Osgard and Snorty pause for a quick picture with the Guardian Leaders in Sanctum
My dwarven pal, Osgard, has had many adventures across the MMO worlds, but perhaps his best known role was as a Dwarven Engineer in Warhammer Online. He also occasionally visits Azeroth in the form of a hunter. It seemed fitting then, to try to combine the two, and the result has worked fairly well so far.
Saboteur was an obvious base, granting him bombs and charges aplenty. While he rather misses his turrets and napalm, it does give him a good mixture of ranged options, and will eventually provide him with landmines. He hasn’t really bothered too much with the trap-side of Saboteur, as they seem a bit ineffective compared with his other options, but perhaps I should experiment with them a little more.
Many were the times in Warhammer that the only healing anyone in his group was likely to get was coming from Osgard’s barrel of Bugman’s Best, and he has continued this fine tradition of healer of last resort by taking just enough bard to give him two area heal-over-time abilities. They’re not particularly large, but they do hit rather a lot of people, so are good for generally keeping people topped up. Healing is typically rather scarce, so a rogue willing to help out with that is a useful fellow to have about!
As his tertiary class he has Ranger. That’s just for the pet, which you can get and upgrade without putting any points in. Having a snuffly friend willing to take agro off you is a major godsend when soloing, and Snorty does the job well. His damage output is negligible, but he’s right good at taunting.
It’ll be a bit indecipherable, I suspect, but here’s a picture of his Soul Tree for good measure. He has largely concentrated on choices that increase the effectiveness of his bombs and charges, though the Dexterity-boosting passive was a must-have also.
Osgard the Saboteur's Soul Tree
This isn’t actually much of a “Dark Moment in Character Building” compared with some of my previous entries in that series, as I suspect that a Saboteur/Bard, with unpointed Ranger, just for the pet, is probably pretty common. In fact I would not be at all surprised if over half of rogues have secondary bard and tertiary ranger, for the healing and pet, with a variety of primary class options, though I would imagine that works slightly less well with the melee souls.
At level 26, he’s well ahead of my other alts. Actually he’s rather farther ahead than I really want him to be, as he still has a great many things he wants to do in Silverwood (and Gloamwood too, which he’s almost finished the quests in), and I see this as something of a design flaw. There is no way that anyone would be anywhere near completing all Silverwood achievements by the time you outlevel the zone, and it feels a bit strange to have so many high level folks running around there also trying to get the various Colossal kills they need for achievements and the epic questline. We desperately need to be able to turn off xp gain, and this will become even more of a factor when the patch currently on the test server comes in to effect, increasing xp for Rifts and Invasions.
He’s not dabbled in PvP yet, partially because the last thing he needs is yet another source of xp. I really need to get around to that, but I keep putting it off, thinking that an xp-lock might be just around the corner. If one does materialise, I’ll be very tempted to start Osgard again. You know how I am with trying to do everything at as low a level as possible!
I’ll introduce you to more of my Rift alt-stable soon!
I’ve been playing Rift quite solidly for the last few days, but I fancied a change today. Been getting a little frustrated with the contribution system there, as I mentioned here. Having to run my stable of alts through exactly the same quests is also slightly wearing, so venturing in a land where there is little or no set track for advancement is rejuvenating. Off I trotted to the Fippy Darkpaw progression server!
With Rift running distraction, Zoltoon has not been out and about as much as I would like. Would that there were more gaming hours in the day! So it is that he is still level 10. I’m not unhappy with that though, partially due to my full set of even lower level alts, and I’m quite content with his general rate of progress when I play him.
There’s a particularly useful button on EQ’s character select screen called “Return Home”. If your character has been logged out for 6 hours or more, you can use it to return him to his home city. In Zoltoon’s case that is Ak’anon, on the other side of the world to Qeynos, where he is usually bound. This means he can pop back at the beginning of his session, should the need arise.
Today, I decided that I rather fancied having a little poke about in one of my old haunts. Steamfont’s Minotaur caves are just about perfect for a level 10 enchanter, provided care is taken to avoid its master, Meldrath the Malignant, and his rather terrifying Minotaur Hero. Back in the day, Steamfont would often see a minotaur train, with the Minotaur Hero or Minotaur Lord at its head, but I’ve not seen one yet, to my slight disappointment!
Zoltoon the enchanter braves Steamfont's Minotaur caves
Minotaurs are a great way of raising your Gem Choppers faction, the gnome warrior faction that is a bit of a pain to raise any other way if you don’t start popular enough to do their quests. They also possess a couple of rather useful bits of kit.
The Minotaur Axe, friend to all lowbie meleers.
The Minotaur axe is an exceptionally good weapon for its available level, let down only by not being magical, and thus unable to harm certain creatures. Zoltoon managed to pick one up for his brother, Dulcien the Paladin.
Minotaur horns are particularly useful to bards, as they may be wielded as an instrument, dramatically increasing the power of any wind based musical abilities. They proved elusive today though, and unfortunately, Zoltoon, ever the adventurous, travelled a little further than was entirely wise into the caves, and managed to get three minotaur slavers interested in devouring him simultaneously. Two minotaur slavers he can handle, with some cunning mesmerisation, but three is right out, so he gated out, sending him back to Qeynos. Revenge will have to wait until tomorrow!
Tracking abilities no longer trigger global cooldown, which also reduces their effect on Rift contribution.
Rift’s Contribution system is something I’ve been meaning to address. During an invasion or rift closure, your contribution is measured against that of the other participants, with you competing for the best rating, and thus the best rewards. Warhammer had something similar, and if you’re a longterm reader you’ll know that I had more than a few issues with their contribution system too, and I discussed the issues with contribution systems in general.
You might imagine that our contribution is measured by damage dealt, healing done, or other useful things that people might do in a fight. It has long been known though that Rift contribution is pretty much just a factor of how many buttons you can activate. Today’s patch-note suggests that it is, in fact, determined by how much time you spend in global cooldown (and probably casting time). I’m not sure how channels work in to that equation, but what is certainly true is that actual effectiveness or usefulness has no part in determining your contribution.
So contribution has been raisable by doing things that are entirely useless to the task at hand, such as spamming your track button over and over. Track was a good choice as it has no mana cost, but you just as often see someone standing there spamming their instant buffs.
You’re at a disadvantage if you’re only doing things that are useful to the fight, particularly if you are melee, as you are likely to spend a fair bit of time running to targets. Now, you *could* use that time spamming something useless, if you’re lucky to have such a power within your skillset, but that makes no sense whatsoever within the context of the game.
Here is the thing for me. When I’m fighting a Rift or Invasion I want to spend my thought cycles considering how best to defeat the enemy. I do not want to spend them on organising within my head how best to arrange my actions to have the minimum amount of time when I’m not under a global cooldown, just so I can get a decent reward at the end. I do not want to know that if I stop hammering buttons, even for a moment, my contribution level will plummet compared with that of my fellows.
At any rate, I’m not a huge fan of competing within your own team, as it can lead to some rather self-defeating dynamics. For instance, I’m actually an idiot for healing other players, unless I believe that we can’t complete the task without it. The more time my colleagues spend dead or running back from respawn, the more buttons I can click in their absence.
Now, I’m not doing these things. I like to play for the team, and to be effective, but it has been extremely apparent that some people are not, and the folks who are playing fair are getting stiffed. Knowing this makes Rift much less fun for me.
Any contribution system is going to have its issues, but it is vital that they do not encourage anti-social or bizarre behaviours, and actually reward people for working as part of the team.
Update: Rift Developer Hartsman just sent me a tweet about this.
Agree with the overall feeling on encouraging weird behaviour. Addressing that as well. The current tweak just makes it “less weird”
So it sounds like we’ll be seeing some positive changes to how contribution works. Huzzah! Hopefully that will include changes to address the imbalance between ranged and melee in gaining contribution too.
My Aether Racing video finally uploaded! I wrote about this short-lived flying mount race event yesterday, and you only have a few more hours to catch it if your interest is piqued! The event has been, in this correspondent’s opinion, a massive success! It was well designed, and played extremely well as a race game. I now want a track in every large outdoor zone!
The video will blow up into 720 HD if you use the button along the bottom. Uploading in that quality does make it take an age to upload, but I think it really helps the viewer figure out what the heck is going on!
Today is the day of the EQ2 Aether Races! When you hear a bell ring, that’s the sound of a Ratonga getting his wings.
Ordinarily, you don’t unlock the Velious flying mounts until you complete a chain of level 85 quests, which come in adventuring and tradeskill varieties. Little Maltheas is a ways off being able to do either, so he has had to watch from the ground as his comrades took to the air. That changes today, briefly, as the Gnomes hold their new air race, which will allow all comes to engage in aerial daring-do over the the Butcherblock Mountains, Lavastorm, and the Tenebrous Tangle.
Race course signup NPCs are close enough to globe or wizard spire zone-in positions that *any* level of character can participate in these races, despite the courses being set in zones that are normally too difficult for some folks.
Prizes include:
* Cool new titles that show how awesome you are at racing.
* The ability to toodle around the zone in the racer that you used…as long as you beat the course time when racing. (This goes away when you zone or log out.)
* A new mount to use after you complete the Velious flying mount quests! (This is a permanent object and can be used after you complete the Gryphon quests in Velious.)
There are hazards and boons as you race so you need to study courses to get the best times, high-score lists, and more.
We know that there’s prizes, but we don’t know too much about how everything is going to work yet. Remember that these races are for one day only, though they’ll almost certainly be coming back for Tinkerfest later this year.
We’re still waiting for the servers to come up, but I’ll be updating this post with all of Maltheas’ aeronautical exploits, and fresh information! If you check back later, there’ll be video!
6:24 pm GMT
We’re off! Turns out I’m really bad at racing, especially when trying to commentate a video, but here’s a picture of the Butcherblock flying mount to be getting on with.
You'll believe a Ratonga can fly!
Here are the instructions for the race. They only pop up once, and I didnt have time to read it before my first race, and ended up dodging the scary looking golden clouds. Oops.
New C.R.A.S.H. Test Pilot instructions:
The first rule is: don’t crash! If you find yourself grounded, use spacebar to take off again.
Watch out for twisters! The red lightning will sap your engine power.
Definitely look for the floating gas clouds. They turbocharge your prop unit and make you really zip along!
The blue gas clouds vanish when you grab them. That means that other pilots can steal them, so watch out!
The green gas clouds never go away! they have the same effect as the blue clouds.
The golden cloud with the blue halo will blast away the twisters. It’s rare so grab it when you see it!
Warning: If you fall into water or lava, your flying machine is kaput until you get out. The C.R.A.S.H. pad requires a solid surface from which to take off!
Rewards
You get a temporary mount for the zone, and the Test Pilot title just for playing.
I just got the Cloud Buster title for scoring well over in the Tenebrous Tangle race.
The Sea Hawk title comes from Butcherblock.
Smokin’ Ace is the reward for Lavastorm. It also turns out that you might just get the rewards based on how many tries you’ve had rather than your time. It seems a bit random so far. I may have gotten a little bugged on this title, as it turned up in my reward window, when accepting the quest, but I never received it.
Aha! The track specific titles require you to get a decent time. Smokin’ Ace seems to require a time under 55 seconds. Fear not! If I can do it, so can you.
The Crash Test Dummy Extraordinaire title appears to be a reward for doing a lot of races.
Update: So in summary:
“Test Pilot” suffix: Earned from your first race.
“Crash Test Dummy Extraordinaire” suffix: Earned for doing quite a lot of races. 15 perhaps.
“Sea Hawk” prefix: Reward for a good time at Butcherblock.
“Smokin’ Ace” prefix: Reward for a good time at Lavastorm.
“Cloud Buster” prefix: Reward for the good time at Tenebrous Tangle.
You can choose one of 5 differently coloured reward mounts. They won’t fly until you complete the regular flying mount quests, but it turns out you can use them as an appearance for your land mount if you’re so inclined. It looks like you can pick one of these up per racetrack, doing wonders for your mount collection!
The beginning of a race can be rather laggy, as more people appear, so you can help matters by turning down your graphics a little. You’ll want to keep your view distance as high as possible though.
Maltheas shows off his Green C.R.A.S.H. Pad in front of the Tenebrous Tangle Aether racetrack.
Update: There is a video on the way. T’is a 25 minute epic, and won’t finish uploading until tomorrow. Which will make it far from timely, but there you have it. The Aether races have been enormous fun, and rather well done, and you should definitely try to catch them while they’re around.
Rift’s Guardian tutorial area has quite a large number of books to find, and they may be missable if you don’t pick them up, given that I know of no way to get back there once you leave.
That being the case, I’ve knocked up this little map, which will hopefully come in handy for anyone having trouble finding the location of the last one or two. I’ve also marked the location of certain relics of the Gods of the Vigil, which will grant a ten minute blessing if you should (And you ought to!) pray before them.
The map will be a little shrunk on this page, but you can click on it to view it at full size. I hope it comes in useful!
For today (actually yesterday, but it’s still going as I write) only, a free Othmir illusion item is available in EQ2’s marketplace. Technically it only has 50 charges, but as neither death nor zoning removes illusions, it is sufficient to last anyone who wanted to permanently be an Othmir.
Cheeves is pretending that he isn't impressed.
If I had any spare character slots I’d probably create a little ranger or shaman, just to play as an Othmir. Of course, they’re not a true playable race, and your armour doesn’t show on them, but they do have more animations than most monster models do, including the remarkably cheerful wave shown above, and a wonderful (though sadly silent) laugh. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have an animation for either sitting or standing type mounts, so you revert to your normal form while mounted. Also, there’s a lot of different Othmir models, seemingly of both sexes, occasionally in their famously bad hats, and you switch between them each time you zone, which might be a little difficult to explain! Nevertheless, there’s enough there to have some Othmir fun with, especially at low levels.
SOE have revealed what the next few Velious days are going to entail, and it turns out they’re not all going to be quite so screenshot worthy as today’s one was, but they are certainly worthy of mention.
February 23rd is a double Guild xp day. A good day to do writs, and a particularly good day for me to hand in all the status items that I’ve been hoarding for exactly such a day. will it be enough to push the mighty Green Lodge all the way to level 26? Unlikely. I’ll try to get some crafting writs done too.
February 24th will offer free character transfer tokens in the Marketplace, one per character, up to a maximum of five. These normally cost a quite ridiculous 25 dollars each, so I’m definitely going to grab some, just in case, though I’m actually not minding the merged Crushbone-Lucan server too much. Hopefully these tokens will sit happily in the bank without going out of date. They’ll be a great insurance against possible future problems. (Update: Amnerys from SOE popped by in the comments to let us know that the character transfer tokens will only be usable on the 24th.)
February 25th will have “cool prices” on frosty-themed items in the marketplace. I snort derisively at this day, unless the prices happens to be free, in which case I would indeed say “Cool!”. Still, it’s better than a day without a sale, and I look forward to discovering what the next Days of Velious will involve!
