vault of eternal sleep

Betrayal, Instances, and Alts!

stargrace April 16, 2009 1Comment

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!

Gaming

Still No Shield, but lots of Fun!

stargrace April 8, 2009 5Comments

Arysh (the coercer pictured above) is getting close to level 80 (finally) and she only has 70aa. This is what happens when you don’t do a single quest with a character (I think she has a grand total of maybe 20 completed) and only get discoveries when you tag along as a boxed character. Now that she’s getting up there, I’ll be switching my play style around some. I’ve had the coercer on the laptop dragging her around while I play the mystic in group – I’d like the coercer to have a better role and so I’m going to start putting the mystic on the laptop for healing / buff purposes and playing the coercer. Now, why on earth would I want to just drag my coercer around for 79 levels and not quest her? Pretty simple, I already have an 80 coercer + an 80 illusionist with epics. I’ve done this before, and doing the whole questing bit just simply wasn’t interesting to me at the time. It does mean I’ll pay for it now, but I don’t really mind that, either. It’s nice to switch things up a little.

The trio headed back to Obelisk in Moors. We had a fairly clean run aside from my laptop disconnecting randomly at the beginning. Reset the wireless router and I was good to go. The healer shield refused to drop (again) and the shadowknight / paladin one was what we got (again). It was still a fun run, and each time we do the zone it gets quicker. There was still a little time to waste afterwards so we headed to Vault of Eternal Sleep in the hopes that luck would stay steady and perhaps we’d get another praetor’s guard for the coercer this time.

Has anyone else noticed a decline in master drop rate? We’ve been doing instances pretty much every day and have yet to see a metal chest aside from the one that dropped the praetor’s guard yesterday. Not a single master spell at all has dropped from any named. Slightly discouraging, but understandable I suppose. I’m wondering if this is intentional, perhaps in preparation of implementing research npc’s that’s been talked about on the forums.

Channels on Kithicor seemed especially rude last night, I tend to phase most of it out but it’s been difficult. I’ve been spoiled by the EQ channels which are far more calm and relaxed. In EQ2 channels are flooded with people selling no trade fabled items to others who may not be able to complete the zones. In EQ this simply doesn’t happen, items that are left to ‘rot’ are announced as ‘free for all’ and whoever gets there first is able to loot it. In fact while I was playing EQ if anyone attempted to sell ‘rotting’ loot they were instantly set upon by the remaining members of the community berating them for trying to sell a piece of no-trade loot. Ah, how things have changed.

After Vaults I decided to call it a night, as I have a Wizard 101 article I need to complete today for Beckett and would no doubt be up early. I spent a good portion of the early evening playing W101 and had a blast, got my wizard Angela to level 17 and worked my way through the early portions of Krokotopia. I used to have a subscription to the game but I really wasn’t playing nearly enough to warrant the $10/m (which is a GREAT plan by the way if you’re actually constantly playing) so I decided to buy some crowns to permanently unlock zones for my account. If you don’t have a lot of time to play this is a perfect payment plan and I’m so happy to find an alternative means for the subscription. I’m not leveling up through content especially fast, and it basically reduces my $10/m down to $5/m based on my play times.

Hope everyone else had a fantastic evening, and are looking forward to the long Easter weekend!

Gaming

Obelisk of Ahkzul, and Vault of Eternal Sleep

stargrace April 5, 2009 0Comment

When EQ had it’s 10th anniversary, for the week you could claim free LoN (Legends of Norrath) loot cards in either EQ or EQ2. For the first portion of the week I was claiming them in EQ, and then switched over to EQ2 when the void vision goggles came out, and then the next day it was the awesome parrot that you see sitting on my mystic’s shoulder in the screen shot above (which turned out really nice, I have to admit). I had planned on doing some questing in Lavastorm for the evening – but had a really nice surprise when Ultann decided to re-activate his EQ2 account. So of course I decide that the group is going to jump right into things, and we head to the Moors of Ykesha to attempt the Obelisk of Ahkzul with just the three of us (and me boxing the coercer). It’s only been a month and a half since we started playing EQ fairly regularly rather then EQ2, and we did pretty well. The new threat meter is amazing and everyone loves it. I adore the fact that you can now auto follow on the Z axis.

I’ve been playing on the highest settings I can put my computer at and still function, which is one below max. The game looks so incredible to me. I did turn down the number of spell particles I see simply because when you have so many turned on encounters start looking like masses of particle effects and nothing more. I can’t see the mobs or where they’re positioned or know if I’m about to die to a giant AoE frontal.

We died once in the ‘ball room’ but it was just us being rusty. The second attempt was flawless, and we managed to get a chest with 14p in it. Those chests are nice when you do the instance in a group of three. I had my fingers crossed that the final encounter would drop the healer shield I’ve longed for since day one – but alas, my luck in EQ2 is pretty non-existant, and nothing of use dropped. On the plus side, void shards WERE introduced to this zone finally, so we each gained one more to add to the pile by the end.

Afterwards we decided to head to Vault of Eternal Sleep in Jarsath Wastes to try (for the 101st time) for the praetor’s guard for Wpus, the conjuror. Ever since we found out we can trio this zone, we’ve attempted to get the guard to drop. Every time, we had no drop. The zone is fairly easy to complete, we rarely ever die. The adds spawned, I mez’d them while still attempting to heal (Wpus catches them with root so I have a little leeway) and down the final boss went.

A master chest!

Now, there are two fabled (maybe more) that can drop here. There are a pair of pants that no one in the group would use – along with the mage item. FINALLY the guard dropped, now we just need to get one for my coercer. Groan.

I started having ISP issues (again) shortly after that, so when I disconnected I called it a night and headed to bed. I had a blast though. It was great to be back in Norrath 2.0 and even better to enjoy the evening with some great friends. I hope everyone else had a fantastic evening, no matter where you spent it!

See you in Norrath!

Betrayal, Instances, and Alts!

Still No Shield, but lots of Fun!

Obelisk of Ahkzul, and Vault of Eternal Sleep

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