August 31, 2010

Quick Peek

A short while ago I finally decided to upgrade my house in RoM. I bought a 2-storey mud house and paid quite a bit of money for it. Then the VERY next day, they went on sale for 5 diamonds! Talk about bad timing. Sigh.
Anyway, I really like the look of my new place. It's much smaller than the 2-storey wooden house but I think it suits an independent mage making her way up in the world. :)
The video is a quick, 30 second tour of the house, showing my four chests (all full), my snazzy purple furniture and even, gasp!, my bedroom. You can also see my housemaid, Catherine, all dressed up and looking fine. She is rocking those boots, for sure. But as long as she makes me Luck potions, I don't care what the heck she looks like.

I used Fraps to record this video because for some reason WeGame has stopped working for me. I prefer WeGame because you can take videos that are longer than 30 seconds and they have a nice website to showcase your stuff.

August 29, 2010

Fancy Hats are a Pain in the....

My latest project has been to craft my very first purple recipe, a level 38 tailoring recipe that creates a Velvet Headscarf.
I started out trying to gather the mats myself but after waking up with my keyboard stuck to my face and realizing that gathering is more boring than a lecture on the benefits of bran, I decided to hit up the auction house and support those players who have more tolerance for mind-numbing jobs.

Here is the final recipe:
2 yew plank (purple)
1 moon orchid extract (purple)
1 Dragon Bear Root plank (purple)
1 Pine Fiber (rare mat)
1 Velvet hood (blue)
1 Disenchant rune

To even make the blue velvet hood required me to make a green hood and a white hood, which also were loads of mats. I think I'm glad that I didn't keep track of how much money I spent in the AH buying the mats. It might have made me (more) crazy.

But I was determined to do this and finally got to the final step. Crossing my fingers and praying to almighty Pasper for a brown upgrade, I hit the Craft button.
This is what I got. Not bad. Gonna pop it in the AH and see if I can make back some of my gold. If it sells well, I might consider crafting another. Then again, I might also consider watching eight hours of the Parliament Channel too. Might be more fun.

August 26, 2010

Beautiful Places of RoM #3

Got a chance to admire the final room in Treasure Trove while waiting for our priest to run back through and rez us. It's quite a nice looking place for a pirate ship!
In front of the pipe organ is our nemesis, Snow Blake. We did kill her eventually...twice.

August 24, 2010

At Long Last...

Finally got my 50 elites this morning! Woot! I have been working on them for months now. Who would have thought two cute little dolls would be so much trouble?
When I first started doing them, I was determined to do them all myself and not buy anything. That dream faded pretty quickly when I realized how hard it was to do some of the quests. I STILL can't do IDK50 and I'm level 59. How could I have survived that at level 50 to get Thynos? And all the Memories? I solo'd Blackhorn Hafiz for his Memory, got Ensia's from a PUG, but had to buy Talomo's.
And then the "best" part is that you have to do it all over for your secondary side before you can get either of the elites. Argh!
But now that it's all done, I really like the elites that I got. For my mage side, I got Gift of the Baron. It causes my Kiss of the Vampire to also increase the damage of my next 2 magic attacks by 13%. Sweet. Only problem is that Kiss has a 60 second cooldown.
For rogue, I got Trap Master. Now I can place all 3 types of traps with one click. Very handy. I love the traps and usually place at least 2 at a time, so I will for sure use this skill on the rare occasion I play rogue.
So now my plan is to go farm all the 50 elite stuff and sell it on the AH so that I can make back the millions of gold that I spent getting here. And it'll help all the other discouraged players who are anxious to get their 50 elites and frustrated that it seems impossible. Good luck to all of you and don't give up!

August 23, 2010

Level 59 - Check!

Reached level 59 earlier today. Very excited! It was a long haul from 58. My XP bar seemed to just be creeping along. Especially with all the death debt I've been getting from dying in Hoto, DoD, SJF, Varanas...kidding on that last one! :)

Today I also completed the Sascilia Steppes minigame for the first time. I had attempted it before but had never gotten to the treasure room. It's really a strategy game, which I like. You have to know when to use your certain skills in order to get past all the mobs successfully. I watched a few good videos on YouTube to help me out. Kinda tricky since most of the videos are in German, but you get the idea.
From the treasure chests I got four pink runes (like Fountain I) plus a bunch of materials to donate to the guild.

Speaking of the guild, KoG reached level 9 today too! Very cool. Now we're going to get a guild quest board and upgrade the gathering buildings and maybe get some new buildings. Need more gold and mats for that. Sigh. Gathering can sometimes be very peaceful, and other times make me want to scratch my eyes out with a toothpick.

Back to the game with me! Half hour until siege...one of the best parts of my day. (Minus the crashes.)

August 19, 2010

DoD, Ya You Know Me

Last Boss in Dungeon of Dalanis
I'm very happy to have joined the great guys at Knights of Good. They're a really fun bunch to run with and an interesting mix of personalities. I'll bet there is not a single time I've logged on that I haven't laughed at least once during the night. :)

We just started running the Dungeon of Dalanis, DoD. The first run was very stressful! But now we've figured it out and we can complete the instance with relative ease...although my squishy mage still does get herself killed now and then.

We've had surprising luck with drops there too. I think everyone who has gone has received at least one piece of purple gear. Good gear makes everything easier. I've been trying to focus more on upgrading my stuff the "right" way. I've been pretty lazy about that so far in the game. But now I'm falling behind in HP and MAtt so I've got to smarten up or I won't be able to play with my guild anymore.

But I've also recently rediscovered my competitive side, also known as the green-eyed monster! I've been eyeing these uber-chicks that saunter around Dalanis and I'm feeling a bit weak. Strangely, it doesn't bother me if a male toon is more uber than me, but if I see a female toon with better stats, I get a little jealous. Okay, a LOT jealous. But the easiest way to fix that is to get better. And soon. 

Gravity Defying Reindeer

Not only is Spazzy a fearless and adorable mount, he also defies the laws of gravity!

Truthfully, we were stuck. The NPC up top, not-so-affectionately nicknamed Legwarmers, is a common sight to anyone questing in Thunderhoof. The darn fool shows up everywhere! This time he was on a tower near the centaur camp, once again telling us where to go while he "helped from the shadows." I think that may be code for "I'm a lily-livered ex-dancer who couldn't find a real job after I got too chubby for my tights."  :)

August 17, 2010

Northern Janost Forest

I've been so busy having fun playing RoM that I've been forgetting to blog about it! But that's a good sign, isn't it? The game devs are doing their jobs to keep an ol' veteran like me entertained.
They opened up a new zone in the game, Northern Janost Forest. Don't let the banal name fool you: NJS has some of the coolest mobs in the whole game. I was blown away by the creativity of the beasties sent forth to destroy my mage butt in this zone. It seemed as if I spent more time gawking at the mobs than trying to kill them.
First of course are the ubiquitous skippers, giant Blue Butterflies flapping lazily through the air. But watch your step! Masses of snakes slither through the grass, not only many giant Withered Jarias snakes with their red and black stripes, but also their tiny offspring. This is no place for the heebie-jeebies!
There are also dragonfly-like creatures named Babels, whom I'm assuming speak in tongues no one can comprehend, plus giant slimy snails and adorable Sharptooths. There are Lakosos in the lakes, basking in the sun with some truly strange dinosaur creatures that will gladly tromp on your liver until it comes out your nose.
Then there's the gliding monkey-dudes with their big bat ears, who spend their days doing backflips near the lake. And there are humanoids too, elven psychos that hide amongst the trees and pepper your backside with arrows when you're innocently gathering Thorn Apples. (Yay, level 56 mats! Thank you!)



But my favorite mob in the new zone is this handsome fellow, a mysterious creature with the unfortunate name of Dimstar Pukari. (Did his mother not realize how much he was going to get teased?)
The Pukari looks like an enormous Fail-Salad that someone has left lying in the forest. Or perhaps a cross between a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree and that bizarre thing you made in pottery class when you were 10. They wait patiently while you tiptoe towards them....
...then raise up their retarded grass hats and blow gobs of spittle on your face as they try to make you tomorrow's fertilizer! The teeth on these little mental patients are enough to make a grown dentist cry.
Luckily for Spiral, Mr. Not-The-Brightest-Star-In-The-Heavens was easily subdued by a taste of some old fashioned fireballs. The reward for successfully annihilating a living leafy nightmare?  One Link rune! Woot!!  (The devs are laughing at us, I know it.)

Many more stories to tell you when I find the time to write them. I've been taking screenshots and saving them up for when I can tear my fingers away from WASD and put them on ASDF JKL;! Stay tuned...

August 15, 2010

Slow Progress

Spiral and her buddy, Ssss'tchk'sssii
I've had the quest, Defend the Broken Bridge, for months and months. Every now and then I would gallop Spazzy over there to see if the event was running. Most often it was not and I would just have to turn around and do something else. The few times the event was running, I tried to participate but never got the completion of the quest. There was even one time where it was frozen up, so I just chilled with the Kaa for a while. :)
Yesterday I went to check again and the Kaa were there beating up the guards. There was another player fighting but she was okay with grouping up with Medi and me. We killed mobs for a while and then suddenly it dinged and said I had completed the quest. It was very odd since we had only killed around 47 out of 100 at that time. Even stranger was the fact that the other girl and I completed, but Medi didn't. That quest is messed up for sure.

I still have many, many quests in my log to complete. I haven't gotten through Treasure Trove. I have some quests in AV that need doing but the elites there kick my butt. Then there's all the quests in Thunderhoof that will probably open up when I'm done AV, and from that the quests in Southern and Northern Janost Forests. Wow, when I list them like that, it seems rather overwhelming! :)
But I will keep plugging away at my To Do list and eventually, hopefully, catch up. I just have to play faster than the devs can get new content into the game!

August 13, 2010

They Are Removing the Mana Change

Woke up and found out that the RoM servers were down. I followed a link on the U.S. forums to the EU forums here. It says that they are removing the new mana consumption calculation and reverting it back to the old way. For now.
If you follow a link in that forum post above, there is actually a very intelligent letter posted up by the Head of Development of Runewaker. I think his reasoning for the mana change is sound. And it sounds very much like he knows the game inside and out and how to play as a caster. The theory behind the mana cost change is that the game was just getting too easy for casters who could just spam spells without consequence. I believe that to be true.
A lot of discussion in the game over the past two days has been about this change. Some people wanted to rage-quit. Others just rolled with it. Personally, I was frustrated but felt that the mana change did add some more strategy into my gameplay. It made it much less boring!
Anyway, we'll see how this all develops. I believe that the percentage mana cost was a good idea, but perhaps just less of a percentage so that we're not all running out of mana after two pulls in HotO.

August 11, 2010

Spiral is Married!

Today was a truly roller coaster day. First had to fix all my TP after the reset, then had to re-learn how to kill since mage skills got all mucked up. Frustrating.
Then went to the joyous and hilarious wedding of two friends, Heka and Majyst. Oh, the love! They are both male toons and are quite pragmatic about the whole relationship thing. They want the buffs, so they got married! We'll see how long it lasts. Heh heh.

But the part of the day that made me smile the most was Spiral's own wedding. She married her good friend, Meditank. The sweet guy even got down on one knee to propose! Ooh, the heart is all aflutter! The ceremony was quick and relatively painless...that is until the wedding duel. Medi kicked Spiral's squishy mage butt! Wife abuse already. Tsk tsk. I'll get him back though. I know where he lives. :)

Medi and Spiral have been doing a lot of quests together so the marriage buff seems a good idea. But there is also a lovers buff that might give a better stat. Or there's friendship, family and master-student. Over time I'm sure everyone will test them out and see what they like best. Ultimately if you group with the same folks all the time, each of you could have a different relationship status with someone else in order to take advantage of all the buffs.

It's kinda strange though that you can't be lovers AND be married. And you can't be lovers and be friends or be friends and be married. You can only pick one "special relationship". Thank goodness it's not that way in RL.

August 10, 2010

Reset of Talent Points Tomorrow

Super exciting news! Tonight they applying the next Chapter 3 patch including new content and a higher level cap of 60!

Here's another important item from the patch notes:
"Additionally our latest patch will have many skills adjusted and balanced. Due to the sweeping nature of these changes, we will reset all spent talent points during tomorrows patch for both primary & secondary classes. All points earned will be added back to your pool of talent points and can be spent again. Enjoy this opportunity to rebuld your characters!"

It's mildly frustrating to re-allocate all my TP but it also is good to be able to rebuild. I pretty much know what skills I use most on Spiral but now I can redistribute my TP on my alts better since I've learned what skills are the best.
And knowing that there is a new level cap tomorrow means that I can collect daily mats like crazy today and be prepared to level level level. Hopefully we've got a triple XP weekend coming up. HINT HINT to Froggie!

August 9, 2010

Bring It!

Logged on today and played with Sunkissed, my PvP girl on Indigo server. I just puttered around completing all the low level quests on Elven Island.
It's strange to be on a server that's so empty.  In the big cities, there's a few people, but in a lot of the "rural" areas, it's rare to see another toon. I've kinda gotten used to the hustle and bustle of Osha, I guess.
In PvE, you have to enable your PvP status in Varanas to be able to fight other toons but I'm not actualy sure how it works on Indigo. Is Sun's status just automatically set for PvP? Or are they kind enough to let you get to at least level 10 before you can be randomly murdered? Can I only fight players close to my level? What about good and evil reputations?
So with a very small but very devilish grin, today I decided to target a lower level toon that was in the distance and press my attack button. Sun actually started running towards him to kick his butt! But when she reached him, it gave the message "spell error".
I did a bit of research into RoM PvP rules and found out that you must complete a level 15 quest in Varanas before you can actively fight other toons. Alrighty then. Onward and upward to level 15!

August 7, 2010

Sigh. Another Jerk

I've been playing RoM for a year and a half and previous to this week I had only run into one jerk. Now I've got two in three days!
New rude-dude's name is Hastemopinup. (what does that even mean?)
This guy is not so bad as the last one. He almost seemed apologetic after I called out that he was a JERK on world chat.

Here's the story. I was killing Winternight Ice Witches like I have been for weeks, trying to get an elite item to drop. They say it is a very uncommon drop from the Witches but if you happen to spawn Aisha, the Witch Queen, it is easier to get one from her, if not guaranteed. I have only ever seen Aisha once and that was way back when I was level 45.
So I've been working on this for a while now, and tried again tonight. I was killing for only about 10 minutes when Aisha spawned! I was so excited!
So I did what any nice girl would do and I started ComeOnIn and did a world shout for a raid group. I wanted to make sure that other players could enjoy this rare event. Then we could all have a chance at drops or whatever. (And besides that, I was unsure if I could kill her myself.)
About 20 seconds after my world shout, Hastemopinup showed up and started killing her. I ran over and said, "HEY." He just kept killing. I kept shouting at him. Nothing. He killed her in less than a minute and started running away. I whispered at him that he was rude. Then I did another world shout saying that the Aisha group was cancelled because he was a jerk and killed her already.
Only then did he respond to me and asked me if I needed the elite drop. I said yes and then asked him why he killed her. He said he was paid a million gold to ninja her. I called him a liar. He laughed and said, "Just wanted to kill."
Then he said, "You have mail." He had mailed me the elite drop. I thanked him and told him that next time maybe he could be nice and just join the group so we all could have a chance.


I don't understand some people. I'm shaking my head trying to figure out why I am so bothered. I guess because I could have done the same thing. I don't mean ninja the kill but I could have kept it quiet and whispered to my friends to come help me and we could have shared the loot between us.
Instead I did a world shout, effectively letting everyone know that 36 people were welcome to join me: strangers, lowbies, whomever. When I was a measly level 45, I joined a similar raid when someone did a shout-out. They were nice to me and I was paying it forward.
I guess that's the thing that's bugging me. I was nice and I got screwed. I hate that feeling that the only way to get ahead in life, and in RoM, is to be mean and selfish.
I refuse to be that way. I'm going to continue being nice, dammit! No jerks are gonna stop me. :)

August 6, 2010

Housekeeper Potions

I have a housekeeper that I've been training up on Crafting. She finally reached level 30 today and I got a new potion: Clear Thought. It increases your casting speed by 10% for an hour. I was super excited about this until I tried it out. Unfortunately, it doesn't stack with Shadow Protection. SP actually cancels the potion out and then if you try to take the potion again it says "immune". Bummer

The other potions my housekeeper gives me are:
Unbridled Enthusiasm, increases movement speed by 15% for an hour (use this one all the time)
Fullness, makes you big
Princely Look, makes you into a frog

Hmmm, I just thought of something. What would happen if I took Fullness PLUS Princely Look? Giant frog?

P.S. Here's a link to a Housekeeper Guide on the U.S. forums.

August 4, 2010

Mekuk is a Jerk

So I truly believe 99% of the people in Runes of Magic are nice. I've even heard other players say that RoM is a much friendlier community than WoW. I know that I try my best to be polite and helpful to anyone I meet and to give other players the benefit of the doubt.

But today I had a run-in with a jerk.

His name is Mekuk.

Yes, I am putting his name here as our first member of RoM's List of Inexplicably Vulgar Jerks Who are Rude for No Good Reason (RLOIVJWARFNGR, what a fine acronym!)

Here's the scoop. I was in Southern Janost Forest, merrily roasting insects in the Bymorsh Ruins. I ran past Mekuk, who was killing a Sigg Lurker, and jumped into a group of three Man-Eating Plants. I did what a mage does and Purg'd the suckers to death, all three of them.
Mekuk run up to me and said something like *^^.
Huh?
Then he whispered to me, "AS S HOLE."
Double huh?
So I said, "Um, sorry? I didn't realize they had your name on them. And PS, I'm a girl."
He said, "I don't care if u r."
Nice. Such a gentleman. So courteous and respective of players who are just out doing their dailies like everyone else.

Congratulations Mekuk on being the first person to tick me off enough to make up an acronym.

Rolling in the Dough

Check this out! I was thinking it was about time I made some money so I went through my bags and trunks and bank and found a bunch of junk to sell. The biggest seller was this rune I'd been hanging on to for ages. Pretty sweet cash!

Used my sudden windfall of coin to bid on some Medusa's Shoulder Guards for two million gold. They are tricked out! Like +11 or some such thing and loaded with stats. If I get them, they will be the second part of my Medusa set and I get a set bonus of +80 Int. Not bad.

I'm also wearing two pieces of the Dragon Lady set from Pasper's Shrine, gown and gloves. They give me a bonus, I forget what, but to get more I'd need four pieces of the set. I figure going for the Medusa gear is more beneficial to me.

I've been hoarding all this stuff for so long waiting for the right time to use it. Why not now? I'm supposed to be enjoying myself, not waiting for a rainy day. :)

Crap, it's late. I've got to work at 8am and it's almost 2am. Sigh. Addictions are tiring!

August 3, 2010

This Song is About Me

I think I may need to re-do my wardrobe. Again.
Last night I looked in my backpack and realized I had 36 Standard Aggregators. What the heck am I going to do with all those? Why do I even have that many? I think they must have come in bundles or something because I don't think I would purchase them on their own.

Anyway, I decided to aggregate my Dragon Lady top and gloves into the Demon Lady set I've been sitting on since, oh, last year some time. Luckily for me, Spiral hadn't gained any weight so she fit into them. (Hee hee!) Must be all that cardio-kick boxing!

Put on my nice new clothes and went to the AH to see if I could find some new boots to match. I'm standing there all proud and a guy says, "I like your outfit." I curtseyed and thanked him. Then he said, "I wish I could buy a housemaid that looked as cute as you."
WHAT???
A housemaid? Oh, no you didn't.
I almost roasted his chesnuts right there in Varanas Central.
I am not a cute housemaid. I am a fire-spewing, lightning-calling, blood-draining, purple-haired hellion!
I barbecue Naga for brunch and ask for seconds.
Housemaid? Pffft.

But did you notice that my new gloves make my fingernails long and purple? So cute!  :)

August 2, 2010

Reinstalling RoM

Last night I decided to uninstall and reinstall RoM to see if it would help with my technical difficulties, like not being able to save my audio/video settings. I was a bit nervous as I pressed "Yes" to the uninstall prompt. What if I lost everything?? What if my characters were gone?? But I reassured myself that all character data is stored on the server and Spiral and Friends would live on.

Woke up this morning and the new install was done. Excitedly, I tried to start the game...and was met by patches! I guess installing the latest version of RoM doesn't include all the patches that have been done since Chapter 3 was released. An hour and a half later, the patches were done and I started up the game.

First thing: change all my audio/video settings to where I like them. As soon as I logged I was stunned by the crazy-amazing graphics. I guess I have been playing on low-graphic mode for so long, I had forgotten how beautiful the game can be when you have the 'puter-balls to run it. :)
Also, the sounds were all cranked up. Clicking my backpack nearly broke my eardrums! I don't often play with the sound on so it was a bit surprising. The music actually is quite nice but can get a bit irritating when it repeats so much.

Pretty soon realized that all my Curse add-ons were gone. Pewp! Went there and downloaded them: pbinfo, Shut Up!, Lootomatic, Advanced Auction House, Monster Tooltip, and ComeOnIn.

So it appears I am all refreshed and ready to go! We'll see if my settings stick and if I have smoother gameplay and less crashes. Perhaps I'll do a disk cleanup and de-frag tonight to add to my "late summer" cleaning. :)