EQ2: little things I love about EQ2

While playing Everquest 2 recently a few of the little features of the game or my main shadowknight character have stuck in my memory as just really nice things to have. They’re either something unique to EQ2 or rare enough in the MMO genre that they’ve stood out as something unusual. Here’s a quick list in no particular order:

1) Evac spells

Teleports, hearthstones, recalls and similar are standard across most of the genre as a way of getting across large distances quickly but functionally they’re more a “return to base” spell. The evac spells, such as shadowy evasion on my shadowknight, is subtly different in that it takes you to a safe place within the current zone. That’s available on some classes or through special items as a secondary teleport ability and it’s situationally more useful than a hearthstone or recall. If you out and about questing but need to return to the quest giver or vendor then this is the spell you want, not the recall to your home city whereby you’d have to trek half-way back across the world to carry on questing.

2) Totems

Linked to the above item are the totem items. These ‘clickies’ are magical items that you can craft and give to another character (or buy of the broker!) to give your character some interesting temporary abilities that their class do not innately possess. Just a few examples of the many options give invisibility,  an evac, or underwater breathing? My inquistor is a woodworker and can make some of these making him a very useful crafter to have among my stable of characters.

3) Legends and Lore quests

This type of quest is very unstructured. You find a body part of the creature in question, e.g. orc, elemental or gnoll, and then collect a further ten or so different body parts by slaying more of the same creatures. Completing the list will give you a chunk of experience, usually a housing item and possibly a special skill to do exta damage to that type of creature. Zam has a list of these quests on this page.

4) Languages

As a language-lover in real life I’ve always been thrilled that Everquest 2 has languages for the player races and for monsters. You can get quests to learn many of them out in the world, or speak to certain NPCs vendors to buy manuals. It’s a lovely RPG feature to the game that provides little in-game benefit but adds to the depth of the immersion of playing.

5) Bag space galore

This game has so much potential bag space on characters. Each character has eight slots for backpacks, holding from four to over sixty items. Then you have your bank slots, your house vault slots and your shared bank slots. If you’re in a guild then that opens even more storage capacity available. It may make inventory management a bit of a nightmare (or dream for the hoarders among you) but at least you’re not stuck with miserly small bags while out questing as is the case in some other MMOs (e.g. LOTRO).

So this is my simple list of some of the little things that I like in EQ2 and often miss when playing other MMOs.