Nomadic Gamer

Too much plat spam and other ramblings

stargrace March 27, 2007 4 Comments

Stargrace and Silverstep, both working on the newest released quest, the sword of destiny

I’m not sure about any other servers out there, but mine has been bombarded it seems with tells for power leveling and selling platinum. Now, I don’t really care if people buy money. It’s a personal choice, breaking the rules or not. What I do mind, is the 3-4 tells I get from Xsdfjtidnmb advertising their site. I report every one of them. Not always because I hate people who buy plat, but just because they’re interrupting the game for me. The only way to avoid them is to go /role or /anon and I don’t believe that anyone should have to do that just to avoid the spam tells. It’s also a shame when I get all excited seeing my “you have mail” icon go off, rush to a mail box, only to find that it’s some gold selling site advertising their wears. My assumption for this sudden influx? They’re not making as much money as they used to. So they feel like they have to advertise more. When I played EQLive everyone knew where to go if you wanted to buy gold. It was like this secret that people rarely talked about but everyone had heard of it. I never once got a tell about it. Even in WoW I never received a tell about buying money for the game – though I did occasionally hear the messages being spammed over the channels.

In VG there’s a huge lock down on those who advertise selling money in game. I love it. They announce it to the server and all that good stuff. I wish EQII were the same way, but that’s just my grumpy opinion.

I have a few in-game dilemmas lately that I’m not sure how to handle. The largest one would be that although I have been welcome to raid with a specific guild, I am not allowed to join that guild. So while I play a needed class, and have been raiding constantly with them for the past two weeks, the leader says it would be a bad idea if I joined, and that I am not welcome to. It’s one thing to be a tag-along on a raid, but being an actual member of the guild is something all together different. I’m not concerned about loot at all, they use a dkp method that I am apart of, but lets say an actual guild member works up the class that I play. Or they find another class outside of guild. They will (obviously) get priority on raids because they carry the tag and I do not. It’s a case of “good enough for the raids, but not good enough for the guild” that I find really unfair. It’s understandable, because of a few other factors that I won’t get into here. I’ve been invited to tag along on some other raids, with another guild who is interested in me joining them, but I don’t feel quite as comfortable with them. That could change though I suppose. Hence my issue.

I’ve also been trying to decide which two characters to work on solidly. It’s difficult to work all three on the main quests that I have. I want to work on the sword of destiny before tomorrow’s game update comes out and they release another part. Doing the quest with all three characters though is a huge pain. Hell doing it with one is. Then there’s also my claymore and DT access quests. Neither the templar nor the illusionist have it though the fury is done both. Argh. The illusionist is at least almost at 100 aa, but the templar and even the fury are so far behind. Then of course there’s all the regular real life stuff going on that people have to deal with that’s not even game related. Feeling slightly stressed over everything.

Weekends are for raiding.. and questing.. and friends.. and instances.. and

stargrace March 26, 2007 1 Comment

The Entrance to Freethinkers Hideout

This weekend was a mixture of raids, instances, quests, and various other pleasures of EQII. I raided yesterday again, nice calm raids that are always a lot of fun, Lyceum and Labs. Both went flawlessly. Before raids, I was trying to get the tunare orb quest completed that both Dasie (the templar) and Stargrace (the illusionist) have. The quest however is a lot longer then I recall it being. I did get the obelisk portion done though, I had wanted to complete it before raids and that didn’t end up working out, but I did get a few steps done, progress is progress after all. The illusionist also managed to get to 96 aa’s between working that quest, and then later (much later) that night, doing an unrest group. She’d never been before, I’ve only ever gone with the templar, so it was a pretty fun experience.

Died twice, both in the same hallway due to buggy mobs that pull through the walls. It doesn’t seem to matter what MMO I play, that’s always an issue. Well, died to Bugaboo as well at the end, but I was not expecting anything less – although – I did hit him for 400 points of damage. Before he hit me, for 13,000. Not fair! The loots were pretty lame too, the plasma wand (which I have yet to see) of course did not drop, nor did the fabled cloak at the end, and both the set pieces of gear were shadowknight pieces. Which, was of course great for the main tank, and eww for the rest of us (side note, the shadowknight / paladin legendary pieces are silver, which is just girlie! Haha. Poor shadowknights). Still a fun run though. I was on vent for the group and basically just played it as background noise, concentrating on dps performance. Speaking of which, illusionists are wonderful dps and don’t ever let anyone say other wise. On the KoS raids I parse typically anywhere from 1,000-1,600 and on some named fights parse 1,800 if they’re the ones who are melee resistant. It’s all about the procs. There’s pleanty of proc gear out there that I don’t have, but in the mean time the pieces I do have work nicely. I love my dps group, it’s a fury (int buffs, vim etc and wonderfully fast group heals), a wizard (again, their group proc spell rocks) a troubador (who is just amazing in a mage group), a brigand so that I can dps buff them with my buffs, and typically either a summoner class of some sort (necro or conj) or a second wizard depending on who is available.

Game Update 33 goes in this Wednesday. Which means I should idealistically finish off the Sword of Destiny quest series (the pieces that have been released) so that I’m up to date and not rushing with a bunch of other people to complete it. Whether or not I’ll actually get around to it, I’m not sure yet. I have been trying to work on claymore for the illusionist, she’s on the last quest in SoS. The templar…. still has not started. Sighs. I’m not looking forward to it. The illusionist could actually get by very well not even doing the quest, the end reward is not that great for mages, but the templar could use it for sure. It’s one of those must-haves for healers.

Crafting has been slow, but I’m looking to pick it up a bit. I need 5 levels on both the woodworker and the sage. Nice quiet afternoon projects to do between house work and the other mundane tasks of every day life.

Freethinkers, Castle Mistmoore, and a whole lot of deaths

stargrace March 24, 2007 1 Comment

Aww, what a cute couple…

Headed off to Castle Mistmoore last night with a pick up group none the less. Something almost unheard of by me, I hate PuG’s, and that zone is awful for them. I had done Freethinkers about 30 minutes earlier though, and was not quite in the mood to call it a night yet. I’m glad I decided to go. Since TK has fallen (for the most part) I’ve been trying to get a feel for other groups and guilds, trying to find a new home. It’s always nice to actually get out there and play in order to do that. The two groups consisted of a few banished, myself and Ymirr from TK, and some random folks (such as Zepp pictured above). The zone typically lags people. We had a bard who kept going LD on us, and adds, always lots of adds. Typically people would lag into them (For once, I have absolutely zero lag in this zone since I’ve gotten the new computer, I adore it) and before you know it, there are 10 more adds. The epics in the zone also hurt, in fact, they hurt bad. We had no shaman, which would have made a world of difference. I’m leveling mine up, the defiler that is. There seems to be a small demand for them and I’ve never played one end game, only the templar and the fury.

Freethinkers was fun. There are ‘tricks’ to the zone that are getting fixed shortly with the tinkered mem-wipe item. A lot of legendary dropped, upgrades and even nicer then some fabled. Go figure. Parsed fairly low since I was on mem-wipe patrol and there were timers going off and all the rest. Still managed around 1,000-1,200 though. Trying to make a few adornments to help out. The fury has been neglected since it seems the entire server went off and created them. I use her to port the illusionist around, and other then that.. not much else.

Hopefully I can wiggle my way into a few more raids. I haven’t gotten a stitch of gear as upgrades, but it’s not that much of an issue for me. When I’m playing the templar I’m a little more aware of my lack of gear due to the simple fact that she’s wearing T7 legendary and T6 fabled. Gear does NOT make the player though, I am a firm believer in that. I’ll take a templar MT healer who’s paying attention over a fully fabled one who couldn’t find their heal button if it was stapled to their ass any day. Trust me, there are a lot of those out there just because templars have a pure HP buff, Sanctuary, and other “pretties” that make them desirable in a MT group.

Despite paying almost 50g in repair bills, yesterday was fun.

Brief Update

stargrace March 23, 2007 2 Comments

Just a brief update today, yesterday the site hit it’s highest hits-per-day yet, at a little over 1700. I’ve been averaging 1000-1200 a day, which is pretty nice. Most of the hits are for the relic list that I have posted, as well as the claymore quests. Though once someone did type in “EQII breasts” to get the site. As well as “Blow Jobs”….. not that I’ve ever talked about either of those until this second. The only down side to having so many alts is trying to find them all a home. I’m feeling the stings of a depleted guild slightly, there are 5-6 of us who play on occasion still in TK, though there is more like 3 of us who play consistently. It makes for a lonely game. My own fault, I’m picky with who my friends are. I hate having to teach someone how to play their class and I have a high standard. Oh well.

Moody today and it shows. Restless with all the characters. I did some T6 instance runs real fast to see if a master or two would drop (which they did not, of course) and acquired some  transmutables. Crafted a little, worked on tinkering a little. Was invited to a HoS raid and declined, just wasn’t in the mood to do a raid with a bunch of new people. I decided after some comments from Gaff that I’d trade in the fae guardian for a fae zerker, and Flirt was re-born. I got both the zerker and the troubador to level 5, and level 10 in crafting. The zerker will be (hopefully) making her own armour, and the troubador will be making furniture. I played around in the fae’s baby zone, which is quite fun. I’ve done the quests a few times on my higher level characters just for the aa’s on turn in.

Other then that, nothing new to post. Haven’t been in game that much as there was some running around to do. Maybe I can snap out of this mood and be in better spirits tomorrow.

Back into the Fae

stargrace March 22, 2007 4 Comments

Tulips, the newest addition

Worked transmuting to 285 yesterday, which means I can now transmute up to level 62 items for components, though I can still only physically make the items from 50-59 until I hit a skill of 300. I’m glad I’m getting it all done now, and I don’t want to ever have to do that again. I’ve spent 65 plat on the project thus far, and have been farming the T6/7 stuff myself from poets and random adventuring zones. Each combine still takes 11 adepts (roughly) so that’s a whole lot of money being spent when I get a skill up now roughly every 4-5 combines. Still, I’m one of those people who enjoy being able to do everything herself as far as gear goes and in the long run I think it will benefit me to be able to make my own adornments and components for adornments.

On that note, I decided it was time to expand my alt-ness and create some new gals to play around on. Not just adventuring but also in the crafting realm, in fact probably more so in the crafting realm then anything else, I wanted a carpenter and an armorer. So I made Tulips (above) my new fae troubador, and I also made Flirt, my new fae guardian. Wait. Did I just say I made a guardian? A tank class? Something must be wrong with me. That’s right, I decided to give it a whirl. Do I expect my guardian to actually get anywhere? No, not really. I can level her using my healers though and mentoring from the other account, and tanks lately have been in high demand, they sort of get screwed. You only need one or two tanks on a raid, but you need one in every single group (at least instances, perhaps not if you’re just doing solo stuff) so they level up fast, but then get forgotten when it comes to raiding. Healers are also needed and level up fast, but there is such an abundance of them lately that mine are rarely needed. I’d like to level up my mystic a little just to see what they’re like end game, since I already have the 70 templar and fury.

Some others on the server have noticed the sharp decline in population – not in the game in general because honestly I see plenty of people still playing, but on Lucan D’Lere a lot of people have been transfering. In some cases, it’s been a good thing, we’ve lost some server troublemakers that I am not sorry to see go. In other cases entire role play guilds have decided to move to the other server in search of a larger player base. I keep /feedbacking to see if perhaps SoE will offer free character transfers again because that is the only way I’ll be able to move. I am not about to pay $50 per character to move all 8 that I currently have and because I’m so keen on the whole ‘being self reliant’ aspect, I’d be heartbroken if I had to give any of them up.

Because both coercers and illusionists seem to be in some what of a high demand, I was contemplating creating a coercer on one account and leveling them up slowly, then I’d have my choice of coercer or illusionist, but erms, I think perhaps I was getting a wee bit carried away *grins*

I’ve been having fun in game at least (incase that’s hard to tell). It was difficult adjusting to the fact that my best friend stopped playing completely (and now is saying he’s not going to play Vanguard either) and that the guild is no more, but it’s not that difficult to find another little niche for myself. I’ve at least been raiding, questing, and well ok so I haven’t been crafting much besides transmuting but now that I can at least do the beginning of T6 I can get back to the regular crafters. Too much time on my hands? Of course, but everyone needs a hobby. Does it interfere with my real life (the little bit that I have) I don’t think so. I’m reading a great book by Tad Williams called Shadowmarch, and with Easter coming up there’s some family events to attend to (not that my family is overly religious but we do have a nice dinner). Got a new vacuum, granted that’s not exciting at all *grins* anyhow, enough of my boring life!