Monthly Archives: May 2010

Junkie No More

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I just got around to changing my Xbox Live gamertag and shall now be known as HalibutBarn instead. MS has been rather oversensitive lately about ‘inappropriate’ names, so I figured I’d better change it before I suddenly wind up suspended for being a drug reference or something.

I finally started Bioshock 2 a little while ago, and this time I’m playing on Hard and going for the achievement for not using any Vita-chambers. So far the main struggle has just been to avoid running out of ammo and money, which are in scarce supply. Otherwise, it’s still a pretty familiar-feeling game and that’s perfectly fine considering how good the first one was. I’ve only made it to Pauper’s Drop so far, but I’ve fought one each of a Big Daddy and Big Sister, and the fights were fairly tense. The Big Sisters in particular are going to be tough, being as quick as they are.

In EQ2, we’ve mainly just romped around Everfrost some more for the last couple weeks, finally reaching the NE and NW corners and finishing a handful of quests, including the HQ for Tobrin’s Mystical Eyepatch. I also did a bit of soloing on my own to clean out some of the simpler quests and pick up collection items.

The city of New Halas was also finally released, and I immediately moved my shaman there to be with his barbarian brethren. It’s a really nice city too, with almost everything within fairly easy reach (the dock is a bit farther away though) and the tradeskills all clustered near the bank. The housing is really nice, and I finally upgraded from the starting apartment to a five-room house, which feels a bit sparse even with 160+ items in it now. I also started up a new dwarven warlock character, but haven’t gotten very far into the Halas newbie zone with him yet.

And I’ve played a bit more of Forza 3, but I’m not as enthusiastic about it as I was before, as now I’m pretty much just trying to grind credits and fill out the event chart. Maybe I’ll look at something like Blur next…

Getting My Mac Wet

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It’s been a while since the last update, so there’s a bit to cover…

In WoW, I finally saved up enough Champion’s Seals to buy the Argent Hippogryph. I was initially thinking of going for the Sunreaver Dragonhawk, but then someone pointed out that it doesn’t actually land on the ground and that suddenly seemed disconcerting. I then started saving them up for the other minipets and mounts, but in the meantime I managed to find all of the Horde tournament minipets on the AH for fairly cheap (it’s easier to grind for 300 gold than it is for 40 seals), so I’m not sure what I’m going to save for next. The warhorse, perhaps…

I got my mage to level 40, enabling him to work on tradeskills again, and soon had JC maxed out at 300 and enchanting near-maxed at 296. It did cost about 700 gold in materials that I didn’t already have on hand, though.

And I found a few more soloable quests in Icecrown that must have been opened up by raised faction levels. I now only need 14 more to hit Loremaster.

Steam finally came out for the Mac, and I already have access to a handful of Mac versions of games I previously bought. For now I’ve only downloaded Toki Tori, Civ 4, and a few Popcap games like Peggle, though.

In EQ2, we did the Temple of Cazic-Thule last week. It’s kind of an annoying place since there’s plenty of roamers that lead to long strings of fights, and a lot of grindy quests, but we did manage to complete the heritage quest for the Screaming Mace in there and I picked up a couple of item upgrades. There’s also an inner instance, and we worked our way to the top of it only to get squashed by the boss in no time flat. It’s frustrating that you immediately get locked out of it for 18 hours after only a single attempt.

Last weekend we then tried the Tower of the Drafling in Rivervale and cleared it out pretty easily, and also completed the Hierophant’s Crook and Bone Bladed Claymore HQs. And then this last Thursday we went and explored Permafrost for a while, discovering a bunch of quests and uncovering a fair chunk of the map, but there’s still a lot of stuff left partially-done and we haven’t seen any of the dungeons there yet.

And finally, I’m essentially “finished” Forza 3 for now after completing the R2 and R1 championships and getting the Season 6 achievement. There’s still plenty of races to do as I’m only around 28% completion according to the stats screen, but I’ll work on them occasionally on a more casual basis.

I also picked up the most recent exotic car pack, and the Mosler MT900S is extremely nice, and easily my favourite R2 car now. And I also discovered that the AI isn’t very good at oval races, with the R2 speedway series involving some rather impressive pileups…

One More

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On Friday we had an impromptu last-minute gathering to do the Amphitheatre of Pain ring event in Zul’Drak, and that got me the last few quests I needed for the Zul’Drak quest achievement. That just leaves Icecrown to go now, though it’s going to be the hardest since it’s mainly group quests left, and as the highest-level outdoor zone in the game, they won’t be duoable like all the other zones.

I also played my mage a fair bit and got him up to level 39. I’m currently doing quests in Dustwallow Marsh, but it’s an annoying place for a mage since you get attacked by roaming crocs and spiders constantly, when as a mage I prefer to launch fights from afar.

I finally got FUEL installed and working now that they’ve added more serial keys on Steam, and spent a little while doing a few races, roaming around the open world, and playing online a bit with a friend. It was fun for a little while, but I can see how it could get a bit boring and repetitive. Fortunately it was only $4.

And speaking of racing games, I completed a handful of series in Forza 3 as well, putting me partway into the R2 championship and at driver level 40. I’ve also rediscovered the Impreza WRX STi as one of my favourite class C cars, as it made the Fujumi Kaido point-to-point races much easier.

Two To Go

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A bit more progress in WoW lately as I managed to finish off the zone achievements for Nagrand and Blade’s Edge with a friend’s help. That got me the Loremaster of Outland achievement, and now I just have Zul’Drak and Icecrown to go for the big one. For Zul’Drak I just need to do a run through Gundrak, which will eventually happen in a random, but for Icecrown I’ll need some group help.

This morning I also managed to nab three of the Argent Tournament minipets from the AH for only 300 gold each. That’s about the price at which I’d prefer to just pay gold for them rather than having to grind Champion Seals for them; that’s 120 seals total, or about two weeks of doing dailies, but less than a week’s worth of gold farming.

And in EQ2 last night we went and checked out a new dungeon, The Obelisk of Lost Souls. It’s extremely maze-like but fortunately one of the group members had the map. Some rooms were pretty tough fights since even the monsters down below would aggro and swarm us, but there was only one death for the whole evening. We eventually gained access to the inner area and an inner instance called the Vestibule, but that’s as far as we can go until we complete an access quest (and only one member has it so far since you need a drop to start it).

We also wandered over to the Temple of Cazic-Thule in Feerrott to farm a wraith for the start of the Screaming Mace quest. With the long respawn time, we could only get three of the four drops needed though, so I’ll have to get mine later.

That Lasted Longer Than Expected

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Our Tuesday night EQ1 group has kind of petered out, but it did actually last a decent amount of time for such an old game. The problem is that without mentoring and/or AA xp control at the lower levels, it’s hard for someone who misses out on a day to catch up. Once people start falling behind, it kind of snowballs and more and more people drop out.

Ah well, it was a surprisingly good day in WoW at least. My warrior finally got the fourth crocodile from the Shattrath fishing daily, and my priest managed to finish off a few more Zul’Drak quests that I had thought I’d need a group for. I only need three more to complete that zone, and I’ll be able to do it the next time I do the Gundrak instance. I’m also now only 30 quests total away from the Loremaster title.

And in Dragon Age I finished off the Lothering quests aside from the ones I have to travel for. Next up I’ll probably try out some of the DLC content, now that I can freely move on the world map.

The Dragon In The Room

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Children’s Week started in WoW today, so I went and did the quests for it on my primary characters. It’s too bad that it takes three years to get all of the rewards for it — it’s the first time for my current main character and the warrior still only has two of the pet rewards now.

Back in Forza 3, I finished off the R3 championship series. After a bit more experimenting, I discovered that I can leave the difficulty on medium and just turn traction control on for the higher-end cars. And, as usual, I did a handful of other miscellaneous series, mostly in the R3 and S classes. The Lambo Miura Concept ’06 is possibly my favourite S-class car now, as it launches easily and is crazy fast. It’s a bit sluggish in turns, but it doesn’t go out of control, at least.

And I finally put some more time into the current major RPG on my back — Dragon Age. I’ve done the initial swamp area and the battle at Ostagar, and am now wandering around trying to raise support for the fight against the darkspawn after being betrayed. I’ve already picked up a bunch of companions, including Morrigan, Alistair, the dog, Sten, and Leliana. So far I’m sticking with Alistair as my ‘tank’, and Morrigan and the dog as damage-dealers, as I don’t have a decent healer yet.