EQ2: I love my Kunzar Jungle

I really really REALLY wanted to level last night, so I made a promise to myself and to anyone in earshot that yes, THIS TIME, I was going to start on those Kunzar Jungle quests, and damned be he that gets in my way. Just for fun I checked on groups in guild — apparently guild leader changed again, and some people who left came back, I missed all that drama somehow because I was playing my cleric all night before last and she is not in the guild.
Anyway, I got some interest from the paladin I mentioned before who is still struggling to solo Fens quests. I tried to get him to join me in KJ, but he thought he would be too low and logged off. This guy was main assist a lot when we raided, and now he is casually tossed aside because, well, he’s a kid, his parents don’t let him play as much as he likes, and he needs help to catch up. Help he can’t find.
I started off killing the hornets at zone in. Some of them have this really fun ability to summon three bug pets which tossed me for a loop the first couple of times it happened. I didn’t know what was up so I would try and crowd control them, which ended in disaster. Finally realized they were swarm (ha ha) pets, and just burned down the bug I was on and they poofed.
I got a tell from a friend asking if I would be interested in a Karnor’s Castle group. Short answer: no. but I said yes anyway, because I hadn’t picked up the Drolvarg Lore and Legend book, and I still had two unfinished questlines in there because nobody ever returns to KC once they’ve been there a couple of times.
Oh, wait. You want my cleric? Sigh. Okay.
I head there with Dera, we wipe three times to unexpected adds in the first fifteen minutes, and people find excuses to leave. Yay! Six more people who will never return to KC.
Back to KJ. I finish one quest and am suddenly no longer KoS to two Iksar villages, Jillis (sp?) and one a little deeper. Even though they seem to be on the same faction, apparently the second one hates the first one, because I’m supposed to frame them for the deaths of the Sathirian guards I just killed, and once I’ve done that, I’m supposed to kill them all. I don’t get the point of why I’m supposed to frame them, then go ahead and kill them. Seems I didn’t need to frame them first. But my faction with both of them is marginal and if I wipe out that village, they are bound to notice and get angry at some point, so I table that quest for now.
One quest requires a special sort of Iksar that lives in the City of Mist, so I slowly make my way across the map. Oh look, saberkitties!!! Wheee! I kill a bunch. Oh look, pretty flowers THEY SMELL SO NICE! I kill a bunch.
I get a tell from Zygwen (yay for readers on my server!) asking me if I’m doing anything. Well, I WAS making a nice flower arrangement with dead mantrap flowers surrounded by the cooling corpses of kitties, but no, nothing that can’t be left next to someone’s bed while they’re sleeping, I guess. Dera and Dina soon find themselves in a group with level 80s, destroying a cave full of yellow skeletons (after doing a quest just outside that gives +35,000 faction to the skeletons and their froggy friends to make you non aggro to them, with faction to spare in case, you know, you want to kill a lot of them. You killed fifty of us? NO PROBLEM! YOU’RE A FRIEND! You’d have to kill at least another couple hundred of us before something so trivial would come between us! Think nothing more of it!)
We headed after to Sebilis. Dera was punted in favor of another healer (thankfully; I would have had to drag Dina behind Dera otherwise, and that is no way to treat a troub.) After about ten minutes of trying to zone, I rebooted, but still had a lot of trouble getting back on. It would tell me that the server was down, or it would crash; when I finally got in, turns out everyone had been zoning very slowly. I guess it’s not just Antonia Bayle any more.
It was the first time for Dina in the Crypt of Agony. I wasn’t running a parse, but I believe I was doing okay. I entered 90% into 75, and dinged 76 before we’d gone too far. No worthwhile loot dropped that I saw, but it was a fun ride and thanks Zygwen & co for finally letting a troub into that zone. The upper cadre of my guild are largely in Charasis now, and don’t seem to go to CoA much anymore. The two people who seemed most interested left the guild last night.
Back in EQ1, we’d have nights where we would just work on quests and group together and get DKP for it. Like, let’s say for Epics (by the time I left EQ1, there were three epic quests per class), we’d just knock those out. People would be happy, we’d do four or five on our quest day once a week, nobody would be begging for help the other days because they knew when theirs would get done, and people would show up to do the quests because, hey, free DKP.
I think my guild’s reluctance to group together or to help on quests aside from a core group of early adopters, at least partially explains why people just don’t log on anymore. My son gave up leveling at 75 because it got too dull and now just plays on Xbox Live all the time. The former MT of our guild has been in and out of the guild many times in the last couple of weeks because he can’t find anyone to group with him in RoK. Guilds at this time really need to take care that they are helping people get their quests done, and their leveling done. If my guild ever killed Mayong, only a couple of people would get their SoDs because the vital Castle Mistmoore groups all ended a couple of weeks after the last chapter was implemented, and with a 7 day a week raid schedule, there was never time for someone who worked to get in on the pickup groups (that’s gonna change; I am going to join the next pickup group I can find working on SoD, since we’re no longer raiding).
Well, anyway, closer than ever to 80, and the higher quests will be easier for me to tank as a result 🙂
Note: This post has been voted by spammers as one of the best novels of the 20th century! WOOT! Go me! And here I was thinking that it being written well into the 21st century and not being a novel would work against me here 🙂

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