March 2007

The Sage of Ages and to Speak as a Dragon, old friends revisited

stargrace March 31, 2007 No Comments

Stargrace in the Maiden’s Gulch, visiting an old friend

It’s been a while since I’ve needed the Sage of Ages for anything, but last night after the Freethinkers Hideout raid I attended a few friends of the guild I was with asked for help with a MG run (Maiden’s Gulch) so I volunteered to help out. The zone is quite simple, especially when you have two groups of level 70’s mentored down to 48. 48 is the level you would have originally had to do the quest at, and I remember it being pretty tough for T5 at the time. The zone has only one encounter, a group of drakes, a named in there with an elemental dot. Since we were mentored the named was yellow, and dropped a metal chest with a dagger, grats to whomever won that.

The sage himself is located at the back of the tiny zone, hailing him presents you with the beginning of to speak as a dragon, where he sends you to visit Nagafen down in Sol. Eye. Of course Nagafen won’t speak to you, as the kind giant standing beside them tells you (and you’ve gotta speak giant as well). So typically off you head to the Sage in Antonica, who then sends you all over Norrath (old world Norrath, none of the new zones) to collect 20 runes. Completing this quest not only allows you to progress the prismatic 1.0 series (if you so wish) but also allows you to speak draconic which is needed for DT access, as well as Claymore (the last quest in SoS, to read the runes on the floor). It’s one quest that’s spanned pretty much every expansion, and one of the few “old world” quests that I hear people doing some what consistently just because it is used in multiple quests. I actually wish more quests were like this. No, I do not enjoy running all over looking for 50 statues in old world zones like the Sword of Destiny chain is having people do, but I do enjoy newer quests that require you to have completed some significant quest in the past. It motivates people to continue doing those quests to begin with.

Before the Sword of Destiny series was released in parts, there was huge speculation that it would require you to have both prismatic 1.0, Godking, and Claymore completed. A lot thought this would be completely unreasonable, but I think it was a pleasant idea. Granted, there’s almost no way for the lore to work out encompassing so many expansions and level ranges, but it was a nice idea to me none the less. I know a lot of people are more pleased to hear that this is not true any how, you don’t need all the previous quests done in order to progress it. In my eyes it’s still nice to have people visiting those rare (and lengthly!) quests from the past. I miss the T5 dragon raids in Feerrott, for the prismatic 1.0 quests, and the one in Antonica, and Fallen Gate. The days of King Drayek raids and the Vision of Vox contested in Permafrost. Ah, things change so much.

It’s the little things that count

stargrace March 30, 2007 1 Comment

Silverstep (or is it Stargrace?) looking out into the Silent City

The zone pictured above is probably one of my very favorite zones, Silent City. I also adore the Living Tombs and they’re rarely ever populated any more. These zones were used mostly to complete one of the nicest weapon quests in game (for healers, this is still the most widely used weapon if you were around when DoF came out), of course I’m talking about the Godking weapons. But like a lot of the lower tiered quests (large ones especially) very few people ever end up working on their godking weapons, or seeing any of the zones related to it. I think a lot more people would continue to work down the peacock chain of quests (long, much like the claymore series, and more then the prismatic 1.0 Darathar series) if they did a few key things. One would be to remove the ‘eyes’ you need to farm for entrance to the raid zone. The final quest sends you into the raid zone to defeat a big baddie like most quests do, this zone is locked and you have to farm multiple eyes from epics in the Silent City, that have a chance and dropping and don’t always drop. It’s a long tedious project. In fact in the past when my guild mentioned we were going to farm eyes for the night, about 50% of the guild would suddenly drop link from “thunderstorms” or “bad connections” or have an emergency suddenly sprout up, and I did not blame them at all. Farming eyes was not fun.

The whole peacock series itself though, is quite fun. There’s interesting lore behind it all, and you get to visit a lot of places, do a lot of timed quests. I still have vivid memories of running around Living Tombs on the timed parts, and collecting rotting food (which is the part my templar is still on). But there’s really no point in doing the quest if I don’t intend on finishing it. I wish more guilds worked the chain. I think the same thing about the prismatic 1.0 quests. How many people have seen Darathar on the island of refuge. I would say almost everyone level 70 who quests to any degree has probably started the prismatic 1.0 series by completing ‘To Speak as a Dragon” because the language quest is used in numerous other quests. It requires you to run around and collect various runes, and you get to make that oh so fun run to Nagafen’s lair.

I suppose when people are bored they may try to complete some of the older quest lines, but between the Claymore series and the Sword of Destiny series, and all of the new EoF quests out there… is there any real point?

Game update 33 goes live, and what’s up with guilds lately

stargrace March 29, 2007 No Comments

Silverstep, on her way to Unrest

First of all, I have to vent. I really hate how a lot of guilds are lately, in their treatment of non-guildies. One issue in specific, would have to be asking / letting someone join on a raid – only to tell them (or not tell them at all) that the raid is actually full, and they’re no longer needed. This is an issue that has happened to not only myself, but a few friends of mine, and not just one isolated incident, with one guild, but at least three, with three separate guilds. Mine typically goes along the lines of standing around waiting for a raid invite, then the raid zones in, uninvited, after being invited along. Which is the same thing that’s happened to a few other TK’ers. One even went so far as to sign up 12th for a raid, and was denied a spot on it. Not because they’re a horrible player, but simply because in the end ‘there was no room’, even if they registered and it was organized ahead of time that they’d be able to go.

I think my largest concern is that the guilds doing this do not even have the curtsey to SAY something to those involved, but leave them standing around watching the raid force zone in. I realize that organizing a raid is a difficult and time consuming thing. I realize running one means you’re constantly heading in ten directions at once, and things can get confusing, but what happened to having a little bit of humanity and taking some consideration for those who are dedicating their time (and efforts) to help out on said raids? It frustrates me to no end. I’m a good raider, and a good player. I’m not the best, there’s always better out there, but I’m adaptable and know my stuff. I wish I didn’t have to prove that to every single person out there and was given the benefit of the doubt. Anyhow, enough of that rant.

The game update 33 went in yesterday, and I absolutely love what they’ve done to macros. I don’t use a whole lot of them, but I do have macros for divine arbitration on the templar, as well as her sanctuary spell. In the past, these macros have never shown what the recast on the spell was, since you choose a separate icon to display it. Which meant that some where on another hotbar, I’d have to stick sanctuary and DA just so that I could watch the recast timer and know when it would be back up. Annoying, to say the least. I also have macros for my mez’s, depending on the situation. I don’t want to spam my groups with macros obviously. My +168 temporary int buff is also on a macro, as well as Savante, a 52 illusionist rare that reduces mana consumption by 56% for a limited amount of time. I’ll certainly be playing with the functions as time goes on and figuring out the best macro methods for me.

The next sword of destiny quest was also released. Not looking forward to that, I haven’t even completed the first two yet. Slacker, I know. I’ve had a lot on my plate lately both in game and out, so I’m moving a little slower. I finally got around to making food and drink, but other then that have not crafted. Transmuting I worked on slightly, but not a lot. My other smaller crafters have been fairly neglected, but I’m sure I’ll pick it back up. Still not much word yet on the incoming server transfers. I haven’t made up my mind yet about where to go (or whether to just stay). Yesterday morning was fun, just before servers came down I heard that the unicorn (level 60 epicx2) who paths around the Obelisk in LesserFaydark, was up. I poked a friend of mine and asked him if he wanted to duo it with me boxing the illusionist / fury. With only 15 minutes until down time it was a little pressed, but down she went (is the unicorn even a she? I’m not sure.. how do you check that?) and dropped a master chest. I was hoping for the cloak, but instead got a dagger which was of course no trade. I would have ran my assassin down to pick it up, except servers were about to go down in four minutes, so I rolled and won it, and transmuted it. I did get the rare mana component out of it so I suppose that’s better then nothing, but it would have been a pretty upgrade for the assassin (if I ever level her).

Tinkering supplies have been cut in half. I love it. There are also new tinkered adornments out there, mob drop recipes only, I haven’t seen one yet, I’d imagine they’re very expensive. Much like everything these days. With a lack of crafting and farming in general, my funds are slowly dwindling. Oh well, not as if there is that much for me to purchase out there anyhow.

.. and the plot thickens

stargrace March 28, 2007 5 Comments

As Posted by Gallenite here, pvp servers are merging, and pve servers, are getting free character transfers

Could it finally be that after all my ranting about lower populations on pretty much all servers, and specifically my own server, that the voices are being heard? The screen shot above is from a post on the EQII players forums, and it was welcome news to quite a few people. A move that is much needed. Not only are the pvp servers merging (and a free character transfer for those on the servers, incase you do not like your merge, of course from a pvp server you must remain on a pvp server and same goes for pve) but as point number three states, pve servers, will be allowed to transfer to other pve servers at no cost.

EQII has already had one free transfer in the first year of the game, I know because I moved then. Of course now I’m facing yet another dilemma because I’m finally getting into some smaller raids, and though I am not allowed to join my guild of choice, I am still having some fun. What’s to say that I won’t move to another server, and be back at square one, at least currently I am raiding. Basically it means I’ll have to do some research. On servers and guilds, and see what’s out there. Moving to another server (all of my characters) is not something to be taken lightly. Chances are their names are also already taken, so it means thinking of new ones, do I even want to go through that hassle. It could mean a new beginning. I could move to servers of fellow bloggers, where I at least would “know” in a manor of speaking, a few other players.

The few of us who are left in my old guild are contemplating moving, most of them hate the low population of LDL. The post does not specify whether or not there will be restrictions on moving. For example the first time that the transfers were available, you were not allowed to move to AB (the other RP server). I think this would deter a lot of role players from moving off of this server, if they were unable to move to the only other rp server out there (which has a very nice population). Personally, I’m not sure what I’ll do. It’s a lot to take in and a lot of decisions to make. I have friends here, but I do post often about how much the server lacks population. Are there pve merges incoming as well? Or just these free transfers? Again, I’m not sure. Because the post is mainly specified over pvp there wasn’t very much news on the pve worlds affected (pvp is player vs. player, incase someone is unsure, and pve is player vs. environment).

So that’s my news for today. It’s going to be very interesting to see how things go, whether or not I’ll take my 8 characters and move, where I’ll move to, what will happen to TK, and all the rest of it.

Too much plat spam and other ramblings

stargrace March 27, 2007 4 Comments

Stargrace and Silverstep, both working on the newest released quest, the sword of destiny

I’m not sure about any other servers out there, but mine has been bombarded it seems with tells for power leveling and selling platinum. Now, I don’t really care if people buy money. It’s a personal choice, breaking the rules or not. What I do mind, is the 3-4 tells I get from Xsdfjtidnmb advertising their site. I report every one of them. Not always because I hate people who buy plat, but just because they’re interrupting the game for me. The only way to avoid them is to go /role or /anon and I don’t believe that anyone should have to do that just to avoid the spam tells. It’s also a shame when I get all excited seeing my “you have mail” icon go off, rush to a mail box, only to find that it’s some gold selling site advertising their wears. My assumption for this sudden influx? They’re not making as much money as they used to. So they feel like they have to advertise more. When I played EQLive everyone knew where to go if you wanted to buy gold. It was like this secret that people rarely talked about but everyone had heard of it. I never once got a tell about it. Even in WoW I never received a tell about buying money for the game – though I did occasionally hear the messages being spammed over the channels.

In VG there’s a huge lock down on those who advertise selling money in game. I love it. They announce it to the server and all that good stuff. I wish EQII were the same way, but that’s just my grumpy opinion.

I have a few in-game dilemmas lately that I’m not sure how to handle. The largest one would be that although I have been welcome to raid with a specific guild, I am not allowed to join that guild. So while I play a needed class, and have been raiding constantly with them for the past two weeks, the leader says it would be a bad idea if I joined, and that I am not welcome to. It’s one thing to be a tag-along on a raid, but being an actual member of the guild is something all together different. I’m not concerned about loot at all, they use a dkp method that I am apart of, but lets say an actual guild member works up the class that I play. Or they find another class outside of guild. They will (obviously) get priority on raids because they carry the tag and I do not. It’s a case of “good enough for the raids, but not good enough for the guild” that I find really unfair. It’s understandable, because of a few other factors that I won’t get into here. I’ve been invited to tag along on some other raids, with another guild who is interested in me joining them, but I don’t feel quite as comfortable with them. That could change though I suppose. Hence my issue.

I’ve also been trying to decide which two characters to work on solidly. It’s difficult to work all three on the main quests that I have. I want to work on the sword of destiny before tomorrow’s game update comes out and they release another part. Doing the quest with all three characters though is a huge pain. Hell doing it with one is. Then there’s also my claymore and DT access quests. Neither the templar nor the illusionist have it though the fury is done both. Argh. The illusionist is at least almost at 100 aa, but the templar and even the fury are so far behind. Then of course there’s all the regular real life stuff going on that people have to deal with that’s not even game related. Feeling slightly stressed over everything.