Gaming

Rescue of the Green Hoods, and training is a shield

stargrace September 4, 2006 0Comment

Silverstep in the Deathfist Arena, fighting before Emperor Fyst

Looking through Silverstep’s quest journal last night, I realized I was probably just as bad as Cordanim with some of the heritage quests I’ve yet to complete at level 70. Since I originally made the character as part of a trio and we were far more concerned with getting levels and exp then questing, she’s missed out on a lot. I’ve never done any faction quests or ring of fate quests at all in maj;dul even though I’ve completed the Godking weapon. I never did any of the To Speak as a Dragon chain of quests besides the very first few that are required later for Claymore. She’s sitting at 430 quests completed or so. Majority of those are book collection quests to satisfy her cravings (yes I realize characters don’t have cravings, I’m talking from an rp sense here no need to tell me I’m crazy, I’m well aware of that factor!).

So while I spent the day as Stargrace, mentored down to level 41 to complete the pre-quests for rescue of the green hoods, and also completed the six trials needed for training is a shield , I decided that I’d take Silverstep out and dust her off, and solo those two quests. Good practice for when the guild goes and does it as the Deathfist citadel script can be a huge pain to run through if you’re not sure what to do. Fyst himself at the end is a level 42 epicx2 (who does not hit like an epicx2, but has the hitpoints of one).

I haven’t been to this zone since I played Qutey, my halfling templar waaayy back when. Back when the game had just come out and I actually spent a lot of time doing everything there was to do, groups were in abundance and twinks were unheard of. So it brought back a lot of memories. A lot of painful memories. There are adds, and mobs EVERYWHERE in this zone. It’ll be pretty interesting to see how the guild handles this zone when everything is coloured. At the time I completed it with Qutey, I swore never ever to go back unless I was level 52+ and the entire thing was gray. I did complete both HQ’s though, and got some guild status. Almost level 16.

I also felt a little nostalgic about having tossed Ricotta the dirge aside for so long. She really is a lot of fun to play. I farmed the night before and for once, had incredible luck, coming away with 13 rares! Two of them feysteel! I had two imbued level 32 dirge weapons made, a short sword and a dagger which she’s now wearing with pride. Dinged her to 33 without ever having left NQ. One of the joys of collection quests and having a level 70 main heh. Pleanty of money to twink out the little ones. Granted I spent about 3p more then I would have liked to spent.. but this is a game where I can spend my money unwisely and have very little repercussions. I watch money enough in real life who wants to do it in a video game.

So those were my past few nights. Today, I’m hoping to get Stargrace caught up in some of the easier HQ. Level 64 coercer and she’s only completed 9/26 HQ’s thus far….. feel free to call me a slacker, I know I am *grins*.

Bloodline Chronicles, and too much tradeskilling

stargrace September 3, 2006 0Comment

Silverstep in the Bloodline Chronicles expansion pack, smushing random goblins

So I actually played Silverstep some this weekend, though she didn’t get to do anything very exciting besides some quests from the Bloodline Chronicles. Which, I actually really loved as far as expansion packs go, aside from one thing.

The chain of quests is very lengthly, has a good story behind it. Unfortunately, they all use the exact same instance. So for 10+ quests you’re running through the same zone, with practically the same mobs, and the exact same lay out. Granted, since it was 100% gray to me I didn’t mind that much. I was there for other reasons. The expansion pack came out with a specific set of spells, player made. These spells never get upgraded. You have to have completed the first three quests given by npc at a camp on either side of the waterfalls in nek forest in order to buy these recipes, which are not flagged no trade. So Willamina hit level 35 sage, and I took Silverstep off to the falls to complete the first three quests, bought the recipe books for sage, alchemist, and jeweler. So Willamina is now very happy with her adept3 of swarm of bats. Especially since like I said, those spells / skills never ever get upgraded. Silverstep is still using her Spirit of the bat at level 70, and Stargrace uses her manacloak every chance she gets. Exceptionally handy spells.

Since I’ve been sick most of the weekend (feeling good today though finally!) I took it easy and didn’t do too much of anything. I crafted a lot, and did a lot of farming. Calicia hit level 34 tailor, Ixiana hit level 26 carpenter, Willamina hit 36 sage, Ricotta hit 30 Jeweler, and uh.. I think that’s it. Silverstep is sitting at 50 woodworker and she’ll be there forever as far as I’m concerned. I hate being able to only make 3 items a level. She can make invis totems, and that’s all I ever really wanted her for. Stargrace is a 70 provisioner, so she’s set now as well. I’m still missing a lot of tradeskill books, but hopfully that will come in time and I can get some good deals.

Cleaned out the guild bank, I’m one of three leaders back in my old guild. We have 14 members, 30 characters total in guild (with alts), and they’re all a very friendly bunch. I tend to keep to myself for the most part, so at times I probably seem reserved and maybe rude, but it’s un-intentional. Today they’re planning to do DFC, which is a zone I absolutely hate and am not looking forward to at all, we’ll have to see how it goes. I’m contemplating doing it with Stargrace, the 64 coercer, mentored down. She would have to do rescue of the greenhood first though. Meh. Again, we’ll have to see.

Strange black rock, reaching blade of the assassin, Missing mask, and more!

stargrace September 1, 2006 0Comment

Above is a picture of dear Willamina, that’s right, the crafty little gnome has been spotted pretending to wander around Freeport as a darkelf! A badly dyed blond haired one at that!

What a busy day yesterday. Seemed to be that way all around for everyone. With only two steps left to the strange black rock, the guild quickly killed varsoon and the scholar, with help from an honorary member Ceeyia. After that we decided to start (finish) the reaching blade of the assassin, which is another fast and fun heritage quest that doesn’t take too much work when you’re in your 40’s with a group of people who work fairly well together. After a brief break for dinner / food and bathroom breaks, we decided Everling had evaded us for far too long, and it was time to take him down a peg or two also. A few group members (myself included) needed the chapel Billy (who doesn’t love billy!) and we stood away from the nek castle zone in so that the scout could just zone in and out until we managed to hit an instance where he was already up. We’d already camped his sorry little moppet butt for an evening before, and no one was interested in trying that again. Killed the sisters for loot (hey, when did they revamp?!) and came away with my guise of the deceiver . The guild dinged 15, and half way through. Willamina also had a nice static exp group earlier on in the day, and managed to land level 40.. and not only 40, after all those heritage quests she managed level 41 by the end of the night, and 8ap. I’m quite pleased with her progress. Even though I really am taking my time with her and trying to enjoy things.

She got a new robe in nek, pretties are always fun. I think everyone had a good time as well, which is always a nice bonus. I almost managed to clear my quest journal enough to have room for 20 more.. but.. as always happens I ended up snatching more quests and I’m now at room for 15 I think. It was still a fairly productive night.

Willamina, pugs, and a night of crafting

stargrace August 31, 2006 0Comment

I’ve been having a whole lot of fun playing the Necromancer lately, it’s a class I played around with just a little bit in Eq1 (I have a 70 rogue, enchanter, and cleric in eq1 and a handful of other smaller babies) and never really had an opportunity to play in eq2. I’ve typically played a healer of some sort, my templar being my main for the longest time until I decided to start over and made the warden (never looked back as far as healers go once I’d made the warden, what a wonderful class, it’s a shame that a *lot* of people re-rolled their templars / plate clerics into druids / mystics and now there seems to be a shortage, at least on the servers I’ve played on). Anyhow.

In my guild it’s typically just me for a portion of the day, and then people log in a little later on, not a bad thing per say, gives me a lot of time to do what I’d like to do, which I enjoy. It’s not often that I stick my lfg flag on, fear of pugs what can I say. But I like the atmosphere of najena, and there are always a lot of people around. So eagerly I sent a tell to a tank looking for dps in runneyeye, and for the next hour we mashed away at things and Willamina finally reached level 39. Slowly catching up to people! It was a great group, there were plenty of times I didn’t think we would make it because they were sort of uh… well… a little high on themselves. We added a swashbuckler to the group after one of our tanks had to leave, and they claimed to have just spent 10p on gear. Not only that, they said cloth gear had the best stats for them, so they’d spent 10p on cloth gear. .. . Then they came to the zone and on their way they fell off a bridge and got squished *snickers*. I told them that for 10p that gear should instantly port them to our zone. I don’t even think my level 70 main has 10p worth of gear on her, granted a lot of it is quested and looted from raids so maybe that’s why. On masters, sure.. but gear? Meh. Anyhow, it was a lot of fun, until we of course bit off a bit more then we could chew, the illusionist decided not to mez the 4 groups we had on us, healers ganked with heal agro and in a matter of moments we were all looking at the pretty revive boxes. Called it a day from there.

Spent the night crafting, carpenter slowly crawled her way to level 24. It’s a painful process when you only get 3 recipes every level. Though now she’s gotten a few more and I’m trying to make it stretch. Willamina dinged 33 sage. I have tried to keep her adventure level on par with her tradeskill level but it doesn’t work. It’s just so much easier to quest / exp once you’re out of vitality still making it worth while as opposed to crafting, which is mind numbing even before you run out of vitality and just bang-your-head-on-the-desk-stupid when you’re out. Made some furniture boxes with 48 slots (just fir, bigger then my 36 slot boxes so it all works) in order to put some of Ixiana’s stuff for sale, it doesn’t sell fast, but it does sell, and that’s why Silverstep has a 5 room house after all, to sell all those goodies.

Speaking of selling. I really wish they’d let us set up multiple toons with markets and not just one. It’s a pain for me to have to switch around all my loot from all my characters every day just to be able to sell stuff from a ‘main’. I’m sure they have their reasons of course, doesn’t mean I can’t complain though!

Little Tardy (Tarby!) lost… and who says bears are better then wolves..

stargrace August 30, 2006 0Comment

So yesterday morning I decided that I’d put off some quests for far too long with Willamina, my necromancer. In order to play a little catch up to the guild (since I’m still in my 30’s and most people are hitting their 40’s now) I decided to do old quests and start some HQ’s that I’d just neglected. First on my list, learning the giant language. Sounds easy right? Sounds even easier since I was level 37 at the time and the giants I was killing were level 28 heroics, meaning green. Poor poor necromancer tank pet. He sacrificed himself so many times as I /yelled off encounters and ran my wee little short gnome legs to safety. I did manage to complete the quest though. Spawned a named too but he was too hard, double attacking me for 900 pts of dmg a round. Ouchies.

Talked to Obsid a few times, he lost his bear. *sighs* He’s a GIANT you’d think he’d be able to see the wee little bear from miles around. So I set off after him. Found him with no troubles at all (thank you eq2 maps!) and after hailing him, waves of wolves spawn. Level 28 heroics. Not *too* difficult to kill– the hard part, is that they agro Tarby first. In fact, the first round I guess my pet didn’t snag agro fast enough, they agro’d tarby and tarby fought back and died. Woopsie. I won’t tell Obsid if you don’t.

So I waited 20 minutes for the bear to re-pop and again the wolves spawned and Tarby fought and grey’d them out, so I killed them and got no exp……. thank you bear. KS’er! Two more rounds later and tarby decided he wanted to ride in my backpack back to Obsid. Lazy little thing! How he fit into my gnome-sized bag with my cog bits and flupperzoowigs I’ve no idea, but man was he heavy.

Obsid gave me the beginner to the PGT as a reward. First thing I need to do for it is mine. Ugh. My mining sitting at 60 when I need it at 90 for Thundering Steppes, so I called it a day for that quest and decided to run around the commonlands completing smaller things I’d never done before.

Got a guild group later on in the day and finished Haedens earring, Willamina can finally breath under water…. ! Oh.. wait… that’s right, necromancers can summon stones to do that… I’d *completely* forgotten that fact as I ran around drowning. Go me. It was still nice, guild dinged level 14.

On a side note. I applied to the eq2 volunteer guide program last week.. and was accepted. There are some rules about what I can post / talk about and what I can’t though, so while I can say I’m an apprentice guide, I can’t reveal server or character name and what not. I’m really looking forward to the over all experience!