Aww, what a cute couple…

Headed off to Castle Mistmoore last night with a pick up group none the less. Something almost unheard of by me, I hate PuG’s, and that zone is awful for them. I had done Freethinkers about 30 minutes earlier though, and was not quite in the mood to call it a night yet. I’m glad I decided to go. Since TK has fallen (for the most part) I’ve been trying to get a feel for other groups and guilds, trying to find a new home. It’s always nice to actually get out there and play in order to do that. The two groups consisted of a few banished, myself and Ymirr from TK, and some random folks (such as Zepp pictured above). The zone typically lags people. We had a bard who kept going LD on us, and adds, always lots of adds. Typically people would lag into them (For once, I have absolutely zero lag in this zone since I’ve gotten the new computer, I adore it) and before you know it, there are 10 more adds. The epics in the zone also hurt, in fact, they hurt bad. We had no shaman, which would have made a world of difference. I’m leveling mine up, the defiler that is. There seems to be a small demand for them and I’ve never played one end game, only the templar and the fury.

Freethinkers was fun. There are ‘tricks’ to the zone that are getting fixed shortly with the tinkered mem-wipe item. A lot of legendary dropped, upgrades and even nicer then some fabled. Go figure. Parsed fairly low since I was on mem-wipe patrol and there were timers going off and all the rest. Still managed around 1,000-1,200 though. Trying to make a few adornments to help out. The fury has been neglected since it seems the entire server went off and created them. I use her to port the illusionist around, and other then that.. not much else.

Hopefully I can wiggle my way into a few more raids. I haven’t gotten a stitch of gear as upgrades, but it’s not that much of an issue for me. When I’m playing the templar I’m a little more aware of my lack of gear due to the simple fact that she’s wearing T7 legendary and T6 fabled. Gear does NOT make the player though, I am a firm believer in that. I’ll take a templar MT healer who’s paying attention over a fully fabled one who couldn’t find their heal button if it was stapled to their ass any day. Trust me, there are a lot of those out there just because templars have a pure HP buff, Sanctuary, and other “pretties” that make them desirable in a MT group.

Despite paying almost 50g in repair bills, yesterday was fun.

Silverstep, sitting on the throne in Kaladim, doesn’t she look purdy?

Yesterday was another fun day, I was invited with the same raid group from Sunday to do HoS (Halls of Seeing) with them. Now, I had already attempted HoS on Friday night with my templar, I posted about my experiences there being less then impressive, in fact they were quite painful. Due to the fact that I was with what once was a ‘hardcore’ raid guild, I expected far more from them. So when I went again on Monday night, it was a huge relief and a whole lot of fun. I joined their ventrillo channel to listen in, and partake in a few conversations. I use ACT and my G15 keyboard to time AoE’s on encounters, so I called out the AoE’s where I could to warn people that they were incoming. I was also parsing 3-5 the entire raid which is always nice for an enchanter.

Today I’m going to work up my transmuting *shudders* and not looking forward to that at all. My characters could really use some adornments, and it’s so much cheaper then having to buy them. Especially if I get gear upgrades and need more, or just want different adornments for different gear. I’m going to spend at least 40p working the skill, and see how far I can get it on that money. I’m at 150 currently (Just able to do T4 items) and I’m hoping that coin will get me to T6.

I also have a lot of L&L to complete, and a lot more quests. I’m still sitting at 93ap and I’d like to get 100 (on the Illusionist). It looks as though I may be able to raid Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Monday with this new group that I’ve been raiding with, and I hope it continues. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

One of these days I’d also like to work on the fireknight pages. A long annoying quest that I’m really not keen on starting. I think I’ve gotten a few general pages as I hung around Loping Plains and New Tunaria, but none of the harder ones quite yet. Ewies.

The ap distribution between Illusionist (91 ap total) - Fury (83 ap total) - Templar (48 ap total)

Sunday was a great day in EQII at least. I was offered to raid Lyceum with some people that I didn’t really know that well, boxing my fury and illusionist, but at the last moment as I was clearing through the remainder of Valdoons, a friend asked if I wanted to come raid with their guild and clear Lyceum and then Labs afterwards. I was also asked if I wanted to give Banished a second shot and raid with them on my Templar - I declined after Fridays raid experience.

So the Illusionist headed to Lyceum, a zone I remember fondly. I frowned at myself for not having yet completed to speak as a dragon. I need draconic in order to acquire the quest located outside the zone just up on a ridge. I’ll have to get that done this week maybe so that I’m ready to do the quest next week. Both raids went off painlessly, and it was a lot of fun. I declined from using ventrilo, wasn’t really needed having been there so many times in the past anyhow. I was also invited back tonight, to do HoS (Halls of Seeing) so that’s a plus. Their guild leader is on hiatus at the moment, getting settled into a new place I believe. Their back up tank is fantastic at his job, and the raid was quickly filled, even over-filled in fact. It was the type of raid experience that I miss having in Torrent Knights. They’ve got a close family atmosphere, and everyone had fun.

The Illusionist finally got her Time Compression ap. A huge bonus. It’s a buff that can be placed on anyone in my group (other then myself) and reduces recast timers, as well as casting timers, and recovery timers by a portion that’s fairly significant, wizards love me for it. I’ve also got illusory arm, which is a permanent buff for 25% double attacks - both melee and ranged. Match that with my own dps (which is not too bad for an enchanter), power regen (which at times I wish I had less of - if I’m below 20% power I do 20% more dps) mezing, and various other tricks of the trade that illusionists have, and I’m a pretty nice support class.

As I looked over the ap set up for each of my level 70 characters, it surprised me to see where they sat. The fury has actually completed the most quests out of the three, but she has only recieved ap for a small portion of them. The templar who was my main for the first two years of the game, has barely any ap at all. The Illusionist, who was my new(est) main has the most ap out of all three characters, and most of those are from quest turn ins - even though the fury has been mentoring for a majority of quest turn ins. I wish I could see that list broken down even further, a list of quests I’ve recieved ap from, a list of items I’ve collected giving ap, and exploration events so I could see what I was missing. Is there even such thing? A list some place of exploration events so people can check each one and see if they’ve gotten the ap for it? Not sure, sounds like a fun (and time consuming) project though. Now that the Illusionist has TC I’m not sure where to go next. There is the Fireknight pages that both fury / illusionist really should be collecting, as well as the various signature quests that neither has done, and the illusionist needs to complete some more claymore steps - she’s on the final SoS portion now, and can move (finally) to PoA shortly. She also needs to work on DT access. The only difficulty with working more then one level 70 up. I’m sure once the newest expansion comes out I’ll slack behind on the fury and just work up the illusionist, but in the mean time they’re both fairly up to par (the fury already has her claymore as well as DT access) so I’ve got the time.

Dasie listening to Euktrzkai Amdaatk - who has one of the longest speeches (besides Valdoon!) ever

I’ve had an influx of raid invites lately, and it’s nice but also a bit overwhelming at times. Especially because I get individual invites on separate characters, for different days. Yesterday a former guild member was taking his alliance through labs (which they also did the previous week) and asked if I’d like to come along with my templar. I was a bit hesitant simply because of the bad raid experience the night before, but I said sure, I love labs. The raid could not have gone any smoother. There was one wipe, and they were back up and ready to fight again in a matter of seconds (the whole room including a far reached named was accidentally pulled) - Vyemm died on the first pull, always a good sign. The tank did an amazing job even if he did die a few times, the backup tanks were superb (I was in the backup group with an assassin, illusionist, a guardian, shadowknight, and a fury who went LD and was replaced with a defiler). The loot system was random nbg (need before greed) - one fabled and one legendary per person. Which means that you could technically be unlucky on every single roll for months and never win a thing - but the possibility for upgrades is at least there even for the newcomers. It’s something most raids don’t have. If you’re a guest you should never expect to be getting any loot.

Once that raid was completed I relogged to my fury and was asked to a clockwork raid right away, it was too late for me though I was just checking sales and heading out for the night. My fury and illusionist were invited to a Lyceum raid today, the templar was invited to a different Lyceum raid today, and also invited to a Freethinkers Hideout (with the guild who’s raid experience I was less then happy about on Friday night) raid. I am not going to go to all of them, thank goodness, but in the mean time it is nice to be raiding again. I wish it were with my own guild but I’ll take what I can get.

I’ve been trying to figure out which classes (if any) I’d like to level up, since I’ve got the two separate accounts now, and I think I’ve decided on the mystic (who is going to betray to defiler) and a troubador. The troubador will also be a carpenter, since I’ve wanted one forever. I’d like an armor smith as well, but I’ll just wait on that. I still have issues with the server population, especially vs. other servers but I’m making due and it’s not always so bad. One thing I have noticed, hanging out on random teamspeak and vent servers with everyone I’ve raided with - everyone makes fun of everyone else, and gossip, is the key word. I’ve heard so much general ’stuff’ about other people from other guilds over the past few days, it’s just astounding. People making fun of people and random tid bits of who’s staying who’s leaving who’s doing what with whom. People are interesting to say the least.

A new pretty for Dasie

I’m slowly getting back into things in game, besides working up the lowbie quests in order to find supplies to cater to my transmuting needs, I’ve been edging my way into some small raids. I did the alliance raid for Deathtoll last week, and then a few days later was asked if I wanted to join in a Lyceum raid this Saturday night, as well as a Labs raid next Saturday. Last night having a small itch for a simple raid Shadowgeist set up a quick and easy courts run. Courts is T6, and can be completed almost with one group. We had about five guild members on and invited some random pick ups to fill the second group. There was only one small hitch.

I played both of the healers in the main tank group, and our only other healer was a fury for the second group.

Surprisingly enough, we only had one wipe, at the very end on the Queen. There was no power regen in group one, so fighting both named with out a power regen break proved to be a bit more then we could handle. We quickly rebuffed and finished her off, raid successful. Everyone ended up with something, which is the great thing about T6 raids. Between upgrades for alts, and crafting supplies that dropped, the majority of people ended up with a master or fabled item of some sort, and two crafting items each.

Since I was playing both the fury and the templar in the main tank group, I had my doubts. First of all could my computer even handle me raiding with two accounts? (answer to that is yes, on balanced settings none the less!) Could I keep the main tank (and the rest of my group) alive? There were a few fights that were close, it’s very hard to cure and heal at the same time, but we managed. I do not think I could play both MT healers in a T7 raid, especially not with the cures that are required (trama in labs for example). Was it fun? Yes! Stressful as well though.

Dasie’s second pretty of the night, a new belt

I know I’ve done the zone before with her, she’s gotten the hoop of endless time (a templar/inquisitor earring) in the past, it must have been before aa’s were awarded though, as she pinged two full aa while there and finally hit 44. Which is way far behind where I’d like her. On the plus side, she did get the aa ability called “blessing” which grants her group a 25% chance at more procs from items. A very nice aa. I’m hoping to get her to at least 50, I’ve not raided with her hardly at all since T5, she used to be my main character and I switched out quite some time ago. I’ve done a labs raid or two with her, but that’s about it. She hasn’t even started claymore, so unfortunately it looks as though I’ll be trying to at least catch her up to the illusionist and then I can proceed to work on it with both characters at the same time. She is my ‘old school’ EQII character, she has her prismatic 1.0 completed, the scepter of the scale (I think it’s called, I may be mistaken) and fought Darathar when she was level 45. That was pretty scarey way back when. She’s almost completed her Godking weapon, though I rarely ever see people doing that raid any more (mostly due to the huge hassle of farming eyes. If you’ve ever done that raid before you know exactly what I’m talking about). Again I think it’s a shame that the older quests get pushed behind and people rarely ever see that content any more. Even if they wanted to, it requires a raid.

Tonight I’ve been invited to a Freethinkers Hideout raid (with Dasie), I warned the guild who invited me that she’s not exactly geared up for that sort of raid (I should know, I played both the Fury and the Illusionist in Freethinkers in the past) although all of her heals (except one level 70 group reactive) are master quality at least. She also has a master of her hp buff, holy redoubt, which gives almost 1k flat hp. Playing a templar is very different from playing the fury. Where the fury can concentrate on group heals and fast casting times, the templar heals are exceptionally slow. It frustrates me some times because I’m used to fast casting times on my heals. The templar can heal a huge amount though, it just takes some time. They also have some of the nicer mitigation and hp buffs. The fury has one mitigation buff (that does not stack) and has no hp buffs at all (though they do have power buffs, where as the templar has none).

So we’ll have to see how tonight goes. Apparently this guild is looking for a raiding templar. Could be an opening for me if all goes well.

Stargrace standing on the rock to the left, amidst the Lucan D’Lere Raid Alliance

I don’t typically do pick up raids, for numerous reasons. They usually end up being huge disasters that leave me with large repair bills and a sour taste in my mouth. So last night when I was randomly sent a tell on my illusionist asking if I wanted to join a Deathtoll raid, I surprised even myself by saying sure I’d tag along. The Lucan D’Lere Raid Alliance is a mixture of mostly Legends of the Tundra (with wonderful coercer Rorion leading that night’s raid) with some unguilded, and Salarionn acting as tank for the night from Forsaken (which is a fairly acomplished T7 raid guild). There was a member or two from HoE, as well as myself from Torrent Knights (which died once Vanguard came out, but there are 4-6 of us who still frequent the guild and don’t want to see the level 60 home dashed so easily). It was a fun night, even if we didn’t accomplish killing the corpuscle (also known as the splitting drake, and a pain in many people’s arse) and we also called it a night on the diseased based snake who has a nasty AoE and port / root deal. Tarinax did fall on the third pull, having some issues with him clambering his way into the wall in behind the raid force and then AoE’ing us all with his frontal when ever he could. Meanie.

It was a change, from the raids I’m used to. A bad thing? Not really. I did enjoy myself. Will I make it a nightly ritual? Probably not. As fun as it was, I missed the polished feel from my previous raids. In my opinion it went very well for people who perhaps don’t raid together all of the time, and who are still working their way through the lower end of T7. One small pet peeve I had this time was the amount of noise on the vent channel. I actually liked the method my previous raiding guild used, on teamspeak (the alliance used Ventrilo) during the raid, only the raid leader / officers / tanks had access to voice. Which meant people were paying attention to the raid, and not breaking out into the latest sports scores or discussions on breasts as we’re going over the strats for a particular fight — that is purely situational though, I realize that interaction with people is what makes these mmo’s thrive and succeed, it’s the community and bonds you form. I’d just rather only hear one voice at a time instead of 10, and have it be on the situation at hand so I can do my job as a raider (I know, I know, raiding is not supposed to be a job) rather then have to listen to a whole lot of other stuff that I don’t have any input in. Maybe that’s weird of me to say, but I like to raid and know I do a good job, and pay attention and get that job done. It gives me a sense of accomplishment and makes me feel good. Just my weird twisted views.

As another first for the evening, I betrayed my 52 necromancer over to a conj! Oh, and I also run a second account now. I moved my 70 fury and the 52 necromancer conj over to the new account, so that I could box them (and anything else I decided to make) along with the characters from my original account. Worth it? Well, here’s how me and my boyfriend rationalized it.

• Already paying for station access (price hike had not occurred yet) for EQII and Vanguard, but have no interest in playing Vanguard. This basically meant I was paying for 4 character slots, and adventure packs, and that was it. I don’t play anything else on their play list.
• Play frequently enough and can box smoothly enough (I play the 2nd account we had along with my account to level up alts and what not) that the account would not go to waste.
• Having a Call of the Hero character, as well as a character who can port, on a 3rd account, would benefit both his characters and mine (Can always park the Fury in Sinking Sands and port to all the EoF zones just fine, as well as dragging the conj to the basement of SoS or even Nagafen if needed and port people down).
• Gives us an extra 2 character slots compared to station access, for a total of 12 characters vs. 10.
• Veteran rewards to a larger amount of characters (the new account came with 6 months of veteran rewards, as well as the boxed rewards for each expansion since release, including the DoF statue, the KoS house plant, the EoF whirly clockwork pet thing.

So in the long run it was worth it. It also resolves my issue about the lack of population. I can box myself when I don’t feel like grouping (which is frequently) and I have extra character slots to create more characters (for example if beastlords come out with Kunark, or that Fae that I haven’t made yet). I’m pleased with it so far and don’t regret giving up Vanguard in the least. I figure perhaps when the first expansion for it comes out, I’ll give it another shot, but until then the bugs and glitches and over all beta feel, was just not what I was looking for.

Hmm. Only own two pieces, and yet three show up?

Lots of bugs happen in MMO’s, you can’t really avoid them. This one is an interesting one. The piece of gear is what my coercer wears, one of the legendary set pieces. The interesting part is that it shows me as wearing 3/7 pieces. It clearly also shows that I own 2/7 pieces (which I do) the shoes, and the sleeves. I’m also benefiting from the 2% spell crit chance.. and have no idea why. I’m not sure why this bug is here or when (if ever) it’s going to be fixed, but I find it amusing none the less. The legendary gear is not all that, but for a new ‘main’ who was wearing mostly treasured, it’s pretty good.

Decided that I wasn’t going to hop on the Vanguard wagon like a lot of those I know. I wasn’t really impressed with what I’ve seen and heard. Plus it would mean I’d need to get more space on my computer, you need 20 free gigs to play, and I have about 12 left after the random stuff I have, EQ2, WoW, NWN, photoshop, etc. I don’t want to have to buy computer parts for a game that I’m not even sure I want to play. So I’ll get the WoW expansion because I already know I like the game, I’ll give that a whirl, and in a few months I’ll see where Vanguard is at. If it seems like flocks of people are running for the game due to some reason that I’ve yet to hear from, I’m sure I’ll wander over as well. In the mean time, it’s just not worth it.

Raids went well this weekend. Clockwork is easiest of all the EoF instances, with Inner Sanctum following close behind, then Freethinkers, and Emerald Halls. Didn’t get a chance to go to EH this week since we were short healers, but perhaps next time. I really wish people could stick around longer, or that we had a few more constant raiders, but well,that happens with time. Especially since it’s the tail end of the holidays, some are still out. Then there’s always those who are sick, who have family things come up, computers break, and any other number of issues.

So, about WoW. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep playing the characters I have, or start a new one, or trying to find a some what static-mature bunch of people to play with (do those exist in WoW?) or what. I really do enjoy the game, but I think I’d like it a great deal more if I actually had some people to play with as opposed to just playing alone 90% of the time and having to listen to “lawl nooborz” and other random comments. The community is the only thing that turns me off of that game. We’ll just have to see how it goes!

Finally, Stargrace’ snow globe collection is complete (for this year)

Antonican, Frostfell, Fae, Volcanic, Dervish, Mystical, Thulian, Bixie, and Everling. Those are the 9 snow globes that were handed out as free gifts from the gift giver in the village. Why on earth anyone would need or even want so many snow globes, I’ve no clue. They’re pretty none the less, and right clicking on them provides some house music (one of my pet peeves is the music that comes in every Qeynos home *shudders*). All of my alts have random pieces of this collection stashed away on them, as I claimed with everyone I could for a week in order to complete at least one set for my main character.

Last night was raids, and for the first time since early December, we were full! Short on healers, but full none the less, it was nice. We headed off to Freethinkers Hideout, which is a moderately hard zone. First name down without any issues (granted I died, a lot, this was my first time in the zone as an enchanter and not a healer, and finding my niche was slightly more difficult), downed the second name after two attempts, with some people in the raid experiencing numerous bugs with the zone. I wish they were fixed. One very annoying bug is mobs spawning in the world. It makes it very difficult to burn down adds if no one can see them. Another bug, when (if) the raid wipes, there is at least 2-10 people who end up freezing at the loading entities screen. You have to type /quit (your name here) in order to load back into the game and not be frozen. Which of course takes time, and when there are 20-24 people and 2-10 of them are freezing, it creates a lot of down time waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting some more.

Loot was…. interesting. It wasn’t horrible I suppose. We got one plate breastplate that went to the main tank, a legendary belt that went to a healer, and a piece of the fury set gear (fabled) that was absolutely gorgeous, grats to Jarath for that. It took a little over four hours just to get those three (really two) pieces of loot.

Wanted to do Nizara tonight before we raid Chel’Drak so Stargrace can get some ring upgrades (Uddo and Jarath need this zone as well) but that fell through, so I think today we’re doing Chel’Drak and Inner Sanctum depending on the force that turns up. We’re short one healer for sure, but we should be able to make do. Inner Sanctum is actually one of my favorite zones as far as EoF goes. We typically do clockwork as well, but I don’t really care for that zone, it’s just about burning the mobs as fast as you can. Emerald Halls, well, I’ve only been there once. It’s an all day raid in my opinion.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

A new year and a new beginning. A new blog and hosted site. It’s not quite 2007 yet, there’s less then an hour to go though. What am I doing here rather then uh.. well anywhere else? Hrms. I like the quiet. We’ll leave it at that.

Dom of the Elani, what a sweet item to have if it were only a level or two lower.. *grins* another part to a chain of quests. I’ve got the final quest to the chain on me and hopefully I’ll be completing it soon, you have to go to Freethinkers Hideout, which is a x4 raid instance in Loping Plains. As you’re fighting mobs and clearing the first and second named, there are combustible walls and the zone fills with werewolves. There’s a chest that you can click for the final update. Rewards are one of a few legendary items, an upgrade to those who don’t already raid, but in my opinion, if you’re in (and clearing) Freethinkers to begin with, you’re already wearing better. So not really a good reward for the risk. Oh well, it’s aa!

Speaking of aa, Stargrace did Deathtoll today. Managed to get her buff for one lucky group mate to have 25% double attack on both melee and ranged attacks. Very nice if you ask any of the brawlers especially in guild. Also got a relic robe and pants for her, not feeling quite so gimpy now and getting used to her being my actual main rather then just an alt. We’ll see how it goes!

Since it’s still pretty close to christmas, not a whole lot has been going on. I was invited to raid with Marauders, some tier 6 things mostly for achievement points. I went with Silverstep since Stargrace is my new main. We did Courts, which I love (and also dinged my little guild level 7), did Lockjaw (awsome aa), and Poets Palace: Return. Which is actually a raid zone I’ve never been to. There’s a reason people avoid this zone, the trash mobs (and there are about 1,000 of them) have a billion hit points. They’re not hard, but they take forever to kill. We spent 3 hours clearing the zone, a very long time for something that’s T6. Ended the night with 3 aa’s and a lot of guild exp, it’s always fun and relaxing for me to get a chance to play in the other zones besides the new ones.

Been doing some quests on all my girls as well, and managed to get 4 crafting levels on Misako, who’s now a 24 tailor. Going to get her to 25 today so she can make the new cloaks. Nice for my lower level characters.. well.. just her I suppose, the rest are higher level and will get their cloaks in time.

Farming is still annoying, roots are hard to come by. Not in a rush though. Sorry for the lack of posts lately, tomorrow’s should be slightly more entertaining!