September 2006

Coercer hits 66, and the bad part about raids..

stargrace September 19, 2006 No Comments

Stargrace killing glare lords in the Feerrott, clearing some of those green quests

I managed to get Stargrace to 66 finally yesterday, landed myself in an SoS group for about 20% exp who happened to be working on claymore. In fact, they were on my exact step, talk about luck. Finished one full quest with them and a good portion of the next one. Unfortunately it also requires me to speak druzaic (dragon language) which I do not yet speak. I have the starter for To speak as a dragon from the Maidens Gulch raid, but I’ve yet to progress any further with it. I’m supposed to visit Nagafen now, in Solusek Eye. The problem is that to get to them, you have to enter an instance, and if you’ve never entered it before you have to do an event– unless you bring someone with you who has done it. Stargrace has never done it before, so I’ve got to hunt down someone to come with me or try to do the event alone.

I’m really loving those frogs lately. I did all of the basket quests that I could in Tangle, and then jumped down to Hidden Refuge and discovered that there were 9 more repeatable quests that had me killing / gathering random items in that zone. Fairly easy, getting a little exp from the green mobs + 2% for every completed quest, as well as coin and items that will come in handy as I solo (like +3 defense for 10 minutes, items that heal, items that have wards, items that give +700 resists to certain types etc). I managed to actually ding off of these quests, and one I found in Temple of the Scale that I could solo invis. There’s an npc right at the entrance, he asks you to go get him some water, even though it’s a contested raid zone, you can invis through the first few rooms that are heroics, and in the very first room, is a click-able water bowl, that doesn’t break your invis. Went back to him, did the turn in, and ta da, 5% exp plus some 5 hour water with nice regen and stats on it. Not bad. It’s nice to have a master1 of my new single target mez, next level I get the master1 of my AoE encounter mez *drools*.

A lot of guilds are having issues with people not logging in for raids. Especially if they’ve been raiding for a while now and the content is starting to become a little dull. However, my guild has the complete opposite issue. We are not a large guild, there are 66 unique accounts, a few of course who no longer play or who play rarely or are boxed accounts. Every raid night, we have about 25-30 people log in, more often then not 30. Raids are limited in EQ2 by sizes of 24. Which actually really sucks. We’ve had to sit people out every raid night since I joined, and I think that’s a shame. Since I am an initiate, it was my turn to sit out last night. We had pleanty of healers, as well as enchanters, and I didn’t need the updates, so members / raiders take priority. Though I did still get dkp since I was on stand by. Unfortunately the guild didn’t take down the mob they were after (dragon in AoAx4), but maybe they will next time at least. It was a pretty boring night while I watched from the side lines, read a book and did other stuff to keep myself entertained. No one enjoys sitting out, but it happens. I’d much rather be forced to sit out, and have too many people attending our raids, then not having enough and have to cancel them all together.

Still trying to find my niche in the guild, I don’t know many people and there seem to be a lot of cliques. They’re very friendly though, talkative, and helpful. Slowly making my self at home, and getting comfortable. Another week of being an initiate, and I can be a recruit, then I come up for vote as a member I do believe. Not too shabby.

Stargrace does Deathtoll, and the frogs gain a friend

stargrace September 17, 2006 No Comments

Last night the guild decided to do a trash run of Deathtoll of all zones, for relic. I figured hey, sounds good to me. I expected to be going on my warden, since she’s level 70. But, the guild said no, go ahead and bring your level 65 coercer instead. I was excited and happy as hell. Even though almost every guild I join SAYS they want the coercer, in most cases they ended up asking me to play the warden instead. Whether it’s because I’m just a good healer, or because they were short, or because of the level of the coercer, it is really nice to have finally been able to do a raid on the coercer. We also killed the contested gold dragon in pillars of flame before that, and Stargrace landed herself some nice fabled shoulders, with pretty good resists. An upgrade for sure.

Today, I was doing some TT quests, just the solo ones where you run around killing 4-8 of one particular mob. Turn it in to mr. froggy in behind a pillar, and you get approx. 10g and some faction with the Lost Children of Marr (the Frogloks). My faction, as you can see by the image above, is max’d with them, lol. I don’t even have max faction with my home town of Freeport, or any other faction for that matter, besides the froggies. Maybe they’re easy for the coercer to manipulate? Left over feelings (the coercer is a wood elf who betrayed quite some time ago) from her Qeynos days? I found it amusing in any case. So I spent the morning running around completing enough of the quests to boost up her funds incase she’s going to be raiding more, need to be able to afford those repair bills. Granted they’re not as bad as they used to be, it costs about 25g for the coercer to repair, and slightly more for the warden (repair from naked that is). I would have liked to mentor someone for the ap experience, but I’ve done those quests so many times now. I have a few more (9) new quests from the frogs in my journals (and room for 3 more quests, eek time to start clearing some!) so I’ll be looking to get those done and out of the way shortly.

Customer service not all that bad, and the village of shin

stargrace September 15, 2006 No Comments

Qutey Patootie, listening to the monks in the village of Shin

In July I sort of went on a deleting spree, I removed all of my characters except my warden, at the time, that was the 64 coercer, the 61 templar, a 44 assassin and some other smaller alts who tradeskilled. I’ll admit righ tnow, it was a pretty stupid thing to do. I petitioned the next day, and managed to have the coercer returned to me, but was told there was nothing I could do about the others.

A week after that, I petitioned again and asked if I couldn’t have one returned, and again I was told no. I was sort of upset and expressed this displeasure at the GM who was talking to me, and left it at that. Recently I decided I’d give it one last shot, after all I pay to play this game monthly, I’ve had my account since the game came out and am in good standings, why not. So I petitioned, 10 minutes later had a reply, and the GM said they would help me, but not to expect them to do it again in the future (trust me, I learned my lesson about deleting characters that have some value to me). So I had my 61 templar Qutey returned to me. I was quite pleased, and pleasantly surprised. The customer service was prompt, friendly, and actually helped me out even though I’d been told no twice before.

A lot of people have issues with SoE’s customer service (or lack there of), but every time I’ve ever had to deal with them, be it by phone or petition, they’ve been friendly and prompt, so long as I was polite to them in return. I really can’t complain.

So now that I have Qutey back, I’m realizing just how behind in everything she is. Gear, spells, and ap’s. Sitting at uh, 7 right now actually, LOL. Since I have the 70 warden and 65 coercer, this is just another alt to add to the list, and she’s also completely broke since she’s sitting on a different server then my other two. It’s still nice to have the character back.

Last night was a lyceum raid, it went really well, we wiped once because the mez’d adds were broken and pummeled us, especially healers. On the final mob we got him to 18%, and would have actually killed him were it not for the fact that it was getting late and about 5 people had to leave, including some essential healers. The night before was Vyemm, and that just ended up being a mess by the end. We managed to get to him no issues at all, quick and no wipes, but as we fought him for some stupid reason he kept getting stuck into the ceiling. While you can still attack him from this position, you MUST be positioned underneath him in order to avoid a magic aoe, and we had no target ring to see where he was so that we could position ourselves. I think Silverstep died about 14x on that raid. Ouch.

Achievement Points – ew (warden)

stargrace September 14, 2006 No Comments

I recently decided it was time to re-spec my warden’s ap’s. The picture above is what I have them at currently. In the past, I had gone fully down the wisdom line, which gives a self rez, main reason I had used it. However, after going down that chain for a few months now, I’ve decided it was not worth it as a raider. Why? Well, in most cases it did more harm then good, I would instantly self rez after a death and die again from agro that had not cleared yet, so twice a fight instead of just once. It was handy in groups, a quick rez where I could be back on my feet to take over heals, but just not worth it. I also decided not to go down the wisdom line at all, my wisdom is well over the cap already (510 is the cap at level 70) and the extra wisdom is just wasted.

So what did I decide to take instead? I went fully down the stamina line, placing 8 points into the first section since wardens do not get any hp buffs at all (which sucks might I add), and I went all the way down to the end, which allowes the warden to become immune to stuns for 30 seconds, every 5 minutes. A lot of raids have mobs that stun, aoe or some times a bad frontal that you may have got caught in if the MT went down or were standing in the wrong place. I figured I’d give this line a try and see how it went. I also decided to go part way down the strength line, for my solo’ing days. I own a fabled 1h sword which is good for solo’ing with, and have 20% double attack, as well as 26% haste attack, and a 450 point heal that can go off for the group with a 10% chance. Sounded pretty good to me. None of the other lines really appealed to me at all.

I love the idea of achievement points, veterans from eqlive (eq1) remember these as aa’s (alternative advancement) and they give your character a small amount of customization. Problem is, you don’t really get a chance to play around with them. If you want to respec (re-do) your ap line, you have to pay. Each time you want to do it the cost goes up. This time, I paid 1p for Silverstep to respec. If she chooses to do it again, the cost is 10p. There’s no way I am ever going to pay that amount to respec. So I’m hoping that if I don’t like this chain of skills, November’s expansion pack will give players a free respec. I don’t think the cost is fair, I think that if you have kept the same ap line for a certain amount of time, the cost should go down. Say in three months if you have kept the same line, the cost goes back to the original price of 1s or whatever it is. There’s no way you can play around with every combination to find the one that suits you. On the same line, if you change from a raider to a casual player, or vice versa, your ap lines would typically change, and you may not be able to afford to change them.

The cap right now for ap’s is 50, you can have no more then that. I’m looking forward to November, when apparently the cap will be raised to 100, with the Gods coming to Norrath. We’ll have to see, it’s a lot of speculation on my end about what these will be like.

Stargrace goes soul shredding, and it’s the end of the world

stargrace September 13, 2006 No Comments

The above image is Stargrace on her carpet, running through the Feerrott. She’s not actually standing on anything besides the regular ground… when suddenly the backdrop disappeared and was replaced by the night time sky…. so it looks as though she was literally running off of the edge of the world and into the sky. Of course once I passed through the regular backdrop of the Feerrott came back, but it was amusing none the less.

My two ‘mains’ have joined a new home, a semi-casual friendly guild where I can raid if I feel so inclined, but am not pressured to raid. 4 days a week, nights, so it doesn’t interfere with any of my real life schedule. No Saturdays or Sundays which I love. Monday we raided HoS and also did a fast two group courts run for status. I love that little raid what a great way to gear up some alts. I had wanted to bring the coercer, unfortunately not enough healers were around so I brought the warden. Coercer also managed to get level 65 (finally) last night, after solo’ing on gazer island in TT. The mobs were green and blue solo, so I would charm one, and run around the back portion of the island gathering provisioning supplies, I was almost completely out. By the end of the night, 15% exp later, I had dinged 65, made a few gold, and had my bags completely full of supplies which was very pleasing. Xegonberry is not even for sale on the evil side, and I had none. Of course almost every single recipe I have uses it.

Stargrace also finished off the soul shredding quest from the Cave of Fear in the Feerrott. I learned a very valuable lesson doing that quest, and it also explained why Silverstep had some difficulties. The first two times I tried to shred souls in Maj’Dul, I was promptly agro’d and had no clue why. Could the shredder be resisted? I scrolled back to my combat window, which I typically only have up on raids. Low and behold. shredding souls counts as a hostile action, and a good portion of my coercers gear has random damage proc’s that go off if you perform a hostile action. So every time I used the blasted thing I had a 50% chance of one of my random damage spells going off and smacking the mob I was trying to steal souls from. Lesson learned, which is why in the screen shot, Stargrace is running around Freeport naked, insuring that none of her gear would ‘accidentally’ proc on one of those nice red epicx4 guards.