The harbor of Khal is an amazing sight. Especially when people’s boats are all parked in various places along the docks (as pictured above). Last night I dipped into Vanguard for a short while with Gozad and Growlius. Not on mains this time though - for once we all played lowbies. I was on my 18 psionicist, Growlius his 22 disciple, and Gozad on his 22 necromancer.

We all got the diplomacy necklace we needed to work towards our mount, and headed to Qalia to work on hunter’s league quests. We did not have a tank, but things went fairly smooth anyhow.

Shoulders were first, and it was very little effort despite the more interesting pulls we had from time to time.

Psionicists work slightly different then enchanters in EQ1/EQ2 in that they can only mez one mob at a time (or at least, that’s all I can do right now at level 19) but we can also charm one mob, and AOE stun for 8 seconds. When we mez (I’ve mentioned this before) we actually phase the mob right out of exhistence - and in order for anyone to actually attack the mob again, we have another spell that phases them back in. That’s right, no more breaking mez - at all.

One of my favorite tactics is making sure I cast my duplicate spell (it taunts the mob and replicates it, but basically does 0 dmg) before I unphase it. That way when I do unphase, the mob is already attacking the duplicate of itself, and I have a chance to snare it and nuke it a few times before that breaks / wears off.

Psionicists also have a world wide channel attached to one of their spells, it’s called ‘mind’ and it’s great. When you have the buff on you’re auto joined to it. A handy tool to ask others questions you may have about your class.

After we’d completed the shoulder quest I decided to take a break for a bit - being exceptionally worn out after a fairly exciting day. Thanks to Tipa over at Westkarana, I’m now writing for Beckett Massive Online Gamer - about EverQuestII. A writing opportunity came up and she happened to mention my name. Wow how amazing is that? I have my first interview next week, and yes I’m very nervous. These newsstand magazines are actually printed and sold in multiple places, you may have heard of them before for their sports magazines. My first two articles (as long as everything goes well) should come out for the September issue.

I think I’m still stunned over that one.

Since I wasn’t in game when these mounts were implimented, I’ve been scatter brained trying to figure this stuff out. Thankfully, there’s some wonderful resources on the web. Lets start first with this site here, they explain to you the steps you have to take in order to start working on getting a racial mount.

“Visit the related city-faction registrar and apply to work for their city. Doing this you’ll be handed out a Kamelott Inc.+diplo-necklace, which you have to equip in order to loot socalled faction-coins. You do not need the ring to do this.

This should work at regular combat as long you

1) gain xp for the kills AND

2) you equip the necklace.

The coins will not be shown in the loot-window, but directly appear in your inventory. For the start you receive as well platin-coin for the faction you chosed. So far known copper-, silver- and gold-coins stack to a kinda additional currency meant  to buy faction with.  The platin-coins come as lucky loot out of boss-mobs only and should be saved in  order to later buy the mount.

if you bought the lvl-30-mount you’ll pay only 100 platin for the lvl-50 ones”

Ok. That seems easy enough. So you’ll want to start getting faction towards a mount as soon as possible, and you’ll want to try to earn these platinum coins in order to purchase the mount. Vanguard has done a nice thing by bringing back KoS to cities through working on these faction mounts. You can also switch city factions, and go after whichever mount you’d like.

So what are those mounts? Well, further searching lead me to this site here. They have a very comprehensive site on where you can find the mounts, what the mounts look like, and oh yes did I mention WHERE you can find the mounts? This was the one thing I couldn’t figure out as I ran around Tanvu. Turns out I wasn’t looking in the right place.

So, all those ancient coins you’re getting from MEST quest rewards? You take them to a city registar, and they will exchange them for platinum coins. Those coins are used towards purchasing your mount. Sounds simple enough. Oh, except for the exceptionally long grind of purchasing those mounts.

As of now, I’ve managed to get Faydai started on her Tanvu faction. I believe she’s a half elf but I could be wrong it’s been so long, and she’ll be (eventually) riding around on a battle turtle. Or something. My thanks to both wonderful sites in explaining all of this! It’s some very handy information.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Vanguard Build 2064 Patch Notes July / 16 / 2008
GENERAL

- Some items (too many to list) that were previously marked as BOP are now BOE. This should give you some additional flexibility on items you may want to re-purpose.

- Factional vendors are now available in most cities. If you are level 30 and higher you should receive an email from Kamelott, Inc. with more details to purchase armor and

other future items.

- Possible fixes for a couple of crash bugs

- Possible fix of Quests not updating correctly from trigger locations

It was time to get out of the sand, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Growlius and Faydai (dread knight and blood mage) have been in Qalia for the past few levels working on quests. After all that bright blinding sand (and it’s not any fun having that grind against plate armor, or so Growlius complained) it was time to head some place darker. Some place spooky. There’s only one place that came right to mind when we thought of that.

It was time to head to Plains of Anguish.

PoA is located on the North Western section of Thestra. It’s dark, rains practically all of the time, and there are always scarey things poking through the woods. After grabbing a rift, we wandered around.

The starting area of this is such a nice change from Qalia. We picked up 14 quests, and I was pleased to see that this quest hub had a banker, exchange (broker), and general goods all relatively close to one another.

Once we’d taken care of the basics, we set off to find undead to smush. Not difficult, they’re all over. Even the quest givers were some form of undead. I admit now, that I know absolutely zero lore about this chunk. I don’t have any idea why I’m smushing undead, because yesterday was about levels and not about actually reading the quests - which was fine by me.

Blood mage and dread knight are a fantastic combination. We were taking down three dots and four dot adds our level (and higher) with relative ease. It helps (a great deal) that blood mages basically have an endless supply of power to heal with - so long as we’re not being hit.

We managed to clear out a lot of quests - even though we’re not the fastest of killers, it was a lot of fun. Just being out of that sand meant so much. It was a refreshing change of pace. There were plenty of people around in other groups and duo’s also working on their PoA quests, which was nice to see. The regionsay channel was alive and well as always, and the craft channel too. I haven’t started looking for a new guild yet - but I will eventually, as it’s getting lonely not being in one. For some reason my UI is completely missing the guild tab, and I’ll have to look into that (and perhaps install the default socials window to get it to work). Dang I hate all that technical stuff.

On a side note, I downloaded Daz Studio, and Victoria4.2 (base) and I’ve been playing around some with that. I know absolutely NOTHING about the program though and it’s going PAINFULLY slow while I try to teach myself. I am not a computer person, at all. So if there’s any Daz Studio guru’s reading this, please drop me a line!

Anyhow - by the time all was said and done, Growlius and I reached level 41, and 30% or so into it. Fantastic! I also managed to complete one of the MEST collections, though I haven’t turned it in because it’s so far out of the way. I’ll start on that tomorrow or later today maybe.

I hope everyone else’ weekends are going just wonderful!

Faydai, my 40 blood mage, standing in a recent quest hub in Qalia (note the blinding sand). This cyclops looks about ready to pound her on the head. Oh, and does anyone know how to fix / change the screen shot qualities? They all turn out exceptionally poor it seems for me, and that’s not how it looks in game at all. I tried to search through my options but was at a loss.

Dipped into Vanguard yesterday for a brief bit before real life tugged me away (which it’s been doing a whole lot lately) and got in an hour or two on my monk. Vanguard is one of those wonderful games where you can pop in for an hour or two (as long as you’ve logged out around your quest area) and get something done. Even without logging in at a quest area, the riftways make it quite easy to get around. Everything is relatively close by.

So it was that I glanced at my quest journal - and again was so impressed with the changes that they’ve made to the interface over the year. Being able to sort the quests by chunk and have it plainly say whether it’s solo or not, and have it colour coded, is just so very helpful.

Looking through it, I noticed I had quite a few quests in the CIS area - aside from the cloak which I’d already done a while ago. Before too long I was headed to a crevice in the mountains to battle spiders who were under the ruling of Nerachnia - a powerful spider queen. The spiders were all two dots, and fell easily enough. It also helped that I cam armed with a giant supply of raid and fly swatters and rolled up newspaper.

I ran into quite a few people while I was wandering about. Once those quests were cleared I continued on, and came across adventurers every which way. Those who think Telon is dead, are sorely mistaken. There are even guide events running these days.

Disciple is one of the more unique healers I’ve seen - but remember, I’m not exactly the most knowledgeable of mmo players, I’ve played EQ1/EQ2/VG/WoW and that’s the extent of my experience (adding WAR to the list later of course). Basically you’re a combination of monk and healer. Your attacks done in a specific order (or as I like to call it.. 6-7-8-9 on my keyboard) set off heals to your defensive target. One of your kicks has a HoT attached to it, you get feign death but it doesn’t always fool the mobs (much like EQ2’s FD can fail) and you’re a medium armor wearing class. The stats you want to go for are not wis and vit so much as other healers, but dex,str, and vit. The best part is you can practically scream out as you do cool ninja moves and fly through the air smashing your opponent to bits. It’s great. The moves and graphics of attacks for the disciple are top notch.

Where blood mages can’t heal if they can’t hit the mob with spell attacks, disciple are a lot alike in that they can’t heal without meleeing. If you like to be up close where the action is - and heal, this class is perfect for you. Disciples also use endurance, and mana. There are a few direct heals that use mana, and most of the melee attacks and specials use endurance. So far my disciple is lacking a little on the buff side of things, I only have two - and my stance, where as my blood mage has a whole slew of buffs plus symbiotes. Maybe the disciple gets them later, I’m only half way through 23 right now.

One thing that really strikes me as interesting about Vanguard and my play style specifically - is that I have yet to find a class that I find ‘boring’ or that I ‘don’t like’ and this includes the tank classes. I have 6 characters in Vanguard and I’m content to keep the count at that - but it would be very easy to make another alt and have a blast with it. That’s almost unheard of for me. In both EQ2 and WoW I refused to play tanks, I’m just not a tank person. In EQ1 I reluctantly play my tank (a shadowknight) and I’m not really interested in wizards. There’s one main reason I think why I enjoy Vanguards selections of characters so much more, and it’s simply because as they fight, they will (based on an action accomplished like a critical strike, or a parry) have a chain go off - hit the response to that chain, and in some cases (ie: disciple) another chain will go off, doing massive amounts of damage (or a heal, etc) and there are also counters, and spell checks, and all the rest. It makes the actual fighting a lot more interesting to me.

Anyhow. Hopefully Telon will be seeing more of me today. We’ll see how it goes!

Another Vanguard / EQ2 split night - and Growlius and I managed to finally ding level 40! This is some what of a mile stone for me in Vanguard, and I’m very happy that we’ve finally reached it. Only one more tier to work through to finally reach the cap and end game. We hung around our typical questing hub and cleared out a few white quests and even some yellow ones - which rewarded us with far better experience then all of the green quests we’d been pushing out lately. I think we started the evening at 60% exp or so, and it took roughly 3 hours to get the 40% we needed to ding.

Also got to see a few more models of mobs in Vanguard, I’d not seen these giant axe swingers before. Still in Qalia though, with all the bright sand.

Figured out how to get the collection bags for the bits that are dropping now too. The easiest way is to head to Khal, and wander over to the bind stone just outside the city. You’ll find a herald there talking about the fair, hail them and they give you a quest. Head to the fair, talk to a gnome standing there, and presto, you now have a huge bag that carries both collection pieces and harvesting tools.

Wait a second. Why does it carry harvesting tools, you may ask.

Well, in Vanguard you’re blessed with multiple equipment tabs. No doubt the developers of VG wanted a nice easily convertible bag slot. So these new collection bags are two fold. Number one, they hold collection pieces, of course - but they will also hold your harvesting tools. Which means tab over to the harvesting equipment tab, and remove that 5-6 slot bag you were wearing before, and equip this far larger bag. Put your tools in there, and your collection pieces, and you’re set. Bag space (or lack there of) is something everyone in VG complains about. You really don’t get enough room for everything with only 5 bag slots (that includes saddle bags) and one of them being a very small general ‘inventory’ bag that you can’t get rid of.

Once our adventures in Vanguard were over I headed to EverQuestII to join up with my typical Runnyeye group - this time playing warden. Group make up was Mystic, Illusionist, Dirge, Conj, Shadowknight, and myself. I must be cursed or something - in all the times I’ve done RE 2.0 I have NEVER seen a fabled cloak drop. Not my class, nor any other class. Last night a few pieces of the black alloy chain dropped, of course I was not on my scout though. We transmuted 5 of the drops, a few went to be sold on broker (the tradeable shields that are going as cheap as 20g now) and other random bits. We did die once, again on the final pull where for some reason my ‘cures’ would just spam over top of one another and not actually land to cure anything. Annoying.

Today, hopefully, I’ll be getting Silhouette OUT of T6 carpentry and into T7 (which I am so excited about!) I have another house decorating order up but it’s going to be far slower then the previous one because I’ll actually be making all of the bits myself for once. I’ll need level 80 to make everything I want.

Happy 4th of July to all my friends in the states, I hope you have a wonderful day!

Last night was another one of my VG / EQ2 split nights, amongst the fire works from Canada day which could be seen from where I was. Though I’ll never really understand why kids decide to shoot them off right outside my window on the street. “Just because” is more then likely their main reason.

Anyhow, in Vanguard, Growlius and I continued on our journey towards level 40. It’s inching by I have to admit but it’s mostly our own fault. We’ve been using exp potions for the past few levels and turning in handfulls of quests all at once. So in the past we’d spend an evening completing 10 quests or so at a hub, and then drink down a potion and turn them in and presto, another level. 100% bonus to experience as well with those, and unlike other games where potions may just cover one sphere (crafting, or adventuring) in Vanguard, each potion covers all three spheres - and quest experience is included which I adore.

In the last GU the quest journal went through a major revamp, one that I’m just getting used to now. It’s colour coded, and you can sort by numerous options - one being ‘by chunk’ which makes it FAR easier to tell what quests you have where. You can also display more then just the title in the list of quests - you can see the chunk it involves, as well as whether it’s group or solo, and even the date you got the quest. Our typical method for clearing these out is by chunk and sort them by level so the green (lower level) quests go first and we clear those out. Last night we cleared out the last green quest and all we’re left with are white - which I’m hoping means our experience will pick up. Ideally, that’s what it will mean.

We spent the night battling undead skeletons and mummies, and raiding an ark beneath the sands of Tar Janashir. I’m getting eager to explore something other then the bright white sands of Qalia - but this seems to be where the content is for these levels. Our goal is to hit 40 by the end of this weekend, but hopefully we’ll be accomplishing that well before.

40 is a level where in Vanguard you get numerous spells (aside from level 50 which is end game right now) and it will also mark us as being on the final stretch. At least in my eyes. After that it’s just 10 more levels and we’ll be ‘capped’ which is something I’m really looking forward to. Maybe I’ll even get to see APW and get key’d for it. I’ve never even given any thought to that.

Screen shot is me flying through Qalia, to a harvesting spot. Filled with dragons that are roaming around it’s not exactly the safest of areas, but it’s one of the best (best = quietest) places to get granite which is still selling for 4-5g a stack. Which reminds me.. I really need to level my carpenter and work on getting some sloops made, I’ve wanted a boat forever!

Last night Kasul and I came up with a cloak design for Nostalgia 2.0 It turned out pretty well I think - and of course the way cloak designs work is that they are unique per guild per server. So no one else has quite this shade of yellow with that symbol in the center. Works for me! Now we’ll be working towards level 20 (short term goal) and onwards to level 30 (long term goal) that will allow us to place edges on the cloak. Along the way of course we’re saving up status for a guild hall, which I’m excited about, even if there are only two ‘regular’ guild mates playing in this guild. We still work really hard.

As I was getting ready to make dinner last night and was mostly AFK in EQ2, I received a random tell from ‘Meddik’ on Najena. It made my day and I just had to mention it here. He/She said that they were a Stargrace groupie, and had been reading my blog for over a year now. I do get tells like that on occasion, and I still never know quite how to react to it. It makes me smile and sort of blush and fluster. I don’t have the most interesting blog out there - I don’t write about the mechanics of the game, or interviews with important people, or anything like that. It’s just my own personal gaming experiences which can be quite drab. So to know that people enjoy my writing is quite a rush. /Waves to Meddik.

I did end up doing more crafting in game - and managed to get the carpenter to level 55. Wow! I’m so very happy with that. Of course now I’ve spent almost 10p on supplies and books just for those five levels, and that would (idealy) mean another 10p to go (or more) for the next 5 levels before I reach T6. Not too keen on that. Again, what’s the point of watching my money in an mmo - I have no real expenses and I already watch coin enough in real life. I’m almost onto the next tier which should bring about even MORE exciting things to craft, and then at level 70 I can start crafting the faction based recipes which include some amazing rugs and jars of skulls and all sorts of interesting goodies. If I keep up this pace it shouldn’t be too long before I’m 80 - hopefully obtaining my carpenter epic, and then doing a complete revamp and crafting my entire house. I’ll be checking the forums plenty to get some ideas, like a fishtank. Popular items for a house to have these days and there’s apparently a quest in Gorowyn that I always skip that rewards you with a fish house item that can be placed as though it’s floating. I’ll have to look into this and see if I can’t find it.

I also popped into Vanguard last night to do some crafting before bed, Ardwulf was there and said hello! It’s been quite some time since I spoke to him. Apparently he’s thinking of joining Safe Haven, which is a wonderful guild on the Seradon server, with a branch on Antonia Bayle in EQ2 as well. Great people. I’d left the guild shortly after I left Vanguard previously, and have not looked into a guild yet since I’ve returned. Anyhow, MaddyCraft hasn’t been updated since GU3 (and we’re on GU5 now just passed) so I deleted the mod and went with default. Which means I actually spent most of the time making my macro’s for crafting with the G15 so that it’s not so much mouse clicking. No, this does NOT mean the process is automated, you can’t since you get complications that will ruin your crafting if you ignore them. It does reduce the amount of mouse clicking though.

As a final note - Happy Canada Day! I hope everyone is out enjoying the sun. Since I live in Ottawa I will be avoiding the 20,000+ people down at the parliament buildings, and watching the fire works from home.

I spent yesterday at the cottage, being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Today after getting some other chores done, I headed to Vanguard with Growlius to continue our questing around Tar Janashir, which we left about a month ago. It took a bit to get situated again. Remembering what keys did what. I thought it wasn’t possible for the sand in Qalia to get any brighter, but I was mistaken. I swear they lightened it further then it was, and it glares like bright snow no matter what my settings are at.

Before all that, I went to check out the MEST, which is the Mekalia Extravaganza of Science and Technology, and disappointing might I add. I was expecting an actual fair of sorts, instead it was a few gnomes standing under some tents. They give you quests for collection items. The rewards are mainly ancient coins, which can be turned in for faction to whatever city you’d like, commonly the faction you’d like a mount from eventually. There are some extra goodies along with a few of the quests, like boxes of fire works and a shrinking device. I guess after seeing EQ2 and WoW fairs, I was expecting a little… more.

Growlius and I got about 50% of a level, so we’re closing in on 40 fairly quickly, which is nice. We headed out after five dot cyclops, and had a blast being tested to remember what it was exactly that each of our classes did.

I’ll talk more about the changes to Vanguard tomorrow, when I’m not falling asleep at the desk.

In EQ2, I managed to take advantage of the double experience bonus that went on over the weekend. I got the monk to level 32, almost 33. She’s almost out of the “wow I’ve already done all this before a million times” phase, which I’m looking forward to.

I also managed (thanks to some coercing from Kasul) to stick around long enough to ding level 50 carpenter. That’s right, FINALLY I feel as though I am getting some where with my carpenter. She can start making the Maj’dul inspired furniture, which is fantastic. Along with plants, pillars, and all the other fun things. I have to do some harvesting for the tier, which is not fun at all. I was pleased with the progress though, that was three levels in a relatively short time tonight.

The guild also dinged level 15 due to all of the writs Kasul and myself managed to complete - which means we can choose a design for the guild cloak. Since there’s only two (and some times three) of us playing in Nostalgia 2.0 on the Najena server, I doubt it will be too hard of a decision to come up with a design that’s agreeable by everyone. The cost is 5p, which I’ll be giving.

Anyhow, more comprehensive posts tomorrow, I just wanted to write something quick before bed tonight. It’s a long weekend here in Canada, being Canada day on the 1st of July. I know next weekend is the 4th of July and Independence day for the states, so I hope everyone is having lots of fun, no matter what realm you find yourself in!