Coming Up for Air
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Yeah, right... like you need to ask.
Topic: Religion
I need help.

Oh, Gods... have mercy on your poor Heretical gamer, for my soul is, as always, mine, and my heart belongs to my wife, but my internet service belongs to Sony. St. Bosco the Gnarly, please don't forsake me. I'll be back, I swear... just as soon as my 'toons are all level 20 or more... both in trade-skills and adventuring... with all their armor quests complete...

Who the Hell am I kidding.

My name is Spidor, and I'm a Questaholic.

Hi, everyone.

I wanted to explain why I've been drooling on my keyboard and unable to post an entry since New Year's. It's because I've been drowning in the EQ2 morass of eye candy and unnecessarily long quests and crafting activities. Oh, sure, some of the quests are quick and easy. But I had a dark elf rogue that needed to be a swashbuckler, and you can't do that in Freeport. So, I had to send her to Qeynos, and betray Freeport to do it.

"How hard could it be?" I thought.

Well, Brothers and Sisters, how does "First, kill 500 gnolls" sound for hard? I became the Ted Bundy of Antonica, as far as dog-men were concerned. And worse, I preyed on the pups... the poor, weakest of them all, because they died quickly and respawned quickly too. And they were in an area that was near town, and considered safe. I invaded their play area and slaughtered them, one by one. And I did it 500 times. And... here's the punch line... I did it because I wanted to be one of the good guys.

I also had to kill 5 gnolls that were named leaders of their community, respected and followed by many. Murdering them was a blow to their society akin to killing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And I did it five times.

To become good. The end, says Sony, justifies the means.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, I decided to leave my friends and family in Freeport behind to suffer the fate which I wished to escape myself. So I went to a known Qeynosian sympathizer and asked him for a hint. He sent me into the sewers. That's where his contact was.

So I went down there, was killed once or twice because I couldn't sneak past the critters down there, leveled up, made it past the critters, and started talking to the guy. Next thing I know, he says I have to prove my sincerity by murdering a Freeport noble. I agreed, and he transported me to the murder site. I killed a guard that I couldn't sneak past, and went into the Noble's chambers...

...and bad things happened. Spoiler here. I'll let you find out for yourself. Suffice to say, I found myself in the graveyard outside of Freeport, looking for a way to Qeynos before the Freeport guys sniffed me out and had my guts for garters.*

Then I had to run through Nektulos. Brothers and Sisters, if my continued existence had not depended on it, I'd have never gone through there. But there's something you don't understand... if you start the betrayal quest, you can't level past 17 until you finish it. At all. You're done. So I had to go into a zone with things determined to murder me if they got close enough. They did, twice. I managed to make it to Thundering Steppes, though, and things got easier.

Not really.

AFter making it through the steppes, and entering Antonica itself, I talked to some zeeb who said he didn't trust me, so why not go kill a lot of gnolls and we'd discuss it again afterward.

It takes a long time to kill 500 gnolls.

Around about this time, I discovered I wouldn't be able to get an apartment in Qeynos until I'd given up the place I had in Freeport. To do that, I'd have to be inside Freeport. I also, about this time, discovered the same thing about my crafting society; can't join one in Qeynos until you leave the one in Freeport. Which means I had to go back through Nektulos.

I only died once this time. I was getting better.

After a few misunderstandings on my part, I found that it was easy to leave the society; there's a menu window for it, called "Societies." (Duh.) Leaving the apartment was a little harder. I had to sneak into the same sewer again, up through it into the sub-division that had my apartment, past the guards (who can see through sneak no matter what your level), and click on the door to get the apartment maintainance menu up. I had to pay 5 silver for rent just to do that, constantly looking over my shoulder for anything vaguely guard-shaped. I swear, those guards have Superman's eyes or something. And the luck! Twice I stuck my head out of the sewer cover just so a guard could lop it off, "it" being my head and not the sewer cover.

Eventually, I got around it by the simple expedient of creating a 'toon on my wife's account and going through the entire Isle of Refuge bit and bringing her to Freeport. You can ask any guard the location of an NPC. If you mistype the name, or put in a bogus name, the guard shrugs and acts more ignorant than usual, showing that Everquest is a game capable of creating Artificial Stupidity. So the new 'toon went into the sub-division, and waited until the guard was far, far away from where I would enter and where I wanted to be. Then she asked him the location of Gubywupr. The guard didn't know, because there's no such NPC as Gubywupr. Eventually, I got tired of typing names and just put in ppp, and that worked just as well. The guard wasn't going anywhere.

Once the 'toon was keeping the guard busy asking him where ppp was at the moment, I logged on with my account on Sputnik. Two-boxing, I snuck into Longshadow and kept the guard busy on the other computer simultaneously. I made it to the apartment and got the Hell out of there. Mission accomplished.

I didn't get killed at all when I went through Nektulos this time. Go, me!

After that, it was just a matter of camping the named gnolls (which counted toward the 500) and the last of the 500. I got another couple of quests that required killing gnolls (Sony hates gnolls, is my guess), and did those at the same time.

After that, it was a matter of talking to a few people, including fighting another one of them (a "bad guy" posing as a "good guy," go fig). All of these named NPC's, both gnolls and the one human, were too tough to solo, and it's a pain to get enough people together to kill just one of them, much less 6. Not many people Betray. I should have wondered why that was before I started. Because of the way the quest is structured, it's hard to find enough people to help you on it, that also need it. If it weren't for my guild, the Knights of the Old Order, I'd still be trying. Thanks and props go out to Katlanta, Trysten, Quix, Jerahmeel, and anyone else that helped but whom I may have forgotten because I'm a pinhead.

Once that was done, my character had gained citizenship, got the apartment, and is now my highest level 'toon (level 18) and ready to start Swashbuckler training. All in all, a nice wrap-up of a long quest that is a bigger pain in the arse than alcohol and laced suppositories.

And it only took 3 weeks.

Damn you, Sony! Give me back my ISP!



*Ewww.