With the completion of the New Lands, New Profits quest, the story of how Master Woodworker Yonger Celli wound up with a sokokar, a master woodworker’s cloak, and the Earring of the Solstice comes to a natural break as everything done up until this time can be done by tradeskill characters who are levels 70-79. So while we leave Yonger in Teren’s Grasp having just received the pass needed to gain the faction he will need to receive the actual tradeskiller’s epic quest line, let’s look at the quests covered in the first four episode’s of the tale.
In “Yonger’s Vacation”, a lot of time was spent not only covering Yonger’s background but in quest dialog explaining what awaited adventurers in the Kylong Plains. Part of the reason for so much text is that Jones and his boss, who gives a different sokokar quest line to high-level adventurers, are usually the first NPCs that players encounter when entering the Rise of Kunark expansion lands. In the midst of all the story development one quest was covered: Fang’s Away. The only game play pointer I hope you come away with is to bring your own fuel and materials. The entire sokokar quest line requires 32 ferrite clusters, 28 redwood lumber and 70 smoldering coUnless you are a high level harvester as well as a high level crafter and low-level adventurer, you will not be able to harvest the materials needed. If you do have the necessary gathering skills (possibly aided by things like the pack unicorn), there are safe places to harvest the materials needed to make the arrows.
The post “Working for Teren’s Grasp” covers two quests, An Eye in the Sky and Sticking My Ore In. When I ran this quest with Yonger, he was level 8 and managed to release the hawk and return as I described. The one piece of dramatic license I took concerned the part about sitting on the makeshift bridge. As of this writing I’ve done the quest on 8 different characters and I’ve never seen a mob get on the bridge. But if you have never done the quest before, you wouldn’t know that. And at the end of the post I complained about paying for fuel from the vendor at the forge. In reality I always brought my own coal.
The episode titled “Yonger Gets a Sokokar” covers the final two quests in the five quest tradeskillers’ sokokar quest line, Preparations for the Rescue and Is It Good News?. Doing the quests is pretty much exactly as described in the story. I even included a couple of good tips to do along the way. The one point I should make is about the trip from Dreg’s Landing to Teren’s Grasp. I’m not sure exactly how to describe the place where you get off the road and start heading cross-country, but I think that you will recognize it when you see it.
The last episode takes its name from the quest, New Lands, New Profits. For low-level adventurers first doing this quest, I have a couple pieces of advice. First, don’t try to use stealth, the mobs will be able to see through it. If possible, get a mount, preferably 40% or faster, although my level 50 necromancer managed to get through the entire questline without dying riding on the direbear that I got by purchasing the box edition of The Shadow Odyssey. Speed really pays off when trying to get from Kunzar’s Edge to the entrance to the Fens. I tried to sneak Yonger between the two points on foot and he died once past the makeshift bridge. The second easiest way to get between the two points is to race between the points on a mount, training the mobs as you go by. But the easiest way is to travel on the road north of Kunzar’s Edge and get killed by one of the iksar. The spawn point is the graveyard at the entrance to the Fens I write about in the story.
The second point is that I managed to get my provisioner, a level 10 warden, to each of the cache points in the Fens without dying. Of course, it was my 5th character to do the quest, but I was able to do it. The secret was that you had to go past the second and fourth caches and then double back. The devs placed a lot of mobs in the direct paths to those two locations.
The final point is once you get to the final cache (and you have to do them in order) call to either your home city or your guild hall. After all the tension of finally getting a level 10-12 toon through the zone, I was wiped and didn’t mind the extra time travelling from Qeynos back to Kylong Plains.
I have to add one administrative point concerning the blog and the story. In order to continue writing the story with the game dialog, I discovered I will have to level up my carpenter, who currently is level 65. In order to get all the appropriate quest dialog for a woodworker, I have to do the quest as an artisan since I don’t have the dialog captured from when Yonger actually did the quest line. I’ve got a lot of xp potions left from my veterans’ rewards and I want to get my master for my carpenter as soon as possible. However, there will probably be a delay of 2-3 weeks until I can continue the story.
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