Tag: VG

Hopscotch, Satia’s new horse

Have I mentioned that I love diplomacy? I have? Just once or twice, right? Well, let me mention it again. I’m taking my time with Vanguard, I really have no other choice. I some how found myself surrounded by quests yesterday and as I diligently did each one the experience climbed until I managed to move myself from level 7 to level 10 (and half way through that). I got a lot of new skills, some interesting, some confusing. Finishing blows, which are of course self explanatory. Parts of chains.. which still elude me. A new stance, that takes 5% of my health and transfers it into energy (mana). I’m basically a cross between a healer, and a necromancer. I also got my first rez. I have a skill that lets me boil my own blood and make vials of it. Then those vials are used as a reagent in another spell that lets me avoid all damage for 6 seconds and mitigate 10% of the damage back to my opponents. I have sets of heals that I can only use on other people, which is a unique idea to me.

So I worked on my diplomacy until I got it to a skill of 40, and then was told I could acquire a free horse if I wanted! Of course I jumped at that chance. It required a lot of traveling, I left Tanvu and took the port at the dock to Ca’ial Brael, then headed towards my quest npc. He lent me a horse, and I did some fast courier type quests, then I was told that if I wanted to do more, I could — but I’d have to reach level 10 in either adventuring or crafting first. Hence my mad questing to get to level 10. Once I’d gotten it I returned to the npc and was sent on another courier quest, to deliver 3 items and of course parle with each of them as well (and win).

With my skill nearing 47 now, and theirs at 50, it was pretty simple. I had 23 minutes left on my 40 minute timer. Turned it in, and ta da, Hopscotch. I claimed my new horse shoes for her, and equipped my saddle bags, which apparently you can fill and keep with you if you die — not certain about this though I’ve not tried it. I’m glad I didn’t have to save up coin for this new mount, there’s no way I’d be able to afford it. I’m down to 7s after purchasing my level 10 spells. Still having some issues making money. I’m going to attempt crafting again today — maybe. A few more of my friends have been talking about how much fun it is, so we’ll see how it goes!

Working my way through Vanguard, has been interesting. Crafting is pretty much the last thing I feel that I should learn how to master, even though I haven’t really grouped up very much yet. I did get a guild invite on my bloodmage but declined. When it comes to choosing a guild I want to know what I’m getting into. A friend of mine invited me to their guild but it’s absolutely huge, and I’m not really looking for something that already has over 100 members. I’d just get lost in there. Speaking of guilds, there’s been a whole lot of drama with my old raiding guild on EQ2, who broke up due to Vanguard being released and leadership moving on. They’re all trying to cover it up, saying recruitment lacked, and they didn’t have enough for raids (when they were sitting members out due to having more then the required 24, and kicking out people they deemed unfit for their idea of a raiding guild) when what it came down to was lack of interest in Eq2 on their parts. A lot of people’s feelings were hurt, and I can’t say I blame them. At least if they had of just admitted it was the new game, and not tried to shift the blame onto other things (that can be worked around if any of them actually had any interest) people would be slightly more understanding. It’s not a bad thing that they’ve moved on, I can understand it, but they handled it very poorly.

In real life news, I am back home! So thankful to be here too. There’s no place like home, it was great to sleep in my own bed for once. I wasn’t so sure my kitty would remember who I was, but after a few minutes hiding under the bed she finally seemed to remember. 

Still lots of issues with Vanguard, and they haven’t done any patching in a few days. I hope they’re going to continue fixing some of the major bugs. I’ve managed to get to 40 diplomacy, except there’s one quest I can’t seem to finish. A woman in Tanvu (I may have spelled that wrong, I forget now) wants me to find out why her soldiers are not working. There’s a mysterious house they’re all standing around, afraid to go inside. I’ve beaten all of their arguments, even hers (who has a skill level of 40) numerous times now, but the quest won’t update. It says to continue interviewing each of the guards until she deems the situation solved. I don’t know if perhaps I have to win every single argument without failing any in between for it to update or if it’s broken or what. The reward is quite a few pieces of diplomacy gear, which I’m really looking forward to.

Another diplomacy quest rewarded me with a 12 slot bag, now THERE was something I could use! I’d been walking around with the default bag and some 4-slots since creation. I seem to always be broke, which is something I need to adventure for a little bit more. Diplomacy doesn’t pay that well, not that you really need it to I suppose. I’ve got a couple of silver to my name. The bloodmage is still one of the best classes I’ve tried so far, so I think I’ll stick with it and see where I go.

In the mean time I’ve also been playing a little WoW, I still love the PvP there, and it’s lack of complexity is a joy after trying to figure things out in Vanguard.

Attempted crafting, again, and got the hang of it. Almost. Until I looked at these recipes I was getting for finished products, and realized that I don’t know what the heck a ‘charlatan’s just bolt’ is. So I decided to nose around some and try to figure it out. Apparently there are special items you can buy from a goods merchant that you can use during refining, and imbue (so to speak) magical properties into the base products. However, they don’t tell you what makes what.. so to test it, I bought wisdom. It costs 2s each, expensive. Combining it allowed me to make a mystic’s jute bolt. I have no idea what the rest are stat wise, but then I can take all of those, and make that one item.Confusing! Complicated! Expensive! At least it’s expensive for me, if I look at each piece costing 2s + utilities each. I don’t even know how to make just a plain simple Jute bolt yet…. Anyone know of any crafting guides out there? Specifically for outfitter if possible. I tried doing some work orders as well, but ran out of harvested items fast. I’ll have to gather more before I attempt any more. I did get to level 4 though! Small accomplishments are always nice.

 I finally wrapped my head around diplomacy enough so that I feel fairly comfortable with it. My only issue now, is knowing what cards to use before I engage in it. How do I know if it’s a gossip conversation or any other type first? Other then that, it’s not going too poorly.

I still wish the game mechanics were better. I’m typing /flush every few minutes, been dropped randomly from the game, and horrible spurts of lag. I like it when I’m out in open places though. Harvesting as an outfitter is also much easier then my artificer. I love being able to skin my kills.

A partial screen shot from http://www.vgplayers.com

One thing I loved about eq2 (when they finally implemented it) was their leader boards. I like to keep track of my characters, see where they’ve been, where they got their levels, where they are in comparison to everyone else on their server and even world wide. It’s fun, and gives me little baby goals.

So I was very happy to see it carried over to Vanguard, and done so very well. I looked up my character Tashina just to see what things looked like. The blog, is an awesome idea. It auto-updates every time your character does something of significance, such as hitting level 5, or 10, discovering an item. The portraits are a neat feature that let you update from in game as well. It would be great to see more of these sorts of forums set up for other MMO’s, I’m pretty sure WoW doesn’t have anything at all like that.

I started a new bloodmage, level 5 so far and I may have stumbled into my new favorite class. They use blood points, basically every offensive attack you do has a reward of blood points. When you cast a heal after accumulating some of these points, the base heal gains a bonus. It strikes me as a combination between healer and necromancer. I eat some of my health to cast a dot, then heat the mobs health and regain some of my own as a heal. Very fun to say the least. They also wear cloth, making them slightly weaker then the other healer types who mainly wear leather chain or plate, but their abilities more then compensate for this.

Tashina, level 6 necromancer, stuck on a chair

Encountered my first stuck character issue last night, there’s a little blue chair in front of me while I’m talking to this quest npc, even though it doesn’t look like I’m really that close to it, I found (after trying to wiggle around) that I couldn’t, I’d some how latched myself onto the dang thing! Thankfully there is a /stuck command, and a /stuck yes confirmation command. They take notes on where you get stuck and (hopefully) fix it some time in the future. A minute or so later and I was ported to a safe(r) location to continue my adventuring.

The way mobs display their difficulty is some what new to me, and confusing. It works through a method of coloured dots. I haven’t seen anything higher then two dots yet, and I can handle those that are two levels higher then me and yellow, so I assume those are still solo mobs. I know the colours work pretty much the same way they do in any MMO, blue is lower then you, white is even, yellow is moderate difficulty, and red is dangerous to attempt. The dots throw me off though.

Necromancer is quite fun. There are of course some bugs. On occasion my pet will fall through the world and I’ll lose him. Some times (often) the mobs he’s fighting will fall through the world. I can’t see if he has any buffs on him nor do I even know if I can actually buff him, I can cast the spell but no icon flashes over his head.

Battle is pretty much the same as any other game with necromancers. You kill over time, with powerful dots. I have three dots now, one direct damage spell, and a fear. I’m still only level 6, but I did get to 25 diplomacy before I encountered one I can’t quite beat yet. I seem to have a general grasp on the game, but it’s hard to explain, it’s really one of those things you have to learn and read about on your own. There are some good tutorials out there though.

Also got myself some diplomacy gear, though you don’t get any special bags or anything to keep the spare stuff in, so that’s a little annoying. I finally understand what it means when you try to engage in diplomacy and get the message that it requires a certain amount of presence with the people before you can talk to them.

Now if only the graphic engines ran some what better..