2007

Making it Manifest, and the quest count rises

stargrace May 22, 2007 0Comment

Qutey posing in Nettleville Hovel, waiting to speak to the constable

101 quests completed, and the little monk has hit level 15, almost 16. She’s also 98% through her 7th aa, almost hitting 8. I’ve been having an enormous amount of fun with this new character, just doing my own thing and attempting quests that I haven’t seen in a very long time in zones that are pretty much deserted now even with the server being as populated as it is. How many people remember the making it manifest quest in the crows resting place? With the sword of destiny series in game it send you there, the home of Fippy, but the instance itself has been around for quite some time. The quest rewards you with a pretty nice legendary tunic that was actually a slight upgrade from my mastercrafted leather.

I haven’t delved into too many quest zones with her yet, she’s played around some what in Antonica doing a lot of far seas requisitions and some of the easier ones, but a lot are too high yet. I did take her around the Down Below, and did a few quests in there (including the tunic one). Went out last night and watched Shrek3, that was a lot of fun, looking forward to seeing Pirates3 next weekend. The weather is beautiful and days are wonderfully sunny.

Crafting and other characters have pretty much been on hold while I relax and play my monk. I’ve been setting aside all of the coin she’s made from questing and loot in her bank, seperate from the coin she carries around daily. For some reason I want to keep track of how much coin you can make in this game just from simple questing. She’s up to 21g and some change so far, not too shabby for just getting started. Of course she is very nicely geared up but most of what she’s fighting is green anyhow. Qutey also finished the gnoll language and is almost done the lore and legend. Her home got a few more pretties, a pet cage and a few more books. More updates as the day goes on I’m sure!

A different type of grind

stargrace May 21, 2007 3Comments

Qutey, fae monk.. think she’s 7 here, floating her way over the cliffs in Butcherblock

I decided to start a new character yesterday night, wow what a surprise. I went with a fae monk, I absolutely love feign death and I wanted something that has solo capabilities because I don’t plan on grouping with her at all. At level 7 I left Kelethin and headed to Qeynos, knowing from the start that it was not where I wanted to spend the majority of my time. I learned a few new things. Well, I already knew fae had glide. I realized how much I love it though. I made it through Butcherblock with no agro and no deaths, floating down to the water off of the cliffs that have killed many of my other characters. You can see the docks off in the distance, much fun. I also learned that there is a Kelethin / Qeynos citizenship quest. If you’re from Kelethin and want to live in Qeynos (obtaining the call of Qeynos spell and the bind point spell) you do not have to betray. . . This was news to me, I had no idea. It also works the other way around if you want to switch your home from Qeynos to Kelethin. Apparently there will also be these sorts of quests for Freeport to Neriak and vice versa.

The quest reminded me of the end portion of the regular betrayal quest. I had to go pick up garbage from the Antonican Highway. Once I’d finished that I had to speak to some guards, and then speak to a few more people, and then pledge myself as a citizen of Qeynos. I worried about what would happen with my call spell but it was replaced for me and I also got the bind point skill automatically. Very nice feature. If I decide that Qeynos is no longer the place for me, I can move back home to Kelethin with the little monk. In the mean time, Qeynos will do.

Getting to level 10 was easy enough. I hung around the Peat Bog and Forest Ruins, and did every quest I could get my hands on. Once I hit 12 I turned off my combat experience, I decided when I made the monk that I would do a different type of grinding with this character. I gave her a set of mastercrafted gear, some rare dollies for the charm slots, rare weapons, and a bandolier. I also upgraded her skills to adept3, after all what fun is an alt if you can’t completely twink them out. I then set off to quest. Leaving my combat experience turned off. She hit 5aa easily enough, and is now level 14.. not bad at all for someone who doesn’t have combat experience on. She managed to get feign death, leaving her at a comfortable spot. I’ve completed about 70-80 quests on her, which is not too many yet. I want to finish off the few she has and then venture into the sewers to do more, on both the Qeynos and Freeport sides. I also want to take her back to Kelethin (damn it why didn’t I pick up the druid portal bush when I was there!) and complete the quests that I skipped over on my hasty departure to Qeynos.

I typically level up all my alts very fast. They hang around in the 20’s and 30’s long enough to farm RoV and CoI and RE, and then I boot them up to the 50’s with Obelisk. I box almost constantly on them. I don’t want to do that this time. I want to explore the content a little more in depth and play along quest lines that I’ve never seen of or heard before because I’ve been busy on my “main” characters. Will the monk ever get anywhere? Who knows. For now, she’s settled into a nice 1 room Inn located in the Baubleshire, some books and other knick knacks (a lab flask, what a wonderful quest that was!) scattered about, half unpacked. We’ll just have to see how things go.

.. I have a new TOY!

stargrace May 20, 2007 3Comments

I have.. a new toy and I absolutely love it. On the left hand side is what looks like your very general track window. But that’s not all, of course not. This track window is a little more unique then most. Instead of tracking mobs and NPC, it tracks harvesting resources. What’s more, is that as you can see by the ? and ! on the page, it will track shinies.

Where does such a wonderful item come from? Well, easy, it comes from tinkering of course, which is the funnest tradeskill I have attempted, even though it’s also the most annoying in so many ways. It uses so many dang resources I’m lucky if I get 20 skill ups off of 5 hours worth of harvests. Though I suppose that’s not so bad.

The gnomish divining rod – great for tracking harvests

Now, there is a little trick I use when I use this item. You can specifically track the items listed if you want, but that will close the track window and waypoint to your destination, meaning you have to wait two minutes before you can track again. Actually, the two minute count down is from the initial use of the machine. Anyhow, it’ll mark your map with an X on the destination.

But.

What I do, is travel through the zone with that track window open. See, tracking can work a number of ways. It can work alphabetically, it can also place all named mobs first for you no matter their distance in the zone, and it can also track by distance from you. If you run around the zone (lets say Feerrott for example since that’s where Stargrace has been playing with this machine) with the track window open, and see a node on track that you’re looking for, you can pretty much just gage how far away from you it is by the distance down the list. As you get closer to the node you want, it’ll raise up on the list until the closest node next to you is the one you want, and by that time it’s easy to find it and harvest it.

If you see no nodes in your area that you’re looking for (For example, take a look at that list, there’s no ore listed at all) you can travel around keeping track up until you DO see some ore on the list, and then just maneuver your way around until the ore is closer to you or until you see it and can harvest it.

There are of course downsides to this. Number one, people don’t like "cherry pickers". They’re the harvesters who leave all the "gross" things up like poor discarded shrubs, and quite often trees, and pelts. Taking just the metals and roots as their loot. It’s not fun to walk through a zone and have nothing at all up to harvest except things that are not for your craft. I typically do harvest everything except fish (I’ve never managed to even work that skill up… I know I know bad of me!) but some times not many people are around and I just want something specific.

Not to mention the fact that the harvest tracker is also great for finding those ? and !’s that are scattered through out Norrath. Especially in those zones where they’re hard to come by, Antonica and Commonlands where there’s just so much space to cover. Or the zones where they seem a little more rare, or well, just any zone for that matter.

So yes, I am enjoying my new toy and all the uses I have for it so far. Tinkering was a great choice for my "main" character illusionist. I have a transmuter already, and actually transmuting is not that useful. Because even if you work a transmuter up to 350, you need an actual specific crafter to make the adornments of your choice in most cases. The transmuter just makes the items the crafter uses. Does that make sense? My transmuter makes powders and shards and infusions, and then my other crafters take those and craft them into adornments specific for that class. One reason why I love having a lot of crafters, I can rely on myself for adornments and don’t have to fork over a lot of money to others to make the items for me. Anyhow, I hope everyone else’ weekend was absolutely amazing, on a personal note, the ottawa senators (where I live) made it to the Stanley Cup finals, and the city is super excited about that. I’m not the biggest hockey fan out there, but it is my city after all, so I have to show a little support *grins* sorry to hear about those leafs Cordanim.

Spiritwalker boots, and the defiler has all the fun

stargrace May 19, 2007 2Comments

Mmms piece two of the defiler class set for Misako. Of course, she needs a few more levels

Yesterday was a great day for the defiler and I had not really planned on it. She was at about 60% experience which is still quite far away from a level in T7 I find. She was also at 90% achievement experience, which I knew I could ping off easily enough. I did my typical Mines of Meldrath run, no dagger. No anything in fact, it was a dry boring run. Quick though so it’s alright. She managed to loot some new precious treasure that gives achievement the first time you loot it, and got her 72nd achievement point.

I was going to run her and Stargrace to Fallen Gate and mentor Shadowgeist’ level 25 bruiser (Named Ixxar Bruizer, go figure.. and yes, he is an Iksar) but Cordanim logged on and had a bit of time to play. So we immediately gave up on the Fallen Gate idea and headed to Obelisk of Blight in Lesser Faydark. Cordanim had not been there yet (nor had my 62 defiler) and it would be a chance at class loot. I was a little leery at first. There would only be four of us, and the only healer (myself) was level 62. The group consisted of myself playing Stargrace (70 Illusionist) as well as Misako (62 at the time Defiler), Cordanim (70 Brigand) and Shadowgeist (70 Shadowknight). The run went amazingly well though. No wipes, though Misa did die a few times due to unwanted agro – that is almost expected as a defiler. Their wards pull agro on incoming far too easily. Cordanim got a nice new neck piece, and some upgrades for his fury who finally made it to Antonia Bayle. The class chest dropped at the end and we all held our breath to see if it would be something useful this time. I’d been hoping for the buckler of blight (which did not drop) or even the ring that drops from the end boss, but neither dropped. It was alright though, the defiler class boots dropped, something that Misa will really appreciate in another 6 levels. She managed to not only get level 63, but got another achievement point, hitting 73, and 20% into her level. I splurged and bought her the buckler of blight for when she finally hits level 69. I’m looking for quite a few more set pieces, the forearms at least that drop from Valdoons, I’ve got the shoulders already. Hopefully as time goes on and she gets a bit bigger I can start doing Unrest, and get her hat and breastplate. I don’t imagine I’ll be getting her gloves or legs any time soon, but we’ll see how it goes.

I can’t remember what else I did in game right off the top of my head, but it was certainly a great night for the defiler!

The Mines of Meldrath, and the assassin gets a new look

stargrace May 18, 2007 5Comments

Yamini picked up a few pieces of legendary in the Mines of Meldrath yesterday

Of every instance out there, besides the T7 ones, my favorite lowbie instance (for the time being at least) would have to be the Mines of Meldrath, located in the mines of Steamfont. There are 5-6 named in the zone, and the loot is very nice for the level. There’s a fabled dagger that drops there that I’ve been trying to get for my assassin (who is now a ranger, more news on that in a moment!) and there’s also a fabled hammer that drops that procs harvests when you use it. That’s right, a hammer that will give you crafting raws (you have to be a low level character to wield the hammer or else the proc won’t work) as you fight. That’s so cool. My defiler is 50% of her way through 62 and too big for the hammer to proc but I wanted to see what it looked like anyhow. There’s also very nice swords and some monk boots, lots of experience and it’s a fairly easy zone. I’ve been doing it daily in the hopes that the dagger drops. No luck yet, but the assassin (ranger) is still 4 levels away from using it anyhow, so I have time to farm it.

Now, anyone who knows me knows I get restless. I had made a fae ranger a few days ago, but was not exactly looking forward to leveling yet another alt up — even though I found the class exceptionally fun. There’s the evil fae coming out at the end of this month and I don’t want to be burnt out making lowbies before that even happens. So I decided that my 48 halfling assassin would just simply betray back to a ranger and I’d delete the fae ranger and make room for an evil fae warlock (once the free content of Neriak goes live). I’ve had Yamini since 2004, but never really spent any time leveling her. I love the class, but I’ve just always been side tracked. She started out as a ranger but betrayed the old way at level 14, slaughtering 500 orcs for the Overlord Lucan.

It was easy to betray her back to Qeynos, probably because I have such a history betraying characters already – former betrayals:

• Stargrace = Illusionist -> Coercer -> Illusionist
• Arysh = Warden -> Fury
• Goudia = Dirge (freeport) -> Dirge (Qeynos) -> Dirge (Exile at the moment going back to Freeport as a Troub at T7)
• Faydai = Necromancer -> Conjuror (contemplating moving her back to a necromancer for the rez and feign death)
• Misako = Mystic -> Defiler
• Yamini = Ranger -> Assassin -> Ranger

In fact the only one of my characters who I have not betrayed is my templar Dasie. Not sure why that is, I’ve never really had an impulse to betray her to an inquisitor. I don’t mind betraying as much as some do. It refreshes my characters for me. I’ve betrayed two at level 70, the rest were lower levels, where it doesn’t matter if your skills get re-set because you’re just going to get new ones. The two level 70’s had a lot of help from their guilds in order to betray and replace lost relic gear. It’s not something I take lightly, though I do get the impulse to betray quite quickly and then just do it and it’s over with.

Since the assassin is now a ranger, it’s looking fun. I love ranged attacks. Which is why I wanted to betray. I have a woodworker who makes arrows, and I never use her for that purpose. I’d like to try my hand at it. The Rain Caller heritage quest is something I’m eager to do even though it’s 10 levels away, it looks like a fun bow to play with.

Before betraying I did a few key things. I picked up all of the evil language primers so that I can speak both the good aligned and evil aligned languages. The rest will come from quests. I also went to the sage in the mage tower, and picked up all of the book quests that are sold there. The merchant won’t talk to me now that I’m a Qeynosian again. I can still purchase them from the librarian in the South Qeynos mage tower though, completing books for both sides. It may seem boring, but well, I do still love my house items and obtaining items for individual characters. I think that’s one thing that marks me as a little different then some people. I’ll treat each character as an individual and obtain their own housing and their own unique items as opposed to just mass sharing between all of them. Maybe that just makes me crazy though who knows *grins*. Had fun talking to Kilanna again a bit before servers came down, we have a lot of the same interests in game and that’s always fun to chatter about. Looking forward to delving back in and upgrading all of the rangers new skills. Then it’s off for some adventuring (I think..) looking at DFC at the moment.