Tag Archives: Everquest 2

Darathar

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Darathar

Darathar

Kasul and I decided that, being the only two in the guild that missed out on the previous raid, we’d try to get it done over the weekend, especially since I had a long weekend off.

The Speak as a Dragon/Fire and Ice/Deception quests, also known as the ‘Prismatic 1.0′ line, can be seen as the original ‘epic weapon’ quest in EQ2, before any expansions were released. The weapon is of no practical use today, other than being a pretty for the appearance slot, but it’s still a nice relic to have.

Putting aside lore and such, the quest itself is rather straightforward. Kill various epic dragons to obtain shards that are used to resurrect Vox, talk to Vox, and kill more epic dragons. I’d make a poor school teacher.

Kasul and I were lucky enough to find ourselves a healer. Gray or not, epics are still epics, and they do still dish out a reasonable amount of damage if you’re one with poor avoidance, like myself. The Darathar fight sends you to a special instance of The Isle of Refuge, except in this version, the proverbial bad guys have overran the place, and you need to set things right.

Basically, the Darathar fight can be said to consist for 3 ‘checkpoints’, at each quarter of his health. The first time you get him down to 75%, he heals back up, and again at 50%, and once again at 25%. In the event that you passed one of the ‘checkpoints’ and wipe, he won’t heal again when you reach the quarters you have previously passed.

Darathar surprised us with a nasty frontral AE right when we pulled him, resulting in Kasul and I dead and leaving us with low power throughout the fight after we were rezzed. Without proper power regen, I end up buffing myself with Ro’s Blade and melee-ing it throughout the fight, together with dots and the occasional ice comet. Still, Darathar went down quickly enough, and Norrath is once again, safe.

Windows 7 initial impressions

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There’s no denying that I’m a geek. I took leave today just so I could be there to install Windows 7 when it is released on TechNet.

Windows 7′s installation is largely similar to Vista’s. It has been ages since I last did an installation of Vista, so I can’t say for sure if it was any faster. Things went without a hitch until I reached desktop and tried to copy over my Everquest 2 installation off a network share. Windows locked up right away. I did a hard reset and tried a couple of times but fail was still the result. Unsure if it was an issue with the network transfer or writing to disk itself, I tried copying for another source. Thumbdrive and DVD copies went through okay, it had to be the network.

The NIC that I’m using is an Atheros Gbe onboard controller. I had the driver for it downloaded, but it wouldn’t install probably due a version check. To my knowledge, Windows Vista drivers are forward compatible with Windows 7. At this point, I thought I’d give Windows Update a shot. Despite Windows 7 being so new, maybe Microsoft did already start addressing issues that slipped through the earlier RC.

Looks like my faith wasn’t misplaced, an updated driver was there which rectified the issue. It would have been nicer if it had been included with the Windows install itself, which would have made for a better out-of-the-box experience. Overall, I was still pretty pleased.

Asides from the network driver, I have not run across any other issues yet. The UI changes would take me awhile to get used to, but it’s definitely a nice touch. I’ve already begun using some of the new features, such as aggregating multiple folders using libraries. More on that later. Right now, I’m gaming away in EQ2, doing Kurn’s Tower x1 on my new Windows 7 installation.

Deja-vu

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This weekend felt like a rerun of the previous. Leviathan was attempted, and failed.

It’s never easy finding a raid as DPS. Most of the time healers and bards are the sought after class. I was promised a spot many hours ahead, but when it was time for the raid to form up, the story changed and it would seem that they were oversubscribed for DPS and lacked healers. Thankfully, Stargrace was kind enough to come along with me on her mystic and use that as a bargainning chip to get into the raid. No one turns down a mystic. It looked promising, I could almost see the quest update at that point.

Fast forward, things didn’t go well. It was the first time for a good number of the raid force, and the result of that was confusion on a large scale. Also, too many people were giving instructions which didn’t help matters. I don’t think we even got Leviathan past 96%.

Another weekend comes and goes

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A bunch of things happened over the weekend, including an event that wa rather tragic and would have a significant and lasting impact on my life. I won’t go into detail because I can’t open myself to such a degree of transpancy, but I probably am not the same person today as I was yesterday.

Setting the above aside, Calreth participated in a leviathan raid over the weekend. Leviathan, who resides in the Chamber of Destiny, is one of the three epic mobs required for the Wizard’s epic weapon, along with Imzok in Protector’s Realm and Druushk in Veeshan’s Peek.

Don’t celebrate just yet. The outcome of this raid is still quite uncertain. Leviathan is a tricky mob. The raid starts off with clearing trash mobs which drops fish (Yha-lei) skins that would allow a person to, I assume, disguise themselves as food that Leviathan would attempt to consume.

Once trash mobs are cleared, most raids would then make their first attempt at leviathan himself in what is termed as a farming fun. At this point, selected members of the raid take turns putting on the fish disguise and being swallowed by leviathan, killing some kind of stomach creature to collect explosive vials. Once a sufficient number of vials are accumulated, the raid then wipes itself and begin the actual kill attempt.

The whole idea behind this is to get swallowed by leviathan just like in the previous attempt, but this time, detonating the vials farmed inside him, causing massive internal damage.

We didn’t get to the second attempt because we ran out of fish suits at this point. The trash mobs that drop them respawns, but takes a few days. Hence, it’ll be Tuesday morning (GMT +8) when the next attempt would be made. Hope that goes well.

Also, I finally had the chance to run Runnyeye: The Gathering (RE2). RE2 has been out for months now, but I could never quite slot myself into a group there, except until now. Ultann and Kasul (it was his first also) came along and we blasted through the instance rather quickly. The internal layout is exactly like that of Runnyeye, except populated with different, and much higher level (83 seems to be the average) mobs. It was a fun filled trip.

Week of EQ2

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It was like a summer fling.

Given a whole week off work, what did all day and night was play EQ2. I ran instances like no tomorrow, accumulated a But that ends today. After today, I go back to being the casual player, logging in just for the weekends.

Calreth is now sitting in T2 shard armor, with 185 AA. I didn’t make any progress towards his mythical. He has his order of rime faction done, and two heritage quests out of the journal. I’m in a guild with great people, everything seems alright again.

But summer has ended.

Meeting the guild

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Kasul moved over to Antonia Bayle today, bringing the population of Torrent Knights up to four people. Stargrace left for bed early, but Kasul and Ultann stayed up and we decided to run some instances. Crucible was first to go, and boy, we tore though that instance fast. It was a group that almost everyone (except for me and the dirge) had their mythicals. Asides from a mishap which involved me and Kasul crashing out during the Codexicon pull, and Kasul coming back with his torch missing, it was a breeze, a walk in the park. The torches used to burn the books respawn now too, so if a group member loses the torch, it’s a non-issue. Nope, the wand didn’t drop.

Kasul had to leave after that, so it was just up to me and Ultann. Evernight Abbey, Anchor of Bazzul and Befallen:CoA were next on the menu. We blazed through each of them and headed to another. By the end of the night, I had a good amount of shards, almost enough for 2 pieces of T2 to give me the 5-piece set bonus. The reminder will probably come tomorrow.

It was my first time grouping with Kasul and Ultann. All in all, it was a great night, and I’m glad to have met and played with the other members of the guild. They’re great players, and probably great friends to be too. If only everyday could be the same as today.

EQ2 Goals

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The world didn’t stop and wait for me while I was away. EQ2′s next expansion has been named and given a rough release schedule, although knowing any software development company, it will get pushed back. The later it is, the merrier, since it would be closer to the date of me being released from my mandatory military service, which is next September.

Meanwhile, I set myself some goals I want to reach before the next expansion gets released. One’s got to have a goal to work towards in life, right? So does my character.

Firstly, I’d like to reach 200 AA. I think it’s a goal that can be achieved with some determination. I’ve completed most of the soloable quests that is equivalent to my tier, with the exception of the rime repeatables. I’m looking to go back and finish up the Peacock and Claymore lines, and also all the grayed out HQs. I want to have an almost empty quest journal in preparation for the expansion.

On the list right behind that is armor upgrades. I currently have 3 pieces of T2 and 2 pieces of T1, which isn’t too shabby, but nothing to be proud of considering a majority of the populace is clad in T2/3. This means endless shard runs everyday. I’m starting to feel bored of it but I’ll have to persist. Toss in a few WoE raids here and there, together with a lucky die, maybe T3 pieces would start falling. Just maybe.

Next, mythical. I don’t know if I’d manage this. It’s tough getting into pick up raids when I’m usually home only one, or at most two days a week. I’d love to have it at some point instead of constantly staring at others with jealousy. Missing Leviathan and Druushk currently.

In other news, Stargrace and her two three* friends (just one at the time of this post, other is apparently having issues) moved over to Antonia Bayle yesterday. Torrent Knights is seeing some life in it again! Stargrace purchased a guild hall for it and that’s some place I would be spending a lot of time idling at in the future. I’m not a fan of hanging around town where there’s a ton of people, so the guild hall with be a nice a convenient place to do so. Tipa moved her characters over too and I’m glad they all chose to. It seems that I would be having a circle of friends around again.

*Mistake pointed by out by Stargrace, she has a total a three friends moving over. Don’t blame me, I’m not used to having so many friends to count!

Days off and catching up

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All the stuff that had piled up in my RSS Reader during my 16 days of absence of civilization came crashing down on me today. I spent most of the day catching up with news that were two weeks old, and I’m not even through one-third of them yet. Seven TV episodes and the live event quests in EQ2 were also on the pile.

A couple new quests were unlocked due to people contributing to and filling up the required bone shards to the brim. I got down to investing the murder of Seeress Ealayna Ithis right away. These quests were extremely well done, backed by a compelling storyline, in contrast to the previous live events that were mindless rinse and repeat ones. The conclusion of the quest even comes with a cut scene! I’d have loved to get them done on as many characters as possible, but with only a short few days of freedom, I don’t have the luxury of time. Sigh.

I also canceled a bunch of subscriptions. I’m actually considering placing my EQ2 account on hold. I want to take this chance (that I’ll rarely be home) to live a life as frugal as possible. The pay, or rather, allowance for National Servicemen is a pittance. Roughly calculated (assuming a 6-day week and 17-hours a day, since we only get 7 hours of sleep) it’s somewhere in the range of a dollar per hour for a Recruit. It makes being employed as a toilet cleaner in the private sector something of a luxury job.

As Murphy’s Law of Combat puts it, “always keep in mind that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder”, so are the men who are supposed to be defending this country (being paid the least).