March 2007

Weekends are for raiding.. and questing.. and friends.. and instances.. and

stargrace March 26, 2007 1Comment

The Entrance to Freethinkers Hideout

This weekend was a mixture of raids, instances, quests, and various other pleasures of EQII. I raided yesterday again, nice calm raids that are always a lot of fun, Lyceum and Labs. Both went flawlessly. Before raids, I was trying to get the tunare orb quest completed that both Dasie (the templar) and Stargrace (the illusionist) have. The quest however is a lot longer then I recall it being. I did get the obelisk portion done though, I had wanted to complete it before raids and that didn’t end up working out, but I did get a few steps done, progress is progress after all. The illusionist also managed to get to 96 aa’s between working that quest, and then later (much later) that night, doing an unrest group. She’d never been before, I’ve only ever gone with the templar, so it was a pretty fun experience.

Died twice, both in the same hallway due to buggy mobs that pull through the walls. It doesn’t seem to matter what MMO I play, that’s always an issue. Well, died to Bugaboo as well at the end, but I was not expecting anything less – although – I did hit him for 400 points of damage. Before he hit me, for 13,000. Not fair! The loots were pretty lame too, the plasma wand (which I have yet to see) of course did not drop, nor did the fabled cloak at the end, and both the set pieces of gear were shadowknight pieces. Which, was of course great for the main tank, and eww for the rest of us (side note, the shadowknight / paladin legendary pieces are silver, which is just girlie! Haha. Poor shadowknights). Still a fun run though. I was on vent for the group and basically just played it as background noise, concentrating on dps performance. Speaking of which, illusionists are wonderful dps and don’t ever let anyone say other wise. On the KoS raids I parse typically anywhere from 1,000-1,600 and on some named fights parse 1,800 if they’re the ones who are melee resistant. It’s all about the procs. There’s pleanty of proc gear out there that I don’t have, but in the mean time the pieces I do have work nicely. I love my dps group, it’s a fury (int buffs, vim etc and wonderfully fast group heals), a wizard (again, their group proc spell rocks) a troubador (who is just amazing in a mage group), a brigand so that I can dps buff them with my buffs, and typically either a summoner class of some sort (necro or conj) or a second wizard depending on who is available.

Game Update 33 goes in this Wednesday. Which means I should idealistically finish off the Sword of Destiny quest series (the pieces that have been released) so that I’m up to date and not rushing with a bunch of other people to complete it. Whether or not I’ll actually get around to it, I’m not sure yet. I have been trying to work on claymore for the illusionist, she’s on the last quest in SoS. The templar…. still has not started. Sighs. I’m not looking forward to it. The illusionist could actually get by very well not even doing the quest, the end reward is not that great for mages, but the templar could use it for sure. It’s one of those must-haves for healers.

Crafting has been slow, but I’m looking to pick it up a bit. I need 5 levels on both the woodworker and the sage. Nice quiet afternoon projects to do between house work and the other mundane tasks of every day life.

Freethinkers, Castle Mistmoore, and a whole lot of deaths

stargrace March 24, 2007 1Comment

Aww, what a cute couple…

Headed off to Castle Mistmoore last night with a pick up group none the less. Something almost unheard of by me, I hate PuG’s, and that zone is awful for them. I had done Freethinkers about 30 minutes earlier though, and was not quite in the mood to call it a night yet. I’m glad I decided to go. Since TK has fallen (for the most part) I’ve been trying to get a feel for other groups and guilds, trying to find a new home. It’s always nice to actually get out there and play in order to do that. The two groups consisted of a few banished, myself and Ymirr from TK, and some random folks (such as Zepp pictured above). The zone typically lags people. We had a bard who kept going LD on us, and adds, always lots of adds. Typically people would lag into them (For once, I have absolutely zero lag in this zone since I’ve gotten the new computer, I adore it) and before you know it, there are 10 more adds. The epics in the zone also hurt, in fact, they hurt bad. We had no shaman, which would have made a world of difference. I’m leveling mine up, the defiler that is. There seems to be a small demand for them and I’ve never played one end game, only the templar and the fury.

Freethinkers was fun. There are ‘tricks’ to the zone that are getting fixed shortly with the tinkered mem-wipe item. A lot of legendary dropped, upgrades and even nicer then some fabled. Go figure. Parsed fairly low since I was on mem-wipe patrol and there were timers going off and all the rest. Still managed around 1,000-1,200 though. Trying to make a few adornments to help out. The fury has been neglected since it seems the entire server went off and created them. I use her to port the illusionist around, and other then that.. not much else.

Hopefully I can wiggle my way into a few more raids. I haven’t gotten a stitch of gear as upgrades, but it’s not that much of an issue for me. When I’m playing the templar I’m a little more aware of my lack of gear due to the simple fact that she’s wearing T7 legendary and T6 fabled. Gear does NOT make the player though, I am a firm believer in that. I’ll take a templar MT healer who’s paying attention over a fully fabled one who couldn’t find their heal button if it was stapled to their ass any day. Trust me, there are a lot of those out there just because templars have a pure HP buff, Sanctuary, and other “pretties” that make them desirable in a MT group.

Despite paying almost 50g in repair bills, yesterday was fun.

Brief Update

stargrace March 23, 2007 2Comments

Just a brief update today, yesterday the site hit it’s highest hits-per-day yet, at a little over 1700. I’ve been averaging 1000-1200 a day, which is pretty nice. Most of the hits are for the relic list that I have posted, as well as the claymore quests. Though once someone did type in “EQII breasts” to get the site. As well as “Blow Jobs”….. not that I’ve ever talked about either of those until this second. The only down side to having so many alts is trying to find them all a home. I’m feeling the stings of a depleted guild slightly, there are 5-6 of us who play on occasion still in TK, though there is more like 3 of us who play consistently. It makes for a lonely game. My own fault, I’m picky with who my friends are. I hate having to teach someone how to play their class and I have a high standard. Oh well.

Moody today and it shows. Restless with all the characters. I did some T6 instance runs real fast to see if a master or two would drop (which they did not, of course) and acquired some  transmutables. Crafted a little, worked on tinkering a little. Was invited to a HoS raid and declined, just wasn’t in the mood to do a raid with a bunch of new people. I decided after some comments from Gaff that I’d trade in the fae guardian for a fae zerker, and Flirt was re-born. I got both the zerker and the troubador to level 5, and level 10 in crafting. The zerker will be (hopefully) making her own armour, and the troubador will be making furniture. I played around in the fae’s baby zone, which is quite fun. I’ve done the quests a few times on my higher level characters just for the aa’s on turn in.

Other then that, nothing new to post. Haven’t been in game that much as there was some running around to do. Maybe I can snap out of this mood and be in better spirits tomorrow.

Back into the Fae

stargrace March 22, 2007 4Comments

Tulips, the newest addition

Worked transmuting to 285 yesterday, which means I can now transmute up to level 62 items for components, though I can still only physically make the items from 50-59 until I hit a skill of 300. I’m glad I’m getting it all done now, and I don’t want to ever have to do that again. I’ve spent 65 plat on the project thus far, and have been farming the T6/7 stuff myself from poets and random adventuring zones. Each combine still takes 11 adepts (roughly) so that’s a whole lot of money being spent when I get a skill up now roughly every 4-5 combines. Still, I’m one of those people who enjoy being able to do everything herself as far as gear goes and in the long run I think it will benefit me to be able to make my own adornments and components for adornments.

On that note, I decided it was time to expand my alt-ness and create some new gals to play around on. Not just adventuring but also in the crafting realm, in fact probably more so in the crafting realm then anything else, I wanted a carpenter and an armorer. So I made Tulips (above) my new fae troubador, and I also made Flirt, my new fae guardian. Wait. Did I just say I made a guardian? A tank class? Something must be wrong with me. That’s right, I decided to give it a whirl. Do I expect my guardian to actually get anywhere? No, not really. I can level her using my healers though and mentoring from the other account, and tanks lately have been in high demand, they sort of get screwed. You only need one or two tanks on a raid, but you need one in every single group (at least instances, perhaps not if you’re just doing solo stuff) so they level up fast, but then get forgotten when it comes to raiding. Healers are also needed and level up fast, but there is such an abundance of them lately that mine are rarely needed. I’d like to level up my mystic a little just to see what they’re like end game, since I already have the 70 templar and fury.

Some others on the server have noticed the sharp decline in population – not in the game in general because honestly I see plenty of people still playing, but on Lucan D’Lere a lot of people have been transfering. In some cases, it’s been a good thing, we’ve lost some server troublemakers that I am not sorry to see go. In other cases entire role play guilds have decided to move to the other server in search of a larger player base. I keep /feedbacking to see if perhaps SoE will offer free character transfers again because that is the only way I’ll be able to move. I am not about to pay $50 per character to move all 8 that I currently have and because I’m so keen on the whole ‘being self reliant’ aspect, I’d be heartbroken if I had to give any of them up.

Because both coercers and illusionists seem to be in some what of a high demand, I was contemplating creating a coercer on one account and leveling them up slowly, then I’d have my choice of coercer or illusionist, but erms, I think perhaps I was getting a wee bit carried away *grins*

I’ve been having fun in game at least (incase that’s hard to tell). It was difficult adjusting to the fact that my best friend stopped playing completely (and now is saying he’s not going to play Vanguard either) and that the guild is no more, but it’s not that difficult to find another little niche for myself. I’ve at least been raiding, questing, and well ok so I haven’t been crafting much besides transmuting but now that I can at least do the beginning of T6 I can get back to the regular crafters. Too much time on my hands? Of course, but everyone needs a hobby. Does it interfere with my real life (the little bit that I have) I don’t think so. I’m reading a great book by Tad Williams called Shadowmarch, and with Easter coming up there’s some family events to attend to (not that my family is overly religious but we do have a nice dinner). Got a new vacuum, granted that’s not exciting at all *grins* anyhow, enough of my boring life!

A whole lot of grinding

stargrace March 21, 2007 0Comment

Silverstep’s Weapon wall – well, former weapon wall

So yesterday I decided I’d dedicate myself to transmuting and see how far I could raise the skill on 50 plat. I hate the price of the adornments out there even though I know they’re quite reasonable for the amount of resources they take. For example, each T6 adornment (treasured mind you, not legendary or fabled which require even more) take at least 10 adept1’s or treasured gear plus the cost of fuel. That’s a whole heck of a lot of money. Not to mention not every combine gives a skill up. In fact, now that I’m sitting at a skill of 260 (which means I can make T6 adornments now, and can transmute items up to level 57) it seems that it’s every 3-4th combine that gives me a skill up. That’s roughly over 1,500 T6 adepts and treasured pieces of gear. When you’re level 70 that’s very difficult to get, though I do have a level 52, they’re in an uncomfortable stage, where it’s either too low or too high for them to achieve.

On the other hand, I am exceptionally happy that I got the skill that high in one day. Again, it did cost me 50p, but that’s what I’d allotted myself to spend and I knew from the start that it would be a costly endeavor. Since the guild has broken apart the remaining members are without a transmuter, and I offered to make what I could or to at least turn their adepts / treasured gear into supplies for them so that they could in turn find the proper crafters and have them made, instead of spending huge amounts of money on the broker for adornments. Are adornments even that important? Well, it’s a matter of perspective really. I know quite a few people who play just fine with none at all. However, it does help. The plus to stats are always nice with the new cap limit, the plus to spell damage is also very nice. I have some plus healing ones on the healers, and I’m looking to be able to make the + int ones.

So, any suggestions on how to farm T6 things? I know I can run poets a few times, the mobs are all green and the items are transmutable T6 stuff. That includes the no trade fabled items, so that’s always very nice. T7 at least will be easier for me, since I can just farm that myself, my own level. I can also run instances like nest and collect easy things to transmute to make into items. It’s going to be T6 that’s the “hell” level for me though. Already dreading it and I’m 10 points into it (I need another 40 points… ew.. )

On a side note, I live on the 11th floor of an apartment building, and last night at about 9:30pm the fire alarms started going off. I own a kitty as well, and typically bring her with me when the fire alarms go off, but it was -22c outside, and I didn’t see any smoke or hear anything unusual (the building is known for pranksters pulling the alarm) so rather then risk her to the freezing cold outside, I left her at home and me and Shadowgeist trucked our way into the chilly winter air. 30 minutes later they let us back into the building, no fire in sight. Ugh. Walked back up the 11 flights of stairs because the elevators of course were packed with people also trying to get back to their houses. Needless today, my legs are sore from walking up and down those stairs. A woman outside had her kitty tucked into her jacket (mine would never tolerate that) so next time I’ll pack her up and take her to the car in the garage, at least then I’m not worrying over her being in the building still and she can stay warm. How’s that for excitement. I’d have rather just played EQII.