December 14, 2008

Plains of Anguish

Managed to team up on Saturday with Growlius and Agaton from Safe Haven and work on some of my Plains of Anguish quests (which I had a lot of). We finally cleared out enough to be working on the Brotherhood quests, which we all had multiples of. One thing that I didn’t know is that the named in the area have a chance to drop an unmarked piece of gear which is used in a quest to give you a skeleton illusion clicky. I’m all about clickies, I love them, have ever since EQ1 and all of those rogue masks that I camped for hours (and days) on end. 

The group was Growlius as his Dreadknight, and Agaton is a Psionicist. Apparently mez doesn’t work on undead, which I wasn’t aware of. I played healer, blood mage. Growlius got level 42, which of course meant new spells for him, and I managed to hit level 44! Brings me one level closer to being able to do my swamp armor quests at 45, and I got to purchase some new spells. I actually only had four quests to pick up, a little disappointing but it looks like 46 will be nice. I am really excited to be getting closer to 50, even if the experience has slowed down drastically. I also want to work on my crafting this week and make the push to 50 in that. It’ll be nice to be hitting 50/50 at pretty close to the same time. I’m not sure yet if I plan on getting diplomacy up to 50 but I probably will. It would be really nice to have a 50/50/50 character in Vanguard. Why? Because (for me personally at least) it’s a huge accomplishment and takes a lot of work. Guild was talking about how level 50’s are bored and typically playing nothing but alts, but since I’ve never had a level 50 character before, I have a feeling I’ll still play mine for quite some time. We’ll have to see. 

There was one death yesterday of the psionicist because lets face it they’re cloth wearers and I just couldn’t heal fast enough when they had so much agro, but aside from that I had a blast and I hope everyone else did too. 

I’m not sure where to head to after PoA, but I should work on that skeleton illusion mask some time I suppose.

The Shadow Odyssey, Chapter 1-5

Yesterday I made sure I logged in each of my characters to get their Frostfell present (I’m still hunting that bag of coal, total to count? Zero!) and once that was done it was time to start the TSO Signature Quest. 

Chapter one was simple enough. I had to go visit Lucan D’Lere or Antonia Bayle and have a conversation with one of the two rulers. This quest starts on the docks in either Qeynos harbor, or East Freeport by the way, for those who have not started it yet. It’s WELL worth starting as soon as you can because of where it sends you. 

Anyhow, I wandered around Antonia’s chambers and marvled at her decorating job. Looked familiar to my own. The good thing about each of these signature chapters is that they reward a good amount of guild status. 

She sent me to Sinking Sands to speak with Professor Fondfate on the docks where the airship picks you up, and he of course sent me to the Moors where I met up with him again (and got a book about the Ethernaughts!). Then it was off to find some clockwork in the Moors. Also pretty simple and all of these steps can be solo’d. 

Once that’s over it’s time for chapter two. You have to kill Brokenskull pirates for a drop, and fix the clockwork with it. Then it’s time for the Obelisk of Ahkzul, and killing the final named inside, Executor Vark. This is a really simple instance, and I LOVE the look of it. It was one of the prettiest I’ve ever been in and had a complete new look that I just fell in love with.

Someone in the group was on chapter 5 and also needed that zone, and what we didn’t realize was that once they killed the final mob we’d all get struck by an uncureable elemental dot that would cause us to explode (as the whole instance was collapsing upon us) if we didn’t exit in time. You can’t evac, you have to run. We had fun yelling to one another in group voice chat to leave the instance as fast as we could, making sure no one was left behind. When you have that sort of pressure on you, it’s easy to forget where the way out is. Especially when it’s an invisible line in the bottom of a doorway. Arg!

No one died though, and we started chapter three which is just a lot of running around and killing some guards who were protecting the Professor. 

Chapter four is all about history repeating itself, and it sends you to the Obelisk of Lost Souls (that’s right, the level 40-ish dungeon) to locate some tapestries. While you’re there searching, you notice two are missing. It’s off to East Freeport, and North Freeport to locate these two tapestry, steal them, and then put them back on the walls. 

Chapter five is where I’m at currently, and it wants me to go to multiple (7) instances, and kill named in each one. The instances are: The ruins of Guk: The lower Corridors, Veksar: The Sunken Theater, Emperor Atrebe’s Laboratory: The fabled City of Kor-Sha, Miragul’s Phylactery: The Crucible, Najena’s Hollow Tower, Befallen: Necrotic Asylum, and Ravenscale Repository. 

But wait! You’re not done! After that The Great Morsley sends you back to The Obelisk of Ahkzul, and that’s where you do the whole anchoring bit where you have to run and flee. 

There are eight chapters all together, and the rewards are simply amazing (and fabled). So if you haven’t started it yet, and you do instances frequently you may want to get to at least Chapter five where it’s sending you all over the place. I’m not sure if finishing this quest is something that I can realisitically ever do without being in a raid guild, but I’m going to be trying that’s for sure!