Nomadic Gamer

2009

Gaming

Ding, Necromancer hits 80!

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Well, I may not be at the level cap yet, but I’m slowly inching my way closer! Last night saw us hanging out at our usual Smith camp, and before I knew it I finally hit level 80 with the necromancer! With not quite 9 days played, I’m really happy about this. Of course, she only has 100aa and still has 5 levels to go before hitting the cap, but this brings me significantly closer. Since I’ve already got the necromancer 2.0 that adds another little accomplishment to the list.

The enchanter is not that far behind, sitting part way into level 78 for now. She’s and older character and just for a comparison she’s got 70 days or so played, with 150aa. I’ve had her since I started playing EQ though, and back before hot zones and before leveling was so much easier.

I spent some time working on my tradeskills as well – I finally managed to raise jewel crafting a few more points. I’m trying to decide which skill I want to raise next. There is an amazing craft quest that I want to do – and it requires at least 250 in all skills and I also want to get the aa for each of those crafts so I imagine that’s what I’ll be working on for the next little while. A huge thank you to the folks I’ve been playing with, without our little team of adventurers I wouldn’t have made it as far as I have. Of course having mercenary NPC available helps out a great deal too, that extra healer (or two) is great. Now we want to work through the SoD progression quests in order to unlock the higher level mercenary. The level 85 ones Journeyman RK5 have approx. 30k power – and that would be REALLY nice. The tank mercenary don’t seem to fair as well and they’re a little more difficult to control, but perhaps being able to unlock the higher tiers of those too would help. We’ll just have to see!

Purchasing spells will be another adventure for me, there’s so many that I’m missing because they’re priced so high in the bazaar. Which reminds me, I have a level 80 rogue pet that I need to purchase from Hills of Shade (I believe that’s the zone) some time! My last solo wander through that zone ended up with some undead taking a huge chomp out of me. Thank goodness I have the veteran reward that allows me to re-gain all of my experience, because I lost a good 8% and was 0% into level 80 when it happened. I decided to just stay safe until I can get a buffer in the mean time.

Hope everyone is having an amazing weekend!

Gaming

Ding, 79 Necromancer (and 78 Enchanter)

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Located within the highest icy peaks of the Serpent’s Spine Mountains is the home of the Krithgor, a species of giants which, unlike other giants in Norrath, are intelligent — some even masters of magic. 

Long ago and much to the chagrin of the other gods, Rallos Zek’s creations — the giants, orcs, ogres, and goblins — invaded the Plane of Earth. Among the giants who did not partake in the war was Beltron, the Krithgor king, who died a short time after the war’s end. The most noble of giants marched into Frostcrypt, the giant burial grounds, to lay their king to rest while the remaining giants stayed in their city, Valdeholm. 

That day in Frostcrypt, Rallos Zek committed an atrocity upon his own creations, setting a curse upon them, an event which marked the origin of the Shades of Zek. Now, the mission of the Shades is to end their creator’s curse. In order to accomplish this, they believe, every living Krithgor giant must be slain. To this day, the curse lives on as the Shades of Frostcrypt do battle with the living and fully functioning Wraithguards and citizens of Valdeholm. – Zam.com

Valdeholm has been my “home away from home” for a little while now. It’s the level 70 hot zone, and the experience has been really nice. There are a few camps that people seem to head to by instinct. One is the pit located right at the beginning of the zone. This is a great spot but the pulls can be a little slow if you’ve got a full group. My little trio (complete with boxed enchanter and cleric) typically heads to the Smith which is just down from the North gate. The north gate is typically camped by people who are looking to farm a particular named who drops a nice augment. My group managed to get one almost right away so we haven’t been after any named.

We’ve gotten a lot of spell drops and I’m hoping that my little bazaar mules will make some coin as people return to check out the anniversary events. I noticed that SOE is holding another contest that I can’t partake in because I don’t live in the US. Shame because I’d really love to enter, too. Anyhow, we’ve been grinding out experience in the hot zone and it’s been a lot of fun. Oh, not to mention the fact that my necromancer is level 79, almost level 80! The enchanter is level 78, and heading towards 79. So yes, the experience has been amazing.

When we were tired of that zone we headed to The Mechamatic Guardian, which is a giant robot who wanders along in Dragonscale hills. Typically when you wander in front of this giant robot, he kicks you. It hurts. It hurts bad. However there are also missions you can obtain and when you run up to his right foot while you’re on one of these missions you’ll get the option to either zone in – or be kicked. Who would choose “please kick me” I have no idea.

The experience in these missions is also pretty good, there’s some rare loot, chance at named, and the zone respawns. We haven’t actually completed the missions yet which is fine by me. Being this close to 80 is exceptionally exciting, I’ve never been so close to the level cap before and certainly not in so short of a time period. The grind from 80-85 I know is quite long but I don’t think I’ll mind it in the least bit. 

I’ve been back playing EverQuest for a month now, and it’s been so much fun. I’m looking forward to seeing what other trouble adventures I can get into – rumour has it that fabled starts on Monday, and every day when I listen to the general channel there are a few more people who have come back to the game to see how things are. It’s fantastic (even if I’m not on my ‘home’ server). I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend no matter where you’re gaming. 

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note – I’ve finally updated my ShutterCal account with pictures for the last few months, I had seriously neglected the site and I’m so glad to be back into the swing of things again. You can see my ShutterCal account here, and you’ll find lots of pictures from my trip to San Diego there as well. Safe travels!

Gaming

Want to buy a Vanguard character?

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Sony Online Entertainment has partnered with Live Gamer to provide Vanguard: Saga of Heroes customers with the same exchange system that our EverQuest II customers on The Bazaar and Vox servers enjoy.  Live Gamer exchange provides the security and transparency needed to trade virtual items with confidence, and with the Live Gamer system, participants will be able to both auction and purchase virtual assets (characters, coin, and items) securely and safely and without the risk of the fraudulent activities that plague 3rd party websites that are not authorized by SOE to provide these services.

Participation in Live Gamer exchange is not mandatory or required, but those wishing to participate in this new service must first register an account with www.livegamer.com.  Once registered, you can then utilize the in-game system to upload virtual assets to your Live Gamer account and auction them to others.  You can also use your Live Gamer account to bid on and purchase virtual assets and to send them to your in-game characters / accounts.

Live Gamer is offering an in-game incentive for trying the system out.  Customers that register with Live Gamer within the first two weeks will receive a jewelry box which when opened will offer a choice between one of three items, each targeted towards one of the three key professions.  For more information about this offer, please visit www.livegamer.com after the service has launched.

We will append this post with availability dates for the new service as soon as possible.

For more information on how to set up your Live Gamer account, please visit this link in our Knowledge Base.

The following thread is available for discussion of the new Vanguard Live Gamer Exchange service.

 

I’ve posted my thoughts on RMT and how it affects SOE’s games in particular before – when Station Cash came out. My opinions over all have not changed a great deal. I don’t mind RMT in games that don’t already have a $15 monthly fee. I agree there’s money to be made out there. It’s the wave of the future (or the past depending on how you look at it) and why not. I feel it crosses a ‘greedy’ line when you have both RMT and monthly subscription fees (depending on the items, I don’t mind fluff stuff at all like the gear from station cash and pets – I am on the fence about potions and the rest), and I feel a little more strongly about the Vanguard changes for a few other reasons which I’ll mention below. 

Number one is that there’s no choice for Vanguard players. All servers will be changing towards this Live Gamer partnership and they’re not going to open a new server for it. For those people who have played since beta it’s a sudden change where they have no say in the matter. This is a reality of gaming, should players really even get that much of a say? I’m not really sure. I do know that people hate being forced into something – give them a choice and they’re MUCH more likely to give your idea a shot. 

Number two is that (my opinion remember! Not fact!) I think this will affect the markets in a big way. On one of the most populated servers (Seradon) it’s already hard to find items for sale on the broker. Once this is implemented, why bother putting anything up for sale at all. You can put it on LiveGamer and then just make real life money from it. Or you can play the market even better and purchase everything off of the broker for plat and then sell that on Live Gamer and make yourself a tidy profit. 

I think SOE is doing this as a guinea pig project. Vanguard already has a dwindled community. They (developers) have been working VERY hard to pull it out of the rough. It’s a fantastic game and I’ve enjoyed playing it for the past 2+ years. There’s very rarely been anything bad I’ve personally said about the game. However even with all that, it has a very small population. 

Which makes it perfect to test out new ideas on. If the loyal community of Vanguard deals with the change well, and it’s popular and makes money, then why not push it towards other more popular games. If it doesn’t work well and it’s a huge flop – well, at least it’s only the four servers of Vanguard and not one of the ‘bigger’ games. Harsh words? Maybe, but I don’t think it’s all that far from the truth.

I’ll continue to play, I don’t echo the thoughts of others about the sky falling, but I doubt the game will have the same over all feeling that it has for me right now. A community of amazing people who work really hard to accomplish their goals. I expect an influx of gold sellers making legit accounts to sell their money and yes I expect people to buy from them. This whole RMT thing wouldn’t be such a big hit were there not some sort of market for it out there. 

These sorts of announcements really don’t come as a surprise any more, and it’ll be interesting to see how it goes. 

Can I buy your stuff?

Gaming

EverQuest Update Notes (March 12th)

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The servers are down for an 8 hour patch (ack!) and here’s what has been added!

 

3/12/2009
*** Highlights ***

– Guild Creation Tool: Players can now get their guilds created in-game by using the Guild Management window. When opening the Guild Management Window (Alt + G) when you are not in a guild, you will be asked if you would like to create one. All existing guild naming rules still apply. Only one guild is permitted per server per account. Guilds cannot be created while in a shroud.

– Pet Window Improvements: The functionality of the Pet Window has been improved by allowing players to customize each button individually. These changes also allow players to add commands that they pick up via AAs. We’ve also added some new commands including a pet hold command. (See UI: Pet Window Improvements below)

– Enhanced Raid Window: We’ve updated the raid management window to allow for sorting and expedition / shared task management improvements. Also added AFK, dead, and out of zone status. (See UI: Enhanced Raid Window below)
*** Items ***

– Nakk’s Enduring Bauble now looks just like the gem from a ring, instead of a ring.
– The Durus Faycite Shard: Gorenaire’s Chant of Frost, and Durus Faycite Shard: Talendor’s Chant of Flame now increase the duration of their respective songs by 1 tick instead of increasing the damage.

 
*** Spells ***

– Cantata of Rodcet now increases HP and Mana regen by 61/70/75 and 50/58/62 for Ranks 1/2/3, up from 51/60/65 and 42/50/54
– Fixed a problem with Performance resonance that was causing it to focus a number of effects that it shouldn’t have.
– Lowered the endurance cost on Wheel of Fists to 253/288/307 down from 316/360/384.
– Lowered the endurance cost on Whorl of Fists to 308/351/374 down from 385/439/468.
– Modified the stacking order of the Calanin’s Synergy discipline to better stack with other similar abilities including the effect from Deceivers Blight Strike and other spells that use the same effect.
– Talisman of the Stalwart scrolls can now be scribed by druids.
– The combat proc granted by Arcane Arietta will now cause additional damage for bards based on their wind instrument mods. This only effects the procs for the bard herself, and not the rest of the group.
– The endurance cost for Calanin’s Synergy has been increased to 385/439/468 up from 308/351/374. The duration in the effect has been increased by 6 seconds.
– The Twincast Self Buff spells are no longer focused by duration extension focuses.

 

*** Tradeskills ***

– Fixed a bug with the Pure sealed power-sources made via tradeskills. They were opening one tier behind where they should (so the Tier 1 took Tier 2 raid to open.)  They should now open properly with the proper tier of content.
– Fixed an issue with Dull, Murky and Foggy Sealed Energeian Orbs that could prevent them from opening properly.
– The following spells created by spell research now create a duplicate scroll instead of the original scroll. The original scrolls are now no trade. This does mean that you may have a no trade version currently, unfortunately there is no reasonable solution for a refund that is not able to allow players to create infinite scrolls. This change is intended to prevent players from creating infinite scrolls for free. 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.
– The research spell Odium can now be researched by priests as intended.
*** NPCs ***

– Dragorn Muramites should be providing a normal amount of experience again.
– Fenden Helter has decided to mark down many of his items.
– Additional items have been added to Fenden Helter in Dragonscale and are available for purchase.
*** AA ***

– Modified how the AAs Animation Empathy and Advanced Pet Discipline function to support the new Pet changes to the User Interface and Pet controls.
– Replaced the Skill Cap adjustments on Third Spire of Ancestors and Third Spire of the Savage Lord with a bonus to minimum damage to avoid certain stacking conflicts.
– Adjusted the stacking order on Rogue’s Fury to better stack with various Rogue disciplines, including Deadeye and Deadly Precision.
*** Miscellaneous ***

– Made various zone stability improvements.
*** UI: General ***

– Enhanced the Raid Window. (See UI: Enhanced Raid Window)
– The Pet Window has received a revamp! (See UI: Pet Window Improvements)
– Added chat window text output for users being invited to raids even when the raid confirmation popup is turned on.
– Added a button in the options general tab that toggles display of pet owner names on pets.
– Fixed a bug that sometimes caused two players to appear to share ownership of the same mercenary when they zoned simultaneously with unsuspended mercenaries.
– You should no longer be spammed with focus effect messages when you have an active mercenary .
– For custom UI creators, ListboxColumns can now have their own tooltips instead of just the Listbox.
*** UI: Enhanced Raid Window ***

– Updated the raid management window to allow for sorting and expedition / shared task management improvements. Also added AFK, dead, and out of zone status.
– Created the /comparetaskraid (Shared Task – Raid) and /compareexpedraid (Expedition – Raid) commands to list the players that are not in both lists.
– Updated the expedition window to allow for simplified raid and shared task invitations.
– Updated the shared task window to allow for simplified raid and expedition invitations.
– The group numbers in the raid window are now color coded in order to better differentiate between groups when sorting by group.
– Column headers now each have their own tool tip.
*** UI: Pet Window Improvements ***
 
– You can now assign buttons to all pet commands in the pet window.
– Pet target will be displayed under your pets hp bar so you will always know who your pet is attacking.
– Added toggleable buttons throughout the pet UI for sit/stand, follow/guard, focus, hold, taunt, and spell hold.
– Added new pet text based commands. You will now be able to toggle all states off or on, or simply toggle the state with a pet text based command. For example, /pet focus on, /pet focus off, and /pet focus.
– Added a new pet attack command to switch your pet to attack the new target regardless of AA’s or level; great for new and low level players. The old command will still exist as qattack.
– Added a pet hold functionality.
– New pet focus + pet hold functionality (call this pet state “pet convergence” ). Now, when you turn on both the focus and hold states, your pet will attack SPECIFICALLY what you want it to and when finished won’t attack or aggro or do anything else.
– Improved /pet back off. Fully clears the hate list and stops your pet from doing whatever it was doing before.
– Pet follow is now on by default when entering zones.
– Added the pet owner’s name below the pet name text (i.e., “Soandso’s pet”).
– When right clicking a pet button, commands not available to you are filtered out.
– Added messages your pet will say when issued different commands to clarify the intended behavior.
– The state of all pet buttons are now persisted across zoning and logging (except sit and follow that default to their appropriate settings when zoning).
– The UI layout of the pet window is now stored across zoning and logging.
– Integrated pet help has now been implemented and put into the EverQuest pet info window. Click the question mark next to the pet close box to access the pet help dialog.
– When enchanter pets are summoned, they properly only have the Get Lost command, unless they have the special grant pet command SPA/AA.
– Pet spell hold is now available as a command in the pet window.

– New –

EQUI_GuildCreationWindow.xml

– Changed –

EQUI.xml
EQUI_DynamicZoneWnd.xml
EQUI_HotButtonWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_RaidWindow.xml
EQUI_TaskWnd.xml
SIDL.xml

 

– The EverQuest Team

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