2010

Claymore Progression

stargrace April 28, 2010 1Comment

As many of you know by now, one of my absolutely favorite things to do in game is to explore older content. I still haven’t completed the quests to TSO nor SF – but last night I spent the evening working on my Claymore quest and progressing through access to Deathtoll. Both of these quests are something I rarely see others doing and I’m pretty excited about it. The access to Deathtoll especially. This requires you to complete a series of quests that send you off to instances and then defeat dragons. The less exciting part is that it requires Talendor and Gorenair which are in a zone called Ascent of the Awakened x4. In order to access THAT zone you need to have completed a quest in Ascent of the Awakened x2 – and that must con to you (ie: the mobs must be at least green) in order for the symbols to drop. To make matters even more complicated you can only spawn and defeat one dragon at a time before gaining a five day lock out. That means there’s at least a five day break in between starting access to Deathtoll and finally obtaining it. Progress was made though! It had been years (literally) since I completed Ascent of the Awakened x2 and while it wasn’t the most exciting thing I’ve done at least the zone has changed enough to keep it interesting. Basically there are four ‘floors’ and you need a symbol that drops from a named for each floor. This is why the zone must con to you, because those symbols only drop from ornate chests. In order to spawn the named for each floor, you need another item that also drops from chests. These items will drop from grey con encounters, so it’s not quite so bad. Once you’ve obtained the items, you click on a little dragon statue that will be located on that floor (or you can search for it for a good 20 minutes like I did because apparently I’m blind).

Tomorrow evening we’ll be attempting Harla Dar, and Vyemm. Also making progress through Claymore and hopefully getting past the Sanctum of the Scaleborn portions are high on my list. We’ll see how that goes. Since there’s a five day wait before we can complete access for Deathtoll I’m not exactly in THAT much of a rush.

Aside from Deathtoll, I’m interested in completing Godking, Prismatic 1.0, Soulfire, and any other number of old ‘important’ quests that EQ2 has added over the years. I was talking with a friend about how if EQ2 added a progression server I’d be there in a flash, or if anyone knows of a progression guild that is just getting off the ground (ie: level locking each tier for quests / raids) please don’t hesitate to let me know! That’s one aspect of EQ2 that I just absolutely adore.

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

The Number Game, and Another 90 Crafter

stargrace April 27, 2010 3Comments

Last night I decided to do a little experiment. Since I have so many characters I’m constantly fighting with myself over who is my ‘main’ and which character out of the 12 I enjoy more. There’s no real way to measure this especially since I tend to float around from character to character so for fun I decided to make a list of who had how many achievements (remember these are different from aa) because there’s a fairly good chance that the characters who have the most achievements are ones I’ve spent the most time on, and thus are probably some of my more favorite characters to play. Does that make sense? Well, it did in my head. The results were about what I expected with a few surprises thrown in there.

• 288 – 90 mystic. I played this character almost constantly through TSO and it’s no surprise that out of all my characters she has the most achievements. I love the mystic. Sadly, I rarely play her these days. She’s also got the most aa to her name, as well as spell upgrades and gear. Why am I not playing her? Not really sure.
• 239 – 90 warden. Another character who does not come as a surprise to me, she has been my favorite for so many years but I’m always reluctant to play her because EVERYONE and their dog has a druid. They’re a very simple class to play, and if you know how to play one well it just makes it all the more fun.
• 229 – 80 illusionist. This one was a surprise to me. I haven’t really played the illusionist that much, and I can’t even recall playing her often in the last year or so. She used to be my raid main but that was well before achievements came out. She did do a little TSO raiding, but I never thought it was that much. Apparently I was wrong.
• 216 – 90 troubador. Not really surprising, I’ve raided with this character and there’s a lot of achievements that come from that. I’ve always tried to make her my main, but no one seems to want the bard unless it’s for raids. With SF that has changed slightly, but not enough for me to want to dedicate myself to playing just this one character.
• 199 – 80 templar. Another big surprise to me. This character has not been my main since I first started playing EQ2. She’s crafted and that’s pretty much it for years now. I love playing the templar, but there’s been very little reason for me to play her with the other (better) healers I have, so she sits on the sidelines for the most part.

The others in order were:

• 139 – 83 coercer and 90 paladin (explained on the paladins part at least because she is still a brand new character)
• 133 – 90 dirge (power leveled character)
• 122 – 90 coercer (just returned after deleting, on Antonia Bayle)
• 103 – 85 ranger (never played seriously)
• 80 – 87 inquisitor (mostly power leveled)

Now, knowing these numbers really doesn’t do all that much for me aside from confirming (slightly) who I enjoy playing more then other characters. I’m really a numbers and lists sort of gal though, and it was still fun to figure out.

In other news! My woodworker reached level 90 last night. That means 6 crafters down, and three to go. Jeweler, Provisioner, Woodworker, Alchemist, Tailor, and Carpenter are all resting at level 90. The Sage, Armorer, and Weaponsmith still need work.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself, I’ll see you in Norrath!

So Many Memories

stargrace April 26, 2010 5Comments

I have been playing EQ2 since release, and for the last few years I’ve played fairly steadily. Typically I take a ‘break’ and wander off to other games but I’ve learned how to multi task so well that I’m able to juggle multiple games without too many issues. Lately I’ve been thinking about how many memories I have of in game events and friends, so many years worth. It’s incredible how much a simple video game can affect our lives and how we interact in it. I wouldn’t give it up for anything, and I don’t consider it a ‘waste’ of my time.

However. As the years pass I notice that things change. Players change, and those who I used to game with on a fairly frequent basis are (well to put it bluntly) growing up. Moving on to real life responsibilities and in some cases that means no more gaming. A lot of my friends have families and children who are growing up and require a lot of attention (as it should be). The gamers are not the only ones changing, but the games are evolving as well. At first I tried to dig in my heels and demand that everything stay exactly as it was but that’s a pointless effort on my part.

I often wonder how many of us are gamers for life. Whether we’re 12 or 120 will we still be playing these MMOs as we do right now. How do we make the choice to finally let go and move on to another hobby to fill in that void of time if we’re not gaming. While I don’t think that games have an age limit, I do think that as we get older the desire to game perhaps grows less. Or at least the desire to play games as we did growing up, with the community that is out there now. Perhaps I’m wrong, but those are just some of my thoughts this morning as I sit here thinking.

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

Events and Options

stargrace April 25, 2010 1Comment

I love events in EQ2. I really wish we had an in game calendar much like World of Warcraft so that we could keep track of what events were happening when, and perhaps even allow players to take it one step further and customize these calendars (ie: guild leaders) to mark when raids were, and what time, and when birthdays were and that sort of thing. When SOE added the ability to track DKP to the guild window, I thought it was a fantastic idea. Granted a lot of guilds simply do this from their web sites, but at least the option is there in game. I’m all about the options.

May should be a very big month for EQ2 and hopefully we see this in game with new and old players returning. It was a great idea for SOE to offer the $5 for three days deal, and then give everyone a bonus experience weekend.

I didn’t speak about this new ‘passport’ deal last week when it came out, but there are plenty of other posts that touch on the subject out there. My basic feeling is that options are always good and no doubt this plan will appeal to someone out there. I personally could see myself taking advantage of it, I’m constantly re-starting my second account for some random reason and then never actually playing it longer then the time it took to activate the account. How great would it be if that only cost me $5 instead of $15. My issue with this new payment plan is of course that it should (in my opinion) be a 72 hour thing, rather then a three consecutive days of gaming thing. Paying by the hour is a fantastic way to get those who don’t have a lot of time into your game. On the down side, those who only log in for a few hours a week but keep an active subscription may be tempted to downgrade their accounts and suddenly you’re losing money instead of making it. If you could draw in enough new players to compensate for this one issue, it wouldn’t be so bad. Whether or not you could guarantee that you’ll manage to get those new subs, well that’s another story.

New Halas is on the test server, along with a LOT of changes. I’ve been waiting for this to go live since before Sentinel’s Fate came out, so I’m beyond excited. Expect some screen shots of all of the new content over the next little while.

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

So Much Leveling

stargrace April 24, 2010 7Comments

It’s only part way through the weekend, but already I’ve probably made more in the way of ‘progress’ then any other weekend lately. It seems that SOE has been pushing for people to reach end game as quickly as possible, so working on that for multiple characters was exactly my plan this weekend. Once I’m 90 I’ve got all the time in the world to work on the other things I want to do with each character. As you can see by the screen shot to the left, I’ve got a LOT of bonus experience going on. That doesn’t even include the double experience for having vitality, because as you can see that character clearly does not have any vitality. So what did the leveling look like?

• Monk: 1-80 (that’s right, I got a character from 1-80 in less then a day. It was crazy)
• Ranger: 80-85
• Warden: 80-87
• Inquisitor: 84-87
• Woodworker: 85-87

I believe that’s where my experience is at as of the time of this post but I could be off by a level or two on a character or two. It’s a blur of experience potions and dead Droag. I practically lived in Halls of Fate, Blackscale Sepulcher, Den of the Devourer, and Nest for the duration of the weekend.

How did everyone else spend their bonus experience weekend? Let me know in commends! Happy gaming, and I’ll see you in Norrath.