August 2006

Willamina, pugs, and a night of crafting

stargrace August 31, 2006 0Comment

I’ve been having a whole lot of fun playing the Necromancer lately, it’s a class I played around with just a little bit in Eq1 (I have a 70 rogue, enchanter, and cleric in eq1 and a handful of other smaller babies) and never really had an opportunity to play in eq2. I’ve typically played a healer of some sort, my templar being my main for the longest time until I decided to start over and made the warden (never looked back as far as healers go once I’d made the warden, what a wonderful class, it’s a shame that a *lot* of people re-rolled their templars / plate clerics into druids / mystics and now there seems to be a shortage, at least on the servers I’ve played on). Anyhow.

In my guild it’s typically just me for a portion of the day, and then people log in a little later on, not a bad thing per say, gives me a lot of time to do what I’d like to do, which I enjoy. It’s not often that I stick my lfg flag on, fear of pugs what can I say. But I like the atmosphere of najena, and there are always a lot of people around. So eagerly I sent a tell to a tank looking for dps in runneyeye, and for the next hour we mashed away at things and Willamina finally reached level 39. Slowly catching up to people! It was a great group, there were plenty of times I didn’t think we would make it because they were sort of uh… well… a little high on themselves. We added a swashbuckler to the group after one of our tanks had to leave, and they claimed to have just spent 10p on gear. Not only that, they said cloth gear had the best stats for them, so they’d spent 10p on cloth gear. .. . Then they came to the zone and on their way they fell off a bridge and got squished *snickers*. I told them that for 10p that gear should instantly port them to our zone. I don’t even think my level 70 main has 10p worth of gear on her, granted a lot of it is quested and looted from raids so maybe that’s why. On masters, sure.. but gear? Meh. Anyhow, it was a lot of fun, until we of course bit off a bit more then we could chew, the illusionist decided not to mez the 4 groups we had on us, healers ganked with heal agro and in a matter of moments we were all looking at the pretty revive boxes. Called it a day from there.

Spent the night crafting, carpenter slowly crawled her way to level 24. It’s a painful process when you only get 3 recipes every level. Though now she’s gotten a few more and I’m trying to make it stretch. Willamina dinged 33 sage. I have tried to keep her adventure level on par with her tradeskill level but it doesn’t work. It’s just so much easier to quest / exp once you’re out of vitality still making it worth while as opposed to crafting, which is mind numbing even before you run out of vitality and just bang-your-head-on-the-desk-stupid when you’re out. Made some furniture boxes with 48 slots (just fir, bigger then my 36 slot boxes so it all works) in order to put some of Ixiana’s stuff for sale, it doesn’t sell fast, but it does sell, and that’s why Silverstep has a 5 room house after all, to sell all those goodies.

Speaking of selling. I really wish they’d let us set up multiple toons with markets and not just one. It’s a pain for me to have to switch around all my loot from all my characters every day just to be able to sell stuff from a ‘main’. I’m sure they have their reasons of course, doesn’t mean I can’t complain though!

Little Tardy (Tarby!) lost… and who says bears are better then wolves..

stargrace August 30, 2006 0Comment

So yesterday morning I decided that I’d put off some quests for far too long with Willamina, my necromancer. In order to play a little catch up to the guild (since I’m still in my 30’s and most people are hitting their 40’s now) I decided to do old quests and start some HQ’s that I’d just neglected. First on my list, learning the giant language. Sounds easy right? Sounds even easier since I was level 37 at the time and the giants I was killing were level 28 heroics, meaning green. Poor poor necromancer tank pet. He sacrificed himself so many times as I /yelled off encounters and ran my wee little short gnome legs to safety. I did manage to complete the quest though. Spawned a named too but he was too hard, double attacking me for 900 pts of dmg a round. Ouchies.

Talked to Obsid a few times, he lost his bear. *sighs* He’s a GIANT you’d think he’d be able to see the wee little bear from miles around. So I set off after him. Found him with no troubles at all (thank you eq2 maps!) and after hailing him, waves of wolves spawn. Level 28 heroics. Not *too* difficult to kill– the hard part, is that they agro Tarby first. In fact, the first round I guess my pet didn’t snag agro fast enough, they agro’d tarby and tarby fought back and died. Woopsie. I won’t tell Obsid if you don’t.

So I waited 20 minutes for the bear to re-pop and again the wolves spawned and Tarby fought and grey’d them out, so I killed them and got no exp……. thank you bear. KS’er! Two more rounds later and tarby decided he wanted to ride in my backpack back to Obsid. Lazy little thing! How he fit into my gnome-sized bag with my cog bits and flupperzoowigs I’ve no idea, but man was he heavy.

Obsid gave me the beginner to the PGT as a reward. First thing I need to do for it is mine. Ugh. My mining sitting at 60 when I need it at 90 for Thundering Steppes, so I called it a day for that quest and decided to run around the commonlands completing smaller things I’d never done before.

Got a guild group later on in the day and finished Haedens earring, Willamina can finally breath under water…. ! Oh.. wait… that’s right, necromancers can summon stones to do that… I’d *completely* forgotten that fact as I ran around drowning. Go me. It was still nice, guild dinged level 14.

On a side note. I applied to the eq2 volunteer guide program last week.. and was accepted. There are some rules about what I can post / talk about and what I can’t though, so while I can say I’m an apprentice guide, I can’t reveal server or character name and what not. I’m really looking forward to the over all experience!

Pick a God, any God…

stargrace August 29, 2006 0Comment

With the prophets and disciples roaming around Norrath it’s hard to walk anywhere without someone screaching at you about the return of the Gods, a highly anticipated part of the new EoF expansion due out in November. With it of course comes a lot of questions, speculation, and other randomness. For myself, I’m a bit flustered as to which God Silverstep (the Dark Elf Druid who lives in Freeport) will follow, if any at all. I’ve been browsing the Eq2 History and Lore forums to find out more scraps of information. Below is a summary of the Gods players will be able to chose from, based on of course city faction (which I don’t agree with by the way.. I don’t worship a certain deity based on where I live…. ) Anyhow.. The choices and a brief description are found below, the information taken from this site.

Qeynos ONLY:

Allied with Karana, Erollisi Marr and Rodcet Nife, and enemies with Bertoxxulous, Tunare, the Mother of All, rules the Plane of Growth.

Tunare appears as a very attractive older humanoid female wearing flowing robes and a crown of vines and leaves.

Tunare is very protective of what she considers to be one of Her finest achievements, the good elf races of Norrath.

As part of an agreement with Brell Serilis and Prexus and in response to the arrogance of Veeshan in claiming Norrath for her own, Tunare created the High Elves and the wood elves of Norrath.

This peaceful child-goddess is allied with Rodcet Nife and Erollisi Marr, and an enemy to Rallos Zek and Innoruuk.

Followers of Quellious the Tranquil seek peace. They are not strict pacifists, though, and will fight to defend themselves and their loved ones.

The peace they seek is an inner one. They wish to know all there is to know about themselves and the world around them.

They thirst for knowledge of their true selves and strive to help others attain enlightenment. It is through the sharing of this knowledge that they believe universal peace can be obtained.

If every creature fully understood itself and its neighbors there would be no need for conflict and war.

Followers of Quellious often follow a nomadic lifestyle, constantly seeking what there is to know and hoping to find themselves along the way.

Freeport ONLY:

Innoruuk is allied with Rallos Zek and Cazic-Thule, and the enemy of Quellious, Mithaniel Marr, and Erollisi Marr.

Followers of Innoruuk, the Prince of Hate, include nearly the entire dark elven race who regard him as their “Father”.

They believe that hate is a creative force, or rather “THE” creative force in the universe – creativity born of destruction.

Love and kindness are tools for those too ignorant to know what they want or too cowardly to do what is necessary to obtain it.

They believe that it is only through the total disdain of your enemies that you can gain true power over them.

Pity and mercy have no power when confronted with contempt and viciousness.

It is the honest belief of the followers of Innoruuk that if they were to hate strongly enough, they could destroy all of Norrath.

Rallos Zek is allied with Innoruuk and Cazic-Thule, enemy to Quellious and Bertoxxulous.

The followers of Rallos Zek, the Warlord, believe in survival of the strong and death to the weak.

The heart of a true follower of Zek yearns for strength, courage, but above all, victory.

They believe that the heat of battle is the only place and time where enlightenment can be gained, that the universe was formed by conflict and in conflict it will end, with the victors feasting upon the remains of their fallen enemy.

No respect or regard is given to the dead, for if they were worthy their hearts would still pump blood through their veins and not upon the soil of Norrath.

The followers of Zek are almost exclusively warriors.

Cazic-Thule is allied with Rallos Zek and Innoruuk, and the enemy of Mithaniel and Erollisi Marr.

Followers of the Faceless, fear their Lord and believe that only by causing terror in others will they be spared his vengeful wrath.

Fear rules their lives and through fear they rule the lives of others.

Pain, misery, violence, torture, living sacrifice – these are the tools of a Cazicite.

Many lizardman tribes are devout followers of Cazic-Thule, but his number of humanoid followers grows daily, a cold shadow slowly engulfing the bright spots of Norrath in a nightmare of horror and pain.

NEUTRAL:

Brell is allied with Fizzlethorpe Bristlebane, and an enemy of Veeshan’s.

Followers of the Duke of Below find true happiness in the caves, caverns and tunnels that permeate the belly of Norrath, but this is one of few points upon which all followers of Brell can agree.

The Runny Eye Clan of goblins claim he is their father, much to the disgust of the dwarves of Kaladim who are certain that only the dwarves are the true children of Serilis.

The vicious gnolls of Split Paw disagree entirely, for was it not Brell who sculpted them out of the sacred Clay of Cosgrove?

Followers of Brell Serilis, in one form or another, can be found nearly anywhere you enter the Underfoot of Norrath.

The Plane of Sun is ruled by Solusek Ro, the Burning Prince.

His father, Fennin Ro is the Tyrant of Fire who rules the greater elemental Plane of Fire, from which the Plane of Sun derives its power.

Solusek wears a suit of golden ringmail and a crown of flame and wields a spear of fire.

He is allied with no one, enemies with no one.

He has a friendly rivalry with Mithaniel Marr.

After reading through each one, it becomes a little more apparent where my conflict comes from. Being a druid, and just simply the way I RP Silverstep, she would not follow Innoruuk, nor do I see her being a minion of Cazic, and she’s most certainly not a follower of Zek. She also doesn’t strike me as a follower of Brell… so that leaves Solusek who I really know little about. Ricotta is pretty easy, she’ll follow Brell unless Bristlebane comes back, Willamina will follow.. well, she’s sorta crazy I’ll figure hers out later. Calicia would more then likely follow Zek, being a fighter and what not. Stargrace (the coercer) will be agnostic. The Gods are usless to her. After all, why did they suddenly decide to show up now.

In the mean time, I’m having a lot of fun reading all this lore that I never paid attention to before. I admit right now I glimpsed through this stuff when I played eq1 and never gave it any thought, but now that I’m actually reading it, it fascinates me. As an ending note, Willamina hit 37 last night, Ricotta managed to land in a fairly good pug (pick up group) in Varsoons and hit 31, and things are going well. More ranting later!

Quest of the Week – The Soul of Tarinax

stargrace August 28, 2006 0Comment

While wandering around the Feerrott, I came across an npc or two that I must have over looked in my travels there, which I admit now, were probably purely for exp reasons. I’ve barely done any questing there aside from grabbing a random HQ, or perhaps a quest or two that interested me. Anyhow.

General Fandrak stands with a few of his battle-ready orcs in the same small section where the spires are. I had actually been looking for the soul-shredding quest, and figured this may have been it since it mentioned Tarinax. Of course I was wrong, but I’m glad I stumbled onto the quest anyhow. He has a very interesting voice over that I suggest people have enabled as they do this quest, I’d typically just rushed through most npc speeches, finding them dull and drab, but I enjoyed reading this one as well as listening.

First thing he does is send you to retrieve the lost soul of Tarinax in the chamber of Contained Souls. Which is, of course, in my favorite zone ever, the Obelisk of Lost Souls. Since they’ve removed the access quest needed for OLS, it’s been highly populated with farmers (sighs) but I managed my way through the quest just fine. You need to examine an urn, which is in a spiral staircase type room, it’s one of the rooms where a named hides out that’s used in the quest for access to the lower floors (One of the named that the book of summoning sends you to). After you examine the urn, you need to kill 3 different types of shadowed men, which can all actually be found outside the zone, Shadowed Riftwatchers, Shadowed Evocators, and Shadowed Soulflayers. After this, you head back to the urn, and you need to kill a Shadowed man with an acolyte symbol to find a way to remove the souls. These spawn inside the Obelisk with the book of summoning, the 3 mobs that surround it. If they don’t happen to be up at the time, you can just simply clear the spawns and they will eventually show up.

Once this is done you return to the urn, which sends you back to General Fandrak in the Feerrott. It also opens up another quest, which sends you to Everfrost. I love chains of quests like these. It rewards some money, and a choice of item rewards (which can be sold to vendor for 6g or passed down to those wonderful alts, or given away etc etc).

The story line was wonderful and talked about how you could help his empire, and help your own at the same time, that there would be treasures involved, and all that wonderful stuff they use in order to entice you to doing their bidding. I’m looking forward to doing the next lines of quests.

On a side note. I started a carpenter last night, a level 1 iksar brigand named Ixiana. She’s not for anything aside from carpentering (is that even a word?) and I managed to get her to level 20. One odd thing I noticed. I hit level 9, and promptly went to West Freeport to choose her subclass- and it instantly dinged me to level 10. I did the same at level 19, having just reached the level, and 0% into it, I went to West Freeport to choose my subclass, and instantly dinged to 20. Not that I’m complaining at all, but I’m not sure if this is ‘working as intended’ or if I was not actually supposed to get a full level of free exp. In any case, it will be nice to outfit Silverstep’s home a little more, Stargrace’ too I imagin since her 3 room house is still just a cluttered mess of items strewn along the floor with no sense of order.

Fear me, for I’ve returned..

stargrace August 27, 2006 0Comment

Ok, so in a strictly non-rp sense, yes, I’ve re-activated my eq2 account after what.. a whole week of having it de-activated? It didn’t last long. Those who knew me probably knew that would happen. I’ve done it off and on for years now, it’s nothing new. I grow bored or frustrated for a short while but eventually I always toddle back. I will post an rp note on Silverstep’s ‘return’ in a few days time, I’ve got enough to write about at the moment that I don’t really feel like posting it as of yet, I’d rather save it for one of those days when I’ve nothing at all to say (do those days even happen?! … yes.)

I took Silverstep to do the quest in the Feerrott in the cave of Fears, this screen shot is of her standing in front of the portal to the plane of fear, which is not yet activated of course. The quest was a lot of fun, I mentored a level 13 on the advice of Tipa and it worked out wonderfully. Maj’dul was not agro to me, since I have never done any faction quests there yet (Silverstep is a huge slacker, she may be level 70 and have fabled gear, but she’s only completed around 400 quests total, something I’d like to work on in the future) – though I did strip down and make her do it in her party clothes, simply because she was resisted twice and ended up getting smashed to pieces as a level 13 wandering around. It took about 15 minutes to gather all 100 souls though, and .. well. I was slightly disappointed with the quest reward. Only because I have the exact same item sitting in my house, that I paid for with seafurry buccaneer faction. It’s sold by the merchants on the boat in South Freeport. 10k status and 30s, which is not a great deal I know, but even the colours are exactly the same.

Monkeys, camels, and man alike all fell before my soul-shredder. It was great. I spent my first day back going over my banks, remembering the commands for the game, and watching the spam fly on the level channels. I was going to work on some smaller quests that I’ve had forever but instead just sat around and talked to a few old friends. I did end up leaving the guild I was in also. For a few reasons. #1. There was no one I actually knew in the guild. I wasn’t friends with any of them. Having friends in this game or at least acquaintances is pretty important to me. I’ll admit right now it’s one of the main reasons I play. So when I would log into my guild and see 35 people online, and not a single one says anything like hello, well, it put me off. #2. Far too large. Yes, a guild can be too big. When people have to register for raids, or sit out, then in my opinion perhaps a guild is too large, for a raiding guild that is. I didn’t like the way loot was run, it was fair in the fact that everyone had a chance at something, but if someone just showed up at one random raid where as you’d been to the last 10, it could put some people off. In any case, it was just simply not the place for me any longer. Considering no one said a word to me after I’d left, I doubt it was really that big of a deal. Anyhow, it’s nice to be back.