Category Archives: PC

Being A Champion Sucks

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I’m kind of getting tired already of the Argent Tournament quests in WoW. Of the dailies available at the champion level, the jousting gets rather tedious since they take so long, Chillmaw needs a group, and the commanders by the Citadel are just too much of a pain in the ass to bother with. I can earn two Champion’s Seals per day at best, which means it’s going to take a long while to get the 120 needed for the top-end mounts, or even for the minipets that cost 40.

And to unlock the best rewards, I need to redo the Valiant quests for the other four city factions, which means even more jousting…

Oh well, at least I completed the Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms achievement today, after finding a lot more quests in Eastern Plaguelands. I also finished off the Explorer achievements for the Eastern Kingdoms. Next up: Kalimdor…

We Are The Champions

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I didn’t spend a lot of time in WoW last night since it was the regular EQ2 night, but I did manage to finish getting through the Valiant stage of the Argent Tournament and now I can collect champion seals for actual rewards. My strategy works just as well on the champion opponents; it just takes a bit longer since they start out with level 3 defense.

Then it was off to EQ2, where we managed to polish off three HQs in one evening, netting us the Bag of Sewn Evil Eye, the Serrated Bone Dirk, and the Stein of Moggok. Only the bag is really of any use to me, but the quests are still fun.

No I’m Not Dead

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Yes, it’s yet more catching up…

EQ2: I missed a week due to being out of town, but last week we managed to finish off Deathfist Citadel, getting me a few nice chain upgrades and level 45 along the way. We’ll probably be off to either Everfrost or Feerrott next. Not much else to report since I haven’t been spending any spare time in it like I used to.

WoW: As usual, most of my time was in WoW and I’ve done zone quests up through most of Icecrown now, with a lot of the remaining ones being group quests that I’ll need help on. Faction-wise, I’ve gotten to exalted with the Argent Crusade, Sons of Hodir, and the Horde Expedition, with some nice upgrades from them. I’m still working on the Oracles and Wyrmrest Accord, and just started working my way through the Argent Tournament as well. I don’t really like the jousting, but the rewards are nice and I’ve got a tedious-but-reliable method for beating it.

I finally hit 450 alchemy and picked up the rest of the trainable transmutations, though I still have a bunch of other recipes to learn via discoveries. I also hit 450 in cooking and fishing, and picked up a bunch more fishing achievements. I managed to get the giant sewer rat from Dalaran, but that turtle still eludes me, though…

And I’ve also started working on the Loremaster achievements again. I still have a ton of quests to do in Outland, but I’m starting with Azeroth since everything there might change with Cataclysm. I’m working on the Eastern Kingdoms right now, and after going through Silverpine Forest, Hillsbrad, and Arathi Highlands, I only have 43 more quests to go in EK.

Forza 3: I caught up on the DLC packs and fired it up for a bit, completing a few more series, but I’ve still barely made a dent in the total list of events. I also discovered that I have to bump the difficulty down to ‘easy’ for the R2 events right now; they’re just too fast to keep control and fight the AI.

Dragon Age: I finally gave Dragon Age a proper start, picking a dwarven rogue and going through the dwarven noble origin, with a bunch of politicking and backstabbing that the dwarves are apparently infamous for. I’ve now just arrived at the Grey Wardens camp at Ostragar, where the main story will presumably start.

Borderlands: And we managed to squeeze in some time in Borderlands, getting to New Haven and doing the quests there and a bit past it. I’ve picked up the Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC, but that won’t really be usable until we hit the end of the main plot.

Weekend of WoW

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It was a long weekend, and I spent pretty damn near all of it in WoW, trying to get caught up. I did manage to hit level 80, a bit sooner than expected, and finished up the quests in the Zul’Drak and Sholazar Basin areas, also opening up the dailies there. We also did some more Utgarde Keep and Nexus runs, with it being my first time in the Nexus. We’re still a long ways from doing heroics, though.

And speaking of dailies, I should hit exalted with the walrus-guys in the next couple days, so I’ll be able to focus on other dailies instead. It takes a couple hours just to get through the current list of dailies, which gets a bit tiring.

I’m almost done with the Love Is In The Air event, with only a couple more achievements to go, but these ones require a fairly tough fight and entering places like Naxx, which I might not get to this year. The Lunar Festival event also started and I spent some time yesterday gathering the tokens for those, including in the Alliance home cities. I had a bit of trouble getting into Teldrassil for the elder there thanks to continually running into level 80s at the Darkshore docks, but I logged in before work this morning and managed to sneak in when no-one was around, and got the exploration achievement as well. I’ll have to do that again for the Draenei area, too.

Damn Gnomes

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Yesterday, our regular EQ2 group was short a member, so we decided to go do something different and visited Steamfont for the first time. We worked through the first handful of quests for the zone, mostly involving beating up kobolds, but didn’t really get anywhere too exciting.

One of the quest chains there has 20 parts though, and my quest log is full now, so I’m probably going to have to delete all the quests for there and come back for them later on.

Freedom!

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Tonight I’d only intended to get halfway through level 76, since it’s a workday and time is limited, but I actually wound up making it all the way to 77. That, of course, was cause for celebration as I could finally pick up Cold Weather Flying. Having to ride on the ground around places like Grizzly Hills and Zul’Drak was driving me nuts.

Speaking of which, I finished off most of the rest of the quests in Dragonblight and moved on to Grizzly Hills, starting with the Hold in the west this time. I also popped into Zul’Drak briefly just to do the intro quests and open up the daily there, so I can start doing that.

Yeah, Um…

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It’s kinda been a while…

EQ2: Not much happened over the Christmas holidays, but since then our group has mostly been working in Zek, finishing off zone quests and venturing into Deathfist Citadel once so far, getting my mystic to level 42 in the process. We didn’t complete everything there, since we got stomped by the arena champion, but we’ll be back… We also stopped by the Enchanted Lands one week when not enough people were around, doing a bunch of the zone quests there, but it’s not part of our official schedule right now.

I worked on a bunch of tradeskills, especially over one weekend where there was a 40% xp bonus, and I’m up to level 42 jewelcrafting on my illusionist and level 41 alchemy on my mystic, with a few minor gains on the other lower alts as well. I started a provisioner as well, so I can make my own food and drink without raiding the guild’s stocks.

We also completed a few more HQs recently, including Hadden’s Earring and the dark elf mask. Now that we’ve gained a bunch of levels, more HQs are open to us, but we haven’t really started them yet.

The new expansion is out soon, but it looks like there’s absolutely nothing in it for characters around our level, so I can wait on it for a while yet. There’s a collector’s edition, but the bonuses are laughable for the $30 extra they want for it.

WoW: Still missing that last crocolisk on my warrior. But that’s not what’s been taking up all my time, as I’ve kinda pulled my old priest, my very first WoW character, out of retirement and transferred him to Borean Tundra, where some friends are.

He was still level 66 from when I’d last played him, and I quickly worked my way through the remaining Nagrand and Shadowmoon Valley quests (skipping Blade’s Edge and Netherstorm for now), got him to Northrend, and then went through Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra. He’s now level 75 and about halfway through Dragonblight.

I had to spend a bunch of gold getting him caught up on getting a flying mount, dual specs, missing skills, and alchemy (now up to 405), but now I’ve got some breathing room to build up some savings before I can get cold weather flying. I’m finally homed in Dalaran now, so I can more easily do the various dailies, at least.

I switched to a shadow spec for levelling up, and it’s fairly powerful indeed. I’ve set up the second spec as holy, but haven’t really gotten much practice doing actual healing yet. I should probably do some pickup groups just for practice, especially with the new Dungeon Finder, even if PUGs do tend to suck.

Borderlands: I haven’t played it in a while, but we’ve finished up in the first area and moved on the to Dahl Headlands, though we haven’t done much there yet. I might have to go back and farm Sledge a bit for loot, though.

Lapsed

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Yeek, I’ve been falling way behind with the updates…

Not much has happened in EQ2 since the holidays have interfered with most everyone’s plans. We finished up some Butcherblock quests and picked up the starter quests in Zek, and then worked on the first stages of the Glowing Black Stone quest. My illusionist alt is currently level 30 and working through the BB quests as well.

I played through Pixeljunk Shooter over a couple of days. It’s short, but pretty good, reminiscent of the old scrolling shooters like Zeppelin and Fort Apocalypse. Your main goal is to rescue scientists and collect diamonds, but to get to them you have to manipulate various fluids and gasses by shooting passages that let them flow around, interact with each other, and so on. I’ll be looking forward to a sequel.

I played a bit of Europa Universalis Rome: Vae Victus. Since I’m still new to the EU series I started out with the Pictii, a minor province in the Scotland area. Unfortunately it’s a rather slow way to learn, as it takes quite a while to get the funds, population, and civilization rating to actually start expanding, and I kept getting overrun by barbarians. I started another game as Carthage, which is much more advanced, but haven’t done much with it yet.

I picked up DiRT 2 for myself over the holidays, and played through all of the rookie-level events. It is, of course, much like the original DiRT, except that the rally raid mode seems different (point-to-point, whereas wasn’t the original’s on circuits?), and there are no hill climb events. The difficulty seems inconsistent, too — I can do certain events like rallies on casual and beat the pants off the AI, but raids and rallycross on casual are only just barely beatable.

And last but not least, a friend got me Borderlands for xmas and that’s what I’ve primarily been playing the last few days. It’s basically Diablo crossed with an FPS, and the variety of weaponry you can find is tickling the loot whore in me. So far we’re level 16 and have done most of the first couple starting areas.

I Hope They Make Armour In His Shape

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I spent most of today’s time in EQ2 starting a new character, a sarnak shadowknight. But wait, don’t I already have a shadowknight? Yes, but I also started taking this guy through the Freeport betrayal quests. I’m about a third of the way through gaining faction with Qeynos, and when I’m done, I’ll have a sarnak paladin instead, which will certainly be an unusual combination.

I had previously been at the character limit (a measly 7 by default), so this was also made possible by converting my payment plan over to a Station Pass. Since I’m still subscribed to EQ1 as well, it was only slightly more expensive than maintaining the two separate subscriptions, and gives me an extra 5 character slots. This will also let me cover all of the crafting professions, if I’m ever crazy enough to try raising all of them.

Ketchup?

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Falling behind on these updates has become a bit of a habit…

EQ2: On Thursday we had our regular weekly meeting and finished off a lot of the quests in Butcherblock, hitting level 29 in the process. I also worked on the Frostfell event quests, getting a bunch of crafting recipes, stuff for the house, and holiday wear, and also hitting level 30. It’s back to AAs for now though, as I’ve still got a lot of sub-30 quests to finish. A smaller group of us also went and finished off the Dwaven Work Boot and Greater Lightstone quests over the weekend.

Forza 3: I finally resumed playing this, hitting driver level 21 today and finishing a bunch of other events. All but two of the event series are unlocked now, but I’m still playing along in season mode and still have two more races to go in the A-level championship series. I’ve got a pretty good stable of cars now, including a few gifted ones from Turn 10, a few I bought myself (including a WRX and an NSX), and a few from driver level awards. I still need an S-class one, though.

Diablo 2: Yes, the old favourite is back again. A 1.13 patch is in testing, which means a new ladder season is probably coming as well, so I spent a bit of time in it tonight to see if I could complete the Insight runeword before the ladder season ends. It’s a ladder-only runeword, so it would be nice to have at least one of them made before it ends and then I can use it on my non-ladder characters. No such luck tonight, though — I’m still missing the Sol rune and a good weapon to put it in.