Tag: EQ2

All about the Look

How important is the way your character looks to you? I know to some, it doesn’t matter. They’ll wear whatever they find and be happy with it, others are more particular. No matter what your fashion sense is, after five years (or more) of playing the same character I bet almost everyone enjoys some sort of change.

This is one of the main reasons why I enjoy the appearance gear of EQ2 – especially in a place where everyone looks similar. With set pieces being common (be they T1 or T4) these little ways to be individual are important to us. It’s also fantastic around holidays and it works as a marketing ploy (station market anyone) in order to sell these bits of ‘unique’ appearance gear. My only qualm with it is that the cloth wearers get the shaft in their appearance, but you can find ways to work around this (station market clothing as well as some sold by the city faction merchants).

I love looking for appearance gear. I could spend hours at the broker searching from levels 1-80 trying to find a piece to add, or looking at everyone I encounter to see what they are wearing. I wish every game out there had appearance slots – although I suppose some games just look so awesome there’s no need.

Last night I headed back to Obelisk of Ahkzul and the shield that I have been trying to get for months and months now did not drop. I wasn’t surprised. I’ve done this zone every day for at least three or four months and I’ve never seen it. A guild mate of mine has it though so I know it’s out there, some where. I’m tired of wearing the RoK shield my healer currently has. I suppose I could try to get the shield from WoE but knowing my luck it wouldn’t drop then either.

Are you going to be playing Champions Online? Starting today I have access for 90 days, so I’ll be giving it a whirl. While I have kept up with the news and other blog reports of this game I have not actually played it yet myself so all of my opinions and views will be brand new. It may also make me a bit slow to grasp things in the long run but I’m looking forward to it none the less. If you’re going to be playing let me know and hopefully we can meet up in game some time.

I also plan on taking advantage of the remaining days I have in WAR, I moved to a new quest hub and have been doing a few public quests. Surprisingly enough all of the zones are highly populated when I happen to be wandering around, with pockets of battle scattered all over the place. Maybe I can get in on some of it without having to worry about turning into a chicken. We’ll just have to see.

Aside from that, my play style has been fairly sparse, something I hope to remedy this weekend with the cooler weather (fingers crossed) but again we’ll just have to see!

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Hunting those Elusive Shiny

I love the island of Mara. It was an adventure pack offered to players for $5.99 (at the time, and free to those with station access) that eventually became free for everyone picking up one of the newer expansions (RoK, TSO). There are a handful of quests that involve this zone, though it’s also known as a crafter hub due to the Far Seas taking up residence in the buildings by the water front.

I spent some time this morning running through the Forsaken City (which is a zone just off of Mystic Lake – off of the Village of Shin) and collected pages and shiny all over. The zone is gray to me now but I still really love walking through the hallways and just exploring. Being able to auto mentor down to the appropriate level will be very nice.

Yesterday was a mixed bag of activity. I spent some time questing on Antonia Bayle with Wpus, on his berzerker Ibeogur (yes, he’s an ogre) and we ran around Kunzar jungle trying to get our footing. I haven’t quested there in quite some time, well not since the last 8 times I did the zone at least..

Later on in the day I did a quick Obelisk of Ahkzul run on the mystic (don’t ask) and then headed back to OoA again as well as Anchor of Bazzul on the illusionist. Nothing of note dropped but it was fun to get a few shards.

I spent the remainder of my evening relaxing, and harvesting shiny bits to sell on the broker. I finished off the TSO ‘epic’ shiny quest which allows you to see the blue shiny in instances, which is fantastic. It also cost me 200p to finish that collection though. Yes, it was worth it to me but it put me a little lower coin-wise then I’d like, so it’s time to make that back. I could always just go try to solo or duo shard of fear and get a choker or two to sell. Those are still going for anywhere from 50-100p depending on the time of day the sale occurs.

Unfortunately I’m in a lot of pain today, so I don’t know how much gaming I’ll be able to accomplish but  I should be able to dip in a little later on. We’ll just have to see how it goes. The week has gone by fast at least. Lets hope the weekend decides to slow down a little!

Happy gaming, no matter where it finds you.

Obelisk of Ahkzul (again)

Things have been going fairly well in game (out of game is some times a different story) even though I haven’t been talking in great details about it all here. The illusionist is now sporting three pieces of her T4 set, bracers, gloves, and boots. I find it a little frustrating that in order for non-raiders to obtain T1-3 it costs a LOT of shards – but for raiders it costs a few plat (which is nothing) and a very tiny amount of shards. Plus you don’t need T1-3 in order to get T4. I suppose much like raids are ‘work’ to those doing them, obtaining shards is ‘work’ for those who don’t raid. Not to mention you actually get a lot of shards while raiding. Ah well.

Apparently illusionists are not happy at all about the six set bonus they’re given. Since I only have my two set bonus (one piece away from 4) I don’t have any idea how it compares to other classes.

Last night I did a quick Obelisk of Ahkzul run in the hopes that I would get lucky and that shield would drop. No, it didn’t drop. I imagine that the day of the new expansion in February if I were to do the zone, it would drop. That would be my luck.

I’ve been outfitting an 80 defiler I have now with gear (she’s still mostly naked) and contemplating doing yet another epic. Taking a look at the defiler epic though almost made me not want to do it any more. Compared to other epics it looks annoying. It involves multiple zones, epics, instances, and encounters, not to mention 40,000 Reet faction, and at this exact moment I’m sitting on -44,000 faction. Ouch.

I’m still working on getting at least one (or multiple) characters to 200 aa. It seems to be moving very slow. I’m looking forward to the September changes, but in the mean time things are a little slow.

I need to get back to a little decorating, and I also forgot to post a book of the day (BoTD) on Saturday, so I’ll have to remind myself to do it this week. I just had so much to talk about last week, hehe. I hope everyone has an amazing Wednesday, no matter where you find yourself.

See you in Norrath!

A Warlock, an Illusionist, and a Mystic walk into a Raid…

Last night was an incredible night on so many levels. It may be an expansion behind, but I finally obtained my mythical weapon on both the illusionist and the mystic. A huge thank you to Paradise Lost on the Oasis server who run pick up Veeshan’s Peak raids once a month and invite members of the server (as well as friends and family from their guild) to join without having to pay an arm and a leg as other guilds charge.

Of course mythicals would not be quite as fun was there not a little drama that went along with the fight. I needed Leviathan on both the illusionist and the mystic, and since they are on seperate accounts it was decided that I would box this encounter. Since the mystic heals and the illusionist does nothing but stand there and power feed, it wasn’t a big deal – until I heard over guild vent something along the lines of ‘wow this illusionist is stupid’ (except they didn’t use the word stupid and used something harsher which I won’t repeat on my site). I spoke up on the mystic and said ‘oh really’? and informed them that the illusionist was actually being boxed, while I concentrated on the healer. They didn’t realize this and fumbled through some sort of ‘I have to give all new guild mates a hard time’ even though I’m not new and have been there for a while. Their complaint was that I had not put time compression on them. They didn’t ask if they could have it, and I honestly did not even recall casting it since I was concentrating on other things, but instead of just asking or inquiring about it they decided to be exceptionally rude and insulting. It put me in a bad frame of mind for the remainder of the evening, as I explained to them in tells that all they had to do was ask, and that she was being boxed.

Leviathan went down – almost without issue – Calreth was there for his update into Veeshan’s Peak and actually ended up dropping link part way through the fight as his power went out. We quickly sent someone outside of the zone (thus exiting combat) and invited him back to the raid while Leviathan was around 20% health. It was quite intense but he got his update which is all that really mattered. Once Leviathan was down it was on to Veeshan’s Peak. Now, I have not been to this zone since I wrote my article in an older issue of Beckett Massive Online Gamer, and I certainly had never been with any characters I currently play, so it had been some time. Groups were swapped around and I started out on the mystic, since her update was first. I knew it was going to be a long raid because we intended on clearing the entire place – not such a big deal when you have an entire raid of geared up players, but we were still sporting two groups of pick up raiders, and alts from the main guild.

The raids of RoK are so different then the ones in TSO. In TSO they are all about curing fast and often – constantly curing. You go through so many potions self curing. They are all about who has what particular debuff at the time and what the counter to that debuff is. I really don’t enjoy them nearly as much as I enjoy RoK raids, which involve a mixture of tactics and most of them involve jousting and knockbacks.

The first and second floors went off without a hitch, the mystic update is Hoshkar on the second floor, and by the time we defeated the encounter I was starting to fall asleep at the desk – it was four hours into raids (which I haven’t done for quite some time) and I barely looked at the mythical weapon I was granted back in greystone yard before logging over to the illusionist for the third floor.

The third floor is the quickest and also the easiest as chance would have it. We wiped three times for the entire VP zone, twice it was due to a faulty pull of some golems, the third time it was Silverwing and some AoE avoidance not being activated in time. I think. I my mind is basically a blur of encounters by that point.

The end of the evening resulted in a huge number of people getting their updates, and I was really happy. I absolutely love the illusionist mythical which allows me to use my single target haste buff as a group buff and adds some double attack to it (I’m so glad I have the master version of the spell) as well as allowing me to use my pet without any concentration (that’s three whole slots it opens up). It also grants my group a power proc which is never a bad thing. Excited? Yes, I certainly was. Taking a look at the mystic mythical above it’s also pretty dang nice, and I’m glad to have finally gotten it – even if I am an expansion behind.

All in all it was a great night, and I really do owe a big thank you to the folks of Paradise Lost – they’ve made me feel incredibly welcome (most of them) and I appreciate it more then they’ll ever know.

Pawbuster, Venril Sathir, and Thuuga – Oh my!

Yesterday was busy. It was wow-this-must-be-a-Saturday busy. Today is also going to be busy (but Sunday should be blissfully quiet). How busy was it? Well I started out my gaming on Antonia Bayle – recovered from the giant data base issue that happened yesterday. The first portion of the day was spent arguing with players about the bonus achievement experience (20%) that was implemented for the weekend. No matter how many times I said “look, I just asked Brenlo himself, and he said it’s 20% aa!” that wasn’t good enough and 40 people would jump down my throat saying it was adventure experience too. The email said achievement only, the /motd in game was slightly more confusing (which is why I asked Brenlo to begin with). The only thing that bothers me in game to any great extent is when people give out the wrong answer or information towards something and then want to argue about their wrong answer. Pet peeve, if you will.

I’m creating and betraying a defiler over on Antonia Bayle, which means yet another epic to work up and spells to be bought. Thankfully my guild mates are the most incredible people I’ve ever met and they’re helping me out. I’m currently working faction for Neriak, as it’s the faster of the two available evil locations. It’s still slow, but I got a fair amount done last night.

After some dinner it was time to head to Oasis, where I ran the mission of the day (Anchor of Bazzul) on the illusionist and mystic, and then ran Obelisk of Ahkzul. No. The shield didn’t drop – but the mystic in group (not me) had it so I KNOW it’s out there.

Once instances were done it was time for a little break and then the real festivities of the night started. It was an off night, no real raids were scheduled which meant it was the perfect time to kill Pawbuster and Venril Sathir for my mystic updates. Calreth joined me (he doesn’t need the updates but it was nice to have the help) and while Pawbuster was an exceptionally easy fight, Venril Sathir took three attempts to work down because (surprise surprise) a few people were not paying attention – even after the nerf to the encounter.

It’s straight forward. At 90% he spawns some adds, burn them down. At 60% you have to start making sure your power does NOT go below 40% and throughout the fight two people will get a blue debuff on them that causes every spell you cast to drain your power. Chances are if you’re not paying attention and you suddenly find yourself without power, you’ve got the debuff. The key aside from curing yourself from a particularly nasty noxious effect, is to watch your detrimental window for that blue debuff. Only two people get it so it’s not a huge deal – but if you don’t watch for it, you’ll wipe the raid (more then likely). We had an easier time taking down this encounter with one group then we did with a full raid force because the more people who have to pay attention – the less who will. It seems to just work that way.

Eventually we got him down and my mystic is now only one update away from her mythical – which happens to be obtainable today. Later on there is a Leviathan and Veeshan’s Peak raid being formed up and I’ll hopefully be bringing along two characters (I’ve not yet decided if it will be the troubador or the illusionist) to get their updates. I’m excited. I’m leaning towards the illusionist, as she could really make use of the mythical, it allows her to cast her pet for no concentration. Not the largest amount of dps she has but a free pet is a free pet.

After Pawbuster and Venril Sathir we decided to two groups Thuuga for an update (assassin) we only had three healers so I thought we’d be a little behind as it was mostly alts tagging along (which means less dps) but the zone was not quite as painful as I remembered it, and it went smooth.

It was nearing midnight by that time, and everyone wanted to head to Spirits of the Lost – which is a level 50-60 raid zone located at the entrance to Cazic Thul (it used to be used in the Freeing of the Frogloks live event) I zoned the two groups in on my warden who has access, and then decided to call it a night and get some sleep. Tonight will be a long raid night, clearing out Leviathan (which is fairly quick at least) and then heading to Veeshan’s Peak. I’m really looking forward to it though, and looking forward to seeing all of those mythical updates!