Civilization Revolution

Now for something completely different, from me at least. Aside from the mmo’s I play, I’m not really a video game person – unless you count the sims. I used to play Mario games with my mom when I lived at home, and when my dad had his radio station job, but that was long ago. I’m not fond of racing games, or shooting games, or even puzzle games. I dislike complicated games that make me remember 100 processes in order to get something to work.

I’d never played civilization before, any versions of it, but I’d heard good things from a few people, and so when it came out for ps3 last week I decided sure, why not. It cost a total of $5 since there was money on the EBGames card still. Can’t go wrong.

So far, I have to sheepishly admit – I’m loving it. There’s just something completely awesome about creating cities and destroying other people’s towns and building.. well, everything. I suppose it’s my love of all things sims that helps me enjoy this game. I don’t have any friends on my ps3 network, so if you’d like to add me, let me know!

Aside from that – today I got my hair cut. Not such a big deal, right? Well, it was almost to my waist, and now it’s above my shoulders (slightly). Big deal to me! Had to be done though, it was just too warm. It’ll grow back by the winter.

I also played around a lot tonight with DAZ which was a whole lot of fun. I’ve figured out just about everything I’d need it to do so far – except applying textures. I’ll work on that next. I also haven’t quite figured out lighting yet, but I hope to with time. It’s been a learning experience that’s for sure. As long as I keep up with it I figure I’ll buy a kit or two a month from DAZ studio, maybe get some new outfits to render. Eventually I’ll be able to tweek the images in Photoshop. The only downside is the bridge from DAZ to photoshop is a whooping $199 american. That’s right, if I want to be able to save / open my DAZ files in CS2 I need to shell out $200. Ouch. Still working on a way to fix that one.

On the EQ2 front, Kasul is back! Pleasure to have him around again too, he’s been missed. Leaving this a relatively short post tonight, and I’ll write about the EQ2 adventures tomorrow.

Electric Guitar Ramblings

It’s finally done.

After much harvesting, and killing, and generally running around in some sort of chaotic dance, yesterday I finished my second epic, the troubador one. Doesn’t it look shiny? The last parts were actually the easiest for me. After the xegonite fiasco (did you know this quest doesn’t even take those from you? So you’re left with the 10 xegonite after.. why couldn’t they just have wanted the 33 I had in my bank!) I had to go feed the flame in Jarsath Wastes. Did that and then it was off to Sebilis. Thank you to Albrta and Eyenstein who trucked down there with me and Shadowgeist (again, we’d already all been there for my coercer epic, as well as Albrta’s templar epic.. but hey what else do we have to do) and killed some named and place holders. Once we’d gotten our fill there we headed to CoA. The group was one of the oddest I’d been in to date, it was a troubador, dirge, templar, inquisitor, shadowknight, and warlock.

We plowed right through though with no issues at all.

Once that was done it was off to Maidens for my final bit. We had one death on the first named (the tail-lashing one who ports) but everything died smoothly the second time around. The group changed after that CoA run, and we went with a coercer, assassin, templar, mystic, troubador, and shadowknight. Drusella fell with no issues, and – if I read the quest right, I was supposed to click on the four instruments scattered around Drusella’s room in the corners – and then fight a level 82^^^ and THEN get my fabled.

At least, that’s what I read.

Which was wrong. I had the group stand around after the kill expecting to have one more kill. The coercer didn’t pay attention and gated out after (oh well) and we stood around some more while I frantically searched for musical instruments, apologizing to the group for the wait.

After a few minutes, I noticed the glowing instrument close to the door, I clicked it expecting to see three others, and before I could even turn around I was holding my epic.

WOOT!

The epic quest for troubadors is one of the best if only because you get a HOUSE ITEM upon completion. That’s right, that sparkling bit just behind Goudia in the screen shot is her newest pretty, and it plays music notes *squeels*. It also has 400 rent reduction. I really wish each of the epics came with a house item. The coercer could come with a statue replication of the chick who spends the entire quest stuck inside your body. That would be awesome.

Aside from completing my epic, I didn’t have a chance to spend any more time in game yesterday, or in any game for that matter. I have been playing around with Daz Studio a little bit, which is a 3D rendering program, and I’m having fun with it. You can see my first few attempts over here. Hopefully as time goes on I’ll get better at it. I took a little break just before 10 to go relax, and before I knew it I was waking up and it was midnight. Crawled into bed and called it a day.

Hope everyone else had a fantastic weekend too!

Plains of Anguish

It was time to get out of the sand, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Growlius and Faydai (dread knight and blood mage) have been in Qalia for the past few levels working on quests. After all that bright blinding sand (and it’s not any fun having that grind against plate armor, or so Growlius complained) it was time to head some place darker. Some place spooky. There’s only one place that came right to mind when we thought of that.

It was time to head to Plains of Anguish.

PoA is located on the North Western section of Thestra. It’s dark, rains practically all of the time, and there are always scarey things poking through the woods. After grabbing a rift, we wandered around.

The starting area of this is such a nice change from Qalia. We picked up 14 quests, and I was pleased to see that this quest hub had a banker, exchange (broker), and general goods all relatively close to one another.

Once we’d taken care of the basics, we set off to find undead to smush. Not difficult, they’re all over. Even the quest givers were some form of undead. I admit now, that I know absolutely zero lore about this chunk. I don’t have any idea why I’m smushing undead, because yesterday was about levels and not about actually reading the quests – which was fine by me.

Blood mage and dread knight are a fantastic combination. We were taking down three dots and four dot adds our level (and higher) with relative ease. It helps (a great deal) that blood mages basically have an endless supply of power to heal with – so long as we’re not being hit.

We managed to clear out a lot of quests – even though we’re not the fastest of killers, it was a lot of fun. Just being out of that sand meant so much. It was a refreshing change of pace. There were plenty of people around in other groups and duo’s also working on their PoA quests, which was nice to see. The regionsay channel was alive and well as always, and the craft channel too. I haven’t started looking for a new guild yet – but I will eventually, as it’s getting lonely not being in one. For some reason my UI is completely missing the guild tab, and I’ll have to look into that (and perhaps install the default socials window to get it to work). Dang I hate all that technical stuff.

On a side note, I downloaded Daz Studio, and Victoria4.2 (base) and I’ve been playing around some with that. I know absolutely NOTHING about the program though and it’s going PAINFULLY slow while I try to teach myself. I am not a computer person, at all. So if there’s any Daz Studio guru’s reading this, please drop me a line!

Anyhow – by the time all was said and done, Growlius and I reached level 41, and 30% or so into it. Fantastic! I also managed to complete one of the MEST collections, though I haven’t turned it in because it’s so far out of the way. I’ll start on that tomorrow or later today maybe.

I hope everyone else’ weekends are going just wonderful!

It’s Just Big

Faydai, my 40 blood mage, standing in a recent quest hub in Qalia (note the blinding sand). This cyclops looks about ready to pound her on the head. Oh, and does anyone know how to fix / change the screen shot qualities? They all turn out exceptionally poor it seems for me, and that’s not how it looks in game at all. I tried to search through my options but was at a loss.

Disciple 101

Dipped into Vanguard yesterday for a brief bit before real life tugged me away (which it’s been doing a whole lot lately) and got in an hour or two on my monk. Vanguard is one of those wonderful games where you can pop in for an hour or two (as long as you’ve logged out around your quest area) and get something done. Even without logging in at a quest area, the riftways make it quite easy to get around. Everything is relatively close by.

So it was that I glanced at my quest journal – and again was so impressed with the changes that they’ve made to the interface over the year. Being able to sort the quests by chunk and have it plainly say whether it’s solo or not, and have it colour coded, is just so very helpful.

Looking through it, I noticed I had quite a few quests in the CIS area – aside from the cloak which I’d already done a while ago. Before too long I was headed to a crevice in the mountains to battle spiders who were under the ruling of Nerachnia – a powerful spider queen. The spiders were all two dots, and fell easily enough. It also helped that I cam armed with a giant supply of raid and fly swatters and rolled up newspaper.

I ran into quite a few people while I was wandering about. Once those quests were cleared I continued on, and came across adventurers every which way. Those who think Telon is dead, are sorely mistaken. There are even guide events running these days.

Disciple is one of the more unique healers I’ve seen – but remember, I’m not exactly the most knowledgeable of mmo players, I’ve played EQ1/EQ2/VG/WoW and that’s the extent of my experience (adding WAR to the list later of course). Basically you’re a combination of monk and healer. Your attacks done in a specific order (or as I like to call it.. 6-7-8-9 on my keyboard) set off heals to your defensive target. One of your kicks has a HoT attached to it, you get feign death but it doesn’t always fool the mobs (much like EQ2’s FD can fail) and you’re a medium armor wearing class. The stats you want to go for are not wis and vit so much as other healers, but dex,str, and vit. The best part is you can practically scream out as you do cool ninja moves and fly through the air smashing your opponent to bits. It’s great. The moves and graphics of attacks for the disciple are top notch.

Where blood mages can’t heal if they can’t hit the mob with spell attacks, disciple are a lot alike in that they can’t heal without meleeing. If you like to be up close where the action is – and heal, this class is perfect for you. Disciples also use endurance, and mana. There are a few direct heals that use mana, and most of the melee attacks and specials use endurance. So far my disciple is lacking a little on the buff side of things, I only have two – and my stance, where as my blood mage has a whole slew of buffs plus symbiotes. Maybe the disciple gets them later, I’m only half way through 23 right now.

One thing that really strikes me as interesting about Vanguard and my play style specifically – is that I have yet to find a class that I find ‘boring’ or that I ‘don’t like’ and this includes the tank classes. I have 6 characters in Vanguard and I’m content to keep the count at that – but it would be very easy to make another alt and have a blast with it. That’s almost unheard of for me. In both EQ2 and WoW I refused to play tanks, I’m just not a tank person. In EQ1 I reluctantly play my tank (a shadowknight) and I’m not really interested in wizards. There’s one main reason I think why I enjoy Vanguards selections of characters so much more, and it’s simply because as they fight, they will (based on an action accomplished like a critical strike, or a parry) have a chain go off – hit the response to that chain, and in some cases (ie: disciple) another chain will go off, doing massive amounts of damage (or a heal, etc) and there are also counters, and spell checks, and all the rest. It makes the actual fighting a lot more interesting to me.

Anyhow. Hopefully Telon will be seeing more of me today. We’ll see how it goes!