Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

Level 26 Erudite Coercer
Level 9 Artisan
Status: Alt, Active

Ordeth is the second of my two active alts and is quickly becoming a favourite of mine, which is why he’s being profiled ahead of my other active alt. Created October 21, 2006, I was looking for another character that I could play for the times where I needed a break from Davyydeous. My other alt was tied closely to one of my wife’s characters and I didn’t want to play that character without her, so I was looking for something completely new.

I knew I didn’t want another fighter, I already two plate fighters (Davyydeous, plus a Paladin alt), plus my wife has a monk that she enjoys playing. I already have a healer (the character I play with my wife – profile coming soon), and a Necromancer I rolled on a PvP server. I also knew I wanted a character that could solo reasonably well, as I didn’t have any plans to join a guild (this was going to be my “escape” character), and I’m not one to join too many pick-up groups. I was initially leaning towards creating another Necromancer, but eventually decided against it because I already had the PvP one, plus it seems like there’s a lot of Necro’s on our server as it is.

I began to look a little closer at the Coercer. The idea that it could be a pet class if you wanted it to be one, but wasn’t restricted to it was very appealing to me. Also appealing was the whole idea of mezzing your opponents and the great crowd control abilities of the class. What really sealed the deal for me was reading through the official Everquest 2 forums and seeing many comments regarding the Coercer’s soloing potential. With the right level of spells and skill, there wasn’t too much a Coercer shouldn’t be able to do solo. It was then that I decided to create Ordeth the Coercer.

I chose the Erudite race simply because of its high starting intelligence stat, plus I wanted something a little different looking, but not too much so. I soon found myself headed to the Outpost of the Overlord, my first experience with the starting zone since its revamp from the Isle of Refuge. I definitely enjoyed the new starting zone, I thought it was very well done. There was definitely a bit of a learning curve to the character. I suppose I was too used to playing Davyydeous because it took a little while for me to cope with the cloth-wearing squishy’s fragility.

It didn’t take long to finish up on the Outpost, and Ordeth soon found himself in Freeport, running through many of the same beginner quests I had ran a few times before with other characters. I definitely felt a certain amount of nostalgia going through those zones again, and I made sure to actually read all the quest text I received. As I became more familiar with the Coercer, I became more comfortable soloing, and began enjoying the class even more. When done just right, I found I was able to solo triple-up heroics that were a level or two above me; something that would be unthinkable with Davyydeous. I take great satisfaction in keeping a mob rooted while I hit him from afar and take control of his henchmen and turn them on each other. The bad thing is, if a mez, root, or charm breaks at the wrong time, I’m dead, period.

I took a bit of a break from Ordeth to focus more time on Davyydeous, but am now getting back to him. The levelling seems to go well, I think due mostly to my familiarity with the game now. I’m not doing too many quests with Ordeth, focusing instead on killing mobs and nameds. Currently at level 26, I’ve caught up to one of my wifes alts, a 28 Warden, and we’ve started questing together. So far this seems to be a fairly effective duo, aside from the fact we have no tank.

I’m enjoying playing Ordeth more by the day, and I fully intend on getting him to max level. There’s no telling how long that will take, but I’m focused more on having fun with him, rather than driving towards a specific level. There will undoubtedly be many tales of Ordeths adventures here in the coming weeks.

For the past while I’ve slowly been working on the Claymore quest line with Davyydeous. Slowly is the key word here, given that there’s quite a few quests to do, many of which include steps that require a certain spawn. I’ve found it difficult to find a group to help me with this quest line, mostly because everyone seems to have already completed the Sanctum of the Scaleborn part of the line, or because everyone is on different parts of the quest. Davyydeous is currently on Trading Information. The other night a few guildies were putting a group together to head down to the forge area in the Sanctum. Knowing that the book I needed to examine to start off Trading Information was in a room close to the forge, I jumped at the chance to join the group.

It was soon discovered that myself and another of the group members needed to slay Gylton, the drake needed for the Thorn of Old quest, so we took a quick detour to kill him. We made short work of Gylton then continued onwards to the forge. While the two group members who required the forge did their thing, the rest of the group headed off to the Exarch’s Seclusion to find the book that Davyydeous needed. After reading the book, I learned that I needed to kill Exarch Trulnariz, who spawns in that same room.

It was here where my bad luck with the spawn gods came into play. I’ve traditionally had fairly bad luck when it comes to needed quest mobs. Back when Davyydeous was working on Berik’s Revenge, I must have camped, and waited for eons to finally kill Lord Byron. Every time I logged in, I’d head to Stormhold (if I wasn’t there already) to check on him. If he wasn’t up, I’d clear the room, and wait. And wait. And wait some more. I continued this for what seemed like months. Eventually I managed to slay him, and there was much rejoicing.

Anyway, back to Exarch Trulnariz. We killed his placeholder again and again, with no sign of Trulnariz. I didn’t keep track of the time, but I’m sure we were in that room for a solid two hours, with no luck at all. This to me is one of the most painful elements of Everquest 2. Nothing kills a good group faster than an un-spawning quest update. Sure enough, one of our healers needed to leave, which was soon followed by our other healer and a Coercer. That was the end of the group, and we gated home. To me, there’s nothing better about this game than getting into a good group and heading out to slay some mobs. Unfortunately, I’ve been in far too many groups that decide to quit because their momentum (and fun) is ended simply due to waiting for spawns.

I don’t want all the needed mobs to be available immediately, that would be far too easy, but the process does begin to wear a little thin after killing the placeholder for hours on end. The other thing I was wondering about, is if you didn’t have access to people who have completed the quest before, or guides on the internet, how would you ever know you were on the right track? There’s nothing in the quest journal that says Exarch Trulnariz will be in that room. I’m sure after spending a couple hours in that room killing things you may conclude that the guy you need isn’t in that room.

Oh well. Trulnariz… watch out. I’m coming for you and eventually, I will get you.

Level 70 Barbarian Berserker
Level 61 Armorer
Status: Main, Active

Davyydeous is my main character in Everquest 2, created on April 10, 2005. I never really had much interest in EQ2, or any MMO at the time for that matter. Despite a friend begging me almost daily to start playing the game, I couldn’t justify the monthly fee to myself. A few months after release, the aforementioned friend sent me a link to the Trial of the Isle seven day demo.

With the demo loaded, I started the game up and soon found myself at the character creation screen. Keep in mind that I hadn’t been following the game; I didn’t know much about it at all, let alone what each of the character classes did. I quickly read the class descriptions and eventually decided on the berserker simply because it sounded cool. All I knew was that I wanted to swing a sword and kill stuff; I didn’t know what “tanking” meant, or “aggro”, “taunting”, etc. When it came to the characters’ name I drew a blank. I’m usually kind of particular when it comes to naming my avatars and won’t name them until I’ve got a name that I really like, and fits the character. With this demo however, I didn’t put much thought into it. I honestly thought I’d play the demo for its seven days and never come back, so I just made my own name (David) sound fantasy-ish and added some stupid spelling to boot. Thus, Davyydeous (Dah-vid-E-us) was born, and I’m still embarrassed with that name to this day.

I really enjoyed my time with the trial, but was disappointed to be restricted to the small island zone, and from what I remember you were restricted to level seven. Nevertheless, I was hooked. The next little while was spent convincing my wife to let me play, in addition to convincing her to play as well. I eventually got the green light to play, bought the game, and brought Davyydeous back to life. In hindsight, I probably should have re-rolled a new character, but I was too eager to get playing.

I remember it taking forever to level Davy up; part of that was the slower xp gain at the time, but the main reasons were because I solo’d most of the time and also didn’t really know the game very well. Davy spent what seemed like several months in the Commonlands, and to be honest, I wasn’t having a whole lot of fun. Davy eventually joined a guild, but it was a small, very casual guild, who’s members all seemed to be off doing their own thing. We never raided, or really did much group activity at all, so Davy was left to solo most of the time, and grind his way up in levels. A select few characters from the guild, Davy included, eventually found themselves adventuring more and more with another guild. This enabled Davy to complete the prismatic weapon series of quests. This quest line sucked me right in, I was loving it. For the first time I felt like I was doing something epic, something that mattered. It was tough (Sol’s Eye), but worth it (seeing Darathar for the first time). This quest gave me a taste of what the game was really about. Davy joined this other guild and started to really play the game. Perhaps this will be a topic for a future post, but your guild can really make a huge difference towards your enjoyment of the game.

Davy soon found himself equipped in better gear, grouping far more often, and learning how to tank. He reached level 70 on September 29, 2006. Unfortunately, his guild began to die, losing players to other games. As of this writing, Davy finds himself in a larger guild that raids three or four times a week, hitting up all the “end game” raids. Davy has only tagged along on a few of the raids as he’s not quite up to full raiding calibre just yet, in addition to the fact I’ve got too many real life commitments with the new baby to dedicate time to the game. Given time though, I hope to get him into most of the high end raids.

Aside from getting into raiding, there’s still quite a few things I hope to accomplish with Davy. This is the beauty of Everquest 2 in my opinion. Davy’s been level 70 for quite awhile now and yet there’s still so many things I want to do with him. Specifically, I’d like to finish up his tradeskilling. As of this writing, he’s a level 61 armorer. Honestly, I never thought I’d spend any time with the tradeskills. Just as in choosing my class, I figured being an armorer would be kind of cool, so that’s why I chose that profession. I didn’t really start the tradeskilling process in earnest until I was adventure level 50 or so, which means I never got a chance to make my own armor (aside for one of my alts). This will be a slow process for me, because quite honestly, it’s not a fun grind. I can’t believe the amount of raw resources it takes to level up, and competing for ore nodes in Kingdom of Sky is not the most exciting thing to do.

Davy’s main focus for the next little while is going to be completing the Claymore line (he’s still stuck in Sanctum of the Scaleborn) and Deathtoll access, in addition to completing some other Heritage Quests. Davy’s upcoming journeys will be a big part of this blog over the next little while. When all is said and done, I’m very happy with Davy; the Berserker class fits my play style very well, and I’m looking forward to killing a lot more mobs in the coming days.

Here I sit, staring at the Wordpress screen, starting a blog.  Another gaming blog is just about the last thing the internet needs, yet I continue unabated.  On a personal level, this is also a terrible time to be starting a blog given that my free time has dwindled to almost none on account of my baby daughter.  This lack of free time has been somewhat of a blessing in disguise however, in that I appreciate any time spent playing games even more.  Perhaps my inability to play has increased my desire to talk about games.  Who knows?

Regardless, here I am.  My aim for this blog is to discuss the game(s) that I’m playing at the time of writing.  For the immediate future, that means Everquest 2.  I really like the idea of using the blog to follow my in game characters quests and progress, so that’s what I’ll do for the immediate future.  One of my first posts will be an introduction to my main EQ2 character and my alts.  Where I go from there is left to be determined.

I can’t promise daily updates, but I’ll sure as heck try.  In the next few days I’ll try and find the time to create my own style/theme for the site.  I’m not putting a high priority on that however, as content is king, or so they say.

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