Guide Events and New Gear!
stargrace 
Did anyone lose a baby dragon last night? As I was running through South Qeynos, I stumbled upon this little baby dragon who was frolicking by the mage tower. They seemed friendly enough, so I looked at the tag they wore around their neck and found out that they live at 14 Karana Court. Well, there’s no telling what a stranger would do to a cute little innocent baby dragon (before you know it they’re a purse!) so I lured them with cake back to their home. This was no easy feat, they ran off after everything that moved, butterflies and other creatures that were outside. Eventually I managed to get them in the door, and in thanks I got the dress pictured below.
I love EQ2’s guide events, even if we don’t hear about them that often. That’s part of their mystery. The reward for this event was a frostfell dress, which can only mean one thing, that the holidays are fast approaching. I like the colour of the dress, even though it doesn’t exactly match Stargrace. It’s tradable, and I’ll probably give it to another character who can make use of it. The event was fun (although short) and I had a lot of fun talking to the ‘baby dragon’ and roleplaying leading them back to their home.
The whole reason I was even in South Qeynos to begin with was that I was headed to Sinking Sands to work on the signature quest that sends you into the home of Lucan D’Lere (evil) and Antonia Bayle (good). I thought maybe the guild could benefit from the status that’s given with these quests, plus the story line is fun to read. Once I’d completed the first chapter on Stargrace I decided to log over to Arysh and poke around the Void Shard Merchants.
I had 7 shards saved up, and while I should have checked out the ‘lesser’ void shard armor merchant first for upgrades, I went to the jewelery ones first. My wrist pieces on arysh have needed upgrading for quite some time now, and while I’d love to be able to afford the infused pieces (they’re 15 shards each from the vendor, 2 shards less then that from crafters) I did find a few upgrades on the regular jewelery merchant.
Next was to find someone who could craft me the piece, and I was in luck because that happened to be one of the books that Kasul looted last time we did a group instance. The jewelery is only 5 shards to begin with, have a crafter make it for you instead and it’s a total cost of 4 shards. Not bad at all considering how much of an upgrade the piece for me was. The void shard gear is really nice, I’d say every piece of the legendary ‘greater’ set is an upgrade for every one of my characters. Getting into groups to do these quests is the issue. Especially since I don’t know the zones well at all. Half of them I’ve never been to before, and I hate coming off like a poor healer simply because I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on in an instance. There’s also a lot of druids out there, which adds to the issue slightly. I think I’m determined to stick with mine though. Even if there are a lot of them, I enjoy playing mine, and I personally think I play mine well. If a wayward shadowknight can find a home after searching for three years, my druid should be able to as well (sure, I know I’ll switch mains again after this post, I always do).
Kasul crafted the piece for me, and he also got a discovery for the item which was a nice little bonus. The void shard armor can be crafted via the commission system, although before you craft for someone else you may want to make sure you put your own personal void shards in the bank. That warning comes from EQ2 traders and their post about void shard gear. The old bracelet I used to wear was treasured and had an overloaded heal proc on it. If you recall, overloaded heals used to be zone wide (making fights like one particular one in VP easier) but it was nerfed in GU50. Rumor has it they’re changing them again in GU51, but they still won’t work zone wide. Anyhow, it was a piece with lesser overloaded heal, which means the proc was just over 100 points.
Speaking of which, I decided to completely re-do my wardens aa’s. She just barely hit 140, and I decided to drop a few of my regular aa and switch them over to the shadow lines. I also decided to give her a melee spec. Warden have a str line that gives them a heal based on melee attacks, they can also turn their spells into CA’s, and they have ‘stances’ in their shadow line. My warden only has 155 strength though, something I plan on fixing. She has over 1,000 wisdom and almost 10,000 power with no raid gear. There’s no reason why I can’t switch some of that out for a little strength, or at least have a melee / solo / easy group set of str gear and then have my ‘hardcore healer’ gear as well. Carrying two sets of gear is annoying, but hey I’m interested in seeing what I can do with the warden. We’ll see how it goes.
For some reason my computer is still having issues ever since TSO released. I find it amusing that I can play VG now on fairly high settings with no issue, but a few hours into EQ2 and to image to the left will happen. The entire computer will freeze for a good solid 30 seconds, and then everything will become distorted in some weird 2nd world way. Yesterday the wood in South Freeport changed into icons of death, patterns of bones, skulls, and chicken beaks. The NPC’s wore bright green clothing, and Shadowgeist (who typically is dressed in black) was sporting a bright shiny metallic garb. I already underclocked my video card and turned the fans on it up when I was having crashing issues in WAR and scenarios. This fixed the issue. I never used to have issues in EQ2 either, but since the day TSO went live, I’ve experienced it. It’s typically in TSO zones, most commonly the crafting ones. Yesterdays happened to be in CT though. I get no other errors or messages from my computer along with it, just this oddly scary version of EQ2. My text also messes up along with all spell icons so it typically always requires me to restart my computer, of course not without taking a few screen shots of the changes to post here (or send to friends) while I giggle and wonder what exactly is going on. Stargrace pictured in the 2nd shot looks like she’s been coated with a nice layer of some sort of acid. Anyone else experiencing this? I haven’t bothered looking at the forums because when it comes to technical issues everyone seems to experience something slightly different and the solution that works for one doesn’t mean it will work for everyone.