Lost in the Void – Tradeskill Style
stargrace 
Yesterday saw us with an odd assortment of guild mates actually on line (all four of us at once!) which hasn’t been happening often this week due to work, so we decided to take advantage of it. That was until Ultann lost his power for a few hours. In the mean time Kasul, Wpus, and I decided we would attempt a crafting mission, and as chance would have it, the mission of the day was the newest one that was added, the void mission.
I’d never done this mission before and I was excited. We all ported over to the Moors where one of the air balloon NPC send you on your way. A few words of warning for this particular mission. It doesn’t tell you, but you require a mining skill of 25+ in order to harvest the ore that is in the zone. This differs from the regular instances where harvesting skill is not taken into account at all. There was no warning that I’d need this skill either, so I had to leave and come back.
Number two, there’s no real ‘door’ to this zone which means that unless you happen to be CURRENTLY ON the quest, there’s no way into the zone (that I have found at least). Now, the down side to this is that if you complete the quest, and then accidently click the ‘zone to Moors’ button that pops up on the nice shiny void door before looting the chest – you will have no way of returning. Arysh didn’t miss out on too much at least when the chest was popped, as we only managed to get ourselves a jewelers piece of gear (which Kasul already had). I dragged both the tailor and the carpenter to the zone to gain the crafter shards as well as faction.
The zone itself was beautiful, and the quest was quite fun. You have literally walked in on a failed raid, and what the raiders could not do in their uber gear the crafters will attempt. Of course there’s the matter of supplies. Dead raiders and mounts lay all over the zone and you have to run around taking the clothes from their corpses. Literally. You click on the dead body and watch as their gear vanishes. It was incredibly funny. You also steal flesh from the dead mounts in order to create the food articles needed. The trees near by can be used for wood, there just happens to be some void-coal laying around the ground, and there are little piles of moving void goo that you can harvest.
But what about a craft table? Well, thankfully the gnome who tells you about the mission has a supply of tinkered ones available, they last for 15 minutes each round and he’ll pass out stacks. We all managed to complete our portions (with poor Kasul doing most of the work, as Wpus and myself are mere lowbie crafters and the combines were quite daunting) and the quest was completed without too much trouble. Of course we all know crafters are incredible beings of power, so we managed to create the portal using the supplies left behind. Who needs raiders.
Once Ultann’s power returned we headed to Veksar: The Sunken Theater and cleared the entire zone (it also happened to be the daily double for yesterday). It makes an amazing difference when I can concentrate on just playing the enchanter and stunning every opportunity I get. Not that I mind two boxing and playing the mystic, but of course performance is better when not divided. Nothing of great worth dropped, and we still had some time before people had to call it an night (myself included) so we headed over to Obelisk of Ahkzul (no shield) and then for a change of pace we went to the Commonlands and completed Cavern of the Afflicted (no jester’s cap, no sword). Ellithia is 16 shards away from completing her T2 void set, Arysh is quite a few more behind but she’s getting there slowly. It’s nice to be able to complete these zones without too much difficulty, and when there is difficulty we don’t have a whole lot of people berating us telling us how much we suck (like that one warlock from Deep Forge who wanted to bring a 3rd healer along when we wiped once on the final named). I didn’t get any time to work on my transmuting before I had to call it a night, but I’m still hoping to get high enough to be able to transmute level 70+ gear before too long. The guild bank has been purged of lower level rares in order to make items to transmute, and I think I currently have enough for about 150 combines, which should grant at least 60-80 skill ups depending on how lucky I am (though we all know if I didn’t have bad luck I’d have no luck at all).
I hope everyone has an incredible Friday, no matter where you find yourself. I should be in various games this weekend, but as always you can get a hold of me via email, twitter, or any other means you can find (most are listed in the upper left portion of the web site). Safe travels and happy gaming!