Real Life

Sloops and Caravels and.. What?

stargrace February 9, 2008 No Comments

Walking through Tanvu (again, notice how it’s night time AND raining here?) on my way to check the mail and see if any of my pretties had sold, I came across a player made ship. I think this one is a caravel, which means it’s one of the larger ships. There’s sloops and caravels, one can travel into deep water, and one has to stick to the shores. You can also name your ships. When I was walking through Khal, I was amused by the names. The first one I happened to come across:

Big Tity Party Patrol

Yup. That was the name of their massive ship, I kid you not. Ships are made by carpenters, and they take a lot of work. Then agian, everything in Telon takes a lot of work. Before you get started on building an actual ship, you have to do painful quests to learn how to make each portion of the ship. This includes learning hull sections, rudder, planks in general, deck stations, spoke, helm, deck, mast pole, mast mount, getting rigging and sails, and learning mast assembly, then also doing a continental quest to learn one of the three styles of sloops. Oh joy hmms?

After all that comes the materials for a real boat. For a real sloop for example, you need:

• 176 Dry Timber
  5 Arid Timber
  24 Iron Ore:
  5 Box of Fasteners (3 iron ore each)(15 iron ore total)
  2 iron bindings (1 iron ore each)(2 iron ore total)
  1 Mast Mount (8 iron ore each)(8 iron ore total)
  4 Rotwort Ship Paste (can be bought from any shipwright)
  1 Ship Paint (many different choices, buy from any shipwright)
  34 Firegrass Bales:
  1 Small Thestran Sail(10 firegrass bales)(10 firegrass bales total)
  1 Small Mast Rigging(8 firegrass ropes, 3 firegrass per rope)(24 firegrass bales total)

That’s for the small boat. No wonder people take such pride in their crafted dinghies. For the caravel it’s not much better. You need to learn a general quest proving your worth to make these monsters, then learn the hull, the rudder, learn how to make a caia figurehead, deck stations, spoke, helm, deck, mast pole, getting a mast pole, rigging and sails, mast assembly, and then a quest over all to learn how to make a continental caravel. The supplies needed for that one?

• 307 Knotted Timber(307 Knotted Planks)
  5 Warped Timber(3 rare select spokes)(2 rare select planks)
  46 pyrite ore
  1 mast mount(12 pyrite ore per mast mount)
  4 Pyrite bindings (1 pyrite ore each)
  10 Pyrite Fasteners (3 pyrite ore each)
  6 Lotus Ship Paste
  51 silkbloom
  1 Medium Thestran Sail(15 silkbloom each)
  1 Medium Thestran Rigging(36 silkbloom each)(12 silkbloom ropes each)(3 silkbloom each rope)

When things only stack up to 20, and you need 307 of something, that’s a lot of space taken up with crafting stuff. Granted you do have a full sized bank on each continent, and I suppose that’s what alts are for in Vanguard, but still, that’s a lot of stuff to stash away some place. Kudos to those people out there who go down the ship building path, I have a small understanding of how much work must have went into the blasted thing.

Graphic wise the ships differ by make and model, colour and continent. I love that about Vanguard, everything is fairly unqiue to some certain degree. More so then EQII at least where everyone ends up looking like cardboard cut outs of one another. Apparently in time galleons will be added to the game, which people seem excited about.

As I gated home (since you can only purchase one house per account, each one of your alts will get the “call home” recall button) I noticed.. half my neighbours were missing and their plots are now for sale. My plot is located fairly close to the Vulmane starting town, one chunk away actually which is fairly covenant for me. I used to have neighbours with fairly well built houses on either side of me in my little section, and now their houses are gone and the plots are for sale. That’s what happens when your rent expires, your stuff will go to escrow for you to claim at a later date if you return, but in the mean time you can loose your plot if someone else decides to buy the land while you’ve not paid your rent. I stuck a couple of gold (rent is 25s a week) into the rent section of my house so that this (hopefully) won’t happen to me. Not that I’ve made any more progress on my home. I need to get my artificer to level 35 or so in order to start proper construction, and I haven’t checked out the prices on broker lately to see what the base materials cost any more *note to self, do that today*. Valentines day items are coming to Vanguard on Tuesday apparently, and I have to admit the house items look pretty interesting. I still love the way Vanguard’s housing is set up, so that you feel like you own an actual piece of the game, no zones at all, you just walk along adventuring and stumble across someone’s house (which is typically locked to random strangers, boo, how can I explore their decorating that way?!) not to mention the ability to put chests in your house and fill those chests with items that you don’t feel like dragging along with you. Anyhow, enough of my rambling, safe travels where ever you game, be it Norrath, Azeroth, Telon, or some other pixel world.

Today I’m off to Winterlude, depending on the snow in town, a winter festival that’s a lot of fun with a lot of ice sculptures. Hopefully I’ll get some nice pictures!

Lets Try This, and Tickets Arrive!

stargrace February 7, 2008 2 Comments

First of all, the tickets for the James Blunt concert came today by Fed-Ex, I’ve mentioned once or twice I’m excited. Ok, maybe a few more times then that. Again, never been to a concert so it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while now. I’m 26 after all, my 17 year old baby brother has been to more concerts then I have. My only concern is the weather, I’m hoping the drive down will be nice. As I look out the window today and see another 10cm of snow I’m cursing slightly under my breath. Hey, it is Canada though, we’ll still be seeing snow in early May.

I decided to make a psionicist late last night, logged out before doing anything (other then getting her guilded) though, and picked up with it today instead. Now she’s level 10. Not bad. A huge thank you to Lanatra from guild who supplied me with a few silkbloom bags- wow those things are HUGE compared to what I’ve been using (28 slot vs. 14 slot) I enjoy the little community of the guild. Every night there are 5-15 people on, day times are a little slower, I believe the majority of the every-day-gamers are pacific as far as time zones go, so maybe I miss some. During the day there are typically 3-4 on doing their own things or relaxing after working nightshift. That doesn’t sound like fun at all.

The class is a lot of fun, I made it for a duo team with a Dreadknight, I was using the bard, but honestly bards can solo just fine on their own, so I wanted something that was a little harder to solo with, that I would benefit from a duo with. Does that make sense? I think it does. Anyhow.

I have one ‘stun’ that works as a mez so far, I also have invis (which has a nasty habbit of breaking just as you walk past that four dot creature every time) and some nukes. I have two buffs, one is a bond I form with other psi that enhance my power regen, and the other is a wis / int buff for my group. I also have a stance, which I had to physically go get by clicking on some gestalt scattered throughout the world of Telon. I found this post which at least tells me what level I get a new one at, and where to find them per continent. Very handy information. This is another priceless site for Vanguard stuff, crafting related, and for all those diplomacy people out there, make sure you bookmark this. This site explains how to use the G15 keyboard to program crafting macros (so your wrists don’t fall off) and while I haven’t figured it out yet, I intend to. One of the best places to find information on diplomacy is here, and if you’re looking for fantastic maps, look no further then here. Everything you wanted to know about building your own house, can be found here. Figured I’d share a few of my favorite links, ones I use quite frequently while I play. I know Vanguard is certainly not for everyone, and there’s still plenty of bugs, but for some strange reason it’s stuck with me despite those. Probably because I remember how it was at release, and I had such high hopes for it.

The screen shot above is blurred because it’s raining out, which is an annoying weather factor that is slowly growing on me. It seems like it’s either always night time, or always raining, or raining and night time, and when Christmas was around it was always snowing. Inside buildings, that’s how powerful snow on Telon is (to be fair, the whole raining in buildings thing has now been fixed). Psi get to cast clones of the mobs they are fighting, they do no real damage but they inure a lot of hate, so you can snare and nuke a few shots before the mob (depending on it’s difficulty vs. you) will see through the illusion and slowly shamble over your way (as long as you’ve snared. Remember, you’re squishy, you’re going to die if you’re fighting something hard and it sees through that illusion and comes bolting after you). I’m thinking carpenter as far as tradeskill classes go, I haven’t quite decided though. My mino hit level 17 and I’d like to keep leveling that so I can at least get more pieces done on my house. Outfitter (specifically tailor) would be nice so then I could make my own gear- but how many times have I wanted to be able to make my own furniture. I suppose it’d be best to actually finish the house first, then worry about making things to put inside. It’s a little difficult to hang things on the walls that I don’t have yet.

Oh, and as a side note before it gets mentioned. I know how hideously ugly  those character models are (that’s a high elf pictured above, not that you can tell at all by the man-ish arms and hair that’s cut through her back) I’m keeping my fingers crossed on those revamps.