Expansion Feature Proposal: Physical Spell books and Skill Compendiums for all Player Classes

We all know and love the venerable EverQuest spell book. Every PC caster class has one and can easily flip the pages of the book back and forth to view the spells they have collected on their adventures. Of course, every PC caster class can open and close their spell book and scribe tangible paper spell scrolls and select spells to memorize to include in their spell gems.

Then I got to thinking: why don't we have a physical spell book?

We have tangible weapons, armor, food, water and other items but we have no spell book. Perhaps this was an oversight or maybe nobody ever thought about it.

I'd like the devs to consider adding both a physical spell book for casters and a physically compendium of melee class tomes and disciplines. It would be a nice opportunity to convert basic melee abilities like taunt, kick, bash, backstab and more into bona fide icons. These both could be added to a special new inventory slot for every character which would not substract a valuable inventory slot. As luck would have it, we just happen to have two open slots on either side of the ring slots.

Spell books and compendiums could have stats too.

Here's a mockup I created:



All melee tomes and disciplines could be found in the new compendium and converted to icons to drag to the hotbar. If the player mistakenly destroys the books, the spells, skills and disciplines could still be available by traditional methods.

In addition, as well as each class given a free book at level 1, the Research tradeskill could craft spell books and compendiums with various stats and focus effects. NPCs could drop both books too with better stats.

This might be a nice addition to add to the feature set of the next expansion. Thanks for listening.

Only thing I can picture is my newly created Dwarf Cleric running around with his “bible” thumping bandits on the head.

You have hit a bandit for 666 damage (Critical Strike).
A bandit has been smitten by the power of Brel Serilis

Rather see a Food and Drink Slots! Even Negreth would like to see in game and get rid of force eating and drinking! Thats only for the cheap people anyways.

Andarriel

Cool idea.
Given whatever time they have to spend on the new expansion I'll always prefer more content vs stuff like this.
But I do like the idea as an interesting wish list item.

it can't be any worse than the luck stat.

So these are (minus the stats) aiming to be a UI consolidation?
By removing the existing spell book icon on the spell bar and combat ability UI found on the combat ability UI piece and moving them to the character window?
I think that's a decent idea myself, though I think where casters have a cast bar a replica of that for the disc timer bar would be needed, but that would be better than having to have the combat ability ui on the screen as its too big and cumbersome anyway.

Or is the intent to simply add an additional character equipment slot so that characters have something else to farm that gets them stats?
Would casters & melee only get one book but hybrids get two?

I'm not against more item slots if they make sense, this idea isn't terrible but could use a little more detail perhaps.

I posted my own idea for an extra item slot a while back in another post on this kind of topic: - https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/add-more-gear-slots.273276/#post-3999206

Food/Drink slots as suggested are something EQ could do alongside removing force-feeding but I would want to see a massive increase in the recipe components dropping in the game world alongside those changes if we are going to be put in the position of being forced to consume stat food rather than preserving it through force feeding, some components for stat food are stupid rare for something that is a consumable.
Also creating stat food should be a lot quicker so the recipes should be updated so you can make more per combine, and maybe have larger stack sizes for it, I dont want to have to spend hours per week just making the food I will eat through the week's play.

Please don't change the GUI unless there is a really good reason

I doubt they will consider additional books.

There was the Tome of the Hero's Journey book which was given to newly created players. It was an actual book like you mean. But they took it out of the game and only the players who had one at the time still have it.

And I always thought this was one of the better helpers for returning players. Even though there is the Hero's Journey list under /ach but it was nice to have a book to open and see your steps.

When they took it out they modified the UI to have the /ach. From the 2018 patch notes:

The Hero's Journey help text is now directly accessible via a UI button:
- - The new menu entry can be found in the EQ Button list under Quests on servers that have unlocked The Serpent's Spine expansion.
- - The alternate advancement ability Summon Tome of the Hero's Journey has been removed. Any existing copies of the tome can still be used to display the list of suggested quests.

No - I play melee's so I can chime in - but ... the more we ask for is the reason we have the "perks" that are add-ons ... think before you ask for stuff please.

I miss my book, the list was much easier to see where you could go next in the book.

As a female who likes her bling, I'd go for multi jewelry slots and add ankle bracelets. Why where 1 neclace when 7 is possible

Imagine the stats you could stack.