Friday, May 24, 2002

EverQuest - Where to hunt today

Hmmm, I'm up to level 52 with Corish and plan on staying there (once I get most of the way through the level, I'm going almost 100% into AAExp points so that I can still go on Vox/Naggy raids). This raises the problem of where to hunt...

Antonica
Permafrost Keep
Lower Guk
Nagafen's Lair

Faydwer
Mistmoore Castle
Kedge Keep

Odus
The Hole

Kunark
Burning Woods
City of Mist
Karnor's Castle
Chardok
Skyfire Mountains
Howling Stones
Old Sebilis

Velious
Skyshine
Wakening Land
Kael Drakkel
Velk's Lab
Cobalt Scar

Luclin
Tenebrous Mountains
The Grey
Fungus Grove
Acrylia Caverns
Maiden's Eye
Greig's End

Granted, some of those spots are more loot zones then experience zones.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 9:28 AM

Windows XP Patch to Comply with Anti-Trust Deal

Windows XP Patch to Comply with Anti-Trust Deal
Interesting... granted they're willing to do this now that MS has a lock on things.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 9:15 AM

Self-Censorship

Heck yeah, I censor myself here, because there are too many people who read this who would interfere (e.g. if I've avoided you for 5 years, take the hint and leave me alone, k?). Apparently if I go out of my way to avoid you, you're not someone I trust, so stay the heck out of my business.

This was supposed to be a spot where I didn't have to wear my happy face for people in order for them to feel okay about themselves. Stop trying to live your life vicariously through mine, you're not part of my life and I don't care to be part of yours. (Never have, and you still haven't gotten the hint after 15 years.)

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 12:47 AM

Thursday, May 23, 2002

Princess Bride

Buttercup: You mock my pain!
Westley: Life is pain, Highness! Anyone who says differently is selling something.

[Rugen has invited Humperdinck to watch Westley being tortured]
Prince Humperdinck: Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work. But I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I'm swamped!
Count Rugen: Get some rest. If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 1:46 PM

Monday, May 20, 2002

EverQuest - favorite screenshots

Just digging through my archives... some of the zones in EQ are very nicely done.

A pretty cool shot of the East Freeport docks back before Shadows of Luclin came out. (SoL redid the graphics, and even made changes to textures in the old world zones.) Shows how well done some of the old world zones were (Freeport zones are part of the original EQ). I used to spend a lot of time pre-SoL waiting on the boat between Antonica and Faydwer unless I wanted to beg or buy a port from a druid or wizard.

Ah, life in the Oasis of Marr. It seemed so much bigger and scarier when I was just a wee mage around level 10 or 12 (Charcon got me killed here on our first visit). One of the ever present dangers is the multiple spectres that live on an island in the middle of the lake. Well, upper-level people like to hunt them for experience, but often fail, resulting in them running loose through the rest of the zone. Needless to say, everytime I heard "SPECS TO DOCK" I headed for my safe little sitting spot out in the water with the caimans and crocidiles.

Now this is a really old screen shot of the windmills in Steamfont Mountains, back when I first started playing EQ. Steamfont is one of the great little zones to solo in during your early teens, and is even better if you bring along some friends. Soon I will have to go back there and see what changes they have made to the zone recently (the gnomes now have some new classes they can play along with new quests).

City of Mist in Kunark is a small dungeon with two distince levels. The regular dungeon/castle down below, and some really high platforms and walkways above (so high that you'll take 10k in falling damage if you fall off). Did I ever tell you how long it took me to get used to Kelethin? Well, this is about 10x worse, and one of the nastier mobs up there likes to cast Gravity Flux (all but one of us were lucky enough to land back on the platform).

This was my first dragon raid, deep down in the depths of Old Sebilis (a zone you need a key to get into). This bad boy is named Trakanon, and casts a poison based area-of-effect (AoE) spell that does 1500 points of damage each wave, plus leaves you with a nasty poison DoT that does some additional damage each tick. I had poor poison resist scores and died pretty fast (I think he killed me on the 3rd AoE).

Well, I have more to post later.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 1:17 PM

EverQuest - Exploring my window layouts

Figured it was a good time to go back and look at the various layouts I've tried for all of my on-screen windows and buttons, because over time, it's evolved to meet different needs of my playing style.


This is probably one of the earliest screenshots (Dec 2001) and it shows what I think is the default window layout for the 1024x768 resolution settings (although I may have moved things around a little bit). I don't have a whole lot to say about this except that important information is scattered to the four corners of the screen.


Next up is a screenshot of me playing Corish in my early teens. Again, still playing using the 1024x768 resolution setting, but you'll notice that I've moved the windows that were in the upper right corner down to the lower right side. During this time I think I was trying to keep the upper half of the screen clear of windows so that I would be able to see stuff better.


I finally got smarter in my late 20s, early 30s playing Corish, realizing that I needed to collect all the really important windows into one place (in this case the lower left corner). You'll also notice that I moved up to a 1280x1024 display resolution so that I had more room for my windows on the screen. I like this window layout because I can watch the chat as well as watching the health bars without tracking my eye over the entire screen.


This is the latest set of windows that I run with, and you'll notice the new "hitsmode" windows are also shown here. I've broken the "others hits" (such as mobs hitting others, or other players hitting mobs) out to the upper right corner (this is because that is secondary information and not critical information). Directly above my chat window is where my hits (me hitting the mob) and the mob hitting me appears (me getting hit is in red and also shows the mob's name).

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 10:18 AM

EverQuest - Getting that first dragon kill

I was wrapping up a night of exp hunting in Karnor's Castle on Wednesday night this week (trying very hard to get to level 52), when I got word via friends that Gathering of Banners (GoB) was going to try to take out Lord Nagafen again. (Apparently they had wiped on the previous night.) This was around 10pm mind you, and I figured since they had done it the previous night we could get in and out in 3 hours (yeah right!), so I agreed to go.

As a result of all the last-minute additions and recruits (initially I was one of two clerics, and neither of us had done a dragon before), it was probably midnight or later before the GoB raid force got it's act together enough to even enter into SolB. Along the way to the first staging point (where we would fight the fire giants to get to Naggy's lair), people got lost, people went link dead, or just didn't listen to directions. But we managed to fight our way past the FGs (including one of the named FGs) and get down to the buff spot to start buffing around 2am (ick).

It took us about 45 minutes to buff, camp out to a server chatroom, then log back in and re-group for the kill (some of the buffs only last 20-30 minutes, so once you log back in you're working with a time-constraint.) The Naggy fight itself was over in 10 minutes... The MA ran out into the lair to pull Nagafen, I dropped my first Complete Heal on the MA, got summoned and meleed to death. By the time I logged back in and made it back over to the fight spot, I had enough time to drop a single heal before Naggy died. I logged once people were rezzed and didn't even stick around for the loot rolls (it was just way too late at that point).

Oh well, maybe next time I'll remember to pop DA after that first CHeal (MA was dropping like a rock during the pull, it was CHeal him or watch him die). Thinking again about how all that went down, I should've tried to chain-cast Remedy for a few more seconds before droping the Complete Heal. But due to lag (he was running back towards me) it looked like he went from 100% to 40% in the blink of an eye, instinct took over and I started casting CHeal.

In retrospect, if he had actually be dropping that fast, there's no way a CHeal started at 40 or 50% should've saved him. Meaning I probably had time to chain-cast remedy and let him build up some more aggro. Idealy I'd have dropped CelHeal on him and let it tick once or twice before CHealing, but with the bard songs and the huge pile of resists I really wasn't sure there would be room for it in the buffs window (CelHeal takes up a buff slot, and we were all pretty well maxed out on our buffs). Thankfully, it looks like the other 2 clerics were able to cover for my mistake and keep the MA standing after I went down.


posted by Wuphon's Reach at 9:15 AM