Back and Forth

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I spent most of it flip flopping between EQ1 and EQ2, which I suppose is quite usual for me. I started out in EQ2. Invited a few new members to Nostalgia, and the guild dinged level 5 opening up our first bit of city merchant goodies. It was easy enough to get, since Stargrace (the 80 provisioner) gets 1.5k status for every writ she does, and the provisioner rush orders fly by. Plus since we’re such a low level, it only took four writs to get us a level and a half. At least now people can see our guild tag when they look at us. I also managed to ding 79 on the coercer, and finished the three factions she needs in order to quest for her Jarsath Wastes hammer. I remember doing this hammer on my rogue in EQ1. I had to work faction, a lot of faction. You turn in whips from local sarnak to the skeletons, and then once you’re done working up your faction it’s a simple little quest to complete it. I remember being so proud when I’d finally finished. One of the raid ‘requirements’ was to have a viable means of getting home again once you were done for the evening. Since the aa that sends you home was not out yet, that meant gate potions, or whatever else you could find that could port you. When Kuron, Tipa, and myself headed to Chardok to check on the royalties the hammer came in handy for me to get out without having to walk through the entire zone (again, and possibly dying to traps).

Next goal is of course to get the coercer to 80. Finish her Thuuga item, and start her epic. I also did the evil aligned quests that came out with GU45. Running around Timerous Deep spreading plague and blight made me feel right at home. A new house item (a book) and a fancy back scratcher (that coats you with flies when you wear it) were my rewards. Of course just as soon as I get settled in EQ2, I feel an incredible urge to wander back over to EQ1.

Lackey was on with his magician and we quickly teamed up, me playing my cleric. He was already in Upper Guk, and I headed that way. In typical Stargrace fashion I forgot how to get there. The PoK map may say Guktan, but the stone says Grobb. Either way, that’s where I was headed. We made our way down to the spawn area of ‘an ancient croc’.

Illia’s Everquest Beastiary says this about the mob: ”

The Ancient Croc is probably second only to the Shin Lord in terms of popularity. The Ancient Crocodile can be found in the very back of Guk, near the two watery enterances to Lower Guk.

He hits for 72 Max, but has relatively low HP for something which hits that hard.”

I had to laugh. The item he drops that was most sought after way back when are his gatorscale sleeves. They have +4 int, 15hp, and enchantment I. which means they reduce the cast time of long beneficial spells. The next comment below the explanation of the mob was even more endearing to me:

“Could a 34 pally farm this place and get some ok loot?”

Of course, it was posted back in 2003. Before Crescent Reach made its way into game and gave lowbies a new area with new loot. Above is what gear looks like ‘now’ in the newer zones. They actually have stats. A lot of stats. It dropped off of some random mob in Blightfire Moors.

Ah how things have changed. It’s nice to say ‘I won’t use any of that stuff, I don’t NEED any of that stuff’ but lets be honest here. It’s pretty. It’s shiny. We wants it. It’s natural to want to gear your character up to the best of your ability. We’re not talking twinking it out by means of bazaar, but quested items, loots and drops you can obtain yourself. We want what we can work for, and feel proud about.

We camped that croc spot last night for an hour and a half – spawned the ancient once. The sleeves dropped, and Lackey was all excited about it, until he saw his sleeves he was currently wearing (which is DE cultural armor) vs. the ones the croc dropped. His have 20 health/mana/end and +3-5 to all stats, plus a few saves. Hard to compare some of the old world drops with the new world items.

Part of me almost wishes devs took the time to revamp every single old world drop so that it could compete with the new world zones – so that they’re not constantly barren where no one has any interest in hanging out (Nostalgia the Guild being the exception to that). On the other hand, it’s a huge exciting thing to be able to go back and see these old items that used to be “so uber” back in the day. Brings back a whole lot of memories, that’s for sure.

Tonight is our weekly meeting of Nostalgia, and I’m looking forward to it. Fingers are crossed that I’ll get the chance to group with my favorite warrior and my favorite ranger (not to mention my favorite shaman, druid, wizard, heck wait everyone is my favorite), but if Tipa’s on tank duty it probably won’t work out that way. I’m also secretly hoping I may get to play my cleric (she’s fast approaching levels where I won’t be able to solo / duo quite so easily for my experience, and I’ve managed to keep her up with Nostalgia thus far for levels ‘just in case’) but the necromancer is always a lot of fun too. We’ll see how it goes, no doubt I’ll write about that tomorrow morning. We’re doing our Butcherblock LDoN’s in an effort to slow down the leveling and earn some more points. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

So it Begins

Ok, number one – apparently my site is acting as a read-me only type thing to five people. I have no idea why, no idea how to figure it out either. At first it was just one person with the issue (Rao) but now it’s Rao, Malfi, Lader, and I forget who else. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions on why these very specific people would be unable to leave comments, or click on any links on my site, it’d be greatly appreciated. I’m not good with figuring out that sort of stuff.

Edit: I’ve updated wordpress to the latest version, and updated the wordpress theme I was using as well – if there’s any change for those of you not able to comment in the past, please let me know!

In other news. Nostalgia has made it’s way over to the Najena server in EQ2. That’s right, the guild has been formed and last night we recruited our first 14 players. I was impressed, I didn’t think we’d have so many so soon. I know there are still a few more people to add to the guild as well, like Mayadhros, Said, and Said’s wife, as well as Kanad who should be joining us this weekend. It was a nice relaxing night of everyone getting to know one another, and doing the beginner quests for whatever starter city they came from (or moving onto other starter cities for the more experienced). I plan to uphold the ‘no specific day a week to play’ method with the EQ2 guild, and just have people play when ever they feel like it (and when they have the time) and for day one at least that worked out fairly well. Tipa came over with her new Arasai assassin, and I think, or at least hope, that people will have fun.

The guild also managed to ding level 2. It’ll be a slow steady climb to get any where but I’m confident that in time we can do it. Especially once we start doing heritage quests.

If anyone reading this is interested in joining up with the Nostalgia guild on the Najena server (or with Nostalgia The Guild on the Luclin server in EQ1) we certainly have room for more. Feel free to check out the forums here and say hello. We’re still looking for an enchanter, and a rogue, and I think a second tank on the EQ1 server. On the EQ2 server we’re not in dire need of anything in specific. Our guild roster can be found by searching on EQ2players for Nostalgia (switch the search to guild and not players). I’ll link it once EQ2 is done their maintenance and I can get the site working again.

I played my swashbuckler last night, who managed to get to level 14 with Dunnos (my faithful shaman) and Scudbucket (necromancer, go figure) both also managed to get a few levels and eat up those aa points in Timerous Deep. The quests were fun, even if we sped through the first bit and left Dunnos wondering what was going on as he’d never done the quests before. I still had fun. It was even more fun to watch everyone else in guild (we had 11 people on last night) eat up levels. It was nice to see everyone enjoying themselves. Or at least, I hope they did. It actually felt refreshing, is how it felt.

Today I’m hoping to get my coercer to 79, she’s 20% away and it shouldn’t take long (ideally). I had to take a break from it yesterday and work my mining up 100 points, seeing as that was my next Danak faction quest. I did manage to find five rares though as I worked on it, so I suppose I can’t complain too much. Other then that, just your typical day in EQ2.

Tomorrow night is Nostalgia, and I am so looking forward to it. I miss playing my healer though. It’s LDoN night and that’s always a lot of fun no matter what. We’re doing Butcherblock LDoN’s which are some of my favorite.

Oh, I almost forgot. Last night randomly I got a tell asking if I was the ‘famous’ Stargrace (I was on Silhouette, the coercer) and after a few minutes found out it was Crookshanks who was saying hello, from the Najena server. We had a pleasant conversation, and promised to keep in touch. Thanks again for the offer of help if you’re reading this today Crook! It was nice meeting you! I’m certainly not famous though, just another blogger out there in the great big sea.

The Day After (and Nostalgia the Guild 2.0)

Screen shot is of my 78 coercer Silhouette floating down to the Howling Stones area in Jarsath Wastes. When dark elves were first given hover I couldn’t figure out why, and thought it was slightly unfair that we’d suddenly learned how to glide down as though we had wings. Now it’s hard to play without it because I’m so used to thinking I’m the off spring of a fae or arasai. How cute, there’s even a little scorpion below – I’m obviously doing the repeatable faction quests, which I spent most of the night doing.

GU45 went off without a hitch – at least on Najena. I spent hours re-organizing my banks and putting everything “just so”. I dumped all my money into shared (bleh, I had more then 187p last I checked, I’ll have to earn more!) and made sure all my ‘mains’ had extra strong boxes to fill in the blanks.

The changes to coercers are nice. I dislike the change to the cure button for priests though. Why? Well, healing (for me) is sort of boring. The one way I could ‘prove’ that I was a competent healer though – was to be on top of cures. Now you have a single spell that removes ALL detrimental effects (one of each) with an instant recast and a .8 second cast time. It takes away the whole thrill (to me personally) of “oh no there’s a dot, we have to cure it and we have to cure it NOW” – and I’ve heard a few other healers mention the same thing. Am I glad we’re short three hotbar slots now? Well I don’t really care too much about those. I don’t think it was worth simplifying the spell. I understand a lot will disagree, but healing was something I didn’t need to be more simple.

I adore knowing where gray quests are, on the other hand. Fantastic change and it’s going to be fun. I had every intention of knocking out some gray quests last night to see how the aa works without mentoring – but got swept up with playing in Jarsath Wastes instead. I did level the coercer from 77->78 and managed to get 40% into the level while I chattered with Nostalgia. Last night was their Paludal Cavern run (how I love that zone).

Speaking of Nostalgia. We’ve basically decided to start up an EQ2 branch of the guild – with a slightly different twist then our EQ1 branch. In EQ1 we are very structured, there are very specific things we want to do, we meet at a specific time. It’s needed, in a game like that. There’s no mentor system, we have to stay within range in order to do anything together.

However, EQ2 is not bound by these, mainly due to the mentor system. I personally feel that it’s important in any mmo, to have a strong community. A lot of people end up leaving simply because the community was not for them. If you can start playing a game, with a group of friends already there — even if you don’t get to group with them all the time, but still get to talk, ask question, and generally know they’re around, it makes a huge difference.

Welcome Nostalgia the guild 2.0

We won’t be assigning (or at least I won’t be) a weekly day to play – but we will be hosting events such as dungeon crawls (instance runs) heritage quest nights, maybe city writ nights, old world raids in time (and with enough interest) and what not, on pre planned days so that everyone knows about it first. The guild has yet to technically be formed, I’m waiting for 6 people to be on at the same time and all together in Timerous Deep so it can be put together. Not an easy task when everyone has their own play times, which is one of the things that actually makes Nostalgia work. There’s typically always someone around (except the wee hours of the morning) we have people from all over.

Tipa and myself both agreed there’s no reason why this guild, or the idea of Nostalgia, can’t span across multiple games. We’ve met some wonderful people and none of us started together on one server. Why not present that opportunity to people (if they want it, no pressure of course) to take advantage of. Again, it’s not going to run as the EQ1 Nostalgia guild runs, but it will give people the opportunity to have a semi static group of folks around with planned events and things to do. People who have forums and vent, who are eager to talk and experience everything Norrath and Norrath 2.0 have to offer. In doing this, and the method we’ve been doing it, I think we’re also picking up a fairly good crowd of people. It’s not exactly random. People hear about us through our writing (we have quite a few bloggers) and word of mouth. We’re not just randomly recruiting people. There’s bound to be a bad apple here and there (they let me in, after all) but over all I feel fairly confident and pleased with the folks we’ve met up to this date. Which is surprising, as I’m typically a very anti social person. Not meaning to offend anyone, it’s simply the way I’ve learned to play my games.

Anyhow. Yesterday was a lot of fun. Between the new GU changes, and meeting new people through Nostalgia I couldn’t have asked for a better gaming day. I haven’t checked out the new quests added with the GU yet, but I hear there are house item rewards, and so you know it won’t be long before I meander my way over to the nearest quest npc to see what they’re handing out and what it’s all about.

GU45 Live Notes

Downtime scheduled – Downtime scheduled 05/13/2008 – 7:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time

This is a notification that US worlds will be updated at 7:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time on 05/13/2008. The estimated downtime will be 4 hours.
– SOE Operations team


Game Update #45 May / 13 / 2008
HIGHLIGHTS

A miraculous event has occurred in North Qeynos. Pilgrims can learn about it from the witnesses at the Temple of Life. During “A Prophet Returns”

(GU45):
There’s a mysterious blight spreading across Norrath’s cities. The Celestial Watch seeks to help those suffering from it while servants of the Plaguebringer bask within their cries. Which will you choose?
Additional bank space and new functionality to the shared bank have been added. Check out the BANK section below for details.
Grey quests are now easier to find, will award adventure experience and, in many cases, will award more achievement experience.
Coercers and Weaponsmiths and Woodworkers will each find significant changes to their classes.
Priest single target cure spells have been combined into one spell named “Cure”.

GAMEPLAY

The time limit between repeatable faction quests in Sinking Sands has been removed.
Damage that can not be resisted or mitigated will now be referred to as “focus” damage instead of crush/pierce/slash/poison/heat /cold/etc in combat chat messages.

Corpses of powerful creatures will now stay locked for twenty minutes.

Respawning near Jarsath Wastes in the Kylong Plains is slightly less dangerous.

Mounts should now suspend while feigning death or riding on a griffon, sokokar or cloud.

QUESTS

Grinash the Vicious and his pack will now trigger in the Steppes for players on “Vicious Assault”. Previously he would only trigger while on “The Cove of Decay – Kraughl’s Request”.
Squire Kivan in Antonica will now give out the quest “Getting the Axe” to characters that he previously thought were too advanced for his quest.
The No-Trade flag has been removed from a large number of book pages that were dropped from mobs or harvested from page spawns. Check your inventories!
Clay golem hearts for “The Heart of Fear” quest in Cazic-Thule now drop as corpse loot instead of chest loot. They also will only drop while you are on the quest now.
Multiple players should now be able to receive an update from killing Pawbuster when on that portion of the Conjuror Epic quest.
Both the dropped and tradeskilled pristine fashioned nacre earring will now update the quest “Dukaris, Hero of the People”.
Low grey quests will now give more experience.

ITEMS

The Nox Noctis Sword will no longer fit in the primary weapon slot.
Deathfist Citadel crafted armor stats have been improved. Existing armor will automatically receive the upgrade.
Are you lacking space in your bags from multiple stacks of poisons and potions? Well fear not brave adventurer, you can now stack poisons and potions to 100. Enjoy your newfound space!
Duplicates of numerous books in the game that currently count toward one’s total house items are now available on Navarius Orvalis and Indis Surion for purchase if you fulfill the original requirements for having received the book (ie, if you completed the quest it was a reward on).
The “Dazzling Tuning Fork” is now only lootable by dirges and no longer “No Destroy” .

ZONES

Shard of Hate Byzola in the Shard of Hate can no longer be pulled excessively far from where she spawns.

SPELLS

The Karana deity pet and the sokokar pet should now stack together.

Scout
Heroic Opportunity Swindler’s Gift should now overwrite itself properly rather than giving an error about having a more powerful spell already.

Coercer
Possession has been renamed to Possess Essence. It now takes control of your target’s essence and makes them into a pet that you can control. Thoughtstones are no longer required as components for spells. The Despotic Mind line will now trigger off player based spell attacks. In addition there is a new level 80 version called Tyranous Mind The other reactive lines have changed to be based on taking damage from when a spell hits the NPC. Puppetmaster has received an additional puppet. The Harmonious link line now reduces hate position when the player takes a melee hit.

Crusader
The Paladin and Shadowknight squires should no longer look differently after zoning.

Enchanter
The stun and stifle lines will now do damage rather than drain power. Enchanters will now also receive Call Servant and Shrink Servant at level 10.

Illusionists
The Personae line of pets should now nuke instead of attempting to power drain just like their owners do.

Mystic
The Ancient Balm line will now grant short duration immunities to any control effects it cures.

Necromancer
The Siphoning of Souls (Master II) will now also grant Master II abilities when it triggers on the death of an NPC. Essences of Anguish are no longer given out nor required as components for spells.

Priests
Cure Noxious, Elemental, Trauma and Arcane have been consolidated into one spell called Cure.

Shadowknight
Despoiling Mist line should once again apply the same number of mitigation buffs as members of the encounter.

Warden
Tranquility will now last 1 minute and attempt to cure impairments on the target several times.

Warlock
Nil Crystals are no longer required as components for spells. The Abhorrent Shroud line now has a power cost to replace the nil crystal requirement.

Wizard
The Surging Tempest line should now work as a dot with a triggered knockdown. This will make the spell work with Freehand Sorcery and Harmonization.

ACHIEVEMENTS
You can now gain Achievement Experience from gray con quests that are level 10 or higher. All classes should receive a free achievement respec. Please note that free achievement respecs cannot be stacked or saved.
Enchanter Volatile Magic will now be a 15% boost that is always on.
Coercer Tashania will now debuff all magical resistances but slightly less than before.
Coercive Healing will now give additional bonuses to reactive heal amount, beneficial casting time and beneficial reuse time.
Manaward now acts as a true ward with a ratio of 1 health to 1.5 power.

BROKER
You can now search the broker for items which give double attack, critical chance and damage additions.

PVP RULESET
Executioner’s Fury should no longer put you into combat when it triggers.

BANK
On all servers:
Banks how have four extra slots for a total of twelve bank slots per character. Shared banks now have four extra slots for a total of eight shared bank slots per account. Shared banks now allow you to share coin between characters on the same account. Exiled characters continue to be unable to use shared banks with other characters on the same account.

On PVE servers:
Shared banks are now shared between good and evil characters on the same account. If you have all four slots filled in both good and evil shared banks currently, they will be combined into a new eight slot shared bank. Both coin and items can be shared with characters on the same account regardless of alignment.

On PVP servers:
Shared banks are still alignment based. However we have added four extra slots to each alignment’s shared bank (for a total of eight shared bank slots per alignment) and the ability to share coin between characters of the same alignment on one account.

TRAVEL
If you have a Sokokar, flight posts in Chardok will now allow you to fly to any post that a group member has access.
The “mysterious portal’ in Gorowyn now allows level 65+ tradeskillers to pass through, as well as level 65+ adventurers.

TRADESKILLS
Weaponsmiths and woodworkers have learned to create recipes for new, more desirable crafted weapons with a choice of new effect.
Weapons that already existed prior to the update will not be affected and cannot be imbued with the new effects.
Geomancy arts should now appear in the crafting window in an order consistent with the other tradeskill reaction arts.
You should no longer get less status for doing a level 70 tradeskill writ than you would for doing a level 69 writ.
Ferrite throwing daggers are now correctly described as handcrafted.
Advanced Artisan Volume One is now available from tradeskill recipe book vendors around Norrath.
Crafted shurikens can now be made at lower level ranges.
Weaponsmiths have also rediscovered where they left their recipe books for throwing ammo.

UI
The version on EQ2UI_Inventory_Bank has been increased to 2.0 to support the Bank/Shared bank changes.
You can now choose to show quest-giver icons for quests you have out leveled. Under Options -> User Interface -> Name and Chat Bubble -> NPC Overhead Quest Icons for Outleveled Quests
The command “/inventory unequip all” will unequip all of your gear except food, drink and appearance items.
Setting the option to now show third party damage combat bubbles will now also apply to third party heals
Detailed arrows on implied target window are no longer cut off.

Spreading The Hate

Silhouette wandered around Gorowyn almost aimlessly, just watching. Tucked into corners here and there were angry citizens, taking out their frustrations on one another. That was one of the reasons she’d moved from the almost too quiet town of Freeport, to the bustling commerce city of Gorowyn any how. She thrived on the entertainment. Along her walk, someone tugged at the sleeve of her gown, insistent that she stop.

“What..” She groaned inwardly. No doubt the coward wanted some coin, or some food, or just.. something.

“Do you wish to spread the hate?” Spoke the raspy voice of whomever had grabbed her arm.

“Spread.. the hate?” She puzzled slightly, wondering if this was some new phrase the kids were using and she hadn’t quite caught on to yet.

“Y-Yes.. Misstress… seek out the Priest at the Innoruuk Spires, in Neriak. There you can pledge to spread the hate.. ”

“Well. Alright then. Thanks.” She deftly plucked her sleeve out of the grimy hands, and decided to head to Neriak. Spread the hate? Sure why not.

When she got there she found she was not the only one who had such ideas in her head. There was a line up to speak with the priest. She tapped her foot and shuffled impatiently from one side of the room to the next, waiting for her turn. Once it came, she was given a task.

“Collect rocks.” Was all the priest said, and pointed one bony finger to the rocky walls of Neriak where gems sparkled faintly.

“Rock.. right.. ” Silhouette almost bit back a chuckle, thinking it was some sort of joke. Collect rocks? That was going to help spread the hate? She thought for a minute longer. Well, perhaps they were going to use these rocks to throw at people! Yes, that would spread the hate for sure. No one liked having rocks thrown at them. She nodded to the priest, and went on her way, deftly plucking rocks from the walls and gathering them together in her skirt. Her finger nails were bleeding and broken by the time she returned, the gems having cut her fingers in numerous places. She would have been seething, were it not for the fact that she knew she was doing Innoruuk’s work.

“Bury, the rocks. Outside” The priest pointed a long bony finger towards Darklight Woods.

“You’ve got to be kidding..” Silhouette spoke without thinking. “You just made me collect all these rocks, and now, you want me to bury them, and some how, this is going to spread the hate?” She frowned deeply, and the priest just waved her off.

Well. What else was there to do. She left Neriak, her feet trudging up dirt and dust and rocks. Headed to Darklight Woods, where she found the perfect spots to bury her rocks. All 12 of them. She wished she’d brought along a shovel of some sort, but hadn’t exactly counted on THIS when the offer was presented to her. As the sun started to set, she buried the final rock, and wiped her hands on her grimy dress, that would need a solid washing. She trudged back to the priest in Neriak, and waited her turn, again.

“I buried the rocks. How does that spread hate?” She questioned.

The priest just looked to her.

“Here. Have a fire place. They’re on sale right now, at Wizzlewoop’s-Emporium-For-Marvelous-Wonderful-Things-That-Whirl-Glow-And-Go-Bang.” The priest grinned at her, and Silhouette almost thought for a brief moment she saw a gnome behind those eyes. It couldn’t be…

The fire place was thrust in her hands. Heavy. She dropped it on the floor, fuming, and cast a quick gate spell, enveloping herself and the fire place. Once she’d gotten it situated in her house, she figured it was free after all, Silhouette stood, and burst out laughing.

She supposed in the end, the quest had been completed after all. If she ever got her hands on that grimy little priest.. well.. there was certainly a lot of hatred started right there…

(( Today is GU45, and so in preparation I had to complete the evil quest that rewards you with the house item pictured above, the counterpart to the good aligned one which also gives you a fire place that I’d completed some time ago. They’ll be removing it (the quest) with today’s update, so be sure to finish yours up if you haven’t yet! ))