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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
My time in EQ2 over the weekend was primarily spent on tradeskilling, getting my mystic up to level 36 alchemy, and my illusionist up to level 37 jewelcrafting. I also got the illusionist caught up on the gathering skills and Mara gathering quests, netting me a bit more cash.
I’m not really finding alchemy all that useful so far, though. None of the potions I’ve made so far are ones I’d really consider all that useful for regular or emergency use. Maybe it gets better later on…
Tonight’s EQ2 session was spent mostly working on tradeskilling, first collecting a bunch of materials around Zek and the Enchanted Lands to fulfill a gathering quest, and then working on jewelcrafting until I ran out of materials, managing to go from level 32 to 35. Levels 36 and 38 are where the good rings I can make will be, but they won’t be wearable until my characters hit class level 30 anyway.
Tonight in EQ2 we finally got back to the Butcherblock quest lines that we’d been directed to weeks ago. We finished off the ones near the docks and sarnak camp and then headed to the camp near the GFay entrance, where we found a bunch more quests. We called it a night there, though.
Along the way I won an advanced armourcrafting page and with it I was able to make nice boot and shield upgrades for my SK, at least. And before the group got going, I did a bunch of gathering and hit level 33 alchemy on my mystic, though it’s fairly slow going now that combines give less xp and take more materials.
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.