Category: Gaming

Tehatamani Harbor – The Return

To this day, I still think Vanguard:SoH is one of the most amazing looking MMO’s out there, with some of the best looking lands. None of my friends play Vanguard any more but I still keep my account active and last night I was wandering around wondering what to do I decided to peek in game. I’ve always loved Vanguard, even though it has very rarely ever been my game of choice. Mostly due to population and friends, and not so much due to bugs. The game has come an enormous way since launch, and I’ve been playing since beta.

When the decision was made to turn all of the servers (there are four)  into RMT servers, well. Some of the player base decided that it was the final straw. I noticed a significant difference in the game yesterday compared to when I would normally dip back in. This could be for any number of reasons, maybe it was just a slow Friday night and everyone was off watching the new Wolverine movie (I saw it earlier in the afternoon, loved it) or maybe the RMT change actually affected the player base. I’m not sure.

The things I noticed about the servers – my guild was exceptionally quiet. I belong to ‘Safe Haven‘ which is an enormous guild on the Seradon server. They are still quite active, but nothing like their former glory. If you happen to be looking for a guild on Seradon, I highly suggest you check them out, you won’t meet a nicer bunch of people. There were five of us on and normally as people log in there would be hellos tossed all around but such was not the case. It was a different atmosphere then I was used to. Also, the general channels in Vanguard have always been teaming with people talking, so even if you never saw another person you knew they were out there. In the 40 minutes or so I spent in game I saw one other person talking in Qalia. Maybe Thestra chat would have been better, always the more popular location for people to hang out and no doubt there’s new content out that way. I didn’t get a chance to check it out but I plan on it.

The /craft channel was still active, less so then your typical Friday night. People were still friendly, as I have found crafters to be in every game I play (more about that later as I make my EQ2 post). It had been a little while since I had done anything more then log into game, check my house, and maybe craft a bit or two, so I decided to flip through my quest journal and figure out where I was at and what quests I had to work towards next.

I found a rift stone close to my house and headed to Tehatamani Harbor, I have written about this place twice before. In my previous posts I talked about how I had to be level 44 to progress the quest chain, and what do you know that’s the exact level I am standing at now. I spent some time killing beetles and snakes, working up faction and getting small amounts of experience, and remembering why I love the game and why I probably always will.

It was a nice quiet night, which is not always a bad thing. If you happen to be on the Seradon server, let me know!

Venril Sathir and Other Goodness

Pictured above is my paladin, with the amulet of necropotence and a nice sword from fear. She’s obviously got some personality good / evil issues, but I’m loving the new look.

Last night was a hodge podge of activity, starting with getting a few steps done on the mystic epic. I managed to get my three skeleton updates, with some help of course. They included skeletons in Jarsath Wastes, Karnor’s Castle, and Kunzar Jungle. Now I’ve got a group instance to do where I have to defeat some heroics, and then more NPC to talk to.

Out of the blue I found myself playing the neglected troubador I have, she’s been at 80 forever, owns both the dirge and troubador fabled epic, and yet I rarely play her. Not because I don’t enjoy the class (I certainly do) but having SO many alts means my time is always split between the flavour of the month. I wish I were one of those people who only had one or two alts instead of the massive army I have now. I’ve said this a lot. I’ve even contemplated deleting all of the ones that I have, but there’s been so much work put into them I can’t bring myself to do it.

The troubador headed to Obelisk of Ahkzul and then over to Anchor of Bazul, which is also within the Moors. I love Anchor, it involves fights that are more then just hack and slash. One of them requires you to possess the body of a void creature to defeat a named. Another has you form a triangle of void portals around a named as you fight it, dispelling its immunity.

In Obelisk I actually won a (useful) master! The first T8 Master I’ve seen in a very long time. Since that particular zone is on a ‘smart loot’ system, it was nice. Happens to be my group haste buff.

Nothing else of note dropped, but afterwards I decided to join in on a Venril Sathir raid.

I know, what was I thinking. It actually didn’t go too bad, even though we didn’t defeat him this time around. Let me explain.

There were only two groups, 90% of them alts to a raid guild. This raid is easier to do with less people, because the less people you have to worry about their power going below a certain mark, or not clicking statues, or not using a cube on the named, or any other number of things that can go wrong, the better. This was my first time doing this encounter, I’d never seen Venril before (aside from his home in EQ) and it was a lot of fun. The entire raid has to keep their power between 30-60% while Venril is ‘watching’ you, or you’ll cause the raid to wipe. You also need to instantly cure a noxious dot, or you’ll wipe a raid. While all this goes on, throughout the fight there are two other important debuffs that will land randomly on two players. One will decrease their power by huge amounts if they cast so much as a simple spell. The other does the opposite. Of course this means you’ll be unable to hover between the 30-60% so when you’re hit with these debuffs so you call it out in raid (typically) and do nothing for the duration. This also means that the remainder of the raid who does NOT have these debuffs can burn Venril Safely, as long as they keep watching their power and that noxious.

If  a single person is not watching everything that’s going on, the raid wipes.

We managed to get him down to 40% with our two groups before I had to call it a night. The raids started fairly late to begin with and since I’m always up exceptionally early I was starting to fall asleep in my chair. They’re going to make another attempt at it on Saturday I believe, adding a third group of guild DPS to the mix because the fight was taking a good length of time as it was. We had three healers, four bards, a few enchanters and only one brigand with no other DPS classes. It was still great fun.

You don’t always have to win in order for an evening to be fun. Especially since I’d never been there before. I understand that RoK raids are ‘old’ now, that there’s better raids to be had and better gear out there, but for myself it was still a great night with a lot of fun. I’m not sure if I want to get into raiding full time or just continue to pop in here and there when I feel like it (very casual), I’ll just have to see.

I hope everyone has a fantastic Friday today. I’ll be off to see Wolverine later on in the afternoon, woot.

New Servers up on Free Realms

It’s always nice to see growth in games – and as I took a peek at Free Realms today I noticed a choice of 6 servers rather then two. Hopefully I’ll have some friends kicking around as well if the chat servers are fixed that is.

Anyone know how the server system works? Can you see your friends online on other servers? Can you change server mid game? Or are you required to switch to join your friends who may happen to be on another server? Let me know, thank you!

Smile, Darathar!

Pictured above, Darathar smiling with ‘the crew’ just before we battled him to steal a prismatic egg. Keyboard issues were fixed for Wpus and it was time to finish the quest. We started off by heading to three zones to raid various dragons and take the shards from their corpses that would allow us to resurrect Lady Vox. If you’ve never done this quest before it’s quite a bit of fun (and even if you have done it before) as you’re about to resurrect the dragon you release each one of the shards and then get killed. If you’ve done it properly you spawn a non agro version of her, if you do it wrong – you spawn an agro version and you get to do all of the raids all over again.

After you speak to her she sends you back down to talk to Nagafen (again) who sends you out to battle three more dragons for some rings, as well as a group instance of DFC to take down an orc. Once you’ve obtained all of the rings you head to the Oracle tower in Antonica and you have access to the Isle of Refuge.

Almost as soon as we got there it started raining, so the screen shots look a little washed out. Darathar was sitting as smug as ever, laughing at us (practically). I remembered this raid. I remembered positioning, and MOST of the strats – what I didn’t remember is that you want to position yourself just inside of his front paw so that you don’t get pummeled by the massive AOE that goes off.

You still need to do this, it doesn’t matter if you’re level 50 or level 80, we had a good 3+ deaths from folks getting one shot by that tail lash. Once I remembered where to stand things went much smoother.

I was sort of disappointed that the script was not the same, I remember him flying away at specific intervals and killing anyone who accidentally left a dot on him as we stood there stunned during the length of his flight. He never left this time around, though we did get stunned.

It was still a mighty battle, and in the end we won (just barely). One  of the greatest things about doing this prismatic line (aside from the appearance weapon at the end) is that Darathar drops one of the guild hall trophies that you can place in your hall. We now own two of them (though we don’t have a hall yet). We have Darathar, and Gynok. Of course, we also don’t have the bases for them yet because the reflective shards are going for 5p a shot and the bases themselves are being sold for 8p a shot, but since we don’t have a hall yet, it’s alright, we’ll just hang onto them.

After we defeated Darathar it was time to head back to Nagafen – where I instantly killed the group, all save for the Shadowknight who had bloodletter up. Lucky. It was an accident though, honestly! I was attempting to turn on auto attack in order to get some action screen shots, and so I targeted a group member who just happened to have Nagafen targeted right then. I watched, practically in slow motion, as my character swiveled around and tried to hack at Nagafen’s ankles. Needless to say we were all one shot with a 25k nuke.

Ouch.

It’s these memories that make the game what it is though, truly. I’ll be teased about that for some time to come. Any time there’s something that relates to that memory, people will bring it up and we’ll all have a good chuckle. That’s what brings me to these games. That’s what keeps me playing, and that’s what I love.

I hope everyone had an amazing Wednesday! See you in Norrath.

Why Play Free Realms?

Perhaps a better title for this post would be – why am I playing since I plan to explain why this game appeals to me (and maybe you the reader, too). I’ve been gaming for 7 years now, not a great length of time but I’d say every single MMO I’ve played has revolved around one ‘main’ feature with little sub components tossed in. It’s not hard to guess what this is, either. EQ, EQ2, VG, LotRO, WAR, even Wizard 101. These games all revolve around a ‘hack and slash’ motive. Killing the ‘bad guys’ and leveling up by defeating encounters. Yes, there is also some crafting in there, some housing, card games, and other unique bits to each game but the main focus has been and will continue to be leveling up through defeating various encounters.

After years of playing hack and slash games I find it VERY refreshing to find a game that I (so far) enjoy, that does NOT revolve around hack and slash if I do not want it to. I can still get cool outfits, I can still feel as though I am making progress through ‘levels’ I can still explore and see every bit of the world without having to fight a single thing if I choose. No, it’s not my ideal game obviously but it’s a start. It also gives me a much needed break from the other titles that I play.

I have had comments in the past that ‘blame’ it on me being female, and adverse to blood and guts but I don’t think that’s what it is. I’ve done my fair share of ‘pwning newbs’ and raiding, I’ve cackled and felt the thrill of the chase in BG’s and Scenarios. I can appreciate those aspects of games – but there’s so much constant fighting. I’ll admit it, it gets to me after a while.

Sure, you may find that Free Realms is not challenging enough. You may think it’s aimed for small children based on the bright colours and cheerful atmosphere, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find something on some level that appeals to you just like I have. After 7 years of taking down dragons and running over orcs, goblins, skeletons, elves, and any other manor of creature I am more then ready to lay down the sword from time to time and find a new way to explore.

Sound Crazy? Maybe.

This does not make me any less of a gamer (at least, not in my opinion). I don’t want things easier, either. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just feeling glad at the idea that I don’t have to bash someones brains in and steal their weapons in order to progress through an MMO and explore a world.

Plus, my cat Princess (pictured above) looks awesome in her new pirate gear. You’ve got to admit.