Keepers of Fortitude - Saryrn / Bertoxxulous

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season!

I imagine it's allready tomorrow down under, but I noticed when I was browsing by that it was the Queen Gimp's birthday.  Hope it was a good one :)

Lourdos and I found what happened to all those Keepers we've lost touch with.  Sadly they now reside in the dungeon Stormhold as skeletons - Well at least they can play chess

Work in progress

Head:
Quest Name:
Quest Giver : Marshall Surefoot? in the Baubleshire
Type: 1 step Slayer quest
Task: Kill 5 Forgotten Guardians
Other Zones : The Forrest Ruins
Levels: 9 or so in a group, solo at 13+
Comments - Only problem with this quest is the quest giver is often bugged so you can't see him.
Related Quests - Requiring killing the same mobs - Embers for Xoort? - From Sage Xoort in the Baubleshire (weapon), ? from ? in Starcrest (?).  Requiring travel in the same zone - A visit to the tower of the Three from Algan Tinmizer in the Baubleshire (shoulders)

Shoulder:
Quest Name: A visit to the tower of the Three
Quest Giver: Algan? Tinmizer in the Baubleshire
Type: Visit a location
Task: Visit the tower of the Three
Other Zones : The Forrest Ruins
Levels: If you don't mind training or are a scout level 10 should do it.  Otherwise level 12 with agroup should be able to work there way back to the back of the castle in the forrest ruins and get the update.  Training is probably easier truthfully.
Comments: Algan Tinmizer can be tricky to find.  He's on the hill that forms the roof of the tavern in the Baubleshire
Related Quests: Requiring travel in the Same Zone - Embers for Xoort? - From Sage Xoort in the Baubleshire (weapon), ? from ? in Starcrest (?), Fight the Forgotten Guardians- from Sage Xoort in the Baubbleshire.

Quest Name: Bear hides for Danielle?
Quest Giver: Daniellle? Clothspinner in North Qeynos
Type: One Step slayer
Task: Kill 5? Bears in Antonica
Other Zones: Antonica
Levels: About level 12 solo, lower in a group
Comments: May have to do "Dyes for Danielle?" from the same merchant first.
Related Quests: Killing Same Mobs: Multiple  From the NPC's in the same shop: Dyes For Danielle (waist), Bear Fashions (Legs)

more to come when I have the energy and memory for it

9PM eastren sound good?  To my knowledge there's me, Lourdos, Aristides(ronik), Yampus, Myrran, Lowpan, Slams, Aire and SD with characters on the server, hopefully we can get six of us there.  The registration guy is in Qharbor right near the SQ gate.

Trying to get a hold of 6 Qeynos citizens at the same time on Highkeep so we can get our guild tag up one of these days.  Seen about 9 of us, the trick is getting 6 of us in the same place at the same time :)

Have a couple duplicate collection items if anyone wants -

Striped Yellow Butterfly
Plain Blue Butterfly
Plain Purple Butterfly
Chipped Shard of Abjuration (2)
Shattered half elf bone fragment

1) Find a map of antonica and print it out.  
You can find a good map at http://www.clanwhitestorm.com/eq2info/
 
The city zones all have decent in game maps, but the Antonica map is a reveal map (you can't see an area until you explore it) so printing out a map will keep you from having to ask questions that have allready been asked in /ooc a hundred times in the last hour

2) Start your Hallmark quests as soon as you can.

Your citizenship quest is pretty straight forward (note, after you finish collecting tokens click on the city sign again to get to the last part) but your class quest can be time consuming.  Get started in it as soon as possible.  


3) Bags

Any bag over 4 slots is currently rare and valuable.  I know 1 quest for an 8 slot bag and one for a ten slot bag.  

In Nettleville Hovel, Verth will ask you to pick up some illegal freeport ale from his brother by the mariner's bell.  Go get the ale from the brother but DON'T give it to Verth.  Talk to one of the guards (Knight-Captain Hastings maybe?   I'm not sure, but it will say in your quest log) and you will get an 8 slot bag as a reward.  Verth will only give you a few copper

The other one is a bit more involved.  At about level 10 go to Antonica and kill the rats and snakes near the gates.  Eventually a book called something like "Bootstrutter's guide to Antonica" will drop (it will be in a treasure chest, if you are not a scout make sure you are at full health when you open chests or a trap might kill you.  Rogues can disarm them).  Examine the book and it will give you a quest "tour of Antonica."  The map you printed out of Antonica will help you greatly on this quest, but it will take some time even then.  Remember Griffins and sprint are your friends.   MAke sure you get this quest before you hit about level 14 because rats and snakes will start to grey out and will no longer drop treasure chests when grey.  Also, there is a quest in N. Qeynos (From Knight Lieutenant Alesso near the castle gate) "Civil service" Which requires you to kill rats snakes and beetles.

4) Delivery (Fed-Ex) Quests

I suggest doing these first as they are easy and give you a chance to get to know the city while getting some experience.  As a matter of fact, you can get from the island to level 11 or 12 without killing anything except the things for your citizenship and class quests.  Some of the parts of the class quests require some  running around so it is often convienant to do some of these quests at the same time.

It's my Mom's birthday as well, nice to have your birthday as a Federal holiday isn't it?

See you in game. Let me know if anyone has any problems

OOC Note - There's a few light spoilers in this, but I've tried to keep them to a minimum

Post-Cataclysm Qeynos and the surrounding area - A Tourists Guide, by Kazaba Evilbane XI, Esquire

Welcome to Qeynos!  As a newly arrived refugee the town and surrounding area may seem a bit confusing, as such I've prepared this guide as a bit of an introduction –

OOC Note – Mariners Bells
Much like Venice Qeynos is full of canals.  In many places you'll find a pair of bells labeled "Travel Within Qeynos" and "Travel Outside of Qeynos" when you click them they will bring up a list of zones that you can go to.  When you chose the zone a Halfling will pull up and pole you to your destination.  Unfortunately you will be looking at the loading screen at the time so you will never actually see the Halfling.  Fortunately it will also spare you from listening to the Halfling's singing.

The following zones can currently be reached by the "Travel Within Qeynos" bell –
All Villages plus Qeynos Harbor

The following zones can currently be reached by the "Travel Outside of Qeynos" bell –
Antonica
The Caves (this is in fact the only known way to reach the Caves)
The Oakmyst Forrest

The Following zones cannot currently be reached by Mariners bells, but look like they have spots for bells to be installed in, so possibly reachable in the future –
North Qeynos
South Qeynos
The Eldaar Grove

Overall I like it and am going to buy it

Things that seem to be pretty popular with most people -

The Graphics -  Qeynos is beautiful, Freeport feels like you are walking through a dangerous slum.  In other words they nailed the look and feel to both.  The outdoor zones look great.  The sky is somewhat mediocre unless the shattered remains of Luclin (they look mighty cool).  Underground zones are creepy.  Blackburrow looks like Blackburrow with the gnolls having 500 more years to breed.  Overall I'd give them an A

(BTW I run the game at the "balanced" or "High Performance" setting.  As an aside if I bump it up to the "High Quality" Setting the performance degredation is noticable.)

Quest System - Some people complain that it's hard to find quests.  I personally think they are crazy as I'd done over 150 "quests" by level 15 (which took me less then a week playing 5 or 6 hours Friday, Saturdsy and sunday and 2-4 hours on weekdays).  Most of the "quests" are one of three types 1) Fed Ex Delivery 2) Slay X # of Y critter because they are terrorising the locals/eatting all the crops etc. and 3) go explore and find a certain place.  They really amount to "tasks" like the OoW task system, but with much better balance and rewards.  Basically quests give the experience grind a bit of focus and reasoning.  Instead of going and killing 100s of critters for no apparent reason like you do in EQ 1 your going and killing them because someone gave you a (usually) good reason to do so.  Also almost all quest drops are not actual drops, they just update your journal, so no hauling 50 batwings or whatever around.

Most quests are given to you by talking to NPCs.  Some are given by drops that can be examined.  Some come from books that you can buy.  Still others come from examining objects in the world.  So there's a lot of sources out there.

The more detailed and time consuming quests are your "Hallmark" quests.  Some of these can be gotten early by talking to the appropriate NPC, but all will appear in your journal automagically when you are a level away from needing them to level.  These quests are more detailed.  I enjoyed the citizinship quest a lot and enjoyed my class quest as well.

Overall - A- to the quest system, as long as new quests keep poping up this system will be pretty good, although I hope there are some more creative quests out there as I move along


Things with Mixed reviews, that I like -

Locked Combat - I'm a fan of locked combat.  Once you've engaged a critter or an encouter (more about encounters later) you cannot recieve help from outside your party/raid until combat is over or you yell for help (of course the mobs can get help so beware of wanderters and respawns as per normal).  If you yell for help you won't get experience or quest drops from anything you are still fighting.  The pluses to this is that K-stealing, and power leveling are impossible.  Of course some people probably think of those as minuses.  

The real downside is that casual help is out the window.  If you are walking through a newb zone and see a newb in a close fight you can't just toss them a heal unless they give up on the fight.  Also, just because you can't K-steal a mob doesn't mean you can't be a jerk and pull a mob that another player or group is obviously preparing to engage.

Linked encounters/Con system - Some critters are linked together, in other words if you pull one of them, you're getting them all.  This makes actaul combat more exciting (at least to me - in EQ one the best way to grind with a group was to have one mob being killed and the next one brought in to camp just as the other one died, that's not going to happen in 2), although it lessens the strategy on pulling.

The con system  - Is somewhat like in one, but there are some big changes.  First of all whenever you click on a mob underneath its name will be "Group" or "Solo."  This does not mean that the mobs are in a group or solo (if mobs are linked in a group, all members of the group will highlight when you click on one), but that the mobs are tuned to be fought by a group or solo.  Defeating mobs/encounters tuned to be fought by a group gives bonus experience.  Secondly the colors are a bit different.  Grey is the same as green in EQ 1- the mob is way below your level and gives no experience.  Green is similar to light blue in EQ1, quite a bit lower level then you, but gives some experience.  Blue, White and yellow are the same as in EQ 1.  Orange is in between yellow and red (which is the same as in one).  The final difference is up and down arrows.  Mobs will have 0-3 arrows above there names pointing either up or down.  The more up arrows they have the harder they are for their level and the more down arrows the easier. It makes a big difference.  A Green mob with 2 up arrows will be as hard or harder then a yellow mob with no arrows.  Basically the game points out undercons or overcons to you.  It sounds pretty complicated, but you get used to it quickly.
 Overall - I like both the con system and the linked mobs.

More to come

I can't really say anything about the beta yet other then I'm in it because of the NDA, but I was wondering if any other Keepers are helping test EQ 2?

Some of you who were on last night's raid may have wondered why I out of the blue fired an arrow at the Guardian of the seal and got myself killed.  Others of you may just want a good laugh at your favorite bald one-eyed human ranger's expense.  To satisfy both requests I give you my Teamspeak story -

The Teamspeak story goes thusly -

I have a game pad set up to hit range attack repeatedly to save my hands when I'm primarily shooting. At first I had it set up to hit the 2 key repeatedly (hotbutton 2 is where I always have my ranged attack key). This worked fine until I hit enter to chat or r to reply to a tell at which point I would say to my group or reply to a tell 22222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222
. I finally got the bright Idea to link hot button 2 not only to the 2 key, but also to f12. That way I can set my game pad to autofire, and chat away, forage or whatever with no problem. However when I manually fire my bow I always use the 2 key, so after a while I no longer really remembered that f12 would fire my bow as well.

Then earlier this week I set up Teamspeak and after fiddiling with my mike a bit decided voice activation didn't work to well so I decided to switch to push to talk. I wanted a key that wouldn't interefere with eq chatting, and wouldn't change my target or my view. So naturally I came up with the same key I'd come up with a year ago for autofire archery f12.

About half way through last night's raid I noticed that I was getting a "you don't have a target" message when I hit push to talk. I was leading the raid last night so I didn't stop right then and switch the push to talk key, but was very careful to make sure I din't have a target or had a PC targeted when I pushed to talk.

Well at least I was careful for a little while. Then Silv said in teamspeak that the Guardian of the Seal and the guard were KoS to anyone. I didn't think that was exactly right, I thought he was only KoS to people who got too close to his seal. So I targeted him and conned him from far away from him and he conned indifferent. Feeling very smart that I knew this factoid and Silv didn't I hit my push to talk key. In slow motion I see the arrow leave my bow and sail majestically across the dungeon where I scored a nice hit on the Guardian of the Seal. Anyhow, I hightailed it across the dungeon to die fast so as not to wipe the raid. Fortunately people were smart enough (or surprised enough) not to help me and only I died and we proceeded to whip some giant golem tail.

And that is the Teamspeak story.

On finishing his Epic!

I was helping Aalawendsaurusashjjkhuigi (or however he spells it ;p ) and Charyl get the nice fabled robe from Paw when a funny thing happened - I had a non-fatal fatal bow shot

[Sun Mar 21 15:20:34 2004] Your bow shot did double dmg.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:34 2004] The Fabled Ishva Mal was hit by non-melee for 164 points of damage.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:34 2004] You hit The Fabled Ishva Mal for 164 points of damage.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:34 2004] Aaladwenous begins to cast a spell.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:35 2004] Actavius begins to cast a spell.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:35 2004] Kazaba performs a FATAL BOW SHOT!!
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:35 2004] The Fabled Ishva Mal was hit by non-melee for 32000 points of damage.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:35 2004] You hit The Fabled Ishva Mal for 32000 points of damage.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:35 2004] The Fabled Ishva Mal looks angry.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:36 2004] The Fabled Ishva Mal was hit by non-melee for 92 points of damage.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:36 2004] You hit The Fabled Ishva Mal for 92 points of damage.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:36 2004] The Fabled Ishva Mal says 'I'll teach you to interfere with me Keker00.'
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:36 2004] You are low on drink.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:37 2004] The Fabled Ishva Mal says 'I'll teach you to interfere with me Vabantik00.'
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:37 2004] You try to hit The Fabled Ishva Mal, but miss!
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:37 2004] Gibeker begins to cast a spell.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:38 2004] Ethlion scores a critical hit! (57)
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:38 2004] You try to hit The Fabled Ishva Mal, but miss!
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:39 2004] You try to hit The Fabled Ishva Mal, but miss!
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:39 2004] The Fabled Ishva Mal was hit by non-melee for 110 points of damage.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:39 2004] You hit The Fabled Ishva Mal for 110 points of damage.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:40 2004] Your target is too close to use a ranged weapon!!
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:41 2004] The Fabled Ishva Mal is seared by flames.
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:41 2004] The Fabled Ishva Mal has been slain by Keker!
[Sun Mar 21 15:20:41 2004] The Fabled Ishva Mal's corpse says 'My comrades will avenge my death.'

First thing I see upon zoning into PoT are Ugly Uglier and Ugliest all unclothed

http://www.gucomics.com/archives/view.php?cdate=20031205

Best Gu for a long time

Dead!

Nizelar (Weeniz)  - 1st - 5K
Killrathi (Gnomerathi) - 2nd - Valorioum Ring Of Gallantry
Rhatloz (Kofspeedy) - 3rd - 1k
Milla (Soontodiemilla) - 4th
Lourdos (Teenilouri) - 5th
Axeroth (Axegnome) - DNF due to Link Deaths and Boat trouble

Thanks to all the runners!