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The Tattered Notebook: A guide to getting Erollisi Day spoils for the time-impaired

The Tattered Notebook  A guide to getting Erollisi Day spoils for the timeimpaired

Ahh, l'amore. You can feel it in their air tonight, no? Oh wait, that was Thursday! No matter, 'tis still the season of love and loot in Norrath.

Did I say loot? You bet your barbarian love notes I did! Holidays in EverQuest II may be inspired by their real-world counterparts, but their true purpose lies in supplying us with oodles of special loot. Don't believe me? Just look at the plethora of items available from quests, crafting, and collections during any given celebration. Sure, there are fun lore lines to follow as well, and that aspect certainly deserves a nod, but there is no denying the prominence of holiday paraphernalia that fills our bags, banks, and vaults.

Not that I am complaining, mind you; it's precisely this loot I am after -- specifically, the housing items. As a die-hard decorating nut, I look forward to the holidays like Erollisi Day to get my hands/paws/claws on these unique items offered only during the events. Unfortunately, like many of us plagued by real life, I don't always have tons of time to devote to the festivities, and EQII's holidays are pretty elaborate affairs with a whole lot to do. So to help us both get the most treasure for our time, I've devised this speed guide to getting the holiday goods before the festival ends at 2:59 a.m EST on February 21st.



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OK, I'll be perfectly honest: If you want to save the most time right now, you can just go on the broker and buy most items from your fellow Norrathians. However, this method is feasible only if you have plenty of plat, as you often pay through the snout for this much time-saving. If you prefer to keep your coin, you'll want to run the quests yourself. You can even collect enough items to make a buck selling to those who use the broker method! Either way, this guide will help you get the most items in the least amount of time.

First and foremost, to save time, we'll dispense with the achievement-based quests and rewards. True, achievements are cool, but you can't hang those in your house and our focus is in acquiring decorations! All told, a full run using this guide took less than 30 minutes to complete. A number of the quests can be run concurrently, so read through before starting. Here's the plan:

Matchmaker

Start your Erollisi day events with the quest Find 'em a Find, Catch 'em a Catch by talking to the disciple of love right outside of the North Qeynos gate in Antonica (for goodies) or just up the road from the West Freeport gate in Commonlands (for baddies). We want to start with this one because not only is it quick and offers a number of great rewards, but it must be completed in order for you to do the whole lore-infused main quest line.

To complete this quest, just run to the indicated folks in either Qeynos or Freeport, listen to a quick blurb describing the NPCs or their ideal companion, and then play matchmaker by suggesting to the quest giver which NPCs to pair together. You can succeed by remembering the key facts and names, or you can help yourself by jotting down each name with a key word. If you are really in a hurry, you can cheat using the official quest guide. Just be sure to choose correctly or you'll have to do it all over again!

The housing items available with this quest are a heart garland, an Othomir or Burynai version of a teddy bear, roses on a cushion, or one of the marble statues of the sisterhood (dark for evil, frosted for good). You can choose only one of the rewards, and the quest can be done only once a year per character; if you want multiple items, you'll have to do the quest on various alts. The really good news is this quest is easy to complete even for level 1 toons, so if you are dying to have enough statues to use as pawns in a giant chess set, you can make an alt, do it, put the reward in your shared bank, delete, reroll, and go again! (However, you might want to refrain from deleting until you complete another in-town quest and collection mentioned later.) For the statues, make sure you create the right alignment: evil for the dark marble, good for the frosted.

If you choose to complete the subsequent quest lines, you will need a lot of time and the ability to kill deer in Antonica. There is a bit more housing loot to be had (a tapestry, vases, a fire), but when time is of the essence and you don't mind skipping all the lore, stop after making the matches.

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A pick-up line by any name...

Would be just as cheesy! And this cheesiness is just as prevalent in Freeport as it is in Qeynos, with the rewards for spewing it being the same regardless of which city you do it in. While running about the city matchmaking, you should hit up Dalron Pinot on the dock in EFP or near the claymore in NQ and begin Love Lines, then work both quests simultaneously.

Just like the previous quest, this one involves just chatting it up with folks in town, so any level character can complete it. It can also be done only once a year per character, and only one of the rewards can be selected, so if you want multiples, start those alts a-runnin'. Housing items available to choose from are another teddy Othomir, four different love-themed candles, and a new black hanging rose. Personally, I'm going after a whole garden of those roses!

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SHINY

While you are in the city, be sure to grab the special holiday collection shinies. This easy collection will net you a nice trifold screen. Although the standard collection quests usually have a rare piece that is hard to come by, the collection quest for the holiday is quite easy; all you need to do is hit up three low-level zones to get get all of the pieces. And trust me, these shinies spawn prolifically! You need three flowers from either Qeynos or Freeport, three from Antonica or Commonlands (you'll get when running to do the next quest featured below), and three from New Halas or Enchanted Lands. However, as collections can be done only once per character ever, make sure all your temp alts turn it in and throw the reward, as well as any leftover flowers, in your shared bank before they get deleted.

Ready, set, get more loot!

As soon as you finish the matchmaking quest, step out a few paces and start the next one. Careful, though, or you might get stuck at this point and never move on! Although this quest takes no more than 5 minutes each time you run it, it is repeatable indefinitely and can net a housing reward each and every time! It's the Hearts a'Flutter race in either Commonlands or Antonica.

To start raking in the housing items, all you have to do is collect a bunch of hearts on the ground in the race area by running over them -- literally. You have three minutes to get as many as possible; prizes scale according to your score, so for the best choice, collect at least 80. With a minimum of 80, you can choose between many different flowers, flowers in vases, and a new rose topiary (envision the hedge with red roses). If you don't want any more of these, you can choose Erollisi coins instead and use them to purchase from the vendors.

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Can buy me love (decorations)

Most of the Erollisi day quests also grant Erollisi coins. If you manage to acquire a stash of these (and they are tradeable among your toons via the shared bank), you can flat out buy a host of housing items right from the holiday gift vendors located outside the inns in East Freeport and Qeynos Harbor. Flowers, puppies, chocolates, an ethereal glowing lion, and a ladybug are a few of the offerings, along with a gazebo, bed, teddy bear, and more. If you have coins from previous years, all the quicker! There are also garlands and pink- and red-stained glass tiles available for purchase for a couple of gold.

Put off till tomorrow what you'd craft today

Of course, another way to get lots of housing items is to purchase the recipes sold by those same vendors and craft them yourself. Unlike in Frostfell, these recipes can be crafted all year around as long as you have the requisite holiday ingredient: either a piece of heart candy or a love note. These candies/notes can be bought off the broker at any time, but they drop from mobs only during the festival. If you are short on time, just grab the recipes and worry about crafting later; however, if you are also short on cash and need to hunt the ingredients, be sure to fit in some adventuring time. (And don't forget to convert all the random notes and candy to a single stackable barbarian note at the love loot trader before the festival ends!)

At a cost of just one gold, one silver, and 50 copper per recipe, you need only six gold and nine silver to get the entire collection on a single toon. Not into crafting much? That's OK -- you need be only a level two crafter to make these items. With the recipes, you can make many different things to keep or sell, including but not limited to flowers, vases, garlands, foods, furniture, rugs, bottles, and even a gilded cage for your home. This year, stone housing blocks were also added.

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Got a minute (or 20)?

If you've gotten everything you have wanted from these steps and still have an excess of time, you might want to do one last quest, providing you have completed the lore quests either this year or in years past. Tainted Love and Heal the Pain, the quests utilizing the special Shard of Love instance, each offer new rewards this year: a new fireplace from the former and tapestry of the sisterhood from the latter. However, note that if you have chosen one of these quests in years prior, you won't have a choice as to which you can complete this time and you'll be restricted to the one you did before.

Of course, the real time sink is going to happen once everything is all said and done. After you get your hands on all the housing decorations you wanted, you've got to figure out what to do with them! And for that, you are on your own. Happy decorating!

EverQuest II is so big that it takes two authors to make sense of it all! Join Jef Reahard and MJ Guthrie as they explore Norrathian nooks and crannies from the Overrealm to Timorous Deep. Running every Saturday, The Tattered Notebook is your resource for all things EQII and EQNext -- and catch MJ every 'EverQuest Two-sday' on Massively TV!