Whirly: good to go

Our visit to Underbog went swell until we ran into Hungarfen, the first boss. Actually, it went better than swell - we did great. But, then there was Hungarfen, our only death of the night. Those Underbog boys are hard for a small group. They put out a lot of damage. Hungarfen has a  360 ever 2 second dot that can stack up to 5 times -  that’s 1800 damage per 2 sec. I couldn’t heal fast enough for that. We finished the evening in the Slave Pens, nothing new to report there.

We’d planned to play AoC. Monday is patch day and there was a large patch that was going to take me a long time to download. I pulled the plug and we switched to WoW. Mike made fun of my 1/2 meg bandwidth. He says he has 16 meg. I think it’s rude to flaunt it.

I’m this close to quitting AoC so we can continue our slow march to 70 in WoW. The thing is, AoC isn’t that easy to give up on. It’s a great game with a lot of good ideas. Playing AoC was just a lark, I never expected we’d stay, but it’s better than than most. I’m not quite ready to give it up.

We’ve been stuck doing the same instances for a while. It seemed like a good time to take a break, do some exploring, and track down the next instance ‘Mana Tombs’. Unfortunately, I made a small error and took us off on a goose chase. Surely you can see the similarity between the names ‘Terokkar Forest’ and ‘Blade’s Edge Mountains’. Even a non dyslexic can understand that mistake. Anyway, the instance ‘Mana Tombs’ is not in Blade’s Edge Mountains. I know that from experience, now. The closer we got to where I thought the instance was, the harder the surrounding mobs became. Eventually, I started thinking, “these guys are just too hard for the entrance of a level 63 instance.” A closer look at my research-maps showed my error. We turned around and headed the other direction.

We worked Mana Tombs, the one in Terokkar Forest, until we reached the first boss Pandemonius. Man that guy can put out some damage - I was chain healing Mark’s Warrior and couldn’t keep up.

Mike’s Mage ported us to Ogrimmar and we took a bat to Gadgetzan to explore the ‘Caverns of Time’ which I had never heard of. It was all new to us, and we had no idea what to expect when entering the ‘Escape from Durnholde Keep’ instance. It took us to Hillsbrad Foothills, seven years in the past, to help preserve, blah, blah, blah. I don’t know why. We were transformed into, not very attractive, humans, and given the task of helping some guy escape from the Keep. We poked around the entrance, but it was past our camping time, and we didn’t stay long.

An interesting evening. We collected around three bubbles of experience. Next time, back to work. I’m thinking Underbog.

I had a flashback playing Age of Conan with the boys last night. At level 14, we entered a non-exclusive outside elite instance. We wandered, died a few times, and finally found a good spot, on a long set of stairs, to pull to. The stairs had a resurrection plate at the top, so that was convenient. My Guardian would go out and pull a couple mobs to the boys, on the stairs, where we would beat them till somebody died. The flashback was of EQ. That’s how we often worked in EQ. I specifically remember a spot on the moon where Mike’s Shaman would pull bugs to Mark’s Priest and my Enchanter. The play style was very similar. But, in AoC, there is no death penalty to speak of. In AoC failure is an option.

We fought there, on the stairs, until I got too bored. We all dinged 15, and moved to a indoor elite dungeon. We were crawling through when another player showed up and started ‘helping’. I’m sure she wanted a group invite. We are kind of picky, so we left the instance, it was getting late anyway.

This morning I realized that even the dungeon encounter was much like EQ. When you were dungeon crawling in EQ, you often came across other groups or players you had to work around. Though we played on EQ Test where there was plenty of room for everybody. I know on EQ production-servers it often got ugly in dungeons with groups working the same area. Usually on Test, if there was somebody in the dungeon you wanted, you just moved on to a different dungeon.

I’ve not decided on AoC yet. The EQ model worked well for a long time. EQ eventually created instanced dungeons, which we used extensively. The instances kind of killed the EQ community. We’ve been playing WoW for years now, almost exclusively instances, without meeting anybody new.

Forget everything I said about Blood Furnace, and The Maker, last time. It turns out, I had no idea what I was talking about - a common experience. We beat Mr. Maker again Friday, our third time, with a little room to spare. He charmed my Priest first, no big deal, then Mikes Mage, we survived. The danger is when He charms the Warrior, but that didn’t happen. He dropped leather, or was it mail? Doesn’t matter, we don’t use either.

We even made it through the second boss, Broggok. Old Brog wasn’t much of a fight after we survived the four waves of guards outside. Brog dropped leather, thanks for nothing. Still, it was good to see him fall. We worked our way in a little further, to the bottom of the ramp leading into the big circle room. We were no match for the groups down there.

I finally got a toon, solo, to level 20 in Age of Conan, and out of Tortage. I’m sort of lost on what to do now.

Blood Furnace was a disappointment as we were, once again, unable to kill The Maker. It depends on how he attacks if we win or not. Plus he seems to use the same technique on repeat attempts. So if we lose, there is no chance that we’ll be successful next time.

The first time we won, The Maker charmed my Priest and continued to beat on Mark’s Warrior. That worked well as my spells don’t do major damage. As soon as I regained control I’d throw a heal on the Warrior and we’d continue. He charmed the Priest a few times, but we were able to survive.

The second time we won, The Maker charmed Mike’s Mage and continued to beat on Mark’s Warrior. The Mage turned on my Priest, but I was able to survive his attacks. He charmed the Mage three times.

Tonight’s loss, The Maker charmed Mark’s Warrior. The Maker and the Warrior then proceeded to beat on my Priest. That didn’t last long. I couldn’t heal myself fast enough to survive. We tried it again and he did the exact thing.

We tried twice then went off to play Age of Conan where we all dinged 13.

As three level six toons, we entered Age of Conan for the first time together. I didn’t feel like searching around for quests, so we headed to the beach and took the rowboat to where ever the rowboat goes. It was fairly crowded with other players running around, but we were able to get into trouble enough to die a few times. Mark was complaining about his healing spell, I think the time to cast and how pitiful the heal was. It was good practice, we dinged a couple of times.

We then exited the ‘where ever the rowboat goes’ and re-entered in epic mode instead of normal. It was much less crowded with other players. The fights took considerably longer as the mobs had more hit points. They didn’t seem to put out proportionally more damage. We did well though I think our experience slowed as we weren’t killing as quickly. I liked the longer fights as we could practice using our skills and spells.

They say epic mode has better drops. I’m not sure if that’s true, we did pick up some gear. Mark received, and is unhappy with, one of those ugly masks - The ones with the feathers. I don’t think he’s going to wear it. I don’t blame him. I probably wouldn’t either. We dinged level 9 and called it a night. I suggested we all solo to level 12 before next time. I had fun. It was a little tiring. I don’t know if because of the button mashing or just the concentration required to play a new game. We’ll return, but we aren’t quitting WoW yet, if ever.

I’ve been playing Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures since release. Mike and Mark have purchased the game as well. We plan on giving it a try as a group Monday. Mike and I played for a few hours Saturday with two level 5s. It was a bit frustrating. We died a lot. Though there doesn’t seem to be any death penalty at that level. We ran a few quests and ended at level eight. My highest toon is 12.

You can easily switch from multi-player (day) to solo (night) play which is an interesting twist. Everybody talks about the fighting system. You must pay attention to what’s going on so you can optimize your attack. It keeps you engaged. There are plenty of quests, at least at these levels. I don’t think you get into the real world untill level 20 or so. I have no idea what that’s like

I’m enjoying the game so far. We’ve played many good games that just didn’t work with our group dynamics though. We need group challenge, not solo content. We’ll see how AoC works out. We aren’t planning on giving up WoW, it’s not even a desire. We are just giving the new-boy a try. I’ll have to say, they have had a very smooth roll out. Very professional.

My system is getting a bit long in the tooth. It’s no match for the newer high end games and is at the end of it’s P4 agp graphic-card life. I ordered a new computer yesterday. I priced out components for a new system at newegg, but eventually decided to pay the extra $s for a Dell. I just didn’t feel like building another computer. I wimped out and went with Windows XP. I’m not sure Vista isn’t a Windows ME kind of failure. I find Vista frustrating to work with. Even so, my newegg system included Vista Ultimate 64-bit. If the Dell system had offered it, I might have.

Back into Blood Furnace we go. We finally killed The Maker again. We killed him a few levels ago by some fluke, and have never been able to do it again, until last night. Twice, Mr. Maker charmed Mike’s Mage, who then turned on me. I shielded myself, one quick heal and Mike was back in control. The fight went fairly well otherwise, though I was getting short of mana at the end. Mark and Mike had dinged 65 previous to the fight, but hadn’t picked up their new spells and skills yet. Perhaps that made a difference.

We didn’t get to fight Broggok, the next boss. You must manage four waves of four orcs. Each wave is harder. We all died on the fourth group with two tries. If you die, all four groups reset. We called it a night and headed home. Slave pens Friday.

We’ve been on hiatus for almost a month while I traveled to London and Paris. I can’t say I missed playing during that time, but it certainly was a pleasure going on a run with the boys Friday. We returned to Ramparts, it seemed best to start easy. My Priest died four times. I lost 1200 gold in a bet.

As we wear cloth and plate, it’s a group joke that all loot is leather. Mark bet me 1200 gold that Watchkeeper Garglomar would dropped leather. I’m never going to pay that bet. Mark doesn’t know where I live. What’s he going to do? Not taunt?

I dinged 65 and as a celebration we killed Omor the Unscarred for the first time, what a pain. Omor seems to be able to create an unlimited number of pets. Our plan was simple. Mike’s Mage focused on Omor exclusively, killing him as quickly as he could. Mark’s Warrior’s job was to keep Omor and all the pets beating on him, and my Priest tried to keep us alive. It seems simple. We’ve tried to kill the pets as they popped before, but that didn’t work for us. We had five pets to kill after Omor went down this time. I’m not sure we can do it again. Omor dropped a very nice stick. It wasn’t exactly an upgrade for Mike or me, but it looks way cool. Mike won the ‘who should get it’ discussion.

Fresh from our success, we tried Vazruden, the last boss in Ramparts. That didn’t work out at all. One good thing, on our return, we found that Vazrunden’s two guards would re-pop when killed. A great place to grind experience. Welcome back me.

I’ve been in London and Paris, still am, with no Internet till now. That’s not completely true. I’ve been without wireless Internet. I found my hotel in London had wired Internet, but never seemed to find the time to locate an Ethernet cable. My Paris digs had wireless for 3e an hour. By the time I found that, I didn’t feel the need to connect. My new London hotel has wireless so here I am. 

No games, no news. After watching French TV for a week, I don’t speak french, I started jonesing about what was happening in the world. Turns out, not much.

An update from last time - I returned and played all the Martin guitars. The D-35 still had a lovely tone, but It seemed a little weak playing single notes compared to the D-28s. I found each guitars unique. Each more than adequate to producing beautiful music. I expect you’d adjust your technique to enhance the guitars strength. I need only come up with the cash to purchase one.

I should be home and gaming next week. WooHoo.