Auberean Irregular-19 (Olle stalks a Tyr

Olle Furflingen Sallies Forth:
The chill permeated the Enchanter as he viewed his prey. Far below on the basin floor a Storm Tyrant stood, enormous claws digging into the stone and grinding it into sand as it flexed and relaxed. Its extreme body temperature had melted the snowfall all around it and the earth in the region of the wurm was warm despite the low temperature. Olle re-checked his mage buffs, all were in place. He was as well protected as he could be, but would it be enough? He moved across the rocks to approach from downwind and behind. As he closed to the range he needed to mesmerize the beast, the Storm Tyrant lurched to awareness. Something about this enormous lizard's preternatural state had alerted it to Olle's presence. It would be to no avail, for Olle Furflingen, Tyrant Slayer, had launched his assault! The Storm Tyrant swung around to face him, shrugging off the Mesmerize spell, each massive step echoing off the valley walls as it closed upon him. Calling upon his arcane skills, he called forth Tanglefoot to root the creature to the spot! The vines broke from the ground and serpentined their way around the tree trunk-like limbs. Olle was still considering which spell to use next as he was burned to a crisp by the flames belched from the tyrant's gullet.

Gurog City:
The April event is curious; is it still ongoing? I know many people who have spent a good deal of time clearing a town of Gurogs in anticipation of being the one to destroy the beacon. Many of the beacons still stand. It has boiled down to this being an admin-run event, and you can only run it if an admin notices you while you're doing it. Seeing as how some people summon an admin for very legit problems (nexus recall) and never get a message back (or in all fairness they log four hours later, before an admin can respond), it's not a wonder that some of our towns aren't nemesis free yet.

June changes:
What a little powder keg this was. If you haven't read the proposal you ought to. Its going to have a large impact on the game. http://www.accmty.com/idealbb/view.asp?mode=viewtopic&pageNo=1&topicID=41003&forumID=77&catID=13
These changes are actually an accumulation of several issues, many of which have been brought to light by the players themselves. They are going to make monsters more difficult. I wonder if that will quell the many folks who complain about the monster AI. There are a goodly number of skill tweaks as well. Some increased in power, some decreased, some changed and some left alone. Turbine has come to the aid of some of the thorny PvP issues and they have a few more allegiance tools. The changes in skill are the crux of flame. My defender's healing skill has a proposed timer increased from 2 seconds to 4 seconds. This, along with a 25% drop in vigor heals. I have been looking to see how this will play out. I see myself running out of vigor. This is death of course. When hunting outdoors, if I get an added creature, I have to heal quite a bit more till one of them drops. Now I will have to beat feet out of there. If I am slowed or hamstrung, I'm dead. Every fourth vigor heal is going to need an additional heal now to keep my vigor full.

My patron is no longer in game. Why? Because she reached level 50 and got bored. My monarch beat her in leveling but he is so fixated on KvK and assisting everyone in the guild, he doesn't have time to get bored. So there we have it. Turbine's main focus was to stop the boredom. While I haven't actually hit the boredom wall, I have never focused on 'winning.' When I read Citan's explanation on the Turbine forums, the more I see how obvious the bulk of the June changes are to the longevity of the game. I have a friend in game who made level 40 in two days. This kind of mindless advancement is indeed going in the wrong direction. In AC1 we had the macroing people. There was the argument that when you pay your monthly fee, you should be able to play however you want. This lead to level envy and the dilution of earning your level.

I know quite a few people back in AC1 who reached level 80 early on and couldn't find anything of interest to do. So while most of us were looking narrowly at what the skill changes would do to nerf our character, we did not see the bigger picture. In AC1 they threw in the towel and made every quest dump massive xp and then came the monkey island. It's the AC1-monty haul version. I loved AC1 and played it since pre-beta (read three char wipes). My highest level character made it only to level 95 due to my lack of macroing or using xp chains. I even went for 45 levels before getting any magical skills. I played for the pure pleasure of playing. When it got to the point where you could make a level 1, join a guild chain with a few buff bots (a must), and make level 126 in two months, I kind of lost heart.

Side note Shadowclaim:
My daughter got to fight Bael'Zharon during the AC1 Shadowclaim event http://users.mcsi.net/leetina/ there is a screen shot of her one on one with BZ.
(BZ won).

Alchemy for a better tomorrow:
For my newly christened Alchemist, reaching level 30 was paramount. Up till that point you are really only relying upon auto-attacks and armor, which isn't the best policy. As luck would have it there are many Bonded Fetich Spawn fellowships to choose from. This makes the journey from 25 to 30 much easier. The Vaults are another problem. In this day and age, finding a group to do the Omishan vaults is difficult to say the least. The introduction of the nexus recall has lead many Linvak residents to re-think their option of ignoring these vaults early on. I found a gentleman named Brolly who has one character who neglected the vaults. I went about securing two of each vault glyph and one evening we completed the Ariaki River vault and the Lumari vault in record time.

The Ariaki River Valley Vault is one of the nastiest boss rooms around. Thankfully they pared down the Chosen One's (Vault boss) Guards. The Vestibule consists of three platforms floating in a dark region of portalspace, you have to jump twice and then face the snakes. With a lugian named, "The Lugian," leading the way, the Chosen One never stood a chance.

The Lumari Vault was just the same. We had picked up an Invoker and between his pets, my vial and The Lugian's swords, we emerged triumphant. The Naderu Vault is another matter. Getting the glyphs for this vault is quite a time consuming effort. Trying to find someone to hunt along with you is even more difficult. I had to log out Fahrenheit and Log in Eeriest Elk, to speed up the process. The Glyph is dropped by Broodu Buruns west of Rakani. This means traveling out there first. Rakani is of a higher elevation with the Deru tree being the highest point. To go west, you have to find a route down. If you can jump off the waterfalls, you can make it down without damage, but finding a place to get back up on shore is the trick. Elk, being a determined Tonk, was able to get to shore and still have enough left in him to slay a dillo near the shore. Finding a Broodu turned out to be a challenge. After running around, it became apparent the only way to get them out of hiding was to start slaying their kin. So a scorched earth policy was begun. Finally the Broodu started to appear. It took 25 of them to drop two glyphs, but the sheer delight a Tonk feels in slaying Buruns made up for it.

I enlisted the help of O'O (a lugian from my guild) to traverse the Naderu Vault. We headed down the musty hallways and took down Burun after Burun. The Keerik are supposed to carry the mossy key for the lower section that leads to the vestibule. The problem was this, every time the Keerik died, the body vanished before we could loot it. When a corpse did stay behind it was empty. Over and over the cycle repeated until we were forced to call upon an Admin to aid us. Once the Admin appeared he/she requested we demonstrate the problem. Not wanting to waste precious Admin time, we sprinted to the Keerik room by mezzing and running. When we hit the room, O'O was low on vigor and the Kiree Burun was nailing me hard. As a result of our hastiness, we both died. The Admin then told us that the issue had been resolved...

Okay, I spent a long time getting two glyphs and securing someone to traverse the vault. The Keeriks were not dropping the keys and we followed the Admin and got killed. Somehow I don't get the same sense of closure that the Admin got. Frustration made me call it a night.

Soulbounds:
I got two soulbound swords for my son's Bezerker. He hasn't had much interest in running him around, so I have adopted him. The twin blades are nice and low in CD which I am lead to understand is what's needed for a 'zerker. I answered a general chat and had them both T2 enhanced for damage. This makes for some rather nice Slice 'n Dicing.

Connor:
Blood Maw is a level 50 Bezerker turned Crafter. I was able to secure some gauntlets and a robe from him and with the twin soulbound weapons, I went off for the final two vaults. The Drudge Citadel Glyph can be retrieved via the Warders Quest. I still had the prosper vault Glyph from earlier. Because I'm content with having Connor be on Osteth for the content there, I stopped leveling him at 25. Now I bide my time until I hear someone asking for Drudge Citadel help. It was a simple ride to the gates and showing my fellowship the easy way to get to the vault (sans fighting). Due to the lag, I couldn't get off the stairs. I was being missiled to death so I hid behind a section so I couldn't be hit. My fellowship commented on how odd it was the Drudge didn't defend himself. The answer was it was trying to attack me.

Chat, chat, where is the chat:
They keep trying fixes for the ongoing chat problems but never seem to make it any better. For me, logging in the evenings means chat will be down. Usually Allegiance chat isn't working for me, which is the chat I use the most. General chat is nice but misused, mostly because of the low server population. I think it should be questions and game information. The Trade channel should be used for hawking wares. The Trade channel should be like the general channel, all across the worlds, come to think of it. I'm not 100% sure its not. I never see anyone using it. Coming from AC1 where you only had fellowship chat and patron/vassal chats, it's great being able to talk to people across the server. The Regional chat comes in handy in areas where incursion quests are coming.

Tired of Invoker:
As longtime readers will know, I have been jumping around with Elk's profession. I started with Healer, went to missle, then to hive keeper, then to missile invoker, then mage invoker. I'm not sure how the other mage invokers do it. I have been having a heck of a time trying to get this system to work. I went off to do the Dillo Rustler's quest. I got the quest and headed to the banderling camp nearby. Every time I tried to get a banderling, my pets would go out and attract every beast on the countryside. While my firepower is impressive, I can't seem to get the pets to return fast enough. I'm starting to think I'm just not cut out for playing mages. The first reset was nice, it got me from hive keeper to missile invoker. I retrained to a mage invoker myself without too much trouble. I started looking at all the options and came up with Zealot. It's a heavy hitter, unlike my Defender, and the twin hand blades just look cool. I went on www.tumeroks.com and asked a few questions and then on the ac2hq skills calculator to figure out where I would be at level 36. After setting that up, I went out and gathered up white pyreals for Soulbound handblades. These weapons are good damage and speed. Most important, they are a sure thing. You know what you are getting. I did a soulbound run and along the way found another claw. Its damage is fair, no magical properties but all in all decent enough to start a level 36 zealot out with. Next I did a Soulbound run to get one blade done.

Okay, I'm all set. I have my notes, my weapons and my armor is good enough for any class. I make sure my tonk is in a safe, quiet location and type out the reset command. When I hit return, I note that something seems wrong. Sure enough, I get a red-link and I lag out. Bummer. A re-log in later shows that the reset didn't happen, all my Invoker skills are still in place. I re-typed the command and got the message that I didn't have the ability to reset. Great, now I have to wait till June...

Defender so close:
I am about 50 million xp away from level 50 with my Defender. This just means some hunting and a quest or two. My understanding is that upon hitting 50, I will become bored beyond all comprehension and have to play Shadowbane. This makes me hesitant to play.

-EE