Tag: EQ2

I love the Everfrost charms – with one small annoyance that I realize is difficult to avoid. Well, ok perhaps two. Number one would be the mass of people in this zone working on the exact same quests. It has died down some, but there’s still 30-50 people in the zone at any given time, and while the zone is big it’s not THAT big. Most of the people running through are level 80’s either trying to get new house items, doing the charm quest, obtaining those few aa that they still need, or running baby alts through the zone. I took my monk over to get her charm item. In fact I believe every single one of my 7 characters (on my main account, only active one currently) have their charm item now. 

Aside from how crowded the zone is (the 2nd version of the zone only stayed up for one day) I dislike how this level 47 item is better then level 80 items. Or rather, level 77. Specifically the provisioner faction crafted items. I’m of course talking about the wishbone and chicken foot. This level 47 item is also better then the charm item that drops off of the contested Mayong in T7. I realize that when you revamp a zone the gear changes dramatically, but I wish it didn’t only rival but surpass greatly – the gear that is 30+ levels higher then it. There are rumors of gear obtaining diminishing returns eventually. That is to say – as you out level the gear, the stats on it will actually decrease, and make it worthless to wear. I think that this is a good idea (though I have personally seen no proof of it being implemented, for now it is just talk in my eyes) because it forces people to upgrade their gear. In EQ1 upgrading your gear is not exactly a big thing as gear has no levels. Well, actually these past few years gear has been given more of a “can not wear until level” and then a max stat level – but in the past gear had no levels. You had a stat cap for your level, so anything above and beyond was useless, but in the mean time you were free to wear whatever you wanted. 

EQ2 doesn’t work that way – every piece of gear has a minimum level you need in order to equip it. Which is why I think it’s important that players upgrade. One of the problems with this though of course is that when a zone gets revamped, or gear gets revamped, or new zones come to life – the items there are of course significantly better then previous areas, so it can draw players into it. 

The level 40-50 items in Everfrost rival a lot of the gear that my level 61 necromancer was wearing. The charm item rivals level 80 gear. I don’t like that ‘balance’. I think that the stats could have been reduced – and leave off the crit chances. In the end game those crit chances are bread and butter of pretty much every class out there, and highly sought after. Aside from raid obtained charms – no charms even HAVE crit chances besides these level 47 charms. 

Goudia finally hit level 40 alchemist yesterday. Thankfully I have supplies saved up, I’m hoping to at least surpass my Monk’s levels so that I can make her a few skills should the need every arise. Maybe her stances at least. We’ll see. 

On a completely unrelated note – happy birthday to my Mom! She’s my best friend, and I hope she has a fantastic day, I love her with all of my heart.

It’s around this time of year (every year) where I get utterly bored with whatever it is I happen to be playing (EQ2 for the past four years almost five now) and decide I suddenly want to play other games, only to stumble back to the comfort of EQ2. This year is slightly different. I have no real interest in playing any other games on a serious level (aside from my brief forays into Guild Wars which is also slow, and infrequent I know) so I doubt I’ll go down that path. Instead I’ve been logging into EQ2 briefly, to help a friend with a quest, or some leveling, then logging off almost right away once those are completed. I know I should be concerned with obtaining more guild status for Nostalgia, but it’s really tough with only a few of us working on it. My restlessness is nothing new, and I don’t take it too seriously.

I spent some time with my monk (level 44 now level 45) in Ruins of Varsoon, wandering around with three good friends. Nothing much dropped but it is 20% bonus exp weekend this weekend (not announced, but it is on the exp bar if you mouse over it) and I took good advantage of it. Mentoring and receiving 75% less experience then normal, I still managed to hit 45. I’ll have to shop for gear some time, the poor monk is level 45 wearing level 2 jewelery and level 32 gear. The new quests in Everfrost may be something I can do – if the locals don’t just shun me and chase me from the zone on entrance due to my gimp-ness, we’ll see! I also spent some time wandering around Fallen Gate with these same three friends. I died, twice. Apparently my monk is not as uber as she likes to think she is. Go figure.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the DAZ Studio bit lately. Creating some images for friends, making a few signatures, that sort of thing. Nothing exceptionally fancy, but it keeps me out of trouble (for now).

Sorry that the blog posts have been quite lacking lately, hopefully I’ll feel more inspired in the upcoming week!

Finally, after doing the harvesting quest 30 times – Silhouette obtained her title. I don’t expect to wear it that often, it’s horribly long, but having accomplished it was nice enough. I had not done a single one of the quests yesterday, and that was my goal. It was easy enough to get the first 20 done, after all the reward of house items is always great. I got my scroll, and then my dragon – and decided to push for the last 10 rounds I needed for the title. I finally settled that I would do the evil version on one character, and then the good version on Arysh.

Nostalgia is sitting at part way through 26 currently. I’ll be away a portion of this weekend, and won’t have too much time to grind writs. I’ve been waiting for some crafting vitality to build up as well – and I’ll need to harvest more supplies. With 5 of my crafters at level 80, I of course have little motivation to actually want to craft. I have two sitting at level 40, and one at level 20. Those levels are so low that it’s difficult to want to grind out writs – status barely trickles as it is.

New member joined the guild last night, someone from splitpaw who had heard about our goals of reaching 30. Splitpaw is a EU server, so I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to see them online much, but I’m always glad to have more members.

Other then repeating quests (over and over) things are fairly quiet. I keep hearing everyone talking about Spore, and WAR, and it’s making me itch a little (as in, want to play) but not quite enough yet to actually draw me into them fully. We’ll see how it goes!

Only 14 more days until Issue 15 of Beckett MOG is released – I am SUPER excited about this, no doubt people will be hearing much more in future posts.

Above is the miniature replica of the Temple of Life – part of the new live events going on surrounding the void storms and all that goodness. You also got another book with this ‘quest’ (I’m reluctant to call it a quest because your journal does not actually update at all while working on this) that sparkles. It’s part three to a series though which makes me wonder where part one and two may be located. I’ve started putting together a little shelf of information / items obtained while working through this lead-in to the newest expansion.

To obtain your very one replica of the temple of life:

There’s no real quest involved, which may be why this item is so difficult to find. What you need to do is head to North Qeynos, to the temple of life. If you’re evil aligned beware of the level 80 epic guards who may try to thwart you. Once you’re at the temple, step into the water and you will see a node called ‘a glowing school of koalindl’ that you can harvest. Fish up one of those, and open your inventory. You will see the fish there – right click the object and examine it, you’ll have an option to set it free.

Do so, and you’ll receive a key.
Now it’s time to head to the down below. Which is level 1 of the sewers of Qeynos. At /waypoint -206, 0, -24 you will find a chest – use your new found key on it and you will find a new book for your house, along with the miniature replica of the temple of life.

You can find my complete write up on the Beckett MOG forums here including how to get those cute little Everfrost plushies that were added.

Last night aside from getting the temple quest done, I decided it was time to work on the harvesting quest. Silhouette had yet to complete a single one. Something to keep in mind – each one of the four quests offered rewards you with aa for T2+ because they all have different titles. They also count towards your quest count, each one showing up in your journal. So what I have been doing is going through each tier and doing all the quests per tier, to get the aa from them, as well as getting my quest count up. Excluding T1 that will be 28 quests, then I can just run the simple ones the last two times to finish off the 30 I need for the title.

I did manage to wiggle my way into Everfrost for a little bit early yesterday morning, finishing off the charm quest on Silhouette – even though it took a few hours of hunting sheep. If people had of been willing to group together, it would have gone a lot quicker.

While I was in the Down Below working on my temple of life quest, I decided I may as well hang out and collect the red shinies for my jello cube house pet. You get a choice of three cubes, one is clear (the one pictured) another green slime, and another looks like a wooden crate. I’d rather be able to tell these items to sit still and not move anywhere, but they can freely roam around Silhouette’s 5 room Gorowyn house along with her billy doll (who is just weird, every time I zone in he makes for the stairs and wanders away).

Yesterday was my first trip into Veksar in EQ2. I had exceptionally fond memories of the zone from EQ1, especially since Nostalgia the Guild had just been there not too long ago. I spent days and weeks and months in the zone back in 2003. I even did the dragon raid as one of my very first raids and it was so much fun. Not with a proper raid of course, back then Veksar was already old news. I had high expectations though.

I was dissapointed with this new Veksar. I understand it’s just a teaser and therefor not very large. How come we couldn’t have gotten a completed Kurn’s Tower that we were promised with the release of RoK?

The zone reminded me of every other sewer zone in EQ2, especially the Freeport hideout where you have to kill an epic. Granted, there was one portion of this zone that was underwater (the entrance to zone in – and just past once you’re in the zone) but I had expected.. I don’t know, more.

There are only four named in the zone, and my group may have had a single death or two when someone took too much of an AOE, but we went in with 1 shadowknight tank, 1 templar, 1 assassin, 1 conj, 1 illusionist, and myself playing dirge and had no issues at all. We got three legendary chests and a master chest though I didn’t win a single thing. Not even a piece of trash loot – go figure. One item was an upgrade to the conj, everything else was just roll for greed. The master wasn’t anything anyone could use.

I know there are at least three fabled pretties within the zone, but no one saw any of them this time around. The entire zone didn’t even take 45 minutes. and that was with some pretty careful pulling by the tank. The final named had some adds spawn with the encounter that the enchanter made short work of, and has a nasty elemental AOE. The named before that one splits into pieces – but if you tank it in the front left hand corner (if you’re at the doorway facing inwards) you don’t actually get any of those adds and you can single pull them later. There are some worms that spawn a la Deathtoll style, and you have to turn some statues and place a rod – but other then that the zone left me with very little desire to go back.

There are four quests that involve the zone. One has you killing the mobs around the Omen’s Call docks first. Get that done and it opens up another quest for within the zone. Once you have the three quests you’ll find a fourth from a corpse in one of the rooms. The quests require some killing, some clicking, and you get nothing but some coin and a book.

I was far more impressed with the revamp of Everfrost then by the release of this instance. Did you know (of course you did) that there is a quested charm slot item from Everfrost that rivals and surpasses almost every single other charm slot item out there aside from high end raid charms? It’s better then the contested Mayong charm item. Better then the wishbone crafted item – there are five choices of charm, for every class, and the quest is simple.

Of course it’s not so simple right now because there are 40+ people in everfrost who are level 80’s trying to complete this amazing quest.

It’s like the Butcherblock charm item quest that people were doing, since it was pretty good (before the faction recipes were added that include the wishbone etc). A level 25 solo quested item can surpass T8 easily. Now we see it again with Everfrost. It’s great that all of these things are getting revamped, and I’m enjoying the extra content. I have to wonder to myself though what exactly is it doing for the balance of the game.