April 2009

General Gaming Goodness

stargrace April 27, 2009 0Comment

Well, lets get the bad news over first – ALL soe games and services are going to be down today for FOUR hours, from 12pm EST until 4pm EST (and that’s as long as everything gets up and running again properly). This was just announced yesterday night, and I’m not quite sure what’s being updated yet maybe it’s got to do with Free Realms going live on Tuesday. In any case, if you’re trying to get into the game and wondering why you can’t, there you go.

Now onto the good stuff! I had mentioned yesterday that I was hoping my bard would make it to 62, a general goal. I started out the day by doing groceries and puttering around getting those real life quests done, and then decided to hop in game for a bit. Ultann and Wpus were both there, and eager to do stuff. I don’t remember everything we did, but I think it started with a run through poets Palace, though that may have been the night before. We did numerous dungeons and instances and even managed to find ourselves in a Labs raid which I haven’t done in FOREVER. It was great. None of us are raid geared and I went with my illusionist who doesn’t even have her epic, along with numerous other level 80 characters and all three of us (illusionist, shadowknight, conjuror) managed to be on the top portion of the parse for the zone. Considering we were with some mythical geared players, I felt pretty good. I realize the parse is not everything but it’s still nice to know that skill and not gear will count for a large portion of how well you do with your class.

We (the trio of course) wanted to do Shard of Fear, but in order to zone in (as we found out while standing at the doors) the bard had to be level 70 (and so did the fury, she was close though). The dirge was sitting happily at level 67, and it was still a few hours before bed so we decided to grind out those last levels and then run fear. We headed to Loping Plains and then to the Mistmoore Catacombs, killing our way to the top floor which is covered in vampires and then heading into Castle Mistmoore for the last remaining experience I needed in order to ding. Plenty of aa and 3 levels later, I was sitting at 70, and we headed to fear. I was hoping that the bloodthirsty choker would drop but alas luck was not on our side (I’m used to it not being on my side by now). It was still great fun and the bard managed to cling to level 71 when we called it for the evening.

I wasn’t quite tired yet, so I ran around grabbing various druid ring ports and getting discovery for all those zones I’d never been to before (Steamfont, Klak’Anon, Bonemire, Barren Sky, etc) pinged off a few more aa and managed to climb half way through level 71. The T8 mastercrafted (incarnadine) gear is VERY cheap, so I picked up a full set of that (50g each) for when I hit 72, and I’ll see about getting some skills made as well (even though they use loam and loam is VERY expensive). I had dreams of an automated character transfer being implemented finally for Eq2 (it’s been down since September of last year) but I think I’ll just have to keep dreaming on that matter. I was debating whether or not I wanted to betray this new dirge to a troubador, but since I already have a troubador I decided to just keep this one a dirge in the hopes that some day all my characters end up on the same server.

I hope everyone had an amazing weekend, and that Monday is not too rough on anyone! See you in Norrath!

Gaming

Working on the Epic, and ANOTHER Bard?

stargrace April 26, 2009 0Comment

An absolutely beautiful day yesterday, so I spent a lot of out outside doing some photography in a little village. It was fun, warm, but fun. Later on in the day I logged in to EQ2 to have a little fun. Ultann was busy doing Halls of Fate with Wpus and the boxed inquisitor who managed to climb to level 77 and I went back to working on my epic for a little while. Finally I had gotten my gathering skills high enough to work on it properly.

I completed the first portion that required me to harvest rocks in Kunark and deliver them to a dwarf in Butcherblock Mountains, then it was time to head to Shard of Fear and take down an Eye of Thul. These mobs are just before the graveyard and are pretty close to the zone in, so 5 minutes later it was complete.

Ultann had to leave for a few hours (and ended up being gone for the remainder of the evening) so Wpus agreed to help me level up my dirge. Now, I know. I already HAVE a troubador on Oasis, one who has her dirge AND troubador epic weapons because I’ve betrayed her THAT many times, but I love bards, I truly do. So of course it was natural (for me) to create another. I may betray her to troubador later on as well, I haven’t decided yet.

She started off at level 54, and is linked to the rent-a-friend account that I have so she’s got the benefit of 200% bonus experience. Not to mention 50% from my regular level 80’s on the account, and she had full vitality plus the Orb of Concentrated Memories which is the 5 year veteran reward that grants full vitality once a week.

Needless to say after running her through Clefts of Rujark and an instance within that zone, then heading off to Living Tombs, she was well situated at level 60. I had hoped to gain two more levels and push her to 62 which is the new tier for Mastercrafted gear (and I was planning on checking out new skills as well) but I was feeling pretty tired after a busy day so I decided to call it an early night at 9:30. Hopefully I can get those levels today instead, we’ll just have to see.

I’ve also found myself turning off most of the level channels on Kithicor, and instead joining the role play channels over on Antonia Bayle, which you can join no matter what server you’re on. One of the more popular channels is a player run tavern called “Raven Mythic” which you can join and listen to by /join antonia_bayle.RM – the tavern is a gathering place for role players who play out their stories within, some acting as staff, others as weary adventurers who have come to sit by the fire and tell their tale. I’ve listened to the stories there off and on for the past two years, enjoying every minute of it. I’d much rather spend my evening leveling and watching the chatter of that one channel then listen to the elitist comments made by the general populace in 70-79. If you’re into that sort of thing, whether to partake or only to listen I highly suggest it.

Other then that, it was a quiet evening. Those are just as nice as one packed with things to do especially after a busy day. I hope everyone else had an amazing Saturday!

Gaming Real Life

Epic Journey

stargrace April 25, 2009 0Comment

There was only one thing holding me back from starting the epic weapon quest for my mystic. Ok, maybe more then one but one main thing. I took a look through the wiki and noticed what I needed before I got too far with it.

You must be lvl 80
You must speak Sathirian
You must speak Halasian
You must speak Death’s Whisper
Gathering skill needs to be 300+.
Foresting skill needs to be 340+.
Mining skill needs to be 340

Now, the languages and the level was not an issue but my harvesting skills were as low as they possibly could be. It happens when you have so many characters, things fall behind. So every once in a while I would take the mystic (when the trio wasn’t already involved in doing something, which was relatively rare) and go harvesting. I was working on the cloak from the Isle of Mara at the same time, so I wouldn’t have to go back and continue harvesting for that.

Yesterday I finally reached the point where I can harvest those skill levels, and so I started my epic. The mystic has been level 80 for quite some time, but since I’ve already got a collection of epics (some times twice such as in the case of my bard who is sporting both the troubador and dirge epics) the shine has worn off a little.

The starter for the mystic epic begins down in Sebilis. You have to speak Sathirian right away and he’ll give you a page. The page speaks about spirits and ancients and a little discovery he partook in, and his desire to go back. From there you head to City of Mist (which is an area in EQ2 and not a zone like EQ which dissapointed me) and kill ‘a timeworn spirit’ who happens to be hanging out. A chest drops which you’ll loot and will start the actual quest. It sends you to Teren’s Grasp to speak with a Runesage.

From there the quest moves on to a million other things I need to do. It’s probably one of the more involved quests I’ve done and I’m not even sure I like the end result. The weapon is great for groups, but has no heal crits and nothing to do with healing on the proc (it actually gives a bonus to combat).

I still want to start the epic with my illusionist some time as well, but since I’ve already started it and completed half of it on Najena, I have even less inspiration.

Aside from that, my gaming was fairly limited last night. I did manage to get the illusionist from 34-40 in carpentry which was fantastic. I churned out rush order writs to fly through the levels while watching Legend of the Seeker on Hulu. 8 episodes later and I’d managed to hit the next tier. I’ll probably wait for vitality to replenish before working through the next tier.

Today I’ll be heading to Manotick to take some pictures. It’s a little village just outside of Ottawa, and today is supposed to be absolutely beautiful out. I already have my balcony door open and the cool air is fantastic. I want to go to Upper Canada Village soon for some pictures as well, but their season doesn’t start until May 16th. Then there’s also the Medieval Festival which I hope will be making another appearance this year. Last year I had an amazing time. So many exciting things to do, both in game and out.

I hope everyone has an amazing Saturday, see you in Norrath!

Gaming

Happy Birthday LotRO

stargrace April 24, 2009 2Comments

Turbine has another promotion going on right now in celebration of LotRO turning 2 years old. Old players will find their accounts active for a week, there’s 25% bonus experience in game, you can purchase a subscription at a discount price of $9.99/m (if you purchase one of their plans, 3 months or more) and there are also gifts to be found in game by means of ‘tokens’ that drop from mobs. I love promotions like these, and Landroval was bustling yesterday during the day with all sorts of players. On one side it was great to see, on another side, the lag was not great to see. I can only assume Landroval is far more populated then the server Nostalgia moved from, since I don’t remember having lag before. It’s short, and in spurts. It doesn’t hamper my game play any more then being slightly annoying as I run through Bree, and it seems to be limited to the big cities.

I played the rune-keeper for a bit yesterday along with Kasul who is still waiting for his character to transfer over. Word reached that Tipa’s characters made the trip successfully, so his should be up very soon. It’ll be nice to have everyone on the same server again.

We completed a few chapters of book one, volume one, inching ever so closer to where we were at before in the series, which was book one volume one chapter 11, the portion where we’d need a group to complete it. Tipa and Malfi will no doubt be dragged into that one to help out.

After it was decided that we’d do our level 15 class quests, mine was already starting to lighten up in colours as I was level 17 by then, but it made me trek out to the Lone Lands and I didn’t want to walk way out there when I’d not yet received the quests that had me adventure that way.

The quest was fantastic, I had so much fun doing it on my rune-keeper. You speak to an NPC outside the Forsaken Inn (I believe that’s the name, if it’s not dead on please forgive me) and get ported to the top of Weathertop. This is a HUGE mountain just North of the lone lands, and when I got there a thunderstorm was raging. I had to take my rune-keeper around and select a number of stones and then watch them each get hit by lightning. Mother nature at her best or some such story. After I’d carefully selected my three stones, orcs began attacking me. The atmosphere was intense, the sky would be pitch black as rain came pouring down and then suddenly everything would be illuminated bright as day time as the storm grew in height and then BAM an orc would charge me from the darkness.

After a time I received the messages that my three stones had been hit by lightning and I should go back to each one and see what remained. Back to the npc who ported me to the Inn and I received my weapon as well as a new class trait that lets me focus on my lightning skills with crits.

I headed back to Bree and turned in 5 iron tokens I’d gathered while adventuring and received a scroll for a weapon smith that allows a one time creation of a purple (not sure what the classification is actually called, heroic legendary etc) weapon! Neat. Most people were talking about how they’d received food from the gift-giver and naught more.

It was starting to get close to dinner after that, so I decided to break there. The rune-keeper is almost 18 and then it’s just one more level to catch up to Hamal once he moves over. Hopefully I can squeeze that in before our next game day the following week. We’ll see!

Gaming

A Little Free Realms

stargrace April 23, 2009 4Comments

Of course I had to jump on the Free Realms bandwagon and add a post about the upcoming game here! The NDA was dropped yesterday afternoon and since then there have been posts galore (not to mention tweets) about this brightly coloured world.

There’s really nothing new I could add right now that others have not already said, so I’ll point you in the direction of a few friends:

Tipa writes about creating a character and the basics of this kid-friendly game.

Cuppy gives the low down on the good and bad points of Free Realms, adding her personal thoughts to each.

Ogrebear talks a little about the specific jobs available and a brief review following cuppy’s good and bad points.

My own thoughts on the matter? I’ve been playing the beta a little while now and I’m really enjoying the overall game. Do I think it will ever be my personal number one game, no not really. It’s great as a secondary game, something you can dip into for a short period of time and have a little fun with. I’m not exactly happy that you can only obtain a permanent pet through purchasing one for real money but as Cuppy states in her post above, that could always change.

The price is certainly right, and adding this to the station access plan is a great idea. If you’re a parent who already plays any of the other SOE titles you may want to subscribe just to bundle it all up together.

One thing I noticed (and Tipa has said a time or two before) is that the mini games are quite mouse intensive. I realize that I am a minority here but I’m left handed, with a right handed mouse (mostly because that’s how I grew up and now it would just be incredibly odd to use a left handed mouse) and that means that for these games I feel that I am constantly under performing due to using the ‘wrong’ hand in order to play them.

So what I did was plug my wacom tablet in so that I could use the pen to play the games with my left hand rather then my right. This worked out far better and I’m having a much easier time with it – not to mention I’m enjoying playing the games more rather then struggling to spin a pot with the wrong hand.

I’m looking forward to seeing the game go live, and it will be quite a treat to see it grow from there.

If you’re looking for me in game, remember you can find me as Stephanie Stardreamer – though both people need to be in game at the same time in order for you to add them to your friend list. You can contact me via email, twitter, or Xfire to meet up!

General Gaming Goodness

Working on the Epic, and ANOTHER Bard?

Epic Journey

Happy Birthday LotRO

A Little Free Realms

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Personal EVE Economic Update (October)

Expensive Month (preparing for fun)

Locked Out (again)

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