Category: Gaming

There are of course in every game, those things I’d wish I’d known before I started playing too much. I’ve made a post about that before concerning Vanguard, and the list now grows, though this is more or less an idea of what a new player to Vanguard should do. Number one, turn off regionsay if you’re at all easily offended by certain topics of conversation or pure idiocy. It’s no different then ‘barrens chat’ as the saying goes. The conversations can at times be exceptionally crude, and I turned off those channels almost immediately. There are alternatives, far better.

/autojoin set craft,dip

That’s the command to autojoin the craft channel, as well as the diplomacy channel- at least on Seradon it is. The craft channel is by far home to some of the nicest people I’ve met, who answer questions not only about crafting, but other spheres so long as you’re not rude and ignorant about it. Silius himself visits the channel often to get the players opinions on thing and to talk about upcoming changes. At any time of day there are people giving away spare crafter gear that they don’t need, offering their craft services, answering questions and the like. Suffice to say, were it not for this community (which is quite large) I’d not be having nearly as much fun in Vanguard. After time you start to learn who are the ‘regulars’, I’ve never come across a more helpful bunch.

The diplomacy channel is much the same, though a little more subdued. People give away spare diplomacy gear, answer questions about parle’s, and other numerous things. It’s a great (though slightly smaller) community and you can easily figure out the regulars as well. Those two channels plus guild are more then enough for me to feel as though I’m not alone in game, and thus I keep regionsay off, unless I’m LFG (which I rarely am, I group almost exclusively with my guild).

I’d also highly suggest getting a guild. There are numerous active ones on Seradon, some larger then others. My guild’s been recruiting fairly steady, at one or two people every second day. Some play more frequently (like myself) and others log on a time or two as they try to find their place in Telon. There’s a guild recruitment tab, but I’ve found it some what annoying in trying to find a place called home. I’d rather go to the  vgplayers.com site and search the server specific forums to find an active guild that suits my needs, or at least post there mentioning that I’m looking for a guild.

There are so many commands and things one can learn by simply joining the channels mentioned above and lurking (which is what I do most of the time unless I’m congratulating someone or need a question asked). For example, today Satia hit 25 mineralogist (woot!) which means she can now join a crafting society, something of which I’d never even know about were it not for these channels. Vanguard does a very poor job of leading a player around. That means you need that community to find your way through the world. You need to rely on experienced players to figure out what you should (or can) do next (like the unicorn and shadowhound mounts which are new to me). It’s not a bad method of learning at all, I quite enjoy it.

Anyhow, so I’ve hit 25 and I’m going to join a society. Well, two to be precise. There are three in New Targonor in Thestra, and there are three in Ahgram in Qalia. You can actually do the first two quests of each society, and get the experience as well as the item rewards (red craft gear, always a great thing to have) before having to settle down to one society per continent (Kojan again left out here, blast that unfinished continent). In New Targonor there’s the Imperial Trade Organization, Arcane Camarilla, and the New Targonor Trading Company. Each one has a different reward, and based on your crafter build you’ll want to choose one to join in the end.

Ahgram’s societies are the Society of Invention, the Merchant’s Guild, and Cabal. Again you can do the first two quests of each society, and then settle down to one after that so you can obtain the red gear and the experience. There’s a great bunch of information on these that you can find here. Just another small intricate part of why I like Vanguard. Lots of busy work. I’m not just grinding workorders to get my levels, I’m doing plenty of crafting quests, and delving into my character more and more by customizing these smaller portions of them. The same can be said with diplomacy, as at level 31 you chose to work for a ‘house’ in New Targonor and can rise in ranks and obtain useful gear / titles and the like from them.

I may still be fumbling my way around Telon, but I’m having lots of fun doing it. Yesterday I also managed to finish my Hunter’s League pants with Growlius, next we’re slowly working on the breast piece (I say slowly, because we need 80 uncommon drops between us, and the area is always full of other groups attempting the same thing, which is a huge annoying pain. SoE really needs to change the number of mobs that can drop your pieces, or have them drop for an entire group rather then each person individually).

 

I decided in the end to stick with my blood mage. I enjoy the crafter aspect of the character (she makes focus’ jewelry, housing bricks and what not) and I’d rather be a caster healer then a melee healer. Just a personal preference in playing. In the screen shot I’m squishing some giant sea creature with Growlius on the disciple. Shoddy quality of screen shot but it’s hard to remind myself to take them as I’m trying to remember what combination of keys unlocks my heals with attacks.

This morning I had Satia learn the Qalia and Thestra styles of gems, so I can at least make all three continents now. I tried looking for some upgraded crafter gear, but alas it was all very expensive. I can pull off white WO’s with refining, but not finishing. I need some +utility gear which is hard to come by at my level. At 25 I can do society quests, and get some more upgrades which should be nice. It takes a little time to get used to everything. I want to be able to work up my diplomacy as well, as I have been incredibly slack with that on Satia. I don’t even know which cards she has any more.

I petitioned to have my crafting pouch moved back to Satia (I’m a pain, I know) and in 10 minutes had a reply (they did not speak english very well, but, they did take care of my issue) which is impressive to me. I appreciated it too. The crafting pouch really is a must have for crafters.

No posts for a few days as I’ll be off to Toronto, I hope everyone has wonderful weekends though! I’ll be back in the world of Telon late Monday and if not then, Tuesday.

 

Today was a good day. In crafting, I managed to get the mineralogist to level 21, which means new recipes to learn, and continental styles, as well as housing bricks, and planks. It’ll take some time to work through it all, but I’m hoping by tomorrow I can at least make some jewelry for the disciple and her partner in crime Dreadknight. The guild was fairly active in the evening, and we had at least 6 of us in the 19-25 range who wanted to do some exploring. Ideas were tossed around, did we want to do Hilsbury? Well, after Growlius’ near death (wait, near? It was complete death) at the gates, he wasn’t too keen. Someone suggested that we start our CIS cloaks though.

Cloaks are great. Not only do they look cool, but they protect you from that ever present rain in Telon. Yes, it’s raining in that screenshot. So we headed to Donovan’s Roost in Qalia (just one chunk west of Ahgram) and talked to a little gnome about some crazy people and how he wanted to learn their secrets or some such. I barely remembered the quest from when I’d first done it in 2007. I even wrote about it  here. The quest has changed slightly. The slave is much easier to find now, he’s almost at the beginning of the zone. I don’t recall him being there. The captain fight is just as annoying- but I don’t remember him turning non-agro throughout the fight like he used to do. Also, we went with one group.

We died of course a few times. I think we had to attempt him four times before we managed to get him down. The group consisted of a 22 dreadknight, 19 paladin, 25 sorcerer, 25 cleric, 20 necromancer, and myself, 22 disciple, all guildies. We pulled him the first time inside of his hut, and a lot of adds came. I mean, a LOT. The paladin dropped like a rock, and we evac’d out. Well, we didn’t have a ranger to sacrifice. It would have to do. We made our way back, and pulled him outside the hut. Still had the two adds he spawns with, and they still decided to beat the snot out of me while we got them positioned and out of the mountain they decided to hide in- but in the end down he went, and his two friends.

So now a few more members of Safe Haven are sporting their new cloaks, and those of use who were 20+ managed to get the quest for the ring (the next part of the infinium chain). I haven’t done it before, so I’m not sure what to expect. I think we have to go read a book, or something? It would have been nice to finish off that Hunter’s League quest that’s been plaguing my journal so I can get on with the other two pieces, but alas most nights the one room with zombie flesh that I need has been camped. Talk about annoying. Why would only ONE room in a dungeon have the mobs that everyone doing the quest needs. Not to mention it’s not a constant drop- nor does it drop for every member in the group. So you have to kill 6x as many mobs if you bring a full group down there (and the mobs are four dots). Hopefully I’ll get it done tomorrow night before I leave Saturday for Toronto. We’ll see though. It was the first time I’ve really grouped with the guild, and I had a lot of fun. So far, Telon’s been a blast.

 

Mounts are an important part of Telon, the world is vast and it can take you 10 minutes just to get across two chunks (continents are made up of like, 10 chunks by 10 chunks, so that’s a lot of traveling). Along with that of course is the appearance of your mount. You can get a horse at level 10, through crafting, diplomacy, or adventuring. Vanguard is great that way, any one of the three spheres will work for a number of things that are level based. There’s a selection of mounts of all different colours based on what you’d like. I wish they’d impliment a ‘dressing room’ option, but for now you’ve basically got to guess, or look it up online some place.

Ishbel is riding a docile grey mount that she bought in Tawar Galan, an outpost with lots of sailors wandering around, on the Kojan continent. I managed to grind my way to level 21 early this morning which opened up the apprentice (T3) quests, per continent of course. Made my way to Ahgram and spoke with Master Outfitter Alibaan Deleard who of course sent me away to Khal (which is where I started to begin with). The Master Outfitter there gave me a recipe to make some stiff leather bundles and I set off to finish that up. Along the way I stumbled across a good many level 18-20 crafter quests, so before I started in on the apprentice ones I finished those up and ended up getting a nice new heroic crafter ring that summons resources every 24 hours of real life game play. Interesting.

Before long I was 80% through my level and hadn’t even touched those apprentice quests, I was a notch or two away once I finished that up and scribed my new recipes. Barding was on the list. It was one of those “oh my goodness I really want to make THAT” items that I’d seen. It also required grade A on completion so I was worried about being able to make it. Thankfully I had crafter buffs on, and I also have a clicky hat piece that I used while crafting. You can add dye to the combine, and voila, a bit of red, gave me the barding pictured above in the screen shot. Barding is not just for show, either. It gives me +15 mount stability which means it’s harder for beasts to knock me off while I’m running through angry creatures. At this tier I can only add yellow, red, black, or orange dye to my clothes. There’s a bunch of other colours that I suppose come later, like blue, light blue, and purple. The item was enough to ding me 22 as well.

As a leatherworker, I can also make saddle bags, which is great, another container to store random pieces of junk I happen to stumble across. I’m getting in as much gaming as I can now, before I head to Toronto for three days, I’m still very excited about the trip, hopefully Growlius doesn’t pass me by too many levels while I’m gone. He hit level 22 last night and I’m still 40% away, it means new skills though and I’m looking forward to that.

 

Lots of progress made in Vanguard this weekend, and I had a blast doing it. First of all I managed to get level 12 diplomat. I love this sphere of Vanguard, and while at times it seems like brainless grinding, I don’t mind it. I did one of the web quests for Qalia, I have three more to do and they take a huge amount of time. Diplomacy is something (most) people do on their ‘off time’ in between crafting and adventuring, that night where you need a change (or you happen to wander by someone who offers you a diplomacy quest). The chain (if you actually read the parleys, I know a lot of people who do not) was filled with intrigue and murders and backstabbing and plots and all sorts of good stuff. In the end I got a good amount of gear (that can be combined with the items from 3 other web quest chains to form some sort of super armor) and I got a lot of experience as well as some evidence. You need evidence (they’re little scraps of paper, and there’s bunches of types per tier) to turn in to informants. You can get gear from doing this or buff items, or baubles (that can be turned into diplo gear, or are used for player made diplo cards). You need seven hearsay, five rumor, or three evidence before you turn them in. An informant takes them and viola you earn something in return. Diplomacy is also used for guild halls, aside from the tons of raw materials (and the 10p plot you have to buy) you also need close to 1,000 pieces of diplomacy evidence, and 150 baubles. That’s a LOT of parleys. It was one way of integrating the three spheres into game though. You also need diplomacy for APW, which is the one raid dungeon in game. For what exactly, I’m unsure of except zone wide buffs you can stick up. I haven’t learnt much more then that.

Adventure wise, Growlius and I both hit level 21, and we headed to Qalia to work on some Hunters League quests. We had a lot of competition last night which wasn’t so fun, it’s the only down side to doing some quests, the updates do not drop from every mob, and on most occasions only one person gets an update at a time, so you don’t want to do it in a huge group if you don’t have to, other wise you’re killing 5x the amount of stuff you need. Granted you do blow through it faster as well. We’re now sporting very fancy shoulder pieces, which have a fantastic graphic compared to the previous tiers, I’ll stick a screen shot up later.

Crafting, was probably where I made the most progress, and it’s not through actually leveling at all, but from finally figuring out how to create crafting macros. In Vanguard crafting is a series of mouse clicks, it’s not a continuous production like EverQuestII where you have to sit and watch while you craft, you can get up at any point in the craft and go tend to real life (which is nice). It also means a lot of mouse clicking though. Probably at least 40 clicks per combine (and there are sub combines to Vanguard). It can get sore on the wrists. Now, macro’s will not craft for you. That’s not their intention. But they will reduce the amount of clicking you have to do by having a text command for the craft that you can hotkey (or add to your G15 profiler, which is what I do). There are (at my tier of crafting) 5 steps with anywhere from 1-5 sub steps per each step. You also have to place items on your ‘table’ first- the items you’re going to use to craft. I’m restricted to four currently, but the number goes up as you get better at recipes. So I have a macro that will ‘load’ my table for me, instead of having to mouse click each item. I load water, solvent, bandages, that sort of thing. My wrists are so happy. It is also a time saver, it’s quicker to hit a macro to load a table of four items then it is to mouse click each one of those four items. I found fantastic macro’s written up here, and here. I am not typically a macro person, I suck at making them in fact. That’s why this took me so long to figure out. I’m so incredibly happy that I did though. I hit level 18 leatherworker with ease, and hopefully today I’ll be able to get 20 (and maybe even 21, where I can learn how to make barding for mounts, instead of the silly vendor sold saddles). Ideally I’d like my crafting to be 10 levels over my adventure level so that I can make my own gear, but that’s a lofty goal for now.

The GU4 is still highly in debate, I’ve turned off regionsay for the past few days to avoid the mobs of angry people. You can read the notes yourself here and there is a blurb about them here. I’m not ready to call this the end of Vanguard quite yet, we’ll have to see how things pan out. Losing all face customization really hurts though, I doubt I’ll actually wear the helms that they’re implementing. Silius himself (dev) was in the craft channel yesterday afternoon answering questions for people which I thought was great customer service (until the typically quiet and calm craft channel turned into a raging sea of frantic mobsters) and he did hint at some future changes. The largest type of boat is going to be implemented into the game shortly (galleons anyone?) and people questioned what was the point- with flying mounts you don’t need huge deep sea ships. However, Silius hinted at fishing, which will be galleon only – or maybe caravel. Gives people a purpose for all the hard work that goes into those sort of ships. He also mentioned integrating diplomacy into the world more, but wouldn’t explain how. I sent him a tell wondering when (if ever) facial customization will be reinstated (since it was said that over time it would be and I wanted a better idea of ‘how soon’) but got no reply. I assume he was probably swamped though since he did make a broadcast telling people if they had questions to send him tells. All in all, it’s just a matter of time to see what effect the changes will have on the game over all. I’ve copied my character to test (as per request of the devs, who are lacking testers it would appear) there are quite a few characters who are getting revamps in the next update, so it will be interesting to see how it goes, people seem very pleased with the druid revamps.