Nomadic Gamer

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It’s 3am, What Should We Do?

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Last night was a great night. It’s been a while since I had one quite so amusing. To start it off I was a guest on ‘View from the Top‘ a podcast about everything to do with guilds. It was my first time and I was exceptionally nervous, but I had a lot of fun in between my mindless rambling when I was just having a regular conversation with people who are passionate about games. It was suggested (and has been a few times) that I start my own podcast, and while the idea is appealing on some strange level, I just don’t think I’d be any good at it. I simply can’t find the appeal to anyone else listening to what I have to say (reading is another matter).

Afterward I was on quite a rush, almost like that feeling you get when you take down a raid encounter. It was midnight, and I was wide awake. As luck would have it, so were Calreth, Wpus, and Ultann from guild. I haven’t seen all of us logged in at one time in months. Literally. We decided to head to Shard of Hate which is a level 80-88 x4 raid zone in Nektulos Forest, and try our luck. With five of us (Ultann was boxing his inquisitor). That’s how my small casual guild works, and I love it. We knew there was no way we’d get that far, but it was still going to be epic to try.

Try we did. We actually managed to defeat Dreadlord D’Somni with just the five (four) of us. That in itself is not exactly scream worthy – but – this particular encounter has one very (annoying) unique feature. He rushes any mages, randomly, and of course they being the smushy classes that they are, die. Well, our small group of four quickly became a group of two, because two of our guild mates happen to be mages. That doesn’t mean they didn’t play a role! Wpus relogged to his berzerker which meant we now lacked power regen, and Calreth played interception. My mystic mythical allows me to click every 5 minutes (soon to be 10 after SF, thanks for changing that after 2 expansions SOE.. sigh) and regen power to the group so long as there is dps being done to the mob. Calreth would stand near the entrance of the zone and the named would go running off after him. We’d have a few glorious seconds to quickly try to regen some power and prepare for heals while Calreth sacrificed himself for the greater good of the guild. Over and over again.

This gave me enough time to re-cast my mythical, and try to feed us some power. I’ve never had such a glorious battle before. It was amazing. Those are the moments I personally treasure in EQ2.

We figured there wasn’t any way we were getting any further, so we decided on a spur of the moment decision to head to Deathtoll and continue our adventures there. Of course Deathtoll is like taking candy from a baby once you’ve managed to four person an 84 x4. Sadly, my eyeballs started drooping at around 4am, and we had to stop our adventures after killing the gnome and his books. So many books. The hovercraft didn’t drop either, but it was still fun.

Sleep? Bah. Who needs it.

Gaming

Venril Sathir and Other Goodness

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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

To Speak as a Dragon

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The other bards laughed at me. Why on earth, they sneered, would you want to go visit Nagafen and resurrect Vox when there was so much NEW stuff to do. So many better adventures. With void creatures running a muck there was never a lack of stories to tell. I shrugged at them and continued with my path. They asked me why but to me it was simple. So many others were already traveling down those paths. It was getting redundant. I had already heard about the void creatures in various songs ten times that day alone. Had everyone suddenly forgotten the lore of days gone by? It was these things that pulled me in, these memories and thoughts that drew me to them like a moth to flame. And so I found myself staring face to face with Nagafen, asking the details on how to resurrect Vox, talking openly about Darathar as memories flooded past. It would make a great song, one day.

Needless to say I spent most of my in-game time working on ‘to speak as a dragon’ the language quest required for a number of other quests out there. I eagerly freed the sage from his dungeon in Lavastorm, and from there headed to Antonica to speak with the Oracles. Of course nothing is ever easy with them and they sent me out through the Shattered Lands hunting for runes in order to translate the language. 26 runes later (and quite out of breath) I returned and they imparted their wisdom. I dragged the bard and mystic along to accomplish this, if I was going to get it done it may as well be for both characters.

Once I’d mastered the language I headed back to Nagafen who shared with me the method of reviving Lady Vox, and how I would have to (eventually) travel to the Isle of Refuge and confront Darathar. This was all fine and dandy and I looked forward to it excitedly. Just like I looked forward to it four years ago.

Things have obviously changed. To obtain the draconic language now it’s a heroic instance, and no longer a raid. There are portals in Solusek Eye that will bring you to the lower levels instead of having to walk the entire way – and encounters are grey and worthless. When I first did the prismatic 1.0 quest none of these things were true. It took an incredibly long time to wander to and from Nagafen as many times as you had to for this quest. You had to bring a two group raid in order to even begin it – and all of this was for a LEGENDARY weapon. There were no such things as mythical. Fabled were practically unheard of. Adept3 were rare, and if you had adept1 you were doing great. There was no such thing as +heal or +spell damage.

I remember playing my templar (my first EQ2 character) with an Australian raid force on Najena. I was level 45, still five levels away from the current cap and they needed healers. I was THRILLED that they asked me to go. I was nervous. The raid force had to position itself numerous times. It was exciting to kill our way down to the beach where Darathar was sleeping and then learn the (at the time complex) strat to killing him.

Then the enormous let down as you didn’t get your weapon until AFTER you managed to walk back down to Nagafen. All of that work and you still had more ahead of you. After a few hours of raiding the last thing people typically wanted to do was kill their way back down, but we did it. Oh yes we did. We sported our ‘of the shard’ titles proudly. I still have the weapon on my templar, the only character of mine who has ever completed this raid.

The plan last night was to finish off speak as a dragon and then complete the first three raids that are required for Fire and Ice, then if there was time, to complete the next four raids for Deception, and face Darathar on the Isle of Refuge. Unfortunately one of the trio currently has a broken keyboard, and we’ve put the raids on hold until this gets sorted out. No use doing it if you’re not side by side with your friends. I’m excited though!

Gaming

More Valdeholm, Levels, Clickies, and Raids!

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Yesterday was a great day in game. I didn’t just play EQ, I spent a little time in Runes of Magic (which I’ll write about a bit more later). Don’t forget today is Daylight Savings, so turn your clocks ahead an hour if you have not yet (thankfully my computer does this for me). The day was also great because Ultann managed to get his internet back, so our team was back to full, teehee. With everyone back it was only a matter of deciding what to do. I’ve mentioned a few times how much of a fan of clickies I am. In some cases they are almost essential, such as raids. When you have a mass amount of people all collected in one space you don’t want to be huge. I know, odd concept. There is a clicky item that drops from a mission in Stoneroot (Depths of Darkhollow zone, see that Ninga, I got it right!), and so that’s where our adventures took us. 

Apparently (from what I was told) this item is really rare. I was told not to expect to see it for 10+ missions, easily. That 30+ hours of farming went into obtaining it. 

Always eager to prove people wrong, it dropped on the 2.5th mission we did. Hah! This little earring click is fantastic, I love it. Not only does it act as a shrink but it acts as a shrink for others, which is important when I’m boxing – plus it casts super fast. No more tiny companion spell scribing for me! A huge thank you to Ultann and Ninga who helped me camp this (even if it was super easy) it was still a lot of fun. 

We had not expected to get the clicky that fast, so we were not sure where to head to next. Eventually we settled on Valdeholm which is the level 70 hot zone (and is a part of The Serpents Spine expansion). The mobs there were higher level then Dreadspire, and there were 15 others in the zone. We headed towards the Smith, and camped a little corner around his building for a while. The necromancer eased her way into level 77 and the enchanter is creeping closer to level 75. 

Ultann is almost (but not quite) level 83, but the experience is slow going. After a little while we decided it was time to do something crazy, what else could be said about a Saturday night. 

So we picked up where we left off with the Dragons of Norrath expansion, and do Tier3 of the progression which includes the following:

Tier 3: Embrace of the Dark Reign 

In order to continue on after this step, you must have high aimiable faction. 

If you speak with General Lereh Dirr, you can gain access to the Reflections of Silver and Kessdona’s Perch events – two non-progression missions. 

On the progression end of things, you must now speak to Officer Sirrikis Ryktor, who will assign you three tasks: 

“Muddy the Waters” — Kill 9 Stillmoon Water Servants in Stillmoon Temple 
“Snowfoot Attack” — Kill 10 Snowfoot Goblins in The Ascent 
“Knowledge is Power” — Loot 7 x Ancient Scroll of Knowledge from Thundercrest Isles 

Upon completing these tasks and speaking with the Commander, you will have access to a single group mission and raid event: 

“The Gilded Scroll” — single-group mission given by Officer Vacax Rol`Tas. Go into the Thundercrest Isles and kill mobs, looting scrolls off their corpses. Upon looting the correct one, it will turn into a Gilded Scroll of Earth Rending. After this, kill Noble Kirin Scholar. Do this and turn the gilded scroll in to Daleynn Spiritshadow in Lavastorm for a flag. 

“Volkara’s Bite” — 42-player raid in Lavaspinner’s Lair, results in Lava Spider Spinners from Volkara, a lava spider. 

Give the Lava Spider Spinners to the Commander for a character flag and move on to the next raid event. 

“Trial of Perseverance” is a 24-player raid in Stillmoon Temple, results in Goblin Warlord’s Beads from A Stillmoon Warlord. 

Turn the beads in to the commander to receive: 

-Two AAs 
-New ability: Embrace of the Dark Reign (increase buff slot limit by one) 

(Walk through is from Zam)

The first time we attempted Volkara’s Bite we died. We didn’t realize that the dot she was so frantically casting was also a mana drain, so our healer ran out of mana. This fight is a LOT like the Thuuga raid in EQ2. As you kill Volkara, she spawns cocoons and then those hatch into spiders if you don’t dps them down fast enough. If you die, bad things also happen (as we found out when the enchanter died, twice). 

So we buffed back up and headed back to give it another shot. Keep in mind this raid was meant for 42 players – and we were one 80 monk, 84 magician, 80 cleric, and then myself as 77 necromancer and 74 enchanter. It doesn’t matter if the raid is out of date, it still hurts. 

We managed against all odds to win the second time around, burning through the last cocoons at 10% instead of dealing with them. Of course we did die to the spider adds once we finished killing Volkara, but it was alright, we still won! Afterwards we did the 24-person raid which was far easier, and collected our updates. 

By the time those two raids were done (we’d skipped the three missions before that, they can be done out of order if you have someone else who is able to get the raids) I was starting to feel a little sleepy, so I called it a night and headed to bed. It was a lot of fun though, and I hope everyone else had fun too. Today? Who knows!

Gaming

A Night of Memories

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I know it’s hard to tell by the screen shot, but that blue x4 mob is one of the epics in The Sanctorium, an instance located in Sinking Sands in the Graveyard. Yesterday I spent a few hours on various characters being mentored by Siege again who were going after achievement points. When Echoes of Faydark released, the achievements were re-set, though they have not been re-set since, that means that a LOT of the T5-T6 content still has aa for people who have not been there in a while. 

My bruiser reaped the bonus of this the most. I started out at level 57, and since she is on my ‘main’ account there’s a bonus of 40% experience. The account is also privy to the 5 year veteran reward that replenishes all of your adventure vitality, so once I ran out I clicked that and poof, back in business. 

We killed the two x4 blue encounters within The Sanctorium very easily, no healer in our group. While they did reward aa, there was only two wooden chests that dropped. We also did Hidden Cache, which is another instance in Sinking Sands. Upon finishing those we went and took down Meathooks, who I remember being far tougher way back when. He’s the x3 raptor in Sinking Sands. Mind you we only had one group and we were blowing through things. 

After that it was off to Pillars of Flame. We ran around looking for named that were up, and also headed to Ancients Table, and Cazels Mesa. Two instances that I remember doing a number of times when Desert of Flames released. It was really nice to see the old content, even if we were just blowing through it. Once that was done we headed to (of course) Shimmering Citadel, where we searched for names before heading into Poets Palace. Once that was cleared it was time for a break, and my bruiser who was 57, was 61. 

Later on in the evening another group wanted to take down some content. We spawned and defeated the gold and silver dragons in Maj’Dul who rewarded no aa but each dropped a master chest with a piece of fabled gear inside. We headed to Thundering Stepps and the Cove of Decay to take down the Epic Angler, who wasn’t so epic after all. Then it was time to defeat Mjolni, you may remember them as the dragon from the prismatic 1.0 chain. 

Not done after that, we headed to A Meeting of the Minds in the Ferrott, then to The Trembling Lagoon, and finally off to Lavastorm to down a random epic that was up in the zone. While the experience was nothing astounding since we were just taking down random epics, the aa was nice, and people seemed to have a good time. Apparently tonight since it’s a slow night Spirits of the Lost is on schedule. The zone is said to give between 3-5 aa due to the plethora of named located within. 

When that was done we decided to call it a night, everyone having got their fix. It was fun, and nice to spend the evening walking running down memory lane.

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