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…
I finished off Final Fantasy XII yesterday, and it was over a lot quicker than I expected. I popped back into the Necrohol to pick up the Zodiac Spear, get a few last things from the merchant there, and kill the second boss (didn’t bother with the Esper that unlocks), and then it was off to Bahamut, where it was really just a rapid series of boss fights.
Most of those fights were pretty easy, probably thanks in no small part to the Zodiac Spear. There was one spot in the final fight where my entire party got knocked out thanks to some really bad timing and a couple lucky attacks, and I had to bring in the backup characters to revive them. The backups were still only around level 16, but they lasted long enough to do their job, and the boss fell soon after.
So, that’s it for FF12, after around 90 hours total. There are still hunts and sidequests to do and Espers to collect and all that, but I think I’ve spent enough time on it already. The next RPG to finish off will be Persona 4, but I’m going to take a bit of a detour before that…
I’m still trying to finish off Final Fantasy XII, but it’s taking a bit of grinding. It was a bit harder than expected to get the Sagittarius bow; I had to collect some loot items, but that required unlocking a new area, fighting a boss in the new area, and then repeatedly killing one monster there and traveling away and back again to force it to respawn numerous times until it finally dropped enough items. And then I had to open up some new areas somewhere else and grind enemies even higher level than me in order to get the drops for the best arrows for it.
I also figured I’d take a shot at getting the Zodiac shield, since the guide I was following said it had a 30% chance of appearing in a certain chest, though the chest itself didn’t always appear. After nearly a whole afternoon of farming it I started to wonder if something was wrong, and upon checking another guide, it said that it was a 1.8% chance of being in the chest, not 30%. That makes…quite a bit of difference. So, I’ve given up on that. I did manage to get two demon shields in the previous grinding though, and those are still quite good.
I’ve started working on the Necrohol, though it’s smaller than expected and shouldn’t take too long to finish off. The enemies in it are quite annoying though, taking quite a bit of magic to either burn them down quickly or heal the large damage they do. I’ve defeated one of the bosses, with two more to go, and next time I head in I’m going to have to check on that Zodiac Spear location…
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.
I finished off the Pharos tower in FF12 tonight, culminating in a series of three boss fights without any breaks, but they weren’t really that tough. Just making it through the previous sections with a decent amount of mana left was the real challenge, since there was an extremely long stretch without a save point. That tower was probably the longest single dungeon in the whole game (so far, at least), and there isn’t really much more to go now.
Now is the time to do a bit more exploration and prep work, though. I bought all the best new items and spells I could, I have some loot items to track down to make other stuff (like the Sagittarius bow for Fran), I could do some more hunts if I want to, and…I have a spear to go fetch.
The Necrohol of Nabudis will be next, both for the Zodiac Spear (I hope I did the requirements properly), and a merchant there with some more high-end items.
And after those diversions, I got back to Final Fantasy 12 with a vengeance over the weekend.
Continue reading 'Back To Ivalice'»
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’…
Woo, over 40 hours into FF12 now… Spoilers:
Continue reading 'Bunnies!'»
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