Exploration

We've covered the user interface and game mechanics in a little detail in the previous user guides. Now, let's discuss some stuff that you'll run into as you begin your adventure in Norrath.

Starting Zone
Your starting location depends on which city you chose during Character Creation. There are five starting locations available in EQ2. Each starting location is beside a city, but you'll begin your adventures outside of the city itself, and will be led to your city around level 8 or 10.
 * Darklight Wood: a compact and well-organized zone for adventure levels 1-20, centrally located near several old-world zones. The city of Neriak is connected to this zone.
 * Greater Faydark: a sprawling adventure zone for levels 1-20, centrally located on the newer continent of Faydwer, distant from the old world. The city of Kelethin is embedded within this zone.
 * Queen's Colony: the old tutorial island for good characters, covering levels 1-8. There is a one-way connection to the city of Qeynos, which is surrounded by adventure zones for levels 7-20.
 * Outpost of the Overlord: the old tutorial island for evil characters, covering levels 1-8. There is a one-way connection to the city of Freeport, which is surrounded by adventure zones for levels 7-20.
 * Timorous Deep: a self-contained zone for adventure levels 1-20. This is the newest starting location, with the best quest rewards of all the newbie zones.  The compact city of Gorowyn is embedded within this zone.

Discovery Locations

 * ''Main Article: Discovery Locations

In your first playing session, you'll probably find a couple of discovery locations in your newbie zone. Nearly every zone in EQ2 has a handful of noteworthy locations for you to discover. You'll earn a significant amount of experience points the first time you travel to each discovery location.

After level 10, you'll also earn Achievement Experience from finding new discovery locations. In fact, discovery locations are one of the key methods of getting achievement experience, so don't miss out on them!

Finding Treasure
As you kill creatures and complete quests, you'll find items. As a rule, take every item that you find, and sell it to an NPC merchant (or to other players) if you don't plan to use it. You'll find that you quickly run out of space in your inventory bags! Use the first few coins that you get to buy more bags - remember that you have six inventory slots that can hold six bags. You should be able to find a merchant who sells bags very close to the spot where your character began.

Item Rarity

 * Main Article: Item Rarity

As you find loot on monsters and get item rewards from quests, you'll notice that some items are more noteworthy than others. EQ2 uses labels to describe items. The plainest of items have no label at all. From least valuable to most valuable, the labels are: There are two additional labels for player-made items (Handcrafted and Mastercrafted), but you won't find them on monster loot.
 * Uncommon - poor quality equipment or low-value junk items, dropped randomly by creatures
 * Treasured - common quest rewards and loot; adept spells; common harvested materials
 * Legendary - above-average quest rewards and loot; rare harvested materials
 * Fabled - rare and powerful quest rewards and loot; master spells

Treasure Chests

 * Main Article: Chests

Occasionally, your enemy will drop a Treasure Chest when it dies. The best loot is found in chests, rather than directly on the enemy's corpse. Even the lowliest creature has a small chance to drop a chest, but they are more commonly obtained from stronger creatures. Named creatures normally drop a chest every time. Heroic creatures have a high rate of dropping chests as well (this is one of the main incentives for venturing into dungeons).

There are four types of chest that can drop. The last two types are extremely rare, and some players will go for dozens of levels without seeing an Exquisite Chest. Each chest has a chance of being trapped. A trap is a spell that harms you (or your group) when you open the chest, and can be deadly if you're not healthy. The more valuable the chest, the more dangerous its traps can be. Scouts have the ability to disarm traps on chests before they are opened.
 * Small Chest: common in frequency, these chests usually contain crafting tomes or other low value treasure.
 * Treasure Chest: Contains at least one item tagged with the "Treasured" title. Adept tomes are the most common items found in these chests, although some decent equipment will sometimes appear.
 * Ornate Chest: Contains at least one Legendary item. Usually drops from named creatures.
 * Exquisite Chest: Contains at least one Fabled item. Either a piece equipment, or a Master spell, or a rare advanced crafting recipe.

Harvesting Nodes and Collectables

 * Main Article: Harvesting, Harvestables (All)

As you venture into the world, you'll find plants and rocks and other objects that are targetable. When you point your mouse at them, your mouse turns into a "hand". These are harvestable nodes, and they can be harvested for raw materials if you have enough skill. You start with enough skill to harvest every node that you'll find in your newbie zone.

Reasons to Harvest
Crafters need raw materials in order to make their goods. Some crafters need thousands of units of harvestable materials. Many of those crafters aren't particularly interested in spending the time needed to gather such large amounts of raw ingredients. You can sell raw materials that you collect to make money, or supply them to a crafter to have an item made for you. Or you can use the raw materials to learn a tradeskill yourself.

Finally, certain quests contain harvesting tasks. There aren't many when looking at all the quests that are available, but if you do a lot of quests, you'll bump into them eventually. If you harvest here and there, you'll keep your skills rising so when it's time to get resources in a quest, you won't have hours of make-up chopping and fishing to do.

Shinies and Pages

 * Main Article: Collection Quests

Collection items are found by collecting shinies (most often gold "?" marks found scattered randomly on the ground in most zones similar to the image to the right).

Tome Collections are a special type of collection quest comprised of harvestable pages which are found either as a "!" mark on the ground in most zones (unlike shinies, these nodes appear as a fluttering page instead of a shining point of light), or by clicking on various objects in a zone (e.g. rocks, pillars, bones, etc).

Completed collections and tomes must be brought to a Collector in your city to receive the Reward. The collectible pieces may also be bought and sold freely on the broker.

Upgrading Your Gear
If you never replaced your gear, it would eventually be tinted gray in your inventory. An item that's tinted gray is rated for far below your level, and is probably hindering your performance in combat.

As you gain levels, you should periodically replace your gear to keep it close to your current level. You'll obtain some replacement gear from treasure chests and quest rewards, but you should periodically check your gear and identify any equipment slots that are are overdue for replacement.

Here are some rules of thumb for keeping your character well-equipped:
 * Wear the heaviest type of armor that's allowed by your class. For example, shamans should choose chain over leather or cloth.
 * Generally your gear should be rated for within 10 levels of your current level. If you can't afford to keep all of your gear current, then replace your lowest level item first.
 * Once you've accumulated some money, look for Handcrafted and Mastercrafted gear on the Broker. This gear is made by other players, and tends to be the best gear that you can obtain easily.

But I don't have enough money!
Prices on the Broker will look expensive to the new player. So how do you accumulate money to buy stuff on the Broker? Simple - sell items on the Broker yourself!

(this section will be expanded soon)

Comparing Items
When you examine an item, its name will be in red if you cannot wear it. You might not be able to wear it because it requires a higher level, or your class may simply be unable to utilize it. Before you discard a red-named item, be sure to check whether you could use it at a higher level.

(this section will be expanded soon)

Adornments

 * Main Article: Adornments

Adornments are items that can be added to your equipment to improve it. By adding adornments to your equipment, you can increase the stats that your equipment bestows on you, or even gain new effects that you didn't have before.

Adornments are only created by player crafters; currently there is no source of pre-made adornments in the world of Norrath. As a result, your first exposure to adornments will be through the Broker, where you can buy adornments from other players. Generally you'll find a huge number of adornments for sale, which means that you can buy lesser adornments for cheap prices.

When you attach an adornment to a piece of equipment, the adornment is expended, and cannot be recovered. Because of this, you'll only want to attach adornments to items that you expect to use for a long time. Generally, you should consider adding adornments to your best items, as soon as possible after you obtain them. For example, most of the newbie zones give a nice tunic at the end of their quest lines; it would make sense to add an adornment to this tunic, because you'll probably not replace it for many levels.

Your Home City

 * Main Article: Cities

By level 10, it's a good idea to visit your home city and explore its services. In particular, you may want to buy your first house, and visit the Broker for the first time. You may also have a collection to turn in. Aside from these activities, your city is also a source of quests. You can use the city quests to guide you to interesting parts of the outside world.

(this section will be expanded soon)

The Tiers of Norrath

 * Main Article: Tiers