2007

Kylong Quests and all the Rest

stargrace November 18, 2007 1Comment

Some how the cat learned how to set the alarm this morning, Sunday. So it’s 6:30 am and I’m up. Not a big deal, went to bed early last night. Low and behold my server is actually down for a one hour patch. Little surprising. However, yesterday there was talk of a corrupt data base file that was preventing Antonia Bayle from being online without numerous issues. I’m hoping that this patch is addressing that. Yesterday the server was down for about two hours with huge issues trying to log in and endless hanging “receiving zone info” messages. Not good business for a Saturday on the most populated server in Eq2.

Yesterday I managed to finish off the Kylong plains quests and max my faction in Teren’s Grasp with both the warden and the troubador. Out of all the characters I’ve been playing since RoK released, I’m having the most fun on the bard by far. She’s close to 73, gaining lots of faction, quest items, upgrades and goodies along the way. Once I’d completed them I wanted to head to Fens of Nathsar and start my quests there. However, the lag was horrible. Three instances of the zone was up with 80+ people in each, and I could barely move without having it bounce me around and having all my combat skills taking 5x the normal amount of time to go off. Frustrating to say the least. Understandable, but still annoying. I’ve heard so many people complaining about various things that I’ve turned off the 70-79 channel just to avoid it.

I’ve been having a blast chattering away to Tipa on her various alts over the past few days. I have to admit I love the community that blogging has shown me. Kilanna is also around (though a little less then usual) and I enjoy our girl talks. Calreth has been busy in his guild, but from time to time he remembers the little people (grins). I also still poke Mrrx on the Bazaar server. Saylah hasn’t been around for a little bit, but I’m sure she’s doing fine and dandy. What a great community we have hmms? There’s of course a lot more bloggers, but those are the ones I keep in fairly good contact with on an almost daily basis. There’s always Cordanim as well (us canucks have to stick together) but he’s been having issues with his UI and hasn’t been in game too much yet. I think he’s playing WoW with a friend as well (even though his blog doesn’t reflect that, yet!).

I left Fens for Kunzar Jungle, and started questing there with Shadowgeist last night. Lots of orange mobs but with the burly shadowknight tanking things went down easily enough. I dropped my defense song for dove song since things were orange and I hate resists, you’d be surprised, the song makes a difference at such a high level. I get annoyed with people who don’t play bards and who ask me to drop certain things for them and play other things. Like the one dps in the mage group who wants haste when I have 0 concentration slots left (different now that I have 1 free one from my self buff, although I used to drop my self buff anyhow on raids for extra buffs). I dislike that the majority of Antonia Bayle considers bards to be the “auto follow” class, where there’s no work involved and you can simply play one on auto follow. Bards are fantastic. Bards who know how to play their class are amazing. I know the top bards on my server, and know why they enjoy their class. I just wish other people gave ’em a chance a little more often. We’re not buff bots, and played right (troubador at least) can easily lock down adds with mez, take one add out of combat with a short duration charm, increase the dps of a group significantly as well as numerous other stats. Anyhow, enough of my ranting, it’s time to play!

Troubador Goodness

stargrace November 16, 2007 5Comments

Ok. I feel like a dork, I admit that right now. Yesterday I couldn’t settle on what I wanted to do. I’m trying not to play Arysh (warden) too much because I’d like her to quest with Shadowgeist (understandable) so I try to sit her aside during the days. I was working on Faydai’s Watch faction in the Fens so that she could vendor buy her 70-75 advanced sage books, but 190+ quests was not what I was looking for. I’d rather adventure the faction in that case. Stargrace, Goudia, and Misako all were having small issues solo’ing in Kylong plains. Things hurt. Even though Stargrace is fable geared, Goudia and Misako were not. I’d been having a far easier time with my healers then any other class lately, I remember it being that way for previous expansions as well. As long as I could heal, it was great.

However.

Then I read a reply from Tipa about her kite method with her troubador.

Well. I’d never really solo’d with the troubador before. I’ve always grouped. So I had no idea how to solo. I also don’t have any melee classes aside from a 52 ranger (used to be assassin) and even my illusionist rarely solo’d her way up. So I decided to give it a shot. I changed my hotbars around to reflect what I thought would be best for kiting. Figured the best bet would be for me to start with a snare, run backwards (Goudia has 15% in combat movement speed… go-go ratongas) and along the way cast my two big nukes first. Then debuff debuff debuff (and procs go off at the same time) as I move backwards a little more. The joys of songs, can cast while moving. Get my bow attacks in there at the same time, and by the time the mob even made it to me, they were typically at 60-50% health and already debuffed. It was great. Amazing in fact. Why did I not figure this out sooner! I could easily melee them down with cheap shot and the rest of my spells while they barely ever got me to 80% health. Rarely used any power, since troubadors now have an extra concentration slot (thank you for changing our self buffs! Those are important to us!) I played my + defense song for once, and my + health regen song. I also keep my str / sta song, power regen (though I suppose I could drop that actually.. there’s nothing else I really want to replace it with though) aria because that’s my life and blood as far as spell procs go. I suppose I could drop power regen while solo’ing and run my haste song too even.

So last night I spent the evening running around Kylong Plains 3 (50 people?! I’m there!) and snaring / kiting to my little hearts content. Get an add? No problem, the troubador mez’s mobs, for the same duration as my illusionist. Need to get back to the docks? Jesters and evac. It’s great. Looking for a specific encounter that I just simply can’t find? Well that’s what track is for. What’s more, Goudia is a was a maxed out tinkerer. So she’s got rez’s under control too, she’s even got feign death. When I mange to spend some time working her tinkering (and once I figure out where the new recipes are sold.. ugh) she’ll also have the reversed Call of The Hero that’ll summon me to my target. Fantastic.

She was wearing legendary EoF gear and treasured jewelry mixed in with some legendary, and I’ve replaced a few pieces already. She had a very poor neck piece (never did MoA on her) so I replaced that right away with some treasured from the docks. I was heavily int spec’d but her agi was so low it was giving me issues. So now she’s sitting at 453 str 615 int and 389 agi which is about where I wanted her, with 315 stam. 6.2k hp help me stay alive a little bit longer, and her power is almost 6k which is far better then it was. I think she was hovering around 290 agi and it was hurting. Even though troubadors get their power from both agi and int, her int was just fine and I really needed that extra agi. Since she does not melee that much as opposed to spell casting (6 pages of spells vs. 3 pages of combat arts) I think staying above 400 str and aiming for higher agi / int is going to be a good combo. I’ve also been working on getting + spell dmg pieces of gear, and even have a few + combat art pieces that were upgrades. At this rate, I may just stick with her as my ‘main for rok’ since I’m enjoying it so much, it’s actually the first time in a long time I felt a definite pull to a class.

So a huge thank you to Tipa for mentioning the kite thing, not sure why I never picked up on that before. RoK zones are perfect for this, I love it. Lots of wide open space to run all over the place. Goudia was not at max aa yet when RoK released, she was sitting at 95, last night I managed to quest up to Brakthyr’s Post, and am at 99aa and level 71, 20% into it. My vitality is actually going up faster then I ever use it since I’m doing mostly quest turn ins, but I’m not complaining. I do realize that group content has taken a serious hit and people are upset over the lack of experience it warrants any more, but I’m pretty sure if it gets ‘fixed’ they’ll just reduce the experience you get for the solo content, and I don’t really want that to happen. I’ve always noticed that to balance something EQ2 tones something down (nerfs) where as (typically) in WoW, in order to balance something, they boost something up (when I played at least, I know that may not be the case any more). I’ve been trying to get as much of the solo exp as I can before any impending nerfs changes that I’m sure are only a few patches away.

Billy dolls, faction quests, and more faction quests

stargrace November 15, 2007 7Comments

Who doesn’t want to be a billy doll, reward from the 4 year /claim and when you don’t want to be a billy doll, you can shrink yourself by 40% with the item and /hide it. Works wonderfully. Arysh quested in Kylong plains most of the day yesterday and I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s too much fishing required. Fishing is quite possibly the only skill I’ve never worked on with any character. I’ve stumbled into two quests that require it so far with chains after them that I can’t complete because ew. Who wants to fish.

On the flip side of that. I had read and was understood in beta that you could still complete some faction quests as a crafter, and even get your sokokar if you were not a high level adventurer. So I decided to put it to the test. The dock-side quests for crafters went off without a hitch, my 57 necromancer (70 sage) received her sokokar with no issues.

However.

Then she managed to snag the quest from Greenblentus in Teren’s Grasp called “New Lands, New Profits”. It gives you faction (on completion) for both of the major (there are more, I know) faction in the Fens of Nathsar, turning them non-agro. The issue is, that to complete this quest, you have to run around in the fens. I’m 57, believing this was an alternate rout for me to complete the faction I needed to at least be non-agro to the watch, so I can start faction writs. At 57 running past the agro guards of the watch is not easy. I did manage to fandangle my way up there, and grab the sokokar post at the same time. I got my quest update, a little crate on the right hand side JUST before you enter the gates of the watch.

The next update? Along the banks of the river just East of Rillis. I’m screwed. Not only does everyone in Rillis want to eat me for breakfast (dang gnomes!) but the country side is filled with mean nasties as well. I tried to find this box on Arysh, since she’s done the adventure portions and is no longer agro, but I couldn’t find the crate I needed.

After this, two more crates. They probably want me to travel to the center of some other agro city.

So how am I going to try to get around this? Well, thankfully, killing one sort of iksar will make the sarnak at the watch non-agro to me. So I’m going to have Shadowgeist smush one for me. The next issue? I have no idea if I can get the writs as a level 70 crafter – I think – that they start at 72. I don’t mind leveling. And why am I going through all this trouble to begin with?

The advanced sage books are going from anywhere of 1-5p on my server. This faction will let me buy them for 10g and some change each. The books are no trade, so you have to faction for them yourself. As a 57 necromancer, thankfully I can still group with 72’s, but the quests for faction (adventurers) are level 68+ and I can’t do them. I understand that the game is a mixture of crafting and adventuring, and it is sort of exciting getting hit for 15,000 as a lowbie wandering around. I’m basically just trying to avoid a price gouge on books since I’m already paying one on raw materials not to mention fuel.

So RoK is very much all about the faction. I like that aspect of it though, makes things pretty exciting.

Rise of Kunark – First day is always the Best

stargrace November 14, 2007 1Comment

Well, as pictured above, I was quite busy once I managed to get into game yesterday with the release of EQ2’s newest expansion. I made a vow not to rush things (and I didn’t). I saw groups running off right away to grind levels and be number one at everything they did. I knew from the start I didn’t want to hang around Kylong Plains because, well, everyone was going to be there. Just like real life, I’m not fond of crowds in game either. So Shadowgeist and I teamed up with Gothun (I was playing Arysh, the warden) and we did our sokokar quests, then left for the brighter questing areas of Fens of Nathsar. Instead of grinding, we worked on solo faction quests. Difficult solo ones at that, thank goodness we had some what of a group / trio. We quickly worked our way to +17,000 with the Watch (located just up the ramp to the left as you zone into Fens from Kylong) and low and behold, the quartermaster talked to me. He wouldn’t sell me his +40,000 faction legendary items, but he did let me purchase all of the no-trade advanced crafting books. I bought them all (at a 3g loss each time) for the discovery, and split the purchases between Shadowgeist and myself so that discoveries were spread around.

I’ve replaced quite a few of my old EoF items with treasured RoK items. Nothing especially fancy dropped, there were shinies all over, disco’d 12 other items besides the crafting books just wandering around and working on quests. A treasured pair of boots replaced the fabled ones I got from Chel’Drak, and a new belt replaced the one from Unrest. In some ways it was sad to see it go, I worked so hard for those items, and after a few solo quests, they were replaced. I remember the first time I killed Chel’Drak, I even blogged about it here. Of course, I was expecting it. That’s what happens when a new tier is released.

I didn’t want to quest too far ahead of Shadowgeist, so today I played some with Stargrace, the illusionist. Things hurt on a whole different level when you’re solo’ing. She had issues taking down some of the blue solo for random Kylong quests, but also got a lot of upgrades. I left Arysh 50% to level 72, and 105aa from her meanderings, Stargrace is almost 71, with 102aa. Money is in abundance, that’s for sure. I walked away with an extra 4p from quest rewards on each character, not to mention the items I placed on broker. People are going nuts for crafting resources (AB already had an 80 sage this afternoon as I was listening to channels) and I’m storing all mine for the few quiet moments I have to myself. I think the provisioner will be one of the first characters I level up. Scribed her level 70 book, and got 11 new recipes. That astounded me. I’m used to getting my four recipes a level, it’s been that way for quite some time. So it was nice to see a little love.

More updates tomorrow of course. For now I’m hoping to just find a little niche as Kylong Plains 4-5-6 open up and let the masses through.

Rise of Kunark Eye Candy

stargrace November 13, 2007 2Comments

The Fens of Nathsar and all their glory

Kunzar jungle, a dangerous patroller over head