Yesterday Nostalgia hit level 35! I’m so exceptionally proud of Ecor and Kasul who have been working really hard to get us those levels. It was an important milestone, though it may not seem like it. First, it’s one step closer to 40, which brings us extra bank space, and it also allowed us to purchase two more guildhall amenities! They were expensive, but worth it. I’ve donated close to 300p towards the hall, and millions of status. Of course once we hit level 35 it was time to decide what we wanted our two amenity to be!
There’s the harvesting depot that the guild could really make use of, as a central location for craft supplies, as well as the hirelings that will go out and harvest for you. That was pretty high up on my list of things to purchase, but I think we’ll try to get some of that around level 40. So instead, we purchased (finally) a broker, and a hireling who we can sell looted items to – including all of those status items we gain from mobs. That means no more running around everywhere trying to find the proper merchant to sell to (or in my case, no need to head to Maj’Dul to use the faction instances to sell to since the merchants there also accept everything).
Our total amenities include: Druid porter (since we can’t afford to purchase all of those bells, the druid porters are great to get around Norrath), banker, broker, rush order writs, fuel merchant, and junk buying merchant. Since we are so small, and such a low level, we really had to be careful about where to spend the two extra items. They each cost 10p and 1,000,000 status. Kasul and I donated some more plat towards the escrow, and we still have 13 million status in there, so that should do for a while more.
Eyenstein and Albrta asked if Shadowgeist, Kasul and I wanted to do a few of the vampire instances in Nektulos forest for some aa. Of course we agreed, and it was a lot of fun, I gained 1.5aa with Arysh, and I also had the quest to receive vampire smite on me, I finally completed the chain of quests from the encampment by the waterfalls. I’ve only had that quest on me forever.
Kasul was also gracious enough to let Shadowgeist and I into his empty Crucible instance and The Deep Forge so that we could get the void shard updates (clickies) and earn some shards. Since Crucible was the daily double, we managed to get five shards without having to actually do the instances. I’m saving up to upgrade the shoes, gloves, and shoulders I have – which means I’ll be saving for a while, I need about 60 shards. Ugh.
Since I’ve decided (for now) to settle on Arysh as far as ‘mains’ go, things have been going really well. It’s easy for me to log her in and decide what I need to do. This week hopefully I’ll be getting both my tailor and alchemist to level 70, which means then it’s just a hop skip and jump with writs to level 80.
Hope everyone has an amazing weekend, I’m happy that the holidays are winding down a little bit.
I think it’s great that we get the choice of some pretty nice armor in Frostfell this year. It’s easier (or at least cheaper) for me to work my way through those instances and collect tokens for gear rather then paying for all of my alts to wear mastercrafted, and it’s certainly on par with MC gear as long as you don’t mind having 0 saves vs. heat. That does mean the fire traps hurt a LOT when you open a chest, as a word to the wise. The only thing I don’t like, is that you can not turn off the graphic effect of the gear, even when you wear it under regular appearance stuff. It also causes a lot of lag, and if you run around on full settings like I typically do it’s a little frustrating. It looks like Stargrace needs to shave or she’s got some very bad rabies going on, and has skin care issues. She’s wearing the level 72 cloth dress, the +spell crit was a fairly nice upgrade since I’ve barely worked on gear for her. 
Ah, sweet memories. Yesterday once my paladin reached level 60, I turned off experience so that I couldn’t level past that mark. I had volunteered to help Siege out in obtaining some extra achievements. I mentioned before that when EoF came out, the old achievements had been reset, so those who had not been to the old content and obtained aa from them back then, can now. Well, that consisted of pretty much every old T5 raid that rewarded aa, as well as a good portion of the ‘less then popular’ T6 raids (not counting the one that replicates shimmering citadel because most guilds farmed that one for status but wouldn’t farm the Djin Master’s Prism for example). If you’ve never been to Spirits of the Lost before, it’s a fun zone. It was REALLY hard back when level 50 was the cap, too. The zone was released along with the server wide quest to unlock the froglok race. I never beat it when 50 was the cap, in fact yesterday was the first time any one of my characters had completed it (and I didn’t even have the quest for the title so that sort of sucked). Even though it’s been years, the quests related to this server event are still there. The chain of quests gives fairly good aa (because you have to gain the trust of the frogloks) and also rewards a shiny house item. The final quest rewards a title, for saving the frogloks. 
My paladin got 6 just from that zone alone. The final boss to the zone of course is Venekor (who you also defeat again in KoS) and then finally Varanak the Everlasting. Since my group was mentored to level 60, and the three groups consisted of end game raiders for the most part, it took very little time to work our way through the raid zone, and it was a lot of fun. The loot was amusing, a lot of the named encounters would drop a whole slew of adepts and crafting rares, but nothing more. I remember when those crafting rares used to be *rare* and people would fight over who would get to have a few in their pocked when they left the raid. The same happened in DoF raids that would reward crafter bits, everyone would bid their dkp on them because it was just so difficult to farm any. Ah, I miss days like that, a lot. 
