EverQuest's 21st expansion 'The Darkened Sea' announced for October

The Year of EverQuest is rolling on and that includes the original MMORPG that started it all. Sony Online Entertainment outlined what's coming up for their long-running adventure, which recently celebrated its 15th anniversary. After adding level 85 Heroic characters, new race combinations like the Froglock Monks, player-designed missions, and the long-fabled Plane of War, SOE is ready to look into EQ's 21st expansion called The Darkened Sea.

The Darkened Sea is a sequel of sorts to the previous Buried Sea expansion. The buried sea is the setting for the new story, which sees demigoddess of hate, Lanys T'vyl, kidnap the ailing emperor of Katta Castrum. The heroes of Norrath must traverse across eight new zones to rescue the emperor and uncover Lanys' machinations.

The Darkened Sea expansion will boost the player level to 105. It will also add new quests, missions, raids, spells, items, and an inventory saver in the form of Mount Keyrings. These items allow players to better organize their mounts and save some precious inventory slots.

There will also be eight new zones to play with. They include:

• Tempest Temple - An island paradise that has been ravaged by chaos magic.
• Caverns of Endless Song - An underground cave inhabited by sirens and the captive sailors that have fallen prey to their song.
• Degmar, the Lost Castle - A sunken dwarven castle filled with dwarves that have been driven insane by their fate.
• Thuliasaur Island - A Land of the Lost-like island filled with lush plantlife and wild dinosaurs.
• Combine Dredge - A series of islands connected by magical conduits.
• Arx Mentis - A flying fortress powered by magic. It's one of EverQuest's most futuristic looking settings, but it's a future as shaped by magic. It's patrolled by reanimated golems and living brooms that sweep the floors.

Other changes coming to EverQuest include some new Player Studio additions. The big one is new player robes, which allows users to deck out their characters with customized robes of varying patterns and textures. This cosmetic feature will launch on Monday. Meanwhile, the team is looking to add a more advanced looting feature, which will allow players to disable certain loot pickups to prevent inventory overload. The new looting system will also look to prevent ninja looters looking to roll need. More details about the advanced looting system will be revealed before it gets released later this year.

The Darkened Sea expansion will release on October 28 for SOE All-Access members, while everyone else can jump in on November 11.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?