I don't code professionally anymore, I decided to repurpose my lovely x220 as an all in one Everquest machine.

Requirements

• Offline friendly

  • I want to be able to take this computer to a cabin in the woods and play EQ instead of walking around and doing healthier things.

• Soloable

  • Everquest is known for being solo unfriendly and have tons of content locked behind group requirements. I must fix that.

• Old-school feel

  • Avoid the current state of the game. It's plagued with micro-transactions and Pay to Win mechanics.

Stack

• WIndows 7

  • Used the original Windows 7 that came with my refurbished x220.

• EQEmulator

  • Installed the latest version.

• Djeryv's Solo Server Package

  • The magic code. It modifies the game's core rules so you can play by yourself

• Everquest Rain of Fear Client

  • I tried multiple clients, and this one worked best.

Caveats

• My Windows 7 is 64-bit, and the client is 32-bit. I've had a lot of DLL version issues and fixed them all by installing the 64-bit ones first and then the 32-bit ones.

• I decided against update the spells file in my client as explained here. Doing it made me not having particle effects for spells.

• Even with the server modified to be Soloable, I'm using EQEmu's bot capabilities to group with a Cleric for anything that's too hard for my Necro. This helps compensate the lack of in game economy. 

• I love the Thinkpad trackpoint dearly, but I can’t play a 3D game like EQ using it even if my life depends on it. I pack a cheap bluetooth mouse with the machine to solve this issue.