Crafting, Instances, and Betrayal?
stargrace 
Yesterday compromised of a little bit of everything. It was great. I can’t think of one particular thing that stood out aside from the three hour nap while I was loaded up on extra strength tylanol but that had absolutely nothing to do with gaming. I think.
The 70-79 channel was particularly rude for no obvious reason I could figure out. You would think that people would be feeling more festive towards one another, but it turns out that this is not exactly true. I did two tradeskill instances, bringing my tailor to level 64, and the alchemist to levle 65. Five more levels or so to go and then I’ll go back to grinding writs for my experience so that Nostalgia can get some levels instead of leveling them through the wonderful instances. Oracia got herself a rolling pin that dropped from the instance. In all the time I’ve done them I’ve never seen that item before. It has a 3% increase to tradeskill experience, I wonder if it stacks along with the other bonus’ in game. I’ve been saving up a lot of transmuted parts, so I’ll probably put a mass of those for sale before too long. I have far too many that I’ll never use.
I spent 100p yesterday on silicate loams. I know, why? Well. I’ve been thinking about betraying the dirge back to a troubador. I know I rarely play her, so why drop 100p? I doubt my reasoning will make sense to anyone other then myself. I changed her to a dirge thinking to myself ‘well, if I’m not going to raid with my bard, why not play something that has more group utility’. Hate transfer, rez, heals, etc. Turns out there are a billion dirges on the server right now and I don’t play her as a dirge, either. So why not go back to troub if I’m not playing and then maybe I at least have a chance at wiggling in on some raids. I have both of my epics for troub and dirge, and if I were ever to raid with her I could complete both mythicals at the same time, heh. Sort of funny (and sad).
Aside from the crafting and spending much money, I did an instance or two. The VERY nice charm item above came from – you guessed it, The Crucible. An instance I’ve done so many times now I could sleep walk my way through it. The quest related to the zone yesterday also required no killing, just some clicking, so I ran my alts through and got them all their void shards. Later on in the evening Hellsong needed an update for chapter five (the final zone it sends you to) and off we went. In The Obelisk of Ahkzul (which is where we were) there is a named who drops two chests. Second last named. The first chest holds a legendary of some type, and the second one holds between 10-20 plat.
We got 12 plat from the chest and some change, which was fantastic. The zone is quick and easy and Hellsong got his update just fine.
It was starting to get late but I wasn’t tired yet, so I stayed up and did some of the Frostfell quests with Goudia. Even if I don’t decide to betray her, I have a paladin and a berzerker and a swashbuckler who could all make use of the loams eventually. I ran the Icy Keep instance a few times amassing tokens to purchase the charm item that everyone is talking about. Still lamenting over the fact that there’s no healer version.
All in all, a really nice weekend! Hope everyone else had a great one too.
Yesterday was a fairly good day as far as leveling goes. I dusted off my swashbuckler and headed to The Mines of Meldrath in Steamfont. I used an experience potion from /claim and the levels were pretty fast, and before I knew it she hit level 52. I don’t have any cobalt clusters to make her some gear or weapons, but I’m hoping I can level to 60+ before that becomes too much of an issue. 
The alchemist (along with carpenter) also headed off to a tradeskill zone. I used a potion and moused over my experience during the process. Not bad! I gained two levels, sitting me at 63. The group instance yesterday was the Firemyst one, where you have to gear up a few dwarves, and I encountered my first ‘bug’ though it did fix itself. Sort of. When the army was finally geared up, they got cold feet, and refused to follow their Commander into battle. For five minutes or so I stood around waiting for the end encounter to happen so that we could go get our chest. After a few minutes the Commander (sans army) ran off after the bad guys who instantly died the second he got close to them. Powerful fella. Even though the script didn’t run properly, the chest did spawn once the commander made it to the end of the field. A piece of rare wood, an artisan item, and the tailor item that I’d already gotten were the rewards. There was also a new solo tradeskill quest that I picked up yesterday that requires you to harvest some items in the Fallen Dynasty zones. Didn’t have time to complete it because as soon as dinner was done it was off to Sebilis!
Azztec is a friend of mine from Antonia Bayle, actually an old guild leader. The guild I raided with fell apart when some officers took control and made some choices that not everyone agreed with. They sacrificed friends and a friendly atmosphere to ‘go after the prize’ and shortly after that I moved to Najena. A few months later Azztec followed. He has a few level 80’s already, but a little while ago started up a templar. I was impressed by how fast he leveled, and before I knew it he was asking Shadowgeist for help with his epic. So yesterday Shadowgeist, Azztec, Kasul, Gellawyn, Mindblade, and I (on Silhouette, the coercer) headed to Sebilis to finish the last few bits he needed. Along the way we hit every named that was up for aa points, which was great. We also took down the named that dropped the tunic on the right hand side, except Azztec rolled greed instead of need (ack!) and I rolled greed (even though everyone else declined and I should have declined as well). This is just another example of why I absolutely love customer support at SOE. I have petitioned them for two pages worth of things on my main account over the past few years and have never had an issue with them so long as I wasn’t asking for something impossible, and I wasn’t rude. I petitioned last night to see if there was any way that the tunic could be returned to the rightful person, and less then 20 minutes after I had sent in the request I noticed that there was a blank spot in my inventory where the item used to be, low and behold, Azztec had it. Thank you! Between the guide events and the customer service, I really think SOE has done things very well. I realize everyone has their horror stories, and I’m really sorry for those who have had bad experiences, but my own personal ones have been nothing but good.
An ogre, a Tier’Dal, and a Gnome all walk into the Deep Forge, and the gnome turns and looks at the ogre and says ‘Oy, is it hot in here or is it just me?’
I did get a pretty nice charm slot upgrade from a quest involving the zone. I can’t remember if this quest was given to me outside or if it was the one I found inside, but it’s nice none the less. There’s also a melee version. The only thing I dislike is that this isn’t really a healer version (and there wasn’t one). The wisdom and power on a charm item really makes me happy. While playing in these zones with friends, I realize just how under geared Arysh is. The downside again to having so many alts, not concentrating on any individual one. Yes, Arysh does still have her claymore, and I do have her fabled epic, and she’s close to 10k power self buffed with 1k wisdom, but it’s the +heals and +heal crits and all of the other little unique bits that make a character ‘good’. She doesn’t have M1 of her spells, etc. So now I’m contemplating settling down, especially if I want to work on void shard quests. I love playing my healers. I’m GOOD at my healers. The problem is that my ‘main’ healer is a warden, and they are everywhere. So my line of thought says that I should try to get my templar her last few levels (she’s sitting at 77) or my defiler (even further behind, at 73) and work on one / all of the healers. I love my coercer a great deal, but I’ve played healers primarily in every mmo. 
Once we were finished in Deep Forge I took a few hours and headed over to Vanguard, then was asked if I wanted to go back to EQ2 and do another instance. I decided sure, why not. I haven’t really been to too many of the instances honestly. The group decided to head to Befallen: Halls of Forsaken (it may be halls of the forsaken, I can’t quite remember right now). This is in the Commonlands, and I’d never been there before. I wanted to do Cavern of the Afflicted (one since I’d been there before and was comfortable with it, and two because it was the daily double yesterday) but the group decided to go some place new. The zone again was quite beautiful, and we had fun figuring out what to do. Thankfully two people had been there before even if I had not. The zone wasn’t especially hard per say, we did wipe once, but only because half of the group charged ahead to destroy a statue while half of us stayed back and I wasn’t really sure what was going on. The group was a shadowknight, inquisitor, swashbuckler, illusionist, warlock, and myself as the warden. We did see a lot of ornate drops, and I did actually get a secondary item upgrade to the shield from RE2 that I was wearing. It’s one of the few upgrades I’ve actually had drop lately. The zone mostly decided it was plate night, and nothing was an upgrade for our two plate wearers. Thankfully, Arysh is a transmuter.