Tag: EQ2

 

With the GU39 being implemented yesterday, I of course (along with the majority of the server) found myself in the shard of fear. The zone is huge, and I loved that aspect of it. It’s one of the few out door dungeons EQ2 has. Not even sure if the others count since they’re raid zones and not dungeons (I’m thinking of the other one in the Feerrott, with those T5 epics that’s an out door zone). So for once I wasn’t doing an instance in a stuffy hallway or house or whatever. The entire thing is out doors. It reminded me both of the Feerrott, and the original Plane of Fear. There are three epicx2’s in the zone, The Dracolich, Agony, and of course Terror, who’s the boss of the zone. The majority of the zone is also orange con to a level 70, so that makes it some what difficult. There are some random quests in the zone, the puzzles were far easier then Unrest to figure out though. It’s a nice tide-over until RoK hits us in November. I did of course get naked from being smushed in there my first time through. I wouldn’t suggest heading in there unless you know your group, and know them well. It was fun none the less.

Last night also saw me heading into LoA (people still DO that zone?) no deaths, 2nd on the heal parse, not that I was keeping track, honestly. After that quick run through the raid made their way to Emerald Halls where we beat our heads against a wall for an hour or two. Or at least that’s exactly what it felt like. A bunch of people left after LoA so I swapped out my warden for the templar. Then we got another templar, so I swapped out for my bard since we were short a few. It’s really the down side to having so many high level alts. While I don’t mind swapping right now since none of them really need anything with RoK coming up, I am hoping to settle down some what once the expansion hits.

Cordanim is of course taking his break from EQ2 and playing WoW some, he’s also headed to France, lucky him! Gothun has been playing his assassin a lot lately which he enjoys, happy to hear. Calreth is of course doing crazy writs and crafting, still can’t believe he leveled so fast. One of my old friends from EQ1 may be coming to the game in November once RoK goes live, that’ll be nice, hopefully I can convince them to stay, and get another guilded into Torrent Knights (who hit level 26 last night woot!). Been chattering to both Albrta and Kilanna plenty as well, both wonderful ladies.

The cold weather is getting closer every day, and I’m absolutely loving it. It makes for nice lazy days crafting, watching the leaves change colours. Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, profit ui is the best EQ2 UI I’ve ever used, I just love it. They added a toggle yesterday that enables you to click a cure in your group window (as you’d typically do) and it will interrupt whatever spell you happen to be casting, and cast the cure. I love it. It’s fantastic. The new update to 4.0 was certainly worth it and I’d highly recommend this UI to anyone who happens to dislike default. It takes a little getting used to, but I doubt I’d ever go back now, especially with their online updater, so I don’t have to keep going to the eq2interface site in order to download my updates.

More updates later, tonight is HoS.. (people still do that zone too?!)

 

I’ve made previous posts about my good experiences with the customer service on EQ2, and today was no exception. I’ve had to contact them about numerous things through petitions, from lost chests, to deleted characters, and name changes. I’ve always been answered in a timely manor, never more then a few hours for a reply. Sure, it may be a slight pain to have to use the browser window for a petition and fill out their forms, but no more so then having to fill out anything else. Plus, I know they record it and get it that way, it’s not getting lost anywhere. I can check the status at any time.

Anyhow.

Backstory: Five or Six months ago, I relinquished my house before actually moving anything out of it. A whole house filled with quested books (about 100 of them) deity quest rewards (the world event ones) expensive paintings (the 450,000 status ones of Freeport and Qeynos) some elaborate tradeskill machines, and 200 other items. I decided at the time, since I was not playing the character that often, that I didn’t care about those items. I was playing a different character and her house was just fine. Foolish of me, yes.

Today: Lately I’ve been playing the character. A lot. It’s Arysh in fact who lost all of her house items. I decided on a whim to see if there was any chance at all that the lost house items could be restored to me. Fully aware of the fact that I’d probably be told no. Not only due to the span of time I left between relinquishing and petitioning, but also because that would be 200+ items that would have to be searched for, as well as the fact that my character had since moved homes twice, her character name changed once, and server transferred three times between then and today. Not an easy Task.

Three GM responses later, and as many details as I could provide, I was contacted and told that they had good news – my items would be given back to me, after 6 hours they had compiled a list of items that I had lost when I relinquished, and would drop them into my inventory. My jaw dropped and I practically screamed with joy. One at a time the items began appearing in my inventory. I started dropping them into Arysh’ home, ecstatic. Wow. Now that’s service.

I knew when I petitioned that I shouldn’t get my hopes up, and I knew it was my fault for relinquishing, you’re even given messages about it. with the newly added moving crates there’s no relinquishing involved (thank goodness). I made sure to give a huge thank you to all those involved, as they certainly went above and beyond what they had to do.

Just remember when you’re trying to get something returned or a question answered, that these people who work in customer service, are just that. People. I was polite, and patient, and knew they’d either be able to help, or not be able. Either way I would be ok with the response. Of course I was a million times happier once my issue had been resolved, but yeah.. what a great day.

 

For those who have known me for some time (how many of my posts start like that any how?) my druid Arysh (formally known as Silverstep) started out a warden. However, I betrayed her when I joined Torrent Knights on Lucan D’Lere since they were short a fury and I had no qualms doing it. After some time though, I decided I wanted to go back to being a warden, so that’s what I spent this weekend doing. Well, a few hours this weekend at least. Fury are great healers, don’t get me wrong, but much like the inquisitor class, they’re also used for DPS. For solo work and pvp they’re amazing, but I wanted something that was far more focused on healing. I only had one piece of gear that I’d loose, which was my hat. I managed to find a fairly good Unrest group last night and what would you know, my legendary hat dropped, a sign that I was meant to be a warden.

I’ve always envied those people who stuck through with their classes. I’ve never managed to do it. I worked so hard on the druid when I played her, having completed her claymore, DT access, Godking weapon, MoA, and Chel’Drak ring. She didn’t get her SoD done (yet) though because I was playing with Dasie instead. So I’ve decided to dedicate some time to the warden and try to complete it. I’m collecting statues (again) and uh, no, it’s not fun. Not any more fun then the first time I attempted it.

I’ve signed up for FTH and Clockwork tonight, hopefully I’ll get a spot on the raid, if not that’s alright though. I know there is a huge surplus of druids typically. I’m hoping maybe I can prove myself as a “better then average” one though. I know the class pretty dang well, and when I was doing MMIS in a melee dps group on Saturday night I parsed 2nd zone wide on the heal parse. I know heal parses are not the end all be all, but when a fury in a melee dps group is you’re second highest.. well, they’re either doing something right, or the other healers are doing something wrong. Or a little of both. It was a bit of an off night and we didn’t quite make it as far as we’d like, but I had fun none the less.

Today I worked on my armor quest for some time, I like the graphic of it. The picture above has Arysh in Thundering Steppes smacking around some skeletons. I had my setting quality turned quite high, and for the first time ever realized that the ravine throughout the zone is actually made of a whole lot of skulls. I was amazed that I’d never noticed it before. I actually didn’t alter the screen shot in any way, aside to add a frame around it, I love the way it turned out.

I’ve been dealing with petitions for most of the day (not bad ones either, more details on it tomorrow when I know the result) and again I have to say I’ve never had a bad experience with the support staff from SoE. Hopefully they can help me out with my issue, and I’ll be one happy camper. If not though, I know they at least tried and I appreciate it.

Other then that, looking forward to the Shard of Fear instance that opens later this week (if all goes according to plan) and other random updates. Things in game are great.

 

Ok, so the image above actually looks far better in it’s full version (it’s shrunk to about half the size here so that my blog doesn’t scream in agony, nor the people who have to upload the images) but I did have a lot of fun creating it. It uses a combination of three screen shots, adjusted and what not to suit my taste. The eyes on Arysh took a lot of work as they were pretty much just black pupils. It’s hard to see exactly what I’ve done to the shot without seeing the originals, but you’ll just have to take my word on it, I changed a lot.

I managed to get Ishbel to level 57 today, actually I grabbed her level quite early on in the day and then spent the majority of the rest of it on the couch battling the sniffles and playing with photoshop. Hopefully it’s just a 24 hour type thing that is gone before I know it. Anyhow, yes, level 57. I’ve run out of Lesser Faydark quests to do, and I’m nearly out of TT quests as well. I spent some time actually doing the warg quests in Somborn since I could just mez (providing it landed) the ones I needed before using the collar on them. I did die once do to a resist, but it went far smoother then I had figured it would, especially since the final mob was red to me and the ones before that were all orange.

I can get experience with level 70’s now, which is perfect for questing. It means I don’t have to be mentored to get an update, important. I spent more time killing heroic brownies yesterday (guess what, the four hours I spent killing solo brownies was wasted.. ) the cowl of the trickster drops from heroic ones only. Well. That sure was nice to learn. At least I found out now and not later I suppose. I finished the Wu chain, as well as the Nybright chain, both which reward with plenty of items and coin. In fact I think over the past three days as I’ve been leveling the coercer I’ve made about 15p from vendor trash alone, as well as doing all those wonderful basket quests (which I’ve completed all of and can’t obtain any more boo). So what’s next on the agenda? I’m not sure if I want to take a little break from the coercer, or if I want to play another alt, or maybe one of my level 70’s or what. I’m still excited and looking forward to the new content coming later this week, including the new instance which I’m sure will be some what difficult. Other then chattering to old friends, playing around in TK, and leveling the coercer, I haven’t been up to too much. I’m thinking of making some simple T6 adornments (namely the +power / +hp ones) to sell on the broker since I’ve transmuted so much lower level stuff lately, we’ll see how it goes.

 

I’ve actually been sticking with an alt, how unique is that. I’m sure that hell must have frozen over or something while I was not looking. The past three days I’ve been dedicated to my coercer, Ishbel. Her role play story is that she’s actually the alter ego of Stargrace, my wood elf illusionist. Ishbel is everything that Stargrace is not. I haven’t managed to get a whole lot of role play going on her, but I enjoy having a back story none the less. Above is the paper doll image I’ve created for her (the image of her is actually with her posing in Maj’Dul, not that you can see that, I’ve added the library background from West Freeport) the forums appear to be down today though, so I’m unable to post it on her eq2player profile. Soon as it’s back up I’ll upload the image there and that’ll be three of the 13 alts done.

I’ve been trying to farm the cowl of the trickster which apparently drops from brownies in Lesser Faydark, to no avail. I spent about three hours there last night and had lots of other drops (which covered my repair costs at least) but no cowl. I wasn’t sure which was worse, the fact that I spent three hours there farming solo mobs, or the fact that I got 40% experience (with no vitality) killing those solo brownies. Ah well. I did manage to snag lots of L&L pieces. Not that I got the L&L started at all.

I’ve learned a few things while playing my coercer this time around. If anyone’s known me long enough you know that Stargrace was actually a coercer to start. I betrayed her way back when she was level 10 or so, and then betrayed back to illusionist for my guild about a year ago. I dreaded leveling up the coercer. It was before EoF and the zones and quests were drab. I couldn’t get a group for the life of me, and it felt like I struggled through the 50’s forever. So what have I learned between then and now?

1. Upgrade those charm spells

If you plan on doing any sort of solo work what so ever, upgrade those spells. I was lucky, I found the level 47 charm for 1p. It doesn’t get upgraded until 61, so that’s a big chunk of key levels right there. It was a steal. I also bought the level 61 m1 charm for 25p which was also a great bargain in my opinion. There are very few spells that I’d ever pay that amount for, but a m1 charm vs an adept3 is a huge difference. In fact I didn’t realize the difference until I played with the two. It’s the difference of a 22k nuke vs. a 5k nuke. No, it doesn’t make your charmed pets physically stronger (which I think it should do) but it makes their dps differ by a huge amount. These spells are key to your class. However, since in most groups, and the majority of raids, you will never get to USE these charms – it’s debatable. It’s all in how you play your class.

2. Get used to dying

This was actually my most difficult concept to get used to, and it took me a lot of time. I get upset when I die over and over, I just can’t help it. I like to think I’m a fairly good player, and dying means I’m a bad player — not true. I’ve probably died on my coercer more then any other class I’ve ever leveled up, but honestly it’s the way the class works that makes it so. If you’re fighting an encounter that’s relatively hard, chances are your pet is going to break. Then you’re going to end up with 10 adds, and before you know it you’re going to be a pancake. It happens. Get over it. Dust yourself back off, go charm another pet, and try again. I know it’s not fun to pay those repair bills, but the faster a coercer learns that “if it can go wrong it will go wrong” sort of mentality, they’ll be 100 times better off. Expect your pet to break every time you start a fight. I can’t believe the number of times I’d just charmed a mob, went to the kitchen to get a drink of water, and have it break on me in the .5 seconds I was gone and smush me. Lesson learned. I have a jug of water on my desk.

3. Learn your limitations

Probably another one of those good key rules. Learn what you can handle. Don’t charm some random mob and then expect to start soloing heroic content. It doesn’t happen. Learn what you can handle and what you can obviously not handle. Go look up some of the pet guides out there (there are a few, and they’re wonderful) and learn what is good in what situation. Get to really know your class. Get a method down for working your way through your levels. Get comfortable with it. If you can learn your limitations and what your abilities are you’ll be much happier and should die less.

Most of all of course, have fun. I’m honestly having so much fun playing this class and learning my limitations (a huge portion of that is due to the fact that I just simply love my master charm spells) that I haven’t even felt the want or need to play another class lately. Anyone who knows me understands that’s something of a feat. I have three level 50+ characters just sitting in tier 6 because I hate the 50’s, and even though I’ve completed most of the solo chains in both Sinking Sands and Lesser Faydark, I’ve moved on to KoS zones and started basket quests which are still quite fun (even when yellow). So will this be my next class to level 70? Hopefully. I’d like to get 70 before RoK comes out. Yes, that’ll be my 6th level 70 character – but hey you can never have too much selection, hmms?