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