Tag: VG

 

Today was a good day. In crafting, I managed to get the mineralogist to level 21, which means new recipes to learn, and continental styles, as well as housing bricks, and planks. It’ll take some time to work through it all, but I’m hoping by tomorrow I can at least make some jewelry for the disciple and her partner in crime Dreadknight. The guild was fairly active in the evening, and we had at least 6 of us in the 19-25 range who wanted to do some exploring. Ideas were tossed around, did we want to do Hilsbury? Well, after Growlius’ near death (wait, near? It was complete death) at the gates, he wasn’t too keen. Someone suggested that we start our CIS cloaks though.

Cloaks are great. Not only do they look cool, but they protect you from that ever present rain in Telon. Yes, it’s raining in that screenshot. So we headed to Donovan’s Roost in Qalia (just one chunk west of Ahgram) and talked to a little gnome about some crazy people and how he wanted to learn their secrets or some such. I barely remembered the quest from when I’d first done it in 2007. I even wrote about it  here. The quest has changed slightly. The slave is much easier to find now, he’s almost at the beginning of the zone. I don’t recall him being there. The captain fight is just as annoying- but I don’t remember him turning non-agro throughout the fight like he used to do. Also, we went with one group.

We died of course a few times. I think we had to attempt him four times before we managed to get him down. The group consisted of a 22 dreadknight, 19 paladin, 25 sorcerer, 25 cleric, 20 necromancer, and myself, 22 disciple, all guildies. We pulled him the first time inside of his hut, and a lot of adds came. I mean, a LOT. The paladin dropped like a rock, and we evac’d out. Well, we didn’t have a ranger to sacrifice. It would have to do. We made our way back, and pulled him outside the hut. Still had the two adds he spawns with, and they still decided to beat the snot out of me while we got them positioned and out of the mountain they decided to hide in- but in the end down he went, and his two friends.

So now a few more members of Safe Haven are sporting their new cloaks, and those of use who were 20+ managed to get the quest for the ring (the next part of the infinium chain). I haven’t done it before, so I’m not sure what to expect. I think we have to go read a book, or something? It would have been nice to finish off that Hunter’s League quest that’s been plaguing my journal so I can get on with the other two pieces, but alas most nights the one room with zombie flesh that I need has been camped. Talk about annoying. Why would only ONE room in a dungeon have the mobs that everyone doing the quest needs. Not to mention it’s not a constant drop- nor does it drop for every member in the group. So you have to kill 6x as many mobs if you bring a full group down there (and the mobs are four dots). Hopefully I’ll get it done tomorrow night before I leave Saturday for Toronto. We’ll see though. It was the first time I’ve really grouped with the guild, and I had a lot of fun. So far, Telon’s been a blast.

 

Mounts are an important part of Telon, the world is vast and it can take you 10 minutes just to get across two chunks (continents are made up of like, 10 chunks by 10 chunks, so that’s a lot of traveling). Along with that of course is the appearance of your mount. You can get a horse at level 10, through crafting, diplomacy, or adventuring. Vanguard is great that way, any one of the three spheres will work for a number of things that are level based. There’s a selection of mounts of all different colours based on what you’d like. I wish they’d impliment a ‘dressing room’ option, but for now you’ve basically got to guess, or look it up online some place.

Ishbel is riding a docile grey mount that she bought in Tawar Galan, an outpost with lots of sailors wandering around, on the Kojan continent. I managed to grind my way to level 21 early this morning which opened up the apprentice (T3) quests, per continent of course. Made my way to Ahgram and spoke with Master Outfitter Alibaan Deleard who of course sent me away to Khal (which is where I started to begin with). The Master Outfitter there gave me a recipe to make some stiff leather bundles and I set off to finish that up. Along the way I stumbled across a good many level 18-20 crafter quests, so before I started in on the apprentice ones I finished those up and ended up getting a nice new heroic crafter ring that summons resources every 24 hours of real life game play. Interesting.

Before long I was 80% through my level and hadn’t even touched those apprentice quests, I was a notch or two away once I finished that up and scribed my new recipes. Barding was on the list. It was one of those “oh my goodness I really want to make THAT” items that I’d seen. It also required grade A on completion so I was worried about being able to make it. Thankfully I had crafter buffs on, and I also have a clicky hat piece that I used while crafting. You can add dye to the combine, and voila, a bit of red, gave me the barding pictured above in the screen shot. Barding is not just for show, either. It gives me +15 mount stability which means it’s harder for beasts to knock me off while I’m running through angry creatures. At this tier I can only add yellow, red, black, or orange dye to my clothes. There’s a bunch of other colours that I suppose come later, like blue, light blue, and purple. The item was enough to ding me 22 as well.

As a leatherworker, I can also make saddle bags, which is great, another container to store random pieces of junk I happen to stumble across. I’m getting in as much gaming as I can now, before I head to Toronto for three days, I’m still very excited about the trip, hopefully Growlius doesn’t pass me by too many levels while I’m gone. He hit level 22 last night and I’m still 40% away, it means new skills though and I’m looking forward to that.

 

Lots of progress made in Vanguard this weekend, and I had a blast doing it. First of all I managed to get level 12 diplomat. I love this sphere of Vanguard, and while at times it seems like brainless grinding, I don’t mind it. I did one of the web quests for Qalia, I have three more to do and they take a huge amount of time. Diplomacy is something (most) people do on their ‘off time’ in between crafting and adventuring, that night where you need a change (or you happen to wander by someone who offers you a diplomacy quest). The chain (if you actually read the parleys, I know a lot of people who do not) was filled with intrigue and murders and backstabbing and plots and all sorts of good stuff. In the end I got a good amount of gear (that can be combined with the items from 3 other web quest chains to form some sort of super armor) and I got a lot of experience as well as some evidence. You need evidence (they’re little scraps of paper, and there’s bunches of types per tier) to turn in to informants. You can get gear from doing this or buff items, or baubles (that can be turned into diplo gear, or are used for player made diplo cards). You need seven hearsay, five rumor, or three evidence before you turn them in. An informant takes them and viola you earn something in return. Diplomacy is also used for guild halls, aside from the tons of raw materials (and the 10p plot you have to buy) you also need close to 1,000 pieces of diplomacy evidence, and 150 baubles. That’s a LOT of parleys. It was one way of integrating the three spheres into game though. You also need diplomacy for APW, which is the one raid dungeon in game. For what exactly, I’m unsure of except zone wide buffs you can stick up. I haven’t learnt much more then that.

Adventure wise, Growlius and I both hit level 21, and we headed to Qalia to work on some Hunters League quests. We had a lot of competition last night which wasn’t so fun, it’s the only down side to doing some quests, the updates do not drop from every mob, and on most occasions only one person gets an update at a time, so you don’t want to do it in a huge group if you don’t have to, other wise you’re killing 5x the amount of stuff you need. Granted you do blow through it faster as well. We’re now sporting very fancy shoulder pieces, which have a fantastic graphic compared to the previous tiers, I’ll stick a screen shot up later.

Crafting, was probably where I made the most progress, and it’s not through actually leveling at all, but from finally figuring out how to create crafting macros. In Vanguard crafting is a series of mouse clicks, it’s not a continuous production like EverQuestII where you have to sit and watch while you craft, you can get up at any point in the craft and go tend to real life (which is nice). It also means a lot of mouse clicking though. Probably at least 40 clicks per combine (and there are sub combines to Vanguard). It can get sore on the wrists. Now, macro’s will not craft for you. That’s not their intention. But they will reduce the amount of clicking you have to do by having a text command for the craft that you can hotkey (or add to your G15 profiler, which is what I do). There are (at my tier of crafting) 5 steps with anywhere from 1-5 sub steps per each step. You also have to place items on your ‘table’ first- the items you’re going to use to craft. I’m restricted to four currently, but the number goes up as you get better at recipes. So I have a macro that will ‘load’ my table for me, instead of having to mouse click each item. I load water, solvent, bandages, that sort of thing. My wrists are so happy. It is also a time saver, it’s quicker to hit a macro to load a table of four items then it is to mouse click each one of those four items. I found fantastic macro’s written up here, and here. I am not typically a macro person, I suck at making them in fact. That’s why this took me so long to figure out. I’m so incredibly happy that I did though. I hit level 18 leatherworker with ease, and hopefully today I’ll be able to get 20 (and maybe even 21, where I can learn how to make barding for mounts, instead of the silly vendor sold saddles). Ideally I’d like my crafting to be 10 levels over my adventure level so that I can make my own gear, but that’s a lofty goal for now.

The GU4 is still highly in debate, I’ve turned off regionsay for the past few days to avoid the mobs of angry people. You can read the notes yourself here and there is a blurb about them here. I’m not ready to call this the end of Vanguard quite yet, we’ll have to see how things pan out. Losing all face customization really hurts though, I doubt I’ll actually wear the helms that they’re implementing. Silius himself (dev) was in the craft channel yesterday afternoon answering questions for people which I thought was great customer service (until the typically quiet and calm craft channel turned into a raging sea of frantic mobsters) and he did hint at some future changes. The largest type of boat is going to be implemented into the game shortly (galleons anyone?) and people questioned what was the point- with flying mounts you don’t need huge deep sea ships. However, Silius hinted at fishing, which will be galleon only – or maybe caravel. Gives people a purpose for all the hard work that goes into those sort of ships. He also mentioned integrating diplomacy into the world more, but wouldn’t explain how. I sent him a tell wondering when (if ever) facial customization will be reinstated (since it was said that over time it would be and I wanted a better idea of ‘how soon’) but got no reply. I assume he was probably swamped though since he did make a broadcast telling people if they had questions to send him tells. All in all, it’s just a matter of time to see what effect the changes will have on the game over all. I’ve copied my character to test (as per request of the devs, who are lacking testers it would appear) there are quite a few characters who are getting revamps in the next update, so it will be interesting to see how it goes, people seem very pleased with the druid revamps.

 

Screen shot is of the Ruins of Trengal Keep, as I’m flying by on a rented griffin. I haven’t ventured inside yet as it’s a group dungeon, but I hear people looking for groups for a series of quests for the area all the time. Apparently the loot is bad but the experience is wonderful. I love the way the air around the ruins is guarded by wyvern who like to smush you out of the air if you get too close.

Vanguard may have a few bugs and graphic glitches, there may be some worry about the games future, but one thing that no one can argue with, is that when it comes to customer service, they are top notch. Honestly, if every game went by the unspoken rule of “we literally can’t afford to upset our customers, so lets put them first” it would do wonders. I’ve dealt with Vanguard’s customer service quite a few times now, and yesterday was no exception. Their petition service is a little crude, just a window that pops up where you type in your issue- and some times it can take a bit of time to hear back from any one (typically within the day though) but I can honestly say I have yet to petition and NOT have my issue resolved.

I’ve petitioned about deleted characters (who were thus restored) I’ve petitioned about broken quests twice now (specifically URT weapon quests, the essences don’t drop and it’s a known issue) and the GM’s have 1. mailed me the pieces I needed, and 2. came to drop them directly into my inventory. Yesterday, I petitioned asking if there was not some chance that a GM could transfer my anniversary bag from one character who I no longer played, to my ‘main’ character. The bag is no trade (of course) and in a few hours time my character was logged into game, and my new main had mail. I went to check it and low and behold, the no trade bag was in the mail (it’s odd, getting no trade items in the mail from yourself when you know you didn’t send anything) thus the petition solved. I was impressed.

How many people think if you claimed your reward in EQII that you could petition and have it switched over to another character? Well, maybe they would do it, but I’d still be skeptical. In Vanguard, I knew they’d move it for me. The GM’s and the services they provide are amazing. Now. I do realize this is probably because 1. They only have 4 servers to deal with as opposed to however many most other mmo’s have, and 2. Their player base is so small right now (it’s not THAT small on my standards, my server is nice and populated, but I can see it being small in comparison to the over all picture) that they just simply can’t afford to give players what they want in regards to a petition. Numerous of my guild mates have petitioned bad quests or lost npc and GM’s have no issues spawning them if they’ve been lost under the world and what not. I realize that those issues should not exist to begin with, but it’s fantastic to know that if such an issue should occur, it will be delt with.

The disciple hit 20, no really new skills but with the URT weapon (which is 2h) she and Growlius are wrecking havoc everywhere. I decided to take a night off from the adventure grind last night (when I hit the 20’s I always run out of areas to quest at and forget where I should go next, I need to find myself a leveling guide) and work on diplomacy. Bought a level 20 mount which was nice, and stuck a few crafted items up on the broker to make some coin. I made my first plat, which is still a HUGE amount of money to me. I know in the states today it’s President’s Day (I believe…) and some folks (but not everyone) have the day off, in Canada it’s Family Day, and most people have the day off as well (but not all). Stores are closed, including grocery and what not, so it’ll be a nice quiet day at home here. I’ll be gone Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to Toronto for that concert, which I am still really looking forward to.

Happy gaming, no matter which world you all play in!

 

The disciple hit 19 last night, after working on the most annoying quest I’ve ever worked on. Growlius and I were sent to some mines in Misthaven to collect belts from locals, apparently Misthaven had a shortage and if we didn’t agree to this pants everywhere would drop. After killing well over 200 miners, and both of us needing 3 more belts, they suddenly decided to stop dropping. Ok, it wasn’t suddenly at all, nothing is sudden after spending a few hours there diligently working away at the quest. We only needed 15 total. This quest sucked. It’s the first time I’ve actually grown so frustrated with a quest that I finally just gave up. We gated out and maybe we’ll work on it another time. We both got a full level of experience in there, and when you’re only getting .5% a kill that’s just sad.

We also managed to finish the URT chest and leg pieces, so I’m no longer sporting an ugly green breast piece, but a dark purple one. At least it matches my legs. I got a few crafting levels and did some quest in Halgarad that rewarded me with 3 T2 rares. I did this quest on 3 of my crafters, since I could easily gate home and just walk one chunk over. I needed those rares in my first quest for a red item (much like an epic item) which I was ecstatic to get. Sure, it’s a crafting item, but red is red (the only gear higher is purple, much like mythical and there’s only anniversary gifts that are purple).

I couldn’t find the patch notes myself, but apparently people are exceptionally upset over GU4 that’s supposedly up at the end of this month. What I heard over the course of yesterday made me worry for the game. Number one, they’re adding helm graphics. Well, that’s great but very few people are going to walk around wearing helmets. We don’t use them in EQII, they’re not used in WoW, if anything there’s options to turn them off, not mmo’s creating options to turn them on. In direct response to the public getting helmets- they’ve decided to lower the amount of facial combinations you can make. At release, Vanguard boasted one of the most unique character customizations out there, and they had it. Everything from the arch of the eyebrow to the puffiness of the cheeks and the size of the breasts. In order to cut down the work getting helms in was, they’re removing a bunch of the customization. Bad move.

They’re also adding the MUCH anticipated flying mounts. Everyone who’s been playing Vanguard talks about these items, they want them probably more then anything else I have heard about. There are supposedly two being added. One will end in a raid, and the second one is raid only (as in, it can be obtained in a raid only). Now, realize that all my information is second hand from channels and I’m not sure how much actually holds any water, but that just doesn’t sound right. Have they not learned anything from EQII who has both group versions and raid versions of pretty much all their main quest lines now?

Vanguard works like EQ in the fact that content does not trivialize. Sure you won’t get experience any more, there’s a threshold for that, but if you want to go to the ant mine and take down the queen at level 50 (and gank it from a bunch of lowbies who worked really hard to get to that spot) then you’re more then welcome to, and loot the item that comes from the mob, and sell it on the broker or decon the item into a rare resource. Of course plenty of people spend their time farming and hanging out in known named locations specifically for this. So the next update is doing two things. Number one, named (boss) loot will be BoP (bind on pickup) ALL named loot, that is. Secondly, you’ll be unable to decon boss loot.

Hmms. Not exactly a bad change, but it’s the start of a slippery slope. Vanguard’s the closest thing to EQ out there (in game play, not in the way the world looks) and a majority of the people I have come across play VG straight from EQ. If they start changing things too much or continue to head down the slippery slope, they’ll loose those people (and I’ll have to spend even more time then I do now listening about how great EQ was. I KNOW how great it was, I was there!).

They are also changing the way people get dusts. I wasn’t sure of the particulars but it had crafters in a huge huff. Enough so that Silius himself (a crafting dev I imagine, his name is on the mythical craft bags we can claim) stepped into the channel to ask what people were saying. Something about them being mob drop or raid drop only if they were rare I think, instead of being able to decon them (to decon something is just like to transmute, you have the chance to decon for resources, or dust, and have a chance to fail. There’s no skill involved though, and anyone can do it with a vendor sold kit).

Those were the changes I heard most about. Again I haven’t actually seen a list, so I didn’t get to hear about anything GOOD that’s changing to Vanguard. Except the character models are apparently going to be changed in skeleton so that they’re easier to render. When they get that make over VG was promised I’ve no idea.

I’m still having plenty of fun, guild’s going strong, and there’s been absolutely no drama. We have our steady 5-15 people on nightly and I can’t stress enough how great it is to play with them. Even if we’re not a raiding guild. I’m still having a blast, which is important.