April 30, 2007
Enough! Enough, enough, enough! They’re selling, they’re not selling…It’s good, it’s bad….Vanbois, B-net kiddies, (Insert upcoming derogatory name for LoTR fans)….awesome, sux, awesome, sux, awesome, sux……
Great grandmother’s shawl! I’m about ready to put my fingers in my ears and just start yelling “Lalalalalalalala can’t hear you!” The noise level surrounding Vanguard is equivalent to spending a Saturday afternoon at Chuck ‘E’ Cheese’s. Lashun Novashine seriously needs to quit Qeynos and come to Telon.
Anyway!
I had been out of town and offline for a few days, so this is a bit brief. But I wanted to pass on three tidbits of information that remind me why I enjoy this game.
Above: Seeking peace in the desert.
I’m Batman!
I got a tell from a nice bard named Fandango last week, who gave me some updates to add to my Hilsbury Manor write up. As I had written previously, visitors to the manor are hit by “Vampire’s Curse,” which can only be removed by completing a quest. While there was speculation about the effects of the curse, the accepted theory now is that it’s harmless.
I’ve since learned that you can get the curse removed by completing one of two quests. You can only do one of them, and each has a neat little reward upon completion. The easier quest is from the head vampire slayer over at the slayer camp. Look for a trapdoor to find your way to him, it’s not easy to find. In addition to getting the curse removed, you are rewarded with a little fairy pet, who doesn’t actually do anything, but is neat if you are into collecting pets.
Fandango tipped me off to a neat reward for doing the Apothecary’s cure quest. The Apothecary is hidden behind the wall in the dining room, and he offers several quests that involve exploring the Manor. If you complete the cure quest, you receive a new ability that allows you to turn into a bat for 5 minutes. You can use it once per evening I believe. How cool is that! Thanks to Fandango for sharing this!
“May attract some unwanted attention…”
Recently, I was running through some River Valley quests with a group of guildmates, and noticed that I kept getting aggro from the stalking wildcats that roam the valley floor. This aggro was unusual though, because the cats were aggroing only me, and I’d see them on my aggro list long before they were in view. I joked about it, but I was starting to think that maybe they were on some type of faction that I had ruined somehow.
A few nights later, however, I got a tell from my guildmate, Reighn. He asked me if I had any “very potent meat” in my inventory. I checked and did. Turns out, the meat attracts the wildcats in the valley, so if you carry it around, you will pickup aggro from them for miles around! Sure enough, the description of the meat, which is a drop from the lizards, says, “The meat is very potent and may attract some unwanted attention…”
I got rid of the meat, and haven’t had them aggro me from far away ever since, thanks to Reighn. The moral of the story, however, is to always pay close attention to the descriptions on items you get. It’s extremely cool that meat can attract wildcats from far away, but it also hints at potential twists down the road if this type of thing is applied to higher level content and raid encounters. My dream is for there to be a huge dragon who can only be lured out to fight if you drop a gnome outside his lair. /nod
Above: Revelry and Honor takes on Smelly Cat! Fresh fish attracts him, so be careful what you carry.
I’m sitting! I’m really sitting!
With the recent patch, there have been some new diplomacy quests offered from bartenders around Telon. The rewards vary, but the coolest are the drinks that have the effect of….sitting!
Above: Ubersitting. This was taken while listening to Old Woman Sparrowsong, but it’s also the graphic you see when you use the diplomacy drink rewards from the bartenders.
I can’t recall the names offhand, but there is a Date Wine and some kind of Ale that makes you sit when you drink it. It’s a totally different sitting graphic though, and I think it looks a lot cooler than the typical /sit. My guildmate, and high level diplomat, Faunis, completed several bartender quests, and how has enough of this stuff to have a serverwide sit down. I know there have been several threads discussing player desire to sit in chairs, and while we can’t do that right now, this is a pretty good alternative.
Now if I could only do jousting….
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Vanguard General | Comments (3)
April 20, 2007
If you yearn for the old days of Everquest, log in tonight and work on the shadowhound or unicorn mount quests. Listening to the shouts Wednesday night of people accusing each other of kill stealing, and watching people all hovering around one or two spawn spots, brought back memories of gankfests like Highhold Pass, where the average orc lifespan was somewhere around .5 seconds.
I chose instead to rise above it all and avoid both quests altogether. Ok, I really chose not to because A) it would take me about a year to finish it given my playtime and B) I’ve slowed down a lot in my old age and know I’d never win a free-for-all anymore. Instead, I went over to Southwatch, which is just north of New Targonor, to work on a quest line that I had been longing to do for sometime. I don’t even know the reward for the end of the quest. For me, the reward is the chance to test drive a griffon, and there is one quest in this series that allows you to do just that.
If you haven’t flown a griffon, either in beta or on the test server, and you want to get a peek at the future of flying mounts in Vanguard, I highly recommend this quest. I was lucky enough to get to try out griffons on three separate occasions during beta, and while there was a lot of stuff I liked about Vanguard, riding a griffon officially hooked me. I flew over a large portion of Qalia, and saw several areas of Thestra and Kojan. It was an absolute thrill to be able to fly anywhere I wanted in Telon, and it’s like nothing I’ve experienced in any game before. That’s not to say that I didn’t run into some unfortunate issues with the griffons, and god knows I played Icarus a couple of dozen times while flying around in beta, but from all reports, they are smoothing things out with them, and it’s gotten a lot better on the Test server. While I’m eager to get a griffon of my own one day, this “rent-a-griff” will satisfy me for the time being.
The quest starts at Beldra Goldhammer, who resides at the Goldhammer Hatchery, tucked in the switchbacks that lead up the mountain ridge in Southwatch. I believe the quest is offered at level 26, although it’s best to bring a partner if you are below level 31. Beldra is highly cranky, not only because she lost her lover, but also because the griffons of Moritha’s Pride are constantly under attack from the Silvertalon Pride, and she’s got her hands full trying to keep them healthy. Your first task is to bring some bells up to Moritha’s Pride, further up along the mountain, to be blessed by Petrenn. Keep a mental note of this location, because this is where you will need to go in order to test fly your griffon.
When you get back to Beldra, she asks you to visit Amy Mullen, who is down the hill at the Widow’s Veil Lighthouse, to pick up some leather for griffon harnesses. Of course, good old Amy blew it and sent the leather up north to Frosthammer to support the battle at the wall. (Something I plan to check out eventually!) So you have to go kill some yetis and bring the hides back to her as replacement. The Ridgefury Brutes can be found in two different spots, both marked on the map, and they are 3 dotters around level 30-31. After getting the hides and returning to Amy, you are sent back to Beldra, where she fashions them into a harness and asks you to fly a griffon down to Beranid Watchtower, to slay some of the harassing Silvertalon griffons.
It’s time to fly a griffon! In your inventory you’ll notice a talon. Put that into the flying mount slot in your mount equipment window (where your horse is), and click on it to summon your griffon. There are a few limitations to keep in mind. First, you can only summon it if you are at Moritha’s Pride, the Beranid Watchtower, or the Silvertalon Pride. You are also limited in how far you can take it, because the griffon gets tired and throws you off (chunking with a griffon is not 100% reliable yet so I think that’s a big part of it). You will get a big yellow warning message, so don’t ignore it unless you want to test out your safe fall skill. You also only have an hour to use it too, although you can now abandon the quest, return to Beldra, and get a new griffon over and over again if you want to keep flying.
To actually get your griffon to take flight, you have to hit space two times while moving forward. I learned this the hard way during beta, where I excitedly ran off the side of the Cliffs of Ghelgad, all ready for my Harry Potter moment, and plunged to my death on the rocks below. Talk about a baptism of fire! Steering is very intuitive, just like riding a horse, only with the added ability to ascend and descend.
While you are limited in how far you can fly, there are several neat spots to visit. I buzzed the Widow’s Lighthouse, the Southwatch wall, and eventually made it to the mountains overlooking Bordinar’s Cleft. If anyone knows of any other neat spots to fly by that are within the leash distance, I’d love to hear them!
This quest series was a bit buggy in the past, but they cleaned it up and patched through fixes yesterday, and I had no problems with it at all last night. Thanks to some helpful tips from a friendly dwarf named Derb, I had a great night of flying through the mountains of Southwatch.
So if you are looking to test out a griffon, or you are someone who is trying to finish the shadowhound/unicorn quests and screaming “SERENITY NOW! SERENITY NOW,” head over to Southwatch and check in with Beldra. Just don’t mention anything about her lover.
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Vanguard Level 30-35 | Comments (0)
April 18, 2007
Over the weekend, two of my guildmates, Tyga and Flayle, gave a guided tour of the Bounty Hunter quests in Seawatch Coast. In short, you are tasked with completing a series of hunting missions in order to gain bounty hunter rank badges. The tasks involve killing lots of very large things, and the reward is three great armor upgrades. In addition, these quests have some fun easter eggs and interesting twists.
You can get to Seawatch Coast by taking the Stranden Point teleport from the NPC on the Khal docks. Once there, you head northeast (if I remember correctly!) to a small village, where you’ll find a few quests. The first quest we worked on was from a kurashasa that was kneeling nearby the village, which is fitting, since the kurashasa are born hunters. He asked us to kill a large snake named Bhadreth, who turned out to be pretty easy considering how large he was.
For our work, we earned a rank one bounty hunter badge. There are 5 total ranks of badges, and you can find the quest summaries over here. There are two bounty hunter quests offered for the first four ranks, and you need to do both rank one quests in order to get the other ones that are offered at the village back on the coast. When you have completed both quests for a particular rank, you can turn in the badges for a reward. The first three ranks all offer neck rewards, but the rank three necklace is far superior to the first two rank necklaces. (Why three necklaces for the same quest line? I have no idea, other than that perhaps bounty hunters like a lot of bling) The fourth rank reward is a nice pair of pants, and the rank five reward is a great chestpiece.
After killing a giant snake, we were ready for more of a challenge. The next rank one task asked us to kill little centipedes and loot segments of their body, which we had to combine into a big gross pile and drop in a certain spot in order to lure a giant Carnipede who apparently likes to eat his own kind. The quest was called “Carnipedes in the Mist,” which I guess is an homage to the film “Gorillas in the Mist,” although I don’t recall any gorillas running around eating their own. It would have been a much better film, though, if the monkeys ate Sigourney Weaver, but I digress.
We laid the bait, killed the giant bug, collected our badge, and traveled back to the coastal village, where my groupmates gave me a lecture because apparently they didn’t appreciate the fact that I aggroed every annoying trash mob along the way. I swear my camel has a huge aggro radius.
Next up were two quick rank two quests, one to kill a large lump of monster grass and return the package to the person who dropped it out of fear. The other was to leave a chest of rocks in the crossroads in order to lure and kill a bandit who’s been harassing the locals. Two up, two down, necklace number two attained, and it was on to a couple of funny quests for rank three.
The first one asked us to kill an animated golem who had gone haywire and had been causing much destruction along the coast. His name is Number Five, which is a neat little reference to the film Short Circuit. The golem even yells “NO DISASSEMBLE! NO DISASSEMBLE” as you attack it. (We disassembled it)
An even funnier easter egg can be found in the other rank three quest, which asks you to track down an arena fighter and his trainer, who apparently threw a fight. The fighter, Hito Tortiz, and his trainer, Saool S’oliz, are a reference to Tito Ortiz and his trainer Saul Solice, of Ultimate Fighting Championship fame. It’s a good way to get your Fight Club on, if you are into that stuff. (Which I am not!)
The last two quests in the Bounty Hunter series, one rank four and one rank five, ask you to first track down a mad psionist named Monvro Vhad, who was in the process of locating a legendary katana named Shiro, but ended up going mad. The sword was so well crafted that the maker took his own life afterwards, knowing that he could never make another one as great. I’m going to guess there are more references to real life pop culture in there somewhere, but I haven’t figured that out.
In any case, poor Monvro had to die, and turning in his journal gave us the rank 4 badge, which we turned in for some nice legs. The only thing left now was to follow the directions in Monvro’s journal to retrieve Shiro. Of course, the darn sword was cursed, and wasn’t going without a fight. A very large, shadowy, kurashasan manifestation appeared, and was definitely the hardest fight of the evening. I was in good company, though, and we all walked away with the katana.
This was a lot of fun, and great for anyone in their early to mid 30s looking for upgrades to chest, legs, and neck. There’s a theory in baseball that if you are solid “up the middle,” (catcher, pitcher, shortstop, center field), you have the makings for a pennant winning team. If the same holds true for gear, this is the perfect quest.
Cool Moment of the Day: I liked a lot about this quest line, particularly because it is full of easter eggs. But my favorite part was the fact that every important mob we had to kill was huge. Even the dark elf bandit towered over us! We even killed a giant blue spiny crab that roamed the beach, although I think I did about 5 total damage to him. Killing big things is cool.
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Vanguard Level 30-35 | Comments (3)