Venril Sathir

How a Saturday Should Be

Despite the heat wave Ottawa seems to be going through lately (ugh I’m eager for snow) yesterday was a fantastic Saturday. It was one of those days I could just play whatever game I wanted, I had no obligations anywhere, and I had a blast. I love days like that. In fact I love them so much I think Sunday will be following in Saturday’s footsteps.

I started the day out in World of Warcraft. I’ve settled down on the Ravenholdt server where I have four characters, one actually being a main. I play a blood elf priest the majority of the time tagging along with a friend who plays a troll warrior. I love playing my healer classes, and we’ve just hit level 47, almost 49. With the latest patch giving us epic mounts at 40, we’re now running all over the place at light speed. I’ve never gotten a character over level 50 before even though I’ve played off and on since release, so we’re coming up to content that is still quite new to me. I enjoy it. I also have a 38 shaman, 38 hunter, and 21 mage. They’re mostly just craft characters, with the hunter being my ‘farming’ character. Skinning and mining so I can make some coin for the others. We joined a small little guild (I mean, maybe five people in it) and it’s actually been a lot of fun. WoW still won’t ever be my main game of choice, but when I want to just kick back for an hour or two it’s certainly fun and easy.

The remainder of my day was spent patching Aion (ugh it had been a while, there was a lot of work to do) for their last beta testing weekend, and then playing some EverQuest II.

In EQ2 a few things happened. First of all, I decided to switch from playing my illusionist to my troubador. I know, I flip flop more then, well, pretty much anyone I know. I had a line of thinking for this, and it still (so far) makes sense (in my head). The illusionist has far more gear then the bard but if I concentrate on the bard for a bit that’s easily fixed. I was wearing two sets of T1 gear, and with my spare shards decided to switch so I was just wearing the bard set. Now I need more shards (as usual). I really miss being able to trade shards via the craft system.

There was a pick up leviathan raid going on, and I decided since it’s my troubadors next update I should try to get in. After sitting in group for 30 minutes we discovered that no one in the raid actually had access to leviathan – and so I decided to leave and free up room for someone who DID have access.

Many people don’t realize that YES you do need access to enter the Leviathan raid. So what is this access?

You need to kill the Overking, and you also need to kill Venril Sathir. I had already defeated Venril Sathir the previous week, it’s the first encounter I needed for my epic. All I needed was the Overking. Low and behold Paradise Lost decided to head to Chardok and take down that Dizok, so I tagged along to get my Leviathan flag.

There’s no quest involved, and there’s not any way (currently) to tell in game exactly what you have access to and what you do not have access to. This day in age I think that’s very important to a game. How do I know if I can get into Poets Palace – while there may not be a whole lot in EQ2 that requires access, there are still things. Not to mention those blasted druid rings, how on earth do I keep track across so many characters who needs what. It’s frustrating to say the least – I did hear that they’re adding a keyring type command in an upcoming patch / expansion, so we’ll just have to be on the lookout for that.

We had two groups of guild mates and two groups of PUGS who needed the update. The raid was incredibly smooth, no wipes. Exactly the type of raid I enjoy! I was starting to get a little irritated at the heat by that time, with both the fan and the AC going, so I logged off for the evening and decided to spend an hour or two in bed reading before I fell asleep. All in all, it was a perfect Saturday, and I had a great time. Hopefully everyone else had a fantastic weekend thus far as well, looking forward to hearing all about it!

See you in Norrath!

Updates, Instances, and Raids (Oh My!)

Once again the moon and stars all aligned and some how Ultann, Wpus, Calreth, and myself all happened to be on at the same time (though Calreth did join us later on). In a rare attempt, I was doing quests in Lavastorm, the void quests that I’ve avoided for so long. We decided to head to the Daily Double which happened to be Halls of the Forsaken in Commonlands, a zone I had actually never done with my mystic. It went smooth – of course nothing of note dropped. We did get our shards though and that was fantastic.

Afterward we were feeling a little daring, so we decided to try out the new EA in Jarsath Wastes. This was one of three instances added not that long ago (the other two being the x2 and single group instances in Kurns tower). This zone is still difficult, and still requires some finesse. We had our usual “are you going to actually win before I waste my time joining your group” comments – which I’m starting to just get used to.

The first portion of the group experience was not that bad. We cleared fairly easily, we got to the ‘cheering’ fight, which is a LOT of lag for most of us and incredible spam – we wiped a few times as we learned the encounter (it always changes from group to group it seems) but eventually we defeated him. Finally, it was time for the last named (or four) in the zone, and this is where troubles arose.

I can understand the fascination and lure of wanting to better oneself. I can even understand the frustration in running ACT (a dps parser) during fights and looking at everyone else and maybe not having the nicest things to say about them because some how they don’t measure up to your invisible line of “uber” – but – despite all of that why on earth do people feel the need to gloat about their own dps while belittling others. Not everyone has the same amount of time to dedicate to the game, not everyone can raid, not everyone enjoys it. If someone is parsing lower (for whatever reason) it doesn’t mean necessarily that they suck but just may not have as much time or experience as someone else – instead of making a huge deal out of it why not just attempt whatever it is you’re attempting, try YOUR best, and let those others take care of themselves. If it’s such a huge deal to you, mark it off as a bad experience, and don’t group with the offending members again. Why do people feel the need to make others feel like crud because they some how don’t measure up to their invisible standards. I dislike that aspect of the game more then absolutely anything else, and I didn’t hold back in telling the illusionist exactly what I thought of them and their “I am out parsing the brigand and the conjuror” tells. I admit, I was livid. They ended up leaving the group during that final encounter, so we invited Calreth along (and low and behold, we actually for further into the fight with Calreth then we did with the lippy illusionist). Aside from that one smear, the experience was nice, the brigand and the ranger were both very nice and very friendly, and stuck it out despite the fact that we wiped so many times I was naked by the end.

I understand there are players out there who are far better then I will ever be (as the illusionist then proceeded to tell me how to play my class, and was linking heals per second, as I was the only healer) but if everyone just concentrated on playing their OWN characters, and stopped worrying so much about what every other class out there was doing, it would be so much better (personally speaking of course).

After the instance runs we (the guild) played around for a bit, but the day was pretty much done, I logged over to the other server with my troubador for a Venril Sathir raid (I need it for my mythical update) and since the nerf (this was my first time attempting it since the nerf) it went VERY smooth and very fast. I don’t think we were even there for a full five minutes. We had three groups, and since you don’t have to watch how high your power is any more, just how low and make sure you don’t have the debuffs (ie: don’t cast with them on) it was just, so incredibly easy. Mythical update achieved, we decided to head to a half cleared Shard of Hate instance – I relogged to my illusionist and decided to tag along.

All that remained was Kpul D’Vngur, also known as The Maestro and Byzola. We only had three groups, four healers, and I had never actually BEEN to SoH before so it was bound to be an interesting experience. Maestro went down with no problems at all, I kept ranged, people jousted, and everything went just fine. I was also exceptionally lucky, the coercer / illusionist robe dropped, as well as an illusionist master. I was the only one who needed them and won the rolls. Byzola was a different story, we wiped twice as we tried to get steady, get adds down (class adds spawn two at a time, fighter mage and then scout priest) cure our dots, run away from the raid when / if we got cursed. I felt glad that I had stocked up on cure potions before hand (my troub happens to be an 80 alchemist) and it was just crazy. With only four healers I didn’t think we’d be able to pull it off – but I was proven wrong, and on the third pull Byzola came crashing down.

What a rush!

A plate helm, the ill will earring (that combines into the larger one), and the cloak pictured above dropped, the cloak was a significant upgrade over the Everfrost level 40 or so one I was wearing, and no one else needed it, so I obtained another upgrade for the evening. I was starting to feel a little like a loot monger by the end of the night, but if no one needs it, no one needs it. Tonight is Ward of Elements (another zone I’ve never personally been to, even though Hamal and Ultann and Calreth have all gone) and I’m looking forward to it. It was a really great way to end the evening, and I’m glad that there are still things like this that I can experience and still have a fantastic time.

Thanks for the raids last night Paradise Lost! See you in Norrath.