I just realized that I haven’t written about EQ2 in a while now, and in short: Steamfont. A couple weeks ago one of our party members was going to be a bit late, so the rest of us goofed off doing some quests in Steamfont for a little while. When he arrived, we figured that since we were already there, we may as well just keep on doing them and go check out the Klak’Anon instance as well.
It turned out to be more of a challenge than expected, with some spots where you encounter a ton of roamers, or waves of spawns, of things ^^^-rank and equal-level. I actually died a few times in there, and it took long enough that we had to spend this last week in there as well. We’ve still got one quest that’s sending us back in there, but hopefully it’ll be quick to finish off next week.
I’ve also gotten my illusionist up to level 54, mainly just farming and doing quests in Lavastorm. With his help, I’ve actually completed the Lavastorm collections and gotten a fairly nifty charm item…which I can’t wear until I hit level 55…
It’s been a while since the last update, but not a lot is really new.
We had our EQ2 group and finished off getting the teleport stone for Sundered Splitpaw, but it turns out that the quests at the ends of the chains are raid events, way beyond our abilities. So, we’ve headed back to Sinking Sands and turned leveling back on, completing a handful of generic quests there and I hit level 51 soon afterward.
I also spent a bunch of time on alts on Saturday. I got my monk from 14 to 24 in Antonica, with the help of the vitality bonus and turning in some collections that had accumulated from leftover bits. And I got my ranger from 8 to 14 almost entirely on collections. I doubt I’ll really put much more time into them, but it was something different to do.
I’ve also been playing a lot of Forza 3 again. I discovered that the achievement for getting gold in all events doesn’t actually have to be done in season mode, even though the text says it does, which will make it a lot easier since I won’t keep getting interrupted by the R1 championship. So far I’ve done all of the drag strip events and the first three endurance events, which normally don’t seem to come up in season mode at all.
We finally got our EQ2 group going again on Sunday, and finished a few of the quests in the Sundered Splitpaw content, getting the stone that lets us teleport back there whenever we want.
Well, except for one group member, who got killed during one instance and couldn’t get back in and get credit for the quest. We’d already exhausted the group quests that contribute faction, so we tried to do a solo quest for him, but it turns out that it really does force you to do those solo — you wind up alone in your own instance even if you’re in a group. It’s a rather unfortunate design consequence, and hopefully we’ll be able to work out some way to help him out.
We’re getting a bit restless being stuck at level 50 though, so I think sometime soon we’re going to flip the AA switch and get back to leveling up in new areas.
Our weekly EQ2 group got delayed again, but I hung around and played my illusionist alt for a while, getting him from 48 to 50 and completing a handful of quests for the Sootfoot goblins in Lavastorm. The same ones I already did on my mystic, but I don’t really want to get too far ahead on an alt and spoil upcoming surprises.
I also farmed my good friend Fire Toad whenever he spawned, and got a number of decent items for my other alts. I was surprised to have an Ornate Chest spawn when I killed a plain, non-named enemy though, as I’d only ever seen them on ‘special’ monsters before. I guess it’s possible for any drop, but just ultra-ultra-rare.
We skipped the usual EQ2 night on Thursday since people were tired, so we moved it to Sunday instead.
We quickly finished off the Flowing Black Silk Sash heritage quest and although the item isn’t useful for me, that bumped the guild to level 24. We then headed off to the Splitpaw Saga content, which involved working our way through a couple of dungeons until we reached a quest hub. We only had time to do one of the quests though, and apparently we need to do three before we get the item that’ll let us teleport back there.
The entry dungeon was at least a bit more interesting in most in that getting through it involved some simple physics puzzles and blowing up cracked walls, rather than the usual old ‘kill N gnolls’…
We had our usual Thursday EQ2 group, and wound up finishing off a handful of the longer quest series in the Everfrost zone. We’ve still got the final step to go in one of them though, since it requires clearing an area until a named goblin spawns, and it was getting late and we knew it could take a while and be rather boring. Maybe next time.
And I also picked up a little indie game called Eversion on Steam, based on the word-of-mouth on some forums. It’s a Mario-esque platformer, but the twist is that you can trigger certain ‘eversion’ points on the map to alter the atmosphere of the level, which affects how the enemies behave, which barriers become passable or impassible, and how you need to go about collecting gems on the level. It’s really short and I already got the basic and third endings for it, but it was a decent amount of fun for the cost. There’s a second ‘good’ ending if you collect all the gems, and I’m at something like 201/240, but some of them are tricky enough that I don’t really feel like spending a lot of time trying for them.
Wow, there’s a whole bunch of new stuff to catch up on.
I picked up Blur for the 360, since it looked interesting and I’m winding down on Forza 3. It’s basically like a Mario Kart-style racer, with powerups you pick up and fire at other racers, but on realistic cars and tracks. You can also use powerups to block incoming attacks instead. So far I’ve found the single-player game a bit frustrating since it seems like so much depends on random luck; I can come in second place one race, and then 18th the next, and I can imagine it getting frustrating trying to hit the specific advancement requirements.
In online multiplayer though, Blur is a blast. It doesn’t even really matter where you eventually wind up placing, with 20 players in total there’s plenty of action going on no matter where you are. There’s a level-based progression system that unlocks new cars and ‘mods’ that affect the rules slightly, and I’m up to level 13 (of 50) so far.
While picking up Blur, I noticed that Picross 3D was out. I played the hell out of the original DS Picross, so I had to pick this one up. It’s the same basic idea, expose the image within a grid by carving out unwanted blocks, but this time it’s a sculpture in a 3D block. The information you use is fairly different though, as you’re only told the total number of blocks to keep in a given row, how many groups the blocks are broken into, and not all rows are numbered. There’s a fairly lengthy tutorial that explains it all though, and I’ve perfected the Easy puzzles and just started in on the Normal difficulty.
And it’s not so new, but a fair bit of stuff has happened in EQ2 as well. I played my illusionist around the Everfrost area for a while last weekend, getting him 5 levels and burning up all the saved-up vitality xp. My mystic cleared out a bunch of the monster-farming quests in his log and then in the weekly group we went and finished off the Golden Efreeti Boots quest. Or the rest of the group did, anyway — I screwed up and missed a turn-in when we were in the Temple of Sol Ro, and then got wiped out by a level 70 dragon while trying to get back to it. I didn’t want to waste their time, so I told them to forget it and I’ll finish it myself at some later point, when everything’s lower-level.
I just got around to changing my Xbox Live gamertag and shall now be known as HalibutBarn instead. MS has been rather oversensitive lately about ‘inappropriate’ names, so I figured I’d better change it before I suddenly wind up suspended for being a drug reference or something.
I finally started Bioshock 2 a little while ago, and this time I’m playing on Hard and going for the achievement for not using any Vita-chambers. So far the main struggle has just been to avoid running out of ammo and money, which are in scarce supply. Otherwise, it’s still a pretty familiar-feeling game and that’s perfectly fine considering how good the first one was. I’ve only made it to Pauper’s Drop so far, but I’ve fought one each of a Big Daddy and Big Sister, and the fights were fairly tense. The Big Sisters in particular are going to be tough, being as quick as they are.
In EQ2, we’ve mainly just romped around Everfrost some more for the last couple weeks, finally reaching the NE and NW corners and finishing a handful of quests, including the HQ for Tobrin’s Mystical Eyepatch. I also did a bit of soloing on my own to clean out some of the simpler quests and pick up collection items.
The city of New Halas was also finally released, and I immediately moved my shaman there to be with his barbarian brethren. It’s a really nice city too, with almost everything within fairly easy reach (the dock is a bit farther away though) and the tradeskills all clustered near the bank. The housing is really nice, and I finally upgraded from the starting apartment to a five-room house, which feels a bit sparse even with 160+ items in it now. I also started up a new dwarven warlock character, but haven’t gotten very far into the Halas newbie zone with him yet.
And I’ve played a bit more of Forza 3, but I’m not as enthusiastic about it as I was before, as now I’m pretty much just trying to grind credits and fill out the event chart. Maybe I’ll look at something like Blur next…
A bit more progress in WoW lately as I managed to finish off the zone achievements for Nagrand and Blade’s Edge with a friend’s help. That got me the Loremaster of Outland achievement, and now I just have Zul’Drak and Icecrown to go for the big one. For Zul’Drak I just need to do a run through Gundrak, which will eventually happen in a random, but for Icecrown I’ll need some group help.
This morning I also managed to nab three of the Argent Tournament minipets from the AH for only 300 gold each. That’s about the price at which I’d prefer to just pay gold for them rather than having to grind Champion Seals for them; that’s 120 seals total, or about two weeks of doing dailies, but less than a week’s worth of gold farming.
And in EQ2 last night we went and checked out a new dungeon, The Obelisk of Lost Souls. It’s extremely maze-like but fortunately one of the group members had the map. Some rooms were pretty tough fights since even the monsters down below would aggro and swarm us, but there was only one death for the whole evening. We eventually gained access to the inner area and an inner instance called the Vestibule, but that’s as far as we can go until we complete an access quest (and only one member has it so far since you need a drop to start it).
We also wandered over to the Temple of Cazic-Thule in Feerrott to farm a wraith for the start of the Screaming Mace quest. With the long respawn time, we could only get three of the four drops needed though, so I’ll have to get mine later.
Our Tuesday night EQ1 group has kind of petered out, but it did actually last a decent amount of time for such an old game. The problem is that without mentoring and/or AA xp control at the lower levels, it’s hard for someone who misses out on a day to catch up. Once people start falling behind, it kind of snowballs and more and more people drop out.
Ah well, it was a surprisingly good day in WoW at least. My warrior finally got the fourth crocodile from the Shattrath fishing daily, and my priest managed to finish off a few more Zul’Drak quests that I had thought I’d need a group for. I only need three more to complete that zone, and I’ll be able to do it the next time I do the Gundrak instance. I’m also now only 30 quests total away from the Loremaster title.
And in Dragon Age I finished off the Lothering quests aside from the ones I have to travel for. Next up I’ll probably try out some of the DLC content, now that I can freely move on the world map.
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