obelisk of ahkzul

Working on Epics and Instances

stargrace May 5, 2009 1 Comment

Ultann managed to get his inquisitor epic in two days. I was really happy for him but frustrated at the difference in ‘ease’ as far as epics go. Some are very easy to get (I finished the coercer one in a single day) and others are painstakingly long especially when you take into count the different pre-requisites they may have.

I’m trudging along with the mystic and illusionist epic though and I’m confident that some day I’ll get them. We’ll just have to see.

Yesterday evening was the first chunk of play time I’ve had steady in a bit, so the trio headed to instances of course. First on our list? Maidens. Now, we’ve never cleared this zone as a trio before, mostly because my enchanter at the time was too small to hold down the adds for Sandstorm as well as the sisters.

Yesterday it went flawlessly and we took down sandstorm (with four adds up) as well as the sisters (on the 2nd attempt, first attempt we had the order wrong) without any real issues. I was exceptionally happy because the zone is also one I need for the illusionist epic, and I’m glad that we can trio it. Plus some pretty fantastic loot drops there.

Speaking of loot for once it was on our side! No, we didn’t get any gear upgrades to drop but for once a few masters did. One of which being my all important power / health buff for the mystic. Premonition. I was so very excited. This spell typically goes for a huge amount of money. Ultann also managed to get his group taunt to drop, and a few masters dropped for folks to sell.

Once we were finished in Maidens we headed to Vaults, and then to our good friend Obelisk of Ahkzul which refused to drop the healer shield (again). We spent a little time in Chelsith but that zone is so incredibly long and the Leviathans tend to drop nothing but treasured so we like to avoid it. I wish it followed the ‘named will drop legendary’ rule but alas it does not. This zone COULD be so wonderful if just a few tweaks were made.

All in all it was a great night, and I had a lot of fun. Here’s hoping tonight is more of the same! See you in Norrath!

Gaming

Venril Sathir and Other Goodness

stargrace May 1, 2009 2 Comments

Pictured above is my paladin, with the amulet of necropotence and a nice sword from fear. She’s obviously got some personality good / evil issues, but I’m loving the new look.

Last night was a hodge podge of activity, starting with getting a few steps done on the mystic epic. I managed to get my three skeleton updates, with some help of course. They included skeletons in Jarsath Wastes, Karnor’s Castle, and Kunzar Jungle. Now I’ve got a group instance to do where I have to defeat some heroics, and then more NPC to talk to.

Out of the blue I found myself playing the neglected troubador I have, she’s been at 80 forever, owns both the dirge and troubador fabled epic, and yet I rarely play her. Not because I don’t enjoy the class (I certainly do) but having SO many alts means my time is always split between the flavour of the month. I wish I were one of those people who only had one or two alts instead of the massive army I have now. I’ve said this a lot. I’ve even contemplated deleting all of the ones that I have, but there’s been so much work put into them I can’t bring myself to do it.

The troubador headed to Obelisk of Ahkzul and then over to Anchor of Bazul, which is also within the Moors. I love Anchor, it involves fights that are more then just hack and slash. One of them requires you to possess the body of a void creature to defeat a named. Another has you form a triangle of void portals around a named as you fight it, dispelling its immunity.

In Obelisk I actually won a (useful) master! The first T8 Master I’ve seen in a very long time. Since that particular zone is on a ‘smart loot’ system, it was nice. Happens to be my group haste buff.

Nothing else of note dropped, but afterwards I decided to join in on a Venril Sathir raid.

I know, what was I thinking. It actually didn’t go too bad, even though we didn’t defeat him this time around. Let me explain.

There were only two groups, 90% of them alts to a raid guild. This raid is easier to do with less people, because the less people you have to worry about their power going below a certain mark, or not clicking statues, or not using a cube on the named, or any other number of things that can go wrong, the better. This was my first time doing this encounter, I’d never seen Venril before (aside from his home in EQ) and it was a lot of fun. The entire raid has to keep their power between 30-60% while Venril is ‘watching’ you, or you’ll cause the raid to wipe. You also need to instantly cure a noxious dot, or you’ll wipe a raid. While all this goes on, throughout the fight there are two other important debuffs that will land randomly on two players. One will decrease their power by huge amounts if they cast so much as a simple spell. The other does the opposite. Of course this means you’ll be unable to hover between the 30-60% so when you’re hit with these debuffs so you call it out in raid (typically) and do nothing for the duration. This also means that the remainder of the raid who does NOT have these debuffs can burn Venril Safely, as long as they keep watching their power and that noxious.

If a single person is not watching everything that’s going on, the raid wipes.

We managed to get him down to 40% with our two groups before I had to call it a night. The raids started fairly late to begin with and since I’m always up exceptionally early I was starting to fall asleep in my chair. They’re going to make another attempt at it on Saturday I believe, adding a third group of guild DPS to the mix because the fight was taking a good length of time as it was. We had three healers, four bards, a few enchanters and only one brigand with no other DPS classes. It was still great fun.

You don’t always have to win in order for an evening to be fun. Especially since I’d never been there before. I understand that RoK raids are ‘old’ now, that there’s better raids to be had and better gear out there, but for myself it was still a great night with a lot of fun. I’m not sure if I want to get into raiding full time or just continue to pop in here and there when I feel like it (very casual), I’ll just have to see.

I hope everyone has a fantastic Friday today. I’ll be off to see Wolverine later on in the afternoon, woot.

Gaming

Exciting News All Around

stargrace April 23, 2009 5 Comments

Wow, yesterday was an overload of new happenings in games and lots of excitement came out of it. I’ll be making a post later about Free Realms now that the NDA has lifted (I have to jump on the bandwagon after all!) and if you’re looking for me in game you can find me as Stephanie Stardream – though both people DO have to currently be online in order to friend them.

Also, housing has gone to the test server in Wizard 101! I have really been looking forward to this. Even though I don’t play Wizard 101 as much as I’d like, I still dive in a few times a month and find it a great casual game when you’re looking for a bit of a break from your ‘main’ MMO. Plus it’s perfect for families and who doesn’t enjoy that.

Now, the main bit of news I’d like to focus on at least for this post is the new user generated content coming to EverQuest II! If you haven’t heard of it yet, be sure to check out the blog post made by Rothgar yesterday on the EQ2 dev blog. Basically this will allow players to write their own books in game, pick an appearance for them, and even make copies of them. They will be tradeable and you can put them on the broker.

This will be an amazing feature for people on role play servers to start. I’m absolutely excited about what people will come up with on those servers in specific where everyone has a tale to tell. I think the idea of collecting volumes of player-made books is fantastic. Lets say you’re an author in real life and you want to promote these little books in game, you could develop a whole marketing scheme for them. Now, I have no idea if this would take off on servers OTHER then the role play ones to any great degree. But housing enthusiasts and book lovers can certainly be found everywhere.

There’s also ascii art you could fill the pages with. Poems for friends, Christmas gifts, your own personal Norrathian stories. You could write guides for players in game, leveling guides, how to make money, a method of gaining achievement points, LOTS of things could be written within these pages for players to enjoy. Dungeon guides even if your character is perhaps an adventurer who explores the deep caverns and writes about what they discover. You could collect rare issues of books from players who left the game since their names are written as the author. You could try to convince devs or guides or GM’s to hold events where you could win a one of a kind book created by them.

Obviously my own personal excitement is pretty high. I’m all for making MMO worlds more personal and involving the players in such a way that they become a part of the world itself. Vanguard has this to some degree by allowing players to purchase actual plots of land in the game (no instances) CoX has this with their new user created missions (If I played I’d certainly be all over it).

Of course, there are down sides. As Tipa pointed out, what about gold sellers. Will they just mail you books filled with links to plat farming sites and spam. The books are created by crafters and I’m not sure what level you have to be or what sort of a hassle that may be. Until it goes live there’s no way to really tell if this will become a valid method of promoting gold sales. Also, what about those naughty books that people decide to write. There’s no real way to sensor a player written book – and I don’t think there should be. Sure, you’ve got the choice to read it or not, but do you really want 100 books of how to mate with an ogre covering the broker? Well, actually, maybe you do.

In any case, I think this is a fantastic idea.

On the down side, the next post after the announcement of these wonderful books, is the Research Assistants who are going to help you learn your master spells. I dislike this idea, a lot. I think it’s just another method of dumbing down the game, to just hand out master spells to players after an amount of time has passed for the NPC’s to “research” it for you. While you may think to yourself “well, YOU don’t have to take advantage of it then!” it will be far too easy to be left behind if you don’t have your master spells when it comes to groups and raids. On the Kithicor server there’s already a very high bar set for players. If you don’t meet a certain quota you’re excluded from a lot of going-ons. It only takes an hour or two in 70-79 to see what direction most people seem to head, every “LF” (looking for) message is followed by “must be mythical” “must have such and such gear” “must not suck”. One of the issues with the server that makes me wish server transfers were free again for a short while.

Game wise last night was pretty relaxing. My trio did Crypt of Agony which was fairly painless, we also did Obelisk (no, the shield still has not dropped) and Nocbot managed to get a few levels and some aa. It wasn’t one of the busiest days in game but it was still lots of fun and I think everyone had a good time. This weekend I believe we’re attempting to get Nocbot to 80 (he’s sitting at 76 I think) so that he can get started on his epic. I also want to finish harvesting on my mystic, so I can start her epic as well as my illusionist’. We’ll see how that goes!

I hope everyone has a fantastic Thursday in the mean time!

Gaming Real Life

A return to grouping, and miniature decisions

stargrace April 22, 2009 No Comments

As always when time goes by I start to wonder about all of these alts I have. Sure, they’re great fun but are they really worth the hassle? Should I just be concentrating on one character (or two, one from each account). It’s due to a restlessness I tend to have and is not exactly game-related as real life has a tendency to disrupt things.

The point is I found myself cringing when I looked at the paladin adept3’s for 71-80. They’re going for 7p each and I need 28 of them. The loams are no better even if I had happened to find myself an alchemist, at 4p a piece plus fuel and raws. I do miss having all of my characters on one server so that I can take advantage of my crafters but when friends are spread all over this becomes increasingly difficult. I can’t afford to move 20 characters around for $50 each.

I decided not to play the paladin last night, and went back to my illusionist / mystic duo that I team up. The group (Ultann, Wpus and I) decided to head to Obelisk to attempt another go at the shield that has never dropped. We’ve been there at least 30 times I’d say by now, and have never seen it. It was a fairly good run, no wipes. The final encounter even dropped two items of use, a nice earring for the conjuror, and a master also for the conjuror. I have yet to see a master drop that I could make use of, but I’m hanging in there and waiting. It’s bound to happen sooner or later.

My next ‘goal’ is to start the epic for both characters, of course to do that for the mystic requires harvesting that I have not bothered to work up as much as I should. That will be todays goal until groups are formed. It would be nice to have them both sporting their epic, at least fabled if not mythical (which I have no grandure hopes of obtaining any time soon). I still need shards for the illusionist who is only sporting her T1 void set thus far.

Crafting is something I’d also like to get back into – both in game and out. Inspired by Kasul and his return to miniatures, I decided that I’d like to try my hand at it as well. I’ve painted a few in the past back when I was in school and it feels like ages ago. He’s going to help me out and send a few spare models my way, and this weekend I’ll be taking a trip to the local Games Workshop to see what I can find. Now, I’ve never really been interested in playing the games, but I do love the whole ‘before’ process. We’ll see how it goes, maybe I’ll give away the models to people who are interested.

I’ve been working out every single morning for the last week and as such I’ve been going to bed early (around 11-12EST) in order to wake up at 5:30-6am (depending on when Princess thinks I should wake up at). We wanted to do Vaults of Eternal Sleep last night but I wimped out and called it a night, read a little more of “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro (great book by the way) and fell asleep. It was still a pretty great night.

Gaming

Betrayal, Instances, and Alts!

stargrace April 16, 2009 1 Comment

Yesterday was busy in EQ2, that satisfied busy you get when you’ve got so much to get done and your friends are right there helping you finish it all. Well, that’s what it felt like in any case. To start it off I betrayed my coercer to illusionist on Kithicor. I know, I already HAVE an 80 illusionist AND coercer on Najena. I’m obviously demented. My illusionist’ personal dps has gone down slightly (especially if you count the lack of charm) the group dps is way up with the new buffs. We’ll manage. It didn’t take long to betray and the illusionist is all settled into her new home in Qeynos, moved into a nice North Qeynos home that I’ll decorate some day I promise.

Ultann picked up a recruit a friend account for himself in order to level up an inquisitor on his laptop as we play. A backup healer is great plus they have some pretty nice buffs we can make use of. Since he has been leveling up this character (approx 36 levels in two days if that) I decided it would be a great time for me to level up my paladin at the same time. It gives him a break from playing the tank if he wants, and I (yes) already have a 71 paladin on Najena. What on earth am I going to do with all of these character doubles if servers ever do merge or I do get my wish of some free character transfers. Well, not sure.

Before we got going on the alts we decided to give instances another shot to see if anything useful would drop. Vault of Eternal Sleep refused to give up the praetor’s guard that we’re attempting to get for the illusionist. Obelisk of Ahkzul refused to give up the healer shield that I’ve spoken about pretty much every day for the last year it seems, and Najena’s Hollow Tower refused to drop the cloak Wpus is after that comes from the water boss. Our look struck as true as ever. If these things DID happen to drop I have no idea what we would do any more since it’s been our routine for quite some time. We make jokes about it, and try to guess exactly what is going to drop.

So now the paladin is sitting at level 31, after being level 18 yesterday. We headed to Fallen Gate and lay waste to everything that stood (and a few that didn’t). Sure, she’s got no gear and is sporting app1’s (and getting adept3’s at level 80 is going to be not so fun) but part of the battle is done.

On an interesting note – the 10% bonus experience that recruit a friend people get from the mount – is group wide. So my paladin was receiving the 10% bonus from Ultann’s mount, since he was riding it. She was also gaining 50% bonus due to being on my main account with other 80’s and 55% bonus from a potion – and double experience from vitality which I managed to replenish with the orb of concentrated memories that players received with the 5 year veteran reward.

Not bad.

Tonight will probably be an evening of ‘more of the same’ but we’ll just have to see!

Working on Epics and Instances

Venril Sathir and Other Goodness

Exciting News All Around

A return to grouping, and miniature decisions

Betrayal, Instances, and Alts!

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