As I continue to get more and more hyped for EverQuest Legends, I decided to check out the new EQ time-locked progression server, Frostreaver. This is a pretty wild server, with a ruleset chosen by the community:
These rules add up to a more approachable experience, but far from an easy one; it’s still EverQuest. Once you create your character, you are dropped into the world with zero direction or signposting. There’s a quest chain for your class at the start, but if you aren’t paying attention to your inventory and NPC text, you won’t progress. There are no exclamation points over the heads of quest-givers here.
While there is XP / level loss upon death, the increased XP gained makes it a bit less painful. I want my Legends post-beta main to be a Dark Elf, so I decided to roll a DE wizard here to get a refresher of the starting areas and challenges.
I’ve spent the bulk of the 7 hours it took me to get to level 10 in Neriak city and Nektulos Forest. Much like all early EQ cities, Neriak is a sprawling maze that takes a lot of familiarity and/or use of the “FIND” command to navigate. It’s a really compelling environment: sinister, brutalist architecture mixed with cozy homeliness.
Nektulos Forest, is, well, an EverQuest forest. It’s sprawling, and filled with early level-appropriate challenges, plus some random higher level enemies that can quickly kill you, as a treat.
There has been some talk of Legends in the Frostreaver chat, but anecdotally it doesn’t seem like most players are interested in jumping ship at the moment:
I still think including Legends in All Access or giving current players a discount would get more people on board…
Anyway, now that I’m level ten I’m moving to the Desert of Ro, a zone that’s oppressive in its own way.
I’m not really in a place where any of the ruleset changes significantly affect me, but I am curious how those will play out over time. We’ll see how far I get before the Legends beta begins!
All screenshots captured by me on PC.
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