Tag: EQ2

Sharatan Reveur, a swashbuckler from Qeynos. She was the most common, ordinary woman you would have found wandering the streets of the illustrious city, and she knew it. She had no horrible background story to go with her heritage, she had no deep dark secrets buried in her closet (these days it seemed that everyone and their mount was a vampire), she didn’t have any outstanding warrants to her name (that she knew of, at least). She was quiet, kept to herself, and preferred it that way for the most part. Sure there was the odd time where she had peered into the Lion’s Mane Inn and wished that it were her at those tables bustling full of activity, but she knew deep down that after an hour or two of the attention she would grow bored. She spent long hours at the Raven Mythic, an inn that many from Norrath frequented. She sat alone in the center of the room and listened to the going-ons of everyone else around her while none paid her any attention and she was content with that. Content to listen and to learn.

Her parents were wealthy merchants who earned their living in North Qeynos, happily married for over forty years the couple still made people sick with their adoration of each other. Sharatan had no brothers or sisters to speak of, her parents had been satisfied with their one child. Secretly her father had hopped that Sharatan would want to get into the family business, but when she showed absolutely no interest in numbers (or selling things, or interacting with the public) he had accepted  her own decision to visit the local scout guild and move from there.

This early morning she was outside in Elddar Grove, training at the monk dojo. She often spent long hours here moving silently with her daggers strapped to her hips. She moved quietly through her training stances, trying to obtain the sense of flow and smoothness that she saw other swashbucklers move with. She bounced deftly from the balls of her feet up onto her toes, her arms brandished above her head in an imposing move. A grind stretched from ear to ear, after all how could she not smile when she was doing something she loved so much. The only activity she saw this early morning was Slipps, a ratonga, moving from store to store handing out pamphlets about the upcoming Festival of Unity. This would be Sharatan’s first time at the festival, and she was more then a little excited about it. In fact it was all she could think about (besides her training of course) for the past few weeks. She was sure she would meet some interesting people there, and have a fantastic time. After all, what could go wrong?

(( Every so often I like to post a roleplay story about my characters, I do play on Antonia Bayle after all! Sharatan is my 83 swashbuckler who I have been working on as of late. I’m always looking to mentor and do smaller things in game, so if you’re looking for some dps, please don’t hesitate to send me a tell! I am really enjoying playing something that is not support or a healer, it’s very different then my usual branch of character, and coming up with a background story for Sharatan is just a pleasure. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself! ))

 

It’s almost that time again, time for the largest eq2 player run festival! The Festival of Unity has been around for a number of years now (5!), and this year it’s bigger then ever. I’ve gone to every single one, and even if you’re not a large roleplay gamer I HIGHLY suggest you check it out. Here are some of my older posts about the festivals on Antonia Bayle – I’m including posts from the counter-part, the festival of discord as well.

• 2007 festival (unity)
• 2008 festival (discord)
• 2009 festival (unity)
• 2009 festival (discord)
• 2010 festival (of the sands)

Each year the festivals grow in size, and this year there are 15 different guilds involved. You can check out the Festival on facebook, and you can also check out a map of the events as well as the time over on their guild portal page. The opening ceremonies begin June 19th (this Sunday) at 2pm EST and will end at 10pm EST. They’ve also included a very thorough FAQ about the festival, so if you have questions be sure to check out their forums.

Some events previously have included Feyiron Chef (one of my favorites) as well as races, matches of strength, and of course the grounds are filled with vendors selling their wears and entertaining the crowds. So many people show up to this that you may have to adjust your settings or risk crashing. I will be wandering the event in one guise or another (I haven’t decided which character I’ll be bringing yet) so if you want to say hello feel free! It’s worth creating a character on Antonia Bayle just for this event.

It’s amazing how easy it is to fall behind the curve in any given MMO when you take a little break from it. As mentioned previously, I had taken a break from EQ2 right before DoV hit – although to be honest I didn’t play that much Sentinel’s Fate, either.  It was getting hard for me to find inspiration within the game to keep me logging in and so in my true nomadic gamer fashion I wandered around to a few other games before eventually returning back to EQ2. One of my major issues has always been the number of alts I have. It’s incredibly difficult to concentrate on playing one character when you have 10 of them at max level and are not shy about volunteering whoever is required to get the job done. Sure, I have my favorites, but none of them are anywhere near the new cap of 300 aa, and I don’t even have any of them at 250 aa at this point in time. I need to work on that.

Of course after deciding to focus on my coercer (after all, I have 3 level 90 enchanters, two of them coercers, I obviously enjoy playing them) my group for the evening already contained one so I switched off to my troubador. Who then proceeded to get so many upgrades I lost count. The group consisted of Ultann (guild mate, Shadowknight), Ibeogur (another guild mate, berserker), and then three friends of Ultann’s, a wizard, inquisitor, and the coercer. We started out in Tower of Frozen Shadow: Shadowed corridors, and then moved to Umbral Halls, an finished off with Haunt of Syl’Tor. The zones are marked on eq2i as being ‘easy to moderate’ and they were. We had a little difficulty with the final boss of the last zone, but the group was amazing and didn’t wipe at all. Of course, myself and Ibeogur were completely new to DoV in general, and everything was an upgrade. We felt more like charity cases being pulled along then anything else – especially after I saw the parses that had everyone well above where I was. Granted, my coercer only has 175 aa at this point in time, but it was still really discouraging.

It will take me some time (and a lot of focusing and dedication) to get my characters where I think they ‘should’ be – but it gives me a goal to work towards and that’s always a great motivational tool. I also happened to pick up a few bits and pieces for my defiler, and at least the troubador is wearing some nice gear now. The rest of my evening was spent trying to decide if I wanted to 1. betray to dirge. and 2. switch from playing the coercer to the troubador (which is something I always end up debating when I switch characters, that’s why I have so many ‘mains’). I haven’t come to a conclusion yet, I suppose we’ll just have to see what this week brings.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself! If you happen to be playing EQ2 (or EQ2X) you can say hello with a /tell antonia_bayle.name   I am typically on stargrace (defiler), although you can also find me there as minxes (the coercer), and goudia (my troubador), arysh (the warden), and a handful of other characters. If you happen to need an extra for a group be sure to look me up!

As a side note, the festival of unity starts next week – and I couldn’t be more excited! This will be the 5th year (I believe) that the festival has run, and I’ve had the pleasure of attending every year so far. If you’ve ever wanted to check out an amazing player run festival, this is the one for you.

My coercer (one of three level 90 enchanters that I have) is pretty behind in aa. I’ve neglected a few of my characters over the years, leveling them up and then barely playing them. Yesterday I was in the mood to play her so I spent some time hanging out with the guild while we did a few older dungeons as a trio, and then headed off to a PQ (public quest) or two to try to get myself some upgrades. It was a good thing I did, too. I ended up winning the breast plate from the very first PQ I did (the fabled one) and it was an enormous upgrade. I browsed the broker and picked up a few pieces of gear that were relatively cheap (a plat or two here and there) and by the time my day was done I’d gone from having 16,000 hp to some where upwards of 22,000 which is still relatively low but much better then I was at. I also managed to get my critical mitigation to 70%, and I need that stat much higher as well but again it’s a start.

The guild trio’d a few Sentinel’s Fate zones, library and research halls, it was good for coin and transmutables. I was concerned that we wouldn’t be able to trio research halls, but we did just fine. I played the coercer, and was joined by Ibeogur (berserker) and Noc (inquisitor). We had a good time, and it felt nice to be playing again.

It’s been a little while since I’ve devoted any serious time to EQ2, and I don’t have the faintest idea what dungeons are like in DoV. In fact I’ve barely done anything at all in DoV, aside from working on the flying mount quests and a few crafting quests here and there. I’m excited to get back into things – and lets not forget that the Festival of Unity starts very soon on the Antonia Bayle server. I’ve gone every year since they’ve hosted it, and this year will be no different. It’s one of the largest player run events in EQ2, and if you haven’t checked it out before I highly recommend it.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

I managed to do a few more public quests yesterday but still feel like healers get the short end of the stick. I don’t believe that I’m the only one who feels this way either – out of three raids of 24 people there were only four healers (one per group) in any one of the raids. There were a LOT of crusaders, at least two or three for every group. They’ve been the flavour of the month for so long now due to their healing / dps / tanking capabilities that it no longer surprises me. Luck was with me for one PQ as I did manage to get the fabled weapon. The breast piece eludes me, but I healed my little heart out on all of the raids and after dropping my settings down to the lowest rank I at least had no issues with lag. I switched back to my regular settings as soon as the PQ was completed, and roamed around the area looking for shinies. A lot of people in the PQ were boxing – some were boxing full groups of players, I could see them all auto following one another. It was a little odd to watch. The rewards from PQ are not that great any more, having their critical mitigation nerfed into oblivion, but for those of us who are still getting their feet wet with DoV it’s quite a large improvement. Yesterday I picked up shoulders, shoes, forearms, and a fourth piece that I can’t remember. It wasn’t the head piece. Ah well, no matter.

I’ve got two or three more days of questing before I get my flying mount, and I’m looking forward to that. So far only my crafter has obtained hers, and since I don’t use the character for anything besides crafting she really hasn’t used it too often. I wish we could fly in the city zones, as that would make getting to and from my guild hall a lot easier when my guild port is down (I play mostly evil aligned characters and the guild hall is located in Qeynos).

I haven’t been doing much decorating in game lately, but I have added to my book collection and I’m some where near the 473 mark (ok, exactly near there, hehe). I had a generous contribution of 20 books yesterday and gladly added them to the collection. I do want to decorated the remaining homes that I own, Stargrace (my 90 defiler) owns a dojo for relaxation as well as a Freeport home on top of the museum that I’ve worked on. There are also a few more ‘artifacts’ I wish to collect, for example the tapestries that are representatives of the Courts of Maj’Dul from Sinking Sands. These are new quests that were added when Sinking Sands went through a revamp, and I haven’t had time (or the patience) to complete them yet.

On that same note, I went through my settings and decided to hide all of the rewards from my quests, so I don’t know ahead of time what I’m getting. You may think that’s an odd thing to have an option for, but I really like being surprised. I don’t know if I’m getting a piece of gear or a house item (unless I’ve done the quest so many times that I’ve memorized the rewards). It’s a neat little feature and allows me to customize my game play even further, which is something I appreciate. It’s all in the details after all!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. It’s a glorious Wednesday!