Vesspyr Isles awaits those who are brave enough to adventure beyond the grave.

Qeynos and Freeport are under assault by the forces of the Awakened. Kerafyrm has possession of the Tear of Veeshan. The commander of the New Combine army lay in his grave, with his daughter, Antonia Bayle, grief-stricken and alone.

The darkest days are coming to EverQuest II. Ages End is just around the corner.

Over the past month your EQII ZAM team has toiled away on the Beta server, working to bring you the coverage you’ve come to expect. We would like to offer our thanks to the assistance we received along the way. One ZAM contributor, Ratagnan, invested much of his time and energy into filling in missing quests, Advanced Solo zone walkthroughs, crafting information and much more. Heroes of Test was as awesome as always, having a fully equipped Tier 4 guild hall and members willing to lend a hand. Finally, our thanks to Feldon of EQ2Wire for sharing some of his dungeon screenshots with us!

Now, on to the good stuff...

In Tears of Veeshan, players are sent to Vesspyr Isles, the dragon Ethernere. It can be accessed through a druid portal or dragon ring, and requires a flying mount to navigate its vastness. If you don’t have a flying mount, have no worries: the first adventuring quest you encounter rewards one!

While wandering through Vesspyr Isles you will encounter various motes (not an official name, but we didn’t know what else to call them) which will give speed buffs or debuffs, or flying collection shinies. Prefer to get your shinies while grounded? There will be plenty of opportunity: this expansion has over 50 different collections just waiting to be picked up.

The overland quest series is more open than players encountered in Chains of Eternity. There is a signature quest series but it is neither required to progress in the expansion nor to access any of the instances (UPDATE: Since we wrote this article, the dev team changed the first signature quest to not progress unless certain key questlines are completed in Vesspyr). Some questlines are linear, but there are several hubs open, giving a more welcome feel to questing in the zone.

Tears of Veeshan also will introduce changes to itemization (check out the in-depth EQ2 Wire interview on this) and several Advanced Solo, Heroic and Raid zones. We didn’t get a chance to check out any Heroic or Raid instances, but Feldon put together a Heroic zone preview earlier today. Interested in the new Channeler class? Calthine took some time and wrote up a guide!

Also launching tomorrow is the new Mercenary Slot feature, which we discussed recently in part two of our ToV interview. For a full look at everything coming your way, be sure to check out our Tears of Veeshan overview.

We also have a huge image gallery! Can’t wait to see it yourself? Take a look at all the exciting screenshots both ZAM and EQ2Wire captured during our time on Beta (thumbnail version)!

Today is the final day to pre-order the expansion, so if you’ve procrastinated this long, be sure to get that order in for the bonus goodies. We’ll be here tomorrow with a recap of all our coverage as well as downtime updates. See you in the afterlife!

Ann "Cyliena" Hosler, Managing Editor

Senior Content Manager, EQII ZAM

Follow me on Twitter: @Cyliena