Whirly: good to go

These ants are starting to piss me off. We’ve gone through three levels trying to get into the Hive of Zihurr. We’ve not progressed much further than the first attempt. The ants are level 18 four-dot at the entrance. We can take two of them easy enough, three if we work at it, but the fights take forever, and we are hard pressed to stay ahead of the re-spawn. Eventually we get over run and must evac (twice) or run for our lives (once). Mark’s Cleric died on one evac, and my Warrior went down while running away, that’s embarrassing.

My Warrior was able to hold aggro better since the level 18 spell upgrades, thank goodness. We were killing a little faster, and able to get in a little further. We ran into a level 20 four-dot human walking around and took him, plus his little friend. He dropped nice shoulders for Mikes Psionicist. Mike got a belt upgrade somewhere along the way as well. We were at our deepest, in the hive, when we got overwhelmed by mobs, and evaced to safety for the second time. That’s enough of that. We headed off to do a few quests.

There is a farm across the road from Renton Keep. Behind the farm, a vineyard with level 20 ants. These are big ants by the way. We had a quest to pick grapes, or some such, requiring us to kill the aggressive ants as well. It quickly turned into work, I hate yard work, though the three-dot level 20 ants were punks compared to the ones in the hive. We spent twenty minutes picking weeds and killing ants. There’s a game consept for ya. I’d buy that game.

We are going through a transition to Lord of the Rings Online. Mike and I played open beta the last two Saturdays, and liked it enough to pre-order. We finally talked Mark into trying, he liked it ok, so we are switching. It seems too soon since we started Vanguard. I guess we aren’t as hard-core as we once were.

I’ll be playing the Guardian (Tank), and Mark the Minstrel (Healer). Mike hasn’t said what he’ll be playing. I’ve been looking at the other classes, and am excited to see if he brings damage, buffs or debuffs. It’s almost like Christmas.

I’m looking for the right class to solo with. Lore-Master, Minstrel and Captain I’ve tried. My latest is a Champion. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, Druid in EQ, Hunter in WoW. Something that can go anywhere in relative safety, and is easy to play.

We weren’t able to crack the hive this time either. We started the evening with a test server patch that took us out for a few minutes. We knew it was coming and thought we were doing some easy hunting in anticipation of being kicked from the server - nope. We were right in a spawn spot, and on our return, we were standing in the middle of three mobs. Luckily, they gave us a three-minute non-attack window, as long as we didn’t move, in which to get in game, group, and get ready for the big fight which eventually included a couple more adds.

Our trip into the ant hive was about the same as our last visit. We forced our way in a little further, but still didn’t win in any measurable way. We can take any two ants, though it can get a bit tricky at times. Any more than two and we are in trouble; the fights take so darn long. Mark’s Cleric died while we were evac-ing from a bad pull. We discovered a problem after returning from our evac. The mobs we were evac-ing from remembered us on our return. Once we had entered the cave they all came running. We ran in the opposite direction. When we cleared aggro, via running away, the mobs forgot us. The experience was still good, we all dinged 18. I don’t remember any useful loot drops.

We were riding Tursh, to purchase our level 18 spells, when I ran into another problem. I couldn’t exit the zone. Mike and Mark could ride across the zone line. I received a message, “that zone is down.” I camped and did it later.

We’ll probably go back into the ant hive tonight, though there is a little momentum for moving to Lord of the Rings Online. Mike and I pre-ordered, now shipped, LoTRO for our Saturday play. Mark has played the open beta a little. It’s still undecided if we’ll change.

Our visit to the lake didn’t turn out as expected. There are a large quantity of level 18 bat things west of town I thought we could do – they were too easy. We wandered over and took some revenge on the bandits near by – they’d killed Mark on his trip over. The bandits were too easy.

We found Cairnsworth Hall dungeon, our reason for being here. I questioned if three level 16’s could take a four-dot level 20 – we did. Working our way into the dungeon, I pulled four of em and called for and evac. Mike magically pulled us out to saftey. That’s enough of that. On to something new.

I was at a loss what to do next. We wandered. We killed every bandit we could find, it wasn’t enough. We found a promising castle, but the level 26 guards ran us off. Mark mentioned some red ants he’d passed earlier. We found them at a farm Mark named ‘Ant Farm.’ We discourage his humor, but he just doesn’t stop.

Checking an online map of the area, I found something called ‘Hive of Zihurr’ that sounded interesting. The Hive ants were HARD. Not in the, “look out we are going to die,” hard. More the long, long fight, “phew, that was hard.” The experience was good. The loot wasn’t. I did get a nice Heavy Armor shoulder upgrade.

We had two problems in the Hive. I couldn’t maintain mob aggro over Mikes Psionicist, even when mashing the Taunting Strike button continually. Once we cleared the entrance, I moved us in to, what turned out was, the spawn spot for the entrance guys. We had one hell of a long chain of fights when they started popping. It was wild and crazy. We’re going back Friday because taming wild and crazy is exactly what we are looking for.

We ended the evening in Tursh, after training our level 16 skills (crap for me), and discussing the near future. We are moving to Lakeview (Silver Lake) with the hope of doing Cairnsworth Hall soon. I think it’s a bit high for us yet, but there are other things in the neighborhood to keep us busy.

We worked around the edges of Stonesmasher Enclave, with one foray inside. We’ve worked that dump, with its large groups, before, but we were a little pooped from the mass rootling killings earlier. Plus, the quests we had were for the Gamekeepers and bears outside. We actually ran into another player, a 15 Druid, working the area - nice buffs from the druid. It was kind of embarrassing to be three 16s working the same content as one 15 Druid. Of course, we were burning through the mobs at a much higher rate than she.

Varlan’s Tower gave us a number of quests. Including, killing rootlings, the high point of the evening. Not because they were hard, but because we had to kill so darn many of them. We needed three kinds of sap. These rootling bugs, when killed, spawned three or more little bugs (level 3) that drop the sap. One of the sap was common, one rare and one extremely-rare. We looted an extremely-rare on our very first kill inside the crater. The last one was, what seemed to be, hundreds of kills later.

There is a crater surrounded with rootling bugs that are red. Inside the crater, non-aggro, easier rootling. We used every technique we could think of, once we moved inside the crater, to kill mass bugs. Mike used AE, Mark used damage shield, but it was just messy killing groups of them, with all their little pops, so we eventually just walked around killing. Mark noticed that the little spawns were different colors depending on what sap they dropped. After that, we didn’t have to kill the little ones with sap we didn’t need.

I brought my 14 Necro to kill rootling later, solo. It took all my mana to take one of the outside ring bugs. The ones inside the crater were easy with a dot, slow, fear. Eventually one ran to the outside ring and aggroed a harder one. I feared him as well, but he came back with a friend. I died trying to gate out. When I returned, I changed tactics to: dot, slow, reduce damage, siphon health. That worked well until I forgot and feared one. He returned with one of the outside bugs. I was able to gate out safely.

We enter, we grind, woo wee. At level 14, we are a little high for the stuff in Riftseekers. Going a little crazy was our only way to make it fun. Normally, I’m a conservative puller. I like mobs one at a time, with little risk. Last night, I was shooting for a little chaos just to keep everybody engaged and awake. My crazy ways almost bit us when Mark went down - I thought he went down. He got a heal off, on himself, well after I thought he was dead. I was already figuring out our corpse run.

The evening couldn’t have turned out better. Mark picked up the same chest armor I received last time. Plus, we were happy to learn, Xathok drops a light armor version as well, so Mike got a fancy new outfit too. Mark looted a very nice hammer with healing and intelligence stats. We all dinged 15 and those level 12 4-dot bats became much easier.

It was our absolutely last visit; I’m not going again. We are back to the level we were, on the production server, before our move to test. I think everybody is enjoying test. There isn’t much of an economy though. I did a ‘/who all’ as we were entering the dungeon, and there were 35 players on the test server. We need to be self-sufficient. Test server player’s gear usually isn’t as nice as a production server player’s. We can’t purchase upgrades.

We went into the deepest depths of Riftseekers Torrent. There be bats here looking for trouble. Luckily, they don’t assist each other and single pulls were easy. We got one add, in the bat room, the whole evening. Mike time shifted him and he slept till we were ready. The Guardians of Xathok and Minion of Xathok were level 12 – 3 dot, easily killed. Bastion Slaughter and Bastion Defenders were 12 – 4 dot, a bit harder.

There is an alter in the room with four of the easier guys surrounding a fifth of the same level. All these things of Xathok, where is Xathok? Why is there no boss mob here? It turns out there is a Xathok, but he’s not always up. After we circled the room, and the alter started re-popping, the center guy at the alter was Xathok. Although bigger, he was no harder than the Bastions.

I received heavy-armor gloves on his first death. We continued grinding the room, killing everything, and when Xathok spawned again (about every other spawn), I looted a major heavy-armor chest upgrade. Loot was very good all round, except for Marks Cleric. We collected a level and a half of experience in two and a half hours. Having the next pull just an arrow away is great for experience grinding.

It looks like we are going back Monday. I’m not excited about the boring grind, but you can’t argue with the great experience and much needed armor upgrades. Still, I’d just as well move on to new adventures. That’s easy for me to say though as I already got my great loot. It will be good. Grinding hard fights is good practice. It will make us better at our jobs. Plus, we can experiment; try some new tricks. We’ll all ding 15. Where to go next is the hard question.

I’m playing the open beta of Lord of the Rings Online. It seems a very polished game. It looks good and plays well. We seem to be settling into Vanguard for a while so I don’t see us switching. I sure wish something completely different would come along. Different as in EVE or City of Heroes. Not another Sword and Sorcerer. We’ve had quite enough of that already.

At level 12 we idled our way through Riftseekers Torrent without much effort. I suppose if we had gotten an add while taking a boss we would have had problems. That didn’t happen.

We started with the outdoor hole. We found a ramp going up the side, which led to a new boss for us. I believe we did everything in the area including releasing a few Brownie slaves. Mike harvested stuff, from the large bug/spider things, for the makings of more bags, though he’s supplied us with a full set already - thank you, thank you.

We killed those released Brownies next when we entered their area followed by undead guys and their skeleton friends. We ran out of time before finishing. I expect we’ll return Friday for our last visit. We saw no other players all evening - it was much like an instance. Ahh, the pleasures of playing on Test server.

I’ve been getting an embarrassing number of loot-drop armor upgrades. Mike’s Psionicist gets all the light armor, as he’s the only one who wears the stuff. As tank, I get all heavy armor that is an upgrade. That leaves Mark’s Cleric with hand me downs and rejects.

I worked on my crafting later. I created copper boots that turned out to be a nice upgrade to what I was wearing. I don’t have any enhancement dust so they were basic. I’m going to try making Mark some copper armor this week, hoping they will be better than what he has. First, I’ve got to collect more copper, lots of copper. The boots required around 12 copper ores. I’ve not found much copper around Tursh, but there is plenty between the dam and the Dwarf newbie area. I need to get my mining skills up anyway.

Comment spam update: 108 messages in the last 12 hours. Best “Clean” subject = bad girl club. I think I ran into them once.

We’ve been unable to log into the Vanguard test server all weekend. Reading the boards, I see many people are pissed about it, “they aren’t treating us right.” I’m kind of ho-hum about the whole thing. I’ve had a hard time finding something to take its place though. Playing on the production server, or the other games available, doesn’t interest me at all. I signed up for and downloaded the open beta client for Lord of the Rings Online. It doesn’t start until the 6^th unless you pre-order. I went to the pre-order page, but didn’t fire.

I’d like to explain the few macros I’m using in Vanguard. I wish I was a macro genius – I’m not - I borrowed these macros from geniuses.

The loot macro is way cool. One button and move on. I use it even in group. I usually change the group loot to round robin, but I loot macro everything. If the corpse has only cash, after I use the macro, we are done. It can also be used to clean up a group of dead mobs as it auto targets the next corpse.

Loot macro:
/endloot
/lootall
/loot
/targetnextcorpse

As a warrior I need to change weapons and stance depending on the situation. Where it says “name of weapon” you enter your weapon name, of course, and include the quotation marks.

Weapons/Stance macro:
/wear “name of weapon” primaryhand
/wear “name of weapon” secondaryhand
/combatformset “Offensive”

With my bard, I use the same macro except sometimes “name of weapon” is an item, such as Lute. Also, I use /playsong “song name” to start songs.

I’ve also found a selection of crafting macros. They deserve a discussion of their own.