Stargrace

Levitating Unicorns and Marus Seru #EverQuest

EverQuest put a wonderful patch in this week that not only changed the old (tired, dated) hotzones, but also revamped hero’s forge armor into a new sleek look. If you happen to prefer the old bulky look you can continue to use it. To switch over to the new look just right click the piece of gear in an inventory slot. Robes are not included in this change, but I’m still happy for it. The bust of my female characters always looked a bit.. off.

I’ve been playing my new paladin lately. I’ve got little to no experience playing a tank class, even though I do have a 53 shadowknight I haven’t touched the character in a number of years. I’ve always wanted to play a paladin, so I decided why not. When I created the high elf paladin Crescent Reach was the hotzone (and had been for a number of years) and I managed to level to 17 without too much trouble. This time I decided to try out the new hot zones, which was Marus Seru for level 25.

The zone was completely empty. Not exactly unheard of on a Thursday evening, but a bit odd. Oger took on a shroud and joined me and our mercs in beating up many Stonegrabbers and Rockhoppers, ah Luclin how I have missed you.

If you’re curious about what the new hotzones are, here’s the list:

— Level 20 – Warslik’s Wood
— Level 25 – Marus Seru
— Level 30 – Frontier Mountains
— Level 35 – The Dawnshroud Peaks
— Level 40 – Jaggedpine Forest
— Level 45 – Burning Woods
— Level 50 – Corathus Creep
— Level 55 – The Bloodfields
— Level 60 – Undershore
— Level 65 – Plane of Air (AKA Eryslai, the Kingdom of Wind)
— Level 70 – Wall of Slaughter
— Level 75 – Oceangreen Hills
— Level 80 – Hills of Shade
— Level 85 – Old Bloodfields
— Level 90 – Valley of Lunanyn
— Level 90 – The Grounds

It looks like I’m off to Frontier Mountains next, as the paladin is closing in on 30 after my adventures last night. I picked up my new spells, and a few pieces of new defiant gear. I gave a brief glance through my alternate advancement and noticed that one of my level 85 includes a levitating unicorn.

O. M. G.

If there was ever a reason to play a class, that’s it.

Postponed Patches, and Market Visits #WurmOnline

I was looking forward to the big summer patch coming out today, but alas it has been postponed due to some ATI graphic rendering issues that the dev team is trying to figure out. Of course I would always much rather a patch be postponed instead of inflicting massive bugs upon a player base, so I’m not too heartbroken over this.

Yesterday I made my way to the south coast of Exodus to set up a merchant at one of the markets down there. I had heard from players that this was one of the more popular Exodus markets, but the server has a handful of them, so I’m not really sure. So far I haven’t sold anything yet, but it hasn’t been that long and I honestly have no idea how many people actually shop there.

My merchant on Deliverance on the other hand does quite well. I’ve made 16s this month from selling my items, and the market really doesn’t have that much (if any) competition, so everyone uses it. I believe another market may be opening to the East, but I’m not certain on that.

I’m pretty excited about the patch tomorrow. I’ve started remodeling some of my homes from wood to stone (I prefer the look) and I’m eager to test out the new fence models. I have a feeling that mortar and brick will be as popular as ever in regards to sales. I’ve neer purchased bulk goods like that before, but I always see people looking for them.

I moved Arysh back to Deliverance where she now holds the writ papers to Caribou Trails, and can watch over the animals. That does mean that Stargrace over on Exodus no longer has someone to provide her with meals nor can she examin the animals herself, but I figure I should get those skills on my main character before too long. I may let the Vynora lapse for a bit in subscription, while I work on other things.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Back Into Rift #Rift #Riftgame

Like many others this week, I decided to poke back into Rift when it went free to play. There were a few issues on starting day like loyalty not being there for everyone and some very long queues, but most gamers are used to these sort of issues and they were not too bad. I picked up with my level 50 cleric not knowing what the heck I was doing, or where I should go. I was reluctant to start over with another character because I really wanted to attempt 60 on the cleric, and I’ve worked really hard on her crafting and other skills. Plus I have one of everything, so I just wasn’t keen on starting another of everything.

Thanks to the cookie cutter soul builds it didn’t take that long to understand what I was doing. You hit buttons, stuff happens. I’m in a dps / solo spec right now that gives me enough heals to stay alive and enough dps that I don’t feel like an hour has passed before anything dies. I decided to queue for some instant adventures after picking up a daily (weekly?) quest for it, which were a lot of fun. It just drops you into a random group in a random zone, and off you go. I think for mine we were in Stonefield. It also mentors you down, so I think I was level 25. It wasn’t a whole lot of experience, but it was a fantastic refresher on “what to do” in game.

Afterward I decided to start the Storm Legion content. I know there’s Ember Island, but I had heard that the experience there didn’t quite measure up, and since Storm Legion came out after, a lot of the gear is also just not worth it. I may adventure there at another time, or when I’m looking for some place new.

I was looking forward to getting my skills above 300 as they’ve been raised with the level increase – however, I won’t be able to afford that for quite some time. Looks like they cost 11 plat each to train, plus the cost of recipes, and I have a grand total of 10 plat to my name. It looks like money has gone through a bit of an overhaul though and it’s far easier to get coin these days than ever before. Perhaps with a few more quests under my belt I’ll be able to afford to train up.

I also have a lot of crafting lures on me, but I’m not sure where people go any more to complete those. I’ll have to ask in channel.

All in all, I’m really happy to be back – enough so that I signed up for Patron (a subscription) just to enjoy the perks and earn more loyalty as I play. You can find me on the Faeblight server as Seduisant. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Summer Update Incoming #WurmOnline

There are some really amazing updates coming out soon, Tuesday June 18th to be exact. This is posted from the Wurm Online Tumblr.

Wurm V1.1 Summer Update Release Next Week

We’re very happy to tell you that our Summer Update which brings Wurm to version 1.1 will be released on Tuesday 18th June.

What’s coming in the Summer Update?

One of our main projects for this update has been to make a number of performance enhancements, mainly to the game client. This should mean that graphics cards will be used more effectively to improve frame rates and overall performance. We’ve also tried to fix as many bugs as possible.

We’re adding a number of new features to the game, including the ability to build house extensions, new fence types, learn mystical powers to become a powerful sorcerer, and several others including an overhaul of the foraging and botanising system.

We have also made some changes to graphics and user interface. These include an update to a number of creature models and animations, a paper-doll window for equipping armour, icons for climbing, lawful etc. and inventory grouping among other improvements.

We’re also very glad to announce that our new in-game music will be released. We’ll let you know more about that soon.

Overall, this summer update has been the result of work from across all areas of the team since we hit 1.0 last December. Some of the changes are quite small, but there are many of them. Others are very exciting and add new depth and accessibility to the game and we’re really excited to see how you use them.

We really hope you enjoy this next release of Wurm Online as much as we have enjoyed developing it for you. Happy Wurming!

Yours Sincerely,
Rolf and the team behind Wurm Online

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for regular updates! There’s also our Team Blog.

P.S. In case you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a condensed featurelist for v1.1:

Client Performance Upgrades

An All-New Mystic Powers and Karma System

More New Creature Models

Re-Work of the Epic Endgames

Kingdom Tabards (worn on the body)

Cross-Server Chat

New Fence Types

Flower Beds and Flower Pots

Gravestones

New “Analyse” on Rock Ores

Foraging and Botanizing Overhaul

Modify Existing Structures

New In-Game Music

GUI: Addition of a Drag and Drop “Paperdoll”

GUI: New icons for climbing, faithful etc

Inventory Grouping

In-game Skill Tracker

Diagonal Roads

Falling Tree Animations

P.P.S. There will also be a slight change to the farming mechanic. There will now be more factors affecting crop yield, including seed ql, rake ql and the rarity of everything involved. In theory, someone with only 1 farming skill could potentially achieve a yield of 4 crops. Also, you will continue to always harvest more than 0 crops.

Charm of Lore, and Mercenary of East Wastes #EverQuest

Oger and myself have been working on a few older achievements as of late. You can find these under the Hero’s Journey category in your achievement window. The one I picked for us to work on next was the Charm of Lore, which involves collecting 37 different trinkets and turning them in to Librarian Hemfar in Crescent Reach. So far the collection has not been too difficult to obtain, but we’re now at the point where 100% of them are drops from mobs and raids. The hard part being simply finding the mobs up (or in the case of regular named, spawning them). Still we’ve worked our way through a lot of zones and I’m really happy that there are only 8 more pieces for me to collect and then I’ll have completed the charm. The ones I’m missing are in Ashengate, Ashengate, Reliquary of the Scale: North, Ashengate, Reliquary of the scale: West, Frostcrypt: Raid Instance #2 and Valdeholm: Udengar the Traitor. It’s not an upgrade any more but there’s still an achievement for getting it done, and a sense of completion for my main character.

I’ve been thinking a bit on what I want to work on next, and I’m pretty sure it will be my druid. I haven’t actually started working on her yet, but before too long I hope to.

Another bit of character advancement came from working on the Mercenary of East Wastes: Zeixshi-Kar’s Awakening. It’s part of the current expansion so any rewards were quite relevant, and a death or two happened here and there. Mostly because of my charmed pet breaking and me not being able to land a charm in time before I was smushed. Especially if mercenary are on passive and not healing me. I’m still getting used to having my rune spells up (and active). This zone was frustrating. Especially if you’re not a tracker. It’s not that the quests themselves were difficult per say but the zone is GIANT (it mimics the regular East Wastes) and it’s constant running around to find what you need. If you don’t have a tracker you’re forced to wander around aimlessly looking for what you need. It did take us a week or two to finally complete these quests but I’m glad we got it done. Now we just need one more East Waste group mission and then we will have completed the hero achievements and obtained the trophy house item that grants buffs. After that, it’s time to move on to someplace new, which I am really looking forward to. The constant snow storms are not my idea of fun.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!