Baby it’s Cold Outside

I didn’t play very much yesterday, but when I did play (aside from a brief session in Ruins of Varsoon helping Gnewton level up his monk) I headed over to Frostfell. The gear sold by Gerbi Frostfoot was a huge upgrade for a number of my characters (ones lower level where I haven’t particularly paid attention to their gear). It scales up every tier, so there’s gear at 22,32,42, etc. My paladin was level 50 and bought all of the level 52 gear. Legendary and – wait.. why does she have snow flakes stuck THERE?

Anyhow. The paladin managed to get from 50-52 while doing the quests to get tokens for that armor. I bought her a full set (which dropped her saves vs. heat down to 0 but oh well) as well as a sword. Ideally I’d like to get the shield and the bow too, but I’m not sure I can handle doing that quest any more. I ran it a LOT yesterday. It’s nice to see my paladin in real gear though.

After the paladin had her turn, I took the swashbuckler for a few runs and bought her the chain bp, legs, and shoulders. Ideally I’d go after the full set the dagger and bow as well, but again that’s a LOT of frostfell runs. Swashbuckler went from 52-53 after running the instance twice. I love the experience given in these instances, though I have a nagging feeling that these may be ‘adjusted’ in the future. The quests are rewarding 7% aa each time you run the zone which takes roughly 10 minutes or so. 7% every 10 minutes is pretty hard to beat. 

Anyhow…

Then it was time for the berserker who hit level 35. This is the one who went from 5-30 on Saturday with the level 80 mentor group. She’s got no gear at all so I’ll probably focus my efforts on getting her some, though I’m torn between getting her the level 32 gear or just leveling her to 40 and wear the new tier of gear. We’ll see!

The tailor and alchemist both hit 65, five more levels and I’ll go back to grinding writs for the final push to 80. That’ll be 7/9 of my crafters at level 80. The armorer is still stuck at level 41, one of these days I’ll have to just get her to 50 so I can do the crafting instances. I don’t plan on leveling up a weaponsmith, but I may level up multiple other crafters on my 2nd account, so that I have crafters on each. I haven’t really decided quite yet. 

I’m creeping up on my 1,000th post (10 posts from now I believe) and I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve also posted every single day for the last three months, which was one of my ‘goals’. Everyone is getting ready for the holidays and I’m excited to see it.

Crafting, Instances, and Betrayal?

Yesterday compromised of a little bit of everything. It was great. I can’t think of one particular thing that stood out aside from the three hour nap while I was loaded up on extra strength tylanol but that had absolutely nothing to do with gaming. I think.

The 70-79 channel was particularly rude for no obvious reason I could figure out. You would think that people would be feeling more festive towards one another, but it turns out that this is not exactly true. I did two tradeskill instances, bringing my tailor to level 64, and the alchemist to levle 65. Five more levels or so to go and then I’ll go back to grinding writs for my experience so that Nostalgia can get some levels instead of leveling them through the wonderful instances. Oracia got herself a rolling pin that dropped from the instance. In all the time I’ve done them I’ve never seen that item before. It has a 3% increase to tradeskill experience, I wonder if it stacks along with the other bonus’ in game. I’ve been saving up a lot of transmuted parts, so I’ll probably put a mass of those for sale before too long. I have far too many that I’ll never use. 

I spent 100p yesterday on silicate loams. I know, why? Well. I’ve been thinking about betraying the dirge back to a troubador. I know I rarely play her, so why drop 100p? I doubt my reasoning will make sense to anyone other then myself. I changed her to a dirge thinking to myself ‘well, if I’m not going to raid with my bard, why not play something that has more group utility’. Hate transfer, rez, heals, etc. Turns out there are a billion dirges on the server right now and I don’t play her as a dirge, either. So why not go back to troub if I’m not playing and then maybe I at least have a chance at wiggling in on some raids. I have both of my epics for troub and dirge, and if I were ever to raid with her I could complete both mythicals at the same time, heh. Sort of funny (and sad). 

Aside from the crafting and spending much money, I did an instance or two. The VERY nice charm item above came from – you guessed it, The Crucible. An instance I’ve done so many times now I could sleep walk my way through it. The quest related to the zone yesterday also required no killing, just some clicking, so I ran my alts through and got them all their void shards. Later on in the evening Hellsong needed an update for chapter five (the final zone it sends you to) and off we went. In The Obelisk of Ahkzul (which is where we were) there is a named who drops two chests. Second last named. The first chest holds a legendary of some type, and the second one holds between 10-20 plat. 

We got 12 plat from the chest and some change, which was fantastic. The zone is quick and easy and Hellsong got his update just fine. 

It was starting to get late but I wasn’t tired yet, so I stayed up and did some of the Frostfell quests with Goudia. Even if I don’t decide to betray her, I have a paladin and a berzerker and a swashbuckler who could all make use of the loams eventually. I ran the Icy Keep instance a few times amassing tokens to purchase the charm item that everyone is talking about. Still lamenting over the fact that there’s no healer version. 

All in all, a really nice weekend! Hope everyone else had a great one too.

Plains of Anguish

Managed to team up on Saturday with Growlius and Agaton from Safe Haven and work on some of my Plains of Anguish quests (which I had a lot of). We finally cleared out enough to be working on the Brotherhood quests, which we all had multiples of. One thing that I didn’t know is that the named in the area have a chance to drop an unmarked piece of gear which is used in a quest to give you a skeleton illusion clicky. I’m all about clickies, I love them, have ever since EQ1 and all of those rogue masks that I camped for hours (and days) on end. 

The group was Growlius as his Dreadknight, and Agaton is a Psionicist. Apparently mez doesn’t work on undead, which I wasn’t aware of. I played healer, blood mage. Growlius got level 42, which of course meant new spells for him, and I managed to hit level 44! Brings me one level closer to being able to do my swamp armor quests at 45, and I got to purchase some new spells. I actually only had four quests to pick up, a little disappointing but it looks like 46 will be nice. I am really excited to be getting closer to 50, even if the experience has slowed down drastically. I also want to work on my crafting this week and make the push to 50 in that. It’ll be nice to be hitting 50/50 at pretty close to the same time. I’m not sure yet if I plan on getting diplomacy up to 50 but I probably will. It would be really nice to have a 50/50/50 character in Vanguard. Why? Because (for me personally at least) it’s a huge accomplishment and takes a lot of work. Guild was talking about how level 50’s are bored and typically playing nothing but alts, but since I’ve never had a level 50 character before, I have a feeling I’ll still play mine for quite some time. We’ll have to see. 

There was one death yesterday of the psionicist because lets face it they’re cloth wearers and I just couldn’t heal fast enough when they had so much agro, but aside from that I had a blast and I hope everyone else did too. 

I’m not sure where to head to after PoA, but I should work on that skeleton illusion mask some time I suppose.

The Shadow Odyssey, Chapter 1-5

Yesterday I made sure I logged in each of my characters to get their Frostfell present (I’m still hunting that bag of coal, total to count? Zero!) and once that was done it was time to start the TSO Signature Quest. 

Chapter one was simple enough. I had to go visit Lucan D’Lere or Antonia Bayle and have a conversation with one of the two rulers. This quest starts on the docks in either Qeynos harbor, or East Freeport by the way, for those who have not started it yet. It’s WELL worth starting as soon as you can because of where it sends you. 

Anyhow, I wandered around Antonia’s chambers and marvled at her decorating job. Looked familiar to my own. The good thing about each of these signature chapters is that they reward a good amount of guild status. 

She sent me to Sinking Sands to speak with Professor Fondfate on the docks where the airship picks you up, and he of course sent me to the Moors where I met up with him again (and got a book about the Ethernaughts!). Then it was off to find some clockwork in the Moors. Also pretty simple and all of these steps can be solo’d. 

Once that’s over it’s time for chapter two. You have to kill Brokenskull pirates for a drop, and fix the clockwork with it. Then it’s time for the Obelisk of Ahkzul, and killing the final named inside, Executor Vark. This is a really simple instance, and I LOVE the look of it. It was one of the prettiest I’ve ever been in and had a complete new look that I just fell in love with.

Someone in the group was on chapter 5 and also needed that zone, and what we didn’t realize was that once they killed the final mob we’d all get struck by an uncureable elemental dot that would cause us to explode (as the whole instance was collapsing upon us) if we didn’t exit in time. You can’t evac, you have to run. We had fun yelling to one another in group voice chat to leave the instance as fast as we could, making sure no one was left behind. When you have that sort of pressure on you, it’s easy to forget where the way out is. Especially when it’s an invisible line in the bottom of a doorway. Arg!

No one died though, and we started chapter three which is just a lot of running around and killing some guards who were protecting the Professor. 

Chapter four is all about history repeating itself, and it sends you to the Obelisk of Lost Souls (that’s right, the level 40-ish dungeon) to locate some tapestries. While you’re there searching, you notice two are missing. It’s off to East Freeport, and North Freeport to locate these two tapestry, steal them, and then put them back on the walls. 

Chapter five is where I’m at currently, and it wants me to go to multiple (7) instances, and kill named in each one. The instances are: The ruins of Guk: The lower Corridors, Veksar: The Sunken Theater, Emperor Atrebe’s Laboratory: The fabled City of Kor-Sha, Miragul’s Phylactery: The Crucible, Najena’s Hollow Tower, Befallen: Necrotic Asylum, and Ravenscale Repository. 

But wait! You’re not done! After that The Great Morsley sends you back to The Obelisk of Ahkzul, and that’s where you do the whole anchoring bit where you have to run and flee. 

There are eight chapters all together, and the rewards are simply amazing (and fabled). So if you haven’t started it yet, and you do instances frequently you may want to get to at least Chapter five where it’s sending you all over the place. I’m not sure if finishing this quest is something that I can realisitically ever do without being in a raid guild, but I’m going to be trying that’s for sure!

That Warm Fuzzy Feeling

The over all feeling I got yesterday was all warm and fuzzy. It was a good day, both in game and out. I didn’t do anything particular to note, but it was still a great day none the less. I headed out and managed to start (and finish) my Christmas shopping which of course is a big weight off of my shoulders. With the buses still on strike the roads were busy, but it’s just going to get worse before it gets better, so I’m glad I’m done. 

Before I spent most of the day shopping, I headed back to the ‘secret’ keep in the Frostfell Wonderland, with Kasul and Shadowgeist. While there we ran through the zone three times (four?) in order for everyone to complete their quests. Kasul’s bugged the first time in, it seems that if you click the rock before you speak to the goblin the quest will not update after that, no matter if you start in a new zone and do it properly or not. So he had to delete his quest and try it from the start. I did get a LOT of tokens though, and some fantastic house items.

One small point of interest. The vendors in the Frostfell instance sell one charm item that is better then any of the charm items you can get (without raiding) in game. It has +3 spell crit on it (for the caster one) along with a bunch of stats, and 100 power (or is it health? either way). I bought it for Stargrace and I’ll have to run my other characters through I think and pick up the charm for them as well because it’s so amazing. There is a melee version too, so if you haven’t checked out those vendors, be sure to.

Made some chocolate chip pancakes and then it was off for a while, when I got back there was a group of level 80’s from Siege who wanted to mentor down for some aa. Lucky for me I have had a lot of lower level characters. I started with logging in a level 28 warlock of mine, planning to hit Stormhold. However we decided to start even lower then that. 

The group consisted of me as my level 5 berserker (Sharatan), a shadowknight, dirge, illusionist, ranger, and I want to say assassin. We headed to wailing caverns where the mobs at the entrance were level 12 (and very red) and with a group of level 80’s mentoring, mythical geared.. well. Lets just say that two hours later I was level 30. 

We wiped out Wailing Caverns, Fallen Gate (along with the instance in fallen gate), the named in Commonlands, and then did the sewer instance in Fallen Gate (along with the quests), and headed to Antonica to do the sewer instance there as well. Lucky us, the epicx2 dragon was up in Antonica as well, and dropped a fabled dagger. I’ve never killed that one before. I can only imagine how much faster I’d have leveled if the berzerker was on my ‘main’ account that gets the experience bonus for having max level characters. As it is she is on my second account with no bonus. 

I had a lot of fun, even though now I’m level 30 in poor gear with even poorer skills and I couldn’t taunt if my life depended on it. I’ll have to spend some time working those skills up. I figure I’ll hit 32 and then be able to outfit myself in some crafter made gear. If I ever play her again at least. So many alts!

I made the rounds with all of my characters visiting the gift giver in Frostfell. Stargrace is 30% into level 79, and I’m wondering if 80 will be a goal this weekend. I have to address and send out a bunch of Christmas cards (I know, I’m a slacker) as well as some gifts, and put up and decorate the tree. I’ll be at my parents place for Christmas, and I’m sure Princess (my cat of course) will enjoy chewing all of the candy canes off while I’m away. 

See you in Norrath!