Author: Stargrace

The cleric is still making her way through the snow covered Iron Peaks, and I managed to ding 46 last night, and part way through today. I spent some time in Stillmoor, but the method of leveling via quest grinding feels the same to me no matter what zone I’m in. I visit a camp, grab all the quests, head of to their various locations, kill/loot/explore whatever they sent me to seek out, return, and then rinse and repeat. Some times I wonder why these NPC wouldn’t just give me all of their quests that send me to ABC location in one fell swoop, instead of making me hike all of the way back out there. Again.

The latest round of quests all involve exploring these massive caverns, and taking apart various secret ceremonies and gatherings that have been going on inside. Problem is I have already been inside these giant caves for other reasons, and so they’re sending me back – again. Why couldn’t I have taken care of the issue the last time I was there! Unless of course I had to wait a little while because no one was home or they were on break, out for lunch, etc.

The guild is quite happy that I’m closing in on 50, and even happier that I’ve spoken up about wanting to heal. I’m looking forward to trying some T1 and then eventually T2. Thankfully healers get off pretty easily, the only stat they’re required to obtain is wisdom, which I have in spades.

Tiny pet peeve – even though I wear chain, and technically I can wear cloth and leather (in specific the armor sold by vendors around cities) my appearance armor can only be chain. If I can wear cloth in my regular slots (as well as leather) wouldn’t it make sense that I could also wear it in my appearance slot? Apparently this is not the case, which I learned the hard way after spending money on a nice looking set of leather.

I managed to participate in an invasion in Stillmoor yesterday, and right afterward a crafting rift – even managed to earn myself another artificer plaque. I was hoping to get a minor catalyst, but hey it’s better then nothing at all. The dailies I’ve been doing in Meridian have been a bit stingy with their plaques as of late and the daily crafting quests I complete never reward me anything special aside from a handful of common supplies and the rare extra craft component (like the ones you use to increase specific stats on a piece of gear). It’s probably just my bad luck, as I’m constantly mentioning that if I didn’t have bad luck, I’d simply have no luck at all.

When I don’t feel like quest grinding I spend most of my time out exploring. Looking for cairns, shinies, and harvesting. You kill enough creatures who are in your way (and participate in the odd rift here and there) that it’s profitable and a nice relaxing break from playing errand girl (or boy) for the NPC’s. I haven’t spent any more time in dungeons yet, but that’s always an option too if I feel like using the LFD tool. I imagine I’ll hit level 50 some time this weekend, and if not then (it depends on whether or not I’m headed out Friday to the Morrisburg Medieval Festival) it should happen shortly after.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

The cleric is level 45 (woohoo) and I’m slowing down a bit in my leveling because I’m a little bored of the quest grind. I’ve been working on harvesting, doing the few dailies I have (mostly crafting dailies) and hunting shinies. I participate in the Rift invasions I see going on to earn planarite and Ancient Sourceshards but aside from that things are pretty quiet in game. I was happy to hit 45 so that I could open the bags I had been carrying around on my character for a while but was left a little disappointed with the rewards. I got one green shoulder armor piece and a blue one (which was an upgrade but just barely). I haven’t seen an artisan’s plaque for almost a week now despite doing everything I can in order to earn them.

I wish I had exciting stories to tell about my time in Rift, but it’s been a little drab. I’m hoping once I hit 50 I’ll have more stories to tell about my adventures in T1/T2 and maybe even some expert Rifts, but for now things revolve around the quest / rift grind to 50, and I don’t see that changing in the next five levels.

So, happy gaming! No matter where you find yourself.

Ah, how I love trying to figure out the puzzles in Rift. I have done a handful of them now, the one pictured above happens to be in Stillmoor – and I can’t actually open my reward from it until I hit 45, which I’m four bubbles away from. It was a fun puzzle, and I had even more fun plunging to my death before hand as I hunted the mountain side for cairns to loot. I stumbled into one and received another container that I can’t open until 45, along with a handful of goodies from a Rift I participated in.

The cleric is now level 44 (as I already mentioned) and although I thought leveling was going to slow down it hasn’t at all. I’m still averaging a level or two a day depending on how much I play, and I expect I’ll be 50 before the end of next weekend. I have also spent some time on my alts, although it has mostly been to craft. My level 14 rogue is a level 260 Outfitter, the 13 mage is a 250 Apothecary. I’ve been sending all of my cloth and leather to the Outfitter to make gear for my mage to runebreak, and got a few skill ups in that as well. I do also have a warrior sitting at level 2, and I’ll probably level her up to the same range as the other two alts before too long. It’s always nice to have a selection to play.

When I was bored of rifts and questing yesterday I decided to queue for some Warfronts. We won two instances of the snow-covered one (name escapes me at the moment) and lost The Black Garden (the one with the fang you have to capture). In fact I don’t think my cleric has ever won that Warfront. Guardians always seem much better then my defiant counter parts in these.

The guild hit level 6, and our goal for this week is to collect 150 artifacts. I think we’re up to 50 or so now, which isn’t too bad. Considering the guild only has a handful of active players, I’m quite pleased. One black mark on the weekend was that a guild mate had her account hacked, and the hacker decided to spend their time spamming open channels with web sites for gold selling. Honestly, how is that a good marketing ploy? Why would someone buy gold from you if you’re using hacked accounts to advertise? It just doesn’t make sense to me. Turns out that she was not the only one hacked, there were reports of numerous friends-of-friends being hacked over the weekend and also being used to advertise for this web site. Not good. Thankfully we were able to contact her by phone (my guild mates are mostly from my old EQ2 guild and are quite close) and her husband was able to kick the hacker off the account but Trion was also contacted and they locked the account until she could call and confirm it was hers on Monday. Fingers crossed that it will all work out.

I hope everyone else had an amazing weekend, no matter where you found yourself. Happy gaming!

I thought my leveling would slow down in the 40’s but as of yet it hasn’t. My cleric is level 43, and I spent most of my evening yesterday following a level 50 (the other half of course) around Stillmoor while an invasion went on. It was nice to see players taking part in this again, as my lower level rifts have been sorely neglected while I’ve been leveling up. One very interesting thing happened throughout the evening though.

I play on a PvE server – however you can flag yourself for PvP four ways. Number one, manually do it. Number two, attack a PvP flagged guardian (their name will show as yellow to you, and once you yourself are flagged their name shows as red), number three attack a guardian NPC and number four, queue for a warfront (although you will not be flagged when you leave). The final boss of this invasion happened to be fairly close to a guardian outpost, and so the guardians thought it would be just swanky if they pulled the boss to the center of their outpost. While I did not attack any guards, I was using AoE heals (and I imagine that a lot of players were using AoE attacks in general, which hit NPC unintentionally) and using those AoE heals on PvP flagged players meant that before too long I was also flagged PvP. The second the invasion boss fell the guardians rushed forward to take down those who had been flagged and of course since I was only level 42 at the time I turned tail and ran like heck for my own nearest outpost. Then once I was in the safety of the guards I gated back to Meridian where I waited for the flag to expire while working on some dailies. Better luck next time!

On a semi related note, I was wandering around Iron Peak and I noticed a tear that I couldn’t open. I had no idea what that meant so after asking in guild and looking on my map I noticed I had stumbled into my first raid rift. Moving around the corner I noticed a raid force (two groups) of guardians were gathered at an expert Rift, another that I had never seen before. The mobs to this rift were level 52, far beyond anything that I could successfully hit – but I do have one proc that seemed to work when I was attacking. So I stood a very safe distance away and pinged an attack or two off on their raid encounter. When the rift was completed (nice job guys) I also received rewards for “participating” even though I doubt I barely did 500 damage total. It was a fun way to spend a few minutes, and I earned a handful of planarite to go along with my adventures. I admit now, the Guardians seem to best the Defiants (at least on my server, and Warfronts) at everything we do. Perhaps once I make level 50 I’ll see what the other side has to offer.

Before the invasion took place in Stillmoor I also had the chance to partake in my first crafting rift. These are spawned with a special lure that you can obtain once a week via a crafting quest. They’re not easy to make, but the crafting rifts are open just like regular rifts so all participation is noted. I hope to tag along on more of them. The rewards were really nice (it was a weaponsmith rift but I still got rewards based on my own craft). I also managed to win a minor catalyst (I believe that’s the name, I’m probably wrong. It’s one of those purple named yellow swirly bits for combines) and a whole lot of other goodies. I’m looking forward to making use of them as I continue leveling up. Right now I’ve got the ability to harvest in Stillmoor but my adventure level leaves much to be desired. It’s no fun harvesting in areas with level 50 mobs when I can’t actually attack them and do any damage.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself! I hope everyone has an amazing weekend.