As if crafting in Vanguard were not difficult enough, there’s no way to sort your recipe book. They don’t even follow any real order, aside from when you’ve picked up the recipe from the vendor maybe. You can’t sort by tiers, or continental styles. Each continent has their own recipes. They have different effects, and looks, and in some cases, stats. So I looked for a UI mod that would help me sort my recipes to some degree. Low and behold, I found MaddyCraft. It doesn’t craft for you, that’d just be wrong, but if you’re willing to take the time to do it right, it WILL make your life simpler. What Maddycraft does most notably, is allow you to create macros under each style category, that will target a specific recipe. The macro in vanguard to select a specific recipe is /refinesetrecipe “name of recipe here” so the resources were already in game. In fact I’d been using that command in a macro to select my housing bricks (since I need to make so many of them) for a while now. Along the bottom of each continental category, is a number button. Those represent each tier (up to 5) and you can create macros for each page. So the three pages I have up there, are Kojani style tier 1, then Qalian style tier five, and Thestran style tier two. Click the recipe name (such as focus) and it will pick the slate focus recipe out of the huge list I have in my book. Without me having to scroll through that mess. I have over 150 recipes, finding what I need, especially by continental style, is a huge pain in the arse. Hopefully, SoE will fix this craft book issue before too long. In the mean time, I’m thankful people take the time to create these sorts of mods. Doing the data entry for each macro was a bit of a pain, but I’m thankful I did it none the less. The only other issue is that I’ll be inputting the data for each crafter, as they’re all different. A huge thank you to Photons from guild who suggested I try Maddy, and also sent me the updated version of DroxUI, which is the basic mod I use.
The one bad part of these mods, is that they are of course made by real people with real lives. Wait, how can that be bad? Well, a lot of them give up the games for whatever reasons, and the mods are no longer updated as releases come out. So my advice is don’t get *too* attached to any mod, unless you’re the sort who can code yourself and you’re confident that you can fix whatever’s gone wrong (like riftways, this previous patch).
Last night Growlius, Kalaso, and I did some Wardship quests, netting ourselves a nice earring (heroic) reward. The quest was easily soloable, but we decided to group up anyhow. It had 10 parts, fairly simple, a little running around, some killing. I was so distracted by other things going on that I didn’t even have a chance to actually read the quest and find out what we were doing. I know at one portion we had to pray at some alters for a few minutes, so I guess it was something religious. We had a new recruit join the guild last night, who was also completely new to the game so it was basically my responsibility to not only see that they were made comfortable in guild (how can you NOT be comfortable when our guild members /bite all those who join?) but that they were getting along well enough in game on their lowbie characters. They’d come from various other mmo’s (most new recruits do) and I always try to make it a personal goal to ensure that people are at least having their questions answered. I’m about half way through 33 now adventure wise, and level 45 for crafting. I made something this morning and apparently discovered it (disco’s do get re-set with GU’s though) which I found amusing, just a ring for Growlius.
Last night Eleyn poked me in Vanguard from EQII, which was a huge surprise (and a pleasant one at that) and mentioned that maybe he’d poke into VG some time to say hello. Krai (also from EQII) mentioned they’d also activated their VG account, and may use it to ‘escape raids’ some nights. Hey, whatever brings people to the game, I’m for it. Mayadhros wanted to do a little adventuring on alts, but alas I was swept up already with my group, that’s the one problem I suppose. Managed to get Lunestra tagged in the guild as well, and tomorrow there’s a guild meeting. Thus far, things are going smoothly, even though I do feel (at times) a little over burdened and that things are quite hectic. I suppose that’s one good thing about playing during the days, there are less people around and generally it’s quieter, I enjoy my time.
stargrace 
