My Tuesday night paladin, Sela, needed to work on the level 20 Crescent Reach quest armor, but she was already over the target level of 20 and shouldn’t be getting too much xp, so I had my cleric Brita farming the materials and patterns in Blightfire for her. This involved gathering up every gnoll in the area, turning on my 660 point damage shield, then looting the bodies. /hidecorpse looted hides corpses you have looked at, even if you have left items on them. Considering all the annoying non-stackable and no-drop stuff the gnolls carry, that command was a godsend. Bored with that, I wandered over to the Stonehive gardens because, well, I’d never been. I was as busy as a bee gathering up bixies and wasps (and remembering last Saturday’s Doctor Who, “The Unicorn and the Wasp”), when I saw Urtog, Nostalgia’s main tank, running past me naked and with some drones in tow. I did my best to pull them away, but he died – again, I guess – and then promptly went link dead.
Hey, why was he even here in the first place? Turns out there was a group! In Stonehive! Well, count me in. I ran Brita into Stonehive and cast Temperance on everyone I could find, then logged to my ranger, Tipa, and made my way there through countless KoS mobs and a shaky camouflage. I did make it there in one piece.
Through a lot of thrilling fights and near-wipes, we finally found ourselves confronting the Queen of the Stone Hive. Repops prevented us from actually giving her a shot, but it’s probably just as well. This morning while I was moving Brita out so she could give the quest bits to Sela, I decided to give her a shot. She hits a 75 cleric for over 700 and summons two nasty grubs every half minute or so. Eventually I had more grubs on me than I could heal, especially with the stuns and interruptions preventing me from using my AOE as often as I liked. I died with her at about 45% – and even then it had taken about ten minutes to get to that point. A group would have been better, but even then it would have been a real challenge and I am not sure she isn’t a raid mob of some sort. Now that I know what I’m up against, I’m sure I could kill her given a second try. Allakhazam’s says she is 51. It would have been a short fight to our mid-thirties group.
It was great to group outside our normal day. I would definitely play more EQ if I could get away with it, but the rules are there to keep us all within grouping range. I dinged to 36, which puts me a level past the max.
I did get the quest bits to Sela, and she made her quest sleeves and helmet, the only patterns I could get to drop. It used up all the plate bits anyway. The silk, leather and chain all went into the guild bank (and any Nostalgians, feel free to use them). I ran Sela over to tonight’s dungeon, Unrest, and tried out her Ghoulbane and undead nukes on the critters there. She did okay on the outside, which was gray. Venturing inside brought ghoul after ghoul after ghoul. And then her temperance wore off. Yup. Train to zone.
Should be fun tonight :)