I’ve been hitting EQ2 pretty hard these days and have managed to get both Velourna (SK) and Murias (Templar) to level 90 with their Enervated Mythical obtained. Oh, so that means you got your mythcal for both Velourna and Murias you ask? Why, yes I did.

Okay, so I have been raiding pretty hard (read 4 times a week) with Murias and loving it. Velourna was sort of unofficially (and involuntarily) retired from raiding since our alliance seems to have WAY too  many tanks. It’s cool though. I’m the only Templar that seems to raid in our alliance, so it makes me feel special. I have managed to get three pieces of T3 shard armor for Murias and one piece of T4 (T8) for Velourna. I still need to do more WoE/ Kurn’s runs to get geared up, but it is coming along nicely. I’m also working on my Troubador (Cloy) who is 73. Our alliance is lacking in scouts and especially bards, so I figured I’d finally take my five year old toon and do something with it.

In case you’re wondering why I decided to post today of all days, it’s because Stargrace of MMOQuests mentioned me in her blog today since we stumbled upon each other in a Library and Conservatory run last night, and I don’t want people clicking my link and seeing my inactive blog. So, yea, I will REALLY try to keep this thing up to date. Really..I mean it.

So yea, I saw a level 90 at around 5pm CST yesterday. It was kind of disturbing. Does this person take pride in this cyber world accomplishment? Did SOE reward his amazing commitment to the cause? Did he even enjoy the journey? So many questions race through my mind, and I fear they shall never be answered simply because I have little desire to entertain someones obvious online Napoleon Complex.

I did manage to hit level 82 and make one discovery. I also noticed mobs seem kinda of weak. It may have something to do with having shard armor, but I’m not sure. Most likely, it’s because SOE has elevated Shadow Knights to demi-god status. Oooo /flex

I took a no PC day yesterday and played White Knight Chronicles. I’m actually enjoying the online portion more than the main game, although it is much easier to advance my little town by playing the main story. White Knight Chronicles is definitely a game for those who want to take on giant creatures by swinging a battle axe into their legs hoping they will lose balance so you can unleash devastating multi-hit combos on the foul beastie’s noggin. Oh yea, you CAN use the giant knight ark if you want, but where’s the fun in that.

• Milyex Vioren: We took a wipe on the first pull due to being tossed around too much by the wing burst, but we slammed this guy to the ground on our second attempt, starting the night off at a good pace. Also, I did manage to snag a sweet piece of loot: Ring of Dark Intent.

• Qunard Ashenclaw: There isn’t really much to say about this guy. You need to start a little ring event and complete that before he becomes attackable, but other than that, he was an easy kill.

• Xygoz: I enjoyed this fight. Xygoz is a HUGE dragon who is sleeping when you first approach him. The MT clicks on him, and he wakes up, and basic dragon tactics apply. At 80% and 40% he falls into a dream state where he will either dream of him with all the other dragons in the zone or he will dream of your raid fighting him. If he dreams of the dragons, you simply kill the dragons when they become attackable, and if he dreams of the raid fighting him, you simply go over and find your tiny self and pick them up. We didn’t wipe on this guy, but he did reset, so it counts as a two pull kill in my book. Still a fun fight though.

Sleeping like a baby

• Hoshkar: This fight was nothing short of annoying. It wasn’t a hard kill, and we managed to take it down on first pull, but the strategy involved drags the fight out. Basically, Hoshkar is on a center island with the MT, and the rest of the raid is on an island that floats around the central island in a moat of lava. You have to continuously readjust your position to be able to attack  with Combat Arts/ Spells, and the MT has the fun of walking the dragon in a huge circle around the center island all the while keeping up with the floating island so the healers can heal. With a raid force that averaged 50-60k DPS, we only managed to get 8k DPS on this guy. So yea, it was a long fight.

• Travenro the Skygazer: Typical tank and spank. He has these little orbs flying around him that shock you and knock you around slightly if you’re too close, but overall, he was an easy kill. First pull kill.

• Silverwing: OMG… The strategy for this guy involves reprogramming some statues, flipping levers, clicking some glowy on the ground based on what class you are, and OTing adds. Two pulls, two wipes. It was late, and this guy hits hard. We stopped after the second wipe, and hopefully, we will take him down tonight. I need this kill to be able to advance to Phara Dar for my myth update.

Overall, this was a much better run than our first night. I’m happy with the piece of loot I got and am looking forward to hopefully getting my myth tonight. It’ll be a long night tonight since we are trying to get as many people mythed for the expansion, but I am up to the challenge.

We decided to tackle Wing 2 first due to weekend time restraints and such, and well, I suppose we did okay for a team who has little raid time overall. My only major gripe for the evening was the start time. The posting says 7 pm CST start, but we didn’t start forming until that time, and aslo, there were voice issues in game, so we had to wait for people to set up vent and adjust voice volumes. For any vent users out there: NORMALIZE. Yes, the voice quality takes a hit, but do you really need to be able to hear the raid leader’s voice in perfection? No..A slight buzz or ‘white noise’ won’t harm anyone. Needless to say, this ‘issue’ set us back almost an hour. Once we got in to the zone, we seemed to be tearing through the first couple of trash mobs like it was nothing. We did wipe twice due to some messy pulls and lack of complete knowledge of the pathing and such, but I view that as a growing pain.

Taskmaster Nichok: This was the first boss we hit, and even though we killed him first pull, it was a LONG fight. I truly believe we had his health at 4% like three times before we finally took him down. The major issue: Communication. I don’t know if people could not hear the two designated timer callers or if they were simply just ignoring them, but there was definitely a disconnect somewhere. Again, growing pains.

Milyex Vioren: Boss number two… ugg. Overall, I think this fight went really well even though we took a wipe once and never actually killed it. At first, we kept the engineer near the north generator with the boss, but he kept healing the generator, so we moved him to the middle, but he was able to heal the two southern generators depending on which he was closer to. Also, we had two DPS on the engineer but noticed they were dropping from some burst damage the engineer pulled off, so we eventually assigned a tank to him and had the tank drag him down the ramp. This worked beautifully. The tank was able to keep the engineer away from the generators and only required one healer to keep him alive. This, in my opinion, is a decent use of resources. We were able to tear through Milyex easily until three generators started popping at once. I’m pretty sure this was due to a lack of burst DPS which was due to the lack of enough power feeders. If we could just burn down those three generators faster, we would have had this guy down for sure. Oh well.

Unfortunately, that left us at midnight, so we called it. As a raid force, the leaders are determined to kill every single boss in VP, and I for one am all for the struggle. It helps us develop as a raiding force, and I’m always up for a good challenge. We have VP planned for Friday and Saturday, so hopefully we will make some progress. As far as us reaching and taking down Phara Dar for my mythical update, I don’t know yet. I will get my mythical at some point, but until then, I’m just going to enjoy the game. Raiding, among other things, killed WoW for me, and I won’t let the same thing happen with EQ2.

In other news, BioShock 2. I woke up this morning and posted that I was installing BS2, but in reality, I was installing the original BioShock. I kind of just sat at my laptop and looked at it like…WTF… It’s ok though. I installed the game and played for a little, and here are my thoughts so far. Now, keep in mind, I’m not far at all.

• I think the game looks amazing. I definitely enjoy the underwater scenery.
• At the start, the game is kind of slow. In fact, I haven’t really reached a part where I feel it has ‘picked up’. I’ve been in some fights, even against the Big Sister, but I just feel like I am walking around more than anything else.
• The fights I have been in have resulted in some “are you kidding me” moments. Maybe it’s because I play on harder difficulty modes, but man, these splicers hit hard. I’m a Big Daddy, and some guy is shooting me with what amounts to a BB gun, and my health is dropping fast.

That’s all I have right now. Like I said, I’m not that far into the game at all. I haven’t even reached a point where I can pick up a little sister yet. I’m sure it’ll pick up, and I’ll update my progress here.

Today I am stuck hunting skyfire drakes for sellable drake hides which are not a common drop. The main issue here: I’m a Templar. I know there are DPS specs out there, and I really should look into them, but man, I really wish they would just die before my sheer awesomeness and save me three days. Oh well.. I can’t really complain since Sony did pretty much dumb down the game a whole lot since launch. At least the mythical isn’t too bad.