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Happy 2nd Birthday Vanguard

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Two years since the release of Vanguard: SOH. I’ve played off and on since the beginning, and I’ve always said that I love the game – despite what a VERY rocky launch it had. Things are far better now, bugs have been fixed and content has been added. There’s still bugs, it happens. But if you were around at the launch and around now, you’ll see definite changes. 

In celebration the folks at SOE are hosting a “it takes two” contest. You can check out the details on their official site here. Pretty neat prizes, I can’t partake because I’m a resident of Canada but I hope some of my friends to the South get a chance to enter. 

The people who do play and who have stuck by the game for the past two years are some of the most passionate people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. They care about their game on a very deep level and they’re not afraid to stand up for their beliefs. The channels (especially in Thestra) are filled with people reminiscing about EQ1, and almost daily you can hear people walking down memory lane. 

So happy 2nd birthday Vanguard! I look forward to seeing what comes in the future, and how things continue to change.

Gaming

Gone Fishing – In Telon

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I spent the afternoon fishing in Telon (Tanvu to be specific) and quickly lost track of time. Hanging on the wall behind Faydai is her very first Kelp Bass, which I was able to mount to my wall in my home. How awesome! I figured fishing out a little better this time compared to when I was playing on test. I now know that when the ‘hit a combo’ button comes up you have to hit four key combinations before the fish moves again. I also learned I’m not good at learning their ‘moves’ or doing combos. Fish have levels and you have to work down their hit points by following their moves. If they do combos that you can’t counter they win and they’ll eventually get away. Watching them at max health as you try to mash buttons is frustrating but when you finally land one, it’s great. 

Leveling up is slow. I spent a few hours fishing and only reached a skill of 5. Whether that’s because I just suck, or because I need to be fishing some place else I’m not quite sure. 

It was a LOT of fun though. I also ran around Telon grabbing Christmas presents for house decorations. My lonely tree has had no gifts under it for far too long. 

Next on my list? Well I have to build a boat of course, so I can take friends fishing with me out on the open water. I’m excited about it, not to mention the fact that carpenters make some pretty nice house items, and my home has looked quite bare for the past two years. 

Randolph is back as well, I dug mine out from the bank and took a brief flight over Tanvu before I settled in for some fishing. 

Doesn’t that lookbetter?!

Gaming

Plains of Anguish

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Managed to team up on Saturday with Growlius and Agaton from Safe Haven and work on some of my Plains of Anguish quests (which I had a lot of). We finally cleared out enough to be working on the Brotherhood quests, which we all had multiples of. One thing that I didn’t know is that the named in the area have a chance to drop an unmarked piece of gear which is used in a quest to give you a skeleton illusion clicky. I’m all about clickies, I love them, have ever since EQ1 and all of those rogue masks that I camped for hours (and days) on end. 

The group was Growlius as his Dreadknight, and Agaton is a Psionicist. Apparently mez doesn’t work on undead, which I wasn’t aware of. I played healer, blood mage. Growlius got level 42, which of course meant new spells for him, and I managed to hit level 44! Brings me one level closer to being able to do my swamp armor quests at 45, and I got to purchase some new spells. I actually only had four quests to pick up, a little disappointing but it looks like 46 will be nice. I am really excited to be getting closer to 50, even if the experience has slowed down drastically. I also want to work on my crafting this week and make the push to 50 in that. It’ll be nice to be hitting 50/50 at pretty close to the same time. I’m not sure yet if I plan on getting diplomacy up to 50 but I probably will. It would be really nice to have a 50/50/50 character in Vanguard. Why? Because (for me personally at least) it’s a huge accomplishment and takes a lot of work. Guild was talking about how level 50’s are bored and typically playing nothing but alts, but since I’ve never had a level 50 character before, I have a feeling I’ll still play mine for quite some time. We’ll have to see. 

There was one death yesterday of the psionicist because lets face it they’re cloth wearers and I just couldn’t heal fast enough when they had so much agro, but aside from that I had a blast and I hope everyone else did too. 

I’m not sure where to head to after PoA, but I should work on that skeleton illusion mask some time I suppose.

Gaming

Fishing, Guild Meetings, and Adventuring

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Spent some time in Vanguard yesterday afternoon, between doing groceries, cleaning the house, and writing those blasted Beckett articles (for Vanguard, it counts as research, right?) that proved to be harder then I thought they would. Growlius decided to reactivate his account, and I was VERY happy. I leveled up my blood mage with his Deathknight pretty much from 20+ and it was always a goal of ours to hit level 50 some time. It took a little while for him to go through his quest journal and figure out what buttons did what (it’s been a few months) but before too long we were on our way back to Plains of Anguish to smite undead and save the town, 

He also got the /claim item that included the pack camel and the wand that transforms you into a cute illusion (or deadly, depending on what you get morphed into). The ferocious cat on the left side is me, and the little pixi looking creature on the right is him. The sword he’s holding is actually bigger then him, and the grass covers us when we’re standing around, we’re just that short. It’s hard to fight that way, with everything looming (quite literally) over top, so we quickly changed back to normal and headed off to the Graveyard and then to a small village to kill some Forsaken Scholars, knights, and steeds. 

Since my Beckett article is about the changes in Vanguard, I headed over to the test server to take a peek at a few of the changes they’re implementing. One of them is a big one. Well, two of them. The one that interested me the most though was of course FISHING!

That’s right, after a LONG two year wait, fishing is finally being put into the game. It’s not like EQ2 fishing either. Or WoW fishing. You go through a tutorial in Tanvu, pick up your rod and reel, and some bait. Then you learn the fishing skill while Tien teaches you the basics. You learn that fish are elusive creatures in Vanguard, and fishing itself is quite complex. You have to cast out your line, stop it at a particular section of water and be sure not to cast too close to the fish or they scatter. Once the line has been cast you wait around for a fish to take notice of it. When you’ve got one on your line, it tugs in a WASD direction (or arrow keys if you prefer) and you have to move in the same direction using your keys. Follow the fish properly enough times (fish moves to the left, hit the left arrow key type of deal) and you’ll automatically reel it in. 

That’s not all there is to this skill though. If you happen to hook a particular fish, you can unlock combos that you have to key really fast, each combo relates to a specific species of fish. Once you’ve unlocked combos for fish types you can master the species (their words not mine). Fish have particular habits as well. Some are around more in the day then the night. Some can only be reached by galleons (that’s right, I said it!) and have to be fished deep in the sea waters. There’s all kinds of particular bait and while it doesn’t really matter which you use, some is better for situations then others. 

After wandering around on test it was time to head back to the live servers for a guild meeting. Safe Haven meets once a month to go over any concerns members may have, bring up events, go over any new policies (like the new dues system we have since we now own a guild hall and it costs 50g a week in upkeep). Over 20 people showed up, and it was a great way to meet everyone. Even Kasul and Growlius managed to come. The guild is fairly active with a good number of people but of course everyone has their real lives and most people play other games aside from Vanguard, so things can get strained at times. Finding groups to accomplish what you need to get done. 

Hopefully, with all of the great changes that are due, the player base swells a little. We’ll just have to see. In the mean time, I’m having a blast.

Gaming

Swamps of Rumug

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At level 45 most players spend the rest of their levels to 50 working on armor sets. These are known as ‘Swamp Armor’ because of the areas that you need to work for faction in. There are three faction and each one rewards the gear with a different focus. I’m still two levels away from 45, but it’s never too early to start working on faction (when some of it comes from kills) especially when you’re also working on harvesting. I was anxious to get lumberjacking over 400. At 500 I can harvest aged wood, which is actually T6 wood and worth a pretty penny. I’m hoping since Galleons come out this month that the price of wood will go up. Right now dusky is going for 1g a stack, since there’s just so many people sitting at T5. 

I headed to the Swamps of Rumug to duo with a ranger in guild, taking down treants. That’s another aspect of VG that I really enjoy, you can get lumber from killing treant type creatures or you can get it from harvesting trees. Leather also comes form the area in the form of skinning trolls. After looking at a few sites and trying to figure out how swamp armor works exactly, I’ve decided I’m going to go with a gorgalok set. There’s no real base healer cloth set for blood mages, and since most of my heals are based off of my damage output anyhow, there’s nothing wrong with going for a caster type set of armor. The gorgalok set focuses on +damage and +crit which is perfect. It requires me to kill in Ichtakhta, which is in the chunk just North West of Rumug. One problem which I’m sure to run into is that my partner in crime, Growlius, mentioned that he may be playing VG again as soon as this weekend (excited!) and he’ll probably want to work on the Ichtakhta set of armor, which is +mitigation and +absorption. This puts us at odds as far as faction goes. Working on one faction will lower it with the others. I guess we’ll just have to see. 

After spending an hour or two wandering around killing trees I gated back home and sold the little bit of vendor trash I had, and put the crafting bits on the broker. I’m finding it a little difficult to make money. There is a huge surplus of artificers who wander the lands of Telon, and I’m just one of them. Crafting supplies used to sell quite well, but there’s so many people harvesting and so many people end game that it’s hard for me to find a little niche to settle into. With the new guild hall for Safe Haven comes dues, and I’m expected to pay 5g a month or 10g if I manage to level to 50. Which this is by no means a huge amount of coin, it is if you play casually and don’t exactly have a lot of money to spare. Or if you ended up giving away all your money in a scavenger hunt you hosted before you left last time. I imagine it will take me a bit to find a way to make coin again. It’s funny to see all the quests I’m doing reward me with 6s and 7s when I get anything into the double digits as a reward even at level 43 I jump for joy. Aside from my skills every two levels and repair bills I don’t have a great number of costs, so for now this works out just fine.

Edit: Forgot to mention! In the general channel today someone mentioned if anyone had tried to /setfog 777777 and said that it made the game nice and clear. I was aware there was a command to remove the fog from game but had never played with it, and at first I thought the person just wanted to fool people into the whole game being VERY foggy or something like that. So I tested it out. Low and behold, when the fog vanished so did every ounce of lag I had. Yes, it removes a little bit from the atmosphere of the game, that screen shot above has fog on, with it off you can see the ruins in the background crystal clear. I don’t mind looking at everything crystal clear though without that hazy feel to it, and like I said, lag is completely gone and no sputtering. I think I’ll leave it off.

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