Poll: Impressions of 'The Buried Sea'Follow

I have a huge secret for everyone that thinks TBS is too hard. Get out of Katta! Katta is geared for lvl 75s with really good gear. Head to TBS and start doing pirate missions untill you can gear yourself up there. Brag rights follow: pirate missions are easy, the mobs hit in the 200-800 range and I can tank at least 8-10 of them (dark blue xp mobs) at a time. If the high level group scene is too hard for you go for the low level and use it to gear yourself. There are 4 group tiers of armor in this expansion smugglers buccaneers citizens and praetorians find the one that is a little better than your current gear and work towards it. Some of the smugglers gear can be bought at indifferent faction!

You obviously need to look around in Katta more. There is a way to leave. Its a portal in the main hall where all the quest givers are, on the far side of the room from the entrance.

Being in a progression guild that raids alot, we haven't spent in anytime in TBS except for a few non raid group grindings to get the new spells, tomes and songs. We have just finished Frostcrypt (killed the Shade King last week) and are going to work on Ashengate progression soon. So, we are behind in the top end progression by about one expansion. We will probably just be staring TBS when the new expansion comes out. Sony's plan to have only one expansion per year will be nice for us to catch up as long as the new zone progression doesn't eat up most of the time to get into the top end zones.

To be honest I have yet to set foot anywhere near TBS nor at the moment do I have any desire to. As a person who started EQ late (Luclin expansion) I have been deeply immersed in exploring all the older zones/lore. Recently I have started exploring TSS (mainly for the Seekers Charm and aug), but with so much to learn and see from the Classic Everquest zones right up to finishing TSS progression it will be quite some time before I feel the need to jump into new content. I am glad to hear that Sony will be slow down the expansions, it seems that too much is coming out way too soon and the extra time would allow players to really get into the lore of an expansion instead of having to blow through it as soon as possible to be ready for the next one. From many of the posts I've read on the forums it seems that players haven't really enjoyed EQ's lore since Kunark and we are a long way from there now.

Edited, Jun 11th 2007 10:22am by Nelbrin

definately fell short of my expectations. I like the idea that they're working faction back into being a major part of the game, but the way you have to go about getting said faction is horrid. Not that i enjoyed having to grind in Kael for days on end to get my faction back in the velius days, but having to do it SOLELY by quests was really rediculous.

Also, although i expected more, the content was actually fairly well thought out. I think they need to reduce the zone size DRASTICALLY though. katta and TBS are WAY too big. katta is like 5 times the size of freeport (all of the old-old zones for freeport combined) and really served the same functions.

I just expected..... more. i do have to give them major kudos for throwing in the campfire / guild banner thing though... makes life SO much easier.

--Baacon -=75th Cleric
--Faedarr-=75th Enchanter
--Deltdeath-=73rd Shadowknight
--Eggz -=75th Monk
All on drinal.

I haven't bought it, and won't. It's the stupidest concept for an expansion that they've come up with to date. It is available ( as are all expansions ) on the Test server, and it doesn't even come close to my preconcieved notions...if anything, it's far short of wasting ANY time on, much less 29.99 for a digital download with no hard copy. As far as I'm concerned, the time and money spent producing this p.o.s. would have been better spent fixing things that are actually broken...like the LoS issues that have been messed up in game since forever

Edited, Jun 28th 2007 6:39pm by Kinderslye

I really like this expansion. It may not be my favorite, but I really enjoy the zone and missions. I especialy enjoy the near Anguish quality groupable armor. It somewhat allows the non-hardcore player to catch-up to the a bit below average raider.

Edited, Jun 13th 2007 2:28pm by ShankzSurillious

You have quite a wait, not exactly on the proper server to be wishing to experience the newest of content =/

Seeing as how I just purchased this expansion with the Anniversary Edition I am still in the process of downloading the approximately 80 hours of updates that are required to run EQ. Yes when I do a patch it tells me that I had 83 hours 52 minutes and 17 seconds of updates to download. I am currently down to 70 hours of updates left and only being home for maybe 24 hours a week and able to only download for 8-10 hours of that wil be a long time before I can even think about going there.

I tried the boats from Butcherblock to the Ocean of Tears and ended up getting dumped in the middle of the OoT with no land in sight and no map of the area. After finding the dock I decided to go back to BB and ended up being bounced from OoT to BB to OoT to BB to OoT to Freeport to OoT to Freeport where the zone stayed stable long enough for me to abandon ship. I will be using the books and PoK to get from zone to zone, the boats are still enough of a problem that I won't be using them.

What gets me is the number of people who want a port to Nedaria's Landing and sit in PoK and holler for one. Talk about Newbs.

See who ever on the FV server in maybe 5 or 6 weeks if I can finish the downloads in that amount of time.

I think the expansion offers alot to low and high end players. It just bugs me when people say they dont like a certain expansion because its, A) to hard, B) to confusing to travel around or C) missions are "mind numbing" for faction to aquire gear. Just because you do the same Evidence of Unity task over and over again because your lvl 68 with 200 aa and CANT do anything else doesnt make it bad, it just means that...well..your not very good at the game? Which is fine. But the people who DO have max AA and max lvl NEED more content to play. You need to consider both sides and dont get an attitude just because you lack skill/time/friends/guild to do certain things. You play for a reason, so keep rockin on, just dont knock on others.

My first thoughts of TBS was "hmmm. Okay". I wasn't impressed at all. But after exploring more of it and seeing some of the VERY easy to get gear upgrades, I'm much happier with it. Where else can you get a 245 HP/Mana ring or a 90HP/Mana aug off a kiteable named? Where else can you get weapons that can be group-attained that will make groupers bag 1.5s? Where else can you get a BiC-style quest that both groupers and raiders want (Jonas Dagmire hand aug).

Many of the missions are way to difficult for the reward, the pathing is horrid, and the faction seems to take a VERY long time to raise. But there are plenty of options out there in this expansion.

I'm pleased overall and it exceeded my expectations.

I think the last half dozen of so expansions came out way to quick. In my opinion, had Sony pushed out an expansion once every 9 months, verses every six, we would not have as many players so behind the content curve. Now that they are on a 12 month cycle, it may be a bit too long. But this is a seperate subject.

There really are two halfs to this expansion. The first is pirate stuff, and for the most part, I think that is well balanced, and has some interesting quests. The focal quest is the skeletal hand, and other then one or two pieces, is can be easly done either solo or with a friend. Although there are 39 quests total, I was able to work about 5 of the quests at the same time, and get through the entire skeletal hand quest in about a week. In the process I was able to get my rank 1 TBS spells, each of which is nice.

One technical issue Barren Coast / Barren Sea boat connection. If you are playing off a slow data line, you could get stuck in an endless loop zoning between both zones, and unable to get out (happend to me when I was traveling on work, and playing off a laptop from a hotel). I like how they implemented zoning into the intances, i.e. get on the boat, and zone and you are on a dock or beach.

Katta zone, is way to big. I would of prefered that zone to be chopped up into two zones. One for the city, and one for the outer part, with the mobs for hunting.

The worst zone in the expansion Zhisza. That zone falls way short of my expectations. I do not mind that the mobs are hard. What I do mind is the lag in that zone due to the trees, and as a puller when I pull a mob and I am too slow (due to lag) to avoid getting hit. I consider that a problem (I use a dual core processor with 2gb or ram and 256k vedio card). My second issue with that zone, is that zone-in and succor points are not always safe. With different zone speeds of individual in a group, if one of the kos mobs is vicinity succor point / zone-in, as your party succors, they get gunked one by one, before they even finish zoning.

As far as the other instance and zones, for the most part they are well designed. I would of liked to see more group and solo quests in them.

My final comment is on progression conent. With the dwindeling server population, I am hard pressed to put together a viable group for progression. I check the LFG and if I am lucky, there will be 2-3 other 75's LFG, not enougth for a progression group. And when there are enougth LFG for progression with the TBS expansion, I check them via eqplayers, prior to inviting them if I don't know them. I see that warrior has less then 10k hp, the cleric has mana regen 2. In other words, those toons are not yet ready for that content. I will not invite someone who is not ready for specific content, since I don't want to waste my or their time.

No comment on the Solteris, since no one on our server is in Solteris yet.

In summery, the pirates hit my expectations, but Katta half fell short a bit of my expectations. Finally, does anyone have any rope to tie Merchant Woad to one spot, so that he does not wander?

Edited, Jun 21st 2007 12:24pm by leadint

Edited, Jun 21st 2007 12:27pm by leadint

Edited, Apr 9th 2014 12:47pm by leadint

no point for me all 32 characters i have are under lvl 52. only expansion i liked so far is the one for all vlles and a new race, tones of zones for all lvls and quests the The Serpent's Spine .

i hope more like this come out soon, at least one of the two expansions per year should be for all lvls, new city, not huge but some more things to do for us low lvlers, who casually play.

i do accept the need for the higher characters too. as more play high, and need new things. i'd like to see another insteance type of thing not just group and raid but small group and single player. and make the dungeon instances very random