This article was mainly written during the beta phase of the RoS expansion. We are still in the early weeks of expansion launch and waiting on post-holiday patches, so expect additional updates.

The Reign of Shadows expansion in EverQuestII went go live on December 15, 2020. As usual, I am trying to corral all the crafting and housing information into one spot, with varying amounts of success. Anything that is added to this article after it is published will be noted with a time and date stamp at the bottom of this article, so you can easily tell what is new since you last checked this page.

This expansion leads us to the dark side of Luclin. There is no level increase, nor are there new harvestables -- you will continue to use BoL resources for your crafting. There will be new crafted items for every class, and a new crafting signature line for level 120 crafters.

Getting Around

Accessing the new expansion will be easy - Fordel Midst is on the wizard spire network, and the port drops you into the "hub" area of Fordel Midst, which is also known as the Nexus.

At three points in the crafting line you will be given three travel potions to aid you in returning to specific zones. In two of those cases, Savage Weald and Shadeweaver's Thicket, you may purchase more of the port baubles from a merchant in the same camp as the crafting quest NPC's.

In addition to that, though, there are port baubles being sold in two spots that have either an adventuring OR a crafting unlock for purchase.

In the southeast corner of the palace in Shar Vahl, there is an alchemist named Chiallar (/way -186, -198, 596) who sells the "Spirit of the Vah Shir" bauble. Do not use that waypoint until you are physically inside the palace, due to how the inside of the building is mapped out, or you'll find your waypoint is pointing you to an odd spot under the ground.

If you head to Shadow Haven (eastern door in the Nexus) and head all the way to the southeast in the zone, the final doorway on your left leads you to the House of Midst. Once you are inside the House of Midst, head upstairs to /way 633, -8, -518 and you will find Sarah Polson. She will sell you Will of Echo Caverns and Will of Shadeweaver's Thicket with the quest completion requirement of Dark Side of the Dark Side (crafting) or Against Thal Odds (adventuring). She also sells Will of the Weald to get to Shadeweaver's Thicket with the quest completion requirement of Tiptoe Through the Shadows (crafting) or Against Thal Odds (adventuring).

Map?

Does figuring out which way to go in the Nexus confuse you? Are you confused about where to go in Shadow Haven to find the House of Midst port bauble and furniture vendors confuse you? Thanks to Wilhelmina of EQ2Artisans, we've got you covered with this handy map of the Fordel Midst city zones that shows you which connects to what where.

Flight?

As you complete (or nearly complete in some cases) the signature quest for either adventuring or crafting in a specific overland zone, you unlock the ability to fly in that zone. You will first unlock flight in Echo Caverns, then in Savage Weald, then in Shadeweaver's Thicket.

Harvesting

As I mentioned above, there are no new harvestables this time around - you will use the same resources as you did in BoL.

After completion of the tradeskill signature line, you will find that your shadow harvesting skill can increase to 50. You will increase it up to that point with normal harvesting in BoL and RoS overland zones.

There is a series of harvesting achievements for harvesting in RoS overland zones, much like there is already for BoL zones. This achievement is currently bugged and will not increase as you harvest in RoS. We expect this to be fixed with a patch in January.

Tradeskill Signature Line

The start of the new tradeskill signature line will be availabe from Hulda Flintbraid in the Nexus area of Fordel Midst for all level 120 crafters. You do not need to have completed the BoL crafting sigline before doing this new RoS line, though you will find you get a few different responses in spots if you haven't done the BoL line.

Images of the rewards are up on the RoS Crafting Signature Line page, but the actual written walkthrough of the eight quests and the walkthrough videos will be done in chunks "soon".

Walkthrough Videos

Would you rather see/hear quest information instead of just reading it? I am dropping video links below as they finish uploading, and later they will also be linked on the proper quest writeup page.

• Quest 1 video - The Delineation of Method (video)
• Quest 2 video - Through the Belly of the Beast (video)
• Quest 3 Video - Paying the Piper (video)
• Quest 4 Video - The Grumbling (video)
• Quest 5 Video - Tiptoe Through the Shadows (video)
• Quest 6 Video - The Grandiose Wordsmith Pursuance (video)
• Quest 7 Video - Ennoblement of Penitence (video)
• Quest 8 Video - Dark Side of the Dark Side (video)

The Recipes

Each crafting class gets three "Acrylia ____ Primer Volume (I, II, III)" for their handcrafted recipes. All classes but provisioner also get three advanced "Shadowscream ____ Primer Volume (I, II, III)" and provisioners will get a single advanced book.

The Acrylia mount gear recipes and Acrylia adornment recipes will be on the guildhall recipe vendors and city crafting trainer merchants with no unlock requirements. The Acrylia primers for each class will require completion of "Tiptoe Through the Shadows" which is the fifth (of eight) quests in the tradeskill signature line.

For adornments and mount gear, there will be a third tier of recipe book: "Void Etched", which will make fabled adorns and mount gear.

For weapons and armor, there is also a special "Shadow Prospecting" set of books. These heirloom books will make gear slightly better than the Shadowscream set, can be scribed by anyone with a 50 shadow harvesting skill (the examine mistakenly says 30), requires the Shadowscream pattern as well as shadowed rares, and gives you ONE charge of the recipe. The naming of the set will be "Shadow Prospecting (Tailor, Woodworker, etc) [Tier 7] and, again, any class can scribe them (which gets around the heirloom issue if your crafter of that type is on another account from the one that looted the recipe. These DO use in-class combines, though, so you will have a slower time of crafting if you are using an off class for these combines.

The recipe lineup looks to be as follows:

• Alchemists - potions and debuff poisons
• Armorers - chain and plate armor (no merc armorthis time around - just stuff them in normal armor!)
• Carpenters - furniture and more furniture, including 2 block sets (one of the block sets is the the Shadowscream advanced books for the number balance, but the blocks use common materials, not rares)
• Jewelers - jewelry and merc accolades
• Provisioners - food and drink
• Sages - short duration buff scrolls. These scrolls take the place of the snacks that provisioners made in CD and BoL
• Tailors - cloth and leather armor, belts, cloaks
• Weaponsmiths - metal weapons, thrown ammo*, arrows*
• Woodworker - wooden weapons, bows, thrown ammo*, arrows*

*Regarding ammo - the mastercrafted versions of the thrown ammo and arrows include not only the normal mastercrafted loadout, but also include versions that use weapon catalysts (from the fuel vendors) to make various elemental versions of the ammo (disease, magic, etc) for use on specific boss mobs.

A Note on "Acrylia"

Yes, I know that "acrylia" is a lower tier soft metal rare, and this confuses things for broker searches and jewelers searching for their new stuff. While we voiced our concerns as soon as we saw the books and item names, there is only a finite amount of dev time for any given thing, and it would have been a lot of things to change between the books, the recipes and all the handcrafted items. While there is some slim chance, maybe, of this being changed before launch, I doubt it will happen.

Mastercrafted Gear - Great, but with a Catch

The mastercrafted gear this time around beautifully gears a player up heroically. While this is a great thing for crafters to have their wares be that worthwhile, it comes at a cost. In order to make the stats that desirable there had to be a way to limit the speed at which it comes into the game, especially given how many Luclin rares many of us are already sitting on. The decision was made to require each mastercrafted "Shadowscream" gear piece to need a pattern. The patterns will be fully tradeable, they will drop in heroic instances, and they also drop in research mission crates. (Possibly other sources as well, I am not sure.) This has already met with unhappiness from the crafting community, but there's no fully happy solution. We've been unhappy that our mastercrafted can't compete in the upper tiers with what players get from dungeons, and this is the compromise that has been decided upon. I'm hoping that the drop rates for the patterns are reasonable, or that the can/will be tweaked that way once we see the system in action.

Furniture

The eye-candy is always popular around here, so I am attempting to track all the new house items that will be available in the expansion. I do NOT have all the sources for the adventuring quest furniture, as the adventuring line has been last on my priority list. I may be able to nail down a few more before launch.

• Carpenter Furniture
• Purchased Furniture
• (Adventuring) Quest Reward Furniture
• Researched Furniture/etc
• Collector's Edition Shar Vahl Furniture

Furniture Videos

Want a closer look at all that goodness? Ocarinah worked like a madwoman to do a ton of house item preview videos from the furniture that we collected.

• Full RoS house item playlistif you want to see it all instead of clicking on each of the below links:
• Ros Handcrafted
• RoS Mastercrafted
• Purchased from Savage Weald
• Purchased from Shadeweaver's Thicket
• Purchased from Shar Vahl
• Purchased from Bazaar Pet Merchant
• Purchased from Bazaar Furniture Merchant
• Purchased from Bazaar Sculptures Merchant
• Quested - Adventure
• Quested - Crafting

Researchers

There are 4 public researchers this time around and they unlock after completion of the tradeskill signature line. You can find more information on names, locations, etc. on the Researched Furniture page.

There are a couple things to note, however, as there are some buggy things happening with the researchers until at least the first patch in January.

• It was intended that new research requisitions be available once every three hours. The researchers are currently refreshing their quests every hour, and we expect this to change to three hours.
• Gundeg is airheaded, even for a ghost, and he also seems to dislike Piccolo and Fivalt. If you have a requistion from Fivalt in your journal, he will not give you a requisition, so grab your requisition from Gundeg before picking one up from Fivalt (and/or hand in the one from Fivalt before trying to pick up the next from Gundeg).
• There are problems with the research completion window to finish one bit of research and start the next. Until the next patch, Gninja has to go from server to server and manually finish each stalled researcher. Please be patient, as he is only doing this every day or two -- even gnomes get a break during the holidays, after all!

Itemization Information

Caith put together an Itemization and System Updates Overview for those wondering about the direction that itemization has taken with this expansion.

Update Tracking

• December 8, 2020. Initial article published. Added the Quest Reward Furniture page, added the Itemization article, added block sets to the Carpenter Furniture page.
• December 8, 11:30 p.m. Updated the Purchased Furniture page to include 12 more items (2 new vendors located)
• December 9, 5:10 p.m. Just a small update to the Quested Furniture page to include 5 more items.
• December 10, 10:27 p.m. The RoS Crafting Signature Line page has been dropped into place. There is no walkthrough there yet, but the newly-added rewards that you get during the crafting line are now pictured.
• December 11, 5:30 p.m. Page with items from the four researchers is now in place
• December 13, 2020, 9:30 p.m. Added in recipe information above. Also did a little tweaking on the research page to include details on NPC locations and such this weekend.
• December 13, 2020, 10:00 p.m. Added a section above about getting around in this new expansion, port baubles and flight.
• December 13, 2020, 11:15 p.m. Started work on the writeup for the tradeskill signature line. More to come tomorrow!
• December 14, 2020, 11:00 a.m. The first two quests in the tradeskill signature line are now complete. I am swapping to working on the walk-though videos, though, since I don't know when beta will be closed down today.
• December 14, 2020, 4:40 p.m. I spent a good chunk of the day creating 8 walkthrough videos for the 8 quests that make up the tradeskill signature line. They are uploading now and will be linked in later. In the meantime, I have dropped a bunch of links into the furniture section, courtesy of Ocarinah and some house item preview videos.
• 6:45 p.m. The videos are taking forever to upload to Youtube. The first four of the eight are up and linked above, the fifth has another 15-20 minutes. I may continue to upload all of them tonight, or I may leave some to upload tomorrow so I can have a break tonight.
• A quick note to those folks who didn't complete the TS signature line on beta until this weekend, after the achievement was updated to not include the beta rewards (due to it being the client they will patch to live). Gninja has said they are tracking those who complete the achievements over the weekend for beta rewards, and those accounts will be given the beta reward at expansion launch or soon after.
• December 15, 2:00 a.m. The servers are going down for the expansion patch in 4 hours. I have all of the quest walkthrough videos completed, uploaded and linked in. I have all but the final quest's writeup fully completed, and part of the final quest written up. I cannot word. I will finish that final quest writeup while the servers are down for patch, and will go get some sleep now.
• December 15, 8:30 a.m. Ran around the site working on getting RoS links into various spots, removing the prelude event from the current events section and so on. I will be working on the final chunks of the quest walkthroughs, and adding a few more images to a couple quest articles and so on. Batten the hatches, we're almost there!
• Initial ETA for the patch is a 6-hour patch window, so we "should" be back up around noon Pacific. That time, of course, may change and if I see any updated ETA I will post it here.
• December 15, 11:00 a.m. It sounds like we are still on-schedule for launch in an hour-ish. Meanwhile, I have added a map that shows how the Fordel Midst city zones connect to each other.
• 12:15 p.m. Final checks are being made on the client and servers now to make sure everything is in place and working. We should see the servers unlock shortly, barring any last-minute issues.
• December 17. Added a page for the Collector's Edition Shar Vahl Furniture
• December 27 - I added a small bit on harvesting above, including leveling shadow harvesting. I also added information on the Shadow Prospecting books (and the actual required skill level needed to scribe them) and added a section on the researchers and the three current bugs with them.