Bleh. I was trying too hard today and it shows. I know her eyes are completely off, when I started I had not planned on putting the bits of fire and fairy around her fingers, so I had her looking off in the distant at something. The origional isn’t even worth linking, it’s bigger and her eyes are more noticeable. I have spring and summer left, I’ll have to wait until I’m in a better mood though I think. Feeling slightly stressed about life and I had wanted to try to relax with some art.

There was no way Stargrace wanted to go back to Kunark. Not yet at least. Last time she had ventured out that way she ws promptly chased down by everything with legs it seemed - and a good deal of creatures with no legs. She had a contract to fulfill though and was so exceptionally close to completing it. Never one to simply give up, she looked for an alternative means of accomplishing it. 

A friend had mentioned that they’d been spending the majority of their time in Everfrost lately. It had been literally years since Stargrace had bothered to venture into the frozen Tundra, she simply hadn’t felt the need. Who wanted to get all bundled up anyhow. The more she thought about it the more she thought it may just be the place for her. So, gathering her heaviest clothing and a good supply of food and drink (which was rare for her as a provisioner, typically she kept everyone else fed while she herself starved) off she went. 

The landscape had changed slightly since last she had been there. Tunnels burrowed deep within the snow walls radiated a certain warmth, and the pioneers had settled into the Bitterwind alcove. She lept up at the chance to help Li Ning Ventur, who had lost her husband (how does one lose such things?) in her travels. Stargrace braved the icy water to recover Mr. Ventur’s ring (to return to his grieving wife of course) and along with it - his entire hand. No doubt the sacred monument graces the top of some fire place or perhaps a dining table at this very moment. Feeling proud of herself, Stargrace continued on to see who else she could help while she collected parts for various other contracts. 

She practically stumbled into the Bitterwind camp, the snow was so thick. She did not remember it blowing quite so hard before. Once there she was informed that wolves had been bothering the camp, and she was sent to quickly dispatch them. Their furs would make wonderfully warm pelts for those living in the camp. She did a few other menial chores for the folks gathered there, one of which she foolishly fell into. Thala Rohquilin wanted to ward the wolves away from the camp which Stargrace did eagerly enough - however then it came down to placing a bucket of meat in the snow which called forth a great white bear such as Stargrace had never seen before. She thought she would be surely eaten! It gnashed it’s teeth together and rose up on its hind legs, trying to frighten Stargrace.

Thankfully, she was brave and took down the creature without too much issue. Thala thanked the woman for her help, clapping and going on about how the pelt would make wonderful furs for the camp. All the while Stargrace braved a smile thinking to herself that it would have been nice had the camp WARNED her about the giant ice bear first. 

She packed up her belongings after that.. incident and decided it was best if she continued on her way. 

(( Ding, 78! Managed to get Stargrace the remainder of her level by doing grey quests in Everfrost. It was nice to step away from the typical RoK quest grind, even if only briefly, to work on something a lot more fun. Now just two more to go… hrms, just like the Nostalgia guild levels. ))

I admit now, I’m feeling pretty silly. Here I was, thinking I wasn’t getting any reward at all out of healing my arse off in scenarios when it turns out that I’m actually gaining way more then I thought. See, that first column says rank. I always figured it was my rank in the scenario vs. everyone else. A marking system if you will. Well, upon closer inspection, that’s just my level stated compared to everyone else. Duh. 

The second number is the total number of people I helped kill. Then my total deaths. Then the amount of renown I earned for the scenario (which I rank first in), I forget what the next number is for, then my dps, and my heals (nice number for that one) and finally the amount of regular experience I earned. I’m still figuring everything out but it’s a little less frustrating knowing that I’m at least being rewarded for my healing efforts. Even got some tells tonight thanking me. Of course after 4-5 scenarios the opposing team (which consists of the same guild over and over) catches on and heads straight for the healers. Ouch. I can’t heal when I’m being smashed to the ground. 

I also found a few (small) things to do between pvp to keep my interest there. Number one. Those public quests that are always empty still reward you with influence if you partake in them. Stage one is always very simple, a kill amount (or at least they have been in Chapter one and two thus far). Stage two is taking on some + and ++ mobs (group mobs typically unless you’re a few levels higher). Anyhow, I can hang around those empty public quests (every single one I’ve encountered aside from the first one so far has been empty which is really a shame) and kill at my leisure, and earn influence. Then I can head off to the merchant and get some pretty nice gear. 

I’ve also taken up salvaging and talisman crafting. This requires me to basically disenchant items (as like every other game out there who has them) and I can make talismans that get applied to particular pieces of my gear. It’s rare for me to get green+ gear so it takes some mindless farming and grinding easy encounters to get items to salvage. I think my salvage skill is sitting at around 10 and my talisman crafting skill around 5. I haven’t found any new merchants besides the ones in early chapter two. 

I’ll be writing up another roleplay story tomorrow. I’m still playing very much my own way, and it’s going pretty well. I don’t have a guild, but hopefully I’ll find one before it becomes too much of an issue. I did play EQ2 this evening, and it was great to hit level 28 with Nostalgia.

Only two more levels to go! Thank you everyone for all of your hard work in getting Nostalgia (2.0) this far. We only need two more levels before we’ll be able to purchase the T1 guildhalls which has been my goal for the guild for quite some time now. The levels are getting more difficult of course but I’m confident that it won’t be too long before we’ll reach it, even if it is slightly after the halls themselves are released.

For those out there who were having issues commenting with IE7 - please let me know if this works any better? Updated the theme from scratch, and disabled some widgets that may have been causing the issue.. can email me if it is not fixed so I know. Thank you!

Not quite so bad, since there’s another archmage in this scenario with me, I’m rank 6 here again. At rank 6 I have two heals. One does a  very small direct heal for 80 points or so (depends on how many nukes I’ve cast ahead of time) and the other is a 212 HoT (heal over time) that also is dependant on nukes I’ve cast ahead of time. 

While it IS important to land a few dots to up those heals, my number one concern is always watching the health of everyone else. Notice my damage output? This scenario it’s a grand total of 406. Pretty cruddy. We won this one too though. Notice my rank is only 6? Well, heals are not going to bring in huge numbers if that’s all you’re concentrating on. That’s part of playing a healer though. 

There’s a few things to keep in mind, for archmage specifically. Please remember there are different types of healers - archmage is a cloth wearing RANGED healer. That means I’m pretty much never supposed to be in the front line. I hang back, way back as far back as I possibly can and cast my heals from behind everyone else. I can see pretty far away, and make sure to have the healthbars of everyone turned on, so I haven’t had any issue. One thing I made sure to do / change right away is the fact that you HAVE to be able to toggle through friendly targets. This is my Q key, right beside tab which toggles through my evil targets. 

Of course, after a while people realize that the healers have to be taken out, and you’re going to get a good swarm of people on you. My typical responce to this is to dance around and heal myself as long as I can, staying out of range, my back not to the opposing side, and hope that someone on my team will notice I’m getting smacked around and come hit the person while I’m trying to avoid them. Some times it works, some times it doesn’t. Because I stand so far back it’s rare that I get a whole gang of people on me unless I’ve some how managed to wiggle my way to the front by accident. It happens, especially if I’m trying to heal someone whose main goal is to run to the head of the pack and try to play hero by taking on 10 at once. 

I’m not good at figuring out who is who yet, aside from the white lion people and ranged dps because they have lions and bows. I suppose I’m alright at figuring out who the dps casters are for my side at least, but it takes some getting used to. I did three other scenarios, and the heals looked about the same, we did lose, once. Each scenario was with a guild (or it seemed at least) called ‘Raiders’ and I’m not sure if they were coordinating their moves or not, but it was still fun. 

Ah, right. I don’t like pvp. Like I said in a previous post it has nothing to do with not being good at it, because I don’t suck. It’s just not my thing. Despite this post (and the others that will follow) it’s nice to at least take advantage of the rest of my ‘free’ month though before the account expires, and who knows.

I’m Satia in the list - and the very last column is heals. While I like to think I’m a pretty good healer, I can’t heal an entire scenario all alone….Oh, I’m rank 6 here, and we won. Too bad heals don’t give as much renown points as actual damage does or I might have gotten a higher rank.

(( In an effort to make this game actually fun for myself, I’ve decided to give up playing like everyone else plays, and play my own way. Having a lot more fun with it, and I’ll see how it goes now that I’m not trying to impress anyone, but just have good ‘ol gaming fun the Stargrace method. I rerolled on a roleplay server - Avelorn. If any one is keen on playing with me you’re more then welcome, just drop me a line. )) 

I remember what they said about me when I tried to get work as a swords woman. It ranked along the lines of ‘too small’ and ’she’d collapse as soon as she lifted one!’ behind the snickers and grimaces. My own parents stood in the background, my father nervously wringing his hat in his hands. He’d hoped to sell me off to some fancy man no doubt, but I had squashed those thoughts pretty quickly one evening when I returned to him after meeting one of his ‘prospects’ and slapped the gentleman’s beard in his hands. He was lucky it was only the beard he lost. 

The problem was one every child experiences. High hopes by adoring parents while my own cries went unheeded. So I rebelled in the best way I knew how. I didn’t even really WANT to lift some ugly sword over my head and swing it, and the crowd gathered was probably right, I WOULD collapse beneath that massive thing, my frail body mushed into the ground. 

I had a secret though. A talent that none of them knew about. I kept it that way on purpose, secluded from prying eyes. I knew the instant my family found out about it that would be the end of my freedom, and oh how I valued that little bit of freedom I had. 

I barely listened to the rest of the meeting. I didn’t care what the outcome would be because I didn’t plan on being around for them to decide. My bags were packed and I was eager to begin my journey on my own. My family had 6 other girls, there is no way they’d even miss me. If anything they’d be thankful to have one less mouth to feed, and when I didn’t contact them they’d assume I was eaten by a harpy or some other creature. Childish dreams at the time, I know. ‘What could possibly go wrong’ was the answer to every worry I had tucked away. Anything for the freedom to make my own decisions. My life, my friends, my career. Whichever path I ventured down I was sure it would be better then being sold off to some stranger. With the dark elves moving further in each day of course I had a little caution - but very little. Time would decide the rest for me.

I haven’t played much WAR, for a few reasons. Most have to do with the game itself. Casualties of War (guild I joined on Averheim) is great - but it’s HUGE and easy to get lost in a crowd. Way too easy in fact. While it’s nice to have so many talented people wandering around, it’s difficult to find a little niche to fit in to. So I decided to play with a friend for a bit who I’ve played multiple games with, and forget about the fact that if you’re not playing this game with a whole crowd of folks it’ll hurt later.

I didn’t enjoy the elves in order at all. The graphics were annoying, the quests were ok but not exciting - so I decided to roll an Ironbreaker on a different server, dwarf of course. I was disappointed to see that Destruction females have 0 tank choices. How kind that the decision to be a tank rests in having a penis (be that in game or in real life). Call me weird, I’m a woman in life and I’d rather play a woman in a game. Go figure. Greenskins have no male / female option, unless I was bugged some how. Anyway I decided I really wanted to be a tank and why not be a dwarf. My friend decided to play a Rune Priest (I think that’s what they’re called) and together we wandered around chapter one. We did our first public quest (and each of us died a few times) the first time I ended up crashing right as the heroic spawned. Great! I figured this might be due to my new graphic card, which had been running pretty swell up to that point. 

Logged back in, everything was alright except I had died at one point or another. 

The dwarf starter quests were a lot of fun. I mean, a LOT of fun. I had way more fun killing snotlings and tipping over barrels and numerous other things then I did when I was running through the elves or even Chaos. Not sure why, it could have been the friend I was playing with. We’ve gamed together so much in the past that it just felt natural, I had time to read quests (though not quite enough to figure out where we were going before he headed off) and it was a smoother transition. 

As of right now my WAR account is cancelled, and I’m still playing on the freebie days. I just can’t find anything that’s going to make me want to keep playing after the free days go by especially since I am not one to want to pvp or rvr 100% of my gameplay. I’d love a small group of people to play with constantly, 5-6 I can handle, 100+ is a little much. We’ll see how it goes.

On a side note: Very glad to see the hide UI command fixed (it toggles it now instead of you having to constantly hold down the buttons). Having the curse client is probably the best suggestion I can give to anyone playing, being able to install your UI mods at the touch of a button and update them is great. 

The gold selling spam was slightly annoying, but I’ve got selective reading and can tune that out pretty quickly. Plus, no one would be sending me tells, since I don’t know anyone on the servers.

I didn’t play nearly as much as I wanted to yesterday, mostly due to a very sore mouth and a few extra strength tylanol but I did get some time in. I wanted to try to get Stargrace to level 80 before the expansion comes out in November, but I’ve said a few times now I just can’t stomach the RoK quest grind any more. I decided since I was only 40% away from leveling, I’d try to put up with it just long enough to at least hit level 78. I headed off to Jarsath Wastes to complete the quests I’ve had for about three months now that have just sat there. 

I did manage to die three times, and with a little help got to 90% experience before I just decided to call it quits. I just really dislike the grind THAT much. I figure now I’ll either do one of two things. Forget about Stargrace until the expansion comes out and try to level her to 80 with the new content (some of it should be mid 70’s range I hope) or go through old world content and level at the pace of a snail. I haven’t decided which. Or I’ll just level someone else and work on her gradually like I have been. The 100% experience bonus made no different to my level 77 character because the experience you gain from kills is so insignificant. 

I did get a LOT of crafting levels though. My tailor went from 21-30 in an hour thanks to vitality and the bonus experience. My alchemist went from 41-47. I’m hoping to get her to 50 today, but I’m out of vitality and things are crawling a little more. Plus I’m not certain if I want to be so eager to hit T6 which is the dreaded harvest tier that uses supplies from Sinking Sands. 

Hope everyone else is having an awesome weekend!