One month later

Has it been a month since my last post?

I really haven’t have anything to post. I spent almost the the entire month of March just tradeskiling. The good news is that I now can make every spell/ combat art in the game.

Sage 80
Jeweler 80
Alchemist 80
Carpenter 51
Provisioner 64

In adventuring news, Isanox finally hit level 80 as a necromancer!

Shattered Moon is now 59.3 and we finally finished the guild raid progression.

In annoying news, I was planning on going to SOE Fan Faire, but SOE has not finalized the details. There aren’t a many weeks left I can take off at work, so it looks like I will not be able to make it.

Node locking is live

A patch went out monday that apparently added node locking for harvest.

If you are harvesting a node, now someone can’t come along and grab the other two pulls off the node.

There were no patch notes on this, and I have to wonder if it was supposed to be in Live Update 43

New and notes for 2/25

Quick update. I did another span of 16 hours days so not much is going on.

Craft update 22 levels in 25 days.
Sage 77 -> 80 (+3)
Jeweler 62 -> 72 (+10)
Alchemist 60 -> 66 (+6)
Carpenter 40 -> 43 (+3)
Provisioner 53 -> 53 (no change)

Adventure news. Isanox makes level 79!

Guild news. We switched from xfire to Ventrilo after Saziron purchased it.
After that is was group time. Friday night we hunted in KJ in the City of Mist. It was a very challenging fight with only 3 people against those triple ups.

Saturday we tried Mistmore. Wow, even with a full 6 man of 71+ we wiped a few times. Those are some fast respawns. We then went to the catacombs but I had to log.

Not bad at all. We have about a dozen people on Vent. It certainly makes the grouping easier. We’ve regrouped after all the guild drama and are moving foward agian. Lately we have been working on the higher level dungeons, including Unrest, which I have still have yet to do.

The Return of the King

After all the Guild Drama (capitalized for emphasis)  of last week is was quite a surprise to see Shattered Moon’s guild leader return to the game. His return re-enforced the fact that the guild is not going anywhere. A few more people left to join Avic’s raid guild, but we quickly replaced them with new people.

The raiding death march has finally stopped. Five nights a week raiding was to much for me, and was rapidly crossing the line between fun-gaming and interfering with real-life.

The guild is going back to basics, and ran Return of the Light Heritage Quest last night. As you may have read, I love that HQ, and it’s great one for new players. We had two full groups and will probably have to do it again next month.

 We are also looking to do more focused grouping. That is where we pick a dungeon like say Stormhold or Runey Eye, and try to get as many people who need the quests there and just take the place over for a few hours.

We are working on yet another new guild website and this time its with XFire. The officers all were on it last night and were having trouble in Sanctum of the Scaleborn last night. With my help as DPS it quickly became a rout. So much so that after a while we were grabbing 2 or 3 packs at once and just annihilating them.

I was in voice chat even thought I really hate it. It is just to immersion breaking for me. But it was very handy and was great to talk to some long time guildmates for the first time.

A quick update on the Month of Crafting. 17 days in and I’ve made 17 levels.
Sage 77 -> 80 (+3)
Jeweler 62 -> 70 (+
Alchemist 60 -> 64 (+4)
Carpenter 40 -> 42 (+2)
Provisioner 53 -> 53 (no change)

Ugh, remind me not to try this again. Between the raids and crafting I have done almost no adventuring.

Rock Band update. This weekend I finished Easy for drums and vocals, and medium for guitar. I am just about 11 songs in on expert guitar, and 3 songs in on medium vocal. I purchased Punk Pack 2 and Dr. Love by Kiss. I’ve got a band going with my kids, and its quite much to my chagrin, I really need to read all the lyrics to these songs BEFORE I buy them. Otherwise I will agro the wife.

Lastly, I read zero books last month. Zero. Early on in my MMO days I determined that how many books I read is a good indication of how much time I am spending in a MMO. I should be reading four to six months a month, depending on how big they are and how easy a read. If I read to few, I am gaming to much and will burn out. To many books and I should cancel the game, because its just not interesting anymore. I’ve been keeping track of what I have read, primary so I don’t re-buy the same book. Only during one other month this decade have I not finished at least one book. I think it’s a testament to EQ2 and the Ruins of Kunark that after a year of solid playing I still have so much to do in the game. But still, zero is not good. Worse still is the fact that I have yet to open a book this month.

Save the drama for your mama

*sigh* I think guild drama is inevitable.  Since Shattered Moon’s guild leader, Krylle took a leave of absence the guild has been runing under a leadership council, of which I am a member of. We have been raiding five nights a week for almost 6 weeks now and it’s starting to take its total on the more casual members of the guild.

One of the concil decided he couldn’t do it anymore and  felt we should elect one member of the council as a full time leader. That caused the council to erupt when Avic wanted to turn the guild into a raid guild. That in turn caused half the council to quit.

I being unaware of all  drama, log in to find that Avic left to form his own raiding guild. A few of the more hardcore raiders lefts with him as well as a few people who didn’t want to  deal with any drama.

What a mess.  Everything is pretty much back in place, except we have lost our raid tank, and about 10% of our more active members.

I should have seen this coming, because it happens enough.

A small group gets together and forms a guild.
They recruit like mad.
As a wave of people level up, they want to try more and more challenging content.
Some of the people don’t have the time to commit to nightly raids/groups.
Now there are not enough people to raid, so the raid folks split off.

It’s almost like a sun forming. When the guild reaches that critical mass, it either morphs into a red dwarf (raid guild) or goes supernova (splinters). Sometimes the remaining people are to few and it just becomes a dead guild like my former guild.

I’m just glad we have a large enough base to weather out the storm.  Now it will be a matter of recruiting a few more poeple including a few raid worthy tanks for our once a week raids.

80 Sage!

28 Days of Crafting part duex

As of Feb 11th here is where I stand:

Sage             77 -> 79  (+2)
Jeweler        62-> 68  (+6)
Alchemist    60-> 64  (+4)
Provisoner  53-> 53  (+0)
Carpenter   40-> 40  (+0)

For a total of 12 levels in 11 days.  Not bad at all. Sage will hit 80, and Jeweler to 70 this weekend. The problem I am foreseeing is a material crunch for Tier 8. Getting my sage to 80 put a large dent into my supplies, and I don’t think I have enough to get more than five more levels.

Revised end of the month goals
Sage             80  (+3)
Jeweler        74  (+12)
Alchemist    65  (+5)
Provisioner  57  (+4)
Carpenter   44   (+4)

That certainly looks do able. I foresee a weekend of nothing but Provisioner crafting.  *bah*

An Epic Day

Last week Avicious decided to see how many open spawn epics we could kill

We started off with Venekor an Epic x3 in Cazic Thule, which we managed to drop with only 11 people.

Then we headed out to the sinking sands are killed Broog the Banished.

Next it was up to Maj’adul where we fought General Cabaar

And peridition in rapid succession.

All told, it took us about two hours to drop four epics, most of the time being spent on travel.
Venekor was amazing easy for a 3x. The two in Maj were a pain due to all the Sh’ar adds.

But all in all it was a good time, and it was great to see the guild show its strength.

A month of crafting

I’ve let me craft side go for to long and I have decide to make a big push this month.

The plan is to get 28 crafting levels in 28days: Sage from 77 to 80, Jeweler 62 to 70, Alchemist 60 to 70 Provisioner 53-60

Day one: No levels
Day two: (1) - Jeweler 62-> 63
Day three: (4) - Jeweler 63-> 65, Alchemist 60->62
Day four: (2) - Sage 77-> 78, Alchemist 62-> 63

To infinity and beyond

I haven’t been on much the last few days. My wifes side of the family had an unexpected death, and I am now a taking care of the kids while she goes to the funeral and wake.

Character updates:

Isanox is sitting at 77 Necro / 76 Sage.
I will finally hit 77 in sage so I can make my Tank pet adept.
I should be hitting double 80s by the end of Feb.
He also has done 24 of the Heritage quests. All the ones that are left are high level epics, which the guild is not ready to help with.

I’d like to get Isanex 60 Alchemist and Greenwood 61 Jeweler up to 65 each. I’m going to try to get 5 leves per month each.

Blackfoot had a huge surge and made 7 provisoner levels in the last two weeks. 60 by the end of next month is looking possible.

Isanix  57 Illusionist /41 Carpenter, Isanax 21 Brusier / No trade … what to do with these two? The low 60’s content really sucks and I am not triller with the bruiser.

Guild update:
We are still working thru the Guild Raid progression and still have the last two to do.
One is scheduled for tonight the other during the super bowl (ugh)
After that we have our first Epic x3 with our raid alliance.
Finally I am trying to get a Karnor’s Castle and Unrest groups together to finally conquer those.

Game update is on Tuesday 2/5.
Epics? eh maybe. I still haven’t gotten my class hats done.

All in all January was a big month. The guild has really taken off. We have more players on at any given time that my last guild had total players. I’m back to crafting after a nearly two month break. I am still shooting for two level 80 adventures and three 80 crafters by fan faire.