With the Chronoportals finally sealed for this year, another festival is upon us in Everquest 2! Bristlebane Day is here, with all the fun of the Master of Mirth himself. Fun and frolic, ho!!!
Maltheas: Bristleybane is the annoyings, always he playing the mean tricks! Why nobody celebrate the gods who is behavings themselves!? Shiny Rodcets, Karana the Freshmaker, or pretty Tunare?
Oh, right. I forgot that Bristlebane is another one of the gods that Maltheas takes a dim view of. There are those that say that Bristlebane assisted Brell in the creation of the Ratonga, and like Brell, promptly lost interest in them and went off to play with something new. The Ratonga are still a little bitter about that. It left them open to approaches from other gods, who lacked children of their own, but perhaps that’s a tale best saved for another day.
In any case, everybody who isn’t being unreasonably grumpy is having a lovely time playing pranks, and getting sent to slay seemingly never-ending tens of rats. While he was quite determined to not enjoy a moment of it, Maltheas could not resist the plea of Galan Jokepeddler who had had his joke supplies stolen. By pirates!!! It’s a new quest for this years event, though several of the old quests have new rewards for this year. They’re mostly based around the Enchanted Lands docks, with an extra questline that exists in multiple low level zones outside the cities.
Gnome Pirates. They're usually the good sort of Pirate, but Gnoggin was a bad lot.
No quest is complete without a reward, and Maltheas chose the Bristlebane Jester house item. He could also have chosen a magical colourchanging steed, “The Horse of a Different Color”, but he has quite enough mounts for one person already, while you can never have too much junk in your home, especially if it plays “Pop goes the Weasel”!
Don't ask. Fippy is stuck here since the Chronoportals shut. In probably unrelated news, Maltheas got an A on his history presentation.
On April the 1st there is a questline that only appears for that day, and this year there’s a second part to it, so Maltheas will be grouching his way through that too! After all, it would be wrong to refuse the Stone of Gygax.
Not only that, but an Aether Race throughout Antonica has been added to the Qeynos City festival which begins on the same day! Truly, it always seems like there’s something going on in Norrath these days, and Maltheas will be in the thick of it if he has anything to say about it
I stepped out from behind the curtain again this week to take part in CSICON’s Claim’s of the the Normal podcast. You can hear the result here. Rift, EQ2, Earthrise, and William Shatner were the order of the day.
This morning, Maltheas’ mailbox received an important missive. Maltheas’ very favourite sort of letter. An invitation to adventure!!!
Maltheas,
We need your help! Portals to a different time have opened up in Antonica, Enchanted Lands, Thundering Steppes, Steamfont, Lavastorm, Sinking Sands, Feerott, and Innothule. We need you to investigate them. Please make your way to the lighthouse by the docks in Antonica. there you will find one of the portals. I will be nearby, and you can speak to me about how your efforts will be rewarded.
Distun Delki
Maltheas: Ooohs. Let’s be goings Cheeves! We have to go BACK TO THE PASTS!!!! Cheeves: … I’ll fetch your time-travelling trousers, Sir. Maltheas: Thats being my’s new catchphrase, by the ways! Cheeves: Great Scott!!!
Maltheas visits his hero, Fippy Darkpaw!
I have been incredibly impressed at how big this event is, especially given that it appeared from more or less nowhere. There are 8 instances, one for each tier from the second. You are automatically mentored down to the appropriate level when you enter. Each has an 18 hour lockout, so you can effectively do them once per day.
Within each, you will find an iconic foe from Everquest, along with their guards. The boss will drop a chest containing a fabled piece of jewelry, and a fabled augmentation. Those must be split between your party members, but everybody also receives some ancient coinage that can be spent at the Chronomancers near Antonica’s lighthouse, for a variety of nice house items. Nearby, you will find the Chronoportal to the level 20 instance.
For Maltheas, it was also a portal to a dream come true! Fippy Darkpaw is the patron saint of Extreme Questers. He never gives up, no matter how great the challenge, and Maltheas has always wanted to meet him. Alas, in his eagerness he forgot that Ratonga were unknown to the surface world during this time period.
Maltheas did get the autograph in the end, after a little misunderstanding.
Be warned, these are not intended for soloing, though you may, as Maltheas did, find you can solo the level 20 or 30 ones. Beyond that they get very nasty very quickly. You will want to gather a couple of your most stalwart companions in order to defeat such foes as the Minotaur Lord, or Pyjzn the Necromancer. It’s unusual for events to not be soloable, but it fits well with it being a tribute to EQ, and I have enjoyed grouping with my friends to get things done.
I’ll probably write up a few of Maltheas’ time travel adventures over the coming days, time permitting!
When last we cast our eyes over the state of Extreme Questing in Norrath back in January, we were rather badly hampered by the EQ2 website’s leaderboards being completely broken. However, in the last week those leaderboards have made a remarkable recovery, so normal service can once again resume! Normally I like these to coincide with a mighty deed (for the pictures), but I wanted to get this out as soon as I heard we had functionality again.
In that time, a number of servers have merged. Maltheas’ server, Lucan d’Lere, has merged with Crushbone. This doesn’t really change our table, though it does mean that characters from lost servers will appear twice, once for their old server, and once for their new, but as we use a composite, it is easy enough to strip those out. It has been quite nice to see more people around on our adventures.
The 60-69 tier is still a recent addition to the table, and we’ll continue with that being the maximum for now. Beyond that, there are so many people with large numbers of quests done that heroic lowbie Ratonga just can’t compete! Mind you, we are getting close to the point that the 70-79 tier might still leave a little room at the bottom for Maltheas to cling on to.
There's all to play for in the EQ2 Extreme Questing League!!
There’s been quite a lot of shuffling since the last leaderboard, and several mighty questers have levelled out of the top. I have no doubt that we’ll see many of them again when I raise the level-limit!
Since the leaderboardless update, Maltheas has not been exceptionally active. Brewday, Erollisi day, and Aether Racing have come and gone (Brewday is ongoing), and he picked off the new quests that came along with them. He has continued to slowly drag himself back up the crafting levels, and the carpenter writs have played a part of that. He has also passed through the excellent Steamfont tradeskill questline.
Most recently, Maltheas has been finishing up in the Feerott. He managed to sneak in to Freeport (always a rather tense business) and pick up 5 quest tomes for both the Feerott and Zek. It would have been nice to deal with those while he was still dealing with the bulk of those zones’ quests, but they didn’t take too much time to polish off, and his library is all the messier for it!
Lavastorm has occasionally made for a change of scene, and he’s probably about halfway through its main questline, but I suspect there won’t be too much progress there without a level or two.
Maltheas and Voidy. It was a very short-lived friendship.
Deathfist Citadel is about half done, but the above-ground areas are rather testing, and may not be completed soon. Emperor Fyst himself gave Maltheas a good hiding not so very long ago. He stands, Everling-like, between Maltheas and several Heritage quest completions.
The Bloodline Chronicles have yielded most of their secrets, but I’m a little burned out on it at the moment. Having to go back in to the same instance over and over, for each stage of the quest-line, is a little draining, and I don’t mean that as some sort of vampire-pun. I’ll get that done once I can face fighting my way through armies of heroic Mist Grinnin’s again.
The Lost Temple of Cazic Thule begins to beckon, and I’ll definitely make a start on that before levelling, but I don’t think it is a nice place for a lone level 42. Nor is the Obelisk of Lost Souls, but both must endure his investigations in the near future. I’m pretty sure he can get something done in there.
So that’s that. I’ll make sure the next update coincides with something exciting!
EQ2 added a house item to its marketplace today. It is 500 Station Cash ($5.00), and the proceeds will be going to help with the ongoing humanitarian emergency in Japan.
Called “Memory of Spring”, it is an statue surrounded by falling cherry blossom. It can be found under its own section within the marketplace, marked “Japan Relief Effort”. There is also a similar item available for Everquest.
Memory of Spring
It seemed appropriate for Maltheas to place it next to his shrine to the god of healing. We wish the Japanese people all the best in the coming days.
Woot! This is fantastic news. For those unaware, until now, US and European servers have been completely separate, using different clients. If you wanted to play on both you would need two accounts, and would need to pick expansions and bonuses up for them individually. This was annoying, as I had a European account, unsurprisingly, but most of my friends who play are in the US. I would have been willing to start a new character, but I wasn’t prepared to repurchase everything on top of that.
We’ll keep our individual servers, but we’ll now also be able to roll on the other side at no extra cost.
It’s not going to happen for a few months, but I’ll be looking forward to getting to say Superhello to my US Superfriends!
Boss Drum, here we go again
Rhythm Eternal from a distant time
An echo of long ago
Not yet forgotten, No.
Music is Osgard the Saboteur/Bard’s department, but that’s not going to stop this week’s Rift character from coming on, and coming on strong! Take pinch of dwarven doughtiness, and a distinctly undwarven love of nature, add knowing insight to mystical might, and you’ve got Dulcien the Shaman!
Dulcien - Connected to the Powers that Be With Healing Rhythmic Synergy
I’ve not played Dulcien anywhere near as much as Osgard (partially because I’m holding out for an xp-lock option), so he’s a mere level 15 right now. Rightfully he might at the moment be called Dulcien the Justicar, but he has all the Justicar he’ll be getting, and will be continuing up the Shaman Tree for the time-being.
Shaman, Justicar, and Druid are all largely melee based cleric souls. All three get the rather amazing passive “Faith in Action” which adds your Spell Power to your Attack Power, your Spell Crit to your Attack Crit, and your Spell focus to your Melee Hit. This results in a cleric who can kick out quite a lot of melee damage. This is particularly important for Dulcien, as you’ll see.
Dulcien CAN heal, and does so as much as he is able. This is predominantly done through a Justicar ability called Reparation (the reason he went so far up the Justicar tree.) This causes 10% of all damage he puts out, or 25% from Justicar abilities, to go out as a group heal to the ten nearest group or raid members. A buff that he has and always keeps up, Mien of Honor, increases the healing by 50%. For instance, if Dulcien smacks an opponent for 100 damage, the ten nearest friends will be healed for 15, or for 37 if it was a justicar ability that did the damage. That can add up to some decent passive healing, as Dulcien would usually be hitting a lot of things during a fight, but of course it’s rather spread out and better for keeping people topped up than dealing with serious burst damage.
He could use a shield, but as his healing is improved by improved damage output, he chooses to use a two-handed weapon most of the time. A staff with a high spell-power bonus works perfectly, increasing both his magic AND his melee power.
He also has a group heal, also from Justicar, called Doctrine of Loyalty. This heals the ten nearest friends for 51 +50% from Mien of Honor. Obviously it’s not particularly good, but is useful. It is also fueled by Convictions, which are gained by using life-based attacks.
And that’s it. That’s all his heals right now. What this means is that Dulcien needs to be melee combat to be able to do any healing. This isn’t too much of a problem, generally, and convictions last 30 seconds so he can fire Doctrine of Loyalty off while moving towards the next opponent. Still, it would be fair to say that you would not want Dulcien to be your primary raid healer, though he’d certainly make life a lot easier for whoever was the main healer. One thing worth mentioning is that as a melee build, his area heals are a lot more likely to hit the people who actually need it, the other close-combat characters, than a healer who is standing well back from the fight.
There is one other source of healing, mind you, and that would be his fairy. Like Osgard, he has a zero point pet-class on the side, providing him with a fairy companion, who casts heals-over-time as she sees fit. Currently she’ll do 110 healing over 12 seconds. Once again, useful, and she seems willing to occasionally chuck them at group-mates.
Going forward, that situation is unlikely to improve in the short-term, apart from spell-upgrades. Shaman get a decent personal heal, but nothing they can use on anyone else. However, they do get some excellent resistance group-buffs, being able to raise elemental resistances by 30 (for the rank 1 version), and using the right one for the job will certainly reduce incoming damage a useful amount.
Druid, which he will put points into fairly soon, will give him a single target heal, Balm of the Woods, after 6 points spent, but it’s on a 15 second cooldown. He’s going to pick that up at any rate, for emergency use. Any ability which will increase his damage will also increase his healing, and that’ll be his main focus.
Reality changing, moving shifting us higher
To a connection with Gaia
Running out of rhythm,
You know that we’re coming on strong
Because we keep comin’ on!
Needless to say, the sensible thing to do would be to create a second build that uses souls with more healing abilities, for use when such a thing is completely necessary. This, though, is his default build for generally poking about. It’s extremely good for soloing, and has gotten the job done in general Rift and Invasion situations thus far. I suspect it would be absolutely awful for PvP, where burst damage is the order of the day. Let’s take a quick look at his skill tree.
Rift - A Melee Cleric's Soul Tree
It’s certainly fun to play. My main reason for posting this character, in truth, is to partially show to non-clerics why they might not be getting the healing they’re expecting. Now, I think Dulcien does do a decent amount of healing, as he is very careful about using Doctrine of Loyalty whenever it would be useful, but it is not always available (Not helped by convictions being a bit buggy, and you not always receiving them when you ought). He’s also put particular effort into getting the Justicar abilities which grant and improve the healing from his attacks, and some melee clerics might not have done that. Even with that though, he’s no healing power-house, but there is no rule that a cleric has to be. In Rift they share healing duties with Bards and Chloromancers, after all.
I couldn’t resist littering this post with lyrics from one of my favourite bands of the 90’s. From the days when dance music was still good:
