norrath out

Well i have not played eq in quite awhile so this  blog is closed until further notice.  I am starting a new hackmaster 4th ed campaign and will post details here for any who are interested.  L8rz

Dungeon Etiquette

It has been awhile but I am back.  I have been busy leveling up a new enchanter on the vulak server.  He is level eighteen now and has been the member of a few dungeon groups.  I now understand the pain of enchanters everywhere when melee and dps casters break all of the mezzes you spent all that mana casting.  I think I will take this opportunity to cover proper group/dungeon etiquette. 

Now, by this time I think we all know how to properly do things.  If you are buffing, either keep timers or cast on yourself so you know when to rebuff.   If you are dps, use assist blah, blah, blah.  All of these topics have been covered endlessly.  My rehashing them here would serve no purpose and for my tens of readers that is not what you have come to expect.  I need to discuss things that are new and fresh.  

What is that you say?  There is no topic in EQ dungeon etiquette that has not already been covered.  Come on now, you have that little faith in me as your avatar spiritual leader and the shining light in your online entertainment desolate night.  I have, after tireless research, found a topic not covered anywhere in your eq strategy guides.  Read on brave soul, read on to take your game to new heights.  To take your skills to the next level.

The etiquette I am referring to of course is the establishment of a “pee corner”.  When you are in a group there have been thousands of occasions over the years when someone in the group calls for a “bio break” or some derivative thereof.   That is all well and good and proper.  However, as we all know no one likes to sit in pee, and yet these players do not move to any corner to conduct this biological transaction.  How disgusting.  As an enchanter I spend a lot of time backed into a corner on my butt medding.  I would like to have the peace of mind that I am not sitting in the non designated, but still used by some, corner.  Therefore, the establishment of the pee corner is essential so that I may rest my mind from worrying about getting unsightly stains on my fancy robe and concentrate on the group tacticals.

I know some of you are saying, “But you are speaking from a strictly role-playing point of view Rownin.  I am just interested in grinding and going on my way.”  Well, you little min/maxer you, I am not forgetting your viewpoint.  Consider this, my number crunching friend, you are in the middle of a big fight on a five mob pull and as soon as, or right before the mobs are all dead someone calls bio break and heads afk.  Since you are concerned only about xp gain /hour you are not paying close attention and pull the next set of five mobs.  Now, let us suppose that person calling the break was the crowd control.  Well here comes the melee port to bind for your whole group.  That is what can and does happen when a pee corner is not established.

Over half of the game is visual cues and we are trained as players to react to most situations based on what visual cues we have.  If there is a mob we see it and react.  If there is a spell effect we go through our mental images and figure out what spell it was to see if we need to change our tactics.  By establishing a pee corner and having everyone who is afk on a bio break head into that corner you can, at a glance, determine your current party strength and whether or not it is safe to pull.  Simple, straightforward, and easy to enforce.

Now down to some specifics about the pee corner.  The corner in question should be out of the way of the incoming pulls but easily within view of the area where you are fighting.  It should be always downhill and away from the wind for obvious reasons.  Ideally there should be a raised portion of ground or a rock in the corner for those of a feminine persuasion.  Also, at no time should someone be standing in the pee corner unless they are in fact relieving themselves.  For one, ewww.   For two, this will cause confusion for the puller and whoever else is charged or feels the need to monitor current party attendance if people are standing in the corner who are, in fact, not actually using the corner for its intended purpose.

By following the few simple procedures I have laid out we will all benefit by adding an extra simple visual cue to our repertoire.  By using this system we create yet another useful tool from something the developers never intended us to gain an advantage from…the corner.  Now in the future I do fully expect developers to try to combat this by making all walls and rooms rounded.  Do not worry about this future event as I have a plan for that as well but am keeping it under wraps to combat the developers’ evil machinations.

Thank you for reading

Rownin 25^th monk

Alayan 18^th enchanter

FD. random thoughts and maybe correct information

Welcome back faithful readers.  When we last left our fearless monk he was leaving the bright sands of South Ro and headed to points east.  I had bounced around a bit finishing up the sash quests and trying to find something to do when I realized that I was just fifty percent away from level 17 and the FD skill.  I was also way down on cash from my recent purchase of the Wu gear.  But at 16 there are not many places to go to get cash.

To resolve both of these apparently unconnected problems I wandered into Nektulos Forrest and found an apparently endless supply of wisps.  These guys conned blue to me and they dropped greater lightstones that sell for 4pp each.  After about an hour I had dinged 17 and got the Feign Death skill.  Score.  Running to Freeport and falling to the ground every 12 seconds I sold all my lightstones and raked in 80pp.  I used some of this to pay for some training at the monk guildhouse.  The first 15 points in a skill do not cost anything money-wise to train at the guild house.  After that the skill costs cast to train.  Not a whole lot at first but it does eventually work its way up to several plat per point.  As I had only 35 points to train with I only spent maybe 5 plat training my fd skill up to 36.

Armed with the defining skill of a monk I decided it was time to head back to befallen and try to get the drop there for my final monk sash (the red one).  Unfortunately I had yet to get a single skill up in fd from practice.  The FD skill works like this (or at least it used to) every point represents a percentage of success.  So at 36 skill I had a 36% chance of any one fd performed of being successful.  At 100% it is not possible to fail an fd but you continue to get skill up to the level of 200.  Mend and sneak also work this way but sneak, for monks, only goes up to the level of 112.  Hopefully this is still the same but I suppose I will find out soon enough as my fd skill cap at level 17 is 90. 

When you have a chance to fail a FD 6.4 times out of 10 you still have to be careful.  In everquest I generally go by the rule that if you really need it to work its not going to so start going to ground early if you think you need to drop all that agro, at least until you get to the skill of 100.  Even at 99 if you really need the fd to work in all likelyhood its going to fail.  This is strange because I rely on mend to work most of the time when I really need it now that it is up to 60+ and it usually works out ok.  FD is just strange like that.

I did get the drop from the priest in Befallen.  It was given to me by a level 30 monk who was slaughtering everything down there.  I would thank him here but sadly I have forgotten his name.  I put off getting the drop from najena as that mob is level 30 and I could not even kill the mobs to get into his area and you need keys and whatnot to move around in Najena.  So I was left with a conundrum….what to do…

I will go over my next steps in my next post.

South Ro Cruzin'

  My South Ro adventure starts thusly.  I know that a croc group is my level and that as a monk that is not twinked I can solo blue caimans all day long, so I would go there and try it out.  Read: I could no longer kill two mobs in a row in Befallen or Guk without dying or having to train out.

  After all that time in the dungeons I desperately needed a tan so I used up my cash to buy a Wu Shirt and discarded my cured silk robe.  For those of you who have never played a monk from back in the day the Wu armor is basically the monk equivalent to bards lambent or warrior crafted for the original EQ.  The Wu shirt is the chest strap look that faded after the Velious expansion.

   I have mixed emotions about the chest strap look due to the fact that there are so many monks runnin around with their nipples hangin out at the moment.  That slightly disturbing image is offset by the fact that I hate running around in the same old same old leather tunic that is omnipresent in later expansions for monks.  Plus the female characters don’t have the same issue with nipples and Wu shirts so it leads one to believe Wu may have been hitting for the other team.

  The chest strap look does however convey the clear tactical advantage of humans over iksars.  The belly button.  The belly button is THE reason, I believe, for the human monk to have a one better delay over their scaly button less brethren.  The button of the belly allows for greater stretching of the abdomen and less weight overall which results in faster punching. 

  Ok, back to the topic at hand.  So there I was, on the shore of South Ro covered in cocoa butter flexing my abs and letting the lady orcs gawk at my button when all of a sudden, something  hit me over the head.  Slightly pissed at this point I looked around to figure out what had interrupted my slightly misguided, but totally working, flirting session to see a dark elf named Dexter at my feet.  Dexter was looking at me expectantly so I waved.  Dexter probably rolled his eyes at this point and said “are you gonna hit follow or not.” OM……..G!  it was a group invite!  I had heard about these of course but discounted them as a myth, kinda like Raster, they probably existed but I sure as hell never seen one and momma rownin didn’t raise no fool.  I decided to humor him and suddenly I had buffs flying all over me and I got a heal.  OMG!  Groups were real, and monks could join them.  The next 2 hours were a blur of croc genocide.  I went all the way to level 16 in that time.  I got yelled at for overpulling but no one died and I just told him to sit down strap in and med up …I got this.  `      

In my next post I will go over how tan I got and how I let the orc ladies down easy as I rode away into the sunset.

East Commons and beyond

By now tens of people may have read my post and are awaiting my next installment.  Well tens may be an exaggeration.  Anyway here is how it all went down. 

East commons xp was SLOW.  I did manage to get a couple plat together for an obsidian ring and some sta earrings.  I also decked myself out in cured silk (pimpin).  Once i hit level 7 i set off on foot for the faraway exotic lands of the Innothule Swamp.  There I bounced in and out of the Upper Guk dungeon trying to score some magic gloves.  After many trains into and out of the dungeon i finally got a pair of woven gloves and headed back to Freeport.  I did a few turn ins for my monk sash quests and went online to look for a ZEM chart for old world zones

For those that are not aware a ZEM chart is a Zone Experience Modifier chart.  For example the East Commons (Commonlands) has a ZEM of 75%.  That means if you kill a white (even) conning mob you will get 75% of the xp that the mob can give, basically it is a 25% xp penalty.  Now, dungeons like Befallen and Guk have modifiers of 130- 160%, basically a 30 - 60% bonus to xp earned.

On the progression server there is a hard coded limit of 2% per kill (so I understand)that you can recieve per mob. Killing mobs with a positive modifier of 30-60% you can almost garuntee at lower levels of getting 2% per kill, while in the commonlands the -25% modifier will ensure your xp bar doesnt even move when you kill the same level mob as in the dungeon.  Needless to say I continued to train my way into and out of Guk and Befallen until level 13 or so.  This is the point I parked myself in South Ro and put up my lfg flag. That story will wait till my next post. 

Just for the sake of clarity, I am posting these about a week behind where I really am in game.

ZEM chart (outdated but gives a good idea)  Thanks Graffe's

Return to Norrath

I have grown bored with WoW.  Rift is to much for my old machine to handle.  City of heroes doesnt have the variety of content i want.  What to do, what to do?  Why I think I will load up Everquest and give it another go.  This was not an easy decision.  My life generally goes on hiatus when eq is live on my machine.  I have decided to combat this by doing this blog detailing my in game and real life experience  this time around. 
I have started a monk on the Vulak 'Aeer server.  I have named him Rownin of course, as all good monks are named Rownin.  (Pronounced the same as ronin but as that is ALWAYS already taken we will just insist this is the better spelling and roll with that.)  OK.  So.  Obviously i am using the human model (with the badass eye-patch) due to the fact that iksars are still not unlocked.  I would still use human regardless because playing a monk without a bellybutton is not realistic. 
logging in the first think i notice is that they are using the new freeport....GAH!  I never bothered to learn the new freeport cus it sucked so hard core.  The eq gods are cruel indeed.  O well I will just make my way to the newb yard and get a few quick levels and move out to the commonlands and hopefully get level 10 or so real fast.  I will not go into trying to navigate my way to the newbie area (it took a full 8 minutes though) and just get right in to killing in the newb yard.  there are at least 3 bards and 3 mages in here with me so it is a race to see who can nab the skellies for that cloth armor random drop.  after about 30 minutes and almost a full set of cloth armor later i realize i have not heard that DING that signifies that i no longer fear snakes (even ones that have learned how to kick).  I hit the "I" key to bring up my inventory and see that i am about 70% of the way to level 2.  O....M...F...G!  this is gonna take forever with my self imposed limits of playtime.  Ten minutes later i finally ding.  I repeated this process for level 3 before venturing out to the commonlands.  I will detail in my next post what i found and what happened when i found it.  If you see me on vulak give a shout and make fun of my gear.
Later,
Rownin (vulak)
Rowninx (nameless)