2008

Ever Seen a Spider Wearing Shoes?

stargrace February 12, 2008 2Comments

One thing adventurers in every mmo have always asked themselves, or a comment that has always come up from time to time, is WHERE the mobs end up getting their items from. How does a cat end up with a battle axe, where did that bear get the dress from, etc. So yesterday when I was wandering around on the disciple (who is now by far my most favorite class might I add) and came across a huge disgusting black spider- who I smushed, of course, and got these shoes from him pictured above, I just had to laugh at the description at the bottom.

Last night Safe Haven had a guild meeting which started a bit late but was fun none the less, we had 14 people join us all in the guild hall, crammed upstairs as it were, and went over the future of the guild. Events and the like. We’ve decided that a sloop race is in order, and people will be getting together to help build sloops for one another and harvest material for it. We’re also going to have a craft fair some time to explain to people how crafting works, and perhaps make general gear upgrades for people who need it. Not sure how that one is going to go yet as the majority of our crafters are still quite small, but hey whatever works.

At level 14 my disciple got feign death, which I can not stress enough about what an amazing skill that is. Being a healer with feign death, and having the dps that I have, is just a very nice thing, and yesterday I put it to good use. There was this crazy wizard. Well, he wasn’t always crazy. He sits way out on an island and his tower is in ruins due to some freaky accident. He sent his love to some caves and time went by and she never returned, so he assumed she’s dead. He created (or tried to at least) a device to wipe his memories of her but it went horribly wrong (of course). So he sends you (random adventurer) off to the same caves to find out what happened to Elise.

He doesn’t give you any more hints then that, and these caves are huge with level 10-14 three dot (small group) mobs. I can kill them (as can most people) just fine, but it would take a lot of work to check the entire cave. Hey, he never said I had to KILL anything in there. So I spent an hour lost in the caves searching for this woman who I assume was just gobbled up by one of these beasties that roam the halls. Oh yes. Feign death is fun.

In diplomacy I sort of got stuck (what else is new). I need to figure out if there’s another way to get presence besides gear. I need 50 presence to speak with a few people for the next portions of my quests, and I’m shy by about 30 or so. I don’t want to have to buy gear- because the quests themselves reward me with gear. Seems like a little bit of a waste of money. I’ll have to check out the diplomacy site and read up on it some. I also really want to find out where I can get a diplomacy bag. SoE was stingy on their anniversary rewards and only lets you claim one item per account, so of course my item is on my bloodmage. Damn it. They could have at least let us have 3 per account, some how I doubt having a bag for diplomacy, adventuring, or crafting is going to ruin the economy of Telon or what not.

Oh, if anyone is stopping in Vanguard by the way, look for Ishbel. I’m still hoping they fix cross game tells with Vanguard to expand across the rest of the SoE title games, but for now I’m not holding my breath.

Pfts, Who Needs Bodies Anyway

stargrace February 11, 2008 1Comment

After playing my psionicist for some time, I decided that I actually missed healing, That, or I suffered suddenly from sever alt-itus, which is always a possibility in my case. I had tried the shaman and not enjoyed it, I’ve played a cleric and also not enjoyed it. I love my bloodmage but they’re too high level to adventure with my friends- so all that was left was a disciple. Which I’ve actually never tried before.

A disciple is a cross between a monk and a healer. Most of their moves either create Jin, or use Jin. If you do a combination of moves, you perform an instant heal that costs no energy, which is always nice. Most of your attacks use endurance, and you can wear bladed staffs and other monk-type things. Fistwraps and the like.

I decided to go with dark elf, because I actually like how they look in game. However, out of all the starter cities, as far as quests go (minus diplomacy quests which I’ll get into more later) I think they also lack the most. It always seems to take me twice as long to level my dark elf to any particular level then it does any other character of mine. Which is why I’ll move her to Thestra now that she’s level 10.

As far as diplomacy goes, I got hit by the bug and I got hit bad. I loved it. I spent most of my time yesterday split between taking care of my other half who’s exceptionally sick right now, and doing diplomacy in between adventuring. One quest line made me crack up laughing I just couldn’t help it.

It began with a long series of assassinations of which I was no part of I swear. Well, ok maybe just a little part of. After I’d taken care of a bunch of people (hiring others to do it, in true dark elf form) my teacher informed me I had ‘a loose end’ and I needed to take care of her too before she started talking. No problem, what was one more.

Her: Shew, about time you got here, is everyone else dead?

Me: Yes, everyone’s dead.

Her: Here, change before the guards find us, I brought us shirts!

Me: Oh good, I brought assassins!

Her: Dead.

I hit level 7 in diplomacy and managed to get some gear, not enough to progress my quests any further though, they require a lot of presence. I haven’t quite figured out how to get presence without gear yet, but I’m working on it. I did also get a yellow outfitter recipe, which is apparently to make your own player crafted cards, interesting.

So I’ll be moving the dark elf out of her Qalia home and over to Thestra (thank goodness for recall to house, so I don’t have to walk it) and attempting the quests there instead. When Vanguard first released you almost never wanted to play a dark elf – they were KoS to everyone out there, and had to grind LOTS of faction work. If you take pride in your character enough that it doesn’t bother you to work faction then it was great, here was a race to do that with, and everyone understood the sacrifices you’d made. However, with GU3 they removed the KoS portion to races in player areas. So dark elves, gnomes, goblins and the like are no longer KoS in other starter areas (or other towns at all, I can walk into Leth Nurae just fine, the high elf city). That’s actually one change I wish had not been implemented. It’s part of ‘making the game easier’ for people that I like to stay away from and thus far Vanguard has done a pretty good job. Tweaks here and there though, of course. There’s also talk of them removing the starter towns completely- you’ll start on an island much like you do in Qeynos and Freeport for EQII and then migrate to a town afterwards, they’ll bump up the starter towns to 5+ instead of 1-5, or so rumor says. Not looking forward to that at all, though I do understand their reasoning. If you play a dark elf and your friend decides to be a vulmane for example, you start on different continents. Not only that you start at opposite ends of those continents so there’s pretty much 0 chance of brand new people playing together unless you 1. Have someone in game who can show you the way 2. Start out as the same race. 3. Plot out the whole travel first before hand with online maps such as the ones you can find here. Is it possible? Sure of course it is, it’s just unlikely.

I’d rather not see an ‘island’ like in EverQuestII (who have migrated past that to include Neriak, Kelethin, and Gorowyn) but I can see how it would be pleasing to some customers.

… Where are their clothes?!

stargrace February 8, 2008 3Comments

There’s nothing worse then being attacked by cave men in loin cloths. At least, that was my experience yesterday. Teamed up with a Dreadknight to do some adventuring on the psionicist who managed to hit level 12 by the time all was said and done. Her gear is still exceptionally under where I’d like it to be, but I spent yesterday afternoon crafting some jewelry for her, so it’s only the regular gear slots that are lacking at the moment. Forgot to actually go and buy the new spells I got at 12, oh well. Filled up my journal with quests from the Halgarad area, and a few little outposts close by. We were sent to kill Corrupted Varanjar, who acted like psycho vodo men and were worshipping some gnome leader, I kid you not. Once we smacked a few of those around we were sent after the leader who dropping a pair of nice cloth booties for me, and on the second time around dropped a belt for the DK. Not plate, but it was better then what he was wearing.

Guild was quiet, a few people are on vacations and what not, we have a few new members, so people are playing their lowbies again. I’m still not sure what craft I want for the psi, if any. The guild already has a few high level tailors which would be the obvious choice for me since I wear cloth. I think I’ll just stick with the three I have, and then perhaps make a carpenter if I ever actually get my house crafted. The guild crafters are mostly 30-40 range, none are 50 yet. Crafting is long and tedious in Vanguard, and takes a lot of work, nothing like any other mmo I’ve ever played before. A lot of it is also random, and you hear people cursing the “RGN” gods frequently. You need to grind a lot, faction at outposts to learn continental styles, WO’s (work orders) to get sigils to buy recipes starting at 20+ and just the skills themselves in order to get any where. Then there’s the crafting quests people need to do in order to upgrade their gear and what not. It’s a lucrative business, in Vanguard if you’re a crafter at all and sell any of your supplies, you’re basically rich. Well, not rich, but you’re guaranteed to have more coin then your average adventurer. Though there’s plenty of stories about gold farmers and duping coin out there, so I imagine the market for that is fairly strong as well, even though yes, it’s against the EULA.

Slowly moving the adventuring party to the West, now that we’re over level 12 we can start the URT quests, even though we’re a bit small yet most of it should be ok over time to duo. Once those are done it’s off to Qalia to start the Hunters League quests. I still haven’t spent a whole lot of time on Qalia, but I’ve gotten to know Thestra pretty well now, and I like it a lot. The Kojan continent used to be my favorite until I branched out and explored, then realized how half assed it was done compared to the other continents. It may be good until level 17 or so, but then you’ll really want to move out. There’s plenty of quests on Thestra to take you where ever it is you need to go, not to mention long chains.

Tonight, aiming for level 14, you get new spells every two levels (and I get a new gestalt at level 15, forget what form it is though) that you buy from trainers. In the screen shot I’m actually not invisible, I’m standing around in my astral form stance- I hate the way it makes me look invisible though. Not sure what my next stance is, just know that I get it at level 15, and that I’ll have to look up where the block is (again) because I keep forgetting.

Other then that, and counting down the days before the concert, things are blissfully quiet. I’m hoping Vanguard’s next big patch (due at the end of February, or so people were told) will implement a few key things (at least for me). Tells were supposed to work across games much like the rest of SoE’s games work, as well as channels- but it broke some time ago and hasn’t been fixed since. It would be nice to be able to talk to the rest of the bloggers no matter the game I’m playing. Universal channels, that’s what I want! I’m not sure if character revamps go in this patch (probably not, I haven’t heard that much of a buz about it, at least not lately) but that would be a dream, especially if they want to get players back.

Every day on the continental channels I hear plenty of new people trying the game, but I’m not sure how many are actually sticking around. The chat is filled with ‘wow I love this game I should have tried it earlier’ and yes, it’s fair share of frustrated pissed off people (like when social chat servers went bonkers last night). Either way, I still hold steady to my thought that the game’s got potential, it’s a shame that for the past year the reputations just been getting worse, if they want to honestly fix things, SoE will need to do something drastic (change those character models!). Oh. Riftways are changing too, and I’m really not keen on the changes. They’re adding them to more locations (making it easier for people to instantly teleport from city to city to play with friends, not so bad at a low new level, but just dumbing down travel at higher levels) and they’re adding a constant charge to using riftways- as much as 50 silver for a level 50 rift. That’s a huge amount of money to me, I think I’ll just continue walking by foot (or hoof, as the case may be).

P.S. I hate the text font they use in VG. That screen shot would be ten times better if I turned them off. Didn’t have time in the fight though.