Labs

General Gaming Goodness

Well, lets get the bad news over first – ALL soe games and services are going to be down today for FOUR hours, from 12pm EST until 4pm EST (and that’s as long as everything gets up and running again properly). This was just announced yesterday night, and I’m not quite sure what’s being updated yet maybe it’s got to do with Free Realms going live on Tuesday. In any case, if you’re trying to get into the game and wondering why you can’t, there you go.

Now onto the good stuff! I had mentioned yesterday that I was hoping my bard would make it to 62, a general goal. I started out the day by doing groceries and puttering around getting those real life quests done, and then decided to hop in game for a bit. Ultann and Wpus were both there, and eager to do stuff. I don’t remember everything we did, but I think it started with a run through poets Palace, though that may have been the night before. We did numerous dungeons and instances and even managed to find ourselves in a Labs raid which I haven’t done in FOREVER. It was great. None of us are raid geared and I went with my illusionist who doesn’t even have her epic, along with numerous other level 80 characters and all three of us (illusionist, shadowknight, conjuror) managed to be on the top portion of the parse for the zone. Considering we were with some mythical geared players, I felt pretty good. I realize the parse is not everything but it’s still nice to know that skill and not gear will count for a large portion of how well you do with your class.

We (the trio of course) wanted to do Shard of Fear, but in order to zone in (as we found out while standing at the doors) the bard had to be level 70 (and so did the fury, she was close though). The dirge was sitting happily at level 67, and it was still a few hours before bed so we decided to grind out those last levels and then run fear. We headed to Loping Plains and then to the Mistmoore Catacombs, killing our way to the top floor which is covered in vampires and then heading into Castle Mistmoore for the last remaining experience I needed in order to ding. Plenty of aa and 3 levels later, I was sitting at 70, and we headed to fear. I was hoping that the bloodthirsty choker would drop but alas luck was not on our side (I’m used to it not being on my side by now). It was still great fun and the bard managed to cling to level 71 when we called it for the evening.

I wasn’t quite tired yet, so I ran around grabbing various druid ring ports and getting discovery for all those zones I’d never been to before (Steamfont, Klak’Anon, Bonemire, Barren Sky, etc) pinged off a few more aa and managed to climb half way through level 71. The T8 mastercrafted (incarnadine) gear is VERY cheap, so I picked up a full set of that (50g each) for when I hit 72, and I’ll see about getting some skills made as well (even though they use loam and loam is VERY expensive). I had dreams of an automated character transfer being implemented finally for Eq2 (it’s been down since September of last year) but I think I’ll just have to keep dreaming on that matter. I was debating whether or not I wanted to betray this new dirge to a troubador, but since I already have a troubador I decided to just keep this one a dirge in the hopes that some day all my characters end up on the same server.

I hope everyone had an amazing weekend, and that Monday is not too rough on anyone! See you in Norrath!

Lets Try Something “New”

Yesterday was great. It started off with me puttering around in game, getting familiar with my housing projects and wondering where I wanted to go next with them. So many characters with unfinished or out dated homes. Then I tried to remember what characters I have where in game – and for me this is no easy feat. I’ve been playing fairly steady (with breaks might I add) for over five years now. I have two accounts, and one used to have station access so I’ve got 12 characters on it. I’m also spread across four servers (which I would change if a free server transfer was ever implemented again, but with the character transfer service (automated version) being down for close to a year – I don’t see it happening any time soon). 

I actually drew a little chart of what characters I have where on which accounts. It was fun, I’d forgotten about some which is easy to do when you have 19.

Before too long Wpus and Ultann were in game, eager to do something. First stop? Obelisk, the one in Moors that we’ve been doing. We only had one death, it was a really smooth run. I know it can be done with no deaths but remember we’re not raid geared and there’s only three of us doing these things! I was hoping that perhaps the healer shield would drop, but I’m beginning to think every time I enter the zone SOE removes it from the loot table. We did each get 4p though from the ‘coin’ chest in the room with the electric balls, which was great. 

Afterwards I was at a little bit of an impasse. I took a break and eventually ended up creating a fury to play along with Wpus’ new Berserker. At that exact time, Ultann came back from dinner so instead of playing alts I decided we’d do something completely different. Something we’ve never done before – at least not in a very long time.

I decided the trio would head to The Laboratory of Lord Vyemm and attempt to ‘raid’ the zone as three people instead of 24. Sounds like a mission ending in lots of debt, right? Well, probably. We only had an hour to waste, so I knew we wouldn’t be clearing it. I’ve posted before about how much I enjoy pushing the envelope with certain encounters, doing things a different way or just plain exploring. I remember doing labs with full raid forces and wiping to things, it brings back fond memories. I hadn’t been there in a while, and I really dislike the fact that we can out level content in EQ2 and thus it remains barren, so off we went.

We actually didn’t do too badly. I remember when we used to raid it, if the main tank got the trama on him (debilitating strike I believe it’s called) his mitigation would drop and so would he. It was *essential* that we cure it as soon as possible. At level 80,  it still needs to be cured but it’s not as bad as I once remembered it being. Trash fell and before too long we were staring at the first named. It’s the one to the left as you come down that first set of stairs. 

We wiped to him once because he pummeled us all with a frontal AoE on incoming but brushed ourselves off and attempted the droag again. I was hoping some random relic would drop from trash, but we didn’t have that sort of luck. We DID however, manage to kill him! He dropped some scout fabled pants that none of us had alts who could use, I won the roll and later sold them to the vendor for 1p. We continued down to the forge room, and after we cleared it we took on the 2nd named, who was far easier then the first. A nice fabled hammer dropped, with a pretty particle effect. Of no use now but since weapons can have appearance slots (and shields) it was still nice to see it. 

Ultann had to leave shortly after we downed the 2nd named, so we called it a night. I was happy that we’d done something completely different that used to be so difficult. I still wish we couldn’t out level zones so that we’d have more of a reason to go back to older content (ie: going back to do EQ gods) but it satisfied that craving at least in some small way. 

I hope everyone else had an amazing Sunday!