Off for the Holidays

Just a quick note to say have a great holiday period everyone.  Hopefully be a few updates while I see my mum and dad (who is a gamer too 😀 )

Happy Holidays!

Fastest way to get EQ2?

Ok so im sat here at work, hungover (thanks lads) and im off to my mum and dads tomorrow for christmas.  Now Ill need an EQ2 fix while I am away and therefore I need to decide how I do it.

I own the original copy of EQ2, so my choices of installing it are as follows:
1. Take my DVDs to my mum and dads, install from the disks and patch which could be hours… if not days!!!
2. Is there some sort of digital download for RoK? Am I able to download this and patch up?

 I think ill end up taking my copy of the game with me anyway just in case!  But on the other hand my mum and dad have just gotten a Wii so I may be playing on that too!

Merry Christmas Everyone, stay safe!

Borgeo Finstermoor – Level 80 Berserker!!

Well its been a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time in coming but this morning at about 1am I capped my first ever character in EQ2! Sure ive been playing since roughly 10 days after EQ2 release but I get sidetracked easily (WoW *shudders*) But last night was THE night!

Started well, Tanked both CoA and Vaults (Which rocks btw) and then started on the quests in Jarsath Wastes since we hadnt done them yet, well as soon as we found the repeatable ones which you can do four at once I was set, it only took 11 quests to do it but BOOM! DING LEVEL 80!!
I want to thank my lovely wife for supporting my habit during this endeavour. My Guild for having a grumpy dwarf zerker on raids and in groups and also everyone out there who knows the feeling of hitting the level cap for the first time ever!

So whats in store for me now? Well first off I need to upgrade my skills to Adept 3, so I guess ill be mining for a while. Then there is always my SK who is level 60. He was my first ever char so I think its only right he makes the trek to 80 too. Then there is always tradeskilling and moneymaking. Not to mention AA exp, questing and instance tanking!

Oh yes its good to be 80!

Tanking CoA

Well finally yesterday I tanked Crypts.  I logged in as nomal with the intent to do some solo stuff since Hun was out.  But got sucked into a Crypt group when our raid leader, Jeckle, asked if I was busy.  Now I am always wary of content untill I actually tank it and I must say its a blast to tank in EQ2, it really is!
First great thing about the night was the named utside the instance was up who dropped some Plate set gloves for me, Carv was pissed to say the least.

Group set up was; Berserker (me) Dirge, Inquisitor, Ranger, Brigand, and Warden.  The Warden was only level 72 though.

Now I must admit that when Rimheart (our brig) went nuts I would lsoe aggro, this has a lot to do with me always being out of power (stupid mob debuffs) but also due to all of my skills being Adept 1.  I think its time I started getting my Adept 3’s made, especially my taunts.

Anyhoo, only one wipe and one mistake by me in the whole place.  First mistake was tanking a boss in Offensive stance (im only 77 so still not confident to do bosses in Offensive) and got squished quickly.  The wipe came on the final boss who just took me out, the second try at him saw him defeated easily.
He didnt drop anything decent so I think ill go back tonight, im not afraid to tank it now so I dont need to be in Carvs group anymore, sure if he is offering me a spot ill go with him, as its easier for me then but now I can safely form my own groups for it 😀

Plan for tonight, COA! and also finish some more of the quests with hun, both of us are aiming to ding.  Im still 77 she is 75 but we both need less than 40%.
Rock on!

I saw you stab him in the face!!! Here have some Plat!

I find it funny as hell that there isnt some sort of penalty system in EQ2 for betraying a faction.  Case in point: We have just moved into the Kunzar Jungle and we are working faction for many places.  I cant remember the exact names but one is an Iksar town beginning with J and the other is some Sarnak Terrorists that dwell on a ridge behind the town.  Now they hate each other but Ive got enough faction with both that it doesnt matter.
One quest for the Sarnaks had me killing some Sentries and Villagers around the town beginning with J.  Now this is fine but when we got there and started massacring the hapless Iksar we noticed that we had a quest turn in, so we killed the last villager (SET FIRE TO SOME CARTS IN THE MIDDLE OF TOWN!) then turned in a quest and got some loot and gold…..  now this is insane, just imagine you are walking through town, when you see some guy run up to a random person, stab him in the face, then set fire to a taxi….. then the shopkeepers say, “Hey thanks for delivering that letter by the ay, here have some cash” All the while this guy is dripping blood of the shopkeepers neighbour.

I think it might be useful to have some sort of temporary faction debuff that if you are witnessed killing a faction member by others then for say 5 minutes you drop to -50000 faction and are KOS.  This would wear off after the 5 mins but any extra kills would reset the timer.  At least this would put a little more realism into the game!

Rant over, now where are we.  Im sat at 77 with Hunni at 75.  We went to the Crypt again yesterday and got sweet FA from it, pretty much only Treasure Chests dropped which was piss poor!  Hun is out tonight meaning im on my own. I think ill go through the Monk quests whic reward the titles (of the Clay or something or other) and maybe do some of the repeatable quests so that im not doing new content.

Have fun everyone!

Distinct Lack of Plate

Now……  Quest rewards from RoK are starting to annoy me.  Why the hell do I get offered all sorts of rewards up to chain whereas my wife only gets offered the jewelry and cloth?  Even the leather rewards I can plainly see and choose, she doesnt even get offered.  In the same vein, I dont get offered one bit of plate… nada, zilch, nothing.

I read on a forum somewhere that people think SOE messed up a little with the expansion and put a number wrong on a spreadsheet so that you are only seeing rewards from the armour type below you, and now I can fully believe this.  Will Sony admit to this mistake?  Probably not and it will be stealth fixed (if fixed at all) at a later date leaving all of us who have completed the quests and not gotten the rewards we should have high and dry.  Luckily I have an SK who is yet to start RoK so I can wait a while and then do the quests again in hope of plate.

Ok rant over and on to a different note: DING 76!  Yup thats right, last night I hit 76 and the wife hit 74. 
Carv, the Guardian and MT of our guild is adamant about gearing me up (which is nice) so he asked us to go to Crypts (I think it was crypts) last night with him and his wife Amissa (we are a very married guild lol)  Well Hunni had just dinged and popped off to get her spells (and mine as I needed 10%) and then we headed into the Jungle for the first time ever!
We stayed in stealth all the way down till we got to the instance and I must say it was a BLAST!  I dinged off of the second mob (god bless discovery exp) then we proceeded to clear the zone in around an hour.  My only gripe was that no tank loot dropped!!  Group setup was: Guardian, Berserker, Assassin, Dirge, Fury and Warden.  Not the best synergy but by god it worked well.  The Assassin (Slah), Guardian (Carv) and Warden (Amissa) were all 80 so that helped, hell Carv was tanking it with DW (till the final boss) .
Drops were so so, we had an upgrade of a bracer for Hunni and also her and Slah both got Masters for themselves!!!  The final boss is a bit of a cock but we downed him after some hilarity.

Slah got killed and Hun started to rez him, the Carv died, So I smacked Rescue to get the mob firmly on me…. of course the healers were busy rezzing so I died, then the dirge died then hun died…. I thought oh crap here we go (mob was on roughly 30%) Amissa runs forward and………  the boss starts twitching in one spot, not moving but attempting to run at Amissa… but not getting anywhere.  We had a giggle and Amissa rezzed Carv.  Then Rezzed the Dirge who in turn rezzed Hun who gorup rezzed me and Slah.  We healed up and finished him off but was fun to see.

 So what is the plan for tonight then?  Well we have two quests left in Fens then we will start KJ in earnest.  Maybe we will end up in another instance, Carv mentionned finishing work early so that will be cool!

Rock on!

New Links added

Just added some links to three blogs I like to read.

Cuppycake, Stargrace, and Kilanna, hopefully you will get some more traffic 🙂

EQ2 Weekend In Review: Emerald Halls, FTH, and Karnors Castle

Well the wife and I have been busy bunnies since the last entry.  Sorry for lack of comms over the weekend, but much questing ensued and also some raiding.
Saturday I tanked for a group for the first time since coming back this time around.  The last time I tanked for a group was back on EoF in Klakanon and that was on my SK!  It was with a guild group so I felt the need to impress.
Well it actually went along really well (DAMN those mobs hit hard though)  and we managed to get 4 quests done before we had to stop.  We even killed a named that was up on one of the ballista towers.  The drops?  An adept book…. to say we were dissapointed is an understatement, especially since the mob had a wicked knockback and I went flying down the other end of the zone!  Cue much laughing and our Guild Leader saying “Yeah I forgot he does that!”

Well we carried on levelling till Sunday where it was raid time!
The guild wanted to try Emerald Halls, so we went in there, managed to kill the wolf then went for some fairy guy with adds who proceeded to hack us to pieces, it was all a lot of fun though much repairing was needed.
After this was done it was decided to have an hour break then head to FTH to play in there.
I managed to win some new Shoulders from one of the bosses and Hunni won her first fabled item too!  All in all I like raiding in EQ2, especially with The Conclave.  Its a slower pace from WoW which I love, I cant be arsed with those sorts of raids anymore.

SO that was pretty much the weekend, I suppose you are wondering how we are progressing?  Well we are just moving on the the Bellywhumper(sp?) faction in the Fens with Hunni sat at level 73 and me at 75!  Yup 5 levels since the last entry!!!!!!!

Lets hope for a couple more!

Claymore Questline – Sanctum of the Scaleborn

Whinging Wife Syndrome!!!  Thats what ive got! Its only cure?  Doing Heroic Quests!!! 

What am I talking about? Well ever since I dinged 70 ive been able to go to the Ruins of Kunark to level, but I haven’t….. yet!  The wife on the other hand is too low to go so I need to help her level.  Ill occasionally get a phone call from her whilst at work complaining that she has no quests she can do and that they are all heroic.  I give the usual “Yes dear” response and tell her just to do some Lore and Legend or Language quests whilst im at work and when I get in we will do some heroics.

Well I got in last night and we decided to continue with the Claymore quest line, not only as I feel I SHOULD complete it but also as its a string of Heroic quests which are great exp.   So off to the Sanctum of the Scaleborn in Tenebrous Tangle we go.  The step of the quest line we were on required us to find some scrolls in the first chamber which were inside some little idols.  Destroying the idol made the scroll drop to the ground and then it was able to be looted……. well that was the plan…

Problem number one: I cant see the idols…. I can TAB target them, but not SEE them……  Thats fine as the wife CAN see them so she goers along merrily blasting them and looting the scrolls whilst I take care of the mobs in the room.  Once she has finished she then goes round again destroying the idols so I can loot them.
Problem number two:  Sometimes the scrolls disappear or dont even appear on the floor….  again fixed by waiting for the idol to repop and getting it again.

So with that lot done we talk to the Shade of the dragon thing in the room and get the next part to collect armour from the Sentinels in the room…. dead easy, they are green con and vary between single up and single down…..  that stage was fairly rapid.

The next quest is one called Vanishing Rewards and the only reason I remember this quest name is because we took a break in the middle of a quest to help another guy with his quests (Which we didnt even have I might add….. shoot me I was feeling festive!) 
This quest involved killing an Orate and killing 4 Scaleborn Spirtualists.  These were in the room to the right of the entrance so were eazsy to find and kill.  Then to go to the apparition chest which seems to spawn all over the place. We found it in the first room.  You get a book which starts the next quest and a fat chunk of exp (for her).

The next step is to animate the book recieved previous, and since we have had a good explore of the dungeon I knew where to head. THe Chamber of Animation (or whatever its called, its got a frigging anvil in it so I know where it is) So off we go!  Animate the book, kill some of the mobs in the room, examine some water pools and back to the Shade.

Now we were making great progress exp and quest wise but there is one thing that bothers me…….. My wifes rolls on loot…  Ask ANYONE from any game we have played together and they will all tell you the same thing, SHE HAS LOADED DICE!!  Out of the whole evening I am sure we had roughly 6 master books, and 3 Legendarys drop….. I won TWO of the NINE items!  TWO!!!  Once a Master and Legendary dropped together, she won both.
Anyway rant off…. back to the questing.  The next quest “The Keys to Trust” invlolve talking to a locked up Froglok who is CARRYING ON THE FIGHT (insane frog) Kill Named in his room, take shackle back to Hidden Refuge then its back into the dungeon to talk to a weird squid faced dude who then gives you the next quest.

For this one you head deeper into the dungeon and examine a chest, (theres a lot of chests in this place!) and you need some stone eyes.  Well we knew what we had to kill. THe giants in the same room. We started to kill them but time was getting on (I make a point to go to bed at 11pm on weekdays so im fresh for work) so we had to leave it there.  Worst thing?  Wife is away tonight leaving me alone….. Maybe ill head over to RoK to check out the quests.

Exp check: Wife is 66 and 50%, im 70 and 71%! Was a good grinding night!

KoS Complete – Ding 70!

YAY for me! Finally dinged 70 and thus finished the KoS content. Now all that is left is to enjoy the newest expansion, RoK. But not for a day or two. Not that I dont WANT to but my wife isnt there yet. She is nearly 67. I have been told that we can go there from 68 so thats the next aim, getting her those levels!

As usual a screeny of the ding is at home! But I must admit I cheated and bought out a collection quest to do it, BAD MAN!

Im chuffed to have hit the old cap, really I am, Everquest is offering so much to me at the moment that I cant wait to log back in.

Tonight we will more than likely be working on some more Heroic quests for the wife, in and around Loping Plains, Bonemire and other places like that.

Short post today as its Wednesday and that means Hockey! Woohoo!!!!!