Planes of Power + LDoN

7-5-2017

Finally landed a TA!! Very stoked on this, since this is the most useful piece of loot for a shaman for many expansions to come. Very cool. Also managed to snag a new mace for my SK, which I am pretty sure is BiS as a primary 1h. Very cool.

I have been doing some research into GoD, since it’s been many a year since I went through that content. Still looks like it will be a challenge, which will be a nice change of pace from steamrolling PoP. 

I have considered doing the BiC aug quest, but I just don’t think I’ll have the time or inclination to get this quest done, especially in the short time frame we are in era. I do however plan to get the “Tongue quest” done, since raid wise it only needs a couple drops and I can duo the rest pretty easily.

I am also excited for some spell upgrades, which are quite useful. A fast cast slow will be welcome, as well as some healing upgrades. OOW will really have the best boom as far as spells go, but GoD is a good filler!

Anyway, a great ending for PoP! 2 weeks or so left, and I am ready to roll!

6-28-2017

Still around! Not a whole lot of new updates to report, as it has been pretty much status quo during PoP. I took a month break, as PoP, though I love it, got a bit tedious after months of farming. Happy to say, I have returned to the epic lands of Norrath once again! Prepping for GoD to release, which will be a welcome change. We only get two months of GoD before OOW comes out, but that should be enough time to break into Tacvi and slay some TUNAT! 

LDoN did come out as well, which gave a slight change of pace with LDoN raids. That was a nice change, since I never did spend any time raiding there. I must say though, the raids are a bit underwhelming. The augs are nice though, especially the focus effects which help round out your gear without having to spend DKP for slight upgrades. The charm is nice too, though I am not enough of a fan of the missions to slog through 250+ missions to max it out. Plus, at this point, none of the buyable augs are even usable in my gear, since the majority of it is a different type than I can buy. 

As of right now, I am still hoping and praying to get a slow stick from PoTime. That’s my biggest goal remaining for the expansion. While I did work my tradeskills up, I didn’t find the time to complete Aid Grimel beyond the third step. I found tailoring to be very tedious and expensive, and gave up on that with a skill of 206 or so, a bit short for the quest. I might go back and complete it eventually, but the gear will end up being somewhat mediocre by the time I complete it. Ah well, was still something new to do!

I have started working my SK again, who is currently level 64. I got him a couple upgrades in the elementals, and I am considering main changing. I miss the old days of throwing my character into the line of fire. Currently though, he needs a lot of upgrades to be considered truly useful. My shaman tanks better right now, even going so far as to be the tank in PoFire at one point. Was pretty fun.

I am getting excited for the new epics coming with OOW, and have started researching them. I already picked up a drop on my shaman, though it isn’t a tough one to get.

Onwards! The lands of discord await!

2-23-2017

Planes of Power complete! Last week we defeated the elemental gods and started raiding PoTime. The first raids were completely full, so unfortunately I was unable to attend due to showing up late. Still received that tasty DKP though. This week we did the gods again, and backflagged the guild alts and boxes (and slackers like me!). I am happy to say I am PoTime flagged, though I have the gimp flags for the elementals. I am still missing Plane of Storms, so the only zone I can’t get into is BoT. However, all I am really missing is a single medallion from storms, which I will probably pick up eventually. Once I get that, I am 100% flagged for all of PoP (minus a few keys for the raid bosses, but meh).

About time I got to … Time.

I was able to snag the Plane of Earth and Plane of Fire flags for my SK, which is really the only ones I was really wanting for him. I need Air and Water to get him time flagged, but I am not overly concerned at this point. Shouldn’t be hard to get those.

Outside of grinding, I have been working on Aid Grimel tradeskill quests. At this point I have completed 3 of the 7, and am currently working on pottery. I failed two combines on pottery attempts, but I got the first three in a single attempt which was nice. I am still in need of skilling up tailoring, which is hovering in the mid 190 range. It is a real money and/or time sink. The skillups are not coming easy, which is a bummer. I have done approx 100 combines, and gotten maybe 5 points. Sucks. I don’t expect to finish this any time soon, but with 6 months to work on it, I am sure it will get done.

There was a hiccup with the matrix, and a vendor was put in PoK that had all the 61-64 turn in spells for sale. Sadly, it was only up for a little while and I was not on, so I did not get to benefit from yet another goof up from the dev team. I am still missing quite a few spells, but have been trying to get the cheap ones from the bazaar. Shaman spells are still pretty pricey, even with the vendor coming in for a bit.

I am still level 63, but nearing 64. RL has reared its head, and my play time has been cut down a good bit due to buying a new house, and all the associated paperwork, inspections, and preparing to move. Hopefully once all this settles down I can get leveling again!

As to PoP so far, it has been fun going through the old content I remember. It was a bit of a let down in difficulty, but that is mostly due to the guild simply being geared to the hilt and running smoothly, so I can’t complain. We once again one shot all the content, even the most difficult fights. Rathe Council was for sure a challenge, but we stuck through and got it done!

2-10-2017

After a somewhat poor launch day,  I was able to return and get rolling on the good ol’ PoP train! The lag had subsided, allowing content to actually be accessible.

I strolled into PoJ and got a trial done with some guildies, which was pretty simple to do. After that I made a foray into PoV for some old time nostalgia. Killing in the tunnel camp and east wall brought back a lot of old memories.

First XP group of PoP!

After that, I got right into the swing of things with some raiding. Our first night we steamrolled through Grummus, Caprin (split raid), AD in PoV, the HoH trials, Mith Marr, MB in PoI, Tallon Zek, and Vallon Zek. This was a hell of a night, even leaving us with about 20 minutes of time at the end of the raid. Back when I was doing PoP originally, this was about two months worth of work, all done in less than four hours! Amazing. Admittedly, also a little underwhelming.

Rollin over some valiant, yet ultimately useless, guards in our rampage to HoH and MM.

Surprise you ugly son of a bitch!

Outside of raiding, I also did a few XP groups in Crypt of Decay, which was actually pretty good. We had a hell of a group, who probably had more DPS than a raid did back in the day. We cleared all the way in, then ran back to zone in to wait for respawns. Knocked out some great XP!

There was also a “quirk” that went live with PoP. A level 68 mission went live, called Hate’s Fury over by Dulak’s Harbor in the LoY expansion. The mission was pretty tough, but doable. The XP was decent, but it was fun to do something different. Well, turns out that it was a no-no, regardless of the fact it was released actively. The expedition guys were despawned after a few days. Too bad!

Slaughtering in CoD

The guild is officially fully elemental flagged. Sadly, I missed out on getting Hedge and Terris Thule, and still have to finish my PoStorms medallion. But, all in all, its been a fast ride. Today I had a couple hours to kill, so I threw together a pickup Hedge maze run. It went very well, only taking about 30 minutes to get a full 18 man raid together. We romped the event with ease, and flag was done! Was fun doing a pickup raid, brings back memories of leading raids back in the day.

Anyway, hoping to get the backflagging done next week and be able to hit up elementals and PoFire for some uber xp and loots! PoTime should be within a couple weeks. Pretty crazy, less than two weeks in and we are knocking on the end zone of PoP already!

Aside from flagging and grinding, I have been laying low with the tradeskills. Plus, the very first flag I need is TT to start Aid Grimel questing, of course the one I do not have. Anyway, focusing on hitting 65 asap and getting some new AA!

This guy was a complete pushover compared to back in the day. Was satisfying to kill him anyway.

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2-1-2017

Well today is the launch of PoP! I was excited to get home and get crackin. Luclin was nice, but I am totally over it. Spent the last month doing tradeskills, prepping for PoP questing.  Both my SHM and SK were max XP, ready for a single kill to hit 61. I logged in both characters, and headed to PoK. Memories flooded back, the golden age was upon me!

Ah, Plane of Knowledge.

I zoned in to PoK, expecting the crowds to be immense. I was not disappointed. Once I arrived, I saw someone advertising for a CoTH to the library. Doors were not working due to the huge load on the zone. Well, whatever. Don’t need to go there anyway. A guildie asked for some people to join him for an instance of PoJ to start flagging, so I joined. Ran to the PoTranq zone, noticing a strangely large group of people around it. Clicked zone. Rejected. WTF?

I asked in guild, turns out the zones are so overloaded they won’t accept new people. Looks like a smooth launch, for sure. Anyway, I keep clicking the zone in, hoping to get lucky. I DO! Loading screen. For 15 minutes. I began to assume I crashed. Amazingly, I made it to PoTranq. Time to find the AoC!

I run up to the location I suspect will be the AoC, and find yet another large group of people. Oh man…

This is truly nostalgic. Brings back memories of dial up, only much worse.

The group mostly gets into zone, 20 minutes later. We somehow manage to get an instance. I say the key word ready. By now its obvious there is about a 10 minute delay on any actions or chat. I expect it to take a while. So I wait. And wait. Both characters disconnected. Fuck.

I try to get back in, get a time out error. I try just bringing my Shaman in, and get back into Tranq. Try to say ready again, and wait. Finally a start to zone. Disconnect again.

So, I now have an instance I can’t use, with a 2.5 day lockout timer, and no way to get in and do the trial. It is safe to say…

LAUNCH SUCCESSFUL! Or not.

At this point I am giving up for now. Time for beer and dinner. Maybe later it won’t be so FUBAR.