An End of an Era

Today marks the last day of Velious. The past week has seen me doing some more raiding of ToV and Kael, as well as picking up a few new loots for my shaman. I also spent some time killing VP key targets for guildies, made my first run into Chardok, then my second to help camp a monk epic piece. I spawned an instance of WW with a buddy and the help of a few people willing to join the group to get the instance started, and completed the quested shoulder item for my SK. I farmed DN with a new friend in hopes of getting a PSC, as well as xp for his toons. All in all it has been going well, with steady progress being made. Last night we did our farewell kill of Vulak and AoW and all the main Kael bosses. Went well, and I am excited to move to the moon! I am especially excited for the bazaar, since my trader is pretty much completely full with spells, items, etc. The CL tunnel was novel for a while, but pretty much over it now. Also having the Nexus available for porting will be nice, though I will probably spend most of my time on the ol` cheese ball in the sky.

The portal to the moon kitty base

With the closing of this chapter of game play, I decided to sit and reflect on my experiences so far, and see how far I have come in the roughly six months since I returned to the game here on Phinny. I might even create pages dedicated to the experience within each expansion, since soon we will be having quite game changing expansions coming out, post PoP.

Anyway, it has been a busy 6 months. The grind to 60 was definitely a slog. I did have a good time doing it though, and for 95% of the time we had groups who knew what they were doing. With the player base being mostly veterans or current players, it has been very helpful when grouping up to get things going. Exp was more often than not very quick, relative to the XP rate. Climbing the ladder through old world zones was a nice return to the olden days. I even hit up and learned zones I had never really explored before (in the case of Velks, I know it TOO well now…). Met quite a few people, made some good friends, and got to feel the accomplishment of getting my epic. Given it was probably the easiest epic to get, it was still nice to have a BiS item and have the help of friends and guildies to get it done.

I was lucky to find a guild in the PST time zone, as I really did not think raiding would be something I could do on my return to the game. As such, I was able to clear all the end game zones in era (though I did not make it to a Tunare kill, I did make the clearing for it before I had to hit the sack…not too upset about that though). I have begun on the new journey of gearing up my characters, which has been going well picking up cheaper items on the back end of the expansion. So far I am up to 4 raid geared slots, which isn’t too bad considering I have only been in the guild a month and can’t make but half the raids. I have a bit of DKP going into Luclin too, so I can eventually pick up those sweet sweet flowing thought items.

Having a box team has been a great help too. It has allowed me to always be able to go out and kill stuff, as well as be able to help friends and guildies work on getting things they normally would have to group up for. Looking forward to being able to get some nice plat now that the next expansion is coming, since I won’t have to be constantly spending cash to upgrade and can pawn off stuff for some nice income. As a side note, I did a race change on my SK to Iksar, because I like the look and no longer have to worry about origin to WFP.

Velious complete! On to bigger and better things!

So what does the future hold? Well of course, the moon landing! Luclin goes live tomorrow, and with it we will charge headlong into SSRA and immediately start working on the boss snakes there. A month later we plan to do Emperor, and break into VT. SSRA will be a new challenge due to all the keying required to get there. Emp keys, VT shards, Arx key, all will be a bit time consuming, but I am down for the challenge. I have raided SSRA before, but never got into VT. So while most all of the Luclin bosses will be a new experience for me, the end zone will be something new when we get there.

And of course, let’s not forget the AA grind! Looking forward to progressing on my characters outside of gear again. I am still interested to see what the AA rate will be, which is still a mystery until tomorrow. Hopefully not too bad!

So long Norrath! I will visit from time to time, but Luclin will be my main squeeze for a while. It was fun and memorable, but I am ready to move on to bigger and better things!

Bear With Me

Now that I have hit 60 on both characters, I have had some time to journey about Norrath and work on different things. Some adventures of note are a few forays into Old Sebilis at the Juggernaut camps. My main reason for coming down here is to try to kill the Protector and Tolapjm near where Trakkanon spawns to try to get a lucky drop of either Malo or Torpor. Having a hell of a time finding these spells, which end up being ungodly expensive if they even show up. I have discovered that if I can get back to the area, which does require a group to clear to, I can camp in the back area and duo the protector and Tolap should they spawn. It is a three hour spawn time approximately though, so a lot of waiting if I try that. I also discovered that camping at Trakkanon’s spawn point is not a great idea in the main zone, since he spawned and ate my group at one point. He doesn’t spawn in the picks though, so that is ideal for trying to get these named down. So far no luck though. I did eat a death on my SK when the named frog gated, but somehow didn’t get adds with my shaman and was able to kill him. Have been making a little plat on the loot drops, but nothing spectacular.

Don’t judge. Bears have needs too.

Hope Trakkanon doesn’t spawn…

In raiding news,  I got my first Vulak kill, which is pretty cool to be killing end game bosses in era. NToV was one of the zones I never raided back in the day, so I am happy to have gotten this experience. I have managed to max XP on my characters as well while running about doing shenanigans all over the world.

I solo’ed Vulak by making him choke on my bear ass. Dragons are known for their enjoyment of bear delicacies.

I spent a few hours in Dragon Necropolis yesterday as well. I got a port over with the help of a helpful druid, who then helped me do some tracking in WW for a named elemental to finish getting my SK a nice shoulder item. I have been hitting up my weekly Friday morning raid group, and have gotten all the pieces I need to complete the shoulder item, except for the pesky WW spawn. He is on a three day timer, roams across the whole zone, and is hard to see (an air elemental in a snowy zone kinda sucks). Also, there are a ton of dragons and such running around, which ended up killing the druid and shaman when invis dropped on druid. A dragon agroed, AE’ed , and dropped invis on my shaman. My SK is ally to all the dragons there thanks to a Kael CoV faction raid I joined last week. The shaman, however, has made no friends since then when killing the dragons in NToV.

Anyway, we ended up going into DN, and I made a friend with the druid. Figured he could tag along for XP while I was killing spiders in hopes of getting a PSC (which did drop). He brought over his monk as well, and we had a jolly time killing all sorts of stuff in there. Sadly, we didn’t end up getting a PSC for his monk, but he didn’t mind since he dinged on his druid.

I am getting pretty excited for Luclin to come out here in the next couple weeks. I can finally start working on some AA, and I am pretty loaded on stuff to sell in the Bazaar. The Commons trading tunnel was novel at first, but now I am pretty much over it. Trying to sell one of your 30 different spells, plus all the assorted stuff of various values is just a pain in the ass. Going to be very nice to load up a trader and let the plat flow. Also, I simply think the Luclin zones are pretty to behold. Can’t wait!