Level 61*

To kick off my journey to another level, I found a quest line in Lesser Faydark that I had missed before, one that actually ran through quite a bit of the zone and ended up delivering me nearly 40% of a level.

Not bad!

Okay, some of it was frustrating. I think the bulk of the experience had to come from Harvesting the Fungus, during which I think I slew mushroom people in greater numbers than… well… than the number of actual mushrooms I eat in a given year.

And I like mushrooms.

So slay I did. Many an animate fungi died that I might harvest a dozen Faydark Amanita! And these overgrown shiitake respawn like, well, mushrooms. I did my collecting between fights and eventually brought them to Duchess Maareanna.

Of course, like most of the quest lines, this one ended up in a heroic quest, so I had to drop it there.

I need to find some people to help clean up all of these heroic quests I keep dropping. This is never a problem in WoW, where we have a regular group, but in EQ2, on the Crushbone server, it is a rare thing lately to see anybody on my friends list online.

The fungus destruction out of the way, I gritted my teeth, grab a new round of writs, and headed back out to the Loping Plains.

I quaffed another Draft of the Wise (2 down, 10 left to go), vowed to be careful, and went hunting.

Dire wolves, blood gorgers, huntsman spiders, and not a few members of the Bummer Gang fell before Blintz’s flashing blades. I finished off writs and a couple of the quests in the zone. But I still was not there yet.

The draft of the wise wore off. (And shouldn’t that be ‘Draught of the Wise?’ The UK spelling always seems more medieval to me.) The experience boost it provided did not seem like that much. I wonder if my drafts have gone stale, having stored them for so long?’

Still, all that boosted me over 80% into level, so I went back to Kelethin, loaded up on the writs again, and went back to work in the Greater Faydark corner of the Loping Plains. Before I finished off three more writs I made it!

Level 61 with 74 AA points and 601 quests completed.

I did notice one on thing on hitting my level. When I have hit levels in the past, the skills that became available at that level used to appear automatically, at least in my skill book. But now it seems that once you hit a level, you have to go make or buy the skill and scribe it before you have access to it in any form.

This behavior is more akin to the days of EverQuest.

Not that I mind. But I missed that change in the patch notes somewhere between July and now. And I had not thought to go looking for skills, so I was behind a few levels and had to go find the list of Swashbuckler skills on EQ2i to figure out what I was missing.

And now I have a big incentive to get to level 62. Back in June or so, when I hit 57, I asked Gaff to make be a full set of Xegonite chainmail armor because he was canceling his account and I did not want to have to grind Blintz from a level 44 armorer to a level 64 armorer just to get outfitted. My trade skill time in EQ2 was being used for more profitable items.

Gaff has come back and canceled his account twice since then, if I recall right. And I got diverted and played my rocket elf ranger for 7 levels during the summer.

So when I hit 61, I went and looked at that set of Xegonite sitting in storage, looked at the stat boosts it would give me, and knew I would have to get to level 62 soon.

Now to get back to the grind. Maybe I can finish a few more of those quests in the Loping Plains.

*Level reached only after the level cap had already been raised to 80.