Logged in to EQ2 yesterday and the MoTD mentioned something about all the dervishes losing their loot and the instance Hidden Cache being closed. I believe this has to do with the increased master drop rate – and not the fact that the drop rate was increased, because Scornfeather’s roost was not changed, not were any overland zones that are ‘contested’ but because of the way that this zone could be abused. Hidden Cache is filled with encounters, and unless you get a named you can kill those encounters (which were dropping an abundance of master chests) zone out, reset the zone, and head back in. Rinse and repeat. As long as you didn’t accidentally kill a named, you never set the lock out timer. I figured it was just easier to go to living tombs and kill to get masters, but apparently a lot of people were using this method. So for now the instance is out of commission. Since I got the rare masters that I wanted (a lucky drop saw me with Enraging Demeanor on Wednesday) I didn’t head back to LT to see if it was now heavily populated with people farming. I know the increase drop rate was intended, but I guess this specific zone was not meant to be used that way. If the drop rate was not meant to be increased, then I assume the other zones that are dropping masters like crazy (silent city, living tombs, scornfeathers roost, etc) would have also been changed.
Anyhow. Since yesterday was Christmas I decided to splurge and purchase three masters for my warden. I always told myself that I would settle on a main first before investing too much money into a character, but I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll never really settle. I enjoy the warden in every aspect on so many levels except the fact that they’re a popular healer, so it makes my chances of actually getting some where with them marginally small. Maybe I’ll get lucky.
Shadowgeist rounded up a few guild mates and I asked Kasul if he wanted to come do the daily double, which was Anathema, a zone I had only been to as a lower level character and not on Arysh. Seems the daily double quests alternate their rewards, and yesterday was 1p and 2 shards as a reward. That brought my shard count up to 15, which was a lot for me. I had a few choices. I could either upgrade my gloves to the greater version, or purchase a few more lesser pieces, and get the three set bonus. In the end that’s exactly what I did. The pieces themselves were not exactly upgrades stat wise, they all have less power on them, but wearing them reduces the recast of my spells by 5%, and gives my heals a boost by 3% (which also counts for overloaded heals) and increases my crit chance a huge amount (crits trigger my epic weapon). In the end I am at 9,400 power (self buffed with no food and drink) 8,500 hp (I’ll be getting stamina adornments) 8-10,000 in every resist, and sitting at 1022 wisdom.
For a non-raid geared person, I don’t think that’s too bad. I’m just touching 50% heal crit chance, which I know is still a little low, but I’ll get there eventually. I bought the shoulders, gloves, and shoes for the set bonuses. Now it’s just a matter of saving up enough shards to upgrade all of those pieces.
The master spells I bought were not that impressive, they were level 80 spells that drop quite frequently, but I was pleased none the less. I bought my level 80 fairy heal special for 16p, and I got a level 80 group heal for 22p. I also picked up my level 52 rare spell for 1p which is nice. Every healer comes with a single target “anti death” as I call it, basically if your target receives fatal damage instead of dying it’ll boost their stats and apply a heal. Wardens get a group version of this spell at 52 that gets no upgrade. It was well past time I bought it. Those spells can never be over used, they’re great in rough times. Kasul died due to some frontals eating through him, but the run was smooth and really quick. The group consisted of a Shadowknight, Dirge, Illusionist, Swashbuckler, Assassin, and myself as warden. Hope everyone had a lot of fun, too!
Now I get to decide what I’m going to use my $100 EBGames card on…
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. 
