Stargrace

Update Notes (Frostfell!)

FROSTFELL

(12/11/08-1/05/09)

Happy Frostfell, Norrath! Gigglegibbers and Frostfell elves are busy celebrating the season in each player city with tasks and stories for everyone. And those that want an even more concentrated amount of Frostfell festivities are encouraged to enter the Frostfell Wonderland Village through the Magic Closets in Qeynos Harbor, West Freeport, Haven, Kelethin, Neriak and Gorowyn. Here you can gather presents to craft wondrous new Frostfell goodies, add to your collections while ducking snowballs, purchase new and classic Frostfell goods, and even assist Mr. McScroogle, Queen Bunny and the innocent Snarf Frostfoot with some important tasks. Don’t forget to log in each day and claim your extra-special Frostfell present from everyone’s favorite Frostfell Gigglegibber, Santa Glug!

ZONES

Moors of Ykesha
It should now be slightly easier to avoid the blood gorgers in the entry passage to Grobb, if you are careful.

ITEMS

The Talisman of the Ethernauts should now proc when casting beneficial spells.

Mutagenic Burst now stacks properly with other procs.

The Darkened Vitality proc on Dark Mail Gauntlets for priests now improves the base amount of wards.

The Talisman of the Ethernauts should now proc effects when casting both hostile and beneficial spells.

QUESTS

Those who are not able to destroy the upper catapult on “Shadow Odyssey, Chapter 6”, should now have an easier time of it.

RAIDS

Many adds associated with high level raid encounters are now immune to memory wiping effects.

Palace of the Awakened One
The void beasts Pentaclypse and Ultaclypse in Palace of the Ancient one will now respawn with their handlers.
Mynzak in Palace of the Ancient one has had his Elemental onslaught ability fixed so that it does less damage under most circumstances.

Palace of the Ancient One
Players encased in ice can no longer drag themselves or other players into the void flames during the Mynzak fight in Palace of the Ancient one.

GUILD HALLS

Level 69 guilds now properly can have a maximum of 24 amenities instead of 20.

BROKER

Fixed a bug causing house addresses to display on the broker for houses with upkeep due.

Nu’roga Nights

Yesterday was a fairly good day as far as leveling goes. I dusted off my swashbuckler and headed to The Mines of Meldrath in Steamfont. I used an experience potion from /claim and the levels were pretty fast, and before I knew it she hit level 52. I don’t have any cobalt clusters to make her some gear or weapons, but I’m hoping I can level to 60+ before that becomes too much of an issue.

Afterwards it was time for the bruiser to get a little love, and I headed to an Everfrost TSO zone. The zone actually ended up being bugged, and no matter how many times me and my group attempted the third named, he would life tap to 100% health. Searching the forums came up with all sorts of other people with the exact same issue. Since we had just taken him down the day before I was a little annoyed that now he was bugged (expected fix: Next update) but there wasn’t much I could do about it last night. The bruiser did manage to get to level 54 though. Another character I’m trying to push through the dreaded 50’s.

So my group decided we would forgo the alts for the evening, and do a TSO instance that most of us (if not all of us) had never been to before. For me personally, that means 1 EF zone, 2 CL zones, 1 Lavastorm zone, 3 LP zones, 3 Moors zones, and the 3 zones in Fens of Nathsar. We decided to head to the Fens of Nathsar and explore Nu’roga. Friends had told us this zone could be solo healed, and said it was ‘medium’ on terms of difficulty.

I’m not sure if it’s just because it was late, or if I was off on my game but DANG this was a hard zone. The group consisted of myself (warden), a shadowknight, ranger, assassin, dirge, and warlock. Since I was the only healer I really had to keep on my toes. The first named is a giant drake, and you have to pull him some what close to these two goblins who have stoneskin on. He casts a dispell, and he will dispell not only all of your buffs (and heals if they’re on someone) but he’ll also dispell the two goblins with stoneskin, so that you can attack them. We fought these guys (dying twice first) for 15 minutes before finding the spot to position the wyvern. If you fight him directly on top of the plat form, for some reason he doesn’t dispell. So we had to pull him a few feet away from the base of the platform every time we killed him. Long, hard fight and I’ve never healed so frantically as I did that encounter.

The other named were all fairly easy, but there are not many of them. This zone is FILLED with trash that you have to clear, and they hit HARD. Typically I don’t see the hitpoints jump around as often as they did last night, spiking from one minute to the next.

The loot was exceptionally abysmal. The stats seemed lower (it’s a required 80 zone and we got a ring that’s for level 77’s) then every other instance I’d been to, with +25 to most things, and +90 or even +70 to health and power with few effects. For the difficulty of the zone I’d say this is NOT worth it, and if it wasn’t for the fact that we did manage to get two void shards (quest + chest) along with a heritage quest update (cloak needs 12 shard drops from mobs) then I’d avoid it. There’s certainly no way I’m going back unless I really have to.

By the time we finished it was bed. I believe today is when Frostfell goes live and I’m really looking forward to that. I should be spending some time in Vanguard today as well if all goes according to plan. I was going to play a little last night, but just wasn’t in the mood.

Void Shard Purchases

I didn’t get a chance to play all that much yesterday, too busy working on some smaller projects, and being cranky. Today is a new day though and that’s great. What I did do yesterday, was the daily double of Evernight Abbey on all three of my level 80’s in less then 30 minutes. Wait, how is that possible? Well, every so often the daily double requires nothing more then clicking something inside of a zone (and of course having the quest on you). So after the zone was clear, I was able to bring my two level 80’s in to get the update as well.

This is how Goudia (my level 80 dirge) managed to get 4 shards and has never set foot into a TSO instance. There are quite a few quests that let you just click updates within a zone, you can hear people looking to purchase entry into a cleared zone so that they can get shard updates. There’s no way I’d actually pay to get my void shard updates, but it was nice to use a cleared instance. So that left me with 4 shards on Goudia, 6 shards on Silhouette (the coercer), and 7 shards on Arysh. Arysh is saving up for the greater void shard gloves, since I just purchased the lesser ones yesterday. It’s 16 void shards I believe from the merchant, which means slightly cheaper from a crafter. The gloves (as I mentioned yesterday) were a slight upgrade but had a nice effect.

The dirge purchased some gloves as well, which were an enormous upgrade for her. The gloves pictured to the right hand side are the lesser version. I absolutely love the effect on these gloves and of course for a bard they come with all of the important stats.

The pretties didn’t end there though, no way. I also ended up purchasing the coercer pants for Silhouette, which were a very nice upgrade and quite cheap. It’s nice to be able to get gear upgrades from merchants even though I was leery at first thinking perhaps people would stop doing the instances. Granted the expansion hasn’t been out quite a month yet, but I hope the popularity stays for a bit.

I headed to Jarsath Wastes with Kasul for a little while before dinner to work on some quests with Stargrace, who is currently 80% of the way into level 78. It’s amusing to me that the character I use as my ‘online persona’ for pretty much every site and forum these days is one of my lowest level characters. At the time that I created this site Stargrace was my ‘main’ and it just sort of stuck. I was contemplating doing some collections to get her the last 20% she needs to ding, but decided against it after I looked at the prices.

Today I have an article to finish up on Darkfall and then hopefully I’ll get a little more time to play. I’m stuck between leveling my paladin (45), my brigand (49), my warlock (27) or my bruiser (53). Ah, the joy of alts.

Because the LoN Spam was not enough

I’ve learned to ignore anything that dings and spams me with yellow text now in EQ2. It wasn’t enough that we’re spammed frequently with LoN (Legends of Norrath) stuff, now we’re also spammed in game with the station marketplace stuff as well.

Great!

Why not just add a scrolling banner that we’re forced to stop playing and look at every few hours..

Edit: Sorry for the cranky posts today. It’s just not been a good day. Expect tomorrow to be back to regular blogging schedules.

Station Cash – Opinions

Alright, now that I’ve settled some, and thought a little bit, here are my opinions about station cash (also known as SC). First of all, I didn’t even know it was being implemented though I’m sure many assumed it would be. It’s too big of a market not to be added to whatever games can.

I have no issues with games selling cute little outfits, fluff pets, and those types of things. I can think of lots of games that already do that. Granted, most of those don’t also have a monthly subscription, but oh well.

I had an issue when LoN started giving out potions, even though there was no guarantee that you were going to get one (making you perhaps spend even more money). I had no issues with any of the house items, the fluff armor, or the pets, but I thought this was a slippery slope and would lead to more ‘game changing’ items even if it only changed the game SLIGHTLY.

So the only issue I really have with the items implemented to date, are the potions. Specifically the achievement boosting potion and also the affect this will have on PvP servers. TSO aa are hard to come by. The grind from 140 to 200 is something that almost everyone complains about. Those who have been playing EQ2 for quite some time have already done the quests out there, and already gained all of the aa from them that they can. The new expansion gives enough aa from quests for approximately 20 of the 60 new aa, if you’re already at 140. The more aa you gain, the slower you get experience.

The aa that are in this ‘shadow’ line are also quite amazing. You need 140 placed in your ‘main’ lines before you can purchase the 4th row, the *really nice* stuff. Anyhow, this wasn’t meant to be an aa lesson, where was I.

Ah yes. The new SC basically just lets you purchas the LoN item that you’d try to get via boosters in the past. Another concern is that there is ALWAYS a slippery slope when it comes to these sorts of deals. How long is it going to be before you MUST HAVE 200aa before applying to a guild, and there for you’re almost required to purchase these potions in order to catch up.

How long will it be before new players to the game feel like they’re being left behind in a 5 year old game, and purchase these (since they have no veteran rewards to claim) to catch up to the masses at level 80. Or even that person who’s got limited time to play who decides to level themselves via potions.

I don’t like the idea that the time I put into actually playing the game can be easily bypassed by someone who had a bunch of cash to blow. I know that brings into argument from people who just don’t have that sort of time to devote to a video game, and pay the same monthly fees as me there for deserve to experience the same things I do, but that’s not how I think. I work really hard to get my characters to 80, 200aa, and being able to purchase your way up the levels just seems to make my own characters worthless.

People can say all they want ‘it doesn’t affect the game that much‘ but it does affect the game. Where do you draw the line? Well, we already have experience boosting potions, so lets allow players who have 5 characters over level 80 automatically start at level 80 if they purchase this potion from the store. Lets allow players who already have one of their mythical epic weapons to purchase it from a vendor for real life coin. It’s so easy to just push that line a little further and a little further.

There are already lots of games out there that incorporate stores into their gaming where you can buy virtual items for real time money and they’re ‘free’ to play. Why are we suddenly paying $14.99 a month for one.

Also, this’ll be the last post I have about this for a while, unless more ‘game changing’ items are added, or something directly relating to it happens. There’s nothing we (as players) can do about it, that’s already been determined. NOT because we’re not listened to, we are, but because we as players are quite content to just sit back and see what happens, and before too long, it’s too late. I just had to get it out of my system. Back to playing games.