2008

To Speak as a Dragon – Lavastorm Goodness

stargrace October 10, 2008 1 Comment

I needed to take a little break from the decorating madness. Guildhalls are not going anywhere, and there’s plenty of time to build up a fantastic looking hall. I’ve seen some of the work going on at the Norrathian Homeshow, and also heard some of the horror stories that I knew would be associated with this. Things like “anyone can resize and move any item placed in the hall if they belong to the guild” and there’s always that one prankster who doesn’t understand how difficult it was to place all of those books, who goes and changes it all. Then there’s the “my guild leader said *I* could decorate but when I went back they had changed everything!”

More reasons why I’m happy that Nostalgia is the size it is and as of yet we have not had any issues with decorating the hall. Even if we did, we’re a fairly open bunch and we’d just talk about it, like adults do, and throw furniture later. 

I have been feeling the urge to work down some older quest chains, the Peacock line and claymore in specific. Since Silhouette hasn’t been around for all that long, I never started Speak as a Dragon which is one of the major ‘access’ quests in game that’s actually still used today. 

Of course, way back when it used to be an epic quest to even get the starter, and now it’s been changed to heroic. I headed through lavastorm on the new graphic settings I have my computer at. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE the new dual core support? I’ve been playing on 2nd highest settings easily, sans lag. Even in Qeynos Harbor. I could probably play on the highest settings, but I didn’t want to push things too far. This game is absolutely beautiful, and it’s something I’ve missed seeing. Even the older zones are beautiful. Lavastorm and Everfrost with their particular hot / cold flavours are just breathtaking.  I took screen shots of me running past the Oracle Tower in Antonica, and it was inspiring. 

I wasn’t feeling well so I logged off shortly after picking up the quest starter, but hopefully today I can run around collecting runes. Having a recall to guildhall spell every 15 minutes, and a druid who will port me around, is of course very handy. Plus I can pick up the shrubs I’ve forgotten – and the new one that they added to Darklight Woods. 

I still haven’t done the new D.I.R.T.Y. quests yet in sinking sands, maybe that will be another goal for today. I’m also trying to decide who I want to ‘settle’ on playing once the expansion goes live in November. So far I’m torn. Not that I HAVE to settle down, but things are always easier to accomplish on one character first then they are to do on 10. We’ll just have to see!

Keep it Simple St– er, you know the rest

stargrace October 9, 2008 4 Comments

While decorating, and listening to everyone else decorate, I’ve noticed a few things. How could I not. I feel that our (Nostalgia’s) guildhall should represent us, and I’m fairly certain everyone in the guild feels the same way. We’re not big and uber, but we’re filled with passion. So our guildhall for the most part has been fairly simplistic, with some creative and passionate aspects thrown in. I actually feel lucky that we’re small because were we any larger no doubt we’d have huge decorating disagreements and pillows / beds / other various house items would go flying. So far it’s been easy. 

Each craft station within the hall has it’s own little area. The craft room is huge, and I like that guild members can personalize this space. Tipa added some neat little (literally) bits to her tailor section, Kasul with his jewelcrafting, and I turned the provisioner area into… well. You can see the screen shots for yourself. 

The smaller shots don’t do it justice, so please feel free to stop by.

Congratulations Nostalgia

stargrace October 9, 2008 7 Comments

We did it.

Yesterday morning Nostalgia was 100% away from level 30, the lowest guild level needed in order to buy a guildhall. Writs (tier8 crafter) were rewarding .5% experience at 15,000 stauts a shot. I figured it would take us a week to grind out that final level, but Nostalgia came together (as I’ve seen the band of folks do before) and by 5:30pm EST we had finished getting the entire level. 

200 writs later..

Honestly, yesterday was probably the best day I’ve ever had in EQ2, minus taking down Chel’Drak for the first time where I also screamed on vent once we’d accomplished it. Hey, it was a big deal way back when. I kept my sanity grinding writs by spamming twitter and the few people who were following that, a huge thank you to Tay and Tipa for the entertainment and putting up with my comments every few minutes while I tried not to just throw the whole computer out the window. 

Getting to level 30 was a big deal for us. We’re a really small guild I’ve said that a lot. Most of us play other games and it’s rare to see any more then 3-4 of us on at once and that’s pretty much the entire guild right there. The guild was formed in May, so we haven’t been around a long time either. We’re not raiders (if anything we’re crafters at heart). I was so very proud of everyone, I just can’t even express the feeling, please believe me when I stress the amount of work that went into this.

Aside from reaching level 30, we had 125p saved up so we could buy the hall + amenities, and we had donations of over 24,000,000 status into escrow. 

We had discussed on the guild forums where the hall would be – Gorowyn so that everyone could get there easily. We also discussed which 5 amenities we’d be purchasing. 5 is really not enough. We have a banker, rush order writs, the recall to guildhall statue, a fuel merchant, and druid rings. We don’t have a broker, or a merchant who we can sell to. We can’t make all of our npc wear the same uniform, or change that uniform. We can rename them all with cute little names though. Our banker is Mini Tipa (halfling, of course) and we have a mini Kasul giving out rush writs. 

The hall itself is huge and beautiful and a vast representation of everything we worked towards. No, it’s not the T3 or even the T2 hall but I take far more pride in what my small guild accomplished together then any other guild I’ve been in, and I’ve been in a lot. 

Now of course, the decorating begins. We wandered around together as a guild and planned out rooms. A crafting room (thank you for the machine donations!), library, and bedrooms for members down below where there’s more freedom for people to ‘do whatever’ with the space (and where I’ll try not to let my decorating sense tingle too much, I wanted everyone to have their own area to call theirs). I’ll be building Nostalgia a stage and music themed area much like the one located in Tipa’s house already. We’re all artisans of some sort, crafters, musicians, writers. 

So, that was my night last night. I didn’t actually do any decorating. I started to build a kitchen and it wasn’t working out so I decided to leave it be for now and I’d go back to it today. 

For anyone wandering around Najena who wants to come visit, please feel free. At the moment the guild is on visitor status, open to the public. I’ve also set our druid rings, writ giver, and fuel merchant to public status for now. We’ll see how it goes. For more Nostalgia fun be sure to check out Tipa’s post about the whole thing too!

Nostalgia Dings 29, Guildhalls Release, and other Ramblings

stargrace October 8, 2008 5 Comments

I’ve been working very dang hard to help Nostalgia reach level 30 in order to purchase a T1 guildhall. Actually three of us have been working very hard, there’s Kasul with over 500,000 guild status now, Ecor who just showed up out of no where and offered to help us level who finally hit 100,000 status yesterday, and myself who has over 500,000 status spread across multiple characters. The guild events window is filled with nothing but writs as of late. We’re so close we can practically taste it, and yet we’re not quite close enough. That happens though, when you have so few people working towards a huge goal. It takes time. Aside from leveling the guild (each writ gives 0.5% now at T8) Kasul and myself donated the 125p between us to purchase the hall, and also have the 14,000,000 status required for amenities. I toured the T1 guildhall located in Gorowyn, and it’s beautiful. It may be a little small, but I still think it’s fantastic and once we are able to purchase it, it will be even better. 

Since I’ve been doing pretty much nothing in game besides help Nostalgia get to 30, I didn’t even have a chance to check out much of the update yesterday. I did of course make an effort to check out the new housing bits. There are a lot of them and they’re all wonderful. They range from new rugs to banners to chairs stools and couches with an unrest theme. You can find pictures of them all here. Wonderful job on those. 

Being able to scale furniture was another big hit with me. I made a few acorn chairs proper size for my characters. I removed the 3 mystical mirrors I was using for my aquarium and enlarged one so that just the rippled effect is showing and not the bright orange boarder. I shrunk books that didn’t fit in the shelves, as well as my large sales crates. I shrunk all of the LoN paintings that were covering the walls, and condensed them all in a mural type setting. I shrunk some tables to the size of proper coffee tables for the new unrest couches that I’d placed. 

I heard others talking about the new purple shinies, and the new quests in sinking sands involving D.I.R.T.Y money but I haven’t had time yet to check it out. Hopefully I’ll meander my way over there some time today or later this week, we’ll see. I heard a lot of people complaining they noticed no change with the dual core support added — but I certainly noticed a difference. From what I had heard and read, you would most likely see a difference with particle effects, and cloth simulation as well as shadows. I run on the 2nd highest setting all of the time and it runs exceptionally smooth now. 

There are some fantastic halloween items coming out when that goes live, rumor had it they would be included in this update, but I don’t believe they were. One change I did not enjoy – they adjusted my wardens epic to sit on her back rather then at her hip. It cuts off her head. It also rests over top of her shield, so she has both her shield and her epic sword showing and it just looks weird. I did a /feedback when I saw that in beta a while ago and hope it gets changed. 

All things considering, great update. Hopefully Nostalgia will hit 30 and I’ll have a little more time to explore the changes!

Also! A huge hello to ‘Pouncequick’ who said hi to me in game yesterday out of the blue, mentioning they read my blog. So /wave and /hug – always a pleasure to meet a reader (and any fellow writers!)