A Pixel Nomad

Despite what it looks like in the above screenshot, my enchanter is a gnome. I’m usually running around in one illusion or another, for this one it’s a dark elf because the shield I’m wearing tends to clip through my arm otherwise (it’s a player studio item that just recently released and I think it’s really nice). One of my goals was to reach 300 in tinkering, not an overly difficult task, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. I ended up spending some, and I’m sure there are easier paths, but this is the method I went.

• From 1-52 visit Matrum Geerlok in Crescent Reach. This is the freebie crafting quest and it will get you started.
• From 1-102 I made stalking probes.
• From 103-148 I made aqualung (keep these, you’ll need them)
• From 149-175 I made rebreather
•  From 176-208 I made innovative bow cam
• From 209-232 I made geerlok automated quill

Then things got difficult. I started farming loams to created sacred symbols, but this requires doing a quest to get patterns and I didn’t really want to do that. So I bought a craft potion from the marketplace for 1,000 station cash which gives you a buff for two hours that allows you to salvage 100% of all failed combines.

From 233 to 300 I made a combination of Tick Tock Sticky Bombs, repeating crossbow bolts, and repeating crossbow. The lumber for the crossbow was incredibly cheap and I gained most of my skill ups from this item. It took over 500 combines to get from 250 to 300 but I didn’t mind since I was using the potion and salvaging. There’s a wonderful guide that gives different skill up routs, but I didn’t really like the amount of farming it has you do. Make sure you do the tinkering trophy when you reach 52 so that your tool will level up with you and you won’t be forced to make the artisan’s seal and old trophy before moving on to the new one like I did. In fact it’s pretty important if you want to start crafting to make ALL your beginner trophies before moving up through the tiers, unless you really want to create 7-8 artisan seals and complete the old trophies and then do the master trophies of the new type.

The only craft I have left to get to 300 is research, and this one is a costly endeavor. I’m currently at 260 but each combine costs almost 1,000 plat in vendor sold items and there’s no way around this. The ‘best’ way I’ve seen to get to 300 is to create the Glowing Energeiac Rod, which is by no means cheap and requires a lot of sunshard ore. However if you’ve got the money and the ore it’s not that big of a deal. When I’ve saved up some more supplies I’ll attempt research again but for now I’m taking a slight break from it.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Now that I’m level 100 I get to play with the big kids, in big kid zones. Last night that involved the Plane of Shadow. I’ve been working on earning alternate advancement points now because I’m well below the current cap. My enchanter has barely 1300 aa to her name – but you get a bonus to earning them up to 4,000 so it shouldn’t take too long to at least reach that many.

We camped a room filled with non aggro dervish and some shadowblade’s with the prospect of two named. We also spotted a named beetle outside so we left the camp briefly for that. It was a pretty relaxing evening, I managed to obtain T3 sleeves, pants, and wrist as well as a new cloak and some spell motes. I don’t have all of my rank 2 spells yet, the motes have simply been too expensive. It was neat to see named still con red to me at level 100 although we didn’t really seem to have any trouble.

When I’m not actually killing mobs I enjoy roaming around looking for shinies. EverQuest added them in this latest expansion and while I was disappointed at first with their rewards, it’s hard not to run out and try to find them all. Addictive by nature I suppose, especially since my EverQuest 2 days. I really wish they rewarded house items or something of the sort, but it’s not a big deal.

I’m looking forward to spending some time in other Rain of Fear zones and hopefully before too long I feel a bit more useful to a group. Enchanters are nice, but they’re a rarely played class, these days.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Ah yes, Sunday of double exp weekend, where everyone and their dog is grinding experience in little camps all over Norrath. It wasn’t exciting, but it was.. well. It was EverQuest. It’s exactly how I remember the game being. This is a good thing, although I know it’s certainly not everyone’s cup of tea any more to spend hours upon hours grinding in a single spot. We got a lot of talking done which is something I also don’t see in very many other games any more. I value that more than the actual levels gained.

My enchanter reached level 100. For the first time ever in my 10 years of playing EverQuest (off and on, mind you) I’m actually at the current cap. I’ve come close before but usually the cap goes up JUST as I’m about to reach it.  This year I’ve reached more of my EverQuest goals than ever before, and I couldn’t be more pleased. One was to reach 300 in each of my crafts (technically I still have tinkering and research to go, but I’ve made a good start) and the other was to reach 100 on at least one character. Possibly more but we’ll see how that goes.

Being at the current level cap certainly doesn’t mean that I’m “done” now either. There are over 11,000 aa to obtain next (I have 1.3k which is a tiny amount), crafting trophies, achievements, and much more. I’m also trying to decide which character to level up next during off peak hours when friends are not around. I tend to waver back and forth between a handful of my alts, which I’ll probably continue to do.

Wulfrik, Elte, Oger, and myself settled in for a long camp at Cobalt, a named wyvern in Shard’s Landing. Later on we were joined by Faliin, a necromancer. I wasn’t the only one who saw the benefits of the double xp weekend, Oger inched his way from 92 to 99, and Wulfrik reached 100 with his shaman and gained quite a few levels with his ranger. Still, a break after that much of a grind is a good thing. I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend and had a great time! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

This weekend is double exp weekend in both EverQuest and EverQuest 2 – and I made sure to take advantage of it. My enchanter started out most of the way through level 95 which I have been for quite some time. I was finding that level long than any other level I had come across so far. Thanks to some great friends and some fun times, she is now level 98. I may actually make it to 100 before the next expansion comes which would be something I haven’t done in years.

The beginning of the weekend was spent making new friends. Wolfrik is a friend of Xoxox and plays a handful of characters but I know him best as his ranger. Meeting new people in EverQuest isn’t the easiest of tasks for me. I tend to get annoyed, I don’t like being on vent all of the time, and I’m old fashioned. In this regard Wolfrik is a kindred spirit, which is a blessing to the play style of myself and Oger.

We headed to Veil of Alaris missions to start with. We got a lot of achievements and I came across the most annoying mission yet. You spend your time riding around on an airship taking down mobs with items given to you by the NPC (unless you’re ranged, in which case you can at least use your own spells). That in itself is not the annoying part. What’s annoying is that the airship you’re on is incredibly bugged, it doesn’t look like it but it secretly seems to bob through the air so you’re constantly having LOS issues (line of sight). Your pets (and auras, since they are invisible pets) are useless for the mission, as well as mercenary, because they can’t actually do anything while you’re on the airship bobbing around. So you fly around between a lot of towers, slowly using a ray gun or your ranged spells while doing so. Eventually bombs start flying at you. You can DPS these down or hopefully have a healer that can take care of it. During another portion you drop bombs down below and kill a bunch of mobs too.

If it wasn’t for the bugged airship this mission would have been a lot of fun. As it is though it takes a very long time (you don’t control the machine or where it’s headed) especially because it seems to spend half the time unnecessarily roaming around the air with no destination in mind. I think it’s a neat attempt at making a different type of mission (and in fact VoA is filled with these types of unique missions) but it wasn’t implemented quite as well as one would have hoped.

Oger and I also decided to head back to our old guild (one that we run, there’s a few other members but they haven’t been around since 2007). While Pak’cafan members were nice they were also incredibly quiet and prefered to do things on their own. I have no issues with that but it defeated the purpose of joining a guild to begin with. Now that I’m making some out of guild friends, the desire to be a part of a guild like that has lessened quite a bit. Especially since I just purchased that new guild hall for the smaller one.

All in all it has been a fantastic weekend so far. I’m very pleased that I’m closing in on level 100 with the enchanter, and I’m having a lot of fun running through VOA and now ROF content. I hope everyone else had a great time this weekend too! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!