EQ

Missions and Achievements #EverQuest

EQ000063I haven’t had a lot of time to game lately, the weekend was filled with purchasing a new entertainment unit and then helping to bring that thing home – and then I got a really bad tooth infection so I’ve been pretty out of it on painkillers and antibiotics. I did get a little bit of gaming in though. Fremder, Oger and myself managed to make our way to a VOA mission or two, and they were quite fun! In the one pictured above we had to move some objects over so that we could kill the Avatar of Steel, he would send earthquakes out over the land and cause a ruckus. We didn’t have to do too much for this mission, but the next one made up for it.

In the next mission we decided we would try to complete the achievements as well. This involved killing a bunch of different creatures in the instance, as well as defeating all of the hunters that were down one path. The mission itself was quite neat, we had to follow an NPC down a path to a cave area, and while the NPC was not aggro to anything, we sure were. Plus everything sees invis. Once we made our way there, we had to open a crate that had a mommy dog in it, and then she attacked us, so we had to kill her. We opened the rest of the crates and found other pups in those which we had to collect and return to the NPC. It seems like those pups were being stolen and shipped out illegally! Who would do such a thing!

I like missions that have a story and have more to them than just simple killing. Although we had to re-start the second one because we didn’t get the updates properly. Experience is quite slow now, my enchanter is almost 96 but not quite there yet. With everyone busy finding a group to gain experience with is something that doesn’t happen all that often. I’ve been thinking of delving into WoW again for a bit as a nice ‘relaxing’ no brainer game, but we’ll just have to see.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Housing Quests and An Epic Request #EverQuest

EQ000061With the hand aug finally out of the way, it was time to decide what to work on next. My typical group of EQ players are a bit bogged down lately with work, so most of the time I’m on my own. EQ is a tough game to play alone, for a number of reasons. I spent some time over at the latest EQ fan site, EQResource – they have a fantastic little area of “special quests” listed. One of the sections is all about housing quests, which I have partially worked on but not yet completed. This is on my list of things to do before too long. I also want to complete ‘An Epic Request‘ which allows you to get an ornamentation for your weapon if you’ve completed one (or both) of your epic quests. I’ve always loved the graphic of my enchanter epic, so this is something I certainly want to complete.

Instead of doing any of that, yesterday was spent with me working on obtaining my Master Baker Trophy. In hindsight I really should have obtained all of my trophies well before hitting 300, because the baking test that you have to complete is much easier at lower levels. The higher level ones tend to require a bunch of items that no one sells and you’ll have to go out hunting for. For the Master trophy I had to create the following:

Create 1 Hearty Meat Sauce using tradeskills
Create 1 Sea Green Cookies using tradeskills
Create 1 Wolf Fillet in Cream using tradeskills
Create 1 Pixie Powder Cinnesticks using tradeskills
Create 1 Beer-Battered Darkhollow Basilisk Souffle using tradeskills
Create 1 Grandmaster Baker’s Spoon using tradeskills
Create 1 Blood Raven Stew using tradeskills
Create 1 Hero Sandwich using tradeskills
Create 1 Hobgoblin Surprise using tradeskills
Create 1 Misty Thicket Picnic using tradeskills

As you can see it also requires the Grandmaster item which is the old crafting trophy people used to get with a 5% mod. The new ones grant 15% at their highest evolution. Of course me being me, I accidentally gave my quest piece to my enchanter PET instead of to the quest NPC. The pet stands right in front of me, constantly, and if I’m not paying close attention it is way too easy to do this. So I had to send in a petition and have a friendly GM return the piece to me. Thankfully they did so without any issues at all and I didn’t even have a very long wait.

While I was waiting to complete the trophy I decided to start a new magician. I still yearn for a class that I can play alone when my steady group is otherwise occupied. I’ve heard good things about magicians but I’ve never played one before. I leveled her up in Crescent Reach last night, and I’m level 15 so far. Things should be pretty straight forward until about level 40-50 and then I’ll see how much I enjoy the class.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

A Dancing Frog and a Gnome Walk into a House #EverQuest

singingThis weekend was spent trying to finish off that many-piece hand aug – and I actually managed to finish it thanks to some help (mostly company) from Oger. The final portion was doing two missions so that we could afford to spend doubloons on the 7 containers that are required for the final combine. I’m really pleased that we finished it, and that the 20+ pieces of the quest are out of my bags. The aug is an upgrade for me, so I expect that I’ll be using it for quite some time. There were a lot of achievements with finishing this item, one for each island you complete, then two for finishing all of the islands and also doing the final combine for the hand.

The remainder of my weekend was spent decorating my humble abode. I had previously owned a house but since I had been away for more than 90 days they evicted me. I received a nice little parcel with my belongings all packed up. So I moved into the guild neighbourhood, picking the best plot of the zone, of course, which is right beside a lake. The old house I owned still had all of its items inside which meant that I really only had to work on making the outside look presentable.

While I was decorating and placing a few paintings – my curious box item (a statue of a frog) came to life with a top hat and a cane and began dancing and singing around me! It was hilarious and so completely unexpected that I couldn’t help but take a few screen shots.

EQ doesn’t have nearly as many quested items as EQ2 and I find that to be the one downfall to the games housing. There are merchants who sell house items, there are crafted house items, many in-game items can be placed, and there is of course the station cash store. There is a small handful of quested house items but it leaves a lot to be desired and I found absolutely no way to get this list without specifically requesting it on the forums. Google search brought up pretty much nothing. I suppose that’s what comes with a 14 year old game. At least there’s some information about it out there.

I also learned that there’s a taxidermy ability that came with VOA that allows you to mount a few mob heads to your wall as house items. These items are technically crafted, so they’re also not listed on any housing item list per say. The best way for me to figure out what sorts are out there was to do a search for ‘mounted‘ in zam. Sadly it doesn’t look like any new ones were added with RoF but hey at least it’s something.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Enter Breeding Grounds #EverQuest

EQ000060Last night was a trip to Breeding Grounds to complete an instance, the mobs were red con to my 95 enchanter, but that didn’t stop Fremder and Nonpoint from taking them down for Oger and myself. The experience was pretty good, without grinding any experience my enchanter is part way through level 95. I still have a ways to go, but it’s moving at least. I’ve also been camping lion skin pelts in North Karana – something I absolutely hate doing. They’re incredibly rare, and used in an awesome quiver that my ranger wants. At 170k it may be quicker to farm the plat than it is to farm these pelts. On the plus side I also farm a lot of grizzly bear tufts along with wolf bits, and these sell for a fair amount in the bazaar. Offline selling has been a blessing, especially since I have two accounts.

Our mission began with Glimkar, we were completing “The Rise of the Ancients” which really went a lot more smooth than I thought it would have, considering our level compared to the level of the encounters. We also got an achievement for not killing any of the little rat mobs that were scattered throughout the zone. A nice bst neck piece dropped for an alt of Fremder, as well as a level 99 spell component. All in all, it was a nice relaxing way to spend an evening.

Unlike the rest of the week where I’ve been working on that hand aug.. Ugh.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Missions and Prayer Shawls #EverQuest

EQ000043It was a great Sunday for playing EverQuest, though I did manage to get a lot of spring cleaning done too (and broke the balcony door, thankfully that was easy to fix). Last night Oger, Xoxox, and myself decided to head to House of Thule to work on some missions, mostly for our alts. I boxed my ranger, and Xoxox boxed his ranger. We all earned a bunch of achievements for completing the missions in a timely fashion and for having no one die. Oger managed to edge his way to level 92 which is fantastic because that’s the first tier of Rain of Fear gear. Gear doesn’t make or break the game exactly (aa do) but it certainly does help.

Earlier on in the day I completed the pre-quest for the prayer shawl 3.0. Since I have not completed my 2.0 shawl yet I can’t go any further but it was nice to get it done. For the 2.0 I need to farm snow griffin eggs, something I dread. I’ll have to use my ranger to track and lately they have been camped by other people also trying to complete their prayer shawls. Go figure.

The 3.0 pre-quest was quite easy. It begins with Kerst Frostrift in PoK who is a new NPC in the center building of the small bank. There are a bunch of new NPC there along with various crafting depots. You need to speak to a few people and make a few items, nothing out of the ordinary. When that is completed you’ll be granted the title “Alliance Artisan” and you’ll also be given the book “Merchant Alliance Tradebook” – this book allows you to craft a few unique recipes which are great for end game characters.

My enchanter is very slowly inching her way towards level 96. It’s quite slow going now, but that could also be because I haven’t actually been earning experience on her in the typical sense of the term. I haven’t been grinding experience, rather. I’ve still been having a lot of fun completing what I have so far, yesterday I started the hand augment quest that involves an enormous amount of bits and pieces. I’ll have to make some room in my bank.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Nomadic Gamer