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!

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.

Castle Bashing

Was away from the game for a couple weeks with work and family traveling, so haven’t had a chance for any updates. Finally got a few days to play a bit this week, and made a lot of progress!

I did have a few minutes here and there during the last couple weeks to work on my Shaman’s alchemy skill. Looked up the Greater Concentration recipe, and spent about 1k on the mats skilling up. The skillups came pretty quick at lower levels, but slowed to a crawl around 150ish. I did end up with quite a few potions, and found that I could sell the stacks reasonably easily at the CL tunnel for 25pp each. Definitely not a huge money maker, but I can actually at least break even on the combines to help skill up. Plus, they are a nice addition to have in groups without an enchanter.

I logged in earlier this week hoping to get some xp flow and move closer to 60. The first day I ended up at the trusty old Frenzy camp, which I found was slow but steady XP. The out of era loot has finally been removed, which took a bit of pressure off the zone from people rushing to get them before they went poof. A solid group at frenzy on the first day got me a level on my Shaman, plus close to a level on my SK.

The next day, a Friday, I quickly found a group when I logged in at the castle. At first they only had room for my SK, but I was fine with that since he was about to ding. I made my way over, though I had never been to the camp. I did explore over there a bit before after doing a Lower Dogs camp, so I had a pretty good idea of where to go. Found the camp with no trouble. Soon after I joined, I was able to get my shaman into the group as well.

Around noon, we got a 76% exp bonus for the holiday weekend. A horde of people showed up in the zone, and LFG was packed. Luckily we were already established, so I popped a couple exp potions for an extra boost, which stacked to 101%. The XP was amazing! Spent a solid block of time there that day, and ended up at 54 on both characters. I was happy to finally get an upgraded canni spell for my SHM, who had been using the original spell since level 23. Sadly as I was getting ready to head out, a strange issue with the mob pathing or perhaps a train led to a wipe when the chanter was AFK and about 6-7 adds charged the group. Then the cleric /exited when we were on the way back, which was very annoying. However some group member replacements were on the way, one of which had a cleric box that rezzed us all. With that I ended my day, and was close to ding on my SK as well.

Gargoyles and golems, oh my!

I only had about an hour and a half to play today, but found a LD group looking for a tank quite quickly. I headed down, and was able to bang out 10% more xp and ding 55, plus a small buffer into the level. I think the castle camps are about the only ones I will do in Velks any more, as 85% of the mobs in LD are light blue now.

Pretty excited though, nearing the end of the leveling grind! I did pick up an upgrade for my SK hand slot, with some nice AC. Now though, I need to get another haste item. Looking at getting a RBB but I don’t know that I can afford one. Failing that, I plan to see about going to CS and farming the seahorses for a haste belt there. Will have to do some checking to see if I can duo it, but if not I will try to get a group and farm it up.

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.