VG – Page 21 – A Pixel Nomad

Plains of Anguish

Managed to team up on Saturday with Growlius and Agaton from Safe Haven and work on some of my Plains of Anguish quests (which I had a lot of). We finally cleared out enough to be working on the Brotherhood quests, which we all had multiples of. One thing that I didn’t know is that the named in the area have a chance to drop an unmarked piece of gear which is used in a quest to give you a skeleton illusion clicky. I’m all about clickies, I love them, have ever since EQ1 and all of those rogue masks that I camped for hours (and days) on end.

The group was Growlius as his Dreadknight, and Agaton is a Psionicist. Apparently mez doesn’t work on undead, which I wasn’t aware of. I played healer, blood mage. Growlius got level 42, which of course meant new spells for him, and I managed to hit level 44! Brings me one level closer to being able to do my swamp armor quests at 45, and I got to purchase some new spells. I actually only had four quests to pick up, a little disappointing but it looks like 46 will be nice. I am really excited to be getting closer to 50, even if the experience has slowed down drastically. I also want to work on my crafting this week and make the push to 50 in that. It’ll be nice to be hitting 50/50 at pretty close to the same time. I’m not sure yet if I plan on getting diplomacy up to 50 but I probably will. It would be really nice to have a 50/50/50 character in Vanguard. Why? Because (for me personally at least) it’s a huge accomplishment and takes a lot of work. Guild was talking about how level 50’s are bored and typically playing nothing but alts, but since I’ve never had a level 50 character before, I have a feeling I’ll still play mine for quite some time. We’ll have to see.

There was one death yesterday of the psionicist because lets face it they’re cloth wearers and I just couldn’t heal fast enough when they had so much agro, but aside from that I had a blast and I hope everyone else did too.

I’m not sure where to head to after PoA, but I should work on that skeleton illusion mask some time I suppose.

Fishing, Guild Meetings, and Adventuring

Spent some time in Vanguard yesterday afternoon, between doing groceries, cleaning the house, and writing those blasted Beckett articles (for Vanguard, it counts as research, right?) that proved to be harder then I thought they would. Growlius decided to reactivate his account, and I was VERY happy. I leveled up my blood mage with his Deathknight pretty much from 20+ and it was always a goal of ours to hit level 50 some time. It took a little while for him to go through his quest journal and figure out what buttons did what (it’s been a few months) but before too long we were on our way back to Plains of Anguish to smite undead and save the town,

He also got the /claim item that included the pack camel and the wand that transforms you into a cute illusion (or deadly, depending on what you get morphed into). The ferocious cat on the left side is me, and the little pixi looking creature on the right is him. The sword he’s holding is actually bigger then him, and the grass covers us when we’re standing around, we’re just that short. It’s hard to fight that way, with everything looming (quite literally) over top, so we quickly changed back to normal and headed off to the Graveyard and then to a small village to kill some Forsaken Scholars, knights, and steeds.

Since my Beckett article is about the changes in Vanguard, I headed over to the test server to take a peek at a few of the changes they’re implementing. One of them is a big one. Well, two of them. The one that interested me the most though was of course FISHING!

That’s right, after a LONG two year wait, fishing is finally being put into the game. It’s not like EQ2 fishing either. Or WoW fishing. You go through a tutorial in Tanvu, pick up your rod and reel, and some bait. Then you learn the fishing skill while Tien teaches you the basics. You learn that fish are elusive creatures in Vanguard, and fishing itself is quite complex. You have to cast out your line, stop it at a particular section of water and be sure not to cast too close to the fish or they scatter. Once the line has been cast you wait around for a fish to take notice of it. When you’ve got one on your line, it tugs in a WASD direction (or arrow keys if you prefer) and you have to move in the same direction using your keys. Follow the fish properly enough times (fish moves to the left, hit the left arrow key type of deal) and you’ll automatically reel it in.

That’s not all there is to this skill though. If you happen to hook a particular fish, you can unlock combos that you have to key really fast, each combo relates to a specific species of fish. Once you’ve unlocked combos for fish types you can master the species (their words not mine). Fish have particular habits as well. Some are around more in the day then the night. Some can only be reached by galleons (that’s right, I said it!) and have to be fished deep in the sea waters. There’s all kinds of particular bait and while it doesn’t really matter which you use, some is better for situations then others.

After wandering around on test it was time to head back to the live servers for a guild meeting. Safe Haven meets once a month to go over any concerns members may have, bring up events, go over any new policies (like the new dues system we have since we now own a guild hall and it costs 50g a week in upkeep). Over 20 people showed up, and it was a great way to meet everyone. Even Kasul and Growlius managed to come. The guild is fairly active with a good number of people but of course everyone has their real lives and most people play other games aside from Vanguard, so things can get strained at times. Finding groups to accomplish what you need to get done.

Hopefully, with all of the great changes that are due, the player base swells a little. We’ll just have to see. In the mean time, I’m having a blast.

Swamps of Rumug

At level 45 most players spend the rest of their levels to 50 working on armor sets. These are known as ‘Swamp Armor’ because of the areas that you need to work for faction in. There are three faction and each one rewards the gear with a different focus. I’m still two levels away from 45, but it’s never too early to start working on faction (when some of it comes from kills) especially when you’re also working on harvesting. I was anxious to get lumberjacking over 400. At 500 I can harvest aged wood, which is actually T6 wood and worth a pretty penny. I’m hoping since Galleons come out this month that the price of wood will go up. Right now dusky is going for 1g a stack, since there’s just so many people sitting at T5.

I headed to the Swamps of Rumug to duo with a ranger in guild, taking down treants. That’s another aspect of VG that I really enjoy, you can get lumber from killing treant type creatures or you can get it from harvesting trees. Leather also comes form the area in the form of skinning trolls. After looking at a few sites and trying to figure out how swamp armor works exactly, I’ve decided I’m going to go with a gorgalok set. There’s no real base healer cloth set for blood mages, and since most of my heals are based off of my damage output anyhow, there’s nothing wrong with going for a caster type set of armor. The gorgalok set focuses on +damage and +crit which is perfect. It requires me to kill in Ichtakhta, which is in the chunk just North West of Rumug. One problem which I’m sure to run into is that my partner in crime, Growlius, mentioned that he may be playing VG again as soon as this weekend (excited!) and he’ll probably want to work on the Ichtakhta set of armor, which is +mitigation and +absorption. This puts us at odds as far as faction goes. Working on one faction will lower it with the others. I guess we’ll just have to see.

After spending an hour or two wandering around killing trees I gated back home and sold the little bit of vendor trash I had, and put the crafting bits on the broker. I’m finding it a little difficult to make money. There is a huge surplus of artificers who wander the lands of Telon, and I’m just one of them. Crafting supplies used to sell quite well, but there’s so many people harvesting and so many people end game that it’s hard for me to find a little niche to settle into. With the new guild hall for Safe Haven comes dues, and I’m expected to pay 5g a month or 10g if I manage to level to 50. Which this is by no means a huge amount of coin, it is if you play casually and don’t exactly have a lot of money to spare. Or if you ended up giving away all your money in a scavenger hunt you hosted before you left last time. I imagine it will take me a bit to find a way to make coin again. It’s funny to see all the quests I’m doing reward me with 6s and 7s when I get anything into the double digits as a reward even at level 43 I jump for joy. Aside from my skills every two levels and repair bills I don’t have a great number of costs, so for now this works out just fine.

Edit: Forgot to mention! In the general channel today someone mentioned if anyone had tried to /setfog 777777 and said that it made the game nice and clear. I was aware there was a command to remove the fog from game but had never played with it, and at first I thought the person just wanted to fool people into the whole game being VERY foggy or something like that. So I tested it out. Low and behold, when the fog vanished so did every ounce of lag I had. Yes, it removes a little bit from the atmosphere of the game, that screen shot above has fog on, with it off you can see the ruins in the background crystal clear. I don’t mind looking at everything crystal clear though without that hazy feel to it, and like I said, lag is completely gone and no sputtering. I think I’ll leave it off.

Boats move, and Faction in Tehatamani Harbor

Just hours after I made this post yesterday about how someone had parked their boat right on top of the riftway and I found it frustrating, I came back to the harbor to find that they had moved their boat (or someone had moved it for them, either way)! It made me giggle and I just had to get a screen shot of it.

I did the first two quests in Tehatamani Harbor, turned them in and got two shards. Right clicked the necklace I had also gotten from the Lucent Circle and it upgraded the piece for me. Went to a new NPC, picked up two more quests. These quests only reward coin, and they appear to be repeatable tasks. One makes you kill 100 creatures around the pyramids, and the other makes you collect 50 vials of liquid from these same creatures. As a blood mage I’m primarily a healer, but it’s basically a necromancer healer. You heal via life taps off of mobs. If I’m not damaging mobs, I’m not healing. The mobs are level 46 or so around this area, at level 43 that’s red. Still, they’re two dots and can be taken down, it just means that my spells don’t always land, and the fights tend to be a little drawn out. I killed the first 100 mobs and gathered my 50 vials in about an hour and a half, maybe slightly more. Went back to the NPC who gave me my 5 silver (ew, repairs were 9 silver) and gave me the exact same quests.

Double ew. I wasn’t sure why they were just giving me the same quests over again, so I checked online and it looks like I need level 44 in order to move up in the ranks.

That’s alright. I headed off next to Vsurog Moor, which is where I’ll be living pretty much from 45-50. At level 45 I can begin to work on faction for the swamp armor that everyone talks about. I’ll be going into more detail about this when I get there. It’s pretty nice armor, and should keep me fairly busy. Rumor has it that Growlius (Dreadknight partner in crime) may be coming back to the game this weekend. That would totally rock, I may put out some nice dps some times but I can’t actually tank, being a cloth wearer and all. For the odd person out there who IS playing VG (I know the numbers may be few) if you’re looking for a friendly guild with a very active player base, check out Safe Haven on the Seradon server.

Safe Haven has branches in multiple games (like a lot of guilds do these days) and have been established for quite a long time. In Vanguard there are over 585 members (as of today, yesterday someone deleted a few alts if you recall it being at 588!) and there is typically anywhere from 7-20 people on every night. I’d like to say ‘most’ people are PST, but there are a good amount in other time zones too. They’re friendly, organize guild events, and have a guild hall. They also have the trophies that get placed in halls, giving members some awesome buffs. You can either group up and hang out, or just do your own thing and have a social network, either way it’s fantastic. Just be careful, I hear Joodah bites.

After the few brief quests I did yesterday along with the killing, I’m 40% into level 43. I can’t complain that’s a pretty good portion into the level. I know 40-50 takes the longest, but I’m confident that before too long I’ll be there.

Exploring Tehatamani Harbor

Screen shot is of someones annoying boat. The fact that they own a boat is great. The problem is that they parked it RIGHT on top of the riftway (that red column in the back end of the ship). When you port in, you end up getting a ‘you are on a boat wee’ compass that shows up and if you’ve never been to this particular area before, it’s annoying. Have a little curtsey and park your boats some place else! Like NOT right on the riftway. Shesh.

I began my slow trek to 50. On some advice of a friend I made my way to Tehatamani Harbor, although I’m too low to get most of the quests there the area DOES have a fantastic story. The chunk itself is located in Qalia, bottom left hand area. A little piece of land that juts out into the ocean. It’s beautiful. There’s a group of people who belong to the Lucent Circle hanging out, they have a little camp all set up. The very first introductory quest gives you a necklace (well, it gave me one at least, two choices of them) and as you work on tasks for this group of people, you can combine the shards (rewards from tasks) and upgrade your necklace. I’ve only done the first few quests so far, but the necklace is already an upgrade for me.

The Lucent Circle is made up of Paladins who are there to right wrongs and do all that good holy stuff. Apparently they have opened recruitment to anyone who wants to help, and not everyone within their ranks are happy about that. The Lucent Circle is there to fight against the Tehatamani Empire. Basically like an old Robin Hood story, the Empire steals artifacts from other cultures and takes them for their own. They ransack and pillage civilizations and cultures, amassing great wealth. The Tehatamani are at war with the Vakrin, who were the last civilization that they stole from. They managed to get some sort of sacred artifact that gave them huge powers that they shouldn’t have.

The first task sent me to learn a little about their history, and then head off to some pyramids in the distance that were surrounded by snakes and bugs. Apparently their grounds keepers are on holiday and they want me to kill the diseased creatures. I did notice a raid mob also pathing around the pyramids (or maybe it was just a group mob, I forget what so many dots over the mobs heads mean now, it was at least five) and I stayed well clear of them. I killed 12 creatures, learned my history lesson, and upgraded my necklace. I love these types of quests, and the story is pretty good. I need to earn more rank with the Lucent Circle, so I picked up the next round of quests. They’re level 46 though, and I’m level 43 which means they’re red to me. They want me to kill more creatures, and I think I should be able to do that easily enough. I’ll need a few more levels before I advance too much further, so I’ll have to find some place a little lower to gain some experience. The next round of quests sends me back to collect some vials of liquid and take care of 100 of the icky creatures that surround the pyramids.

The kills all net me faction with the Lucent Circle as well, and there’s some nice heroic gear on a vendor if I turn in tokens to them. We’ll see how it goes!