West Karana

The number one rule of Nostalgia the Guild is that we level together and nobody gets left behind (unless they stop showing up). Last night we had the twin goals of getting everyone up to our current cap of level 55, and to explore the sunken city of Veksar, deep beneath the waves of the Lake of Ill Omen. SOE introduced the original Veksar as a free content update in June of 2003, and are poised to do it once again in EverQuest II.

If you travel to the Lake of Ill Omen in the Fans of NASCAR zone in EQ2’s Kunark, you can see that the recent live update did more than enrage the void storms… that tremor was some power forcing the long-buried city back to the surface. Who knows what’s entombed in those ancient ruins?

Maybe we’ll find “Bad touch” Rogbog still molesting Iksar Golems. I mean, it’s possible, right?

The night started out slow, but people tend to trickle in and we have tricks like the campfire to help people get to the right place. Once we had a full group — me, Ceipheid playing his ‘zerker Rogbog, Warmunger showing off his shiny new epics, chanter Mantis, and Stargrace two boxing her cleric, Ishbel, and her beastlord, Nala — we headed in. No issues, no wipes, we made it without getting too lost to the shops/iksar behemoth area, placed the campfire in a safe place (as opposed to “under where the behemoth pops”, as SOMEONE suggested), fired up the Lesson of the Devoted and settled in for the night.

Callendra, Sisca and Binxs showed up awhile later, so I split off to be their tank, and we moved back to the pool room.

While we were in the other room, i was watching the first group on the web cast. It was pretty wild :)

The aim was to get everyone to level 55. All but Binxs and Rogbog made it. And that’s tenacity for ya. Veksar is not a hot zone and in fact the experience is pretty crappy, in general. It always was. Even back in 2003 when I was leveling my cleric there, we seemed to spend days there without making much progress.

But heck, we’re not in a race, and a lot of people had never been to Veksar before, so it was worth a look on the way up. Rogbog, who was like level 6 or something when he got there, ended the night well into his forties, so that was good. I made 6 AA, and that didn’t suck, either. I’m saving the first nine AA for Endless Quiver, but after that — back to Combat Fury and Weapon Affinity.

Next week is the Plane of Hate. That DOES have a decent experience mod, so we should be able to get most everyone to 55 and also a fair bunch of AAs along with it.

Afterward, I went and did the GU48 void storm quest, and now have seven notes to my name. Just fourteen or so more, and I’ll have the cool black armor :)

Last night, I was going to get my necromancer, Dorah, over to Najena. No matter what. I tried their automated transfer system with a couple new names. Neither were in use, according to EQ2Players. Since Sony TSRs can’t actually move characters themselves, their jobs are to pass you along to someone else — either make it my fault somehow, or have me contact an in-game GM. But I’m pretty sure in-game GMs can’t perform a character move, either, so I was not going to leave until the TSR gave me a different solution.

It’s like one of those old fights against a demon you read about. They try to distract you, they shift form, but you just have to hold on until they tire and then do your bidding. I got instructions to petition. On how to petition off-line. Instructions for configuring my Internet Explorer correctly (which was funny, since I was using Firefox 3 under Linux. No IE there.) The site tried to discourage me from coming by having a certificate with credentials not matching the site, which had my browser warning me of a possible phishing attack.

At the end, I got him to send me a form asking for a manual character transfer. So I filled that out and returned it. Maybe it was just another, successful, attempt to get me to go away, but it was something I had not seen before. I believe, though, that TSRs should have the ability to escalate concerns to people who can do the things they can’t. Maybe I’ll find out, at last, why I am being accused of a Service Violation whenever I attempt to transfer a character that needs renaming.

Anyway, that was pretty exhausting, when all I really wanted to do was to play. So, last night was gonna be the no whining, gonna get a goddamn group and PLAY EQ2 night… and it was.

I talked with some friends for awhile, almost joined a Shard of Hate raid, but stopped myself in time; almost joined a couple of instance groups, joined a guild just for someone to talk to… Oh yeah, you’re looking at one of the newest members of Dark Alliances. A high end raiding guild on the Befallen server. Another one, actually. The raiding guilds on Befallen can be split into four types. Those that can clear Veeshan’s Peak, and therefore can get you your Mythical epic. Those that are working on clearing Veeshan’s Peak. Those that are working on Tier 2 or 3 raids, and every other raiding guild. Serious raiders go for the first type. Most of the rest are scattered through the VP guilds that are still working on the gateway encounters. Every other guild is just essentially a feeder guild for the top ones. This is the standard ladder for raiding guilds everywhere — in EQ and WoW, it was the same way. Simple raider economics.

I told them up front I would be able to devote no more than two days to raiding, and they eventually accepted that. Tonight was to be Protector’s Realm, the most lucrative Tier 1 raid, but I can’t attend because tonight is Nostalgia night, and nothing is more important than Nostalgia. Rescheduled from Friday because tomorrow is David Cook night. Oh, yes. I will be talking about the American Idol tour Saturday — sorry :)

Long story short (a phrase I should be prevented from uttering), I’m in a guild, and a bunch of us went to Runnyeye and ruined the day of a bunch of goblins. First time there with Dina. They wanted me to bring Dera, my inquisitor, but after being kicked from the last group I joined there, mid-dungeon, me sitting there in a tent deep in the dungeon while one of the group brought a healer bot to replace me, made me reluctant to try healing there without an uber raid geared cleric, so I said no, no, a thousand times no until they relented and I brought the bard.

Troubadours have little love from SOE. For one thing, our class name is misspelled. SOE is on a one-company mission to convince the world that troubadour is spelled “troubador”. Reminds me of the time they unveiled the space shuttles and the banner for the Endeavour was misspelled Endeavor, which actually is the correct, modern spelling, but the space shuttle was named after Francis Drake’s Captain Cook’s ship, and that was spelled Endeavour. Anyway, troubadours punch up mage DPS, and themselves depend upon mage buffs to increase their own DPS. Last night’s group had the usual number of mages, which was zero. It did have a guardian, three scouts (including me), and two healers. A dirge, that buffs melee, would have been perfect, and since the vast majority of groups have far more melee than mages, a dirge is nearly always a better choice.

Anyway, long story sh… oh, sorry. We descended to the very depths of Runnyeye with only a couple of wipes of which none were my fault (thankfully, way to make a first impression and all), and did hunt, kill and slay. I got a new bow and a new mage/bard cloak (no mages, defaulted to me, nice) that has a tattered graphic, so I will continue to wear my Brell Day cloak over it. The swashie was just hauling in the chain armor, the Blackened Iron stuff which aged well on its 500 year journey from old Runnyeye.

Afterward, I was pumped to continue, so I went out in search of void storms of my level. Darklight Woods didn’t work for the quest, unfortunately. Neither did The Bonemire. And neither did Loping Plains, though the scary beasty in the picture above dropped some unusual weapons; a long bow and this weird sword. So I guess this kind of stuff can drop even when the mobs are gray to you. I still hope to finish the quest enough times to get the black chain armor, as I have on my Arasai assassin. But I saw the gi that Stargrace’s brawler has, and I might get that for my own young Arasai bruiser, Winterwing.

Anyway. Tonight: EQ1, Veksar! A trip to the original zone to get psyched for its re-emergence, Ry’leh-like, in EverQuest 2. I’ll be tracking some of the easier Luclin raid mobs; not Va’dyn, but there are others we might be able to do that people may have forgotten about. I have stopped playing Wizard 101 — it’s a fantastic game, but I am now waiting for release so I can play it for real. Saturday is going to be all about the Guild Wars, and I’ll write a “Day 2″ post, which might, hopefully, bring me to level 20.

Have a great Thursday!