Categories
Skyrim

Meet Lenya

Lenya is a Breton born in High Rock but whose parents moved to Markarth when she was an infant in hopes of taking advantage of better trading opportunites. Sadly, when Lenya was about 5 years old her parents were slain by a Thalmor patrol for the horrible crime of “not getting out of the way fast enough”. This left her an orphan with a burning hatred of all things Aldmeri.

She spent much of her time growing up in and out of orphanages that were little more than slave labor camps. She also managed several escapes and spent quite a bit of time on the streets of both Markarth and Solitude. From this background she learned that if you want something you have to go out and get it for yourself and not let anyone or anything stand in your way.

Categories
Gaming

Lets Play Skyrim

Over the last year or so I’ve gotten away from MMO gaming and have spent most of my time in single player games, mainly Fallout 4 and Skyrim SE. When getting back into these games, and especially in the modding these games I turned to the gamers favorite resource – YouTube. Some of the more fascinating sites I ran across were people doing lets play videos.

This led me to Twitch and people streaming their play experience but I quickly tired of that since it seemed to be mostly about the players, and the people in chat, instead of about the game itself. Back on YouTube though there were several really good creators doing interesting lets play videos that were mostly in character (links down below). Many of these were almost like an episodic TV series and I kept coming back because I wanted to see what happened to the character next.

I also ran across several really good audio lets play’s that were like listening to a radio drama from the early days of radio (or the BBC even today for those lucky enough to get it).

Categories
Archives Miscellaneous Madness

Old School meets New School

I’ve recently started playing a D&D 4e campaign. We’re going to be playing online using a web based tabletop in combination with Google+ Hangouts. Old school pen & paper gaming meets new school online gaming.

We played through a test encounter last week and I have to admit that the combination of the bare bones tabletop provided by the fine folks at Roll20.net with the video chat of the hangout made it feel like we were all sitting around a big table throwing dice. The Roll20 site basically provides you the tabletop map and a dice roller. It’s up to the players and GM to figure out what they need to roll and when so everyone has their character sheets and the books handy just like you do around a physical table.

It took us about 3 hours to get through a single encounter but a lot of that was figuring out the software and learning our new characters. I figure we’ll get faster over time but remembering some of my past pen & paper experiences it wasn’t unusual for us to only get through a single encounter in a session then so maybe not.

Pakts Dabagars - Gnome Warlock
Pakts Dabagars – Gnome Warlock

Still, I’m looking forward to getting into the adventure. I’ve written a backstory for my character – that’s his picture there in the post. Instead of adding it as a post here I think I’m going to create a page for it and just post it there. Maybe I’ll add a sub-domain with a blog to journal all of his adventures if I have the time.

Categories
EverQuest Epics

Soldiers of Fortune

If you have the new Age of Discovery expansion you can now hire mercenaries to help you out if you have to solo or to fill in a needed spot in a group. Lore and I have been using them since the launch and I have to say they are game changing for a small guild like us. Now when we only have 2 or 3 players on we can still field a full group and do some of the harder instance content that has been denied to us. On the solo side they made getting Sisca, Acsis and Casis from 85 to 90 much easier than it had been getting them from 80 to 85.

I know that on first glance the price for hiring and their upkeep cost seems prohibitive – 5P to hire and 50G an hour upkeep at level 80+ though it does scale with level – but it’s really not. In the month+ that they’ve been out I’ve pretty much had one up on all of my characters and I’ve still banked well over 200p just from selling loot to the merchant – not even trying to broker spells and such anymore. You’re much more likely to get a chest drop with a Merc since you’re technically in a group so you tend to get a lot more high value loot to sell.

So if you’re interested here’s a list of the various classes and where to find them:

  • Qeynos Harbor :  Wizard, Paladin, Troubador, Swashbuckler, Templar, Monk
  • Freeport: Warlock, Assassin, Brigand, Dirge, Inquisitor, Guardian
  • Neriak: Shadowknight, Necromancer
  • Gorowyn: Berserker, Defiler (no cure on abilities)
  • Kelethin: Ranger, Warden
  • Halas: Conjurer, Mystic

Classes no merc available: Beastlord, Bruiser, Fury, Coercer, Illusionist

In Qeynos they’re in Fish’s in Qeynos Harbor, easy enough to sneak in the backdoor if you’re evil. The only one that might prove a problem to hire is the Pally since he’s standing outside.

In Freeport they’re at the tavern in – I believe it’s East FP – it’s right on the water and there is a bell that drops you on the back porch. Again, easy enough to get into if you’re good and want to try one of those classes.

In Gorowyn they’re right up the first ramp from the lower level and of course the Sarnak don’t care about alignment as much.

In Halas they’re in one of the wooden roofed buildings – not the stone ones – that look like great halls and, much like Gorowyn, the guards will ignore you.

In Kelethin they’re in Josalyns Pub and, again, the guards here ignore you.

In Neriak they’re just past the first gate at the entrance from Darklight Woods. These are the two that will be toughest to get if you’re not evil since that gate is guarded by 2 level 85 epic x 2 raid mobs. It can be done if you have an evil friend that’s either a Conjurer with call of hero or has the call of veteran vet reward token. They just need to summon you to the area over by the forge and you should be able to hail them. Be careful though there is another x2 guard inside the tower that they’re standing outside of. If you need help getting to one of these try to hook up with Lore or myself and we’ll get someone over there to summon you.

The good news is that if you replace the merc with a different one for whatever reason they’ll be available in either Qeynos or Freeport depending on your alignment should you want to hire them back. This means you only have to do the whole sneak around thing once. If you do it at low enough level they’re even relatively cheap at 5s per hire at level 20. You could take a new character around and hire them all so that they’ll all be available as you level if you wanted. At higher levels this could be costly at 5p per hire but, as I said, you tend to make up the cash pretty quick (I know this probably won’t work for Reyder since he tends to squeeze every copper so hard that the guards have a warrant out for him for assault on Antonia’s likeness).

(Crossposted from Revellers.GnomeDepot.Net)

Categories
Reflective Reviews

Spandex Evolved

Having read all of the uproar over Champions and their lifetime subscription plan, but only if you order now and not after you actually get a chance to play the game, I was glad to see that they had relented somewhat and actually opened up the beta to pretty much anyone before the deadline for making a decision. I was also curious since a lot of the bloggers seemed to be disappointed with what they had seen of it. I wondered if this was a fault of the game or just a case of the hardcore MMO fans looking for something, anything, to be the second coming and dethrone WoW.

So, first my overview of the game play experience. I know that much of this has been posted elsewhere but I think it’s important to put down what I saw while playing so you can see why I’ve formed the opinions that I have.

Categories
Miscellaneous Madness Theoretical Thoughts

Weekend – Open Beta Version

Lately I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed in EQ2. There are so many different things I want to do that I find myself paralyzed by choice.

This weekend I decided that what I needed was a change of scenery and since both Champions Online and Fallen Earth had open “betas” I figured I’d give them look. I plan on writing a more detailed post on each of them later but here’s my one line review.

Champions: City of Heroes 2.0 or maybe CoX evolved and that’s not a bad thing.

Fallen Earth: The love child of Fallout 3 and Eve with a crafting system that I find very compelling.

More later – the iPhone is ok for short posts but not so much for longer writing.

Categories
fan faire

Fan Faire Day 2 in Review

I know a lot of this has been posted elsewhere by now but due to traveling and having to upgrade my main computer to Windows 7 when I got home – the beta build is expiring so I have to upgrade to the RC – I never managed to get this stuff posted. Still, I want to get it out there and I hope I can help clear up some of the confusion that I’ve seen here and there over the last couple of days.

The first session we attended on Saturday was the premier of EverCracked, the Jace Hall documentary about the creation of EQ. I can strongly recommend that you grab a copy of this when it comes available it as hilarious as well as an interesting look at the people behind the game.

Categories
Reflective Reviews

Fan Faire Day 1 in Review

We only managed to take in a couple of sessions today but, between them and the announcements from the keynote tonight there’s going to be a lot of new stuff coming for SoE games. I’m just going to go through my note book and give you the stuff that I remembered to write down along with some impressions.

Categories
Unknown Ululations

Learn 2 Play!

Yesterday in my Twitter feed (@sisca if you want to follow me) and I saw this from @spouseaggro:

Silly Far-Stretched Comparison of the Week: “..Free Realms looks and feels like an overly cutesy, yet still grindy, version of WoW..”

To be clear this was a quote from some blogger and not the opinion of the fine folks over at Spouse Aggro

That got me thinking and then this morning I was reading through the comments over on Broken Toys post about the game and it kind of congealed.

For all of you out there that are trying to compare this to WoW – or whatever your favorite flavor of the month is – I just have one thing to say…

LEARN 2 PLAY!

You know like you did when you were a kid.

No, really. Put your achiever, must get to max level and get the uber gear mindset back on the shelf and just go out and learn how to play again.

I’ve got 2 young nieces, 7 & 9, their parents don’t really like them watching TV and they tend to regulate how much time and what they can do on the computer. They don’t seem to mind that much though because they have more dolls and horses and such than you can shake a stick at. They even have a small tent setup in an otherwise unusable area of their house that is filled with these dolls and such that they call their cloud castle. They spend hours playing together, making up stories or acting out stories from their books. They also spend time competing, racing each other, playing soccer etc.

I can see them playing Free Realms now and jumping from job to job, game to game, achiever to explorer to socializer.

If you really think that this is just a “overly cutesy, yet still grindy, version of WoW” then this game is not for you! This game is only for the truly hardcore PLAYer’s that really understand how to go into a world and make it their own and to do so for nothing more than the FUN of it.

Categories
EverQuest Epics

Ding!

FINALLY!

EQ2_000120

Almost 4 1/2 years after launch and I’ve got my first max level character. In fact this is my first max level character in 10 years of playing MMO’s.

Even scarier is that the next day:

EQ2_000022

Acsis only took me almost 3 years to cap.

Shortly after that Lore also managed to ding 80, I’m not sure what her played time is but I did manage to snag a screen shot of her ding

EQ2_000020

I also managed to get Sisca to 80 in Alchemy over the weekend so now I just need to get Acsis 10 more levels of Tailoring and I’ll go from 10 years of no characters at any level cap to 2 characters with both tradeskills and adventuring levels capped.

We also started doing the daily quest for Void Shards and managed to get the first 2 pieces and by the end of the week we’ll have the third. I think our next goal is to get Lore’s mage caught up and I wouldn’t mind getting my ranger leveled so we have a scout class to give us some versatility. I’d also like to spend some time mentoring guildies to see if we can put together a group and maybe start in on some of the TSO instances. I also want to get the crafting epic done with Sisca and Acsis is about halfway through the harvesting cloak so he’d like to finish that off as well.

So still plenty left to do and I haven’t even started in on my other 12 alts 🙂