2008

Plane of Hate – AKA The Night of Seja

Last night, Nostalgia braved the undead dragon skeletons and other horrors that lurked in the Plane of Hate. We had a few close calls, but it was a fantastic night. Kanad joined us on his newly de-leveled shaman, and Seja had just obtained the magical number to enter the zone (46) on his enchanter, so we had a few new faces. Which was great, because again we were slightly short and ended up with a few extra spots. Our second tank / zerker was not there nor was our beastlord (aside from my box). Our groups consisted of uber tank Tipa, Callendra, Sisca, and Mantis in one group (I apologize now if I’ve spelled all of your names incorrectly, it’s early and I am horrible with names) in the other group we had Warmungar, Seja, Kanad, Coldheat (who kept having connection issues, poor guy) and myself (I boxed my beastlord and druid for some extra dps).

Since the zone was not a hotzone, and in fact is still categorized as a raid zone (and has a 5 minute cool down before you start regenerate power properly, ew) things were slow going. The big winner of the night was Seja, who managed to get every piece of gear upgrade I believe, and it was really nice to see things dropping that people could actually use for once. He also gained a handful of levels.

Our cap has been raised to level 60, so I have levels to gain again as well. Hopefully I’ll get one or two throughout the course of the week. I’ve been teaming up with Kanad for experience, and have been having fun in more of the old zones, like Griegs End that we went through yesterday. Also not a hot zone, but the experience was not too bad. Qutey is now at 22aa and part way into level 56. Nala is 70% through level 55, and has 21aa. Ellithia, who I de-leveled hit 102aa yesterday in GE with Kanad.

I’m thinking of teaming up the cleric and enchanter with Kanad just to farm aa some place. She really needs the salvage crafting aa, as well as the final rank to her jewel crafting mastery. It’s getting painful failing combines so often. We’ll just have to see how that goes.

Most people I know are at Fan Faire this weekend, alas I could not make it. Perhaps next year! I hope everyone has a lot of fun.

Nom Nom

A post that’s not about gaming for once, what’s gone wrong? Well, nothing. I’ve been having fun leveling my baby dirge up in EQ2 (yes, that’s right I’ve gone over to the evil side. Tired of betraying the troubador back and forth I decided to start up a counter part much like I have with the illusionist and coercer). She’s level 32 right now, and I need to make gear for her and some spell upgrades. I also played Guild Wars last night, and blogged about it because I was just too dang excited, which left me with nothing to write about this morning.

Tonight Nostalgia meets up in EQ1, and we’re off to the Plane of Hate. For those truly old school, you’ll remember it as a raid zone. It’s got some raid encounters left in it still, but it’s now a group zone. You can access it by buying a stone from an npc in Neriak and turning it in to the plane of Tranquility off of PoK. Who, I forget. How much it costs, I also forget. It should be a blast though. You can also hand the stone in to your resident guild hall gnome, and he’ll set the guild portal to hate for you. How kind.

I do all of my groceries (weekly) at a place here in Ottawa called Farm Boy. I don’t own a microwave (I know how horrible eh) and I don’t buy anything frozen. I do love cooking, and I love the new foods that are out there and experimenting. So when I saw the above two items at the market, I decided to pick them up. Now, the amusing thing about the small box that contains a ready to eat tuna salad – is that it’s from Thailand. No big deal, but on the back of the can it says that the Tuna is from British Columbia. Thank you for selling us our tuna back! The meal is actually delicious, it’s almost like a tuna version of vegetable soup, minus the soup portion.

The sweet and sour noodles were VERY spicy, and amazing. I added broccoli and chicken to the dish, and it made way too much of course. The rice noodles didn’t exactly turn out as I would have liked. I’ve never cooked them before and it said to soak them for 3 minutes in boiling water which was not nearly enough time and they ended up weird and chewy.

Tonight? Good ‘ol BBQ chicken legs with rice.

I promise I’ll post something about gaming either later tonight, or tomorrow..

Who Ordered Extra Crispy?

Pitney has some issues. Actually, Pitney has a lot of issues. I stumbled across this npc in.. I believe Lakeside County. It’s a quaint little village and wild birds seem to roam around. There’s a field not too far, and it’s been infested with worm. Not just your average worm either, oh no. That would be too easy, lay down a little pest control and you’d be set.

These worms are the people eating sort. They probably chomped on a few of the roaming birds too. I could see a chicken or a small wolf being dinner. Anyhow, Pitney has worm problems to start. So you adventure around taking care of the issue. Looking for materials to lure out the Queen worm. That’s exactly what you want to do after all, right? The little people eating worms are just not enough. Anyhow, you eventually get lead (by Pitney himself) over to the Queen worm, and hopefully don’t get smashed to bits as you take her out. The field is filled with all sorts of other critters, wolves and smaller worms. Having an AoE or two helps take things out fairly fast (or a partner in game to play with, which is my option).

After you take care of the worm incident, Pitney mentions that his prized bird has flown the coop. Or he’s been stolen, or lost, something along those lines. He wants to send YOU (brave adventurer that you are) into the catacombs, to rescue his rare bird.

Oh boy!

So off I went to Ashford Abbey (I love the traveling in guild wars, very easy — but how come when I travel me and my group mate have to disband? Every time it gets more and more annoying, is there a way around this?) I went, to go to the catacombs.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in this little zone. Spiders, and animated skeletons and other little gooey bits of fun hang out there. A lot of the necromancer quest stuff is in there. I’d already been there once to light some ritual candles and again for some other necromancer stuff. I am an elementalist with a secondary profession of necromancer, and my partner in crime (from time to time) a warrior, also with a necromancer secondary profession.

Anyhow. We meandered our way through the catacombs, had a few close calls. Oh, how do you revive if your group member forgot to swap in their revive spell? The only method I could find was to open the map and port back to town. That does not really sound right to me. Eventually, we came to a ritual room, and there in the center, was Pitney’s rare bird.

Smushed. A little pile of legs and feathers on the floor. That’s what the screen shot is showing though I’m standing in front of what’s left of him (or it). Great. So now after all that hard work I had to go back to Pitney and tell him that his rare bird (after already dealing with worms) was dead, used in some sort of necromantic scheme.

That’s right, it was me, I was feeling hungry after all that adventuring..

I think I’m sitting at level four now. Maybe part way through it. I did a few other quests, including lugging a huge honeycomb over a bridge for someone. I had to make sure I moved slowly, so that the bees could keep up. Good thing my skin is almost like plastic (oh that reminds me, I turned off the ambiance setting or whatever it was that caused my skin to glow as though I had just eaten a candle.. much better now).

Still having lots of fun with the game, for once not worried at all about the level grind – and just listening to everyone’s stories. It’s great!

A Mixed Bag

Yesterday I finally completed the warden epic. Glad to have it done? You betcha. One thing I dislike (but also understand) about the epics, is that they all follow almost exactly the same time line. However, doing this also ensures that you have multiple classes working in the same zones and areas so that they can garner interest to help as others work on their own epics. The last three portions of just about every epic match, with the names of the mobs changing slightly and perhaps a rotation between which RoK instanced zone it’s going to use.

I admit now that I didn’t read the story line too well. The first few quests didn’t especially grab me. In fact the only quest where I did read the story line in depth (aside from troubador, because I read that on Tipa’s blog as she worked on hers) was the coercer one that pulled me in (or pulled someone into me, quite literally) from the very first quest.

None the less, all of the epic quests were well done, and players should take enormous pride in completing theirs. Hopefully the level cap stays at 80 at least for one expansion so that people can actually enjoy their epics before they get replaced by the next tier of gear (unlike my soulfire, which was replaced almost right away once I’d gotten it finally).

Silhouette dinged 74-75-76 crafter (thanks to anime) and I made quite a bit of coin selling some master drops. Chelsith last night was especially friendly. Two master chests dropped (though nothing came of any use) with a bruiser master that Shadowgeist sold for 100p and a fury master that the winner will no doubt be able to sell for quite a pretty penny (their main single target nuke). A handful of ornate chests dropped and Arysh got herself an earring upgrade, which was great. Since her epic procs on critical heals, I’m trying to boost that as high as I can. Adornments should help out, a bit.

Hopefully Silhouette will get 80 carpenter before too long, then I can work on her crafting epic. Having the earring that grants run speed would be really nice. After she’s reached the maximum level I need to get Arysh to 80. Then whoever is left (there are a few). It’s always nice to have a plan!

Nomadic Gamer