Monthly Archives: April 2010

They’re Going To Have To Rewrite The History Books

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Not much has been happening in WoW lately, just the usual dailies, though tomorrow I’ll be guaranteed to be able to purchase the Chef’s Hat, at least.

In EQ2, our weekly group was postponed until tomorrow due to one member being sick. I worked on tradeskills a bit more, provisioning and woodworking in particular. They’re about the only useful ones since it’s hard to keep up with our class levels now so equipment and spells aren’t much use, but any food or water is better than none, and the woodworking stuff is all unique. I also used my ebon cluster to resume the Bone Bladed Claymore quest and now I have to kill 1000 sentient monsters. That’ll probably take a while…

I got back to Forza 3 for a bit, starting the R3 championship and doing a few other series in the meantime. I find I have to turn on traction control and bump the AI down to easy for the R3 races though, as they’re hard to control otherwise. I’m kind of unenthusiastic about it at the moment though.

Our EQ1 group on Tuesday went and visited the Lake of Ill Omen for a daily quest and then popped into Mistmoore, where we got mobbed and wiped. We haven’t really been following ‘proper’ pulling and crowd control techniques, but they’re less important now and we’re just out to have fun anyway.

And finally, I messed around with Hearts of Iron 3 a bit. I played as Panama and turned off fog of war and just sat back to see how the rest of the war would unfold, and it didn’t quite go as expected. The USSR attacked Germany but got stomped, losing everything even way past Moscow; the US tried landing on the NW tip of France but failed to break through after years of fighting; Britain was barely involved in the European war and went around conquering Africa and South America instead; and Japan was stopped short by Nationalist China, so they never got around to taking over the rest of the Pacific.

HoI3 has a bit of a bad reputation among the strategy game purists, and I haven’t even delved into the mechanics properly yet, but it’s fun to goof around in it so far. I’m tempted to start a game where I try to turn Canada into a nuclear power before anyone else…

A Few Closer…

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Back in WoW, a bunch of us from the guild went on a rampage through Auchindon. I’d been meaning to go there for a while now since I had a bunch of quests in the various wings there, and after we were finished, I managed to clear six spots in the quest log and am now much closer to finishing the Nagrand achievement.

And this is a bonus xp weekend in EQ2, so I played my illusionist alt for most of the day. I managed to gain five levels in both jewelcrafting (up to 48) and my class (up to 43) before the vitality ran out, mainly through questing and fighting in Feerrott. I also managed to find two ebon clusters, one of the rarer tradeskill components that had been eluding me for quite a while — I needed one for a quest for my shaman, and could only find one through a different quest up till now.

I Wanted A Pony And I Got It

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Not much has been happening in WoW lately, as I’m mostly just doing the dailies. I did finally collect enough Champion’s Seals for the pony bridle, which now lets me access the bank, mailbox, and a vendor from anywhere (once every four hours, anyway) — never again will I be screwed when I go to turn in a quest only to realize that I forgot one of the pieces in the bank. And I also saved up enough cash for the next upgrade to the Kirin Tor ring, though the stat boost was fairly minor. One more upgrade to go now.

Yesterday, in EQ2, we delved in to Solusek’s Eye and completed all of the quests in there. It was kind of annoying in how you get mobbed in certain areas, and have to go really deep through some repetitive areas to get to the target for the final quest, but we were never really in any danger. Some familiar old enemies made a reappearance, like lava duct crawlers, but overall it’s a very different place than it was in EQ1.

And beforehand I managed to finish off a bunch of old quests in Steamfont and the Enchanted Lands, freeing up a fair bit of quest log space.

I Almost Forgot What It Felt Like

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Yesterday I managed to do something that I haven’t done in a while now: complete a game. And not just one game, but two games!

First, I played Flower, which I bought a while back but hadn’t even tried yet. This one was actually pretty quick to finish as it’s fairly short, but it’s still pretty good. You control a petal that glides around on the wind, and it’s serene and relaxing to start, and then suddenly develops into something much more game-like. It’s really more about the emotional effect it induces than gameplay, though.

And second, I finished off Little Big Planet’s main story levels. I did about half of them two weeks ago (and forgot to write about it), and went back and did the rest of them today, along with some of the community levels with a friend riding co-op. It was a decent enough game, but the controls and physics were frequently aggravating enough that I don’t think I really want to spend any more time on it. It treats everything, yourself included, as real objects, and the momentum makes it really difficult to do things like jump on small platforms. The lives system also seemed a bit unfair at times; there would often be one really difficult section and if you failed it, you had to go back and redo the much-easier rest of the level all over again, and the aforementioned control issues didn’t help.

I’ve also recently played through a bit of New Super Mario Bros Wii, and so far I’m up to the middle of world 2. I don’t know if the game’s getting harder, or if my reflexes are getting worse (I used to be able to finish the original SMB no sweat), but it feels a lot tougher than I’m used to. Making jumps doesn’t seem as precise as I’d like, which leads to a lot of deaths.

And I also fired up Lego Rock Band and worked through the first two tiers of songs. The presentation is cute, as expected, and there are a few good songs in there, but a lot of them are teen-oriented ones that I haven’t heard of before, and don’t really appeal all that much to me. I’m thus still not sure whether I’ll export the songs back to RB2 or not. I’m not sure how far into LRB I’ll get when I’d prefer to play songs back in RB2 either. LRB does have at least one new feature: occasional rock challenges where you do something storyline-related, like demolish a building or scare ghosts with your music. They don’t really play that much differently, with just some restrictions like not being able to use star power, but they have custom background animations at least.

MMO Mania

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Before I fall behind yet again…

EQ: The Tuesday group just whomped some rats and snakes in Blightfire Moors and then headed off to do another LDoN instance, this time from the Commonlands camp. We managed to complete a hard one fairly easily, no doubt thanks to the mercenaries. I hit level 27, and I’m making some decent cash, so maintaining the mercenary shouldn’t be a problem.

EQ2: This week was called off since two members were unavailable, so I mostly just worked on finishing off old quests. That included the Polished Granite Tomahawk, which I’d left unfinished for quite a while. I finally actually have some breathing room in my quest log.

WoW: I finally hit exalted with the Kirin Tor and could buy the robe from them, and I’d accumulated enough money to buy one of the Kirin Tor rings and one upgrade to it (I still need more gold for the remaining two upgrades). I also got new boots from hitting exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord, a Brimstone Igniter from emblems of triumph, and a few drops from running instances, for a fairly significant gear upgrade over the last little while.

I finally got my Venomhide Ravasaur mount after running the 20 dailies for it, though I’m not sure I’ll use it as a primary mount. Like the hawkstriders, it’s too tall and gets blocked in some arches and doorways.

And finally, I worked on quests a fair bit over the weekend and got the achievements for Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley. I think I only have four other zones to finish off now, and only something like 40 quests total. I’ll just need some help with the dungeon and group bits…

M-m-m-megaachievement!

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Tonight in WoW, I managed to gain 14 achievements in a single evening. Most of them came from the Argent Tournament: I’d saved up all the remaining Valiant Seals I needed (100 of them), and gained champion status with the four remaining cities one right after another, for eight achievements. Turning in the last one also got me three achievements for reaching Crusader rank with high enough faction. And then the last three came from finishing off the Noblegarden achievements, once I tracked down a female dwarf and gnome.

Now that I’m a crusader, I can do two more dailies for champion seals, which now lets me get seven seals per day fairly easily (ten if I do Chillmaw and the citadel, too). After a bit of experimenting, I also determined that I can get off two shield-breakers during jousting while the opponent is repositioning, which makes the fights go much faster, so now I can start doing the champion jousting without it being too tedious.

Turbo EQ

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Last night was another EQ1 night, and we started out in Crescent Reach again with bumping off a bunch of undead. There was apparently a quest for it, which I had failed to pick up, but it was good xp anyway.

After we got done/bored of that, we headed to Everfrost and did an LDoN adventure to rescue a hostage. It had been a long time since I’d done an LDoN instance, so I was fuzzy on the details of how they worked, but we ripped through it with plenty of time to spare.

The xp was also pretty good there, and I ended the night at level 22, a whole six levels higher than before. That’s definitely a lot faster than I remember from when I played my enchanter way back when…

We Are The Champions

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The Thursday night EQ2 group spent more time in Lavastorm, this time focusing on the NE portion of the zone. We did a bunch of further quests for the goblins, and I think we’ve now accumulated a few that require us to go into the Temple of Solusek Ro. Maybe we’ll get to that next time.

It was also Bristlebane Day, and chests had a rather odd appearance to them. There were also some quests going on in Enchanted Lands, and I got a familiar-looking Stone of Gygax for my house.

Back in WoW, I’ve been keeping up on my dailies, but I recently realized I can now do the Sunreaver dailies now that I’m exalted with them. So far they’ve been fairly easy quests that grant Champion Seals as rewards, so now I can get 4-5 of them per day instead of just 1-2. It doesn’t look like there’s much to spend them on besides mounts, minipets, and heirloom leveling equipment, though.

We did a few heroic runs as a guild, and I got four new item upgrades in one run of Utgarde Pinnacle, including two drops and two quest items. I lost some mana regen since they didn’t have much (or any) Spirit on them, but the boosts to health, mana, spell power, and haste were well worth it. I completely lost internet access during a Nexus run and didn’t get back on for a good 10 minutes, but made it back just in time for the final boss.

I’ve also started working on Outland quests for the achievements again, and did almost all of Blade’s Edge in one afternoon. There are still a few quests I’ll need help with though, as I can’t quite solo them.

And I played my hunter a bit more, though he’s still only level 18 via the usual Barrens path. I’ve got his engineering skill up to 136 so far, though.