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
Everquest: Loping Along
I spent some time in Everquest recently with some old gaming friends. We didn’t have much time available, so we decided to head out to the Loping Plains and get some grinding experience in. Our Wizard was bound at the spot where we usually set up camp, so we all met up in the Plane of Knowledge and then ported out to the Plains.
This is a very safe camping spot, so not much excitement happened. Our group consisted of level 80 gnome warrior, 76 wizard, 80 mage, 80 cleric, and me with a wimpy 68 ranger. We used the pulling technique we have used for years. The warrior would pull, and if he got multiples, the mage would cast Call of the Hero and pull him back to camp aggro free. This helps split the camp and we get easy solo pulls. We popped Lesson of the Devoted, which gives us 30 minutes of double experience, and got to work.
A common critter we encounter is the blue orc, which comes in several different types. There is the standard warrior orc to start with, and then there’s the rogue, shaman, and necromancer orc. The neat thing about these orcs is that they can change form mid-way through a fight. They start out as one type of orc model and then transform into something different in a flash. Here is an example:
So we took out plenty of the orcs along with black horses with flaming hooves called Nightmares. Experience was good, even for the level 80′s in the group. Loot drops are nothing special, but they do sell to vendors for a decent amount. It wasn’t a flashy, brag about it night, but we all made advancements and had a good time making fun of one another. A nice diversion from Vanguard every now and then.
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