Taking the Worm for a Ride

Caerie looked across the bitter snow bound undulating hills of the Palisades. A mist clung lightly to the land obscuring the point where they convene, the light blue radiance of the crescent moon over her shoulder and stretched the barely visible shadow to a mere whisper on the terrain, and provided a glow of beauty and incongruity. Her quiet contemplation was abruptly interrupted by the soft crunch of a boot meeting the snow. Her honed warrior senses quickly eliminated the menace by recognizing the intention of the gait and distinguishing the one approaching.

"Grasp, what brings you out this harsh night?" She inquired.

"I have found myself closely bonding with many who are of Dominion as of late"With a smile of purpose slowly etching itself across Caerie's lips the night suddenly seemed to warm.

Boring Boreing,

After awhile you get the feeling you haven't been keeping up with the leveling like you should. Grasp is still level 37. This was fine pre-patch, but now there isn't much to do. As a primary solo player and a defender I find that Steppe dillo's are very difficult to take down. In talking with my guild these should be my primary fodder. In analysis it seems I'm taking too much damage. I got my Paragon skill up to 15 and it's almost painful to raise higher. The bulk of my skills are around 30 to 35. I really want to raise them up but that would be at the cost of raising paragon.

Next I look at my armor. It's the same set I have had since I was around level 32. The stuff I have been fighting either drops too low or too high.

My armor thus far breaks down like this:AR 36 D 21 BreastplatesAR 14 D 18 GrievesAR 11 D 16 GauntletsAR 9 D 19 Boots

AR 29 D 6 Shield

I asked a level 45 monarch what to hunt for drops and he suggested Steppe Dillo's. Oh terrific the one critter that has been a bane for so long. Still its been awhile and I may have gotten more savvy. Well about five dillo's chomping on my dead body later I decide that I need a different quarry. I found the Eli to be quite nice to kill aside from 4k a kill they had quite a few potions on them. I was able to work down my vitae quite a bit. Still I wasn't finding armor. My guild informed me that Myrmidon Burun is the creature I should seek for armor that is level 37. I headed to the sanctuary on the Vesyan ringway jumped off the waterfall and swam to the Burun villages that are along the shore. It didn't take to long for me to find an AR 32 D 4 shield. I quickly donned it and checked my total armor. It was unchanged. I removed the shield and stood with just sword in hand. Sure enough my armor was the same. Ah, the shield doesn't add into the armor total. (Most of you are yelling DUH!)

A dozen Myrmidon's later and I Have improved my entire set... slightly.AR 36 D 19 BreastplatesAR 20 D 16 GrievesAR 11 D 16 GauntletsAR 9 D 18 Boots

AR 32 D 4 Shield

All in all its not a tremendous improvement but every little bit helps. Mind numbed from killing burun's I head back to linvak to try out a Steppe. Still no luck, I'm beginning to really hate those Dillo's

Tonk abandoned

I logged in determined to make it through the Drudge Citadel and untrain some of my many, many mistakes. I still can't figure out what I want to do but I know I don't want to do what I'm doing. I traverse the lonely country lane and along the way I pick up two Lugian companions. There is a bridge just before the complex, this has always been a good staging place and this time was no exception. Unfortunately a number of things happened. One of my comrades got killed, then one got stuck in a wall (that bizarre incident turned out to be prophetic). The drudges on the other side of the bridge where a bit too much for use to handle so I called upon Corrine, a guild mate of no small ability. With Corrine's assistance we went through the drudges like a scythe through wheat. We used the 'shortcut' of heading along the left wall after the entrance and running up the slope there, this bypasses a lot of drudges and a lot of problems as well. There was only one drudge mystic in our way and it fell quickly. Inside we headed up to get the key, Corrine was invaluable keeping us alive. The key in hand we jumped down to the beginning again and started the short run to the vestibule portal. I got stuck on top of some debris and decided to jump off of it. As I hit the roof I didn't come back down. I was stuck in the wall. My comrades had already run ahead. After a few attempts to get myself unstuck I had two options. One to call for assistance or two log out and lock back in. I decided that any +Admin that decided to help out would have told me to do the second option anyways so I took the lesser of two evils and logged out. Sure enough, like Billy Pilgrim, I became unstuck. Unfortunately I got unstuck to Cavendo at the lifestone. I recalled and started the long tedious run back to the Citadel telling my fellowship what had occurred. As I reached the first fork in the road Corrine informed me that my comrades didn't want to wait and had headed into the vestibule without me. I was a bit put out because I felt I had done quite a bit to make this jaunt a success, not to mention waiting for both of them at one juncture. So I decided to log off rather then rant at the fellowship.

My guild at war

Goodly portions of my guild, The Phoenix, have chosen to align ourselves with Asheron and Order. Most people on the server it seems have made similar decisions. The downside is that very few people make the decision based upon anything other then being the big dawg. Kingdoms require a bit of role playing and almost no one on leafcull has that particular skill. Instead we have Order camping portals an attacking others K vs. K without heeding any of the requirements of Order. In other words Order is acting more like shadow then order.

Exactly how you enforce people acting like their kingdom is a tough one. If you had one kingdom lord who could boot and bar people from a kingdom that would certainly change things.

Anyone aligned with Order on Leafcull is KoS now. This poses a problem for that minority who are actually role playing. The characters choose a path and now have two other options that they would never choose to keep from being ganked. An actual discussion of the events mentioned above with my patron is the opening fiction you read.

Tonking the spear

After looking at HQ2's marvelous skills program I decided to go with a hive keeper. Changing out from a healer is going to take awhile but in the end it will be much nicer. We recently had an old guild mate form AC1 Gulpin, arrive and he was looking for a fellowship around Elks range. There was a small group at a lifestone fighting Burun. It was a nasty run to get to them but the xp would make it worthwhile. Cinnimon, Apoc, Tiny, Gulpin and I soon where waging war and suffering many running deaths. Along the way we gathered enough xp that I was able to level twice and totally switch over to spear then to hive keeper. This became annoying. It turns out if you're a hivekeeper you need to use a special weapon, it's a hive on a stick that you fling wasps from. Using this weapons renders all your spear skills null and void. I checked into the claw bearer and concluded it would be the same thing. Akin to the human alchemist not being able to use a bow. I decided to stay the course and untrained all the attacks on spear to save up xp for being a hive keeper.

Worming

During my xp scrounge for my Tonk the Slammer worm hit. As it happened I was in game when it struck and got booted out. Trying to get back in I was informed that my character was being saved. I was able to log in Grasp, my defender, without problem. I even ran to the location of Elk on the off chance he was standing there. Well the SS opportunity of a lifetime passed me by. No Elk standing there. I decided to do the moarsman quest while I was on Omishan. I found the Chief and got the quest without problem. As I was hunting for Burun I killed one with a key over its head and was sent off to kill the slimelord. This slimy Burun was housed in the Toad keep, a Dungeon that kicked my tail not to long ago. With my improved armor and wielding a GA sword I was much more formidable then ever before. I ran to the hall and dove into the portal, only to end up back at the portal on the surface, when I moved an inch I was portaled again, to the same place. I was stuck in a portal loop! I tried logging out and back in only to hit the portal again and start it all over. Well poop! Two characters down, I logged in my new human mage, he is near Cragstone waiting to find a group to do the excavation quest with. I am finding there are a lot of folks out there that don't respond to "Hello, I was wondering if you were doing the quest?" or anything said by another fellow traveler. I ended up following them and tossing heals here and there until the group invited me in. We succeeded and I recalled out and started running to Cragstone. As I was running everything stopped, massive lag. I logged out and logged back in to find that the group decided to turn in the blueprints without me. Am I detecting a pattern here or what??