EQ2

Bots and books.. I hate them both

stargrace July 4, 2006 No Comments

I absolutely hate Obelisk these days. Since the revamp of the zone, they’ve broken more quests then they’ve fixed. The above picture just being one of them. The mob that this book calls for, no longer is even in the zone. It doesn’t exist. In it’s place is a single named, who spawns *every* time you kill him. Usually dropping metal, always dropping legendary. So not only can I not finish this quest at all, but there are typically 2-3 groups of plat farmers (bots) in there who have each of the named on a timed cycle.

SoE also just made it *easier* for these people to opperate, by removing the access quests to the Obelisk. Making it easier for anyone to enter, where as I devoted about 6 hours of work to get access to the areas needed. Needless to say, I am not happy. There are also two other book quests, part of the Remembrances series, that I am at the moment unable to do. One of them requires yet another mob (and 30 of that one mob) that spawns as a named 70% of the time now, and the other one requires mobs so rare to find in the zone that you may as well just give up while you’re ahead, especially if there’s anyone else in the zone.

I’m big on quests that reward house items, my house displays them nicely and I’m proud of what I’ve acomplished. Each character gets their own house, and if I play them to any degree I typically move them into a larger house. I just wish SoE would fix the broken quests (it’s been a few months now) and get rid of the bots. Too much to ask I suppose.

It’s all about the guild.. and other ramblings

stargrace July 3, 2006 No Comments

Lack of posts lately, I just haven’t felt the insperation I suppose. Now, I’ve moved servers twice before, once from Najena to Lucan D’Lere, and then back from Lucan to Najena (which is where I currently am). My choices to move were pretty basic, Lucan is far too small of a server for my tastes. It was a good time for a chance. I paid the $50 fee (twice) to move my two “mains” over, and don’t regret it at all. No issues with the move, their houses and banks and items remained in tact.

One thing I’ve done on each server and over time, is started a smaller guild just for my alts. This time was no different. I enjoy having a “home” for the smaller characters I play, if not specifically for any other bonus rather then just being able to use the guild bank to transfer items between them all (especially since I’m a heavy crafter). So “Rapture” is my new home, a guild name that I openly admit to seeing on Lucan and it appealed to me. Granted the one on Lucan is for a guild of Harlots and mine follows no such course, but I still found the name pleasant. There are exactly 7 members, 6 of which are my own characters, and the 7th a friend who also plays on Najena and put their smaller alt into the guild. I can craft and share items between the bank and I’m pleased with that. It also gives me a small “goal” to work towards in my spare time when I’m bored. I can level the guild up, if not for any other reason then simply because I wish to. It’s just a very relaxed thing for me to do.

Also started myself a little brigand today, Nesia (which is short for Amnesia, which is what I wanted origionally but found the name already taken). She’s going to end up as my carpenter (hopfully). So that’s 6 characters once again, though they’re all fairly small, the brusier sitting at level 24, the dirge at 20, the conj. at 8 and the brigand at 5. Then of course there’s the warden at 70 and the coercer at 63, fairly well rounded if I do say so myself. With nothing much to do until November I’ve pleanty of time to work on each one of them as well as crafting.

Cordanim is gone on a vacation for this week, so I don’t expect I’ll see him around, I hope he has fun though. Pascolino seems to be enjoying the smaller swashbuckler that he made to play on the server. It’s nice to hear about him enjoying the game without the pressures that are associated with a higher level main.

Made about 10p on the broker over the past few days, so I’m sitting comfortably at about 30p, which is just fine for me I don’t need a whole lot of money. Eventually you reach a point where there’s just simply nothing to buy anyhow, and you’re just crafting with it or buying pretties for alts, etc. It’s fun, lately I’ve gotten much more out of the game by simply doing smaller quests, and enjoying the basics of the game, no pressure.

Just another day

stargrace June 29, 2006 No Comments

*edit* Forgot to mention, I’ve got the page links along the top set up / working with brief bio’s and pictures of each gal.. wuwu!

That’s right, finally after a month or two of working on the Claymore series with Silverstep, I’m DONE with Sanctum! Not to mention the fact that the breast plate was actually an upgrade for my girlie. Well, sort of. The one she was wearing was cloth and had FT6 on it, which is handy for raids. However in every day group situations, I’d rather the stats / mitigation of the leather one vs. the cloth. I also finished the next claymore quest after this tunic, which rewarded me with a very nice ring, also an upgrade *cheers*.

Took Stargrace through the Den instance, managed to finish off Grizzfazzle’s quest for her, now she just needs three more levels in order to wear the weapon..*groans* I’m sure it’ll come eventually. I also started a new swashbuckler today, to take up the 6th (and final) character slot I have. Cordanim hasn’t been in game since I’ve moved servers, but hopfully I’ll get to see him around eventually. Making friends is awfully slow *grumbles* I’m still having a blast though! Ricotta’s betrayal is.. on hold.. for the time being, until I’m not quite so grumpy and I feel like working on it. Maybe I’ll just keep her in Haven, I haven’t decided really yet. That’s about all the rambling I’ve time for today, more tomorrow as always!

SoS and other quests

stargrace June 28, 2006 No Comments

As if it were not enough that I’ve been doing the claymore series with Silverstep, I decided to actually start it with Stargrace as well. Ugh.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The experiance is very nice, and I don’t actually mind SoS that much.. yet. However, this series of quests has you running literally *all* over SoS, and in most cases by the time a group has made it to the lower levels of the zone, they’re no longer interested in actually working on the quest any more, since it takes quite a bit of time to delve that deep. Unless you are a monk, and can FD your way down there. Even invis will only take you so far, as random guards and mobs will see through. I spent some time farming food supplies for Stargrace to cook with, she’s been slacking for quite some time now, and Silverstep spent some time just wandering around EFP a little, I wasn’t really in the mood to play. I did join an PoA (Palace of the Awakened) group for a short while; but as always there are good pick up groups, and bad. This one was certainly one of the worse ones I’ve been in, perhaps one of the reasons I tend to avoid them (though I’ve no choice right now, being new to this server). First sign that it was a bad group, a random invite to it. Now granted, I *did* have my LFG up, but I recieved no tells on what we’d be doing, where we were going, or if I was interested in that specific group. Typically I’d just turn them down right away for that. I perfer to get a tell first. Just picky that way I suppose. Second sign. There’s just me and the shadowknight in the zone to start, and a necromancer in the group. Both are mid 60’s while I’m level 70. We then invite another mid 60’s inquisitor and another shadowknight. 20 minutes pass, and it is still just myself and the shadowknight in the zone. The shadowknight is busy dueling other groups that are also gathered at the front entrance. Still no one has spoken a word in group. Needless to say, after that I didn’t stick around, and left to do my own thing for a bit.

Ricotta is still working on betrayal, and I hate it, I perfer the old method. Why? Because unless you’re very twinked out and can ping off the sabatoge quests fast, you’re going to be at it a while. The simpliest quest I’ve found is rock smashing. You walk approx. 20 feet away from the quest giver, to the Freeport city walls, and find 5 rocks to click / smash. Back to the quest giver and you recieve +1,000 faction for Qeynos. Issues? #1. The rocks take a little bit to respawn. #2. +1,000 is not very much faction when you’re looking to get from -50,000 faction to +40,000 faction. It takes approx. 5 minutes per quest. Now, granted there are other quests with greater faction rewards, one of which is +5,000 and I did manage to complete one. But in the time it took me to finish that one quest, I could have completed at least 5 of the easy rock smashing ones. It requires you to sneak into the crafting instance in West Freeport (level 30+ heroic guards at the gates, you’ve got to use the sewers to get to WFP, level 72 epic x 4 at the other gates, level 50+ heroics that patrol the streets), once you’re there, you have to sneak around collecting 24 recipie cards. There are 2 see invis mobs in the zone that you can avoid, and shift the camera angle so that you can click the cards. Then you have to sneak back out of west freeport, back through the sewers, out to commonlands to complete the turn in. Yeah. Like I said, not the most fun of quests. I’m eager to finish her up though and perhaps get closer to level 20. Also, you get no exp rewards at all while working these sabatoge quests. And they get permanently removed from your journal upon completion so they don’t count towards your total quest count. Sighs.

The Exiled

stargrace June 26, 2006 1 Comment

That’s right, Ricotta is now an exile from Freeport. At the moment she’s sitting at 111 quests, and 23% into level 19. I decided to check out the new betrayal system for a few reasons. One of course is natural curiosity, I’ve betrayed my fair share of characters using the old method, and found it an interesting way to add some history behind each character. This new method so far, is quite entertaining. I had to run around Freeport doing various tasks for “squires” who would tell me of this Haven, a town located in some caves, where those of neutral alignment (hated by both towns) could escape to. The quests even sent me some mail as I made my adventures along, from “Citizens of a Free Freeport”, it was great. Haven itself is fairly sparce, however for those who are not attached to material house things, it is not that bad. There are sections for crafting, a black market, secret entrance ways to various zones, a bank, and even a market place to buy food and general supplies. Over all I was quite impressed and had fun running around. Of course, now the boring work starts, working my Qeynos faction. I’m actually going to remain a dirge, I’ve no inclination to switch to a troubador. So why bother betraying at all? First of all, I gathered all of the Freeport language primers. Since merchants of Freeport will not sell to those from Qeynos, and vice versa.

I wanted Ricotta to have the opportunity to learn all languages. She is a worldy ratonga after all, singing her songs in whatever language she pleases. So that was one deciding factor in the betrayal. Also, I wanted to be able to do some of the Freeport quests (hence the 111 at this point in time) as well as the Qeynos ones. This server also appears to be Qeynos heavy, with better sales on the Qeynos side. So those were the deciding factors for me. The small quests I’m required to do to work my faction back up to ally, are…. not fun. I’m only level 19, so things still squish me fairly easily. I’m not a twink, at all. I wear level 2 gear because it’s what I’ve found / can afford. I have no guild to help me out. Thus far the easiest quest I’ve found, is basically me running back and forth along a wall about 10 paces from the quest giver, and smashing 5 rocks. Rinse and repeat. This gives me +1,000 to Qeynos each run, and I’m sitting at -47,000 currently. I’m told I need to get to +40,000 before I can actually move back to Qeynos. This should be… interesting. Various quests give more faction then others, based of course on the difficulty of the quest. One that has me running into Freeport directly, gives +5,000 faction to Qeynos, so I’m going to attempt some of those ones today and see if I can’t finish this betrayal up. I was hoping I’d get to keep “the exiled” as my name, but I think it’s a temporary status seeing as I can not remove it whatso ever while I am betraying. All in all, a lot of fun!