Everquest Interlude

If you've looked at the Legos with my kid page you know from the Kunark Cloth Map on the wall that I'm an old Everquest die hard.  Little did I know, back in 1999, that one day I'd play this game with my son.  He's almost 10 years old and we've played Minecraft and many other games together.  Out of all those, EQ is the one that really makes me happy to play with him.  Sometime in the last few years I let him get an account and he mostly just goofed around in newbie areas, not leveling past 12 or so.  Then one day he was old enough and familiar enough to group and do something coordinated.  It didn't take long for his Necro, and my Enchanter, to level to 44 together.  We went to a variety of zones along the way, finally camping out in Trakanon's Teeth on the way to Sebilis and ended up going inactive at that point.

That was sometime last year, but suddenly he started talking about it again recently.  I got us setup again and we logged in to head to Sebilis.  My friend from high school, who I played EQ with back in the day, was going to try to join us with his 47 Beastlord, but schedules did not work out.  So my son and I decided to try Sebilis, just the two of us.

Necro+ Enchanter is already pretty good, but the addition of mercs has simplified filling out a group when trying to do dungeons with big multi-pulls.  We both use Fighter mercs which works pretty well.  If the Beastlord makes it next time, he's got a healer which would make us incredibly tough.

Anyway, my son and I click the red and black glowy ball in the floor and zone into Sebilis.  The first two mobs are red and yellow.  With Mezmerize and Slow they both went down quick and easy.  So did the next two, both red.  We worked our way up to the door at the end of the entrance hall, fighting the last two mobs.  Then it happened, the last mob hit 20% and ran, snare had failed.  It started a 5+ chain of a train.  Somehow not immediately dying as two cloth casters in a sea of red and yellow cons.  I told my son to follow me and I headed for the exit, thinking suddenly to check if the zone was empty.  A quick "/" told me there were 40 people in the zone, I hoped for a Trakanon raid, but as I opened the door to the exit hall I saw three or more people standing there.

As quickly as we arrived we were off again, running back to the entrance hall.  My son informed me that my merc was dead, which was good to know.  My son has Gate memorized at all times but I still needed to memorize it.  So I did that real quick and told him to get out.  We managed to kick some butt, start a huge train, not kill anybody and not die.  You gotta love that.

The next day we went back and got level 45 in that same hallway.  Just as we got past the door, where we got in trouble the day before, my older son came in and I had to talk to him about real life stuff.  Playing an Enchanter properly while discussing the finer points of being a truck owner is not an easy thing to do.  Fighting by the big rock between the entrance and exit halls, we got some wandering adds.  So I made the call to gate out.  My son always argues, he thinks we can fight it out.  Maybe we could, but it's EQ and managing not to die still makes me feel good, even if the penalties are nowhere near as bad as they used to be.

Back in EVE things are still progressing.  Niskin will be remapping for Perception/Wisdom tomorrow, finishing up T3 training and whatever he needs for the upcoming roamer mission.  The alt is still filling out basic skills, but I'll be picking up the last ones he needs tomorrow.  I don't have an ETA on the swap yet, but I should know soon.