I’m Not Dead Yet

Ugh, I’ve been forgetting to update again, so in brief:

EQ2: Last Thursday our regular group popped into Befallen briefly but didn’t find much there, so we headed to Stormhold, explored it pretty thoroughly, and completed a handful of quests there, though some are still unfinished. On Friday I worked on the Heroes Festival quests, including a fairly easy collection, setting off some fireworks, and a long quest chain that took me through a few instance zones I hadn’t seen before, including Unrest and Karnor’s Castle, giving me the title of Dream Hero. Since this is probably a one-time-only thing for the 5th anniversary, I did it on almost all of my alts as well.

I also started working on the armour quests on my mystic, and grouped up with a couple other guild members to finish them off on the weekend. Since then I’ve been working on quests on my illusionist, holding him at level 25 and letting it go to AAs instead. I’ve mostly finished off Antonica but still have to do GFay. And I discovered I can sneak around the Zek zone and gather some materials for the next tier of crafting without getting into fights, but haven’t done anything with them yet.

WoW: There was a seasonal harvest bounty event in WoW as usual, and I finished off a couple more achievements, but didn’t get most of them. Not much else has happened there, really.

Serious Sam HD: This was finally released on Steam and I played through the first chapter of it. It’s a bit on the old side now, even with the updated graphics, but it’s still fun to get mobbed by a bunch of screaming, exploding, headless guys.

Catchup

Whoops, I’ve been falling behind a bit, so in brief:

EQ2: Over the last few days I mainly worked on crafting, but didn’t spend as much time in it as I had before. Tonight we had our weekly group and went through Wailing Caves again (not everyone else had seen it), and started on Fallen Gate. We didn’t make it to all the areas in there though, so we’ll have to come back. It finally made my healing actually necessary, though, and I’m halfway through level 24 now.

WoW: Yesterday, I finally achieved two goals at the same time: hitting Exalted with Kirin Tor, and collecting 100 cooking awards in Dalaran and getting the chef’s hat. Those were all I had really been logging in and doing the dailies for, as I think I’ve got pretty much all the other possible awards for the cooking and fishing dailies.

Torchlight: I made it through a couple other environments and I think I’m at the last one now, though nothing terribly exciting or interesting has happened. I did finally get a kickass wand and found a couple suitable uniques though, so I’m much better equipped than before.

Lucky Day

I’d been trying for the past week and a half to get the squashling pet on my warrior, and after getting it on a couple of alts instead, I finally lucked out and got it today. And if that wasn’t enough, I hatched my egg from the Oracles and got a green proto-drake mount. It’s not any faster than my current mount, but it’s much rarer and more impressive-looking.

So Many Newbies

Although our EQ2 group doesn’t start until next week, I spent a bit of time preparing by doing collections (I have six to be turned in now), and made a few other characters and leveled them up a bit. I think I’m actually going to go with a shaman for my main character, to get the group a healer, and I never really played one before even back in EQ1. My enchanter will be my soloing character for non-group days.

Today I also finished off Machinarium, an adventure game by the same guys who did the Samorost games. It’s the story of a little robot separated from his girlfriend, the thugs that harassed him, and a plot to blow up a tower, but it’s all revealed in-game without any words at all. It’s fairly standard use-everything-on-everything adventure fare, but the solutions are a bit tricky in some places and I did have to resort to the hint system a few more times than I would have liked.

And also, back in WoW, I lucked out and found the final book of Arcane Magic I was missing just minutes before a server restart, right after I woke up this morning. I’d picked up the previous seven books fairly casually, but this last one took a few sessions of waiting around before I finally got it today. And for all that effort, I got…an elemental pet. Nothing useful, but I seem to be addicted to collecting pets…

It Lives!

There hasn’t been much to say about WoW lately since I’ve mostly just been doing the Hallow’s End dailies. I’m still missing a lot of masks and the squashling pet on my warrior, but it’s really a matter of pure luck. I also got my mage up to 32 just finishing off the quests around the Hillsbrad area, but I think I’m going to leave him there for now because…

…I’m getting sucked back into EverQuest 2. A bunch of us from a forum are going to try to get a regular weekly group going, so last night I spent some time creating a new character (another kitty enchanter) and getting him to the Timorous Deep newbie area. We haven’t really decided on roles yet though, so maybe I’ll try a cleric instead. Someone else in the group also wants to be an enchanter, and I don’t really want to do a melee class after so much time on my warrior in WoW. It doesn’t officially start until next week anyway.

Spooky!

The major recent event in WoW was the arrival of Hallow’s End, so of course I had to go and rack up a bunch of the associated achievements. Some of them just depend on blind luck based on what you get from the treat bags, though, so it might take a while to get them all.

My mage is also up to level 30 now, hunting around the Tarren Mill area. I’m kind of torn between leaving him there and picking him back up when Cataclysm arrives, or continuing on to at least Outland so that I do Cataclysm from the start with a completely new character instead…

My Own Stinky Zoo

I mostly played my mage in WoW last night, getting him to level 28 and finishing off most of Stonetalon Mountains.

But the real action was on my warrior, where a convergence of pets finally got him the 50-pet achievement. It was a bit sooner than expected thanks to the unexpected arrival of a penguin in the mail for doing the battle.net conversion, finding another alligator reward in a fishing daily, and the hatching of the Jubling egg. That still left me one pet short, so I bought a mechanical toad off the AH, netting the achievement and the reward of a skunk pet. That’s five pets in one night with hardly any effort needed…

There’s another reward at the 75 pet mark, but that one will be tougher. I’ve already got all the easy ones, and although I know of another 28 or so pets I could get, it would cost a fortune to buy them off the AH.

A Mage’s Life

Lately, most of my time in WoW has actually been spent on my mage alt. Over the weekend I managed to get him from level 19 to 26, and raised jewelcrafting to 217 and enchanting to 136 (enchanting’s a bit of a pain to raise). It’s strange because he’s simultaneously more boring than my warrior (just cast Frostbolt over and over and over…), but more interesting because I can’t approach situations the same way by just barging in like I would with the warrior.

I didn’t neglect my warrior entirely though, managing to complete the zone quest achievement in Zangarmarsh, collect a few more aspirant tokens at the Argent Tournament, and finally got around to socketing some of my equipment. With the boost of a few gems, I finally have a defense rating of 536 on him, which is good enough to avoid crits in non-heroic dungeons (I need 540 for heroics).

Damn You, Maladaar

I spent most of my time in WoW tonight working through some of the Auchindon dungeons, to try and clear out some old quests. I forgot that Exarch Maladaar was the boss of the western area though, and he’s pretty much impossible for me to solo right now due to his ability to clone me and summon help.

I did manage to work my way through the eastern dungeon for the first time, completing a couple of quests there and getting the key for the southern one. I couldn’t make it all the way through the south dungeon since one of the mid-bosses was too tough, but I did make it deep enough to get a book for a Nagrand quest and resume that quest chain.

Unfortunately I don’t think any of them counted towards zone quests that I still need for achievements…