Author: Stargrace

Finally, Dasie managed to get her set piece forearms

Yesterday was quiet, I had a BBQ to go to (oh my goodness crab cakes and steak and potatoes… it was so good) and then once I got home did a fast Valdoon run with Shadowgeist (I played Dasie and Stargrace). I’d been attempting to get the templar/inquisitor forearms for quite some time with no luck. Usually the shadowknight ones dropped. I was also hoping to get her the bloodlust earring, but that one decided to be a little more stubborn. On the plus side that also drops from the first named, so I can just kill that and avoid the rest of the zone now that I’ve gotten the forearms. I did a Chamber of Immortality run for the two masters that are guarantee drops with Ishbel, and did it again this morning. I have her parked outside of the zone so that’s pretty much all I do with her lately. Having so many alts is an expensive hobby, I figure if I farm that zone everyday that’s still 14 masters a week (minus whatever else I typically farm) and that’ll help when it comes time to gearing up my alts.

Last night I couldn’t sleep, so I dusted Yamini off and headed to the Obelisk of Lost Souls. Spent some time farming in there (while boxing, of course) and hit level 49 with her. I’m still looking to get both her and Goudia to 52 so that they can wear all that cobalt gear I bought a while back. Tonight is another off night, so no raids at least. Tomorrow is labs and Chel’Drak. I’m sure both will go very well.

A small pet peeve I have, is when people keep asking / bothering me for the items I loot. Now, that sort of comes off wrong. I’m not a greedy person and I don’t have any issues helping my friends or giving stuff away, but I hate it when almost complete strangers ask me for that sort of stuff. A few have said ‘well I don’t get the luxury of boxing’ or ‘I don’t play as much as you do’. But I still put forth time and effort to accomplish anything that I have in game. Those should not be ‘excuses’ to hit me up for items or money or power leveling. Is it just me? I mean, a guild group is different. I’ve been helping to level a few guildies in the evenings and I decline on everything that drops unless it may be a tradeskill item. There’s simply no need for me to roll on that stuff since I have my own characters and because I can indeed just box to get the items I need. I suppose maybe I am not the nicest person, but I help in my own way. If someone needs help with something I typically am available to help. If they have a question about the game, I’m more then willing to aid there as well. I just don’t like passing out extraordinary amounts of material things. Though I did give a guild necromancer a level 70 master yesterday since I just had it sitting around.

A friend of mine who plays on Najena was telling me how she was finishing off her collection tome quests, and I decided that it may be a good idea for Stargrace to complete some of those as well. I’d been harvesting pages forever it seemed, and had only a few needed for each collection, most of the time only one was needed. So I looked up the quests and found out that for 8 of them, the pages I needed were actually clickies located in the Feerrott. So off I went, and completed *8* book quests! I was ecstatic. That was 8 more house items to add to the library. I also managed to finish four more L&L’s and added the weapons to the growing collection on Stargrace’ wall.

Other then that, things are quiet, and I can’t say I mind at all. I will probably be heading to Niagara Falls later next week so there may be a lack of posts, but it’s still in the works, so we’ll see how it goes!

*** As a side note *** This is my 300th EQII related post… wow, hard to believe I’ve hit that number already! Thank you so much everyone for the support and comments and all the rest that help make this blog possible. I really enjoy having this little niche in the MMO world.

The AA information on the left hand side is for Dasie, who’s sitting at 66 right now, and on the right, Stargrace who is at 100. I just wanted to see where the majority of their points came from. Dasie hit 50 before any aa were in game, so she never got an opportunity to do any of the lower level stuff for it. Stargrace on the other hand, was created when DoF and KoS were both already out. Dasie is the lowest of my characters as far as aa’s are concerned, I’ve rarely ever gotten a chance to play her, she’s never been needed. It gives me a goal at least though and something to do. Dasie is also a 70 jeweler, which is always nice. I’m going to make her a tinkerer since Stargrace already is one, who wouldn’t want two.

The guild leader left for a short vacation on Thursday after raids, Friday was a tentative raid to work on the arcanists signets quest line from Loping Plains. You know the set, that gives a VERY nice proc against vampires. I had horrible thunderstorms, so I actually had to leave part way through for a brief period, and didn’t want people to have to wait on me, so I was left behind. Understandable though, I’ll complete it another time. It’s really a very great proc to have on raids. It was a small group but we did manage to get our off tank the cloak that proc’s hate. Not that he needs much more hate, he’s a great off tank.

Saturday (again with no guild leader nor his wife which means no MT and no MT defiler.. and our MT templar is also on vacation..) we were scheduled to do LoA but were cautious about it, missing so many people. I was asked to play my inquisitor in the main tank group because the templar who typically raids with us is on vacation. Now. Dasie does not have masters of her heals, and she’s slightly under-geared, but that is only a portion of how well a player does. I parsed very well on the heals for the night, and aside from some difficulty from the eyeball in the zone who spawns tatter tots (we wiped x2 and got him on the 3rd) the zone was cake. Impressive since we had three groups and so many missing. I had a blast playing Dasie. I’m really hoping that I get to keep her as my main, I have to talk to the guild leader when they get back and see how viable that would be. I know everyone loves having a constant illusionist (or two, since we have two) around, but I am a healer at heart and I hope I proved that with my game play the past little while.

Tonight I’ve got a BBQ to head to so not much time for playing, an off night since it’s Sunday. Monday is an off night as well, though a courts run was planned too few people signed up. Tuesday I believe we’re doing labs and Chel’Drak again, but I could be wrong. We’ll see how it goes. In game it’s your typical Sunday, people complaining on various channels and all the rest. The Festival of Unity ended yesterday with a parade, but I didn’t get to go to it because of raids. I know there’s a balance between role play and raiding out there, but it sucks that I couldn’t go to the event. One of the main reasons why I enjoy the 3 raids a week that we host right now as opposed to joining the other guilds who were interested in me who all raid 7 days a week. Just because I’m on frequently doesn’t mean I want to spend all of it raiding.

Dasie, playing the part of an inquisitor, all done up as a vampire

I used to be able to say that there was one character I had never betrayed, my very first character on EQII in fact, my templar. However, that’s changed, not a bad thing! I decided I wanted to try an inquisitor for a few reasons. Number one, I really wasn’t playing the templar at all, she’s not needed for raids, and there are plenty around. Not that there aren’t also a lot of inquisitors in around too, but the guild could use an inquisitor some times. I honestly miss playing a healer, I played one pretty much all of my time in EQII until I decided to switch to illusionist for a bit, it’s been about 5 months now since I’ve been playing her.

The betrayal was fast, I had help from Dalthar, a brigand in guild. He snuck into the instance with me and would sneak around completing the quest while Dasie sat around, then I zoned her out, died to an epic, rinse repeat to finish the simple faction quests. She got her +10k with the city of Freeport within the hour, tamed a dog, killed a woman, and ta da. Dasie is a new inquisitor. I had adept3’s and masters set aside for her, so she was all set to go. Then came raid time. I typically play Stargrace on raids, the guild has plenty of healers. Well. Usually. Last night we had a shortage, and I was asked if I’d mind boxing both my healer and my illusionist on the raid. I don’t mind boxing, but boxing on a raid… is hard. Especially if you’re playing a healer — not to mention it was my first day playing an inquisitor.

I was a little leery at the end since we all have to run into Venekors room at the same time, and avoid adds and get back up against a wall. I had to do it with both girls fairly fast or risk wiping the raid, and I did not want to do that. I apologized ahead of time incase I caused a wipe, and uh, well my girl got stuck on the door, and of course, we wiped. Another raider went LD during the run anyhow, so it wasn’t completely my fault, but it was none the less. I felt horrible. So that was the only death of the evening at least. We went at it again, this time I made sure both characters were clear through the doors, backed up against a wall, all that good raid stuff that I’ve been doing for some time now. Kill was flawless, even with the lack of regular players.

Hopefully I’ll be playing the inquisitor more frequently, I had a blast. Granted, I am still learning her spells, and she’s not at 100aa yet, but hey, work in progress. I figure if I don’t like it I will just betray her back to templar in November when the level cap goes up. Do I regret giving up her master spells? She had all of them except one level 70 group reactive, including her T6 rare holy redoubt (a 962hp buff). Not really. I heal fairly well (not to brag, that’s not my point here) with or without the masters. She could *really* use some upgrades, but what’s the point if I’m not going to be playing her seriously. She could also use claymore. Ugh. I’m dreading doing that on a .. 4th… character… *sighs* We’ll see how it goes. Sorry my thoughts are all over today, weather has me a bit scatter brained. Didn’t see Kilanna this morning, hope she had a pleasant night though!

Some days, I have a huge dislike for people…

So, people who don’t know me very well may think that I am some quiet shy person who never speaks up about anything, and actually the opposite is true. I can be quite temperamental and I speak my mind. Yesterday a guild mate needed some quest updates in Nektulos Forest. I mentored my 70 illusi down to 25, and said I would help out. As they were returning from a quest turn in, one of the mobs they needed was up. They were still some time away, so I mez’d the mob, and cleared the camp for them.

Along comes Ikun, a necromancer. He sees me there with the mob mez’d. He breaks it the first time, and I say in says, if he could not do that I would appreciate it, thinking it was a mistake. Then he breaks it again. And again. And again. I’m mentored to level 25, so the mob is hurting me each time he breaks it. I send a tell, saying I’m just waiting for a guild mate to show up, if he could stop breaking my mez, I’d appreciate it. I get down to about 10% health, and as you can see I also screamed at the guild mate to type /lock so that my mez could not be broken. Problem is (only the guild leader can /lock an encounter when you are engaged, at least in this group set up) the group leader also has to be able to have the actual mob targeted in order to lock an encounter. So I sighed and just let my nukes go and killed it before the group mate reached me, and before I ended up dying.

30 minutes later, I get a tell from Ikun, and it says “why are you harassing my kid”. . . . .

Pardon me? Harassing their kid? I barely said two peeps except to tell them not to break my mez, that I was waiting on a group mate. I didn’t swear (I rarely do) and I didn’t rant at them once I had no choice but to kill the mob. So I patiently explained to this “parent” that I had not harassed anyone, that I had logs and screen shots if they required further proof, and explained that if their kid could not read, or understand that you don’t go around wacking other people’s encounters in this game, that perhaps they should not be playing.

Well, after about 2 minutes into this conversation I realized that I was not talking to any sort of “parent” at all, and it was more then likely some snot nosed kid who decided they’d try to turn the tables on me. How did I come to this conclusion? They wrote very poorly, and you could just tell by the demeanor of their answers. I’m not stupid. I hate people who lie to me. Especially when I had done nothing wrong. They demanded to know why a level 70 was in nektulos forest. I was still mentored to level 25, and stated as much. I also explained I was there helping a guild mate. I didn’t even have to explain, there’s plenty of reasons why a level 70 is in a lower level zone. It rubbed me completely the wrong way, and I told them that I thought they were being exceptionally rude, and I asked for the name of their guild leader. They said welcome to ignore, and that was the end of the conversation.

I rarely have bad encounters with players in EQII. It’s probably one of the reasons I tend to keep to myself though and solo / do my own thing. I realize there’s no such thing as camps as acknowledged by SoE, and that it’s perfectly alright to break someone else’ mez in game while they are in an encounter. However, there are still game ethics, and player maturity, and all that good stuff. Sadly enough, some days it just lacks.

Chel’Drak, dead for the first time by the Inquisition

Last night was raid night, and it started with a very very fast run through labs. I did not find it enjoyable at all, I hate rushing through zones, easy or not. It was “get going faster faster” the entire time. We had one wipe to Vyemm who refused to be mem-wiped, and then headed off to make our first attempts at Chel’Drak. The inquisition had attempted him a time or two before I do believe, but they were not exactly sure what to expect this time. A majority of them had never been here. The raid was explained, macro’s made. Positions assigned. The first pull went beautifully. Well, positioning, not so much of a pull seeing as you have to charge into his room. Everyone had their parts down great. We had some bad luck, and three warrior adds spawned in a row. Anyone who’s done Chel’Drak before knows that it’s not the giant ancient dragon who kills you, but the class adds. Warriors taunt the entire raid onto different targets, which means healers can only use group heals to keep their tanks up. It’s not a pretty sight.

So we ate the wipe, and set up again. We came prepared, with repair kits. A whole lot of them in fact. Little did we know they would not be used at all this night. We charged in again.. and the adds came.. and went.. AoE’s were called. Encounters downed.. He hit 30% before we knew it.. 10.. 5.. 1%.. we burned like we’ve never burned before, and down he went. On the second pull. A huge congratulations to the guild as a whole for accomplishing this encounter on their second attempt. It gave people the motivational boost that they needed I think in order to do better at the EoF raids. Pride in themselves as players. Everyone brought their “A” game.

Now, I know guilds have had this specific encounter down to farm status for months now. Including my previous guild back in January, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many guilds have done it before you or how many guilds are to come after you, what matters is that there was a goal and through team work and a lot of hard work and patience, it was something everyone achieved together. I just wish more had been on the quest for the zone that gave them the pretty ring with 5% off their spell cast timers. Oh well! Now that we all know we can do it, hopefully future attempts will go just as smooth.

Since it was a raid night I didn’t get to attend any of the festivities going on in Antonica, but I did keep an ear out for the Feyiron Chef contest, it sounded like a lot of fun. Tonight there is more entertainment and I should be heading down that way unless something else comes up, we’ll see how it goes. Congratulations again The Inquisition on Antonia Bayle, a job well done.