One Goal Down!

Last night Kasul and I came up with a cloak design for Nostalgia 2.0 It turned out pretty well I think – and of course the way cloak designs work is that they are unique per guild per server. So no one else has quite this shade of yellow with that symbol in the center. Works for me! Now we’ll be working towards level 20 (short term goal) and onwards to level 30 (long term goal) that will allow us to place edges on the cloak. Along the way of course we’re saving up status for a guild hall, which I’m excited about, even if there are only two ‘regular’ guild mates playing in this guild. We still work really hard.

As I was getting ready to make dinner last night and was mostly AFK in EQ2, I received a random tell from ‘Meddik’ on Najena. It made my day and I just had to mention it here. He/She said that they were a Stargrace groupie, and had been reading my blog for over a year now. I do get tells like that on occasion, and I still never know quite how to react to it. It makes me smile and sort of blush and fluster. I don’t have the most interesting blog out there – I don’t write about the mechanics of the game, or interviews with important people, or anything like that. It’s just my own personal gaming experiences which can be quite drab. So to know that people enjoy my writing is quite a rush. /Waves to Meddik.

I did end up doing more crafting in game – and managed to get the carpenter to level 55. Wow! I’m so very happy with that. Of course now I’ve spent almost 10p on supplies and books just for those five levels, and that would (idealy) mean another 10p to go (or more) for the next 5 levels before I reach T6. Not too keen on that. Again, what’s the point of watching my money in an mmo – I have no real expenses and I already watch coin enough in real life. I’m almost onto the next tier which should bring about even MORE exciting things to craft, and then at level 70 I can start crafting the faction based recipes which include some amazing rugs and jars of skulls and all sorts of interesting goodies. If I keep up this pace it shouldn’t be too long before I’m 80 – hopefully obtaining my carpenter epic, and then doing a complete revamp and crafting my entire house. I’ll be checking the forums plenty to get some ideas, like a fishtank. Popular items for a house to have these days and there’s apparently a quest in Gorowyn that I always skip that rewards you with a fish house item that can be placed as though it’s floating. I’ll have to look into this and see if I can’t find it.

I also popped into Vanguard last night to do some crafting before bed, Ardwulf was there and said hello! It’s been quite some time since I spoke to him. Apparently he’s thinking of joining Safe Haven, which is a wonderful guild on the Seradon server, with a branch on Antonia Bayle in EQ2 as well. Great people. I’d left the guild shortly after I left Vanguard previously, and have not looked into a guild yet since I’ve returned. Anyhow, MaddyCraft hasn’t been updated since GU3 (and we’re on GU5 now just passed) so I deleted the mod and went with default. Which means I actually spent most of the time making my macro’s for crafting with the G15 so that it’s not so much mouse clicking. No, this does NOT mean the process is automated, you can’t since you get complications that will ruin your crafting if you ignore them. It does reduce the amount of mouse clicking though.

As a final note – Happy Canada Day! I hope everyone is out enjoying the sun. Since I live in Ottawa I will be avoiding the 20,000+ people down at the parliament buildings, and watching the fire works from home.

More Tar Janashir, and EQ2 Crafting

I spent yesterday at the cottage, being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Today after getting some other chores done, I headed to Vanguard with Growlius to continue our questing around Tar Janashir, which we left about a month ago. It took a bit to get situated again. Remembering what keys did what. I thought it wasn’t possible for the sand in Qalia to get any brighter, but I was mistaken. I swear they lightened it further then it was, and it glares like bright snow no matter what my settings are at.

Before all that, I went to check out the MEST, which is the Mekalia Extravaganza of Science and Technology, and disappointing might I add. I was expecting an actual fair of sorts, instead it was a few gnomes standing under some tents. They give you quests for collection items. The rewards are mainly ancient coins, which can be turned in for faction to whatever city you’d like, commonly the faction you’d like a mount from eventually. There are some extra goodies along with a few of the quests, like boxes of fire works and a shrinking device. I guess after seeing EQ2 and WoW fairs, I was expecting a little… more.

Growlius and I got about 50% of a level, so we’re closing in on 40 fairly quickly, which is nice. We headed out after five dot cyclops, and had a blast being tested to remember what it was exactly that each of our classes did.

I’ll talk more about the changes to Vanguard tomorrow, when I’m not falling asleep at the desk.

In EQ2, I managed to take advantage of the double experience bonus that went on over the weekend. I got the monk to level 32, almost 33. She’s almost out of the “wow I’ve already done all this before a million times” phase, which I’m looking forward to.

I also managed (thanks to some coercing from Kasul) to stick around long enough to ding level 50 carpenter. That’s right, FINALLY I feel as though I am getting some where with my carpenter. She can start making the Maj’dul inspired furniture, which is fantastic. Along with plants, pillars, and all the other fun things. I have to do some harvesting for the tier, which is not fun at all. I was pleased with the progress though, that was three levels in a relatively short time tonight.

The guild also dinged level 15 due to all of the writs Kasul and myself managed to complete – which means we can choose a design for the guild cloak. Since there’s only two (and some times three) of us playing in Nostalgia 2.0 on the Najena server, I doubt it will be too hard of a decision to come up with a design that’s agreeable by everyone. The cost is 5p, which I’ll be giving.

Anyhow, more comprehensive posts tomorrow, I just wanted to write something quick before bed tonight. It’s a long weekend here in Canada, being Canada day on the 1st of July. I know next weekend is the 4th of July and Independence day for the states, so I hope everyone is having lots of fun, no matter what realm you find yourself in!

Back in Telon (again)

It’s completely Ardwulf’s fault, of course. His posts about Telon and finding his way along (again) made me itch to play the game, and why not, I’ve had station access for months now and have only taken advantage of a game or two here and there. I never disliked Vanguard, I’ve actually always spoken very highly of the game. However, I’m one of those people who constantly flip around from game to game depending on my moods. Bad for people I play with, but good for me.

Due to some other circumstances, I bid fair well to the Nostalgia meetings on Fridays – but will still be around in EQ1 on occasion and far more so in EQ2. I doubt anyone was too heartbroken, there’s plenty of members now and I’d missed the past few weeks of meetings due to real life (and broken computers). I dislike letting people down, and being unable to commit to the one day a week was making me feel very badly.

Anyhow. This weekend is double experience in EQ2, which is great. I plan on getting some craft levels on both the weaponsmith (62 so far) and carpenter (46 and holding steady) as well as the monk (28 and counting). Eyenstein, a friend I’ve known for about 4 years now, managed to get some trooper boots to drop – and since they were lore for him, offered me a fantastic deal. The little bardling is singing in style, now.

In Vanguard, I ran around harvesting with Gozad trying to remember what key does what. While I was away (just over a month) a lot changed. For one, SOE revamped my blood mage class. I have no idea what changes happened and assume I should speak to my trainer, and read some notes. I did find out we can make body bags to carry around our organs in, which is great – except they’re only 20 slot, and my personal bags are 28 slot. You obtain the spell at around level 24 (or so I heard) which makes it fantastic for newer players.

There are also collectibles in Telon – and I don’t have the slightest idea what these are. There’s a special bag that will hold your collectibles, as well as your harvesting tools. Just something I saw linked in the general channel today, I’ll really have to do some research. The living legacy promotion reaches into VG as well, with some free mounts for people and a month of free game play. I don’t mind missing out on this one, the mounts are going to be available to old and new, which is what EQ1/EQ2 should have done from the start.

The market is much like I left it. My house is still standing too, with 13 more weeks of rent paid off. The game itself seemed to run smoother – but that may just have been wishful thinking on my part. In the cities I still chugged around some until items were rendered properly, but I’m coming from a completely new instillation of the game.

There were people chattering away on channels, also good. Seems Telon is fairing pretty well on that at least. I heard lots of requests for groups, even though I spent my time (for now) harvesting. We’ll see how the rest of the weekend goes!

Not on the Schedule

I’m one of those people who work best with a schedule. That’s one of the reasons why I knew I’d love our Friday night Nostalgia group. I like being able to log in, and know what we’re doing. We don’t spend hours in game wasting the Friday night away doing that (which is the point, I’m sure). I’ve always been a follower more then a leader, so logging in and just being told where to head, is perfect for me too. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just my play style.

So me and a friend talked for a while and decided that since we’ve both got station access, why not pick two days a week to play Vanguard. The game *is* great and I still love it. It just wasn’t quite enough to hold my attention as a “one game only” sort of deal. There are three games I play now with station access, Vanguard, EQ2, and EQ1. So on Monday and Tuesday nights I’ll be playing Faydai, my level 37 blood mage, on the Seradon server in Vanguard. So far it’s just me and Growlius who will be playing, but more are welcome to join of course. We’re not starting from scratch or doing anything unusual aside from setting two specific days to play.

Then on Friday nights I’ve got the Nostalgia group which is coming along fantastic. I hit level 15 on Ishbel (cleric) which was high enough for me to wear the DoN cultural armor I had made. The game is down for 6 hours today, I had hopped to make my necromancer a set of gear as well. I made Lackey some yesterday, though he still has to add the augmentations to it.

At first I was leery about having a schedule for games. In the end though I think it’s exactly what I needed. That doesn’t mean things can’t change, or that everything is planned out, but at least I won’t run around wondering what to do so much of the time. The schedule is flexible enough that I still have four evenings a week to do whatever whim I may have. I typically game from 7-11 nightly, since I don’t watch tv I game. I do pop in a few times during the day (mostly afk, especially in EQ1 where I tend to leave a trader up to sell) but aside from that my days are filled with ‘real life’ whatever that is.

This morning I logged into Vanguard briefly, I don’t have much coin there any more since I gave most of it to guild mates before I took my break – but I didn’t want my house to run out of rent and then lose the T5 house I had built that I am still oh so proud of. Logging into game made me remember why I enjoyed it. I noticed I had mail — oopsie, a guild mate who hadn’t heard that I had switched games (again) sent me 150 dusky timber to build their components for a house. Suppose I’ll get to that later today. I’m hopefully also going to be doing some harvesting, so I can make a little more coin. My house is paid for the next 20 weeks, at least that’s one concern taken care of. Being able to afford my spells (since I get some at 38) would be a nice thing. We’ll see how it goes!

Unsafe Haven – Ravenholdt

Last night Gozad managed to convince some Safe Haven folks from the PvE server to help us sign our charter on the PvP server – and within a few moments, we were members of “Unsafe Haven” the rp / pvp branch. We don’t expect to be a large guild, but while there are 5 of us (give or take) all playing on the same server, it’s nice to have guild options available. I paid 10g to have a tabard  made up, and Gozad picked out a design that I think is pretty nice. The white tower representing a ‘safe haven’ of sorts. I bought everyone a round of the shirts for 90s each, and then went to figure out how much guild banking would cost.

100g each tab of banks, and there are 6 tabs. Ok. I think not. I’m not THAT rich in game, sure I’ve played on the server off and on for a little while now, but I’ve barely gathered together 70g (less now that I’ve spent some to get things done) and that was mostly going towards my mount when I hit level 40. So the banks will have to wait for now. A nice money sink on Blizzards part, it’s not an impossible task (I know money comes easily at later levels) and we’ll get it eventually.

Last night I managed to get 19 on the warlock, Zokor got 18. I was a little disappointed to hear that one of the guild members has a friend / family member leveling for them since they “just don’t have the time” to play. Come on now, it’s world of warcraft, how much time do you actually need in order to get anywhere in the game. So that was one let down. Then two members proceeded to have a conversation about how they would run money transfer services (for real life money of course) and power leveling (for real life coin, of course) and numerous other ‘iffy’ issues that revolved around mmos and made me sort of frown. I don’t mean to seem all high and mighty, but conversations like that just rub me the wrong way. I asked the two members if they could take the conversation to tells, but in typical male format, they decided to question me about why it bothered me, and continued on for a bit longer while I decided to just keep quiet. I don’t want to control anyones conversations, it’s just a few things get me riled up. So yeah, it was probably best that I just step away.

I helped Zokor get his shiny new sword from the ‘final’ ghostlands quest with my 33 priest, there was a line up of people all waiting to get their weapons as well. A 57 warlock made short work  of the named before a 70 rogue wandered in to take their guild mate through. Zokor and I finally got our chance at the named and he walked away with a nice new two handed sword (blue). My warlock doesn’t really need hers, since I will be switching, probably to my hunter around 23, and to the priest of course at 33. I am excited about this whole ‘casual’ gaming. It’s a lot of fun.

I’m also excited about the scavenger hunt I’ll be running in Vanguard on the 5th. There are about 20 people signed up and I hope everyone can make it. I have some good prizes for folks (since my account expires on the 9th) and I think they’ll get to know their fellow Vanguard Safe Haven guild mates, which is never a bad thing.

A huge congratulations to Siege on Najena in EQ2 as well, they finally defeated the Veeshan’s Peak encounter that gave 6 people their mythical last night – assassin, troubador, and wizard. Very well done, and hard earned.