I had no idea if the bonus experience was still in place or not - but it felt like it was. I had no vitality and managed to hit level 50 last night. Tomorrow is July 1st which means it’s Canada day, and plenty of people are home today and tomorrow because of it. Anyhow, I figured out that one of the main reasons I dislike crafting (or get bored of it) is because what else is there to do as you grind out the experience. Not a whole heck of a lot. Today I found a way to resolve that. I don’t own a lap top, but decided I’d run EQ2 in a half screen size. I have a 24″ widescreen monitor, so it worked out just fine. On one half I had EQ2 running, and on the other half, I decided to watch some shows on broadband. Now, the tv stations in the states won’t allow me to do this because of my Canadian IP, but there are a few Canadian stations that let you watch full episodes. I watched a show called “Gossip Girl” which wasn’t too bad. Anyone who knows me realizes that I am really not much of a tv person, at all, but hey in the name of crafting, why not. It would make it go by faster. I also have a LOT of anime piled up that I haven’t worked through yet, and began on that afterwards.

Three hours later (with a break for lunch and what not) Nostalgia 2.0 dinged level 16 - which is great because we just hit 15 late last night, and I’d completed over 30 guild writs. I went from level 50 to level 54, and 30% into it. I’m debating now whether or not I want to finish that last bit off and try to ding 55. The problem is I’m out of supplies, and sandalwood is going for 50s each piece. I’ve already spent 7p today on supplies and advance books (a few books were nearing the 1p range and I’m a fanatic about owning them all). Not that I don’t have the coin to spend, I suppose it’s not that big of a deal.

The plus side to all of this is that I’m finally able to make house items that I actually like. The new screens that came out a few updates ago, plants, and pretty maj’dul inspired items like I’d mentioned yesterday. The highest I’d gotten my carpenters in the past was roughly level 35 or so. Even Calreth mentioned this morning that he was happy to see I’d made it past ‘the point of no return’.

My typical ‘plan’ is to make 1 of everything for the pristine bonus - and promptly move it into Kasul’s house because he was mentioning it looked bare. Then I grind out writs for the rest of the level. I’ve made it past the 10k status range with the Gorowyn trades faction merchants - also another bonus. Since Silhouette moved from Neriak to Freeport to Gorowyn, getting status hasn’t been easy. She left behind 5k in Freeport faction, and started over from scratch. I’m hoping to get the 30k on one crafter sooner or later (Stargrace is pretty dang close) so that I can buy the recipes for mannequins that I want. Eventually, maybe even the recipes for the respec mirror. We’ll see.

Anyhow, sorry if it seems boring, all I’ve done is grind writs today. Hoping maybe later tonight I’ll play some Vanguard, and inch closer to level 40, we’ll see how it goes!

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!

It’s completely Ardwulf’s fault, of course. His posts about Telon and finding his way along (again) made me itch to play the game, and why not, I’ve had station access for months now and have only taken advantage of a game or two here and there. I never disliked Vanguard, I’ve actually always spoken very highly of the game. However, I’m one of those people who constantly flip around from game to game depending on my moods. Bad for people I play with, but good for me.

Due to some other circumstances, I bid fair well to the Nostalgia meetings on Fridays - but will still be around in EQ1 on occasion and far more so in EQ2. I doubt anyone was too heartbroken, there’s plenty of members now and I’d missed the past few weeks of meetings due to real life (and broken computers). I dislike letting people down, and being unable to commit to the one day a week was making me feel very badly.

Anyhow. This weekend is double experience in EQ2, which is great. I plan on getting some craft levels on both the weaponsmith (62 so far) and carpenter (46 and holding steady) as well as the monk (28 and counting). Eyenstein, a friend I’ve known for about 4 years now, managed to get some trooper boots to drop - and since they were lore for him, offered me a fantastic deal. The little bardling is singing in style, now.

In Vanguard, I ran around harvesting with Gozad trying to remember what key does what. While I was away (just over a month) a lot changed. For one, SOE revamped my blood mage class. I have no idea what changes happened and assume I should speak to my trainer, and read some notes. I did find out we can make body bags to carry around our organs in, which is great - except they’re only 20 slot, and my personal bags are 28 slot. You obtain the spell at around level 24 (or so I heard) which makes it fantastic for newer players.

There are also collectibles in Telon - and I don’t have the slightest idea what these are. There’s a special bag that will hold your collectibles, as well as your harvesting tools. Just something I saw linked in the general channel today, I’ll really have to do some research. The living legacy promotion reaches into VG as well, with some free mounts for people and a month of free game play. I don’t mind missing out on this one, the mounts are going to be available to old and new, which is what EQ1/EQ2 should have done from the start.

The market is much like I left it. My house is still standing too, with 13 more weeks of rent paid off. The game itself seemed to run smoother - but that may just have been wishful thinking on my part. In the cities I still chugged around some until items were rendered properly, but I’m coming from a completely new instillation of the game.

There were people chattering away on channels, also good. Seems Telon is fairing pretty well on that at least. I heard lots of requests for groups, even though I spent my time (for now) harvesting. We’ll see how the rest of the weekend goes!

Yesterday was a pretty good day, as far as EQ2 is concerned. I spent a little time playing my monk, took her through Wailing Caverns with a mentored Shadowknight and managed to get from level 10 to level 25 in a fairly short amount of time. Not to mention got a whole lot of loot which I transmuted some of, and put the rest for sale. Lower level adepts (we’re talking 1-20 here) sell for a fairly good price, I saw most for 4-10g each, I priced mine at 2g each and they were sold by the time I’d relogged to another character. Some transmuter out there no doubt. I kept the useful adepts and scribbed them on the baby monk. Then I spent 5p and geared her up since she was wearing just the newbie armor you start with. I bought all mastercrafted leather armor, some fighting batons, two charm slot items, all of her adepts that she was missing, as well as a few pieces of jewelery. Expensive? Maybe, but what’s the point of having an alt if you can’t twink them out.

Yes, I could have crafted all the bits myself, but that takes time and well, again - what’s the point of having all this money in game if I don’t actually spend it. I already live on a budget in real life, why worry about virtual coinage.

Later on in the day Malfi logged in and was talking about his vacation - and also talking about how he was working on Claymore. One of those really long chains of quests that no one does any more. Well, practically no one. It’s those quests (and older) that I just love doing and would be more then willing to get a group of people together to work on. Of course he’s 10 levels over the cap for it - but that doesn’t make the quests any less fun (or rewarding) not to mention if you’re one of those very questy people (which he is, of course) it adds towards your total count.

All his talk got me thinking about my own Claymore quest chains. I’ve completed it once on Arysh (warden) and have it started on multiple other alts all at various stages. At level 80 a good portion of this quest chain is gray now, making it far easier then it would have been when it released. Especially the dreaded SoS portions and PoA.

That’s the problem great thing about awesome friends - they always make you interested in whatever it is they’re doing.

But instead of working on Claymore or doing any other chain of quests, I logged in the carpenter and got two levels on her, pushing her to level 46. It’s my goal to try to hit 50 on her before too long at least to be out of this tier of boring crafted items. It’s the highest I’ve ever managed to get my carpenter, which is a plus. I’ll be gone all day Saturday, so I won’t be able to take advantage of much of the “double exp” weekend, but I hope to be able to grab the last few levels I need.

This morning bright and early Shadowgeist helped the troubador run through Chardok, grabbing clickies she needed for her epic. Of course on my way to one of the final ones, something saw me and evac was down and in a very short space of time I was looking at the entrance of the zone again with debt (not that it matters at level 80). I probably need a group to reach the furthest one. I appreciated the help though!

I’ve got a lot on my plate in EQ2, and it’s great. Last night in one of my ‘list’ moods I wrote out all my characters, their races, their adventure and craft levels, and then made up a quick ‘to do’ list, in no real particular order. Just a general list of things I wanted to do and accomplish over time. Having so many alts, this is a great way for me to keep track of everything. Of course, instead of working on anything I listed, I made a new alt. Well, actually she’s an old alt.

On every server I’ve played on, I keep telling myself I’ll try a monk. They’re great to solo with, have a fair amount of dps, can tank some of the lower instances - and while they’re not T8 tanks, they can feign death their way around and just generally sound like a whole lot of fun. Problem is I seem to get my monks to level 25-35 or so and then I give up or move servers or switch games or something along those lines. It’s happened every time.

So I created Ysandria some time ago. Probably when Nostalgia 2.0 was just getting started. A fae monk, of course for their glide ability. Last night I felt the ‘alt itch’ while I chattered to Mayadhros, and decided to level her a bit. Then today I decided it was time to try to get the monk to level 35 (or higher if I can) so that I’m at least past the point of no return that I reached with all of the other monks I’ve played. It would be nice to catch up to Kasul, and have a duo partner for some of the solo / duo stuff if I can manage to catch up. This weekend is double exp weekend for EQ2 - but Saturday I’ll be relaxing at the cottage, with no time to play (expect lots of pictures!) the rest of the weekend we’ll just have to see how it goes.

On a side note, Borgeo got a hold of me this morning! How great was it to talk to him! It’s been ages it seems. A pre-congratulations on the 2nd kiddo he has on the way, two months will fly by!

For a few months now, I’ve had some issues with people being unable to post comments on my site.

I’ve finally figured out what it is - thanks to Borgeo. Now, I need to figure out a way to fix it.

The folks who can’t comment are typically on from work, and I’m going to naturally assume you’re using some form of IE. Well, that’s the problem, apparently. Borgeo couldn’t post from IE, but he switched to Firefox, and posted a comment just fine.

Grr. Annoying.

So, anyone have any solutions on how I can fix this? I’ll try to google a solution in a bit.

I’ve been working on the troubador epic which has been a lot of fun so far, even though all I’ve done is the first bits that send me running all over Norrath talking to various bards. I remember reading Tipa’s post about her adventures through it, and what hassle fun it was. I read the walk through first. Whoever figures this stuff out on their own, my hat off to you. Seriously. Having done that, I got the required languages out of the way first before attempting to go anywhere.

So far, I’m up to the point where I want to run around Palace of the Awakened (wait, did I just say I WANT to run around there?) to get the next updates. Then it’s off to bribe a monk to train me around Castle Mistmoore, for more updates. I’m hoping, that I can potentially get to the portion that’s going to require me to harvest 10 xegonite clusters.

That’s right, 10. Actually. Harvested. Clusters.

Ah, the things we do for our epics.

Anyhow, the screen shot struck me as amusing. I’m not sure when I was last in Poets Palace, but I don’t remember the Dijin Master looking like that.

Have you heard? There’s new contests in town. They involve taking screen shots of your living legacy and submitting them, for all sorts of cool prizes.

You can find out more details here.

Oh. Wait.

Except I can’t partake.

In fact I can’t partake in any of the cool contests SOE has going on. I also can’t move a character to the bazaar (not like I ever would) and sell them, though that’s a whole different matter.

The problem is, I’d LIKE to partake in these events. Especially screen shot ones *glances at her collection of over 1,000 screen shots*

I can’t though - because I’m not a US citizen. That’s right (insert the gasps now) I live in Canada and that disqualifies me from even entering.

Sighs.

Everyone has that one zone, that no matter who you’re playing, you always want to go back. No matter if you’re on your main, or your 10th alt (I don’t know anyone like that.. honestly..) it’s just one of those places. For me, that zone is Living Tombs - and subsequently, Silent City.

The zones are part of the Desert of Flames expansion and honestly when it first came out, I wasn’t that impressed. The expansion is well known for it’s Silver and Gold dragons, as well as it’s quest chain for Godking - which people rarely do these days because it requires access to the end raid zone and that requires farming eyes.

Oh how I dreaded farming eyes. Everyone did, in fact. The guild used to be filled with mysterious LD’ers and people suddenly complained of storms brewing near them any time we mentioned farming eyes.

Silent City used to require access. It was of course removed once the expansion was no longer new and shiny as a way to entice people to continue to use the older zones. Today for my troubador epic I had to pick up a few languages, one being

• Uruvanian from Words of Air

And the other being

• Death’s Whisper from The Whispers of Death

I know, how much of a slacker am I for not having those two quests already completed. Anyhow, the Uruvanian language I finished quickly enough up in Shimmering Citadel, killing handfulls of Dijin to learn it. The Death’s Whisper language I headed to Living Tombs to complete, grabbing shinies along the way. I’m a ratonga, what did you expect.

The zone is just beautiful, especially if you turn on your lighting. Glimmering runes and smooth stone as far as the eye can see. There are quests for this zone as well as Silent City, though again I’m not sure if anyone does them any more.

I don’t think I ever really began liking these zones until KoS (Kingdom of Sky) came out - which was an expansion I disliked a whole lot. Jumping around from island to island and requiring a port up just did not settle well with me. It did too much to break the “world” of Norrath up, and further felt like a bunch of “zones”separate from one another that I had to travel to. Aside from the quests on the main island, and of course the claymore chain, I just felt it was lacking. Nothing really stood out to me as being beautiful, the dungeons were all just cut and paste from one another including the raid zones, with only the final one being different from the rest.

Anyhow, back to work on my troubador epic. I just had a sudden urge to post about these ‘older’ zones I’d been adventuring to. I miss these places.

That’s right, I did it. I had a few characters stranded over on Antonia Bayle for some time now, and one of them was my 80 troubador Goudia. I dislike having my characters all over the place. I made a deal with myself to NOT move any more unless SOE opens free transfers. That’s the one and only time I’d ever contemplate it. But as the months went on and Goudia sat there unused, I finally decided yesterday to move her over. That just leaves my 80 sage, and 64 alchemist, and 74 mystic over on AB. Those ones can sit there until SOE opens free transfers again (if they ever do).

I’m glad I moved her, I realized how much I miss playing the troubador, even if no one wants her in a group. It’s another one of those “oh we could really use you for raids” type classes that is out shone by the dirge as far as regular grouping goes. Hate transfers and melee procs seem to be more in demand then deagros and caster procs. At least from what I see.

I took Goudia around and quickly completed the tempest storm quests, deciding she needs a new set of appearance armor. The black chain is perfect for this little ratonga. I only have to do the quest *checks notes* 17 more times before I’ll have her set. At least she kills the void tempest things fairly quickly.

I also managed to get her two crafting levels last night before running out of vitality, and she’s sitting happily at level 62 weaponsmith. Wow have things changed in that direction. It used to be that she would barely get 3-4 recipes a level, including the imbue recipes. I glanced through her book and with the addition of new ‘blessed’ weapons, as well as a new proc on the imbued weapons and a WHOLE LOT more regular weapons, she had plenty to keep her busy. Now if only she had some vitality.

Organized her banks (again) and tried to tidy up her inventory. Next, will be attempting to start her epic. I’m noticing a pattern - the least played classes (coercer and troub) have very simple epics. Unlike the warden whose epic I have on hold for now. I realize the faction is not THAT difficult to get, but spending an afternoon in Sebilis (and trying to hunt down a group for it) grinding faction quests, sounds… well, not fun. I’m sure I’ll pick up on it again at a later date. For now though, I’m content to play what I have.

I’ve also been running around various zones collecting food for hungry halflings, getting fancy dishes and cutlery for my houses. The items are not no trade at least. Those quests are also fairly simple, you run around and harvest 100 food items, turn them in to Duggin, and he licks a plate clean for you and passes it your way. Can’t go wrong with halfling licked utensils.