Free grand in plat for a newcomer

[Buellen]

Chance to win COF 2.o thread ?





sorry couldn't resist

[Azeam]

I play the game slowly, family and other commitments keep me from logging in daily. Azeam is now 22, but almost a year old. So it's been a long time since I was in Crushbone but I will almost always remember how awesome it was when our group was rolling on cloth armor, shields, and the mighty Legionnair's Bracer. Amongst us newbies this was HOT stuff and worth rolling on. I was like, "Now this is classic!!" Even at 22 some people are rolling on brass armor that drops, which I think is pretty cool.

Not sure what I would do with the 1,000P if I am chosen, save some for spells and maybe try to get my wis up a notch or two, and try to fill some of the empty slots. Thanks for the contest.

Azeam - 22 Cleric of Odus

[jakerees]

I would have to say that the swamp known as Innothule has always held a dear place in my heart. As my first character on live, I made a troll warrior. I recreated this character when I first started here, however I haven't gotten around to playing him much yet. Instead I have made a monk and have made the journey from Freeport down to the swamp a few times.

How can you not love a good swamp. The dark, dampness. The alligators. And oh my, the frogs! Which brings me to the next best part of Innothule Swamp, it is home to the dungeon of the froglok people: Guk. There is nothing like a strong adventure party raiding the frogloks in Guk. The less seasoned and veteran adventurers alike are able to test their skills in this sprawling cavern. Many hope to leave with the rumored treasures within, such as a Flowing Black Silk Sash, which is said to enhance the speed of whoever wears it.

Innothule is also provides its residents with close proximity to the Ogre neighbors by traveling through the Feerrott. This allows for a quick change of scenery and gives adventurers another dungeon to visit...Cazic Thule.

Finally, Innothule is in an ideal location on the southern tip of Antonica. For those travelers moving from one side of the continent to the other on foot, there are two choices: Make the deadly gauntlet run through highpass and a dangerous Kithicor in the night time, or travel south, and pass through the greatness that is Innothule Swamp.

Slagsmal, 21 Monk

[akmetal]

My first experience in live was in Freeport watching my neighbor and his brothers play. I would literally sit and watch them play because the game was so intriguing. Freeport seemed like a traditional fantasy theme city to me..

Then I saw Kelethin- it was completely different than anything I had ever imagined in terms of a city and fit the idea of "wood elves" so well. I managed to convince my mom we needed a desktop computer and started a half elf ranger (I grew up in Alaska- hunting is part of my heritage so that initially drew me to a ranger).

I loved the lifts. So cool to actually be able to activate and go up and down. And then fighting someone at the top or bottom for the elevator. It was literally a tree fort city and to my 9 year old self, it was amazing. Not to mention how much of a badass I felt like surviving a fall for the first time (that happened again on my P99 character recently- 22 druid). It just seemed like such a living city, with so many lowbies in the area and other people coming through, there was always an ooc discussion going.

Moving out from the city and fighting orcs and etc. was really exciting. Having an outside element/threat and learning to deal with KoS enemies at early levels was cool- especially with the level variance in centurions.

Crushbone next door was the cherry on top.

Kodiaak Beaar, 22 druid. (if it's any incentive, I just built a computer for my little bro and it will be his first experience playing a MMO and we will be duoing an iksar monk/shaman combo)

[Safon]

2 folks here have won prizes, I will let this go until Friday, at some point on Friday I will post here and end the submission period, and tell folks who won. I am debating making the winners journey to some cool place to meet me for their plat, but if that sounds just like a pita to you guys we can just do ec for your boring arses lol

[ox45]

i came to this version of the game just to go back to the old newb zones. when i reached north ro i felt a little welled up inside. back in the beginning me and my two best buds would meet up with my brother and we'd run around the zone together and camp the dervs. there was on derv NPC that would spawn and everyone would yell out where he was. my brother was his favorite victim . In those days we played a lot and spend many hours in Ro together . one of my buds has passed and i had a friendship ending falling out with the other . my brother has taken the dark path of drug addiction and is living a hard sad life. Taking a run through north ro feels like going back home to see my friends sitting and waiting for me to come play again

[Dracosmuerta]

My adventure began in da moist choad dat is da feerot. Momma ogre always tell me "Da gud ogres kill greenies. Gobbos, lizzards, froggies and more gobbos." Sometimes she tellz me you can't have any dinner until you kill yer gobbos." Is tuff killin greenies. One day Momma ogre and Papa ogre say "Son, go ta da Feerot and kill some lizards. Bring back da rump roast for dinner." Papa ogre give me his favorite tree branch and off I go ta kill da lizards.

Let me tell you lizzard smisshin is da best smisshin there is! You hit em high they pee dere pants. You hit em low and they legs don't work no more. You hit dem tails and they make da bestest screams. I tell ya smisshin lizzards is fun for da whole family. I had ta have smisshed twendy five and when it was time ta go home I noticed I couldn't see Ogguk no more.

"Papa ogre gonna smish me", I thought.

I yelled for help and some dummy says ta use my /loc. I don't need a lock and dat's not how you spell it dummy. I ignored da dummies and kept lookin. I finally found a bridge. It looked important. I asked da ogres there where ta go and they told me ta leave or get smished. I crossed da bridge. It looked like it needed crossed. On da other side of da bridge I found sumting funny. It was a tiny little blue man. My first thought obviously was ta smish it. But you only smish green tings. Even I know dat. I saw he had a name so I went ta talk ta him. I said "Hi Dork Assassin!". I think he reached back ta high five me and he must have missed cuz he punched me in da face.. a few times.

Feerot is confusing. Not only do you have ta smish da greenies. You have ta not get smished by da Dork Assassins. Papa ogre smished me when I got home because I couldn't find his favorite tree branch. Mama ogre smished me cuz I didn't bring any lizard rump roasts. If those lizards weren't so fun ta smish I'd never go back ta da Feerot again.

~Level 7 Smissher - Caniba

[Feanol]

Love

[AxerJ]

Greeeaater Faaaydaarrk! I can't help but prefer High Elves as a main, and I've never gotten past level 23 - so I've spent a lot of my played time in GFay. I have two especially memorable newb experiences.

One cool newbie memory comes from my experience playing my wizard, who is my main, level 23, and who I plan to continue to the far reaches this game has to offer, when he was level 3. I thought I should really try to turn in black wolf skins and bat wings to the caster GMs in Felwithe for phat xp, but they were both dropping really rarely. Of course, I found out later that those quests give next to no xp even at level 3, but I was still determined to hand in stacks and xp efficiently (noob mind there - and I only realized that turning in bone chips actually WAS awesome xp in Felwithe a lot later). So I was Shock of Frosting and daggering these individual bats and wolves, and getting very few quest drops. Pretty slow, and even though I was 3 it seemed the xp was moving SO SLOWLY.

By then, though, I had bought just one other spell - Numbing Cold, which, though I didn't know it at the time, is a radiating aoe for level 1 wizards. I didn't know what it did, and tried it out. Ok, an azure blue particle-y cylinder rising upward from the enemy, looks pretty awesome! I'm a badass wizard, summoning this blue magic upward at the enemy! But then I realized - this spell icon is a different color. This is a freaking area effect spell. At level 3 I was able to take a bunch of hits from bats, wasps, and wolves without too much issue. So I decided to try something awesome, not knowing if I could survive it - I hit a bat, ran to another, hit it, ran to a wasp, hit it, hit a wolf, ran past any wasps I could see because I found out they have a hive mind and aggro you if one of their drones is already on you, and hit another bat. I had like 7 mobs hitting me. Moment of truth comes - I try casting Numbing Cold to take em all out.
..interrupted. Of course, they're hitting me all the time. But I was able to regain my concentration better than I would've thought, and I was able to smoke down a bunch at once! Holy shit, that was cool! AND, it was a lot more fun than going from single to single. AND, I was able to collect way more loot at once.
This seems like a no-brainer, but to my newb-addled mind it was a breakthrough and kind of a triumph. I was able to run around, loving aggroing the wasps so easily, and level through to 4 in no time. I think I kept doing it and got to 5 that way, and was able to turn in a bunch of bat wings and wolf skins for the pitiful xp they awarded. So that was just a really fun level, felt awesome and was fun using ae wizard power on all the Felwithe-garden mobs in GFay. Of course, that was like the last time I used any area effect spells - I hope to again someday...


Another memory comes from when I played in the year 2000, and involves GFay - but I was actually trying to run from Felwithe to Freeport. I was a newb High Elven mage, let's say level 8.

I had found something on the ground, I think - I don't remember what it was. Maybe a mob dropped it, but I can't think what it'd be. Everyone was using the auction channel in GFay back then, and I wanted to be cool and do it too - this thing I had found wasn't like anything else I had seen, I remember that much. So I auctioned it, trying to be cool. PST. After a little while, I was kind of shocked to see someone actually DID send me a tell, and THEY SAID THEY WANTED TO BUY THE THING FOR LIKE 50 PLAT. Or something like that. I was really, really excited. Also, I was 10 years old. So that was something really exciting for a kid who had somehow managed to get to level 8, had no real idea how to play this game seriously, and had never walked out of GFay. And there came the tricky part. The buyer wanted to buy it in Freeport, for some reason - it doesn't make sense now, considering he must've been in GFay to hear the auction (unless auctions weren't restricted to just that zone back then?), but that's what it was. He wanted me to meet him in Freeport and sell it to him for HUGE OMG PLAT, as far as my young mind was concerned.

I had never been to Freeport or even outside of GFay, as I said. But, I had watched as my older brother ran from Felwithe to Butcherblock, past Kaladim, stood at the docks, and spent a pretty cool amount of time on the boat before reaching Freeport. I had seen him do it. He wasn't around, but I could do it. It was the only chance I had to make like 50 plat, and that seemed like a huge amount. So I set off. I remembered where my brother had run, and I followed the GFay trail until it let me to a new zone. OK! I zoned in. It was another forest. OK... I didn't really remember the details of how Butcherblock looked, but I was going to make it to the docks, damnit! I continued on the trail. It'd lead me there. Which way to turn at the dwarven outpost somewhere in the middle of the zone, I thought to myself? I think turn right? I continued along, feeling nervous as I continued, because something seemed different - quieter, not as open, not as sunny as the impression I had of the route... kind of tense and scary. I kept going. Then HIT!
HIT! A brownie hits you for 43 damage!
A brownie slaps you for 58 damage!
WTF?!
A brownie slaps you for 870 damage!
That's what it seemed like.
You have died!

...NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! - went my thoughts, my hopes, my dream of running to Freeport and making 50 shiny platinum to buy all the spells I needed and maybe a staff, and still have plenty!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
I still remember the horrible feeling of loss, death, knowing I'd never be able to get my corpse without dying again, not knowing where I went wrong, thinking I had just permanently lost my character and the rare chance to make 50 PLATINUM. PLATINUM. I was distraught. I may have cried a little. It was like trying to do something, thinking you could though you weren't totally sure how to do it, going the wrong way, and dying. I never talked to the person I was supposed to meet in Freeport. I don't think I ever even played that character again. That High Elven mage, my very first character in EQ EVER, died that day. The brownies scoured his bones and ate his flesh, and they had victory. Oh also, I thought at the time that if we died on a corpse run, our original corpse would be overriden by our naked corpse - so I felt that if we died on the cr, our original items would be permanently deleted. Aaand I still thought that until about level 10 or so on my current character, now. Haha! That was quite a relief finding out that mechanic, made corpse runs MUCH less scary.

So those are my two memorable newb GFay experiences, one recent, one 15 years old. I really like the zone in general - it's green, mysterious, misty, roaming orc-y, waspy, tree-city-y with great music, has awesome wizard spires that seemed massive and impenetrable when I was 10 years old, is such a friendly, safe, comforting place to level up to 8 or so before heading in to Crushbone, and used to be auction central, or so it seemed. Also, shouting "ding!" was thing that seemed totally normal. I'll always like this zone a lot - it seems like home, as far as any zone in Everquest can seem like that.


I typed a lot, that may have been tedious to read, especially the first story! But those are two memorable newb experiences I've had in what is likely the best starter zone in the game.

[Cinadien]

Over the years I think I've started new characters in most of the noobie zones, even in later expansions including Luclin and LoY. One of the most memorable for me was Everfrost (and Halas). Not just because initially the only race that could be Shamans were from there, or that I thought a Barbarian ought to be the best type of warrior (before I realized the starting stat bonuses for Race and Class were different). No it wasn't for Barb-boobies. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

From the number of spiderlings around when trying to level tailoring, being chased by mad snow goblins or a stampede of Mamoths, there was always excitement and adventure. And also less falling out of trees from Kelethin; remember to never follow Bards or Monks around Kelethin.

Trying to find my way through the tunnel to Blackburrow without a torch; looting a Mammoth Tusk and thinking I would be rich enough to afford some new spells; and the frequent shouts for some pick-up Vox raid; all part of the character of Everfrost.

The most memorable time for me though isn't related to leveling or the new experiences exploring for the first time, but from my old guild on Mithaniel Marr who would hold guild meetings in the little alcove just off the paths to Halas. (Often with one of the Enchanters using a charmed Frost Giant as a marker to help members find the group. It was the only guild I can remember being part of from 2000 through to 2005 when I move on to other games.

The positive community and teamwork to accomplish new challenges was what I loved about EQ, and I hope to find another great group of folks here on p1999 also to bask in the nostalgia and make some new memories.