Code 51-50!

Spent another couple nights at the faithful spider camp in Velks. I have noticed that the zone seems to be more packed lately, either due to more people reaching these levels or due to the fact that only 3 picks are up at once. There were 7 last week, which spread out the people much better than the current state.

I was blessed with a few great groups at the camp, which kept the XP moving right along. At one point we had a group consisting of pretty much all DPS and my shaman, and we were able to kill large groups of spiders even without CC. Our biggest pull and kill was probably around 8 to 10 spiders, though a med was required afterwards. I have pretty much exhausted all upgrade options at this camp, so I was determined to up my game and try either the upper or lower dogs.

I logged in last night with the hope of making a group up and trying out these higher level camps, but was pleasantly surprised to get an invite to a group within about 5 minutes of being online. They even had room for my shaman. I headed down to the lower dogs camp in prep for using /pickzone to head to the proper pick. When I got down, the group in my current zone tried valiantly to poach me for their group. I was honored, but decided to go to the group I had already agreed to join.

When I arrived, I joined up with a few people who I had been grouping with the last few weeks, plus a few new faces. We had an enchanter in the group with a charm mob, and we positively slaughtered down there. The XP was amazing, much better than spiders. I was able to quickly level both characters, and ended the night at 51 on my SK, 50 on my SHM. I am quite happy to be in the last 10 levels to hit the top of the ladder so to speak.

Things did go pretty smooth, although we had a scary moment waiting for an enchanter replacement to arrive. We got a large pull, including a named, and were on our way to a wipe when the enchanter showed up at the last minute, charmed the named, and set us straight. Was a close call.

We did end up with one wipe at the end of the night, due to a named pull with many adds while the cleric was LOM. The named down here are fricken brutal. Slows basically will not land on some of them, and neither will Malo to help make that work. Our mage was basically useless, and unable to burn the named down due to resists. The enchanter was killed, released a hasted pet, and it went downhill from there.

We all grabbed a rez though from a group who moved in after the named we wiped on, and since we were at the point of breaking up it was not a big deal. Got a 96% rez, so I was able to maintain basically all my XP. I plan to head back there or try upper dogs and keep the XP flowing. Soon I will move into the castle area as well.

I have been slowly gathering up the gems needed for Velious quest armor through my adventures in Velks, and have at least a couple pieces of gear’s worth on each character. I have been doing “greed all” up until the time I headed to the lower dogs camp, with the idea I could sell or trade the gems I was not in need of for the correct ones I wanted. The lower dogs group was doing a “need’ on all gems you required, so I actually picked up quite a few while we were down there.

A patch was released yesterday that supposedly removed a lot of the NODROP rare items from Velks, since they are for some reason considered over-powered. I was talking with a guildie though, and it appears at least some of the items are still dropping. Will be interesting to see if this is patched again or just left alone.

Into the Labyrinth

Been a few days since I could get an update going, but I have been busy!

Went into a week of overnight shifts at work. This kinda sucked, but the one good thing was I had free time to bring a laptop in and get some EQ going! Was not able to box, but instead alternated playing my SK and SHM, trying to keep them in same level ranges.

The vast majority of time has been spent in Velks, mostly at the frenzied camp. I did make a foray over into Sebilis one night with my SK. This ended up pissing me off to no end. I had a bad feeling heading over, telling me I should have stayed in Velks. As it turned out, I should have listened. After the group made it in (we were at the bugs camp), we began killing without too much trouble. The kills were slower and the mobs were tougher it seemed than in Velks, but I figured since I was here I may as well check out a new zone.

Things went south when we stopped for a med break and I went to make some coffee. I came back to find that the group had disbanned, leaving me alone in the zone. I was dead due to a roamer. Now I know I should have FD, but since I was trying to med up that would not have helped much. What really pisses me off is the group knew I was afk, and said “whatever” and left. I was gone maybe 5 minutes when all knew it was a med break, so it is not like I ninja afk’ed for 20 minutes. Really got me riled up.

I made my way back to Velks, in hope of regaining my lost XP and placing the whole event in a “live and learn” category.

The good ol’ frenzy camp

I spent about 5 days alternating the SK and SHM in Velks. The zone has been extremely busy, but I have been able to put a group together or join one quite quickly every night. Even made some friends as well. I found that playing at off hours (6pm-4am PST) usually leads to grouping with quite a few of the same faces. For the most part everyone was cool and a good player, so the groups did well. On a few occasions we had level 60s outside the group helping their alts, and sometimes a level 60 would come join us for drops and general chatting.

I am finally getting the hang of navigating this zone, and don’t fall off the damn ramps and such as much any more. I am very glad they nerfed falling damage, as I probably would have fallen to my death many times by now.

I did try heading to the “Upper Dogs” camp once, but without a CC to mez we ended up wiping. The dogs are pretty mean, cast heals, as well as self buffing themselves with haste and shaman buffs. I am hoping that once I hit 50 it will be more of an option, since the spiders are 80% blue cons now, and I am running out of loot upgrades to snag.

I have been getting a ton of upgrades here in Velks. My SK in particular has gotten probably 8 upgrades from the zone, including some awesome greaves. The SHM has also gotten about 4 upgrades.

It has come to my attention that some of the better “NODROP” items from the named here, which are for the most part pretty rare, are going to be removed due to being out of era loot. I have already scored a couple pieces of this, so I hope that it is not an item removed from the game but simply made to not drop any more. I haven’t scored either of the two biggest drops, an earring and a range item, but those named are almost always camped. However, I have been able to get almost all of the other upgrades available from the spiders for my toons.

Since I have been alternating my characters instead of boxing, I am still working towards breaking level 50. Almost there though! My SHM is level 48, and my SK is about 60% through 49. Getting pretty excited to get into the home stretch as it were. Only issues I can see coming up will be snagging all my level 50+ spells. It appears the vast majority are dropped items, and although I picked up a nice poison nuke for my SHM, there are a ton more to go. Will have to look into checking with the guild bank or perhaps purchasing some of these in the CL tunnel. Will have to see what happens!

I have decided to wait until after I hit level 50 to start making a strong effort to get my SHM his epic. I am hoping that it won’t be too hard to do, since the faction part is pretty trivial. Once I get maxed faction, then I will focus on the CoM fight and getting the tear from Plane of Fear.

Idols and Spiders

I was eager to check out some Velious leveling when I logged back into the game. I put up LFG while in the CL tunnel, and prepared to get a port to the Great Divide and check out Velks. Right as I was porting, I got a tell asking if I needed my Sebilis key, and was invited to a key hunting group. I got a port over to EJ and ran over. I am not sure if they changed it, but there were froglok hunters and foragers all over the damn zone. They were actually pretty tough too. We had a ranger pulling for the group, and thanks to track we were able to bring the frogs in quite fast. I noticed that about half the group was light blue to me, and the frogs were yellow. Not sure how much help we got out of the lower level people, but I guess its all good. Anyway we all got our keys in short order. I did the turn in to the emperor for both characters, and zoned into Sebilis to get my keyring updated. After that, I headed back to the Commonlands to once again prepare for an adventure into Velious.

I sent out a LFG request, and was contacted by the ranger from the key group. We ended up forming a group, and decided to first check out the giant camp in Great Divide. The group quickly filled and we headed over thanks to a druid porting us in the group. Turned out the fort was a bit low level for us, with most of the mobs being light blue. We agreed to head to Velks, and off we went. We found that there were a total of 7 picks up, with pick 2 being nearly empty. We zoned over and headed up to the spider camp.

This zone is fricken annoying. With slippery slopes, random holes, and all around pain in the ass navigation, I was often frustrated trying to move about. Throw in some see invis spiders randomly spread out, not to mention the fact that they are invis until they attack, and it was a recipe for some cursing out loud.

Anyway, we still made it to camp without too much trouble, though I am very glad that falling damage was nerfed, or I would surely have died at least a couple times trying to get up the damn ramps. We started slaying away. The spiders here actually have very low dps, especially when slowed. Tanking was a breeze, and even my shaman could tank if he got agro from slowing. We ended up getting quite a few named, and I was able to upgrade to the SCHW for my SK and got a nice neck piece for my shaman. I ended up level 44 on both toons.

The next night I was away from home but had access to my laptop, so I ended up not boxing. I played my shaman solo, since I had not done that yet (SK was solo until 22, shaman has always been played as a box). I started off by grouping up with a number of guildies, most of whom were over level 50. We actually had a necro pulling with his pet tanking, and it worked quite well. We slayed spiders at a great pace for a good while. Eventually the group broke up as people headed to bed, so I attempted to re form the group. I got a 60 wizard to join up, which I thought was pretty cool. We had trouble finding a tank, so we had a mage lined up to pet tank. Unfortunately we had a very bad streak of pulling catastrophes. For some reason we kept getting trained. Three separate times we got trained by a group of 15-20 spiders. The first two I have no idea what happened, but it may have been due to bard songs or something. The third time the bard had a mob mezzed who fell off the ledge and trained back up.

After a somewhat downer of a time, the group got frustrated and headed out, except for me and a rogue. I re-formed up with a standard group setup, including a paladin tank and a cleric. We had a higher level bard for CC as well. This time the group went very well. We were very solid, and had no issues with pulls or trains at all. We ended up rotating out through the night, and I ended up with a completely different set of people. We still kept it solid though. I even managed to get a nice shield upgrade for my shaman. Although I was in the zone for about 9 hours, we only got three named. Was not a very good night for named, but it was good for XP. Ended up at level 46! Now I can enter the planes and cause a ruckus for sure. Will probably be playing my SK tomorrow in a similar circumstance to keep the levels evened out.

Something Old, Something New

 

Another day, another session in City of Mist. Hit up the LFG list and formed up a group, and we headed in to arena camp again. By now I had a good idea of what to expect and how to get a good pull rotation going. The kills were steady, and though the mobs hit pretty decent here, their HP is very low. Kills came in quick. I also discovered that a nice upgrade for my shaman drops here, the Slimy Green Ring. Took about 3 named to finally win a roll for one, but I am now the happy owner!

The group went pretty smooth, and we only had one wipe. Unfortunately we still get trained from time to time, and an unhappy coincidence of repops and a train led to a group wipe. We had a named in camp at the time, and their hard hitting coupled with adds did not end well for the group. However we all ran back pretty quick, scoring a port from a druid in the group. I ended the day at 43 on my SK, and 42 on my shaman. Moving right along!

The next day I logged in and found there was only one pick of the zone available, which was pretty camped. I managed to get a druid to join up. I have been finding that the xp is slowing in the mid 40s, and it is getting harder to get people who want to come by the zone. I spoke with the druid who joined, and we decided to check out SolB. We were able to get some more members for this zone, so we filled up quick. Made our way over courtesy of the druid porting, which was nice since it was a quick port and run to the zone.

We found the zone mostly empty, leaving a lot of camps open. I was pretty unfamiliar with the zone, since I had grouped here maybe once before a long time ago. The druid was familiar though, and led us to the “spiders” camp. The only issue here is that the pulls tend to take a while to path through all the caves, so we had to wait a bit for them to show up. Overall though, the fights were pretty easy. We had a bard doing CC, which was quite adequate since we usually didn’t have more than 2 mobs per pull. I did discover a rather annoying mob called “a stone spider”. It seems to proc the same stun as the damn basilisks up in Lavastorm do, and thus left me almost perma-stunned on some fights. It also seemed to have more hp, although that may have simply been due to DPS loss from stuns.

Love the old zone graphics, poor guy stuck in that web never made it out

Guktan potions.. frogs for days

It was nice to come to a different zone. I find that the server is kind of set in what people expect for XP groups, as far as “only the best spots”. I have been following the standard grouping path, mostly because I have since forgotten all the different areas available. I ended the day at 43 on my SK and SHM, and just about ready to ding another level on my SK. After I had to head out, I went ahead and gathered all my spells up to level 48. My SK has a pretty limited spell selection coming up, as far as pre-50. The shaman is doing nicely though, getting quite a bit of nice statistic upgrades and finally a new HP buff.

I have been asking around, and apparently I am nearing a good level to hit up Velks. I am thinking I will head over there on my next session to see what I can get in on, and finally start up on the “latest” expansion (relative term LOL). Seems to always be very busy there, with multiple picks up. I am hoping to get an upgrade or two there as well, especially the SCHW from the frenzy spider camp. Although I have a FBSS, I think the slightly better haste will allow me to get a decent stat/hp belt replacement. I haven’t purchased any upgrades, gear wise, for quite some time, but I think what I have will get me through till I can get the Thurgadin armor quests going. Hopefully that won’t be too long!