This is an ongoing project of mine, I’ve had a Norrathian Museum for a few years now, and decided when Halas came out that I’d revamp it and move to the new homes. I’ve only got a few rooms done so far, but I love working on it.
I finally finished re-building my Kojan two story home and decided to show off some screen shots. Enjoy! Remember, nothing in Vanguard is instanced (unless you want to count the ‘shards’ for raiding). This home required a LOT of materials to build, and I built it myself. I spent a few days harvesting granite and dusky timber in order to craft:
There were also a few portions that I couldn’t craft myself. These included 15 window coverings (outfitter created), and 15 mithril fasteners (blacksmith created) as well as a few vendor sold items (mortar). I’m incredibly proud of the home, so feel free to let me know what you think of the screen shots!
Telon has been quite busy since the merge, which has been good and bad. The channels are bustling, which is good. However, every single item in Telon was re-set as far as discoveries go. If you’re not aware, you can discover not only crafted and looted items, but first time kills on mob encounters. Each time you get a discovery, a screen shot is taken of the event and it’s recorded in an automated blog over on VGplayers. As you can see from the link to my main Faydai – I’ve gotten a lot of discoveries. This is adding an incredible amount of lag to the server. In a few more days it should die down significantly (or so we all hope).
I’ve always loved Vanguard, but rarely were any of my friends playing it which makes for a lonely game. I’ve been playing since release, and get into spurts where I’ll want to play for a week straight and then won’t touch it for a month. My blood mage inched her way to level 45 yesterday, thanks to the double xp bonus that’s in effect. She also made her way through most of that level. I teamed up with a good friend of mine who I’ve known since EverQuest days and together we worked on obtaining Swamp Armor pieces. Swamp armor was ‘end game’ gear for a lot of players (before the cap was raised to 55) and before raiding. It consists of three factions, and each one gives you a set of gear that has different stats. It was a lot of fun, and some of the encounters were really unique. One in specific encounter that I can’t recall the name of except everyone called it “hag” consisted of an encounter that reminded me a lot of WoW – you’re required to tank the mob and at the same time, avoid glowing pentagrams on the floor. A number of these will spawn at a time, and if you’re standing on one you’ll die. In Vanguard encounters like this are rare, where as in WoW all I ever seem to do on named fights is jump all over the place avoiding things.
We also defeated Lord Faladrian, attempting to get my breastplate to drop (well, in my case a robe). We killed him three times and saw every other class EXCEPT mine. Go figure. I’ve always said that if I didn’t have bad luck, I’d simply have no luck at all. By the end of the day I DID manage to finish my pants, gloves, and hat which were all large improvements over what I had before. The down side (well, sort of) is that these pieces can all be upgraded with a crafted component. Of course, this crafted component is now selling on Telon for 50 gold – a HUGE amount of money to me. I barely have one plat. For now I won’t be upgrading the gear.
It was still a lot of fun, and I had a great time getting familiar with the game again. The graphics are amazing, the world is vast, and the crafting is the best I’ve ever experienced. I realize that not everyone feels the same way, but I’m pretty sure I always will.
Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself.
I finally hit level 80 yesterday on my first ever character in world of warcraft. I was pretty excited to get there – and then once I was there I looked around wondering ‘what now?’ The thing is I don’t know anyone on my server. Thanks to the LFD tool there’s no reason to actually talk (or even group) with anyone, and there’s rarely anyone in my dungeons from my own server any how. I don’t belong to a raid guild, and I don’t know anything about ‘end game’ in world of warcraft, aside from it being a gear grind. Manos has been 80 for a little while now, and had a few suggestions for me. I’m obviously not geared well enough to go jumping into heroic dungeons, even though I do have some available to me.
What we did for the majority of the night was run the Trial of the Champion instance, which is a three part ring event that rewards one epic loot the first round, two the second, and two the third. It’s notorious for it’s trinkets – and bad groups. It seems like after 2am EST all of the groups went significantly down hill. I suppose that’s to be expected on a Thursday night, but I wasn’t prepared for it.
There was the group that wanted to vote someone out simply because they had never been there before. One incredibly impatient person started the event before the new 80 even had time to know what was going on, and then he spent the next little while dying through no real fault of his own. The impatient person screamed for him to be voted off, and in fact a second member of the group /spit on the new player. I decided this was not a group I wanted to heal for, because lets face it I’m just as new, and I left.
The first event can be confusing for any new player. You’re required to grab a lance from the sidelines of a huge arena, and then mount up on a warhorse. The main event is jousting, and you’ve got to run around charging the enemy and knocking them off of their mounts. If players know what they’re doing it can be quite fun, and it’s relatively painless. If you notice your mount is dying the best thing to do is to move to the sidelines and grab a fresh one. A few times I didn’t get there in time and once my mount ‘died’ I was pummeled to death by the enemy, which wasn’t fun. The revive point is very close by, thankfully.
The second event compromises of two different names, it’s random which one you get. The female encounter is the more difficult of the two, but the male is quite simple, you just have to face the other way while he’s blinding everyone. Literally, look towards the wall.
The last encounter is great if you’ve got the dps, and painful if you do not. Since this is one of the entry level dungeons for level 80, you’ll end up with a lot of under geared players very easily.
Needless to say, I started the evening with a gs (gear score) of 2700 and ended with a 3250 or so. Ideally, I’d like 4-5k – and higher than that requires raiding. I ran the instance 6-7 times, and obtained three pieces of gear. A huge upgrade over what I had been wearing, though it quickly became too late for me to test it out and see if dungeons were any easier. I’m attempting to gather shards for both gear (myself) and heirloom (the alts) and in the mean time I’m pondering creating an alliance character on another server simply to experiment with that side of things. I’d rather it not be on my ‘regular’ server because – well because (for those who don’t know, I play on Ravenholdt). That will require some research on my end, maybe I can find myself a good home.
Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself.
The Lich King is a scary sounding guy. I love every quest that brings him out to talk to his failed minions – it’s pretty exciting. Almost as exciting as me finally reaching level 79 on my priest, and 50% through. That’s right, I have less then one level to go before I will have my first ever max level world of warcraft character. This may not seem like that big of a deal, but to me it is. I’ve played since release, and never come close to the cap. Of course I’ve also never stuck with the game for more then a month or two at a time before growing bored, so that has certainly played into things as I just started my 3rd consecutive month of playing yesterday.
Now. I did two new (to me) dungeons using the LFD tool last night. One was The Oculus, and the other was Halls of Lightning (not to be confused with the easier Halls of Stone). You will hear this a lot from WoW healers – we don’t heal stupid. That means, if you’re in the Oculus and you stand IN the lightning, expect to die. I’ve noticed that for the majority of named fights there will be some AoE that goes off that you’ll want to avoid – as long as you’re looking at your screen you’ll see it coming so it’s just a matter of moving out of the way. For example in the Oculus (lightning mentioned above) the warlock lived. The paladin and druid died. The warlock being a cloth class already had points against him – but he was smart enough to move OUT of the lightning. Just take a few steps OVER THERE.
One thing I’ve had to come to grips with is that I can’t save everyone. My job is to keep the tank alive first – and everyone else alive second because without a tank we’re going to die anyhow. If people are being smart and managing their aggro (hey, we have threat meters for a reason) and watching where they’re standing, it makes my job a billion times easier.
Halls of Lightning is not an especially hard zone – but fill that group with a bunch of *ahem* people not paying attention to what they’re doing, and suddenly there are deaths all around. The tank never dropped, and neither did I or the mage in group – but the DPS spec’d druid who kept meleeing the dwarves as they whirlwind sure did. So did the DK who pulled before the warrior tank was prepared. Or the druid (again) who walked right up to the named while he was stealthed, not realizing that the named could see him. It’s really easy guys. Just pay attention. Let your tank do their job, and you do yours which is to assist (did you know the F key is the assist button by default?) and dps the mobs and be a little responsible for yourself.
As a healer in a dungeon I come well prepared. I always put out a fish feast for players before we start, I group buff, I use an int scroll if there are no mages around, and I use a guardian and battle elixir to up my spirit and spell power. I come well supplied with mana potions, and I really try to bring my “A” game. When people die I typically blame myself for not being able to save them in time (just a knee jerk reaction) but the more I do instances the more I realize that 90% of the time someone dies it’s because they’re doing something they shouldn’t be. As long as everyone is paying attention and doing their job, I rarely have a death in group.
Now, lets see what 80 brings. I’m very nervous to hit this level, as I’m certainly not geared for it (my GS is 3,000 or so) and I don’t have the faintest idea about anything ‘end game’ – but I do pride myself on being a quick learner, and I expect I can pick it up before too long.
Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself.
stargrace