Comparing Harclave to Hideout
Ogad was saying that it appears that Hideout provides much better xps than Harclave does, in Splitpaw. Since Chen is lvl 50 now and thus receives no more xps, I loaded up Terenius to test this claim.
Thus far, first attempt in Hideout last night failed because I died. At the point I died, I had almost achieved 2 bubs of xps (20% in EQ2-speak). I figure there wasn't much more xps to be had since I was almost at the end. I might get about 2 and a half bub of xp in total. However, since I failed in that attempt I will have to try it again when the servers come up.
It is confirmed, however, that at level 33, a single run through Harclave at "Difficult" setting produces 5 complete bubbles of xps, meaning 50%. Half a level! As such, assuming I do get 2.5 bubs of xp later in Hideout, it would appear that my earlier assertions were correct - 2 Hideouts = 1 Harclave.
The Journey Ends.... For Now...
Aye, it has come full circle. The young wide-eyed monk, who started his journey on the Isle of Refuge so many months ago, has finally reached the final destination. He has attained Level 50 in the wee hours of 22 August 2005.
The final bub of xp was the hardest to get. I was totally out of adventure vitality, and thus, it was like working with debts all the way up to lvl 50. When I finally hit level 50, a sense of relief came over me. Finally I can stop "getting to the next level". Finally I can concentrate on Terenius or Leireth or Dakarth or Grrrik. Finally I can just do writs for fun with Chen.
That is, until the Desert of Flames expansion comes out on 12th Sept. Aye indeed, the Journey has ended, for now.
Shared Experience Debt Going Away!
Hah! Check out
this article on EQ2 Vault.
Finally SOE is wising up to the idea that giving your fellow groupmates debt when you die is not a good idea. When I was playing City of Heroes, they never had it done like this.
True enough, when you share the debts among groupmates, it makes people less tolerant of your mistakes. As soon as you make a mistake they kick you out of the group. At least in City of Heroes, we let the lone ranger do his thing, let him get killed over and over and then he learns not to do it again because he has a huge wad of debts whereas the rest of us have none.
Personally I dislike debts. It sucks even more when your good friend happens to die while in a group with you and you get his debt through no fault of your own or your friend's. Sometimes, things happen and people die not due to recklessness but due to other factors like being caught off guard, or adds from a wandering group of mobs. You know, things that aren't within your control. When things like these happen and you get debts even though you didn't die (but your friend did) it's totally demoralising.
Muld had a funny suggestion the other day though - we should get more adventure vitality the longer we play and stay online than for people who log in once in a while. In fact, Muld suggested, people should get DEBTS for staying offline, and may possibly even die while offline. Man that was hilarious! Can you imagine going on a 3-week vacation and coming back to a dead character lying in the middle of your own house? hahahah that is a funny mental picture!
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Halfway To Level 50
Ok Chenyu is level 49.55 now just before the servers came down for maintenance today. That means just 4 and a half bubs of xps more to go... about 2 Harclaves and some change assuming I have adventure vitality.
Since I just ran out of Adventure vitality, then the numbers must double - 4 Harclaves... maybe 5. I do not know if I want to continue on Chen or switch over to Terenius or something. Assuming I wait for Adventure Vitality, it would seem that the earliest I can reach level 50 would be Sunday late night, or Monday itself. That would be about August 21 or 22.
However, if I decide to push on despite not having Adventure Vitality, according to my calculations I'd still hit level 50 around Sunday night or Monday morning.... hah! Ah well, may as well rest up and wait for Adventure vitality.
Ash Fighting Batons
You know what useful recipe we get at level 27 Woodworker? Just one (I think) - Ash Fighting Batons. The other 2 are just totem poles for enhanced vision, for a grand total of three... yes,
THREE whole new recipes for the entire level 27.
Man, what do they want us to do for one whole level, make the same things over and over again to get to 28? I actually need to get to 29 to imbue things and that's like 2 more levels away. With such a pathetic amount of recipes available at these levels I wonder how I am going to do it. Even the Ash Kite Shield has turned white, meaning less xps now.
Guess I will have to keep churning out those shields and bows ... at least the components still give xps for now...
Antonia Bayle Bites The Dust
No, Queen Antonia Bayle is still alive an kicking. The title refers to the name of the server, not to the Queen :)
This is what I hate about online gaming - when the server goes down, you can't play. There I was in
The Builder's Choice, quietly hammering away at the forge (well technically it's a noisy affair) to make some Carbonite Shods when suddenly, the whole world caved in and I got booted back to the Character Select screen.
Man this is just great. Wonder if all the xps I made in the past 10 mins got saved. Tradeskill xps at this level (level 26 Woodworker) is hard to come by, partly because there's a pathetically small number of new recipes at level 26 and 27 (2 or 3 in total) and also as you level up, it takes more xps to get to the next level, just like adventuring.
Speaking of adventuring xps, Chen tried to do Harclave last night. Funny thing is, he died twice at "difficult" setting, which was strange because normally I have no trouble going through it. Might be because most mobs are now lvl 50s with some at 52 and 53 (Kind of reminds me of The Shard in City of Heroes. I remember flying through The Shard and then coming across level 53 brutes, and Nite-Hawk had a pretty challenging fight with them even though he is Regen).
Anyway, on the 3rd try I decided to go back to normal setting for Harclave, and now everything in there is either blue or white with the ocassional yellow (level 50). That went better, but the xps suck... only made like 1.8 bubs of xps at "normal" setting. I have no idea what the "difficult" setting would be because this is the first time I'm doing Harclave at level 49, and I have no basis for comparison. It might very well turn out that "difficult" setting might only yield another 0.2 bubs, it might yield more, I simply do not know.
Well anyway, I'm going to try logging on to Antonia Bayle again.. I hope they fixed it by now..
By Hook Or By Crook
Right after completing
Bone Bladed Claymore, I was totally flushed. I wanted to do more! Since Ogaming's quest section is fixed, I went in and took a look at what heritage quests there are left for me to do. Then I noticed this - "
By Hook Or By..." which I have yet to start on.
So, sneaking around abit, I slipped past the level 42s guarding the door to Rukir's tree-stump house and spoke with him. I got the quest, and as with all heritages, it starts out boring - kill 100 Nightbloods.
Geeesh, ok so I went and started killing 100. It was heck of a lot slower than killing 1000 gnolls in Antonica believe me! Anyway as luck would have it, Grawfr came online to harvest materials to make armour, and he came to Enchanted Lands to do it. So once I finished killing the 100 Nightbloods, I asked if he was going into the Drafling Tower anytime soon because I needed to get JumJum from there, same step as he is in the quest.
So off we went into the Drafling Tower. We fought, and we ran screaming like scared little forest elves when we encountered a wandering patrol of Bixies (for the uninitiated, a "bixie" is a half human half bee monster). We finally got to the Refinery and fought to the huge vats containing jumjum to grab the required amount for Rukir. It was at this point that Paganstar was available to join us and so we waited for him to come before continuing on to the Queen's Chamber.
To summarise, we completed the heritage, and by the time we did it was already 10am Singapore time. I had not gone to bed the entire night, and I was desperately needing some sleep.
It was amazing.. 2 heritages completed in 2 days... haven't done this in a long time indeed.
The next day, I realised that Chen only needed like 8% more xps to level up to 49, so I took him out to complete whatever writs that were outstanding. I completed the one that needed Ice Walkers in Everfrost, which by the way, now I know exactly
where to go to get Ice Walkers heh! It's at the area near the entrance of the Sepulcher, and not at the other end where I normally would hunt for mobs.
Once complete, I headed over to Lavastorm to try to get some Sootfoot Peons. There were not many of these too, as there are others there hunting the same mobs too. So in the end I only managed to get like 14 of them, and I need 10 more to complete this writ. In the meantime, I killed whatever else crossed my path, and finally pushed myself into level 49.
So here I sit, one final level to go before 50. 4 or 5 more Harclaves to go (assuming each Harclave gives about 2.5 bubs of xp like it did at level 48), or some writs and some hunting plus 3 Harclaves. Well, I would say I will hit level 50 in about 7 to 9 days.. which is like 2 weeks before Desert of Flames will arrive.
I sure hope Tecdrome will buy Desert of Flames. I think I will be buying that one.
Bone Bladed Claymore
At last! I have completed the entire heritage quest
Bone Bladed Claymore. The most agonising thing about this quest is actually the killing of 1000 "sentient beings" part and not the one about Opalla or whatever other heroic mobs.
The killing of 1000 beings took me approximately 3.5 hours to complete. It was dang long and about the same length as one Harclave run. Speaking of which, I need to run through Harclave again because:
- I am poor again because I gave in and bought an Ebon Cluster instead of harvesting it.
- Experience Points, what else?
Right now I must remember to clean up my inventory because it's still filled with junk from the "kill 1000 beings" part. I know I still have a whole stack or 2 of those status loot which I need to sell off to the scouts at Elddar Grove or the fighters at North Qeynos...
Earning The Trust Of Gnolls
Well what do you know? Grawfr said he did the Prank quest solo, and I tried it. Yup, it works! So now I know - of the 3 out of the 5 or 6 quests that earn the trust of the Splitpaw Gnolls, these 3 are soloable!
Yup, Harclave (staple), Solo Arena, and Hideout are soloable! Don't have to depend on anyone anymore to help me get the shard to teleport back into Splitpaw!
Heritage Week
Ok before we go any further, I saw with my own eyes, a Sony GM! Yeah while I have sent /petitions before and have had responses, I never seen one in-game in any MMO before till now. Here's a picture to prove it too!
Click on picture to enlarge
See the guy with red name? That's him! Yeah, the guy with the big green arrow pointing down on him... if you wanna take a closer look, click on the picture, it should zoom in.
Heh well anyway, we just had a guild meeting on Saturday (technically Sunday 1am Singapore time), and well, 2 things happened:
- Guild Fees are upped to 10% instead of 5%
- I got made an Officer of the Guild
So yay! I got promoted! Well I'm kinda still new and wet behind the ears abit, but I'm gonna try to see what new and wacky things I can come up with for the guild to enjoy.
For some updates too - Chen got to level 48, Terenius died 2 times in the BSV raid after the guild meet, and Dakarth, my new scout, made level 15 last night.. Why are these important? I don't know! It's my blog, and I'll write whatever I want in it....
Well anyway, this week is "Heritage Week", ie, concentrate on heritage quests. Well Chen can't do anything till he finds an Ebon cluster, and they are priced like 4 to 6 plats per cluster. Those greedy xxxxxx ! They want an arm and a leg plus cheese with their demands...
I wonder if I can find Berik, Sword of Thunder in the halls of Stormhold... Grrrik could use Berik...
Scouts and Jewelry
You know what's the funny thing about Everquest 2?
It's the way the tradeskills are categorised. See, Jewellers make scout combat arts, or skills. Look,
Jewellers! I mean, I would have thought Jewellers made just jewelry, you know, bracelets, bangles, necklaces etc stuff?
Then it gets better... Alchemists make fighter combat arts, like those for Paladins, Guardians, Monks etc. Umm... I thought Alchemists were short little gnomes locked away in the cellar in front of the chemistry tables and once in a while I'd hear "Boom!", the sound of explosions coming from the cellar...
The only logical (to me) tradeskill is the Sage - he makes wizzy and priest spell scrolls. Now,
THAT I agree. A sage is a person who has studied long and hard. He knows stuff. Hence, if he is able to scribe a scroll for the Wizard, it's fine.
Yeah yeah it's all about "balance". True, I mean who would want to become a Jeweller if all they could make was just jewelry? There's only so many rings and bracelets you can make and sell and unlike real-world, there won't be any women coming to buy your jewelry on a whim. Once they got a ring that will last them to lvl 30, they will keep wearing that ring till level 30, or they get a better one off a monster drop.
Alchemists have it slightly better - they are able to make poisons and stuff, and poisons run out. Scouts need... well not
NEED in as much as
WANT to use poisons. Poisons help to push damage up. Scouts apparently are the only class in EQ2 that are able to use poisons.
So, it's either to become and alchemist or a jeweller. Right now I still have a choice because my new baby scout is only level 13 in tradeskill... I have 6 more levels to go before I must decide on a final trade - Alchemist, or Jeweller. I will probably go Jeweller, just so I can make scout runes.
