Visit to Hate

On Saturday my guild was going to raid Emerald Halls, but we didn’t have the healing power so we took a trip to the Shard of Hate for a trash run. I brought Valencin, my troubador along, and it was a lot of fun, plus it was my first visit there. We bashed our way through scorn fiends and those annoying walking chests (why don’t they drop themselves more often?) and got a couple of nice masters for some guildies, and I got a really nice intelligence earring to boot.

I definitely miss these guild events when I’m not playing, it’s fun to just joke around and laugh, but still get the job done. Looking forward to the next one!

 

Wandering ogre returns

I always have an on-again, off-again love with EQ2. I will play the game hard for a good while, but then I will get tired of it and burned out, and quit MMOs and go out and do other stuff. Then after a while I will come back. I am back on the upswing now and back in game – so I will start updating the blog again soon!

 

Last night’s adventures

I had a great time last night, adventuring in Vault of Eternal Sleep and Maidens with a (mostly) guild group as well as couple of other great folks. It was fun to just blast through there and joke around on Ventrilo without taking it too seriously – too often in pickup groups people seem so serious. Also, we killed Drusella Sathir which was a personal first for me, the fight went quite smoothly.

I installed a new video card last night and it’s making a huge difference in game, I’m running around in Very High Quality or Extreme Quality with good frame rates, though those drop a lot in a highly populated area. I took a screenshot of Valencin, my bard, and it came out pretty well I think. Halflings for the win!

 

Busy weekend

It was quite a busy weekend for me in EQ2. My troubador raided Freethinkers on Friday night with my guild, and it went very well. On Saturday I managed to hit Vault of Eternal Sleep, Crypt of Agony, and went deep into Sebilis to help a guildmate with an epic update. Unfortunately on the last we failed, literally inches from our target. (We’ll get it soon!) On Sunday I joined a group to slay Xalgoz which I hadn’t done before, and dinged 77 on my troubador. It was especially nice since I had several pieces of gear I could finally equip at 77, so I’ve done quite a bit of upgrading.

I’ll be working on Anakh some this week, as he’s gone to the wayside in terms of levelling and quest completion. It’s hard to find blog posts since he hasn’t been adventuring as much, but I’ll try to stick with it!

 

Hilarious moment last night

I was doing some quests and exploring with my troubador Valencin in Fens of Nathsar when something really funny happened. I was exploring the ravine where the Thugga raid zone is, and there’s an elevator that takes you way back up to the top. While I was poking around a crocodile aggroed me, and I ran back to the lift. He ended up inside the lift cage and I was slightly out of it, so I mezzed him, activated the lift, and watched him sail upwards out of sight!

If only I had had the wits to yell, “See you later, alligator!” the moment would have been perfect. As it was I laughed myself silly.

 

Bards

I’ve always been a fan of bard classes, in any MMO I’ve played. I don’t know why exactly, but I just find them neat, and in most games they are an interesting mix of abilities. Dark Age of Camelot had a really interesting system – each of the three realms had a bardic class, but each of them were completely different in playstyle and abilities – one was a melee heavy bard with lots of instant shout damage, another was a light rogue with charms and control abilities, and the third was a healer with nice buffs, etc. The EQ1 bard will always be one of my favorites, simply because they have so many abilities – basically they are a “kitchen sink” class who can do a little bit of everything. The song twisting element in EQ1 was sometimes fun and sometimes painful (literally!)

I like my troubador (and my dirge) in EQ2, and they are fun and interesting classes – the division between caster support bard and melee support is an interesting one, and they get to choose between a lot of buffs and other abilities, to make their groups stronger.  I’ve now been trying out the Vanguard bard, which is an excellent class – a bit more focused on melee than the EQ2 version, but they have musical instruments that make their songs a lot more powerful (similar to EQ1) and they can compose their own songs from song elements you learn as you go. It’s an interesting system that makes them unique, and I really like it. It’s fun to be able to make heavy DPS songs, buff songs, healing songs for emergencies, and so forth.

It will be interesting to see if future game have a bard type of class, World of Warcraft doesn’t have one, which is too bad, and I’m not sure about the upcoming games like  Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. But if they do, you’ll see me out there giving the bard classes a try!

 

Vanguard

I started playing some Vanguard over the weekend, in addition to EQ2. I really felt like trying it again after reading Stargrace’s blog for the last while. I ended up joining the guild Safe Haven on the Seradon server, bunch of great people so far, I really like it. I’m enjoying giving the game another try also, some of the classes and mechanics are really interesting and it should be a good break from EQ2 from time to time. I re-made Anakh as a very non-ogrish bard, and love the class so far. Stay tuned for further updates!

 

Playing the bard

Anakh has been spending a lot of time on the shelf these days – when I’m not working on his crafting I’m mostly playing Valencin, my bard. Part of this is that Val is much more useful to the guild for raids, since we’re short on bards, and I felt it would be best to focus on one character to get to 80, rather than muddle along slowly on both. It’s been fun, though with the Kunark quest-oriented style, it’s brutal for a troubador, whose solo ability is pretty bad compared to a brigand’s. Val got to 75 last night after a fun run through Crypt of Agony. I really enjoy playing him in groups, not so much solo. I’m just hoping I can eventually level into all the nice gear I’m collecting! I found a Burdened Signet last night (really nice caster/bard ring) and I can’t wait to use it!

I’ve made a promise to myself to let Anakh do some adventuring at least once a week so I’m sure you’ll be seeing him around the lands soon enough.

 

Adventure in de sunset

I be doin’ a good bit of adventurin’ yesterday, in de new lands. I explore dis place called de Fens, dere lot of peoples dere who want me to do tings for dem. It real pretty place but dere lots of monsters dere, some be real big like dem rhinos! De place I like best be de Omen’s Call, it dis small town with lot of people who be fishin’, and it got a real beautiful sunset, de best dat I seen. I jus’ sit for a while dere, watchin’ de sun, drinkin’ an’ talkin’ with de fishing mans. It be a great day.

 

Test server

So I’ve been dabbling with a couple of characters on the test server. As much as I love Antonia Bayle and my guild, I’m enthralled with the idea of a totally self-sufficient character that Test offers. There’s a really neat community there, and even though it’s small, people tend to be willing to help you out much more often than in the regular servers. I especially like that almost everyone joins one chat channel, Test, and there’s always discussions and jokes and whatnot – it’s sort of like one big guild chat for the whole server.

You get a 50% experience boost on Test, which if anything is too much at low levels, I’m imagining myself flying through the levels MUCH faster than AAs, so I may have to do something about that. Right now I’m playing a low level necromancer and having a lot of fun – if you’re on Test, say hello to Lasiin, I’ll probably be the one fleeing from a pack of angry monsters.