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Kunark Ascending Crafting & Housing Preview

Kunark Ascending ("KA") is the 13th expansion for EverQuest II, and was released to the live servers on November 15, 2016. As is now traditional, I did a massive crafting & housing preview while this was still in beta. As is also traditional, there will continue to be random updates for a week or two after launch, due to changes, patches, etc.

I hate having to use huge red letters, so I apologize in advance for those of you who are well aware of the drill by now. This is for the newer folks, and those who tend to skim without properly reading.

Disclaimer: This article and all linked articles were created and edited while the Kunark Ascending expansion was in beta testing. This means that things can and likely WILL change, and these articles will be changed as time permits. Do not expect everything to be set in stone. Things will likely shift and change a little due to patches and such for a week or two after release.

Now that all that is out of the way, and maybe 5% of you read it, here are the details.

Prepping for KA

There are a few things you may want to do in advance of the launch of Kunark Ascending if you want to hit the ground running the moment the expansion is released.

  • Finish the entire ToT Crafting Line on the crafters that you want to do the KA line on.
  • Obtain your Earring of the Solstice and complete the Proof in the Pudding quest (aka, the original "crafter epic"
  • Learn goblish (goblin language) if you don't know it already. There's low-level goblins in some starting areas, so this truly shouldn't be a hardship, and it gives you something to do while you're waiting on the expansion. Don't fret if you get to Obulus only to realize you haven't learned the language. Once you have enough faction that the residents of Twark won't attack you, there will be goblin territory markers you can gather to learn the language. If you're also going to be doing the adventuring line, you'll need to learn sathirian and draconic in addition to goblin.
  • Make sure you have a stash of ToT common harvestables and, if desired, some of the ToT food rares. (The expansion uses different rares for everything else.)
  • Finish the Shipwrecked! crafting line on any alts who might want want to quest for a new almalgamation recipe and several new poison recipes on launch day. ;D

Quick Summary

There is such a wonderfully huge array of tradeskill and decorating stuff going on, that I decided a summary might be in order. Among other things crafters and decorators have the following to look forward to:

  • Over 50 tradeskill quests, including a new epic line with lovely new rewards, a gardening goblin quest line, an addition to Raffik's quest line, dailies and weekly! Tons of great lore in there, too!
  • New recipes for every crafting class, including new armor, weapons, ascension spells, furniture, spiritstones, purple adorns, merc gear, infusers, etc.
  • The ability to level up/gear up mercenaries (hence the need for merc gear recipes!)
  • The new wardrobe feature
  • Three tradeskill collections, sort of.
  • Faction buyable house items
  • A new type of rare harvest mechanic (which means the Gardening Goblin quests mentioned above may be useful :D)
  • An optional timed version of the Frillik's Tide for crafters (once they have done it once for Raffik), and adventurers (once they have done the instance for an adventuring quest). More details on the reward and such when I find the spare cycles to poke at it


The Recipes

Recipe books with this expansion will be faction purchases with the Clan Bloody Tooth goblins. While we are still waiting for the final side-quests to be put in for the gathering goblin, it is likely that you will be able to get your essentials books on launch day if you do all quests, including side-quests, dailies and weekly. I'll have more solid numbers for you once everything is in and settled.

  • Essentials Books for all classes, can be traded, 20K faction, 2 Sovereign of Rile
  • Advanced Books for all classes, can be traded, 30K faction, 6 Sovereign of Rile
  • Clan Bloody Tooth Mercenary Gear, scribed by level 100 artisans of any class, HEIRLOOM, 30K faction, 10 Sovereign of Rile. (Contains recipes for merc gear and accolades that use common mats, as well as similar sets using KA rares)
  • Clan Bloody Tooth Scribblings on Reconstructing Infusers, scribed by level 100 artisans of any class, HEIRLOOM, 30K faction, 10 Sovereign of Rile.
  • Clan Bloody Tooth Spiritstones, scribed by level 100 artisans of any class, HEIRLOOM, 30K faction, 10 Sovereign of Rile.

Class-Specific Recipes

On a handy naming consistency note, the gear in the various essentials books will be "Twark ___" and the advanced books will contain "Bloody Tooth ___" items. This helps since the gear is advanced enough not to use the handcrafted and mastercrafted tags. (Currently on beta both are labeled "Legendary", though that tag may/may not change.) The rare armor and weapons are supposed to be able to use refined primares, but there is currently a bug with it on beta.

  • Armorer: Several sets of chain and plate recipes in the essentials and advanced books
  • Alchemist: Your essentials and advanced books contain recipes for potions (no poisons), as well as the recipes to make spell upgrades for the Thaumaturgist ascension class.
  • Carpenter: 63 furniture recipes in your essentials book, and 30 in your advanced books. The gallery thumbnails will be found here and loose grouping shots can be found here.
  • Jeweler: Shiny jewelry sets as well as Geomancer ascension spell upgrades await you in your essentials and advanced books.
  • Provisioner: 4 sets of short duration food and drink, 4 sets of long duration food and drink as well as handcrafted infusers are found in your essentials book. Your advanced book has 1 rare food and drink set (using ToT food rares) and the mastercrafted infuser set.
  • Sage: You'll have your hands full with Etherealist and Elementalist Ascension spell upgrades in your essentials and advanced books. The advanced book also contains a recipe for an Arcane Tome that can be written in. (Pic below)
  • Tailors: Several cloth and leather sets, plus cloaks, in each book, including one set that is monk-specific.
  • Weaponsmith: Metal weapons, metal shields and ammo are contained in your essentials and advanced books.
  • Woodworker: Wooden weapons, wooden shields and ammo are contained in your essentials and advanced books.

Sage-made Arcane Tome

Crafted Armor Appearances - plate, chain, monk leather, female then male other leather, cloth
Crafted Armor Appearances Back View - cloth, male and female leather, monk leather, chain, plate

Purple Adorn Recipes

Those crafters who complete the epic part of the KA crafting line will also receive recipes for two purple adornments. Which two adornment recipes you receive are based on your crafting subclass and class.

The recipes will need to be crafted on the Forge of Brell (house item version is fine), and will use a Blank Luclinite Rune, 3 thalumbral root, 3 umbrite, 3 bornite nodule and 5 thaumic fuel. You will receive two runes during the epic quest, and additional runes can be obtained from completing the Twark weekly "Snacky Snacks". The fuel will vary based on the recipe. (For the sage-specific recipe, for example, you will use thaumic incense, for the scholar-specific recipe, you will use thaumic coal.)

These purple adorns are lore-equip as well as having set bonuses (and only set bonuses, no adorn-specific stats), so adventurers wanting the set bonuses will have to chase down more than one crafting class in order to fill out a specific set. The recipes are distributed as follows

  • Foundation of Thought - craftsmen (carpenter, provisioner, woodworker)
  • Firmament of Power - outfitters (armorer, tailor, weaponsmith)
  • Ascension of Magic - scholars (alchemist, jeweler, sage)
  • Foundation of Excitement - sage
  • Firmament of Passion - jeweler
  • Ascension of Love - alchemist
  • Foundation of Earth - woodworker
  • Firmament of Growth - provisioner
  • Ascension of Life - carpenter
  • Foundation of Ruin - weaponsmith
  • Firmament of Fire - tailor
  • Ascension of Destruction - armorer

Of course, that doesn't really give you a good picture of how adventurers are going to be asking for stuff, so here's a breakdown that might help with confused customers and crafters.

The Aspect of Paixao set is a scholar-crafted set consisting of Foundation of Excitement (sage), Ascension of Love (alchemist), Firmament of Passion (jeweler), with the following bonuses on the set:

  1. 26% potency
  2. 28% mitigation
  3. 4 fervor

The Aspect of Zhu Kunnen set needs crafting by one of each subclass and is made up of Ascension of Magic (scholars), Firmament of Power (outfitters), Foundation of Thought (craftsmen), with the following bonuses on the set:

  1. 26% potency
  2. +25,000 power
  3. boost to several ascension abilities by 4% (Frozen Heavens, Implosion, Terrestrial Coffin and Virulent outbreak)
.

The Aspect of Aniqualacion set is an outfitter-crafted set made up of Foundation of Ruin (weaponsmith), Firmament of Fire (tailor), Ascension of Destruction (armorer), with the following bonuses on the set:

  1. 26% potency for the first
  2. +100,000 ability modifier
  3. adds fire damage to several ascension abilities (Tainted Mutation, Granite Protector and Ethermancy)

The Aspect of Pingyuan Diqu is the craftsman-crafted set, made up of Ascension of Life (Carpenter), Foundation of Earth (Woodworker) and Firmament of Growth (Provisioner). The following bonuses are on the set:

  1. 26% potency
  2. applies Firmament of Growth (increases the window of opportunity for another to trigger a combo effect from your ascension abilities)
  3. 25% max health +250,000 health

What's This Ascension Stuff?

Since you now have runes and spell upgrades that directly apply to ascension abilities, you likely want to know a bit more about ascension classes. I simply don't have the cycles free to give it a proper explanation, so I'll refer you to the Daybreak article on Ascension Classes.

Other Furniture

Building Blocks

The Collector's Edition and the Premium Edition of Kunark Ascending come with a snazzy new City of Mist Waterfront Estate. It is massive and quite impressive. In addition, just like happened with ToT, they get a recipe book with some themed building blocks. These blocks are likely to be heirloom, so you'll have to get them commissioned if you need some and don't get either of these versions of the expansion. While we can't see the recipes yet, and can't get names from item examines since they're only placed in the tour house on beta, I've done some close-up shots of them to give you a better look at them. Click here to see more.

Faction Furniture

The faction vendor in Twark (Scribbleclaw) sells seven plants and trees. They, plus the one quest combine furniture item from Twark quests are now documented on the Furniture Goodies from Twark page

Harvestables

There are no common harvestables in the new expansion. Recipes will use Thalumbra commons instead. You will also use the two rare food harvests from Thalumbra. For the nonfood rares, you will be looking for the rare spawn shadeweave plant, from which you can obtain a single pull (two if you get a bountiful harvest) of a random one the following:
  • leathery shadeleaf
  • luclinite nodule
  • shadebark
  • shadeweave root
  • shadow quartz
  • shadowstone ore

Shadeweave Plant

The other way to obtain these rares is through an optional quest series. If you are willing to "free" (give up for good) your gathering goblin, you can do a series of quests that not only unlocks him to be hired as a merc, but also gives you a house-placed plant from which you can harvest a single random Obulus rare once every 23 hours. Details on that quest series can be found on the Gardening Goblin quests page.

Mercenaries!

Mercenaries will get a needed stat boost with this expansion by way of gear slots and training ranks. You can find more mercenary details here.

Wardrobes!

A wardrobe feature has been added for those who own the KA expansion. Handy explanation, pics, and a small Mum venting can be found here

Raffik and The Frillik's Tide

Yes! No! Yes! First we needed the Frillik's Tide instance as part of our signature line, then it was removed, now it has been re-added as part of the continuation of Raffik's old "Shipwrecked!" questline. Details on the new quest, "Pirates!" have been added to the bottom of that quest writeup.

That doesn't have to be the only time that you see the Frillik's Tide, however. Not only do adventurers now have an optional quest involving it, but once you have been sent there once there is a 5-minute timed version of the Frillik's Tide. The following was from Daybreak Dev "Chrol" in the beta forums:

Memories of The Frillik Tide is a timed quest that unlocks after you complete either the adventure or tradeskill quests that first take you to the ship. The timer starts after speaking with the iksar slave for the first time in the brig. There's also a bell inside the brig that you can ring to take you off the boat early if you want to forfeit the timed quest.

I hope to find time before the end of beta to find the right loc on the beach to trigger it and run through the timed version to check on the rewards, but there's a lot of other stuff for me to do as well before I get to it.

Tradeskill Quests!

In addition to a new grandmaster cloak that is a seriously souped-up version of your old mastery cloak from the Proof in the Pudding Line, crafters who complete the entirety of the new tradeskill line will obtain this lovely mount:

Further details can now be found on the KA Tradeskill Quests master page.

Tradeskill Collections

There are three tradeskill collections in this collection ... sort of. One is a traditional red shiny collection, the second is partially a red shiny collection and partially quested, and the third is a subclass-specific tome collection as part of your new epic quest.

Gardener's Supplies - this red shiny collection will be found in the Gardens of Nye'Caelona. As such, you will not only need your earring of the solstice in order to see them, but also faction with Nye'Caelona, which you can earn partway through the Kunark Ascending Crafting Timeline. The rewards are a Watering Can house item and a Gardener's Watering Can collectible.

Gardener's Tools - this red shiny-ish collection requires the Gardener's Watering Can collectible from the Gardener's Supplies, plus 3 collectibles from the Gardening Goblin quests, plus three red shinies from the Abandoned Mine Tunnel that connects Obulus and the Fens (crafters are sent into this tunnel twice during their questing). Due to all of the above, you will not only need your earring of the solstice, and certain progress on the Kunark Ascending Crafting Timeline, but will have to also complete the Gardening Goblin questline, which requires permanently surrending your gathering goblin. Reward is a 64-slot Gardener's Backpack that is heirloom. Collection parts are lore.

Epic Tome Collection - As part of your new crafting epic, you will need to complete a special tome collection in Bathezid's Watch that you can only see when you're on the right step of the epic. Each subclass gets a completed house item book out of it, and title and text inside vary based on subclass. The appearance of the book, however, is the same for all three subclasses.


Update Tracker

  • October 18, Part 1: Advanced Carpenter items and 2 new handcrafted items added to the carpenter furniture page. Additional faction buyable added to the faction section above. Sage notebook added above.
  • October 18, Part 2: Added a Frillik's Tide quest walkthrough for adventurers and crafters alike. Tinyurl for it is http://tinyurl.com/KAship
  • October 19: Removed the recommendation for the solstice earring. While it is still always a good thing to have on your crafters, red shinies are no longer needed for the crafting signature line in the expansion.
  • October 27: The Frillik's Tide instance is no longer part of the crafting timeline.
  • October 30: Added a Mercenary Article to cover the merc gear and rank process. (Crafters will be able to make merc-only gear.) I'd also like to shout out that the beta update notes for today includes the following, which may appear on the live servers during the expansion, or may appear earlier/later. Whichever, it may be incoming: "Added the Froglok Meditation Pool and a Skyblade Skiff deed of ownership to the Loyalty Realtor."
  • October 31: An article on the Wardrobe Feature has been added. The final part of the tradeskill signature line "should" be hitting beta tomorrow, if everything goes well, and I'll be busy testing that, then retesting the entire KA tradeskill timeline a couple times before I tackle quest writeups. Meanwhile, be aware that you WILL need to have completed your Earring of the Solstice questline (Proof in the Pudding) in order to complete this tradeskill signature line.
  • Oct 31, Part 2: Dropped in a bit about the recipe books and will flesh it out the next time I need a beta break.
  • Nov 1: Added a screenshot of the new mount that is part of the reward for the tradeskill signature line
  • Nov 3: The KA Tradeskill Quests master page has been dropped into place, and includes screenshots of the new epic cloaks and stuff like that. I will start on the actual quest walk-throughs in the next day or two
  • Nov 5: I'll be doing chunks of updates all day, and will try to call them all out here later. First up is a chunk in the recipe section, but more is coming in that section and elsewhere.
  • Nov 6: I think I have the recipe section done, including extra detail on the purple runes and pics of the crafted armor appearances. The carpenter items page had 1 more item added to it last night as well. (The bookcase at the bottom of the handcrafted section.) More stuff to come as I find my brain!
  • Nov 7: I decided to write up some information on testing with a true low, low level adventurer on the crafting questline. For those who are interested, I give you Adventures in Beta Testing - Squishy!
  • Nov 8: Chaos day! A continuation to the Raffik line was added today. The Gardening Goblin quests were added today. A few other things were fixed/changed today. So, I'm running around testing stuff. I will provide more details in the next day or two, but today may be update-light as the testing needs to be a priority if you want the bugs found and fixed before things go live. ;D
  • Nov 10: Back to writing amidst the testing! The first 15 quests are now documented and the articles linked in to the Main KA Tradeskill Quests Page Lots more to come, as there are 53-ish quests total for me to document. I also added more details to the Raffik and the Frillik's Tide section above, including initial information on an optional timed version of the Frillik's Tide. Also updated the harvestables section with a few more details.
  • Nov 11, 2 a.m.-ish: I'm now up to 29 quests documented. More progress expected in the afternoon after sleep and some real-life errand-things.
  • Nov 11, late afternoon: 1) The writeup on Raffik's questline now includes screenshots of the 12 new level 100 poison recipes that are part of the reward for the "Pirates!" quest in Obulus Frontier. 2) Added a page for Furniture Goodies from Twark that includes the six already-seen faction buyables, seventh one added today (Nye'Caelona Pine) and a quest craftable (Fancy Plant Pot). 3) I have another quest chunk almost written, and should have the rest of that chunk done "soon".
  • Nov 11: 9:13 p.m: It was bound to happen sooner or later. I got so distracted trying to get in a few last-minute bug reports, answer questions, etc. that I flubbed, and lost a couple hours of work on a quest page. So, while another chunk of quest writeups is up and linked into the main KA Crafting Quests page (with images to follow later), I need to re-do the entire Gardening Goblin writeup, which I had to cobble up in the first place from some quest logs, screenshots of quest text (when I forgot to turn logging back on) and other fun stuff. Back to the drawing board. Once I have that done and linked in, I'll backtrack and add images to that page and to the page that finished off the Twark and Nye'Caelona non-epic quests.
  • Nov 12, 12:30 a.m.: I finished the rewrite a bit ago and linked it in, but still need to add images to it and to another quest section. I have started placeholder page stubs for the new Epic and Dailies/Weekly, but won't work on fleshing those out until later in the weekend. I also just took screenshots of 92 of the 93 new carpenter-made items, and put a bug in on the 93rd as the in-game art apparently went walkabout. I'll edit them sometime this weekend, then code them onto a page before launch. (The group shots have been up for a while, but the individual thumbnails with item names needed to wait until I was relatively sure things were finalized.) I'll also write up a blurb for this page about the new red shiny collections "later" (aka sometime before launch). I'll chip away at the art from the quest pages that are missing it, then sleep, I hope!
  • Nov 12, 9:30 p.m. I got the art up for a couple more quest pages, and did the long brain dump that is the epic walkthrough written. It still needs cleanup and images, but the information is there, at least. It is huge enough that I will likely dump all the reward info on a separate page (rune details, cloak details, mount details, cloak pics, etc). Right now the rune info is in this preview article, but not over where folks doing the epic after launch would see it, etc. I'll do that sort of juggling later.
  • Nov 13, noon-ish: Tradeskill collection info added above. I still need to clean up the epic walkthrough, document the dailies and weekly, process 90-some screenshots and put up carpenter thumbnails of every one of their items, and do some more stray testing.
  • Nov 14, 12:51 a.m.: Dailies and weekly walkthrough and shopping list done, separate rewards page for the KA Crafting Epic Rewards created. More coming.
  • Nov 14, 2:00 a.m. Epic walkthrough cleaned up. More carpenter screenshots cropped, resized, renamed, etc. Will finish them after sleep then upload them and code them into tables. Other than that ... am I done? I think I'm done other than that ...
  • Nov 14, 2:30 p.m. Carpenter furniture thumbnails are being worked on, and likely will continue to be worked on for a couple more hours. :D
  • Nov 14, 4:43 p.m. Done! The carp furniture page is done. I may or may not do a short story before launch time tomorrow, but I'm not stressing it right now. Time for a break!
  • Nov 15, noon - We're up! Here's a very short story, as well, just because.
  • Known Issue: the /claim merchant crates for use on the broker are buggy and are waiting on a patch.
  • Nov 17: The merchant crates were to be fixed with today's patch. The new merc does have track (unlike my earlier report from beta). I am now working on running another alt through the crafting line so I can update the resources needed for the dailies/weekly due to today's patch. After that, I'll work on adding details to the building blocks page. What, you thought I was done with updates?! :D

Created: 2016-10-15 06:26:57          
Last Modified By: Niami Denmother          
Last Modified on: 2016-11-19 01:46:20          

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