The Hidden Plunderers are a band of iksar looking to exploit explore the City of Mist. You’ll find them in the far north of Kunzar Jungle, conveniently located just east of the City of Mist. They have their own sokokar post, which is connected to the City of Jinisk and the Abandoned Village. You will start KoS to the camp so don’t go charging in - you need to start by speaking to Skulker Traz who is on the far side of the camp. The Hidden Plunderers are focused around a set of heroic quests for groups looking to explore the City of Mist but the faction can be gained solo (slowly) through the repeatable quest.

Gaining Faction

Initially you will need to speak to Skulker Traz located at -400,138,-847 for the quest Prove Your Allegiance. This is a repeatable quest which will award 1,000 faction every time you complete it by taking out 8 Sathirians, which are right around the corner. It is possible, albeit slow, to max out faction through this quest alone. Certainly, it is worth taking the quest every time you pass by as Sathirians are plentiful in the jungle and it never hurts to get credit for thinning their ranks.

At this point, the action shifts to the City of Mist and if you wish to continue the quest line, you will need a decent group of players in their high 70s. Speak to Skulker Ganiz and Skulker Slythe for the Heroic quest lines.

You may wish to nip over to the iksar village camp by the river at -210,120,-600 to pick up additional heroic quests in the City of Mist in order to get the most from your group.

Ireka Nazan is in the camp at -196,119,-593 and has a quest series which starts solo but is easier done in a group. After two quests, she’ll ask you to deliver lunch pails in City of Mist. The NPCs are all in the same area as the Hidden Plunderers quests.

Ebenezer Sprockbok (Traveling Master of the Mechanical) is at the river’s edge at -187,121,-606 and has a quest series to harvest parts from the golems in the City of Mist. This heroic series ends in Sebilis.

Benefits of Faction

You will be able to see the items on Trafficker Galax, the faction merchant, at negative indifferent faction although this does very little good as he has no items to sell to you until you reach ally faction.

At 20,000 faction you will find you are welcome to use the amenities of the camp. You will also gain a new revive location - if you die in the area you will be offered the option to revive at the Hidden Plunderers’ Camp, which can save a bit of a run should your fighting in City of Mist go terribly wrong.

A Skulker buyer located at -463,147,-887 will buy your goods but at 20% less than you would receive in your hometown. For anything of value, you are better off traveling home or to and selling your goods there for maximum profit. The Skulker buyer also sells Jungle Nut Bread and Purified River Water should you happen to find yourself without supplies.

A camp patcher, located at -442,148,-877, is available to repair your armor and weapons. Like most other menders in Kunzar Jungle, you will pay a 67% mark-up, a hefty two-thirds more than you would pay at an honest mender. The mender at Synod Reet will repair your gear for hometown prices or nip over to Fens where you’ll find Bathezid’s Watch and Exiles of Droga offer hometown pricing for mending and for selling your loot.

Once you have achieved 40,000 faction, you can purchase the faction rewards from Trafficker Galax at -443,149,-882:

Click Column Headings to Sort (twice to reverse order)

Be sure to check all the faction rewards to make sure you are getting the best item before spending your time and hard-earned plat! Our focus on Kunark is still continuing. You can subscribe to get MMORPG-Info via email to make sure you don’t miss any of the tips.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Game Update 46 has included a lot of new content to Norrath with a nice mix of special items for players of all creeds. As we have a bonus experience weekend coming up, here is a collection of links to help you make the most of the new content.

The Associate Producer of EQ2, better known on the forums as Kirstie, has posted a rewrite of the Game Update 46 notes just for fun - written the way she’d like to write the update notes.

Allakhazam’s has the details of the quest including an incredibly useful list of tempest storm locations, so you can always find a storm to yourself if you are willing to brave the world beyond the level ten newbie zones. Massively has an inventive pictorial walk-through of the Void Storms live event including screenshots of all the items you can purchase with your rewards. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Sorry for the silence from Paxmar the Pacifist - I’ll have to catch up on her journal quickly as she’s leveling like crazy lately. It helps that there is an abundance of newbie zones so she can travel around, cherry-picking the best quests. I’m also being very careful to tick off exploration experience locations to make sure I don’t miss any.

My biggest problem is dealing with other people in-game without coming across like an idiot. Blind group invites have always annoyed me but now, suddenly, they are a relief. I can just decline and carry on my way. When someone sends me a tell asking me if I’d like to group, well, that’s more complicated. Do I lie? That doesn’t seem very pacifist, really. Do I preach? Ugh. Do I say “I won’t be involved with the shedding of blood” and hope that the person has a sense of humor? I don’t know. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Guild Update 46 has included a new diversion for epic crafters: red shinies! Also known as glowies, these are ?’s to be collected, like the standard collections seen in adventure zones, except you must be wearing your Earring of the Solstice (tradeskill epic) in order to see them and the shiny / glowy color around them is red instead of golden or blue.

Before you start, make sure that your Particle Level of Detail is set to max (Particle Effects can be found under Options → Display) so that you can see the ?’s from as far away as possible.

You don’t have to take collection items you don’t need - if you choose not to loot the item, the ? will fade in two minutes and a new one will appear in a separate location. However, if you are actively hunting for shinies it is faster to clear them.

You can use Gnomish Divining Rods (made by tinkers) which will show you the location of the shinies near you although you can’t tell if they are standard ones or the new tradeskill shinies from the display. You will need to have your Earring of the Solstice equipped for the red shinies to show up on the tracking window, so you can check the ?’s that show up by unequipping the earring and seeing which ?’s disappear.

Locations

The ?’s can be found in the following zones: [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

The Synod Reet are a clan of Krupp frogloks hiding from the Sathirians in the Crypt Grounds in the Kunzar Jungle. They are hoping to rescue their enslaved brethren and once you earn their trust through Assistant Pubbit, they will happily accept your help.They can be found in the southwest of the zone. Murkdwellers’ River is the closest sokokar post to the Crypt Grounds.

There are a few solo quests in the Jungle around Dalnir’s Wheel but the majority of the quests are in Sebilis and you will need a group to complete the heroic quest lines there. You must have achieved level 74 to begin this quest line. The repeatable faction quests are also heroic and take place in Sebilis.

Beware: killing the risen brittlebones in the area give negative faction with Synod Reet. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

The macro system in EQ2 is very simple to use and can save you a lot of hotkey space. Your macros are on a tab on your socials window. The default way to bring up this window is by pressing the letter “o” and you can create and edit your macros directly in the window. You can also turn any ability or spell hotkey into a macro simply by right-clicking on the hotkey and choosing the “create macro” option. That ability will now be the first step in your macro and you can add various other functions. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

I’m aware that it’s starting to sound like I have a macro for every function in the game - actually, that’s probably true. I’m terrible at remembering commands and I have a lot of alts. Having macros set up makes it much much easier to get into the swing of things quickly without having to remember specific details for every toon I play - like what clothes she should swap when going from solo to group and whether she’s using spells, items or potions for self-heals.

A number of my macros that are shared across different characters aren’t particularly life-changing but they do make life a bit easier.

Mute

For example, I have a mute button which is really useful for when work calls mid-fight. The line command to turn off game volume is /master_volume 0 but that’s not something I can remember when the phone is ringing, let alone type quickly. So I’ve made a hotkey to turn the volume off quick - and of course a corresponding one to turn the volume back on. The command to set your volume back to full is /master_volume 1 but that is a bit much for me, so I have my macro set to half volume: /master_volume .5

Items with Effects

I also find it useful to have pieces of equipment set up as a macro so I can equip and use them quickly as needed. This amulet has a heal effect which is useful but the stats on the necklace aren’t good enough for me to want to keep it equipped. I always put non-primary heals under control-5, so characters who don’t have the amulet will have heal pots hotkeyed there instead.

This way, I have a single keypress that I already hit instinctively which allows me to equip and use the amulet quickly when I want a heal. Whether it’s the necro who needs a top-up mid-fight or the ranger trying to minimise downtime, “fast heal from equipment” is always in the same place and so I don’t even need to think about it. Between fights, I just press my hotkey that equips my fighting gear and I’m back to normal.

Downside: as you can see from the screenshot, equipment used in this manner doesn’t grey out the hotkey. If you hotkey an item you can see when it’s usable again but within a macro you simply can’t tell, other than trying it. If it’s a piece you use often, you will need to watch out for this or make a separate hotkey (not tied to a keyboard combination) with just the item in it so you can see when it’s ready to be used again.

Equipping and using items can be done in a single hotkey if you use the /use_equipped_item command, as explained in detail in the post about Equipment Macros.

Bear in mind that a lot of items do not need to be equipped in order to use them. In that case, you don’t need a macro at all, just drop the item onto a hotkey and you can use it from your inventory.

Harvesting

There isn’t a lot of call for the individual skills in your knowledge book when it comes to harvesting, as you can walk up to any node and simply click on it to use the correct skill. It may seem odd to bother with a macro rather than just use the default action (the f key in the standard set-up) until you use the default action on something you shouldn’t have…like people wandering around oblivious to the fact that you are oblivious to them.

Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to read web pages or listen to Radio 4 while I harvest nodes so I’m only keeping half an eye on the screen. All it takes is for some idiot NPC to walk in front of me and suddenly I’m swinging my sword at him, ready to attack. It finally struck me that I could get around this by specifically using the harvesting skills instead of the default action. If I happen to end up targeted upon a fool whose walked between me and my pick-axe … well, no problem! I’ll simply get an error message that he can not be mined and he can carry on his way, never knowing what a narrow escape he has had.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

A critical function of macros is to save time and so it’s no surprise that they are used to great effect in combat and group play. There are two different types of macros which you will find useful in a combat situation: command macros (automating a commonly used line command) and ability macros, using spells or combat abilities in combination or for situational awareness. Equipment macros are less useful as you are limited as to what you can do with equipment during combat. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

I’ve not seen I am Legend yet - I can’t quite see how the book could make a full-length feature film and so I strongly suspect I’ll hate it. If anyone who has read the story has seen the film, do let me know what you thought of it in the comments, please.

Meanwhile, we can have fun replaying the plot on Norrath as a Vampire Slayer extraordinaire. There are a number of ways you can increase your damage against the blood-sucking beasts, making you the darling of Mistmoore Castle raids.

Vampire Master Strike

Vampires don’t have a Lore and Legend quest like most of the other primary races. I suppose this is because they crumble into dust rather than leaving body parts for us to harvest.

At any rate, to gain the master strike you need to complete the Bloodline Chronicles. This is an adventure pack so although I believe it is included free as a part of the Kunark all-in-one expansion, you may find you need to purchase it separately. The adventure pack consists of an extended quest-line from either the Hand of Marr or the Brethren of the Night. The two quest-lines are very similar and aimed at groups but you can do the quests solo (gray) from around around level 45 onwards. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

The /use_equipped_item is a very useful command because it enables you to to equip and then use an item in a macro. The “Use Item” macro step fails in this instance as it does not recognise that you’ve equipped the item. However, you can add a Command step and use the command line prompt in order to use the items immediately as they’ve been equipped, in the same macro. For an insta-cast item, this means that you can equip the item, cast it and then equip the original piece in a single macro. For non-insta-cast items, you can only do the first two steps, else the cast will be interrupted by the re-equipping. However, it is still useful to quickly equip and cast an item using macros rather than searching for the item in your inventory. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.