I decided that levels were more important for now in EQ, so I went ahead and hit level 74 on Friday. The only really good new spell was a new colour stun, though, and I don’t even use those as much as I did before now that I have the banishment AA.

Saturday I decided to start working on research a bit, starting with the trophy quest. The research system was overhauled a couple of times while I was gone, and involves more combines of expensive ingredients now, but most of the pieces I needed I could get just running around PoK.

Except for one… I needed a ‘sludge sample’, and the only place I could find the kind I needed was deep in the Gates of Discord areas, deeper than I had gone previously. Unfortunately, I discovered upon arriving there that absolutely everything was immune to charm. I had to resort to root-n-nuke, died a handful of times, and I spent nearly all day there without it dropping. Ugh, I’ll come back and try again later, when I have more powerful nukes…

And then yesterday I spent a lot of time back in Sunderock again, where I finally got Slave Driver Azza to spawn and drop a piece for the Charm of Lore. The stats on it are good enough now that I moved the Wanderlust Lodestone over to it and use it instead of the Silverwing charm. The main stats on it are actually slightly lower, and it has lower mana regen, but I’m capped on those already and it has higher HP/mana.

I did some more xping there as well, eventually getting into a group (though the xp actually wasn’t as good as soloing) and hitting level 75. I immediately bought Perfected Levitation, another rank in Clinging Root, and the 10th spell slot AAs, and I still have 11 left over to save for the next level. 75 is also a really nice spell level, with a new charm and group versions of clarity and haste.

Our group then went to Riftseeker’s Sanctum, an OoW-era zone I’d never been to before, and although nothing nice dropped, the xp was pretty good and I’m around a quarter of the way into 75 already.