With the weekend nearing an end last night, Davyydeous found himself at the gates to the Sanctum of the Scaleborn hoping to make good on my vow to kill Exarch Trulnariz. There was a group meeting up at the entrance so I asked if they happened to be heading down to the Exarch’s Chamber. “Nope, not going that deep,” was the reply. I waited some more, scanning the out of character chat, when I saw, “SoS Claymore group needs one more.” I quickly sent a tell to see what part of Claymore they were working on, and asked to join up when I was told An Uneasy Alliance, just two quests away from Trading Information.

We quickly blew threw the zone, the group consisting of Davyydeous as main tank, a 67 Shadowknight, a 69 Mystic, a 59 Fury, a 70 Warlock, and a 70 Wizard. It wasn’t long until we were all on Trading Information, and headed towards the Exarch’s Chamber. It was approaching midnight at this point, so to be honest, I didn’t have high hopes that the group would last much longer, so I was really hoping the Exarch would spawn quickly.

We entered the room only to see the all to familiar Herald of Dar staring back at us. We cleared the room, and settled in for the camp. Someone in the group asked if it was going to be a long spawn… I didn’t want to jinx us, so I didn’t go on about my experiences camping him. When Relickeeper Zarinis spawned on the left side of the room I started to wonder about things. We had cleared the right side of the room first, so I would have expected either the Exarch or his placeholder to spawn before the left side, but that wasn’t the case. A few minutes later, I saw him. Standing there, looking right at us, was my “White Whale.” When all was said and done, the fight was quite anti-climactic, lasting all of fifteen seconds. It’s been a while however, since a quest ding has felt so good.

We hung around killing harbingers for the next step of the quest, managing only one key before the group disbanded. I feel much better about my progression on the Claymore line having that guy killed, and will hopefully be out of SoS soon.

The other bit of good news Davy had, was a successful roll on a Wizard master spell, Fusion, that dropped. The Wizard in the group already had it and announced a free for all. I’ll be shipping that off to my wife’s Wizard as soon as possible.

I decided to do some tradeskilling with Davyydeous last night as he was close to dinging 62 armourer. There I was, banging out some writs, when all of a sudden, someone else came along and started working away at the same forge that I was using. I don’t know why, but for some reason this really bugs me. No other forge in the place was being used, yet this individual still thought it was perfectly fine to stand next to Davy and craft away. It has absolutely no effect on my crafting, except for the sheer annoyance of it. Am I the only one who’s bothered by this? Just imagine if you were at work, sitting peacefully in your cubicle, only to have someone else sit themselves at the other side of your desk and start working on stuff. I ended up finishing the item I was working on, shrugged my shoulders, and moved to one of the other forges.

Speaking of the forge, way back when I first started playing EQ2, I had no idea how crafting worked. As a baby-faced Berserker, all I wanted to do was maim and slaughter stuff, and I had no interest whatsoever in crafting. The appeal of crafting my own armour eventually came over me which brought me to the forge. My only experience with crafting at that point was the quick tutorial you got on the old Isle of Refuge, followed by the quick tradeskill quests done upon arriving in your city. That is to say, I had no idea how to craft. I didn’t know about the tradeskill arts, so I would just select my recipe, click start, and watch the bars go down until the item was completed, quality be damned. I had no clue that I was supposed to do something when the tradeskill events occurred, so I would often take damage when they did. One time, the forge actually killed me. Yep, my big ferocious barbarian cried out and slumped to the ground, writhing in pain. There was nothing I could do as the heat damage-over-time pecked away at my health, and before too long I was presented with the revive window. You want to get lots of “LOL’s” and “ROFL’s”? Tell your guild the forge killed you. The one benefit though, was that I quickly learned about using the tradeskill arts, and from then on, my crafting went a whole lot faster (and no deaths!!!) … imagine that.

After dinging 62, I left the tradeskill instance and headed out to Butcherblock Mountains. I’ve been working on the Knights of the Round quest in the Sword of Destiny timeline, collecting the statues from all around Norrath. I had only four to go, the one in Unrest (can’t wait to see that zone), the one in the Acadechism, one in Mistmoore Catacombs, and the one in the bank vault in Kaladim. I didn’t have much time so I figured I’d pop into Kaladim and see if anyone had recently opened up the bank vault. I was fortunate enough to find a group there that was working on just that, and let me join. They had already gotten the blasting keg, so we headed to the vault. I figured it’d take a couple minutes, we’d kill a few mobs, then be done with it. That was not the case. We were getting jumped by mobs left and right; they were coming through the walls, through the floors, from everywhere you could imagine. I haven’t spent much time in Kaladim at all, so I don’t know if that’s normal or not, but needless to say it took much longer to get the statue than I figured it would. Regardless, I’m now down to three remaining statues, and I’ll be quite happy to be done with the quest.

My vow to kill Exarch Trulnariz by the end of the weekend is looking like it won’t happen. I’ve barely been able to log in this week, and I’m not so sure that’s going to change on the weekend.