June 7, 2008

Another Friday Come and Gone

Another Friday has come and gone, and another meeting of Nostalgia the Guild, perhaps the best gathering ever aside from our very first meeting. We had TWO full groups of people with a few who were known to be gone for the night. Our goal was to own Dulak’s Harbor, and own it we did. A quick /who of the zone showed 26 people there at one point in time – and not all of them were Nostalgians. It was fantastic. Boy, did the experience fly. I think the level leader of the night was Malfi, gaining an amazing 7 levels in the hours we spent there. I managed to hit not only 51 on Ishbel (I was 47 to start) but gained her first 3aa, and spent them in run speed. My choices right now are very limited, especially with my stats already being at the cap of 255. I’ve decided to turn my focus to other things instead of so much wisdom, like mana, and flowing thought.

As if that was not enough, I got to partake in starting a war, and swaying the forces to benefit me. Not without some help of course. Kuron was right there, beard flapping in the breeze.

See, in Hollowshade Moor, on Luclin, there’s three types of creatures constantly battling for power. The owlbears, the sonic wolves, and the grimlings. The first bit of the war was easy. Weaken the grimlings so that when the owlbears prepared their attacks, they won. The next part wasn’t so easy, we had to find the right caves to start it off. Then the sonic wolves began their attacks on the owlbears, and a few slipped past us while we ran off trying to figure out where we should be. The owlbears lost their hold on one of the camps. No worries, they still had claim to one camp. So when the sonic wolves sent out their force en mass again, we killed them before they could get to the owlbear camp.

Then we killed another wave. Waited a bit. Killed another. Waited. Killed another – did this five times, those wolves were persistent. After the fifth wave of sonic wolves had been dispatched, the owlbears made their move to the caves, and since nothing stood in their way, over took them.

Once the owlbears occupied all three territories, their queen Skriat`Chakku spawned in a provisioner area, and even though the drop I wanted was supposedly rare – she dropped it. Ishbel is now the proud owner of “Eye of the Owlbear Mother” – which may not have the best stats, but it does have a meditate mod, and it does have FT1 (remember, I’m capped on wis) add a +mana augment to that thing, and she’s set. Plus, it was LOADS of fun to get.

The fun of course did NOT end there. Oh no. Kragnn and myself (as Ellithia, the 68 cleric) have been slowly working on a charm slot item that came out with Serpents Spine – and one of these relics we needed to collect came from Blackfeathers Roost. The zone is made up of nests and islands and you need to unlock access to each one. We managed the first two with no problem, the experience was fantastic and it was quite easy. We had to round up food to feed hungry griffons. Once we’d done that (twice, they’re hungry!) we noticed the zone was (of course) getting progressively difficult. Of course we called upon mighty Kuron to come save the day. We quickly got him caught up to both of us, and headed off to the third quest in the series.

By that time, we noticed that the relic we had to collect was actually on the first island, and we didn’t need to get access to any of the other ones at all. Oh well, the experience really WAS quite rewarding, not to mention just plain fun. The final access lets you into the Queen’s Palace, which is a raid mob for 55+ (but apparently it’s a lot harder then any 55 level raid would be able to handle) so I doubt I’ll be taking her down any time soon (I see Tipa is there tonight though with a friend, I’m sure if anyone can do it, she can, and maybe we’ll all get the pleasure of reading about it!).

Tonight I did some simple crafting for Malfi, contemplated new upgrades for Ishbel, and almost maybe started my crafting trophy. I’m not sure yet. There’s a quest I want to do in Natimbi for Ishbel to get her a new secondary item with mana preservation III on it, we’ll just have to see how that goes!

So congratulations to everyone from Nostalgia last night on a whole lot of levels, and fun. I hope everyone had a blast! We had a record setting number of folks on, and it was just an amazing time. I’m very lucky to be part of something so wonderful, with people who are just fantastic. It’s been a very long time since I’ve felt this involved in an mmo, and after all my ‘restless’ time bouncing around from game to game, who would have thought all I needed to do was dive back into EQ1.