Soloable Everquest Machine
Since 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.