Perhaps some of you remember a EQ-emu server that went by the name of Winter's Roar? Well, it has evolved into Shards of Dalaya.
I'm posting this because I play SoD, and I would love to see some of you guys start. I've played it for quite a while, and it has proven to be more fun than EQ or WoW, especially for the end game. It's similar to EQ in look and feel, but vastly different in content, quests, zone connections, and lore. Let's not forget to mention various class skills, abilities, and AA differences. Also, there's no major spoiler sites out there to ruin the mystery and fun for you.
SoD has recreated the Velious era feel. (although there are a few PoP/Luclin/LDoN zones) There are warring factions (dragons vs giants). There is no ridiculously uber gear, and transportation is not trivial (no PoK porters for you lazy bastards). End game content is very creative and is far from the typical CH rotation + dps you might expect from a project like this.
To lure you in a bit, I'll share some information:
- Adept mobs. Adepts are special mobs that limit what level of players can engage them. These are meant to give raid encounters for lower levels, and all the way up. If an Adept isn't red to you, you can't touch it. If you have higher level spells on you, you can't touch it. Getting heals or outside help doesn't work. This creates some truly fun and challenging encounters, and they start from level 9 or so. (Actually, there's a level 1 engage Adept just for fun, somewhere...)
- Treasure Maps. You can come across a map various ways in the game. If right click it, it will say what zone it's for, and you can identify it for the difficulty. You go to the zone, dig with a shovel at the correct spot, and it spawns waves of mobs until a treasure chest spawns. These chests contain unique loots, and difficulty ranges from very easy (soloable at 65 for some classes) to very hard, which would require a large well equiped raid force.
- Guk has been renamed and seems to be ruled be a certain fellow by the name of Mielech. There's upper guk, lower guk, and 2 other surprise zones that fit the theme. These have been my favorite zones to exp/group in, by far. (guktop starts relatively low level too, 16-20ish)
- Temple of Veeshan, now called Dragonhorn Keep, is once again a worthwhile end-game raid/city/quest zone, and a fun one at that.
- Significant experience modifiers based on how much experience you've gained in a certain area. This encourages players to move around instead of grinding one spot as long as possible. On top of that, certain zones have innate experience modifiers.
- Temple of Ssra, did you like it? Well, imagine it as a zone limited to 6 people at a time (non instanced, just only 6 people can be inside). Think of it as a zone with several wings, each of different difficulty, each with better rewards as the difficulty increases. This zone is called Cyrtho Malath. Now, throw on top of that an innate 35% zone experience modifier, plus, a 25% new area modifier, and you're in for one hell of a fun, challenging, and rewarding time.
- Mistmoore is a 55+ zone.
- Skyshrine is revamped into one of the ultimate end game raid crawl dungeons, and is done extremely well.
- Permafrost is now Everchill Caverns, a 60+ group/raid zone.
- Dynamic storyline and lore, in which the players can actually have contributing and recognized roles.
- Level 65 supported and about 500 AA's, varying depending on class. (More can be added later)
- Replacing disciplines are combat styles. Melee and hybrid classes gain new styles at certain levels that are essential to the game and add versatility, as well as some extra fun. Every class begins with three basic styles.
- Many more features, zones, and surprises that I don't want to ruin for you
So, what's the catch? None. This is completely free and legitimate. The server is located in Canada, because of favorable laws. The development team is scattered all over the world.
What do you need? EQ cd's, up through PoP/LDoN if possible.
What's the reason behind SoD? Well, the same development team that maintains and adds to SoD is also working on their own game from scratch, called Dawntide. Based on what I've experienced in SoD, I'm looking forward to it.
Go here: Shards of Dalaya and get started. I'll be more than happy to help anyone here get started. I'll give some plat so buying spells isn't an issue or something, maybe group up with you on an alt and do some plvling, whatever works, it's all fun.
Contact me on the server, or reply here/pm me if you want to know anything else!
Darm / Sarm
Shards of Dalaya
Moderator: Dictators in Training
Shards of Dalaya
Last edited by KaiineTN on Sat Nov 05, 2005 5:54 am, edited 2 times in total.
most of the time like 160-190 on average.
its an interesting version of EQ. from what i have seen and read.. they have removed the annoying zones that don't have anything to do with stories.. or at least havn't opened them to play.. certain zones are raid zones that were low level areas before. There are certain named that you can only attack if its red to you. loads of other fun stuff.
leveling is a tad faster but overall its pretty fun.
its an interesting version of EQ. from what i have seen and read.. they have removed the annoying zones that don't have anything to do with stories.. or at least havn't opened them to play.. certain zones are raid zones that were low level areas before. There are certain named that you can only attack if its red to you. loads of other fun stuff.
leveling is a tad faster but overall its pretty fun.