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Welcome To Norrath

You begin your adventuring career in Norrath as a refugee, newly arrived near a large city that you can call home. From here, you'll explore the relatively safe region near the city. As you undertake quests and defeat monsters, you'll earn higher levels in your character class. Each time you earn another level, you gain the prowess necessary to take on stronger enemies and explore further afield.

You start off near a few buildings that contain essential services, such as a merchant and some instructors. The city is farther away, and you'll find it after an hour or two of gameplay. The nearest NPC, or Non-Player Character, will start off your adventure with a task. By reading dialogue and figuring out how to complete tasks, you'll learn more about the setting and your character's abilities.

Your Starting Location

Your starting location depends on which city you chose during Character Creation. There are five starting locations available in EQ2. Each starting location is beside a city, but you'll begin your adventures outside of the city itself, and will be led to your city around level 8 or 10.

• Frostfang Sea: a set of islands with an organized progression up to level 20. This is the newest and most streamlined starting zone. The city of New Halas is found on the central island in this zone.
• Timorous Deep: a self-contained adventure zone. This is the newest starting location, with the best quest rewards of all the newbie zones. You can progress up to level 20 within this zone. The city of Gorowyn is embedded within this zone.
• Darklight Wood: a compact and well-organized zone, centrally located near several old-world zones. You can comfortably progress up to level 20 within this zone. The city of Neriak, City of Hate is connected to this zone.
• Greater Faydark: a sprawling adventure zone, centrally located on the newer continent of Faydwer, far from the old world. You can progress up to level 20 within this zone. The city of Kelethin is embedded within this zone.

Your First Quest

A quest NPC

Regardless of which location you start at, you'll begin beside your first quest NPC. You can tell that an NPC has a quest for you because of the glowing feather above their head. Click on this person to start a conversation with them. You'll get quests and learn about the setting by reading dialogue and choosing responses. If you follow the quests as they are offered, then your first few adventure levels will pass quickly and smoothly.

For some quests, your only task is to find another NPC and converse with them. Doing so will complete the quest, and may also invite you to start another quest. Other quests will ask you to complete specific tasks before you return to the NPC that started it. The game keeps track of these tasks automatically. You can view your progress on these tasks in the Quest Journal - press J to open it.

In your first few quests, you'll learn several kinds of skills. The game eases you into your new life as an adventurer, so in your early activities, almost nothing will require urgency on your part.

Your First Battle

For one of your first quests, you'll have to find a specific kind of creature nearby, and kill several of them.

In order to attack a creature, you must first target it. Target a creature by clicking on it with your mouse. Its name will appear in the target window near your character's name, and the creature itself will be highlighted by a targeting ring. Walk close to the creature, and click the "attack" button on your hotkey bar (or press the tilda key ~ on your keyboard). Your character will start auto-attacking the creature with his melee weapon. The creature will respond by trading blows with you.

When you're fighting a battle, it will continue until one of you dies, or until you run away. Your Health and Power are shown at the top left of your screen, next to your character's name. You lose health each time an enemy damages you; if you run out of Health, then you die. Your opponent's health and power are displayed in two places: in your Target Window, and also above their head. You can judge how the battle is unfolding by comparing your opponent's health against your own.

Your First Abilities

You could let your character try to win his battles using auto-attack, but it's much more effective (and also more fun) to use your character's special abilities. Everquest 2 places your first few abilities on the hotkey bar automatically. At least one of them will be an attack ability: look for an icon with a red background. Click the icon to use the ability.

You can use your ability every time it has finished "cooling down", which is shown by the dark shading on the icon. Your abilities (spells or combat arts) cost Power, which is measured by the green bar next to your character's name. If you run out of Power, then you can't use any of your abilities - all you can do is auto-attack.

We already mentioned the red-colored attack abilities on your hotkey bar. You should use these when you have a monster targetted. They won't have any effect on yourself, or any other player, or NPCs. Aside from attack abilities, you probably have some other abilities on your hotkey bar. If you have any yellow-colored or purple-colored icons, then these are beneficial effects that you can cast upon yourself. Try it before your next battle! These "buffs" will make your tasks and battles go more smoothly.

Your First Rewards

When you finish the steps required for a quest, you'll be instructed to return to the NPC that started the quest. Talk to the NPC, and you'll receive money and items as your rewards. Sometimes you even get to choose your reward from a list of items. These items will help fill out your empty inventory slots with equipment, and eventually you'll get replacements for your starting gear as well.

You might also find items or money on the corpses of monsters that you have slain. Occasionally, a monster might even drop a treasure chest containing something valuable - usually either a piece of equipment, a spell scroll, or a quest item. To retrieve these items, you need to click on the monster's corpse (or on the treasure chest that the monster dropped). A window will pop up, giving you an opportunity to loot the items.

Be sure to equip these items whenever you receive them. They aren't equipped automatically, so you'll have to do it yourself. Press "I" to open your inventory to check out your equipment. Look in the bags and slots along the bottom of the window for stuff that you looted recently. If an item can be worn by you, then you can double-click to equip it. (An item's name will be red if you can't wear it.)

Your First New Level

Each time you defeat an enemy or complete quests or discover a noteworthy location, you'll earn experience. You can see the experience accumulate in the experience bar at the bottom of your screen. It won't take long before your experience bar is filled and you gain a new adventure level. You started at level 1, so your next level is level 2.

Gaining levels is the main way of advancing your character's prowess. There are a few concrete benefits to gaining a level: you get more health and power, you gain one or more new abilities, and you can use equipment that is rated for your new level. Each level takes a little longer than the previous to complete, but in the early part of the game, levels come very quickly. At first, you'll gain a new level after completing every few quests, or after every few dozen victories over monsters. Later, you'll gain a level every few hours of gameplay.

Your First Interactions

There are a few types of interaction that you'll learn during your early quests. All of them require you to find something in the world, and click on it with your mouse pointer.

• Harvesting. You'll be asked to find certain items and harvest them. Harvesting nodes look like part of the world around you - bushes, rocks, logs, and so on - but like monsters, they have a name overhead and you can target them. Stand next to a harvesting node, and click on it to try retrieving materials from it. Your success rate at harvesting will improve with practice.
• Delivery. You'll be asked to find a specific NPC, with only a general description of where to find them. To complete the delivery, click on the NPC to start a conversation, and follow the dialogue until your quest advances.
• Activation. You'll look for an item in the world that's interactive, and click it to make something happen. Interactive items will highlight when you put your mouse cursor over them, and your mouse cursor will change to a hand. These items are usually inactive unless you're on a quest that requires interaction with them, so whenever you find an interactive item, try clicking it.

The other kind of interaction is something we've already discussed: dialogue. Sometimes your quests will simply ask you to go find a specific person and talk to them. As you've already learned, you can just click on an NPC to speak to them. If you choose the wrong response at any point, you can always start the dialogue over again.

Your First Death

Your Health and Power regenerate automatically when you're not in combat. If you make sure that you're healthy before you start each battle, and choose opponents that are close to your level, then you won't have very many brushes with death. The "newbie" region is not too dangerous, but if you're new to the game, you might lose some battles early in your career.

When your health bar falls to zero, you are considered dead. The battle ends, and you must revive at a safe location nearby. You may think of this as having been found by a friendly traveller and taken to a safe place to awaken. Your equipment is intact, but has lost some condition. You also incur a very small "experience debt", during which you'll earn experience at half the usual rate. This debt is usually paid off by your next victory or quest completion.

After ten deaths, your equipment will run out of condition, and will stop giving you any benefits. Before your tenth death, you should visit a Mender NPC and pay his fee to repair your equipment. Mender NPCs are found at almost all "quest hubs", especially in the newbie zones. The repair fee is modest, but will require you to have some cash on hand.

Your First Merchant

Merchant NPCs are found at all "quest hubs". They're more common than mender NPCs. You'll find merchants willing to sell you clothing, armor, weapons, ammunition, and even spells. To buy their wares, you'll need cash. You'll get cash when you finish quests, and you'll get cash by selling odds and ends that you loot from dead monsters.

Merchant NPCs will buy your loot. To sell items to a merchant, click on a merchant NPC and go to the "Sell" tab. Marchants will also buy items that you earn from finishing quests, if you decide that you don't want to use the items. They usually aren't interested in buying items that you harvest from the ground.

Becoming a Veteran

By level 8, you'll have exhausted the quests in your starting location, and will have been directed to move on to another location to continue the storyline. You may notice that the weakest monsters, which you fought in your first few quests, have now "turned gray" and no longer give you any incentive to kill them. It's time to move on and find challenges that befit your new prowess.

Level 8 is a great time to learn more about the game and its world. Your hotkey bar is probably full, your bags have probably filled up with loot, and you've probably peeked at the next geographic area. Now is a good time to read more of the Beginner's Guides, to discover your home city, and take stock of your character's equipment and abilities. In particular, the guides on Exploration and Character Development will be very useful around level 10.

Of course, if you just want to press on with more quests and adventures, you can do that, too! Dive into the Solo Timelines to find quest lines to pursue, or check out the Zone Guide for an overview of where in the world to go.

The Golden Path

The Golden Path is a set of outdoor zones that have been recently tuned and improved to give you a smooth, satisfying experience of levelling by questing. You can always choose to quest in other zones, of course. The Golden Path is as follows:

• Start in New Halas, Kelethin, Neriak, or Gorowyn and proceed to level 20 there
• Butcherblock Mountains for levels 20-32
• Steamfont Mountains for levels 32-42
• Lavastorm for levels 42-52
• Sinking Sands for levels 52-57
• Tenebrous Tangle and the rest of the Overrealm for levels 57-67
• Kylong Plains and the rest of Kunark for levels 67-80
• The Sundered Frontier and the rest of Odus for levels 80-90

An overarching quest line, called The Legend of Roger Goldie, guides you through most of these quest areas. The story begins in Butcherblock Mountains at level 20 and guides you through to Kunark.