Ever since RoK was released, Antonia Bayle has experienced huge traffic. In my eyes, it’s a blessing. Especially since I transfered here from a fairly dead server a year ago. I love the server, I really do. Understandably, there are issues due to the high traffic. One of them revolve around the amount of items listed on our broker (since they now allow all alts to sell) and the data base handling it. As such, our broker transactions are removed for portions of each day during “peak” play time. For the past four days between 6pm EST and 10pm EST the server is pretty much un-playable. Zone times move from 30 seconds to 20-35 minutes. Log in queues are long, they’re “throttling” the people logging in, which means for some the server says it’s up, and for others it says it’s down as they try to pace it all.

I’ve kept pretty quiet about the whole ordeal. I’ve played EQ1/EQ2/WoW/VG for years now, and this isn’t exactly a surprise to me. What has been a surprise though, is people’s reaction to it. I’ve never been more sad to glance through the Antonia Bayle forums and disappointed at a core player base as I have been over the past little while.

With threads like this, and this and this I can’t help but shake my head sadly. Since when did the server develop this whole ‘us vs. them’ mentality? Since when is it ok to say “we need to get rid of all non-rp’ers because this is a rp-preferred server” - and have people agree with it? Honestly. I’ve never seen so much hostility between players. It’s not anyones fault that Antonia Bayle is a populated server. Take it from someone who knows what a barren server is like, you don’t want it. It’s not fun. I understand that troublemakers most often have the loudest voice, and they’re sure to make it heard, but how on earth can anyone hold that opinion and actually mean it? Role Play means different things to different people. No one player gets to decide what it means for anyone else. There’s all sorts of reasons why we choose this server. Be it a friend, a guild, population, an older crowd (though I use that term loosely after reading the past few posts on the forums) we’re all here to play together. Just because someone doesn’t actively participate in what one person coins as ‘role play’ doesn’t mean they’re any less deserving to be on this particular server then anyone else. After all, we all pay our monthly fees. I don’t walk around spouting thou and thee every which way, but I consider myself a moderate role player. Hard core? No, I’m not, I do attend events though when I’m in the mood to, and I do write my role play stories. Do I think anyone should be removed from the server because we have such a high population? No, of course not. That would be silly, not to mention just rude.

I do think people need to calm down though. It is always being fixed and worked on, and yes, it’s annoying and frustrating I agree. It’s also going to leave a bad taste in all new players mouths. There probably are some temporary solutions out there to appease the crowds that should be looked at before the angry throng of rp’ers and non-rp’ers alike plan a road trip to the SoE building. I miss reading the pages of recruitment posts, the planning of events, and all of the activities that make this a fantastic server to be on. We (as a server, a community) want to WELCOME people to Antonia Bayle, not shun them and scare them away with over bearing rants about how much so-and-so needs to be removed because they don’t conform to our idea of role play.

The whole situation in general has been handled badly on so many fronts. I honestly hope that it clears up in the next few days weeks, and the server can enjoy its high population without the horrible animosity that’s been brought about lately.

I know a lot of people are upset that in the newest expansion your pretty much forced to quest in order to level with any amount of speed at all. There’s been numerous posts about it, outcries, and random bursts of anger. Personally speaking, I love the quests. I’ve seen zones like Darklight Woods, and Greater Faydark, absolutely explode with quests compared to their old world starter zones and there’s no other better way to get upgrades, coin, and experience all at once. I of course share concern with those who are worried about the lack of heroic content, but since I personally am not one to grind away my levels, it’s a very small concern. I don’t agree with forcing people to play one way or another, and wish there was equal content for all playing habits. I also realize that this is probably a very difficult task.

Anyhow.

I spent the weekend questing on the bard. Finished off all of the Kylong plains quests, and maxed out my faction with Teren’s Grasp. Without having to step foot into Karnor’s Castle (which I’ve never been inside yet since I played beta). I worked on some Kunzar Jungle quests with Shadowgeist (who’s shooting past me in levels, think he got 75 last night and is part way to 76? Very nice!) since there was less lag there. Then headed to the Fens to continue on my chain of quests there. I’ve made plenty of coin, lots of upgrades, and am just having a lot of fun completing them. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to play yesterday as the Christmas rush is approaching and I’ve got things to get done (plus I just bought a new book that’s so good!). Goudia did hit 73 though and is 30% away from 74. There’s lots of people who are already high 70’s and 80, but I’m taking my time to enjoy the new expansion. I haven’t done nearly as much tradeskilling as I’d like to do, but I’m sure I’ll get that in there some place too.

The log in issues on Antonia Bayle have been horrible, and I’m hoping it’ll be at an end real soon. We’ll just have to see.

For all you bloggers out there, be sure to /join antonia_bayle.bloggers - a new channel that Cuppy started for the community to get together and chatter, I’m typically in there and spent some time talking some last night, even if it is quiet the rest of the time. Great idea to start one up!

Some how the cat learned how to set the alarm this morning, Sunday. So it’s 6:30 am and I’m up. Not a big deal, went to bed early last night. Low and behold my server is actually down for a one hour patch. Little surprising. However, yesterday there was talk of a corrupt data base file that was preventing Antonia Bayle from being online without numerous issues. I’m hoping that this patch is addressing that. Yesterday the server was down for about two hours with huge issues trying to log in and endless hanging “receiving zone info” messages. Not good business for a Saturday on the most populated server in Eq2.

Yesterday I managed to finish off the Kylong plains quests and max my faction in Teren’s Grasp with both the warden and the troubador. Out of all the characters I’ve been playing since RoK released, I’m having the most fun on the bard by far. She’s close to 73, gaining lots of faction, quest items, upgrades and goodies along the way. Once I’d completed them I wanted to head to Fens of Nathsar and start my quests there. However, the lag was horrible. Three instances of the zone was up with 80+ people in each, and I could barely move without having it bounce me around and having all my combat skills taking 5x the normal amount of time to go off. Frustrating to say the least. Understandable, but still annoying. I’ve heard so many people complaining about various things that I’ve turned off the 70-79 channel just to avoid it.

I’ve been having a blast chattering away to Tipa on her various alts over the past few days. I have to admit I love the community that blogging has shown me. Kilanna is also around (though a little less then usual) and I enjoy our girl talks. Calreth has been busy in his guild, but from time to time he remembers the little people (grins). I also still poke Mrrx on the Bazaar server. Saylah hasn’t been around for a little bit, but I’m sure she’s doing fine and dandy. What a great community we have hmms? There’s of course a lot more bloggers, but those are the ones I keep in fairly good contact with on an almost daily basis. There’s always Cordanim as well (us canucks have to stick together) but he’s been having issues with his UI and hasn’t been in game too much yet. I think he’s playing WoW with a friend as well (even though his blog doesn’t reflect that, yet!).

I left Fens for Kunzar Jungle, and started questing there with Shadowgeist last night. Lots of orange mobs but with the burly shadowknight tanking things went down easily enough. I dropped my defense song for dove song since things were orange and I hate resists, you’d be surprised, the song makes a difference at such a high level. I get annoyed with people who don’t play bards and who ask me to drop certain things for them and play other things. Like the one dps in the mage group who wants haste when I have 0 concentration slots left (different now that I have 1 free one from my self buff, although I used to drop my self buff anyhow on raids for extra buffs). I dislike that the majority of Antonia Bayle considers bards to be the “auto follow” class, where there’s no work involved and you can simply play one on auto follow. Bards are fantastic. Bards who know how to play their class are amazing. I know the top bards on my server, and know why they enjoy their class. I just wish other people gave ‘em a chance a little more often. We’re not buff bots, and played right (troubador at least) can easily lock down adds with mez, take one add out of combat with a short duration charm, increase the dps of a group significantly as well as numerous other stats. Anyhow, enough of my ranting, it’s time to play!

Ok. I feel like a dork, I admit that right now. Yesterday I couldn’t settle on what I wanted to do. I’m trying not to play Arysh (warden) too much because I’d like her to quest with Shadowgeist (understandable) so I try to sit her aside during the days. I was working on Faydai’s Watch faction in the Fens so that she could vendor buy her 70-75 advanced sage books, but 190+ quests was not what I was looking for. I’d rather adventure the faction in that case. Stargrace, Goudia, and Misako all were having small issues solo’ing in Kylong plains. Things hurt. Even though Stargrace is fable geared, Goudia and Misako were not. I’d been having a far easier time with my healers then any other class lately, I remember it being that way for previous expansions as well. As long as I could heal, it was great.

However.

Then I read a reply from Tipa about her kite method with her troubador.

Well. I’d never really solo’d with the troubador before. I’ve always grouped. So I had no idea how to solo. I also don’t have any melee classes aside from a 52 ranger (used to be assassin) and even my illusionist rarely solo’d her way up. So I decided to give it a shot. I changed my hotbars around to reflect what I thought would be best for kiting. Figured the best bet would be for me to start with a snare, run backwards (Goudia has 15% in combat movement speed… go-go ratongas) and along the way cast my two big nukes first. Then debuff debuff debuff (and procs go off at the same time) as I move backwards a little more. The joys of songs, can cast while moving. Get my bow attacks in there at the same time, and by the time the mob even made it to me, they were typically at 60-50% health and already debuffed. It was great. Amazing in fact. Why did I not figure this out sooner! I could easily melee them down with cheap shot and the rest of my spells while they barely ever got me to 80% health. Rarely used any power, since troubadors now have an extra concentration slot (thank you for changing our self buffs! Those are important to us!) I played my + defense song for once, and my + health regen song. I also keep my str / sta song, power regen (though I suppose I could drop that actually.. there’s nothing else I really want to replace it with though) aria because that’s my life and blood as far as spell procs go. I suppose I could drop power regen while solo’ing and run my haste song too even.

So last night I spent the evening running around Kylong Plains 3 (50 people?! I’m there!) and snaring / kiting to my little hearts content. Get an add? No problem, the troubador mez’s mobs, for the same duration as my illusionist. Need to get back to the docks? Jesters and evac. It’s great. Looking for a specific encounter that I just simply can’t find? Well that’s what track is for. What’s more, Goudia is a was a maxed out tinkerer. So she’s got rez’s under control too, she’s even got feign death. When I mange to spend some time working her tinkering (and once I figure out where the new recipes are sold.. ugh) she’ll also have the reversed Call of The Hero that’ll summon me to my target. Fantastic.

She was wearing legendary EoF gear and treasured jewelry mixed in with some legendary, and I’ve replaced a few pieces already. She had a very poor neck piece (never did MoA on her) so I replaced that right away with some treasured from the docks. I was heavily int spec’d but her agi was so low it was giving me issues. So now she’s sitting at 453 str 615 int and 389 agi which is about where I wanted her, with 315 stam. 6.2k hp help me stay alive a little bit longer, and her power is almost 6k which is far better then it was. I think she was hovering around 290 agi and it was hurting. Even though troubadors get their power from both agi and int, her int was just fine and I really needed that extra agi. Since she does not melee that much as opposed to spell casting (6 pages of spells vs. 3 pages of combat arts) I think staying above 400 str and aiming for higher agi / int is going to be a good combo. I’ve also been working on getting + spell dmg pieces of gear, and even have a few + combat art pieces that were upgrades. At this rate, I may just stick with her as my ‘main for rok’ since I’m enjoying it so much, it’s actually the first time in a long time I felt a definite pull to a class.

So a huge thank you to Tipa for mentioning the kite thing, not sure why I never picked up on that before. RoK zones are perfect for this, I love it. Lots of wide open space to run all over the place. Goudia was not at max aa yet when RoK released, she was sitting at 95, last night I managed to quest up to Brakthyr’s Post, and am at 99aa and level 71, 20% into it. My vitality is actually going up faster then I ever use it since I’m doing mostly quest turn ins, but I’m not complaining. I do realize that group content has taken a serious hit and people are upset over the lack of experience it warrants any more, but I’m pretty sure if it gets ‘fixed’ they’ll just reduce the experience you get for the solo content, and I don’t really want that to happen. I’ve always noticed that to balance something EQ2 tones something down (nerfs) where as (typically) in WoW, in order to balance something, they boost something up (when I played at least, I know that may not be the case any more). I’ve been trying to get as much of the solo exp as I can before any impending nerfs changes that I’m sure are only a few patches away.

Who doesn’t want to be a billy doll, reward from the 4 year /claim and when you don’t want to be a billy doll, you can shrink yourself by 40% with the item and /hide it. Works wonderfully. Arysh quested in Kylong plains most of the day yesterday and I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s too much fishing required. Fishing is quite possibly the only skill I’ve never worked on with any character. I’ve stumbled into two quests that require it so far with chains after them that I can’t complete because ew. Who wants to fish.

On the flip side of that. I had read and was understood in beta that you could still complete some faction quests as a crafter, and even get your sokokar if you were not a high level adventurer. So I decided to put it to the test. The dock-side quests for crafters went off without a hitch, my 57 necromancer (70 sage) received her sokokar with no issues.

However.

Then she managed to snag the quest from Greenblentus in Teren’s Grasp called “New Lands, New Profits”. It gives you faction (on completion) for both of the major (there are more, I know) faction in the Fens of Nathsar, turning them non-agro. The issue is, that to complete this quest, you have to run around in the fens. I’m 57, believing this was an alternate rout for me to complete the faction I needed to at least be non-agro to the watch, so I can start faction writs. At 57 running past the agro guards of the watch is not easy. I did manage to fandangle my way up there, and grab the sokokar post at the same time. I got my quest update, a little crate on the right hand side JUST before you enter the gates of the watch.

The next update? Along the banks of the river just East of Rillis. I’m screwed. Not only does everyone in Rillis want to eat me for breakfast (dang gnomes!) but the country side is filled with mean nasties as well. I tried to find this box on Arysh, since she’s done the adventure portions and is no longer agro, but I couldn’t find the crate I needed.

After this, two more crates. They probably want me to travel to the center of some other agro city.

So how am I going to try to get around this? Well, thankfully, killing one sort of iksar will make the sarnak at the watch non-agro to me. So I’m going to have Shadowgeist smush one for me. The next issue? I have no idea if I can get the writs as a level 70 crafter - I think - that they start at 72. I don’t mind leveling. And why am I going through all this trouble to begin with?

The advanced sage books are going from anywhere of 1-5p on my server. This faction will let me buy them for 10g and some change each. The books are no trade, so you have to faction for them yourself. As a 57 necromancer, thankfully I can still group with 72’s, but the quests for faction (adventurers) are level 68+ and I can’t do them. I understand that the game is a mixture of crafting and adventuring, and it is sort of exciting getting hit for 15,000 as a lowbie wandering around. I’m basically just trying to avoid a price gouge on books since I’m already paying one on raw materials not to mention fuel.

So RoK is very much all about the faction. I like that aspect of it though, makes things pretty exciting.

Well, as pictured above, I was quite busy once I managed to get into game yesterday with the release of EQ2’s newest expansion. I made a vow not to rush things (and I didn’t). I saw groups running off right away to grind levels and be number one at everything they did. I knew from the start I didn’t want to hang around Kylong Plains because, well, everyone was going to be there. Just like real life, I’m not fond of crowds in game either. So Shadowgeist and I teamed up with Gothun (I was playing Arysh, the warden) and we did our sokokar quests, then left for the brighter questing areas of Fens of Nathsar. Instead of grinding, we worked on solo faction quests. Difficult solo ones at that, thank goodness we had some what of a group / trio. We quickly worked our way to +17,000 with the Watch (located just up the ramp to the left as you zone into Fens from Kylong) and low and behold, the quartermaster talked to me. He wouldn’t sell me his +40,000 faction legendary items, but he did let me purchase all of the no-trade advanced crafting books. I bought them all (at a 3g loss each time) for the discovery, and split the purchases between Shadowgeist and myself so that discoveries were spread around.

I’ve replaced quite a few of my old EoF items with treasured RoK items. Nothing especially fancy dropped, there were shinies all over, disco’d 12 other items besides the crafting books just wandering around and working on quests. A treasured pair of boots replaced the fabled ones I got from Chel’Drak, and a new belt replaced the one from Unrest. In some ways it was sad to see it go, I worked so hard for those items, and after a few solo quests, they were replaced. I remember the first time I killed Chel’Drak, I even blogged about it here. Of course, I was expecting it. That’s what happens when a new tier is released.

I didn’t want to quest too far ahead of Shadowgeist, so today I played some with Stargrace, the illusionist. Things hurt on a whole different level when you’re solo’ing. She had issues taking down some of the blue solo for random Kylong quests, but also got a lot of upgrades. I left Arysh 50% to level 72, and 105aa from her meanderings, Stargrace is almost 71, with 102aa. Money is in abundance, that’s for sure. I walked away with an extra 4p from quest rewards on each character, not to mention the items I placed on broker. People are going nuts for crafting resources (AB already had an 80 sage this afternoon as I was listening to channels) and I’m storing all mine for the few quiet moments I have to myself. I think the provisioner will be one of the first characters I level up. Scribed her level 70 book, and got 11 new recipes. That astounded me. I’m used to getting my four recipes a level, it’s been that way for quite some time. So it was nice to see a little love.

More updates tomorrow of course. For now I’m hoping to just find a little niche as Kylong Plains 4-5-6 open up and let the masses through.

The Fens of Nathsar and all their glory

Kunzar jungle, a dangerous patroller over head

Crafting has changed some what in the newest expansion due to release this Tuesday, all wonderful changes from my point of view but some folks may not like them. Pictured above ist he new crafting window. That’s right folks, your hotbars will no longer be cluttered with 6 hotkeys for crafting — unless of course you are a creature of habbit, then you may want to. By default the buttons are 1-6 and become active when your crafting window is up. The 3 +durability are first and then the 3 +progress follow. It automatically uses the highest of each, so no more switching them around. However, if you’re used to your buttons being in a specific order, you may not enjoy the convenience offered here. I love it. to the bottom left is your recipe book icon, and to the right a stop botton (which switches to the repeat button if you’re done the recipe).

Some recipes don’t have tiers any more. That is to say, that unless you craft pristine, you’ll just get fuel components back. As far as I know furniture is the only one that works this way but it may be all levels of crafting, I didn’t really get a chance to test. The reasoning is quite simple, who wants to buy a less then pristine item these days. There’s no need for less then pristine house items at least.

So you’ve made your way to Kylong Plains and you’re wondering what all of the new nodes are going to look like? Well, here they are:

Common

Metal Ore : Ferrite
Pelt : Bristled
Root/Cloth : Lichenclover root (Damask cloth)
Wood : Redwood
Gem : Kunzite
Precious Metal : Deklium
Loam : Mineral salt loam
Berry : Cranberry
Vegetable : Succulent petal
Meat : brute meat, devourer meat, drachnid meat, hornet meat, mountain giant meat.
Fish : Barracuda, King Prawn
Coffee Bean : Cabilis Cocoa Bean
Tea Leaf : Torsis Tea Leaf

Imbue

Smoldering Material

Rare

Metal Cluster : Incarnadine
Pelt : Hidebound
Root/Cloth : Mantrap Root (Swiftcloth)
Wood : Mahogany
Gem : Fire Emerald
Precious Metal : Tynnonium
Loam : Silicate loam

Kunark is also going to attempt something new with crafting besides the window. Dens, will no longer drop meat. That’s right, rodents everywhere have stopped hoarding chunks of elephants in their dens, and are now leaving that to the actual creatures out there. Meat will drop from mobs. Now, if you’re a provisioner you may be slightly offended by this new tactic. Domino has assured crafters everywhere that it will not be overwhelming though, as very few of the new recipes will actually use meat. It’s also an incentive for people to go out and experience both the crafting and adventuring aspects of the game. Players can list their meat for sale on broker for crafters who may be too small to obtain it themselves.

Since I have a provisioner, I’m affected only slightly. I’m actually looking forward to the change, I think it’s good. I’m far more happy that recipes will not use meat for every combine, so that I can still level without their use if I don’t want to kill mobs for their meat drops. Hopefully prices will be reasonable so that I can at least get a first time pristine combine on them. We’ll have to see how it actually goes.

A few other small (new, fun) crafting changes, provisioners will be able to make food and drink that basically work as temporary buffs on top of regular power and health regen. These are the recipes that use meat I believe. Weaponsmith will also gain the ability to create temporary adornments for weapons that (as far as I know) stack with regular procs and permanent adornments. What are these specifically? Well, you’ll just have to poke your local weaponsmith when RoK comes out and see what they are (I’m of course still madly leveling Goudia, since she’s my weaponsmith). There are also crafting stations and writs posted at various outposts around Kunark, which I love. Out door crafting is far more prevalent in RoK then in any other expansion. I think adventurer and crafter alike will adore the changes and new levels. The carpenter house items, are amazing as a side note. There were far too many to post pictures, but I can already see my housing being revamped for each character to include some of the nick nacks such as an ink well, thrones, very amazing paintings (although, I am slightly pissed off because three paintings look exactly the same as three of my “rare” paintings that I managed to obtain.. making them worthless now) amazing looking counters, and other goodies.

Domino, the Eq2 Tradeskill Dev. Had this to say about Crafting in RoK:

Thought I’d take a moment to explain a little bit about tradeskills, factions, and Kunark.

Kunark is a big and pretty unfriendly continent, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.  Those here have been isolated a long time.  Even the remains of the old Overthere outpost was only marginally friendly to travellers at the best of times in the old days, and is now inclined to charge visitors a hefty extra price markup for their trouble.

To get normal vendor pricing pretty much anywhere in Kunark (unless you’re a Gorowyn resident of course and can shop there) you will need to earn the trust of one or another of the local factions.  Adventurers have a wide selection of ways to do this, some of which can be described as the usual hit [x] of [y] over the head [z] times, though there are other types. SMILEY;)  For crafters, there are three main areas that you can focus on, should you wish — these are intended to be optional, not requisite.

Greeblentus in Teren’s Grasp in the Kylong Plains will give you a little starter mission to gather information and help him out, and in exchange, you’ll gain enough faction to become non KOS to the Riliss and Bathezid encampments in Fens of Nathsar.

Riliss - an Iksar encampment in the middle of the Fens of Nathsar.  Speaking to Preparations Officer Zekilius will get you started on a series of writ quests to create supplies for their armies.  Being Iksar, he should not give you these quests if you are an enemy Sarnak (however, he SHOULD be fooled if you go in with any illusion on, so you aren’t actually prevented from doing these).

Bathezid’s Watch - a Sarnak fortress in the south west of the Nathsar.  Supply Sergeant Anuhadux will also offer you a series of writ quests to help their armies against the Iksar.  Again, he shouldn’t talk to Iksar players but will be fooled by an illusion if you’re really keen.

Both these NPCs will give you the recipe books for these writs, they’re divided into archetype (a scholar book, an outfitter book, a craftsman book) and you’ll have to craft a random item each time.  The books will be removed from your recipe list at the end of the writ.  The items should just update your quest and don’t really create anything in the world.  If you make extras after finishing the quest you’ll get an item, but it has no stats and is no trade - these are just for fun, flavour, and a little more interest than having people make 5,000 of the same long sword or whatever.  There are 4 levels of these writs at 72, 74, 76, and 78 with new recipes for each.

Then we have a further quest from Greeblentus, doable at (I think) 75.  This will make you non-KOS with the third faction:

Danak Shipyards - located in the Jarsath Wastes towards the south west, this is also an Iksar outpost, so same rules apply to Sarnak players as for Bathezid.  Work Requisition Sergeant Zildrax will offer you a new set of writs.  These recipes are all level 80, though you should be able to start making them from 75 onward.  Again the books are divided by archetype, though there’s just one book for each archetype since they’re all the same level.

The maximum faction you can gain through crafting with these three areas is “warmly”, you cannot get to “ally” without doing some adventuring side stuff also.  They will stop offering you writs when you max “warmly”.  The amount of faction per writ is still open for tweaking, the general idea is that it should take about as much time for a crafter to get to “warmly” as it would for the adventurer to quest his way there, and this is still something we’re working out.  It will certainly not be an instant path.

Apart from the obvious convenience of having good faction with someone on the continent, friendly merchants, a place to craft etc., and extra pristine bonuses and xp from the writ recipes of course, each of the three areas will also have faction merchants who will sell rewards to both adventurers and crafters.  The tradeskill rewards will be some additional recipes above and beyond the normal “advanced” books which will be available in the normal manner.  The recipes should have a bit of a Kunark flavour to them, e.g. armor with the new Kunark graphic, Kunark themed furniture, etc.  For some classes this is harder than others (*gets a headache just thinking about it*) and some classes will get more stuff than others, but there should eventually be at least a little bonus there for anyone who bothers to work up the faction.  Some of these recipes are already in place but they’re not all done yet and will be appearing in the future (before release is the intention, but we’ll see).

The recipes aren’t intended to be overpoweringly OMG MUST DO items that force all crafters to grind writs, they’re intended to be a nice reward for those who do choose to, but all the essentials of life should be available in the normal essentials and advanced books as in every other tier, so those who don’t like writ type grinding don’t have to.  They will of course be no trade, however.

The above quest lines were mostly designed and implemented by Olihin, my tradeskill apprentice, who has unfortunately been evacuated due to the fires in San Diego and I’m not sure yet when he will be able to return.  So, while the quests did get checked in and are currently in beta, I haven’t had a chance to check them for bugs and it’s quite possible there are still issues to be ironed out which he may have been working on when chaos broke loose down here.   Do go ahead and /bug any issues so we can get to them.

For those not interested in the new continent there are of course the normal tradeskill writs offered by the crafting societies in your home town.  These will give you guild status, the Kunark writs will not, though both will give you tradeskill XP.

Hopefully that gives you a bit of an overview of the areas of Kunark that will (potentially) affect crafters, and the intention behind them.

Alright, so the weekend got off to a fairly interesting start. Late Friday night I couldn’t sleep, and decided to browse through the recruitment posts just randomly. I noticed Azure Skies was looking for a templar. Those sort of classes never seem to be needed on my server since most templars (and thus guilds) are already well established. So I asked what sort of templar they were looking for. It could have been for a mage group, but surprisingly enough (though I suppose not THAT surprising since the guild is fairly new) they were looking for a main tank templar.

Hmm.

I spent the night pondering it over, talked with Shadowgeist about it, and decided to give it a shot. With raids only three days a week, it wouldn’t take up a huge amount of time, and while some of the folks may not be the friendliest of people, well. Lets be honest here. I want to do well. I’m still in TK on all of my alts and plan on remaining that way. Friends are very important to me, and I wouldn’t want to just abandon anyone. However, I have to admit that I am pretty excited. Last night we did their first ‘major’ raid. We met up at Freethinkers Hideout, and zoned in with three groups, and three characters botted. I was not overly excited. Especially when we wiped on the ‘finger pointer’ a number of times. We were just about naked (and discouraged) when low and behold, our tactics worked, and down she went. We were excited. Malkonis was next, who went down first pull. Trayloth (spelling on that may be off) posed only a slight issue, as we had two bat adds part way through. We got him as well though, first pull. Dasie got the wrist piece pictured above.

We headed off to Clockwork next, no issues there, things went smoothly. I was a little concerned about DPS, but we pulled it off. Not that Clockwork is really difficult, but well, you never know. Next we headed to Courts for some guild status. Azure Skies is fairly new, a few people who broke off from another major raiding guild. So we’re only level 30.  Blew through courts, and decided to go attempt Chel’Drak. Now, a few of the newer members have never been to any of these zones before. So they were in absolute awe as we downed them with what appeared to be ease. Of course it helps when 6 of your members have already been very well geared out by previous raid zones (the core of the guild, in fact). I’m sure it was a lot of fun for the newer members to experience the raids this way.

Oh, and Tipa will be pleased to know that my RoK ‘main’ is indeed, a halfling. Bring on the Jumjum.

It was announced this evening that the RoK NDA is finally over, and of course this will be one of many posts I make about the new expansion and my impressions of it. I won’t talk too much about it tonight, since my thoughts are all in a jumble, but I have got to say, wow. The screen shot above is Arysh riding her rhino mount (which she of course quickly named “Bessy”, prone to stomping on shinies rather then harvesting them and leaving giants trails of.. rhino gunk, behind her) in the Fens of Nathsar, just one of many beautiful zones coming on the 13th.

I had a blast partaking in the beta. Even though by the end of it I was getting slowly worn down by the constant “How can we get buffed to 80 with all our uberz stuffz” questions and comments. Didn’t they realize that all content had to be tested, with all levels of gear. Not just level 80 raid geared folks. Ah well. Turning off channels fixed that. I had added my character to beta before I even got in, in preparation. You can /beta add at any time, and I didn’t want to be waiting around while my “real” characters go there. I quickly found the way to Kylong Plains from the Antonia docks (or you can also take the docks in Commonlands, and a Griffin located on the beach in Butcherblock) and just stood in awe. Not only because of the shear number of folks who cluttered the docks and the incredible amount of lag that came with it, but just because of the volume of land that stretched out before me.

Kunark is huge.

You’ll hear it over and over again. It’s giant. The lands are some of the biggest any Norrathian traveler has ever seen. The first thing any person is going to want to do, is to grab the quest from the halflings on the dock, and attempt to get their Sokokar. Which I’ll talk about more another time. As a brief over view though, Sokokar work like portable (to an extent) griffins and more so like the horses you can find in Greater Faydark and Lesser Faydark. You find a hitching post, examin it and learn the “rout” to that hitching post, and then on your travels you find more hitching posts, thus being able to travel from one to another, or from one to multiple choices. The sokokar doubles as a little pet that can follow you around. You do fly on it when you reach a hitching post, but it’s by no means a flying mount for EQ2.

It seems like this was a huge eventful Friday for those involved in EQ2, not only with the NDA of RoK released, but with the games third birthday, and a few more veteran rewards hitting the game. Those are up in the next post!