A little DoN, TBS, Leveling, and DoD
stargrace 
Last night saw a little bit of everything as my happy little trio headed to Lavastorm to start and finish off the Tier2 DoN mission. We finished off the solo quests and then it was time for what once would have been a 24-person raid against Emoush – a huge swirling mass of bits. The encounter was not especially difficult, but it was not really made for three people. You can’t bring mercenaries on the fight because it’s considered a raid zone. Basically there are three guards who surround Emoush, and you have to killl them all at once before he becomes vulnerable to your attacks. Once they’re down you’ve got a timed encounter to defeat him. Well, my group consisted of a shadowknight, a monk, my enchanter and my necromancer. The monk and shadowknight are 75+ but my own characters are still quite a bit lower. Needless to say we were a little lacking in the DPS department and so we’d get the little guards down and then work Emoush down to half way or so, and those little guards pop back up alive and well.
You spend more time working those guards down while Emoush grows in power and regens his hit points – exceptionally frustrating! If you don’t get him down to 0% in the next round or so, he grows harder and gains more power and more hit points each round. My little trio was fighting him for the better part of an hour, just barely hanging in there before we all ran out of power and had to call off our first attempt. We buffed back up and headed back in where we vanquished him without too much problem at all.
The free aa we got from this was a hp/mana/end buff (that stays constant as part of your stats) and 2 free aa, plus flagging for the next portion which I don’t believe we’re going to do. We all also received a new spell to add to our collections.
After that we headed off to TBS (the buried sea) to work on faction and do missions. The servers had been re-set the night before, and apparently the way the missions work is that you earn less orux (I believe that is the term) for repeating the same missions over and over again. You’ll eventually wear down their worth. We found one mission that was worth 150 of the currency for that expansion, and so we proceeded to work on that a few times. The mission was a lot of fun, you make your way to a room filled with chests and in the center stands a Sphinx. You have to unlock chests in a proper combination while the Sphinx spawns mobs on you that take on characteristics of those chests. It was a lot of fun and some times very intense as my little trio battled the rock monsters. A good time was had by all though.
In fact, so much of a good time that Nocbot (as our cleric bot is termed) finally hit level 80, and Ultann hit level 82. My own characters earned a few aa and hit level 73 and 71 respectively. I haven’t looked into their spells yet, but that will be next on my list.
Once we had dinged, we headed back to DoD for a quick mission to obtain another spell that was released in that expansion. I haven’t actually picked it up yet, so I’ll be doing that today. I also picked up all the components I need to start crafting myself some misty thicket picnic baskets. It seems that a high level crafter was also working up their skill because on the vendor in the baking section of Crescent Reach there was 1,000 of the food bits just sitting there. 1g each. Wow what a deal! It literally felt like christmas as I purchased them all and stashed away a bunch in the guild. I put a bunch on broker as well for 5p a piece, a little profit to cover what I’d spent buying them all off of the merchant. It’s little things like that that I enjoy the most about EQ. I LOVE being able to buy other people’s junk that they’ve sold to the vendor.
Not sure what today is going to hold game-wise, but tonight I’m making a nice roasted chicken and some mashed potatoes and gravy and little green onions, so please feel free to stop by!
I also noticed that I had a new item I could claim that I’d never seen before. In this item are gem slots, I assume for some sort of attunement. Something else I’d never heard of before. Since my highest character is (at this moment) only level 44, I decided not to claim it yet. I can’t wear it until 50 anyhow. I don’t have the faintest idea how the gem slots work or where I obtain them from but I’m looking forward to figuring it all out. That’s one of the best parts of Vanguard to me, trying to figure it all out and put it together. I don’t have to know everything about the game in order to play it. Eventually I’ll figure it out.
Last night my little trio was supposed to head to Lavastorm and continue on with the DoN progression quests – however I wasn’t really in the mood to work on those (it happens) and so I decided to create two alts (one on each account) and play around on those for a little bit. Ultann and Ninga also came to play on alts, and we had a lot of fun. 
I spent most of yesterday (and I will today as well) transcribing the remainder of my SOE interviews that I did while in San Diego, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time to play. Ultann and Ninga logged in and we decided to start working our faction for the Dark Reign again – of course it seems that I missed a very small part of the progression that may (or may not) have made this all easier.