Blue Robes
Sometimes I can kick myself. I am so used to buying the best of the best of the best for Chen and Terenius, that I didn't save money when I could have on Leireth.
Since Leireth doesn't really get into the thick of things, he can make do without rare robes (ie non-legendary). However, at the time I wasn't thinking so I bought legendary-level robes and pants for him, costing about 1 plat 40 gold in total.
I could have gotten the same set, but normal, standard, handcrafted-level ones, for a total of 30 gold. Yes the stats might suffer a little, but 1 plat more for 2 more points Intelligence and Wisdom?? I really should kick myself!
Plus, the non-legendary robe looks better in my opinion. Nice, grey robe with cyan trimmings, instead of this outlandish purplish-blue robe with gold trimmings.
Well now that Leireth has hit level 40, yeah he's wearing them now.
Ding! You Are Now Level 54!
Unexpectedly, I dinged 54 today. I had half expected Chen to hit 54 around October 30th or so, near or around Halloween.
So it was a surprise that I actually hit 54 so quick. Part of the reason is that I discovered, albiet a little too late, that quest xps are
independent of vitality! Yes! With or without vitality, quests will always give you the same amount of xp once you turn it in! So if you have a short repeatable quest that you can keep doing, such as the Tears Grifters quests in Maj'Dul, you can keep turning them in for quest xp and thus, advance yourself even without adventure vitality!
It was such that I actually went from 53 to 54 is about 3 days or so, just playing Chen, and doing quests. Most times I was solo, but once or twice I was in a group.
With this discovery, I realise that "xp groups" are only good when you have vitality to spare. Otherwise if you are out of vitality, just do quests. Turning quests in will give you xp.
Thus I am sure good candidates for quest xps will be book quests and collection quests.. I am going to start "buying" collectables and turning in those for xp really soon.
Of Carpets and Stones
First of all, Terenius finally got the
Strange Black Rock quest done, and got a nice Glowing Black Stone to wear which increased Intelligence and Wisdom. After that, I noticed that he has like 2.5 bubs of xps to go before hitting level 42, so I brought him to run around Maj'Dul. He did a level 50 quest there, which gave alot of xps, as well as running around Maj'Dul and getting location exploration xps.
All in all, that was enough xps to bring him into level 42 - location xps as well as the level 50 quest to locate Nazeem's mother. As soon as he turned level 42, I sold off Terenius' horse which netted me 1 plat and 44 gold. Why did I sell the horse? Well since I can wear the Legendary Journeyman Boots, which gives me a 10% speed boost, and I also have Spirit Of The Wolf spell on Terenius which gives 20% speed boost, the combined boost will be 30%, which is just 2% less than the horse. I can live with a 2% speed loss heh!
Then, I spent 1 plat and 32 gold on 2 hex dolls, one for Wisdom bonus and the other for Intelligence boost. So, I improved Terenius' stats and still made 12 gold "profit"!
Just when I thought the day was already going pretty well, it got better! While running around in Sinking Sands on Terenius, basically testing his new hex dolls and the new JBoots, there was a guy spamming in OOC about forming a Carpet Quest 4 raid force. I switched to Chen quickly and got into the group.
So there we were, on the lonley rock that the Djinn was supposed to be, 24 of us. First time around we all got creamed because somebody aggroed the Djinn before anybody was ready. Then, exactly 6 people left. I really don't like those sn0bby "damn if they get me killed they must suck!" guys. This wasn't because of an incompetent group! It was an ACCIDENT! We did not get killed repeatedly and not learn from it.
Well I know their names and I won't be grouping with them anytime soon. They might get me killed and leave me alone to get my own shard or something.
The good thing is, after those 6 snobbish people left the raid force, we got 6 more guys in, and as luck would have it, we got a level 60 Illusionist which made the whole thing easy after she mezzed the pets, so we could all just concentrate on killing the Djinn.
Well anyway, after spending a couple of hours and having the groups rotating thru killing the Djinn, we all got our required updates. We all ran, evacuated, recalled, or whatever, at our fastest speed back to the Carpet Quest giver to finally get our carpet.
It was a little disappointing though. The carpet only gave a 25% speed boost. By about level 50 or so, most of us would have already gotten at least a 32% speed horse, or a 40% speed carpet from the city merchants. Getting a 25% speed carpet is kind of anti-climatic.
However the good thing about owning that carpet is that now, you can take carpet rides at various locations within the Sinking Sands and Pillars Of Flame zones like you can take griffons in Antonica and Commonlands. In other words, the carpet will allow you to travel really quickly in those zones if you have "discovered" those locations beforehand.
Yup I'm pretty happy all in all.
Ding 53!
Ok just got to level 53 today. So it takes me 10 days to grind one level. In between these 10 days there are of course downtimes for Chen. For example, I know I spent like 4 days playing Grrrik, getting him from 22 or so to 27, and Leireth from 33 to 35. Plus, I am going to get Terenius from 40 to 41 soon.
Vitality is totally gone from Chen. He needs probably about 4 days or so for the vitality to come back in full. Terenius has had a run of bad luck and had died like 8 times in 10 mins. No thanks to Lavastorm and their see-through-invisibility mobs. I think Terenius might have to wait a couple more days before the debts go down sufficiently enough for me not to dread playing him.
So if it takes 10 days to get from 52 to 53, I am predicting it will take me about 12 days to get to 54. That would be about.... well, Halloween! We will be having a guild meet and some events or something too in the meantime.
Cool!
The Grind
Ok I finally got to level 52.
I tell you, the grind is horrible at these levels. The vitality disappears too quick, and in a few hours the whole 100% is gone.
Compare and contrast that to those for lower levels, such as low or mid-20s. I can go a few days before the vitality starts going down. You know what that tells you? Yeah it tells you that the amount of xps needed at levels 50+ is heckuva lot. Even the vitality pointer doesn't go more than half the whole xp bar when at 100%, at lvl 51...
I wonder I am going to grind to 53. Ah well....
Tier 6 Imbues are in!
Ok last night they had a long shutdown (3 hours) but there wasn't any warnings about Live Update 14 going "live". Well the good news is, the imbuing recipes are finally in for those crafters that are 50+.
So what this means is, soon enough we will see tier 6 armours, weapons etc coming out. Chen will have to get a whole set of armour (probably cost 4p total). The weapons... ah well probably another 2p, so I need to start saving up till I get at least 6 platinum pieces before I can be fully equipped...
In any case, the crafting transition from level 30 to 31 was almost painless... I still have some Binding recipes (tailoring) left undone when I dinged 31 Woodworker, so that means I still have some pristines available to me to score double xps when I next do crafting.
I also realised that level 31 is when Woodworkers are able to make
Spirit Totem Of The Wolf, a pretty-much sought-after item for people who are doing the JBoots run (
Journey Is Half The Fun Heritage).
So, Chen made 3 or so, and put them up on the market. The prices were however, pretty dang high at 2 gold per totem. Freeport had them for like 79 silvers each. I priced mine at 1 gold 90 silvers and I somehow do not think they will "sell like hotcakes".
Anyway I will know once I get online on Chen later...
Grawfr's 6-Month Drinking Binge
We just got word - Grawfr will be posted out to France or Israel or some other faraway place from Canada, where he lives. He will be gone for 6 months starting October 12th, and that's only like 9 days from now.
Ah well, we're gonna miss him. With Grawfr gone, Chen is now the guild's highest level tank. Man it's scary to think that I play 2 of the guild's highest archetype - I play my guilds highest healer too, Terenius... he's only level 40 and he's the highest we have. I have 2 more characters, Dakarth is a scout, but the guild's highest is Henaz :) Leireth is a Conjuror, but Pagan is the highest Conjuror in guild.
Chen has run out of adventure vit again too. So, last night I had him do some crafting and I finally got to level 30 crafting around 2am my time. Man it was a long grind from level 26, where I got like just 1 or 2 new recipe per level of Woodworker gained. Now at level 30, where even the Washes and Resins are white (instead of blue or green), the xps should fly... at least till I'm like 34 or 35 Woodworker where it will start to slow down again..
In other news, I am surprised that my first video, "
The Monk" is more popular (downloads-wise anyway) than my newer "
Look Over Here". I packed each of them up into a .torrent file and distributed them over Bittorrent network yesterday, and
The Monk has been downloaded more often than
Look Over Here. In fact,
The Monk now has 14 or 15 seeds (completed versions being distributed in Bittorrent) compared to
Look Over Here which has only 2 or 3 seeds. The funny thing is, I packed up
The Monk like 6 or 7 hours after
Look Over Here. Maybe the Internet world isn't ready for a Mandarin music video...
Anyway that means the next video I make should be English, or instrumental. Ok, off to look for a song or an idea for the next video....
