Crafting

Saturday Bits and Pieces

stargrace June 7, 2009 3Comments

Ah yes, another picture less blog post which means I’m blogging from bed again where I have no screen shots saved. Not going to rant about that here, no doubt my spirits about this whole situated will improve before too long.

Yesterday was not nearly as productive as I had of hoped. I did get some wizard 101 time in and my alt, Emma, is level 8 now and wandering through Triton Avenue and Cyclops Lane completing quests. She’s picked up a few more house items but nothing of any great significance. Mostly books and candles.

In EQ2 it was also fairly quiet, most of my friends were either away for the day or working, so I spent most of it working on my transmuting (I believe I’m at 230 skill now maybe slightly over) and working on the carpenter.

I love carpenters, I already have one on Najena, the coercer. This time around it’s my illusionist. I was at level 55 and running low on vitality but thanks to potions managed to inch my way to level 61, which is when the cool recipes start. Level 60 also meant I could head to The Isle of Mara and pick up the carpenter only shiny collection, granting me some very nice Asian themed recipes which will certainly come in handy.

That was the extent of my gaming for the day. I haven’t figured out if Sims 3 can be run on my laptop, but I may attempt to install it to find out. EQ2 runs just fine (and EQ) so we’ll just have to see. I’ve been contemplating starting up WoW again just for something exceptionally casual (please don’t flog me) but I only own up to the burning crusade and I’ve never managed to get a character over level 50. Go figure that the ONE game that is supposed to be the ‘easiest’ out there is also the one I’ve never had a max level character in, nor have I ever raided. I think the fact that you can simply use addons that will ‘do it all’ for you is a turn off in that regard and it’s why I’ve never tried.

I attempted to move my troubador to Kithicor via the email character transfer service, but their responce was that I would have to call their office for security reasons. I have no idea why, but it seemed odd (and annoying) that I would have to wait until 1pm on a Monday and then call to San Diego. I’m not sure moving a character is even worth whatever hassle will come from that so I may just decide against it. Not like I don’t already have plenty to work on.

I hope everyone is having an amazing weekend, I’ll see you in Norrath (and probably Telon, and Wizard city, and any other number of places)!

Gaming

Lost in the Void – Tradeskill Style

stargrace June 5, 2009 0Comment

Yesterday saw us with an odd assortment of guild mates actually on line (all four of us at once!) which hasn’t been happening often this week due to work, so we decided to take advantage of it. That was until Ultann lost his power for a few hours. In the mean time Kasul, Wpus, and I decided we would attempt a crafting mission, and as chance would have it, the mission of the day was the newest one that was added, the void mission.

I’d never done this mission before and I was excited. We all ported over to the Moors where one of the air balloon NPC send you on your way. A few words of warning for this particular mission. It doesn’t tell you, but you require a mining skill of 25+ in order to harvest the ore that is in the zone. This differs from the regular instances where harvesting skill is not taken into account at all. There was no warning that I’d need this skill either, so I had to leave and come back.

Number two, there’s no real ‘door’ to this zone which means that unless you happen to be CURRENTLY ON the quest, there’s no way into the zone (that I have found at least). Now, the down side to this is that if you complete the quest, and then accidently click the ‘zone to Moors’ button that pops up on the nice shiny void door before looting the chest – you will have no way of returning. Arysh didn’t miss out on too much at least when the chest was popped, as we only managed to get ourselves a jewelers piece of gear (which Kasul already had). I dragged both the tailor and the carpenter to the zone to gain the crafter shards as well as faction.

The zone itself was beautiful, and the quest was quite fun. You have literally walked in on a failed raid, and what the raiders could not do in their uber gear the crafters will attempt. Of course there’s the matter of supplies. Dead raiders and mounts lay all over the zone and you have to run around taking the clothes from their corpses. Literally. You click on the dead body and watch as their gear vanishes. It was incredibly funny. You also steal flesh from the dead mounts in order to create the food articles needed. The trees near by can be used for wood, there just happens to be some void-coal laying around the ground, and there are little piles of moving void goo that you can harvest.

But what about a craft table? Well, thankfully the gnome who tells you about the mission has a supply of tinkered ones available, they last for 15 minutes each round and he’ll pass out stacks. We all managed to complete our portions (with poor Kasul doing most of the work, as Wpus and myself are mere lowbie crafters and the combines were quite daunting) and the quest was completed without too much trouble. Of course we all know crafters are incredible beings of power, so we managed to create the portal using the supplies left behind. Who needs raiders.

Once Ultann’s power returned we headed to Veksar: The Sunken Theater and cleared the entire zone (it also happened to be the daily double for yesterday). It makes an amazing difference when I can concentrate on just playing the enchanter and stunning every opportunity I get. Not that I mind two boxing and playing the mystic, but of course performance is better when not divided. Nothing of great worth dropped, and we still had some time before people had to call it an night (myself included) so we headed over to Obelisk of Ahkzul (no shield) and then for a change of pace we went to the Commonlands and completed Cavern of the Afflicted (no jester’s cap, no sword). Ellithia is 16 shards away from completing her T2 void set, Arysh is quite a few more behind but she’s getting there slowly. It’s nice to be able to complete these zones without too much difficulty, and when there is difficulty we don’t have a whole lot of people berating us telling us how much we suck (like that one warlock from Deep Forge who wanted to bring a 3rd healer along when we wiped once on the final named). I didn’t get any time to work on my transmuting before I had to call it a night, but I’m still hoping to get high enough to be able to transmute level 70+ gear before too long. The guild bank has been purged of lower level rares in order to make items to transmute, and I think I currently have enough for about 150 combines, which should grant at least 60-80 skill ups depending on how lucky I am (though we all know if I didn’t have bad luck I’d have no luck at all).

I hope everyone has an incredible Friday, no matter where you find yourself. I should be in various games this weekend, but as always you can get a hold of me via email, twitter, or any other means you can find (most are listed in the upper left portion of the web site). Safe travels and happy gaming!

Gaming

A Day of Crafting and Instances

stargrace May 19, 2009 3Comments

Yesterday was Victoria Day here in Canada (though I was informed that it’s called something else in Quebec) and a quiet one too (at least for me). I’m still recovering from being sick these past three weeks which is a process that’s frustrating since I seem to be on a ‘good day bad day’ plan where I’m feeling fantastic one day only to get up at 2am the next and feel horrible.

Game wise things were relatively productive though not exactly on the same level as the day before. I managed to inch the illusionist up from level 40 carpenter to 46 before burning up my vitality. I have plans to get her to 50 so that I can do the crafting quests in the Moors and eventually take her to the crafting instances to try and obtain some books and other goodies. I’ve got all of them except one on the mystic (tailor) and it would be great if I could get that one to drop. Plus there’s the faction which would be nice to get and finish off one day (which I have slacked horribly on I’ll admit).

Aside from the crafting there were instances. Ah yes there are always instances. We headed to Maidens and Chelsith neither of which dropped anything of use this time around, and then we decided to head to The Crucible, a TSO instance in Everfrost. We’d never been there as a trio before and in the past you used to be able to stun the final named each 20% to avoid the massive AoE that goes off if you don’t click books in time. Since I had my doubts (that were later confirmed) that I’d be able to heal + click books effectively I decided I’d try the stun approach on my illusionist.

Except each time I cast my stun I was granted the annoying resist ping sound that happens, so we couldn’t stop the books from spawning. Wpus and I grabbed torches and burned books as they appeared, then Wpus took down the adds but alas it became too much for me to be able to burn books and heal at the same time, so we ended up giving the encounter three tries before calling it. If we added one more person to our little trio we’d have had it down no problems at all. We did manage to get him down to 46% which was amazing for just the three of us I figure. All was not lost though, we still got the ‘free’ shard update from the main floor, as well as the shard update from the quests given outside. I’m slowly working on getting a T2 set for the illusionist and finishing off the T2 set on the mystic. She only needs the breastplate and the shoulders for her set to be completed. What I also didn’t realize last night is that they changed the 5 piece bonus on my gear. That will teach me not to pay attention.

Now that both of my characters (on Kithicor) have their epics, it’s time to mark out a new plan of attack – what to do next. There’s a huge bundle of aa that the illusionist is missing because she was leveled up fairly fast, she’s only sitting on 100 right now, which leaves another 100 to go. The mystic is faring slightly better with 156 aa under her belt. Though I’m not in too much of a rush for hers because there’s not exactly a lot of ‘useful’ aa. What I’d really like (especially for the TSO heal aa) is for them to physically show on the spells you have. My TSO aa increase the amount of crit and the amount of the base heal, but when you examine the heal they’re not listed as being adjusted. Makes me feel as though the heals are doing no more then they would typically do.

Hopefully GU52 gets put on the test server soon so that it can move to live, I know a lot of people are looking forward to that one. In the mean time, I’ll see you in Norrath!

Gaming

Hanging Around Bree

stargrace April 7, 2009 2Comments

My (now) 17 Minstrel hanging outside of Bree last night. It was one of the few ‘safe’ places to be that didn’t involve “rubberbanding” as they’re calling it on the forums and in game.

The issue is quite simple. I’m not sure if it’s present on all servers but it’s certainly on Nostalgia’s. Eventually as you’re walking along, at particular points you’ll meet up with an invisible wall that pushes you backwards each and every time you try to push forward. It slings you back, like a rubber band. There was one such wall on the outskirts of Bree, heading towards the Shire. It also happened to be exactly where Kasul and I needed to go to progress our epic line. No worries though, we worked around the area by using swifttravel, even though it took us a huge distance out of our way. When the quest sent us back to that area again we decided to move on to other things.

Needless to say neither of us gained very much experience.

We did still have fun though. No office supply is going to stop that! So we spent the majority of the evening wandering close to Bree, picking off bears and searching for mines. Once we’d filled our bags with goodies we headed back to the crafting area to gain a few skill ups. While crafting in LotRO takes a LOT of resources, I also enjoy it. Crafters rely on one another for components, much like VG does and EQ2 used to do. With an active Kinship (and Nostalgia is active for the members we have) this is hardly an issue as we’re constantly trading things between one another for use. Combines are done much the way they are in World of Warcraft, nothing too fancy about it. It’s not a mini game like EQ2 and you can’t (as far as I know) fail the combines like EQ, thus losing all of your material. I’m attempting to save up for a house (some day) but dang are they expensive. I can barely afford my skills each time I level, let alone a LOT of gold for a home. It’s a (far) future goal of mine though.

Lately I have had a HUGE ache for some role play. When I had these cravings before I used to satisfy them in EQ2 as a guide – but I don’t have the time to dedicate to the program any more. There are no D&D groups that I know of around here (here being Ottawa) so I’m trying to think of a little project I can do that would take care of my desire to be a story teller or my need to listen to other people’s stories. One idea I’m tossing around is creating an alt on Antonia Bayle (the most populated server in EQ2, also happens to be one of two RP servers) and write about an adventure of hers once a week leaving her for only role play. There are LOTS of guild events that happen on AB for RP purposes, and I could easily lose myself in one of those.

Aside from that, I’m not sure what other games out there offer a strong RP community. I’ll have to search a little bit. It’s like an itch that needs scratching, creative juices that are eager to flow (or some such thing. It’s late and I can’t come up with flowery words right now).

Hopefully LotRO is fixed back to normal by Thursday, which is the 2nd day of the week designated for some play time (during the day this time). I’m looking forward to inching towards level 20 – and appearance slots. Kasul got himself a really nice pirate hat and eye patch tonight, and I’ve been looking for ‘fluff’ armor for just such a reason.

Hope everyone else had an amazing night!

Gaming

Relaxing in Middle-Earth

stargrace April 3, 2009 0Comment

For the first time since September, I played last night and had no graphic glitches at all. It was nice. It was really nice. Kasul, Tipa, and I headed to LotRO and spent some time slaying various creatures and progressing the epic line. Now, I’ll admit I didn’t spend that much time actually reading the quests. I normally do, I love reading all the stories and then I get to thinking about who wrote them and what inspired them and it just takes off from there. However; I was dealing with some real life background noise (ie: stress) and just trying to make sure I followed along, kept people healed, and didn’t trip over my own two feet very much. I was so happy that the new video card ran (and ran well) that I could barely do more then walk around in a half daze looking at everything.

I do remember getting quite a few pieces of gear upgrade. I got a new cloak, some gloves and even a really awesome recipe that only has a one time charge of some cloth shoulders. It came from one of the instances we ran, and I’d never seen it before. My tailor (explorer) is happily leveling away, and things are going well in that direction.

Gozad also started playing on the same server as Nostalgia (our Kinship, now spanning three games officially, though you can find Nostalgians all over the place), not sure if he plans on continuing or not but it’s always nice to have another member. Our Kinship just reached rank 6, and we’re headed towards rank 7.

I like to unlock the various deeds and see a mass accumulation of titles and little ‘unique’ bits to the game that show off the various feats my character has accomplished. Even if they’re the same titles that everyone else has earned, they are unique to my character and remind me about what I’ve done (or haven’t done) in game. The one Tipa is sporting (on her character Dera) is awesome, and completely fitting for the little hobbit (who I keep wanting to call a halfling due to EverQuest II). It was a wonder we didn’t step on her multiple times throughout the night. Elves may be slim and move with grace, but my Minstrel is wearing some pretty clunky items and I always feel like I’m clunking around instead of floating gracefully.

Monday evening should be the next LotRO meeting unless Kasul has changed his schedule around for that day (one never knows) I managed to reach level 16 and part way through it. We also started working on Book one Chapter five (I believe that’s where we’re at in any case) which has us running all over the place currently. I don’t own a mount (nor do I envision myself owning one any time soon) so it’s a lot of running. A lot.

Over all? Having a lot of fun with the game. Of course, playing with great friends always makes games 100x better then playing alone.

Saturday Bits and Pieces

Lost in the Void – Tradeskill Style

A Day of Crafting and Instances

Hanging Around Bree

Relaxing in Middle-Earth

You Missed

The Search For Hrada-Oki Bivouac

Personal EVE Economic Update (October)

Expensive Month (preparing for fun)

Locked Out (again)