Running with the Far Seas Trading Company

As I have tried to pick up the thread of an adventure in EverQuest II, I seem to have fallen in with the Far Seas Trading Company, an organization that is a bit more about crafting than adventuring.

Which isn’t to say that I mind crafting.

Crafting in EverQuest II has developed over time, eventually settling down into what it is today, something still deep but manageable.  It can actually be relaxing, something I can plug away at while listening to a podcast or an audio book.

But crafting is supposed to be more of a side task, yet even my adventures end up leading me to crafting somehow.

As noted in the previous Norrath post, I was having some trouble even finding where to pick up when it came to adventuring.  It is easy to say that EQII isn’t WoW and so maybe I shouldn’t expect to be headed straight to the current content, but even in EQII you used to be able to pick up the thread of a zone at the point where you landed.  After finding no quests in places like Eidolon Jungle and Obol Plains and having the quest chain trip over a broken quest in Cobalt Scar, I ended up in the Tranquil Sea.

Landing in the Tranquil Sea

There, once I got my mercenary out and healing me, I was able to progress as I fought my way through the various tasks.  There was enough there to even get me a level’s worth of progress.

Made it to level 96

However, the adventure quest lines, which I was getting multiple quests for at one point, eventually narrowed down to a single thread.  There was also a quest giver offering up the option to go do solo instances.  I gave that a couple of tries, but find solo instances a bit… antiseptic maybe?  I don’t know, maybe solo and dungeons and instancing is too far for me.

And then there were the Far Seas Trading Company NPCs, who seemed to have any number of tasks for me, so I went off with them.  Their tasks garner a bit of adventure experience along the way, but seem to be more focused on moving you along in the crafting sphere, so while I hit 96 in adventuring, I am already past half way into 98 when it comes to crafting.

And I haven’t binged on writs

As I said, that isn’t a bad thing, but it wasn’t quite where I was planning to head, and it is a bit off from my past experience with the game, where on entry to a zone you seemed to get all sorts of options.  But that was the 2008 view of the world and a lot has changed since then.

So I am carrying on.  I have the EQ2 Maps addon for the game, so I can SEE all the quest related points of interested marked on the map.  So I know there has to be a lot more out there on the adventuring quest front, I just have to make my way to it somehow.

In the mean time, I carry on with the Far Seas Trading Company, which has earned me a pile of their tokens.  However, I can’t actually spend any of them as my standing with them as a faction is still neutral.  I suppose I will need to fix that somewhere along the line as well.