Whoops

I discovered tonight that the flurry ability I bought yesterday doesn’t actually work for charmed pets like I assumed it would. Oh well, that’s a bunch of ranks I don’t need to buy into any further…

Instead I picked up another rank of Shield Block and the other banishment ability, that acts in a cone effect. The single-target one is the preferred one for charming, but the cone one should be useful in emergencies when there are multiple enemies after me in a bad charm break. With my AA options cut a bit short by the above discovery, I think at this point I’m going to bank the usual 30 AAs and get back to leveling, as the more useful AAs I still want won’t be available until the next few levels.

I also finally hit 100,000 plat in the bank tonight. Soon I’ll have to choose between whether I want to keep saving it for spells and other items later on, or splurge it all on the fastest mount type.

Moving In With The Fire Goblins

I spent a little while longer than I intended working on more AAs in EQ. With the dual-wielding trick, I’m earning them more quickly than ever before at the fire goblin camp, so I may as well milk them while I can, and I’ve bought some more like innate charm resistance (will supposedly be important in the Seeds of Destruction areas) and the flurry ability for my pet. I can usually earn enough AAs to buy a rank of something each day, so although the camp is a bit repetitive, it doesn’t really feel like any days are entirely wasted. It’s pretty good cash too, with the deepwater gem and plat drops.

Dang Zombies, Get Off My Lawn

I went through the usual motions in EQ yesterday and got another handful of AAs and another rank of the research mastery skill, but what I was really after was some horticulture.

Plants Vs. Zombies is kind of like a tower defense game, though it’s a bit more restrictive in that there are specific lanes that the zombies follow and you have to defend each lane separately by placing plants with various attacks and defenses. And, of course, there are different kinds of zombies with various attacks and weaknesses. Some plants are only usable at night, when you have less ‘sunshine’ to spend, and you can only take a limited set of them into each battle.

So far I’ve made it through the first two chapters, which take place in your front lawn first during the day and then at night, and now I’m in the middle of chapter 3 in the back yard, which adds a pool in the middle and some new plants and zombies to handle it. There are also some minigames at certain points, like zombie bowling, where you launch ‘wall-nut’ plants to try and knock them over as they shuffle towards the house.

It’s fun so far, though it’s a bit more frantic than I expected since you have to react quickly to which zombie types appear in each lane, while collecting falling sunshine drops and trying to develop your ‘economy’ without leaving yourself vulnerable by not building enough attackers in time. It’s trickier than it looks.

I also tried out Puzzle Kingdoms, a more traditional fantasy-based sequel to Puzzle Quest. The focus this time is more strategic though, as you command a group of troops and attack buildings rather than do quests. Combat involves matching by sliding entire rows and columns rather than switching spots, and your goal is to build up attack points for each of your troops that will let them attack and do damage when you’ve finally collected enough.

It’s different enough from the original Puzzle Quest to be interesting, but it feels a bit unfinished. You can do things like garrison troops at buildings you’ve conquered, but there’s no point to it since the enemy never counter-attacks.

A Whirling Cloud Of Fine Steel

Though I’ve just been grinding AAs in EQ lately, I made two big discoveries recently.

First, the anniversary quests aren’t gone yet, even though the event has ended. This means I can keep doing at least the fishing one, for a pretty good amount of cash and a couple AAs for an hour or so’s work. I’m not sure if this is intentional or if it’s just because the servers haven’t been rebooted yet, so I’ll have to do it whenever possible in case it vanishes soon.

And I also remembered that I can give charmed pets weapons to make them dual-wield. This resulted in a huge increase in DPS when I tried it out on the fire goblins in Buried Sea, and now I can make 4-5 AAs per Lesson period instead of 3. It’s also riskier when charm breaks, of course, so I also have to be a lot more careful.

And speaking of AAs, I’ve bought up all of the ranks of Jewelcraft Mastery and Salvage, and one rank of the research mastery AA as well. I think I’ll finish off that one (15 more AAs to get the next two ranks), just so the important tradeskill AAs are completely over and done with, and then get back to leveling.

Panty Raid!

I did more exploring around the Buried Sea area today, as there’s a bit more to it than I thought. There was a camp of fire goblins on Suncrest Isle that was pretty good xp, where I’ll probably spend my double-xp periods from now on, and I found some chests along the beach on another island, in which I found:

It also turned out that I could enter the city of Katta Castrum by jumping into the big whirlpool at the center of the zone. It’s an enormous city, divided into outer areas under siege by elementals and Shissar and the inner area where the old Combine empire lives, but it’s largely empty.

I picked up a handful of tasks and did a few of them that I could do right within the city itself, but none of them were all that important. Katta Castrum has its own separate currency, but to pick up any of those it looks like I have to do the harder, group quests. I doubt there’s anything I really want to earn here though, since it would probably be quickly obsoleted once I reach the Seeds of Destruction areas.

Back To The Coast

I figured I’d try somewhere new in EQ today, so I headed to the areas of the Buried Sea expansion. Unfortunately it’s a lot smaller than I expected — there are two main zones, but then the rest of them seem to be LDoN-ish mission areas that need a group.

Oh well. I picked up a bunch of tasks in the Barren Coast zone and worked on them for a bit, though they were fairly simple ones that only awarded xp, cash, and faction. A few of them took me into the Buried Sea zone and I hunted there for a while to work on one of them, though the xp wasn’t all that great. I did pick up a bunch of miscellaneous items that might be good for twinks, though.

Best of all though, I managed to see a level 76 named basilisk spawn twice, and just barely beat him both times (first time with my animation, second time with a charmed basilisk), and got both of his drops, including a rather nice 33% haste belt with decent stats. My monk will love that when/if he hits level 68.

Damn Kids

The seasonal events in WoW rolled right into each other as Children’s Week started up today. It’s a much smaller event though, basically escorting kids around to certain locations, and getting some pets as the final reward. There are some achievements relating to having them around with you when you do certain things, but I probably won’t bother with the PvP ones.

And it was the same old AA grinding in EQ tonight, though I’ve started putting ranks into the Jewelcraft Mastery skill, since I should probably resume raising it at some point. The fewer failures I have, the less it’ll cost me.

Chocoholic

As I’d hoped, I finished off the Noblegarden achievements in WoW tonight, though it took a bit longer than expected. I ran around to various spots looking for a female dwarf, the rarest combination of all in the game, but had no luck for a long stretch. They were probably all in Dalaran, but I still don’t have access to there yet. But I did run across one by pure chance in Ratchet, and finished off that achievement.

The last achievement was just to eat a bunch of chocolates from the eggs, but it turned out to be a multi-tiered achievement and I needed a total of 100 instead of just the 25 I thought it was. Fortunately competition for the eggs was a bit lighter tonight.

And as usual, I popped into EQ for the daily xp period and got yet another rank of the mana regen AA. It might seem unnecessary with the boosted out-of-combat regen rate they added, but when I’m charm soloing I’m usually in combat mode 99% of the time, and my regen rate determines whether I can sustain the charming or if my mana will slowly dwindle towards zero…

Another Day, Another 50 Eggs

The Easter event continued on in WoW tonight, and I picked up a new set of Spring Robes and a handful of achievements related to the event. I only need two more achievements to complete the whole event set, which would be the first time I’ve ever done so, and they should be fairly easy ones to get.

And in EQ I put another rank into the mana regen AA. Yay.

Bunnies!

I haven’t done much in EQ the last couple days except use up the daily double xp period (gaining enough AAs for the Persistent Minion skill), but I did get sucked back into WoW for yet another special event, this time for Easter.

It centers mainly around finding eggs hidden around some of the starting areas, and turning in the chocolates inside for rewards or finding other random rewards in the eggs. So far I have the full tuxedo suit (pictured below), an elegant dress, two equippable flower bouquets, and a new pet Spring Rabbit. The rabbit is especially cute in how it does a big leap to catch up to you if it wanders too far away.