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In Omens of War (the expac you are talking about) you very quickly max ally the factions that don't do a whole lot for you such as Children of Dranik and Riftseekers . Mostly it appears faction was used to flavor events around Overlord Mata Muram the central figure of the OoW storyline.

There are many cases of mobs that look like each other that are on opposing factions. Dragorn that aggro aren't usally a bad thing to kill, but if you notice minus faction to Dranik's Loyalist... maybe don't kill those ones.

Dranik's Loyalists is the important faction with some quest rewards worth doing years after this content was current.

Aside from mass killing the lowbie mobs on this faction, raiding Anguish is the fastest way of getting DL up enough to do the quests. Note that some of the quests require drops from the raids --not something you solo at 66.

Okay so would you say that faction is relevant then to, what? Quests? I mean, to this day I'm still trying to raise faction with Chardok but I was doing it to try and keep them from attacking me in Burning Woods so I wouldn't have to keep wasting my mana on them while trying to hunt the wurms (actually though I've surpassed the need for this, and now maybe I go back to that megalomaniacal herald say "I will serve the Sarnak... FOR DINNER!" *nuke*)

but meaning, why do we raise faction? For quests is that what faction is really relevant to?


Edited, Sep 24th 2013 12:58pm by broonsbane

The dranik's loyalists factions are necessary for the Omens of War armor quests. you need to have amiable for the group armor and ally for the raid armor i believe.

The raid armor is actually pretty decent, most of it better than defiant gear of the same level. If you've got the faction up, you can loot some of the items on an anguish run and get some sweet upgrades.

I didnt play when it was current, but it looks like anguish raid gear is the best thing you can get Pre-TSS until PoR Raid drops

In original world we raise faction to be able to use other races cities and do quests. It you wreck Temple of Sol Ro faction (as an example) you just lost a bunch of questing options. Raising faction also allows you to make up for your misdeeds such as being a halfling and killing the halfling raiders in Nektulos (teehee).

In Kunark you had an all-level world with Iksar race faction, good character aligned Firionia Vie outpost, and evil character aligned Overthere Outpost. The worker sledgemallet resulted in many neutral and good types levelling up a bit evilish. Chardok gave you the choice of aligning with them, or killing them. This connects to tons of quests. Most killed them, but the rare person that is not kill-on-sight in Chardok can be rather handy for scouting and opening doors (if a lockpicker). Chardok rewards your loyalty with quests and rewards that only can be recharged by staying allied with them.

Velious gave us the triad factions of Coldain Dwarves, Giants (forget the exact Krom.... spelling), and Dragons (Claws of Veeshan). Each faction worked in combination/opposition. Working for the dwarves gave some cool rewards, but some classes benefitted from working other angles. You could always refaction. Plane of Growth is an example of a zone where faction choice is permanent... you kill in there, you are forever hated. Nice loots.... that very few ever had.

There's other examples... just glossing over here.

Luclin faction was less significant. The Vah Shir accept anyone into there city. Luclin mobs usually hate each other so you can choose sides (such as the aliens in Scarlet Desert) but most of the time it's not that consequential. Some quests require faction though... usually the cityish spots like Santus Seru --though I'm not even sure you had to be better than dubious for most of Luclin questing. The Devs were more into keys then faction at that time...

Planes of Power is basically factionless. It was all about flags and progression.

Lost Dungeons turned faction into merchant points at adventure camps. This evolved into alternate currencies for most of what has come since.

The Serpent's Spine gave us the Drakkin who accept everyone, but there is a lot of faction based quest stuff in specific zones. Orc and gnolls in Icefall for example that you pick a side.

The other thing they did a fair bit was hide spells/armor behind vendors that require faction. I haven't played that content near as much... but pretty sure The Buried Sea is one expac using this model heavily. They called faction "alaran language" for an expac..? Someone that has played above SoD will have to help me with that lol.

Learning Alaran used to be PITA, requiring doing a bunch of missions each of which awarded points in the language, but not many. Getting to 100 took awhile. Then they changed it so one entry-level quest in Shards Landing, which mostly requires just running around, automatically gives us max Alaran (100).

It's consistent with EQ's usual policy of "grand-fathering" in players who never got around to attaining some faction or ability to enter a locked zone once most of the driven players had done the hard work that was formerly required. Not knocking this policy, just saying. It makes sense so that latecomers can experience the game content which formerly was cutting edge but is now passé.

Anyone ever tried to solve this quest?

book of turmoil ?

I was doing some wine hand ins with Banner today, and the prompt text is still there. This is an old old quest... and the plat cost involved would have been very discouraging at the time. A few expacs pass (cost would have been daunting at low level for quite a while) and most would assume the quest reward totally obsolete.

Theories that the quest was never fully implemented should be discounted unless someone can find a dev post?

Also my Adventurer's Stone has been sitting dormant since I pretty much got it- I'm looking at the quests for it and am presuming, to get this thing to "work" do I go around the Wayfarers camps and just talk to the right people enough it will pop? And do the WB only do raids? Are there any solo missions? I'm looking at all the good stuff they have for sale and wouldn't mind having a few of those items- but they seem really raid/group focused? Is there any place in the WB for solos?

Supposedly being loaded in battle used to slightly enhance your fighting skills. Makes sense perhaps for dorfs, barbs, ogres, maybe trolls. So I guess the idea was if you had high alc tolerance you could get more benefit from drinking more right before battle. But it never was significant and I doubt it even has any effect at all nowadays. Like has been said above except for a few very rare special cases where an encounter imposes some form of drunkenness upon players it's a useless ability now. Which is unfortunate because there are so many interesting alcoholic beverages in the game and it would be nice if they served some purpose other than décor.

You get a slight +STR and a more sizable -INT modification when you're "drunk". Old smithing guides for fighter types used to recommend getting drunk as possible without the wavers (since you didn't want to waver off the forge) since smithing used the highest of INT/WIS/STR to determine skill increases.

There is at least one charm that gives you stats based off your alcohol tolerance. This was added much later in the game though, and goes along with the dev insistence? on making charms goofy and mostly not worth having.

Wine quest guy I just gave him stacks of wine. For Banner this was pricey (he's only got a few plat to play with) so I didn't do it too many times for repeated faction hits. Now that quest turn in can be done with full stacks... wine quest won't take much for a person to do. Since solving quests (i.e., to get the npc text, to be able to do the turn ins, etc.) often requires having good faction... you might as well max out this one.

Adventure stone will be very hard to level up unless you are able to for a partial group of the required level range [granted they have changed some things around this from original Ldon]. For a while it was the only decent charm slot aug for casual players. Crescent reach quest charm item and Crescent reach quest charm augment are partly doable solo, and even partly done rather nice.

Good question broons!

This was totally amazing to me in the early years of EQ, and still is for the most part. When the player base was much larger people spent a lot of time researching "trigger phrases" and quests. Some quests you don't even say anything to an npc, you just hand them what appears to be random objects. How did someone think to do that???? We didn't have floating titles over NPC heads saying "GET YOUR QUESTS HERE!!!". Basically players would stumble across a mob or npc they hadn't seen, come here (or castersrealm) and post their question or findings. Eventually quests were solved. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there is/was a sizable amount of quests that were never discovered or solved.

I still stumble across NPC or dialog that appears to be from a quest, but doing research doesn't turn anything up about it. Unfortunately a lot of the old world quests were broken when they revamped old world zones, removed certain mobs, or relocated NPCs.

Here is a link to a quest that is still being worked on, though probably won't be solved due to lack of implementation. Skim through the comment threads and it's a good indication how the quest solving takes place.

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=64


Edited, Oct 1st 2013 3:46pm by ZatxWoopyoax

Certain items have seemingly bizarre tribute values and there's no easy 1:1 comparison between their tribute value and cash value. However, I suspect that defiant gear has a rather low value due to its being a fairly common global drop. Items off rare named mobs tend to be worth significantly more since the items themselves are much more rare. If defiant gear was tribute valued like the other stuff, everyone would have near infinite amounts of tribute to burn.

Hey guys I was trying the Tome quest from the other thread and noticed I had to go into Neriak. This meant trouble for me, so I put up my Daft Trickster illusion that never fools anyone to see if I could get in without a hassle. Well, no, I went up to the entrance and was attacked by the guards. I guess they hate Jokesters in Neriak as well as High Elves. Anyway, I thought I would fight back for once since I was high enough level for once, but the guards seemed immune to my attacks. So are the guards invincible? If so, what else might I run across that is invinicble so I know not to bother them?

Also I read something recently that I thought couldn't be true, but wanted to ask just in case because it's AA relevant for the "innate" abilities: I saw more than one post as well, which is why I ask: has dexterity anything to do with how much damage a Wizard's spells do?

Thanks in advance.

Edited, Oct 3rd 2013 11:18pm by broonsbane