Soloable Everquest Machine
I don't code professionally anymore, so 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 has 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.
Installed the latest version.
The magic code. It modifies the game's core rules so you can play by yourself
I tried multiple clients, and this one worked best.
Caveats
I decided against updating 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.
My Windows 7 is 64-bit, and the client is 32-bit. I've had many DLL version issues and fixed them all by installing the 64-bit ones first and then the 32-bit ones.