EQ Superstitions/HabitsFollow

Do any of you have weird habits while playing?

A while ago a friend asked me why was I strafing left and right while tanking stuff, I told him that it makes me dodge more often, or at least it feels like it does. I'm not sure, but I do it anyway. I also told him that when I fight stuff I aim my view to what I believe are weak points, and back in the day I would turn on and off auto attack to rotate the combat music to combat music 2, because it was the best one!

Anyways he thought it was pretty silly, but I've heard of weirder stuff, like one time this person accused me of messing up his camp's spawn time because I walked over where the enemies appeared.

So yeah, what weird habits/silly superstitions do y'all do or have heard of?

Anti-camp radius legend.

Yeah that's also a thing, every time I'm on my druid, I always end up getting stuff for melee dps classes.

Something else that I've always wondered was if negative charisma actually affects fear duration, because nowdays it seems impossible to get negative charisma with all of the defiant super stats.

I was doing the right-left and back-forth thing when trying to squeeze into The Hole entrance
As it would help...

Edited, Jun 16th 2014 2:36am by Surimuri

Edited, Jun 16th 2014 2:37am by Surimuri

Obviously EQ was derived originally from old pen-and-paper fantasy games that use dice to simulate random number generators. I haven't played those for years but I still remember that whenever I had to roll some dice for a major result I'd shake the damn things for a ridiculous amount of time until I "felt" that true randomness had "entered" them. Actually I preferred to use a plastic cup rather than my hands because to me this result happened quicker if I wasn't physically touching the dice.

A friend I played with a lot would drive me nuts because he had an entirely different approach. I'd hand him the dice and he'd instantly just let them slide off his hand without even shaking them. Since I handed him the dice he had no means or opportunity to finagle a desired result (even if he could) but that thought never comforted me. It got the point where I'd insist that I shake them first before handling them to him.

I even tested this on my own by dropping some dice repeatedly from my hands and discovered that unless my hand was very close to the tabletop there was never any consistent way to have the result of the drop predicted by how the dice sat in my hand.

Yes, superstitions can be a scary thing! Even with the in-game /random command I still have my suspicions that the result isn't truly random and that other players may know a secret way to manipulate this command to get what they want! I know other players have their own superstitions here since we used to have arguments in groups over what number to use for the cap in /random.

Several years ago a player tried to convince me that letting a mob corpse rest for a while would produce more loot (because early looting interrupted the loot-load, I guess). I did not buy that idea.

I still do this as well every time!

LEFT for me. And I'm right-handed. No idea why it went this way. The origin for me is entirely lost in the sands of Ro... and time!

Yeah - left.

Karana Pebbles were alleged to reduce the amount of drink you consumed IIRC. Actually, they were alleged to do a bunch of things, since as far as I know, no purpose for them was ever found in the game (unless some dev has since added one, that is).

I imagine there were a number of EQ programmers back in the day scratching their heads over all of those superstitions and rumors. Players would construct elaborate theories about what controlled various spawns and drops (Pzin was a classic), when in reality they were just plain random. I suppose that all added to the mystique of the early game.

The Queen as a super-rare spawn at the Chessboard in Butcherblock Mountains. Back in 1999-2000 that rumor was rife among people I played with back on the old Saryrn server. Figures since knights, bishops, rooks and pawns spawned, not to mention uncommonly the King, that there eventually would pop a Queen.

I never saw her....

Of those toons which I ran "old school" (about 6 of them) I still have the full sets of newbie armor (for example) taking up space in their respective banks.


In newbie zones (OK, Crescent Reach) I'll log my Halfling cleric (of which I have one on multiple servers and all named the same except on Stromm) and buff everybody in sight. I'll normally give them a piece of gear or 3 while I'm at it.

Speaking of which, I "wiggle" left and right when casting spells with my Paladin while in melee. The theory being that this reduces the amount of push you receive from melee damage and therefore reduces the odds that your spell will be interrupted as a result of position change. Not sure if it actually works at all, but I do it. I *think* it works, but who really knows?