You know, I might just be getting the hang of this….

by on December 18, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Posted In: MMO

Had a BRD and a Scholomance run this past weekend, I did both with Farmishi.

Saturday, was yet another BRD run. Farmishi did her last quest there, Jail Break. Then we went and did the vault. Then we decided to hunt down the Dark Keeper who has the key for the ‘extra’ bit in the vault, who it turned out was enjoying himself in the Grim Guzzler.

We were a little nonplussed to find him buried in the corner and surrounded by patrons, and quite unhappy with us. So… we decided to try approaching him, pulling him out of the corner, and having a few words with him in the storeroom. This is effectively what you do when confronting Ribbly Screwspigot, and only his guards bother to help out.

Well, this guy is a lot more popular. We got all the patrons in the area after us, and… well, it wasn’t pretty. We did take a nice chunk out of the crowd though. We went back in, spotted the fact that the guard had indeed come in, and were in front of the back door now. Grumbly, a little overeager to get a drink for the remaining patrons, hands in his “do one silly thing” card and charges right in front of them. ^_^; Two deaths (me and Grumbly), two rezzes, and back to pondering what to do.

We make another attempt at them, but the social aggro on the patrons is quite large. (Gee, what do you expect: “Fight!”) The bad news, was this time much of the dungeon respawned, and we had to fight our way to the bar again. So we get back, finish off, grab the key, fight back to the vault, and get… a Traveler’s Knapsack. Yeah, all that for a white 14-slot bag. Bag space is good, but I don’t think anyone’s that desperate. (We do seem to have gotten the weakest loot possible.)

We cleared out the guard in the bar pretty easily. Pulled them down to where there was no longer any patrons, and only picked up about three extras.

Other than finding out just what all those warnings in the write-ups about the bar are about, it went very soothly. We had the best Lyceum run ever.

The Emperor was something else again. First he joined in in the last fight before tackling him. Wipe. Then, we’re doing well, everything’s fine, and Blanc suddenly takes about four hits and goes from top-of-form to dead. Wipe. Third time’s the charm, and Blanc got a nice Santa Hat for his troubles. ^_^

Sunday was a Scholomance run. For us, it went very well. For us in Scholomance, that is. Offhand, I recall 3-4 wipes.

What’s interesting is where we didn’t wipe.

We went in with Blanc, Farmishi, Blondiewood, Jariedthe, and Thermidor. So, no priest, and a bit down on DPS from our normal set (since even while fighting undead, Farmishi is just no substitute for Dunain on damage output). There were definite upsides, but I was a little worried going in.

However, we were all really on top of our game last night. We went for Jandice Barov (who, after our last two encounters we try to avoid) because of a quest, and took her down fairly easily. Knowing what to expect definitely helps. We also got Lord Alexi Barov very cleanly on our first try, and he’s someone who’s tied our party in knots before. In fact, the entire final sequence of bosses went very well for us.

Gandling looks kind of silly in a green Santa Hat though. He also was a bit tough. Farmishi was the only person in the party who didn’t get teleported away during the fight.

The runs have been finishing a bit late, so Farmishi is going to need to run around and turn in quests during the week.

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And a mighty Ding!

by on December 12, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Posted In: MMO

A couple of adventures to write about:

Last week, Blizzard released Patch 2.01, which means that they’re officially updating the engine to account for the changes in Burning Crusade. There were some unfortunate side-effects, such as boats that go to places that don’t exist yet. But one of the biggest things for everyone is that the talent trees have changed again. The new talent trees now go up to 41 points for the ‘best’ thing, instead of 31 points (the old ‘best’ is right where it was, the 41-point talent is a all-new ability). This means that a lot of characters will no doubt be less “broad” than they were, spending ten points for their new ability, and loosing 10 out of whatever secondary set that had been developed.

Case in point: Dunain. He’s always been Marksmanship-spec, and now he’s lost some of his Survival and Pet training trees to the new Marksmanship ability (Silencing Shot – I’m not exactly mourning the choice). However, there’s a lot of overall changes to the Hunter talents, Dunain definitely isn’t quite the same as he was before. Overall, I’d say he’s doing a bit more damage than before (at least his critical hits have picked up a bit).

That night we did an impromptu Lower Blackrock Spire run. We started with three, picked up a fourth, and went back to three for the final bit when I went to bed (after doing the final boss – they were going back after the puppies). Still a bit late for me, but a lot of fun. We did well, and while we didn’t get what we specifically wanted, Blanc still got a good item.

This weekend, we did a raid into Upper Blackrock Spire. We’ve only recently gotten a key, so this was completely new for Blanc and I. We also had Grumbly (our guide), Blondiewood, Noxlux, Asclepius, Thermidor and Jariedthe along, as well as a out-of-guild hunter that Grumbly knew (I forget the name).

So, we did most of the Spire with 9 people, and did very well. Sadly, our spare hunter had an earlier bedtime than I did, and we lost him before getting to the end parts. We actually did quite well, and got The Beast. Blanc had a good night: Rend Blackhand dropped a Dungeon 1 piece for him, and The Beast dropped, and Blanc won, Finkle’s Skinner on the first try.

That left us with eight people and General Drakkisath. That did not go so well. Of course, I’m amazed that we got to him with barely any snags at all on our first try, and undermanned. And having a hunter (me) who’s completely unused to kiting doesn’t help. Main judgment is that we need the two extra people for DPS, and then we’ll see.

And in other news, last night I went adventuring with Farmishi and hit level 60 with her! (And immediately spent 60-70 gold on new skills….) The paladin talent tree hasn’t changed much, and since she was never meant to hit the bottom of any one tree (Protection/Holy split), she hasn’t changed much, but a lot of the special effects on spells have changed.

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The Seven Years War, in two years

by on December 10, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Patch and Mark and I got together yesterday for some boardgaming fun. Instead of the normal SFB, we played Soldier Kings. It’s a simple multiplayer game of the Seven Years War that I’d gotten for cheap some time ago. As a multiplayer game, it would solve some of the problems with having a three-person group.

As with many multiplayer games, its obvious that it gets better with more people (it can take as many as eight), but it was still fun, and we hope to play it again. The three player version we played uses Spain, France and England; that is concentrating on the part of the war that involved the colonial powers. We did a couple turns to get used to the system, then started over with me getting England; Mark, France; and Patch getting Spain.

Unit density is a bit low. None of us felt we had enough to get on with doing what we should be doing, much less react to what the other powers were doing (which is probably historical enough…). The first year went well for Spain, and we had to work at making sure Patch didn’t have the points needed for an automatic win that winter.

For the second year, I had a decent plan, and things started off well for me. However, there were two critical flaws: one, we had only kept Patch from winning, we hadn’t really nailed him down far enough to keep him from easily qualifying for it again; second, my plan (which I’d seen more as consolidation in some of the not-so-great areas) put me on a direct collision with Mark/France.

Worse, I succumbed to temptation and diverted a force on its way to India to taking French West Africa. Further collision with Mark, and the aftermath was part of a really bad summer turn for me. So, Patch grabbed up more valuable territories in the Fall, and Mark and I were out of position to do anything effective about it. For me, a large part of the problem was the fact that I was still in the midst of reorganizing my naval deployments, so the RN was unavailable for transport duty.

So, Patch won because England and France were unable to refrain from going after each other….

We’re looking at our next meeting being on Jan 6th, and if we can find a fourth (or fifth, or sixth…) we’ll play this again. Otherwise there’s a historical SFB battle that I’ve been looking at doing.

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Vacationing in Blackrock Depths

by on December 4, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Posted In: MMO

Among the other things I did while on vacation was get my computer up, running, and on the broadband. This allowed me to participate in two BRD runs with Farmishi.

It was a little odd, I almost tried to go down the corridor to say something to Smudge off-line at one point, only to realize I wasn’t in the same house as her.

Also, TeamSpeak seems to be acting up. Other people were complaining about not being able to hear Smudge, despite the fact that she was crystal clear for me. And she seemed to be having no problems with people that I couldn’t hear. It’s like everyone is on random relative volume settings to everyone else….

The first run went all the way to the back and got the Emperor. Along the way, we picked off another three Anvilrage Captains (official count: 34, Plans: 0). One death in the Lyceum, otherwise a very clean run (and my first for lighting the torches). If I remember right, we originally went in with three people, and picked up more as they logged in….

The second run didn’t go to the back. But we got lots of other things done (like Bael’Gar). Farmishi is now down to Jail Break for BRD quests. We’ve officially put BRD on ‘farm’ (or was that ‘fram’) status. Sadly, we have quite a bit to farm down there….

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Disclaimer

by on December 4, 2006 at 11:51 am
Posted In: Life

I would like to clarify my earlier posts to mention that tech-support was not my primary activity while visiting. ^_^; It just took more effort than anything else, so there’s a lot more to say. ^_^

Well, had a last second problem with my dad. I had updated his graphics drivers, and gotten Civ IV to a ‘workable’ state on his machine (still had some odd problems, but the terrain was no longer invisible). But, when he tried it again, it was back to it’s old shenanigans. So, for the moment, we’ve swapped games (he’s borrowing my copy of Age of Wonders, and I’m borrowing his copy of Civ). And I’m wondering whether to get him an AGP card (it’s got the slot, but is running on chipset graphics), or if I should start looking into modernizing my system (again) and give him my current GeForce 6200 card while I move on to PCI Express….

Hmm. I could see if the card currently in Utena (my previous system, and currently hanging around as a ‘backup’) would be up for Civ IV. If I do end up needing Utena, I should be able to transfer the 6200. Might be worth thinking about….

…Anyway, the weekend was spent at the home of some old friends that I haven’t seen in way too long, Elaina and Mike. And their two-year-old daughter, Rowan.

Rowan is an extremely bright and impressive two-year-old. It doesn’t hurt that she was also quite taken with her “Uncle James”. ^_^

They showed me some of Guild Wars (not bad, but I’ve got enough addictions). Talked too much WoW (which they’ve quit due to financial belt-tightening) with Mike. Showed him some of the games I brought down for my dad, and may have accidentally made another convert to A Victory Lost….

And most importantly, got somewhat back in touch. I really need to get better about emailing.

Drove back Sunday, and had a very smooth trip up. Getting everything put away was more of a challenge, as I had more stuff than when I began….

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