Whirly: good to go

Many of the entrance mobs in Runnyeye have turned gray on us and give no experience. It only takes us a few minutes to get past them and into the ‘meat’ of the dungeon, but half an hour or more to reach challenging content. Runnyeye is a large zone. There are only three of us, and we only play for two – two and a half hours. I expect the long entrance will eventually turn us away before we’ve seen the whole place. That’s not a bad thing. It’s always better to have more content than you can use.

We were able to break the ‘a pudle of gunk’ room for the first time, and we succeeded in the Attendant Xyroc, GerkXil, and TithrVin section. I picked up a very nice helmet for my Guardian. It has a nob on the back that looks like a cell phone antenna.

We eventually died, but I can’t recall exactly who killed us. I’m sure it was a huge overwhelming force. It usually is. Either that or a big mistake on our part. Unfortunately it’s a dungeon and not an instance. You can’t die your way past the hard guys in EQ2 like you can in that other big game. Here, when you die, you get to start over. We aren’t hard-core enough I guess. More than soft-core though. Medium-well-core sounds good. And medium-well-core has problems getting through these large dungeons. We aren’t into farming dungeons, so when it gets easy, we move on.

We returned for a quick visit to Ruins of Varsoon. I tried to fight as few mobs as possible to get into the Chamber of Immortality. Unfortunately, the boss dropped a cloth hat with the same stats that Mike’s Wizard already wears. The Wizard is our only cloth wearer. It take too long to get to the Ruins. I don’t expect we’ll go back.

We were able to make the run to Runnyeye Citadel just in time for the 7pm Friday patch. It’s been a regular feature on the Test server the last two weeks. Not a major. They get it all working quickly. We played on Test in EQ for years. Patches and down time are part of the fun.

We camped in Runnyeye at the end of the night and played a few more hours on Saturday. We are making progress, but haven’t broken the place yet. We failed twice trying to break into the room with a pudle of gunk, and once trying to reach Overloard’s Throne Room. We seem to ding ever two or three hours now, so we’ll keep pounding on Runyeye Citadel until it’s time to move on.

Another trip into Ruins of Varsoon. We really should move on, but I picked up a nice upgrade shield in the Chamber of Immortality. I’d like to see if there are other things on the loot table we could use. I seem to recall the Chamber being on a 17 hour timer, which is fine. We don’t play again for four days. Nothing else in there gives us much challenge. We really should move on.

Runnyeye is next. We’ve checked it out already and did quite well until we crossed the bridge and got over run. We are two levels higher now and should have even better luck. I’m looking at a map of Runnyeye, it’s huge. I didn’t realize how little of it we’ve seen. It might be more of a challenge than I thought.

Oops, I should have read what that button does. I got us killed in Ruins of Varsoon, and it looks like I’ve done it before. We were working our way through the dungeon, doing very well, when we entered the forges. The flames were indifferent to us so I was ignoring them while pulling the other mobs in the room. “Watch your AE (area effect),” I actually said when I pulled a larger group. We were fighting next to the flames and I didn’t want them to add. They did add. We were overwhelmed. We called evac and Mick pushed the button. Mike and Mark survived, I didn’t, but I resurrected right next to them so we were good.

While we were waiting for mana regen, I checked my spells to see if one of them was an AE spell and could have caused the flames to add. “Plant” was the culprit. I’ve been using it for some time it “Roots targets in area,” and other AE stuff. All these times we’ve gotten adds from surrounding mobs, it was me. How embarrassing is that?

Have you ever been stuck in a dungeon trying to finish a quest? We spent over two hours in Crypt of Betrayal trying to track down 12 ire minions to finish Part V of Mike’s class armor. We killed every mob in that zone, multiple times, trying to find those minions. Initially we were mentored down to Mark’s Priest (28), but we got killed one time too many and stopped that. At 34 Mike and I are a bit too high for CoB. We were still getting experience, a lot actually, simply because of the huge number of kills. It was just a grind though with few real fights. I didn’t know you could get tired of opening chests for loot, there were so many. I received two shield upgrades – sweet. I don’t expect to ever return to Crypt of Betrayal. On to part VI.

We are still playing EQ2. I found a list of dungeons by level we are working our way through. We all love a good dungeon crawl, so we are having a great time. We are also working on our class armor quests.

When we re-started, Mark was playing a Priest. He switched to a Druid, but now wants to go back to the Priest. Our mains are 34ish and his Priest was mid teen. EQ2 has a great mentoring system. When you mentor a lower level player, your level is reduced to match theirs. You still have all your skills, spells, and equipment. I don’t know how they reduce your power while mentoring, but it works. I think the Priest is around level 28 after one week of casual mentoring.

A couple of years ago I got so frustrated trying to re-install ATC sim 2, it’s an air traffic control simulator, that I deleted it and eventually tossed the install disk. It’s a great program, but the anti-piracy, or what ever it is, crap just pisses me off… I purchased the damn thing again. It’s $15 more for just a standard download now. There is a professional version. The web site isn’t very clear what pro includes other than a sector design kit.

I run the occasional plane into a mountain. Nothing happens on screen. Maybe you notice the missing blip, maybe not, but when you check your stats at the end, you get gigged for it. Pthh.

We are moving right along in EQ II. I’m playing the tank, Mark is the healer, and Mike plays a Wizard. I chose a Guardian as tank. My second choice was a Paladan. I read somewhere that a Pally was a better choice for a small group. Obviously, I chose a different path.

The experience on Test Server is accelerated. The cash income isn’t keeping up. I can’t afford arrows for pulling. Fortunately we can summon food and drink. I don’t know what we’ll do for equipment. I’m level 14 and I’m still using newbie island stuff. That will limit us.

At these levels we ding every hour or so. It’s hard to keep up with what spells do what and which to use when. It’s not a problem unique to EQ II. It’s fun so far. Good to be back in the saddle after our break.

Well ToonTown was petering out so we gave it up. It’s not that there wasn’t more content. It’s just that the grind ramp was getting kind of steep. Do 20 of these then 100 then 1000. That ain’t no way to have fun. See ya.

We gave Wizard101 a moments time. When we all logged on together, we found it to be bleh. We weren’t even paying attention while fighting. We need a little more challenge than that.

We are off to EQ II for a month. I thought I’d just download the client, but after twelve hours I went to plan B. I tracked down my install CDs, renamed the folder I’d been downloading, installed from CD, copied the recently downloaded content to the new install and started it up again. It took another 12 hours to download /sigh. I guess I need more bandwidth.

We are playing on the Test Server of course. I had three toons there already. I deleted the lowest and created a new Guardian. It’s my turn to be tank. The newbie island experience has been greatly simplified and I got through in half an hour or so. I’m level eight in Qeyons waiting for the boys. Ehh, it’s something to do.

We’ve been working out of Daisy’s garden in ToonTown, doing three and four story buildings. We ran into a wall this weekend when we couldn’t get any quests until we took out the Factory Foreman in the Sellbot Factory. We’ve been in there a couple of times just wandering around. We had no idea what we were doing. Now we had to win. What pressure.

We did our homework, maps and such from the internet. I figured we’d fail a couple of times then go do more buildings on the street. It didn’t work like that at all. We took down the Foreman on our first attempt. I couldn’t have been more surprised. Now I’m wondering if it was a fluke. I guess we’ll find out. I received another quest requiring another Foreman.

I canceled my WoW & LotRO accounts. I’ve resubscribed to City of Heros. I’m not sure I’ll be playing that either. I don’t like pick up groups. No, I hate pick up groups. CoH kind of requires a group. The boys don’t seem very excited about returning to CoH. We’ll see what happens after ToonTown.