The Everquest Chronicles: The Lake of Ill Omen and The Sarnak Fortress

It all started in December 2000 when I purchased Everquest, the game. I have been a gamer since the early 1980s but had never played an MMO before.

In the next few weeks, @bingbabe would become an 'EQ Widow' as I was drawn into the harsh unforgiving world of Norrath, an obsession that would last for several years.

More recently I installed the Everquest client again on my PC. It's free to play now but a far cry from the heyday of the early noughties when adventurers banded together for quests and glory.

Many zones are now deserted as players have long since left the game for other ones with superior graphics, and easier gameplay.

This is the story replayed today as my level 66 70 Barbarian Shaman who can now freely roam through low and mid-level zones without fear of being killed.

If you are not a gamer and have never played an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) then you may not be able to relate to this at all.

Everquest was named 'Evercrack' due to its addictive nature and for good reason.

Other article's in this series:
The Everquest Chronicles: Halas and Everfrost
The Everquest Chronicles: The Entrance to Blackburrow
The Everquest Chronicles: Blackburrow and the Ice Giants
The Everquest Chronicles: The Bandits of Western Karana
The Everquest Chronicles: Northern and Eastern Karana
The Everquest Chronicles: HighHold Pass
The Everquest Chronicles: Kithicor and Beyond
The Everquest Chronicles: Freeport and The Ro's
The Everquest Chronicles: The Temple of Cazic-Thule
The Everquest Chronicles: Timorous Deep and Kunark

Against my better judgement, I have spent some time levelling my Shaman to 70 and can now wear the next level of Defiant Armour.

This cheap gear is readily available and quite overpowered compared to old world drops. I also subscribed for a month for the cheap price of £8.99. I do need to cancel it so it doesn’t auto-renew.

...'Elegant Defiant gear is powerful and cheap, so load up on the stuff and get killing'...

Why not have some fun and get even more overpowered? This gained me well over 1400 ability points as well as a better Mercenary who is not made out of a paper bag.

The trouble is levelling has now become not quite trivial, but I can quite easily take on 2 or 3 BLUE conning monsters in the Plane of Fire, stick them with DOT’s and sit down while my new improved Mercenary and dogdog take care of them.

…’but to continue the story’…

After entering Warslick’s Woods I realised there was no zone to the Lake of Ill Omen without going through another couple of zones first.

In the end, I did it the easy way getting the port book to Firiona Vie, and then entering the Lake from the other side. That's age for you and I am getting old.

This was my normal method as going via The Overthere was strictly a route for evil characters in the past.

Memories of a zone filled with real players came flooding back to me. At level 22 or so I had made the long treacherous trip to Kunark using boats and that could take the best part of an hour earth time.

Now it was sadly empty as I looked over the Lake with Veskar looming in the centre.

I passed Sarnak architecture on my journey to the fort in the north-east corner of the zone. How many years had it taken for the industrious lizard men to sculpt these fantastic idols?

...or how long had a geeky graphic artist took designing them...

In my youth, I had spent countless hours sitting around the entrance to this magnificent fortress waiting for Sarnaks to spawn, to kill them again and again.

It had been a truly wondrous life-changing experience for the young Cammere (and nicely removed a fucking chunk of my life).

Summoning my new Journeyman mercenary and getting dogdog ready with a simple speed buff, I ran up to Sarnak after Sarnak fully expecting these brainless lizards to pointlessly wail on me.

I say this as my AC is far too high for them to hit me for more than mere nibbles.

After quickly reaching the Chancellors room, I was not expecting much opposition having simply let Senadin the Mercenary do his job.

This bastard expects a whole 30 platinum pieces every 15 minutes for his work as a meat shield. Ludicrous I say!

He needs to work for that money and I have to admit he does a mighty fine job with haste, regeneration, and strong all-around armour, HP, dexterity, etc.. buff only a shaman can provide.

The Chancellor went down as easy as the rest as did the other named monster, Weaponsmith Ko’zirr.

These monsters would have struck fear into me as a young shaman, and likely had been the cause of my death if at any point I had joined a group and tried the fort interior.

It's easy to get lost in these indoor zones, and I had to download some 3rd party maps as the internal ones are quite shit. Little has changed in that respect.

...'All Images are screen captures, processed manually by ME!'...

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