Gaming Diary – Sinking Sands Carpet Quest

Jitter has been saving for a new mount. What I really wanted was either a

Mistrunner or

 

Nightmare, but it would leave me broke. So on hitting 47 I decided to go and do my Carpet of El`khazi Quest. It is a 4 part quest kiven to you by El`khazi the carpet vendor in SS. Me and another guildie, Ryuwo a 70 ‘Zerker duoed all of it upto the 4th quest (at this point I’d like to say thankyou to Ryuwo, without him I wouldnt have got as far i this game as I have already). On reaching the 4th part I called on another guildie a 52 Fury and his friend a 47 Manaburn Wizard, a 55 Wizard friend of mine and a guildie from my original EQ2 guild (Synergy) called Benjirii a 70 Monk. We wiped 5 times on the Djinn. First time his AoE hit the healers and casters and killed us stone dead. Four more wipes and I was ready to give up (the 2 tanks were mentoring to 55) so we tried on last time.

The wizzy’s hit the Djinn with everything incuding manaburn then the tanks when hell-for-leather on him, with the 2 healers out of AoE range and healing like crazy, we took the Djinn down in under 40 seconds and I got my Carpet.

Well I was told it couldnt be done with group level of 55 max, but we did and Jitter now has his carpet. I seriously do want one of the Mistrunner or Nightmare steeds, but i think that I will do the Warg quest next and get a Warg.

 Maybe one day, when I have 19pp to spare I’ll buy Jitter a horsie as well, but for now I have my new Axminster Steed and I am happy.

A big thankyou for everyone who helped me.

Mentoring and the Epic Drop Rate

Having spent a few hours in Cazic Thule, getting, I must say, some very good XP (doing a level in about 2 hours) the group finally broke up, as the tank needed sleep. I am not sure why, but trying to find a tank in the mid 40s on Splipaw is like trying to get fabled drops off yard trash, they dont exist, anyway I digress. A shout goes up in chanel raid forming to kill x2 Epic Nightblood in Rivervale. So i send a tell to the Raid Leader and get in the MT group – Defiler always seems to be the healer of choice in a MT group. After about 30 minutes the raid is formed 50% of which is 60+ players mentoring down to me (level 45) which is an ideal level for the Nightblood. So we kill it and it drops a Treasure Chest – boo, no Exquisite or Ornate Chest. So we kill the x2 Epic Lamia around the corner – no drop at all. The raid heads over to the Enchanted Lands and we kill Cragshell x2 Epic Crab, he only drops a Treasure Chest, then run across the zone to kill the Overseer x2 Epic who again only drops a treasure chest – see a pattern ?

This is not the first time that I have seen suge a poor drop rate from highly mentored groups. Technically it shouldn’t make a difference, if a player mentors to your level, the kill should be equivalent to a group at the mentored level, but it isnt. I am not sure if it the effect of having a mentoring player that has a lot of AAs, but they do seem to help. Not once in any four of the raid targets that we hit, did the tanks health (a level 70 ‘zerker, mentoring down to 40s) drop beneath 90% health and the mobs were dead within a few minutes. Raid targets are supposed to be a challenge and these weren’t. maybe the game mechanic realises this and rewards accordingly, but I am sure that this isnt how the devs originally intended it to be.

The Perpetual Epic

EQ1 introduced us to the idea of the Epic, a quested item, specific to a class that was, at the time, one of the best items in the game for your class. As things progressed, the Epic item didnt scale and slowly after several more expansions, epics became little more than trophies, but were rarely used. To combat this, SoE introduced Epic 1.5 and Epic 2 items, but again will suffer from the same mudflation and eventually they too wil become little more than trinkets. EQ2 doesnt quite have epics yet, but had the same issues with the Prismatic series of weapons, they are already superceded.

What I am proposing is the perpetual epic, an item that grows with you as you level. It wont always be the best item at your level, but it will be situational, but tailored to your choosing. let me explain. At level 10 you undertake your initial epic quest for your class. This will be a tough solo quest and will reward you with your base epic item. I am a Defiler so my base epic is called The Mace of Hate and it will have nice stats for a weapon of my level, maybe +4wis , +4int +10 to all resists. At level 15 I get the option to do a series of quests, the choice being, solo, single group or raid. But there wont be just 1 of each you may get a choice of 4, but you can only select 1. The 4 options give 4 types of reward which are all adornments for your Epic but, depending on whether you choose to do the solo, group or raid version of that quest line, depends on how nice the reward is, but not rediculously so. So for example my 4 choices are:

• Quest of Knowledge – gives a Wis adornment
• Quest of Intellect – gives an Int adornment
• Quest of Health – gives  Health adornment
• Quest of Power – gives a Power adornment

 So I choose Quest of Power, now I have 3 options, solo, group or raid. The 3 rewards may be solo gives +5 power, group gives +5 power, +20 Devine, raid gives +5 power +15 to all resists.

As you can see the differences arent huge, but big enough to reward the greater difficulty. remember you can only choose 1 quest line per 5 levels. Combined with this the item will automatically gain stats every 10 levels, so that even if you choose not to do any adornment quests the Epic will still be an OK weapon to use.

If you complete the adornment quest you will be given an adornment item, so I finish my level 15 Power quest my reward is Sparkling Opal of Power and a crafting recipe. I then have to take my Mace and the Opal to a forge, and using the recipe I combine the 2 (in a no fail combine) to produce a new Mace of Hate. At some levels the quest line maybe additional stats, sometimes they may be resists, sometimes there maybe a choice of procs or flowing thought. As you add more adornments, the stats that you gain also add, but the procs wont. the procs will overwrite any previous proc, which is logical as they become more powerful. Again the proc rewards maybe similar to the equivalent spell drops, so the solo reward is an Adept 1 proc, the Group and Adept 3 and the Raid a Master 1 version or they may all have the same proc, but the chances of it proccing get higher with the level of quest, solo 10%, group 16%, raid 23%.

This way every person gets to have an individual Epic item and the adornments that they choose at each level can suit their play style. Early on you may solo and so choose solo quests. Then at level 30 you join a guild and you can get help with your Epic quests, so you choose to do Group quests and so it goes on. Some quests may also have the effect of changing the physical appearance of the Epic., for example some adornments may give particle effects, such as fire or glowing blade, others may produce lightning or haze the weapon, others may actually change its colour physically.

As you progress in levels the choice of adornments will also improve, until at the level cap for that expansion you may get a choice of just 2 very cool quest lines. The choice for the Defilers Mace of Hate maybe a clicky effect, being either:

• Self Resurrect with 90% health restored
• Group Resurrect 90% health restored, out of combat (Area Effect Resurect, all fallen group members within 50m) or Group Resurrect 30% health restored in combat.

 These will be raid only options, as the overall reward is very significant and will make them class defining weapons. This event will only be available at the current expansion level cap and will scale. So Defilers completing it with DoF could potentially get it at level 60 whereas if they are not level 60 when KoS went live, they would have to wait until level 70 to try. This may seem unfair as you may have level 60 Players with their Epic with its Epic Adornment whereas there maybe level 69 players without it, but this is supposed to be a defining adornment and should not be available to everyone easily.

I understand that this maybe a lot of hard work for the game devs, but it is a way to combat mudflation on epics and bring a little bit of individuality to a fairly linear series of quests. It also gives players who may never or rarely get the chance to raid the ability to gain at one nice piece of equipment at any given level of the game.

Gaming Diary – Dwarven Ringmail Tunic HQ

Not too much gaming this week, rl demands have pulled me in other directions. I did some grinding and a little harvesting in the Feerrott for the first time, nice to see that all my old harvesting spots are still there. I got into a few RunnyEye groups and managed to push Jitter onto 41.

Last night I finished my 10th Heritage Quest – In Honour and Service aka Dwarven Ringmail Tunic. This is a long and tedious journey around Greater Faydark with some camping of rare-ish spawns involved. Infact KSing is alive and well in EQ2, after shouting up in zone that we were camping The Expedition Leader  (a semi rare spawn) and anyone that wanted him was free to join us, he popped 3 minutes later (after over an hour of camping) 0 we were sitting right infront of his spawn, when a lvl 27 Troubadour runs in and kills him infront of us, then says ‘oh sorry were you after him, only I have come here specifically to kill him !!!!!’ then ran off. I am not going to mention his guild, but this is the second time a member of this guild has KSed me over a mob, once more they all go on ignore. Anyway another 2 hours of camping and we finally popped him. The remainder of the quest was a cakewalk after that and we were all rewarded with our Dwarven Ringmail Tunic.

I am also in a bit of a quandry as to which AA lines I want to choose. Unfortunately when I first returned to EQ2 I didn’t have the KoS expansion so I put 27 of my 40 AAs into my defiler AA tree, since getting the KoS expansion I have been putting AAs into my Shaman Tree – currently I have 4-4-4-1 in Wis and 1 in dogdog. I want to get the final spell – Ritual of Alacrity in the Wis line then need to choose what next. My gut feeling currently is Int – as the perma-dot seems a nice damage bonus - I am not a melee priest 

Gaming Diary – Haddens Earing HQ

Sitting on the docks in Nek Forest I shouted up in channel 37 Defiler LFG, virtually straight after, 4 other 30somethings shout up LFG. So I quickly decided to put a group together and see what we could do. We were short of a tank, so I shouted up for a tank, and whilst waiting, trotted over to the Enchanted Lands to Kill Burnspear – I hate that wasp.

We decided that a romp around the Ruins of Varsoon was in order and headed over to the Thundering Steppes, at the same time, I got a tell from a 41SK – bingo we had our tank and off we went. Most of the mobs in RoV were green to us – which meant faster kills and faster xp. I think that we took down every named in RoV at least once, including Varsoon himself. Master Chests were falling like confetti at a wedding and I think it is fair to say we all left with a huge amount of ‘phat lewt’.

Whilst inside RoV I finished all the required parts for Haddens Earing, namely killing Hrath T’vol a 32^^^Heroic Skelly so when I left all that was left was speaking to Kerath McMarrin on the docks of Thundering Steppes, then killing the nasty little gnome who is Captain Krieger, a 31^^^Heroic. I recruited a bit of help to kill him, as he hits like a train and would have wiped me had I tried solo. Once dead another chat to Kerath McMarrin and was rewarded with a Fishbone Earing (+8 STA   +8 AGI   +31Health   +25 Power +202 vs. Disease   +134 vs. Divine   +168 vs.Magic,  AC 55, Effect: Water Breathing) and 27,900 Status Points

Not bad for a nights work.

Congratulations Cuppycake

Listening to the ‘Shut Up. We’re Talking Podcast’ last night, Cuppy aka Tami announced that this would be her last podcast due to the fact that she has a new job. So it is with sadness I say congratulations Cuppy, I hope that all goes well in your new position as Community Manager for Areae Inc.

Cuppy, you are a brilliant podcaster and your departure from the podcasting community will be felt by many of us. Conversley what the podcasting community loses the MMO community will gain in spades, so I hope that all goes well for you, both in your relocation to San Diego and in your new job with Areae.

You can read more about Cuppy’s new job here.

I hope that Raph realises that he has someone special in employing you and looks after you well. Best Wishes

Mushii

EQ2 and UK Distribution Problems

Since returning to EQ2 I realised that I was 2 expansions short, EoF and KoS so I decided to visit my local Game to see if they had boxed copies of either – in short they had neither. I asked if they could order a copy in for me, to be told no. So I decided to trawl the web to see if I could order a boxed copy online – not one UK supplier had a copy of EoF. One or two placed had KoS but they wanted £30 +p&p !!

Some of you may say, well just buy the electronic downloads and in the end that is what I did, but firstly I like having a box (especially all the nice little in game extras that you get with a boxed set) and secondly as EoF had all previous expansions included, why should I pay twice when I could have got everything for half the price.

So my question is what is the problem? Is it as I have always suspected UbiSoft dont give a rats ass about the MMO market in the UK. Or is it that SoE dont really care about the UK market? My gut feeling after 7 years of playing SoE MMOs is both. Anything to do with PS2 or PS3 SoE seem to move heaven and earth to fill shelves with their games – so why did they let UbiSoft handle the european distribution of their flagship MMO?

Combine this distribution issue with the lack of advertising (unlike Blizzard’s WoW campaigns) and I really do wonder what SoE’s intent is with regard to their European market. At every turn European gamers feel marginalised compared to their NA couterparts – few live events, no Fan Faire (ever), no limited edition boxed sets and now no boxed copies of games at all!! Now I am no marketing major but this sure seems like a strange strategy for a company to market its products, particularly in a market where the likes of Blizzard have shown what the actual potential is.

Gaming Diary – Guise of the Deceiver HQ

As I have previously stated I am a bit of an HQ junkie in EQ2. Jitter currentluy has 5 HQs ongoing and 5 HQs completed so far, so last night I decided I need to go and kill Lord Everling in Nektopos castle to advance my Haddens Earing HQ and get the Guise of the Deceiver HQ at the same time. Fortunately one of my guildies who also wanted to advance Haddens Earing and get the Guise of the Deceiver HQ done, had access to all of the castle, so we went to get a group. 20 minutes of shouting up for a group in channel yielded no response, so we decided to shout up for a group to get the GOTD HQ – I was flooded with tells – including 2 tanks (and they are harder to find than hen’s teeth on Spltpaw at the moment).

Anyway we went on a romp around Nektropos Castle, we got the HQ and within 2 hours found our way down to Everlings Chamber. Just as we were about to kill Everling , Kayto, my guildie went LD. It was too late and we had to finish Everling off. The remaining 4 of us all got our update (by clicking the chest in the corner) and the other 3 gated out. I felt kinda bad as Kayto helps me with so many of my HQs so I decided to wait. 10 minutes later Kayto logged back on, his PC had crashed and his quest journal had not updated. Just out of chance I invited him back into group (as I know that in many quests the whole group gets an update for kills etc) and told him to click the chest, he was kinda sceptical but did it anyway. Bingo, in guild chat it pops up ‘Kayto has completed Guise of the Deceiver Heritage Quest – Earning status for the guild’ . I guess the moral is, if a group member goes LD on the final part of a quest, dont zone out, wait for them and see if they get the group update when they rejoin.