May 2007

So you want to be a raider

stargrace May 31, 2007 6Comments

Dasie, originally named Qutey – Do you know who she’s standing next to?

There are numerous types of blogs out there about MMO’s. I say this because I spend an hour every day reading the ones that interest me, the ones of course that are linked down the right hand side of my site. There are the ones I like to call “news types”, that blog about who’s doing what within MMO companies and what’s going on with the dynamics of the games, and who play the games themselves but write very little about their actual adventures. Then there are those who blog about their actual adventures, specific quests, zones, characters. I admit right now, I am not one of those people who blog about the news of MMO’s. I know what’s upcoming because I read it else where. I write about my own personal experiences within the game and my observations outside of game. But I’ll never be one of those news blogs, and there’s nothing wrong with that.. I only mention this because someone decided to send me tells in game on a level 1 character that I’ll leave unnamed and speak down to me about my blog. I write the way I write, and if you don’t care for my style, well, quite frankly you can just bugger off.

Anyhow.

Tonight I’ll (hopefully) be doing Lyceum and Halls of Seeing, with The Inquisition on Antonia Bayle. They are not a hard core guild, but they do raid three times a week, and are making headway into EoF content. Today is their KoS day, which suits me just fine I’m always cautious raiding with a new group of people. Why am I cautious?

Well, raiding is a big deal. Ok, not a big deal, but it’s complicated. It’s not like your general group, you’re with 23 other people and the responsibilities shift based on your class. Every single player in a raid has their own personal part, and you have to do it, and you’re expected to do it well. If you don’t, it will be noticed. So this post will be some very basic, very easy hints and tips to raiding. I’m not trying to come off as a know it all or anything of the sort, but I have been raiding in EQII for quite some time now, and it never ceases to amaze me the amount of things people simply don’t know. Not because they’re stupid, but because no one’s taken the time to teach them how to raid. Yes, you do have to be taught to raid. The screen shot above is my templar standing by the Vision of Vox. Yes, she’s a templar wearing a dress, I think it was for the cold saves. The screen shot was taken in 2005. Vox is used for prismatic 1.0, which was “the thing” to do when you were level 50 and that was the level cap. Dasie got her prismatic scepter of the scale at level 45, with a guild on Najena called Allure. I have learned so much since those early days of raiding.

Number one, show up on time. You’d think this would be a very simple rule, but I can’t even count the number of times that key members are late. Yes, there is such a thing as real life, but if you are signed up for a raid then please at least have the curtsey to show up for the raid. Of course there are always exceptions, life happens, but if you’re just goofing around on an alt or something, you’re holding 23 people up. Try to be at your raid location 15 minutes ahead of time at least, so that the raid leader can invite you and start organizing their groups.

Number two, unless YOU are the raid leader, let them do their thing. It always astounded me the number of people who moan and complain and gripe about certain things in a raid – like group set ups. You may know better, but it is not your raid, and mouthing off in the raid channel about it during the raid is the wrong time to open up a discussion about how things are set up. Deal with the raid in the method it’s given to you, and then afterwards, request to speak to someone on how to make it better and improve on things. The raid leaders have enough to deal with already without 10 people screaming at them about how “such and such a thing” is done wrong. When you’re the raid leader then you can control the raid. If you’re a guest, remember that’s what you are, you’re a guest. If they ASK for suggestions and help, that is different.

Number three, show up prepared! Some more hard core guilds require you to keep certain pieces on you. These range from power regen potions, to critical hit potions, or symbols that are sold from the city merchant that let you avoid aoe’s. There’s any number of items that can help you prepare for a raid. The very basic of these though — mend. That’s right, showing up at the raid in 10% gear is not showing up prepared to raid. Show up with food and drink. Try to keep at least one repair kit on you at all times. Especially if you’re doing a pick up raid, there is no guarantee that they’re going to supply you with a mendor bot, or repair kits of their own. Find yourself a carpenter and keep one on you. Personally, I keep + wis or + int potions on my characters, as well as clarity potions. They’re not a requirement, but they will make you a better raider.

Number four, be patient. The raid is gathering. You showed up early. There’s still 10 people missing and it’s 15 minutes past the start time. Don’t start bouncing around asking when you’re going to start. Just sit tight, and be patient. The raid will start when it’s good and ready. You being upset about the start time is not going to hasten it along. AFTER the raid, talk to an officer or the raid leader and if you’re going to be raiding with the group on a constant basis, bring up the time issue. Ask or suggest what methods could insure that the raid starts on time. Be patient during the multiple AFK’s that will happen while you’re in the zone, and while loot is being handled out and discussed.

Which leads me to number five, if you are a guest, ask how loot is handled before you join the raid. Does the guild use DKP? Do you have any chance at loot at all or is it guild only? Is it NBG (need before greed) is it /random 100? Ask before the raid, before the leaders are flooded with other questions and yours is just another annoyance. There’s nothing wrong with asking. Communication and lack there of is always a huge thing especially in an MMO when you can’t see the people face to face. You have to talk to leaders and raiders alike, during the proper time periods of course. Don’t start spamming their raid channel with questions during the raid. Leave it for important messages and uncluttered.

Don’t get me wrong with this post, raids are certainly a lot of fun, and there’s a lot of time for fun and playfulness within one. You may not want to start laughing hysterically while you’re about to pull Mayong Mistmoore though over teamspeak, distracting people from doing their jobs. In the end, that’s what a raid is, it’s a group of people coming together and doing their jobs, and taking down named for pretties.

Know your class and upgrade what you can. Know your skills. Know how you benefit other people. If you see your resists are low and you’re afraid of getting creamed with AoE’s be sure to step back on a fight. Listen during the raid for hints and tricks on how you’re going to attempt specific encounters. EVERY guild does named encounters differently. Every time I’ve done Labs or Lyceum or Halls of Seeing, or even Freethinkers Hideout, the encounters are different. Some times just the pull is different, the positioning, the method of downing the mob. So be sure to listen to that sort of stuff. If you’re unsure of where to stand, look for people of your class, and stand with them. Mages, healers, fighters, scouts. Where are they clustered around. It’s just common sense, but it never hurts to be reminded.

During a raid, don’t take things personally. If someone screams that the healers are not doing their job, don’t start a huge debate on how you ARE in fact doing your job. YOU know what you’re capable of. Unless they are another healer, and telling you that you’re not doing your job. Then ask how you can improve. Ask for hints and tips on how to make the raid better. Most raids use parsers to indicate who is healing or who is dps’ing. Parsers and showing up at the top (for heals at least) are NOT the end all be all. It does not mean that the 4th healer is not doing their job — unless their heal parse is blank. THAT is when you worry. Or if AoE’s are going off and no AoE heals are being cast. That’s what heal parsers show. They don’t show who is the best, they show who is paying attention. Shaman are typically always first on those parses, just because of the way their heals work, it over writs everyone else’ heal out there since it’s damage prevention instead of actual hit point healing.

Anyhow, sorry for the rambling, in preparation for tonight’s raid I just wanted to go over the basics. What can I say, it’s been a while.

The Alt-Bandit Strikes Again

stargrace May 29, 2007 8Comments

Remember that warlock I made when the evil fae first came out? Well today she wanted to play

Restless. That’s how I am in game lately. It comes from a few factors, being bored of all my alts, restless in game with old content, and trying to wiggle around some and figure out what I want to do. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I envy those who have one “main” character, and no alts. I wish I could do that. I’ve tried, but it’s just not my style. So today I piddled around absentmindedly in game and barely did anything for the majority of the time. I did manage to get Tulips a level in her armoring, and damn is that an annoying craft.

I also spent 10p and bought two full sets of cobalt armor. Why? Well, my ranger is sitting at 48, and my dirge at 47, and they’re not going to be those levels forever. Eventually they will hit 52, and need something pretty to wear. So why buy it now? Cobalt armor was selling for 60g a piece. Cobalt clusters were selling fro 95g a piece. That doesn’t include the fee I’d have to pay someone to make it, since my armorer is sitting at uh well level 33. 60g was a great price for me to snag those pieces, especially with the mad influx of evil fae that are going to make their way slowly across all leveling fields. This is in fact the busiest I’ve ever seen Nektulos Forest.

So later on in the evening I brushed off Minxes, my warlock, and decided to delete her. I made her into an inquisitor. Why? I have no idea. I’ve never played one before, and with three T7 healers already, well, it’s not as though I needed another. I brought Goudia to Darklight Woods, she’s my exiled dirge. She has +13,000 with the city of Freeport, but that still leaves Neriak, Kelethin, and Qeynos all disliking her. I figured I’d try to see if the npc of Darklight give out their quests still — and they did.

So I mentored down to level 1, smacked a mob once, and it died instantly. Smacked a few more, got the inquisitor to level 7, and completed all of the lowbie quests on Goudia for some quest credit, then decided I didn’t want Minxes to be an inquisitor after all. So I deleted and remade her back into my origional warlock. Completed all of the level 1-7 quests (again) and managed to get her to level 10 within a relatively short period. I really do love Darklight Woods and all of the quests that can be found there. I really wish Antonica and Commonlands hosted the same sort / quality. Even the gear is far beyond what you can find in any of the “old school” starter zones.

I also managed to get the monk to level 19, and a few more quests under her belt. I was looking on EQ2players.com (a site I adore and use to snoop on people!) to figure out where I rated in the “quest scheme” of things. Stargrace (my “main”) is 33rd on most quests for Illusionists. The top few don’t even play any more. There is also a level 26 coercer (or maybe it’s an illusionist, I forget now.. I was checking both) who has 600+ quests under their belt. Wow. Now that’s impressive.

So my day in game was restless but fun none the less. I’m hoping this is just a phase and I’ll settle down as always. In the mean time, between my two accounts that leaves me with the following: 70 fury, 70 templar, 64 defiler, 19 monk, 10 warlock on one account, and 70 illusionist, 53 conjuror, 48 ranger, 47 dirge, 31 coercer, 7 berserker. I have room to make 2 characters on one account, and 1 on the other. Not that I’ve any intentions of making more alts.. yet.

One reason why I love my illusionist

stargrace May 29, 2007 2Comments

Stargrace, 70 illusionist 70 provisioner, stats while playing in Obelisk

The screen shot above is of my illusionist, while she’s playing in Obelisk. I wanted to try to get some templar boots last night, Dasie is going to be heading to Freethinkers Hideout tonight, and her boots suck, to put it bluntly. The best thing about that screen shot, is that I’m grouped with a shadowknight, and a templar, but that’s it. The templar had just cast Divine Recovery, which is one amazing aa they have. As you can tell by the spell casting speed, and the spell recovery speed, I well over the cap on one, and brushing the half way point on the other. This makes me a machine gun caster. I can do some fantastic dps with my illusionist, especially with her int sitting at 836, and if she’s below 30% power, which I rarely am, but I try to be. The enchanters do 30% more dps when they’re below 30% power.

It’s amusing since during raids everyone keeps trying to give my illusionist food and drink. I keep food and drink on me at all times, I’m a 70 provisioner after all. But I do raid with sprint on, to keep below the 30% mark. It sounds easy, but with a bard in my grp, and me having to keep my regen spell up for the other group members, it’s very hard. Takes some practice to be able to hover there.

I did a lyceum raid not too long ago with a guild that had a few extra slots. The raid went alright, the group set ups were completely weird to me though. I’ve been on a good amount of raids over the years, and this was the first one where the illusionist was in the main tank group. There was a coercer on the raid, level 70 as well, and they were put into the mage group. The tank asked for Time Compression, which doesn’t do that much except it does affect their taunts. It does not help with general CA’s though. I was still parsing 1-2-3 on the raid, in the main tank group on a raid with warlocks, wizards, necromancers, and conjurors, and not because I was parsing high, but because the dps was incredibly low.

There’s only one key thing you have to do on a raid that 70% of people who are ‘casual raiders’ seem to miss, and it’s pay attention. If you’re going AFK every four seconds or every few minutes, you’re not paying attention. If you’re in tells, or chattering away on channels, you’re not paying attention. I realize that there’s such a thing as real life, and people have children, but honestly that’s the one thing that bothers me beyond all else – when it’s raid time, dedicate the few hours you need to do the raid, and try to clear your time table for that. Everyone asks how they can raid better, how they can parse better. Pay attention, that’s all you need to do. Realize that you have spells that need to be cast in a particular order. Cast them in the right order, and keep casting them when they’re up, and you’ll do fine. Why do my healers do well? Because I pay attention, and not just to the main tank, but to the entire raid. People need to be cured, group heals need to go off, spot heals for other groups. If you have a necromancer who’s life burning, you need to heal them or they’re going to die. Why does my illusionist parse in the 1k-1.5k range without being in the mage group? Because I pay attention. Cast spells in order, remember to debuff. Wait for those dispatch messages, assist the proper person and don’t take frequent AFK’s.

Tonight’s raid should be interesting to say the least. I know the guild I’m going with has difficulty to begin with on this stuff. There was also a recent change to a tinker made item that used to let you mem-wipe constantly and prevent the 2nd named in Freethinkers from doing their script. It now has a 2 minute recast timer, and can’t be used as effectively for that use any more. Which means all those guilds who used to breeze by the encounter by mem-wiping, will have to do it the good ol “regular” way, off tanking all of the adds that spawn — or — hope that you have enough enchanters on your raid to mem-wipe the real way. I’m expecting to be naked once or twice with Dasie on this raid. She’s not exactly the best geared of my characters, in fact she does not have any fabled from KoS or EoF at all. She’s wearing legendary, has 6.3k power self buffed, and 7.3k HP. She has good saves though, and all of her spells are master quality, so I don’t think she’ll be a liability. We’ll just see how it goes.

10 (11) Things you need to know about Neriak

stargrace May 28, 2007 4Comments

The guild’s been busy, what can I say

I managed to get five more levels today on Ishbel, the coercer, sitting her comfortably at 30. She’s only been to three zones, the Darklight woods, the Wailing Caverns, and Fallen Gate. It leaves a lot of room for some discovery and questing later if I ever feel like it. I took Cordanim’s little Ratonga alt with me to Fallen Gate and we managed to get him three levels as well. It was a fairly quiet day none the less.

I decided to do an in depth look at Neriak, my site’s been getting a lot of hits for various things relating to the zone, and while I’ve been crafting I answer at least the same 10 questions every single day. So here they are:

1. Where can I do the citizenship quest for Neriak? Easy, Clerk V’Nox will start the Neriak Citizenship quest for you, at the house of Landlords. It’s just past The K’Nex Falls, in the Eastern section of the city.

2. Who will take my status items? Step to your nearest guard, and right click them. Then select find NPC. Type in guild status merchant, and they will mark your map with an X, it’s the same building as the guild registrar, in the dock area.

3. Where is the achievement respec NPC? Tria L’Blek will help you respec, she’s by the stables in the Western portion of the city — but again, the guards of Neriak are very helpful. Right click any one of them and do a find NPC for achievement. They’ll lead you in the right direction.

4. Is there a pet store some place in Neriak? Surprisingly enough, yes! Ch’hok Milk’Tokk just east of the House of Landlords will be pleased to sell you all the furry friends you could ever want. You can use a guard to locate them as well.

5. Where is the shinies collector of Neriak?! Phyra Zesmice, is the shiny collections person of Neriak, use a guard, or make your way to the docks, you’ll find them there.

6. Are there portals to TS and Nek in Neriak like there are for Qeynos and Freeport? Yes! You can purchase a ticket from an npc in the Dark Bargainer Hall, it will take you to TS or Nek, the spires though, not the docks. There is also a carpet to get to Sinking Sands located in Darlight Woods, at the fair.

7. Where can I find my class trainer, I’m lost! Again, just find a guard, and do a search for whatever your class is. They’ll point you to the trainers.

8. How can I use the teleport pads? Divton T’Szelyl at the entrance will give you a level 10 quest to use them. Be sure to mentor down for the completion in order to get that AA!

9. Where is the broker? Banker? Crafting stations? Again, use a guard! Anything that an NPC has as a title under their name, you can ask a guard about. For a general idea though, head to The Down Under, caves located in the Eastern section of the Dock Market area.

10. Are there writs offered for the people of Neriak? Yes! There are.. they’re level dependant though.. the level 10 range can find theirs at the Indigo Brotherhood. . . Level 60 seemed to be behind Darklight Palace. If you’re some other level range, just wander around the zone with your map open, you’ll see the orange flashing circle indicating a quest giver.

11. I’m from Neriak, but how do I get my call of Neriak spell and my set recall point spell? Check your spell book using the K key, and under the abilities category. You’re lucky, you’ll have it already if you’re already from Neriak.

As a side note, it’s very handy to get EQII Maps if you have not already. The points of interest marked on the map are priceless, and you’ll know your way around Neriak in no time.

Ishbel – 25 and counting

stargrace May 27, 2007 4Comments

Misako, Ishbel, and Ixxar, happily fishing in Darklight Woods

If you enjoy questing at all then you’re going to love Darklight Woods. There are at least 100 quests within the zone if you include the few that send you to Neriak. I feel sorry for those characters who start out on the island still. Their gear and quests are not nearly as entertaining as the ones in both Kelethin and Darklight Woods. The quest session yesterday was joined by Misako and Ixxar both who mentored the (at the time) level 7 coercer. Ixxar got about 6aa to his name, Misako managed to hit 75 of her own and 85% into her level. I’m in no rush with her lately (what else is new, when an alt has caught my fancy).

I am a bit ashamed at Misako’s clothing choice though, as you can see from the picture the coercer is sporting a nice white and grey/blue dres, the bruiser is decked out in some clothes that at least match, and then there’s poor Misako decked out in bright purple and green with blue tints and bright red oven mitts. Looks fetching doesn’t it? Well, ok not exactly.

I realize that to give players the option to colour their own gear would be a huge endeavor, and then we’d have issues of neon green and yellow outfits around Norrath, but dang, whoever came up with the idea for those pants to tuck INTO the characters shoes.. must be hurt. Badly. Aside from the bad colours and the interesting graphics, I’ve been making a nice amount of coin off of the lowbie adepts and gear that drops. In fact it’s selling very very well. I can make a few plat a day off of selling my little farmed items. Of course my level 25 coercer is still wearing level 1 gear, but well that’s the joys of being able to two box and move your character along at whatever pace you like. I don’t really need the gear on her, she’ll get some new stuff at 30-32, until then the level 1 stuff will suit her just fine. I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on items that she’s just going to out grow in a day or two.