Everquest Forum » Hogcaller Inn (General) » The Best Zones in Everquest

Following the other thread on the worst zones. (by the way some of the mentions could be out of pure nostalgia)

The Warrens- One of the first few dungeons I went to I think. It was great, plentiful bronze, (my cousin outfitted completely in it I think), molar drops (which you traded for faction and pp), lots of names; Foodmaster and Smithy, Prince, King with the High Priest, Huntmaster. And it was one of those zones that you could run back with a load of kobalds on you and either die or survive at the entrance.

Blackburrow- THE first dungeon I went to- where I was awed by my crappy ranger AE. (which somehow killed some gnolls..) Great dungeon.

Western Wastes- all those dragons, got to be a winner.

Qeynos Sewers- I got lost on here on my first character. Was a curiously zones with it's geletinous cubes and it's graffited walls, as well as the blood red signs spelling out shark on each corner. (oh and the spectres)

Plane of Mischief- I actually encountered this late on but truely bizarre but memorable zone.

Karnor's Castle- the highlight of the 'Kunark express'. Awful xp but the camps for the possibility of loot and the trains made it. (an enchanter's dream..)

Sebillis (or OS)- can't mention one without the other. This had distinct areas, distinct mobs and distinct loots. And always fun killing frogloks.

Lake of Ill Omen- (with the later-added Veksar in the middle)- nice mix of mobs and there was a specific hierarchy you went around as you levelled up.

Qeynos Hills- another nostalgia one probably. But the zone had a good intrigue of the factions, combined with the mysterious figures of Varsoon and Pyzjn (and Hadden), and of course with the entrance to BB.

Ssra, oddly being a hater of raiding. Raiding here was actually likeable (other than one bit camping for keys), it had a bit of dungeon aspect with distinct names. Emperor was a decent finale to that dungeon.

Oasis -  always thought it was such a well done zone

Have to give it up for -Guk -being my first dungeon ever

Hallowing Stones - just a very fun zone

Sebilis - First time entering an thinking Guk on roids .Got lvl 51 while doing the key quest in trak for sebilis stayed inside seb till 60 losing rolls to every peice of loot that ever dropped for my groups lol, spent gods amount of time in there till velious came out

Skyshrine - just an amazing zone, when i finaly got my faction up being able to explore the whole zone  for the first time tryin to figure out the maze for almost 2 days refusing to give up till i got to see the rest fo the zone..thinking will it ever end  was such a massive place.. then finally making it to LY an bein owned by him ..didnt think about conning him since i wasnt kos to anything else in the zone lol

The Hole - my all time fav spending more time here than any other zone over my EQ career.

Best Starter zone: Everfrost peaks and Greater Faydark. Both those zones gives you a slight hint of what the game was about: go out and explore, because there is always something to discover past this fog/mountain.

Best 1-60 zone: Oasis of Marr, because it was the most packed low lvl zone, where youy got to meet great people and total jerks alike - it didnt matter: you realized the bigger community you were a part of.. and it made you feel great to be in this alternative world.

Best lvl 50 dungeon: Nagafen Lair: the wide variety of camps and the inclusion of a big bad red dragon at the end made this zone a camp nightmare with so many people running around, but the variety of it and its intricate construction made it the best original EQ had to offer.

best old world raid: Plane of Air-  the incredible layout of this place (numerous floating islands in the sky) and the challenge put up by the bosses made it a very cool and out -of-the-box designed place of the original game.

Best lvl 60 dungeon: Old Sebilis. where else can you go from farming stuff to aggroing a raid boss who's gonna kill you in mere seconds? Pulling the protector without aggroing Trak was great fun! But so scary...

Best Kunark raid zone: Veeshan Peek: the drastic rules (basically, if you die you start over), the numerous cool looking dragons, and the elitist nature of that zone made it enter the legend of EQ hardcore raiding. I never went there before the revamp, but just knowing it existed made me crap my pants back then.

Best Velious zone: Temple of Veeshan. dragons everywhere, dragon-scaled hallways, and a fun challenge. This was EQ raiding at its pinnacle.

Mistmoore - Vampires in MMO's?!  What's there not to like!  I like anything vampires, and mistmoore remains one of my favorite zones.

Sebilis - One of the all-time most popular dungeons ever.  The layout of the dungeon, and the fact that it supported 10 levels, was unheard of.  Modern day MMO's can learn from the design of sebilis to understand the meaning of "dungeon crawl adventure".

Kelethin - Where my character was born in EQ1, the memories, music, deaths from falling, etc... one of the best racial town ingame imo.

Revamped blackburrow in SoD expansion - New gnoll graphics, modern textures, while the layout of the zone stays the same.  It's a revamp done right.

Plane of Fear/Hate - Never have I been scared upon zoning into a zone like back in PoF/PoH days.  You are in danger the minute you zoned in.  Tons of wipes, tons of CR, lots of levels lost, but also great fun raiding.  My druid pulled PoF for so many guilds back in the days.

Velketor's Labyrinth - Slippery icy ground, back when falling meant death, it was fun.  These days you don't die from falling so it's minor annoyance when you do fall. But that zone was great adventure back when you took a lot of fall damage, and lost items on corpses.

As a rogue back when the level cap was 50 i think,

CAZIC,

I went there at 23, barely enough to get a group in the courtyard. The coveted class armor, Ravenscale was aquired there. I was excited to get there, and 23 - 30 there was prob some of the best times I had in the game.

Once pulled the "AoF", Avatar of Fear  out of his bubble UP to land and to the zone in !! Was accident, but only saw it done once. Killed everyone on way to zone in.

-Danarth Dagger

I pretty much loved EVERY zone in Kunark. It is probably because I started playing EQ when Kunark came out. Im going to have to think of more but these are my absolute favorites.

1) Lake of Ill Omen-- countless hours spent here. at the mill or Sarnak fort front, somwhere around the lake, gobbie tunnels or Sarnak fort back.

2) Frontier Mountains-- Some of my fondest memories are at the giant fort. I remember I had just gotten a Forest Loop when the server crashed and when i cam back, it was gone :(

3) Chardok-- This place is absolutely amazing

4)Mistmoore-- I used to go here just for the heck of it

5) Eastern Commonlands-- back before the Bazaar, I loved coming here and grabbing deals to make a quick sack of plat

6) Dreadlands-- I shat my pants so many times in this zone.

7) Karnor's Castle-- i enjoyed the trains. It made it feel alive. Tons of camps, loads of mobs, endless possibilites

(besides the first 3, these are not in order of most loved)

 One of my favorite zones in original EQ before any expansions was Mistmoore Castle.  I also enjoyed the Plane of Sky which nobody really bothered with although the process to obtain its loot by gathering quest items that you hand in has now been copied in WOW.

One zone I hated considerably was Solusek A and B.  When I played these two dungeons were usually over camped and being a troll I often got stuck in doors which I had to duck to get through.  People often congregated around the zone in looking for groups.  If I ever had to run for the zone it meant training people or being blocked from zoning out by all the people waiting to join groups.

Dreadlands was so scary the first time I floated over speedily with a bard LOL.  I stayed there for a long time.  See those were the days.  I think the best best place to start was Faydark, yes yes I was a High Elf.

I'll agree with Qeynos Hills, Black Burrow, Oasis, and the Warrens. Though I've never been so scared in a game as I was doing a corpse run in BB. THAT was Awsome!

Lake of Ill omen

Karnors Castle

 What? No love for Unrest or Mistmoore? 

bleh unrest can rot in bloody hell for all the corpse runs it made me endure through that god forsaken cauldron

EW Eastern Wastes I had alot of fun in this place orc camp in the middle it really made me glad that I was a bard cause a lot of the orcs had SoW on them.

Tower of Frozen Shadows was also a fun place though dying in that place back in the day really really really was the worst I remember my body was on the 5th floor i think it was with my gf 2 took me a hour 2 find a necro and payed him 1000p for it.

Temple of Veeshan was also a great raiding zone back in the day 2.

Also loved Lower guk, Seb , KC, WW, Plane of hate the old 1 so many fun great places.

Shame the game is really different now wish they never updated some of the old zones they just lost there touch when they did it. Hate the newer Freeport and Nro and Sro.

The cool thing about EQ is that I played for 5 years and still never went to a lot of the zones and still had a ton of unexplored content left.  I could jump in right now and go to zones that were in from day 1 and still had never seen them and probably level up to max level that way.  The amount of content in this game was unlike any other...the expansion every month (hyperbole) was what really sucked...it was hard to keep up and keep raiding and keyed for everything.

Erud's Crossing was one of my early favorites...I remember having to get a magician friend to summon me weapons to hunt wisps (because my minotaur axe wasn't magical).  It was always a little bit dangerous, too...if too many wisps joined in there wasn't really anywhere to run.