Thoughts and Game

The stone buildings are rough, with pockmarks from the ever-driving winds. The Lugians built them to last and so they have. On the field below forages a Carnage Shreth. On a thick stone wall stands Tex, a look of anger and frustration mottling his face. On Omnishan he had learned to fear and hate shreths, that had been burned away into a loathing and a drive to end their existence. As his skill with blade, axe and flail grew, so too did his fear diminish. That was on Omnishan. This is Linvak. The Carnage is the largest and most powerful of shreths. It can administer a swath of death to all but the most experienced of warriors. Tex doesn't have that experience yet. So he stands in the long deserted outpost, imagining a day soon when his skills will match the Carnage, a day that is coming, and coming soon.

A few thoughts to start:
It's patch day and as I write this, I have just finished reading the AC2 boards. The praise is sparse, the criticism is high, and the patch is not even three hours old. A goodly portion of the people posting haven't even been in game yet and are reacting to what little first hand information has been published. Others are reacting upon the Dev notes. Boston is where Turbine is located and it's currently having lots of snow problems. I can imagine the traffic snafu's, even with that new billion-dollar bridge open. It would be one of those days to stay home and watch the snow pile up. In reading, I see the same old knee jerk reactions and threats and condemnations from people who shouldn't be throwing stones. Its amazing how fast paced our world has become. Instant gratification is the norm. No one saves up for things; instead they pay afterwards at 14%. We need online tracking of overnight deliveries to complete a rushed project that has financial penalties for going past the deadline. We carry cell phones to not miss a call. Streams of information junkies walk around zombie-like, oblivious to their surroundings.

A person wakes up, grabs a breakfast bar, drives through a coffee stand, makes it into work to grab a large stack of papers and run into a meeting that goes past break. Looking at the computer clock on their screen, they notice that its lunchtime, so they hit the lunchroom, and slide a few bills into a machine to get something that wouldn't have passed for food 50 years ago. Rush back to catch that next phone call, spend the next couple of hours putting out fires and getting quick fixes on things that didn't have time to be done correctly the first time, only to see you're late picking up your kid from their sports/lessons/daycare. You jump into the car retrieve your child, maybe have a 5-minute conversation about their day, half listening because you forgot to do several things that will come back to bite you. Hitting home, you nuke the pre-prepared food or open the bag from the Burger King and flick on the tube while booting your computer. The news drones on while you check your e-mail and field a few work calls making copious notes on your palm pilot. The bath is drawn and children washed while you clean up the kitchen and get them ready for bed. A Wiggles/Bob the Builder tape later, you usher your child to bed a few times and finally have time to log into AC2 and watch CSI.

Makes ya wanna get off the merry-go-round, don't it? I remember in elementary school some movie (no VCR's yet) with a futurist who was speaking glowingly about the future time when people would be working less and less hours and having more leisure time. Modern technology was going to make our standard of living so much better because of it. I guess these Utopian Ideals never made it past the planning stage. I still have only two weeks paid vacation per year and my benefits where I work are much less then my father's were. We spend so much time trying to get to a place where we can enjoy the fruits of our labor, that we are too exhausted to do anything but sleep. Not that I want to go back to living in caves and being a hunter-gatherer. I'd just rather spend the majority of my life enjoying what there is around us then trading my life energy for "things."

Back to our show:
Those who have read past columns know that my four-year-old has a Bezerker running around Osteth. He recently hit level 16, which isn't bad. The incursion quests are the primary xp resource. He tends to find a lifestone in a nasty area and proceeds to attack everything for long periods of time. He doesn't care about dying or taking on more then he can handle. I guess a Berzerker is a good fit for him. Periodically, something else will catch his attention and he will wander off from the keyboard. This can be mid-fight as well. Over this last weekend I noticed his abandoned Lugian was being talked to in a fellowship. The group was concerned about his disconnecting. He had not been in the fellowship for very long, scrolling up showed me how he got into it.

"Hey, do you want to do join our Slavetaker fellow?"

"connor" (the only thing he ever types)

"LOL a man of few words I like that."

Then he chose 'yes' on the joining window. He had the quest, no doubt from clicking the heretics trying to attack them, along with another five quests he had picked up along the way. The group was small and knowing the quest, I opted to play his Lugian in the same stoic manner he had developed. I must say I am impressed by the sheer damage this class can dish out. There is a recovery time, to be sure, but damn, the dual wielding crits are nice. After the quest I decided to clean up the rest of the ones on his list and I joined in on a Broken Totem quest to aid in his swimming.

Lodrog's Bones:
With my shiny new GA weapon and Totem run boost I decided to do The Ancient Periapt Quest. This involves heading to Linvak Tukal, visiting an altar near there, then heading on the Thusik portal loop to various altars and avoiding various guardians. It's a running quest. You don't have to fight anything and if you're careful to use the second ring rule, you won't even take damage. I guess I'm not very careful. I got about five deaths doing this quest. The first one I plead Linvak Lag on, and technically I hadn't even gotten the quest yet. Here is a good tip though. Use the various LS so if you die you can run back with the protection. I died on my way to the quest (lag as stated before). Next I was killed while trying to heal with the wrong toolbar up. Nothing is more embarrassing then going for a heal and seeing a crafting recipe pop up. The next death was me jumping off a cliff to avoid a mob with low health, partial success because the mob didn't actually kill me. The final death is too embarrassing to talk about here, but it involves an Eli.

This epic quest strikes me as odd. You start with the GA and you get a weapon with a wield of 38 that has okay to poor damage. The AP (Ancient Periapt) Quest then boosts the wield requirement up to 40, so if your level 38 you can't wield it anymore. Each of these quests pushes the weapon beyond your reach... Odd.

Next I go to visit good Ole Lodrog the forsaken. He has a little tree fort that his fellow Gurogs won't let him leave. It seems to me that having a couple of Gurogs at the bottom as guards would complete this picture.

Lodrog asks me to get him some undead bones. Shi Hideau, our resident Tonk healer, took me under his wing on this quest. After viewing the many people hunting near the tower, he pulled me off to The Ossuary. Inside we found one of the better decorated dungeons on Linvak. I found a Legionary bone in short order. The prefects were harder to come by. We had journeyed deep into the undead fort when, through an unfortunate set of circumstances, Shi got himself killed. I decided to fight it out and was rewarded with a prefect bone after a good 30 kills. This left the conscript, which I am lead to believe is a most difficult undead to find a bone from. I got one on the first kill.

Icefire Oops!
Logrog gave me some rattles for my trouble and a nice little XP boost. He also sent me to find the frozen one for the Icefire quest. I headed out that way in the hope of finding a group. My guild was going to run it the next night, so I wasn't too concerned. Somehow I had thought you needed to be level 41 now to 'receive' the quest. It turns out that this simply isn't so. I found out by double clicking the frozen one and receiving the quest. Needless to say I was a bit shocked and I'm more then happy that a nearby group let me join in a fellow to kill the Gigurath.

I upgraded my weapon to way beyond my ability to wield it and distributed all my xp to Paragon. It turns out that I am way behind the curve with this. According the HQ2 boards, a lot of people are a 30 paragon by the time they hit 40. I'm still forty and using diligence my Paragon is now 26, and I'm not stopping till it's 50.

My vassal Tex had a group out hunting ridge dillo's. I ran to meet up with them and we playfully wandered the countryside seeing new sights, meeting new creatures and killing them. When he started playing, I suggested the Defender. This was because I was playing one and really enjoying it, and I am familiar with his playing style and I thought he would enjoy it as well. I have noticed that things I enjoy are not always mutually appreciated. I recently got up the gumption to ask Tex how he liked the player class. He poetically replied "The defender stands toe to toe with an enemy when others are rushed to the lifestone" (paraphrased with apologies to Tex).

The group was a good one and we merrily went off a-hunting. When we ran into a Gurog Marauder, it was suggested we try out the Relics of the Golden Age quest. Having been on this quite a few times and knowing the paths fairly well, it sounded like fun. Unfortunately my timer wasn't up. This meant I wouldn't be able to follow them through the final portal. Still, there were enough of us that my absence wouldn't cause too big of a rift in the offensive/defensive make-up. In other words, they wouldn't miss me. We headed to South West Stone shadow and hunted the spawns along the river. There are a lot of Gurgog Marauders that can spawn there. The trick is to kill the existing spawns one direction and head back to see what's there. In this way everyone doing the full quest got the medallion in short order. Next, we headed to the ornate chest in the Gurog ruins. This is a short run, swim and climb away. The Gurogs spawn quickly and they can smack you a considerable distance. At one point I was battling one and was knocked clear back into the river. We all got our medallion and among some deaths, headed back to the Golden Age Reliquary Dungeon. By this time I was considered the de-facto leader and everyone followed me quite well. It had been awhile since I was 'in charge' and I was starting to enjoy myself when the oddest thing happened. I go stuck in a lag spot or something. My computer wasn't locked up, I had a green bar and no packet loss but I couldn't talk to anyone or move. I finally had to log out and come back in. The group waited for me and I was happy to see that. At the second spiral drop, we lost a Tumerok warrior. This can be a nasty place to re-group and upstairs the spawns would have slowly whittled us down. My idea was to take the level 35+ people up top and help clear a path. Tex, Sovereign and myself were elected. We backed up a good portion and with one or two mishaps; we got the group back together. The last push turned out to be a difficult one. I bid them farewell at the portal and Tex took the lead the rest of the way. At one point someone said to let 'the big guns' up front. It's been quite awhile since I was considered a 'big gun.' It was a good feeling.

Tonk woes:
I am really disappointed with the Hive Keeper. The 'pet' wasp you get dies with the creature you attack. The healing is way slow. The only real advantage is the distance is close to that of an archer. I have been contemplating changing him over again. I don't have a missile character and I want to have one.

I have decided to try something different with my Tumerok. I am going to un-train the Hive keeper skills and try something else. A missile/mage/feral.

My main skill will stay missile with M, GM and Paragon with the following skills.

Penetrate (zero), Huck, Barbed and Gore

>From the magic tree:Mastery, Grandmaster, harm (zero), heal, revitalize, wing foot, thornskin, espirit and acumen.

>From the melee tree:Mastery, Grandmaster, pincer, lumbering might, pulverize (zero), summon shreth, adept.

I'll have portal recall and two points for summon with another two points left over for more missile, maybe pin and double thrust.

What do you think?