A Pixel Nomad

Tipa and Silhouette, watching the Far Trader sail off into the distance. Yesterday brought about our second Nostalgia craft night, where Tipa, Kasul, and myself headed off to a tradeskill instance to kick some serious craft machine butt. We did pretty well too. Of course, I was the slacker. I figured out why though. Some times I’m so busy spamming buttons and I look away half an instant that I miss a counter during the process. If you miss a SINGLE counter in an archtype that is not your own, you have a very good chance at failing that complete combine. Key to winning these (and not being far behind) is to just pay attention. Or at least pay enough attention that you can counter everything. It was a great evening, Tipa won herself a bit of crafting gear, and I managed to get a void shard recipe book. The way the book works is quite simple. The Void Shard merchants sell you two types of gear. One is lesser, the other is greater. The greater pieces cost roughly 24 void shards (for the breast piece) – if you get it commissioned by me, it costs 21 void shards. Not too shabby. 

I didn’t get any rares when we did the instance as a guild, but later that evening I decided to buckle down and get my alchemist some levels. I figured I would solo one of the group instances. I know it takes a LONG time (3h in fact) but what was the difference between me grinding writs for 3h or me grinding the instance. 

It turns out, that those little tradeskill instances are *amazing* for leveling up 50+ and here’s why. Number one, you use no fuel, no materials that you have to harvest. So while I’ve been going through my horrible T6 (sinking sands) crafting, I no longer have to farm materials for it. Due to the fact that my alchemist is on my ‘main’ account with five other level 80 crafters, she receives a 50% bonus at all times. In three hours I managed to get 6 levels, and went from level 53 to level 59. I also got three T8 rares, a reflective shard (used for those aa mirrors) and a craft token, as well as the piece of legendary gear (which she can’t use because she’s too low, but it’s level 75 and fletching, again). There is one fairly significant downside to using this method to level and that is simply because the crafting instance does not reward any guild status. Those levels I’ve been grinding would typically be done via writs, and so Nostalgia has felt the pinch of not doing them. With five new Heritage Quests in the expansion, as well as the Signature quest, we’re still gaining status but not quite as fast as normal. I’m thinking of picking up the adventure writs at least once a day and completing those, not only for the status gain, but because the faction rewards from the city factions can be quite nice (ie: fighter, priest, mage, scout). 

I didn’t just craft this weekend. I headed to my first TSO adventure instance, Befallen: Cavern of the Afflicted. I picked up quests along the way, and the whole instance was pretty much giant groups of mobs swarming us and me healing as fast as I could. The group was a shadowknight, wizard, necromancer, scout (forget what type, but they were dps), mystic, and myself on my warden. We died once when we had an add during a named fight, but it was a lot of fun. The gear was alright, nothing was an upgrade for anyone and I ended up transmuting the few bits I won. I did get a void shard out of it though, as well as a heritage quest located in the zone where you have to run around collecting pages (which reminds me, I ducked out early so everyone else could grab their pages at the end, I’ll have to go back and swipe them before the instance resets). I’m only up to three void shards now, and I expect that for me to actually get any gear will take a fairly long time. Especially because I’ll get a void shard here and there on multiple characters. 

Still great fun though!

I don’t have a name for the museum yet, but I’d like to think of one eventually. Picture above is the work in progress main room. It has a small Lucan D’Lere display (it will be more complete and changed around once I get that new Action Figure of him you can get with some TSO quest I’m not sure which) and includes various artifacts on display. I need a few more stools so I can place items, as well as scrolls for inside the cases. I’ve been having a lot of fun building this. I intend on doing it pretty much one room at a time. 

The museum for those who missed it in the previous post is much better in person and you can find it in North Freeport on the Najena server, in the mage tower (which seems fitting I think) under Ellithia’s name.

I realize not everyone is an EQ2 housing buff, but you’ll have to bare with me because it’s a project I’ve had a lot of fun building (and hence I tend to ramble on about it a lot). The bear display turned out surprisingly well. Silhouette pictured above reading the display notice. It probably says something like ‘Don’t Feed The Bears’.

My next goal is to flesh out that room and then work on the ‘paintings’ room, which will consist of a room (the upstairs one in the 5-room Freeport homes if you’re familiar with the layout) paneled in the redwood dividers, with some set out in the center of the room for artwork to be lined up on. The paintings are the LoN ones that I’ve collected over time, as well as the new ones from TSO. One of the new TSO items is in the very first screen shot, painting on the left hand side of Mayong. I can’t remember if it was a quest reward or if it was pilfered loot, but it’s a nice painting none the less.

Outside I’m going to make a garden framed by a walkway for players to walk along safely, downstairs (if I have space to build anything) I’ll turn it into a living area for the owner of the home. The main entrance I figure I’ll do some sort of seating / welcoming area, maybe with a stand for pamphlets of the ‘must sees’ in Freeport, and there’s one other little area I’d like to turn into a room for Heritage Quests to be displayed (since right clicking them turns them into house items). I’ve also got the token aquarium of course, in the outdoor area on the main floor. 

All in all? It’s coming along!

More posts on actual adventures this weekend (it was a great weekend) coming later today! I hope everyone e had an amazing time in Norrath.

This is a work in progress, it’s one of my rooms in the new museum I am building on the Najena server, in the LoN free 5-room house (this one happens to be in Freeport, in the mage tower) feel free to stop by and check out the work. I have to get some groceries done (IRL!) but I’ll be working on this throughout the day more then likely. It’s coming along nicely! The walls and the display case are made out of the new Mara recipe furniture.. about 50 pieces of it to build that against the Freeport cracked granite walls. Ouch!

The goblins who reside in that little area are quite happy in their habitat might I add!

More postings with pictures about this later.

Now that I’m a little more awake (mark that as very little, it’s 6am) I’ll talk about the group crafting instances in a bit more detail. For so long games have underestimated the number of people who play their games for the more ‘casual’ aspects. It feels odd for me to say this, because until RoK released I was a pretty steady raider. This is not an indication that I’ve given up completely on that scene, but I am having a pretty good amount of fun playing the game the way I do now. Last night was the weekly Friday EQ1 meeting (minus me, when I decided to stop being a guide and when I opened up the 2nd EQ2 account I decided to close down all other games) and I waited eagerly in the background for it to finish up so that we could head into some instances. I got my NaNoWriMo for the day completed and I’m now sitting at 40,218 words. 

Tipa and Kasul logged over to EQ2, where I told them I should be able to share the group quest I had. Little did I know that this was not actually the case. Each day the one group instance you can choose changes. The day before yesterday it was Commonlands, yesterday it was Steamfont. Thankfully the merchant in the Far Seas building also sells you gate orbs. I headed to Steamfont, unaware of the dangers we would be facing. 

I did not look through any guide to figure out what we had to do, and it was better this way. We zoned in, eager to help gnomes (ew) with whatever issues they may have had. Aside from being vertically challenged, one of their creations had gone awry and was roaming around the bottom portion of their building. This creature looked amazing, and it was a level 100 epicx4 that was AGRO to us as well. Don’t let anyone tell you that crafting instances are for babies, when was the last time YOU trio’d a level 100 epicx4?

The quest itself was made up of four parts, with 9 craft types involved, 3 parts per craft archtype. It worked out well that each of us came from one of the three archtypes, so we split up the work and off we went. The recipes were level 70, and while they were blue to me that meant that only one used sculpting (carpenter) and two used the skills that were far lower. This is where buying the gear from the Far Seas Merchants may be a handy thing, the crafting process is quite long (and dangerous!) if it’s not your archtype. 

Nostalgia persevered and in the end, completed everything in each stage. I’m not sure about Kasul and Tipa, but I failed three combines total while in there. I had 12 critical fails in a row. The woodworker machines hate me. 

We had a lot of fun as we crafted. When it came to actually doing the work we buckled down and there wasn’t much talk, but while the other two waited for me to catch up and in between stages we chattered and enjoyed ourselves. It felt so weird and I actually giggled to myself a little when we first zoned in and I saw a LOCK OUT timer of 1 day and 11 hours for a TRADESKILL instance. The very idea just made me laugh. The instances do have an 18 hour timer, so it will be a bit before we can do another one. We got one piece of gear from the chest at the end and I wish it was smart loot as you can tell by the picture it was a +fletching piece. I passed that off to Arysh. I figure if everyone gets their own base sets first, then they can concentrate on getting sets for the classes that they don’t have. Silhouette certainly could have used +fletching last night. 

Things brings me to the one and only issue I have with all of these innovative crafting gear pieces coming out. Where am I going to keep them all. I *could* keep them in my appearance gear slots, but what happens when I want to wear a different outfit, or when there is no appearance slot for it. My bags are becoming cluttered with crafter gear, and Vanguard jokes aside, this is quite a lot of gear. I have two charm items a cloak and an earring so far, and that’s without owning any of the new Far Seas Merchant craft gear. 

All in all it was a fantastic Friday night, even if we didn’t spend it in some ‘regular’ instance getting slaughtered over and over again. The loot was a little sparse, I know I got a chromatic essence for countering one of the craft pop ups correctly, but it also rewarded a fair amount of experience for those leveling up (ie: Tipa’s tailor was the only one who was not level 80). It looks like this may be a great alternative means of leveling if you’re bored of the regular craft grind. 

I still highly suggest getting together with at least three other crafters though, one from each archtype. It took us an hour (?) or so to complete the instance with the three of us. It takes approximately three hours when you do it alone, and while it’s fantastic that it can be done this way, wow would that ever be boring.

It’s after midnight and I’m falling asleep at my desk but before I got to bed I just had to post about this fantastic night. I’ll go over it in more detail tomorrow. Tonight, Nostalgia set foot into a group crafting instance. We truely are hardcore crafters – but we are so much more. I had an absolutely amazing time. I would suggest going into these crafting instances with AT LEAST three people, and if you can, one from each of the crafting archtypes. That means an outfitter, a scholar, and a whatever the final one is that I can’t remember. You’ll find things much easier this way.

I walked away with aa experience, a Far Seas token (I just need the faction now to purchase two new craft books) and a chromatic essence for countering one of the pop ups correctly. The chest at the end also dropped a nice piece of crafter gear – but it had + fletching on it, so it went to Arysh, my woodworker (who was not in the zone, too bad it’s not smart loot). 

Anyhow, before I get some sleep. It was great. I couldn’t have met up with a more wonderful bunch of people to play EQ2 with. Tipa and Kasul, thank you both!