2013

Instances and Decorating #EQ2 #EverQuest2

stargrace November 19, 2013 1 Comment

Yesterday I decided to start decorating part of the guild hall. I decided to create a cottage in the courtyard for myself, along with a little garden. As you can tell by the screenshot above it turned out quite well! I added a fireplace and a chimney with smoke that puffs from the top (thanks to the fog machines from nights of the dead that I sunk into the stone).

Once I was done decorating, it was time to attempt another heroic instance in Tears of Veeshan. This time the group was a bit more prepared (with gear) and we decided to head into the Hive. The group consisted of:

• Shadowknight (tank)
• Inquisitor (boxed)
• Berserker
• Swashbuckler (me)
• Fury (boxed by me)
• Monk (mercenary)

The first named posed little issue. The tank held the named while we burned down the blobs that spawned, and while he would sometimes heal it was manageable. Our first truly difficult encounter came with the bixie that has two bears alongside. The bears would charge off in the direction of a player and pretty much instantly kill. Our mechanic was simple, run around in crazy directions so the bears don’t touch you. Die a lot. Hope a healer could rez. It took a few tries, but eventually this method actually worked. Of course most of the fight was the shadowknight soloing the entire encounter along with the monk mercenary, but still, we succeeded.

Our next difficult fight came from the flaming bird mid way through the zone. They cast an aoe incineration that one shot anyone who was too close. It meant a lot of laying on the ground while again the tank and mercenary did all of the work, but again we were successful. We had some issues with one named that summons a lot of adds while frogloks look on help but we didn’t wipe on that encounter so I consider it one of the lesser evils of the zone.

I’m not sure what the purpose or reasoning is, but there are four sense of urgency you can earn per zone. Each one requires a shorter completion time. It feels very forced to have so many achievements for the exact same thing when there are better achievements to add, but so be it. We earned three out of the four, and completed the zone earning our first piece of arcane gear which can be upgraded with blue gems (that I’m hoping to purchase the recipe for today). It was nice to be able to complete a heroic dungeon, and I’m looking forward to completing more in the future. There’s a patch today that fixes some of the ToV issues that have been reported, and that should help some.

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

The Difference Between Quest gear and Solo Advanced Gear #EQ2 #EverQuest2

stargrace November 17, 2013 1 Comment

People in channels keep asking what the point of advanced solo dungeons are because they reward gear that’s equal in stats to the items that you quest for out in the open world.

Except they’re not the same.

What is very hard to see is that the armor piece that you loot can actually be upgraded four times with gems. You can’t tell that these armor pieces can be upgraded unless you examine the piece, and then you’ll see at the top on the left hand side a little blurb that says 0/4 gems.

How do you get these gems?

Easily enough. There are recipes for these gems for crafters, or you can purchase the gems outright from a vendor in Vesspyre.

• Cryptic – Advanced Solo (up to 4 yellow gems)
• Arcane – Tier 1 Heroic (up to 4 blue gems)
• Potent – Tier 2 Heroic (up to 3 green gems)
• Energized – Tier 1 Raid (1 red gem)
• Mystical – Tier 2 Raid (1 purple gem)

EQ2wire has a fantastic write up on their FAQ about these gems. I highly suggest people go check it out. Hopefully, SOE will make these gem slots a bit more noticeable in the future because as it stands right now unless you go to outside sources and read about it, or you pick it up from another player, it is incredibly difficult to learn about them. Mousing over the gear mentions nothing of the gem slots.

Into the Nexus Core #EQ2 #EverQuest2

stargrace November 15, 2013 1 Comment

The first (and easiest) dungeon in ToV is the Nexus Core. Last night the members of Torrent Knights decided to see how we could do against the zone, with two of us wearing ToV quested gear, one wearing CoE gear, and the last person wearing level 92 crafted gear. All of us were 95, but returning from various stages of the game. The group make up was:

• 95 shadowknight (tank in reckless, ToV quested)
• 95 inquisitor (boxed, ToV quested)
• 95 defiler (myself, ToV quested)
• 95 mystic (92 crafted gear)
• 95 berserker (CoE gear)
• 95 monk (mercenary)

When you enter the zone you’re greeted with a warning if you’re under the required crit chance. I just barely managed to squeak by, as did the tank. Everyone else was under. The zone plays out almost the same as the advanced solo, except harder. First you run to the center and click on the crystal, which activates the zone. You clear the center room (nothing fancy) and then a mini boss pops up. For this named you’re required to run away from and dodge his magic missiles. We didn’t have too much issue aside from a lack of DPS. The new ToV quested gear makes an enormous difference, as I was second on the DPS parse with the defiler, after the tank. We got a purple adornment and a priest hammer that I declined on so that the mystic wearing level 92 gear could get a few upgrades.

Once the mini boss is down the three remaining rooms open up. Each one with a named. We went west first, and it was probably the easiest named out of the ones remaining, but still quite difficult. The boss spawns globes on each side of the room, and if they reach him he heals. Thankfully they are % based, and he doesn’t just constantly spit them out, because we did not have the DPS to deal with these blobs. We just let them reach him, and fought him down from full again each time. A dagger for my swashbuckler dropped that round.

Next we went east. This is a very difficult boss. First we had to kite the rippers that roam the room and pretty much instantly kill anything they touch. Then the boss randomly spawns a bunch of shredders that also instantly kill anything they touch. We fought for quite some time and tried to find positions in the room where the shredder adds could not touch us, and managed to get the boss to about 30% but after numerous attempts we had to call it a night so people could get some sleep.

Still, it was a great experience, especially considering we’re hardly the “proper group” and most of us were not geared. I’m looking forward to seeing how we do once we have a bit more ToV gear.

Tears of Veeshan Brings Changes #EQ2 #EverQuest2

stargrace November 13, 2013 No Comments

Dragons have invaded the skies of Qeynos (and Freeport), with the launch of Tears of Veeshan. I took my 95 mystic out to explore a bit and enjoyed watching them swoop and dive.

The 10th EverQuest 2 expansion added a lot of changes that players are going to have to get used to.

One of the major ones include a swap between the cap of multiattack and DPS, so MA now caps at 200, and DPS has a soft cap of 600. That requires reforging to fix, and reforging has gone up drastically in price. It was 10 plat to reforge a single raid item from CoE, the previous expansion.

Another change is the mercenary window, and this confused me greatly. Thankfully ZAM has an awesome article about merc slots, and how you can summon and suspend your merc and what the changes mean. While at first glance you may think you need to spend 100 station cash to unlock a merc that you had just purchased – that is not the case. The UI is just not very intuitive, so I highly suggest people read the article to figure out what is what. Before you are upset that your merc is missing, be sure to type /merc resume, and see if they’re around.

Harvesting has also changed. No longer are you required to work your harvesting skills in order to obtain materials for whatever zone you happen to be exploring in. That means all of those level 85 heroic characters with no skill can happily adventure along and harvest to their hearts content – although you won’t gain rares from harvesting until you’re at the appropriate level for that tier in the skill.

Player housing has changed and while this may not seem like a big deal, it’s fantastic for the housing fanatics out there. Items that are considered ‘building blocks’ now have their own item count. So if you had a house with an item count of 800, blocks will now be 800 and everything else another 800. This is great for players who enjoy creating their own buildings from scratch using other materials. If you’re not sure what your item count is currently at, you can zone into your home and access the panel by either clicking on the door, or /house.

Those are the changes that I found most relevant so far in the expansion, feel free to mention any others below in comments! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.