37,813 words once my writing session today ended.
Updated my profile and I’m looking forward to the home stretch. Even know how it’s going to end! Should have a couple more write ups on my personal site next week, depends on how busy things get. Thank you for all of the motivation!
Even though there was no in game notice this morning, servers came down promptly at 10am EST for their daily hour of downtime. It was announced on the forums at least, which is a fairly safe place to check if you’re not seeing messages in game. Perhaps this will address the vendor bug that’s allowing people to sell things to a particular TSO merchant for large amounts of coin. The /motd in game says that those who are ‘taking advantage’ of this will find their coin removed by the end of it all, but that at this moment there is no ETA on when that may be (or how it will be done for that matter).
In the mean time I’ve been working diligently away at my harvesting cloak. It’s a good thing I actually enjoy harvesting, because this is not a quest for the faint of heart. I’m up to harvesting T5 now, and it sends me to Rivervale and Ferrott to harvest 20 of each sub-type of node. (20 wyvern meat, 20 bear meat, from each zone for example). Remember how you complained in the past that dens didn’t drop anything but meat? Well now you’ll want them to.
I’ve also come up to a slight bottleneck in this quest. Rivervale is a small zone when compared to the other ones that this quest sends you out into. There are 10+ people on Najena also at this part of the quest, and in true greedy harvester fashion they ignore any node that’s not one that they need. Since I don’t mind harvesting and since T5 requires rares for the crafter epic, I follow up behind them and harvest everything I see. I’ve gotten a good chunk of rares and supplies for my crafters. It does mean that my progress on the quest is quite a bit slower, I still require a lot of supplies from Rivervale. I’m not in a rush though.
I typically don’t have a great deal of patience in game. It’s a fault that I admit to every so often. This quest is quite relaxing, and I’m not so gung-ho about completing it as I am just collecting harvests from every tier. With the new guild hall hirelings I find it a rare sight to see any harvesters out there. The market is flooded with rares that no one uses and aside from the elusive T6 harvests (sinking sands and PoF which are difficult zones to harvest in to begin with) they sell for 10-30g and no more. Najena is not a server for lower level characters. I miss that about Antonia Bayle, which caters to a lot of lower level characters due to their role play community (which is a fantastic one might I add). Since I have both of my accounts active, and the ability to create new characters on the second account still I may make one on AB just to relax and kick back on. I do have a level 30 guild over there after all that Calreth has been keeping warm for me.
Harvesting gives me lots of time to think about what direction I’d like to go in the game. Taking a look at my site one year ago this month I was just getting into RoK raiding (the expansion released earlier last year) and having ups and downs with it as my guild attempted Thugga for the first time. I’ve been debating whether or not I want to get back into raiding full time. Despite having been on Najena for quite a few months now I’ve kept mostly to myself / Nostalgia and a few close friends, and I don’t have the connections I had on Antonia Bayle as far as raiding guilds go. There is also a larger diversity of raid guilds on Najena because it has a heavy aussie / EU population. The only issue with returning to raiding would be the time I would have to devote to it. While I would be able to make the time for it, I start to feel restricted and constrained having to adjust my life around a video game. I like to be able to come and go as I please, and if I’m simply not in the mood for something, I don’t log in. Partaking in a raid guild means others rely on me, and I’d feel obligated to put forth my best effort in whichever encounter we had planned for the evening. I don’t like to do things part way, and this is one of the biggest reasons I’ve avoided the raiding scene for the last year. Before RoK I raided fairly heavily, and I had a lot of fun with it. Once my guild dissolved though I had trouble finding a new ‘home’ and things just went down hill from there.
I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes! I hope everyone else is enjoying their time in Norrath. Hopefully those polar bears will have my copy of TSO today, but I’m not holding my breath. Since Shadowgeist had raids in the new content lats night he caved and bought the digital download. Every day I’m not playing in the new expansion I tell myself I’m extending the longevity of ‘fun’ by that much. So far it’s worked.
Another evening without TSO means 35,788 words on NaNoWriMo, and a bit of art work too. Can be found in full view here. Contemplating starting up a second blog for the art bits, but I hate having multiple places to write in, I’d rather be able to mush all my interests together. I know not everyone likes that though. I tried to siphon out the non-gaming bits, but it doesn’t work for long.
Apparently those polar bears got stuck in snow, or were stopped at the boarder with their bags of video games because as of 7:30pm on the 19th there is no date or time given on when the TSO expansion (retail) may actually be for sale. EBGames claims they MAY get it by Friday, Best Buy has no idea what the game even is, and Furture Shop has none ordered at all.
I wouldn’t mind getting the digital download if it wasn’t for the bear mount with 52% (that’s 62% with aa) run speed. Why did they have to add a USEFUL /claim item to the retail box this year. Why did they have to be DIFFERENT rewards at all.
Bitter? Sure, a little bit. I have articles about the new expansion due on the 8th with no expansion in sight and no one seems to understand what’s going on. EBGames even told me yesterday after I talked to them that they would have it today. Today they’re claiming they have no idea and I should check in Friday. Sighs. I do get to enjoy reading everyone else’ post on it though, and watching them explore the new zones and the new goodies while I work on my harvesting quest.
Why does this have to be so complicated. LoTR’s expansion is full on the shelves and so is WoTLK. Maybe this is just a sign.
Sorry for the rant, it’s rare that I do it but this is one of those times.
When I first interviewed Sony Dev’s for Beckett MOG about TSO I specifically asked if there would be any incentives to get players out into the older zones. I always disliked how as soon as a new expansion was released, there was 0 reason to continue on through the old content. Their answer sort of confused me, and confused me even more when I actually took a look around TSO and the content offered.
Quite a few of the dungeons are located in old world zones. This includes Lavastorm, and Everfrost as well as Commonlands. There’s also one huge quest line and while it’s not directly related to TSO it was implemented with GU50 on the same day.
Of course I’m talking about the fabled cloak for harvesters. I’ve been working on this quest chain (I still don’t have TSO) off and on yesterday and today and I’m actually finding it quite challenging for a few reasons.
Number one, each tier the quest wants you to harvest more and more items and amounts of said items. You start off in T1 harvesting 5 of each item and work your way up stage by stage. I’m on T4 now (Zek and Enchanted lands) and it wants 15 of each item, in each zone. That’s a lot of harvests.
One life saver while I have been doing this quest has been the gnomish divining rod. This is a tinker made item and it allows you to track nodes, as well as anything else that lays on the ground, shinies and book pages. If you leave the track window open (like regular track) and run around it will show the nodes in the order of proximity to you. So you can leave it up and run around and know if you are at least close to any of the nodes you need. I also used this item yesterday when I was hunting down my carpenter pages. Some liked to hide off to the side and it was getting a little frustrating.
Aside from the sheer number of harvests you’re required to obtain there is the difficulty in the type of harvests. Don’t have your fishing up quite yet? Well you’ll want to because these quests all require amounts of harvested fish from specific zones. Remember all the times you complained about dens giving out too much meat and not enough pelts? Well now you’ll want those meats and NOT the pelts. Of course they’re no where to be seen.
It’s nice to see a some what complicated crafter quest. Though I can see how low level adventurers may not be able to complete it since most harvesting areas are populated by aggressive mobs. That could add to the thrill though, having to dodge and duck away from the mean things trying to eat you. Me, I’m thankful that Silhouette is 80/80 already while I attempt this.
The quest sends you into every tier, and pretty much every old world zone. Last tier I had to harvest from both Nektulos Forest and Thundering Stepps. It’s a lot of fun meandering your way through the forgotten zones and visiting things you haven’t seen in quite some time. Of course there’s still a lot more to go. This quest takes a lot of time and I’m looking forward to that, keeps me out of trouble while I wait for those polar bears to show up.
The merchant bug from yesterday / this morning has been fixed (thankfully) so people shouldn’t be selling body drops for 3p a shot any more while being gouged on their repair bills. Apparently I was wrong. Checking the MoTD shows that the bug is still in place but is being worked on. I expect that the lag will still be there tonight when the servers fill up but that’s a population thing and I’m glad to see it. I wish there had of been a little more lowbie content to draw some new players into the game, but I can’t be picky. A few people that I know have returned for the expansion, here’s hoping they stick it out this time around.
stargrace