1-15-17
Happy new year! Hopefully this year will bring good things for EQ, real life, and evertyhing else out there.
So I have been continuing on my raiding journey, gathering loots here and there. Managed to get quite a few upgrades, including a Vulak shield last night. Was a bit sad to see my old shield go, since it was my first loot in the guild. However, I can’t argue with the upgrade!
Most of my time has been venturing around doing tradeskills in hopes of completing the Aid Grimel quest line in PoP. Having all tradeskills at 220+ is quite an adventure, but I have managed to get two of them to 220 so far, jewelery and brewing, though both are pretty easy ones. I am pretty stoked though, closing in on getting ready to hit the ground running in PoP. Also, after seeing the range of combines and such available, and being on a Luclin era server, I have run into a bit of a bind trying to get a good guide to get this done. I am going to put together a simple guide that I will update as time progresses, for future reference. Hopefully it isn’t too bad to get going, but time will tell.
Other than that, I have joined a box raiding group on Sundays, hitting up VT. We got a slow start, but still managed to get a boss down with limited numbers. Seems like we will be picking up though this next week, we shall see!
12-26-2016
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all! In the world of Norrath, I have been chugging along, doing some XP here and there, and have began working on tradeskills. This is my first go around doing tradeskills in a serious manner, so I am learning as I go (not that it is very complicated, just gather up the stuff you need, click combine, and hope to succeed!). So far I have been enjoying it, mostly building my skills through simple combines with the goal of getting skillups. Haven’t started worrying about making any cash yet, but so far the sale of the items I make back to vendors keeps the pricing down a good bit. This has been very helpful, especially in jewelry, since the combines at this point cost me about 100pp each. So far I am 150+ in all tradeskills, with tailoring and research bringing up the rear, though both are over 100 now. I hit 200 in jewelry first, since the combines are simple and all vendor bought, though expensive. Going to try to get everything to 200 before I jump in and go higher, since as soon as one goes over 201 it locks everything else at 200 max before AA skills that open them up. I am thinking blacksmithing will be my choice, but not 100% decided yet.
In other news, I have been trucking along and keep getting upgrades through raiding, and am closing in on being 100% raid geared. Pretty stoked on this. I even managed to get Seru’s sword for my SK, which was a major upgrade. Definitely helps when I am duoing, since the DPS upgrade was huge. I am still waiting on a rift from Emp to finish his VT key since I missed the raid last week, but with any luck I can get it this week. Will have to see if work/raiding times match up in a successful manner.
I also won a 12 krono jackpot while the guild was doing some holiday /random fun. This is far and away more than I have ever had, which has come in quite handy for funding my tradeskill journey. Very thankful that we have such generous guild members, who are willing to put up their own currency for good times in the guild.
There was a cool double xp event running over the weekend, which allowed me to bang out 12 AA in just a few hours. However, with the holidays comes much family time, so I wasn’t able to run around raking in the AA like I would have liked. However, I am not complaining! Rounding out a few nice AA, and going to start working on defensive AA as well to help with solo/duo situations.
Pretty excited to go into PoP in a strong position. Just a little over a month left, and I am ready to roll!
12-10-2016
Things have been moving along nicely. Loot continues to roll in, as I am slowly but surely increasing my raid gear. I went ahead and created a Magelo account to keep track of whats going on. Still a ways to go, but I am getting there. I finally got my ancient DoT spell, which offers a lower cost, higher damage DoT. Great for stacking DoTs when I duo or on mobs like Seru.
We are looking to start up a box VT raid group, so I have been working on the VT key for my SK. Originally I had decided against this, since I was pretty burned out after doing it for my shaman. Luckily, with the lower demand for shards, it has went pretty smoothly! I was able to knock out 9 of the 10 shards in a couple days, and now only need Fungus Grove to complete my shard collection. Been pretty lucky gathering them on my SK, which I am quite thankful for. Still have to complete the Emp key, though I have the pouch already. Once I get the shards, it should be pretty easy to get the frame using my SK. FD makes it a lot easier, so I won’t have to bring a full group to get it done.
I am still a bit low on AA, mostly since I haven’t been doing much in the way of XP groups. Still, over 50 on my shaman, which is steadily increasing his power. I am 1 AA from maxing defense AA on my SK, so that is nice. Once I get that, I can work on his offensive stuff.
We recently changed our guild’s bidding system, so I am hoping to pick up a nice weapon for my SK, probably off Seru. His sword goes cheap, so it would be nice to be able to get a good boost for duo situations. Tank wise, he is still quite capable, even with no raid gear (aside from his shoulder item). Even then, my shaman is pretty tough, so it works out pretty well. Going to keep trucking along, getting excited for PoP coming out soon!
No recent screenshots, but I do have a link to my Magelo instead.
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11-16-2016
Luclin has been a blast so far, aside from the tedious work of farming the VT key. I have been enjoying the raids here, especially since this was all “new” content to me. The AA grind continues, but isn’t as bad as I thought. I currently sit at 40 AA on each character, which has helped considerably. My shaman especially has increased in power dramatically with the addition of new raid loots and some awesome AA skills. My shadowknight is steadily getting better at tanking, though I suspect in PoP it will begin to be an issue not being raid geared. At this point the only gear to upgrade for him is considerably expensive, and well over the money to reward ration I am willing to pay. Regardless, he is still pretty good at tanking, though my shaman already has more HP and AC. The defensive skills make up the difference though, so he is still quite useful to have in duo situations.
Welcome to the VT night club! Horses, worgs, and other pets allowed! Gnomes must be on a leash though.
I have been hitting up some XP groups on my spare time, while spending some quality time in VT, SSRA, and Seru’s bedroom. The XP bonus was nice as well for the last couple weeks. I can see now why VT was referred to as Candy Land. The amount of loot that place puts out on a single raid night is amazing! Earlier in the week we did a full clear of VT in four hours, which was pretty breakneck speed. However, the zone itself is pretty easy, aside from the army of trash mobs in there. We have been working on creative tactics to bypass some trash by sprinting by it, and pulling named though. Our fancy pants monks have this down to a science.
Tonight we plan to hit up SSRA, though I will be on late. We now have two Seru keys, so we might split raid him after that. Should be a fun event with lower numbers, as killing him with a full raid is somewhat of a trivial outing. Can’t complain about his loot though.
That’s a big bitch!
I spent today killing some stuff in Maiden’s Eye with my SK and SHM while LFG. The killing is actually pretty fast, and I can kill 4-5 mobs at a time without much danger. Usually I stick to 2-3 mobs though, tanking one on my SK and casting DoTs and tanking two with my shaman. XP isn’t amazing, but it is steady and progress is made!
I soon got an invite to a GE group forming up, and headed over. We ended up having two shamans, which was quite enough there. Heals and slows are pretty trivial, and even allow for DoTs to be cast. Things went pretty well, though Phinny crashed at one point and rolled me back about 30 minutes. I knew I should have camped to save my progress, since the chat service went down. Was very weird being in a group that you could not communicate to, either through tells, group, or say. Luckily we were pretty established at that point, and just kept on moving.
Aside from that, I made some Guktan potions for some guildies, who seem to have a strange desire to be froggin`. Been slowly selling stuff off my trader, though I must confess I don’t have much in the way of wares. But, since I don’t have any big ticket items to buy, I think I can finally start to put a nice nest egg away. I have been considering getting to work on my tradeskills once again, since some decent leveling paths have come up in Luclin. I have been saving up my acrylia once it occurred to me that it was a valuable item, time wise, so hopefully I can get some work done on that.
Damn drunks in their bath robes!
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11-4-2016
Been busy since returning from my cruise to Mexico, which was a blast!
Had a tough go trying to get my scepter frame done in AR after helping some guildies get their last shards. While the guild was raiding VT, I went about helping farm some shards with others who needed it. We ended up getting the ME shards done, then headed into AR to finish getting those, which only took about 15 minutes. We then headed to the area for the frame turn in to see what we could do. We only had 5 in our group, which wasn’t ideal in the first place. Had sk, war, chanter, shaman, cleric. Tried to lock down the room quickly, but ended up being too fast of a respawn for us to get done right. After some ill fated attempts at getting the group to get it done, I called it a night. I did manage to master moving around in the zone though, and through a combination of invis and IVU I was able to get to the room and a safe spot with ease.
I had some trouble getting a group to head back the next day, so I ended up heading back on my own. Through some wrangling, training, and very fast turn ins, I was able to get my frame, and didn’t even die! I was pretty stoked to be so close to finishing this damned VT key. I ended up helping a guildy and some other guys in a group finish their ME shards after that, then headed to the bazaar where I ended up getting my final group focus spell for only 1k. Very happy to be done with spells.
Tonight I logged in for SSRA, but joined late and missed the earlier snakes and only made Emp, who sadly does not drop orbs. After that, we headed to do the Khati Sha event in AC, only to have it bug out on us and not work right. We headed to Seru after that though, and low and behold, I got an orb! VT KEY DONE!
Thanks for the orb, sleep tight
Not much to see thanks to these damn guards, but behold, Vex Thal!
Now time for some AA grinding, as a double xp bonus took effect after the raids tonight. Pretty stoked to finally be able to hit up some xp grouping, though it took a month to get here. Off and running!
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10-21-16
The last week has been very productive and successful for myself and the guild. Last week, we were able to get our first Emperor Ssra kill! I was excited to be able to join and get in on the action, though I had missed the other bosses in the zone due to work. We mustered our forces, headed up, prepped in the “carpet room” and engaged! Initially we agroed Blood a few seconds early, but we were able to deal with it and lock down the adds and down the Blood. Oddly, the Blood of Ssra did not drop any loot. Well that sucks, but the Emp was about to go active, the adds were still locked down, and we didn’t have time to worry about it. The show was going to go on, no turning back!
Good day sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Cazic Thule? Whoa, don’t get mad!
Since this was our first time, we weren’t sure exactly how long this iteration of the Emp would take to go active, which turned out to be a little over three minutes. When he did, our tanks engaged, heals were thrown, gnomes were punted, rangers gated. When all was said and done, we got him down with only about 4-5 deaths through the whole fight, which I was very impressed with. For a first time event, this can be really tough. Congratulations to all, start the victory songs!
Take a dirt nap you mutant bastard. Norrath has it’s revenge!
Then we discovered something was amiss. The Shissar Wraiths were not dropping loot. The last item for Vex Thal, 40 keys worth, was not dropping. WTF? Emp dropped loot, so what’s the deal!? After petitions, some forum discussion, and some all around annoyance, we discovered the issue. Wraiths and Blood were incorrectly tied to the zone as “trash loot”, which means our clear in the early part of the week effectively locked out all loot from Blood and the wraiths, which was totally lame. One of our fearless leaders went to battle with a GM, and through initial denials managed to bring in the head honcho at DBG and get our rifts awarded manually through a GM. What made us annoyed was we found out this had happened to TWO other guilds, who had their rifts refunded (after a battle). So, this was a known issue that was essentially confirmed to be not working as intended, and yet not everyone was being treated equally without fighting for it. They did patch this a couple days after our issue, but was still frustrating. Anyway, we went back yesterday and cleared the whole Temple minus the Arch Lich, and got another set of rifts. Even had some rot this time, so we should be in great shape for VT. Aside from the Rug of Doom wiping us with a nasty AE when someone went to inspect the stitch work, the Emp kill went very well again.
Snakey snakey, wakey wakey
Yesterday was also one of my personal best in terms of getting things done! I accomplished quite a few things:
- Grabbed my final shard from ME, which was a PITA. Almost there! Just need to throw a group together to get the frame, and await an orb.
- Purchased Torpor (FINALLY), for a measly 14k. Totally broke me 😦
- Got the Canni 5 AA. This AA and Torpor are a total game changer, loving it.
- Finally got more loot! Picked up an FT4 cloak, and a nice wrist/arm slot item in the SSRA temple. Pretty stoked, having a multi slot item makes gearing decisions nice.
- Got excited and bought some Hero’s Armor Ornamentation stuff.
- Being broke from buying Torpor, I went to Acrylia Caverns to farm some named. Ended up with about 10k worth of items in just a few hours. Love that place!
- Should be getting my final spell, group focus once the spell collecting officer gets on. Finally done with spells till PoP.
Grimlings are ugly as hell, but they have nice shinies.
All in all, I am pretty happy with my progress through Luclin. Been less than a month and we are breaking into VT on Monday or Tuesday. Sadly, I will be on a cruise next week so I can’t join the fun, but I look forward to future candy land runs!
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10-13-16
Many adventures on the moon! So far my efforts have been focused on SSRA, getting the key components done and prepping for Emperor raids. Has been pretty successful thus far, with multiple groups at the different camps, exploring, and a raid night dedicated to farming up Insignias for the guild (those named are definitely tougher than the rest of the sub-raid named in the zone).
Ohhh, sparkles
Insignias for all!
The first few forays I made mostly consisted of snake slaughter at Comm2 (second floor commander). The first PUG I joined was massive in the DPS department, and we positively slaughtered up there. The XP isn’t anything to write home about, but it is decent enough to have snagged around 10 AA on each character so far. A lot left to go, for sure. So far I haven’t even done a single XP centered group since Luclin launched, which is kind of a bummer. However, I have been able to down a bunch of raid targets, and would say I have been at about 60% of the total raid bosses Luclin has to offer. Due to schedule issues, I haven’t made a SSRA run yet, but I am hoping to get in on one soon.
Mutant cobra killing
In other news, there was some issues with the instances spawning double named, guilds exploiting some mechanics such as Emp being non-leashed in the instance version, and general geometry “shenanigans” resulting in some less than exemplary kills. As such, DBG, in their infinite wisdom, pulled the SSRA AoC for a couple days (on two occasions) and implemented a “hotfix”. The hotfix has now caused most all instances in Luclin to be bugged, and not have named pop when they are created. This has caused a big pain in the ass for many guilds, including mine, since there is also a generic lockout that hits when they are spawned that spans all instances. Pretty lame. Hoping that gets fixed soon.
The vast majority of my time has been spent keying up for Emp (completed on shaman! woohoo!), and now I am starting the long road of farming shards. In fact, even as I write this, I am camped in ME farming a lonely corner where 3 mobs pop that can be a named that has a shard. Not very exciting to be sure. However, once the keying process is done, it is full steam ahead on XP running. Still managing to eek out xp though, thanks to being able to duo most of the shards. Pretty stoked I can at least make progress while doing this tedious stuff.
Kinda dreary here in Maiden’s Eye, but what can you do
I also purchased a mount from the DB store, since for some reason they decided having stat boosting mounts was ok, even if it is out of era. Pretty sure this is simply a money grab. So, since I assumed that mounts were an important aspect of this expansion and wouldn’t be messed with, I bought a 10k horse mount. After finding I could get the faster stat mounts, the horse went back to pasture. My shaman now rides a mean looking Worg, while my SK gets to be faster on his stat-less AA mount. Works for me for now, $25 for a mount is a pretty hefty price for a melee.
Otherwise, I snagged a few equipment upgrades in bazaar, still waiting on getting in on some nice raid stuff. Haven’t had a good run with drops yet, but I figure once we break into VT the loot will start flowing in. A few runs and we should be rolling in the l33t gears. Now, back to the waiting game…
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9-29-16
Well, last night I officially made my way into Luclin! I had parked at the Velious spire in GD, in prep for getting a port there. I only had a few hours to play after work before the ol’ Sandman came for me, which I planned to spend doing what I refer to as “Admin” stuff, such as gathering spells from Shadowhaven, setting my bazaar trader up, and picking a mount for my shaman. I did make a quick foray into Dawnshroud peaks just for fun, since I had spent a good amount of time there back in the day when grinding up the levels. I figured I could massacre some of the Goranga as well to see if I could get lucky on a Lucid Shard drop for the upcoming VT adventures.
I still enjoy the Luclin zones, much prettier than old world in my opinion.
I was successful in my adventures, though I had to get a port up to Nexus from the Commonlands, as my level 1 trader met an untimely demise in GD waiting on the spire. All good though. No luck on the Lucid Shard, but still had a good time killing the natives. Apparently the SSRA AoC is busted, so I am not sure what our plans will be for tonight when we do our first Luclin raid. Probably the Deep or Akheva Ruins. I do enjoy the fact that traveling is much easier here on the moon, since I don’t have to worry about being on a completely different continent when I have a destination.
I got my trader going, but found about half the spells I wanted to sell were basically valued a little bit above vendor pricing. Even some people were selling them under vendor price, so if I had the time or inclination I could have made a few hundred plat farming the traders. I ended up selling off a good portion of stuff to make room in the bags, and not worry too much about squeezing every plat I could out of the junk I had. I did make about 4,000 or so overnight though, so it was all good! I also ended up selling off my Velious armor gems, since I don’t really think that will be something I will pursue. Plus, there are so many gems up for cheap that I can just pick them up if needed, with little difference in vendor price to trader price.
I did grab a couple spells for pretty cheap in the bazaar I was missing, though the big ticket ones are still a bit outside my price range (18k for Malo, 30k (god damn) for Torpor). I will probably eventually have to bite the bullet and pick them up, since I don’t see much hope for getting them as drops in the future.
I also noticed that GE named are dropping the nice loots I was wondering about. The rings/ear slots, as well as some of the other assorted stuff is pretty good. I am hoping they are left in the game, as they are nice upgrades for both characters. Much like Velks, I am sure they will be mine eventually, or at least get cheap in the bazaar since they are Lore items. Once the initial rush and craziness is over, I expect prices to get more stable.
Onward, to glory!
Welcome Back to Norrath 