May 2009

Working on Epics and Instances

stargrace May 5, 2009 1Comment

Ultann managed to get his inquisitor epic in two days. I was really happy for him but frustrated at the difference in ‘ease’ as far as epics go. Some are very easy to get (I finished the coercer one in a single day) and others are painstakingly long especially when you take into count the different pre-requisites they may have.

I’m trudging along with the mystic and illusionist epic though and I’m confident that some day I’ll get them. We’ll just have to see.

Yesterday evening was the first chunk of play time I’ve had steady in a bit, so the trio headed to instances of course. First on our list? Maidens. Now, we’ve never cleared this zone as a trio before, mostly because my enchanter at the time was too small to hold down the adds for Sandstorm as well as the sisters.

Yesterday it went flawlessly and we took down sandstorm (with four adds up) as well as the sisters (on the 2nd attempt, first attempt we had the order wrong) without any real issues. I was exceptionally happy because the zone is also one I need for the illusionist epic, and I’m glad that we can trio it. Plus some pretty fantastic loot drops there.

Speaking of loot for once it was on our side! No, we didn’t get any gear upgrades to drop but for once a few masters did. One of which being my all important power / health buff for the mystic. Premonition. I was so very excited. This spell typically goes for a huge amount of money. Ultann also managed to get his group taunt to drop, and a few masters dropped for folks to sell.

Once we were finished in Maidens we headed to Vaults, and then to our good friend Obelisk of Ahkzul which refused to drop the healer shield (again). We spent a little time in Chelsith but that zone is so incredibly long and the Leviathans tend to drop nothing but treasured so we like to avoid it. I wish it followed the ‘named will drop legendary’ rule but alas it does not. This zone COULD be so wonderful if just a few tweaks were made.

All in all it was a great night, and I had a lot of fun. Here’s hoping tonight is more of the same! See you in Norrath!

Gaming

A Little Bit of Everything

stargrace May 3, 2009 0Comment

I decided to disrupt Princess (my cat) for most of the day yesterday, and spent it spring cleaning. Moved all of her ‘beds’ around and rearranged the apartment, it looks much better now. I still have a few rooms to go, but it’s a start. Once that was done I headed in game to find Ultann’s boxed inquisitor at level 80 – woohoo! Less then a month to level from 1-80 using the recruit a friend method, which means he can start working on his epic now. We decided to head to Crypt of Agony and see if the Cardiocutter would drop (which it didn’t) or even the fabled ranged item for Ultann (which also didn’t drop). What DID drop though was that caster ring (legendary) with some pretty nice spell crit on it. Of course it would drop, since I had been trying to get it for my illusionist for quite some time and we never saw it. Thankfully, it’s also a nice ring for a bard who makes use of both CA’s and spells.

That was the only thing of note to drop within the instance, and afterward we decided to head to Courts off of Pillars of Flame in order to get some more guild experience (not to mention a good handful of craft rares). We one grouped everything except the final Black Witch who happens to elude us because our dps is too slow to take down a x4 before she ports most of us all over the zone, leaving either no healer, or no tank, or no dps (which makes everything even more slow). She also places curse of insanity upon the group which means you can get one shot if you go below a certain amount of power. Seeing as we were one group trying to take down an encounter meant for 24, we use a lot of power.

It was still a lot of fun, we still gained a lot of aa and the guild is nearing level 30 where we’ll be able to purchase a guild hall.

After that we headed to Chardok in an attempt to obtain the inquisitor starter which has been noted as dropping either there, or in Chelsith (or outside Chelsith). We didn’t see it and ended up calling it early because red encounters were absolutely ripping my bard to shreds.

The evening went well over all. The bard dinged level 74 and is 30% or so into it. As you can see above, she gets a good chunk of experience each kill. I wish it worked for quest experience too but such is not the case. At level 75 she can start doing shard missions, though you do have to be 79 to pick up the daily doubles. I haven’t begin to work on obtaining her skills yet, but that will be next. I cringe at the number of silicate loams I’m going to have to get.

I hope everyone else had an amazing Saturday, don’t forget next Sunday is Mother’s day!

Gaming

Who doesn’t want MORE alts?!

stargrace May 2, 2009 1Comment

Of course in game, I need more alts. Why? Because I had character slots free. I made three of them yesterday. Will I stick with any of them? Who knows. While I played on Antonia Bayle I listened to the chatter taking place in the craft channel. It’s amazing to see the difference in community on all of the servers I play on. I have level 80 characters on four different servers, and I’ve played extensively on two others that I moved from. I enjoy playing with friends which is my main reason for changing so often.

The atmosphere on the roleplay servers is completely different then that on ‘regular’ servers. I’m fairly confident that this can be said for almost all games, and roleplay servers also tend to be quite popular. Even the difference between Antonia Bayle and Lucan D’Lere is noticeable in EQ2, mainly because of the size difference. You always have those bad apples who talk louder then the 100 nice people you may have missed coming in contact with.

The casual atmosphere and the openness are two things that I notice the most on roleplay servers. People talk, almost constantly. They talk to people walking by, to strangers in channels and numerous other instances. I love it. Every time I walk through Freeport I can hear people roleplaying and on the roleplay channels there’s always a story going on. I adventured through Zek one day and came across a group of people randomly roleplaying around the druid rings, and walked into their story. It was an incredible experience and one that reminded me why I love these games, why I play.

I hope everyone has an amazing weekend, I’ll see you in Norrath (and maybe Free Realms, and Vanguard, and EverQuest, and.. )

Gaming

Tehatamani Harbor – The Return

stargrace May 2, 2009 1Comment

To this day, I still think Vanguard:SoH is one of the most amazing looking MMO’s out there, with some of the best looking lands. None of my friends play Vanguard any more but I still keep my account active and last night I was wandering around wondering what to do I decided to peek in game. I’ve always loved Vanguard, even though it has very rarely ever been my game of choice. Mostly due to population and friends, and not so much due to bugs. The game has come an enormous way since launch, and I’ve been playing since beta.

When the decision was made to turn all of the servers (there are four) into RMT servers, well. Some of the player base decided that it was the final straw. I noticed a significant difference in the game yesterday compared to when I would normally dip back in. This could be for any number of reasons, maybe it was just a slow Friday night and everyone was off watching the new Wolverine movie (I saw it earlier in the afternoon, loved it) or maybe the RMT change actually affected the player base. I’m not sure.

The things I noticed about the servers – my guild was exceptionally quiet. I belong to ‘Safe Haven‘ which is an enormous guild on the Seradon server. They are still quite active, but nothing like their former glory. If you happen to be looking for a guild on Seradon, I highly suggest you check them out, you won’t meet a nicer bunch of people. There were five of us on and normally as people log in there would be hellos tossed all around but such was not the case. It was a different atmosphere then I was used to. Also, the general channels in Vanguard have always been teaming with people talking, so even if you never saw another person you knew they were out there. In the 40 minutes or so I spent in game I saw one other person talking in Qalia. Maybe Thestra chat would have been better, always the more popular location for people to hang out and no doubt there’s new content out that way. I didn’t get a chance to check it out but I plan on it.

The /craft channel was still active, less so then your typical Friday night. People were still friendly, as I have found crafters to be in every game I play (more about that later as I make my EQ2 post). It had been a little while since I had done anything more then log into game, check my house, and maybe craft a bit or two, so I decided to flip through my quest journal and figure out where I was at and what quests I had to work towards next.

I found a rift stone close to my house and headed to Tehatamani Harbor, I have written about this place twice before. In my previous posts I talked about how I had to be level 44 to progress the quest chain, and what do you know that’s the exact level I am standing at now. I spent some time killing beetles and snakes, working up faction and getting small amounts of experience, and remembering why I love the game and why I probably always will.

It was a nice quiet night, which is not always a bad thing. If you happen to be on the Seradon server, let me know!

Gaming

Venril Sathir and Other Goodness

stargrace May 1, 2009 2Comments

Pictured above is my paladin, with the amulet of necropotence and a nice sword from fear. She’s obviously got some personality good / evil issues, but I’m loving the new look.

Last night was a hodge podge of activity, starting with getting a few steps done on the mystic epic. I managed to get my three skeleton updates, with some help of course. They included skeletons in Jarsath Wastes, Karnor’s Castle, and Kunzar Jungle. Now I’ve got a group instance to do where I have to defeat some heroics, and then more NPC to talk to.

Out of the blue I found myself playing the neglected troubador I have, she’s been at 80 forever, owns both the dirge and troubador fabled epic, and yet I rarely play her. Not because I don’t enjoy the class (I certainly do) but having SO many alts means my time is always split between the flavour of the month. I wish I were one of those people who only had one or two alts instead of the massive army I have now. I’ve said this a lot. I’ve even contemplated deleting all of the ones that I have, but there’s been so much work put into them I can’t bring myself to do it.

The troubador headed to Obelisk of Ahkzul and then over to Anchor of Bazul, which is also within the Moors. I love Anchor, it involves fights that are more then just hack and slash. One of them requires you to possess the body of a void creature to defeat a named. Another has you form a triangle of void portals around a named as you fight it, dispelling its immunity.

In Obelisk I actually won a (useful) master! The first T8 Master I’ve seen in a very long time. Since that particular zone is on a ‘smart loot’ system, it was nice. Happens to be my group haste buff.

Nothing else of note dropped, but afterwards I decided to join in on a Venril Sathir raid.

I know, what was I thinking. It actually didn’t go too bad, even though we didn’t defeat him this time around. Let me explain.

There were only two groups, 90% of them alts to a raid guild. This raid is easier to do with less people, because the less people you have to worry about their power going below a certain mark, or not clicking statues, or not using a cube on the named, or any other number of things that can go wrong, the better. This was my first time doing this encounter, I’d never seen Venril before (aside from his home in EQ) and it was a lot of fun. The entire raid has to keep their power between 30-60% while Venril is ‘watching’ you, or you’ll cause the raid to wipe. You also need to instantly cure a noxious dot, or you’ll wipe a raid. While all this goes on, throughout the fight there are two other important debuffs that will land randomly on two players. One will decrease their power by huge amounts if they cast so much as a simple spell. The other does the opposite. Of course this means you’ll be unable to hover between the 30-60% so when you’re hit with these debuffs so you call it out in raid (typically) and do nothing for the duration. This also means that the remainder of the raid who does NOT have these debuffs can burn Venril Safely, as long as they keep watching their power and that noxious.

If a single person is not watching everything that’s going on, the raid wipes.

We managed to get him down to 40% with our two groups before I had to call it a night. The raids started fairly late to begin with and since I’m always up exceptionally early I was starting to fall asleep in my chair. They’re going to make another attempt at it on Saturday I believe, adding a third group of guild DPS to the mix because the fight was taking a good length of time as it was. We had three healers, four bards, a few enchanters and only one brigand with no other DPS classes. It was still great fun.

You don’t always have to win in order for an evening to be fun. Especially since I’d never been there before. I understand that RoK raids are ‘old’ now, that there’s better raids to be had and better gear out there, but for myself it was still a great night with a lot of fun. I’m not sure if I want to get into raiding full time or just continue to pop in here and there when I feel like it (very casual), I’ll just have to see.

I hope everyone has a fantastic Friday today. I’ll be off to see Wolverine later on in the afternoon, woot.

Working on Epics and Instances

A Little Bit of Everything

Who doesn’t want MORE alts?!

Tehatamani Harbor – The Return

Venril Sathir and Other Goodness

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