Alternate Advancement Slider – Thoughts?

stargrace September 29, 2009 11 Comments

With GU53 came the option for players to be able to convert their combat experience into alternate advancement experience, something we all saw in EverQuest and something I personally missed a LOT in EverQuest II. Before GU53 you would have to have been level 80 before your combat experience converted.

There are a lot of benefits to this new feature, one of which is visiting older content. In fact a lot of the features from GU53 has players returning to older content and I couldn’t be happier.

To the right is Ishbel, my new iksar bruiser. She leveled to 15 along with Feelix her trusted Kerra friend (paladin) and then both of them turned off their combat experience by setting aa to 100%.

Now, there are a few differences when you do this at a level lower then 80 – and you may actually want to stop gaining experience at level 79 so that you can take advantage of these.

First of all – turning your achievement bar to 100% takes certain factors into consideration. It’s not just that you’re gaining aa but that you’re gaining it based on what you would normally be gaining for combat experience. What do I mean by this? If you have vitality, that will add to the experience. If you use a combat experience potion, this will also add to it. If you have a bonus to experience based on the fact that you have other level 80’s on your account, this will also contribute as will any experience you gain while there are server events going on. Once you hit level 80 this is not the case. It doesn’t give you a bonus for anything aside from mentoring someone lower then yourself.

Ishbel may only be level 15, but she’s got 35aa so far and counting. Her and Feelix headed to Wailing Caverns, Commonlands, Antonica, Blackburrow, and The Firemyst Gully (an instance in Antonica) to take down encounters. Now that Lore and Legend quests have changed (you no longer have to hunt down books, but simply examining a piece to the collection will grant you the starter quest) she also managed to finish off a few of those – which is something I’ve never actually completed while “on the go” before. L&L have always been something of an after thought, if I was near a book I may pick it up but other wise chances were that I would not be. While you may think to yourself “dang, this seems almost TOO easy now!” I think the motivation is a welcomed change.

Speaking of things being too easy – there are specific reasons these changes are coming. In February the game will raise by another 10 levels, which will mean 90 levels total. While people who are veterans of the game will have little trouble with gaining those levels there is also new players out there who will find 90 levels exceptionally daunting and may even see them as a deterrent to the game. By allowing some things to be ‘easier’ it opens the game up to those people. I tend to agree with people that some things may be a little too easy (like skill ups, I barely hit a mob and I raised my skills effortlessly) but I can also understand why these changes were put in place.

What do you think of the new alternate advancement slider? Have you taken advantage of it yet? Any plans to? Let me know below!

In the mean time, happy gaming and I will see you in Norrath!

Where’s the red pool?!

stargrace September 28, 2009 4 Comments

This weekend was pretty intense. In fact it was so intense I didn’t take any screen shots, and I didn’t post on my blog at all. I’ve got a large handful of RL going on between family friends and work, but still managed to get a lot of gaming in over the weekend (knowing that the next two weeks I won’t be able to do that much).

The servers had a 40% bonus to experience, alternative advancement (formally achievement), and crafting – and while I would have loved to have gotten some crafting done it simply wasn’t in the plans.

I did manage to level my little Willamina (ranger) from 1-67 and I’ll have some roleplay posts about that later this week (or possibly next, I have deadlines coming up and things are a little hectic) and I also decided to turn aa experience on my little level 15 bruiser and reached 28 with her, which was fantastic.

I ran shard of love a few times, did a lot of instances, and everything was generally a blur. It was great. You know those happy gaming phases where you’re not concerned with anything else (for once).

Yesterday was also my first ‘official’ TSO raid run, as a recruit of Paradise Lost.

Let me tell you, TSO raids are *stressful* and basically as a healer you’re only ever doing one of a few things (because that’s all you have time to do). You’re either casting cures (which you do a LOT in TSO raids), not casting, or healing. We headed to Tomb of the Mad Crusader first, which I have been to quiet a few times now and have no issues healing in – oh except that I was experiencing (as were a few others) INSANE amounts of lag. The game may as well have been performing as a slide show. Now, I realize I don’t have a top of the line computer, but I rarely have as many issues with any other game as I do with EQ2 even playing on the lowest settings. I know I could improve my heals 100x if I could simply play the game properly without the handfuls of lag.

Once ToTMC was down it was time to head to Zerrakon, which I had never fought before. The encounter is pretty straight forward. There are two pools and a lot of debuffs and when you get hit with purple or red vision (which is more like black and the floor poofs with my settings) you have to run into one of the two pools or you wipe the raid. Not only do you wipe the raid but it calls out who has wiped the raid so everyone can laugh at you.

Of course, being my first time there it was me who wiped the raid. Lagging off the side of the red pool I fell to my death below instead of curing myself. Woopsie.

There are also annoying adds that spawn, per group, and you have to take them down or your group is unable to do anything with Zerrakon or anything at all outside of your own group. Very frustrating. Eventually we finished that raid (we do have a lot of recruits currently and things are a little wobbly) and headed off to Palace of the Ancient one, which I had only been to before once and that was on my troubador.

Palace is another raid zone where you’re constantly curing, and when you’re not doing that you’re healing and watching for debuffs where you’re not supposed to cure or you’re supposed to run through a portal or click on an item. These raids are VERY tedious and not fun what so ever. I don’t even get to watch anything going on because I’m constantly watching my group to cure and act on my detrimental window. The raids are nothing like the ‘fun’ raids of EoF or RoK.

I ended up getting two pieces of gear by the end of the night, my shoulders and my helm. That means my mystic is now wearing 5 pieces of T4 gear, critical mitigation went up a huge amount. My jewelery still absolutely sucks but that’s something that will come with time. She also has all of her master spells now, which I’m happy about.

This is the first time I’ve ever played a mystic on raids. The first time I’ve ever experienced TSO raids, and I’m fairly under geared since I also never did RoK raids with the character. Hopefully it will only take a time or two before I get used to it and start remembering the encounters and what I do on each of them.

What did everyone else spend their weekends doing? Anything exciting? I want to hear below!

Happy gaming, and I’ll see you in Norrath.

What’s the neatest item you’ve seen so far?

stargrace September 25, 2009 2 Comments

We love shiny games and we love new games, but what’s almost as good is when a new pretty makes its way into our current games. Has there been a particular update in your MMO of choice that brought forth a new item that you simply HAD to have? Whether it was a new piece of gear, a quest item, or some other interesting tidbit, games are constantly trying to push forth new things onto their players.

With GU53 came a new live event once again involving the spires of Norrath. They are in various stages of completion (once again) and our friendly token merchants are back – newer and more improved. There are three repeatable quests available, and each quest will reward a number of tokens.

Pictured above is one of the best items I have ever seen in EQ2 to date, of course that is coming from a player who will easily shell out 50p-150p on house items and not blink an eye.

The house item is called ‘magic mouth’ and it acts as a bulletin board where you can write a message on it. When this board is placed in your house and another player walks past it, the message that you’ve added will be used in a /shout in your house zone.

WOW.

I can think of so much potential for these things. You could propose to your loved one while they spy around your house. You could hold a scavenger hunt using messages from these boards, you could (which is what I’ll use them as) describe what the player is viewing as they stand in front of it.

I have wanted an item like that for quite some time, though I don’t need it to shout I do like the idea of people who are visiting my museum to be able to actually read what it is they’re looking at. This has been a long time project of mine, and it’s still on the go (of course). So today I’ve been working on the live event, stocking up these tokens to spend. The magic mouth is quite expensive, and I’m not sure how many I’ll need. There are a LOT of other items on the merchants including all of the ‘no graphic’ gear that we saw when the void creatures were roaming Norrath and had a merchant for that.

Yesterday I spent most of the evening working on achievements. I did some exploring, worked on some old raids, and generally relaxed. There was a WoE raid going on that I do need to complete some time (I need the earring for this weeks raids) but it was a night off from raids and I didn’t want to spend it mucking about WoE.

I also headed back to the shard of love with guild mates, no wings (again) but it was a fast run and I finished off the Love’s Champion achievement and gained that new title. I have heard a lot of people complain about the fact that the zone only rewards appearance and ‘fluff’ items, but I enjoy this aspect, there are so many achievements and collection quests within the zone that it makes it worth while for me. I don’t think it will be something I want to do over and over again, but it does provide a nice distraction.

Happy Friday to everyone, I hope it’s amazing.

I’ll see you in Norrath!

How did you spend your time after the patch?

stargrace September 24, 2009 9 Comments

Yesterday was a whirlwind of activity and I had no idea where to start. I decided the Shard of Love was something I had to rush out and see, so access was acquired for that first. My little templar didn’t fair so well with the berserker duo she was with at the time, but later on in the evening I completed access on the warden and went back with a shadowknight and assassin. The story behind the zone was amazing, and I had a lot of fun getting a handful of housing items. Well, more like two handfuls. The wings didn’t drop, but a lot of other really nice things including a chair with a ‘sit’ option that made me crack up laughing because no matter how many times you select it, you will get the message “you don’t really feel like sitting down” that flashes across the screen. Dang, so close!

I didn’t get a chance to try out the chronomagic feature, but I did have a lot of fun looking at the new achievements. A little confusion in channels about alternate advancement (formerly achievements, now aa) and the new achievement system. I’m sure it will catch on in time, especially for those of us who remember EQ Live.

As you can see above, my mystic does not have a lot of achievements. She was never really a quest character, and there’s a lot I haven’t done on her. Hopefully I can change that, and I’m excited about having something to work on. The appearance gear from completing them is pretty neat. I thought I remembered there being more then 488 on test, but I may have been mistaken. I’m sure more will be added with time.

Last night was a raid night, and we were off to Tomb of the Mad Crusader, where my mystic managed to grab herself T4 bracers as well as boots. That brings her to four set pieces, which I’m happy about. After we’d cleared Tombs we headed off to the new x4 raid zone in Everforst, Miragul’s Planar Shard (I believe that’s the name, I may be off this morning). The zone looks almost exactly like Crucible, x4. The gear was not especially exciting, but we did get discovery on a bit or two. Always nice.

Today servers are down with the patch to fix the patch (as usual) and hopefully when they come back up I’ll be working on the Shard of Love access for the mystic, as well as a few other things. Claymore is fairly high on the list of items I want to obtain, which requires a lot of questing. As long as it’s not RoK questing I seem to be doing fairly well.

What about everyone else, how did you spend your time in game once the servers were up? Get to explore anything exciting? I haven’t checked out any new house items yet or even peeked to see where that extra room is in my 5-room homes, but I did find it in my 1-room homes. I had to remove a wall so I could find it in fact, lol.

Hope everyone has a fantastic Thursday, no matter where you find yourself. I’ll see you in Norrath!