A little more about Everquest II - Writs in Freeport

You may notice that the first post was about Neriak Writs which is a city from the ‘Evil faction’  So I am now going to give you some advice on how to find Writs in Freeport… Another ‘Evil faction’.  What?  I can’t help it, I am just drawn to the dark side; chuckle.

Writs for Neriak are here, also a little tiny intro about the game.

Everquest is a MORPG that does exactly what it says on the tin, Quests are forever, you never run out of quests in this game and there is always something to do.

You can log on and quest, craft, design your very own house (or in my case my very own 15 houses) or you can level and play the dungeons as you go.  It is a well established MMO with loads to do and regular expansions out every year or two. 

Writs are quests that gain you faction points within certain factions, you can then use their vendors to buy things with your faction status points.   Freeport is also one of the evil factions along with Neriak.  It is a city built along the coast and its kind of rough but still looks awesome with many winding streets and back alleys.  If you are new to the game it’s easy to become lost in freport so here are your Writ NPC’s to help you on your way.

You can get writs from the following NPC’s in Freeport:

Freeport Militia - West Freeport

Trooper Boneshaw and Liege Helvanica

Dismal Rage - North Freeport  (Opposite Library)

Convert Y’Ral and Occultist Leuonicus

Academy of Arcane science - North Freeport  (In the Library)

Neophyte Jhanor and Archivist Jindefog

Seafury Buccaneers - South Freeport (On the Docks)

Squab Kalina and Boatswan Fomas

So now you know who to look for lets go go go and start killing the real evil in the land of Norrath

EverQuest 2 - The Return of the Light

The Return of the Light is a Heritage Quest which has a series of Quests before the final battle of the Quest.  Here are some guidelines to help you get through this Heritage Quest.

You can pick up this quest at level 18 however it is recommended that you be level 20 before entering the last few quests of this Heritage line. 

You start the quest by Examining the Burned out Lightstone dropped from the lightbringer wisp.  You can find this North of the Ring of Nature (Druid Rings) in the Commonlands.  Waypoint destination is around 800,- 60,- 200

Once you have examined the item find ‘Connix’ and he will send you to find the following:

The Mourned at  -590,-48,-629

The Forgotten at 172,-45,260

Rama’nai at 878,-58,11

Rama’nai is a lion you must kill before returning to ‘Connix’ who will then send you to kill the following Orcs:

Captain Geary at -855,-48,668

Captain Ogaf at -645,-48,461

You must return, again, to Connix and he will send you to kill more Orcs at the following locations:

High Priest of Valmar at the top of the tower at 382,-47,230

General Drull in the instance - Blood Skull Valley.  Go to 215,-48,667 first and then to -4,-48,729

General Drull is a Heroic and comes with 3 massive mobs so you will need a group to complete this part of the quest.

After completing this instance return to Connix and begin speaking to him.  He will be attacked but you need to let him die and re-spawn before finishing the quest or the quest will not complete.

So there you have it.  If you decide to jump into the land of Norrath and go adventuring and happen to come across the Light bringer wisp then you’ll be on your merry way to completing this Heritage Quest.   The reward for this quest suits a wizard or a necromancer well as it boosts stats for intelligence and wisdom.

Thanks for reading and have fun !!

RIFT - Beginners guide for solo Rift Warrior.

What Paladin build is best for solo PVE in Rift?

I have been playing rift now for two years and still remember running through the open Beta test thinking this was a great game.  The fact that you can be running around happily questing one minute and have an invasion coming along the road at you the next is great chaotic morpg fun.

I am a casual player so don’t ever play a morpg for the end game …yet, however in saying that part of the fun of playing rift  is being able to hold your own when you’re caught outnumbered by the sudden invasions, I have indeed, been caught and squashed like a bug with various mage builds but never with my Defender. The following spec is a levelling spec which will allow you to roam Telara exploring,  rift chasing or just questing quietly. 

The Defender is a brilliant tank, currently at level 42 you should have spent 56 points in your soul tree.  You will have the Warlord, Paladin and Rift blade souls but you do not spend any points in

Rift blade  at this point.  You focus the majority of your points in the Paladin soul tree spending a total of 40 points.  Your Warlord soul tree should have 16 points in it.

With the Defender you are using sword & shield so your focus is on defence, armour and block are key to the success of this type of warrior. If you prefer duel wield fighting you need to look at building a champion spec, if you want to fight with two handed weapons, this can be ok but, only,  if you build for offence, you can still be outnumbered on occasion without the defence though as the defender is primarily made for tanking.

When upgrading your armour, always try and use the gear from the rare planar goods.  Planer gear has good stats and is cheaper than buying off of the auction house.  You gain the planarite from closing rifts, defeating footholds and being involved with invasions (you also gain various source stone currencies doing invasions too)  

The most confusing thing for me when I first got involved with rift was the Source cores you got, what is the best way to stat them?   I have a good set up which seems to keeps me alive when running quests or rift chasing.  I use the amplified Source core which allows you one Greater planar essence and three lesser planar essence.   The greater essence is the ominous shade source which grants a bonus to certain moves, the three lesser essences are the Mighty force planar, the lesser scintillating deepstone and the Flamelord rage essence.   Each of these grant stat bonuses to various attributes however much of this goes towards strength, block and critical moves.

This build has taken me through all of Moonshade Highlands easily, even when I accidently pulled 7 undead, I lived to tell the tale.  I have tried my luck in Iron pine peak during the beginning of the  storm legion invasions before the expansion hit, and I took the same build onto the beta test for Storm legion and it did really well if it was level appropriate.   I love the dimensions so in order to find the best options for dimensions at level 38, I ran my defender through Tulan, to get to Tempest bay for all of the dimension options  and dimension goods.  I can say although she did a lot of ducking and diving she made it without a single death scene.

So there you have it, if your new and you have little idea of how to build a solo toon, this should help you on your way.  Happy questing!! 

Types of Rifts

 In the MMO Rift you come across various types of rifts.  Firstly you have the Elements; Earth Rifts, Fire Rifts, Death Rifts, Air Rifts and Water Rifts.

Within these rifts there are many different types.  I have come across four different types of Death rifts alone.  They are different dependant on the event and the zone. 

The Death rifts you can see in the pictures are only two of the four I have come across but I will give you some tips.

In the Rift with the skeletal dragon it tells you to kill 30 lost souls.  If you come across this type of Rift when you are solo run past it.  Yes, I said leave it alone.  It is impossible to kill 30 of these lost souls alone as the float towards the dragon and they do not retaliate so you would spend hours trying to do this.

If a rift has ghostly looking wolves in it you need to draw the wolves to the sparkling headstone before killing them as when they are caught by this they change so as you can now kill what it tells you to in the rift Quest.  If you don’t do this you end up killing these ghostly wolves to infinity as they are not in the correct form to register the kill within the rift.

You do get two other rifts which are basically standard rifts however; beware, in one of these the big dude in the centre splits into around 12 soldiers so stand back and only use area effects if you are with a group, otherwise pick them off two by two.

I have put in some pictures of different rifts, the dark ones are Death rifts and the bright colourful ones are life rifts

Hope this helps you with your journeys through Telara!

All pictures taken form in game footage and courtesy of Trion. 

RIFT: Warrior Class - Beastmaster

After writing about the Warrior class: Defender I thought I would potter around with my Beastmaster and test that out for solo ability. I like to write from a beginners perspective and never play for end game results so can only recommend you find experts in the raiding field if you are looking for end game information.

I try to keep it simple but please feel free to ask questions if I don't cover what you’re looking for and I will answer asap. The Beastmaster build is a support class build but actually did pretty well in level appropriate areas. At level 44 I now have 60 points spent in the skill tree as follows:

Beastmaster Soul Tree

As you can see Riftblade is left as the zero spec tree whilst 40 points are spent in the Beastmaster tree and the remaining 20 in Paragon. In order to solo you really do need this detail of the build. Unlike the Defender who has excellent healing capabilities, this build is limited for healing. Take what healing you can get from this build because if you are mobbed whilst alone, the heals that you do get, can help to a degree, if used wisely.

The Beastmaster is a fun build to play, but make no mistake it is not a Tank. Beastmasters' kill faster so you can move through quests a lot quicker than a defender if you are fighting one on one or one on two; any more than that at a matched level and you can go down fast. Glass cannon could be a word used to describe the Beastmaster as a solo class but it does the job well if you avoid the mobs.

I use Planer armour (you get the planer to pay for the armour from rifts and invasions - and in some areas daily quests too). I use sword and shield as this seemed to work better for solo rather than a two handed weapon. I was planning to try Duel wield with this build but just did not manage to find a good set of swords, this is something I still plan to test and will update when I have more information on this.

The only real downfalls to playing this build solo are Rifts and Invasions unless they are a level or two below. My first level appropriate Rift with this build caught me off guard and I did 'face plant' (die); after that however I managed to pick the Rift mobs off one at a time and I managed to close the rift but it was slow (even slower than my tank).

The invasion however was a different matter. I stood no chance trying to run in and go on the offensive, defensive action was not much better. My point is that if you are an invasion chaser and you really want to join in invasions with this build you cannot solo them, you need to be involved in the public groups.

So There you have it. If you are new to Rift or MMO's in general, it is a great game with loads on offer but depending on your play style you may want to prepare yourself for a tougher challenge playing this build. If however you’re looking for a more solid Tank build you can click the link at the top of the page for more information on that.

Many thanks and I hope you enjoy the game as much as I do.

Rare Planar goods Vendors in Rift - Telara/Mathosia

I decided to write this article as we have had a lot of new players in game asking where the planar vendors are.  Planer vendors are in game NPC’s that trade you good armour/Weapons for Planarite different types of source stones (which you gain by joining in with Invasions).  These are forms of in game currency.  I highly recommend you seek them out as soon as you have your first 150 planarite and source stone as you can get your chest piece and leggings and this improves your stats greatly at low level.

Where do you find these vendors then?  First off, you’re looking for the Rare Planer Goods vendor and you can find them in the following locations.

In Freemarch you get the Porticulim to the Arch and run up the hill to ‘Kings Retreat’  you can see the vendor standing at the forge with the green arrow above her head.

In Stonefield you need to get to Granite falls (preferably via the porticulim) and run towards the Wardstone (Big grey and red stone over there) . The vendor stands beside this.

In Scarlet Gorge, you need to make your way to Scarwood Lift Base, you can port to it via the porticulim if you have connected previously.   If you look at the pictures you can see that the platform has a wooden ramp going up.  The planer vendor is at the end of the wooden Ramp.

In Scarwood Reach, you need to head to Perspice.  Again via Porticulim if you can, you can see the Rare Planer goods vendor in the picture not very far from the porticulim in Perspice.

In Moonshade Highlands you need to go to Timberveil, again the vendor is not far from the porticulim standing by the tent and little machine.

Finally (On the Mathosian map)  in Iron Pine Peak you need to run to (or port to) Whitefall Tavern, this is a tricky little town with lots of twists and turns into little squares of houses but ensure you head for the porticulim and you will see the NPS in the long white robes opposite, that’s your vendor.

Well I hope this little tour helps you get that good armour a little quicker now without you getting lost first, Happy Questing and ….make sure you close the Rifts on your way past !!

Seven room Neriak House in EQII

Neriak House

When I play EQII, I am normally hiding in one of many houses I have procured over the last 6 or 7 years and there are many. I sometimes log in just to decorate and set up homes rather than go questing and its worth the final result as any EQII house decorator will tell you.

This House originally began as the 5 room house in Neriak but over the years  two more rooms to it.  It is a good house to start with as its big enough to get an idea of how to decorate without having too much space so here is what I managed to do with mine the first time around. All of this was done before I found out about EQII Layout editor and before the wall dividers were available on the station cash market so it took many grinding trips to get enough tokens for the city festivals in order to get what I needed.

This was my Necromancers ritual and prayer room.  I used Neriak floor tiles.  to get the dark marble effect on the walls I used Freeport Dividers

I had a look out set up on a newly set second floor on the entrance and a Welcome bar for visitors.  I hand built the steps to it using  Grobb benches.

I built a torture Dungeon in the basement and used the tin helmet you get form the Bristlebain quest to fit to a chair so as it looked like an electric chair.   (Remember she is a Necromancer )

When the balcony appeared I had no idea what to do with it so this is what I came up with, although I could probably do better now.

Any way I hope you enjoyed my tour around an EQ II House and please check out my others as I also have Thurgadin Hall, amongst others on the way.

EQII Tinkered Townhouse

I was wandering around my housing in EQII and taking pictures left right 

and centre, trying to get some good pictures for my blog when it occurred 

to me that my favourite little Tinkered town house was absolutely full of 

moving items.  I wandered around trying to take more pictures to show 

this but it just didn't work.

Well it is not in my nature to just leave it out or make do so I did some 

digging, learned how to record in game footage and viola!!

There are four rooms and each room is pictured below but ....There is also 

a video to give my Tinkered Town-house the view it needed to show all of the equipment.  

Just about everything was gained from collecting the tokens during tinker fest 

(except the table, chairs and bed which are still tinker style items and 

cost me nothing to make). 

Tinker Room

This room is full of moving parts and equipment and it had been so long since 

I had messed around with Layout editor I did it all by hand, it felt great when 

I had finished it. 

The Living Area

Just a quiet calm place in the town-house

The Boiler Room

Full of boilers and engines along with some pollution coming form the pipes 

in the corner.

At the beginning of the video is the entrance area,  sit back and enjoy the

 tour. 

EQII Housing - Thurgaden hall

When I first bought Thurgaden Grand Hall I knew from the start I wanted to see what I could do with the massive caverns at the back so I threw myself off of them to get an idea of how far you could drop before being re-loaded to a safe spot. I found the height and then had the task of clipping the first tile as low as it would go so as I could get started. Finally with many hours work (I did practically everything by hand but had to use layout editor for the stone bridge) I have the fist section of the lower Garden done, but I have since discovered I can get further down so you will see a set of steps leading to the start of another level at some point, (I got bored crafting grass squares after the first level) but all of the upper Caverns and lower lever caverns are completed now. There are many different areas in this housing project so I have sectioned the pictures and the videos to break them down.

The Cemetery

The Cemetery This house belongs to my Arasi (this is an alt in the pics as taking pictures with a taller toon was easier), Necromancer so there is a Cemetery and a torture garden, other than that I take the caverns into a haven for the Arasi with flora and water pools scattered around. Oh and there's a Sauna and Baths room too.

Baths

Baths & Sauna

 Here you can see an overview of the lower Caverns. Hours of work went into placing many many grass squares before

View from the top of the Caverns

A Little greenery

I got the plant life and ponds placed. My little mushroom garden When I discovered how to record in game however I was able to capture even more of the lower and upper caverns. Here they are: