Yamini just wasn’t suited to Qeynos. Every day she heard “have you ever seen a gnoll before?!” she had to resist the urge of throttling the little twerp who irked her. So it was that I decided to move her back to the comforts of Freeport, where she could lurk in alleys and steal pie from window sills all she wanted. It’s not like she hasn’t already betrayed before, numerous times in fact. Yamini is my second character that I ever made on EQ2, and she’s only level 53 with 37aa. I made her shortly after Dasie my templar, who’s also a halfling, go figure.

She did the old school betrayal quest at level 14 where she was cast from Qeynos and lost her shard (ah, the good ‘ol days) and became an assassin, then not too long ago she went back to Qeynos, embracing the ways of the ranger, until yesterday where she’d had enough and went back to an assassin. A friend asked me if there were any characters aside from the new monk who I had not betrayed, and I had to answer honestly- no, I’ve betrayed them all. Tipa asked the question of how many had only been betrayed once, which was a clearer answer, two have betrayed once. The druid I have, and dasie, who only made the trek to inquisitor once before I’d decided the class was simply not for me.

I like the versatility of being able to betray back and forth even though I absolutely hate having to work the faction up afterwards. It wasn’t so bad this time around, I choose to wander through Neriak and do the quests there instead of my usual sneaking into Qeynos method. It would have gone by a lot faster were it not for the sudden influx I saw of people who were also moving onto greener pastures in Freeport. At least 4 people also sported “the exiled” as titles to their name, a permanent fixture until you finish pledging your allegiance to your new home town.

Once I’d finished getting her all settled I made for Freeport, did the citizenship quest over there, and bought her a (mostly) empty house to stuff her potions and poisons in. Oh yes, of course she’s a crafter. 53 assassin, but 62 alchemist. It comes in handy to use her own crafted poisons with all the adept3’s I make and dusts I have kicking around for use. Not to mention it can be quite profitable when I actually get into a crafting mood (which I have not, lately).

I spent quite a few plat upgrading her skills, buying the new home, and getting settled. Browsing through her quest journal I noticed she’d completed 6 heritage quests, but not missing mask, which is typically an essential HQ for all my characters, as I love popping into dark elf form. So once servers come back up I imagine that’s what I’ll set off to accomplish, not to mention the guild is quite close to level 29, and I’d love to see us push for 30. We’ll see how it goes. Cordanim mentioned he was going to be doing some crafting, so hopefully he’ll be pounding out a few writs as well *nudge nudge*.

Other then that, and making fun of some roleplaying tactics, I had a blast talking to Tipa about her WoW rp days. They sounded amusing to say the least. I wish I had known her when I was playing the game.

Since I closed one of my accounts, it means I’m without my monk, who was my quest character. Also means I’m short an armorer, and I wanted to have one kicking around mostly for adornments, they get to make some pretty nice ones. So with my final character slot on the one open account, I made a high elf monk named Ysandria. She’s also a roleplay character, though I haven’t decided on any sort of background or story line to her yet. I’m sure it’ll come to me in time. I spent most of yesterday questing around Gorowyn, and it didn’t take long to get to level 18 with 14aa that way. The new zones SoE’s added over time have been wonderful for new players, providing far better gear and rewards then the old shattered lands starter zones. I actually think both of the islands could use a revamp, as none of the gear is on par with the starter zones of Darklight Woods, Kelethin, nor Gorowyn. Though it is nice to start there for quest credit, then move on to greener pastures.

So once I’d finished off all of the Gorowyn chains, which ended with me lighting some machine up and exploding aviak out of the air (best quest ever lately) I headed to the shattered lands zones. I enjoy doing the smaller chains there as they reward you with faction for your respected city. So I hung out in The Caves, The Forest Ruins, Oakmyst Forest (how many times I died to that named bear back in the day I couldn’t even start to tell you, he was a bane of my lowbies existence) and did the small quests around those areas. Some have been revamped, over time npc’s have moved, though there are still a few oldies. Npc’s in Baubleshire still ask you to hunt forgotten guardians for a few goodies, and ask you to explore the mage tower. At level 19 these zones were mostly gray to me, but I still had fun and got about 1% exp for turn in. The quests didn’t warrent any aa at my level either, but I’m not too concerned.

It’s nice to be taking a break from the T8 grind, and exploring the smaller zones that I fell in love with when I first started playing this game. I miss the T5 raids, and how difficult I thought they were at the time. When frogloks were introduced the raid zone gave you a title as well as a house item and I fell in love with it immediately. I still remember doing my prismatic 1.0 and how proud I was to have been going with my templar at level 45 (which was the min. to get into the zone to begin with). I remember that I went with Allure, an Australian guild on Najena. Ah good times.

I gathered up a small handful of house items while I did these lowbie quests, four books for my house (which was nice, none of them are L&L’s) a small lab flask, a small cage that hangs from the ceiling, and a bench. I’ve outfitted Ysandria’s small inn room with these, and promptly put her meager gatherings for sale - which all sold, go figure. I priced level 1-19 stuff for 1g and made 31g just from that. Thank you transmuters.

No idea how long I’ll keep playing the character, but in time I hope to make her into a crafter, and continue on questing. Ah yes, the break from T8 is nice.

So I decided to take a break from Vanguard (already), I was feeling a little lonely with a lack of community. I always said I’d be back to EQII as soon as I wasn’t feeling quite so burnt out anyhow. Yesterday I decided that it was time for me to betray my mystic to a defiler. Why? Well, why not? Defilers have some wonderful power management tools, and I betrayed from defiler for a guild to begin with long ago. So why not just play what I want to play.

I decided this time around to do the betrayal quests for Neriak, which are not quite as boring as the ones for Freeport (that I’ve also done countless times). I need +10,000 more faction before I’ll be allowed to actually apply for citizenship - which is the most tedious portion of the betrayal, obtaining the faction you need in the end.

The price of fire emeralds has apparently also come down quite a bit, so I’ll be stocking up on those. Misako (the mystic / defiler) is still only level 70, so I’ve got some adventure levels to catch up. I’m not sure if I’m going to leave her in Neriak, or move her to Gorowyn. Or maybe just put her back in Freeport. I also have an extra stein of the alesmith that she could use, in order to gate to Kylong Plains (dang us non-druid / wizard types!). In the mean time, it’s nice to be talking to old friends again, and yeah, nice to be back playing EQII. I’d probably stick it out with Vanguard if the game was slightly more populated. I still enjoy it a great deal, but hey what can I say, EQII is home.

One of the more amusing quests that came out with RoK, is one of the language quests. This weekend I decided I’d level Arysh some, and get some aa. The easiest way of course through questing. She decided to pick up the three tome quests which are static spawns, one in Kylong plains, and two in Fens of Nathsar. After picking up the pages, turning them in to a collector, each one gives a sub quest (or two) with a few easy objectives. The one in Kylong has you kill 15 skeletons, one in fens has you kill a few cockatrice, and the final one has you feed a froglok some people food. At the end of the froglok language one, Shorty, decides to stick around for a bit, rambling and trailing after you. He doesn’t just trail after you either, he gates with you if you try to shake him off.

And boy does he talk. Almost none stop. He takes off after some amount of time on his own, but no matter what I did the little green shorty refused to leave Arysh’ home. So far the weekend’s been fairly productive. With a Mistmoore Inner Sanctum (MMIS) raid scheduled for this Wednesday, I decided maybe I’d be able to wiggle Arysh onto the raid rather then Goudia, depending on our turn out (or I offered to box). Arysh has been on the stage of SoD where she only needed the 6 pages and the named afterwards, so I talked to Shadowgeist and asked him if he thought we could duo this yet.

I played Goudia and Arysh (Troubador and Warden) and he played the tank, and we managed (Him at level 80, as well as Goudia, and Arysh at level 75) to duo right up to the named (where we stopped for the day and decided we’d do the rest Sunday as I know guild mates need them too). I was impressed. The zone IS still difficult. They still cast dots left right and center, they still stun, adds are still a pain (though we had 4 encounters at one point and still managed to survive) but it was doable. There were other raids running through on their way to MMIS so at times the zone lagged and that wasn’t quite fun, and yes, we did die (though a few times we died on purpose so we could make our way to the back staircase instead of the front doors) but I was still happy and proud that we managed it. Goudia is way at the beginning of SoD, Dasie has hers already and has for a long time now. If there’s a chance of me switching off to my warden I’d gladly take it.

I had the sage make all of Arysh’ spells up to 75, 8 more fire emeralds and she’ll be done, always a good thing. I’m just now starting to get to the good quests with legendary rewards. I haven’t taken her to Jarsath Wastes yet but I want to start working on that shortly. She also hasn’t started the Kunzar Jungle quests, I’ve stuck to Kylong Plains and Fens of Nathsar, aside from that one Crypt of Agony instance run. Sitting at level 75, 50% through it, with 118aa. I’m quite happy. I always did enjoy playing my warden.

Granted there are 100’s of druid types on the server and every second group I hear asking for a healer is looking for plate or chain, but oh well. It’s supposed to be what I want to play, right?

Another full day of Christmas shopping / decorating today, and then some game time. Ah, ’tis the season.

Goudia managed to ding 80 last night. It wasn’t that big of a deal to me, I’d been sitting at 79 for over a week now, barely playing the character. There just didn’t seem to be anything at 80 that I couldn’t do at any other levels, so I didn’t push it. Quested with Shadowgeist in Kunzar Jungle, which is still by far the worst zone to me, and for no real reasons other then I have a difficult time finding my way around it. The repeatable quests send you all over, and there are too many repeatables. Every second npc seems to have something he wants you to kill over and over.

Once I’d gotten her to 80 though the question sprung up.. what do I do now?

I’d told myself that one level 80 adventurer was all I’d have. I’d work my crafters. But crafting can only go on for so long before you need a change of scenery. So I ultimately decided that I’d level one mage, one priest, and one scout, to 80. For now. Of course knowing how I am, that’ll change next week. So today I decided I’d work on Stargrace (71 illusi) and Dasie (70 templar). There’s no way I can handle solo questing through all of those again with a templar all alone. It’d take me forever to kill anything. I do own two accounts, and I do enjoy boxing - however, the way I box is both accounts on one computer, and I alt tab between them hitting their hot keys (no macro’s at all) and play each as though they were individual. Of course my computer has other ideas with RoK. I can box in any other zone, I’ve even boxed on raids no problems at all. But the intensity of the RoK zones leaves something to be desired on my poor machine. I’m not even aware of my computer specs but it’s a fairly nice one. The idea of solo questing is enough for me to turn down my graphics until the characters are nothing but blobs in burlap sacks on the screen, and waiting for things to render when I’m standing on top of them. That’s how bad I dread solo questing with a templar.

So this morning I set up my graphic settings, turned the sound off of both accounts (the game runs better that way, go figure) and set out to adventure in Kylong Plains - which Dasie had never been to since the expansion hit. Of course that meant I had to do my sokokar quest. Again. This will be the 6th time I’ve completed the quest, and thankfully no more of my level 70’s need it (except maybe a crafter here and there.. and they can wait). Dasie was at 95aa when RoK released, yes, I slacked on her. She’s now close to 100, and 80% into her level. Servers came down (for nerfs, I’ve been told, but who knows) so I’m just waiting for them to come back up and I’ll continue on my way. Decided that today would be a good EQ2-day, cooking a roasted chicken with stuffing later on.

I moved Dasie and Stargrace from Torrent Knights (my own little personal guild) to Arsenal, which is where Goudia is hanging out. I’m not sure how the guild will survive over the next little while, but we do have raids scheduled for next week starting Wednesday, so maybe we’ll turn around. I hate being spread out in multiple guilds, it’s annoying. Especially if I think someone may need me in the “main” guild. I’ll keep my smaller characters in TK while the bigun’s hang out in Arsenal. We’ll see how it goes.

If anyone else is on AB doing the 71+ grind of quests and wants the company of a templar, let me know. I’m already forming plans to convince Shadowgeist to re-quest all those quests with me again after doing them for himself and Goudia.

Signature I made for Goudia, there was going to be some wise ass comment about giving a rats ass.. but decided to leave it as is for now. Who doesn’t like cheese after all!

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.

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.

I’ve got a very small range of goals that I’m trying to get done before the new expansion comes out. Why bother? Well, I’m sort of a lists person. If I want to get anything done, or feel a small sense of accomplishment, I make a list. I do it for a lot of things. One of the items was to get Goudia’s tinkering skill to 350. Now, I already have a tinkerer at 350 skill, Stargrace. But I rarely play her. I decided a few days ago that the level 70 I’d stick with in rise of Kunark will be the troubador. I had her tinkering at around 60 and decided I’d spend 10p of my savings (if it cost that much) and see how high I could get it. I’ve spent roughly 2p50g and gotten it to 300 so far. 50 more points and that will be finished off. I’m exceptionally happy of course.

Down side, Goudia is not at 100aa yet. She needs 9 more. So that’s on the list as well. And so is saving up collection quests in preparation for the expansion. Though I’m sure that there’s so much discovery and quests that it won’t exactly be needed.

The quickest method I found for leveling tinkering, was to stop production after the first completion. Because this craft works on skill rather then experience, you get the same chance at a skill up from pristine as you do from the first tier. Aside from that, one recipe (at least) a tier, uses very few ores, but it uses plenty of loam (fairly cheap still) and rocks (also fairly cheap) thus saving you huge amounts of money. You get no pristine experience so making things for the first time isn’t going to net you anything extra either. You want to see what that cool do-dad is that you just scribed? Easy, open the recipe book and right click the image, then right click the image at the bottom of that, and you can examine the item before you ever make it.

So why tinkering? Well, Arysh is already 350 transmuting. That cost me about 50p to work up (minus any farming) and I’m not going to do it again. Tinkering also has far more usability to my characters. Who doesn’t want to be able to feign death, rez a group member (I’m a troubador remember, not a dirge) or any other number of things to play with. Though I was of course disappointed that my mem wipe item was changed to a de-agro, it happens.

Of course in the mean time Goudia’s bags are a disaster area, as can be seen above. She’s got ore and roots and rocks stashed all over the place and there’s no point in me trying to organize it right now when all I want is another 50 skill ups and then I’ll be done (for now). I apologize for the lack of posts lately, but with the expansion looming and plenty of people hanging out in beta more then in game, there’s been sparse topics to post about. Expect an explosion on the day of release!

Tomorrow the wonderfully smart owners of my building have decided that between 9:30am and 3pm, the power (including heat) is going to be turned off. I’m sure there’s a reason for this (they did it last year too) but they always seem to pick the coldest day of the week to do it. I also live on the 11th floor which means if I want to leave the apartment at all during the day, I’ll be walking. So tonight, I’ll be heading out to go book shopping, find a few extra art supplies, and find something that I can take out of the fridge and eat without having to prepare it on a stove first, and something I won’t need lights for. Since it’s winter months here now pretty much it’s going to be a dark, quiet, day. Thank goodness for my mp3 player and a love of books.