Out Of The Woodwork

On a whim, I took another stab at the Silverwing quests tonight instead of doing HoH for the zillionth time, and actually managed to find some of the pieces fairly quickly. After running around Droga, Noble’s Causeway, The Deep, and Velketor’s for a while, I had three more pieces: the belt, cloak, and mask. The belt and cloak were even decent upgrades, which is going to make giving them up to make the charm even more difficult…

I also ran across an old friend from the very early EQ days, when I had a small, regular group I played with a lot. Looks like the mercs are bringing back even more people.

Well, It Is More Accurate

The EQ devs had a bit of fun today by changing the names of all of the classes in-game. Necros became ‘n3cr0’s, clerics became Rezbots, rangers became Corpses, and my enchanter became, well, a Smartypants.

I just barely made it to level 69 tonight, though it took pretty much all evening, so it’s going to take more than a single day for further levels… I seem to get 5% of a level per basement clearing now (though I was forced to leave before collecting much data), in which case it’ll take 20 clearings to get to level 70, which would take nearly seven hours at three clearings per hour (spawn time is about 20 minutes).

Zzzz…

Nothing exciting in EQ tonight, just more exping in Halls of Honor. I hit level 68 and nearly all of the mobs there turned light blue, but the reduction in xp wasn’t as dramatic as I feared. A full clearing of a basement still gave me 6% of a level, versus the ~7% I was getting the level before. I could conceivably hit level 69 or 70 here, or maybe even 71.

If the boredom doesn’t kill me first… Unfortunately I won’t really get any new spells until I reach 71, since the 66-70 ones are such a pain to get, so I can’t really explore other areas safely for now. Without the new spells, I can’t even charm anything over level 64 anyway (the HoH mobs are mostly 62-63).

Pants!

Argh, I wrote up a big, long post about EQ tonight, but it got eaten when I hit the Publish button. I’m not retyping it all, so in brief:

– finished anniversary quests, got shiny collapsible roboboar
– found elaborate defiant silk pantaloons for much cheaper than usual in bazaar, important for spell haste to ensure charms land before stun wears off
– 20 AAs banked now, back to leveling, sick of HoH but it’s the only safe, reliable spot I know of for now

Longest Anniversary Ever

I only have one more EQ anniversary event to go now, after a couple more delivery quests and following the party machine, and I couldn’t do it today only because it was on some shared timer with other ones, so I can’t even start it until tomorrow. I figured I’d work on the Silverwing quests a bit more instead, but after spending a while in Droga trying to get a piece to drop, I’m starting to wonder if it’s even worth it and if I might be better off waiting for a higher-level item instead if it’s going to take so much time. There are certainly charms with better total stat bonuses, but that 5 points of mana regen is so tempting…

By this point I had 30 banked AAs, so I spent a few, primarily on Natural Durability (giving me over 600 more hp), the shield block ability, and finally getting critical hits for my spells. It’s only a 2% chance of a crit for now, but I managed to fire one off before too long. Direct damage isn’t really an enchanter’s forte, but it only cost 2 points. I’m down to 12 banked AAs now, but there isn’t really anything urgent to spend them on, so I should get back to leveling soon.

Putting Out The Fires

Today was spent on more of the anniversary quests in EQ, of course, this time involving various tradeskills, a bunch of fishing, spreading disease, and making it rain in various zones. I even had to go to a few of the new areas I haven’t been in before, but I’ll have to go back later for a closer look. The fishing quest in particular gave me a pretty good chunk of plat and a couple AAs as a reward, so I might have to repeat that one…

A lot of the quests wind up taking me to or through a lot of the same zones, which makes it tempting to combine them and work on some simultaneously, but that’ll probably make things a bit too complicated to keep track of. And I’m almost done anyway.

And I also got my monk to 48, mainly just so he could start wearing some of the Intricate Defiant Leather armour, so it doesn’t eat up bank space. I had a bit of trouble finding a good zone at first, but settled on the Goru’kar Mesa, where he and his merc could plow through light blues pretty much nonstop.

Fire!

I knocked off another three of the anniversary quests in EQ tonight, including another series of kill-equal-level-monsters, one where I had to plant seeds in various zones, and another where I had to set fires in more zones. They’re certainly taking me around to places I haven’t been in quite a while.

At this rate it looks like I should be able to complete all of the quests, so that roboboar will soon be mine…

Don’t Stop The Party

I figured I’d better get around to doing those anniversary quests in EQ, and fortunately there’s a handy guide available, so I started doing them roughly in order (aside from the party machine one, which will take a while since it moves from zone to zone and I have to catch it in all of them).

I managed to get four of them done tonight, two of which were fairly simple and only involved talking to people and using items on them, but the other two involved fights against a series of equal-level enemies in areas where I couldn’t effectively charm, so I wound up having to tediously root-n-nuke my way through them. And it looks like the next one is going to be more of the same… At least having the cleric henchman makes them even possible.

I had 18 AAs banked by the end of the night, but then I blew 15 of them at once in order to get the AA for the pet /hold command. Unfortunately it’s not really what I thought it would be, so that might have been a waste. Oh well…

Woo, A Spell

I headed back to Noble’s Causeway in EQ tonight, but with a particular goal in mind this time: working on the Silverwing quests. I’d picked up a glowing shard in HoH, and the other part of the quest comes from here.

I found an area where there were monsters known to drop the band I needed, but charming them was a bit tougher this time around, since in this expansion they reduced the DPS on charmed monsters (normally they’d hit for over 400, but only hit for 241 when charmed), and they were fairly magic resistant, so charm broke a lot more often. I died once soon after arriving when I got an unlucky charm break just as some spawns were repopping and mezzes were fading.

It was a good spot though, since I could kill the packmaster when it spawned as well, and it can drop the runes needed for the 66-68 spells. I only got one rune, which I turned in to get a, uh, Rune spell, but it’s better than nothing. I might have to come back here and see if I can at least get the 68 charm spell. And I finally got the Silverwing Band I needed, and completed the quest to get a really nice ring that was a substantial upgrade. There are a bunch of other lower-level quests I can do in the same line and can combine them all to get a nice charm, as well, so I’ll have to try that sometime (though that means I’d have to redo this quest to get this ring back).

I spent the rest of the evening back in HoH to burn off my xp bonus period, and I now have over 200 total AAs, with 12 banked right now.

(And speaking of spells, I’m starting to buy some higher-level ones when I see them in the bazaar for cheaper than they’d cost at vendors. It’s just the 66-70 ones that remain elusive since very few people would have spares of them with the way the rune turn-ins work.)

Catching Up

I was out of town for a while, but I still managed to get some gaming in during the trip:

Izuna 2: It’s essentially a roguelike for the DS, similar to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon in the overall ‘feel’ to it but starring a rather excitable young female ninja and her friends instead. It relies heavily on using special items with effects when thrown as you find them, and you’re encouraged to use them often since you have very limited inventory space. Nothing really special so far, but it’s competent enough.

Final Fantasy Tactics: I’d been meaning to get to this one for quite a while now, but I’ve only made it through a handful of battles so far. I don’t know if I’ve screwed up or what, but my characters haven’t really progressed very far, I don’t have any options for improving them yet, and I’m just getting my ass royally kicked in the current battle since the enemies are numerous and much higher level. Kinda stuck for the moment.

Eets: I’ve already played the 360 version, but I also picked up the original PC version a while back. It’s largely the same gameplay, with different levels, but I’ve made it farther into it than I did on the 360. I’ve gotten 100% on the first four areas and at least unlocked all of the others, with new things like the gravity-changing aliens, the marshomech, and appearances by Penny Arcade’s Merch.

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix: Essentially Puzzle Quest in space, but with a new hex grid instead of the old Bejeweled-style grid. The hex grid makes things a bit tougher since I haven’t gotten the hang of seeing how the board will change with each move yet. Hacking leapgates is annoying due to the time limit on them, but I’ve managed to do a handful so far and I’m up to level 8.

Sins Of A Solar Empire: I started off a couple of games teamed up with an AI so that I wasn’t completely on my own. For an RTS that allegedly plays at a slower pace, I still found myself falling behind on various things like choosing research and keeping construction drones busy. I haven’t finished a game yet since I keep feeling like I screwed up too early on and need to start over, so I still have to come up with a decent starting strategy.

EverQuest: I finally got net access at my mother’s place, so I spent a bit of time in EQ as well, mainly making sure my daily xp bonus period didn’t get wasted. All I really did was pick up some more AAs via Halls of Honor again, though, finally maxing out Hastened Gathering and Innate Run Speed, and starting to pick up Doppelganger and Persistent Casting. Hopefully the latter will let me use better hastes on my charmed pets and still be able to get the stuns and recharms off reliably.

I’m getting really tired of HoH, so I’ll probably just bank a handful of more AAs for future use and start concentrating on exploring and leveling again. I also need to start working on the 10th Anniversary quests before they go away…