A Little Late To The Party

After EQ, I actually spent most of the day in WoW, though. I finished off most of the quests in Netherstorm, a couple I’d left hanging in Blade’s Edge, and finally headed off to start the Wrath of the Lich King zones in earnest. I’ll focus on Howling Fjord first, where I’m cleaning up some quests around Angmar, but haven’t decided where to go after that.

I was a bit surprised at how much money I made, going from something like 350 gold at the start of the day to nearly 700 at the end. I’m going to need at least 2000 sometime in the near future, for the dual specialization and cold weather flying abilities.

Master Of Illusion

Today in EQ, I remembered that there are a few spells I hadn’t gotten yet, so I first went and got the Drakkin illusion spell from a fairly quick, simple quest. Upon evaluating the others though, I opted to skip them, since there’ll be higher-level versions coming up fairly quickly.

I went and explored the Prophecy of Ro zones for a little bit, but there wasn’t really much to explore. They’re pretty, but boring, from another one of the expansions that focuses mainly on group instance missions and little else. I then went and checked out the Loping Plains zone from the Secrets of Faydwer expansion. There’s a lot more potential there, with a bunch of potentially-soloable quests and blue-con critters to kill, though I’ll have to do some more testing.

Well, I Am A Junkie

And not satisfied with my new level in EQ, I popped into WoW and finally pushed through to level 73 there as well. Nothing too exciting skill-wise, but I did finally purchase glyphs for myself, after settling on Devastate and Blocking for the major glyphs and Thunder Clap, Charge, and Battle for the minors. I’m not sure why I put them off for so long, since in the end the choices were fairly clear for my build.

I also polished off a good 30 or so quests in Netherstorm, putting me over the halfway done mark there, and it shouldn’t be too long before I can truly begin the WotLK areas.

Putting My Snake Away

As expected, I hit level 78 fairly quickly in EQ today, giving me a Clarity spell with a big boost, new nuke and DoT spells, and another rank of the Total Domination skill. And while xping I even got some equipment upgrades, with new ranged slot and weapon items. I was a bit reluctant to switch away from my epic weapon, but the stats on this one are just so much better.

I got myself back up to 30 AAs, also putting me 20% into the level, and I think it’s time I worked on some quests and explored a bit. The fire goblin camp is still good xp, but I need something different to do…

Unlucky Shot

To mix things up a bit, I worked on doing the tasks for a different island in the Buried Sea in EQ today, focusing on the siren island. Most of them were fairly easy except for the Siren Hair one, which needed a fairly rare drop. Plus, fighting the sirens is annoying since they have a huge aggro radius, the terrain on their island causes weird pathing, and they’re highly resistant, so I had to go charm a pet from a different island. In the end I got all three fingerbone pieces from the island’s quests though.

These quests are kind of annoying in how you have to do them, though. The fingerbone rewards aren’t unlocked until you do a couple other quests on each island, and the available rewards are set at the time you take the quest, so you can’t simply pick up all of the quests for an island and then go do them all. You have to take one, go do it, turn it in, pick up the next one, go do it, etc., which gets annoying when you have to zone back and forth with the Barren Coast, or you pick up pieces for other quests that go to waste because they’re not counted because you couldn’t start that one yet.

I then spent most of the rest of the day xping in the usual spot, though I did die for the first time at that camp. I had charmed Lutzan, the named goblin, and on one charm break he ran up and hit me while I was sitting, and I hit the button to stand up at just the wrong moment, making me sit back down again, and he hit me sitting down again. Getting hit when you’re sitting down always does max damage…

Oh well, I’m 85% of the way towards level 78 now, and should easily get it fairly quickly tomorrow. That’ll be a nice level since I’ll have another rank of the charm strengthening skill and will still be able to charm nearly anything blue to me.

Dance, My Puppet!

Just more exping in EQ tonight, with the slight twist that the named goblin spawned at the camp and I realized I could use my new charm spell on him. Named critters usually aren’t good for charming since they’re often unrootable or can summon you, which makes charm breaks a pain, but this guy doesn’t have either ability. Hasted and dual-wielding, he puts out a lot more damage than the normal goblins around there (max damage of 908 versus 639), and fights went much more quickly and I could clear the entire camp instead of having to leave a few untouched each spawn cycle.

Of course, charm breaks were also more dangerous since he hits so much harder, so I had to be extra careful about keeping him away from me and watching the remaining charm duration, but I haven’t died to him yet. In fact, I’m surprised I haven’t died at all at the goblin camp yet, even though I did a handful of times at the safer Sunderock camps.

Ding

I hit level 77 in EQ fairly quickly today, and the new spells are pretty decent, with upgrades to tash, haste, and a new charm. I also bought upgrades to the Clinging Root and Mez Mastery AAs, putting me back down at 14 AA points.

The exp is still pretty good at the fire goblin camp, so I’m going to have to decide whether to keep exping there, or start exploring a bit more, with the new charm opening up more possibilities. Either way, I think I’ll first max out my AAs again before hitting level 78, while the xp is still good.

The Trick To Making A Small Fortune…

I started leveling again in EQ tonight, but it’s going more slowly than expected, and after a couple hours I only gained about 26%, putting me 59% of the way to 77. I guess it’s going to take me a few more days…

I got bored of the exping though, so I figured I should actually spend some of that money I’ve been saving up and worked on jewelcrafting for a bit afterwards. I quickly got up to 282 with vendor gem combinations, but after that you need dropped gems. Fortunately, since the server had been up for quite a while, the ones I needed were readily available on random vendors, with a bit of searching.

It’s getting expensive, though. After spending about 40k plat (knocking me down to 70k left in the bank), I’m up to 288 skill now. Those last 12 points are going to be annoying, since at this point all of the gems and bars are quite expensive, the salvage skill doesn’t kick in quite as often as I’d like, and you can easily chew through 5-10k plat without a single skill gain. I think I’ll leave it at here for now…

Bad Timing

I was plagued by internet issues again today, so I started out by getting back to an offline game — Disgaea 3. Four new chapters centered around Raspberyl had been released recently, so it was as good a time as any to finally do them. They were fairly short though, with only four maps per chapter rather than the 6-7 or so of the main story, and I was able to steamroller through them with my rather overpowered characters. A nice little diversion, but not as substantial as I’d hoped.

I made it into EQ long enough to earn another 13 AAs, and would have gotten the final 30th one in the bank except for getting completely disconnected just as I was working on it. I got dropped just as I was in the middle of looting a nice twink weapon, too. But fortunately my internet access was restored just before I had to head to bed, and when I logged in the weapon was still on my cursor. There was also an angry fire goblin standing right next to me, but he was easily placated and I quickly finished off that 30th AA.

Next stop, level 77.

The Most Annoying Foe Yet

I went through the usual camps in EQ today and got the first 16 AAs towards the amount I intend to bank, but I also wandered over to the other side of the island and fought the aqua goblins for a while. They’re a bit more annoying since most of them are underwater, but there were enough nearby that I was able to get the named guy there to spawn twice, got both possible loot drops, and completed another quest back in Barren Coast. I’ve also started collecting the fingerbone rewards from the quests, since I discovered that they can be combined into a final, single augment with very good stats.

Later on I also popped into WoW and completed a small handful of quests in the Netherstorm area, but I spent most of my time fighting lag. My cable modem connection was extremely flaky today, with high packet loss and latency leading to numerous multi-second pauses in combat, stalled looting, and so on. After resetting the cable modem a bit later on, things seem improved, but overall quality of the connection has been down for the last couple weeks now. It’s been noticeable in EQ as well, with casts often exhibiting high-lag symptoms like the audio not starting until the cast is nearly done, severely delayed fizzle messages, or mobs ‘teleporting’ straight to me. If it keeps this up, I’m going to have to complain to Shaw.