October 2008

LoN, Housing, and a Cold

stargrace October 16, 2008 4Comments

Feeling under the weather lately, with all the regular aches and pains that come along with it, I didn’t get a whole lot done yesterday. I did decide to move Silhouette out of her 5-room Gorowyn home and into a three room. There was just no reason for me to have such a huge house when I already own two 5-rooms in South Qeynos. I started thinking of ideas for her home but had a difficult time concentrating so I sort of piled everything at the door and I’ll come back to it another time.

I had heard that LoN (legends of Norrath card game) was giving out free things with their new Ethernaught scenarios and I decided to play a few rounds. First one I got replenishes 100% of your adventure vitality. Pretty cool little item except that most of my characters are level 80 and I don’t have room to make more. Apparently there is also a sales crate that reduces the broker fee, and a wand of forgiveness that erases experience debt. 

There’s quite a few debates over LoN going on right now. I’m quite impartial to the majority of them. I think some of the loot cards need a second look (ie: Letting players choose a random class hat of any class to wear that has no stats) but for the most part don’t really mind the items as they don’t have a huge affect on game play. I love the idea of rewarding loot cards to players for actually PLAYING the game, as opposed to being able to simply plunk down an amount of cash to buy booster packs and randomly winning one. There’s a player on my server who proclaims that they can sell any single loot card to anyone out there (for in game plat) as long as the price is right. That leads me to believe they have way too much cash to burn. Good for sony I suppose though, for being able to tap into such a profitable market. I think the in game announcements are a little too much at times, but for the most part those who don’t want anything to do with LoN don’t have to. Though everyone just got a free starter deck and 5 boosters, so they may actually want to at least check those out for any random loot cards. 

Crashed to desktop with an error when I tried to arrange my deck, apparently it’s quite common when you’re in very high graphic settings. I took it as a sign and decided to go to bed for the night. Of course it was quite early so I was up at 4am this morning. Ugh.

Lets Get D.I.R.T.Y. Tonight

stargrace October 15, 2008 5Comments

I had been neglecting my duties, I knew it from the start. When the priests in the Temple of Life started going on about excavation sites I barely paid attention. Didn’t they know Nostalgia had just purchased our very own guildhall? Everything that wasn’t guildhall related I pretty much just tuned out. 

A week or so had gone by though and again I heard the hushed whispers. It was past time I checked things out for myself. I took the next carpet to Sinking Sands, brushing grains of, you guessed it – sand – out of annoying places that sand shouldn’t be. Why on earth had I decided to wear a dress to the desert of all places. I shook my head in annoyance. No one to blame but myself. 

There were D.I.R.T.Y. workers everywhere. Standing by the carpets leading to Sinking Sands, and welcoming me on the docks once I landed. They mentioned I’d want to head west up the hills to see the new discovery. I thanked them and headed off. 

Jimbo McDaniel greeted me, and mentioned he was having issues with the local monkey and wouldn’t I bet so kind as to shoo them away for him just for a bit? Of course I agreed. Some times it’s painful being this nice. 

Then the monkey started throwing… stuff… at me. I didn’t sign up to be pelted with monkey poop!

After I finished shooing away the monkeys (and no doubt I looked slightly ragged, running up to Jimbo with my hair strewn about my shoulders and brown splotches covering my dress) Jimbo sent me to the excavation site to help out. 

It wasn’t enough that I had been pelted by monkey poop, it was time to get REALLY dirty and help dig up relics. 

My pick axe was just one of a thousand others working away in the sand. The sun lowered in the desert sky and my skin was coated in a thin film of dust and grime. 

After a few hours of helping out the excavation site I headed back to Jimbo, I had been paid a few bits of D.I.R.T.Y. money for helping out and wanted to spend them. Of course before Jimbo McDaniel would open his shop to me he required me to investigate a monkey that had been going around infecting people. Once I had dispatched that monkey he sent me to take care of an even BIGGER monkey. I swear if I see another monkey today it will be one too many. 

At the end of the day it was all worth it though, I got my very own excavation helm to take home. It can apparently also spot hard-to-see shinies on the ground, I got to test it out once before the site became too populated for me to notice any others. 

Now if I could only remember what D.I.R.T.Y. stood for….

(( Spent some time doing the newest live event quests today, very fun! Aside from monkey poop, of course )) 

Festival of Discord – Beauty Pageant

stargrace October 15, 2008 0Comment

The contestants were a unique bunch. The only ones allowed to partake in the Festival of Discord’s “beauty” pageant, were trolls, ogres, sarnak, ratonga and of course the scaly iksar. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, after all. A fair number of people showed up, something I was pleased to see. The event itself was hosted by one Ariania, who was having a few computer issues ahead of time. 

The participants were asked to show off their ‘talents’ which ranged from dramatic readings, to a demonstration of their abilities. Kanad and I inched closer to the front in order to get better seats. I had thought that /says worked over a greater distance, but apparently I was wrong. They were also asked some pretty hard questions, like what would they do if they found an injured paladin along a deserted road, and what would they do if they had Antonia Bayle in a room alone for an hour. Answers ranged from serious to just outright amusing. 

I joined the festival channel (shown above) on Najena, so that I could listen to the announcements and the activities. After the beauty pageant was a pumpkin carving contest, and then a trivia event. Once all of those were done it was time for some relaxation with a drink and good food at a local tavern. 

I was handed some food and drink by one kind Ratonga who informed me that their supplies this year were actually provided by SOE, which is fantastic. 

Events like this typically have a snowball effect, inspiring others to host their own player events. So I’m happy to announce that Nostalgia will be putting on a performance in the near future in our guildhall for the good people on Najena (of course visitors are also going to be more then welcome). Our very own Tipa Tanglewood (also known on Najena as Dinah) has agreed to write the script while I work behind the scenes on promoting the event. This is just an idea for now, and will become more fleshed out as time passes. Excited? Yes, I am!

Last night was a lot of fun, and it was a perfect ending after spending the early evening decorating.

Visitors, Decorating, and Just Plain Fun

stargrace October 15, 2008 3Comments

A few things to start off with today. First of all, thank you SOE – it’s not odd for me to catch a link from their town crier or see that of a friends blog but when I checked out yesterdays listing on the EQ2players site and saw four of my posts linked, it was a nice little surprise. Since I was having “one of those days” it made me smile. 

Second of all, /waves and hello to Caladwen if she’s reading this! Caladwen sent me a tell yesterday asking to come visit Nostalgia’s guildhall. Of course anyone is more then welcome to stop by (Hey, Rao, that means you eh!) and I chattered with her a little while she ran around. Good thing Buddy didn’t take a bite out of her arm or we’d have a lawsuit on our hands! It was nice to be able to show off every ones stuff, the crafting areas with little bits of personality all over as well as the two new designs we added to the hall yesterday. Remember, this is very much an ongoing work in progress. 

So what was worked on? Well, I finally got the theater stage completed. It’s formed after the one I built for Tipa’s house. Now that we’re able to scale furniture it’s a bit bigger then the one she has, and we’ve decoreated it for Halloween. There’s also a music area, and a bar as well as seating to view the theater. A rug or two in the center of the room and I think it will be complete, maybe some extra seating, I haven’t decided yet. It’s difficult to make sure we won’t run out of house items in the hall. I actually had a dream last night (a sure sign I’m decorating too much) that Tipa called me to tell me we wouldn’t be putting any books at all in the hall because they counted towards the item limit. A huge thank you to Kasul, who built all the twisting stairs used in yesterdays designs. There’s no way I’d have the patience to align those. 

Does anyone know or have an idea of which Bayle that is pictured above? The painting is simply titled “Bayle” but I’m not sure if it’s Kyle Bayle (that’s what my vote was for though) or Antonious or someone else. Kasul went searching through lore archives last night to see if we could figure it out. Ah, what another fantastic aspect to EQ2 (and EQ1 of course). 

Besides decorating I did end up heading to Antonia Bayle to partake in some of the Festival of Discord events, but I’ll be posting about that in a second post. It was a LOT of fun! Remember that the event runs until Saturday, so you still have lots of time to check everything out.

A Simple Morning

stargrace October 14, 2008 0Comment

Picture taken by me this morning, watching the sun come up. Full view is better, of course. 

Yesterday and the day before was spent with family, enjoying the Thanksgiving Holiday. I didn’t get to do an enormous amount of things in game. I’m looking to transfer my 71 defiler from Antonia Bayle back over to Najena with the rest of my ‘crew’ but SOE’s automated transfer service is down. There is a work around to this, you can submit an email request and they’ll send you the form – however this can take up to two weeks to finish apparently. I sent one off this morning and we’ll see how it goes. 

I didn’t get to attend any of the events yesterday at the Festival of Discord, but I’ll be looking over their schedule today to plan out some events to attend for the rest of the week. I know Friday night and Saturday are probably going to be heavily populated with other roleplayers, so I’ll try to make a point to attend those days. 

The pre-order for TSO (The Shadow Odyssey) started today. You get a ‘special’ item for the retail version – a dire bear mount. The digital version also has a ‘unique’ item, a house item creature. I used to buy the retail versions of EQ2 but EBGames (where I do most of my game shopping here in Ottawa) started getting their shipments in late, and I would be unable to play the new content for a day or two after release. Silly that I want to be right in the thick of things right away? Not really. So I started purchasing the digital downloads every release instead and have never had an issue with them. 

Now I’m wondering if I’ll go with the retail box just so I can get this dire bear, apparently it levels and grows along with your character as you level and grow. I’m not sure if it can be claimed on all characters or just one (my gut goes with just one) so I guess we’ll see. 

Little big planet releases a week from today. Still very eager about that, though I won’t be able to play until that night, either. Ah well!