Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

I read a favourable review of the game Dungeon Runners so I figured I’d give it a try and post my impressions here.  The game is free to download and play, however, you can choose to pay a monthly fee of five dollars to become a member and gain access to more powerful items in the game along with various other priveleges.

Creating an account and downloading the client was simple enough, and it wasn’t long after that I was in the game.  My immediate impression was that it looked very much like World of Warcraft, right down to the interface buttons.  The starting area had a few NPC’s milling about with the all too familiar exclamation mark hovering over their heads.  I started to walk around, exploring the area, when it struck me that I should really be in Everquest 2 working up Davyydeous’ tradeskill.  I quit the newly downloaded game without even giving it a shot and popped back into EQ2.

I’ve got a pile of games on my desk here that I’ve been meaning to play for so long, but I just can’t free myself from Norrath’s grasp.  Anyone else have that “problem”?  In fact, what am I doing writing this right now?  I could be doing writs!

I’m going to take a page from many other bloggers and have you guess where in Norrath the screenshot to the left was taken.  Feel free to leave your guesses in the comments, the first person to guess correctly wins absolutely no prize.

I haven’t been up to much in the game lately adventure-wise.  A few posts back I mentioned I’d probably spend a good chunk of time grinding Davyydeous’ armour skill up to 70 from 62.  Turns out I’ve spent more time with my tailor.  Ordeth and Saryan made it to level 42 a little quicker than I had anticipated and my tailor wasn’t of sufficient level to outfit them for the next tier.  So, Elrahir has been standing in front of the loom sewing away, gaining some levels.  I’ve found that the rare leather pelts and roots are comparatively cheap on the broker and I’ve been buying them in bundles.  The leather pelts I’ve gotten for as little as a few gold each.  It’s very refreshing considering the prices my armourer paid for the rare ore from that tier.

Finally, just a quick comment on the latest test update notes, particularly this part:

Your raid force can now clear part of The Emerald Halls, leave, and then come back later to pick up where you left off.

• There is no longer a “failure” timer.  You will be locked to an instance for 5 days once you kill any mob.  You can reset your timer after 5 days and enter a different instance, or you can choose to continue in the same instance for up to 10 days total.

I’m really liking the sounds of that, and I’d be willing to bet Rise of Kunark is going to have some pretty large raid zones.  I hope this also helps bring a few more people into raiding by allowing raid forces to split up their raids into multiple play sessions.

I do have a slight concern at this point however.  Does this signal a shift to even more of a raiding focus, and will it alienate too many players?  I don’t play World of Warcraft, but I do know that the majority of its raids are persistent instances.  From what I’ve read, The Burning Crusade expansion introduced many large, very hard, raid instances that the majority of the player base will never see.  Will the same happen with Rise of Kunark? 

Ordeth and Saryan have been working on some heritage quests over the past few play sessions, with Foomby’s Stolen Goods being the latest.  The first step calls for the death of Darkflight Faeries until you find a Cracked Gold Monocle.  This is now the fourth character I’ve done this quest with and for each one, this step seemed to have taken the longest.  It was certainly true of this latest attempt, with Ordeth and Saryan killing what had to have been five billion faeries before getting the monocle.  After seeing “Quest Item Not Found” for a good chunk of our evening, we decided to log off and try again the next day.

The gold monocle was eventually retrieved, which meant that we had to kill Chomper, a level 37^^^ fish.  He wasn’t anywhere to be found, so we started the placeholder dance, and after about four or five Hungry Nibbler kills, Chomper reared his ugly head.

We buffed up, got set, and just as Ordeth was going to pull Chomper, another duo swept in out of nowhere and pulled him first.  The other duo consisted of a fabled-out 70 Necromancer mentored down to a level 39 Defiler.  Admittedly, I was really hoping they’d wipe, evil me, I know, but we had spent a fair amount of time swimming around the pond killing Hungry Nibblers and muckfins and felt like the Chomper spawn was “ours”.  Needless to say however, they killed the big fish and went on their merry little way.

I realize that’s the nature of contested mobs, but it was fairly obvious what Saryan and I were doing and I don’t think it would have hurt to send a quick tell asking if we wanted to group up.  Oh well, I guess it gives us something to do later on.

It was just a little past 11:00 pm last night when I told my wife that I’d be up to bed in “just a few minutes.”  I wanted to log in to Davyydeous and check the broker, see who was logged on… I’m sure you know the story.  “Don’t stay up late,” she told me with a hint of a sigh which indicated to me that she knew full well I’d end up being longer than the twenty minutes I said I’d be.  It had been a long day for both of us, and I was quite tired, so I had every intention of hitting the pillow very soon.

I had left Davyydeous in Loping Plains after killing two of the three blades in Arkelek’s Gash for The Stone Behind the Ankh quest of the Swords of Destiny timeline.  I wasn’t quite able to defeat the third blade on my own so I decided to bring my wife’s Wizard in to two-box it.  I ran Davyydeous over to the spot, where as luck would have it, a Conjurer and Warden were about to kill the blade I needed.  I asked to join and the three of us easily got our updates.  I thanked them and drpped group to head on my merry little way.  Of course, I couldn’t just log out… no, I had to check out the next step of the quest.

It wasn’t long after that I found myself in Mistmoore Catacombs, a few more steps into the quest of course, when I ran into the Conjurer and Warden again.  They asked to team up again and I obliged.  We soon got our next updates and found ourselves off to Kaladim.  A Monk joined our group which ended up being a godsend, as this guy was über.  We knocked out the Kaladim updates in about forty-five minutes, maybe less, a task that would have taken significantly longer without the Monk.  Seeing this guy in action really made me think I rolled the wrong class for my main.

After Kaladim we headed back to Mistmoore Catacombs, answered the riddles, then portaled to Butcherblock (three cheers for Druid portals) to finish off the quest.  This is where our group ended, and I was pleased as punch to have advanced the Swords of Destiny to this point.  With my scattered playtime of late, I didn’t think I’d get this far so soon.

So, my twenty minutes had now turned into three hours according to the 2:00 AM staring back at me on the clock.  My next task would be the most difficult quest of all; getting up and into bed without waking my wife.  How’d I do?  Well, unless she reads this, and I don’t think she will, she’ll never know.

Ding!

Are you ready?

Yep.

Wait, I need wolf.

I’m casting it right now.

Ok, hailing.  Click, click, click… ready?  Go!

Where are we going first?

Thundermist Village.  Just follow me through the canyon here.

I’m going to sprint for a bit.

Sure.  Okay, head right and get your ding.

Are we taking the griffon to the next one?

I don’t know if it’ll be faster.

So… no?  Hurry up and decide!

I don’t know!  What do you think?

I’m taking the griffon!

Get ready to jump off as soon as you ding, should be soon.

Okay, where now?

Head back to the water, Shrine of the Sirens.

I’m not dinging.

Keep swimming.  Come down here a bit more.  I just got my ding.

Okay, got it.  Lead the way, I don’t know where I’m going.

Just follow me up through Deadview Pass.  We have to head over the bridge there and run by the gnolls.  Watch out for the giants.

Are you okay?  Are you going to die?  You’ve got, like, ten giants on you.

I should be fine, just keep running.  Coldwind Cove is next, over by the griffon tower.

Are we taking the griffon?

No, I can’t remember its flight path.  I think the next spot is just a little into the canyon anyway.  Although, I think we should take the other one… Southeast something station.  By Varsoon.  Just double back a bit and follow me when you get your ding.

I’m not dinging.

Run through the pool of water, by the rocks.

I am!  Nothing’s happening.

Just keep running around.  You’re in the right spot.

Uhhh, it’s not working, and we’re running out of time… wait!  Got it!  Where’d you go?

Just head back a bit and head towards the griffon.  Find me on your map, I’m right there.

Okay, I’m on the griffon.  Where do I jump off?

Just before Thundermist.  I just jumped off, check your map.

Are you going to make it?  I’ve only got two minutes left, I don’t think I’ve got enough time.

You should be okay, just keep going.  Sprint some more.

This is going to be close.  I’m not sure…

You’ll be fine, you’re almost there.

Thirty-two seconds…

No problem.

Ding!

Sweet.  Let’s head to Nektulos Forest.

Crap, I hate that one.

Yeah, me too.

The Journey is Half the Fun.  One of my favourite, and at the same time, most hated, quests in the game.  My wife and I decided to get that Heritage Quest done with our alts (Ordeth and Saryan) one day when we had nothing better to do.

The first time I did it with my main, Davyydeous, a long, long time ago, I remember having a really tough time with the Thundering Steppes race.  Back in the day I think it was almost a requirement to have someone in your group with evac to take you back to the docks.  As illustrated above, we were able to do it using the griffons in a couple spots, which of course weren’t an available option a while ago.

This is one of my favourite quests because it’s just plain fun.  Yet, because you’re timed, it can be bloody aggravating as well.  Add to that having to do a stage all over again because you missed it by a few seconds… oh yeah, that’s fun stuff.

As it turned out, I found the quest to be much easier this time around.  Nektulos Forest was no problem at all.  I think the zone revamp had something to do with that.  There was hardly an aggro-able mob in sight.  After doing Nek, we took a bit of a break from the quest, gained a few levels, and this past weekend decided to continue it at the Zek stage.

At level 40, the entire zone is still aggro to us, but we found the mobs were easily run off.  The only time we had trouble was the last checkpoint, where you have to ride the long elevator down into the quarry.  I ended up dieing there, while Saryan got her ding and used portal to head back to the dock.  Even with the death, I was able to rez and continue on my merry way and finish the stage with time to spare.

Enchanted Lands was also quite easy.  Finding the Goblin Pass was the most difficult part of that one.  Finally, The Feerrott race was definitely the most difficult, first because the mobs in there hit us pretty hard, what with all the spiders paralyzing us with their poison, secondly because even with a map, I still have a hard time finding my way around that zone.  I ended up dieing again, and rezing up near Cazic Thule ended any hope I had of finishing that race.  Saryan managed to do it with about 2 seconds left on her timer.  I ran it again immediately, and discovered that most of the mobs along the way don’t see through invis, so I made it without any problem at all.

I think they need to update this quest, or add another one, to include zones like Lavastorm, as well as the KoS, and EoF zones.  Or am I just a glutton for punishment?