21 years after staring at pictures on magazine, I want to play it

Discussion in 'The Newbie Zone' started by Inusaa, Apr 24, 2020.

  1. Inusaa New Member

    So badly.
    But I have some questions.

    - Any benefit/issues to play with the Steam client ?

    - What can I buy with daybreak money in game ?

    - Do I need to buy expansions to be able to play all the races and classes ?

    - Do I miss something if I don't subscribe right at the beginning ?

    - Is there a quest line to follow ? if I start on the first old starting areas ? Because each time I watch youtubers playing on old area, they all seem to know exactly what to do, and don't talk to any npc, so it looks strange. I wasn't able to find any youtube video saying what the game is really about.

    - What is the difference between the old starting zone and the new one, except graphics ?

    - Could you explain, gameplay-wize, in what way is it more challenging than wow ? For fighting, death, quests, etc

    - Is there crafting ?

    - I saw that evil characters couldn't talk with npc, then how can they play the game ?

    - Can we refuse the server xp boost when it happens ? I don't want any advantages, I want to suffer the entire game as well as enjoying it.

    - My internet randomly crash 2-3 times a day, but it just last a minute. If it happen during a fight, how long the character will stay in the world ?

    - What soup do you like ?
  2. Buri Augur

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  3. Celephane Augur

    New England Clam Chowder is the best
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  4. Xyroff-cazic. Director of Sarcasm

    I recommend starting by running the whole tutorial in the Gloomingdeep Mines zone. Crescent Reach will be considered your "home city" but the first quests to introduce game mechanics are in Gloomingdeep, and that is where you'll first load into the world. On the character select screen there is an option to Enter Tutorial. That's only available if you're pretty low level (15 or lower I think). If you do all the quests in Gloomingdeep before leaving, you'll get a decent starting guide for basic mechanics and you'll probably be somewhere around level 10-15. At that point you could go into Crescent Reach and Blightfire Moors and start working on stuff there.
    Old school starting zones are generally race specific. Trolls started in Grobb, erudites started in Erudin, high elves started in Felwithe, etc. There's a bit of overlap like humans and half elves sharing Freeport and Qeynos. Crescent Reach is the modern melting pot starting zone. Any race can start here, and if you're on a free to play account then Crescent Reach is your only option. This helps centralize lower level content instead of spreading low level players all across the world. There's not very much low level population these days as it is, so it makes sense to at least lump them all together.
    Super spicy chili!
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  5. SmoochyOfWolfington Augur

    Be aware I am an old school veteran of the game, at least where Classic EQ is concerned. Also be aware I am old and stubborn and forgetful as well. So take everything I say with a grain of salt... Also I am breaking this up in several posts due to I am long winded at times, but you asked a lot and so I fell the need to give a lot.

    Tutorial- While others may say to do the tutorial, I say skip it. It may help with learning the game to a degree, but I find it long, boring and tedious. I enjoyed reading the help section more than the tutorial and I can honestly say if I was new, the tutorial would put me right off and not even have me bothering with the rest of the game. Plus they basically are given you things right out of the starting gate that really is not necessary. Of course I am old school so maybe I just prefer to have to forge my fate on my own as I go about my journey.

    Steam Client- Ease of use. I assume it will alert you if any friends get logged onto EQ. Be advised though, if you have a newer computer you may not have the proper files and for what ever reason the Steam download does not either. o_O The game works otherwise, just missing a distinctive Direct X version. However you may of downloaded another Steam game that did at one point have what is needed and you are already good to go. Or you could do it manually if you are tech savvy. Easiest thing to do is to just download the game first from the main EQ website and then the Steam version as all files will by then be installed. And this is coming from experience.

    Daybreak money- Not my corner of expertise, but I believe extra character slots for one. Probably some other advantages in the grand scheme of things.
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  6. SmoochyOfWolfington Augur

    Expansions- The majority of expansions are included in the free version. I believe there are two more to be had, either through simply subscribing monthly or purchasing them separately. There are already tons of content already you most likely will never see or even step foot in the same zone area. Most of the original places hardly get any love and are abandoned, quite sadly I might add. Also all races and all classes are included from the start, even for free players.


    Subscribers- I would not say you would miss anything at the beginning, maybe you would. They probably give you stuff from the start and I believe some kind of in game monthly credit that you can use to purchase other things. But again it is not needed in my opinion. Plus how much "elite" gear do you want for not having to hardly work for it? Back in the day it would take someone hours or even days to get the most basic of banded or boiled leather armor. A complete set earned was a great undertaking for a new player and showed their worth. Now you basically start with it and you quickly chuck it away for other things basically given or hardly earned

    However once you reach a certain level, around the 80's I believe, it is probably for the best or maybe in order to proceed, you need to subscribe. Others can go more in depth on this. If you keep rerolling characters however in the low levels, it is nothing to worry about. Although subscribers do get more character slots from the start, free is only two per server (quite generous in my opinion though), Silver which is ex-players with proof (?) is several and of course paid is even more character slots per server. And then you can buy a few more on top of that. But that is really if you want all your characters on one server.



    Story wise- There is a LOT of lore to be had. Twenty some odd years worth and an unimaginable wealth of story. Most people on YouTube probably have done all these quests before or simply do not care for the story and maybe even used a strategy guide and by passed a lot of other things to get to their end goal or had friends help, etc. They want to get in and out. That is not how I play personally, but each their own.



    Now if you mean a quest to follow from day one until the end I am not sure, but I doubt it. Each (most) expansion brought new areas to explore and probably a theme with quests to complete. But it is not quite the same as playing D&D on the computer or with dice, with the quests building to some kind of final climax, no. At least I say they don't anyway.
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  7. SmoochyOfWolfington Augur

    New and Old zones- Some would say, myself included, that the old zones were the better of the zones. It was more tightly knit and packed back in the day. They were unique and even drove a person to choose a certain race, either because they started there or the trek to get there was not very far, maybe only a stone's throw a way so to speak. Better shops for some, better newbie starting areas for others. Some more lax for other races, etc.

    Each and every thing had it's place and purpose. Some will argue for the better, while others for the worse. But the old ways have mostly been abandoned and if you start as a free player you do not have a choice of a starting city, you start at Crescent Reach which is I guess the "new" newbie area. I hate it personally. I used those new fangled teleporting books (Not really new by any standard now, but new to me as I am geared to Classic) to get where I needed to go for my should starting swamps as a Troll and that was about all I used of it. Now I travel on foot and even hide the compass in the far corner and refuse to use the map. I do not use Sense Heading because it starts you off maxed, so I resort to throwing a sword on the ground which always points north and go from there. (Yes that really was a trick that needed to be used, that and leveling up your Sense Heading skill.)



    Other MMORPGs- I have not played WoW. It was not on the list of the other dozens of MMORPGs that were. I would say though, compared to the others I have played free or paid for, that EQ is unique in a lot of ways, especially when it first came out. It only changed to try and keep up with the new kids on the block. I can not speak for the newer content, but the older ones you definitely had to be a team player. You could strike it out on your own and "survive", but it really helped to have honest to god groups and not just a person with multiple characters playing as their own group at the same time. With a real group- you'd fight, you'd laugh, you'd cry, you'd talk about the weather, what's going on in your life, or even just role play your character and what you were particularly hunting all while having a good time. Plenty of fun is still to be had, but a lot of the magic has disappeared unfortunately.



    Back in the day you really had to worry about death. Not so much now. When you died back then you could lose a whole day's worth of exp grinding. Worse yet if in a truly inhospitable place you could lose your whole person and everything on it. You would have to ask for a Necromancer to go and retrieve the body for you at a safer distance from hence you died. You would also ask a Cleric to revive you so the exp penalty was much less. Of course you would pay them in some way for their troubles usually, but sometimes they refused payment and just wanted to help. But you knew who to call. That was their shtick.

    You wanted a tank you got a warrior. You needed a teleport you needed one of the mages which I forget which one. You needed something crafted you got another mage. You wanted the elusive buffs you generally asked a Druid or a Shaman. You needed to journey across hazardous countryside you got Ranger. You needed to raid a dungeon, you asked for a shadowy Rogue, etc. The game truly was that good.

    You wanted to be the biggest and baddest you rolled an Ogre, not only for it's strength, but because of the racial perk of physical frontal stun immunity. You wanted a character that could work better on it's own you got either a Troll or a Iskar due to their faster regen and less sitting to heal. Now with all the trinkets you can get and skills you can buy with new points that were not part of the original EQ, those starting perks become less and less. Someone put it as the lines for races and classes have been blurred. It's a nicer way of putting it than I ever could. ^^!

    A lot of the classes made their way in the game, because of their usefulness. Either they were always asked to group. Asked to buff others along the way. Or to make money on the side, because otherwise they were really hard pressed due to the natures of their characters. When the new Expansions came, most notably Planes of Power and the teleporting books, the mage that could teleport, really lost a good chunk of income and it just went down hill from there.
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  8. SmoochyOfWolfington Augur

    Crafting- Yes there is crafting, but I am not knowledgeable in it. It has always or just about always been there anyway. Of course they have increased what there is to be crafted over the years.


    Evil characters- Evil characters can talk to NPCs, it just depends on which NPCs they are trying to talk to. I as a Human or a Barbarian
    (back in the Classic era) I

    had no problem talking to the majority of NPCs. As those two are generally considered good and there are more good races/factions and places than evil. However if I found my self in the swamps, I'd be in the cauldron for sure. ^^! it also depends on what class you use as well. A human necromancer is, well... evil... :p


    Now as a Troll I have no problem with my own kin or even Ogres, although you will get some in game racism even from them. Certain humans as well will not sell to you, but they will not out right try and kill you either, as they say KOS or Kill On Sight in game, where as a human guard will consider you KOS. As an Iskar Shaman back in Classic EVERYONE hated you. You could not even get along with other Evil races as I recall. It is certainly how it was reported anyway.


    So what does all that mean? That means there are just some places you really can not go. But there are side quests you can do to gain the trust of others in an area, but I believe doing those will worsen other factions, possibly even your own. But it is a way to be able to continue on and elvove so to speak. Also some human cities have "back alleys" or fabled rear or side entrances where the shadowy figures of the underworld can congregate and be, at least some what, safe. If all else fails you give all the loot you picked up in a group and give it to another member of said group that is welcome in the closest city and pray to your deity that they come back with your share of the profit and go about your business merrily. ^^! Now I believe you can gain potions or affects to change your appearance. What that all entails I am not certain.


    So do not come and think you can do everything your first, second, third, fourth, fifth or to infinity try and be done with the game. There are probably 10+ year veterans who have played every day and still have not even seen and done it all. And even if they had it would still feel new if they tried again just due to the huge assortment of things to do. The good and evil aspect make for a great RPG experience. As I said, certain NPCs, even if not ready to out right kill you, will talk differently to you in one character, than it would for possibly another character of yours. It really is neat to behold.
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  9. SmoochyOfWolfington Augur

    XP Bonus- I am not sure you can refuse the XP boost, but I like your style. If you play on Firiona Vie (role playing server), you and me can smash some heads in together for sure! I'd even invite you to dinner, but depending on your race and class we may have to eat away from my village, for your protection of course. ^^! However like I said I purposely hide the map and compass and no longer touch the teleporting books. It's about all I can do at the moment.

    They do have servers that allow to play sort of classic style though, but they always go beyond just Classic and even still I can not vouch for how classic they actually are. I assume they still use the new mechanics, which defeats the purpose. I actually still play with most if not all graphics on Classic. ^^! Only now, or so I have gathered, that the servers that do play Classic are for subscribers only. I think just for the next month or so they are allowing for free players to try them.



    Server crashing- I can not answer the server crashing question. Back in the day in Classic that would be a death sentence though and many had died because of it. I can definitely say though, if you are a major character in a random group and you are constantly losing connection, you may not find your self in many random groups. I'd still welcome you on my journey however.

    I have been kicked out of the game due to how my game screen sometimes plays with the mouse pointer and when I try to get back in I have to kick my old character off, go through all the loading screens again, etc. and I have yet to be killed because of it. I now no longer have any finger nails. ^^! So maybe it is not as bad as it once was. As I said I have to kick my character out to get in it where there are enemy mobs near by, so I am not sure if I am getting beat to hell or the game senses I may of been out of game or I have just been lucky. I would say though, IF you know when it will crash, do not play at those times. Since you said randomly though... ehhh...



    Soups- And I like bean soups, tomato soup, cheese and broccoli soup and really just about anything soup, a hearty stew is good as well. In game though High-Elf priestesses are the tastiest. ^^!

    Edit: Phew... *Wipes the sweat from his forehead and stretches in his chair making unintelligible high pitched sounds as his bones crack all over the place. :p *
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  10. Sagarmatha Augur

    FAKE!
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  11. Inusaa New Member

    Wow thank you very much for those FAT answers :D

    I couldn't resist to subscribe just to start in the troll city :D
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  12. Shanarias Augur

    I strongly disagree with skipping the tutorial. I almost never played this game after the first night, since I didn't even know how to equip my weapon, and kept getting killed by orcs (37 times!) and get super frustrated. It was very late at night, and no one was around to help. This was just before Y2K, and I was working in a computer store as a repair technician, and someone at work listened to me whining about it, and agreed to meet and group with me, and I finally began to grasp some of the basic mechanics of the game. Now I play more than ever, because I am retired.

    But when I came back after a LONG hiatus, I was mostly clueless, so I started a new char in the Tutorial. I found it to be absolutely invaluable. I might be a slow learner, I guess. I derived absolutely NO pleasure from this game the first time I tried to play it. The tutorial is your friend if you are new. You can go back with a paid account to other starting cities after you get finished with the tutorial, and relive that experience if you wish. Getting stuck in a canal in Felwythe is my least favorite thing since. :)
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  13. Inusaa New Member

    It's what I am doing, since I find the rewards of this tutorial area too strong.
    I do the whole tutorial to learn the gameplay and the lore of this place, then I delete my character and start in the troll city.

    Will I not miss any achievement for not doing the tutorial ?
  14. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Only if you like collecting Steam bonuses like the cards that are granted from certain achievements & time played.

    If you play on a TLP it will also depend on which expansions have unlocked what will actually be available to you from the store, mostly it is things like vanity items, gear/weapons appearance ornamentation - housing items & some consumables like potions for buffs, these buffs can be things you can just as easily get from players or they can be experience boosting potions.

    You will have access to all but the 2 most recent expansions, if you were to buy the most recent you get the prior ones thrown in with it. This is something you only really need to do once you have attained all but the most recent levels.

    You can certainly see a lot of the early game without a sub easily enough, the only major restriction being choice of home city is only Crescent reach for free to play players, all-access can choose their original racial starting home too. By level 65 the restrictions on AA for F2P will start to hurt & if you are thinking about Raiding at all just don't as F2P you will be a liability not an asset as a F2P.

    While many of the starting cities now have a set of early "armor quests", these are items that in general are not as good stats as the items granted by the "escape from Gloomingdeep" tutorial. There is also something found in the achievements window known as the "Heroes Journey" which has quite a lot of gear you can earn from completing stages of it, this gear can take you from level 1 all the way to level 85.

    There are 2 main differences.
    1. The "Heroes Journey" begins in Crescent Reach & the zones leading off from there.
    2. *Crescent Reach has a set of tradeskill quests (that give you the components you need free of charge) that will take you from 0-50 in each of the tradeskills - at that point you should consider the Tradeskill Trophy quests, you can still do them later on but it is a far easier quest to gain the trophy at a low Tradeskill level.

    N.B. There are another series of "Freebie" Tradeskill quests in the Abysmal Sea which also grant you the ability to convert some basic materials found in Gates of Discord zones into more useful materials some of which are needed for quests in that expansion, so that can also be a viable alternative "route" to getting from 1-50 in the major tradeskills.

    While levelling in WoW is far more focused on single-player quest chains that you follow & which guide you through zones in a long chain - levelling in EverQuest is almost like 2 different games in this regard.

    EverQuest's early levels & expansions had quests that were much less obvious to locate & weren't generally required for levelling, it's levelling game mostly focused on groups moving to static "camp" locations to farm XP & to target specific named rare spawn creatures for the loot that they dropped, the questing in the early expansions could be very involved though & very few clues were provided by the game on what to do, where to go - this is why players formed self-help websites where they would collectively gather information about quests as multiple players worked on them & made discoveries they would share with others, an early form of crowd-sourcing / networking this led to websites like Allakhazam & EQResource that had walkthroughs built up from that collective effort to complete those quests.

    In the later game (Seeds of Destrruction onwards) a new levelling/questing "group progression" model appears in Everquest, this consists of a series of quests split into 3 chains that have associated achievements to allow you to track your progress towards completing that zone's quests & has over-arching rewards attached.
    Partisan Quests - these usually are required before you can request the Heroic (group) instanced missions & Raids for that zone and tend to be much more involved multi-step quests that the others in the zone.
    Mercenary Quests - often these are only required as part of over arching achievements, a lot of these will consist of simple kill a set number of mobs of a certain type quests, though some are more involved with multiple stages & different tasks that must be performed.
    Hunter Quest - this is an achievement tied to killing each of the rare creatures in the zone, this chain generally only has a few rewards for completing multiple-zone achievements, usually bags are granted through this.

    Heroic (group) Missions - most zones will have 2 of these, the first will require that you have done all of the partisan quests, the second that you have all of the partisan quests AND the first group mission done, these are a mostly a group-version of the raid event from that zone and they will be a fairly challenging mission to do that usually require a full group of real players (much harder to box in-era).

    Death in EQ is not as harsh as it once was, you no longer leave items on your corpse requiring a naked/ungeared run back to try & recover your body & items, players/mercenaries resurrection abilities can return to life in the zone you died in or you can respawn at your bind point & recover much more easily using the guild lobby & the corpse retrieval system (buy a token, hand to an npc it will summon your corpse to you & you can then arrange a resurrection on it there).


    Many quest npc will talk to all characters, some may require the requisite faction to have been earned prior to talking to you, there are also some quests that are race & class specific.

    Kind of.

    The extra experience events modify the base amount of XP gained per kill, Quest XP is often unaffected by these but there are exceptions.

    Were you to have managed to maximise the amount of AA XP your character can earn you could set your regular XP to 0 to gain no further level XP, were your level XP maximiused you could set your AA XP to 0 to gain no further AA. While you have both not maxed you would be affected by the extra xp gain modifier with no way to avoid it other than not playing during the xp bonus.

    EverQuest is pretty good at handling internet drop outs that are short-lived, its net-code was originally built back in the days of typically slow internet over copper phone lines & 28k baud modems. EverQuest will stay running & try to reconnect for a few minutes.

    Gnome & Potato.
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  15. Herf Augur

    - What can I buy with daybreak money in game ?
    You can buy bags, some of which reduce the weight of what you're carrying, you can buy a variety of potions that increase your health and mana regeneration, and many other things (called "buffs" by players.) You can buy appearance items, but many of them you have to also pay an absurd amount of points per character to be able to use. And if you pay to play, you get 500 pts per month which you must claim each month to get; and instead of that 500 points they offer you 3 experience potions, much cheaper than buying the same potions with points.

    - Do I need to buy expansions to be able to play all the races and classes ?
    Mostly, no, though Drakkin and Frogs are tied to a later expansion. Never played them But you can play all the fun races. If you were on a very early server which hadn't opened expansions you get everything but Frogs and Drakkin. Iksar came out with the 2nd expansion in the series (they make the best monks.)

    - Do I miss something if I don't subscribe right at the beginning ?
    You will miss the crowded newbie zones, which is a bummer. But you'll also miss griefers and fighting over spawns, which is a good thing to miss. On established servers there are a few common starting zones that people raising their alts go to.

    - Is there a quest line to follow ? if I start on the first old starting areas ? Because each time I watch youtubers playing on old area, they all seem to know exactly what to do, and don't talk to any npc, so it looks strange. I wasn't able to find any youtube video saying what the game is really about.

    - What is the difference between the old starting zone and the new one, except graphics ?
    Crescent Reach is the new starting zone. I don't like it. It's too big, too annoying to find your way around, but mostly it lacks the racial feelings related to ones one racial home town, all of which had their own look and feel. I believe you can find the "PoK book" in Crescent Reach at any level and go to PoK, where most people hang out on the servers once Planes of Power opens. From PoK you can easily get to any races home towns. But beware, most home town guards are racist so 'con' any NPC you see before approaching.

    - Could you explain, gameplay-wize, in what way is it more challenging than wow ? For fighting, death, quests, etc
    In WoW there's very little penalty for dying. Sure you have to repair your gear eventually (which you do NOT have to do in EQ) but you regain the XP quickly. When I played WoW I would literally die my way into dungeons to get past monsters; if you do that in EQ you'll lose levels quickly. In the past, if you died in EQ you had to go get your stuff off your body; that was changed long ago. But if you want to get your XP back you'll need to get your body back.

    Fighting is similar. Quests in WoW have an easier UI to tell you where you are in your quests. HIstoricaly the differrence between EQ players and WoW players was that WoW players were more reckless, because there wasn't much of a death penalty. A player could run into almost any situation and fight, kill a few, die, repeat, until everything was dead. Can't do that in EQ.


    - Is there crafting ?
    Yes, but it's difficult. Alchemy is probably the best tradeskills, you can make potions to use in game. But only Shamen can do alchemy. Otheres that are popular with hardcore players is smithing, tailoring, brewing and baking. Oh and jewel crafting; you can make some nice magic rings and earrings. The later the expansion, the more useful crafting is.

    - I saw that evil characters couldn't talk with npc, then how can they play the game ?
    The game has built in racism :). If you're an elf, Troll NPCs will want to eat you. If you're human the elves and gnomes and dwarves and such will put up with you but may or may not sell to you until you kill some stuff in their zone to get better faction. Faction is an important part of EQ. If you're Iksar, everyone will hate you (and you will hate them, because you know you're better than them.) The only place this is not true is in PoK (Planes of Power expansion), and a very small handful of other places such as Thurgadin in Velius. But you will definitely talk to NPCs. They have stores to buy and sell stuff, and they have quests. But you may have to work on faction. Some times it's easy, sometimes it's hard. Here's a link to the different faction levels https://articles.eqresource.com/factionexplained.php

    - Can we refuse the server xp boost when it happens ? I don't want any advantages, I want to suffer the entire game as well as enjoying it.
    If you want that kind of play, come to Agnarr. It's been running for a few years and is locked at PoP/LDoN, and the xp level is faster than it was in 1999, but it's still low so you have to work for things. Or as I like to think about it, you have time to experience things.

    - My internet randomly crash 2-3 times a day, but it just last a minute. If it happen during a fight, how long the character will stay in the world ?
    A fairly short time. Probably less than 30 seconds. But you will have to re-login regardless; hopefully you'll still be alive when you do.
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  16. Inusaa New Member

    After finishing the tutorial in gloomerdeep, just to learn the gameplay a a piece of lore I can't do later, I now recreate the same character and will start straight in the troll city. I really want to play this game as vanilla as it was and still be able to enjoy all the new content later.
    It will be so cool to progress from zones mades decades ago to the new ones :D

    I am on the european server.

    Thank you everybody for your fat juicy passionate answers, you are part of what makes me want to play this game :D
  17. Herf Augur

    Which server are you on? On Agnarr there's a Euro guild, The Remedy. If you're not on Agnarr, and are happy to stop advancing at LDoN, it's not to late to restart over there.
  18. SmoochyOfWolfington Augur


    Yes, which server did you end up choosing? Or there is only one European server?
  19. Inusaa New Member

    Yes, it's Antonica Bayle something