I thought it would be fun to share some early favorite PoP experiences everyone has gotten in to so far. For me: Finding a good EXP camp in PoNightmare to be one of the early level 65s on the server was cool. A zone that often would get skipped with level unlocks had plenty of people looking to avoid the trial lines and still get decent EXP. Turning in our guilds first Spectral Parchment and getting Command of Druzzil on the very first turn in was amazing luck! I almost couldn’t believe that happened. Defeating bugged Bertoxxulous after a wipe. We were not expecting a 1.5k/tick DoT that zeros out your mana on engage! Saryrn also being defeated in bugged form where the silence wasn’t avoidable. Reminded me of our first runs at Mayong. It is actually quite fun to run into mechanics you aren’t expecting and figure out a strategy to overcome them. For 3-box trophy kills I’ve done Junk Beast and Untel’Dak so far. The former being the hardest because of his absurd HP Regen and the AE blind causing issues with pets. Doing alternate access quests I’ve never done before to gain access to zones for my main character who may not see the zone otherwise for several weeks or my boxes who might not see the zone for months. A few of these are really well designed quests IMO. So what is everyone else’s favorites? Some raids, some groups, some quests, some tradeskills??
RL has kept me out of game, and will continue to for a tiny bit longer, but one thing I'm really looking forward to is this: [Thu Oct 24 01:05:40 2002] Cambus tells you, 'so many new things!!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEeeeee' [Thu Oct 24 01:05:44 2002] You told Cambus, '' [Thu Oct 24 01:05:48 2002] You told Cambus, 'tinkering overload!' [Thu Oct 24 01:05:54 2002] Cambus tells you, 'YUP' [Thu Oct 24 01:06:18 2002] Cambus tells the guild, 'happy gnome. happy gnome... i'm such a happy gnome' ...except this time around, I'm the tinkerer!
And of course, early PoP was the peak of the power of charming. I spent a LOT of time in Storms playing frog wrangler. This time I have an enchanter, so I'll be able to take it even further.
I had a lot of fun grinding Lenas to 65. My memories of PoP during PC launch had me doing slow crap like fear kiting ravens solo in PoN or fighting in Disease... This time I had a hobgoblin group on day one and blazed through the early levels. Finished to 65 a few days later; was all a good time.
Just been enjoying everything really. Raids are fun, exp is fun, trying to get spells is fun. Exping is viable again, so been enjoying BoThunder grouping party vibes and PLing guildies while they sleep. Pretty fun having so much to do with flags and alt access things, will keep me busy for a while. It's been a blast, thanks for new and exciting content all around.
I really enjoyed crawling around the hobgoblin and mephit caves in Nightmare in the first few days after launch. Higher-tier zones are of course faster and more rewarding, but exploring off the beaten path in Tier 1 was good fun.
By far my favorite experience has been sooooo many groups with 6 real humans at the keys vs. boxes. I'm going to savor it like a fine wine, because it won't last forever!
There was an industriousness in our guild during the first two days as we pushed to get flagged, keyed, and leveled for Aerin'Dar. That was immersive and exciting unlike i've experienced in year. Also, I've been able to compete with the tradeskills market for the first time and that has been very rewarding!
Getting dupes of the dumbest mage spells (shoulder + neck foci - 3 each) instead of getting Burnout V; my first Spectral going onto my Enc and getting Insanity instead of something useful. Realizing my Chanter is basically useless without Command, Sleep and Bliss in higher tier zones because Apathy is basically useless past T1.
Nah, I'm actually enjoying the frustration. Reminds me of back in the days with constant frustration at progression.
The first 3 days of massive NAG effort to get our selected through Justice Trials, Storms Giants, into BoT, get levels and spells, and get setup for Agnarr on day 3, was absolutely amazing. It brought me back 20 years, we were actually doing content that was difficult, everyone was 1-2 boxing, and we had to work together at every single step to make it happen. Later I have enjoyed doing weird quests, going on side-missions because, "oh, this thing dropped that is for this quest, lets do that!" - PoP is such an amazing expansion. I have enjoyed these last 11 days (has it only been that? It feels more like 11 weeks!) more than I have enjoyed any Everquest for 20 years - thank you everyone that made that happen! Also, I have enjoyed that, bar a few incidents, everything has been pretty smooth, people have respected camps, been nice to each other, helped each other etc. I hoped for that because TAKP is amazing, but was afraid greed/ambition would cause some difficulties, but I have seen very little of that!
The first day trying to get through PoJ trials was a riot. Triggered my anxiety hard, and I had to take a break, and go kill some Kunark dragons : ) After getting through PoJ, PoV was awesome to wander around almost alone for a few days. Then doing server first AD and LMM will be very memorable (thanks for all the work to make rotations a thing!) The race to 65 felt soo much more attainable than my initial race to 60, and managed to reach 65 in about a week on my main trio. Learning how to Bard with Fading memories has been awesome as well. I'm really enjoying my first time playing PoP, and really enjoy playing on this server a lot.
I feel you on the leveling. First camp I found, with the weekend off work, I just parked my butt there for 17hours. Got to do some actual leveling and meaningful grind with guildies. Doing the hedgemaze last night was a blast. This content is already really fun.
