Gameplay
Several "recent" (lol, since 2007) gameplay changes were not immediately understood by me as a returning player, so I'll document them below. Totally a work in progress.
Expansions
It's been difficult to memorize which expansions added which levels, so here's a table.
| New-Level Expansion | Level Cap | Same-Level Expansions |
|---|---|---|
| EverQuest, 1999 | 50 | n/a |
| The Ruins of Kunark, 2000 | 60 | The Scars of Velious, 2000 The Shadows of Luclin, 2001 |
| The Planes of Power, 2002 | 65 | The Legacy of Ykesha, 2003 Lost Dungeons of Norrath, 2003 Gates of Discord, 2004 |
| Omens of War, 2004 | 70 | Dragons of Norrath, 2005 Depths of Darkhollow, 2005 Prophecy of Ro, 2006 |
| The Serpent's Spine, 2006 | 75 | The Buried Sea, 2007 |
| Secrets of Faydwer, 2007 | 80 | n/a |
| Seeds of Destruction, 2008 | 85 | Underfoot, 2009 |
| House of Thule, 2010 | 90 | n/a |
| Veil of Alaris, 2011 | 95 | n/a |
| Rain of Fear, 2012 | 100 | Call of the Forsaken, 2013 |
| The Darkened Sea, 2014 | 105 | The Broken Mirror, 2015 Empires of Kunark, 2016 |
| Ring of Scale, 2017 | 110 | The Burning Lands, 2018 |
| Torment of Velious, 2019 | 115 | Claws of Veeshan, 2020 |
| Terror of Luclin, 2021 | 120 | Night of Shadows, 2022 |
There's also a great table on Wikipedia.
AAs
I was already 50 before I realized that even with a free account, I was entitled to Lesson of the Devoted (extra XP for ~30 minutes a day) and some other AAs. I had to scroll through them all to see which ones I could buy. The great news is that AAs come really fast. I read that there is a multiplier that scales from something like 500x to 1x as you get your first 500 AAs, to help characters not be so squishy and ineffective. There's also an autogrant feature, but that's only for paid accounts. As I stated on the welcome page, as of this writing (Jan 2022), there are four characters on Magelo tied with 74,377 AAs. That's a LOT of catching up!
Currencies
I remember LDoN Adventure Points and DoN Crystals, but now I see a whole tab of alternate currencies that I'm not high-level enough to worry about yet. There seems to be a comprehensive table at https://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Alternate_currency that I need to study. The entire Fanra site looks like a wonderful wealth of information, and I'd rather point people there than try to reproduce (plagurize) that content here.
Heroic Characters
For a fee, you can magically make any character become either level 85 (~$35?) or 100 (~$40?). This is supposed to give you about 1000 AAs and bring all your skills up to what is normal for characters of that level. I've done it to 100, it's great, and you get every slot outfitted with Grandiose Consigned Gear - but no Augs.
Mercenaries
Introduced with Seeds of Destruction in 2008, these are sort of like pets, but they level up as you do and you cannot directly command them - you just give them "stances" to adjust their aggression. You start in the tutorial with Apprentice Mercanaries, either a tank or a healer. Aapparently there used to be many levels of Apprentice and Journeyman mercs, but now it seems like the system has been revamped, and there are only Apprentices and Journeymen - but different races of mercs unlock somehow. At present, in the low 50s, I don't see how to fix this, but I'll address it and investigate further when I feel the need.
There is some useful info at https://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/EQ:Mercenaries although it still refers to various tiers of Apprentice and Journeyman mercs in some sections.
Purity, Power Sources, etc.
Even though these were entering the game as I was leaving, I have no clue what, why, or how, other than they make armor better modularly, much like some crafted armor used to take Symbols which gave the gear a good chunk of its final stats.
Hat tip again to Fanra's:
UI Changes
I see strange new windows, like the Extended Target window. I guess this is pretty useful on raids, but it seems to just take up space for now.
