Public Quests and Other Goodies #EQ2

I managed to do a few more public quests yesterday but still feel like healers get the short end of the stick. I don’t believe that I’m the only one who feels this way either – out of three raids of 24 people there were only four healers (one per group) in any one of the raids. There were a LOT of crusaders, at least two or three for every group. They’ve been the flavour of the month for so long now due to their healing / dps / tanking capabilities that it no longer surprises me. Luck was with me for one PQ as I did manage to get the fabled weapon. The breast piece eludes me, but I healed my little heart out on all of the raids and after dropping my settings down to the lowest rank I at least had no issues with lag. I switched back to my regular settings as soon as the PQ was completed, and roamed around the area looking for shinies. A lot of people in the PQ were boxing – some were boxing full groups of players, I could see them all auto following one another. It was a little odd to watch. The rewards from PQ are not that great any more, having their critical mitigation nerfed into oblivion, but for those of us who are still getting their feet wet with DoV it’s quite a large improvement. Yesterday I picked up shoulders, shoes, forearms, and a fourth piece that I can’t remember. It wasn’t the head piece. Ah well, no matter.

I’ve got two or three more days of questing before I get my flying mount, and I’m looking forward to that. So far only my crafter has obtained hers, and since I don’t use the character for anything besides crafting she really hasn’t used it too often. I wish we could fly in the city zones, as that would make getting to and from my guild hall a lot easier when my guild port is down (I play mostly evil aligned characters and the guild hall is located in Qeynos).

I haven’t been doing much decorating in game lately, but I have added to my book collection and I’m some where near the 473 mark (ok, exactly near there, hehe). I had a generous contribution of 20 books yesterday and gladly added them to the collection. I do want to decorated the remaining homes that I own, Stargrace (my 90 defiler) owns a dojo for relaxation as well as a Freeport home on top of the museum that I’ve worked on. There are also a few more ‘artifacts’ I wish to collect, for example the tapestries that are representatives of the Courts of Maj’Dul from Sinking Sands. These are new quests that were added when Sinking Sands went through a revamp, and I haven’t had time (or the patience) to complete them yet.

On that same note, I went through my settings and decided to hide all of the rewards from my quests, so I don’t know ahead of time what I’m getting. You may think that’s an odd thing to have an option for, but I really like being surprised. I don’t know if I’m getting a piece of gear or a house item (unless I’ve done the quest so many times that I’ve memorized the rewards). It’s a neat little feature and allows me to customize my game play even further, which is something I appreciate. It’s all in the details after all!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. It’s a glorious Wednesday!

Why I’m Not Leveling #Rift

The title of this post is not completely true – I did hit level 26 today on my Defiant cleric. I’ve been playing off and on since release and this is my highest level character. Of course I’m playing Rift meshed between a handful of other games and real life, but there’s another reason why I’ve been neglectful in my leveling. Pictured above, the cleric in Stonefield. This zone is almost completely empty every single time I play. It’s me fighting minor rifts alone, me questing alone, and me in the small quest hubs alone. In fact the last few times I’ve played I haven’t seen a single other character around. It makes for some pretty lonely times. Of course, this is also mostly my fault. While everyone else was off leveling and exploring – I was playing other games and so I was left behind. It makes sense, I don’t expect anyone to hang back and wait for me and I state this every time I join a guild, that I tend to take things slower, and do my own thing. Sure, I could use the new LFG tool and get into a dungeon eventually, but I wanted to explore the massive outdoor world. I just wish this tier were not so desolate.

As if it were not bad enough that I never see anyone around me – I also never hear anyone in the public channels for my level or this zone. I enjoy doing my own thing and watching chat filter by, the illusion of being social without actually being social. Except for some reason that doesn’t work here, either. I’m not on Faeblight server which which is where most of my twitter friends ended up, I’m playing on Deepwood – and there ARE lots of players around. Meridian is full(ish) every time I head there. Because there is only one starter zone and progression is so linear and there is no mentoring in game there’s very little reason for folks to want to come back to the lower level zones unless they are working on achievements and collections. One of my major pet peeves has always been seeing huge empty zones – there should always be a reason for a player to go back to a zone within a game. When new zones are added (or levels) they tend to make older zones obsolete.

Needless to say, I haven’t been logging in nearly as much as I’ve wanted to. I do my crafting dailies, as well as the dailies in Meridian, and wander about completing a quest or two before logging out. Hopefully I’ll get inspired enough to work my way out of this tier and the next one will be better.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

From 0 to 135 #EQ2 #EverQuest2

This weekend found me (much to my surprise) in EQ2 when I wasn’t out enjoying the Tulip Festival and gallivanting around the city with the other half. After exploring a little DoV (I’ve barely set foot into this expansion) and doing enough quests to be on the daily portion of my flying mount, I decided that I wanted to play a lower level character. I really enjoying older content in EQ2 and I had a level 6 Freeblood character that I had created some time ago. Myself and Ibeogur teamed up (while chattering to Ultann in guild) and headed first to Wailing Caverns. Because this weekend was double experience the levels came incredibly quickly (not to mention I have 120% bonus due to max level characters, and I used a potion, and I had vitality). Before too long the ranger was level 35 – and I had gone from 0 aa to 135. I’ve spent what I can in the first two trees until level 70 (50 points in each), and made my way down the Shadows tree. I didn’t want to level too fast, because there are a lot of quests I enjoy doing. 35 is a comfortable level, and I’ve set myself to 100% aa for the next little while. I’ve played a few rangers before – one all the way to levle 90 but I ended up deleting her because she didn’t have the aa and I didn’t feel like grinding them at end game. Looking back I suppose it’s a little foolish of me to constantly delete my levle 90 characters, but I only get rid of those that I feel no emotional ties to – my main characters I try to keep around.

I actually had a lot of fun playing – a lot more then I thought I would. It’s been ages since I’ve played EQ2 on a serious level and having guild mates around made an enormous difference. Of course it also took some getting used to as well. I barely remember how to get from one place to another or what any of the acronyms mean in game. Channels were bustling (at least on the Antonia Bayle server) and I managed to pick up 10 (that’s right, TEN!) new player-written books to add to my museum. That brings my total up to around 433 player-written books. I’m pretty proud of that fact.

I hope everyone else had an amazing weekend no matter where you spent it. It’s a long weekend here in Ottawa (Victoria Day is today) so I’m going to spend it indoors gaming after spending most of my weekend outside in the sun (plus it’s cloudy and just gross outside today). As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Paladin Adventures

The paladin is 61 (closing in on 62) and experience has slowed down some what. At least as much as experience ever slows down in WoW when you’re wearing heirloom gear for experience bonuses. Being this level means a few (wonderful) things for me. First of all, I can finally fly. This makes questing and harvesting SO much easier. I am now in Outlands, exploring (once more) Hellfire Peninsula, but I’m on the alliance side for the first time and so things are at least a little different. Ok not so different that I can’t tell the exact horde counterpart, but different enough. I’ve still been tanking for pick up groups, and they’ve gone slightly better then the pre-60 dungeons. I disliked 55+ so much that I avoided doing dungeons all together and decided to quest my way to Outlands. It was simple, and quick. I think it was even faster then if I had of queued. I’ve tanked Hellfire Ramparts twice now, and both times the group moved smoothly, with only one (or two) mage deaths (ahem, Detch) from adds. The only down side I’ve really found with the paladin is that because my cool downs tend to be a little lengthly, it can some times be difficult to catch adds if I’m not expecting them. See, the problem is that everyone else has their AoE’s going off, and then more mobs add to the bunch, while those AoE’s go off – meaning that I barely have time to taunt or take aggro myself before the mobs are on someone else. When this happens I do my best to pull them off, but if my own AoE’s happen to be down for a moment it can get a bit hairy. I’m working on timing things better, and I know it will come with experience.

On the plus side most groups now have been patient enough to let me handle pulling, which is a huge relief. I was beginning to think that every single PUG in WoW was a hopeless cause, and I’m always eager to be proven wrong. Now that I’m 60+ I’ve slowed things down, prepared to take my time and enjoy my character while learning how to play her properly.

Although I’ll want to level up past 65 sooner rather then later, because my crafting (and harvesting) are capped at 375 until then. I’ve taken up alchemy and herbalism, the herbs come in handy for my inscription character (shaman). I had worked inscription to the cap once before but then (foolishly) dropped it for mining. After thinking about it I decided I really did want to keep inscription, and picked it back up. I’ve also maxed out my jewel crafting on the shaman, who is 78, and I’ve been busy doing dailies on her so she can purchase recipes and cut more gems.

Thanks to a generous gift from a friend I’m also sitting at 72 pets on my ‘main’ (the 85 priest) only three pets away from an achievement I’ve been after for quite some time. When I don’t feel like doing dungeons or interacting with a lot of other people I tend to work on these achievements – it’s not player housing, but it fills in the blanks just nicely.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

It’s Pretty – But Is It Fun? #Rift

Servers are down right now for an update, and I’m backlogging a few days where I neglected to post (it’s actually the 25th, not the 19th) so I decided to upload a few more screen shots in my massive collection, and I’m struck by just how beautiful this game is. Screen shots are important to me in any game, I’m not sure why. I have folders upon folders of “memories” for the various games I’ve played. Those I’ve stuck with for years (EQ/EQ2) and those I’ve only played briefly (AoC). It doesn’t matter what the game, before I learn any of the commands for actual game play I want to know how to take screen shots. I’ve been that way for years now and I doubt it will change any time soon.

I was so frustrated with the lack of participation I found in Stonefields that I was ignoring the fact that the zone is incredibly pretty. Sure, the entrance is a desolate barren wasteland inhabited by trolls and other goon-like creatures but as soon as you hid the mid-way mark things brighten up considerably. There’s more population to speak of. One of the things holding me back slightly is that I prefer to do my zone quests in order and thus I didn’t even make my way to stonefields until I was well into 20, almost 21. Now I’m 26 and my quests are 21-22 which means there’s very little risk involved. Of course I did happen to stumble into a rift or two where I couldn’t defeat the bonus round by myself and limped away as fast as I could before I was smushed (or, after I was smushed as the case was a few times) but it was still pretty fun.

I’m having fun, which is important. Fun enough to grind by myself for hours in this little speck of land before I get bored? Probably not. But I don’t mind queuing while I quest, and at least then it’s broken up by a dungeon or two. I still think Rift really needs a mentor program so that you can play with your lower level friends without completely trivializing the content for them. I appreciate the fact that my level 50 friends can help me out with my quests, but when things die in one hit it makes me wonder what the point is, I may as well just be on auto follow and have them do everything for me.

A few things could be added to clinch this game for me. Number one would have to be player housing, objects crafted as well as quested and looted that could be placed in said homes. This gives players more ‘to do’ outside of slaughter. I enjoy working on achievements but I also enjoy just hanging out and talking to friends. Except I don’t want to just hang out, I want to do something that doesn’t require me worrying about whether or not I’m going to get killed while doing it. I also wish factions meant something besides just grinding for gear. I appreciate how factions work in EQ, they have meaning. You’re working on your faction for a greater purpose, and enchanters and their illusions become incredibly handy. I dislike the WoW faction grind, working away to a specific faction level in order to have a vendor item become available to you. Granted, I’m 26 and rarely (if ever) have come across this yet in my own travels in Rift, but I know it will come with time.

I enjoy crafting and doing my daily quests – but I think crafting is too easily accessible. It makes crafted items almost meaningless, and the market is so incredibly flooded with items that there’s no real point to them any longer. Harvested goods on the other hand can sell for a tidy profit, and I’m looking forward to doing some crafting rifts eventually. For now I’m content with my two dailies, and I’ve even gotten a few Artisan plaques from doing my dailies around Meridian.

Anyhow, enough of my rambling for now. Game should be back up, and I’m eager to try to reach the next tier so I can get a little closer to the rest of my friends who are playing. Despite the fact that this post sounds quite negative (well, for me in any case) I AM enjoying myself. It’s just a matter of finding my niche within the game. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!