August 1, 2007

New GU37 House items are a big Hit

 

Working on Misako’s home, slowly. Managed to finish up the bar area close to the entrance

So my first impressions of GU37 went quite well. Of course I spent the majority of the time locked in a crafting instance frantically creating all of the new pretties that are available, but hey I’ll get to the rest eventually. I can’t pin point a favorite item quite yet. In the image above of course is the new (small version) vale bar. I have a hanging potted plant along with one of the new hanging mine lamps. There are some Faydark wooden stools lining it, along with of course my market board. I’m planning on adding another lamp to the other side (closer to the board) so that the lighting is a little more even.

Besides the new house items, they’ve added some very handy commands. My favorite would have to be the new control command. When you’re moving any piece of furniture that would typically sit on the floor, you can hold down control, and using your mouse wheel, scroll the item vertically. What does this mean? Well, remember those hours and hours of building up items so you could place your loft floor just right? The new method allows items to “hang” in the air, without any support. Fantastic idea for building all those lofts, adding stairs, and numerous other creative ideas that I’m sure are incoming. I of course wasted no time in creating a loft in Misako’s home, a living area that I hope to work on eventually. I have been trying to find a method to her home decorating that won’t leave me feeling all flustered. I figure the best way to attempt this is to work one room at a time, forming lists of what I’d like to see crafted for the rooms and then of course slowly adding to those lists.

Close up behind the bar, complete with wine rack, roses, and some azurite chalice

It’s a very slow progress, but I’d like her home to be impressive. At least to me. I’ve been browsing through the Norrathian Homeshow trying to get ideas for the rest of the house. It’s also difficult at times because I do not want to hit my 500 item limit. I’m also trying to work around the 50,000 status I need weekly for up keep, by crafting some of the higher quality items that give a lot of status reduction. There are always a few quests Misako could stand to do as well to help lower the rent (such as the ship in a bottle from Thundering Steppes and the Idol of Everling).

Another change that went in that I love, is the alchemist one. There is a quest in Rivervale that will provide you with the means to change your lower tier dusts into higher level ones. Combine three lower tier dusts and it will produce 1 higher level dust + you’ll get one of the lower dusts back. I’m not sure how this will affect the market but it should be interesting. The T7 dusts (On the AB server at least) sell for anywhere from 10-20g each. They of course are the bi-product from adept3’s. With the ability to combine lower level dusts into higher level ones (thank goodness I bought out the market every chance I could.. I just wish we could batch produce these, it’s going to take forever!) there’s going to be a lesser demand on the original T7 ones. On the plus side, my characters who use potions like they’re going out of style (which is pretty much all of them) are going to find this an incredible thing to produce. I may try my hand at selling some more potions and poisons, and see how it goes. I imagine that alchemists are going to have their hands full trying to combine all these lower level dusts.

I have not checked out the world event yet (apparently located in QH and EFP) but I will today (if I can find the time between crafting!). Apparently the Freeport version of the quest did not reward a house item, or anything in fact. The Qeynos version rewards with a book you can place in your home. The event of course is in preparation for RoK which is only three months away from release now (the game is abuzz with anticipation). As I look around at the server, I’ve noticed a huge influx of people returning to the game. The lower level chats are all filled with people who are giving it another try, who want to be around for RoK, who heard that they’d (SoE) improved on a lot of things. It’s great to see, and I really thing SoE”s been doing fantastic lately. I realize some people are unhappy with the changes to agro (my poor Goudia lost a good bit from her songs that de-agro the group) but in my opinion it is stuff folks will work around and change with and adapt to. We’ll just have to see how it goes. I’m looking to get her to level 60 tonight as well. If I can tear myself away from the crafting and homes!