2013

Why Own Just a Guild Hall – Why Not The Whole Zone?! #EverQuest

stargrace April 24, 2013 0Comment

Why decorate a simple guild house – when you can own the entire neighbourhood! This is exactly what I decided to do for the small guild I belong to in EverQuest. The station cash store has an option for you to purchase not only a guild hall (that can be accessed through the guild lobby) but an entire guild neighbourhood. This instanced location will belong to the guild as a whole, not any one individual person, which you’re warned about before you purchase it.

Other people can enter the instance, tour the houses and poke around, but they won’t be able to purchase house plots.

So it was that I ended up with an entire area to decorate and then some. The guild halls are nice, spacious, and they come with a handful of NPC to help make your stay there more comfortable. So far I’ve not done much decorating, Oger has added some weapons and shields to the walls as well as some very nice looking paintings. We have a crafting room off of the main entrance, complete with some of the more ‘unique’ craft tables, like alchemy and even an ice cream churn. There are some extra NPC down there so you don’t have to go racing all over the place to collect items from your bank, and I really like how things are looking so far.

I’ve also set up a few houses within the zone for my alts, you can use these for storage or whatever else you would like. I haven’t gotten around to any massive decorating yet, and certainly nothing on the scale of EQ2 housing (yet) but it’s in the works and as I make some progress I’ll be sure to share pictures.

Speaking of progress -the ranger on my second account is now level 85. I’ve paused her leveling here for now, 100% of experience is going into alternate advancement. I don’t want her to be useless, so the more aa I can get the better. Plus this gives me time to work on getting my epic completed, and a few other (ie: older) quests that I want to do. My rank 5 mercenary quest is pretty high up on that list as well.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Time for Faction! #EverQuest

stargrace April 22, 2013 0Comment

There have been a few things I’ve been working on with Oger in EverQuest, but the two major projects have been working on the Dragons of Norrath progression (evil), along with the Trials of Mata Muram. Both are quite easy these days especially with mercenary, and the trials more so since the lock out timers have been tweaked slightly. You can now complete each one every 2 hours – 3 day lock out for completion (or winning), 2h lock out for a failure, and an overall 2h timer before you can move from one to the next. Oger and I managed to complete all 6 over the weekend which raised the base resists we are able to have by a small amount each trial. The hardest one required special spells to open chests scattered around the room and since I did’t have my spells at the time (they’re now sold in PoK, quite easy to obtain, but I didn’t know that at the time) we failed it. Returning later that evening netted a win at least.

Dragons of Norrath progression is a bit more difficult because it’s a faction grind. Faction in EverQuest can be a long and tedious task, as shown here by EQresource:

-3000 to -1999 – lowest faction points
-2000 to -751 – Scowls at you ready to attack! (KOS) (approx. 1300 point range)
-750 to -501 – Glares are you threateningly! (KOS) (approx. 250 point range)
-500 to -101 – Glowers at you dubiously. (Not KOS but very close to) (approx. 400 point range)
-100 to -1 – Looks your way apprehensively. (approx. 100 point range)
0 to +99 – Regards you indifferently. (The majority of NPC’s have this neutral standing with you) (approx. 100 point range)
+100 to +499 – Judges you amiably. (approx. 400 point range)
+500 to +749 – Kindly considers you. (approx. 250 point range)
+750 to +1099 – Looks upon you warmly. (approx. 450 point range)
+1100 to +2000 – Regards you as an ally. (Highest level of faction attainable) (approx. 1000 point range)
+2001 to +3000 – highest faction points

At the moment I am kindly faction with The Dark Reign, and have completed up to tier four in progression. I also managed to pre-loot the pieces for the final tier, completing them the previous week with Nonpoint and Xoxox who were completing the raids for another friend. These days the group tasks can be completed solo (especially with mercenary) so the faction grind is not quite as bad as it once was, but the raids still take a little bit of finesse.

You earn a few useful things for completing faction, the first tier unlocks the passive ability to increase your max stats by 10. The second tier grants 250 hp / mana / end and the third tier increases your buff slot limit by one. The fourth tier which is the one I’m currently trying to complete increases the critical chance of melee / magical attacks and heals and finally the fifth tier increases your ability to resist a detrimental spell.

I’ve been enjoying myself as we go through these older quests and factions. They’re still relevant and while I may not be able to handle doing much alone in the current content (just the way EverQuest is) at least I’m not completely useless.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Enchanter Levels and Crafting – Oh My! #EverQuest

stargrace April 18, 2013 0Comment

With Shadow of Fear released yesterday, I found myself happily wandering through the new zones, attuning myself to the new portals. This will come in handy when it comes time to actually adventure in these zones, and for now I can go invis and collect shinies since some new ones were added (but the rewards are not any better).

The new prayer shawl 3.0 was also added to game, and components for it seem to be dropping quite frequently. Or at least my group found a few of the drops yesterday without too much issue. People were also selling them to vendor, unsure of what they are for. Oger has been purchasing them and saving them for later use.

My enchanter managed to ding level 94 in the Feerrott (which has become my home away from home for a number of levels now) and is well on her way to level 95. Then begins the slow climb to 100. It seems like such a daunting number.

I decided the guild needed a neighbourhood of its own, so I purchased one from the station cash store. A guild neighbourhood allows only those guild members to buy plots within it. It also came with a guild hall to decorate – enormous! The hall has all sorts of convenient NPC you can place – things like bank, parcel, and travel. It will take me quite some time to decorate it the way I want, but for now at least the NPC are all placed, and there’s a portion dedicated to crafting (with bankers close by so you can run to and from).

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself! I’ll see you in EverQuest.