When I left off in Norrath, I was at the entrance to Chelsith: The Ancient Vault. I had been sent inside to collect some items, and the zone was similarly set up to the original Chelsith, so it felt familiar yet different. Chelsith has been home to the Yha-Lei for quite some time, but this zone appears to tell the story of previous Iskar inhabitants. At least, that’s what the ghosts in the zone mostly look like. I haven’t read quest dialogue in this game in so long I sort of just insert my own storylines as I kill everything in sight. There were plenty of trash mobs in this zone, along with a handful of bosses, though what I assume was the last boss seemed to be locked away out of reach, and the quest update occurs right outside of the chamber. Perhaps that’s part of the heroic version that I didn’t get to access, as I’ve just been burning through the advanced solos. Either way, it was a great boon to my experience bar, mainly because this has been a double XP weekend in EQ2.

After completing the instance, I returned to the quest giver on the boat, who then sends me to the Greater Faydark to meet up with the Duality. After speaking with Dartain, he opens a portal to the Obol Plains, and just like that, I’m whisked back in time (or to a parallel time frame, I’m not entirely certain… maybe I should actually read this shit). This is the second main overland zone of the expansion, so at this point I believe I’m 3/4 of the way through the content. Obol Plains is to The Loping Plains as Eidolon Jungle was to The Feerrott. It has a similar layout, but things are in different places and the inhabitants are different altogether. Some new mobs are present in the zone I hadn’t seen in the game before, along with plenty of sameishness. It’s a pretty zone, much better looking than EJ was, though I am partial to EoF zones, and since LP was in EoF, this makes complete sense. The first part of the zone leads you into a small town where you eventually run into Firiona Vie.

She’s a busy little bee, as I hadn’t seen her throughout all my years of playing EQ and EQ2, and this is the second time I’ve seen her this year. It’s also interesting that she’s a good aligned character, and my evil aligned character is working with her. I suppose if it’s one of those “for the greater good” sort of situations that would make sense, but I just don’t see it under normal circumstances. Either way, she’s aging well — she looks exactly the same as I remember her back in 1999.

The quest lines here devolve back into the same old kill this and gather that variety, which is fine for mindlessly grinding through stuff. If this zone is anything like EJ was, there will be more interesting quests towards the end of it. One of the early quests saw me capturing some of these weird creatures called Tuataras, and once the quest line was finished I got one of my own:

It’s an ugly fucker, and it’s not a fully flying mount. A while back Daybreak changed around mounts, and beside the normal ground mounts we were all accustomed to, they added in different degrees of flying mounts. This meant if you were low level you couldn’t fly right off of the bat. There are leapers, which have a very high and long jump, gliders, which and jump high and safe fall but have some weird steering, and the fully controllable flying mounts like I typically use. This lizard is a glider, and after jumping he flattens out and has these skin flaps that presumably catch the air. Add it to the collection (I probably have like 10-15 mounts now) which isn’t much of a collection because I’m not that kind of person.

I progressed through the first outpost, and have pushed forward into the zone at this point. I ended up sitting at about 80% to 93 by the time I was done for the night, and I just might hit 93 if I get some more time in this weekend with the double XP.

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Lil Hunter is the bane of my existence. I played as Horror. Had a rocky start but leveled out and then was doing well. Got a crown, made it to an extreme bullet hell boss level and down I went.