I’m doing to speak as a dragon, again. I’m pretty sure this will be my 12th time doing the quest, perhaps even more. I don’t mind it so much now, I’ve almost got collecting the runes down pat and it barely takes any time – what IS frustrating is that since Tuesdays patch there have been database issues and a few of the zones that are required by the quest are not actually up on the Antonia Bayle server. Tuesday after the patch Solusek Eye wasn’t up, which meant that even getting the quest to begin with wasn’t happening. Wednesday, Obelisk of Lost Souls remained down – and not only that but upon attempting to enter the zone my characters would be immediately kicked to character select, and thus “stuck” within the zone that refused to load.
I petitioned this since I obviously would rather not have a character stuck who I’m trying to play, and got a response in about five minutes. At least the GMs working on the stuck character queue are exceptionally prompt and friendly. Throughout the evening this particular GM was incredibly polite, and kept me updated with the status on the zone. Unfortunately even with my testing the zone didn’t come back up before I ended up calling it a night, but it wasn’t for lack of effort. The fact is that these things happen, and while it is a huge pain (especially since I have an open Cella instance that I am trying to not have expire before I complete this portion of the quest) it’s not an unreasonable one.
I’m hoping that today the zones are fixed and I can continue on with this quest. I’m attempting to get my Epic Repercussions spell completed on the coercer, and inching my way towards level 89. It’s going slow, but I’m looking forward to it.
Other then that, a quiet day in game! See you in Norrath.
You had mentioned this quest a few weeks ago, and having never done it, I got a small group together and we made the trek to Solusek’s Eye to pick it up. Myself and another were higher level mentored down, the other two were in their early fifties. Having never been that deep into Solusek’s Eye before, it was slow going, and it probably didn’t help that we had a group consisting of 4 scouts, and only 4 scouts. When we got to that difficult-to-understand elevator that takes you back up to sublevel 6, one of our level 50’s fell down, and trying to make it back, he was killed. He called it night, not having any way to fight back through from the beginning of the zone again by himself. Soon after, one of our higher level characters was killed from a bad pull. She was able to make it back through the zone fairly easily (unmentored), while the other low level and I pushed on. She arrived just before we made it to the Oratorium of Thyr. We had no idea what to expect here, and so we made the mistake of stealthing past the mobs and trying to deal with the guys up top. After wiping in a record pace (myself being the strongest member of the team, and doing the hailing, which meant I got sucked away, and then having all the aggro in the room immediately swarm myself and the other two), we decided to approach the situation a bit more carefully. Luckily, wiping in that instance left us just outside, so we didn’t have to fight our way through again. Our next attempt was successful, and we were able to get in to see Nagafen. After many hours of playing, everyone called it a night. Yesterday, home sick, I decided to pick up all the runes (I “cheated”, I was unmentored, so all the mobs were gray). Only the one in Freeport presented a challenge; the first two times, I ran into guards that I failed to see (which I blame on being sick), the third time, a Freep got me (as we were playing on Nagafen server). My fourth attempt was a success, and I visited the Oracle Tower and completed the quest. Now I have to help get our fourth member of the group back through Solusek’s Eye, as well as help all three pick up the runes.
All said and done, I have to say I enjoyed the quest immensely. It took me to a few places I’ve never been (deep into Solusek’s Eye, Permafrost, and The Obelisk of Lost Souls), and getting to see Nagafen was a delight. Having only been playing for seven or eight months now, I realize just how huge Norrath is, and that there’s a lot of places I still haven’t explored. I commend the developers for making such awesome content.
By the way, I also ran into issues yesterday, trying to zone into Antonica on Nagafen. The GM responded within a few minutes, and had me brought up in another zone in no time at all. I’ve had very few issues with this game, but the few times I have, they’ve always responded quickly and resolved the problem promptly.
I love this game. =)