My evaluation time is almost done and perhaps some are tired of hearing me blather on about Horizons on a EQ board.

Last night I discovered a few things and had something else reinforced. If you play Horizons, take advantage of all the alternate XP sources there are. You will keep busy and not feel like your grinding. I found crystals that grant bonus xp for using them. I visited the Task officers for that extra little but of xp. I kept at the adventure, crafting and dragon trainers for more quests which, in turn granted xp.

All I can do is explain it like this for EQ players. Imagine as a newbie you talked to a gate guard and he said something about how the orcs are causing trouble and he'd get the city council to pay you if you killed say 10 of them. So you go out, kill 10 orcs (getting xp because they are of your level) then you come back to the guard. He's happy, you get 250 xp (sometimes about a quarter of a level. Not typically that high, but it is significant xp.) You also get some change, in EQ terms you'd get say, 5 gold. In Horizons, copper and silver are the medium of exchange so far rather than the plat. I've seen things that cost several silver but not 2k plat. You actually can survive off the money you make from quests, tradeskilling and looting monsters.

Now, say you get to level 10. Up to now all your new combat abilities were free. Some still are, but there are some extras you can get if you do a quest. In fact, with my dragon I have several I can do for added abilities in both crafting and adventuring. From the looks of it, by the time I'm done with the level 10 series of quests, I'm going to be level 20 and be eligable to begin the second series of quests.

So, why is this not like the "hurry-up-and-level" grind of EQ? Because it isn't necessary for me to level to start doing the "high end" stuff. The latest big event is the finding of the dryads. This is so they can help seal off hole that the big bad undead guys are using to leak into the world of Istaria. The first part of that is to find the tower of nature. Its in the middle of a particularly nasty part of blighted land (that's land where the undead have leaked in to such a degree that its really quite trashed). I am level 14. I was out looking for some garnets and got to wandering. I ended up in West Deadlands. There was creepy lightning and green smoke all around. I came across some level 50 monsters. The ones, oldoak was saying he was fighting. I avoided them, of course. I dashed through an opening in their patroll and ran for all I was worth. Exploring more, I came to the road that was supposed to go to the druid tower. Ran into a golem that very nearly killed me. No, I didn't fight anything in West Deadlands, that would have been suicidal. It was my hope that I could get away from the bone golem or that the druids at the top actually existed and they could take care of it. Lucky me, the golem gave up the chase after nearly killing me with one spell.

At the top, I ran into the druids, who had a lot of lore to give about the seal and how the tower was in trouble and the ebon guard were coming to pay them back for holding the seal for as long as they did, yatta yatta yatta. Climbed a huge tower to find a spell desk and a wisp that said "whoosh". I ran into the bug where the guy I was supposed to meet there happened to be under the floor. So yes there are still bugs in the game. Lucky you can target him and still converse and trade.

So, that was fun. I also got involved in finding some clues as to how to perform the ritual to find the dryads. A new npc quest was found near Chiconis, a dragon city. The quest involved a guy who was being tortured really and I had to take on his curse to help him find a way out of it. So, off I went to kill some blighted wisps while my health was decreasing. Even people with 2000 hp went down to 360 hp due to the curse. In the end we found five new clues to help us figure out how to perform the ritual, bring us that much closer to solving this riddle.

Which brings to mind a final thought. This entire game is set up in such a way that anyone can participate in the "high end" stuff. Big events that take place often benefit the entire server rather than just a select few. My experience in the EQ world would be that this quest would only open up the dryad tree to whatever uber guild was on top and they'd farm or block off access to this Dantor guy (the new one giving clues last night) so that others couldn't also access the dryad tree. Its hard to explain, but this game seems to foster a spirit of cooperativism a lot more than EQ does. If you do the hard "work", its a game so work isn't a proper word, you are rewarded.

I hope Horizons is around for some time to come. There are those who don't like it, that's fine, but I see great potential in it and it is even fun in its present form.

/smile

My feelings about Horizons exactly....it isn't for everyone perhaps, but I like it a LOT. Still. I like the fact that I don't feel pressured to play, and when I do I have a variety of different things I can work on depending on my mood - crafting (in various flavors), leveling (in multiple classes), quests, construction,etc.

On the money thing you are right. I have been playing since November and I still have not earned 1 gold piece in total. Seriously. Everything in the game is in silver and copper denominations, and 1g is simply a fortune. A guild saves to get 1g. A player...it will take forever.

Mithril (the top denomination)...well, that is years away.

My wife complains that she has no money. As a dragon I have nothing to buy really so I just kind of, um, horde it. Granted there are issues with dragon hordes right now so I dont' actually put it in the official horde pile.

What often happens is I buy her a nice upgrade from a consigner from time to time.

Another nice thing is we dont' have to find 6 people (8 in the case of Horizons) to do stuff. Like you said there is plenty to do when we feel like it. Sometimes we have 3 or 4 people in a group, often times we just go dual and trade off quest requirements. Kill 20 wolves for me, find blighted orbs for her, collect zombie fingers for me, kill 5 sslik skeletons for her. I hope to do the rite of passage some day, though I hear its bugged in a few places. Mostly its complaints about hording. I'll just have my friendly cleric lady friend churn out a collection of rare spell scrolls. Actually, my plan is to just keep the stuff I'm going to horde in my vault or on my inventory until I have to have it to start the rite of passage. I'm sure I can't keep 250k worth of horde on me, but I hope I can have a significant amount.

She's discovered that dragons can carry more, so I've been a dump truck lately. Its ok though because its still fun.

For cash, I would recommend that your wife put some of the spells she makes on consigners. I have found with a little reserach you can find gaps in the market and basically come up with a list of 5-10 items in a given discipline that you can sell basically every day.

Easy example...there are very few people making leather armor. Druids can only wear leather. I search most consigners EVERY DAY looking for items that would be upgrades. Of course, the higher you go the more likely you are having stuff made to order, but I still find that I visit consigners regularly to pick up items I am missing.

Another example...hardly anyone makes the wooden 1hb weapons that druids wield.

And teched gear you can always sell if you choose the techs wisely. Spend your experience time killing mobs that drop tech resources you can use, focus on a widely needed spell that is often sold teched, and you can sell them on consigners for a 500c or 1s premium over the non-teched price depending on demand and item/item level.

Always check what a consigner is already selling before you give them items to sell. Have a variety of sell items in your packs when you go and choose 5 items that are not represented. On the spell side I often found I could sell tier 1 spells that were not terribly valueable but rarely for sale. Not for a high price, but for enough that it was worthwhile.

On the horde angle, they are going to change the horde values on spells in a way which I don't really agree with ... fixed value per spell tier. At that point you will want your wife to make the highest quantity of the lowest resource spell.

I would suggest you cajole her into working on jewelcraft. I think she could make decent money in it, but as a horde activity you can help her gather the resources, she could make the jewelry and you can rake in the horde value. Ie she mines gems, you mine metal and make metal bars. She cuts gems, and makes the jewelry with the metal bars you hand her.

Horde also affects your stats in some ways I am not too clear on, so if you decide to simply save until you are ready for the RoP, you may find you are underpowered for your level along the way.

More on dragon horde...

I have been meaning to find out how this works better just because I have been pretty unclear.

Basically, for achieving certain horde levels per level, you get a +4ac bonus per level, plus some bonus damage to your breath attack.

The horde level information can be found in this link...

http://www.tazoon.com/gameworld/downloads/files/hoard.xls

On the surface it may not seem like much, but just to take an extreme example, at level 100 the horde AC bonus would be 400AC, at least as I understand it from a cursory exploration of the system.

So...as I read it...even maintaining the level 10 horde value of 1000 would net you 40ac at all times, and that should be pretty easy to do.

Since in Horizons AC seems to be king (at least in my experience) I would recommend that if you are playing you at least shoot for maintaining a partial horde. The truth is, the ROP requires some hefty horde levels so you would not want to be faced with chugging through the horde build all at once when you are ready for the RoP.

I have put some stuff in the horde and let me tell you, there is a string of hobbitses in that cave taking it out on a bucket brigade. You can literally watch the value go down.

Heh...yup...bless the hobitses!

The concept of the horde in the game is that it be one of three ways items get removed from the player economy. The other two are deconstruction for experience, and selling stuff to pawnbrokers for quick (low) cash.

Many players feel they have overcompensated. There are some game play logistics that make the horde dynamic hard to deal with. First, most dragons fill their horde with their own craft work rather than make cash and buy items to put in the horde (which I think is the designers intention). Second, there is really a very good question about whether the horde depletion rate is too high considering the cost and time investment it takes to fill it.

They promise they will look at horde again soon, but the dragons are a bit restive about it since the only changes so far seem to be about lowering horde values (HV) on items, which seems like the wrong direction.

My own belief is that there should be a level determined platform below which horde cannot fall. IE, if you are level 20 your ideal horde might be hmm 20,000, but under no circumstances could it fall below 10,000.

Actually for all I know there is something like that already ; ). I don't play a dragon so I don't follow the horde discussions too closely.

The best trick though is definitely to work with a biped partner who can make you high HV items, especially if you choose something you can help gather resources for. The RoP has a crafting requirement so you will want to do that anyway.