2007

Housing and Sword of Destiny (again)

stargrace October 20, 2007 2Comments

I’ve already completed the Sword of Destiny quest chain up to the legendary on my templar Dasie, however since I’m playing Arysh hopefully as a constant for the next little while, I decided I should get it done on her as well. It was difficult enough the first time, I did not relish doing it for a second time after a majority of people have already completed it. Yesterday I spent the day collecting my 50 statues, which was not quite so bad. I had Gothun help for a few sections (New Tunaria and Mistmoore Catacombs) and had Shadowgeist and Calreth help me for a few other portions (Kaladim). I met up with a friendly troubador from Fated who helped me into an Acada instance to grab the one there, and in turn I let him into my Unrest instance. It worked out well. It took the majority of the day but I managed to get them all.

After turning them in, I was given my house item which of course I adore. It’s the little statue pictured above on the right hand side of the fire place by the guitar. I spent a lot of time decorating Arysh’ house once the GM’s had returned all of her items to me, eternally grateful of course for all their help.

Her library holds over 80 books, and there’s easily another 20 that I can add. I’m pushing the housing item limit though, so I’ll have to wait until Torrent Knights his level 30 before I can upgrade to a 5-room (Not eager to move back to Kelethin), or just hold out to see what housing is like in RoK. I think I’ve got 273 items, 352 actual at the moment. Some of the books I’ve got still count as house items since they’re pretty old, and of course there’s 33 lore and legend items that take up a chunk of housing space as well. I tried not to clutter the house, but still get all of my items placed inside of it.

Today is MMIS, but we’re going to be missing quite a few people so I’m not sure how it will go. With RoK so close to release it seems like fewer and fewer people are signing up for raids, and I’m a little cautious about what’s going to happen once the level cap goes up. I’ve heard some people saying their raids were cancelled because certain core members wanted to wander through Shard of Fear instead of partake in their raids, which does not sound promising. I expect with the expansion that for a short time there will of course be some upheaval since they’ll be expanding the levels.

Aside from MMIS, and of course the typical weekend adventures to the grocery store, I’m hoping to work on my SoD a little more. I’d like to at least get to the portion that requires me to head into Castle Mistmoore and hunt down pages as well as named. If I can get that far then I know I can managed at least getting the legendary version of the weapon. I don’t think I’ll be killing Mayong any time soon for the fabled, but hey, that’s at least a step in the right direction.

Shard of Fear

stargrace October 18, 2007 4Comments

With the GU39 being implemented yesterday, I of course (along with the majority of the server) found myself in the shard of fear. The zone is huge, and I loved that aspect of it. It’s one of the few out door dungeons EQ2 has. Not even sure if the others count since they’re raid zones and not dungeons (I’m thinking of the other one in the Feerrott, with those T5 epics that’s an out door zone). So for once I wasn’t doing an instance in a stuffy hallway or house or whatever. The entire thing is out doors. It reminded me both of the Feerrott, and the original Plane of Fear. There are three epicx2’s in the zone, The Dracolich, Agony, and of course Terror, who’s the boss of the zone. The majority of the zone is also orange con to a level 70, so that makes it some what difficult. There are some random quests in the zone, the puzzles were far easier then Unrest to figure out though. It’s a nice tide-over until RoK hits us in November. I did of course get naked from being smushed in there my first time through. I wouldn’t suggest heading in there unless you know your group, and know them well. It was fun none the less.

Last night also saw me heading into LoA (people still DO that zone?) no deaths, 2nd on the heal parse, not that I was keeping track, honestly. After that quick run through the raid made their way to Emerald Halls where we beat our heads against a wall for an hour or two. Or at least that’s exactly what it felt like. A bunch of people left after LoA so I swapped out my warden for the templar. Then we got another templar, so I swapped out for my bard since we were short a few. It’s really the down side to having so many high level alts. While I don’t mind swapping right now since none of them really need anything with RoK coming up, I am hoping to settle down some what once the expansion hits.

Cordanim is of course taking his break from EQ2 and playing WoW some, he’s also headed to France, lucky him! Gothun has been playing his assassin a lot lately which he enjoys, happy to hear. Calreth is of course doing crazy writs and crafting, still can’t believe he leveled so fast. One of my old friends from EQ1 may be coming to the game in November once RoK goes live, that’ll be nice, hopefully I can convince them to stay, and get another guilded into Torrent Knights (who hit level 26 last night woot!). Been chattering to both Albrta and Kilanna plenty as well, both wonderful ladies.

The cold weather is getting closer every day, and I’m absolutely loving it. It makes for nice lazy days crafting, watching the leaves change colours. Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, profit ui is the best EQ2 UI I’ve ever used, I just love it. They added a toggle yesterday that enables you to click a cure in your group window (as you’d typically do) and it will interrupt whatever spell you happen to be casting, and cast the cure. I love it. It’s fantastic. The new update to 4.0 was certainly worth it and I’d highly recommend this UI to anyone who happens to dislike default. It takes a little getting used to, but I doubt I’d ever go back now, especially with their online updater, so I don’t have to keep going to the eq2interface site in order to download my updates.

More updates later, tonight is HoS.. (people still do that zone too?!)

SoE Customer Service Comes Through Again

stargrace October 15, 2007 5Comments

I’ve made previous posts about my good experiences with the customer service on EQ2, and today was no exception. I’ve had to contact them about numerous things through petitions, from lost chests, to deleted characters, and name changes. I’ve always been answered in a timely manor, never more then a few hours for a reply. Sure, it may be a slight pain to have to use the browser window for a petition and fill out their forms, but no more so then having to fill out anything else. Plus, I know they record it and get it that way, it’s not getting lost anywhere. I can check the status at any time.

Anyhow.

Backstory: Five or Six months ago, I relinquished my house before actually moving anything out of it. A whole house filled with quested books (about 100 of them) deity quest rewards (the world event ones) expensive paintings (the 450,000 status ones of Freeport and Qeynos) some elaborate tradeskill machines, and 200 other items. I decided at the time, since I was not playing the character that often, that I didn’t care about those items. I was playing a different character and her house was just fine. Foolish of me, yes.

Today: Lately I’ve been playing the character. A lot. It’s Arysh in fact who lost all of her house items. I decided on a whim to see if there was any chance at all that the lost house items could be restored to me. Fully aware of the fact that I’d probably be told no. Not only due to the span of time I left between relinquishing and petitioning, but also because that would be 200+ items that would have to be searched for, as well as the fact that my character had since moved homes twice, her character name changed once, and server transferred three times between then and today. Not an easy Task.

Three GM responses later, and as many details as I could provide, I was contacted and told that they had good news – my items would be given back to me, after 6 hours they had compiled a list of items that I had lost when I relinquished, and would drop them into my inventory. My jaw dropped and I practically screamed with joy. One at a time the items began appearing in my inventory. I started dropping them into Arysh’ home, ecstatic. Wow. Now that’s service.

I knew when I petitioned that I shouldn’t get my hopes up, and I knew it was my fault for relinquishing, you’re even given messages about it. with the newly added moving crates there’s no relinquishing involved (thank goodness). I made sure to give a huge thank you to all those involved, as they certainly went above and beyond what they had to do.

Just remember when you’re trying to get something returned or a question answered, that these people who work in customer service, are just that. People. I was polite, and patient, and knew they’d either be able to help, or not be able. Either way I would be ok with the response. Of course I was a million times happier once my issue had been resolved, but yeah.. what a great day.

Armor Quests, and a new(old) Warden

stargrace October 15, 2007 0Comment

For those who have known me for some time (how many of my posts start like that any how?) my druid Arysh (formally known as Silverstep) started out a warden. However, I betrayed her when I joined Torrent Knights on Lucan D’Lere since they were short a fury and I had no qualms doing it. After some time though, I decided I wanted to go back to being a warden, so that’s what I spent this weekend doing. Well, a few hours this weekend at least. Fury are great healers, don’t get me wrong, but much like the inquisitor class, they’re also used for DPS. For solo work and pvp they’re amazing, but I wanted something that was far more focused on healing. I only had one piece of gear that I’d loose, which was my hat. I managed to find a fairly good Unrest group last night and what would you know, my legendary hat dropped, a sign that I was meant to be a warden.

I’ve always envied those people who stuck through with their classes. I’ve never managed to do it. I worked so hard on the druid when I played her, having completed her claymore, DT access, Godking weapon, MoA, and Chel’Drak ring. She didn’t get her SoD done (yet) though because I was playing with Dasie instead. So I’ve decided to dedicate some time to the warden and try to complete it. I’m collecting statues (again) and uh, no, it’s not fun. Not any more fun then the first time I attempted it.

I’ve signed up for FTH and Clockwork tonight, hopefully I’ll get a spot on the raid, if not that’s alright though. I know there is a huge surplus of druids typically. I’m hoping maybe I can prove myself as a “better then average” one though. I know the class pretty dang well, and when I was doing MMIS in a melee dps group on Saturday night I parsed 2nd zone wide on the heal parse. I know heal parses are not the end all be all, but when a fury in a melee dps group is you’re second highest.. well, they’re either doing something right, or the other healers are doing something wrong. Or a little of both. It was a bit of an off night and we didn’t quite make it as far as we’d like, but I had fun none the less.

Today I worked on my armor quest for some time, I like the graphic of it. The picture above has Arysh in Thundering Steppes smacking around some skeletons. I had my setting quality turned quite high, and for the first time ever realized that the ravine throughout the zone is actually made of a whole lot of skulls. I was amazed that I’d never noticed it before. I actually didn’t alter the screen shot in any way, aside to add a frame around it, I love the way it turned out.

I’ve been dealing with petitions for most of the day (not bad ones either, more details on it tomorrow when I know the result) and again I have to say I’ve never had a bad experience with the support staff from SoE. Hopefully they can help me out with my issue, and I’ll be one happy camper. If not though, I know they at least tried and I appreciate it.

Other then that, looking forward to the Shard of Fear instance that opens later this week (if all goes according to plan) and other random updates. Things in game are great.

Fun with Screenshots

stargrace October 12, 2007 0Comment

Ok, so the image above actually looks far better in it’s full version (it’s shrunk to about half the size here so that my blog doesn’t scream in agony, nor the people who have to upload the images) but I did have a lot of fun creating it. It uses a combination of three screen shots, adjusted and what not to suit my taste. The eyes on Arysh took a lot of work as they were pretty much just black pupils. It’s hard to see exactly what I’ve done to the shot without seeing the originals, but you’ll just have to take my word on it, I changed a lot.

I managed to get Ishbel to level 57 today, actually I grabbed her level quite early on in the day and then spent the majority of the rest of it on the couch battling the sniffles and playing with photoshop. Hopefully it’s just a 24 hour type thing that is gone before I know it. Anyhow, yes, level 57. I’ve run out of Lesser Faydark quests to do, and I’m nearly out of TT quests as well. I spent some time actually doing the warg quests in Somborn since I could just mez (providing it landed) the ones I needed before using the collar on them. I did die once do to a resist, but it went far smoother then I had figured it would, especially since the final mob was red to me and the ones before that were all orange.

I can get experience with level 70’s now, which is perfect for questing. It means I don’t have to be mentored to get an update, important. I spent more time killing heroic brownies yesterday (guess what, the four hours I spent killing solo brownies was wasted.. ) the cowl of the trickster drops from heroic ones only. Well. That sure was nice to learn. At least I found out now and not later I suppose. I finished the Wu chain, as well as the Nybright chain, both which reward with plenty of items and coin. In fact I think over the past three days as I’ve been leveling the coercer I’ve made about 15p from vendor trash alone, as well as doing all those wonderful basket quests (which I’ve completed all of and can’t obtain any more boo). So what’s next on the agenda? I’m not sure if I want to take a little break from the coercer, or if I want to play another alt, or maybe one of my level 70’s or what. I’m still excited and looking forward to the new content coming later this week, including the new instance which I’m sure will be some what difficult. Other then chattering to old friends, playing around in TK, and leveling the coercer, I haven’t been up to too much. I’m thinking of making some simple T6 adornments (namely the +power / +hp ones) to sell on the broker since I’ve transmuted so much lower level stuff lately, we’ll see how it goes.