2007

Workers Sledgemallet and frustrating guilds

stargrace December 2, 2007 0Comment

The happy little bardling managed to finally get her workers sledgemallet, after earning max faction with the clans in Jarsath Wastes. The hammer is great, lets me gate to JW when it procs. Handy if you’re not a druid. The quests weren’t too difficult, and I did group up to do them even though they’re flagged as solo. They also rewarded plenty of experience, aa, and legendary gear at the ends which is always a nice thing. Even though once again, it was easy. Everything seems easy (except raids, but that’s another story).

So enter the guild drama. Everyone has some, it happens frequently, especially when you combine any number of people with one another, things are bound to happen. One of the officers of the guild left today, no notice posted on the forums, and an explanation to a few members who asked but no discussion before hand, just left. They also happened to be our best healer, and only druid. So we took a hit on all fronts. They explained to me why they left, and it seemed like a valid reason excuse.

Later on in the day, after saying that I wish them the best in whatever they decided to do, found out they’d actually applied to a few other raid guilds last week, though they failed to mention that to anyone else.

I can understand people wanting to move on. If you’re unhappy in a guild, why stick around. If it’s that bad. If you’re looking elsewhere, then at least have the decency to tell your guild. Especially if you’re an officer or anyone with a high rank. It’s just unfair to the guild other wise when you take off suddenly. I don’t mind that they left, or that they were having issues here, but I do mind that they neglected to tell anyone ahead of time so the guild could prepare and search for a replacement. I hate hearing excuses, I’d rather hear “I hate it here, I’m out” then make up something to seem like they’re the good guy, then find out more information about the situation later. Pet peeve, what can I say.

So now we’re druid-less, and down an officer. This person’s left before in the past, and re-joined, though it seems like that was a mistake. I know it happens, and there’s plenty of drama that goes along with guilds, but it still makes me twinge to hear it. Seems like ever since the 2nd year of EQ2 the guild turmoil just constantly boils. Still waiting for the dust to settle, so to speak.

Raids last night were challenging, we went back to Thuuga and attempted the drachnid mistress again, with no luck. She not only cocoons people but at 40% she spawns adds, you’d think to yourself, hey, it’s just three ^^^ heroic, we’ll be fine. But no. It doesn’t end there. Approximately 10-15 seconds after those three little spider adds spawn, 4 more spawn. Then 6 more. We couldn’t burn her + adds down fast enough, just didn’t have the DPS. So eventually we were over taken by spiders, and lots of them. The best part? They don’t de-spawn when they trigger, so when you wipe, and revive, and head back.. you get to smush the baby spiders again first before attempting her. Unless you pull her away from the spiders, which you can do, but it’s annoying when they’re standing on the spot you fight.

Aside from the raids, guild drama, and Christmas stuff in real life, I’ve been crafting a lot. The jeweler, sage, and provisioner are all happily sitting close to / on level 80. Next (I think) is the woodworker, then the alchemist, weaponsmith, tailor, armorer, carpenter. I managed to sneak a few transmuting skill ups in there as well, so I can tear apart items up to level 75 on Arysh. Stock piling for those adornments that Shadowgeist and I will need eventually.

Tomb of Thugga? Not likely

stargrace November 30, 2007 5Comments

Sighs. I’m disheartened, what can I say. Last night we attempted our first RoK raid instance, the Tomb of Thugga. It’s located in Fens, in a small cave in the center portion of the waterfall close to the span. We were excited, we had a great raid force, people were in great spirits. Zoned in, and it looked.. well, not exactly exciting, but not bad either. It consists of a long hallway with spiders and skeletons who enjoy stunning and fearing. Two small rooms to the left and right, with a huge spider Mistress in the center back.

We cleared the zone and were face to face with the named. Staring her down. Pulled her, and wiped as we had no clue what to expect. Figured out what her “thing” was (ever named encounter has a “thing”) and prepared to pull her again once we’d worked out a strat.

Down came the server.

Sighs. The raid hung around on ventrilo for 45 minutes waiting for Antonia Bayle to unlock, and then we had to call it, it was getting late and people were bored. It unlocked, and we were….

Outside the instance. Zoning in, we found the entire thing had re-set. If we wanted to attempt this zone again, we’d have to clear everything, again. People were upset. Now, I’m typically quiet calm when these things happen, after all I know there are issues that are expected. That doesn’t mean it was any less of a disappointment though. We can’t even attempt the zone again until Monday or some such as our MT won’t be around this weekend. Goudia was parsing around 900 on some fights (the troubador) and I was just tickled pink, since she’s 78 in treasured gear. I know that number’s not very high, but I was happy with our progress. We were doing wonderful.

When the server was down yesterday morning for three hours instead of the planned one hour, I didn’t mind. When we have log in issues and throttling the players logging in (slowing them down so the log in server is not swamped) I can understand it. I didn’t mind them disabling our broker sales completely for periods of time while they worked on things. But the expansion’s been out for a while now, and the server stability hasn’t gotten better. We still experienced 15 minute receiving zone info timers if we tried to go anywhere. I think I’ve stared at that screen more then I’ve looked at any RoK zone this week so far.

Of course, we’ll just go about our way, and try again some other time. I just wish our first experience in one of the new zones had of gone a lot smoother.

Figures.. Here come the Nerfs

stargrace November 29, 2007 9Comments

Since the servers are down (with no explanation again, aside from the fact that they were supposed to be down for an hour (it’s over two hours now) I went browsing through the EQ2player forums, which is always a mistake. As I browsed I found this article, which just made me cringe. I feel exceptionally bad for all those people who replaced their gear with the treasured rewards (and then sold their old gear) thinking they would be better. Heck, I’m one of those people as well. Although I tried to upgrade for stats before I upgraded for the gear bonuses, I did replace practically everything Goudia was wearing with the new stuff. I also replaced Arysh’ fabled due to the heal procs.

So what happens? We’re SoL pretty much. It doesn’t matter if you’ve replaced, and sold, your old gear. You won’t be getting it back. Let this be (another) lesson to us all.

I love the way people ask in the post “isn’t that what beta was for.. ” because they have a point. Two weeks after the expansion is out and now all the items that people quested to get are being changed. Bleh.

A rather large tune will be appearing in an upcoming hotfix, and I wanted to give you all a heads up:

The effects that are currently attached to Treasured items in Kunark were initially intended for Legendary quality gear; you can find effects like Overflow and Divine Restoration on both tiers of equipment. Typically these effects will automatically scale down on lower quality gear, but given the ease of acquiring RoK Treasureds, they did not scale down enough, and this has created a large imbalance throughout the expansion. In order to correct this, I’ve created lesser versions of all of these effects and attached them to all Treasured gear. None of the stats on the gear itself has been touched, only the power of the effects, which has been lowered by about 1/3 in most cases. I know this will be upsetting to many of you who have worked hard to acquire the pieces you have, and don’t like seeing them balanced in this manner. The best consolation I can offer you is that there are Legendary versions of all of these pieces which can be acquired through quests, bosses, and faction merchants. The effects on these Legendaries should now be a large (and much more desirable) upgrade from the more easily acquired Treasured items.

In addition to the above changes, the 4 rewards from the Anaphylaxis quest have been dropped from Fabled to Legendary quality. They are still of better quality than most Legendary loot available in Kunark, but should no longer rival the strength of Fabled weapons acquired on raids.

I am sorry to be the harbinger of bad news; I never like tuning items down, but in this case it was the most equitable solution. I hope to have some good news (in the form of new, cool items) for you all sometime in the near future =)