The weekend that was..

What an eventful weekend! This may be a long post....

Friday night it was time for some more mentoring fun and along with the wife on her alt we headed to Deathfyst Citadel (DFC) for a quick run through for her ‘Training is a Shield’ HQ and the ‘Rescue of the Greenhoods’ HQ. I took along Voltaan for tanky and dps fun and boxed Adurj as a buffbot. This time I used the Chronomancer in east Freeport to mentor both Voltaan and Adurj down to level 45. I knew with going to DFC that the nameds are level 40 ^^^ and 42^^^, and mentoring to my wifes alts level which was 37 at the time would probably not have cut it. We may have been ok but I wanted a quick fun run without death being a problem. My wife asked me if she could tank the zone to get some more practice (she doesn’t really need it in my eyes..no probs with her tanky spanky), so I took a back seat where that was concerned.

So our first stop once through the gates and having been mobbed by countless over enthusiastic orcs, we headed straight for Infiltrator Strijin ( Is that the right name?) in the south west tower to get the ball rolling with that HQ. All we had to do for the ‘Training...’ HQ was to kill Emperor Fyst so we just concentrated on killing all the nameds for alternative achievements and hunting down the three lasses who needed freeing from the citadel. Two down stairs in the jail area and one in the citadels south east tower (part of the citadel itself, not the tower on the outer wall). Before long we were heading to the arena in DFC to bait Fyst a little bit and smush his champions. Now it has been a long long time since I have been there and I hadn’t yet done the version where all you fight is his one champion and then head upstairs to his throne area to kill him.

I recall the tough but fun event where you had to slaughter a few waves of lesser champs then the champ himself then finally an epicx2 Fyst. I kind of enjoyed that setup. I know it was a lot harder and gathering a small raid for just one mob in an instance was a bit of a crazy idea, but it worked and I think I preferred the older way. Like so much else in EQ2 now, it was just a little bit too easy. Now I know I was using two mentored down 80s so it of course was going to be easy but I got the distinct impression that even with a relevant level group the current set up for the end of the DFC instance would be a walk in the park for all but the most fail of groups.

In short order Fyst was pushing up the daisies and the wife after heading to hand in the Training HQ (the ‘Greenhoods’ one updates as soon as you kill Fyst) made over all from simply handing two heritage quests in, got 2 AA for the ‘Greenhoods’ one, and 3 AA for the ‘Training’ one. That’s not taking in to account all of the AA she gained in DFC itself. Not bad for a couple of old HQs. Oh, she had the slider set all the way to AA btw.

After this Emarald was required in some group or other, so I decided to log off and try a bit more of Requiem: Memento Mori. Some good news here! No, I haven’t managed to bottom out the crashing problem, but I actually think now it is when I tab out of FS that causes it. No, the good news is that me old mucker from back home is starting to try it out too. Good old Daltieri from EQ2 (you can check him out on this link to my old blog here), one of my longest standing RL buddies. So that was nice. We got to catch up for a while and chatted about the game. He joined me online on the Valdes server and we managed to have a duel, then I got booted and couldn’t get back on. It’s a real shame I am having this issue. The game itself seems certainly good enough to explore it some. I just wish I had the chance.

My wife took the kids out all day on Saturday and I got some well deserved chill out time on the PC. One sentence, but it equalled serenity and bliss. I love spending time with my kids so much, but it’s very easy to forget the last time you got to spend on your own that wasn’t in the bathroom! So, what did I do with my hallowed time? Did I spend every second online enjoying the game..well some but not a huge amount. I logged in did a quick instance run then did some questing that I have been meaning to get done for an age, like the ‘Speak as a Dragon’ language quest, a good proportion of the lore and legends and a few other little odds and ends doing some journal clearing. I also watched about 5 episodes of The Office: An American Workplace and I err, fell asleep. The rest of the time I spent missing the kids and wishing they were home. Even so though, all in all it was a pretty good day. During the evening I helped on a few updates for some Epic weapons and later waved goodbye to wifey from Tapiolan Sankarit as she heads for new pastures with Vindicators guild to feed her inner raider. I hope the raid times don’t prove too much for us as a family. Monday and Friday raids will mean her being available at 3 am our time. That’s gonna be one tired mommy!

Sunday was another great day. The weather here is so good for this time of year I was able to take advantage of the good stuff and take the kids out for a while, but as usual that ended up costing me money and it was time to return home before they broke the bank. The evening was fun too, again just some easy instance runs to assist with epic weapons and two of our guildies got their final updates and new shiny weapons. Congratulations to Coonac and Rhuaha (think that’s how it’s spelt!). I must say now that I have full T3 on Adurj and a piece of T4, the rush to farm shards is no longer there and I am enjoying just messing around helping and doing some of the older content. In fact if I take apart my whole weekend the most fun I had was on older content. Maybe I’m not an end gamer? Perhaps I’m what I call a nostalgic gamer? I think the reality is that I am a bit of both. I just love older content, especially stuff I haven’t seen before. I do however love the raid content at end game T8. I just don’t get to do it enough but hopefully that will change. I’m not sure how at the moment though. I would love to raid with Tap San, but there seems to be dirges coming out of the woodwork so the chance of getting a spot may be a little difficult. I suppose I could raid on an alt, but Adurj is my main and he’s my raider, simple as that. Think I’ll speak to someone in guild about that this week. See if I can’t get a spot if one of the other dirges doesn’t sign up. We’ll see how that goes.

Tonight (tomorrow morning) is the first 3 am raid for my wife. Good luck hunny, keep the keyboard tapping down quiet please..shhhh ;)

Oh, and one last thing. A shout out to one of my confirmed readers from my guild, "Hello Hiiri !!"

Be well.