Faydai, my 40 blood mage, standing in a recent quest hub in Qalia (note the blinding sand). This cyclops looks about ready to pound her on the head. Oh, and does anyone know how to fix / change the screen shot qualities? They all turn out exceptionally poor it seems for me, and that’s not how it looks in game at all. I tried to search through my options but was at a loss.
Dipped into Vanguard yesterday for a brief bit before real life tugged me away (which it’s been doing a whole lot lately) and got in an hour or two on my monk. Vanguard is one of those wonderful games where you can pop in for an hour or two (as long as you’ve logged out around your quest area) and get something done. Even without logging in at a quest area, the riftways make it quite easy to get around. Everything is relatively close by.
So it was that I glanced at my quest journal – and again was so impressed with the changes that they’ve made to the interface over the year. Being able to sort the quests by chunk and have it plainly say whether it’s solo or not, and have it colour coded, is just so very helpful.
Looking through it, I noticed I had quite a few quests in the CIS area – aside from the cloak which I’d already done a while ago. Before too long I was headed to a crevice in the mountains to battle spiders who were under the ruling of Nerachnia – a powerful spider queen. The spiders were all two dots, and fell easily enough. It also helped that I cam armed with a giant supply of raid and fly swatters and rolled up newspaper.
I ran into quite a few people while I was wandering about. Once those quests were cleared I continued on, and came across adventurers every which way. Those who think Telon is dead, are sorely mistaken. There are even guide events running these days.
Disciple is one of the more unique healers I’ve seen – but remember, I’m not exactly the most knowledgeable of mmo players, I’ve played EQ1/EQ2/VG/WoW and that’s the extent of my experience (adding WAR to the list later of course). Basically you’re a combination of monk and healer. Your attacks done in a specific order (or as I like to call it.. 6-7-8-9 on my keyboard) set off heals to your defensive target. One of your kicks has a HoT attached to it, you get feign death but it doesn’t always fool the mobs (much like EQ2’s FD can fail) and you’re a medium armor wearing class. The stats you want to go for are not wis and vit so much as other healers, but dex,str, and vit. The best part is you can practically scream out as you do cool ninja moves and fly through the air smashing your opponent to bits. It’s great. The moves and graphics of attacks for the disciple are top notch.
Where blood mages can’t heal if they can’t hit the mob with spell attacks, disciple are a lot alike in that they can’t heal without meleeing. If you like to be up close where the action is – and heal, this class is perfect for you. Disciples also use endurance, and mana. There are a few direct heals that use mana, and most of the melee attacks and specials use endurance. So far my disciple is lacking a little on the buff side of things, I only have two – and my stance, where as my blood mage has a whole slew of buffs plus symbiotes. Maybe the disciple gets them later, I’m only half way through 23 right now.
One thing that really strikes me as interesting about Vanguard and my play style specifically – is that I have yet to find a class that I find ‘boring’ or that I ‘don’t like’ and this includes the tank classes. I have 6 characters in Vanguard and I’m content to keep the count at that – but it would be very easy to make another alt and have a blast with it. That’s almost unheard of for me. In both EQ2 and WoW I refused to play tanks, I’m just not a tank person. In EQ1 I reluctantly play my tank (a shadowknight) and I’m not really interested in wizards. There’s one main reason I think why I enjoy Vanguards selections of characters so much more, and it’s simply because as they fight, they will (based on an action accomplished like a critical strike, or a parry) have a chain go off – hit the response to that chain, and in some cases (ie: disciple) another chain will go off, doing massive amounts of damage (or a heal, etc) and there are also counters, and spell checks, and all the rest. It makes the actual fighting a lot more interesting to me.
Anyhow. Hopefully Telon will be seeing more of me today. We’ll see how it goes!
*Note: QoTW means Quest of The Week – it was a weekly post I’ve started in the past but never managed to stick with it. Maybe this time it’ll last more then two weeks*
Those dwarves at Fort Irontoe need your help (again) and yes you’re the only one who can help them! If you’re one of those people who love to work their faction up, then you’ll love these quests. Goudia is 80 and they’re grey to her now, I never had an opportunity to complete the quests when they were coloured to her. It’s a level 60 heroic quest, that first sends you to pick up some traps at the Arms Hall of Fort Irontoe, and then sends you off to Kaladim to place those traps and collect some fur – as well as collect two whips from the Frothbark Whipcrackers (who I am still waiting on right now. Instead of the Whipcrackers spawning I keep getting the named, I hope that’s not a pattern).
Having faction is always a good thing. This quest also opens up another one with other rewards. I’m not sure what the ringlet from the quest does quite yet, but I’m looking forward to figuring it out!
The only down side to this quest (or perhaps just downside in general) is that Kaladim is completely empty. While I do enjoy having an entire zone to myelf, it wasn’t that long that it was just packed with people working on their soulfire updates. I dislike content that you can “out level” or that can become “useless” to a player. In EQ1 (and a few other mmo’s) the content can at least sort of stay fresh because mobs don’t grey out. Quests don’t become trivial to you. You can be taken down by a massive swarm of level 5’s if you’re not careful.
Oh, and yes, for this quest Goudia broke out the little Christmas hat. Doesn’t she look stunning?
Was a long day, yis yis! See these nails here? They used to be all shiny, oh so very shiny. I used to polish them and made sure that no dirt ever got near them. Needed to, you see, to play the music songs that people love. Can’t play that music with messy fingers, on noes. I had to dig dig dig for these other shiny. Ten of them. The first five was not so bad, I was persistent, but then my stamina started to wane. So I went home for a bit, I buried what I found under the front steps.
I thought maybe when I sleep that the guards would come along and they would sees it, but they did not! Bright and early I got up the next day, and mourned over the dirty fingernails again. Not too much longer now though, I knew I was almost done.
Tap tap tap went my little hammer, and then I scrambled to dig the gems out of the rocks. T’is hard work you know, some folks they came by to see me toiling but I was not allowed to have any help. I was so strong and brave. I tried to scare some critters away, I thought maybe they wanted to steals my shiny! That could not happen, not when I was so close.
I lost track of the hours that went by, but the shadows started moving along the ground while I worked. Thank Bristlebane I has fur! I have no worries of sunburns.
By the time all was said and done, I had 2,500 loams, 2,646 metal, 11 spongy loam, and yis yis, even my 10 xegonite. It is over, finally. In total it took me 7 hours of ruining my nails to gather everything I needed. Now I can finally feed that flame, and then see what happens next, I move on to bigger shiny! That’s always the way it works, t’is never completely done, there’s always something to move on to.
That is very good though, hmms? It keeps me out of people’s pockets. Not that I go there often, no, only when I am trying to put something back that has fallen out. What do you mean it didn’t fall out? Ohs, you must have not seen it like I did, I have wonderful eyes. Can see little specks from so far away. I assure you, that was there when I found it. It looked exactly like that…
Day two of the troubador Xegonite hunt. The screen shot above is my permanent home, or has been for the last little while. I need only two more xegonite, and then I’ll have my 10. So far I’ve spent a total of 4h30m harvesting, which isn’t too bad. I have 10 spongy loam, and so many common materials I think I can supply alts for a while. I’ve made some money while I worked on this portion as well from the shinies that spawn on occasion close to where I’m harvesting.
The area is fantastic. There’s three alcoves with nodes, roughly 3-6 nodes in an alcove. From time to time someone wanders by, and I send them a tell explaining I’m here for my troubador epic and if they’d like the common materials I’d kindly pass them off in the hopes of being able to harvest my last two Xegonite. The first two people didn’t reply back, but they did move. The next two wished me luck and also moved. I don’t like “claiming” an area, but I do really want to get this quest done.
I also caved in yesterday and moved my 58 necromancer / 80 sage over to Najena. It was the last transfer I’ll do – vowing to myself to stay here until I’m old and decrepit. I’ll be starting the sage epic on her later on, hopefully. I’m going to look for the same guild who helped me out last time and see how that goes. I’m excited to have the necromancer over on this server, even more so to have an 80 sage kicking around.
I did manage to squeeze out a carpenter level last night too, hitting level 62. The grind has slowed down some, but mostly just because I’ve been busy with other things and can’t devote quite as much time to it as I’d like. The recipes for this tier are exciting and fresh to me, I knew once I passed T6 it would just be a wonderful experience. I’ve been browsing the housing forum on EQ2players, the Norrathian Homeshow. If you haven’t checked it out (and some of the absolutely amazing creations people have in there) I highly suggest it.
Anyhow, I suppose it’s back to xegonite harvesting!
A Pixel Nomad 