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)
April 16, 2007
I recently finished up the Legends of Trengal Keep quest line. I have a love/hate relationship with that dungeon, but that’s what also makes it so endearing to me. As I wrote before, this former Thestran keep is now home to a variety of orcs, goblins, drakes, meteors, and many other creepy things. If you are also working on the “Crux” quests, you can eventually get a ring that will summon Karujin Gulgrethor, who massacred the Martok and stole The Harvester. It’s visually stunning, and enormous – it sports a large courtyard as well as two underground areas. There is enough here to keep people busy for weeks, and it’s great for anyone level 23 and up, although I would recommend not going too far into the dungeon till at least level 25.
Above: Rancorr faces off with a Gulgrethor orc.
Trengal Keep is the kind of dungeon that really tears up bad pick up groups, which I found out the hard way a couple of times. Luckily, there are plenty of guildmates who are willing to roll up their sleeves and tackle a tough dungeon. Thanks to my friend Fizzi Fazzle, I was able to see some amazing things and finish up the Legends line to get a nice cloak! Fizzi is one of those people who just plain knows how to play, and I’m lucky to have known her for years now. She has a way of bringing everyone’s game up to another level, which is important because her favorite stomping grounds are deep inside hair-pullingly difficult dungeons, where there is little room for error.
Fizzi was nice enough to take several groups of guildies through here, and she put together a great guide for the Legend of Trengal Keep quests. She was nice enough to let me post it here and share it with others. (With a few notes from me here and there) I hope others find it as helpful as I did!
The Legend of Trengal Keep:
Note: When fighting in from the front of TK, be careful of trains!
Part 1 is straightforward. Go into the front of the TK (main entrance). Kill everything in sight. Keep working your way straight in. You’ll get all mobs you need.
*NOTE* The front courtyard is also where you can complete the quest for Aarond’s Notes as well as the first “Study a brick” quest for the Thestran cornerstone crafting quest. Aarond’s notes can be found in a dilapidated building on the left as you head in. You’ll see a plank leaning on the ruined building. Climb that, work your way around the ledge, and you’ll see the notes, which have a fast respawn. The brick you need to study is also in a ruined building on the left (I can’t remember for sure but it might be the same building.) You’ll have to study it a few times for the update so keep trying if you don’t succeed!
Part 2 is also pretty straightforward, but you’ll need to go in quite a bit deeper. Go in straight, past the pit with the rock-thingys in it. After a point, you wont be able to go in the foward direction anymore, so head right. The clouds that you need will be in this right turn area. This is also train-city, so be careful. Once you emerge from this turn area, you’ll start seeing the skellies you need and the casters. Mow em down, but remember that the clouds are the bottle neck for this quest. Note also the pit that you see beetles in. You need that for Part 3.
Above: Heading to the Beetles!
Part 3 isn’t too bad if you know where to go. So I’ll tell you! Fight back in all the way to the beetles you saw doing Part 2. The beetles are in a pit that has a left hand side and a right hand side (cause there is stuff in the middle, duh). Kill everything in the left hand side and then move to the right hand side. Kill the beetles, and now you have all 10. Now that you’re on the right hand side, you will see a wall in front of you (probably with a big spider on it). You need to get up that wall. Go to the wall and make your way leftward and you will be able to get up it. Gratz. There are all the spiders you need in this area. Kill the 10 you need, but note, while you’re on the wall, to the right of you and in front a bit, that there is a fallen pillar. You need to go up that pillar to get your crystal. You will know it is the correct pillar because it has a spider on it about halfway up. Make your life easy by going up the ridges of the pillar, kill the spider, get to the very top you’ll be on a ledge. work your way left and out on a plank-like thing. There is your crystal. You’re done with part 3.
Part 4 is a PIA. This is because you really have to go in deep, and if you wipe, you’re in for a longish CR and lost time.
Fight all the way in to the fallen pillar of Part 3. There is an entrance in the ground you need to find. You can find it by imagining that you’re walking down the fallen pillar and that you keep going a little ways (and slightly to the right) into the ruins you come upon. Poke around a bit and you’ll see an entrance that goes underground. That’s it.
Above: Entry for the Arcanium, needed for part 4.
Go on in. This area isn’t very big, but this is tough stuff because of chain agro. The first room you break has a couple of roamers that will chain everything on you. Be careful of roamers in general. Be careful of other groups training you. The 5 dots are easy. The 4 dot little spiders you come upon later are very very tough, undercons. Just go really slow and you will get your two locations and mobs.
A safe spot for a CR is in the room with the three mobs (center one is a skelly) tight on the wall to the left. Note it before you proceed into the hallway on the right that has the spiders.
Part 5 (and heart of Steel quest while we’re at it).
On the side of TK (roughly in the center) that faces the quest giver area there is a small entrance hidden behind a smallish mob spawn area. Make your way there and enter the Keep.
Make your way to the right and pass through the open gate. Keep going and soon you’ll see the chapel ahead and to the right. The mobs you want are in here. However, to make it to the chapel, you will pass Fizzi’s unlucky chain agro of death area. That is, it seems that the rock mobs in front of the chapel have a huge agro radius and will agro from afar for no reason. Proceed with caution. If you are grouped with a bard, use invis.
*NOTE* If you are doing the Thestra cornerstone quest for crafting, you can find the second brick in front of Fizzi’s unlucky death chapel. Study it!
Go into the chapel and start killing your mobs. They are all there, and this should be straightforward.
To do the Heart of Steel quest while you’re in the area, come out of the chapel using one of the “front” doors. Head straight out and a little to the left using invis or clearing the obnoxious rocks that are all spawned there. Eventually you will come to a plank that leads down into pit with shallow water. Kill a few mobs down there and your drop for the quest will drop. Evac out now or head back to where you came into TK by the side door.
To get to the Part 5 turn in NPC is actually a lot of fun. As you reenter TK from the side entrance turn left and make your way to the leaning pillar the leans against the Keep’s outer wall. (Also, make sure that you’ve set your compass to track the turn in NPC, Sage Soandso.) Climb that pillar to get to the top of the wall; nearing the top, a jump or two can help. Go to the right once up top. Using your compass make your way to the NPC. There is a point where you move to a lower wall level. Nothing sees through invis up here, so if you’re grouped with a bard, you’re golden.
Part 6 is pretty straightforward. (This part is added by me so if it has errors don’t blame Fizzi!). As before, you head in through the sewer on the side of the wall, and cross over the fallen pillar to the spot marked on the map. Invis helps make this a short trip. As you clear the dungeon to the shrine, you’ll get plenty of updates for the quest to kill orcs. There is also a chance you’ll get “Nishek’s whip,” which is needed to summon Nishek for the Crux of Trengal Keep quest. We unfortunately didn’t try it, because the room was bugged and there were double spawns of orcs stacked on top of each other in the summoning room, but hopefully we’ll try that down the road.
As for the shrine update, if you crawl straight from the stairs, and then take a left when you can’t go straight anymore, you should reach the room. You’ll know it because it’s at the bottom of some stairs, and it has two rows of orcs guarding it. If you carefully pull enough from the entrance, you can work your way around the left side of the shrine room, and get close enough to get the update. When you’re done, you head back up the fallen pillar to the wall, to meet up with Sage Ezelen, and you now have a sporty hooded cloak and the honor of having completed the quest line!
Above: “Scenic” overlook of the Trengal Keep courtyard.
Cool Moment of the Dungeon Crawl: Our group had a bit of unexpected danger as we went to meet with Sage for the last time. We reached the wall, ready to turn in, only to find her missing! Eventually we spotted her down below in the courtyard, fighting about 12 mobs! I guess she was tired of standing around and decided to go pick a fight with the locals. We made our way down to her and hailed her between rounds of combat, and then stuck around to help her finish off the glob of monsters she was fighting. It may have been a bug, but it was neat to have one final battle to cap things off. It was a very fitting end to an extremely fun dungeon crawl.
Thanks again Fizzi, for letting me share this great guide to a fun dungeon!
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Vanguard Level 25-30 | Comments (1)
April 6, 2007
River Valley, and the Flower Palace, are two spots that I got a peek at during the beta griffin events, and when I saw them I couldn’t wait till I’d be able to see them on foot once I was high enough. I had mentally filed it away until I stumbled on it while looking for a spot to do some lumberjacking. I needed to find some evil Treants, and ended up finding a whole lot more.
Above: Volaren Towers in River Valley.
If you are level 28+, this is a great spot to do some solo and duo quests. It’s not easy to find, but it’s full of eye candy once you get there. You can reach it through the Shidreth Mining tunnel, just behind the Shidreth Mining camp in Qalia. If you did any of the Infineum stuff you’ll recognize the area. There’s a great little turf war too – the Shidreth miners tunneled right into the side of a cliff structure that is populated by Vizarian Sirens. While you start out friendly to the Shidreth miners, you can certainly choose to side with the Vizarians, and if you do, Imirial the Seducer offers you a few quests that, when completed, reward you with a panther illusion mask that give a run speed buff. The walkthrough is here at Vanguard Rangers, but be prepared to encounter overcamped tunnels and lots of waiting for spawns!
Above: Vizarian Temple in River Valley.
*Side Note* Vanguard Rangers now has a full walkthrough of the Infineum quest series, thanks to Legendamar. It’s great, and hopefully he’ll do a Pantheon walkthrough as well!
As far as quests for the Valley area, you can get a couple of quests at the Shidreth Mining camp, including one to kill treants, which worked for me since I was working on lumberjacking. There is also a quest offered inside the mine tunnel to kill Vizarians, and two quest tents in the Valley Itself. One is on the South side of the Valley, which you can reach by taking the first elevator on your left and heading west along the river wall. If you run into a bunch of lethargic filth, it’s just west of there. There is another on the north side of the river too, but I haven’t gotten to it yet, partially because of time and partially because I don’t have any more room in my journal. Almost all the quests are solo or duo tasks, so it’s a nice spot to get through the high 20s and low 30s.
Above: Outside view of the Vizarian cliffside structure.
At the far end of the Valley is the Flower Palace, which I got a peek at last night with a guild group. We killed one mob and decided that it was a bit above our heads, but it looks like there’s some kind of Vizarian worship going on in there. On the way out we killed a named shadowhound that took for freaking ever to kill, and ended up dropping a tooth. Must be a quest mob!
I like this spot a lot, not only because it’s visually stunning, but also because it’s a nice change of pace from the heavy quest lines I’ve been working on in places like Fallen Lyceum, Trengal Keep, and Infineum Plateaus. I love dungeon crawling and big quest lines, but it’s nice to also have a night or two of easy grind quests, surrounded by great scenery, that still lets you feel like you accomplished something by the end of the night.
Cool moment of the day: As I was lumberjacking, I noticed that the treant had a curious bit of carving on its back. A closer look revealed the letters “SB + LH 4VR.” I’d love to know who SB and LH are, and whether it’s a dev easter egg (I don’t see any devs with either pair of initials) or whether they are names of in game NPCs who wanted to immortalize their love for each other. Either way, I got a nice laugh out of it.
Above: SB + LH 4VR!
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Vanguard Level 25-30 | Comments (3)
April 5, 2007
Benjamin Franklin once said that “in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
Well here we are in Vanguard, in a glass cage of emotion, debating the good old mechanics of death again. I guess Ben Franklin was a gamer!
Apparently the Sigil Dev team is not going to follow through with the proposed changes to the death penalty system. I guess I was in the minority in believing that it wasn’t really a big change. I don’t want to rant and vent about the death system, because I wouldn’t be able to do it nearly as well as others. But apart from the fact that death would take a little less experience, I’d be willing to bet that the new system they were planning to implement wouldn’t change how most players have been coping with death, because the only real change they were making is taking out the whole concept of bind stones.
There must be some data out there to tell how many players actually are using bind stones on their gear. I’m willing to bet that it’s a tiny fraction, and that many people don’t even know what they are. Brad McQuaid also has mentioned several times that lots of players aren’t aware of altars, and that there is a false assumption that you must fight back to your corpse.
The current death system is just not being used as it was envisioned. Few people bind their gear, fewer carry a second set as backup, and if people do fight back to their tombstones, it’s most likely to recover their gear, rather than regain the lost exp. Putting in essences streamlines the death experience, rather than dumb it down.
The problematic part of the new death system was the issue it would create with bindable gear competing against crafted gear on the brokers. People that were binding their gear before would no longer do so, and that would mean even more of it would have hit the broker. That could be easily remedied with the “Bind on Equip” system of WoW, or the attunement system of EQ2. (same thing different names) In any case, it’s interesting to see yet another debate about death in online gaming!
On another note, I bet if Benjamin Franklin were a mmorpg gamer he’d amend his quote to say that the only things certain are death, taxes, and the eternal question, “where the heck do I hunt?” With a world as large as Telon, and resources scattered around on tons of fansites, it’s hard to know where to go at what level. The Vanguard Dungeon Finder and Sypher’s Spawn Maps are great resources, as are the recently updated Silky Venom Wiki, and Curse Gaming’s quest database, but there are a few spots that seem to get overlooked, and are great areas to check out. Here are a few nice spots that helped me get through my early and mid 20s.
Vampire Slayer Village/Ulla’s Tower: (Thestra) These are two nice spots to pick up quests that can be done solo in your early 20s. The Vampire Slayer Village offers a quest to hunt over at Veshka’s Monastery, a great little spot if you are looking for easy pull, level 19, 2 dot mobs. Ulla’s Tower sends you to a poacher camp that also has level 19ish mobs, although these are 3 dots.
Coastal Graveyard: (Thestra) This is a nice spot for soloing and duoing in the early 20s. If you’re into “grinding” type quests, check out the quests at Alicia’s Graveyard, as well as the Wrenfold Bandits quests and two good quests that involve killing the ghosts of all the shipwrecked sailors on the coast (Ghostly Grog and Haunted Lighthouse). These involve killing mobs that are 3 dot, 20ish mobs. If you’re into traveling, there’s a quest that asks you to visit three lighthouses located along the cliffs, where you can then pick up even more quests. (make sure to check out the Neighbor Coast Lighthouse – you literally have to hop the fence to get in).
Above: The effects of the Sirens – Coastal Graveyard.
If you have a partner or a small group, check out the sirens just off shore. (It’s no wonder there are so many wrecked ships nearby!). There is a quest NPC on a rock near the island that gives a few quests, and a goblin on the shore that asks you to hunt for ingredients on the island. The sirens and hags are 3 dot, level 22-24ish mobs, and they run so it’s good to have snare. There is also a nice little “event” you can trigger from the quest, where you can summon Maera, boss hag of Siren Island. She has friends though, so you’ll definitely need a good group for it.
Also, since you are in the area, if you have time, check out the Deebs for a fun quest called “Making a Splash in the Deebs,” given out by Guard Abery on the north western bridge. If you were the kind of person in EQ that would jump into a pool of water to try to pickup 1k copper that someone sadistically dropped there, you will love this quest.
Above: The view from the Deebs Bridge. I’m about to make a splash!
The Guard will ask you to jump through three wisp rings and return to him for a reward of one copper. The jump is hilariously fun, as long as you don’t hit the rocks below, but it takes for freaking ever to run all the way around the cliff to get back up to him. It’s a cool spot, if you have time to kill!
Shrine of the Flame: (Thestra) This is hard to find, but it’s just to the east off the road as you leave Three Rivers and turn south towards New Targonar. There are a few quests here to kill Ahsendregs, given by the fairies at the shrine. I just noticed this spot, but it looks like the quests are for level 23ish, and the Ashendregs seem to be 2 dot mobs around level 25ish.
Above: Shrine of the Eternal Flame in the moonlight.
Trengal Keep: (Thestra) I wrote about this dungeon before, and while it’s a great place for a group, it also has a lot of quests that a small group can do in the mid 20s, or someone soloing could do in their late 20s. The nice thing about this spot is that you have plenty to do, so even if you are waiting for a group you can still kill a few spiders in the meteors nearby, or pick off some of the Gulgrethor orcs that patrol the area, and grab a little extra experience as well as some decent rewards. Just watch out for those Ebon Drakes!
Those are a few spots that I have enjoyed in my 20s. There are plenty of places to go though, and I’m constantly annoying my guildmates by rambling on and on about things I want to see and do. The abundance of things to do, combined with the fact that there is no one path to progression, makes the game great, but also makes it challenging to find out where to go. Hopefully this provides a few more options, and some nice alternatives to the Donovan’s Roost/Infineum route. I’d love to hear of any other good hunting spots for the 20s, so feel free to share some!
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Vanguard Level 20-25 | Comments (2)