Vanguard: We kill bats for profit. It’s a living
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.