This and That

I wasn’t really in a gaming mood tonight – yes, I know, did hell freeze over (would be nice to get out of this heat that’s for sure). I spent the afternoon in EQ1 for the most part. My beastlord reached level 48, and the druid finally hit level 51. Actually she was 2% from 51 and died, but a kind cleric rez’d me for no charge and I wandered off for one more kill to ding 51. Very pleased with that progress. Afterward I headed to MPG (Muramite proving Grounds.. though I probably spelled that wrong) and exp’d some with an old friend of mine.

Anyhow, as I was saying. Tonight I wasn’t exactly in the mood to game, so I settled down for a few hours of DAZ Studio’s, which I’m still learning. There are two important things I need to learn how to do. Well, three I suppose. One would be applying textures. Another would be applying backgrounds, and the third would be lighting which I can’t seem to figure out for my life. Me and computers just simply do not get along. The 300 paged manual that comes with DAZ could probably help if I had any idea where to start. I’ll have to look up some other tutorials for it no doubt.

The screen shot above can be seen in far better quality (and size) here. Just click on the image if it doesn’t bring you to the full view right away. I still have no outfits to render for my characters, but the face shots are coming along nicely. I tried to frame this one after Stargrace in EQ2, who is a wood elf. It didn’t turn out too badly. Thinking of using one of these images I create to make a signature. We’ll see how that goes. I’d really like a dark elf texture, and I do have one but it’s not for V4.2 which means it’s not really going to work for me. I suppose I could colour it by hand in photoshop, but we’ll just have to see. Some times, it’s just nice to take a break.

So That’s Where They All Are!

Ever wonder where everyone hangs out now in EQ1? Noticing that PoK is a little more empty then usual after your return? Well the above image would be the reason. It’s the picture of the guild lobby on the luclin server, busy as always. It’s great to see so many people active in the game. Since things have slowed down (slightly) for me, I’ve decided it was time to rejoin the Nostalgia crew in EQ1 on their Friday night adventures. Since I’ve been gone they’ve been growing by leaps and bounds, and doing some raiding to boot.

I still currently have both of my EQ1 accounts active, so I decided to take the 50 druid and 45 beastlord to Dulak harbor for a little grind sesson. Of course, I got a head of myself and before I’d even made it to a camp Qutey and Nala were little smeared bits of Nostalgians on the ground. Woops.

So I loged the druid out (slightly frustrated, since I spent a lot of time buffing them) and brought out the 70 cleric instead. Since the beastlord has some levels of catching up to do, I simply had the healer follow around and dot the mobs – it worked out far better. My very first kill dropped a defiant plate breastplate which I’ll ship over to my 48 shadowknight, and though I didn’t see another piece for the evening I still had a lot of fun. By the time I called it a night the beastlord had reached level 47, which means a new pet. Her skills started to rise a good bit as well, sorely neglected in my power leveling sessons of the past.

Before this Friday’s Nostalgia meeting I’d like to get Ishbel (that’s the cleric) a shield from a quest in Natimbi, I need two more pieces of turtle meat to drop though. That’s today’s project (in between some real life stuff). If anyone is looking to talk, remember you can add me to Xfire (check it out if you haven’t yet) and it lets you talk in game, no matter the game as well as take video and screen shots.

Other then that, I hope everyone has had a fantastic weekend, no matter the realm you’re gaming in!

Harbor

The harbor of Khal is an amazing sight. Especially when people’s boats are all parked in various places along the docks (as pictured above). Last night I dipped into Vanguard for a short while with Gozad and Growlius. Not on mains this time though – for once we all played lowbies. I was on my 18 psionicist, Growlius his 22 disciple, and Gozad on his 22 necromancer.

We all got the diplomacy necklace we needed to work towards our mount, and headed to Qalia to work on hunter’s league quests. We did not have a tank, but things went fairly smooth anyhow.

Shoulders were first, and it was very little effort despite the more interesting pulls we had from time to time.

Psionicists work slightly different then enchanters in EQ1/EQ2 in that they can only mez one mob at a time (or at least, that’s all I can do right now at level 19) but we can also charm one mob, and AOE stun for 8 seconds. When we mez (I’ve mentioned this before) we actually phase the mob right out of exhistence – and in order for anyone to actually attack the mob again, we have another spell that phases them back in. That’s right, no more breaking mez – at all.

One of my favorite tactics is making sure I cast my duplicate spell (it taunts the mob and replicates it, but basically does 0 dmg) before I unphase it. That way when I do unphase, the mob is already attacking the duplicate of itself, and I have a chance to snare it and nuke it a few times before that breaks / wears off.

Psionicists also have a world wide channel attached to one of their spells, it’s called ‘mind’ and it’s great. When you have the buff on you’re auto joined to it. A handy tool to ask others questions you may have about your class.

After we’d completed the shoulder quest I decided to take a break for a bit – being exceptionally worn out after a fairly exciting day. Thanks to Tipa over at Westkarana, I’m now writing for Beckett Massive Online Gamer – about EverQuestII. A writing opportunity came up and she happened to mention my name. Wow how amazing is that? I have my first interview next week, and yes I’m very nervous. These newsstand magazines are actually printed and sold in multiple places, you may have heard of them before for their sports magazines. My first two articles (as long as everything goes well) should come out for the September issue.

I think I’m still stunned over that one.

Bloodline Chronicles

When SOE implemented the mini expansion packs that would come out mid way through the year (for a fee of $5) a lot of people were upset. Why are we paying for extra content was the cry from the general public. With the latest expansion, each of these adventure packs were included (for those who did not purchase them) and one of the best ones there aside from Fallen Dynasty (which is my number one favorite) is the Bloodline Chronicles which pits you against vampires and badies in the low 30’s to high 40’s range through a series of 11 quests.

The zones may seem drab after all this time, but the rewards are fun. Arysh (warden) is far too high for these quests, and I mowed through them fairly fast. Some coin, aa rewards (now that grey quests reward experience) and some cool appearance gear – as well as the charm that turns you into a vampire.

Why bother doing these quests at all? Well there’s also the vampire smite spell you get by the end – and who does not want to be able to smite those foes? Ever since Castle Mistmoore and the incidents there..

Last night I also came to the conclusion that, YES, you CAN have TOO many alts.

I know. Lets pause here to check for a pulse, I did indeed just say that. Me, with all the alts that I have.

So I’ve decided it’s time to cut down and focus. Now, why on earth would I ever say too many alts is bad? Let me mention here that crafting alts don’t fall under this category. I simply mean too many adventure alts is bad. Think of it this way, unless you can devote a LOT of time to each alt, how on earth will you manage to complete everything there is to complete in the game.

I have plenty of characters, and I’ve done a lot of content, but no one character has done all or even a majority of it. I’ve got one with claymore, another with prismatic 1.0 another with godking, two with their epics.

It’s all spread all over.

The same thing can be said about masters and upgrades. How can you afford to gear up and equip every one of those characters. I know people who have one definitive “main” who own every single M1 they can possibly own. Why? Because they have no alts to buy for.

Now, crafting alts are money makers, adornment providers and other random goodness. Those are different.

There’s a pretty good chance this whole experiment will backfire on me. I’ll get frustrated and end up creating ten alts to compensate for it. We’ll just have to see (I can hear everyone laughing in the background already). I won’t know unless I try!

Figuring out the Vanguard Racial Mounts

Since I wasn’t in game when these mounts were implimented, I’ve been scatter brained trying to figure this stuff out. Thankfully, there’s some wonderful resources on the web. Lets start first with this site here, they explain to you the steps you have to take in order to start working on getting a racial mount.

“Visit the related city-faction registrar and apply to work for their city. Doing this you’ll be handed out a Kamelott Inc.+diplo-necklace, which you have to equip in order to loot socalled faction-coins. You do not need the ring to do this.

This should work at regular combat as long you

1) gain xp for the kills AND

2) you equip the necklace.

The coins will not be shown in the loot-window, but directly appear in your inventory. For the start you receive as well platin-coin for the faction you chosed. So far known copper-, silver- and gold-coins stack to a kinda additional currency meant  to buy faction with.  The platin-coins come as lucky loot out of boss-mobs only and should be saved in  order to later buy the mount.

For the racial mount you’ll need both:
+ a certain amount of faction points (rumors say 13k)
+ 50 platin-coins to buy the lvl 30 version of your racial mount
and/or
+ 100 platin-coins to buy the lvl 50 version of your racial mount

if you bought the lvl-30-mount you’ll pay only 100 platin for the lvl-50 ones”

Ok. That seems easy enough. So you’ll want to start getting faction towards a mount as soon as possible, and you’ll want to try to earn these platinum coins in order to purchase the mount. Vanguard has done a nice thing by bringing back KoS to cities through working on these faction mounts. You can also switch city factions, and go after whichever mount you’d like.

So what are those mounts? Well, further searching lead me to this site here. They have a very comprehensive site on where you can find the mounts, what the mounts look like, and oh yes did I mention WHERE you can find the mounts? This was the one thing I couldn’t figure out as I ran around Tanvu. Turns out I wasn’t looking in the right place.

So, all those ancient coins you’re getting from MEST quest rewards? You take them to a city registar, and they will exchange them for platinum coins. Those coins are used towards purchasing your mount. Sounds simple enough. Oh, except for the exceptionally long grind of purchasing those mounts.

As of now, I’ve managed to get Faydai started on her Tanvu faction. I believe she’s a half elf but I could be wrong it’s been so long, and she’ll be (eventually) riding around on a battle turtle. Or something. My thanks to both wonderful sites in explaining all of this! It’s some very handy information.