EQ

Citadel of the World Slayer #EverQuest

stargrace April 28, 2013 0Comment

One thing I really like about EverQuest is how out of date content is still quite relevant in the current game. Last night I was invited along to raid the Citadel of the World Slayer, which is a raid from the Seeds of Destruction. Those are void zones, and while I’ve done a fair amount in the regular zones I had not done anything in the raid zones before so it was bound to be an adventure. We had 21 people in the raid but a good portion of those were boxed. The raid involves 7 boss fights, and we managed to down 5 of them before calling it a night. I imagine we’ll get the last two today.

While the gear that dropped was not anything to write home about the augments that drop and spell components are still quite handy, and of course there are achievements for completing these raids.

The first mob we were up against was Mindblight, which was a pretty straight forward fight. The mob would spawn, we hit it a while, then adds would spawn. We fight those until dead, then back to the named. Eventually a new type of mob would spawn, I would mez those and they would vanish. A few AOE went off at the same time, but nothing too serious. It was a fun fight, and a nice introduction back to raiding. The mobs gave experience since they were light and dark blue to me at 95, so while they’re certainly a few expansions behind it’s not as though they were complete pushovers.

Next was the Trophy Room, then Stasis which was my favorite fight. It involved a lot of running around, people being banished to cells, and an entire script that had to be played out. I may not have felt like the most useful person in the raid (almost everyone else is level 100 and are geared for raiding) but it was still a great time. I didn’t even die, although I did have a few close calls.

Left is Overlord Muram and the Edge of Destruction. I believe we’re going back to do those tonight, we have a lock out timer on the rest of the zone now. Who knows, eventually I may even be raiding current content, although these days I don’t really see a need to have very many enchanters on raids. We’re not exactly awesome DPS, though we do bring a few unique things to the table I don’t feel (yet) that any of them are essentials. I guess we’ll just have to see!

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

Why Own Just a Guild Hall – Why Not The Whole Zone?! #EverQuest

stargrace April 24, 2013 0Comment

Why decorate a simple guild house – when you can own the entire neighbourhood! This is exactly what I decided to do for the small guild I belong to in EverQuest. The station cash store has an option for you to purchase not only a guild hall (that can be accessed through the guild lobby) but an entire guild neighbourhood. This instanced location will belong to the guild as a whole, not any one individual person, which you’re warned about before you purchase it.

Other people can enter the instance, tour the houses and poke around, but they won’t be able to purchase house plots.

So it was that I ended up with an entire area to decorate and then some. The guild halls are nice, spacious, and they come with a handful of NPC to help make your stay there more comfortable. So far I’ve not done much decorating, Oger has added some weapons and shields to the walls as well as some very nice looking paintings. We have a crafting room off of the main entrance, complete with some of the more ‘unique’ craft tables, like alchemy and even an ice cream churn. There are some extra NPC down there so you don’t have to go racing all over the place to collect items from your bank, and I really like how things are looking so far.

I’ve also set up a few houses within the zone for my alts, you can use these for storage or whatever else you would like. I haven’t gotten around to any massive decorating yet, and certainly nothing on the scale of EQ2 housing (yet) but it’s in the works and as I make some progress I’ll be sure to share pictures.

Speaking of progress -the ranger on my second account is now level 85. I’ve paused her leveling here for now, 100% of experience is going into alternate advancement. I don’t want her to be useless, so the more aa I can get the better. Plus this gives me time to work on getting my epic completed, and a few other (ie: older) quests that I want to do. My rank 5 mercenary quest is pretty high up on that list as well.

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

Time for Faction! #EverQuest

stargrace April 22, 2013 0Comment

There have been a few things I’ve been working on with Oger in EverQuest, but the two major projects have been working on the Dragons of Norrath progression (evil), along with the Trials of Mata Muram. Both are quite easy these days especially with mercenary, and the trials more so since the lock out timers have been tweaked slightly. You can now complete each one every 2 hours – 3 day lock out for completion (or winning), 2h lock out for a failure, and an overall 2h timer before you can move from one to the next. Oger and I managed to complete all 6 over the weekend which raised the base resists we are able to have by a small amount each trial. The hardest one required special spells to open chests scattered around the room and since I did’t have my spells at the time (they’re now sold in PoK, quite easy to obtain, but I didn’t know that at the time) we failed it. Returning later that evening netted a win at least.

Dragons of Norrath progression is a bit more difficult because it’s a faction grind. Faction in EverQuest can be a long and tedious task, as shown here by EQresource:

-3000 to -1999 – lowest faction points
-2000 to -751 – Scowls at you ready to attack! (KOS) (approx. 1300 point range)
-750 to -501 – Glares are you threateningly! (KOS) (approx. 250 point range)
-500 to -101 – Glowers at you dubiously. (Not KOS but very close to) (approx. 400 point range)
-100 to -1 – Looks your way apprehensively. (approx. 100 point range)
0 to +99 – Regards you indifferently. (The majority of NPC’s have this neutral standing with you) (approx. 100 point range)
+100 to +499 – Judges you amiably. (approx. 400 point range)
+500 to +749 – Kindly considers you. (approx. 250 point range)
+750 to +1099 – Looks upon you warmly. (approx. 450 point range)
+1100 to +2000 – Regards you as an ally. (Highest level of faction attainable) (approx. 1000 point range)
+2001 to +3000 – highest faction points

At the moment I am kindly faction with The Dark Reign, and have completed up to tier four in progression. I also managed to pre-loot the pieces for the final tier, completing them the previous week with Nonpoint and Xoxox who were completing the raids for another friend. These days the group tasks can be completed solo (especially with mercenary) so the faction grind is not quite as bad as it once was, but the raids still take a little bit of finesse.

You earn a few useful things for completing faction, the first tier unlocks the passive ability to increase your max stats by 10. The second tier grants 250 hp / mana / end and the third tier increases your buff slot limit by one. The fourth tier which is the one I’m currently trying to complete increases the critical chance of melee / magical attacks and heals and finally the fifth tier increases your ability to resist a detrimental spell.

I’ve been enjoying myself as we go through these older quests and factions. They’re still relevant and while I may not be able to handle doing much alone in the current content (just the way EverQuest is) at least I’m not completely useless.

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

Enchanter Levels and Crafting – Oh My! #EverQuest

stargrace April 18, 2013 0Comment

With Shadow of Fear released yesterday, I found myself happily wandering through the new zones, attuning myself to the new portals. This will come in handy when it comes time to actually adventure in these zones, and for now I can go invis and collect shinies since some new ones were added (but the rewards are not any better).

The new prayer shawl 3.0 was also added to game, and components for it seem to be dropping quite frequently. Or at least my group found a few of the drops yesterday without too much issue. People were also selling them to vendor, unsure of what they are for. Oger has been purchasing them and saving them for later use.

My enchanter managed to ding level 94 in the Feerrott (which has become my home away from home for a number of levels now) and is well on her way to level 95. Then begins the slow climb to 100. It seems like such a daunting number.

I decided the guild needed a neighbourhood of its own, so I purchased one from the station cash store. A guild neighbourhood allows only those guild members to buy plots within it. It also came with a guild hall to decorate – enormous! The hall has all sorts of convenient NPC you can place – things like bank, parcel, and travel. It will take me quite some time to decorate it the way I want, but for now at least the NPC are all placed, and there’s a portion dedicated to crafting (with bankers close by so you can run to and from).

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself! I’ll see you in EverQuest.

Shadow of Fear #EverQuest

stargrace April 17, 2013 2Comments

Shadow of Fear launch today, the second part of Rain of Fear, the latest EverQuest expansion. This second half of expansion goodness brings a few new zones, missions, and raids to the table along with new spells and alternate advancement. Since my enchanter is only level 93 there’s not a lot I can do with this latest update yet, but it won’t be long before I’m in the midst of it all (I believe around level 95 is when most things will come into play).

That doesn’t mean I’m not excited though, all of my friends and their level 100 characters will certainly be exploring the new areas that will be cram packed with other adventurers. I’m excited to see what will affect me. The new spells and aa in specific. I wish I could have gotten closer to 100 while I had the time, but that’s alright, I’ll get there eventually.

I’ve been having loads of fun playing EverQuest lately (as you can tell by my blog posts). I’m really glad I’ve returned. The game is still hard, and some classes are insanely over powered at the later levels (berserker decap and ranger headshot I’m looking at you) making it seem like my class is utterly worthless, but that’s alright, I just keep playing.

I’m not sure what else I want to play these days. I’ve always been a nomadic gamer and it seems a bit weird to only be focusing on one MMO. I’ve all but given up on Wurm Only, for a few reasons but the biggest reason being that I felt coerced into play because there were sever repercussions. If you don’t log in every single day, your animals / buildings / items suffer decay, and waste away. After playing for so long I disliked that penned in feeling, that feeling that I was going to actually lose my time invested if I wandered to another game. I LOVE the basics of Wurm, the creation process, the terraforming, all of it is amazing – but I don’t like being punished for not being there 24/7. I think I’ve finally broken free from that painful cycle.

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