I am on the next phase of the URT: Undead Envoy quest line.  The quest is named “Soul and Brain Power.”  The objective is to run over to Veshka’s Monastery, kill a few of Veshka’s followers, and aquire a brain and torso from their bodies.  I also needed to go to the graveyard behind the monastery and absorb the spirit of a Wandering Spirit that can be found there.  Veshka’s Monastery can be found along the road east of Misthaven.

I easily found the monastery and killed a few of Veshka’s followers that were milling around outside. I quickly obtained the brain and torso.  I then ran around the back of the building and found the graveyard.  It is full of aggressive undead.  I spotted the Wandering Spirit and watched what he was doing.  The Spirit will slowly wander around the graveyard, which made this part of the quest much easier.  I killed several of the undead to clear out a corner of the graveyard.  I then waited for the spirit to wander past.  I used the URT Spirit Absorber when he came into range and it was done in an instant.  So far things are going great.

Quest completed, I ran back to Misthaven to turn in the quest to Helave Velore.  Just one problem.  She doesn’t think I have completed the quest.  My quest journal shows all objectives complete.  The quest tracker shows everything complete.  Why won’t this bitch acknowledge it?  I tried putting all the items in the bank and then logging out.  I put the items back into my bags upon re-entering the game but that didn’t work when I tried to turn them in again.

This is frustrating beyond belief.  How long has this game been out?  As a casual player, I don’t have the time or inclination to be put through crap like this.  I want to have fun playing a game, not cursing at my screen and writing articles like this one.  Right now, I can’t see paying to play this game when my free time is up.  Why should I when everything I try to do is broken?

I needed five broken hand bones from my undead friends, so off I went to the nearby hilltop to kill a few of them.  As I mentioned before, due to the problems with this quest, once two hand bones drop, you won’t get another one until you run to town and put them in the bank.  A hand bone dropped on each of the first two undead that I killed.  I killed several more to see if the quest had been fixed.  It wasn’t, so I ran to town, dropped them in the bank, and ran back.  I did this until I had the required ten that the quest called for.  What a pain.

Helave Verelore, the NPC that I need to turn this quest into, is located in Misthaven.  Since it is a long run to get there, I flew a griffon north until I reached Misthaven and turned in the quest.  She then gave me the quest “Soul and Brain Power,” which is the next task in this URT quest line.  It seems she needs a good brain and strong torso for this undead envoy they are building, so I must go to a monastery and kill some minions there in order to aquire what she needs.  I am also to use a device to absorb the essence of a spirit that wanders the graveyard there.

I dinged level 20 after completing the Harvesting the Parts quest.  The druid spells I received were:

• Thunderclap 1: 810 to 855 arcane damage
• Venomous Thorns 3
• Sooth 3: 578 heal and 1206 heal over 16 seconds
• Tranquility 1: Invulnerability for 20 seconds
• Okeli’s Shield 1: Reduces damage taken by 100% for two hits or 30 seconds
• Ire 3

I have so many quests in my journal that I don’t know which ones to go after.  Many are lower level quests that I never got around to.  I am assuming that the URT quests are more important because they give nice equipment upgrades for the level.

First, I don’t want to give the impression that the M17 is not a good gaming machine.  It is a great one.  The 3DMark ’06 score is well over 12,000 and it plows through World of Warcraft at max settings while running at 1920×1200 resolution.  WoW has a very refined graphics engine, however, while Vanguard falls far short in this cateogry.  It also plays Crysis and other games extremely well.

I expected to be able to run Vanguard at Very High settings while keeping to my screens native resolution of 1920×1200.  In reality, the best I could do and still get a smooth experience was set it to High and tweaking it from there.  One of the biggest performance killers are shadows, and I had to set them to low quality.  I wanted to use full drawing distance but I had to set it at around 70%.  Turning on HDR made the game flicker like crazy, so I had to keep that turned off.  I also had to lower tree detail at long range.

I am not a FPS numbers kind of guy, so I don’t have that for you.  What I find important is how the game feels and flows as I play it.  If it hitches or stutters, that is all I need to know that the game isn’t running well at the current settings.  With the above modifications to the High graphical settings, the game runs very well while I am out in the field adventuring.  Things get much worse when I go into a town.  The game struggles to load NPC’s and buildings, which causes major stuttering until all the objects are loaded.

I had read that Sony had made some improvements to the graphics engine that they claimed would improve performance and reduce the “chunking” effect.  The Vanguard world is cut into many squares of land, or chunks, and when you pass from one chunk of land to another, the game freezes and churns away while it loads the contents of the new land area.  My experience since returning to the game is that there has been no improvement whatsoever.  My character still freezes in mid-stride and I have to wait a few seconds before he moves again.  Many times my character will start moving again but his legs are stuck in place, which makes him float over the terrain instead of running over it.

Keep in mind that all of this is happing at a high screen resolution.  Sure, I could lower it down to 1650×1080 or even lower, but I bought this computer in order to run games at high rez.  Other games are not a problem, but it is painfully obvious that Vanguard still has a long way to go before it will run well, even on high-end computers.

Now here is the kicker.  After being disappointed in the performance of this game on the M17, I did some research and discovered that SLI in Vanguard is not supported if you are using two separate video cards.  Bingo.  This is the reason for my troubles.  It boggles my mind that it doesn’t.  Here we have a game with extremely high hardware requirements and yet it doesn’t support SLI.  Fah!

So, the fault isn’t with the M17, it is with the game itself.  With this information in mind, the M17 plays Vanguard amazingly well.  I am not so disappointed after all.

My first night back in Vanguard after not playing for eight months turned out to be a very frustrating evening.  I logged in, fully expecting to have a good time, and re-learn all the basics about the game that I had forgotten.  I ended up logging out after several wasted hours and experiencing no fun at all.

To get back into the swing of things, I decided to get started on the many quests in my quest journal.  The quest that I picked is called:  URT: The Undead Envoy.  This is a United Races of Telon quest that has several stages to complete and has a nice equipment reward at the end.  I picked it up at Arlinora’s Retreat from Elkisa Harok.  The idea of the quest is that they want to start diplomatic relations with the undead of Telon and they think that the best way to do this is to build their own undead envoy.  The thing is, they don’t know how to build one.  So, Elkisa gives me the quest “Background Knowledge,” so that they can learn how to do it.

Things started out well enough.  She gave me an Invisible to Undead potion and told me to run over to a nearby graveyard.  I am to use the potion, sneak past the undead that walk there, and steal a journal from the local necromancer who resides in the graveyard.  The location sits atop a nearby hill and it is full of undead skeletons.  There are three small buildings in the middle of the graveyard.  My first assumption is that the journal would be found inside one of the buildings.  It turns out that I was correct.

I popped the potion and ran over to the nearest building.  I opened the door and found myself face to face with a big, named skeleton.  Luckily, the potion was working and it did not attack.  No journal was to be seen.  I ran to the next building and found two skeletons and the necromancer himself inside.  Still no journal.  Third time turned out to be the charm.  The journal was sitting on the floor of the third and last building.  No skeletons were inside.  I snapped it up and ran back to town to turn it in.  Everything was going great.

Here is where my night turned sour.  Elkisa takes the journal, reads it, and then gives me my next task, which is the “Harvesting the Parts” quest.  I need to go back to the graveyard and kill skeletons for their body parts.  I also need to find some zombies and get their body parts.  Two body parts in particular ruined my night.  They are zombie skins and broken hand bones.  I killed what seemed a million skeletons and zombies and yet all I had was five skins and two hand bones.  I kept at it, hoping the next kill would give me what I was looking for.  After more than an hour, I was frustrated and pissed off.  I finally asked in OOC who I needed to blow in order to get these things to drop.  The answer I got ticked me off even more.

It turns out that the quest is screwed up.  If I want to have more of these items drop, I must first put what I have in the bank.  What?  The nearest bank is Veskal’s Exchange, which isn’t exactly close by.  In desperation I decided to try it, so I put the items in the bank and started killing again.  Two hand bones dropped immediately and then stopped dropping.  Five skins dropped right way and then stopped dropping.  In the end, it turns out that only two hand bones and five skins will drop if you have any of these items in your bags.  Now, the quest requires 15 skins and 10 bones.  If I want to get that many, I must run back and forth to the bank time and time again.  This is amazingly ridiculous.  This quest has been in the game since forever and it is in this condition.  Totally unacceptable.

I ended my night with an unfinished quest and frustrated beyond belief.  Nice job, Vanguard team, nice job.

Edit: In fairness, I want to pass along a note I received from an SOE community manager about the issues I encountered with this quest:

Hi there! I’m a Community Relations Rep at SOE and I just stumbled across your blog post here about your frustrations with Vanguard. I wanted to let you know that this quest issue has been reported to the team, and we hope you’ll still come back to Vanguard and enjoy adventuring in Telon. Have a great day!

That is great news!  I am sure that others who try this quest will be very happy.  Thank you!

If you will recall, I needed to find Shaman Krat to complete the Okhnom Supplies quest.  Following the in-game map to his location took me all the way through Halgarad, out the northwest gates, and through an area called Derogar’s Outpost.  While in the Outpost I found a spellcaster trainer that invites me to visit the Ring of Zalaz to further my Druid training.

Shaman Krat can be found west of Derogar’s Outpost.  He stands next to a wooden watchtower.  Completing the Okhnom quest gave 1310 experience points.  Krat then gives the Final Delivery quest that wants me to deliver the supplies to Lake Carlsson.  He also gives a few more quests that I will get into later.  I had the quests from the Halgarad guards to complete first.

I had to run all the way back through Halgarad to do the Isolation quest.  I discovered that the watchtower is on a high hill south of the Halgarad gates.  I ran past it on the way to Halgard without seeing it.  I delivered the supplies and received 80 copper and 524 experience.  While there, Shield Unga tasked me with killing bloodhowlers and taking their eyes.

The Bloodhowler Invastion and Two Eyes For An Eye quests took me to the same spot.  It is a gnoll camp just down the hill from the Halgarad gates.  Since I was playing solo, I had to tread with care in order to pull singles.  It wasn’t too bad, and in the end, I killed enough gnolls, harvested enough eyes, and burned enough supply bags to get the quests done.  The supply bags were a bit tricky as most of the little white bags are next to groups of gnolls, but with careful planning I got it done.

The last thing I wanted to do during this session was find the Ring of Zalaz and find the Druid trainer.  It took me a long time to find since I was not given any clue where it was located inside Halgarad.  I finally found some street signs that pointed the way to it.  It was in what I thought to be a strange part of town, being in the crafters area.  Be that as it may, I found Varral the trainer and trained my level 10 spells, which were:

• Dissipate: Disperses a spell my opponent is casting (counter spell)
• Piercing Roots II: Immobilize enemy and cause 303-323 damage over time
• Nature’s Wrath I: 1413-1490 damage over 32 seconds
• Soothe II: 360 heal and 702 heal over 16 seconds
• Restore I: 340 Heal
• Vanishing Winds: Evacuate self and or group to a safe area
• Hierophant’s Boon: Restore 60 phenomena points.

–Wolfen

They want me to prove myself to my new clan, so I am sent to find a Vulmane named Gnakel, who is under the influence of a Bloodhowler.  I am to slay him and wash my hands in his blood.  Gnakel is under guard at the campfire near the center of town.  It was an easy fight, which is good, because his guards didn’t help me.  My reward from this quest was 60 copper and 1459 experience points.

Next up was the Okhnom’s Supplies quest.  My suggestion is to save this quest until you have finished all of the other Dahknarg quests.  You’ll need the levels and it leads you to your next city and quest hub which is Halgarad.  I had to take some supplies to Shalen who is out on the road some ways east of the gnoll cave.  I found her standing next to a large boulder cowering in fear.  Turns out there is a band of bloodhowlers up ahead and she is too scared to go on.  She wants me to kill a bunch of them and then go find a guy named Armol Furth who should be further up the road.

The bloodhowler’s are 3-dot mobs, so they are a little tougher than the standard ones.  You can pull singles if you are careful.  I knocked off the required amount and then went past their camp in search for Furth.

I found Furth a good ways up the road.  He had fallen on tough times because the bloodhowler’s invaded him, tore up his wagon and stole his supplies.  He wants me to go slay the bloodhowler’s that did this and get back his supplies.  I found them just up the road from him in a camp on the right-hand side of the road.  The very first gnoll that I pulled dropped the supplies.

After recovering the stolen supplies, I was tasked with taking them on to the city of Halgarad.

–Wolfen

The quest had me report to a guard named Mikah who is found just outside the gate.  I tell him about the alliance between the Broken Fang and Bloodhowler gnoll clans and I receive 20 copper and 150 experience.  I then get the quests Cull the Pack and Lobo head.  This required me to go just a short way beyond the gate and slay lobo’s and procure a pristine lobo head.  These were easily done and I was rewarded with just a few coppers and a few hundred experience.

Nighthunter Marudak, who stands next to Mikah, gives a couple quests, including Forrah’s Patrol, which has me patrol a few different patrol points and kill any gnolls I find.  This is a virtually an exact copy of the quest I had in Kojan except that the hidden attackers are gnolls instead of orcs.  I just run along the path until a hidden gnoll pops into existence and starts pounding on me.  Rinse and repeat for the four patrol points and you’ll get 244 experience.

I run a few more quests and then I am eventually directed to the NW gate to find Nighthunter Valas.  He gives me the Bloodhowler Raiders quest and Okhnom’s Supplies quest. Okhnom’s quest is significant later on because it will eventually take me to another quest hub much further out onto the continent.  The Bloodhowler camp is a ways out of town and up on a high hill.  The camp has several tents and a bunch of angry gnolls.  Luckily, they are easy to pull solo if you are careful.  I killed the required amount and received 30 copper, 781 exprience, and a pair of Ghostclaw Gloves for my trouble.

Back at the south gate, Varin gives a few quests.  They are Bloodhowler Threat (kill 8 Denwatchers), Bloodhowler Defenses (explore their defenses), and lastly The Foreman (kill 2 taskmasters and the bloodfang Foreman).  All of these take place at the same gnoll camp that is up on a hill.  Again, if you are careful, these can be pulled singly from the perimeter.  The Foreman is a little ways inside the camp but just be careful and you can get to him solo.  The Foreman quest gave 70 copper and 1177 experience.  I should note that I did these quests while between the levels of 6 and 7.

Near Valin is Nighthunter Dakken.  He gives a couple quests, including Stop The Flow.  This one wanted me to find and kill the Bloodhowler Runner who runs between the gnoll camps delivering information.  He runs along the paths and as you spend time in the area it will be impossible to miss him.

Nighthunter Jerl then gives a few quests, including Bloodhowler Attack, which needed me delve into a cave full of gnolls and kill some Gatekeepers.  Another one wanted me to remove some contents from barrels within the cave.  Yet another needed me to rescue a vulmane captive being held in the cave.

The cave is up on a hill a good ways east of Dahknarg.  The Gatekeeper is found just inside the first wooden stake wall you come across.  The captive vulmane can be found by taking the first right-hand turn once inside the cave.  You’ll have to fight a few gnolls to get to him.  Just past the captive is a dead-end where a named gnoll spawns.  He is called Angimor the Watchful.  He drops armor pieces, including a very nice set of trousers for my druid.

I was adventuring solo, so I didn’t go too deep into the cave, but it sure did remind me of the Blackburrow dungeon from Everquest.

–Wolfen

The Vulmane starting area is called Spirit’s Rest and it definitely has the feel of a wilderness outpost.  The surrounding land is beautiful to look at and I instantly preferred this area over the Kojani style.

The first questgiver I see is Swiftfang Kover.  He gives a couple quests that have me kill some whelps located right outside the camp and to steal food from the Broken Fang gnoll camps.  They each gave a few copper and experience points.  There is also a general goods vendor that gives a quest called Young Bear Pelts.  The title says it all.  I killed a few bears and brought back the pelts for a few copper and experience.

Ghostclaw Grimaw has a couple quests as well.  He is too old to harvest the spirit blossom herbs anymore, so he sends me out to harvest some for him.  Once that is completed he sends me to see my spellcaster trainer who is located inside a tent.  She tells me the basics of being a spellcaster and gives me my level 2 spell Piercing Roots I.

I am then sent off to a cave northwest of camp to assist the Spiritragers found within.  Spiritrager Volsar tells me the history of the Vulmane and gives me The Essence of Souls quest.  I had to kill some Seething Souls and collect a Seething Essence.  I thought the essence would be found on the corpses of the souls, but it turned out that I had to click on a wooden stake leaning out from a wooden wall to get it.  Doing this gave 40 copper and 78 experience points.

Spiritrager Jalgresh wants me to do the Hunt The Soul Eater quest.  The Soul Eater is a big crab found in various spots within the cave.  This quest gives 10 copper 78 experience and Ghostclaw Boots.

The last quest in the cave is given by Spiritrager Jurkar, which is Soul Suffering.  This required me to kill Splintering Souls, which are little balls of light that are found throughout the cave.  I got 40 copper and 78 expererience for doing it.

Back at the camp, Nighthunter Karnor gives the Broken Fang Alpha quest.  After killing an Alpha Gnoll the quest gave 80 copper and 158 experience.  It also had a selectable reward and I chose the Ghostclaw Greatstaff.

There were many other quests in the area that I completed, but I won’t go into detail on them here.  They were all easy to do solo and gave various quest rewards.  One quest of importance, however, came from a piece of parchment that dropped off of the Alpha gnoll.  It is named Bloodhowler Plans and I have to take the parchment to a Vulmane in the next town I am to visit – Dahknarg.  This is another quest hub for the low level adventurer.  I will detail some of the happenings there in another post.

I personally prefer the Vulmane starting area over the Kojani area.  I like the look and feel much more.  It could be because it is more of a wooded, country-type area instead of the open, island area of Kojan.  I also liked the quests better and I think the quest rewards were much better, especially for quests giving armor.

–Wolfen

I frequent a very popular gaming message board.  Many of the members there decided to start up a Vanguard guild on the Xeth server.  I was asked several times to make the switch so I finally gave in and jumped from Seradon to Xeth.  Since Vanguard doesn’t have a character transfer service, I had no choice but to start over from scratch.  I decided to do things a little differently this time around.

I loved playing the druid, so that stayed the same.  What changed was the race I played and the continent that I started on. This time I chose to play a Vulmane druid.  Vulmane’s are wolf-like creatures that basically look like humans with wolf heads.  I have to say that the Asian “spirit” theme on Kojan was starting to wear a bit thin, so I felt that switching races and continents would be a nice change. As you will see in forthcoming posts, I greatly enjoy  Thestra over Kojan.  That surprised me because I always hear great things about the lands of Kojan. For me personally, however, I enjoy the quests and the scenery much better in the Vulmane starting areas.

Some things will obviously be a re-hash of what my druid did before.  The spells will be the same, but the quests and the lands I do them in will be vastly different.  This will allow me to report on the differences between the two starting areas so that others have a better idea of where they might want to start.  I thought about trying a different class, but I was having too much fun with the druid.

So a new chapter begins.  Let’s see how well it goes.

I first played Vanguard when it was still in beta.  The game was so rough and unfinished that I could immediately tell that it would not be anywhere near finished before it launched to the public. History shows that I couldn’t have been more correct.  The game ran so poorly and had such a great number of game-breaking bugs that it is a wonder that it is still available on the market today.  I quickly cancelled my account with the thought of never turning to the world of Telon.

Time moves on and it has now been about a year since Vanguard launched.  I began to hear some good things about a game that couldn’t pay anyone to give it a good review when it was new.  Intrigued (and because I had the Station Pass), I decided to check it out again and see what all the talk was about.  Turns out that a near miracle has been performed.

The game runs about 200% better than it did at launch.  Where it was barely playable then, it now runs acceptably well on my computer (AMD X2 6000+, 3GB, Nvidia 8800GT).  Make no mistake, however, that Sony still needs to do a ton of enhancements to the game engine in order for it to run as it should.  The game still hitches and there is still a delay when you move from one land chunk to another.  The developers say they have found a fix for that and it should be coming soon, so keep an eye out for it.  I still can’t come close to running it on maximum settings. I keep it at the High setting and customize things from there.

The game world is incredibly huge.  The sheer landmass of this game can be a bit overwhelming and this started to become a problem with most players.  If you wanted to adventure with friends, chances are that you would have to run for half an hour or more to get where they were.  But, Sony listened, and this is another area that they improved upon.  The riftway system was expanded, allowing immediate travel to most major areas, which allowed people to group up much more quickly.

The game world is also a sight to behold.  In my experience, it is beyond a doubt the most beautiful looking game world I have ever played in.  Granted, it takes a high-end computer to get the most out of it, but I’m always in awe of the graphics.  I am constantly stopping to take a screenshot of the scenery for use as my desktop wallpaper.

The game play is where Vanguard gets a mixed review from me.  The character animations really need some work.  They are jerky and not fluid at all and it breaks the immersion factor.  Sometimes game textures will not render correctly, making things look strange and out of place.  When I first used my Wolfshape spell, I thought that I was turning into a cool looking white wolf.  Instead, the texture wasn’t showing and the next time I used that spell I was the normal shade of brown.  I also found an infamous old Everquest bug that seems to have found its way here. It seems fish have no problem swimming onto land and attacking you.

As a Druid, my combat usually starts with rooting the creature I want to kill.  For some reason, even though I am standing a good distance away, the creature will sometimes hit me with its fist or weapon.  I am not sure what causes this.  Is the game client not catching up fast enough to accurately show me what is happening?  Sometimes I will root a moving target.  I get the text message that it is rooted but the creature still walks up to me and starts whacking on my head.  My in-game network meter always shows green, so I don’t know what the problem is.

I have only played a Druid, so I can’t speak to how well the other classes play.  I do know that I hear nothing but great things about all the classes and I think it is almost unanimous that all the classes are designed very well.  Each class steps out of the standard mold and offers something unique that you may not have seen before.  That said, there are some problems that need ironed out and a few classes are slated to see revamps.

As for the Druid, it can hardly be compared to the Everquest druid of old.  Yes, I can heal a little bit, and yes, I have some damage over time spells, but what makes it interesting is that some spells can do two different things. Some spells have a direct damage component mixed with an additional damage over time feature.  Doing two different types of damage at once is nice.

What makes the druid most unique is how the class uses what is called Phenomena points.  Certain spells can use these points instead of using mana.  The neatest one I have seen so far is called Starfall.  If I have enough phenomena points available, the spell calls a star down from the sky and smites my enemy.  This does massive amounts of direct damage.  I can easily kill same-level creatures in one shot with this spell and it doesn’t use a drop of mana.  The number of phenomena points is limited and they regenerate back over time, so you can’t chain cast these things, but it sure makes you feel powerful at a low level.

Questing is a very large part of Vanguard.  My quest book has never been empty and there is always something interesting to do.  Sure, many quests are of the “go kill X number of Y,” but there are also many that have neat stories attached to them.  Also, as a new player starting out, I like how the quests move you from area to area.  I am only level 17 and I have already travelled a very long way from my starting spot.  It helps keep me interested in the game because I am always seeing new things.

Vanguard has always had a reputation of being a group-oriented game.  This may be true at higher levels (I don’t know), but I have been able to solo every step of the way with my druid so far. In fact, it has been almost too easy to solo.  As I said above, some of the mechanics of the druid class really make me feel powerful, and that is a great draw for me.  I am told that the druid is one of the least played classes and I was shocked to hear that.  I haven’t played a more fun class in ages.  I think it may suffer from the druid’s reputation from Everquest and that keeps people away.

Despite its flaws, Vanguard has come a very long way.  I wish things would get fixed more quickly, but Sony has decided to put only a small development team on it.  Be that as it may, they have worked wonders on what was once a completely awful game.  I can now honestly say that Vanguard is worth a try.  If you played it at launch and hated it, come back and see what has changed.  You might be surprised at what you find.  The game is far from perfect, but it’s not a complete stinker anymore, either.

–Wolfen

Guard Eba has many quests to give the newly arrived adventurer. Next to him is Guard Na Cho who also has many quests available. The first quests had to deal with eliminating Ulvari Devourers which are nothing more than gremlins, and thin out an infestation of what turned out to be flying eyeballs. These creatures were just steps away from where you get the quests, so they were easy to complete.

The Ulvari Corruption: Ulvari Devourers quest resulted in me receiving 1 silver, 60 copper, and 3983 experience points.  The Eye of the Ulvari gave 1 silver, 50 copper, and 3618 experience.  The Eyes of Ulvari surround a colorful rock formation and are very easy to pull solo.  The same goes for the gremlins.  I also completed the Ulvari Pearls quest that had me find a pearl that the gremlins drop.  It gave me 75 copper and 1921 experience and this quest is repeatable.

The next set of quests had to do with the Loamsworm Brotherhood.  There is a stronghold of these brigands located just past the Ulvari area.  They built their fortress inside some mountain walls.

There are several different kinds of these brigands and I had to go kill several of each as well as bring back some gems that they drop.  It’s actually a neat area with fast spawns that can keep the solo player busy.  A group could burn through it in minutes.  I completed the quests Loamsworn Necklaces, Prophetic Action, The Rest of the Bunch, and Alluvian Gems.  They all gave around a silver each along with 3618 experience points each.

I dinged level 17 and logged out for the night.

I found Bautali inside the Hold and he had a bunch of quests to give.  Standing next to him is Hai Tang who also has many quests to hand out.  I picked a few from Bautali and got started on them.  I had to go kill a bunch of tigers, ostra’s, varana’s, and others.  The varana and ostra were easy to find, but just like back in the starting areas, the tigers were extremely rare.  I got so tired of running around looking for the tigers that I put that one on hold and worked on some other quests.

Located on the beach which is down the hill from Lotus Hold is a bunch of burned out houses that the orcs have taken over.  The quest Orc Assault: Martok Deadbringer wanted me to go kill a few of the Deadbringers, so down to the beach I went.  The beach is crawling with orcs, so it was easy to quickly find what I needed.  The quest netted me 1 silver, 40 copper, and 3220 experience points.

Back at Lotus Hold, I discovered that the stress and fear of constant orc attacks have caused some of the villagers to go crazy.  Some guy named Mung decided to take a group of them away from Lotus Hold to find some other place to live.  It seems that the crazed villagers took Tao’s Idol of Focus with them when they left and they didn’t ask permission to do so.  I was tasked with getting the idol back.

The crazed villagers are found up on a high hill that is a ways south of the Nakai Dojo.  They stand close to each other, so I had to use Nature’s Calm in order to pull a single.  The very first one I pulled had the idol.  Nice luck.  Returning the idol to Tao resulted in me receiving 1 silver, 40 copper, and 3220 experience points.

I then started a quest that tasked me with retrieving some treasure boxes that the orcs had stolen from Lotus Hold.  These boxes are located around the burned out houses down on the beach.  I had to clear the way of orcs in order to get to some of them, but I also found that I could sneak in behind the houses and get to some of the treasure boxes with minimal combat.  There is a wooden wall behind the houses that has gaps in it and I found a couple gaps that I could squeeze through.

I ran back to Lotus Hold and turned in the treasure box quest and the kill animals quests.  They all gave about a silver each and 3220 experience points each.  I dinged level 16 while doing these quests and here is a list of spells that my Druid received:

- Barbwood Talisman III: AC 60, HP 120, 17 damage shield

- Wild Growth I: 935 to 986 damage over 24 seconds

- Solar Flare II: 297 to 319 fire damage & 107 to 118 over 4 seconds

- Restore II: 503 point heal

- Summon Earth Elemental II: Summons a pet for 3 minutes

- Quelling Wind I:  Lowers hate by 3%

]]> http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/12/vanguard-lotus-hold/feed/ 0 http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/10/vanguard-the-two-hour-search-for-crates/ http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/10/vanguard-the-two-hour-search-for-crates/#comments Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:48:48 +0000 Wolfen http://www.mmonotebook.com/?p=88 Did I say that Lieutenant Oda was a prick?  Yeah, well, I absolutely meant it.  After insulting my prowess, he then gives me a new quest that frustrated me to no end.  I don’t think I will ever forgive him.

The quest is called the Short Handed Nakai.  It seems that his army is so busy that they allowed some orcs to steal some supply crates.  He wants me to go recover three of the crates.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Well, there is one little problem.  The quest text makes no mention at all as to where I must go to find the crates.  None at all.  This is actually the first quest I have found that does this.

I wasted 2 HOURS of my life looking for those damn crates.  I ran down the road all the way to Lotus Hold and found none.  I searched every inch of Thrakos Island (which is full of orcs) and found none.  I searched and searched with no luck.  I even asked in region chat and had no luck.

I finally had to break down and visit the VG Curse website to find the answer.  I searched the database and a commenter gave me the clue I needed.  If you ever need to do the Short Handed Nakai quest, here is what you need to know:  You will find the orcs and crates by traveling south of the Nakai Dojo.  They will be on and near the beach in that area.

I can’t tell if it is bad game design or if I am just a dumbass.  I think it is the former, while I would imagine that most of you readers would think the latter.

Anyway, I had to return the crates to Commander Kato.  My reward was 2788 experience and 1 silver, 30 copper in coin.  Kato then gives me the Kill The Coward quest.  This is a group quest that requires you to go kill the traitor Hanji Kotoawa.

Here is a picture of me after trying out the Wolf Shape spell.

As I mentioned in my last post, if you keep going along the coast, you’ll find more and tougher types of gremlins.  So, I ran past the first two camps that I attacked earlier and found the third camp.  This one had the Augurs.  I dispatched some Augurs and found some portal shards, but I didn’t combine them.  This quest is a group quest, so I’ll need to wait until I can find some help before finishing this one.

Speaking of finding a group, in all my time spent in this gremlin area, I only saw one other player the entire time.  Even after SOE merged some servers, the player population is very low.  It may be better at the higher levels, but as a low level player, it is rather disheartening.

Just a few steps away from Ju Ming, there is a fellow named Nao Tak.  He also gives out some quests.  One of them is called Otherwordly Artifacts.  He wants me to kill gremlins and recover 5 inert portal shards and 5 fiendish portal shards.  Gremlin killing seems to be common pasttime around these parts.

I ran around and killed random gremlins until I had enough of the shards.  I returned them to Nao Tak and I received 2431 experience and a measly 60 copper.  Are Ju Ming and Nao Tak related or something? Nao gives one last quest called To Lotus Hold.  I sat that one aside and worked on a few other quests first.

Back at the Nakai Dojo, Lieutenant Oda has some tasks for me.  I get from him the Pride of the Army quest.  I am to patrol the road leading out of the Dojo and look for invading Martok orcs.  I have to visit 4 patrol points and clean out any orcs I find.

The way it worked out is that you simply run down the road and wait for an invisible Martok Ambusher to jump you.  Kill the orc, run down the road some more, and wait to be jumped again.  You do this until you have reached all four patrol points.

I returned to Oda after completing my patrol and I discovered that he didn’t seem to have much confidence in my abilities.

Prick.

–Wolfen

]]> http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/09/vanguard-gremlins-and-orcs/feed/ 0 http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/08/vanguard-after-the-big-update/ http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/08/vanguard-after-the-big-update/#comments Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:37:50 +0000 Wolfen http://www.mmonotebook.com/?p=86 The folks at Sony gave Vanguard a big update while I was away from the game.  I had completely forgotten about it until it came time to buy my new spells.  I dinged level 15 while whacking gremlins, so I went over to the Nakai Dojo to see what was available.

I hit up the Druid spell vendor and that is when I remembered the game update.  There were several spells for the levels I had already gone through as well as some nice ones for my current level.  Some of the highlights for me were:

- Lifestream 1: AOE Heal

- Rampant Roots: AOE Root

- Ire II: Arcane Direct Damage

- Wolf Shape: Turns me into a wolf

- Ant Shape: Turns me into an invisible ant for 3 minutes

- Starfall: 1982-2087 Direct Damage

For soloing, the two that really stand out for me are Ant Shape and Starfall.  Ant Shape is really just a fancy way of granting invisibility.  I turn into a small ant that I can see but enemies can’t see.  Three minutes isn’t very long, but it is nice to know when it will wear off.  It also has a five minute refresh before you can use it again.

The other great spell is Starfall.  With the damage is produces, I am able to one-shot kill orcs with ease.  The one limiting factor to Starfall is that it uses Phenomena points.  You have a set number of points and each time you cast Starfall is subtracts from that total.  Once you use up those points, you must wait for them to refresh.  I believe it takes 1 hour for used points to refresh.

They claim that there were some graphical performance tweaks in the update, but everything seems the same for me.  It runs just like it did in January.  Things still hitch and I still have to use the /flush command every now and then to get performance back.  They claim that a fix for the hitching is on the way.  Let’s hope so.  As a reminder, my PC is an AMD X2 6000+, 3gb RAM, and a Nvidia 8600GT 512mb video card.

I had been running some quests that Ju Ming had given me, so I looked in my quest journal and started from there.  I began with The Gremlin Menace quest.  It seems Ju Ming wants a few gremlins dead, so he tasks me with going out and killing some Kojuko Despoilers and Ravagers.

The gremlins are found along the coast not far from Ju Ming’s house.  The first gremlin camp I encountered had the gremlins I was looking for.  They were guarding a portal that they were using for nefarious reasons.  Naturally, I did my duty and dispatched the required number of gremlins.  The gremlins were numerous but I could easily pull them all solo.

I returned to Ju Ming and told him of my good deeds.  He rewarded me with 1905 experience and 1 silver, 10 copper cash money.  If you ask me, he’s a little stingy with the coin.

The next quest he gives is called The Menace Grows.  This time I am tasked with killing gremlin Disrupters and Razorclaws.  You can find these gremlins by traveling past the first gremlin camp.  The camp is right next to the first.  In fact, if you keep traveling along the coast, you will come across camp after camp of gremlins.  The further you go the tougher the gremlin you find.  Once again, I did my duty and slew many o’ gremlin.

Ju Ming was pleased with my progress, but once again he was stingy with the coin.  I received 1 silver, 20 copper for my efforts.  Experience rewarded: 2341

–Wolfen

Mito says I need to prove myself before he will let me take care of some “special situations.” He sends me off to get him a new tiger pelt covering, which apparently takes 10 tiger pelts to make. Killing 10 tigers sound easy enough until you find out that they are not very plentiful. The tigers share spawn points with other creatures and it took a very long time for me to find enough tigers to acquire the 10 pelts. Had this been a busy area, it would have taken many hours to get this done.

After returning the pelts to Mito and completing the “Prove My Worth” quest, he still thinks I am next to useless, so he sends me off to find Lieutenant Oda, who may have something for me to do. Oda gives me the “Cleaning Up” quest that requires me to go out and kill 10 goretusk boars and 10 fleet ostra birds. The boar and birds are found in the same area as the tigers, so I didn’t have far to go in order to find them. Upon completing this quest I received 1 silver, 20 copper, and 2431 experience points.

Oda next gave me the “Pride of the Army” quest. He wants me to visit four different patrol points and slay any orcs I find along the way. He suggests that I take a friend along because the orcs seem to travel in pairs. I saved this quest for another time.

I made level 14 while completing the “Cleaning Up” quest, so I needed to train up my new spells. Nakai Dojo has a building that contains all the class trainers inside, which was very handy indeed. It also has a general goods vendor to sell your loot to. My level 14 Druid spells are: Barkskin 1, Speed of the Wolf (30% run speed increase), Stormcallers Fury II, Nature’s Calm 1, and Soothe II (288-298 heal). Nature’s Calm looks to be useful for my next quest because it keeps a creature from attacking. If the orcs roam in pairs, I can cast Soothe on one and pull the other singly. We shall see.

–Wolfen

I thought it might be some strange fluke, so I logged into the game, but nothing changed.

I played my entire session this way, just for the hell of it. It’s a comical sight to see just my head floating along the countryside. Hey, Vanguard developers, here’s one you can work on.

–Wolfen