2011

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!

Visiting The Planes of Power

stargrace March 3, 2011 0Comment

Yesterday instead of playing on the progression server, Ninga and I decided to go back to Drinal and explore the planes a bit on our higher level characters. See, EverQuest is great and we’re both having a lot of fun but the incredibly slow grind of the progression server can be a bit (a lot) daunting. It’s 4x slower then it was during first release which makes casual gaming almost impossible at this point in time. We’re not giving up, but a brief reprieve was required. We peeked in on Vallon and Tallon Zek, both were down. We checked in on Marr who was not at home (must have heard us coming), Bertox was up but we decided to leave him alone (having already defeated him not that long ago), and so we went to visit Terris Thule at her home in Plane of Nightmare. She was a lot easier then I remembered back in the day, and I managed to get a progression flag, having never killed her on my necromancer before.

It surprised me to see how heavily camped these mobs still are, many years later. There were 100 people sitting in the guild lobby, and while the server is not as active as the progression one I feel confident in saying that EQ is still doing amazingly well. One of these days I’ll have to start decorating the home I purchased there, so far I just placed the house and have a completely empty yard.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

More Freeport Sewer Adventures #EQ

stargrace March 1, 2011 0Comment

(I know, that screen shot has nothing at all to do with the freeport sewers, but I spent so much time running from drowned citizens that I forgot to take any!)

It was a fairly quiet day in EverQuest – as quiet as they ever are. I managed to hit almost 17 on the cleric which is an enormous feat for myself, and the enchanter inched her way pretty close to 16. At 15 she got quickness, her first haste. Sure it only lasts 5 minutes (that’s one minute longer then charm) but having haste at all is nice. Cleric, Enchanter, and Monk headed to the Freeport Sewers again and I found out why they’re so quiet. The revamped named no longer spawn in the zone because their gear is more over powered then it should be for the current expansion. Fine by me, I’m there for the experience not for the gear.

After an hour of wandering the sewers my monk friend decided that although he plays a very decked out monk on live servers – it wasn’t working for us and our combination on the progression server. He decided that now would be a good time to re-roll as a warrior, and so he promptly made a dwarf. I decided that I’d like an alt even if I don’t play it that much and I decided to make a bard (starting in Freeport, close to Kaladim for leveling purposes). I’ve always wanted to play a bard but have never actually gotten anywhere with one. Since the experience is so much lower then normal I doubt I’ll get anywhere here either, but I did inch my way to level 3. Twisting songs is an art from the past with the /melody command implemented on the progression server. Basically it’s an auto-twister. You make a macro that /melody 1 2 3 and then it will twist songs one two and three in your spell gems. Right now I only have two songs, my group buff and my AoE which I have to make sure I turn off when guards wander by.

Since we’ve already figured out where to level from 1-16 I’m hoping it won’t take quite as long with the new characters but we’ll just have to see. I’ve always loved having alts, it’s just really difficult on a progression server.

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