Dragons Galore

Well, I finally hit 60 on my Shaman! It has been a long road, but finally made it to the top! Had to bite the bullet and finished out 59 in Velks at the castle. I don’t plan to go back any time soon, I will say that much. Gotta find some new projects now!

After some consideration (been thinking about it for a few weeks), I have joined a new guild that raids on PST time. Although I like the group of people in CoC, I simply could not make raids in their designated time zone. I do hope to continue joining them on Friday mornings for shenanigans, assuming I can avoid lockout issues.

Anyway tonight I logged in after being tagged last night. Had my first venture into NToV! Everything went well, as I learned the ropes of shaman raiding (mained shaman over SK for guild needs). Pretty excited about this development…really didn’t think I could get into the raiding scene due to life/work restrictions, but things are looking up!

Dem Chompers

Root N Scoot

Ugly Fish of Hell

My first kill in NToV

Little Bit of Froggy

So the last few sessions I have been trying to avoid any serious grinding in Velks, mostly because I am just sick of the zone. I have been following a cool guy on Twitch who does pretty much daily streams. Its been tough to get on at the same time to meet up, but this week I was pleasantly surprised to get a couple good sessions with him and have a good time. We didn’t do anything serious, and ended up running the disco camp in Seb for a couple days. Though the mobs are green and light blue, I’ve still gotten halfway through 59 on my shaman, and a nice 60% buffer on my sk. Had a good time down there, bringing along some lower level peeps to help them level. My buddy is a 60 necro – Opi_8 on Twitch. Give him a follow, hes a good guy. Always helping out people and just enjoying the game.

Aside from that, I did my weekly raid and downed Vindi with our Friday morning raid group, as well as Vox. I missed Phinny sadly. I am after a quest drop he has for a nice shoulder item still. After I get that, I am pretty sure I can duo the last guy in WW and finish up the quest, but will have to check it out. Was a lot of fun though.

I picked a few more spells for my sk and shaman, including the level 60 focus. Pretty stoked on that, the spells are a bitch to get.There are just a few left to get for my SK, but the most important one is the level 60 FD. There is also a cool illusion spell in Chardok, but I was saddened to see it was not the one I was expecting (I guess the lich type spells that necros get are not until a later expansion…sad panda). Still after Torpor and Malo for my shaman, since those are going to be very important for raiding and all around grouping/duo situations. Also need one of the higher end DoTs, Pox of Bertox.

SPEARED!

Well, last week I was able to complete my Shaman Epic! Behold! Spear of Fate

This marks the second Epic 1.0 I have completed. The other was the beastlord epic quite a few years back, much after Luclin. I did get the 2.0 epic on my warrior, but ended up doing the pre-quest and did not actually get the 1.0. I am pretty stoked, as the spear was a massive upgrade for me. I am not that fond of the clicky DoT, which is a progressively higher damaging spell like the Splurt line. It will probably come in handy when I am in duo situations, as it is a free 1400 dmg DoT that is able to be focused from what I have read. The long cast time, coupled with the 1.5 minutes it takes to fully do its work, makes it pretty much useless in group situations. Still a fancy spear though, and I am quite happy to have got it.

The final fight actually went south the first time we tried. When we got to CoM, we killed in, went to the upper levels, and got the temporary key to go up the elevator to the epic area. Here, the idea is to kill the black reavers until Lord Rakashiir (or something close to that name) spawns from the corpse. He will not be KoS, and basically you turn in the child’s tear from plane of fear, and he spawns a new, mean version of himself.

Interestingly, when we arrived and clicked the elevator up, a couple things happened. First, my shaman fell through the elevator and didn’t go up with the raid (about 2 groups of people, give or take). Secondly, when we got to the top, the epic version was already spawned! He was right next to the elevator, agroed the raid, and his AE tore us up since no one was ready, plus we had a few adds, including a reaver.

Luckily for my shaman, he didn’t get agro at the bottom of the elevator, and my SK was able to FD before death. We rezzed back up, and set up down the hall instead of going up. Apparently he reverted to his non KoS form after the wipe, and remained up. My SK pulled the trash down, then pulled the non KoS Lord Rak to the raid. I got a CoTH and FD’ed. This set us up pretty good. My shaman did his turn in, the epic guy popped, and we killed him. Positioning was a bit of an issue to make sure we didn’t get the AE in the raid, but we got it done.

A second shaman in the guild logged in while we were killing the epic version, and asked if we could do it for him. We obliged. Luckily we got Lord Rak to spawn on the last black reaver, and he popped in a perfect spot in the hall for the raid to kill. Turn in and kill went flawlessly. Me and the other shaman made our way to the final turn in mob (conveniently located just outside the zone in Emerald Jungle), and we both got our epics done within 10 seconds of each other. “It’s raining epics!”

Aside from that, I did a bit of grinding and got my shaman to level 59 today. For most of the day I tanked outside the group with my SK, while we had a chanter and other assorted group members in the group. Went well, though I am not looking forward to the slog from 59 to 60. I estimate in a good paced group, it will probably be close to 16-20 hours worth of grinding, not counting a 25% potion. Ugh.

 

Have been doing a few raids here and there on Fridays, and my SK is working toward a nice shoulder piece from some of the raid mobs we have killed. Need a couple more kills and it will be complete! Strength of the Elements

Reaching the Summit

Well it has been quite a while since I posted any updates, apologies to anyone following the blog (I did get one tell in game from someone who had been following it, made me feel good). I had thought I lost the draft of my last post, but found it just as I was about to post this one, so I went ahead and put it up a minute ago. Anyway here is the most up to date one as well!

 

I have spent the vast majority of my time in Velks, which is no surprise since that seems to be everyone’s favorite place to level. I won’t go too much into detail, since mostly I have been killing at the castle with the occasional Sebilis group and upper/lower dogs when finding an opening was sparse. For the most part though, grabbing groups has been quick and easy. I especially love the groups with chanter pets, since we simply melt through the mobs and that XP (slowly – thanks Phinny xp rates) flows about as quick as it can. While I have had a few “interesting” group events, there haven’t been any mass catastrophes aside from a few bad pull related wipes. No drama to report, sorry guys! Oh, and I was able to get a Crystalline Torque for my shaman, so he has Mana Pres 3 now! I debated selling the item since it is worth quite a bit, but figured I could farm plat or duo some drops for upgrades since it is quite a rare drop.

Few events of note:

Went on my first raids. I am now part of a guild that we merged with (Cult of Chaos), and I was pleasantly surprised to find out there is a morning raid group (called Morning Wood of course) for non DKP on Fridays. I am always off on Friday, so this was a nice development for me. Though I do not earn DKP, the drops are NBG so I still have a chance to grab some stuff. We did a PoFear raid, and my Shaman was able to grab his epic drop! So now all that is left is some monotonous kill/turn in for faction, and a 2ish group kill in CoM and he is done! Was a lot of fun. The guys and gals in the guild seem like a great group of people, and are always willing to help out.

I also joined a HoT armor farming group, but sadly was only able to stay for an hour or so before I had to attend to RL issues. No drops for me, but it was nice to see what ToV was all about (first time there).

I also did a quick foray into Kael to join a faction farming group, which turned out to be horrible XP but still netted a nice leg slot upgrade for my shaman.
Oh and of course the main thing to mention…. DING 60! On my SK at least. I had an unfortunate incident with my back, leaving me bedridden for about three days. I took the opportunity to use up some of those fancy 50% xp potions I got from making a character on the new Quarm server (which I tried for about 30 minutes and decided I had too much time invested in Phinny to do anything at this time). Since I could only use my laptop while laying down, I was not able to box. However, my shaman has not been idle, and is currently about halfway through level 57. I am finally able to start getting and using group buff spells with him, which is pretty awesome.

As a matter of fact, on the fear raid I only took my shaman since that was requested over my SK. Since it was not a DKP raid I decided to focus on the shaman, since I had not raided as one before. Bit of a learning curve finding out which spells to keep memmed, but I have the general idea of debuffing, slowing, spot healing, and the like.

So now that I have hit 60 on my SK, I have decided to take a break from the grinding and work on getting my shaman his epic, get some armor questing done, and do some different activities for a while. I figure my shaman will keep getting XP as I go about my business farming faction and armor, so it isn’t like he is on a complete hold. I have basically been grinding 95% of my play time, which was starting to burn me out a bit. I figure picking up some missing spells, maybe farming some plat, clickies, and trade skills will help keep me happily moving forward. I do plan to get the shaman to 60 prior to Luclin’s launch, so that I can focus all the grinding on AA rather than playing catch-up.

Puttering About in Velious

**Posted About 2 weeks late **

The last few days have seen me with somewhat limited play times, but I still ended up ahead in the overall scheme of things. I did a few castle groups, but seem to have had cursed luck the last couple runs. In one group, we ended up with quite a few people coming and going, which cut into our fighting time. Another time, we had a puller who made a couple mistakes leading to large trains coming in and laying low our camp. We were lucky to get a rez from some helpful people inside the castle, which was nice. What was not nice though, was that Velketor, the big mean giant that the cave is named for, popped right after our rez and agroed us and the group. While it was nice to see the big guy, it was not nice to have to re-rez immediately after the wipe, not to mention the poor group that helped us suffering the same fate. After that though, we were able to get back on our feet and finally get some decent killing going on back outside the castle.

It also must have been a full moon, because the rogue and monk started arguing and bitching at each other about weapon augments. Eventually they hashed it out and got back on good terms though. I had my popcorn out most of the time.

I also made my first foray into Kael after being invited there on my shaman. I was not quite sure what to expect, but I made my way to the arena camp to see what it was all about. I brought my SK along to hopefully get some faction and assist outside the group. I was disappointed to see that these giants did not give Thurgadin faction, which is what I will probably end up needing for the armor turn in pieces. However, I did get a nice leg slot item upgrade for my shaman, and my SK ended up with a head piece for armor turn in. Sadly I am pretty sure his current equipment is superior to the quested stuff, but I will have to double check.

The experience was pretty much abysmal in Kael, so when the group broke up I headed back to the Velks castle. I got a decent group with my shaman, and we were able to lay down the law once again. I ended up hitting 55 on my shaman, so now I am evened out once again, though my SK is about 60% into 55. I find that the experience seems to slow down a great deal after 55, so it has been slow going, even considering the groups that have been somewhat sub optimal. However my spirits are high as I continue to trudge on to 60!

In other news, apparently my guild is once again merging into a different raiding guild. I had started the game by getting invited to a kind group of people who were just starting some raids, and only had a couple level 60s. We shortly after merged into a larger guild, who was doing raids a bit further along in content. I found out yesterday that we will be merging once again into a guild who has or is about to kill Vulak and AoW. So, hopefully once I am 60 I can jump into the end game scene and maybe score a few items. I am looking forward to the Luclin launch, as I feel I have seen about 80% of what Velious has to offer in the sub-raiding game, if I combine my experience from years past. I have a couple more zones I want to check out, but pushing to 60 has pretty much completely enveloped my play time since it is a bit limited.

Oh and I got a nice new haste belt, which was something I was a bit worried about! Managed to trade for the seahorse belt from SG, but I still plan to check out the zone after 60 to see if I can get any decent plat drops.