EQ2 – Page 5 – A Pixel Nomad

A Response to a Response (or Time Management)

This post is in response to one I read over at Inventory Full and it probably won’t offer any useful information at all, but I did want to explain how I manage my time these days in order to be able to complete what I can in EQ2.

I “play” roughly two hours a day. I put quotes around play because I’m actually in game all day long. I have EQ2 set up on my MacBook Pro which I keep beside the couch, and the couch is basically where I live as I nurse the newborn / his change table is nearby / Netflix is nearby / etc. So when I’m nursing or doing something else I can still watch chat and while I may not actually be moving my character around, I can type on-handed, or my husband can drag me around an instance and I can hit accept for loot. I don’t consider this actively playing though.

What it comes down to is time management. It takes approximately one hour to grab the quests and run through every solo and advanced solo dungeon in KA (it takes myself as a necromancer and my husband as a wizard this amount of time, your time may vary). That leaves one more hour for whatever else happens to catch my fancy that isn’t group related, because on Antonia Bayle at least there’s no way I’m going to find a group in that time or complete a dungeon. Normally I just end up crafting or running through older instances. There are so few people on Antonia Bayle that the Jarsath Wastes PQ has failed multiple times now since the recent changes (the statue stays kneeling for less time than before). I do still manage to complete the PQs a few times a day though, since I’m logged into the game all day long and they respawn every two hours (approx). I complete each of them maybe three times. I typically leave my character in the guild hall transportation room or in JW / Fens in order to be right where the action is when it goes live. I can do all of that one handed, or have the husband move my characters for me.

Do I think the expansion was worth the cost? For the basic version, yes, I certainly do. I’m getting more than my monies worth out of it and I think the value is great, especially because there IS a lot of content – it’s just content that you have to repeat, every day. How many times do you want to run through the exact same solo / advanced solo dungeons before you get bored of it. The signature line takes my characters two or three days to complete, and I have 7 level 100 characters. I was also disappointed that Daybreak didn’t add any bonus experience or any Frostfell sales over the holidays, it just felt very un-festive.

That being said, there’s lots of things I’m not currently working on that I should / could / will one day work on. I need to complete the Thalumbra signature line on a few characters still. I kept up with crafting on that one, but not adventuring. I still haven’t completed all of the Frostfell quests. The Mushroom Grotto event was a bust (for me) since it doesn’t last enough time, and of course the holidays are busy for everyone.

With the spare time that I DO get in game, I make sure I know what I’m doing and I run off and do that right away because I don’t know how long that time will last. Lately that includes farming one very specific solo dungeon when my timers are up because an item there sells on our server for 150k (charm with 1k potency). I could really use that sort of cash.

Anyway. That’s how I’m spending my time these days. Again please do feel free to drop me a hello in game! I’m on Antonia Bayle as Stargrace / Quails / Mousical – it may take me a few to respond if I’m not actually around but in most cases I have no issue watching the chat scroll by. Helps to make me feel a bit more human instead of a constant milking machine…

Happy gaming! No matter where you find yourself.

A Balance Between Group and Solo

I mentioned in my previous post that I don’t have a lot of free time and that what free time I do have is pretty sporadic, so I can’t really LFG in EQ2 to any great extent. The thing is, I WANT to play more, and I want to do group content, and I want to experience all of that. I just can’t, at least not right now.

So how do I progress my character in the meantime?

Well, in Kunark Ascending that means a lot of solo and advanced solo dungeons. Over and over. I pass the gear to my alts, and when the alts are full I salvage or transmute it.

It means doing the signature line, getting my ethereals, and then working on ascension which is pretty easy because it just requires experience. Doing the public quests in Jarsath Wastes and Fens of Nathsar contribute a huge chunk of that daily.

Then there’s faction grinding (pretty boring) key quests (timed, I can’t always do these), and the crafting grind which includes more factioning. There’s collecting status and leveling the guild, and – well. That’s about all I’ve found to do, aside from some meta achievements like running old zones, collecting shinies, or trying to make coin. Truth of the matter is that without the time to dedicate to first finding and then completing group dungeons there’s not a whole lot I can do. This game isn’t like world of warcraft, with queues and LFRaid. It’s one thing I really miss about WoW. No matter how much (or how little) time I had I felt as though I could still experience a large portion of the expansion and I didn’t have to dedicate more than an hour here and there to it. In EQ2 there’s no way for me to participate in any raids at all and so most zones are places I will only see if they turn them into a non-combat zone (has happened a few times, Daybreak is pretty good at re-using zones).

Does this make me sad? Does it bug me that I paid for a subscription to a game where I can’t actually experience all of the content it has to offer?

Not really. I knew what I was getting into. I knew I wouldn’t have the time to dedicate to it that I might once have had. It won’t always be that way, either. In the meantime I’ll live vicariously through those who are doing the group content and go back to my crafting.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Throwback Thursday

It’s amazing how we look back at things we’ve done throughout our lives and suddenly realize just how much time has passed. 8 years ago this month I was writing articles for Beckett Massive Online Gamer about EQ and EQ II. Today I took a bunch of time to go through some of those articles and just reminisce. One of my favourite features was doing the class guides, especially bards. I got to interview some really fantastic people (some who I’m still friends with today!) and I had a blast doing it. The four years I spent writing for Beckett was (I feel) some of the most rewarding writing I ever did and not only because I could pick it up from a local book store as a physical object (how cool is that), but because of the leeway I was given in my articles to write my way and not have to follow a lot of strict rules. Ah, memories..

Beautiful, but Slightly Annoying

I’m questing through Altar of Malice right now in EQ2. It’s the expansion that took us from 95 to 100, and it’s a few behind these days so everywhere I go is pretty empty as players opt to get to 100 by experience grinding elsewhere (I can hardly blame them). My first days in Tranquil Sea were uneventful. I didn’t enjoy the quest lines and the story didn’t pick up until I got to Phantom Sea. Then it all got much more interesting.

One of my least favourite type of quests are the ones that require you to harvest something but as you’re harvesting you get a message like the one below.

That’s right, you managed to pick up the item but OH NO it crumbled to dust! Now you have to harvest another one. Honestly, these quests are nothing but annoying, especially when (as I have mentioned numerous times) RNG and I are not friends. There’s a handful of these types of quests scattered throughout the Altar of Malice timeline, and every single one made me groan. Just let me harvest double the amount instead of tossing in these failures! At least then I have some idea of progression and achievement instead of feeling bad that I’ve failed, again.

With that annoyance out of the way.. the expansion is amazing looking. It”s probably one of the prettiest places I’ve seen in EQ2. The dungeons are beautiful, and I found myself taking a lot of screenshots.

Now I continue to work my way to level 100, so I can at least have one character at the cap. Sure, I’ve got two crafters (out of 9) at 100 already, but that doesn’t really give me the same sense of achievement. Ideally I’d like to get a few more characters to 100, but we’ll see how that goes (as always). It’s nice to be playing in Norrath again, even if my subscription is up in a month. I’d like to be able to afford a krono or some other means of subscription but at 100,000 plat that’s just a bit out of my range.

Still, I’ll enjoy things in the meantime.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Comfort Gaming

I’ve talked about this before in-depth, but this week more than others I find myself drawn to “comfort gaming”. Basically just like comfort food, we all have games that we’re very comfortable with. Maybe we don’t give them as much attention as we wish we did, or maybe we’ve moved on over the years to something more shiny, or maybe we’ve just stopped playing for whatever reason. Whatever the case may be, this week has been all about comfort gaming for me, and nothing gives me that feeling like EverQuest 2.

Lets face it, we all have a really bad week here and there. Mine started out with a doctor appointment that I was pretty sure was going to be bad news. Turns out, it was. There’s potentially something wrong with my pregnancy so now I have to fly to Vancouver for testing (in approximately a week) so I can find out what’s wrong, and how sever it is, and what (if anything) I can do to prepare myself for whatever comes next. Getting bad news sucks. Getting bad news and then having to wait a week before knowing anything sucks even more. Getting bad news, having to wait, and then having to take an unexpectedly expensive trip to find out results is even more stress. Then I found out my friend in EQ2 passed away after losing his fight with depression (which I wrote about here, too). Needless to say my weekend and the beginning of this week has certainly been filled with far more downs than ups. I’m ready for something good to come along.

That’s why turning to these comfort games is something I fully embrace. I’m not saying ignore the world or pretend the problems don’t exist, but give yourself a bit of a break. You’re dealing with some pretty rough times, you need some space to step away and collect yourself.

I decided nothing really gave me that feeling as much as leveling up a new character and so I created two. One is Milay, a berserker, and the other is Quails, a channeler. I logged in a second account and decided to power level both characters (one at a time) because what I really wanted to do was just plow through content without any thoughts at all.

So that’s exactly what I did.

Both characters are now at level 50, brokers are stocked with lots of yummy items for sale, and I feel a bit better about things (or at least calmer). Is it a perfect solution? No, of course not, but I can’t stress enough how much gaming has helped me keep my sanity in otherwise impossible situations. I had a lot of fun, and got to relax. It’s a great combination.