Stargrace

Eliza Droverson #D&D

Eliza crouched down behind bush, waiting for the pair of figures in front of her to part. Her fingers were wrapped tightly around the smooth blade of a dagger and she held her breath in anticipation.

“What’cha waitin’ for Missy.” The sudden stench of day old cabbage and mead filled her nostrils along with the shrill voice of a man everyone simply called ‘Snake.’ Eliza’s eyes bulged and she frantically backed away from the bush hoping that the pair she had been following didn’t hear or notice her mentor speaking so loudly to her. She was never going to get promoted in the guild if this happened every time she went out on her own. “Why Snake, of all people,” She sighed to herself.

“Thanks a lot. I almost had them!” She huffed, slipping the dagger back into her sleeves.

“Oh Ya did, did ya?” Snake grinned, he was obviously having a lot of fun with her discomfort. “Well, yer parents want ya home Missy, so you had better run along now and leave the pilferin’ to those who know how to act quickly, before the next day begins.” He taunted, and before she could send out a scathing reply he turned from her and walked away.

Eliza groaned. As much as she disliked Snake, he WAS her mentor these days, and he didn’t tend to lie when it came to her parents. She began walking back to her families house in Harkenwold, a small village made up mostly of farmers, woodcutters, and woodworkers, like her mother. She was the youngest of five, all daughters, and her parents absolutely dotted on them all. As Eliza grew up it became apparent that she didn’t share the same skills as the rest of her family. She wasn’t strong enough to cut down heavy logs, and she killed pretty much every plant she ever touched, which left her father shooing her from the farm fields more often than not. While she was apt enough with her daggers and a short sword, she couldn’t use them to carve figures into wood like her mother could. So Eliza had begun training with the thieves guild, under Snake. This worked great in two respects, it kept her out of her parents hair while they decided what to do with her, and it was something that she was actually good at. So far she had done nothing more than pit herself against the simple bandits that wandered along The King’s Road to the West, but it was something.

“Eliza, you’re home!” Her mother came out of the house, brushing wood shavings from her apron. “We’ve been looking for you..” She spoke too fast, and her smile was too broad. Something was going on.

“Of course I came home when I heard you were looking for me. Why did you have to send Snake..” She frowned.

“Well, because he knew where you were of course!” Her mother didn’t look daunted at all.

“I have great news. Lets go get your father.” She started to pull Eliza towards the fields in behind their home. Her father was working with a handful of other people, taking in this seasons crops. It was never much, but it was enough to feed them and leave a modest amount to sell afterward. The real money the family made came from the miniature carvings that Eliza’s mother did. She had such talent, each piece carved with painstaking detail.

“Oh you must be getting ready to tell Elizabeth the news!” Two sisters came up behind Eliza and her mother, sounding like a flock of excited ducks.

“Tell me what! No one has told me anything yet..” Eliza was beginning to feel a bit left out. Some big news that involved her, that no one would tell her about.

“Why, that you’re getting married, of course!” One of her sisters piped up.

“I’m.. I’m WHAT?!” Eliza screamed, freezing in place.

“I KNEW she would do this!” Her father stood up with a rake in his hand, pointing at Eliza’s mother. “She’s acting as though the undead were here, forcing her into marriage with them.”

“They may as well be!” She exclaimed, still not believing the news. “Why on earth did you think I would want to get married! I mean.. Why.. What..” She floundered, unable to express herself properly.

“It’s time.” Her mother said, finality oozing over each word. “You have been running a-muck for far too long dear. It’s time you settle down, with babies!” Her mother blushed a bit, but didn’t stop her excited speech. “We had an offer from the next town over. They’ve offered a VERY nice price! The young lad is quite handsome you know, we should count ourselves to be so lucky.”

“I don’t feel blessed or lucky at all.” Eliza sobbed.

“You don’t exactly have a choice in the matter.” Her father said, the exasperation in his voice ringing clear. With that the conversation was ended. Eliza ran to her room, slamming the door behind her. Life was so unfair. She didn’t want to get married! She had heard rumors of things happening to the West. She wanted to be there, she didn’t want to be chasing after children and changing diapers and growing old. It was a life that her parents had envisioned for her from the start, she realized. The life of a daughter. “I’ll show them..” She thought to herself. She began tossing a few things into an old leather pack, planning her rout. She would leave after night fell, when the farm was silent. She would travel along The King’s Road and prove to them all that she had more potential than to simply be someones wife.

“I’ll show them all..” She murmured to herself, as she waited for darkness to come.

(( A brief introduction to Eliza Droverson, my human rogue for an upcoming D&D campaign. She may seem young and naive but I’m sure she’ll come into her own as time goes on. ))

The Great Divide #EverQuest #EQ

It was time to move on from Blightfire Moors, and explore a ‘new’ zone. Well. Not especially new, but new to these characters at least! The next zone we headed off to was The Great Divide, which is a great little zone. It was time to smack down some Frost Giants, and smack down we did.

There’s only one issue we’re running into lately, and that is we’re almost leveling too fast. By the end of the night my beastlord was sitting at a comfortable level 37. She’s missing a lot of gear, and I haven’t purchased my spells since 30 or so. I did pick up my pet at 30 but I didn’t stock pile on anything past that. Technically I didn’t really need to. The mercenaries are holding their own, we have one dps (melee I believe) mercenary, and I also have a healer one. So while I’m not doing a lot of damage at the moment, it’s not noticeable. Leveling so quickly on a new server where we’ve nothing to our names is also proving to be an expensive endeavor. Mercenaries are almost 10 plat every 15 minutes now. I’m baffled at how a new player would be able to afford them for very long especially not knowing locations to spend grinding.

I have managed to sell a few pieces of gear at the bazaar in offline mode, which I really like. It’s not much, but it’s a start. When I watch general channel it amuses me to see pieces selling for multiple MILLIONS of platinum. I’m unsure if that’s because this is FV, or if it’s like that on all servers. On my home server of Drinal I don’t remember seeing people charging millions of plat for an item.

I still haven’t gotten into crafting yet, but I do want to. I’ve been selling bits and bobs to vendor for now, I figure I have lots of time to farm the materials I need to level over 50. I’m thinking of starting with food and drink to start, as it would be very helpful for our characters to be able to afford good food and drink. I may work towards tailoring from that, and in specific the barbarian cultural armor. It would be neat to be able to afford my own gear. Since it’s been so long since I’ve worked on any of that, we’ll just have to see.

Time for More of Blightfire Moors #EverQuest #EQ

Crescent Reach was starting to look a little small, most of the encounters were blue or easier, so the decision was made to head to Blightfire Moors, which is also a hot zone. This zone is packed full of snakes, shrubs, and prowling cats. We set up a camp near the entrance to begin with, and picked off bog rats and rats until we completed two simple quests that were on a sign just outside Crescent Reach. Turning them in didn’t net very much experience, but it was still better than nothing.

Eventually we moved on to a small camp of gnolls. These came in packs of three and we were almost defeated numerous times but some how managed to pull through by the skin of our teeth. Leveling was going really well, and before I knew it my Barbarian Beastlord was 20, along with the shadowknight.

Once we had our fill of gnolls, we moved on to some wild cats. These were far too tough for us. They are social and before we knew it we had about 10 cats chasing us around. Poor Oger fell to their vicious bites twice, while I ran away like a chicken to the nearest zone line. Always saving myself. Thankfully I also had the healer mercenary, so I came back and gave him a rez. After two wipes at this camp we decided to move on to killer shrubs.

The shrubs were also social but easier to handle even when they conned red. A few more dings, and we both found ourselves sitting at level 25. Only 75 more levels to go before we reach the current EverQuest cap of 100.

I decided to explore the bazaar a bit, it has changed over the years. You can now set up a trader in offline mode, but it doesn’t work the way I thought it would. What you do is set yourself up with trader satchels like you would if you were staying online, and when you click the trader window to offline mode, it kicks you from the game. You are only allowed to have 1 character total per account in offline mode, and you can’t be connected to the game while you are offline selling. So it’s great before you go to bed, or if you’re going to work for the day, but not if you want to be around in-game or on another character. I haven’t checked to see if I’ve sold anything yet, but a handful of plat would be nice because mercenary costs are going up. I’m now up to over 2 plat every 15 minutes to hire one.

Even though I’ve “started over” on a new server, veteran players are at a significant advantage over a brand new player. See, veterans earn loyalty points the longer their accounts are active, and I’ve racked up over 5,000 of these points. You can use them to purchase bags of plat, gear, a character slot, and house items as well as a handful of other things. I love loyalty points and I think it’s a great motivational tool to keep your loyal customers feeling special. I did spend 500 points on a bag of platinum, and received 17,000 plat. That goes towards keeping my mercenary paid for. I also had a mount in /claim and a package of level appropriate defiant gear in /claim, so I took advantage of those. I’m still missing a lot of gear, but I’m not wandering around the Moors naked any more at least.

I think the plan is to stay at the Moors for a bit longer and then move on. I’m also going to begin crafting in Crescent Reach with the ‘free’ crafting they have for players to work their way to 50 in all tradeskills for no cost. These mimic the quests you can do at Abysmal Sea. It may also be time to find a casual guild to join, we’ll just have to see.

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

From 8 to 13 in Crescent Reach #EQ #EverQuest

Crescent Reach, our home away from home once the tutorial was completed. Now, I know traditionally you would start in your race specific home cities, but this day in age you can choose between that city and Crescent Reach, which has a lot of nice beginner quests and is relatively close to POK and other amenity, so that’s where we started out. The evening began at level 8, I had just picked up my very first pet spell. I finally felt like a beastlord. We decided to explore a bit and picked up a variety of level 1 quests that are available. This is also a new thing for EQ, as most of the game was played without any quests at all, and certainly not a quest journal (you can access it via alt + q) detailing all the steps. It felt a bit weird not scribbling down directions on scraps of paper that I would quickly lose.

The quests didn’t reward much experience, but we did rack up a handful of plat which was important to me because spells are going to get pretty expensive. We also got a few odds and ends of gear, although I’m still sporting a club I found on the ground. Because we’re starting over on a new server we’ve got no coin, and being able to afford spells later on may become an issue. Oger also realized he was going to need bone chips to summon his skeleton pet, so we spent some time collecting that.

Finally it was time to burn lesson and get a few levels. We’re still working on the bears and pumas, but eventually graduated to the harder skeletons and alligators. I almost thought I was going to get a new beastlord weapon (remember, when a mob is holding a weapon you can physically see it in a lot of cases) but it ended up being a quest piece instead. Hopefully I have a bit more luck getting a weapon tomorrow.

By the end of the experience buff running out we were 13, I had a bunch of new spells, and also a handful of hero’s forge armor. This stuff is for appearance slots that EQ added not too long ago. The problem is you have to unlock the ability to wear hero’s forge armor per character, via the marketplace. I have not yet decided if I’m going to unlock it on this new character, but it’s looking like I probably will. I have a surplus of station cash at the moment, and I do like the gear. I’m just reluctant because it’s per character, and I’ve already purchased the ability to wear appearance gear on a character that I haven’t been playing.

I’m looking forward to moving out of Crescent Reach and onto a new zone. I haven’t any idea what the hotzones are these days, but I do plan on looking into it. That will probably be the next adventure, we’ll just have to see!

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

Hedge Mazes and Gazebos – Oh My #WurmOnline

I’ve been spending some time working on my deed Mystic Cove, that’s the coastal deed on Deliverance. I tore down a bunch of horse pens that I had in the back after deciding that I didn’t want to breed a lot of animals there (I do horse breeding at Cirque instead) and took down an old wooden well I had, and placed this fancy new fountain. Then I created an arched 1×1 building over it, and ta-da, gazebo. I attached some torch lamps to the corners to light it up, and then proceeded to pave the surrounding area with a nice cobble path (in the screen shot above, it’s still dirt). I made a nice winding path around the gazebo and out the back gate, planted a willow bush and a few rose bushes, and I still have hopes of some time adding a small hedge maze in the area. The problem is hedges need 5 sprouts of the same tree per hedge, so that’s a lot of harvesting sprouts. I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

In other news, I also finished the shipyard building that was on my dock. This was my first multi story project, and while it looks like nothing more than a square building 4 floors high with a 1×1 stone building on the very top surrounded by castle walls, I’m still quite pleased with it. Moumix has been busy with real life so there have been no ships built there in quite some time, but when I get the urge at least there’s a nice area completed.

I’ve recently taken my 3rd character Faralithe over to the Independence server to “deed sit” for a friend who has been whisked away due to real life. She’s repairing bits and bobs that need looking after, while he’s getting ready to move. The deed is lovely and it’s a nice change of scenery when I spend most of my time these days on Deliverance.

My next project is to collect the materials required to build a guard tower at Cirque, there’s a lot of wild animals that come visit up there, and Arysh doesn’t have the mighty 70 fight skill that Stargrace has, although she does have a very nice rare steel weapon. My masonry is about to hit 60 which is pretty nice, although not quite as useful as some other skills it does help to be able to improve forges, ovens, and stone altars to 70.