2008

The Ironforge Exchange and Faction

stargrace September 24, 2008 1 Comment

When I leveled up Stargrace as a provisioner, I didn’t do it by writs like I do with most of my characters now. Mainly because at the time those writs didn’t give any experience other then what they gave for the process of crafting to begin with. The experience for turning in a writ came later. So it was easier for me to make masses of food and drink and either use them myself, or sell them. Since that was the case, my faction with the ironforge exchange lacked horribly. Typically, if you level yourself via writs, you’ll earn your faction by the time you hit level 80. Easier now that they’ve boosted the faction from 150 to 300 for rush orders. 

So the past little while I’ve been grinding out writs to max out my faction with the crafters of Qeynos – and of course to help boost Nostalgia as well. Yesterday I finally accomplished my goal and hit 40,000. I promptly bought some appearance gear – and discovered the boots which I guess no one had bothered to buy before from the merchant. Woot!

Ah, the sign of a true crafter of course. I sort my factions and see that the highest one I have is with the Ironforge Exchange. I love the look of the appearance gear. Granted it doesn’t exactly look like something I’d want to go out adventuring in for fear of getting it dirty, but it has that rustic look that I really like about the clothing. Reaching 40,000 with them also enables me to create the aa mirrors – I can already create them with Silhouette who has 40,000 with the Gorowyn tradeskill people, but the mirrors have to be commissioned if you can’t make them yourself, which means I can’t make them for my own characters. So being able to make them is a nice little bonus (though of course I know people who can make them already). 

This small little goal also allowed me to purchase more house items (of course!) I placed a little globe of Norrath in Stargrace’ home (which is due for a revamp, and the upstairs needs something done to it, I’m not sure what yet it’s a huge indoor garden type space) and also bought the two titles and they came with little scrolls to place. I realize that I shouldn’t have spent the status buying all that stuff, but hey I deserved a little reward after all that hard work. It was expensive too, I ended up spending 6p total for the gear + scrolls + globe. 

I am incredibly excited about the double experience weekend, though I’m not sure if it’s just for adventurers or for crafters as well. I spend the evening harvesting so that I’d have supplies to use – and if it’s for adventure only that’s alright I’ll level my monk or my necromancer. All in all, it was a pretty great day in Norrath. I still have to see where Najena is in unlocking the server quest. Kithicor and a few other servers have managed to finish their quests now, and they reward – you guessed it – house items! A few other goodies besides that too. You can actually read up about it here on the EQ2players forums.

DOUBLE experience weekend in EQ2!

stargrace September 23, 2008 4 Comments

We’re all used to the 20% bonus these days, it’s been ongoing for quite some time. So SOE is releasing the very first ever DOUBLE experience bonus weekend! You can read all about it here. I’m going to take advantage of that to grab a LOT of crafting levels I hope! I’ll have to spend this week harvesting supplies… *makes plans*

Still so excited about GU49

stargrace September 23, 2008 4 Comments

Things in EQ2 are starting to pick up again, which is always really fantastic. I have to admit, it was sort of fun to go read the Norrathian Homeshow forums (which I visit frequently for housing ideas, I can’t help it) and see a post about Beckett MOG and the house item given there. Made me feel all warm and tingly to be a part of that. I did have to deal with a little bit of drama last night but I’ve found the best solution to those sorts of incidences is just back off and don’t give the parties involved any more of a reason to be angry and grief like they had been. Some times people forget that these are games with other people behind them. A quick /ignore takes care of most things. 

I know I’ve mentioned this a few times, but I am REALLY looking forward to the next game update. I already have plans and ideas on how to take advantage of being able to resize furniture items. First of all you know those books that don’t QUITE fit on your shelves? Well, that will take care of the issue. How great will it be to resize them to fit where ever you’d like them. Tired of items not being halfling sized? No problem – lets fix that. The best part is those cute little items that ARE halfling sized (I’m talking about that acorn chair reward from the void storm quests) will be able to be resized and used for everyone else. 

I know it’s hard to see, but on the right hand side are two tables stacked on top of one another with food around each one as a little uhms.. display sort thing. Those tables are slightly too small though. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to be able to resize them so that the food fits properly? The entire bar is halfling sized (which is intentional, since this is Tipa’s bar) wouldn’t it be nice to resize it for an ogre? 

I’m also really looking forward to the new quests in sinking sands – though I am a little worried about how over populated it’s going to get, if it’s anything like Everfrost. It should be a lot of fun though, people need new things to do. That’s the great thing about EverQuestII, is it’s ever evolving and changing gameplay. 

Of course the biggest thing about the game update will be the guildhalls, but I’m not sure if Nostalgia will make it to level 30 in time. I’m going to work on writs today and try to inch Stargrace up to 40,000 faction with the Ironforge exchange. I believe she’s sitting at around 35,000 right now. Silhouette already has 40,000 faction with the Gorowyn tradeskill folks, and then of course I’d like to try to get max faction with the other crafting factions as well.

One thing that would be great – you can now work on the faction for cities of the same alignment for adventuring only though. So you can pick up writs for other factions as long as they’re not getting ready to lop your head off with a sword. It would be fantastic if this were also the case for the crafting factions. I’d love to be able to work both Gorown and Freeport for example. Ah well, maybe it will be something SOE will look into in the future.

Beckett MOG statue, and other goodness

stargrace September 22, 2008 7 Comments

The screen shot is a picture of the in game house item that comes with the newest issue of Beckett MOG – Kasul got the discovery on our server (Najena) which was pretty cool. Once furniture becomes scalable in size, I’m interested in seeing how big (or small) we can make it. I’m still really excited about the update upcoming, even if I’ve been dividing my time between multiple games now. 

There was a thread started on the eq2player forms about the house item, mostly people wanting a few particulars. For example, you can only claim one per account, unlike the satherian painting that was given away last year which is (or at least was) one per character. 

Still really nice that SOE gave this gift to Beckett MOG to give away. 

I spent the morning crafting house items for a friend, which is a hobby of mine that I enjoy a great deal. What better satisfaction is there in game then examining a pretty house piece only to find that your name is on the ‘made by’ tag. I remember when they implemented those tags and thought they were a great idea. 

I noticed Egat started playing a coercer in guild too, and Kasul did a whole lot of writs. We’re half way through 27, maybe a little more actually. I’ll have to start grinding writs again as well to help push for 30, but I’ve been a little burned out from doing that lately since I’ve done so many. 

On a side note, today is the first day of fall, and here in Ottawa the leaves are already changing colours. I bought one of those little mini pumpkins they sell and put it on the desk – where the cat promptly decided it was taking up HER space, and started to try to shove it off. The pumpkin is bigger then her head and despite all of her best efforts, the pumpkin remains.