Starting as an Erudite, upon first relocating to Qeynos, I proceeded to get "stuck" in the hallway that connects north and south Qeynos because it was so dark in there I'd run into the walls, get turned around, and zone over and over again losing my bearing as to which way I was facing.

The cleric I bought the eyepatch for was doing scarecrows in the Karanas.

I don't know exactly how close my stupid Linux alpha/gamma bug puts me to actual classic night blindness, but it certainly is a hell of a lot closer to what live was like, and that really does change how you play even basic EverQuest. Scarecrows are like the simplest mobs ever to fight (undead warrior mobs that don't run), but even dealing with them in the dark is noticeably more challenging.

I am sure starting with a candle was not a thing at launch. I got the game release day and promptly created a human bard. After finding the guild hall in South Qeynos i noticed night had fallen and it was incredibly dark. I went back the way i came and zoned into North Qeynos. After about 15 minutes of trying desperately to get out of the zone in tunnel and about 30 rezones in emerged from the tunnel and went towards the way i remember the gate being. All of a sudden the incredibly black darkness got darker. I could not tell where i was or what direction i was pointing. I did have an odd new UI element that was a decreasing blue bar. Then that blue bar disappeared and i quickly died.

I had blindly stumbled into what i soon discovered was the water hole near the South Qeynos zoneline. If i had had a candle I would have not rage quit and deleted this sad little bard and made a Half Elf bard instead.

Maybe they added the Candle at some point in the near future from launch but I never made a human, barbarian, or erudite ever since that horrible first time playing.


I think at this point if they aren't going to enforce classic gamma then there's no point to give free candles.

It was so dark at night most people here would threaten to quit over it

My dark elf could barely see in Nektulos forest at night even with ultravision

I remember having to actually sit out the night (go afk) because of how dark it was.

Going through east commons only being able to see what little bit was revealed by a greater lightstone

Make greater lightstones great again

I've found evidence that there were candles at least in August of 1999.

They were apparently much less effective than a fire beetle eye.

Don't forget that a candle is still better than nothing, and a corpse run without even that as a human was daunting and nearly impossible.

I would like to know whether they were in at launch. Do you remember starting with even a very dim light source? Or was it literally nothing?

I found a post from March, 1999 talking about Barbarians getting candles. They must have been in at launch. They were pathetic light sources by all accounts however :D

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...2&postcount=11

They were really bad, on par with necromancer coldlight spell but with a orange/reddish light. Worse than a fire beetle eye, which was itself largely inadequate. Like that spell, they were dim enough that on a dark monitor (remember CRT's? they do dark/black better than LCD screens can) a player might not have been able to tell the difference. As such some folks threw them away along with the discord book, and it's understandable some folks might have forgotten 'em. A torch or lantern is a highly recommended early purchase. All the candles really did was make a black tunnel not-quite-black for a few feet in front of the player.

Danth

This is why I still run along the edges of the zone every where in classic zones. Except in Kithicor there weren't usually any spawns on the edges.