I Don’t Want “Killed By Making A Chair” On My Tombstone

Continuing on in EQ2, I explored a few more of the game systems.

The banks are much like EQ1’s, except for holding fewer bags. In fact, space in general is at more of a premium than I’m used to, and most of my packs so far are only 4-slot. While there I also found out how to get my house and set up items within it, though it’s pretty bare at the moment. It comes with a convenient access point to the EQ2 equivalent to the auction house, at least.

I also did the crafting tutorial quests while running around the Peat Bog and finishing off the other quests for that area. Crafting involves harvesting materials from a variety of sources (bushes, logs, rocks, etc.) and then combining them at the appropriate crafting station. That’s fairly similar to other games, but the one big difference is that while performing the crafting, you have to play a little minigame where you have to keep the item’s durability rating up while reacting to various flaw events that pop up while the item is being crafted. If you fail to respond with the appropriate hotkey, the item’s durability can suffer, increasing the chance of failure, and you can even take damage. It definitely makes it a lot more interesting than the usual sit-n-wait systems.

Next up, I need to finish off one last quest in the Peat Bog and then start nosing around the rest of Qeynos for more quests…

At Least They Weren’t Wearing Tights

The majority of my day was actually spent in Fallout 3 though, where I mainly just did more exploring, and the focus this time was on the northern part of the map. Most of the spots were just monster infestations with some mediocre loot, but I did finish off a couple more of the major quests. One involved dueling “superheroes” in a town that didn’t particularly need or want them, and the other involved finding the grove of Oasis and helping an old friend therein.

I Suppose It Was Inevitable…

As if I haven’t wasted enough of my life in MMOs yet, I couldn’t resist picking up EQ2 this weekend. Mainly because it was only $10 on Steam for the entire latest bundle, and I figured I should at least satisfy my curiosity for that price, even if I don’t stick around past the free month.

The intro video was pretty cheesy, but I guess this was from around the “It’s time to slay the dragon!” era of terrible EQ marketing. Character creation drops racial restrictions on classes, so I took a kitty illusionist, with a home city of Qeynos.

A lot of the mechanics were instantly familiar, but the one big change is in how quests are handled. They’re voiced, and follow a select-your-response interactive menu instead of using keywords, and a lot more stuff is automatically tracked. It’s especially nice how quest items are automatically picked up and held separately from your regular inventory, so there’s no wasted space on them.

Combat is also more WoW-like, and introduces something called “heroic opportunities”, which sound complicated though I haven’t bothered to look into them much for now. I could chain-cast spells in the middle of combat, and mana regens fast enough that there’s little downtime (at least for now).

So far I’ve just finished the tutorial area and picked up a few starting quests in Qeynos. I still have to look into things like crafting and diplomacy.

What Do I Look Like, A Savior?

I finished off The Pitt in Fallout 3 today, though it didn’t take very long. Some easy arena fights, some talking to people, some other minor fights…and that was about it. I wound up siding with the slavers, since it didn’t really seem to matter which side would ‘win’ in the end.

After that I wandered around to previously unexplored areas (I took the Explorer perk along the way, so I at least have all the map markers now) and did some quests, most notably finding a violin for an old lady and screwing around with the election results in the Republic of Dave. I’ll probably keep wandering and polishing off old quests before finishing the main plot again and starting the Broken Steel part.

They Just Need A Union

Back in Fallout 3 tonight, I started working on The Pitt, an area filled with slavers and their slaves, pressed into work at a big industrial plant. I didn’t really get too far into it though, instead getting distracted by an initial task to collect some steel ingots. That turned into a search for all of the steel ingots I could find. It took a couple hours, but in the end I found 93 of the 100 ingots on my own and managed to find the remaining 7 with a guide (fortunately they were all ones near the start of the guide).

That gives me some decent unique equipment to finish off the rest of the area, since all of my regular equipment had been stripped away by the slaves. Now back to rescuing something-or-other…

Feed Me

I was able to play around with Prototype for a bit today. It definitely has the open-world feel, though it’s a bit empty right now since I’m still fairly close to the start. There isn’t really much to do except a few races, starting the next mission, and causing some minor havoc that’s not really worth the effort in terms of xp earned. Stuff should be opening up soon though, as I can ‘consume’ certain people, gain their memories, and open up parts of the story and new people to meet.

The premise is a bit overwrought — you’re the product of some experiment gone wrong, an infection is spreading, and you’re out for revenge, blah blah blah. The movement isn’t as precise as Crackdown, and probably deliberately so, and there’s no stopping to contemplate how to reach a particular point — you just run straight up the side of a building. The controls while sprinting and wall-running are a bit awkward, and I’m constantly overshooting the tops of buildings and falling off the other side, but apparently there are upgrades that will help refine the controls.

And for someone who’s wanted so desperately by the military, it’s kind of odd how I can run up a wall, leap off a building and land in the middle of the street with a big concrete-breaking thud, or sprint through traffic and bounce off the roofs of cars, and nobody wandering around seems to think it odd.

One Last Shot

I bought Prototype today, but it was taking forever to download from Steam, so in the meantime I started up Crackdown to get me in the right frame of mind.

I also had another motive for returning to Crackdown: that one last damn agility orb that I’m still missing. I’m up to 498 of 500, I know where one is (and want to make it the very last one I pick up), and now there’s just one left. Damned if I know where it is, though. I’ve considered following guides to all of the orbs, but that gets tedious quickly, so I just ran around listening for the orb-nearby sound.

Alas, by the end of the evening, the agility orb still eluded me. I did pick up a good 15-20 more hidden orbs though, putting me at 283 of 300 of them. I don’t think I’m going to waste any more time on that agility orb, though — congrats orb, you’ve beaten me.

Another Blast From The Past

I know, I have too many games going already, but tonight I couldn’t help but reinstall Wizardry 8, spurred on by a whole bunch of discussion on a forum. I’ve always wondered how far I could get with a solo character before hitting a roadblock or losing interest, and after a few hours so far, I have a faerie ninja up to 91 stealth off the starting crabs. That gives her a base AC of 11, which is going to be rather critical since there’s barely any armour she can wear.

It’s getting pretty tedious to raise it at this point though, so I’m not sure if I should soldier on to 100 or make do with one less AC point and let the rest build up naturally as I go along. Once you hit around 60 stealth, the crabs start retreating from you, which actually helps since you can now heal up without using up potions, but chasing them down and getting them to resume attacking you gets really annoying.

The short term goal for now will be to make it to Arnika, switch to bishop, and grind the hell out of the magic schools, with the eventual goal of switching back to ninja with a (near) full set of spells and the Cane of Corpus.

Dance My Puppets, Part 2

I intended to continue the same RPGs as yesterday, but got swept up in The Sims 3 instead today. I never played any of the previous Sims games, but figured I should see what all the fuss is about.

I created some characters based on me and my friends, but haven’t really done much with them yet. Instead I recreated the Odd Couple, with Felix (traits of Neat, Neurotic, Frugal, Grumpy, Unflirty), and Oscar (traits of Slob, Absent Minded, Couch Potato, Charismatic, and Friendly) and mainly played around with them today. They’ve actually been getting along fairly well, even if Felix does have to do all the cleaning and fixing. Oscar is the main breadwinner though, with a fairly good journalism career so far.

I’ve tried to be as hands-off as possible since they’re supposed to have a high degree of independence in their own actions, but you have to intervene in some cases in order to ensure things get fixed, wishes get selected and fulfilled, which mode they should be in at the office, etc.

Clean Those Pitts

It was an RPG-themed day as I first dropped into Persona 4, where I finished off the first dungeon and rescued another classmate that joined our group, fused some more personae, and raised a few s-links and stats, as usual. The number of choices about what I can do in my spare time is opening up a lot more, with clubs, part-time jobs, and other hobbies now.

And later on I finally got back to Fallout 3, where I still have to catch up on some DLC. I started heading northwards to where the starting point of The Pitt section is, but got distracted by a few map markers on the way, including Fort Constantine and some antenna array. I did finally reach the Pitt contact, so I’ll kick that part off next time.