*waves* Monday, Jun 29 2009 

Everquest II and Guilds and Raids , Kilanna 2:11 am

Yes … I am back.

After 2 wonderful weeks of vacation, and much of last week travelling for work, I am back home and trying to settle back into a regular routine.

While I did get a little game time in towards the start of my vacation, really it was not an awful lot to speak of, and I did miss the boys.  However, over the last weekend I did manage to catch up with the boys and girls of Pax and get a little game time in … but with one MAJOR frustration.

I didnt have any in game voice 😦

Apparently the last GU has been causing some problems with in game voice for a few folks.   Looks like I am one of them.   I know I do some blonde things sometimes, but I am not completely stupid with Technology.   I checked all my voice chat settings and tick boxes, checked my firewall settings, checked my windows sound settings, and everything looks OK.   I guess that all I can do now is wait for the hotfix to come after fan faire.   I dont want to fiddle too much or I know I am just going to end up messing it up completely lol.

While I did miss hearing and talking with the boys,  we still managed to hit an instance or two.   Most notable of them was Ravenscale Repository last night.    While this is only my second trip into the zone, we certainly showed those mobs who was boss :p.  

One thing that I really noticed was the totally supreme change in aa that running a shard instance now gives.    Prior to the GU, Killy could earn herself somewhere around 4 or 5% aa for completing a shard run.    The last few days she has been earning around 15% which is just awesome.

I have also taken little Killy to talk to the research assistant to choose her first master.   I have chosen my single target reactive heal, as I have never seen it for sale for anything less than 300 PP.   While it is a long wait …. I dont mind that at all.   Some people may not like the idea of research assistants, however I dont see it as a bad thing really. 

Given that people can only use this assistant for one character per accout at any one time, I dont see that the market will completely dry up as some might claim.  I believe that there will still be an active market as people continue to seek masters for multiple characters, but I do think it will mean that we may see much less of those outragous prices for the highly desirable masters – and I dont see that as a bad thing.  

Tonight then will see me returning to the fray and raiding with my guildmates.    At this point we have still only cleared VP once, and I think that there is still a lot of phat lewtz that could boost our raid force.   I also think there is still some things we need to learn about some of the named in there, so I am glad we are continuing to hit VP.   We have also planned that if we finish VP in good time we can poke our noses in to have a look at Tomb of the Mad Crusader.   I really think that is a good plan, and it will give us a much greater chance at success in TotMC once we have a little more gear.

So enough of an update from me … Still trying to catch up with what has happening with other folk in the blogosphere too.

Happy hunting and crafting everyone!!

 

What a difference a week makes Tuesday, Jun 2 2009 

Everquest II and Guilds and Raids and Uncategorized Kilanna 1:16 am

Wow … where have the last few days gone???

The weekend seemed to fly past as I made some final arrangements towards my holidays at the end of this week.   I did however enjoy a little time in game hitting some fun content with the boys.

We have been talking about it for a little while,  and finally Killy started her TSO signature quest line.  It is our intention that we all get to the same point and progress the quest line together … so Killy caught up and we all moved things right along into the start of Chapter 4 iirc.

On top of that, we also headed into one of the Guk zones – I am hopeless since I dont even remember which zone it was *giggles*.    It was nice and a whole lot of fun to hit a new zone … Discovery AA … AA for killing new named … AA for quest completion.  How lovely!

The beginning of a new week saw us hit VP once again, with hopes to clear the zone and earn mythicals for our remaining guildmates.   We knew that things may have been a little easier with quite a proportion of us now wearing Mythicals … but GOSH what a difference a week makes.

I was a little worried that we were light on healers – especially for Druushk (if we got that far).   My fears were shown to be unfounded.

While some encounters were still untidy (especially Nexona), the change from last week was astounding.   We killed every mob on the first pull, and it only took us one night to progress as far as we did in three nights last instance.  Nexona took us around 15 mins to kill instead of the marathon 40 mins from last week.

I was particularly struck with the changes in the Druushk fight too.  We were so short of healers we only had Killy and Lukwut (Defiler) in MT group.   I was worried that Arishas health would be spiking dangerously without a third healer, but we had no such problem.   Arisha even asked how the healing was feeling in voice chat and I commented that it felt nice and stable and controlled.  Killy and Luk made an excellent healing team 🙂

Last night we killed up to and including the Taskmaster.  So tonight I hope that we shall kill Milyex, Xygoz, Ashenclaw and Hoshkar … and perhaps even have time to start into the next wing.   Even if that is all we manage tonight, that will give us both nights next week to play in the final wing, to get both Silverwing and Phara Dar for our Monk, Guardian and Rangers (hope I have not forgotten anyone!)   Cross fingers for us and wish Pax good luck!!

Happy hunting and crafting everyone.