Everquest: Lost Dungeons of Norrath introduces a new sect of
characters, the Wayfarer's Brotherhood, into the game. The quest begins with
your character entering your race's homes city (or talking to an NPC if
you've been banned from the city). After receiving a message from an NPC,
you are sent on a quest to find the five Brotherhood camps. After talking to
each Wayfarer, each of whom ask you a set of questions, you're given an
Adventurer's Stone, which allows you to accept missions and use
teleporters.
Being relatively new to the world of Everquest (I mean, it's been
what, 3 weeks since I reviewed the Everquest: Evolutions
compilation?), I found this latest expansion to be something of a shock at
first. Fundamentally, this is the same great game, but there have been
enough noticeable changes to make it feel new. For the most part, the game
seems to be built more around the 'party' atmosphere than the solo one. This
is, of course, an excellent thing since going on dungeon crawls with big
parties is the concept the entire genre is based on. Taking a note from the
design document for Everquest II, Sony Online Entertainment has decided to implement
randomly generated dungeons. This means that there are dungeons that will be
generated solely for your party that won't be accessible by anyone else.
This not only gives the game that extra push, but also relieves the problem
of traveling to a dungeon only to find someone has already routed the place.
One of the neat things about the dungeons is that they are tailored to the
party you're traveling with - factors like the level of your group, as well
as the number of people in your group.
Missions break down as follows:
Collect: Get X number of a certain item.
Rescue: Find an NPC and help them get to the exit.
Assassinate: Kill a certain NPC boss.
Lay Waste: Kill, kill, kill.
Time limits have also been added to the new dungeons (30 minutes to get to
the dungeon; 90 minutes to complete it), which help to make quests that much
more exciting. Once your party leader takes a quest, you part is given a
time limit in which you must complete it. If you are able to do this, you're
given a reward. Rewards not only offer the requisite EXP and gold, but will
also give you Adventure Points, which can then be used to purchase both
Augmentation Items, which allow you to apply permanent stat upgrades to your
existing items, and high-powered gear.
Lost Dungeons has also gone in and balanced the classes a bit in
order to make some of the 'weaker' classes a little more useful in party
situations. Classes like Rogues and Necros are now a little more welcome.
