Epic 1.5 Progress!
stargrace 
Aside from the defeat of Bristlebane, last night was filled with a few other adventures that warrent talking about. To start it off my little necromancer is not quite so little any more. Through the aid of hot zones and some amazing help from both Ultann and Ninga, she’s reached level 68, and 70% into it. She doesn’t have any veteran rewards, no experience item she can use every 24h or anything like that, it’s just been from regular leveling. If I had of concentrated on her the first few days I was playing instead of the rogue she would have probably gained a few more levels by now as well.
Ninga suggested a mission last night (and I’m still new at those) which we did with a few complications (mercs are still not as good at healing as a real person no matter what) and the reward was that glowing staff pictured in the screen shot. This is my first item that I’ve ever owned with a very noticeable particle effect. Needless to say I absolutely love it and I’ll be taking it to bed with me for the next little while. Minxes is completely set with her glowing staff in one hand, and her little doll in the other.
The particle effect staff was not the main component of the evening though, nor even the most exciting. Nope, it wasn’t Bristlebane either.
The boys suggested that I work on my epic 1.5 pre-quest, and then we start plugging away at my epic 1.5 in truth. I sort of stood there dumbfounded for a minute or two, and asked “are you guys serious”? before letting myself get too excited. I’ve owned 1.0’s on characters before, both my cleric and my rogue (and part of the one for my enchanter) but I’ve never done a 1.5 before. Sure, it’s out dated but the feelings I associate with those weapons are very significant.
Just so happens that the necromancer one is not that difficult (now), and does not require the loads of crafting that some of the others require. I have one no-fail combine that needs a blacksmithing skill of over 100, but aside from that it’s all fairly simple. So we headed off to start the pre-quest which was not too difficult. I had to make my way to West Karana (the zone, not the site) and then give a note to an NPC there – doing so triggered five wolves to spawn. Four of them were level 68, immune to melee (sorry our handy monk) summon, and hit for about 1200 a shot. The other one was 69 and highly magic resistant. When I first triggered everything we were not really sure what to do and so the wolves summoned and ate through my little group pretty fast. We also didn’t take along our healer, Nocbot. Woops. Once the mobs are triggered you only have 30 minutes to defeat everything including the next step, so we set up for round two, used monk mez and pulled the wolves one at a time away from each other.
It went much smoother that way.
After they were defeated I had to kill a shady bandit who was standing a little ways away, and then there were a few more fights, nothing of note though. Before long I had my pre-quest completed and I was free to start on the actual epic. Looking over the notes, there is only one encounter (at the end of course) that may be any trouble at all, and it’s in Nobels Causeway. My group is fairly confident that with a little finess we may be able to defeat this just fine – and I was so excited at hearing that, and at hearing in general that I may get my 1.5. I think I mentioned that once or twice already, hehe.
We continued on with the main portion of the quest which requires obtaining random bits and combining them into containers and then turning in those containers to obtain more bits. Ultann headed off to farm some balls of clay while myself and Ninga headed to the mines for a few ore. Afterwards Ultann hunted gargoyls for me for a tradeable bit, and now I need to hunt in Plane of Innovation for a rare drop. After that, it’s a matter of defeating four paladins, and then there’s two more encounters and my 1.5 will be completed. My fingers are crossed for this one, I’d really like to get it done!
My goal for today is to work up my blacksmithing to 100 so that I can get that out of the way. I’m having an absolute blast in game these last few days have been so much fun. I hope everyone else is having an amazing day, no matter where or what you’re playing!
Now, Bristlebane isn’t part of PoP at all (Planes of Power for those who may have forgotten or never played) but he was still on the list of “would like to kill one day” encounters that we all made mentally. I’ve never killed him before, in fact I’d never even seen him before let alone kill him.
The dagger (even though VERY old) was still an upgrade to my off hand. Sure, I could purchase a better one from the broker but what would be the fun in that? Where was the challenge. 
Yesterday was such a trip down memory lane, on so many levels. Back in 2003 I was playing an enchanter and I was about to go on my first raid ever. My closest in game friend (A beastlord named Fistinyereyes) was in Keepers of the Elements – and I was going to get to go with them on a raid. I can’t even begin to describe how I felt about it. I was nervous. I was well under geared. I had only been playing a short while, and I was so excited. The raid? Bertoxxulous. As a regular enchanter it would have been my job to keep certain things (I forget what not) mez’d while the raid dealt with other things. Since I was too low they didn’t expect that of me and I basically just got to watch two hours of madness. I am also fairly sure I held my breath the whole time. So yesterday when Ninga and Ultann suggested we head off to see if Bertox was up I was pumped. All the memories I had from these raids came rushing back to me. Now, the zone Bertox is in is considered a hotzone. There were a few people around exping, but not too many. The event for Bertox spawns a LOT of mobs and players use that to obtain a crazy amount of experience – and then leave Bertox up and repeat it in six hours. I felt a little bad doing the full event but it was still so much fun. Bertoxxulous fell without too much of an issue, and I just stood there stunned. I remember having so many people along to take him down when I went and now we’d just trio’d him. 