Vanguard: Gremlins And Orcs
After completing The Menace Grows, Ju Ming gives me one last task to perform. This one is called The Head of the Beast. I am to go find gremlin Augurs and wrest something called a Pulsating Portal Shard from their grubby little claws. I must obtain enough shards to combine them into an Orb of Calling. This Orb will summon the Kojuko General who, not surprisingly, needs killed.
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
Vanguard: Nakai Dojo
Behind Lau Mung, the man who made the hangover cure for the recruit, is a teleporter that had not noticed before. I stepped into it and I was whisked away to the Nakai Dojo. The first person I came across was Commander Kato Chikage. Commander Kato doesn’t like to be bothered, so he sent me to find Lieutenant Mito so that I could prove my worthiness. Just how many times do I have to prove my worthiness in this game?
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
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