August 31, 2006
“Up a hill, down a hill, whirlegee do. Get out of the way I’m Leiland woooOOOOoooo!”
That’s about the sum of my night last night. The line is actually inspired by my daughter’s favorite book, Willie WoooOOOooo, a firetruck that motors around town. But last night, I was grinding on spiders in Sinking Sands with Mutz and a friendly necromancer, and I was on autopull. It’s a little monotonous to run down the dune, grab a spider, chug up the hill, and kill as fast as possible, but the experience was great, and I basically got a level in about an hour and a half.
Some things never change. I still remember the first time I had ever experienced “outdoor zone wall” pulling, 8 years ago. Mutz and I joined up with a very zealous dwarf paladin, who told us to park ourselves on a grassy wall in West Commonlands, while he sommersaulted out and fetched mobs, over and over. That was when Mutz was playing a wizard, back when wizards were known for being able to kill steal from an entire group. And I played a paladin because I loved the idea of being a warrior that could save someone else in a pinch, and also because I was in love with the Soulfire. That flaming sword was the coolest thing in Everquest! Well, that and the scute shield. I never did get to find Dunedigger, nor did I ever see Rahotep, despite many attempts to track them down.
While I had a little downtime in Sinking Sands, I also knocked out a few of the Beetle Herding quests, which are kind of fun. You get to jab a bug zapper into skittish beetles, to drive them into the tarantua valley, where they get quickly devoured and drop their shells. It’s easy experience, with the only thing slowing down the quest is the rarity of the beetles. (It’s even easier if you have an invis, since you can prod and keep your invis up. Just watch out for aggro on the tarantulas, they see invis!)
I think more and more, I’ll be playing a troubador, which means I can use my blog entries to sample my newest song lyrics! Eat your heart out Fansy.
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Everquest II | Comments (4)
August 30, 2006
It never fails to happen. Mutz and I will be duo’ing, and I toss up a Heroic Opportunity starter. Just as I go to advance it, I see a big yellow chalice and a flashing red lightning bolt, flashing in my face and taunting me with “HO? How about no.”
Above: Dear Tunare, please stop Mutz from nuking during my Heroic Opportunities, amen.
The Heroic Opportunity system in EQ2 is good, but at times I wish it were different. I really like the concept that we have the ability to gain advantages during fights, if we are in a smart, attentive, and coordinated group. It makes grouping with friends even more rewarding, and it gives an incentive for PUGs to be better players.
But somewhere along the line, Mutz and I sort of gave up actively trying to do HOs. I occasionally do some solo ones, because they give me a better chance to keep aggro, and my rare one is a nice little mitigation buff. Other than that, I never see them. When we group with others, or raid, it’s very rare that there’s any real interest in arranging successful HOs.
Why?
I think the first reason is that, while there are lots of combinations and many choices, it’s still not a flexible enough system to allow you to manage them during a fight. When we need a heal buff, we’d usually get a direct damage increase. And of course we’d get the attack speed reduction when the mob was at 3%. In the end, the HO system is really just a roulette wheel that you can spin while in combat. It can even be a game of russian roulette, because in some instances, a high damage HO or a crushing HO could spell unwanted aggro and the possibility of a wipe. Every now and then, the one you hope for shows up in a timely fashion, but it’s too random to bother.
As Mutz pointed out to me, he’s skeptical about whether a group that regularly runs successful HOs is more effective than one that doesn’t. And often times, if you are trying hard to successfully run HOs, you’re doing things you don’t want to necessarily do, like heal when you don’t need to cast a heal, or hold off on a combat ability because you need it to complete an HO. It would be interesting to see damage parses of groups that run HOs versus ones that don’t, or compare rate of mobs killed in the two types of groups.
Another problem is that the choices themselves aren’t really that interesting. Most of them are either buffs or damage bonuses. I’m probably thinking of stuff that would make combat too complex and tedious, but it would be cool to see some real Heroic Opportunities that reflect better on the classes that are involved with them. It might even be a way of helping address class balance issues. Warlocks, for instance, are concerned about not being able to reduce their hate. A solo HO could address that. A fighter and a scout might find it frustrating to try to duo without any way of healing. A HO could provide for some kind of faster regen out of combat, or even a little heal while in combat. Nothing that would lead to the demise of the priest class, but a small benefit that would help tip the tables to victory every now and then.
The other thing that seems a little unwieldy about the system is the whole icon thing. I’m a fighter, so my intelligence isn’t up where it should be to understand the system. I look at my hotbar, though, and I see tons of little icons with hands, feet, bird claws, you name it. I’ve finally mastered them to the point that I know how to get the most out of my combat abilities, rather than just smashing them like a monkey.
Then the HO starter chain pops up and now I’m seeing horns, boots, lightning bolts, coins, cloaks, hammers, etc, and none of it matches the combat icons. Yes, I know that the CAs flash when they are needed to advance or complete a HO, but the whole chain seems clunky to me. Trying to remember every possible Heroic Opportunity seems like homework too. I can barely remember what mine do, let alone four other classes, with dozens of combinations. It almost seems like it would be better to just simplify the system, reduce the number of opportunities, and make some unique ones that really fit the classes that participate in the chain. I’d much rather have to remember a handful of HOs, that are truly worth remembering, even if it meant putting them on a longer timer.
Above: Killing orcs in Clefts. Turns out that Mutz can muck up my troubador HOs too!
Ok, having said a huge piece about simplifying them, I also think it would be better to add more chances to change up the Heroic Opportunity. For instance, I can do a heroic opportunity with Mutz, but only if I start the HO chain. If he starts it, I can’t advance it at all. Scouts can start chains for all the classes, but they’re the only ones that can. Personally, I think this makes it more confusing, and it certainly makes it harder to use HOs if you don’t have a balanced group of all four classes.
I recently read on the EQ2 forums that there might be a revamp of the HO system, and I would be happy to see that. I also know that a Heroic Opportunity type of system is going to be implemented in Vanguard. I think in general, the concept is very worthwhile, and I’m a big fan of anything that allows a good player to separate himself from the lunks and lazy players. But darnitall, I don’t want to see another flashing hammer and lightning bolt for as long as I live!
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Everquest II | Comments (3)
August 29, 2006
Last night, Mutz and I made the decision to leave our guild. We met a lot of good people and we wish them well. So to add to our full plate of things we want to do in game, we now have a new task of looking for a new guild.
For a little change of pace in game, I decided to travel to the Village of Shin to tangle with some terracotta warriors. I hadn’t done any of the monk pebble trials in a few weeks, so I attempted the Trial of Lin Vo.
Above: Docking my junk at the Village of Shin.
The trial is very straightforward. You have 30 minutes to kill 75 terracotta warriors. The zone layout is the same as the Forsaken City layout, and there is a good map of that zone here. (Yes I know I still need to do a Forsaken City writeup, it’s on my to do list!)
The warriors varied in level from blue to yellow (71), and unlike the Trial of Bo Fen, they aren’t aggro until you attack them, so pulling is not a problem. What I found to be the most difficult part of the trial wasn’t killing the soldiers themselves, but actually finding them. I spent too long running from room to room, killing only about one in each room. I started to encounter clusters of them on the upper levels, so I’m assuming that if I had started working up faster I would have had more success.
Above: Vanilla hack and slash in the Trial of Lin Vo.
While I was doing the trial, I thought about two memorable timed experiences in Everquest. The first one was the Plane of Justice trial. Now, there was more than one trial down in PoJ, but if you had ever done any flagging at all, you would know which trial is “the” PoJ trial. I must have done that thing about a couple hundred times, not only because I failed it a lot at first, but also to help friends and guildmates get through it. I did love the trials, all of them in fact, because no matter how many times I did them, I still felt that thrill of being able to take out those razorfiends and rocks just in the nick of time. And being able to kill the executioner by a whisker, thanks to a timely heal and a weaponshield, always made for a lot of fun. I still have the echoes of the screams and yells from the prisoners resonating in my head. Great zone.
The other “timed” experience I had in Everquest was with the Lost Dungeons of Norrath. For some reason, even though the same pressure was on by being on a clock, I never really got excited to do them. Of course, in the very beginning of LDoN, there was the added frustration of knowing that some of the “collect X in Y amount of time” missions were bugged, and there simply were not enough of the needed item in order to win, even if you killed everything. Even when they were fixed though, doing those timed missions just never really seemed that fun to me.
Now, the Trial of Lin Vo is a lot like the LDoN timed missions. But I do find them pretty enjoyable, mainly because they are a good way to fill a half hour, they don’t require a lot of thought and strategy, and sometimes it’s fun to just run around, doing vanilla hack and slash on anything that is targettable. I’d like to do more trial work, in fact, because as you collect more pebbles, you can turn them in for player titles. A list of some of the titles can be found here.
I ended up failing on my first try in there, but I think now that I know my way around better I’ll have a much better time of it next try. So if you are a guild that’s recruiting on the Guk server, and you can use a great fury and a monk with a couple of pockets full of pebbles, (and an up and coming troubador) look me up.
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Everquest II | Comments (2)
August 28, 2006
I was running around the Sinking Sands this past weekend, marvelling at how swift I was with Selo’s, when, *BLAM* I ran off the side into the landslide passage and to my death. (At least that was fast though)
Above: Random shot in Everfrost. I was running around there this weekend and always liked this area, with the icebreaks.
After eating some humble pie and reviving, I reminisced a bit about all the silly mistakes that I, and others, had done while playing Everquest, and it made me miss the “good old days.” Here are some of my favorite silly (and all too common) mistakes:
– We’re at a big fight, things are going great, we’re down to the last 10% on the mob, the call to “Burn him down!” is given and all of a sudden……I and 5 others find ourselves at the zone entrance. We’ve just fallen victim to Druid Evac! I always loved that second or two after it would happen, when everyone was trying to figure out if the missing people were banished by the mob, or died, or were feared. And luckily, no one ever really said much after it happened, because it was pretty obvious who was guilty.
– Until recently, rangers in Everquest used to have to manually press the range attack key every time they wanted to fire an arrow. That was a huge pain, so there were some programs that allowed you to map a key to your range attack and then basically autofire by hitting the key to toggle it on and off. It was very easy to forget the “toggle it off” part, which resulted in “Jaye wakes up A Gigantic Maniacal Raid Destroyer” being spammed 500 times on everyone’s screen if you assisted with your autofire still running. At least rangers got to chat during raids though!
– There we are, raid all formed, Boss mob about to be engaged, and all of a sudden you see “Jaye’s bow crackles with a natural energy.” Blown Disc Syndrome!
Rangers were lucky enough to be able to blow two important discs, trueshot and weaponshield. It became a fun game, though, to see random spams of people blowing their worthless discs during downtime on raids. And one of my friends used to make a phony emote that said, “Snazzles’ bow crackles with a fantastical energy,” which he used to hit all the time while running around Plane of Valor at level 46. FSnazzles!
– The following one is one of my favorites, and although it’s always a very serious moment, to me, it’s one of the funniest. There’s a disgruntled member in the guild, and they’ve just launched into a huge, rambling, tirade, basically about how the guild has failed to stand on its head in order to satisfy the needs of this member, so they are leaving, but “will always be a tell away.” Then there’s a little pause, followed by EnragedGuildmember01 tells the guild, “remove.”
A little word of advice to anyone who is about to stage a dramatic departure from their guild — make sure to look up the correct command to remove yourself before you pound out your final departure speech! Or don’t, actually, because I love it when that happens.
– Vex Thal was one of my favorite zones (no really it was!) but even I’ll admit that the fights in there did take a ridiculously long time. Especially named fights. Especially fights against the named goos. But those long fights were always worth it at the end, because if you stayed at your keyboard all that time you got to see the warrior play the game “AfkEnrage.” We had a warrior in our old guild, Fallen Alliance, who was exceptionally skilled at his class, and he had a sharp sense of humor. So to keep people honest, and to get a laugh, he would sometimes momentarily flip a mob to the raid, which resulted in all the afk’rs (who didn’t turn off attack during enrage) to die. Ah, the good old days of dying to enrage! It was especially fun to be around rogues when that happened, because they dropped the fastest!
– Lastly, one of my bugaboos used to result from the fact that I usually pulled for my groups, but I didn’t always move my pull message key out of my bar, so every now and then, on a raid, I’d be mashing my assist key and getting really irritated that I didn’t have a target. I’d proceed to look down and see “A %t is incoming!! Kill it!!” spammed about 759 times on my groups screens. I don’t know why, but after my profuse apology I would always try to stay very silent the rest of the night, maybe in the hopes that it would balance out the burst of noise from my itchy fingers.
Above: Alzid Prime in the Lab of Lord Vyemm. I’m nicknaming him “Katta Banker!”
In EQ2, many of these still can happen. I’ve been autorunning off cliffs now for 8 years. There’s a few new ones too. One of my favorites is the untimely /yell just as your group (or raid) is about to finish off a mob. But while mistakes can be irritating at times, I find it’s pointless to chastize, scold, and dwell on them, because they are, after all, mistakes.
So if you see a monk (or these days, a troubador) dead at the bottom of a high outcropping, feel free to laugh, but toss a sympathy rez my way too please! I died because I was, um, lagged out, and my safefall failed me again!
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Everquest II | Comments (2)
August 25, 2006
Last night Mutz and I had the fortune to get on the two group guild raid, and the target was the Ascent of the Awakened (X2). It’s a two group instance that is part of what’s needed for access to the Ascent of the Awakened X4 raid zone, where we’ll be able to fight Gorenaire and Talendor.
I’m no lore expert, but from what I have read, the Ascent of the Awakened is the home of aviaks that have devoted themselves to Gorenaire (Icy Breath) and Talendor (Fire Breath). Last night, we focused on making our way to the Great Hall of Fire to meet Sharti of the Flame.
On each floor we reached, we had to kill groups of aviaks in order to find gems that are needed to open access to the floor above. One particular part I found fun was seeing the Trial of the Flapping Wing on the second floor. When it starts, the whole floor becomes overrun with drakes. We pulled the named into a side room to avoid the kick that you get from the drakes, and we were able to move on pretty easily.
Above: The Trial of the Flapping Wing has begun!
The real fun, though, began when we met Sharti. We learned the hard way that if we stay in melee range, adds spawn. We also learned that they don’t despawn at all, even if you all die. (On a total aside note, why can’t they have raid zones where it’s actually useful to have feign death?! Other than saving people some mender fees, I hardly have found a time when my FD has saved a raid, because most of the raid zones dont’ have respawn. And in this case, the adds didn’t reset so even though I had a successful group FD, it was useless.)
Above: Pulling Sharti of the Flame in the Ascent of the Awakened.
Anyway, we did get Sharti on the second try, but we still had spawned too many fire blobs so we all wiped apart from our intrepid swashbuckler Rapscal, who scooped up the loot for us.
Above: Victory!
This fight sort of reminds me of the Emperor Ssra fight, in the sense that we had broken down the raid into little teams that were each responsible for a different aspect of the fight. I remember for the Emperor, we had a team on mez, another team on the non-mez snake adds, DPS on the Emperor (crap my shissarbane is in the bank! /headsmack), and a rez team. I loved that fight because it was a change from the usual one mob with one MT and everyone else either behind it or on the side, sitting there smacking away, while the healers count to 5 and press a key somewhere nearby. It seems that splitting up the duties and spreading out would work on Sharti, as well as Gorenaire and Talendor, although you wouldn’t need anything nearly as elaborate as the Emp fight.
This was a fun little zone, and very useful because it is needed for quests related to Claymore, Ascent of the Awakened X 4, and Deathtoll. Apparently with our victory last night, we will be able to now face Talendor. Killing more dragons, I can’t wait!
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Everquest II | Comments (0)
August 23, 2006
Today is just a short update, because I had to be offline the past few days. Mutz has been on a business trip and I haven’t had a lot of free time. The next couple of days might not have too much in the way of updates either, because I’d like to clean up the site a bit, and add a “Where to Hunt” section to the side bar. That will mean my blog time will be filled with clerical work rather than the fun stuff of typing up stories. Also, I have had a teenie bit of free time to play and I’ve still been enjoying playing a troubador. We’ll see where this leads.
I also have two interesting shots from last weekened that I haven’t had time to put up, so here they are.
I call this one, Erika in the Matrix. Totally freaked me out to zone into Willow Wood and stare at myself! This wasn’t at all staged by the way, and I have no idea who the monk is, but it sure is strange.
I noticed the following last Saturday, and I’m curious what it means. While running around Maj Dul with my Troubador one night, I noticed that all the heat-crazed prophets had smoky purple heads.
I’ve been into Maj Dul tons of times and had never seen them like this, but I figured it was just the fact that they’re heat crazed and I must not have had my particle effects turned on. However, as I headed further in I noticed that the citizens, the dervish thugs, and even the Tears Grifters Agents had smokey purple heads. It reminded me of the way the plague spread, because it seemed arbitrary as to who had the purple haze and who didn’t.
Maybe I’m just oblivious all this time, maybe it’s part of one of the triggered events that can happen in the city, or maybe it’s part of some new event related to the gods. I went back just now and everyone seemed ok, so I will have to check on the forums to see if anyone else noticed this. Any feedback is appreciated!
*EDIT* I just got a chance to check the official forums and apparently it’s related to the new Fear quest, where you have to gather up souls. So I guess someone was taking their souls from the denizens of Maj Dul, which is pretty cool.
In the process, I also saw this thread that points to the next pair of live events that relate to the return of the gods to Norrath. Tranquility and War? Should be fun!
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Everquest II | Comments (2)
August 18, 2006
I noticed some really odd things in Qeynos Harbor last night while I waited in vain to try to get on last night’s guild raid.
Here’s the gnomish version of Tiamat. Maybe it’s the new Arsai race. (Yes I know the arsai are not a playable race!)
Above: Timmit, Zobek, and Ogeb, forming the scariest chimaera I have ever seen. Way worse than Quarm even!
And what’s this? A new manhole cover? A new entrance to the Hidden Cache? Newp, just me hiding under the monk helm.
Apparently last night, a couple of guildmates could not see my helmet, and instead I appeared totally bald to them. While this was an obvious graphics problem, it did make me think about how monks, in fact, do shave their heads, and I’m now seriously considering it. Hey, it grows back, no worries!
On a happier note, I did get to group up with my friend Meopha. It’s been hard to catch each other in game, because we’ve both had summer trips, plus her raid nights and our raid nights don’t always match up well. So it was cool to get to do something in EQ2 with her. We also grouped up with a guildmate on his warden twink, and grabbed an lfg wizard, and ran around Runnyeye.
I haven’t been to Runnyeye in a while, and it seems that the farming is kind of bad in there. We weren’t really trying for named, just crawling around, but it was so annoying to be clearing a room and suddenly find group after group dash into the room and then dash out like a pack of cockroaches in the light. They were obviously running around the zone snagging nameds.
Above: The bridge in Runnyeye. I love the little glowing wispy things in this room. Still one of my favorite dungeons.
Overall, we did pretty well. Our group consisted of a 29 warden, and the rest of us at level 34, and we killed everything up to a level 40 goblin. Orange = failure. A couple of members dinged, we killed lots of stuff that was way over our heads in level, and Meopha and I reminisced about EQ like a couple of old grannies. Hopefully we can group more regularly once the fall rolls around. At least it will soften the blow when I find out I’m not good enough to make the cut for a raid. I can take my frustration out on Meopha….I mean, the mobs.
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Everquest II | Comments (0)