Preparing for the Kunark Ascending Expansion

Written by Feldon on . Posted in EQ2, Expansion News, Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization

eagles_talon_feldon

One of the proudest achievements in my EverQuest II history was acquiring my Eagle’s Talon epic weapon while Kunark was still fresh, challenging content. It took many months to find groups to get all the various group updates, many of which required defeating the hardest enemies in the game. Other updates required faction grinding (urrrgh Reet!), collection quests, and other solo side quests. Sadly I could not find a screenshot of when I received the fabled Eagle’s Talon, but I do have the above screenshot of when I acquired the mythical version during my brief flirtation with raiding.

When the Epic Weapon 1.0 quests went live in February 2009, nothing about them had been revealed as there had been no public beta test. They were a complete mystery. Players had to band together and use their knowledge of Lore to seek out the quest starters and find the updates and requirements themselves. Some classes took over a week to find their quest starter. Many of the quests had NO quest feather to help and some had extensive prerequisites requiring hours of gameplay to even start the quest. Fast forward to today, and most quests in EQ2 are expected to be straightforward and obvious, with few if any prerequisites.

Not surprisingly, the announcement that EverQuest II’s upcoming thirteenth expansion Kunark Ascending would have some requirements and prerequisites from older content before players would be allowed to start the new stuff has been met with surprise and searing feedback. After much forum strife, one requirement was dropped: You no longer need to have done the Terrors of Thalumbra Signature quest before you can zone into Obulus Frontier, the expansion’s new overland zone. That’s not to say all requirements  have been dropped.

Here are the curremt prerequisites before you can start the Kunark Ascending Signature line. If you want to be able to start playing expansion content on day one, you’ll really want to knock these quests out sometime in the next 4 weeks:

  • To Speak as a Dragon — If you already completed Epic Repercussions, you’ve already done this lengthy quest and already know how to speak Draconic (check your Skills -> General tab). If you have done this on one character, you can buy a bag of draconic runes from the Nektulos Forest docks and dramatically speed up the completion of this quest for your other characters on the same server.
  • Claiming the Goblish Tongue — Please be absolutely sure you do not have a [eq2u]Goblin Territory Marker[/eq2u] in your inventory, bank, or shared bank. If you do, you won’t get any others until you examine it and start the quest, no matter how many thousands of Goblins you flatten.
  • Underdepths SagaWhile this ToT Signature quest is now optional before starting Kunark Ascending, rumor has it that there will be a bonus reward for having completed it.

The Greenmist timeline takes 2-3 hours, Sathirian language takes about 1 hour, To Speak as a Dragon takes 3-5 hours, and the Underdepths Saga takes about 2-3 hours.

As for Epic Weapon 2.0, we don’t know all the requirements, but we do know that you won’t be able to start the quest until you’ve done the original Epic Weapon 1.0 fabled quest (Epic Repercussions doesn’t count), and that you cannot start the new quest until you earn Ascension Level 5 in the expansion. In other words, you have at least two months to knock out your Epic 1.0 quest on each of your characters.

If you have any questions or concerns about these quests, the members of the EverQuest II Discord chat would be happy to help in any way. We know that the in-game chat on many EQ2 servers is extremely negative and nonconstructive. We do not allow that in the Discord chat. If you do not receive help, please contact an Administrator or Moderator. We have it on good authority that your Epic Weapon 2.0 will be the most powerful weapon in the game for your class for at least 2 years. The fact that you won’t be able to pick it up in a week is a GOOD thing.

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Comments (37)

  • Anaogi

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    My warlock was my first epic. Got his Fabled Death’s Grip the night before Shadow Odyssey went live. It was one of the few times I’ve managed to accomplish something like that when it was current content.

    Reply

  • EQ3orGoAway

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    Here’s the problem with the prereqs –
    1. They didn’t tell us in advance that we needed those quests. No biggie right?
    2. The problem is that now we have substantially progressed in beta. If we do the questlines on live and /beta copy over our main toons we have to start from scratch all over again.
    3. Because of #2 we just lost 75% of testers.

    Lack of foresight on the devs part. Now the expac will go live and most heroic and sig line content will be bugged. I’m kind of upset about the whole ordeal. They should have allowed us to bypass these requirements for testing purposes. Add them to launch after we’ve tested everything.

    Reply

    • Anaogi

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      Dude. It’s been in beta a week and a half. I’m not seeing it quite that dire.

      Reply

    • Lucus

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      gonna have to agree with this. now to basically test we have to run it o each progressed toon on beta and then do it on the same toon on live as well or give up the progress on beta and beta copy toons with greenmist for example and start the sig line from scratch

      Reply

    • Yerbo

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      I agree. I don’t mind too much having to do old content as a prereq. for this expac. But I am not going to spend 4 hrs doing it on a beta toon just so I can continue helping DB test their expac. I am there to test the new content, not to spend 4 hours on old content. Really badly thought out.

      Reply

      • Jrox

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        Any chance you can all just accept we can figure the epics out together on live? Why does everything have to be “RIGHT NOW” 2 years is a long time and I see nothing wrong with a 2-6 month lore tracking and hunting expedition to fill my time. Honestly the mystery has me drooling for the adventure. Best of luck to everyone, but seriously, chill out.

        =)

        Reply

  • zaab

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    Any chance of getting a current tradeskill pre-req also? Pretty sure I saw
    where Domino stated not having to collect RED shinies anymore. I did the pudding quest on one of my 7 crafters and I would REALLY not want to do that 6 more times.

    Reply

  • Malade

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    Why the animosity towards alts these days? They seem bent on making people choose 1 character after allowing for people to have many. Even people on all the time didn’t get ethereal runes on more than a couple characters.

    Reply

    • Kruzzen

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      This right here.

      Why the animosity towards alts these days? They seem bent on making people choose 1 character after allowing for people to have many. Even people on all the time didn’t get ethereal runes on more than a couple characters.

      Reply

    • Necromancer

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      There is a balance. You don’t want to cater to the people who box and/or have multiple alts but you also don’t want to alienate them and a lot of the recent content updates have been alienating people who box and/or people with multiple alts. I’m not sure how true the rumors are that the game is in “critical condition” in terms of generating revenue and in danger of sunsetting but you don’t want to push people who spend money on the game away. There is a balance to be found which was kept for many years that DBG has moved away from.

      Reply

      • ziplock

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        Very much this. Boxers are totally willing to pay for xpacs for multiple accounts but not membership for each of them. The cost is just too much for both. With prestige items being member only and the latest Fabled zones being member only (when they weren’t before) this will stop a lot of boxers from playing. This means less revenue for Daybreak and reduced customer satisfaction. Lose-Lose.

        I’m curious how many other boxers like me who due to this wont be getting the xpac on all of thier accounts and will just orphan them.

        Reply

        • Amaitae/Valeriee

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          Safe to assume the game is subsidized by other revenue streams of Daybreak? Past decisions like those you mentioned are some indicators. Any valid proof it is not ? In case it is it could be an explanation all the past decisions which were not in favor for boxers.

          Reply

    • Archangel

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      It’s not animosity, it’s Daybreak Games viewing alts as cash cows, and time sinks.

      . Giving only one item per account, means if you need that item for your alts, you’ll pay Station Cash to equip each alt. Cha-Ching.
      . Having every character go through the entirety of the Epic Weapon 2.0 quest pre-requisites, instead of doing the equivalent of “buy a bag of draconic runes”, means you may be spending Station Cash on potions and stuff for each alt. Cha-Ching.
      . Requiring every character to go through the Epic Weapon 1.0 quest line, instead of accepting Epic Repercussions results, means you may be spending Station Cash …

      Also, running the pre-requisites and Epic Weapon 1.0 (Devs are saying Epic Repercussions was a waste of your time) is a time sink. “In massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), time sinks are a method of increasing the time needed by players to do certain tasks, hopefully causing them to subscribe for longer periods of time.” When you have alts, you’ll spend more time on the Same quests.

      By exaggerated example, say a game has only an hour of content. One character has one hour of play time. Ten characters will have ten hours of play time. Someone will troll you, ‘well you got 10 hours out of it didn’t you?’

      Of course Epic Weapon 2.0 is optional. But of course it’s also telling that SOE created Epic Repercussions, but Daybreak Games (play “Your Way!”) is saying ‘no no no, it’s our way or the highway.’

      /*

      “I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha
      One way or another I’m gonna win ya”
      Blondie – Debbie Harry and Nigel Harrison, 1979
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXewIR7Y7cc

      Reply

      • Noctew

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        “Free to play your way” was a SOE slogan.

        On a sliding scale from nickle-and-diming players to giving away the farm, SOE was wayyyy in the farm territory. If you timed your SC purchases right, you could easily play the game for $20 per year with a silver account and barely any restrictions. They have now corrected that mistake so they don’t have to rely only on whales buying lots of cosmetic items subsidizing the player base.

        I’d say pricing now is fair where before it used to be ridiculously cheap. Anyone who joined during the giving-away-the-farm phase may disagree, but thats life!

        Reply

  • Grishtik

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    Only 1 hour for the Greenmist line is a little optimistic imho. Took me about 2-3, due to all the traveling back and forth.

    Reply

    • Feldon

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      Updated it. Thanks!

      Reply

      • Jrox

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        Ouch,

        Smart play is with guild banner and vets call with a druid or wizzie! I did mine in 1hr 07min. Planning is key!

        Reply

  • zaab

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    Grishtik
    October 23, 2016 at 2:13 pm | #
    Only 1 hour for the Greenmist line is a little optimistic imho. Took me about 2-3, due to all the traveling back and forth.

    Reply

    and how is this possible when you have to do one of the longest quests in the game (Solstice Earring) to be able to harvest the red shinnies ?

    Reply

    • Feldon

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      It requires finding some red shinies during the quest. I don’t think it’s the same thing as doing the Epic Tradeskill Quest.

      Reply

    • Caam

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      There are no “red shinies” for this quest. The reference is to a step in the quest where you need to click red spots on the ground that happen to look like shinies. They are not harvests and are in no way related to “red shinies” except for being red and kind of shiny.

      I think a motivated level 100 player can finish in an hour if they can be ported (or can port themselves) and if they have done the sokokar quest (as I learned last night).

      The most frustrating part of the quest now is keeping people from interrupting the captain as she strolls down the dock.

      Reply

      • Yerbo

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        Yeah, the Captain situation is ridiculous. They need to just make her pop over at the ship once you talk to her. Like most quests. The wait for her walk is bad enough, having it interrupted numerous times is awful

        Reply

  • sycla

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    you would need to learn Goblish as well

    was surprised by the number of my alts who did not learn that language.

    Reply

  • Occam

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    Devs are saying Epic Repercussions was a waste of your time

    In what world was doing ER a waste of time? You got to use the abilities of the mythical weapon without doing the raids, and you got to separate those abilities from the weapon so you could keep using those class defining abilities even after epics were no longer relevant to have equipped. You’ve now been able to use those abilities for YEARS while still equipping upgraded gear from all the expansions that have come after RoK.

    So you did a quest that is no longer relevant. In case you haven’t noticed, that happens with EVERY new expansion. It’s time to move on and stop nit-picking irrelevant issues.

    Reply

    • Feldon

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      Exactly. Not only is Epic Repercussions not a waste of time, it will still be valid into 2018. Epic 2.0 will have a completely different effect than the one you got from Epic 1.0 and were able to keep using by doing the ER quest.

      Reply

  • Narsikus

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    Getting my mythical back in the day was my greatest gaming achievement in my 30+ years of gaming.

    Reply

  • Argillan

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    My wife and I are almost 68 yrs old and been on this game for more than 11 years. We bought the expansion, and now learn I cannot play on it unless I do a bunch of prereqs? This is BS. We want our money back, because you did not tell us we had this problem. It is 4 days away from expansion — a hell of a time to tell us.

    Glad DBG thinks it is funny to pull this immature stunt.

    Reply

    • Feldon

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      You’ve played the game for 11 years and didn’t do any of the Kunark content in 2008?

      Reply

    • vonTugboat

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      Seriously? 11 years and you haven’t done Kunark? No epic weapon? If not, I cast no aspersions, but you’ve had 8 years to do the Kunark content; it’s kind of silly to complain about it being a sudden barrier to continued adventuring…

      Reply

  • Frazzled

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    Feldon, I know you blurred it out… however wasn’t that in our old guild when you got your Epic 2.0? I know we got me my Warlock, then I went on to get the Wizard when I betrayed.

    Really nothing else to add, except I’m a bit perturbed that I have to start over in Beta after getting Satherian language done.

    Reply

  • madrat

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    So why is this required, with 16 alts now I got to go do all of this? I get the feeling they told me to go spin.

    Reply

    • Feldon

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      They never should have put in the “broken weapon” shortcut to doing Epic Repercussions.

      Reply

      • madrat

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        Well yes I agree I got all but 3 alts caught up on epic weapons, but its the rest of this stuff. Kind of makes me angry. They got my money and said you cant play this unless. that just is not right. I got everthing but the green mist stuff .

        Reply

        • Feldon

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          The Greenmist stuff was a surprise for me. I haven’t done it on any characters.

          Reply

  • Artemiz

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    This has been a problem with power leveling alts for years and only exacerbated by the insta-level tokens the past several years, You have shells of characters which have no depth.

    I too see some indication whereby alts are being discouraged and I hope this is an indication DBG is looking to allow multi-classing of a single toon (crafting and adventuring) making alts more or less unnecessary. I won’t get my hopes up but I can dream none the less.

    Reply

  • Billie Marie

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    I highly doubt there will be requirements for inferior past quest weapons. They want to sell these expansions… Capitalism takes presidency over idiocy.

    Reply

    • Feldon

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      Believe what you want.

      Reply

  • Leddeye

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    So paying money to buy the expansion doesn’t enable you to actually use it? That’s not cool.

    Reply

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