Alternate Everquest

We'll take a look at this. Thanks for the heads-up.

Druids have received 2 new spells as of last week. One should help tremendously with mana costs on regular fights, and the other should help druids become more competitive on hard fights.  For the first, it is available on many druid spell vendors at level 10. For the other, check with any city's Druid Guild Master for hints on how to get started.

We're working hard to release a zone that should fit with your desires quite well (duo-box up to a point).  It should provide an intermediate gear step for many/most classes, if you can get to the named mobs.  There will also be quests offering tokens allowing people to purchase gear to fill in some of the gaps they may have from other zones/quests.

Keep your eyes peeled on Discord.  Release of the zone should be coming this week (with any luck)!

That happens occasionally, but relogging seems to clear it up.

@Nedush

I understand some of the concerns you've raised, particularly about the expectation of gear progression with how nice the newbie stuff is.  We are working to add some new gear to help fill some holes that some classes find themselves having, though the SolRo-equivalent armor does provide a nice upgrade path from newbie gear.

What I see as the largest point in your post is the solo/duo game, and what content is available.  For this, I'm afraid the answer is there isn't a lot.  Most of the content we are building focuses on full-group (and some raids) play.  That said, we do recognize that there are some folks who are on a schedule that has them playing odd-hours compared the the larger population, leaving them limited options for grouping.  I will take this as a point of opportunity for us to add some content more suited to small group play (1-4 characters), though it will be some time (a couple months at least) before we're able to release something like this.

In regards to future expansions, our plan is to follow our server's unique story-line.  This means that the zones released within each of our 'expansions' may or may not correlate to how EQ originally released them.

As for content you can do right now in the small-group style, some options that come to mind immediately are:

• Dulak
• The Hole
• Kedge Keep
• Unrest (deep in)
• The Hatchery

One of our developers is nearly finished building the next zone that will be launched for xp/questing/loot.  We're hoping it will be ready within a week or two, and the content should be doable for a very solid 1-2 person group, or an average 4-person group.  Some of the content will probably require a full group, but I don't expect the small groups to have too much difficulty finding something to do.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope that helps answer some of your questions.  Please keep them coming, along with any feedback that you may have.

Fixed (again)

This area has a bunch of features will repel adventurers:

High aggro/assist radius
High density of wandering monsters
High combats stats relative to level
Mesmerize immunity
Mobs walking through walls

This makes it one of the few areas that really call for a group that functions fully in all areas: healer, slower, tank(s), puller, crowd control, and DPS. I think it is good to have such an area, and this by itself could be a good boost for Bards and Enchanters in particular. However, early information on the area indicates that this is a standard "rare spawn" hunting area rather than a taka- or pits-style dungeon crawl to a guaranteed target. As a "grind" area it is a hard sell to players to spend a lot of time in an area that demands a high level of play and an optimized group. I think that engagement with the area would be higher if it were changed so that the respawn time was more forgiving to groups that stumble while attempting to reach its deeper areas. A lower respawn time would of course make it take even longer to experience the rare spawns in the zone so I suggest that the loot mobs be moved to static spawns with even longer respawn timer.

• Mobs walking through walls - This is generally a result of pathing back home during a pull or after a wipe, rather than normal pathing.  This also has to much to do with how the zone was compiled by the EMU community, such that the 'walls' are not necessarily truly walls, from the mob's perspective.  I'll add this zone to the list of ones we need to fix pathing on.
• Mesmerize immunity - These are few and far between, and if you need to mez something and it's immune, chances are your group should change targets so you can land your mez on the one that IS mezzable.
• High combats stats relative to level - I am constantly tweaking the mobs in this zone, as more data is gathered.  Also keep in mind that the mobs were built before the changes to slow spells and AC mitigation, so those had to be factored in also.
• Respawn times - This is reasonable, and I'll make some adjustments.

That said, it sounds like you understand the vision for what the zone was intended to be.  I'm not planning on making any major changes to how loot is handled for the time being, as nobody has spent enough time there to see what the rewards can be.

I do not believe in a game where all you should have to do is be present, and you get great rewards.  Taka, Delve, and Hatchery all follow that model.  This zone was not meant to be a loot fest, but something that you had to work for in order to succeed.  And the rewards should be commensurate.