Gaming

It Just Makes my Day

stargrace July 23, 2007 5Comments

A random tell I got today that just made everything worth while

Every so often, I’ll get a tell from someone who reads my site, telling me thank you, or that it has some good information, or that they used it for the relic gem list and what not, and each time, it makes me smile. Last week I had someone comment (after I’d spoken in the 60-69 channel so they saw my name) that they had the site linked from their guild, and used it for relic gem lists quiet frequently. I was pleased as punch. So when I got the above tell today, of course it just made me smile. I responded with my typical nervous “well thank you so much” type of reply, because honestly what else am I supposed to say to a comment like that. I don’t do very well with the praise. I’ve met some wonderful people through my site though, and even if no one at all read it I’d still update it every day simply because I love to write.

I also (along with Geabrial) worked on a few heritage quests tonight to try to help push the guild towards level 10. Shadowgeist wanted a few HQ done for his necromancer, so we decided on Foomby’s Stolen Goods, and By Hook or By Crook. Both are fairly simple to do with very little camping. The guild actually got three levels today. Now, I realize that level 10 is not a big deal. A lot of guilds can achieve that pretty much instantly. However, I worked hard at it to get it that far and I have every intention of seeing it all the way to 60 if I possibly can. I take pride in my achievements and this will just be another one I add to the list. Besides, once they add tradeskill experience to crafting writs, I intend on grinding out a whole lot of them with the weaponsmith (have I mentioned lately how much I HATE leveling this class? No? Well I do).

Aside from working on HQ and the pleasant tell today, I also decorated a small amount. Took more screen shots of Stargrace’ home which is open to the public at 4 Bayle Court and will have some shots coming up tomorrow more the likely. I spent 12p on 19 rough ebony (the T7 rare) in preparation for GU37 with multiple characters being able to sell at once. Not only can I use some crates myself for the plethora of alts I have, but I can sell them for a tidy profit (hopefully). I’m down to my last 20p which is quite frustrating for me. That’s the fun of having alts though, always some where to spend your money. Misako’s betrayal is the cost I am still trying to recoup over, it’s very slow going though.

Oh, and a random pet peeve. To all those people out there who are harping on the Equinox magazine because they think it is SoE trying to steal their money? I direct their attention to here. While SoE I’m sure is reaping some sort of benefit (though it may just be general publicity to their game) PLEASE keep in mind that this magazine is NOT published by SoE. It is being published by a UK based company, who actually does specializations in a few MMO’s. I was actually asked to write an article for their 2nd edition, so maybe it’s a bit of a shameless plug for myself, but even if I hadn’t been. It’s best to have the whole story before you go flaming SoE for trying to “steal” your money. No one is forcing anyone to buy it. Gah. I’ll never understand people.

Goudia’s House (1-room Inn, Big Bend)

stargrace July 22, 2007 5Comments

Even a Ratonga needs a place to live. This is Goudia’s one room in located in Big Bend, Antonia Bayle if anyone ever wants to stop in and say hello. With the implimentation of multiple characters being able to sell from the same account in GU37, I decided it was time to spruce up some homes. The new indium candles are beautiful, and make a great addition to the dining table (food to come next) and the poppies to the left spruce up the simple room.

Even a ratonga is not opposed to gazing at themselves in a mirror, nor would she ever dream of giving up the few books she has (which will hopefully grow with time, and not become too cluttered)

An overview of the room shows a simple seating (and drinking?) area, some more books of course, and her bed area, complete with roses. A girl is still a girl after all, even a troll can appreciate the scent and colour of flowers (though they may end up eating them).

A close up of the seating area, some photos hang proudly and a merchant board, a fine collection of wines.

Close up of the sleeping area, what a little reader our Goudia is! The scent of the poppies wafts out through the room.

So remember as you’re decorating, you do not need huge extravagant ideas in order to make even the 1-room inns look like a comfortable place to live. Give it some personality and make it your own, that’s always the most important part.

Test notes for GU37.. Oh.. My.. Gawd

stargrace July 20, 2007 8Comments

Ok. I am in heaven. I just went and read the test notes for GU37… they’re way too long to post the entire thing, so if you’re interested in reading, check here, and in the mean time, here are the portions of it that I personally am so ecstatic about:

BROKER

• You can now sell items on the broker with more than one character!
  • All characters on an account can list items for sale at the same time.
  • Items remain listed as long as you log in with any of your characters at least once every 7 days.

Mystic

• Enhance: Resurrection Efficiency: Improved power reduction from 8% to 12% per rank.
• Spirit Dance: Increased resurrection amount from 15% to 40%. Improved reuse speed from 2 minutes to 90 seconds. Increased radius to 30m.
• Enhance: Cures, Fading Spirit, Ancient Balm: All ward amounts have been increased by 20%.
• Immunization: Improved reuse speed from 3 to 2 minutes.
• Weapon Mastery: Also increases effectiveness of Summoned Spirit Companion (single down arrow instead of double down arrow).

TRADESKILLS

• Crafted deity altars are no longer flagged “Lore”.
• Wuoshi’s Molted Scale, Bark of Growth, and Seed of Growth are no longer flagged Lore.
• Imbue type harvests are now known simply as “material” instead of four separate types (“flower”, “stone”, “tooth”, “scale”, simplifying bank space usage logistics. Existing flowers, teeth, and scales will not be renamed but can still be used.
• Crafters now gain tradeskill experience from completing tradeskill writs.
• Crafters who have respec’ed their crafting class and wish to exchange their crafting tool from the Village of Shin quests can now speak to Rai Faela Nurwin near the Village of Shin brokers.
• The following tinker-made items are now tradable: gnomish flotation device, spring-loaded gnomish stilts, goggles of the bats, gnomish diving goggles, gnomish shades, full spectrum goggles, gnomish anti camo goggles.
• The Dark Bargainers have noticed a business opportunity and moved to fill it! Neriak now has its own tradeskill faction and faction merchant.
• Carpenters have removed the following recipes from their recipe books, as they are identical in appearance to other existing items: Maple Gnome Chair, Gnome thinking chair, Gukta ironwood shelf, Ornate bedside table, Burlap painting, Elegant bone chair, Fir trophy box, Ruckas rug, Bone shelf.
• Tradeskill writs now award Dark Bargainer faction to Neriak citizens.
• Tradeskill faction merchants will now sell in-home crafting stations to crafters whose efforts have sufficiently impressed them.
• Kindling merchants not working inside the tradeskill societies are now stocking a wider inventory of recipe ingredients including cream cheese, cocoa, and sugar.
• The Norrathian Carpenters’ Guild has quietly retired the recipe for the Twisted Oak Table due to lack of demand (existing twisted oak tables will be unaffected).
• The horned leather backpack recipe is now level 63.
• Grandmaster’s Elixir of Second Sight will no longer be removed when you zone.
• The recipe for the teak oval table is now correctly named.
• An intrepid band of single-minded interior decorators has ventured deep into what remains of the Misty Thicket, and returned bringing yet more furnishing ideas to the cities of Norrath.
• Carpenters have discovered Steamfont hot springs heating technology! The carpenter-crafted moonstone pools now look slightly more desirable than the quested versions with similar appearance…
• Jewelers across Norrath have discovered how to make pristine quality handcrafted and mastercrafted rings accept adornments!

UI

• You can now re-purchase your 10 most recently sold items at the same price.
  • No time limit!
  • Even after logging out or zoning!

Misako’s first raid

stargrace July 20, 2007 1Comment

Little hard to see since it’s shrunk, but besides the blocky persona window in the way, that’s my typical UI

Last night was Deathtoll and boy was I nervous. Yes, I’ve done the zone numerous times over the course of the past two years, but I had never raided with Misako before. Not even so much as Labs. It was also my first raid as a mystic, and there was lots for me to pay attention to. Thankfully with some suggestions from Thunderwalker, I didn’t mess up too badly. It will certainly take some time to get used to healing with her vs. the other healers I have. Mystics have a lot of temporary spells to keep track of, aside from their pet, their stunning ward (which I rarely used), bolster, and torpor… the raid was a blur for the most part. It was fun though. No deaths. Well, one death because we accidentally stepped on a second group of worms and I had wards up, other then that though, no deaths. Probably one of the smoothest DT runs I’ve ever done with this guild. We’ve moved some people around in groups, and I love it. We’ll be diving back into EoF shortly and I’m looking forward to that.

As you can tell by my UI pictured above, I have a lot on the screens. Every character is pretty much the same. The persona window is blocking a lot of the battle or else you’d be able to tell that I have a lot of room to see things. I have 4 chat windows, the ones to the left are tells, group, raid, guild, and then combat, the ones to the right, are npc says and then channels. I also have 7-8 hotkey bars up at any given time depending on the character. I use profit reborn UI, best that I’ve found and it lets me see everything I need to see, like in combat power regen, and specifics about my attacks.

I’m trying to get Goudia to level 30 weaponsmith. I hate having to grind through the 20’s. Number one the +durability buttons are going to turn grey and make it impossible for me to reach pristine. Number two, it’s just drab and boring. I’m also out of vitality, so I’m trying to grind through the levels doing writs which of course just take longer. She’s sitting at 26 right now, so just 4 more levels to work through. On the plus side, the little baby items I’m making seem to sell well. It will be nice to be able to make weapons.

Other then that, things are going well. Guild drama has slowed, Kilanna is away for a few more days (thoughts are with you again girlie). Guild leader and his wife as well as a few others are going to be taking vacations shortly, so raids may be a little slowed. I’m looking to get into more rp, I miss it since the festival of unity a few months back. I’m eager to get Faydai leveled, and then maybe my troubador or ranger. I’d like to see all 3 hit level 70 before RoK comes out. Not sure how feasible that is though. I suppose I could just grind every day, but that’s going to get drab really fast. Misako needs to start / work on the Sword of Destiny, as well as her Claymore. She still needs to speak as a dragon, which I’ll probably get done sunday or monday, not sure yet. Shadowgeist has been having a lot of fun on his necromancer, think he’s close to 45 now. Lader has been playing his defiler, for some reason I just can’t see him as a healer. Lots of interesting changes coming as far as the loot system and drop system in game, looking forward to that. They patched yesterday for 2 hours but nothing was said in update notes, so I don’t even know what it was for, and then today servers are down again. I know it’s quite frequent with all the changes they’ve been adding to have these down times, but people are starting to get slightly cranky. I’d MUCH rather have the servers down for 1-2 hours every day (except weekends) then go through what WoW does though, which is 8-9 hour patches every Tuesday. It’s been that way since release.

More chattering later as always!

One of those days..

stargrace July 19, 2007 1Comment

I was attempting to write some rp note about how Misako went back to Mystic and ended up back in Qeynos with her twin sister Stargrace, but for some reason today the words just don’t seem to want to flow. So a post for a later day perhaps. The servers are down for two hours, which means I have plenty of time to get the daily house chores completed, though it would be easier if the cat wasn’t always under foot. . . and of course I completely forgot what I was going to write about.

Not much happened yesterday. I helped move things into the new guild bank, which of course was always fun. I love having a new little baby guild again and I don’t mind being removed from the raid guild since they’ve been getting on my nerves from time to time. Not their fault, it’s just that moody time for me or what ever. Spent a lot of time talking to Gothun lately, hopefully he takes what I say with a grain of salt. Talking to Kilanna a lot as well. Tonight there are raids, not sure what the target is yet so I can’t really write about it. I’m hoping today I’ll be working on HQ most of the day with various alts to help the guild get closer to 10 and then 20, we could really use some extra slots. Sorry for the short post, but it’s just not one of those blogging days!