Sandstorm, the live EQOA server

by Xylof/joukoq

About

Sandstorm is the first and so far the only public EverQuest Online Adventures server after the official servers shut down in 2012. You can play with an emulator such as PCSX2 or a real Playstation 2.

The project started in late 2020, when no functional open source server projects existed. It is independent of any previous projects and the code has been written 100% from scratch by me (Xylof), although I've been able to use some knowledge and data gathered by people in previous restoration efforts (see the history and Thanks links below).

Some important milestones in my view:

• server setup that allows connecting without prebuilt memcards or save states; also figured out how to push our own art and data assets to game clients
• figuring out the previously unknown ESF/CSF file format allows us (and other projects) to load terrain and building data from the game disc, required for things like pathfinding and line of sight
• figuring out the exact meanings of most bits and bytes of the EQOA UDP protocol allowed establishing stable connections between the server and game clients
• creating the SCP (Sandstorm Control Panel) enabled people to start contributing by creating quests, NPC's, items, item procs, NPC spell rotations, pathing and more - without programming experience needed. Starting from December 2023, a content creation team has formed to take main responsibility for these tasks. People helping in this regard include Lardubedu, Renodor, xpli, ShadowRampageTV and Krumpzilla

How to

To connect, download the appropriate PCSX2 patch/cheat file from the links below. Use an empty memcard (without any EQOA data). Set up networking normally.

Special DNS settings are no longer needed with the new patch/cheat files (if you want to use the old patches for some reason, set DNS to 5.161.217.188).

The new patches eliminate the need for any DNS queries for the game to operate, so you can leave DNS setting to automatic or enter any IP address manually, such as 1.0.0.0.

If you want to play on a real PS2, you'll need some kind of solution to use one of the cheat files or remove DNAS in another way.

Both Frontiers US and the original Europe/PAL version work (the latter naturally missing the Frontiers-specific areas and some other features). The original US pre-Frontiers version is not compatible at the moment.

In case of problems, you can check the PCSX2 Setup Guide by Jonathan Greenway.

Status

What basically works

• creating account and characters
• moving around
• combat and most abilities
• leveling up to 45
• class masteries
• database of over 21,000 NPC's and 8,000 items originally from the Hagley server team, with thousands updates of our own
• some loot tables from Prima's Official Strategy Guide and more implemented by us
• all starter quests and more
• chatting, who list, emoting, ignore lists
• coaching, wayfinders, teleports
• NPC pathfinding, roaming, aggroing, etc.
• looting, inventory, bank, merchants, blacksmiths, spiritmasters
• preliminary line of sight in some zones
• item wear-down and repair
• etc.

What doesn't

• XP debt
• guild system
• auctions
• some features that were added in client-side code patches such as group finder and some toolbelt UI changes
• etc.

Patch files

Frontiers: eeee1fcc.pnach ← UPDATED

EU vanilla: 973e3177.pnach ← UPDATED

Contact

Email: xylof@eqoa.live

Note: Sandstorm is a non-commercial project. Some of my other projects:

• Kiekko.tv - multiplayer 2D ice-hockey simulator, active since 2004
• TyperA - possibly the first competitive typing test on the internet
• Klikki.fi - my security research