Not much to report lately, as all I’ve been doing in WoW is the daily Brewfest quests for some more tokens, and a few other simple dailies. I’ve subscribed to the Brew Of The Month club, but still need a lot more tokens for the pink elephant pet and the Brewfest outfit.
Almost forgot that I spent a bit of time playing the original Dark Forces, too, from that same Jedi Knight pack on Steam that I mentioned before. It’s a pretty competent shooter from the Doom era, though nothing all that special compared to current ones. I’ve only done the first two missions so far though, and I was a bit confused at first since apparently you can’t save mid-mission at all — you can only resume a game at the start of a mission.
I also put a lot more time into NFS: Shift today, and I’m close to unlocking Tier 4 now. I have three cars now, the starting Mazda RX-8, a tier 2 Lotus Elise, and a tier 3 Audi R8, and they’ve been good enough for pretty much all of the races so far. I will have to buy a few more for the brand/region-restricted races, though.
I’ve avoided drift races entirely since I’ve been terrible at them in the past, but I think I’ve done all of the other types now. ‘Races’ are straightforward, well, races; ‘time attack’ lets you set the best lap time you can within a time limit, and your position doesn’t matter; and ‘duels’ pit two cars against each other in a best-2-of-3 point-to-point race, with each car taking turns starting out front.
I’m still unhappy with my own driving since I’m having trouble sticking to the driving line and slide and oversteer quite a bit, and I’m still not sure if it’s just the nature of the game or if I’m just sucking at it. The control does feel better after adjusting the sensitivity settings, at least.
Today in WoW was all about beer, as Brewfest began. Most of the achievements were acquired pretty quickly, but a few others will have to wait until I gain enough tokens for completing the dailies, and one was a bit too tough to solo (I wandered down to Blackrock Depths to face an opponent only to discover he had over 300k health…).
I’ve also played a handful of other games lately, though not spending too much time in each.
I bought Need For Speed: Shift a few days ago, and played a few races into it. The NFS series kind of lost its appeal for me over the last few entries, but this one is a reinvention of the series along more realistic lines. The handling seemed a bit odd at first, but after adjusting the controller sensitivity with some settings recommended in a few forums, the control feels much better now. I’m still not really far enough into it to get a good feel for the game, though.
I put a few hours into Trackmania United today, first trying to get gold on a problematic solo track (Bay C3), and although I improved my time, I still didn’t get gold in the end. I also played multiplayer for a while, getting my rank back up into more respectable territory (started at around 660,000th, and ended around 350,000th).
And I also picked up the Jedi Knight pack released on Steam recently, and played through the first level of the first Jedi Knight game. Unfortunately I died before reaching the end of the level and hadn’t saved. So far it’s a fairly traditional FPS, as I don’t have any Jedi powers yet. The rather ancient 3D graphics make it a bit hard to stick with this one, though…
In WoW today, I popped back into some of the older zones, looking for quests around the Terrokar and Nagrand areas. I found a few of them, including a couple treks into Auchindon, but I’m still one short of the achievement in Terrokar, as most of them just didn’t count towards that. Tracking down these last few quests is getting to be a pain…
I also killed some time with a bit of fishing, getting another achievement there and working on cooking along with it.
Nothing too exciting has been going on in WoW lately. I’ve just been doing a few dailies and finishing off the odd quest here and there as I work towards the loremaster achievements, with Howling Fjord and Grizzly Hills now complete.
I did finally make a tempered titansteel helm though, which also got me to 450 blacksmithing. I could make boots as well, but my current boots seem to be almost just as good, so I should probably save my titanium for something else. I’d need to find new recipes though, as I’ve already made the store-bought ones.
I hardly got any gaming done last week thanks to a business trip. About the only thing I did do was play a brief introductory session to Crusader Kings. It’s another one of Paradox’s history-based games, but with an emphasis on specific leaders and their personal traits, their relationships with others, establishing a bloodline, random events that happen to you personally, managing the people in the royal court, etc.
My games haven’t gone too well so far, though. In one, I was immediately given a demand to either let another person take over my province (which is an instant game-over since you no longer have a leader controlling anything) or go to war, and the war is almost impossible to win with your starting military. In another, I was doing pretty well for about 10 years (the total length the game covers is around 400 years), but made a choice that wound up getting me excommunicated by the pope and everything spiralled downwards from there. In another nearly everyone close to me wound up getting sick or dying, and my wife went insane. And in yet another, nothing interesting is really happening, as the duchy I chose was just too small and irrelevant. I have yet to get a really good, stable game going, and it doesn’t help that it crashes every once in a while.
I did also get back to WoW tonight, finishing off a handful of more quests in Icecrown, and I think the main remaining non-daily quests are ones I need a group for. I also started doing the initial quests for the tournament area in the north-east corner of Icecrown, including things like jousting. I might be able to earn some better equipment there.
I didn’t spent much time in WoW today, but I did manage to get the Oracles in Sholazar basin to exalted. Nothing really useful for doing so though, as I could already buy the pet-hatching eggs before, but it’s an achievement.
And I did a few more Icecrown quests and got to Honored with the Knights of the Ebon Blade, which let me buy a nice pair of defense boots. I might not need the titansteel boots after all…
The last couple days in WoW have been pretty eventful. First I finally made my Titansteel Bonecrusher, giving me a pretty healthy upgrade in DPS. Then, while doing the dailies, I hit exalted with the walrus-guys, letting me buy a penguin pet and a fishing pole that lets me breathe underwater, and I also hit honored with Wyrmrest Accord, getting me a very nice defense cloak. I should work on Wyrmrest faction a bit more since there’s a fairly nice BP at revered, too.
I also engaged in a bit of PvP in Arathi Basin alongside a friend. It’s the first time I’ve actually done PvP in WoW, and I’m not sure if I really like it. In the end I didn’t do very much damage, died quickly too much before I could even do anything, and felt like I was just holding the team back. I just don’t have any idea what to do there, tactics-wise.
Ah well, I went back to Icecrown and finished off some more quest lines, which unlocked yet more dailies… If this keeps up I’ll be able to do the entire quota of 25 dailies in a single zone.
Today was a bit more relaxed, though. I primarily worked on an alt, getting his jewelcrafting skill up to 150 and enchanting up to 87, and then I rolled through Blackrock Depths on my warrior, to finish off some old quests.