Author: Stargrace

Silverstep in the Bloodline Chronicles expansion pack, smushing random goblins

So I actually played Silverstep some this weekend, though she didn’t get to do anything very exciting besides some quests from the Bloodline Chronicles. Which, I actually really loved as far as expansion packs go, aside from one thing.

The chain of quests is very lengthly, has a good story behind it. Unfortunately, they all use the exact same instance. So for 10+ quests you’re running through the same zone, with practically the same mobs, and the exact same lay out. Granted, since it was 100% gray to me I didn’t mind that much. I was there for other reasons. The expansion pack came out with a specific set of spells, player made. These spells never get upgraded. You have to have completed the first three quests given by npc at a camp on either side of the waterfalls in nek forest in order to buy these recipes, which are not flagged no trade. So Willamina hit level 35 sage, and I took Silverstep off to the falls to complete the first three quests, bought the recipe books for sage, alchemist, and jeweler. So Willamina is now very happy with her adept3 of swarm of bats. Especially since like I said, those spells / skills never ever get upgraded. Silverstep is still using her Spirit of the bat at level 70, and Stargrace uses her manacloak every chance she gets. Exceptionally handy spells.

Since I’ve been sick most of the weekend (feeling good today though finally!) I took it easy and didn’t do too much of anything. I crafted a lot, and did a lot of farming. Calicia hit level 34 tailor, Ixiana hit level 26 carpenter, Willamina hit 36 sage, Ricotta hit 30 Jeweler, and uh.. I think that’s it. Silverstep is sitting at 50 woodworker and she’ll be there forever as far as I’m concerned. I hate being able to only make 3 items a level. She can make invis totems, and that’s all I ever really wanted her for. Stargrace is a 70 provisioner, so she’s set now as well. I’m still missing a lot of tradeskill books, but hopfully that will come in time and I can get some good deals.

Cleaned out the guild bank, I’m one of three leaders back in my old guild. We have 14 members, 30 characters total in guild (with alts), and they’re all a very friendly bunch. I tend to keep to myself for the most part, so at times I probably seem reserved and maybe rude, but it’s un-intentional. Today they’re planning to do DFC, which is a zone I absolutely hate and am not looking forward to at all, we’ll have to see how it goes. I’m contemplating doing it with Stargrace, the 64 coercer, mentored down. She would have to do rescue of the greenhood first though. Meh. Again, we’ll have to see.

Above is a picture of dear Willamina, that’s right, the crafty little gnome has been spotted pretending to wander around Freeport as a darkelf! A badly dyed blond haired one at that!

What a busy day yesterday. Seemed to be that way all around for everyone. With only two steps left to the strange black rock, the guild quickly killed varsoon and the scholar, with help from an honorary member Ceeyia. After that we decided to start (finish) the reaching blade of the assassin, which is another fast and fun heritage quest that doesn’t take too much work when you’re in your 40’s with a group of people who work fairly well together. After a brief break for dinner / food and bathroom breaks, we decided Everling had evaded us for far too long, and it was time to take him down a peg or two also. A few group members (myself included) needed the chapel Billy (who doesn’t love billy!) and we stood away from the nek castle zone in so that the scout could just zone in and out until we managed to hit an instance where he was already up. We’d already camped his sorry little moppet butt for an evening before, and no one was interested in trying that again. Killed the sisters for loot (hey, when did they revamp?!) and came away with my guise of the deceiver . The guild dinged 15, and half way through. Willamina also had a nice static exp group earlier on in the day, and managed to land level 40.. and not only 40, after all those heritage quests she managed level 41 by the end of the night, and 8ap. I’m quite pleased with her progress. Even though I really am taking my time with her and trying to enjoy things.

She got a new robe in nek, pretties are always fun. I think everyone had a good time as well, which is always a nice bonus. I almost managed to clear my quest journal enough to have room for 20 more.. but.. as always happens I ended up snatching more quests and I’m now at room for 15 I think. It was still a fairly productive night.

I’ve been having a whole lot of fun playing the Necromancer lately, it’s a class I played around with just a little bit in Eq1 (I have a 70 rogue, enchanter, and cleric in eq1 and a handful of other smaller babies) and never really had an opportunity to play in eq2. I’ve typically played a healer of some sort, my templar being my main for the longest time until I decided to start over and made the warden (never looked back as far as healers go once I’d made the warden, what a wonderful class, it’s a shame that a *lot* of people re-rolled their templars / plate clerics into druids / mystics and now there seems to be a shortage, at least on the servers I’ve played on). Anyhow.

In my guild it’s typically just me for a portion of the day, and then people log in a little later on, not a bad thing per say, gives me a lot of time to do what I’d like to do, which I enjoy. It’s not often that I stick my lfg flag on, fear of pugs what can I say. But I like the atmosphere of najena, and there are always a lot of people around. So eagerly I sent a tell to a tank looking for dps in runneyeye, and for the next hour we mashed away at things and Willamina finally reached level 39. Slowly catching up to people! It was a great group, there were plenty of times I didn’t think we would make it because they were sort of uh… well… a little high on themselves. We added a swashbuckler to the group after one of our tanks had to leave, and they claimed to have just spent 10p on gear. Not only that, they said cloth gear had the best stats for them, so they’d spent 10p on cloth gear. .. . Then they came to the zone and on their way they fell off a bridge and got squished *snickers*. I told them that for 10p that gear should instantly port them to our zone. I don’t even think my level 70 main has 10p worth of gear on her, granted a lot of it is quested and looted from raids so maybe that’s why. On masters, sure.. but gear? Meh. Anyhow, it was a lot of fun, until we of course bit off a bit more then we could chew, the illusionist decided not to mez the 4 groups we had on us, healers ganked with heal agro and in a matter of moments we were all looking at the pretty revive boxes. Called it a day from there.

Spent the night crafting, carpenter slowly crawled her way to level 24. It’s a painful process when you only get 3 recipes every level. Though now she’s gotten a few more and I’m trying to make it stretch. Willamina dinged 33 sage. I have tried to keep her adventure level on par with her tradeskill level but it doesn’t work. It’s just so much easier to quest / exp once you’re out of vitality still making it worth while as opposed to crafting, which is mind numbing even before you run out of vitality and just bang-your-head-on-the-desk-stupid when you’re out. Made some furniture boxes with 48 slots (just fir, bigger then my 36 slot boxes so it all works) in order to put some of Ixiana’s stuff for sale, it doesn’t sell fast, but it does sell, and that’s why Silverstep has a 5 room house after all, to sell all those goodies.

Speaking of selling. I really wish they’d let us set up multiple toons with markets and not just one. It’s a pain for me to have to switch around all my loot from all my characters every day just to be able to sell stuff from a ‘main’. I’m sure they have their reasons of course, doesn’t mean I can’t complain though!

So yesterday morning I decided that I’d put off some quests for far too long with Willamina, my necromancer. In order to play a little catch up to the guild (since I’m still in my 30’s and most people are hitting their 40’s now) I decided to do old quests and start some HQ’s that I’d just neglected. First on my list, learning the giant language. Sounds easy right? Sounds even easier since I was level 37 at the time and the giants I was killing were level 28 heroics, meaning green. Poor poor necromancer tank pet. He sacrificed himself so many times as I /yelled off encounters and ran my wee little short gnome legs to safety. I did manage to complete the quest though. Spawned a named too but he was too hard, double attacking me for 900 pts of dmg a round. Ouchies.

Talked to Obsid a few times, he lost his bear. *sighs* He’s a GIANT you’d think he’d be able to see the wee little bear from miles around. So I set off after him. Found him with no troubles at all (thank you eq2 maps!) and after hailing him, waves of wolves spawn. Level 28 heroics. Not *too* difficult to kill– the hard part, is that they agro Tarby first. In fact, the first round I guess my pet didn’t snag agro fast enough, they agro’d tarby and tarby fought back and died. Woopsie. I won’t tell Obsid if you don’t.

So I waited 20 minutes for the bear to re-pop and again the wolves spawned and Tarby fought and grey’d them out, so I killed them and got no exp……. thank you bear. KS’er! Two more rounds later and tarby decided he wanted to ride in my backpack back to Obsid. Lazy little thing! How he fit into my gnome-sized bag with my cog bits and flupperzoowigs I’ve no idea, but man was he heavy.

Obsid gave me the beginner to the PGT as a reward. First thing I need to do for it is mine. Ugh. My mining sitting at 60 when I need it at 90 for Thundering Steppes, so I called it a day for that quest and decided to run around the commonlands completing smaller things I’d never done before.

Got a guild group later on in the day and finished Haedens earring, Willamina can finally breath under water…. ! Oh.. wait… that’s right, necromancers can summon stones to do that… I’d *completely* forgotten that fact as I ran around drowning. Go me. It was still nice, guild dinged level 14.

On a side note. I applied to the eq2 volunteer guide program last week.. and was accepted. There are some rules about what I can post / talk about and what I can’t though, so while I can say I’m an apprentice guide, I can’t reveal server or character name and what not. I’m really looking forward to the over all experience!

With the prophets and disciples roaming around Norrath it’s hard to walk anywhere without someone screaching at you about the return of the Gods, a highly anticipated part of the new EoF expansion due out in November. With it of course comes a lot of questions, speculation, and other randomness. For myself, I’m a bit flustered as to which God Silverstep (the Dark Elf Druid who lives in Freeport) will follow, if any at all. I’ve been browsing the Eq2 History and Lore forums to find out more scraps of information. Below is a summary of the Gods players will be able to chose from, based on of course city faction (which I don’t agree with by the way.. I don’t worship a certain deity based on where I live…. ) Anyhow.. The choices and a brief description are found below, the information taken from this site.

Qeynos ONLY:

Allied with Karana, Erollisi Marr and Rodcet Nife, and enemies with Bertoxxulous, Tunare, the Mother of All, rules the Plane of Growth.

Tunare appears as a very attractive older humanoid female wearing flowing robes and a crown of vines and leaves.

Tunare is very protective of what she considers to be one of Her finest achievements, the good elf races of Norrath.

As part of an agreement with Brell Serilis and Prexus and in response to the arrogance of Veeshan in claiming Norrath for her own, Tunare created the High Elves and the wood elves of Norrath.

Mithaniel Marr – The Truthbringer Mithaniel Marr, the Truthbringer, governs the Plane of Valor. Mithaniel is the ultimate paladin who wears a full suit of shining silver plate armor and wields a glowing longsword. Mithaniel Marr, who owes his existence to Tarew Marr, leader of the Triumvirate of Water, is allied with Erollisi Marr and Karana. He counts Innoruuk, Cazic-Thule, and Bertoxxulous among his enemies. He has a friendly rivalry with Solusek Ro.

This peaceful child-goddess is allied with Rodcet Nife and Erollisi Marr, and an enemy to Rallos Zek and Innoruuk.

Followers of Quellious the Tranquil seek peace. They are not strict pacifists, though, and will fight to defend themselves and their loved ones.

The peace they seek is an inner one. They wish to know all there is to know about themselves and the world around them.

They thirst for knowledge of their true selves and strive to help others attain enlightenment. It is through the sharing of this knowledge that they believe universal peace can be obtained.

If every creature fully understood itself and its neighbors there would be no need for conflict and war.

Followers of Quellious often follow a nomadic lifestyle, constantly seeking what there is to know and hoping to find themselves along the way.

Freeport ONLY:

Innoruuk is allied with Rallos Zek and Cazic-Thule, and the enemy of Quellious, Mithaniel Marr, and Erollisi Marr.

Followers of Innoruuk, the Prince of Hate, include nearly the entire dark elven race who regard him as their “Father”.

They believe that hate is a creative force, or rather “THE” creative force in the universe – creativity born of destruction.

Love and kindness are tools for those too ignorant to know what they want or too cowardly to do what is necessary to obtain it.

They believe that it is only through the total disdain of your enemies that you can gain true power over them.

Pity and mercy have no power when confronted with contempt and viciousness.

It is the honest belief of the followers of Innoruuk that if they were to hate strongly enough, they could destroy all of Norrath.

Rallos Zek is allied with Innoruuk and Cazic-Thule, enemy to Quellious and Bertoxxulous.

The followers of Rallos Zek, the Warlord, believe in survival of the strong and death to the weak.

The heart of a true follower of Zek yearns for strength, courage, but above all, victory.

They believe that the heat of battle is the only place and time where enlightenment can be gained, that the universe was formed by conflict and in conflict it will end, with the victors feasting upon the remains of their fallen enemy.

No respect or regard is given to the dead, for if they were worthy their hearts would still pump blood through their veins and not upon the soil of Norrath.

The followers of Zek are almost exclusively warriors.

Cazic-Thule is allied with Rallos Zek and Innoruuk, and the enemy of Mithaniel and Erollisi Marr.

Followers of the Faceless, fear their Lord and believe that only by causing terror in others will they be spared his vengeful wrath.

Fear rules their lives and through fear they rule the lives of others.

Pain, misery, violence, torture, living sacrifice – these are the tools of a Cazicite.

Many lizardman tribes are devout followers of Cazic-Thule, but his number of humanoid followers grows daily, a cold shadow slowly engulfing the bright spots of Norrath in a nightmare of horror and pain.

NEUTRAL:

Brell is allied with Fizzlethorpe Bristlebane, and an enemy of Veeshan’s.

Followers of the Duke of Below find true happiness in the caves, caverns and tunnels that permeate the belly of Norrath, but this is one of few points upon which all followers of Brell can agree.

The Runny Eye Clan of goblins claim he is their father, much to the disgust of the dwarves of Kaladim who are certain that only the dwarves are the true children of Serilis.

The vicious gnolls of Split Paw disagree entirely, for was it not Brell who sculpted them out of the sacred Clay of Cosgrove?

Followers of Brell Serilis, in one form or another, can be found nearly anywhere you enter the Underfoot of Norrath.

The Plane of Sun is ruled by Solusek Ro, the Burning Prince.

His father, Fennin Ro is the Tyrant of Fire who rules the greater elemental Plane of Fire, from which the Plane of Sun derives its power.

Solusek wears a suit of golden ringmail and a crown of flame and wields a spear of fire.

He is allied with no one, enemies with no one.

He has a friendly rivalry with Mithaniel Marr.

After reading through each one, it becomes a little more apparent where my conflict comes from. Being a druid, and just simply the way I RP Silverstep, she would not follow Innoruuk, nor do I see her being a minion of Cazic, and she’s most certainly not a follower of Zek. She also doesn’t strike me as a follower of Brell… so that leaves Solusek who I really know little about. Ricotta is pretty easy, she’ll follow Brell unless Bristlebane comes back, Willamina will follow.. well, she’s sorta crazy I’ll figure hers out later. Calicia would more then likely follow Zek, being a fighter and what not. Stargrace (the coercer) will be agnostic. The Gods are usless to her. After all, why did they suddenly decide to show up now.

In the mean time, I’m having a lot of fun reading all this lore that I never paid attention to before. I admit right now I glimpsed through this stuff when I played eq1 and never gave it any thought, but now that I’m actually reading it, it fascinates me. As an ending note, Willamina hit 37 last night, Ricotta managed to land in a fairly good pug (pick up group) in Varsoons and hit 31, and things are going well. More ranting later!