EQ2 – Page 15 – A Pixel Nomad

Quest of The Week: Infiltrating The Sanctum

Yesterday I was looking through Arysh’ quest journal, thinking to myself “wow, I only have room for 8 more quests”. The quests that I do have in there I’m reluctant to delete, they’re either chains that I’d like to complete one day, or they’re book quests that I don’t ever delete because (gasp) house items rock. One quest that had been in there forever (almost literally) was part of the Sanctum of the Scaleborn timeline. It’s one I’d never completed on any character – even though I have basically lived in SoS in the past, working on Claymore (which I completed on Arysh).

The quest is the ‘infiltrating’ line, that starts just inside the doors to SoS on the left hand side. The first few quests are quite easy, you have to run around placing listening devices. Of course by now everything is very grey to me, so this was no issue. The entire quest compromises of 6 portions, each one slightly more difficult then the previous.

When I got to the final two quests, Shadowgeist came to SoS to help me out. Not that I needed help per say, but killing grey heroic mobs can be slow (and boring). Since I was there, I decided to log in Ellithia, the 74 defiler. Added her to group and when we mentored, the zone turned green (and most of the upper levels still grey) which was perfect. We had to kill enough scaleborn to finally get a trial stone to drop, and that was probably the most difficult part of the whole quest. The trial stones are used to spawn a ring event in a pit and in the amount of time I’d been in SoS, I only saw one. Thankfully, we were lucky and got one to drop after clearing out a few rooms.

The quest gave me a LOT of achievement, and it was just plain fun. Of course there was a hidden reason why I wanted to complete this chain, and it was not the fact that the second last reward was a cool looking sword that my warden could wear.

It was of course a house item. One of the few things in game that will pull me to a quest no matter what level it is. The dragon bust doesn’t look all that impressive compared to the other crafted ones, but it does have a fair amount of status on it, and I’m proud for collecting it. The final quest makes you kill Cyenadros, a x2 epic dragon that resides above the gorg pit in SoS. He (she?) was not up when we made our way there, but you can trigger them by killing the worshippers who hang out on the rug on the bottom floor. Then upstairs x2 drake will spawn around the outside of the main platform. Kill them, and Cyenadros will spawn in the center. The dragon is level 67, and we duo’d it at level 74. They DO have a kick back, so make sure you’re up against a wall when you fight or you’ll get tossed over the side. Other then that, fairly simple fight.

Arysh hit 149aa when all was said and done, which is not too bad. I’d like to be closer to 160, but since I haven’t worked on her at all, well, I’ll take what I can get.

When I was done with the SoS quest fun, I decided to level the paladin a little bit. Sitting at 62, Lithe has her 52 rare spell (hate transfer via group) and is a lot of fun to play. I logged in my templar (Petites) to box along with, and headed off to do The Nest in Barren Sky with Shadowgeist.

The paladin managed to hit level 65, which means she can group with level 80’s and get quest updates (finally). The templar also hit level 78, which is a huge deal to me because solo’ing with a templar is like watching paint try. It also means I’m close to having my 5th level 80 character, and possibly a tank before too long on the 2nd account (which I’m really looking forward to). At 65 I can start the Kylong Plains quests, but I think I’ll wait until 67-68 before starting them. I haven’t explored very many zones with Lithe yet, and I’m still enjoying the paladin more then I thought I would. I looted a very nice shield off of Cyenadros last night, so she’s sporting that. Now I have to save up another 100p for some T8 loams, too. Only five more levels before I’ll start using those (and I should level the alchemist up to help her out too).

There’s still so much fun to be had in Norrath, I hope everyone enjoyed their Saturday! I’ll write more about the other games I bought on Friday this week hopefully. he

DING! Nostalgia hits 35

Yesterday Nostalgia hit level 35! I’m so exceptionally proud of Ecor and Kasul who have been working really hard to get us those levels. It was an important milestone, though it may not seem like it. First, it’s one step closer to 40, which brings us extra bank space, and it also allowed us to purchase two more guildhall amenities! They were expensive, but worth it. I’ve donated close to 300p towards the hall, and millions of status. Of course once we hit level 35 it was time to decide what we wanted our two amenity to be!

There’s the harvesting depot that the guild could really make use of, as a central location for craft supplies, as well as the hirelings that will go out and harvest for you. That was pretty high up on my list of things to purchase, but I think we’ll try to get some of that around level 40. So instead, we purchased (finally) a broker, and a hireling who we can sell looted items to – including all of those status items we gain from mobs. That means no more running around everywhere trying to find the proper merchant to sell to (or in my case, no need to head to Maj’Dul to use the faction instances to sell to since the merchants there also accept everything).

Our total amenities include: Druid porter (since we can’t afford to purchase all of those bells, the druid porters are great to get around Norrath), banker, broker, rush order writs, fuel merchant, and junk buying merchant. Since we are so small, and such a low level, we really had to be careful about where to spend the two extra items. They each cost 10p and 1,000,000 status. Kasul and I donated some more plat towards the escrow, and we still have 13 million status in there, so that should do for a while more.

Eyenstein and Albrta asked if Shadowgeist, Kasul and I wanted to do a few of the vampire instances in Nektulos forest for some aa. Of course we agreed, and it was a lot of fun, I gained 1.5aa with Arysh, and I also had the quest to receive vampire smite on me, I finally completed the chain of quests from the encampment by the waterfalls. I’ve only had that quest on me forever.

Kasul was also gracious enough to let Shadowgeist and I into his empty Crucible instance and The Deep Forge so that we could get the void shard updates (clickies) and earn some shards. Since Crucible was the daily double, we managed to get five shards without having to actually do the instances. I’m saving up to upgrade the shoes, gloves, and shoulders I have – which means I’ll be saving for a while, I need about 60 shards. Ugh.

Since I’ve decided (for now) to settle on Arysh as far as ‘mains’ go, things have been going really well. It’s easy for me to log her in and decide what I need to do. This week hopefully I’ll be getting both my tailor and alchemist to level 70, which means then it’s just a hop skip and jump with writs to level 80.

Hope everyone has an amazing weekend, I’m happy that the holidays are winding down a little bit.

Not Quite Working as Intended

Logged in to EQ2 yesterday and the MoTD mentioned something about all the dervishes losing their loot and the instance Hidden Cache being closed. I believe this has to do with the increased master drop rate – and not the fact that the drop rate was increased, because Scornfeather’s roost was not changed, not were any overland zones that are ‘contested’ but because of the way that this zone could be abused. Hidden Cache is filled with encounters, and unless you get a named you can kill those encounters (which were dropping an abundance of master chests) zone out, reset the zone, and head back in. Rinse and repeat. As long as you didn’t accidentally kill a named, you never set the lock out timer. I figured it was just easier to go to living tombs and kill to get masters, but apparently a lot of people were using this method. So for now the instance is out of commission. Since I got the rare masters that I wanted (a lucky drop saw me with Enraging Demeanor on Wednesday) I didn’t head back to LT to see if it was now heavily populated with people farming. I know the increase drop rate was intended, but I guess this specific zone was not meant to be used that way. If the drop rate was not meant to be increased, then I assume the other zones that are dropping masters like crazy (silent city, living tombs, scornfeathers roost, etc) would have also been changed.

Anyhow. Since yesterday was Christmas I decided to splurge and purchase three masters for my warden. I always told myself that I would settle on a main first before investing too much money into a character, but I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll never really settle. I enjoy the warden in every aspect on so many levels except the fact that they’re a popular healer, so it makes my chances of actually getting some where with them marginally small. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

Shadowgeist rounded up a few guild mates and I asked Kasul if he wanted to come do the daily double, which was Anathema, a zone I had only been to as a lower level character and not on Arysh. Seems the daily double quests alternate their rewards, and yesterday was 1p and 2 shards as a reward. That brought my shard count up to 15, which was a lot for me. I had a few choices. I could either upgrade my gloves to the greater version, or purchase a few more lesser pieces, and get the three set bonus. In the end that’s exactly what I did. The pieces themselves were not exactly upgrades stat wise, they all have less power on them, but wearing them reduces the recast of my spells by 5%, and gives my heals a boost by 3% (which also counts for overloaded heals) and increases my crit chance a huge amount (crits trigger my epic weapon). In the end I am at 9,400 power (self buffed with no food and drink) 8,500 hp (I’ll be getting stamina adornments) 8-10,000 in every resist, and sitting at 1022 wisdom.

For a non-raid geared person, I don’t think that’s too bad. I’m just touching 50% heal crit chance, which I know is still a little low, but I’ll get there eventually. I bought the shoulders, gloves, and shoes for the set bonuses. Now it’s just a matter of saving up enough shards to upgrade all of those pieces.

The master spells I bought were not that impressive, they were level 80 spells that drop quite frequently, but I was pleased none the less. I bought my level 80 fairy heal special for 16p, and I got a level 80 group heal for 22p. I also picked up my level 52 rare spell for 1p which is nice. Every healer comes with a single target “anti death” as I call it, basically if your target receives fatal damage instead of dying it’ll boost their stats and apply a heal. Wardens get a group version of this spell at 52 that gets no upgrade. It was well past time I bought it. Those spells can never be over used, they’re great in rough times. Kasul died due to some frontals eating through him, but the run was smooth and really quick. The group consisted of a Shadowknight, Dirge, Illusionist, Swashbuckler, Assassin, and myself as warden. Hope everyone had a lot of fun, too!

Now I get to decide what I’m going to use my $100 EBGames card on…

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I think it’s great that we get the choice of some pretty nice armor in Frostfell this year. It’s easier (or at least cheaper) for me to work my way through those instances and collect tokens for gear rather then paying for all of my alts to wear mastercrafted, and it’s certainly on par with MC gear as long as you don’t mind having 0 saves vs. heat. That does mean the fire traps hurt a LOT when you open a chest, as a word to the wise. The only thing I don’t like, is that you can not turn off the graphic effect of the gear, even when you wear it under regular appearance stuff. It also causes a lot of lag, and if you run around on full settings like I typically do it’s a little frustrating. It looks like Stargrace needs to shave or she’s got some very bad rabies going on, and has skin care issues. She’s wearing the level 72 cloth dress, the +spell crit was a fairly nice upgrade since I’ve barely worked on gear for her.

My paladin is wearing the plate version of this gear and has the same snow flake effect, it surrounds the flower (she’s a kerra) she wears in her ear and when she’s in combat it looks like a huge abnormal growth glowing on the side of her head. My bruiser is also sporting the gi, the effect on that gear is slightly different. Instead of snow flakes you are morphed into a giant ball of snow that dusts constantly, and that’s all you can see. It’s a lot more lag then the snow flake one.

I’m hoping we’ll have the option to turn this gear off in the future, or maybe once Frostfell has passed the effects will be toned down. At least let me hide it under my regular appearance gear.

Game wise, yesterday was fairly quiet. I took my paladin to Sanctum of the Scaleborn which was completely empty. She gained a fair amount of achievements, and hit level 62. It still feels odd to have a tank this high in levels, and I’m enjoying it a good amount. I was going to do some crafting instances and get some experience on Ellithia (65 tailor) and Goudia (65 alchemist) but instead headed off to some DoF instances on my (at the time) 53 swashbuckler. She’s now sitting at 55.

It’s almost difficult for me to play a melee character now, after spending 7 years playing ranged mages and healers. It feels like I always have to be at ranged for some reason, and I have a difficult time positioning myself. Something I’ll have to work on in the future.

Tomorrow is Christmas eve! I’ll be here at home for the day and then heading to my parents place in the country. However, we are due for a huge snow storm (again) so plans may change and I may be spending Christmas eve here at home depending on the roads. Driving through 20cm of snow at 7pm at night is no fun. I hope everyone has an amazing holiday no matter your plans, get some family time in and many hugs to you all!

Spirits of the Lost, and the Echoes of Time

Ah, sweet memories. Yesterday once my paladin reached level 60, I turned off experience so that I couldn’t level past that mark. I had volunteered to help Siege out in obtaining some extra achievements. I mentioned before that when EoF came out, the old achievements had been reset, so those who had not been to the old content and obtained aa from them back then, can now. Well, that consisted of pretty much every old T5 raid that rewarded aa, as well as a good portion of the ‘less then popular’ T6 raids (not counting the one that replicates shimmering citadel because most guilds farmed that one for status but wouldn’t farm the Djin Master’s Prism for example). If you’ve never been to Spirits of the Lost before, it’s a fun zone. It was REALLY hard back when level 50 was the cap, too. The zone was released along with the server wide quest to unlock the froglok race. I never beat it when 50 was the cap, in fact yesterday was the first time any one of my characters had completed it (and I didn’t even have the quest for the title so that sort of sucked). Even though it’s been years, the quests related to this server event are still there. The chain of quests gives fairly good aa (because you have to gain the trust of the frogloks) and also rewards a shiny house item. The final quest rewards a title, for saving the frogloks.

So why bother going back to this ancient zone? Well the grind to 200aa is a hard one. The closer you get to 200, the more experience you need. If you’ve been an avid quester and are not a new character, that means you’ve probably already done (and gotten aa) for the quests through the older expansions which leaves you with less options. There has been a huge increase of people mentoring and passing through older content for the achievements, which I’m happy to see.

There are a LOT of named in this zone, which is why Siege decided to do it yesterday afternoon.

My paladin got 6 just from that zone alone. The final boss to the zone of course is Venekor (who you also defeat again in KoS) and then finally Varanak the Everlasting. Since my group was mentored to level 60, and the three groups consisted of end game raiders for the most part, it took very little time to work our way through the raid zone, and it was a lot of fun. The loot was amusing, a lot of the named encounters would drop a whole slew of adepts and crafting rares, but nothing more. I remember when those crafting rares used to be *rare* and people would fight over who would get to have a few in their pocked when they left the raid. The same happened in DoF raids that would reward crafter bits, everyone would bid their dkp on them because it was just so difficult to farm any. Ah, I miss days like that, a lot.

Once we were finished in the zone, we headed to the Feerrott and took down the x4 encounter just outside of Cazic Thul. Three pieces of chain fabled gear dropped which was a nice surprise. The guild also gained a good amount of status, contested epics always reward a lot. We also went to Solusek’s Eye, where there was another epic up. Another three pieces of fabled gear, this time plate.

After that, it was off to the Commonlands, to defeat Echoes of Time. This zone used to be so difficult for my guild, I remember wiping over and over again, when 50 was the max level. The named used to eat through people’s weapons (armor? pants?) and before long we’d have a naked tank. King Zalak the Ancient gave us no problems today though, and he was dead in 18 seconds. Wow, fast zone.

When I mentioned I wanted to get back into raiding this wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but I had a lot of fun none the less. A thanks to Siege for letting me tag along, I hope they all gained a lot of achievements.