Monday, June 11, 2012

Finding your way.

I unfortunately didn't get much done this week, and what I did get done doesn't make for especially interesting reading. On advice from an anonymous commentator, I picked up some Massive Mana Charges, hoping they would fix the drop-item problem I ran into two posts ago. Result were... well, inconclusive, since I didn't die and was in no hurry to do so, but I have some more free space in my pack now. With that done, my quest for some spiffy boots continues in Nanto:

Empyrean Garrison


I thought this dungeon was interesting while running it, but as I remember very little of it now, maybe not. It's another drudge dungeon, which means the challenge level is low. Some respectable effort is put into design, which is complex but navigable and includes a tricky lever puzzle, but without decent monsters it has no bite.  I grab the Alloy Whatever with little trouble then move on.

Nanto Rat Nest


I hit this for completeness' sake. You'll recall the last time I was in Nanto, I tried to run it, but turned back before the entrance because the mobs outside were too much for me. Those same mobs are still around, but this time I'm able to get through them. The dungeon itself is not worth the trouble, being pretty much exactly what it says: a small dungeon full of various low-level rats. I leave and bash the monougas outside instead to make the trip worthwhile.

Matron Hive South



Bone Lair & Desert Ruin



A pair of dungeons near Al-Arqas, one tackled for a Alloy Thingamajig, the other because it's there. Neither is terribly remarkable. The Bone Lair is home to skeletons and a few lever puzzles. The Desert Ruin feels like a first draft of Musansayn's Vaults, with drudges everywhere and a lot of bookshelves. It looks really good from the overworld, though:


I feel like there should be something more impressive in a place like that. Seeing something like that on the horizon and trekking out there only to find another drudge-bashing dungeon feels anitclimactic.

The next Alloy Piece is in Glenden Wood Dungeon, which I've covered already, but while in town, I take a surprisingly-rewarding side-trip:

Daiklos


Since I'm running a lot of obscure content, it's not common for me to find signs of other adventurers. So it's surprising to me that right at the start of Daiklos, an old dungeon of no real quest or lore significance, I find drudge corpses left behind by a recent visitor. Deeper inside, another dungeoneer has left his corpse. The reason for this appears to be twofold; one, a rich spawn of level 40 Drudge Lurkers (A kill-task is out on them, I think,) and two, a large number of chest throughout the dungeon holding better-than-average loot. I imagine people visit her to farm drudges and MMDs. Nice to see some old content getting used, isn't it?

Also, may I just say that the Viamontian invasion of Glenden Wood is a complete farce? They've barricaded the roads and not much else. And even if you ignore the town network, it's still dead easy to run around the roadblocks without even aggroing the knights or eaters. No wonder that war wound up as a stalemate.

(Well, that and a critical component of the army -- the players -- was playing both sides.)

Temple of Forgetfulness & Temple of Enlightenment


Somewhere amidst all of this, I finally decided on a (somewhat) concrete path for my future development. I've decided I want to be a low-magic melee. Why? Largely because of the added challenge factor, but also because trade skills instead of spells offers the possibility to spend skill points on Defense skills. To this end, I take a trip to these two temples to untrain Life Magic and pick up some spec gems for later use.

When you think about it, the whole concept of these dungeons is kinda silly. I mean, I get why they exist; It was probably much easier on the code to do it this way than to amend the UI. What I don't get is why respeccing your character requires dragging yourself off to the rear end of the map, solving a somewhat-obscure puzzle that will send you back to town cursing if you don't know to expect it, then an (admittedly somewhat trivial) dungeon-crawl past some Golems. At the time, Turbine seemed to be operating under the idea that everything must be a quest. Or maybe that everything must be justified in the lore. I dunno.

In any event, the run to get to the temples is a bigger problem than anything else, taking me through areas with very high level spawns. Occasionally I stop to fight something interesting, but mostly I just put that 200+ Quickness to use. I untrain Life Magic and train Alchemy and Cooking instead. I keep Item Magic because I'll need portal magic for the foreseeable future. I grab a gem and spec Arcane Lore, since even under the best of circumstances I'll need to cover some buffs with my gear, and grab spec gems for the three defense skills. I may or may not wind up using them, however. If the wiki is correct, I should have 24 skill credits coming between now and the level cap. With the four I have now and four others earned from quests and luminescence, that makes 32. Speccing all three defenses will cost 26, which will be doable by level 180. This is fine unless I decide to take tinkering skills at some point. Which is likely; I've heard good things about Rending and Gearcraft. The options going forward may involve untraining Missile D or Item Magic, or juggling tinkering skills with them via the Temple of Forgetfulness. Right now my priority is to get Melee D specced, since hard-hitting melees are starting to give me trouble. Of course, the long-term question here is "Is 28 points in your defense skills relevant?" If not, I'll just trash the gems and have more than enough skill credits to take tinking. 

In any event, we'll deal with that when we deal with that. Right now, I've got new skills to play with, so I also run the crafter quests for Alchemy and Cooking. I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble. Alchemy isn't too bad; Once you've got the necessary tools, you just set up camp at any archmage, craft nine items, than make the deliveries. The Cooking Quests, however, require you to run all over the place tracking down ingredients, then drag the finished products to places like Bandit Castle and Crater Village. Annoying, but hey, combat experience is capped and direct experience isn't. Since I don't have a pressing need for beers or phials right now, I don't need to boost them with combat exp just yet.

My stats at this point:


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