It’s been a long time coming, but after weeks of farming eyes in Silent City, our guild headed into the Fountain of Life to kill Godking Anuk. Davyydeous had two quests to complete in here, Restoring the Vessel, and Wrapping it All Up, the final step in the Peacock Club timeline. Davy has had both of these quests sitting in his journal for quite some time now, just waiting for a chance to finish them.

Looking back now at the Peacock Club, I have to say I enjoy this sort of epic quest series, but at the time, it definitely drove me nuts. I remember many quests that involved hunting for items located throughout Maj’Dul and the Living Tombs, and a few of my least favourite kind of quest – timed events. This was also at a time when everything in the Living Tombs was still aggro to me and, because I didn’t want her falling too far behind, I was two-boxing with my wife’s Wizard. I’m not the best two-boxer in the world, and let me tell you, there are few things as painful as trying to finish Finding My Way by yourself, let alone with a squishy Wizard auto-following you. It took a few tries, and many curse words, but I eventually got into a perfect rhythm and got it done. I think I got it to the point where I quite possibly could have done it blindfolded, but I’m not about to prove that claim.

So while there were some painful moments, and the quest reward is well past its usefulness to me, the quest line as a whole was really well done. I also happen to think that the Living Tombs and Silent City are some of the best zones in the game, with some great quests to do. I really like both the architecture and the mobs in the zones and am very much looking forward to getting my alts into those zones to do the whole thing over again. Mind you, by the time I get my alts leveled up, Rise of Kunark (hey, there’s a website!) may be out and I’ll be pushing Davy to level 80. Man, I love this game.

After turning in my Wrapping it All Up quest, a friend (70 Shadowknight) and I did some dueling in Maj’Dul. Talk about getting humbled. I don’t duel often, just on rare occasions for a quick laugh, so I don’t take it seriously, but wow, did I feel inadequate. I barely even got close to the Shadowknight through all the knockbacks. I tried offensive stance, defensive stance, one hander with shield, two hander… nothing worked. Just to pour some salt in my wounds, I found out he didn’t even use harm touch or death march. Dang. Those Shadowknights sure do get a lot of toys to play with. Nerf ‘em I say.

I’ve changed the site address to http://www.timesink.ca

For those with bookmarks or links, please update accordingly.  In the meantime, there may be some linkage hiccups for the next day or so, as I hunt down any references to the old address.

My guild was raiding the Laboratory of Lord Vyemm last night, and as usual, it was a fun time blowing through mobs. Davyydeous has been on a string of good luck these days and that continued last night, where he scored two fabled drops, the Chestplate of Fiery Might, and the Doomrage Faceguard. Both were very good upgrades over what he was wearing previously, although I must say, I’m going to miss my Berserker Hoo’loh helmet. It took a while, but that horned helmet grew on me, and I really came to like the appearance. The Doomrage, while way better statistically, is just the typical looking plate helmet. The chestplate is also a very nice piece, and looks good to boot. It was a great night for plate wearers, as later on in the raid the relic plate arms dropped, as well as some fabled plate boots. Davy finally getting to the point where I’m not embarrassed by his gear… almost.

I still haven’t finished gushing over the new content coming to Everquest II, and lo and behold, eq2.allakhazam.com is announcing a fourth expansion called Rise of Kunark.  This has been rumoured for some time of course, but now it appears we have some confirmation, along with some details.  Check out Everquest II Allakhazam to read more, but here are a couple of highlights:

• New player race, the Sarnak
• New starting area,  Timorous Deep
• Level cap raised to 80 (adventure and tradeskill)
• More weapons and armour
• New mount, The Kunarkian Rhinoceros

Definitely some cool sounding stuff in there, I certainly can’t wait to find out more.  If this expansion is anywhere near as good as Echoes of Faydwer, we’re in for some great stuff.  I just hope I finish my Claymore quest line before I ding 80.

The upcoming live update will be bringing many riches to us Everquest II players, and I can’t wait. I won’t go through all the upcoming features here, as it’s been done elsewhere (check out Ogrebear’s Thoughts for a good rundown with pictures), so I’ll just post some screen shots I took of the new content.

The biggest elements of the update are undoubtedly the new race along with their new starting city and zone. The new race is a dark version of the Fae called the Arasai. Check out the May Producer’s Letter for a bit of insight into the new race. There’s a fair bit of customization you can do, and I really like the look of the Arasai. When Echoes of Faydwer came out I never got the urge to create a Fae, but without doubt, I’ll be rolling an Arasai as soon as the content goes live. It took me a while to decide on which wing type I wanted as there were a few different ones I really liked, but I ultimately went with a “batty” look.

This screen was new to me and I’m not sure if it’s unique to the update, or if it was implemented in EoF. Regardless, here it is, a map of the current world of Norrath. It’s a nice touch, and I really like it. I also really like the fact there’s still lots of open water there for new lands to magically appear one day.

Darklight Wood is where you start off, inside a little village. There’s a quest giver standing right in front of you, ready to send you on your way to fame and fortune. I was too eager to head out into the rest of the zone, so I didn’t explore the village too much.

There’s a path that leads out of the village into Darklight Wood itself. I followed the path out and decided to turn around and have a look at the outside of the village. Fittingly, the zone is dark, and very atmospheric. There are a lot of lower level mobs to kill just outside the village gates, as well as a small cave to explore.

I soon came upon the Wellspring of Nightmares, a mysterious pool of water surrounding by flying ghostly skulls. I don’t know of any lore behind the wellspring, but I’ll keep my eye out for some. I think I spent about five minutes just standing there watching the skulls swirl about. After a quick swim in the pool, I moved on.

Not far from the Wellspring of Nightmares I came upon a huge chasm called Innoruuk’s Scar. This area definitely looked nice, and the mist rising out of the chasm really adds to the atmosphere. The bridge looks really good too, and suits the zone. On a side note, there’s something about bridges in MMOs that I really like. I can’t explain it, but when I see a bridge I just have to cross it, or jump off it. I chose the latter, and using my wings, I floated harmlessly to the bottom of the chasm, only to see…

…our good friend Nagafen. My understanding is that Naggy is here only to give curious players a way out of the chasm. Apparently GMs were getting a lot of requests to rescue players from the bottom and eventually decided to drop a version of Nagafen in there so that players could just attack him, get killed, and revive back up at the village. Surprisingly, my level 2 Bruiser was not able to defeat Nagafen, and I soon found myself back at the village.

Just beyond the bridge, the path eventually leads to K’Rais Tunnel, which will take you to Neriak. I wanted to finish exploring Darklight first, so I chose not to enter at this point. As soon as I get some time I’ll check it out. I really like the look of the tunnel entrance, in fact, I think they’ve done a great job with the whole zone.

I next headed back across the bridge and headed deeper into Darklight Wood, eventually coming upon a druid ring like structure in The Harrowglade. It didn’t appear to be a regular druid ring like the ones in the other parts of Norrath, although that’s not to say it won’t be in the future. I guess only time will tell.

I headed deeper into the zone, careful not to get too close to the enemy mobs wandering about, as I was only level 2. I saw a shining blue beacon off in the distance and decided to check it out. I couldn’t get too close, but managed to get a decent shot of Warpfont Spire. It’ll be interesting to see what purpose this spire will have in weeks to come.

Nearby is Sableflame Crater, which was crawling with many mobs eager to kill me. I had to tread very carefully in order to get this picture. If I get a chance in the coming days, I’ll get myself leveled up so I can explore the building and see if anything is there.

Further into the zone I came across a guard riding an armoured warg. Wow, how sweet does that warg look? That is one awesome looking mount, and I hope there are plans to bring some armour in for the warg mounts already in the game.

Finally, I found myself heading down a path deeper into Darklight Wood and came upon some drakes surrounding some dragon bones. In fact, there was a named in there called Searscale. Unfortunately, I can’t confirm that name at this time, nor do I remember what level it was, as a drake caught wind of my presence and felt all to happy to kill me before I could jot the information down. If I remember correctly, most of the mobs around here ranged in level from 8 to 9. I want to say Searscale was 14, but again, I may be completely off with that.

So that’s about all I’ve seen of Darklight Wood to this point. It looks and feels like a fair sized zone with quite a bit of content. In the next few days or so I hope to level up a bit and head into Neriak and check it out, and of course, take some screenies.