March 2011

Ding 84, And On To Tier 3 #EQ

stargrace March 9, 2011 0Comment

Last night was another amazing time in EverQuest, thanks to the kindness of some incredible friends. I was invited along to work through House of Thule progression which is a place I didn’t think I would be seeing too much of because of my low level. Underfoot didn’t raise the cap from 85, and I still haven’t even stepped foot in that expansion aside from my beta exploration. Our guide for the night would be Xaoz, who had a goal in mind for getting us flagged at least for Tier 3. Each tier of House of Thule requires you to work your way through a number of tasks. The tasks unlock the next tier as well as achievements for completing them without any deaths and other little neat things like pulling a mob into a pool of water to fight it. Having already completed two tasks the night before really helped out, it meant that instead of having 6 tasks to do, we only had 4. I managed to score myself two new bracelet pieces which were enormous upgrades and I also dinged 84 – something I had not even thought I would approach because experience tends to be so slow. At this rate I may actually hit the old cap of 85 on my necromancer and then dare I say it, 90.

The servers were coming down just as we finished flagged for T3 and had entered Al’Kabor’s Nightmare and that’s where we’ll pick up tonight (hopefully). My necromancer is WELL behind where she should be as far as aa goes – the character is one of my newer ones, created in 2009 and barely played since then aside from the odd jaunt here and there. I’ve got her on 90% experience (until I hit 90) and 10% aa – and each task was granting me 3aa at a time upon completion. SOE has raised the experience gained if you’re below 2500 (it used to be 1500 but was raised) and I benefit from that greatly, and will for some time to come. This weekend the guild is planning an Anquish run for some 2.0 orbs, as well as some DoN progression to unlock the aa that you can get from there, specifically from killing Emoush the Destroyer. I did this in a trio two years ago, so I think it will be a relatively simple fight these days.

I hope everyone else is having an amazing week so far, no matter where you find yourself. I’ll see you in Norrath! Also, if you’d like to add me to friends you can find me on Drinal as Ellithia. /friend eq.drinal.ellithia if you’re coming from EQ2 or another EQ1 server (Vanguard works for tells, but you can’t add friends from cross game).

A Peek into the House of Thule #EQ

stargrace March 8, 2011 1Comment

People laugh at me for wanting to go back and play EverQuest instead of the newest shiny out there – and I can understand where they’re coming from. But take a look at that giant treant pictured above, doesn’t that look amazingly awesome?! I think it does. Yesterday marked everything I LOVE about EverQuest and reinforced my opinion that I’m playing the right game for me. To start it off, I found a guild. Or rather, a guild found me. I posted in the guild lobby on the bulletin boards that I was looking for a guild. In case you’re not familiar, EQ has a section to either side of the lobby that allows people to advertise for guilds, and a place for guilds to advertise looking for players. I made my post there late last week and had heard back from a few people but was undecided about where to go. Eventually I spoke with leadership from Order of War, who happen to be raiding older content on weekends right now and have a very casual laid back attitude. They seemed friendly enough, so we’ll see how it goes. I also spoke with leadership from a guild called Eternal Knights of Norrath – who were incredibly rude and did nothing but bad mouth the guild I had chosen. Even if what they said about my guild is true, I found it incredibly rude of them to just go on and on about how much they suck. Even if it doesn’t work out with the new guild, I won’t be joining that one either.

I do have to say a very big thank you to Sweed, who is a warrior friend of a friend (with a lot of alts). Last night he took Ninga and I under his wing and showed us around some really awesome House of Thule tasks as well as spent some time gaining experience in The Grounds. Having found no one else I know actually playing EQ right now (aside from the progression servers) it was really what I needed to convince me to stay. The group was fantastic. The experience was amazing and I managed to ding 83 on the necromancer although I haven’t picked up my spells quite yet. The struggle to 85 (and then beyond to 90) is not quite as much of a struggle since I’m finally beginning to play EverQuest as it’s meant to be played – in a group.

One of the neat zones I saw is the new Feerrott – it’s been completely revamped into a dream-like state, and you can get tasks for different versions of it that are a part of the progression. The first task we completed was Fall of the Tae Ew, where we had to kill groups of Tae Ew and then eventually a named at each of the different pyramids. At 82 this entire zone was red to me and the experience was amazing. I used my lesson of the devoted, and found myself at 70% by the time we had finished. The second task we did was called Welcome to My Nightmare, and involves the lower floors of the house of thule. The inside of the house reminded me a LOT of Unrest in EQ2, and there were even some paintings on the walls that I swear I’ve seen as EQ2 LoN rewards.

I mentioned it on twitter and I’ll mention it here as well – if you look at my Raptr hours, you’ll see they’re VERY high for EverQuest each week. The explanation for that is quite simple. It’s not that I’m playing 23 hours of EQ a day but remember how the EQ bazaar system works? You character still must be logged into the game in order to go into a broker mode for players to purchase from you. So I leave the game up pretty much 24/7 (aside from pc restarts) so that I can try to make a little cash for purchasing my spells and what have you. So far I’ve only made a handful of plat here and there, but it’s better then nothing.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Bayle’s Heraldic Crest #EQ

stargrace March 7, 2011 0Comment

Since my group is Still not strong enough to fight in the level 80 hot zones (our gear is just too old and out dated, a lot of level 85+ players have upwards of 35k hp, we’re sitting at about 20k) we’ve been working on some older expansion things like the SoD (Seeds of Destruction) time-line. One of the “arcs” in that time-line is Bayle’s Heraldic Crest which (eventually) gives you an augment with some pretty nice stats. Well, they seem nice to me in any case. The quest is quite large, you need to complete 22 tasks in order to get each part and then you need to combine a combination of parts in containers that you purchase by having faction. You earn faction as you do the tasks, so you should have no issue by the time you’re done. Right now I’ve got 12 / 22 of the pieces, and have been working with Ninga in Oceangreen Hills to complete the rest.

SoD is all about progression. There are 7 “stages” of progression, and right now I’m on B, which means when I zone into The Void I get put into a different version of it and the fallen god Zebuxoruk has different things to say to me based on my progression. I love reading all of the lore about what is going on even if the expansion is two behind now. Eventually I’ll make it to Underfoot, and then after that House of Thule but we’ll just have to see how it goes.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Empty Hotzones and Crafting Skill Ups #EQ

stargrace March 6, 2011 1Comment

EQ is still a popular game by my standards, there are a few hundred playing at any given time (all you have to do is do a /who in the bazaar or in the guild lobby to see your search cut short) but because the game is 12 years old (just about) it’s pretty rare to run into anyone unless you’re playing in the latest expansion or you hang out in the hotzones. Maybe it’s just that the hotzones this time around really suck. See, EverQuest increases the experience you earn in certain zones, convincing players to group up in a designated spot so that we’re not spread all over. For level 75 (which is about my range right now because 80 is a little too hard) this means the hot zone is Zhisza, the Shissar Sanctuary. This zone came out with the Buried Sea, one of my least favorite expansions. It’s difficult to pull, difficult to maneuver, and when Ninga and I showed up with our two trusty mercenaries there was not a single other person in the zone. As opposed to the two level 80 zones, Toskirakk and Kaesora Library which had a handful of people in each. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a group in one of those two zones before too long.

The experience may be a little slower than normal due to the mass of light blue mobs we were fighting but I DID manage to ding 82 on the necromancer, and I also managed to get 13% into my level, preventing me from losing it when I die. Notice I said when.

Before we headed out for some leveling adventures (Congratulations to Ninga for hitting level 85!) I decided to work on my crafting. I’ve always had a love hate relationship with EQ crafting. My enchanter is my designated crafting character, she is above 200 in all crafts, but has only come close to 300 in jewelcrafting, where (as of yesterday) she sits at 291. It doesn’t appear to me that the skill of crafting has increased any with House of Thule, at least my skills are still showing 291 / 300 for crafts, but I could be wrong maybe they don’t show the increase until later. In any case I learned about a few changes that didn’t make me very happy.

See, my enchanter is my crafter specifically so she can enchant metals. I noticed I was missing the enchant dwerium spell and I wanted to skill up by making dwerium practice pendants. I decided (since the bazaar was severely lacking) to make the spells myself since they are trivial at 130 and my research is 201 or there about. Of course that first meant that I needed to make a handful of sub-components.  The full recipe list to make this one spell required me to:

• Purchase Ink Additive of the Nameless from a vendor
• Purchase Quill of the Coercer from a vendor
• Purchase Invigorating Thickener from a vendor
• Purchase Ink of Druzzil Ro from a vendor
• Craft Fine Runic Papyrus which requires Clestial cleanser (crafted), and fine runic papyrus solution (purchased)
• Celestial cleanser is a combination of celestial solvent, an empty vial, and a vial of pure water (crafted).
• A vial of pure water is an empty vial (x5), a gnomish heat source (vendor), and a water flask (x4) (vendor).

Combined all that together, eventually making my mass enchant and my single use enchant – only to find out I was unable to scribe them. I had to ask in channels what I was missing since I couldn’t figure it out. I was an enchanter. I was level 80 (the spell required 61) and every time I tried to place it into my spell book, I got a message saying my race and class couldn’t use the item. Thankfully one helpful Kandy sent me a tell. Turns out, those enchant spells are not actually spells any more, instead they are used from your main inventory as a clicky and they get turned into achievements. Not only that, but they are achievements with VERY LONG shared recast timers. Mass enchant is on an 8 hour timer for 10 bars, the single bar enchant is on a one hour timer.

Ouch.

Thankfully I could still make the practice version of the spell. I managed to level my jewelcrafting trophy almost to Master quality, I’m just 9 points away. I need more supplies to make Dwerium bars because I bought all of the raw faycite crystals last night (15k later, ouch) for 100 combines. All in all, it was a pretty productive day. I picked up House of Thule from Direct2Drive for $20 and applied it to my 2nd account. Since I was already boxing on the progression server there’s no reason why I shouldn’t continue to do so on the live servers. Except I have no characters aside from a 42 ranger on my 2nd account on Drinal – so I’m trying to decide now what to make. I’m leaning towards a beastlord for boxing / duo purposes, but a bard may be very nice too.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Rift is Fun.. But… #Rift #EQ

stargrace March 5, 2011 2Comments

Tipa’s post today really hit home for me, it was exactly what I was going to write about (but she does a much better job of it). Rift is fun and pretty but it doesn’t give me enough of that “other stuff” to do. The crafting isn’t complicated enough to make a good hobby of (you can easily farm your supplies as you level and never have to farm extra unless you’re looking to make things to sell), there’s mounts, companions, and collections to hunt but even that still means you’ve got to be out in the specified zone killing mobs. What do I do if I don’t want to kill things. What Rift is lacking (for me personally) is housing and alternate advancement. I realize that none of the games I play (EQ and EQ2 namely) had those things at release either and that there’s time in the future for Rift to add them – but in order to compete with games NOW you should be preparing for those sorts of things. The incredibly linear progression of Rift prevents me from playing it for too long before I get really bored. I quest in Freemarch right now even though I’m level 20 I still have level 15+ quests on me because I spent a lot of time doing Rifts. The quests all take me from one hub to the next, with very little deviation allowed. Sure I could skip quests completely, but I like to finish everything off. I think having only one starting zone makes things feel even more linear, my alts all have to go through those exact same quests, unless I make a Guardian instead of Defiant. Understand that I do love the game, my cleric is level 21 and I’ve sunk 37 hours into it in the last two weeks – but – it’s not a game that I can play full time because eventually I simply get bored of mashing mobs (or Rifts, or players) over and over.

What have I been doing instead? Well. Last night I looked up the hot zones for EQ under the assumption that perhaps Ninga and I would like to eventually hit level 90 (gasp). He’s almost 85 while I’m just moments away from 82 on the necromancer. The problem is the hot zones are either level 70 or level 80. We’re a bit too big for the level 70 ones, and a bit too small for the level 80 ones. With hot zones in place, it makes leveling outside of those zones almost not worth it. We headed to Hills of Shade last night which is off of Loping Plains, and camped outside of a graveyard filled with zombies. A few hours later I had managed to gain 11% experience, which brought me back to my Fippy Darkpaw days. I am currently using a melee DPS merc, while Ninga has a healer merc, and he tanks. It was enjoyable, calm, and I had a lot of fun. I’m about 4% to level, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any more.

Ok so I did stay up very late working on my house (that one pictured is my neighbour, not mine) building little fences and placing fountains and pictures inside. I love housing, and EQ does a fantastic job with allowing players to customize them. I also like that you can purchase homes with Loyalty points if you want instead of plat. The goal for today is to perhaps find an active guild on Drinal that wouldn’t mind someone who isn’t level 90, if you happen to know of such a guild, don’t hesitate to let me know!

Until then, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!