February 2007

Wrapping my head Around Crafting

stargrace February 11, 2007 6 Comments

Attempted crafting, again, and got the hang of it. Almost. Until I looked at these recipes I was getting for finished products, and realized that I don’t know what the heck a ‘charlatan’s just bolt’ is. So I decided to nose around some and try to figure it out. Apparently there are special items you can buy from a goods merchant that you can use during refining, and imbue (so to speak) magical properties into the base products. However, they don’t tell you what makes what.. so to test it, I bought wisdom. It costs 2s each, expensive. Combining it allowed me to make a mystic’s jute bolt. I have no idea what the rest are stat wise, but then I can take all of those, and make that one item.Confusing! Complicated! Expensive! At least it’s expensive for me, if I look at each piece costing 2s + utilities each. I don’t even know how to make just a plain simple Jute bolt yet…. Anyone know of any crafting guides out there? Specifically for outfitter if possible. I tried doing some work orders as well, but ran out of harvested items fast. I’ll have to gather more before I attempt any more. I did get to level 4 though! Small accomplishments are always nice.

 I finally wrapped my head around diplomacy enough so that I feel fairly comfortable with it. My only issue now, is knowing what cards to use before I engage in it. How do I know if it’s a gossip conversation or any other type first? Other then that, it’s not going too poorly.

I still wish the game mechanics were better. I’m typing /flush every few minutes, been dropped randomly from the game, and horrible spurts of lag. I like it when I’m out in open places though. Harvesting as an outfitter is also much easier then my artificer. I love being able to skin my kills.

Vgplayers.com – oh how I love you

stargrace February 9, 2007 1 Comment

A partial screen shot from http://www.vgplayers.com

One thing I loved about eq2 (when they finally implemented it) was their leader boards. I like to keep track of my characters, see where they’ve been, where they got their levels, where they are in comparison to everyone else on their server and even world wide. It’s fun, and gives me little baby goals.

So I was very happy to see it carried over to Vanguard, and done so very well. I looked up my character Tashina just to see what things looked like. The blog, is an awesome idea. It auto-updates every time your character does something of significance, such as hitting level 5, or 10, discovering an item. The portraits are a neat feature that let you update from in game as well. It would be great to see more of these sorts of forums set up for other MMO’s, I’m pretty sure WoW doesn’t have anything at all like that.

I started a new bloodmage, level 5 so far and I may have stumbled into my new favorite class. They use blood points, basically every offensive attack you do has a reward of blood points. When you cast a heal after accumulating some of these points, the base heal gains a bonus. It strikes me as a combination between healer and necromancer. I eat some of my health to cast a dot, then heat the mobs health and regain some of my own as a heal. Very fun to say the least. They also wear cloth, making them slightly weaker then the other healer types who mainly wear leather chain or plate, but their abilities more then compensate for this.

Stuck on you… literally

stargrace February 9, 2007 2 Comments

Tashina, level 6 necromancer, stuck on a chair

Encountered my first stuck character issue last night, there’s a little blue chair in front of me while I’m talking to this quest npc, even though it doesn’t look like I’m really that close to it, I found (after trying to wiggle around) that I couldn’t, I’d some how latched myself onto the dang thing! Thankfully there is a /stuck command, and a /stuck yes confirmation command. They take notes on where you get stuck and (hopefully) fix it some time in the future. A minute or so later and I was ported to a safe(r) location to continue my adventuring.

The way mobs display their difficulty is some what new to me, and confusing. It works through a method of coloured dots. I haven’t seen anything higher then two dots yet, and I can handle those that are two levels higher then me and yellow, so I assume those are still solo mobs. I know the colours work pretty much the same way they do in any MMO, blue is lower then you, white is even, yellow is moderate difficulty, and red is dangerous to attempt. The dots throw me off though.

Necromancer is quite fun. There are of course some bugs. On occasion my pet will fall through the world and I’ll lose him. Some times (often) the mobs he’s fighting will fall through the world. I can’t see if he has any buffs on him nor do I even know if I can actually buff him, I can cast the spell but no icon flashes over his head.

Battle is pretty much the same as any other game with necromancers. You kill over time, with powerful dots. I have three dots now, one direct damage spell, and a fear. I’m still only level 6, but I did get to 25 diplomacy before I encountered one I can’t quite beat yet. I seem to have a general grasp on the game, but it’s hard to explain, it’s really one of those things you have to learn and read about on your own. There are some good tutorials out there though.

Also got myself some diplomacy gear, though you don’t get any special bags or anything to keep the spare stuff in, so that’s a little annoying. I finally understand what it means when you try to engage in diplomacy and get the message that it requires a certain amount of presence with the people before you can talk to them.

Now if only the graphic engines ran some what better..