61 thoughts on “Kunark Ascending Beta is NOW OPEN — October 11, 2016 @ 12:15pm”

    1. It’s the absolute worst, most user unfriendly start to an expansion in the history of this game. It requires previous expansion’s sig line done, then a bunch of back and forth in Thalumbria and once you finally get to where you need to be, you are given NO direction. You are expected to just run around hovering over every book and scroll you can find. Then, if you haven’t rage quit by that point, you have to get through the most infuriating game of hide and sneak they could have possibly come up with.

      Oh, and don’t ask for help in game. This spectacular community shines through again with snide remarks and “oh it’s so cool” but won’t offer any help. No wonder I quit this game years ago and as much as I was hoping for a continuation of the good old Kunark days, it’s actually just made me unsub and hope they offer refunds on the expansion purchase. RIP EQ2.

      1. I commented on the expansion information that no feathers, no POIs and expecting everyone to keep putting the answers out is ridiculous.

        Saw the game designer on the video proudly proclaiming what a good idea it was to get rid of the game help and it would bring the community together… I knew it would be exactly as Nicolos describes, going around clicking on every book, item or NPC and having no idea where to go next is not fun …

        The new class enhancements are a good idea but again having the patience finding where to go and what to click will drive me insane,

        As for having to do the Epic 1 quest with the endless faction building and quests, sub quests is not appealing, I have 20 characters and only had patience to do the full Epic quest line on one and I like the game…(Did Epic Repercussions on the rest of them though)

        I do enjoy the game but will SKIP this expansion I cannot believe how out of touch the game designers are by not making it fun instead of a grind…

        2. Peter, if you’re lvl 100 and the mobs are grayed out, you don’t need to worry about faction for most of the epic quests. I did the epic 1.0 quest for 3 of my chars last night, and it took me about an hour apiece.

      2. I completely agree Nicolos I made it to the boat and after getting thrown back in jail about 20 times no matter what I did, I finally walked away in disgust. Daybreak if you want us to test your product don’t make an impossible for some gating mechanism on the second instance. Can’t even get to the meat of the beta. How lame

    2. The quest starts in your mail box, just as the past 2 quest lines have. From there you either the Queen in Neriak or queen in Kelethin. Then you head to the Queen in Maldura. That’s as far as I got before I got busy.

    3. This is why im against Daybreak’s new ‘No POI’ mandate – you cant play a game for 10 years one way and suddenly have daybreak remove a major component of how we play (quest giver feathers, POI spots etc)

  3. Wow I regret pre-ordering this expansion.
    Requiring the ToT sig quests to start the new expansion, the spire, the mother-f***ing ship…

    That aside I will attempt to write up some notes.

    Adventure quest
    1. Read the mail. See the queen in Madura. Harvest. See the queen by the gfay. Enter the spire in the chasm.

    2. Spire. 2nd door on left, doorway on right, doorway on left. Back table, grab the scroll. backtrack through the two doorways, turn right to the room with the book on a pedestal. click once to put scroll on book, second time to activate. All doors open. back to central room. Take first door on right from entry point. Go straight through multiple doors to circular lab. Shard on floor on the right. Back to central room. First door on left. Click to fix teleport. Talk to queen. Click big crystal. Cutscene x3

    3. The stupid ship. At certain points the state of the ship changes so you don’t have to start completely from scratch. Talk to slave. Walk to gate listen to captains long winded speech. Wait for rat. Talk to slave, talk to rat. Fade to black. Talk to and feed rat to get keys. Open door, look for wanderer. First, go right and grab hook. Then go left and crouch up the stairs. Grab the rope. Make the grappling hook in your inventory. Use the grappling hook at marked point. Retrieve hook. Crouch across the mast forward. Watch for roamer. On middeck, take left stairs down. Hook around to captain. Get in the box, go around right side of captain in box into rum room. Exit box by cancelling buff in buff window. Dump the rum, light the rum on fire. Get in the box and go back by where captain was. Box breaks outside. Go inside center foredeck, sneak up on pirate, click to KO from behind, grab helm. Go to rope ladder up, get update. Go back up middeck stairs and climb rope ladder clickie. Climb across rope. When wind comes, stop and click rope. Will happen twice. Zip line twice, avoiding guards on birds nests. Second zip line will knock out guard out when you land. Grab cannonball and look down through hole. Drop ball on captain. Jump down and grab gear. Use hook to climb back up through hole. Click barrel by cannon, then click cannon. Done. More cutscenes.

    4. You are rooted. Talk to NPC, you get released. Go left. Form a group with whoever else is there and wait for spawns to get updates.

    5. …

    Tradeskill

    1. Read the mail for the quest
    2. Maldura throne room. Talk to the guard
    3. gfay area, talk to the queen
    4. gfay nest, talk to the other gfay, harvest the giant yellow pine-cone like buds on the ground level.
    5. Maldura – make the stone
    6. gfay area. Ping pong among the gfay. When you have to talk to the queen and she is not there, click the note on the ground where she was. Enter the spire from the same location.
    7. Spire. Second door on left, straight to the book room. Scroll on right on floor. Activate book, then again to use scroll. Res’s defenders. Go out through doorway to left, then left again to bad guys. Back to central room. Door on right, all the way back to circular lab room. Gather materials, jump up on table, craft. Return to bad guy room. Go one room past, with boxes. Blow them up. Go back and talk to queen. Cutscene.
    8. You are on the ship. Again. Kill me now.
    …
    Flower is on the island west of slavers point and north of Nye’Caelona
    When you get the quest to harvest chok bones, harvest 8, not 4

    1. Wait what really? I wouldn’t have bought KA if I had known about that… That is literally NO WHERE in the purchase description, it says you get ALL content from AoM, Rum Cellar, and ToT. If those member only items prove to be a hindrance then I’ll make sure not to buy any future expansions.

      1. Oh that’s the tip of the iceberg; There’s a lot of content that you buy with xpacs that you can’t actually access without membership too. Some of it you get away with, but prestige items are the tipping point for me.
        I can understand this limitation on single account, but not multiple. There should be some sort of multi-account deal or something for xpacs AND membership. That way daybreak get the extra money and the customer gets the content. WIN-WIN.

        1. I don’t understand why this game bothers to be free to play when they don’t operate like a free to play game. They try to get money both ways at once and it’s ridiculous, all they’re doing is driving people away which explains why this games population is tanking much quicker than its competition.

          I mean that being said though, I’m doing ToT solo just fine in the level 100 gear I got from the expansion buff. In fact it’s way too easy as I’m literally one shotting everything in the overland zone. This game seems set up in a way where you can do solo stuff fine without a sub, but if you want to do heroics or raid you need to sub, which I guess is fine but it’s a very strange way to do free to play. They should be focusing on moving cosmetics like other games are, instead they seemingly forgot the marketplace even exists.

          1. The Free-to-Play went wayyyyy too far and gave the entire store away for free. Over the last few years they’ve been dialing it back and making a Subscription pretty much required to do the high level content.

            That said, EverQuest II’s level 1-90 game is the most generous Free-to-Play game on the market. You can play mountains of content without paying anything.

    1. I ran around the beta for ages trying to find out how to get anywhere. After asking several times, I was told that I should have done the previous expansion’s signature quest first and that it shouldn’t take me more than a day per character to do that. I’ve spent the last few days trying to do that and can’t complete it on any of my characters so I’m unable to play the new expansion at all, so it’s of no use to me. This was not pointed out on the page where it is sold.

      1. It has been announced that you will not need to do the previous expansion’s signature quest. That said, if you want to do it, you should have received an in-game mail telling you about Thalumbra. Here’s a link to the entire Thalumbra Timeline, including numerous optional subquests. The actual Signature line takes about 2 hours. To pick it up, you must go to either Kelethin or Neriak.

        http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Terrors_of_Thalumbra_Timeline

        If you are curious, this is the first Google search result for “terrors of thalumbra signature”.

  7. Absolutely reeks of they were either too lazy or just didn’t want to spend the time and resources to add the feathers/POI’s. ( My guess cutting corners on work to keep cost’s down)
    Cost cutting and greed are killing this game : (

  8. Feldon,

    Do you plan to offer any editorials and updates around the new expansion pack beta on EQ2Wire? Since those without access to the Beta cannot even view the Beta forums, it’s really hard to know how things are developing and turning out. Based on what I’m hearing so far, I want to hold off on pre-order until I know more. If they are doing away with any form of quest guidance (quest feathers, POI’s, etc) then I’m most likely opting out of this one…

    1. The beta just started. We have over 1 month before the expansion goes live. There are opportunities to change things. There may be wiggle room on some of the requirements. Don’t assume that the way it is now is set in stone, otherwise why have a beta?

      1. I agree with you. I was asking if you were planning to post news/update notes/commentary on how the beta is progressing for those who are interested but not yet pre-ordering, as we cannot see the Beta forums.

  9. It’s like everyone has forgotten how to play games. Personally I’m glad this expansion won’t have feathers and blue’d areas on the map. I’m tired of blowing through content because you don’t have to actually take a minute to figure things out for yourself. Sorry if this isn’t a popular opinion, but people complain when they’re not led around by the hand, then complain when they finish all the content too fast. It boggles the mind. 😕

    1. It just means I need the wiki open more, it doesn’t really slow me down any. Just a little annoying since I need to keep pulling Chrome up. I’m a little surprised at this change but I guess Daybreak wants to try something different, which I can appreciate so long as they’re also willing to fix it if players don’t like it.

      1. Honestly folks just have Daybreak make the ‘No POI Rule’ optional in General Settings. I think at this point in time let the paying players decide whether they want ‘Daybreak’s immersion’ or not.

    3. There’s a universe of difference between deductive reasoning and research in an RPG and the completely abstract quest updates you sometimes get in EQ2.
      If you’ve played EQ2 through the years, there many quests that have updates you would take weeks or months to find the update because they are incredibly ambiguous. It’s not the same thing at all.

      1. Sadly the ‘instant win’ portion of the population is pretty large nowadays.
        Imagine if they bought soul shards and multi combine crafting back? People would leave in droves but I would love some of the original ‘features’ back 😈

    5. It just means keep perma Wiki and delays – you cant suddenly change the way we play for a decade – now this worked in EQ1 (no quest markers etc – and i played that for 7 years) but it wont work here, a much smaller footprint and different beast of a game – EQ2 was never about the quests but about the heroic grinding. The quests and Sig lines barely lasted a few days anyway.

      1. Never? No, in the first years it was about the quests.Until TSO which introduced us to the not familiar alternate currency grind, there were barely any grindable instances, mostly open dungeons and lots and lots of overland areas. ROK had hundreds of quests. You leveled by questing and unless you were a class which could oneshot non-heroic mobs, it took weeks to level from 71 to 80 even with the help of wikia.

        Area markers on the map were a Smokejumper era invention, and he came onboard with DoV I think. Until then it was EQ2 maps or nothing.

    6. Agreed that it’s more interesting to have to follow clues and directions rather than just heading to a coloured area on the map. However, that requires that appropriate clues and directions are included in the quest, rather than something vague like “Talk to Fred Bloggs in Antonica”, otherwise we just end up looking up everything in the wiki again.

  10. I preordered the premium edition as a goodwill gesture to support this game but the idea of no quest feathers, POI markers etc will force me to *cancel *. At this point in time, after almost a decade of eq2 I dont feel like running around hovering my mouse over every single damn NPC out there or perma google Zam Wiki to progress on regular damn quests.

    The team said they ditched the POI markers stuff for ‘immersion’ but all it will do is delay, frustrate and piss off players.

    I can understand no POI for Epic 2 but not the whole damned expansion for pete’s sakes.

      1. Some of them. The trooper in the cave was a pain to return to. I couldn’t find him. Overall it was not too bad though. The quests kind of point you to your target. General locations anyway.

  11. I just wanted to make the point that the EQ2Maps add-on will likely still have POIs for quests if players decide to add them. If you have EQ2 maps I’m sure at least some of the quest POIs will be added before beta is over.

  12. Wow! Quite the disturbance here and on the game forums. So many stamping feet and so much angry angst.

    Won’t stop me from playing the game. I like the challenges. Aggravating at times? Heck ya, that’s what fantasy games are all about.

    1. Where’s the big like button! I agree totally. I liked that recent quest lines have had to make you think a bit to progress instead of following the blue spots all the time. Players may even start reading the text instead of just clicking though.

      1. That’s the problem though. The first two instances you do have NO direction. The quest text literally says “Advance through the tower.” There is challenging or using your brain, then there is just frustration. Hover your mouse over a 10 room library looking for a single book or scroll with not a clue otherwise is annoying and badly done. And don’t even get me started on the boat. Yes, this is beta and hopefully feedback will be taken to ease the pain a bit but unless people bring it up they won’t know.
        If they insist on taking away the poi feature after YEARS of it being the standard, then it is their burden to make coherent and well written quests. I can forgive mediocre writing so long as I have a guide to complete my quest but trying to drudge through walls of text about Arcanum just to discover I need to kill 10 rats is ridiculous. ToT was by far the worst questing experience I’ve had since the game launched and these were precisely the reasons why.

    1. The boat is really easy if you take your time and listen to your character talk to themselves. Your toon basically tells you step for step what you have to do.

      1) “I better close the door behind me or I will alert the guard.”

      2) “I need to crouch and go slow.”

      3) “Oh there is a guard up there I better look for a different way.”

      etc. etc.

      1. We’re in beta. The boat is in beta. We are making changes daily. There were a few problems with the boat, yes. We’ve fixed 99% of them plus added more clues to make it smoother. Removed a few guards, etc. The boat experience isn’t done until we go live. We are absolutely listening to feedback.

        As to the quest marker issues. The only thing we have stopped adding are the ROI’s. Mobs still have quest feathers if they are updates . Quest NPCs still show feathers and books. We have just stopped adding the giant blue or green areas, as they overlap, depending on what quests you are on, they are almost always not fully accurate and we felt that they really didn’t add anything positive.

        1. Have you received feedback that they were a negative aspect of the game? Most likely not.

          Have you received feedback that removing them is a negative change? Yes, you have, I’ve seen the forum threads about it.

          It’s an option in the EQ2 settings. As I’ve said before, leave it as an option to the player. You could even default the option to off, so those who want the feature have to manually turn it on. How does this not please both sides of this? Unless there are reasons for this change that you do not wish to disclose.

        2. Kander thanks for communicating with us. Its much appreciated.
          However please bring back the ROI’s or at least make them ‘optional’ under settings – it saves a lot of heartache and time – we don recall anyone ever complaining about them, they’ve been in existence for ages and older players, certainly veterans, found them invaluable.

          1. ROIs take a LOT of time to implement. ROIs were added in, I think, 2012, and were only added to certain zones due to the work involved.

        3. Kander, Thank you for your participation in this discussion. So far I like whats being done with the new expansion. I think the blue POI’s do help me as a player But are not necessary as long as wikia and zam and EQ2Wire.com continue to provide help for stuck quests. My biggest Problem and concern with this expansion are the Items offered with the different expansion are one per account rather than one per character.
          I really feel that my toons are individuals and the items offered with the expansion should ALL be one per toon. I have money in hand and want to buy the collectors edition but this concern is holding me back from doing so. Please fix it so that all my toons may enjoy the perks of the collectors edition equally.

        4. Ty! Such a relief to hear the quest markers are a feature being kept! I used to spend hours just hailing every NPC in a zone, checking for quests. It was such a frustrating waste of time. (I’d have been ripping my hair out in no time with no quest feathers/book icons over NPCs heads. XD)
          The ROIs were nice, but yah, a bit inaccurate. Maybe in the future, with the help of something more efficiently/accurately automated, they can return, but if they are done by hand (so to speak), they do seem like a bit of a waste of time, particularly with EQ2maps searchable POIs and EQ2wiki there to point us in the right directions.

  14. I’m a complete idiot when it comes to this kind of thing but I managed the spires fine after a bit of banging my head.

    The boat was a bit trickier but it kind of fell into place after the captain part. Some of the text clue hotspots could do with having the range increased a bit but it wasn’t too bad.

    Everyone knows that sooner or later a complete walkthrough will be posted and EQ2MAPS will have POI’s for everything just as they always have. Then it will become a small timesink for every toon you do it with. The sky is certainly not falling.

    I’m no Daybreak fanboy and I can complain like a boss but ultimately I’m just glad the game is still alive after all these years and the skeleton crew that now runs it give us something for our money every so often. Even if sometimes I hate the content like others do.

    I still get to play the game I love with good friends as I have done since launch. It’s evolved of course and not for the better in a lot of respects but it’s still here.

  16. I understand all to well how Nickolas feels. I, too, am not a fan of wandering around looking for an item or mob for hrs on end. This is simply because I am an impatient person. I also have limited time to play as I work a full day and can only play some evening and the weekend. Therefore, wandering around trying to find a mob for an hr is not something I want to do or have the time to do. I am a vet of 12 yrs and this game is my down time so I don’t want to spend it bugging people in chat for answers or wandering around for an hr.
    However, I did the boat, (grrrrr I wanted to shoot DB), and once I got a few tips from other players, I was able to complete it but yes, I died so many times it frustrated me. I was ready to scream, but I kept my cool and it al worked out.
    Once on the island I have had no problem doing the tradeskill quest. I am enjoying the new content so far. I did not buy the Premium,, good Gawd thats way too much to spend on a game!!! I did get the collectors edition tho, I need my builder’s kit.
    In Closing, I say give it time, ask in chat if you need too some people are very helpful,, Edelphia, Cosmi and others.

    1. No one is asking for auto play Baynok.. We are lucky that EQ2 is a great game for many play styles..

      Some of us do not get as much time as we would like on the game, some of us just do not have as much patience as others, all that needs to happen is give people the choice to use help or not.. What is so wrong in asking for that?

      The game needs to keep and increase players, if it is only for the hard core it will not survive and as a long standing loyal player I want to keep a good mix of playing styles within the game so anyone can change how they enjoy it!

      If people want not put on EQMaps, just use the standard interface, not use EQ2 wiki. for answers, don’t want to Raid or Group they can !!
      How many would have got bored of the game right at the start if we did not have the help we already have, I don’t think I would have.

      So can some get off their high horse and give some of us a break and I will have to include DEVs in that statement..

      By the way is it just me or is EQ2wiki much harder to use now (no search function) and it keeps crashing my browser with SO many adverts and pop ups.

      Enjoy the game with your own play style

  18. Questing in EQ2 has always been the casual part of the game. Dungeons and more so raising is the hardcore content.
    We liked having the ROIs. It made for an enjoyable game with little frustration. With the removal of the feature, I really don’t enjoy the game anymore, so DBG will probably loose me as a paying customer. There are so many other options these days.

  19. LOL wow it is so funny to me on how lazy the players of this game have gotten. This is EVERQUEST. Its not intended to be easy. Why would you want yet another expansion you can burn through in a couple months. Oh ok lets just hurry through the quest then all we do is raid……ONCE AGAIN. I am personally glad they made the game hard again. You all say its another screw up i say its a step back in the right direction. I hope people do skip this one then maybe the true gamers will come back

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