2008

Back in Telon (again)

It’s completely Ardwulf’s fault, of course. His posts about Telon and finding his way along (again) made me itch to play the game, and why not, I’ve had station access for months now and have only taken advantage of a game or two here and there. I never disliked Vanguard, I’ve actually always spoken very highly of the game. However, I’m one of those people who constantly flip around from game to game depending on my moods. Bad for people I play with, but good for me.

Due to some other circumstances, I bid fair well to the Nostalgia meetings on Fridays – but will still be around in EQ1 on occasion and far more so in EQ2. I doubt anyone was too heartbroken, there’s plenty of members now and I’d missed the past few weeks of meetings due to real life (and broken computers). I dislike letting people down, and being unable to commit to the one day a week was making me feel very badly.

Anyhow. This weekend is double experience in EQ2, which is great. I plan on getting some craft levels on both the weaponsmith (62 so far) and carpenter (46 and holding steady) as well as the monk (28 and counting). Eyenstein, a friend I’ve known for about 4 years now, managed to get some trooper boots to drop – and since they were lore for him, offered me a fantastic deal. The little bardling is singing in style, now.

In Vanguard, I ran around harvesting with Gozad trying to remember what key does what. While I was away (just over a month) a lot changed. For one, SOE revamped my blood mage class. I have no idea what changes happened and assume I should speak to my trainer, and read some notes. I did find out we can make body bags to carry around our organs in, which is great – except they’re only 20 slot, and my personal bags are 28 slot. You obtain the spell at around level 24 (or so I heard) which makes it fantastic for newer players.

There are also collectibles in Telon – and I don’t have the slightest idea what these are. There’s a special bag that will hold your collectibles, as well as your harvesting tools. Just something I saw linked in the general channel today, I’ll really have to do some research. The living legacy promotion reaches into VG as well, with some free mounts for people and a month of free game play. I don’t mind missing out on this one, the mounts are going to be available to old and new, which is what EQ1/EQ2 should have done from the start.

The market is much like I left it. My house is still standing too, with 13 more weeks of rent paid off. The game itself seemed to run smoother – but that may just have been wishful thinking on my part. In the cities I still chugged around some until items were rendered properly, but I’m coming from a completely new instillation of the game.

There were people chattering away on channels, also good. Seems Telon is fairing pretty well on that at least. I heard lots of requests for groups, even though I spent my time (for now) harvesting. We’ll see how the rest of the weekend goes!

It’s Always the People

Yesterday was a pretty good day, as far as EQ2 is concerned. I spent a little time playing my monk, took her through Wailing Caverns with a mentored Shadowknight and managed to get from level 10 to level 25 in a fairly short amount of time. Not to mention got a whole lot of loot which I transmuted some of, and put the rest for sale. Lower level adepts (we’re talking 1-20 here) sell for a fairly good price, I saw most for 4-10g each, I priced mine at 2g each and they were sold by the time I’d relogged to another character. Some transmuter out there no doubt. I kept the useful adepts and scribbed them on the baby monk. Then I spent 5p and geared her up since she was wearing just the newbie armor you start with. I bought all mastercrafted leather armor, some fighting batons, two charm slot items, all of her adepts that she was missing, as well as a few pieces of jewelery. Expensive? Maybe, but what’s the point of having an alt if you can’t twink them out.

Yes, I could have crafted all the bits myself, but that takes time and well, again – what’s the point of having all this money in game if I don’t actually spend it. I already live on a budget in real life, why worry about virtual coinage.

Later on in the day Malfi logged in and was talking about his vacation – and also talking about how he was working on Claymore. One of those really long chains of quests that no one does any more. Well, practically no one. It’s those quests (and older) that I just love doing and would be more then willing to get a group of people together to work on. Of course he’s 10 levels over the cap for it – but that doesn’t make the quests any less fun (or rewarding) not to mention if you’re one of those very questy people (which he is, of course) it adds towards your total count.

All his talk got me thinking about my own Claymore quest chains. I’ve completed it once on Arysh (warden) and have it started on multiple other alts all at various stages. At level 80 a good portion of this quest chain is gray now, making it far easier then it would have been when it released. Especially the dreaded SoS portions and PoA.

That’s the problem great thing about awesome friends – they always make you interested in whatever it is they’re doing.

But instead of working on Claymore or doing any other chain of quests, I logged in the carpenter and got two levels on her, pushing her to level 46. It’s my goal to try to hit 50 on her before too long at least to be out of this tier of boring crafted items. It’s the highest I’ve ever managed to get my carpenter, which is a plus. I’ll be gone all day Saturday, so I won’t be able to take advantage of much of the “double exp” weekend, but I hope to be able to grab the last few levels I need.

Bring on the Alts

This morning bright and early Shadowgeist helped the troubador run through Chardok, grabbing clickies she needed for her epic. Of course on my way to one of the final ones, something saw me and evac was down and in a very short space of time I was looking at the entrance of the zone again with debt (not that it matters at level 80). I probably need a group to reach the furthest one. I appreciated the help though!

I’ve got a lot on my plate in EQ2, and it’s great. Last night in one of my ‘list’ moods I wrote out all my characters, their races, their adventure and craft levels, and then made up a quick ‘to do’ list, in no real particular order. Just a general list of things I wanted to do and accomplish over time. Having so many alts, this is a great way for me to keep track of everything. Of course, instead of working on anything I listed, I made a new alt. Well, actually she’s an old alt.

On every server I’ve played on, I keep telling myself I’ll try a monk. They’re great to solo with, have a fair amount of dps, can tank some of the lower instances – and while they’re not T8 tanks, they can feign death their way around and just generally sound like a whole lot of fun. Problem is I seem to get my monks to level 25-35 or so and then I give up or move servers or switch games or something along those lines. It’s happened every time.

So I created Ysandria some time ago. Probably when Nostalgia 2.0 was just getting started. A fae monk, of course for their glide ability. Last night I felt the ‘alt itch’ while I chattered to Mayadhros, and decided to level her a bit. Then today I decided it was time to try to get the monk to level 35 (or higher if I can) so that I’m at least past the point of no return that I reached with all of the other monks I’ve played. It would be nice to catch up to Kasul, and have a duo partner for some of the solo / duo stuff if I can manage to catch up. This weekend is double exp weekend for EQ2 – but Saturday I’ll be relaxing at the cottage, with no time to play (expect lots of pictures!) the rest of the weekend we’ll just have to see how it goes.

On a side note, Borgeo got a hold of me this morning! How great was it to talk to him! It’s been ages it seems. A pre-congratulations on the 2nd kiddo he has on the way, two months will fly by!

Ah Ha!

For a few months now, I’ve had some issues with people being unable to post comments on my site.

I’ve finally figured out what it is – thanks to Borgeo. Now, I need to figure out a way to fix it.

The folks who can’t comment are typically on from work, and I’m going to naturally assume you’re using some form of IE. Well, that’s the problem, apparently. Borgeo couldn’t post from IE, but he switched to Firefox, and posted a comment just fine.

Grr. Annoying.

So, anyone have any solutions on how I can fix this? I’ll try to google a solution in a bit.

Just Not Right

I’ve been working on the troubador epic which has been a lot of fun so far, even though all I’ve done is the first bits that send me running all over Norrath talking to various bards. I remember reading Tipa’s post about her adventures through it, and what hassle fun it was. I read the walk through first. Whoever figures this stuff out on their own, my hat off to you. Seriously. Having done that, I got the required languages out of the way first before attempting to go anywhere.

So far, I’m up to the point where I want to run around Palace of the Awakened (wait, did I just say I WANT to run around there?) to get the next updates. Then it’s off to bribe a monk to train me around Castle Mistmoore, for more updates. I’m hoping, that I can potentially get to the portion that’s going to require me to harvest 10 xegonite clusters.

That’s right, 10. Actually. Harvested. Clusters.

Ah, the things we do for our epics.

Anyhow, the screen shot struck me as amusing. I’m not sure when I was last in Poets Palace, but I don’t remember the Dijin Master looking like that.

Nomadic Gamer