Tag: VG

Mentoring, Crafting, and just Exploring

Instead of wandering around wizard city, or questing in Norrath, I decided to spend most of my evening yesterday (once power was restored) exploring Telon again, getting familiar with my characters in the hopes that I’d spend more time in Vanguard over the next little while then anything else. I’ve played off and on since release and while it’s never exactly been my ‘main’ game, I’ve always had fun. A huge factor of this is of course my guild, Safe Haven. Every time I log in there are no less then 10 people around and in the evenings that expands to 30-40 people. We’re not even the largest guild on the server (Seradon) I believe the Platinum Order is the largest.

Kanad from Shattered decided to play as well, and we met up in Thestra (Renton Keep) to test out the mentor system. He was playing his 14 shaman and I decided to play my 19 psionicist (enchanter). In Vanguard mentoring has a level range of 5, and there seem to be a few bugs. The instructions claimed I could still use my spells, but I would get unknown error messages if I tried to cast a spell that I had not already gotten one version of by level 14 (my mentor level). Once I was unmentored the spells worked fine. Once he leveled to 15 I was no longer able to mentor him until I hit level 20, granting the 5 level range again.

We worked on URT (United Races of Thestra) quest chains. By the end of the evening we had completed both the gloves and the shoes, then we decided to break and mend, get our new spells, etc.

It had been a LONG time since I crafted anything for anyone, but I still remember the click frenzy known as Vanguard crafting. I spent hours upon hours working on orders in order to farm sigils. One feature Vanguard has that I really enjoy is the vgplayers web site, where the achievements of your characters are auto-blogged. You can find the blog I have for Faydai (my 44 blood mage) here. Of course the main reason I mention crafting is that a guild mate requested an upgrade to five pieces of jewelery and I actually disco’d two of the five pieces (granted, only one shows up on that blog atm). I believe discoveries re-set every time the server re-sets but perhaps it doesn’t any more.

In any case, I was pleased to be the first person to make those particular pieces, and happy that I hadn’t forgotten how to craft. I delivered the bits and decided to call it a night, I may not have done a whole lot of leveling, but it was still fun. I’m looking forward to getting a lot more Vanguard time in the future (especially since this happens to be a long holiday weekend, Monday is Thanksgiving here in Canada).

Until then, happy gaming and I’ll see you in Norrath Telon!

Wandering through the Bog

I may not write about Vanguard all that often, but I still happen to play (and enjoy) the game a fair amount, and since I didn’t do all that much in EQ2 yesterday (more about that later) I decided why not. Vanguard is one of those games that I wish more people played. The population is exceptionally small (especially on servers like Sartok (pvp) or Halgar (EU) compared to Seradon (the most populated server). There IS a community there if you look for it, and it’s very close knit. I’ve been in the guild Save Haven for a number of years now, and lately there has been a surge in numbers and higher level characters in the guild which is something I haven’t seen for a very long time. Members are partaking in raids now, and on any given night there are 10-30 people around, which I think is fantastic.

My main problem in VG is that I feel so lost when I come back to the game – I don’t have the faintest idea where I should be leveling, or where I can actually handle the encounters. I look at the map to get a rough idea of what zones are where and what level it is aimed at, but that doesn’t always help.

I have a handful of quests on me, so I typically pick a “chunk” (zone) and off I go, hoping that it’s enough to gain me a little experience. Last night I was hunting bog creatures in order to find a very rare bracelet that one of the creatures seems to have eaten or stolen from a lady. I hunted for an or or so but saw no sign of the bracelet, I think it must have been digested.

I wanted to do a little crafting, but apparently there’s a pretty sever bug right now that eats up your crafting supplies without giving you anything in return, so I decided to avoid it for the night and just spent my time quietly questing, talking to guild mates and finding my way around. It was a great way to spend an evening.

I’ve been pretty pro vanguard since release, despite the bugs and issues with performance, I always felt that the good surpassed the bad, and I’ve always personally enjoyed playing. I don’t debate that the release was absolutely horrid, but for some reason something still keeps me coming back for more.

Time to go draw a name for a contest I was hosting over on the Beckett MOG forums for an umbra sword, so I’ll end this post early today. Hopefully I’ll get a little more game time in, we’ll just have to see!

Happy gaming no matter where it finds you.

WTB Some Time

I love my job, I really do. Being able to write about something I enjoy as well as something I’m passionate about is a great gift that I try to make sure I’m aware of constantly. On my web site, I write for me and I love talking about my adventures, thoughts, friends and anything else that happens to cross my mind. The only time any of this is difficult is when it all seems to happen at once. These days there are so many games out there, that I simply don’t have enough time to play everything I want. It’s a shame, because I’d really love to.

EQ2 is my ‘steady’ game even though I’m barely playing it these days (it’s due to being crunch week and no other reason) it’s the comfort game that I know inside and out, and I like that comfort factor. However. It’s not the only game I want to play and certainly not the only game I am playing.

I’ve been having an incredible urge to continue playing EQ, which I have waded in and out of for quite some time now. Problem is I don’t enjoy playing EQ alone (where as in EQ2 I have no problem wandering around on my own) and it’s difficult for me to make friends (especially when I waver to and from games). I have my 81 necromancer that I’m considering leveling a little, she’s fairly close to level 82. I’ve always wanted to hit “end game” in everquest, and with the expansion NOT raising the level cap in November, it may very well be a possibility.

Vanguard is another one of those “if I only had more time” games. I seem to be in a rut with my blood mage, and I’m slowly running out of areas where I can just dip in for an hour or two before calling it quits and feel as though I have gotten anything acomplished.

Last month I won a free copy of Age of Conan, I think I found the time to play once during the month that came with the game, and then it sat neglected. For some reason it just does not appeal to me as much as I wish it had. It may be because I’m not really a melee person, and it felt uncomfortable. Either way, it’s one of those “I wish I had more time” games – along with many others.

Lord of the rings online – I really enjoy this game, a lot. It’s familiar, it’s beautiful. I want to continue playing but for now my account lays dormant because once again the greedy time monster has taken all of my time away, and I just don’t have any to spare or to warent spending a monthly subscription for it.

So what AM I playing? Well, my current play list includes EverQuest II, Vanguard (barely), Free Realms (barely), World of Warcraft (please don’t shoot me, it’s easy to dive into for an hour and feel like I actually acomplished something), Wizard 101, Aion Beta, and some DDO.  I want to be able to devote more time to EVE, but that learning curve is so far over my head I may as well actually be playing from another planet. I’ve been having fun in Aion, but again – not enough time to play everything I want to play, and to get work done as well as real life things (plus I can’t actually sit at my desk for too long before I start to get sore from health issues).

While I am excited that there are so many games out there (don’t even get me started on console games and finding time to play those too!) there are certainly moments where I wish the selection were smaller. Am I the only one?

So Many Games, So Little Time

A full blog post just isn’t working out for me today, so I’ll keep it short (for once). I didn’t get to play EQ2 at all yesterday due to work, meetings, and other things popping up (brother came down for the day) but I picked up the daily double to do at another time since you can keep them for a number of days. Started a few new games, can’t talk about one yet but I will as soon as I can. Princess (the cat) woke me up at 5:45 instead of 5:30 today, so that’s nice. She’s resorted to chewing apart the same book instead of 20 different ones, another bonus!

Next weekend is the Medieval Festival and work deadlines, so needless to say my posts will be sporadic and disjointed at best over the course of the following seven days. Once that weekend is over things should be able to settle back down to normal, and I won’t appear so harried and frantic. We’ll see!

Happy gaming where ever you play, and have yourselves a fantastic weekend.

Exploring Ruin Falls (Level 44)

One thing Vanguard does not do for you, is hold your hand as you adventure. If you want to figure out where to go after being away for a while, it can be difficult. Especially if you’ve already turned in all of those rift seeker quests that rewarded you with pies that give bonus experience. Those quests used to tell you where to head for level appropriate areas. I spent a lot of yesterday spending money and flying around from place to place trying to figure out where I should be. At level 44 I’m too small for a lot of the higher places, and to big for a lot of the lower. I could head back to the Harbor but I’d already spent so much time there, it was time for a change.

Growlius suggested we head to Ruin Falls, which is located in the southern portion of Thestra. I’d been there once just flying through but had not completed any of the quests yet, so I found a rift stone and off I went.

There were only three or four quests that we could obtain right away but that was fine by me. We set off to kill some frogs first as we eased our way into the game and learned how to play together again. I’ve always loved the blood mage (there’s a reason why she’s my only level 44+ character) and they make a perfect duo with a dreadknight.

The area is all swamp land and we spent a lot of time slaying disgusting hag like creatures that looked like deformed trees with pus, I kid you not. Channels were actually quiet, although there was word of a Tipa sighting!

Most of the mobs we had to kill for the starter quests were only two dot (solo) mobs, but they came three at a time. Eventually as we progressed the quests we had to kill a few three dot mobs. When they hang out in bunches it’s hard to solo and we teamed up with a shaman who happened to be adventuring at the same time.

Once we’d completed the first few quests it was time to turn them in and prepare for the guild meeting that Safe Haven would be having. I tried to stay online for the meeting but alas about 20 minutes before it was due to start I was called away by real life and had to log off. Next time perhaps!

I’m still finding my footing in game, and still learning good areas to hang out. It’s difficult when I’ve been (semi) away for a length of time now, I would prefer to solo but rarely know of any good locations. I know they’re out there, it’s just a matter of me learning where to go once again.

I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend no matter where you spent your time, and here’s hoping this is the beginning of another wonderful week! Safe travels!