March 2008

Cragwind – LOTS of fun

stargrace March 21, 2008 No Comments

Growlius and I had picked up about 20 quests in Cragwind the day before, and before turning a single one in- we completed them all. I was close to 34 (and new spells) so I dinged easily enough from kills. 10% into my level (and he his) and we were finished all of the quests. So. Now came the decision. Use a 50% exp potion? Or 100%. I thought about saving them for crafting (I’m 45 now) but I don’t really need them. Aside from sigils, I have no new recipes coming to me for 45+ so it doesn’t matter if I level a little slower. I couldn’t pass by an opportunity like this.

We turned in all our quests and low and behold, went from 10% exp, to 95% exp.

Wow. Nice.

The great thing was that almost every single quest we compelted opened up to yet another quest, so our journal is filled again. I imagine tonight we’ll do the same thing. Complete them all (the potion has a 5h in game timer anyhow) and then turn them all in one lump sum to get the levels we need. So I’m now sitting at level 35 (cheers) as is Growlius. Kalaso has been doing some crazy leveling as well, in fact he stayed up all night last night and managed to get level 36. He just created his paladin two weeks ago, so that’s some fairly hefty leveling. Granted, he’s already got a level 50 ranger, and a 32 bard, so I can hardly fault him, he knows exactly where to go to get the levels.

In the screen shot you can see I haven’t turned off those obnoxious dots above the mobs heads yet. I’m slowly getting used to them. I still don’t know why the named need to be ALL IN CAPS though, honestly, if you can’t tell whether or not something is named you may want to switch games. I made bricks to put for sale, as well as a few jewelry pieces. I want to get enough sigils to upgrade stone weapons as well as expendables, as I hear there’s a pretty nice market for those. The crafting npc are still not fixed so as of yet I can’t switch Arysh over to a weapon smith, but I intend on leveling her and the leather worker still.

Borgio and the Mrs. were in game today, eating up the levels. Mayadhros has been slowly sneaking up as well, always great to see. Today is a holiday in Canada (Good Friday) so a few people that I know are home. I haven’t decided if I’m going to level up my bard or her crafting yet. Either way, safe travels whatever realm you find yourself in today!

Tier5 House – Work in Progress

stargrace March 21, 2008 No Comments

In all the excitement lately, I completely forgot to mention that my house is complete, and has been for a few days now. It’s really lacking furniture, but I’m working up a carpenter to remedy that issue. The broker prices are just too dear to be paying. I’ve switched Minxes over to my carpenter, and during the days I’ll be leveling her and playing her some. In this first screen shot is the Thestran T5 granite fireplace, some floor pillows to the left, and a little basket I filled with bread and cheese to the right. The flames didn’t come with the fireplace, I actually had to buy them separately from the housing merchant, go figure. Eventually I’ll add a seating area, with some couches and maybe even make a tv of some sort. Who knows. I haven’t seen everything that can be crafted yet to make a decision.

The bedroom area is also the area I keep my chests (filled with raws rares and dusts right now). I wanted a method of disguising those boxes on the right hand side, so I added a few pillows propped up in order to make them look more like a bench then a bunch of chests shoved together. The bed itself is sunk into the wall slightly to hide the headboard (which Idid not like) and is one of the veteran rewards players got to claim from their accounts. It’s the leth one. Oh, I almost forgot. The best part of Vanguard housing? You can move objects by the X Y Z and also the Pitch, Yaw, and something else. Which basically means there’s endless methods of moving items. You can move anything in any direction. Turn it, spin it, mount it on the wall, etc. That’s how I got my pillows propped up to actually look like pillows rather then just having them laying flat.

The desk was also a veteran reward, although right now its location is sorta meh, upstairs out of the way. There’s my 5th chest on it (just a Qalia style one) and a little jug, as well as some books. Eventually I want to build a library of sorts for it. My house can hold 250 items and 5 chests, so we’ll just have to see how the decorating goes.

Each continent has a significant style difference, the Thestran style here is nothing like the Kojani style pictured above. The Qalian styled homes are even more unique, with a very distinctive Arabian flare. I still love the way housing is set out in Vanguard. It’s as though you own a little piece of the game, rather then some zone some place. It does mean things like buying from a person’s home is not exactly a viable option (after all, how do you figure out which house on a plot is theirs? There’s so many of them) but I enjoy it none the less. I’ve built quite a few homes now for guild mates, and I’ve yet to hear any complaints. The rent for this house is 60s a week, a 10g plot (all plots on Kojan are 10g) so it’s a great deal for me. I’ve got 5 40-slot chests in the house, one housing supplies for each tier.

I’ll post more screen shots as I continue decorating, I have plans of a kitchen in the front entrance beneath the stairs, as well as the sitting area by the fire place, and I’m not sure about upstairs yet. A library for sure and perhaps a second bedroom area. Anyone who knows me understands how much of a fanatic I can be about housing! It’s almost a shame that I can only own one house per account.

Tsang’s Tomb

stargrace March 20, 2008 6 Comments

When Vanguard first released last January, this dungeon was pretty much my home- and I still never completed the quests that it involved. I loved it, my first group ran at 4FPS which made it FRUSTRATING to say the least. Now that I’ve got a better computer, and Vanguard itself has done plenty to resolve performance issues, I’m sure I’d enjoy it a lot more. There are chains of quests you do outside of Tsangs first, and then eventually they lead you inside. One small issue with Vanguard is that you can easily out level the content of the game before ever doing those ‘major’ quest lines. The end reward is a pretty nice weapon, one of the best when I first played. Of course now people typically skip this, they move on to HL, URT, CIS (Hunter’s League in Qalia, United Races of Thestra, in Thestra, and Infinium in Qalia). Each one of those chains also rewards you with a very nice weapon. Kojani as a continent is very under used, most people move on to higher content very fast, but when I started.. that was the place to be, for me. I adventured through Tsangs and Blighted woods until level 22, and then moved on to Thestra. To this day I’ve barely done any adventuring in Qalia.

In searching for a new place to level, Growlius and I decided we’d head to Craigwind, which is nestled between huge rocks and dunes. There were at least 20 quests we both picked up, however with adventurers all over the place we were hard pressed to find a little niche to explore and kill at. Not that a bustling population is a bad thing, but slow respawns can be annoying.

I managed to get 70% into my level (33) and I was going to turn in the quests I’d accumulated, but instead figured I’d take a 50% potion, save up all 20 quests, and then turn them all in at the same time.

The carpenter managed to get level 11. I deleted a few alts, and now Minxes will be my carpenter. That leaves me with a leather worker, weapon smith, mineralogist, and carpenter. Four alts is plenty in this game where there are so many spheres to work up and level.

Guild had a meeting last night, but I’ve been some what down with the flue, so I didn’t attend. It didn’t help that it was also starting at 10:30EDT, which is a little too late for me especially when I’m not feeling well. So I went to bed while that went on. I’ll be hosting a scavenger hunt for guildies at the end of this month, that should be a lot of fun. I’m planning prizes like sets of gear / jewelry / houses / diplomacy goodies, and what have you. Nothing too huge, but enough to keep people motivated.

Since last week was GU week, and this week was patch week (while they fix everything they broke with the GU) it’s been… testing, to some. To say the least. One huge issue is that you can’t get the text any more to respec your tradeskill. When they added attribute points as a purchase from crafters, they some how blocked all of their other text, so until that’s fixed it’s quite annoying. Chunks have been up and down most of the week, and latency has been an issue in the evenings. The servers are down right now, and hopefully these are being fixed. It also seems that they at least slowed the dust flow from resource harvesting- to a steady trickle rather then a huge river of dusts. The same can be said for the decon items, which suits me just fine, there were far too many dropping to begin with.

Sales have been slow. Almost non existent actually. I need to find a niche market again when I get back into the swing of crafting. After grinding to 45 and doing my faction as well as housing quests, I’ve taken a small break from it. We’ll see how it goes!

A Few Signatures

stargrace March 18, 2008 2 Comments

Since the game is down I decided I needed to update some signatures. I’d made one for Ishbel when I was playing her as my ‘main’ but decided it was time for an updated Satia one. I was also asked to make one for Tazikor who is a warrior in guild, and he sent me some amusing screen shots to use. I’ve always loved making signatures for people, and will probably continue to do it so long as an opportunity presents itself. I know mine are not nearly as nice as some people out there, but I’m still learning.

MaddyCraft

stargrace March 18, 2008 2 Comments

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.