March 2009

Quests and all the Rest

stargrace March 21, 2009 0Comment

Admittedly a large portion of my time in various games has been spent questing. I enjoy quests, even the ones that tend to be a grind. What I don’t enjoy, is ONLY questing (example: Ruins of Kunark) in order to progress in a game. I like a mixture of things, be it quests, experience grind (just good ‘ol plain killing) crafting, and simply hanging out. It’s all of these things combined that draws me into any MMO. If I start to feel pressured to do one thing or another, chances are I’ll end up giving the game up.

Yesterday was spent doing a combination of things in EverQuest, as well as peeking my head into some Spellborn, though I didn’t have much time to do anything before I had to go out for a few hours. First I spent some time hanging out in Stoneroot, and my little halfling druid managed to inch her way to level 71. Friends make this type of grind so much easier, I burned my lesson of the devoted and we were set. Drachnid fell every which way. It only took half an hour or so to get the level, and then the group broke up a little. Next? It was time to work on my epic. Now, I had given up on the epic the day before in frustration because the Bloodgill foragers that I needed decided to spawn inside of the walls of a building. Not fun. Today we hoped that would not happen – but if it did we would be prepared. You can order your pet to attack by text command rather then a target, and that’s what we did. It worked, thankfully. My little Bobo (name of my druids bear) headed into the wall very brave like and calling him back caused those foragers to head right for us.

I thought that would be the most difficult portion of the day, but alas it was not. Once I’d moved past a few more steps it was time to play Hide and Seek with a bunch of Goblins in Frontier Mountains. This requires you to first make a disguise, hang out in the front of the Temple of Droga, wait for 7pm game time, and then use the disguise, mention starting a contest, and then the King sends all these Seekers out and a few Hiders. Your job? Kill the correct Hider, before the King says the game is over (30 minutes).

Well dang. I ran around with track going and managed (with the help of Ninga of course) to kill a good portion of Hiders, but it was not the specific one that I needed. 30 minutes passed by and I lost the game. Unhappy that I’d lost and the disguise at the beginning only has one charge so you have to start way at the beginning again – I decided to call it a night. It’s always better to step away during those frustrating times (I’m sure lots of people have stories like this) then risk getting upset in game.

It was fine by me of course, I have a few books I’ve been neglecting and I ended up spending the rest of my evening playing scrabble on yahoo which was something I haven’t done in years. Today my mood has calmed some and I’m not quite so cranky at having to start all over. Not that I’ll be doing it again any time soon, teehee.

I’ve been trying to plan out my schedule game-wise for the next three weeks. Not for my personal game play, but because I have a few Beckett Articles (few = 5) due in early April (not to mention my birthday is coming up, dang I feel old!) and I have a review for MMORPG that needs to be completed. I love the way I have a few weeks of quiet and then everything comes all at once. Typically it begins with me emailing my editor about a separate issue and then the casual ‘Oh by the way, we need it a week earlier and we need five pieces not two’ comes into the conversation. I am quite used to it now, and it’s actually something I adore about this line of work. Gets the blood going!

In any case, I hope everyone is having an amazing weekend and enjoying some of that nice weather if you’ve been so blessed. Hopefully I’ll get some more game time in this weekend, I’ve got a few projects on the go that need some work first.

Safe travels!

Gaming

Brew Day Fun!

stargrace March 20, 2009 3Comments

Who says there’s no such thing as flying pigs? Wandering around in Norrath today I managed to complete the Brew Day quests before they were vanquished for yet another year. Before I headed out to do these quests I did also manage to get a few guild writs done, inching Nostalgia further along level 42. Since I’ve been playing EQ lately, I haven’t really been in EQ2, but I know the guild is (for the most part) self-sufficient and regular members (Tipa, Kasul, and Ecor) know that I tend to bounce around from game to game depending on where my whim takes me for the month. Looking through the guild hall I decided I should try to get back into decorating a little bit of it too some time.

Today though, today was all about the booze. Or rather, walking around in a booze enhanced state where everything was blurred and I didn’t have to wonder (for once) if it was my video card acting up (again).

I headed to the Commonlands on Silhouette (the coercer) and zoned into the Bar of Brell. It’s a special zone that you can only gain access to this time of year. There were a few new quests to pick up as well as the quests that I’d completed yesterday. The best part about these quests of course is the fact that they (typically) reward a choice of house item.

The quests listed above were the ones associated with Brew Day, and I loved doing each one of them – in particular Snoogle’s Presentation, because it rewarded me with a pink elephant plushy that I added to my (fast growing) collection of plushies.

The reward from Ale Goggles was very nice too, I added a fancy looking jug to Silhouette’s table and had a lot of fun doing the quests. Logging in to LoN (Legends of Norrath) also rewarded me with my free loot cards for today – in EQ2 it was a vision of the void (which you may remember being similar to the vision of fury) that makes black darkness shoot out your eyes. In EQ the item is a blue crystal staff that shoots of some particle effects. I’m not sure if today is the last day to claim items, but I believe it is so don’t forget!

After placing all of the new items in my house I took a glance around a few of the half finished housing projects I have ongoing (and have had ongoing for quite a while now). I need to get Goudia’s home done some time, I created an amazing little miniature library for her and then left the rest of the home relatively bare. I’ve always loved the housing in EQ2 and I doubt that will ever change.

Anyhow, it was great to wander around Norrath 2.0 today, and I hope everyone is having an amazing Friday! Here’s hoping the weekend is just as fantastic.

Gaming

Deadly Dragons

stargrace March 20, 2009 0Comment

There is nothing quite so majestic as a dragon, nor as terrifying or exciting. Nothing that I have found in my travels, in any case. Yesterday as myself and the human monk traveled through the frozen lands of the Western Wastes we happened across such creatures. Many of them in fact. It does not matter how many of the great creatures you either slay nor admire, each time they will give you reason to pause in your tracks. The monk acted as though he had a personal vendetta with each and every one of the creatures, tearing at them with his hardened claw-like weapons. Myself, I watched from a distance. While I did not have anything personal against these great creatures nor was it my place to interrupt.

Yesterday was spent working on the druid 1.5 pre-quest for the most part. It was actually not too bad, involved a lot of foraging which I sort of assumed. The drops were not quite as rare as forum posters made them out to be (at least for me) and on our way through the Western Wastes (since servers had been taken down for 6 hours just prior) we came across 6-7 fabled dragons all lined up in a row. Of course they all dropped nearly the same thing, a fabled talisman, but it was still nice to be able to partake in some of the fabled activities without having to elbow other players out of the way.

After completion of the 1.5 pre-quest I decided to begin working on the actual quest itself. I didn’t get very far though because when I approached the Lake of Ill Omen where I was to spawn three Goblin Foragers – they spawned directly inside of a wall. They didn’t path, and I had no way of reaching them. Instead of bothering support with my epic woe’s I decided to call it for a bit. Frustrated? Sure, slightly.

Afterwards with some guild mates we decided to work on the PoR missions that reward spells and auras. I felt pretty much useless as my druid has 10 levels of spells lacking (that I can not find in the bazaar at all, not to mention with fabled season well under way spectral and ethereal parchments are more difficult to obtain) so I sat around and tried to do what I could and not die, which is always a bonus. Afterwards we headed off to another mission in North Ro, where I ended up looting some piece I shouldn’t have because the same person needs to turn in all four pieces. This was not mentioned in the mission any place and I couldn’t have really foreseen it, my night ended on a some what sour note in any case.

On the plus side, today is Friday! I hope everyone has an amazing day and finds themselves in awesome stories with mighty battles. Most of all, I hope you all write about it, because I certainly love reading it.

See you in Norrath – or where ever I end up this weekend!

Gaming

EQ Patch Notes – March 19th

stargrace March 19, 2009 0Comment

3/19/2009

*** Highlights ***

– Pet hold can now be used with charmed pets again (as long as the owner has the AA).
– Put separators back into raid window. Separators will now appear between sorting groups for all sorting criteria except for “by name.”
*** Quests & Events ***

– Added a check to make sure there are miscreants in Shadow Haven when they are supposed to be there.
– Bristlebane’s party will now show up in, er, minitab as expected.
– Added a default “Hail” dialog to each kill target in the Justice of the Tribunal 10th Anniversary task that will let you re-engage if you already hailed that NPC but failed to kill him.
*** NPC ***

– Modified the spawn rates of several NPCs in Fabled PoP that drop the “Swarm Pet” Weapons to normalize the rate that they appear. Most spawn rates were increased but some were reduced that were appearing too frequently.
*** Tradeskills ***

– Fixed the broken coffin poison bottle. Now it can make any NORMAL poison combine as well as the original coffin bottle combines.
– The following spell research recipes now create a duplicate (tradable) scroll instead of the original (no-drop) scroll. For real this time! Skill: Champion’s Aura, Skill: Poison Spikes Trap, Skill: Master’s Aura, Skill: Bloodlust Aura, Spell: Blessed Aura, Spell: Decrepit Skin, Spell: Aura of the Muse, Spell: Elddar’s Grasp, Spell: Puratus, Spell: Moonshadow, Spell: Ghost of Renewal, Spell: Mind Shatter, Spell: Chaos Flame, Spell: Iceflame Guard, Spell: Mind Flay, and Spell: Spirit of Oroshar.
*** Pets ***

– Pet hold can now be used with charmed pets again (as long as the owner has the AA).
– Now only PC pets will display their owner’s name under them.
– Telling your pet to attack another target when focus is turned on will now cause it to switch targets and focus exclusively on the new target.
– Fixed a bug where telling your pet to attack a new target when focus is turned on would fail if the pet hated the new target the most already (even if the new target was not already its target).
– Casting swarm pets or familiars should no longer disrupt the state of the buttons on your pet window when you already have a normal pet up.
– Pet target hit points are now updated even if you are not targeting the pet’s target.
– Fixed several other bugs that were causing the buttons in the pet window to become out of sync with the server or to reset upon zoning.
– Qattack will now only change the pet’s target if the pet did not already have a target. This is contrasted with the regular attack command which will force the pet to change targets (if focused or not). Qattack now simply adds the target NPC to the pet’s hate list, so that it will attack that target at a later time when its other targets are dead.
*** UI ***

– Put separators back into raid window. Separators will now appear between sorting groups for all sorting criteria except for “by name.”
– When sorting by group, empty slots should always be shown after filled slots for each group. Also group leaders should always be at the top of each group.
– When sorting by anything but group, all the empty slots are removed and not displayed.
*** Previously Updated ***

– Fixed a problem with Atler Flamejabber. He should now reappear in his correct location after someone has completed his quest.
– Nettle Higglesbury should now correctly gather some rabble rousers around him once he’s finished his pie.
– Fixed an issue with Bristlebane’s parties not showing up as expected after 20 hours.

Gaming

Fabled Loot, Leveling, and Epics

stargrace March 19, 2009 0Comment

I haven’t actively gone after any fabled in game. The really good amazing stuff is either camped – or it’s held hostage by encounters that there’s no way I could kill, even with friends. Later last night it was suggested I begin working on the druid 1.5 pre-quest (difficult to work on 1.0’s when the named you need are fabled up) and so I was heading to Plane of Growth for some foraging when a fabled encounter walked into view. I had no idea who they were – but as coincidence would have it, they did drop a nice clicky for me! My first fabled drop and it’s not so bad.

As I mentioned, yes. I decided to begin working on the druid 1.5. Ideally I’ll do the 1.0 as well but with fabled up for the next month it makes it a little difficult, and I’d rather own my 1.5 anyhow. My first task was to head to Jaggedpine forest, a zone I have not been to in many moons. It looked almost exactly as I remember it way back when. After speaking to my npc there I headed to Plane of Growth (no fabled Tunare up) to forage a nut, which took most of my evening. Thankfully Tipa’s tweets on belly button line kept me entertained and slightly disgusted, either way.

Before heading off with a guild mate to work on my druid epic, we hung around Stoneroot and managed to ding the little druid level 70. It surprised me because when I started playing her again she was level 63 – only a few days to get to 70 without even trying. Of course it shouldn’t surprise me after the speed in which the necromancer leveled (from scratch) but it still makes me giggle.

By the time I managed to forage the one item I needed, it was getting late and I was getting tired, so I called it a night and headed to bed. Today I’ll pick up on it again as I’m sure there are plenty more things that need to be foraged, and it’s easy to get it done while I do other things. Inching the druid up a few more levels will be nice, though not on the top of my list of priorities. I still haven’t completed the new deity quests that are in place and for some reason servers came down last night at 2am and should not be back up until 8am – I have no idea why. The MoTD claimed it was for a hot fix, though I’m not quite sure what hot fix takes 6 hours to implement. Guess we’ll see!

The new LoN items today are great! For EQ2 it’s a parrot for your shoulder, in EQ it’s a special frost particle effect. Be sure to check out the LoN free loot items for EQ’s 10th anniversary. Even if you don’t play the game there’s no beating free items.

I should have some role play posts to add here soon, it’s been a little while and I’ve missed it. We’ll see how that goes! In the mean time, happy adventuring no matter where you find yourself.

Quests and all the Rest

Brew Day Fun!

Deadly Dragons

EQ Patch Notes – March 19th

Fabled Loot, Leveling, and Epics

You Missed

The Search For Hrada-Oki Bivouac

Personal EVE Economic Update (October)

Expensive Month (preparing for fun)

Locked Out (again)