Missions

Finishing off DoD Missions

My gaming session started off some what poorly yesterday as I completely forgot a key fact in crafting. Specifically when you’re working on baking, and brewing. My enchanter has been some what neglected in the ways of food and drink, and of course I had a whole bunch of supplies stored on her to make misty thicket picnic baskets when I had a few free moments. The key word there is had

I finally had some free time – and harvested an egg so I could make dough (finally) and 10 veggies which was all I was missing. I logged the enchanter in and began doing my combines. I sort of shook my head as I noticed some ingredients I had previously purchased were no longer there. In fact, NONE of the edible ingredients that I had purchased were there. No food, no drinks. Nothing foraged.

Ack! I’d COMPLETELY forgotten that if you store food and drink supplies on your character – your character will EAT IT if you don’t have a supply of regular food and drink placed before all of the crafting bits. Dang it!

So I spent a few hours re-collecting all of the supplies I needed (I was attempting 100 combines, which is 400 baskets and needless to say requires a lot of room). Once that was done I proceeded to work on my baking skill, and while I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked I did get a great deal of space back in my inventory by the end of it. 

When Ultann and Ninga were around it was off to finish the Depths of Darkhollow missions for level 70, and subsequently get my last spell on each character. I was excited, it was all stuff I’d never done before. One of the prettiest zones I’d been to was the one pictured above. I can’t remember the name of the zone, but it was one of the last ones needed for the level 70 spell. The mobs were all very cool looking (like the dragon pictured above) and the whole zone actually reminded me of the void shard zones in EQ2 where there’s open sky with stars all around. Apparently this zone is not used for anything else aside from this mission, which I think is a shame because it’s really spectacular. Another of the 70 missions included being transformed into a mob and finding hordes of Drachnid which was fun but frustrating. It’s hard to learn how to play a new character and even harder when the mobs you’re trying to take down hit hard, and when you revive you have rez effects. It was still fun, but required a little patience. 

The missions were painless, and before too long both my enchanter and my necromancer were sporting their level 70 spell. We also killed Gloomfang again who dropped another greater and glowing rune for the enchanter, who finally got her group haste. Next glowing I get goes towards her group mana regen spell, another nice one to have. She’s about 75% into level 72, while the necromancer is 40% into level 74. 

Once we finished those missions we had to do 69.1 in order for the enchanter to get a spell she had missed. It was pretty quick, and we rounded up the evening doing the DoN missions for Ultann so he could get his 250hp/mana aa that he apparently missed out on the previous time we did it. This included “raiding” Emoush again, who we took down before he even respawned his shaman buddies. 

I believe we’re going to be working through The Buried Sea next, something about a whole lot of faction needed to purchase spells (and gear) and earning lots of orux. I have explored a little through this expansion and done a few missions as well as some quests in Katta, but I haven’t ventured too far into it yet. After that is Secrets of Faydwer, and then of course the latest expansion that released in October, Seeds of Destruction. There’s still so much of this game that I haven’t explored yet, and I’m loving every minute of it.

Dragons of Norrath Progression and Missions

Yesterday was all about progression through Dragons of Norrath, which was an expansion that released February 2005, so it’s quite old now. Ultann finished (most) of his unpacking, and managed to squeeze a few hours in game which was nice. My happy little trio headed to Lavastorm, and then debated which camp we were going to follow. Ninga already had his faction with the goodies, while Ultann (who was actually on his shadowknight for the evening) had none and though I’ve done the DoN missions before, I apparently also had not worked any faction. I believe at the time I was advised against turning in my tokens so that I could obtain crystals from both camps and purchase whatever it was I wanted from the merchants.

Speaking of purchases, that was why we were doing the DoN bits to begin with. Not only does the progression reward special unlocked aa (and regular aa of course) and spells, but one of the merchants also sells a pet focus item that I wanted. This lets me cast more powerful pets – and the ‘nice’ ones are super expensive, so this free one that Ninga happened to find was absolutely perfect. 

You can find a fairly clear walkthrough for the progression here on Zam – but keep in mind that once you’ve completed the first tier, you have to earn more faction for the second tier. 

We did missions for the evening, and trapsed through Lavaspinner’s Lair, Stillmoon Temple, The Accursed Nest, Thundercrest Isles, and Tirranun’s Delve, as well as our home base camp in Lavastorm, and The Broodlands. It was a lot of fun, and my two girls earned a lot of achievements. Kameeko managed to finish off the craft aa that allows you to raise more then one craft over 200, so she can now begin to work on all of them. Next I’ll be turning all of those into reduced failures. I haven’t decided the method I want to take yet in leveling them, I was contemplating brewing and baking simply because I dislike purchasing so much food and drink on both of my characters. We’ll see how that goes though. Tailoring and smithing are high up on my virtual list, and pottery near the bottom but still something I want to complete. 

Not sure what this Wednesday evening will bring, but I’m sure it will be fun, and I’ll write all about it tomorrow morning as always. On an unrelated note – EQ2 has some amazing changes and revamps coming in their next update, and I’ll be sure to write about that too. I’ve always loved the original Lavastorm in EQ2 but felt it was sorely neglected from simply being outdated. If the Everfrost revamp was any indication, Lavastorm will be exceptionally popular and players will once again frequent it as they should. More on that later!

Necromancers and Missions

I took a little break from gaming yesterday to play around with some more art pieces, learning (yet another) new program that I’m trying to get the hang of. I’m not that great at it yet, it’s a lot more complicated then the previous one I was using, but the images also come out a lot nicer too (as shown above). I want to do an image with my rendition of my EQ necromancer – she’s Drakkin though and I’d like to add the scales / tattoos that cover her body (in red). There’s no post work on the image above, so it still needs a lot of work, but I decided to scrap it and start over again from scratch. 

I did play for a brief bit last night, Ultann is still in the process of moving, so it was just Ninga and I. We decided to do some more Depths of Darkhollow missions, working on getting more of my spells (and a few other pretties in the process). We did one that involved slaying a lot of mushroom men, annoying ones that liked to path funny. 

I also had two glowing runes to turn in (level 70 spells) as well as two greater runes on Kameeko – she finally obtained her level 69 mez and can take care of creatures up to level 73. The previous one only worked up to level 70, so this is a good thing for me. She earned three more aa, and I unlocked yet another tradeskill to 300 instead of 200. Not sur which it will be yet, as I haven’t crafted in quite some time and the guides on leveling on EQ traders are quite out dated. 

The mission runs were fun and relatively painless, since we had to rely on my one mercenary healing us we just did the easy versions. Normally it would be no problem at all to do the hard missions, but alas my mercenary is not the most reliable of healers even on the best of days. 

As we head into March I’m getting more and more excited about the 10th anniversary of EQ. I think it will be great to see old players return to check out the events (there’s no doubt in my mind that a few will at least), and maybe even drag a few new players out that way as well. We’ll just have to see!

As always, happy gaming no matter where you happen to find yourself, see you in Norrath!

Nomadic Gamer