Stardock is perhaps a name that you don’t know well, mainly due no doubt to their penchant of making software that mods windows XP or Vista. Such fare as ObjectDock and the like. The sort of thing we have all installed once, but removed once it dragged Windows to its very knees. They also pioneered the online product delivery method back when Steam was just a gleam in a fat mans eye. To order a Stardock game it is required that you download and install their horrendous client first. This then unlocks the game itself and downloads the content.

Yes, Stardock are strange alright.

I was lucky enough to come across their previous games thanks to Penny Arcade,when they introduced me to Galactic Civilisations II. In the office, Gal Civ was a God of games. It had more depth than the Mariana trench and yet managed to remain accessible. Hour after hour was sucked into this game and even on a limited and simple map one could easily start to need vitamin D supplements. I spent so much time telling my staff to get back to work that I almost felt that I should do some too.

But I don’t know how to dance the dance of the Australian aboriginals, so I wont beat around the bush; Gal Civ II was deep, involving and brilliant but it was also slow. Glacially slow. So glacially slow that Polar Bears could take up residence and global warming start taking effect before anything actually happened.

Sins is Gal Civ like you imagined it could be. It is also every Star Wars space battle, every Cylon Base Star attack and every White Star Fleet engagement rolled into one. IronClad have taken the best from many lesser RTS games and built them into an amazingly coherent core around which they… well around which they forgot to hang a story.

To explain: Sins has an animated intro when loading. However, you can safely ignore this in its entirety as there is no single player story. At all. There is only skirmish mode.

Probably the best skirmish mode ever devised.

Sins borrows shamelessly from lesser games. The 3 classes are very similar to CNC3, the maps are straight out of Gal Civ II, the mahoosive tech research tree is an idea taken from Civilization and the battles are similar in play to Age Of Empires 2.

That is one hell of a pedigree!

Chuck all these games in a blender and pour the results into space and you have 80% of Sins. The last 20% is the graphics engine from heaven. Many times in my RTS gaming history I have wanted to zoom-out for some tactical clarity. Similarly I have also wanted to zoom-in to get a real feel for the battles. Sins has an amazing engine that allows you to smoothly zoom out until the very star systems are little blobs and then in a second smoothly zoom in until you can literally read the numbers on the side of a carrier. This effect is not just a gimmick, it is built into the very fabric of the game’s control method. Using the mouse wheel you zoom out and then while holding down the right mouse button you rotate the view in 3D. Once happy you then use the wheel to zoom back in. Once this is understood you can be in the middle of a hundred-strong battle and hear an alarm from another system, instantly zoom all the way out and, by moving the mouse over the required planet, zoom straight back in. You get so used to doing this that, frankly, going back to the old way of doing things is going to be a serious step down.

That is the rub with this game. Every single time you come across an RTS stable, such as ship production, Ironclad have got there before you and somehow worked out exactly what the genre needs to improve from before, such as auto-fleet assignment. At every single turn IronClad have improved the template they “borrowed” to such an extent that it is difficult to remember how it used to be before.

So what is the basic premise? You are the leader of a civilization that starts off in a small uncharted backwater in the unfashionable end of the western arm of a star system and you must build your people up until you are either dominant or at peace with other races. There are in total three races and up to 8 players spread out amongst the stars. You must build, fight and coerce your way to victory through strength of arms. The planets are all connected by at least one space lane and travel is only via these using Faster-Than-Light drives. Remove or ally with all the other civilizations and you win. The three races in the game are the TEC (Trade Emergency Coalition), the Advent, and the Vasari.

The history of the races is quite interesting. The TEC are a group of trade worlds that descends from earlier human exploration and are playing catch up in the space wars they find themselves embroiled in. Attacking them are their rejected cast off’s the Advent. Back from the remnants of space the Advent were originally a desert religious sect that mastered psychic powers. They are 1000 or more years ahead of the TEC. They have returned to exact vengeance and unite the human race with the “Unity”. The Advent tend to favour cheap lightly armoured units but make up for this with energy weapons (lasers and plasma), psi-weapons (weapons that are mentally charged with a user’s mental powers) and shields. The final race are the Vasari. The Vasari are the only alien race in the game, they tend to have fewer but more expensive units that have extremely hardened hulls. Their ships tend to use Phase Missile technology, which has the possibility of completely bypassing the shields of enemy ships.

So far so very template. In fact change the names to GDI, NOD and Scrin and I wouldn’t blink.

What Sins offers is at once very deep in the level of personality you can bring to your strategy, but eventually very shallow in that all non violent options are tactical in nature. In other words, Sins always comes down to battles in space; to violence. It is not possible to win the game through peace like in CIV. However, while this is not too much of an issue it does explain the contrast between the game’s extreme combat depth and the light diplomacy options.

Here is a basic scenario I played (and lost) in my first go at the game:

Here is my new TEC home planet.

You can see the contextual menus at the bottom, which change based on what I have selected, and the standard research/resource menus at the top. Hovering over these gives readouts on the performance of all aspects of my civilisation. What is new here is the fold out menu to the side which gives a graphical run down of the planets and fleets I have at my disposal. This menu is excellent in messy situations. In battle it is what I spend my time looking at as it shows the enemy in rank order; thus giving me my next target.

Here is the same view totally zoomed out:

My corner of this map is very small; time to expand! I tell my builder ship to claim the local resources. In Sins, resources are split into three. Cash gained from taxes, metal

A TEC Metal refinery.

and Crystal.

A TEC Crystal refinery.

Each planet may have a number of asteroids in its gravity-well from which you can harvest a stockpile. You are going to need it. I have completed the entire research tree a few times and it takes hours. Cash on the other hand is earned from taxing your people. More people means more taxes. Cash can also be earned by selling excess resources to the pirates (or other players in multiplayer). Thus, what resources are around which planet becomes an aspect of your unfolding strategy. Do you go for that ice planet, rich in crystals, or is it stretching your fleet too far? Leaving yourself and your planets open and undefended is quick death in this game and expansion cannot be unchecked.

In order to defend this lush bounty I need ships. There are four types of ships: non-combat (freighters etc), light frigates, Medium frigates and the special Capital Ships (which can have short range fighters/bombers called strike craft). Each race gets a completely different set of ships, not only in look but also in weaponry and firepower. The TEC are basically standard BSG humans and their ships use only human based weapons such as gauss guns, ion cannons, lasers and auto cannons.

The TEC frigate builder.

My first ship!

A Cobalt light frigate.

This is the lightest of the TEC combat based ships (leaving aside colony ships and scouts) and like all RTS games is great at the beginning and end of the game. The beginning because they are cheap and no-one has researched anything else yet, but also good in the end game because (as always) there is an upgrade which makes them relevant that is buried somewhere in the tech tree.

I send the little fella’ off to scout the next planet and build myself a military research station.

These items are the basic requirements of researching certain technologies and come in military and civilian flavours. Each planet can take only a limited amount of space-born equipment before running out of “slots” for them. This means that to research the higher end items, you will need to expand to other planets and place down more stations. There is a massive amount of space born items that you can place, such as civic research centres, fighter hangers, planet defence guns, FTL “phase” jump inhibitors, planet shields and even massive super weapons.

Everything must be researched.

A few hours later…

I have managed to move my forces and empire up to the next few star systems. Mainly due to this bad boy:

“Mr Gaeta, bring her around.”

The Kol is one of the TEC capital ships and vital to successfully winning the game. Capital ships have shields far in advanced of normal ships, weapons of all types and can be individually upgraded based on their experience or culturally upgraded based on what you research. There are about 30 different upgrades you can research and 10 levels of specific upgrades. The Kol is a direct fire ship. It is brilliant at simply diving in full steam and laying the smack down. Anyone who knows me will appreciate that this is very much the way I like to do things. Capital ships carve up frigates and smaller craft like Sunday joints. They hammer colony ships to bits and their powers can include all sorts of special bonuses from reduced damage (due to multi-phasing shields), to dropping nukes on their opponents. The non TEC ships are similarly spectacular and can drop special bonus powers such as the ability to reflect damage or cause 250 damage to all ships in range. Capitals also come in different flavours. All races have carriers of some description (although some are better than others), support ships and combat vessels. The TEC have a missile boat, while the Advent push out the Mothership which is a direct homage to Homeworld.

It is not long before I have pissed off the other races to the point where they have allied together and attack me in force.

The map half way to my death.

The flash point comes when the enemy attack one of my planets…

…while my fleet is away taking on pirates!

Prepare to jump:

Ah pirates! In this game pirates attack the player with the most bounty on their head. you can drop credits onto another name and save yourself the bother of fighting them off, or you can take them on and use them to upgrade your capital ships. Either way just be careful that you don’t get wiped out or dragged into a bidding war with another player!

The pirate homeworld is well guarded and they quickly pounce on my clumsy attack.

While the battle may look confusing a simple roll of the mouse zooms out and the ships turn into icons, which are simple to read. I often find myself placing orders and then zooming back into the action. The fleets meet and I am clearly outclassed so I order the retreat!

So much for ridding the world of the pirates! I quickly learn that pirates can be your best friend. With them in play they can act as a buffer, a predictable enemy or even a mercenary fleet to unleash on your opponents.

While I have been away the AI has been watching. They don’t like the look of my fleet so they have quickly settled their species differences and ganged up on me. I meet them few jumps from my homeworld in a deserted asteroid belt and the the battle is fierce indeed!

Here they come!

My fleet do their best and take down the enemies top carrier:

and the mighty Mothership:

But it is a losing contest and as the enemies bombers and fighter strike craft swarm around my capital ships I know I am doomed:

My fleet is gone and the enemy quickly jump to my homeworld to wipe me out once and for all:

Game over.

I have played in total now, 30 hours of Sins. I know this because after every game you get an exhaustive report. This stats-based ending is always gratifying if you have done well and mind blowing when/if you see how far off the mark you actually were. Yes, the AI in Sins is of a high standard. Not a single time that I left a homeworld undefended did it stand.

You quickly learn that this is a game of many battles. Often there is a final keystone battle, but mostly the play is one of a war of attrition. You are trying to reduce your opponents ability to wage war rather than win through a decisive final conflict.

So that’s the game play in a nutshell. Every race is significantly different to be unique and the AI is stunningly good at the higher levels. All in the all the experience is very well balanced and refined by a team who obviously love RTS games far more than the rest of us.

I have since gone to play some multiplayer online and in the office and my teams three man structure played well to the games setup. Jim prefers the tricky Advent, with their sneaky play and cleaver psychic powers. He loves taking over the ships and craft of the others.

Notice the hands in the graphics as the Advent take over this missile boat.

Kieran, on the other hand, loves the alien nature of the Vasari. They place emphasis on large ships that don’t die easily. Power is the role for him. Myself, I love the TEC. Why? because my idea of a good night in is to check in with Adama and Number Six. I often find myself imagining Starbuck in the little craft or Boomer in the bombers. That is the power of the engine here that it can achieve that level of detail.

So what’s wrong with it?

Well, the diplomacy is very light and you cant give missions out to others like the constantly do to you. Also, there is no campaign just skirmish mode. That’s about it. Everything else is exemplary.

There is nothing wrong here that isn’t wrong with a million other RTS games.

An RTS of significant depth is all about the massive level of possible moves. It is like Chess or Go in that your objective is to find the best way to victory for you. It is about carving out the correct strategy to marry with your fleet’s tactics. The questions the game asks you are:

• What is the right amount of bombers, ships and capitals to obtain victory?
• Which tech’s to research first and which to leave to later?
• How do you advance your civilization safely?

That’s all good.

But eventually you will get it. You will crack what it takes to win and refine that idea down to a formula. Once that is achieved the game will lose its shine. This is the same for all RTS’s; they only keep you glued while you are learning.

Long may that be.

Sins is a masterful RTS from a stable of masterful RTS makers and specialists. That perfect formula is a long finish line away and there are three races to master. And even then, once that race is well a truly won, you will still get surprised. I was a master of AOEII, or so I thought. I won something like 50 games in a row and then played Kieran and lost again and again.

There is nothing as refreshing as getting your ass kicked by someone else in a ways that you didn’t even consider. Sins is the next and best of a genre that steps us inventively towards the game found in Iain M Banks’ “Player of Games” novel and as such is a welcome addition to a bloated genre. It throws up some surprises and features a wonderful 3D engine that polishes up the serious depth. Thus it is a brilliant game.

Oh, you can mod the game easily, I cant wait for some of these mods to come out:

Sins scores 8.5/10 (losing only half a mark for the diplomacy-lite options)

Regards,

Basho

Just in case you didn’t already know.

It’s a common misconception that Rogues “do it” from the front or even, on rare occasion, laterally. While there was a brief period in the sixties where such things might have been in vogue, these days it’s understood that best position for rogues worldwide is directly behind. Indeed, many rogueish feats demand it.

100% cotton heavyweight t-shirt in stealthy black. With “Rogues do it from behind” printed on the front in white, and the Penny Arcade logo on the back - also in white.

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Unfortunately, due to the quest being written up incorectly on the web, none of the people from the guild who came were able to join me and I was forced to go in with a pick up group.

The final questers were myself (25 Guardian), a 28 Monk, 28 Paladin and 25 Templar.

To zone in you require:

1. To be at the final point of the quest called “Into the hive” given by the Crypt Keeper.
2. To be at least lvl 24
3. To have a very good healer
4. The zone is on a 8 hour timer for failed attempts

There follows a few notes and images of what I found.

Upon zoning in there are a number of lower level bugs hanging around a small yard:

We made quick work of these! Our Paladin had been in the zone before and made us stay back. Guarding the next area are four larger bugs. These are all non agro UNTIL you cross the line. We buffed up and suddenly the bugs were upon us. They fought hard and conned white.

The battle flowed and our large DPS count started to beat them down. Breathless we were happy with the perfomance and started to wait for health and rebuffs before heading in further. However, we were not given the chance! Suddenly the Queen came up the stairs and attacked. She had spells and poisons as well as around 4 babies.

She was very tough and not being ready we looked like we were in trouble

Finally the Paladin dropped and soon after we all did. The battle was very very close by the end. It looks like you have to the pull all the mobs RIGHT to the zone line and be ready to run. Or at least have two healers and more dps.

I left to find more Guardians but soon afterwards, I also got major wife agro and had to log

I look forwards to returning to this place and sorting this bitch out! (Queen Ankhestara, not my wife!)

Guardians of Qeynos here is your challenge!

Yagyu

**CONTAINS SPOILERS!**

**Current version: 2.0 - Added pictures of TOV**

My Quest for the Ghoulbane.

I had been adventuring in the Thundering Steppes for a while and slowly completing the Guardian Armour Quests when I heard of a quest for the mighty Ghoulbane sword. There follows my diary and guide to the quest and what I think of the reward.

This is one of the longest quests I have yet to come across in this game, not least of all because I had not trained myself in mining and this forms a very large part of the quest.

To start, one visits a newbie quest giver in Nettleville called Vida Sweeps. She needs a new broom and offers to reward you with a valuable stone. I had ignored this quest for ages due to the fact that I found it unlikely that the stone was actually valuable. How wrong I was! Many other questers, I’m sure, will have deleted the reward for this quest before continuing and must be kicking themselves now.

Vida sent me to find Tawli Whiskwind in Baubbleshire, collect her broom and bring it back to Vida. The reward is the Dusty Blue Stone. Upon examining the stone I was given the Dusty Blue Stone quest to try and find out what it actually is. I took the stone to a mining expect called Gruffin Goldtooth in Graystone, near the Oakmyst Forest entrance.

He said that he needed time to look into the stone and would I collect some things for him whilst he does so? Sure, I thought, why not? What do you need? He wanted me to go to the Thundering Steppes to collect 40 rock samples from Wind Swept Rocks. A quick shout around the guild found that I needed a 90 lvl skill in mining to collect the samples. Unfortunately my skill was 8. Thats right, 8. The one after 7 and before 9. 12 was right out.

This just made me even more determined. Firstly I upgraded all my bags to large and I cleared out anything I was carrying (spare swords etc). I then rolled up my sleeves (mentally as my armor doesn’t bend very much) and stomped off to Oakmist. For the next 40 minutes I mined, chopped, picked, trapped and fished anything that crossed my path. I wasn’t the only “non newbie” doing this either. It became a mad dash to get to any rocks before the others and I couldn’t help wondering what the newbs ™ were making of myself (resplendent with my AQ armor) hanging around their zones. Finally, I got to level 19. Level 19 is what is required to mine in Antonica. Axe in hand I headed out. Most of Antonica is grey to me. That is everything NOT hanging around rocks rocks are grey. Antonica is also very very big. The best places I found for mining were north of the roads from the Keep of the Needle to the Windstalker village.

This took sometime. Suffice to say it is a chore of epic proportions. I did however get one break. Upon the third hour I checked to see if I had filled my bags and found that I had mined some coral and a lapis lazuli. My finger hovered over the delete button, and I quickly asked their value from the guild. The coral was worth 8 – 12 gold and the Lapis was worth around 2 gold. Amazing. I had just spent one of the most taxing (although not too boring) nights of my life and made more money in that time than the whole last two weeks killing and leveling.

I quickly found that people are all to ready to cheat people in my position and my first attempts to sell the Coral were met with offers of 8 silver and 20 silver respectively (from jewelers too!) . Suffice to say I have a few more names in the old ignore list now than before. I eventually sold the coral to a nice bloke who wanted to make something for his wife. He paid me 7 gold and 60 odd silver. The Lapis went for 2 gold.

With such largess to my name the quest took a slight hiatus as I went power shopping. I bought my Guardian a set of Pristine Carbonite armor, a complete set of Pristine Agate jewelery and the wonderful mace “Starfall” which is from a rare quest in TS. Feeling better about the hours so far spent mining I set my pick about the rocks with renewed vigor in the hope of getting more riches. I couldn’t actually tell you what I mined to get the coral, but I didn’t get another.

After many hours, many many hours, I reached lvl 90 in mining. Off to The Thundering Steppes!

Mining in TS is not safe. If you are going to do this quest I suggest strongly that you attempt it before you start hunting Cenotaur’s. These horses live upon and around all the best sites for Wind Swept Stones that I could find. A night was spent getting the rocks, which are mostly on the left hand side of the map (for me). I noticed something else too. You don’t get credit from EVERY rock you mine. I found (or I may have been in a trance and imagining it) that you needed to mine slowly. As in you need to the let the messages go from your screen before you mine again. But this may just be the hours of hitting things getting to me.

**UPDATE** Another good location for Wind Swept Rocks is down by Tower 4 to Tower 5 and all the undead there

Finally the quest updated to 40 samples and I was on my way back to Greystone. Old man goldtooth explained that he had had no luck in working out what the stone was and suggested I try a mage.

Searching the MageTower in South Qeynos I found, upon entering the red teleporter, the mage Aristide Calais.

He too had a task for me (I must change this DHL hat for something new). Unbelievably he wanted me to go BACK to The Thundering Steppes and deliver some enchanted bars to Olden Highguard (found at the village at 612, -1, -60).

I quickly did this and gated back. Finding the mage for my reward he only said that the stone has no magic in it, it has a blessing. He sent me to a priest for more advice.

Said priest is called Toranim Skyblade and is located outside on the left at the Temple of Life in North Qeynos. He, of course had a task for me to do as well.

I needed to kill undead in the StormHold. I rushed there and slaughtered the yard trash skeletons (taking on 8 at once) and rushed back.

This is the point where the quest either ends (and you get a non sword reward) or continues and becomes the Heritage Quest for Ghoulbane.

The point is when he mentions Ghoulbane you can click “I dont use swords” and he gives you a choice of something else. I, of course, didn’t do this.

After you kill 25/30 skeletons for Toranim Skyblade, you come back and he tells you that it is none other than the stone that was the pommel of the Ghoulbane and gives you a long story about the lore of the Ghoulbane and its last owner who died and so on and the Paladins of the Temple of Light brought his body and the sword back down into the Crypt of the Stormlords. The Crypt of the Stormlords is actually in fact the Crypt of Valor and is past the Atrium close to the archer room.

Now the Crypt of Valor is a locked zone requiring a quest to open. The quest is called “A Key to the Past”. An interesting quest given from the Crushed Librarian in (of all places) the library. I was half way through this quest by the time I got the Ghoulbane quest and so I included here some quick notes from other sources up until the point I continued and some notes about the library.

The quest NPC for the key is the Crushed Librarian in the Library.

The Library is accessed from the room downstairs with the mists in it. In the floor there is a grate which connects you to the library. BE WARNED that the mobs in the library called Writs (flying books – very Harry Potter) are tough as old boots and will kill you if you are sub lvl 30. You can get in without agro, but be careful. On the far side of the wall there is an exit to antonica if you get in trouble.

Note 1 - The big red glowing claymore at the top of the stairs is not the Ghoulbane, its the Bone Bladed Claymore which is a lvl 40 click able quest.

Step 1: Talk to the “A Crushed Librarian” in the Library in Stormhold. The entrance to the Library is in the Feign Zombie room past the Atrium. There is a grate on the floor that you click to enter the Library.

Step 2: Kill Defiled Squires until update. Kill Defiled Knights until
update.

After these steps the Librarian wants you to kill some of the more rare upper level bosses in the zone.

Lord Androus spawns in the chessboard and requires a smallish group to kill. He is spawned along with two priests at one of the 3 locations around the board.

He is fairly infrequent and you need to kill his placeholders (knights and priests) to get him to spawn. He is also killed almost immediately and so I suggest (for you dual boxers) parking your mule in there and keep asking for a group to get him. For the people like me who only play one character you just have to be lucky. I spent the rest of the time killing greens in the hope of getting the Berik Sword of Thunder drop with no success.

Guard Captain Hess spawns in the barracks on the top level (2nd right from the main hall and in the doors to the left) and is even more rare than the Lord.

I strongly suggest getting in with a group camping him as it is unlikely that you will get him on your own. He comes with two friends and I was lucky enough to get him right after a server reset. I soloed him and his buddies at 24 but it was close. His placeholders are two Defiled Zombie Knights at the enclave.

The Zombie Handmaidens are downstairs then left in the Aritum and left again upthe stairs. They spawn fairly frequently, are very hard to solo at 24 and DONT ALLWAYS update your quest.

Finally, upon killing the maidens I returned to the Librarian and was sent to find the key.

Now, he doesn’t tell you where to actually find the key and it is in the last place you would think of looking. Basically, its a the feet of a statue next to Sir Valinayle, who is all the way back to the entrance. I grabbed the key and had the access.

It should have been plain sailing from here…. It wasn’t. Listen ladies and gentlemen to my tale of woe told in bullet points.

1.You need 3 people with the key to get into the zone. (crap!)
2.You need the Scion of Darkness, that can kill you before you can blink, to not be up and kill your team members over and over. It blocks the Atrium and is a real bastard. (smeg!!)
3.You need to all be next to the zone in to click it. (Bollocks!!!)

**YOU NEED TO NOT CLICK ON ANYTHING WHEN YOU ZONE IN UNTIL YOU GET THE SWORD**

Yes, in my excitement I forgot to tell this to my group. Before I could find the sword someone clicked on a grave inside the Tomb and a HOARDE of yellow^ zombies spawned and spanked me back to the dark ages. Not so bad? Well, TOV is on a timer… an 8 hour timer…. Basically I had to wait for the next day before I could attempt the mind taxingly difficult task of clicking on a sword again.

I was a we’ bit frustrated at this point in the proceedings.

The next night also had problems. Upon logging back in, I found a duo of fantastic guild members willing to come to TOV with me. I was going to loot the sword but we were going to also finish the quest for that zone. It quickly became apparent that we would need more members if we were to be successful, not least of all a healer. Or two.

In SH there is always (at least on our server) one or two people looking to get into TOV. We quickly picked up a fourth team member who said he wanted to do TOV in full, when suddenly one of my guildies went LD. Waiting for him to come back and for a healer. Or two. Our new found friend became impatient.

“Logging in to get my Ghoulbane…”, he said.
“What the hell? wait!”, I replied. Too late. In this guys urgency to get the Ghoulbane he zoned in. It was clear that he had no intention of staying for the whole of TOV and it was even clearer that he wasn’t going to roll on looting the Ghoulbane.

**REMEMBER only one person can loot the sword PER INSTANCE**

**Once one member double clicks the zone - YOU ALL ZONE IN**

I was slightly pissed off. Luckily, the week before I had doubled my RAM in my system. This means I now zone FAST. More than this I know exactly where the Ghoulbane is in the zone.

Location: It is on the left hand wall about half way down under a torch.

I zoned in and ran for the sword, with him right behind me. Clicking as fast as I could, I pulled the sword from the wall. Success!

The gentlemen was none too happy and I got one or two tells of rage. The poor member of my guild that had been dragged in with us and the other member stuck outside were also none to happy with him. Since we were now unable to continue (the TOV mobs are all very hard) we decided in Groupsay to Call of Qeynos the hell out of there. As I casted, the asswipe opened a grave and started the mob spawns. Then to my shock, the guild friend remembered that they had used CoQ recently and couldnt cast again for half an hour. As I ported out I felt awful. I had dragged a friend down there and they had been screwed by this guy. Twice. Then I had got away and they hadn’t and had be given only debt.

The two morals here are this:

1.Be careful who you group with in such circumstances.
2.When you need to beat a wanker to a reward, run and don’t stop to take screenshots.

Hense, I have no screenshots of the inside of TOV. Just remember that if you don’t tough anything but the sword you are totally safe from the ghosts. When I go back here tonight I will post some.

**Update** Here are the missing screen shots. My guild attacked this zone last night. Its tough but worth it.

The Ghoulbane itself! Right click and pick it up.

This is the zone from the entrance:

This is the mobs:

Afterward either gate out or leave via the grate in the wall.

Anyway, I came back to North Qeynos and Toranim Skyblade…

…and he combined the stone and the sword to give me Ghoulbane. Or at least

WEAKENED GHOULBANE!

Not that I can use it yet mind. Sigh.

Was this quest worth it. Hell yes! The sword has very nice stats indeed and a low speed. I earned a ton of cash and got to kill some nice mobs. I also learned by way around SH and TS completely.

My path is now set. I need to finish the Armor Quests (I’m on 6), get to skill level 160 and then go for the next parts of the quest: The charging of Ghoulbane!

Watch this space.

Yours always,

Yagyu the Guardian.

/basho

OTHER EQ2 ENTRIES:
http://www.outsidecontext.com/wordpress/index.php?cat=10

Personally, I find I can solo anything up to green ^^. If its marked as a group mob that is. If its a solo mob i can take it up to yellow. To be able to solo in EQ2 you need to use your smarts, in WOW the solo mobs are handed to you on a plate and your’re allowed to get on with it. In EQ2 you need to search for the little blighters. Here are some of the places i solo’d so far:

Firstly you can solo in ALL THE NEWBIE ZONES and solo ALL the newbie quests.

Antonica. There are many solo mobs here. Bears and wolves up by the windstalkers, undead by caltoris, lizards by the oracle tower, gnolls on the islands and around the gnoll hero. Solo gnolls also walk north of the entrance to FMG, around the archers woods, inside the southern gnoll cave. Moreoever, you can solo crabs on the north east beach, the undead outside SH and as many bears and wolves as you can eat.

BB inside the front entrance there are gnoll pups and if you pull the right side first you can start to solo the courtyard. Once you are high enough you should be able to take out the gnolls patrolling the treasure rooms. From the other entrance there are many easy to get gnolls.

Vermines Snye. Here you can take the snakes, bats and eventually the cubes. The bats drop a lot of loot and some very nice pages (that sell for good silver). There are also many many clickable quests for people all over this zone. Some giving very nice items.

Stormhold. After 20 the zone line trash greys out and you can start to solo at the chessboard, then the scorched and finaly work up to the lancers and tunel undead leading to the stairs. Downstairs you can solo the mists, the wanderers (crusaders and caviliers) - (when you get high enough).

Thundering Steppes. I have solo’d grifawns for ages here as well as deer, eagles, the undead by T1, the wolves by the Chanters and the lower undead by the docks. Not to mention the crabs and sea creatures.

ANYONE WHO SAYS HE CANT FIND SOLO MOBS ISNT TRYING HARD ENOUGH!

Now, the game invites you to group by the fact that most of the quests and quest mobs require a group to get to (TOV for example requires 3 people to zone in). If this game is at all solo unfriendly it was this aspect. SOE have tried to counter it by adding none group NPC quests (the Watcher of the fields in TS or Sir Vallyiee in SH are two i have done) but there is still a way to go.

Stop your [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot]ing and go and find out. This isnt a “simple” game like WOW, it certainly isnt AD&D. If you really want to know what this games inspiration is think “Morrowind” with other people.

As for grouping in general. Yes, sometimes it can be hard and you have to ditch a badly led group. But sometimes…I’m telling you guys i have really really kicked some [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] in a group and we have taken mobs and slaughtered things i would never even EXPECT to be taken by our levels. Add to that, that the higher HO’s rule.

When it comes down to it

Grouping Adds Life.

You dont have to sit at the zone line waiting to group you know!? If you want to find things to do - trawl the forums (there are tonnes of ideas), read some EQ2 blogs (shamless plug), or even take on a big solo quest (parts of Goulbane are solo and they take ages! and i personally made over 9 gold on the dusty blue stone quest - SOLO!)

In a growing trend Yahoo has reviewed both EQ2 and WOW at the same time.

He offers little commentry other than EQ2 requires more input before it gives up its output. I kind of agree with this, although point out that EQ1 veterans are all complaining that EQ2 is hand holding too much!.

I love to live a small part of my life in fantasy world, the trick is to balance this so that you remember which is real!

If my experiences with two new massively multiplayer online role-playing games have taught me one thing, it’s that if I really wanted, I’d never have to interact face-to-face with another person again. I have all the friends and enemies I can handle thanks to “EverQuest II” and “World of Warcraft.”

Yahoo Review

I have held off writing a review of this game because as with all MMO’s you need to invest a lot of time in the game before you can judge it. I state here and now that I cannot judge the whole game at all. The later levels and full class balances are as yet a mystery to me (and everyone else) as is the RAID lvl content and Uber Mob encounters. We know they are there but I cannot step safely outside Antonica without coming face to face with creatures 10 lvls higher than me and so cannot get to them. However, I can state that I have been playing only this game since I got it and that I haven’t yet bought Half Life 2. If that isn’t recommendation enough, read on.

What I have for you is an analysis of the changes and upgrades from EQ1 then some further tales of my adventures in Antonica

I recently completed the classic game Morrowind. I had a full set of every type of armor, I was head of two guilds and I had ALL the special quest weapons (other than Bluebrand). I left my avatar in that game, having saved the world, sitting peacefully with his loot arrayed around him in his room like an armory sculpture. Morrowind was quite simply the greatest RPG I had ever played.

Until now. What did Morrowind have missing? Other people. Everquest 2 is two things. It is an answer to all the problems, requests, and issues with Everquest 1 and secondly, it is Morrowind with real people.

EQ2 is EQ1 fixed.

What did we hate about EQ1? I seem to remember being very addicted to it and unable to think of much else during my days at work, this had the consequence of making me blind at the time to its myriad faults. I had fun in EQ1 because it was hard and I like grouping. But what problems were there? Thousands!

However, fear not. I can tell you now that every /bug or /gm has been written down in a little book. Every exasperated forum post, bad uber loot encounter and nightmare 14 hour Hate Raid corpse recovery has been noted and pondered in a book.

This book is called “What will we do better next time?”. Well heres the top of that list and what they did in EQ2 to remove it:

1.Twinking. Twinking and economy overload killed much of what made EQ1 great. It hurt seeing a lvl 1 warrior running around in full Cobalt uber armor and it hurt seeing them flooding the markets with supposedly hard to get swords and ruining the prices.

In EQ2 twinking is a thing of the past. SOE have simply and effectively done away with it using four processes. Firstly, all items have a fixed level range before you can use them. You cannot give a lvl 7 (the lowest lvl that sees the main city) uber loot and expect him to be able to even use it. Secondly, selling items is much more interlaced than before. In order to sell anything using the games built in systems you need to be in your room. thats right, stuck in you room. This of course leads to many afk sellers, who sell their loot whilst they sleep or goto work (like me). Long gone is the zone auction channel being drowned by a hundred people shouting out prices. The idea of price checking anything is very difficult compared to EQ1 and there are no (at the moment) middle men who simply buy low and sell high through a day making a killing in the process. I know this happened, because I was very very good at it in EQ1. The third reason the economy is well is paradoxically that mobs no longer drop money. In fact the only way to really get money is to quest for it. Nor do they drop quest loot you can sell easily. This is because quest items are automatic. Should you need to kill 10 gnolls for a quest, on the tenth the quest will automatically complete without you having to loot anything. Rolling for quest loot is gone. Most mobs (so far) drop pages and spell books for crafters. Finally, the very best items in the game are attunable. This means that you can sell them, but to wear them they need to be attuned and once they are attuned they become no-drop/no-trade. That item is removed from the sales chain. dropped Hand-me-downs no more. Twinkers no more.

2.Crafting. in EQ1 dropped loot was by far superior to player crafted.

I say dropped hand-me-downs above, because player crafted gear is better than the vast majority of early dropped items and quest items better than that. The whole system has been set up to benefit both players who have put in the time to craft and questers who have put in the time to quest. Crafters make the same armor you can buy in shops but with better AC and, if it pristine, stats.

3.Camping was rampant in EQ1 with sometimes a waiting list to even get near a mob.

Camping, still to some degrees exists in EQ2, but it is a micro fraction to what it was before. Once again SOE ave taken a multi level approach to this ancient problem. firstly, if a zone gets over crowded the game simply spawns another copy of the zone. Any zone. This leads to there being double the amount of spawns for the rearer mobs. Secondly, the game has been designed that the best mobs spawn in dynamic instanced zones, that act like little worlds, where a group of adventurers can battle through and no-one else can barge in. This I suspect is how dragons will be faced. finally, SOE have turned the idea of grinding on its head…

4.Grinding. EQ1 was famous for the Grind needed to go up the levels, this situation getting worse as you went on.

Gone, and good ridence. Well, actually you can still grind if you want to but don’t expect to get any good items, or xp or gear compared to questers. Truthfully, questing gives far superior xp and items to drops and grinding. Some quests may ask you to kill say 50 of a creature, but that is really all there is left in the game. Hunting is still there and alive and well, but camp grinding is a major thing that SOE have tried to get away from. About 85% of my xp in my 20 levels has come from quests. After lvl 20 hunting comes into it a bit more with all the mobs being double red (very very hard). But even these mobs have a reason, all the classes get a full set of armor quests for post 20.

5.Questing. In EQ1 quests were a joke. In fact apart from the epic, I never even started one.

In EQ2 questing is of major importance. This is drummed into you again and again only the difficulty of the quests expands. Almost all the quest givers in the game now have full speech for their answers. The system for talking to people has been changed from the nightmare EQ1 style to a full and easy to use “click the option” system. Many of the quests are funny, some are sad and some are serious. Just walking around the town triggers guards and NPC’s to beckon you to help with some sort of errand or problem. All with exactly character driven voices. Some quests require you to speak a different language, yes language means something in this game.

Quests break down into different types. Access quests give you keys or rights to hidden or instanced zones. Whereas collection quests just ask you to pick up a certain amount of any items. There are also guild quests, wholesaler quests and well as hallmark quests which must be completed or you cannot progress beyond a certain point. For example, becoming a warrior or choosing you subclass are both hallmark quests. all of these are kept neatly sorted within your journal, which acts as a reminder to complete all you have started. This is directly lifted from morrowind. As is asking people for NPC locations. The quest usually has some sort of clue to which zone you need to be in to find the quest NPC’s and on arrival to that zone simply right clicking on a guard enables you to ask him where you may find Mr so and so. The guard (if he knows) will point and a line (similar to the Corpse recovery line) will lead you to the required person. This is a magical benefit. The best quests ask you to group as to do them solo is almost impossible because Kiting is a thing of the past too. This is not too much of a pain as since everyone is on the quests and most mobs post 20 are red you will want to group anyway. Soloing whilst in the game is not the focus.

6. Fighting. In EQ1 the human warrior had two buttons. Attack and kick. that was it. I could leave these going and go make a cup of tea.

This for me was the BIG problem with EQ1. I had very little to do in any battle other than taunt, which I did every time I kicked. I didn’t even have to click anything extra. EQ2 has solved the team dynamic issues. The warrior now is no longer a final class. It splits (painfully to some) into a Damage Per Second (DPS) Berserker and a Tank based Guardian. Moreover both have a massive multitude of special moves, stances, attacks and self and team buffs. I have two full bars of buttons to press in a battle. I am required to seriously think when in combat and it takes all my attention to cast the right special at the right time and benefit my group. Even better than this, SOE have introduced a chain special system called Heroic Opportunities (HO’s). These allow a group to press specials in a defined order to produce a beneficial spell or damage to the enemy. So far only the very simple HO’s have been worked out, but it is thought that in RAID encounters multiple groups can cast HO’s together leading to a kind of Uber effect. This system is fragile. A wrong click can break the HO and the chance for damage is lost for a few more seconds. This has simply and effectively made any group knuckle down. There is no room for time wasters and good players stand out a country mile. No longer is Uber just in your equipment.

7.Dying. EQ1 = 8 hour corpse recoveries to the Plains of the Gods. Nuff said.

Dying is always going to happen in any game, but it is in a MMO, which has no reload facility that it has systems that have reached the levels I am going to describe. Firstly, death no longer takes xp away. It simply adds red xp debt to your xp left for the level, damage to your gear and slight damage to your stats. That debt is bigger or smaller based a few things.

I.If you get your ghost (shard) back from where you fell it is vastly reduced and stats returned to normal.
ii.if you get raised from the dead by a priest it is vastly reduced and stats returned to normal after a minute or so.
iii.If you are in a group and a member dies you get a little of their debt.
iv.If you log out debt reduces faster naturally.
v.In an instanced zone you can click the door to get your shard back.

This has led to the end of EQ1’s zerg rush. When you die you get restored at a predefined waypoint in a nearby zone (no longer will you die on the way to Kunark and have a CR journey across 18 zones!). You also keep all you gear on you. All with a 10 percent reduction. When this hits 0 you can no longer put on the armor or wield the weapon until you fix it. Your stats will continue to reduce if you get killed again until you reach an unplayable state. This will put an end to the zerg rushing seen in high level EQ1 guild tactics. And that is good.

Also under this section comes the conning of mobs. The game now has a rather neat system in place which gives you far more information than previously. you can tell if it is an easy mob for its type or harder. you can see what lvl it is and whether it is designed to solo play or group play or even multiple group raid play. nifty.

This system is deadly accurate. You can be in a excellent group killing red conned monsters all day, but take on a times 2 group red con and your dead as a door nail.

8.Kill stealing and ninja looting. In EQ1 the person who scored the most damage on a mob won the xp and items, also the fastest clicker got to loot.

Whilst here in EQ2, a mob is yours until you run away and click break. No more will a mage simply nuke your mob out from under you and no more will you have people passing through pulling them off you. Once you hit that mob its yours. Also there will be no more arguments over who hit it first as the encounter is locked on the first blow. A groups leader can set the loot order to auto loto, which make sure that no one can ninja steel anything anymore. The loto system is random and people can click to not take part in it if they dont want the item.

PART TWO: Onwards to lvl 20 and beyond.

My experiences from lvl 15 to lvl 20 have been great. For earlier episodes check the archives. Over the last few weeks I have been concentrating to finishing all the little quests left in the city and hunting some of the more difficult named mobs. I have also been scouring the dungeons of Blackburrow, which his full of gnolls and The Vermin’s Snye, which is full of the undead.

Some of the quests I have been on have been brilliant. As you will remember in my last post I had spied a character with a powerful two handed weapon, [golem] AND I WANTSSS IT! [/golem]

Tracking the quest giver down {cough! Google cough!} I was told to go and kill a number of sea creatures including the very large Cold Wind Octopi that inhabit the zone of Antonica, just outside the city.

Here I am swimming in the river trying to find the octopus

And here one comes!

After killing a few of these super cool horrors (I like octopi and squid!) I turned in for the reward:

I immediately decided to test this baby out on a more difficult quest. This one was what is called an Access Quest. This rewards me with being able to go into a instanced zone. The quest involved finding a note on a dead ratoga in the dungeon and taking on a investigation to finding out what the note means. The quest led me all over the city until I found someone who could finally tell me where the note points too. It seams that the taverns in the city are all members of a gang represented by a coin. The guards told me that these coins are rare but he remembers a now dead noble having one.

The next step was a quick run down to The Down Below and then fighting my way through to the nobles. All of these were low level for me and I managed to do it alone.

I then had access into the instanced zone to find out who or what is behind the gang. Hidden behind a staute of a man was a switch. This is what I found:

It Fippy Darkpaw! (who was in EQ1 – or at least his great great grandfather was). This NPC had the most brilliant voice acting, which was very funny. I clicked something like “Oh! your a gnoll who talks!” and he came back with “OH NO! A talking gnoll! Call out the guard! Sigh….you complete dolt!”. It turned out he had bet on me finding my way down here and now he had a little job for me. He has been supplying grog to the taverns around Qeynos from down here in the dungeons. He wanted me to collect the signatures on the manifest and bring itback to him. To hell with that, I thought. I collected the signatures ok, but went back to the zone and killed everyone (Fippy runs away and I didn’t get him). I then turned the manifest into the guard for a reward (and a feeling of having done the right thing). A nice quest. Looking it up on the web showed I could have got a reward from fippy instead if I had completed the quest his way.

Now that my AC was creeping up (always good for a warrior) I joined a group taking on harder game. We went around and killed yellow and above cons. such as:

The Fanglord! This mob had been the standard wandering upper level mob you allways get in zones. I had tangled with him before and died so this was sweet revenge.

Valen. This guy stands atop a tumble down tower deep within the zone. He is needed for a quest and is non agro, but we decided to take him anyway!

The Courier. This mob pops when you have a certain quest. I will have to kill her again when I get the quest up to this stage myself. She was hard.

And even Queen Bright Fang (although in this image I wasn’t fighting her, this is the only one I have since I was far to busy tanking the bitch to be able to snap shots!). She lives deep within Blackburrow and feeds upon the gnolls that have disturbed her nest. As you can see she is a wonderfull looking mob and showcases this games great animation!

After all this slaying I was now lvl 18 and ready to take my sub quest for lvl 20 and ability to become a guardian. This quest was quite easy all told. I was sent out to kill a number of gnolls (easy) and then teleported to an instanced zone full of the smelly dogs. Taking my time I pulled them in groups and managed to kill my way through to the chieftain. The story behind the quest was brilliant. I was being asked to help stop a planned invasion of the city by the gnolls partnered with the Bloodsabers. The final two mobs were the negotiators in this pack. One was a bard, the other was a wiz, but they both went down.

Finally, I had made my mark in the game. I quickly built up the exp needed to ding 20 and went shopping! here am I in my heavy +20 only armor, nice! This is mostly Vanguard 20+ only armor.
I took the surname of the real Yagyu.

Armed up I was able to join in with higher groups. Zoning away from Antonica I joined a group as a third tank who were hunting in Thundering Steps, a high level zone compaired to me.

Our leader was a Paladin who had a horse upon getting to 20. Nice. He looked the business riding around mounted up. Here you can see him in front of a Tripple Red mob (one of the guards) I guess I wont be able to solo this one!

Everything here is massively red to me but our team was very solid and we quickly racked up the kills:

Centaurs! These raise up thier legs to attack and you need a very high AC to be able to tank them even with two healers!

Plus the named! Named mobs are allways difficult. This one caught agro on our second healer as we moved through the zone, killing him in one hit. We finally took it down but I burned all my power to do so.

The group leader decided to go for larger (sic) game. here we are killing Giants!

They are BIG! Giants are allways cool to kill. The graphics in this game are brilliant.

But they do go down! Giants also drop nice loot.

I am having a really good time in this game. After a few battles, The Main Tank gave me some drops he no longer needed and in coming reports I will be telling of how I managed to get enough experience to put them on and also the start of my own warrior armor quests.

until then,

basho

With the wife having left for the day on a quest of her own (to see if she can get into the new Apple shop in Oxford Street) I hunkered down for some serious Everquesting!

My Warrior is now level 13 and looking quite good. I have completed 59 quests which put me in the top 750 questers on Highkeep server, but the question is where to go from here?

In Everquest 2 the best experience is to be found by questing. As is the best items. I have been hunting and met people the same level as myself who have earned a pittance compared to me and have the most flimsy and cardboard of armors because they have spent the entire time hunting for no reason. Without a quest, hunting is nothing and with one hunting is the best way to get your level up and gain some special and unique items.

My first of the day involved the running around of Antonica seeing the sites. Sounds dull? Well firstly, Antonica is huge. Roughly the equivalent of 5 EQ one zones and filled to the brim with all sorts of monsters and adventures. It has beaches, forests, woods, hills, citadels, towers, passes, rives and everything you could want with plenty of space for everyone. In fact it is so big you can take a nice griffin ride across it. Well, the quest was found when I was on a quest to kills gnolls in Antonican heartlands. After 40 gnolls one dropped a book and I won the roll. It was the journal of the famous Bootstrutter, who if you know EQ1 was the chap who gave out the Journeyman boots. In is he described all the major landmarks of the zone and reading the book opened a quest to see them for myself.

This is the MMO version of the “stealth mission”. There is much in the zone that is death on a stick for me. The problem became one of how to approach the areas needed without getting munched, chopped or blown up. The quest took me all over. To the far edge and the entrance to Stormhold and the far north where I found the grave of Lady Webspinner (which netted me a mini ding). Thence to the south and the islands of the cost and the towers and castles in between. On the journey I came across gnolls (of course – they have invaded the zone), bears and wolves of all types, treants (giant walking angry trees), bandits (who are tougher than vindaloo’ed mutton) and Witches (I stayed away from them!). Finally I had all the locations spelled out, but how to get back. One of the best things about EQ2 is that warriors also get spells of some description. I have already mentioned “Call to Arms” and “Toughness”. Along with these I get “Call of Qeynos”, which teleports me back to my hometown. I hadn’t thrown it before so I was interested in seeing what it did. It was clear that it took a good 30 seconds to proc, so not something to use in an emergency!

After getting back I turned in the book to the librarian and got Bootstrutters 10 slot backpack for a reward plus some silver. Very very nice indeed!

Next on my list was the retrieval of another book from a tree in the newbie beetles area (which looks like a farm) in Antonica again, which was given to me by the head of the elves in Elddar Grove. However, this one didn’t go so well to plan. On arrival to the tree it all went wrong. Firstly three upper yellow bandits spawned. Yikes! Time to run! Secondly, my computer started its lunchtime virus check and slowed down to a slideshow. And what a slideshow it was, entitled “The Brutal Murder of Yagyu”. Cursing Sophos’s name I logged and killed the virus killer. On my return I picked up my spirit shard and took a moment to think of a plan. It came to me immediately, help needed! Shouting across the zone got me a shaman and a druid willing to take on the enemy. Nervously I returned to the tree. The bandits spawned again and battle was joined. But this time it was they in trouble. With the shaman healing me, the druid nuking and myself holding all the agro (I now have 4 agro holding spells) we made light if long work of the bastards. Thanking my friends I returned to the quest giver, dinged 14 and received the very nice Amulet of Warding. The story behind the quest then got interesting.

The bandits apparently are in league with Ratoga scum under the city and could I investigate their Scee? Sure, I said. Venturing again into The Down Below (see previous posts) I found the Scee, which is a zone within a zone, and entered. Joining a group by the gates we started attacking our way in. Unfortunately the servers were coming down and the quest has to wait a little longer. However, one interesting thing was the weapon the other warrior had.

What a powerful 2hb wep! I decided upon my return tomorrow I would quest for this magical mace.

Till then!

Basho

Well, in true Everquest fashion it took as long to get lvl 10 as it did to get from lvl 4 to 9!

I have a lot of experience in questing from my days playing Morrowind. I know that whenever someone gives you a quest to an area, you can get a massive amount of other quests to that area which you can do at the same time. It was the collection of these quests that kept me up till midnight last night.

In order to become a warrior I need to kill White Spiderlings in The Caves. Simple, and sure enough they spawn right at the beginning of this zone. I also got another quest, from a medic in South Qeynos. This was for poison glands, from (you’ve guessed it) White Spiderlings. Similarly, a Weaponsmith nearby wants Snakeskins for his sword handles and sure enough they too spawn in the same space as the Spiders. In fact along with the delivery quests that I picked up on the way (and fulfilled on the return – all of which were on the way I was going) I had 6 quests going at once. I said it before, there is content here. The Caves are reached by ringing a bell on the docks, which teleports you to wherever you can go. The Caves are dank and dark, but White Spiders are simple, easy peasy. Just hit them. In fact that part of the zone is very safe since they don’t even agro. Also on the zone is a large infection of Gnolls, who certainly can hit me and are agro. There are a number of trains leading to zone every ten minutes or so as an adventurer has to run for his life from these mad dogs.

It’s one of the nicest things about EQ2 at the moment. I don’t think anyone is much over lvl 20 on my server and I am reading people gasping at the idea of owing a whole platinum piece. I’m in on the ground floor! I like the fact that in general I am one of the first to challenge this world. I’m sure a year from now people at lvl 7 will thrash all these Gnolls with ease, but for now there is a definite feeling of adventure and seeing new things for the first time. Its a lot of fun.

What isnt fun is the lag in North and South Qeynos. I think that much of it is due to my machine needing more RAM but it’s still annoying.

Finally I get all the quests in and reap the rewards:

blackened sword +1 power +2 health
brightly dyed sash +1 power +2 health
crystal embedded ring +3 power +1 health

Oh! Phat lewtz baby yeah!

Anyway, next in the Warrior quest I have to go and speak to a few hand to hand fighters. One is obviously on the path to being a Monk and is to be found under a tree. The other is hitting rocks in the quarry. Both encounters are voiced very well and scripted to the nines. On completion I am sent to talk to three senior guards and er literally tell them what a good job they are doing. Seriously, the reason is that people don’t appreciate the Crusaders as much as they should. Funny. Anyway, after much back slapping the next thing is to kill a Gnoll Pub out in the wastes. Easy and bosh he’s dead.

Finally I am told I have to defeat “…Bears and Lions in the Arena”. Thats it. Not the “North or South Arena”. Not, “That arena over there…” or “The one with a very small hidden door that doesn’t look like any arena you’ve ever heard of”. No clues, advice or help at all. This proved to be the hardest mission out of all the Path of the Warrior set simply because I couldn’t find the fucking place. And not just me, there were buckets of potential Warriors wandering around like lost ducks asking anyone and everyone where this place is. I visited almost all the city zones, every nook and cranny, the wilds, even back to the bloody spider Caves before a very kind Warrior said where it was. I’m sure this was on purpose. Once in the arena (read warehouse) I quickly killed the Lions and Bears (oh my!) and finally became a Warrior.

On my triumphant way out of the zone to go try out my new skills I put a few lost Warrior recruits out of their misery as to the location of the fabled Arena of Qeynos.

(UPDATE: Its here : 330.71, 4.70 in North Qeynos)

I dropped by the Antonica and laid waste to the beeltes there. I was going to go further in but I conned the first MOB and saw this.

Yes, it’s a Ninja Deer. So much for being able to whoop ass!?

Basho (Yagyu)

You can now see more about my character on the Yagyu page on the EQ2 main site - click:
YAGYU INVENTORY PAGE

Well night two and I log in to EQ again.

This is content.

In order to even get into Qeynos I need to become a citizen and take the citizens quest. This seems to be a way of getting the user used to the interface, where the nearest dungeon can be found and what sort of monsters you might face. In the little villages attached to Qeynos I find the inn and walk into about 7 NPC’s asking me to assist in a mini quests. Most of them require me to take something somewhere or go get something, etc. The rational for all the quests are interesting. one of them is from a Erudite who, along with his friend, are threatening a guy for some scroll. They ask me to go and get the scroll from this guys brother whilst they hold him there. Another quest intersects this one as one the way I come across a weaponsmith who has just finished an order for a lethal knife for the Erudite! He remarks to me “…strange weapon for an Erudite…”. On finding the guy with scroll (a busy and brisk shop owner) and finding out he doesn’t have it either, I return and hand over the knife. “This will come in handy…” he smirks waving it in the face of the guy they have cornered. Talking to him reveals he is very frightened. This is content, real content. I feel a little like I am in a theme park at the moment. Everquest 1 had no newbie quests worth anything (does anyone remember the awful “muffins for Panos quest” in Freeport?) whereas here, all my good gear has come from newbie quests just like this one. Even a few magical items such as rings etc.

After a bucket load of these little quests I hit the level 7 roof. I cannot go any further until I do the citizen quest. I get this from a sign by the gate to Qeynos and it tells me to kill monsters in the “down below” and return with 5 tokens.

This “down below” is the first dungeon. Venturing down there I come across a large labyrinth style sewer full of standard fare such as rats, spiders, etc. Some of these are tough (some are even lethal) so I team up with a Mage and we go killing. We only have to run the once before I get the required items. Wishing the Mage well I enter the city proper…

Qeynos is massive.

The size of this city is amazing. A collection of zones (and quite a lot of lag) with varying architecture. The scale is well judged in my opinion as it lends to the illusion that you really are in a big city rather than the village sized Freeport in EQ 1.

I collected a few quests from the seedy docks and head through the throng or drunken NPC’s. Effects here are well implemented. I have a very middle of the road computer and a basic 9800 se graphics card but even I get the nice Direct X 9 water effects. Similar illusion adding features include rats running around (little ones not big combat ones) and a cat chasing them. Also I can across a duck called Sir Quackers! That raised a smile. Through the gates I come across an Elf village full of trees and a full on martial arts center (very nice lighting effects).

The spirit of Kelethin is here for all those who miss the wood elf city (I certainly spent many weeks hunting from there and Ynnos recruited me into the Hoodies there too).

After about three zones I make it out of the city with a small quest to kill 10 of every type of critter found in the newbie hunting zone. Again, the whole thing is familiar but much bigger and with tighter quests and integration.

I haven’t felt the “left on your own to die” feeling that EQ 1 gave me for months. I quickly join a band of warriors with one priest and get stuck in. Unfortunately the group leader hits a gnoll and we get adds. Lots of adds. I manage to use one of my skills to agro the lot and take down the leader then run. I don’t get very far and the rest of the team die with me.

Dying.

When you die in EQ2 the group also get an XP hit. It doesn’t drop your XP, it simply gives you a deficit you must work off. This means, I guess, undinging is a thing of the past, and no bad thing. You also get recovery effects that drop you stats until you recover your spirit (which mitigates most of that). This should stop the “zerg rush” that plagues the high end game and led to Kerafram’s death in EQ1. The system has taken much from SWG. No one has the ability to revive yet so I respawn at the gate. The spawn selector also informs me of the danger level of the spawn, which is a nice touch.

On my rebirth I get a sparkling line leading me to my spirit shard and a quest to find it. Once I do I simply click it and get back cured of much of the sickness. You no longer drop everything. At least at our level you don’t.

Combat.

My team select more palatable game and my levels have gone up enough to get a few interesting skills. The bar in the picture shows the icons. All are on various timers and they are:

Sprint.usable any time you have power (energy).
Help!This breaks the encounter and enables others (outside your group) to hit your target.
Sit.Goos old sit, or kneel in this case. Recharges you MUCH quicker than in EQ1
AOE swing.Area of effect attack that hits all the groups targets.
kick.Kick, doesnt seem to stun much at my level.
Heroic Opportunity.Opens the Warrior HO window. The next icon in the sequence to continue the HO will then flash. Grouping with others of a different class offers icons I don’t have. Once the second stage is complete the final stage asks for a more general icon. If all are done there is a special attack. I have the feeling that a high level group would spend all their time finding super combinations of special attacks. They appear to be the key to victory in a difficult fight.
Swing hit.Sort of jumping spin attack, not very hard hitting but extra.
Taunt.Jusgt as before. Taunt and the enemy attacks you.
Group Taunt.Tuants all the foes. This is nice. Very nice.
Buff.WHAT?? I’m a warrior! Yes, I get a group buff! Makes us all swing faster and better.
Intervene.Take damage off the priest onto me.
Toughen.Up my AC and avoidance.

We make quick work of the snakes etc and even take a roaming yellow (with only one death). when you select a foe you get a rating. This has much more detail than EQ1. it shows that the mob might be a rated for a group and not solo. It shows if it is a tough mob for its rating (up arrows) or if it is a weaker than it looks mob (down arrows) It shows how th ecreature thinks of you (this is also evident from the colour of the creatures name). It also shows the same old colours: Red for don’t bother, yellow for uh oh, white for ok, blue for simple, green for easy and grey for rubbish – no xp.

If you find a wandering red with two up arrows that says RAID encounter and you are a level 5 ranger with a wooden bo…. run. Or at least try and look inedible!

After a while I get another ding and the level 10 quest pops up. Bidding farewell to the others I find the Master of Arms and he talks to me about what type of fighter I will become.

They have also taken website integration to a whole new level with this game. Check out my character page at the main EQ2 website:
Yagyu at EQ2

Laters.

Basho (Yagyu)