Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Michael's LiveJournal:

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Monday, May 15th, 2006
4:28 pm	After making my last post, I was reading through this journal and ran across this post from nearly a year ago. My fishing is still not to 300, but I still have my bootflask. :) (Comment on this)
3:21 pm	The end of an era I've not posted in this journal too much the last while, because most of my gaming time's bee involved with WoW. I've not played many board or card games, and my DnD playing's had little of note. However, this past weekend saw the end of the nearly 3-year Dragonlance campaign I've been involved in. We started sometime in May of 2003 with knasty as our Dungeon Master and myself, ch00k, lorazia, notchanges, and philoscifi as the players. We began as level 1 characters (wizard, cleric, rogue, fighter, fighter respectively) who met near a watering hole outside of town when someone was attacked by goblins. Since then our characters grew in power and fame earning the respect and admiration of the Knights of Solamnia, the wizards of the Tower of Wayreth, and even the gods of Krynn themselves. During our journey, lasting eighteen and a half months in-game, My character (Jack, a wizard of the white robes) died three times. he was resurrected twice and reincarnated once. He began the journey as a human, but ended as an Elbyreth (half-elf). Of the rest of the party, ch00k (a human cleric named Coldyn) died twice, lorazia(an Elbyreth rogue named Adridyr(sp?)) died once and notchanges (a human fighter named Dagnal) died once. When Dagnal and Adridyr died, they were replaced in the party with Val (played by lorazia) and Aida (played by notchanges).Last fall, real life caused notchanges to move away, so Aida left our party. Because of our gaming group's surprising cohesion, we chose not to replace her in the gaming group and continued with only 4 people. Val chose to leave the party as well, and The Power of Plot(tm) allowed Adridayr to return. There were two primary plot hooks throughout the campaign: We had to search for and reunite five rings. Known as The Children of Paladine, each ring represented one of the five metallic dragons of good. They were each held by a variety of creatures and beings. Walrus men in the extreme cold areas, champions of the people in lands long lost to the west, and even by Kitiara, one of the heroes of the Chronicles you're familiar with. We regained each of these rings through battle, service or bargaining as required, and we were ultimately successful. As each ring was regained, the power of the rings grew. The second major plot hook was an invasion of Ethergaunts into the world of Krynn from their home on the Ethereal plane. We began encountering these fearsome creatures early in our adventures, and in the end, we brought the fight from the Prime Material plane to their home in the Ethereal. What's more, we used the Children of Paladine to destroy the monolith which served as the Ethergaunt's source of power in that area of the Ether, effectively removing the threat of invasion. A far cry from driving off a few goblins a scant 18 months previous. During the 3 years we played this campaign, we went from having our only source of Dragonlance knowledge being the Dragonlance Campaign Setting book and the books written in the world, to many more source books, including Age of Mortals, Holy Order of the Stars, The Towers of High Sourcery, Bestiary of Krynn, War of the Lance and Time of the Twins. As each book came out, the new and interesting abilities, feats and powers dictated the course of our characters. ch00k commented that, had all of these sources been at our disposal from day 1, our party would be radically different. Jack ended the game with 4 classes (wizard, warmage (prestige class from Age of Mortals), Wizard of the White Robes and fighter). Coldyn and Caine (philoscifi's character) each ended with 5 classes. I'm not certain how many classes Adridayr ended with, but I think it was three. As a result of the hodge podge character building we underwent, Coldyn became a truly broken cleric, capable of healing over 30 points of damage with a cure light wounds. Jack could average nearly 200 points of damage on an attack with certain spells. Caine could crank his AC through the roof. Adridayr was quite literally a walking Cuisenart. Our last session was a blaze of glory. We each performed our designated functions well and perfectly and to extremes. Coldyn cast single cure spells well in excess of 150 points of healing. Caine struck down a cloud giant with a 340+ point attack. Adridayr's final attack was worth over 240 points of damage. Jack's last spell caused 232 points of damage. As I said, we each performed our roles excellently. We had several major fights which we survived well, as well as opportunities for role playing when we found ourselves among persons of an interplanar merchant race. Our campaign ended well. I'll miss the group I played with, though. They are all wonderful people, and we get along great. It will, however, be rather nice to no longer have to schedule around a DnD game every two weeks or not know if you'll be driving out of town or not depending on ch00k's schedule. Would I do this again? With the same people involved, I can say, without reservation, yes. I would. it's been amazing fun. It was amazing fun. Current Mood: happy (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 2nd, 2006
12:56 pm	So much has happened since my last update. DnD: Dragonlance continues. We have 4 of the 5 Children of Paladine. The 5th is held by Kitiara. Yes, *that* Kitiara. In the meantime, we've discovered a lost civilization, saved people, had two of our party members (Val and Aida) leave and and old one (Adrydair) come back from the dead. Also, Jack's died again and been reincarnated as an Elberyth (half-elf). It's been a cray, crazy ride so far. We play again this coming Sat. Weapons of Legacy: A new campaign that's started since my last update. Kelso's running, and Conor, Erik (not sancho), Heather, Emily and myself are the players. Emily's playing a druid, Conor's playing a cleric, Erik's playing a Samurai, Heather's playing some kind of fighter/sorcered half-class thing I can't actually remember, and I'm playing a Warmage from the Complete Arcane which is a fighter-sorcerer combination. Yeah. It's been pretty fun, so far. Kelso's running us through a homespun world that's been pretty cool, and I'm enjoying the game. We've got persistent scheduling problems, though, so we've only played perhaps 5 times, total. Hopefully we can get together to play next weekend. World of Warcraft: When I last updated, I'd just joined Mystic Order, rerolled on Frostwolf and abandoned my character on Wildhammer. I've completely abandoned the characters on Wildhammer and Frostwolf (though if I am ever given the option of having them transfered to other servers, I might bring my hunter from Wildhammer to Suramar). In Mystic Order, I've become an officer, and helped usher in a DKP system that's fairly math-intenssive, but pretty fair, we think. When I joined in November, MO was still the relaxed family-oriented guild I've known and loved forever. Since then, however, we've brought in a lot of people to the guild and have become a solid end-game raiding guild, even if we're still in the early stages. We began attempting Molten Core at the first of the year, and last week we downed Majordomo Executus for the first time. This is pretty good progress, considering that we ran MC once a week until three weeks ago, when we began running two nights week (Wednesdays to clear Lucifron, Magmadar, Gehennas and Garr, and then on Fridays to go as far as we can). Sadly, last week I was unable to be there due to a convention, and they took down Golemagg and Domo. I wish I'd been there to see it. Ah well. An'Quiraj is open, and we've started trying the 20-man section. Second boss is being a little bastard, though. Can't get to him because of the 7 waves of baddies ahead of him. We've not stepped foot in the 40-man instance there yet. I'm ok with that, really. We're still rocking along in Zul'Gurub, though. We've not dropped Hakkar since the buff last patch, but we're making progress. We're going to try Jin'do the Hexxar on Monday. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 24th, 2005
11:40 am	DnD: Yesterday was the last session with all 5 original players. One is moving to Albequerque soon and this was her last session with us. She's retired her character and left the Child of Paladine she carried with us. One of our other players is beinging back an old character of hers. Which will be awesome, since the character is one of the original party members. It's very cool. WoW: I got a story for ya, Ags! February: I roll the character Peanutbutter on Suramar. I make him a skinner/tailor. June: Peanutbutter hits lvl 60 and begins trying to get Finkle's Skinner (A dagger that gives a skinning bonus). June - Sept.: Many, many UBRS runs during which I saw the skinner drop *once*. Sept: Get frustrated with skinning and never getting (or even seeing)the skinner. Drop skinning and take up Herbalism. Four days ago: Get bored with Herbalism. Drop it and pick up skinning again. Yesterday: Start leveling skinning again. Get it back up to 37/75 before my guild decides to run UBRS. I go along. Last night: We kill The Beast, and Finkle's Skinner drops. I roll needs. I have no idea what anyone else rolls, but I win the roll and finally get the Skinner. I havr to explain why I can't skin The Beast even though I just got the skinner.... Today: leveling skinning as fast as I can. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 16th, 2005
10:14 am	Ok, so it's been a month... DnD: Jack's back again! This time, though, he wasn't raised or ressed. He was Reincarnated! The gods were kind, however, and he was reincarnated as a half-elf. The net effect of this is positive, though. In a game mechanical sense, I lost nothing other than one extra skill point per level, and I gained sleep immunity, Elfsight, some skill bonuses, etc. In the game, he's a bit more popular with the ladies, and he's decided to carry on Adredayr's Elbereth campaign. We also killed a black dragon. WoW: On Suramar, I left CTI for Mystic Order. On Wildhammer, I stopped playing, since of the four active people, one changed guilds and one rerolled on Frostwolf. This left two of us left. After talking it over, we also rerolled on Frostwolf. This past weekend on Wildhammer, though, I finally tamed Brokentooth (fastest beast attack speed in teh game), and finally got my mount. Yeah, now I'm starting over. Again. On Sundays, at least, I'll be on Suramar. And before you ask, yes. I'm still enjoying the game, even with the rerolls and guild changes. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 17th, 2005
10:59 am	whoa.... I knew I was a little behind in getting this updated, but... wow. July 11 was my last post? Where to start... World of Warcraft: A lot's happened that's major, but to sum it up: The guild I was in, Variable Starlight, merged with Cow Tippers Inc. and had a wonderful, successful month. Then a lot of Stuff(tm) happened, and as a result, key members of the guild (including all the officers and the guildmaster) have left for other guilds, switched to playing Horde on Suramar, or have rerolled on other servers entirely. The guild is, while not dead, it's all but defunct. I've rerolled on the PVP server Wildhammer as a Night Elf Hunter. I'm enjoying it. DnD: Whew! A lot's happened. I've gone through a period of time in which my teleportation has earned me a reputation of innacuracy. I once spent two game-days teleporting around tryign to return to the party. Another time, I ended up in the Tower of Wayreth and they kindly "dropped me off" a couple hours walk from my destination. Our little group's been growing in ability, reputation and power. We've run into NPCs from many, many levels ago who have formed their own adventuring parties after meeting us and seeing the good we've been doing. It's been pretty awesome. We're currently tracking down the third of the 5 rings known as the Children of Paladine. It's held by a black dragon, and we've been constantly distracted from this goal by several problems, but we're nearly there now. Except that I've died again.[1] That's 3. Whee! I've died more often than some rednecks have teeth! I'm coming back, though. Don't worry. :) I've also started into a game on opposite Saturdays from the Dragonlance game. This one is a Weapons of Legacy based game that Kelso's running. We've had one game so far, and it seemed to go pretty well. It'll take a bit to get into the game, though. Some of the players met for the first time a thtat first game, so there's the "new person" awkwardness to get around, and one of the players is pretty new to the 3.5 system and isn't used to our general way of dealing with characters. It'll all work out, I think. That's about it so far. Sorry that I've neglected this journal so long. [1] One of the characters in our group was being run by someone other than their usual player (work schedules, etc.), and the person playing did a few things that were a bit... out of character. As a result, some reaction to actions were done poorly, and one thing led to another and I died. Do I blame it on the person running the character? Not really. Do I think I'd have lived had the actual player been in charge of the character? Yes. *shrug* It happens. I'll get raised soon enough. (Comment on this)
Monday, July 11th, 2005
9:37 am	Weekend gaming update! DnD: Holy cow! I played DnD this weekend! Jack got his first outing as a War Mage, and boy, is he lovin' it. He needs a thing of Charisma, though. His charisma of 10 doesn't really help one of his new class powers too well. We fought trolls, though, of a couple different varieties. Dalamar's Lightening Lance is my friend. 2 lances, ranged touch, 13d6 each. pow. Ahh... it's good to be throwing dice again. WoW: Things are slowing down a little. I've not gotten any nifty items in a while, nor have I completed any kick-ass quests. I did, however, get two of the three gems needed for the key to UBRS yesterday, so that's good. One more, and I can get into UBRS any time I want. Cow Tippers, Inc. made a couple speed runs on Baron on Saturday night. First run finished up right at 50m. Second run finished at 40m. We found some very tasty shortcuts, second time throough. We've *heard* it can be done in 32m, but ... I'd like to see video of that. We were pretty balls-to-the-wall as it was. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 27th, 2005
9:05 am	weekend gaming update! DnD: Hmmm... Where to start. First off, I didn't play. Yes, it was a shceduled weekend. However, there was scheduling weirdness that resulted in Jack being sent to Austin to be played by... someone. I've not heard back anything about the session. I hope it went well. It was his first session as an honest-to-goodness War Mage. WoW: Finally finished the two Araj Quests (did them both at once) with a little help from some friends. During my normal instance-whoring, I was outrolled on two needed pieces of my class set, and a third piece dropped before I joined the raid. Bleh, my luck this weekend was horrible. Spent two and a half hours yesterday farming for a Big Iron fishing pole. Never did find one. A friend sent me his, since he doesn't fish any more. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 20th, 2005
9:03 am	Weekend update (on time, even)! DnD: Off week. Nothing to see here, move along. WoW: No idea where to begin. Went to Scholo and got my devout headpiece. Went to strat-scarlet in a 10-man and had in excess of 47 green or better loot drops. I won 3 of them. -.- Went to UBRS where nothing I wanted dropped (devout chest, devout mantle, Finkle's Skinner....), but I still got a really nice cape out of the deal. :) The coolest thing about that run was that it was a guild run by a larger guild, but they included me since they needed a priest. That's not the cool part. The cool part is that they took the time to kill Father Flame. Why's that cool? Because Father Flame drops the Devout Mantle. He's the only way to get it. Killing him is also in one of the most annoying parts of UBRS where it's extremely easy to wipe the whole group. That they would take the time to do this part for a non-guild member was really very cool of them. I only have one more thing to finish to complete my Onyxia Key. Which I could have possibly done in UBRS, but I didn't get that part until afterward, so... Back I go! As if I didn't have plenty of other reasons to go. It's been a bit more than four months, and I'm still enjoying the heck out of World of Warcraft. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 14th, 2005
4:28 pm	Short weekend update: DnD: Finally got to play again. Stood in for ch00k in Cale's high Adventure on Friday night. He saved the day in one part, had fun. Saturday was Dragonlance, and it rocked the llama. Much, much fun. WoW: Finished up BRD on Thursday (three runs back to back) and started the Onyxia portion. Saturday was a Molten Core run in a pickup group. Compared to other pickup groups, we were extremely successful. Never made it to a boss, but hey. We all learned. Spent the rest of the gaming weekend ensconced in WoW having far too much fun with people. Did a speed run on Strat-baron last night. 56m. We can do better. Have been working on 5-manning Scarlet-Strat to kill the archivist for a quest. Quests can only be done in 5-man groups. it's tough, but we get further every time we go in. It's only a matter of time. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, June 6th, 2005
11:30 am	Weekend gaming update! DnD: Off week, no update. WoW: Friday night, I realized just how many friends I have on the Suramar server. A friend asked if I wanted to help with "Order Must be Restored," but he didn't realize it was a rather difficult raid quest. We figured we'd need about 15 people. During the course of assembling these 15 people, I found out that you need 20, really. 15 had pushed the limits of my networking already. So I kicked into high gear contacting people I'd partied with previously and such and ended up assembling a 36 person raid in under half an hour. We owned that quest. I had no idea I could pull together that many people that quickly. It really made me happy. The last group of people I pulled in, however, came in as a group (9 people) on the condition that I join them to raid Stratholme. They needed a priest, and that's what I am. So after Nathanos Blightcaller was down, I joined them in a Strat run. We decided to run for time. 55 minutes later, all the named mobs were down, and Rivendare was dead. I also ninja-looted myself by accidentally passing on Devout Sandals and not realizing my mistake until after they'd been disenchanted. Oopsy. We ran the raid again. 50 minutes. All named dead. Rivendare down. Devout didn't drop that time, though. Ah well. First run, no deaths. Second run, three deaths because the warlock and mage decided to try area of effect spells for faster kills. It worked, but they did die. Too much damage too fast. They were out damaging my heals. 4-man run on Bael'Gar last night. Priest, druid, mage, paladin. We succeeded. No biggie, it was a nice, short run. Going back into BRD tonight to do Attunement, Emperor, etc. fun stuff. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 2nd, 2005
9:01 am	I hit lvl 60 on Tuesday night. Time to work on an alt. (or return to the sunlight). (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 31st, 2005
9:33 am	The weekend gaming update on time! DnD: Canceled due to character sheet issues. Next meeting in two weeks in Austin, I think. A friend if trying to get a local game together using an alternate set of rules, so I've agreed to take part in that. We'll see how that goes. Truth be told, I've been extremely apathetic about pen and paper gaming in general recently. I think it's tied in more with my over-all anti-social tendencies than anything else. WoW: Lvl 59 currently. I should hit 60 sometime this week. Yesterday, I decided to grind for XP a while in Eastern Plaguelands, but when I landed, I immediately noticed a raid forming to kill Nathanos Blightcaller. I had the quest to kill him (lvl 6 elite quest), so I asked to join the raid. Turns out it was a fairly big raid. About 37 people. It took a total of perhaps a minute to kill Nathanos once everything got started. Only a few deaths on our part (including myself), but I completed the quest. I'm glad, because the first part of the quest description includes the words "raise an army." We had an army, that's for sure. I got a good chunk of XP and a super spiffy wand out of the deal. Upon turning in the quest, I got invited to Lower Blackrock Spire (LBRS). Having never been there before, I agreed to go. About three hours later, however, I had to go to a meeting here I the real world, and had to leave the raid. I felt really bad about that. I was the raid's primary healer, supplemented with a druid a few paladins. The main tank had left earlier in the raid due to an emergency, and one of the pallies had taken over that role. Then I had to leave right before the last boss. Purely bad timing. I don't know if they succeeded in killing him or not. I hope they did. After the meeting, I went home and got back online. Was immediately invited back to LBRS by the druid from the earlier run. There were a few others from earlier in this one as well. I forgot to ask how the other one ended, but I suppose it went well, since they didn't harbor a grudge against me for leaving. :) This time, I was able to last through the entire run with the group. I didn't get any spiffy drops either run, but I'm starting to learn my way around, so that's good. The raid ended as people were coming over to watch movies, so I logged off. Got back online after the movie for a bit, and agreed to help a friend with a quest he needed. I needed it too anyway. Problem is, the quest is bugged and we couldn't complete it. We're going to try again tonight. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 23rd, 2005
9:09 am	Yep, it's that time again. DnD: Off week. No DnD played. The Sunday campaign is on indefinite hiatus. I'll stop referring to it unless things change. Other games: I actually played something besides DnD and WoW this week. Two things, in fact. The first was a racing board game called Mississippi Queens. Very, very fun. Basically, you're the captain of a paddle-wheeler that must race down the river, pick up passengers, and then dock safely. Very, very fun. The second was called Bang. It was a card game. A variant on the "who's the enemy in the group" type games. It was interesting, but not as fun as Mississippi Queen. It did, however, provide some great laughs. I wold like to play it again sometime when I'm not feeling as ass-like as I did Sat. night. WoW: Started out the weekend at lvl 54, which I'd been at for several days. Saturday, I concentrated on questing up in Felwood and Wintersping. Caedani, our lvl 60 paladin in the guild, helped me out with a few quests that were above my level. That's the thing about playing a priest: I'm squishy and not generally meant for combat. By the time I logged off on Sat. night for bed, I'd hit lvl 56. I also made my Mooncloth Robe and equipped it. I must say, it looks really good on my character. Yesterday was more general questing, a little grinding, and late in the evening, Grehan (the other lvl 60 in the guild, a mage) showed me through the various quest chains in Burning Steppes. He didn't actually "drag me through" since the quests were very close to my level. He just has a much, much higher damage dealing capability than I do. When I logged off for the night, I was lvl 57 and had completed most, if not all, of the non-dungeon quests in that area. One thing I'm finding about this game that I absolutely love, is that reputation means a lot. If you're a good player, people will want to play with you. If not, then you'll not enjoy the game at all. People who play the game mercilessly and at the expense of other players end up black-listed and unable to access the end-game content which *requires* cooperation on a massive scale. If you play fair, are polite and helpful, then You'll be asked to take part. I'm looking forward to my last three levels. Not only have I worked hard to be a fair player and make friendships outside of our little guild, but I'm also playing a priest. Specifically a holy-spec priest. This makes my character very highly in demand in the endgame. There are three types of priest: Discipline, Holy, and Shadow. Typically, priests are split along two lines. They are either Shadow with a few points in Discipline or Holy, or they are Holy with a few points in Shadow and a couple in Discipline. My build puts the majority of my talent points in Holy, and almost as much into Discipline. I have no points in Shadow at all. The result is that I have a larger mana pool, increased holy damage and healing, and greater mana efficiency. However, I can not fight other players one on one, nor can I take NPC mobs that are more than three levels above me if they are non-elite. If they are elite, they need to be at least 6 levels below me for me to take them reliably. The Shadow path is where all the damage dealing is for a priest. But you know what? I don't mind. I'm having fun and making friends. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 18th, 2005
2:21 pm	The weekend gaming update - midweek Well, at least I didn't completely skip this time. Now for the updates. DnD: DnD happened this weekend in Austin! Unfortunately, I was unable to make it for reasons of illness. My character made it, however. I have it on authority that he single-handedly killed three baddies in one fireball blast and made good use of the Fly, Mass spell. Beyond that, he's alive, and that's all I know. Sorry it's such a skimpy report. WCIII: I actually haven't had a chance to play since the initial excursion. No update here. WoW: Lvl 54. Found Moonglade. Got Tailoring and Cooking to lvl 300 (Thanks, Grehan/Taybel/Duran). Working on my fishing. I got Thunderbrew's Bootflask. Firebreathing fun. :) I've begun working on a guild webpage. Nothing up yet, but it's getting there. When there's content, I'll let you know. As usual, thanks to Jeff for hosting. Caedani and Grehan, the two highest-level members of the guild hit 60 yesterday. First 60s in the guild. That's an important step, I think. I hope to be the third 60 in the guild, but there are three others nipping at my heels. I'm sure more stuff's going on, but I can't think of anything currently. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, May 9th, 2005
11:08 am	I skipped a week? It seems that I forgot to update last week. Well, here's an update: DnD: No DnD last weekend or the weekend before. DL was canceled for reasons I can no longer remember. The Sunday campaign has been thrown into the murky realm of scheduling questions. Dragonlance is scheduled to go off this weekend with another 8am game on Saturday, so I'll have to get to Austin on Friday night. There's a birthday party in Austin that night that several of the group are going to, but at this time (and it may change between now and then) I'm quite highly inclined to send card/gift with others and come back to CS. I like the people the party is for, I'm just not in an overly social mood recently. We'll see how it shakes out. On a completely different note, there has been discussion in another journal about house rules for DnD and such. While the rules being discussed are innovative and such, I don't honestly see myself being happy playing in a campaign with them. They cover things things from slowing level advancement (which can be a problem on the GM's side, but will take away some enjoyment from the players, and honestly, this is the rule I would have the *least* problem with playing with... I wouldn't mind the slower progression if game play compensated to hold my interest), to making significant changes to the spell-casting classes. Some things make logical sense (sorcerers and their innate magic affinity), but others not so much (restricting wizards to item creation feats and no metamagic feats). Mind you, this is my own personal opinion, and I'm not wearing the GM hat. I just think that both sorcerer's and wizards should have access to both metamagic and creation feats. The alternate rules being discussed for turning undead simply confuse me. Honestly, I'd rather have the all-or-nothing approach given in the standard rules than either suggestion mentioned. As I said though, I'm not wearing the GM hat and I can always bow out of campaigns implementing these rules. I'm just a big fan of using the rules given in the actual game and only using house rules when there is an obvious problem or when all of the players in the game agree that something needs to be changed. Giving Sorcerers the Eschew Materials feat for free, for example, is a good one because it makes sense. Not letting a wizard have the Empower Magic feat does not make sense to me. I can go into details if you want, but not right now. Bleh. WoW: I have absolutely no idea what I did with World of Warcraft last weekend. I probably leveled or something, or had a fun grouping experience. No idea anymore. This weekend, however, I started the weekend with the goal of hitting lvl 50. I had 10% left in lvl 48 at the start. Last night I hit lvl 51. I hit lvl 50 on Saturday. Also on Saturday, I managed to make between 30 and 35 gold. Of course, I didn't end the day with 30 gold. I ended with just over 14g. See, 7g was sent to a guild mate in repayment of a loan. 14g was spent on learning my new spells for lvl 50. Another couple gold was spent respecing my character (1g to respec, and then I had to repurchase a spell tree because of it). I have no idea how I ended up with so much money through the course of about 10 hours of playtime. Last night was fun, though. Got to party with the two guild members higher level than me to do some rather fun quests. Completed a couple quests I had, nearly completed another (need to kill one more thing for it), and killed a demonlord. Or banelord. Or whatever it's called. It was a lvl 59 named elite mob. I must say that it went down like a little bitch. To borrow a phrase from Juan. Seriously, though, it lasted less than 20 seconds after we started our attack. My initial shielding of the other party members (lasts 30 seconds or 670-ish damage, whichever comes first) never failed. Well, it didn't fail on the lvl 54 paladin. It fell on the lvl 58 mage, though, but I was able to quickly re-shield and heal him. He's the only one who took damage, and he never fell below 40% of health. All in all, a good kill. However, the mob dropped grey vendor trash. Oh well. We did an escort quest in Felwood that was really, really fun. It was long, though. About 25 minutes start to finish. We were never in any serious danger, though. It was a lvl 56 quest, but we handled things quite easily. I'm really enjoying this game a lot. WCIII: A new entry into the gaming updates! I picked up the Warcraft III Battlechest at Best Buy yesterday. I've never played the game (or any of the series, actually), and I'd like to get more background and history on WoW from it. Plus, I've heard nothing but good things. Additionally, it will run on my iBook with no problems. It came with the Frozen Throne expansion, but I haven't installed that yet. I think I should play through the default game first maybe? Anyway, I haven't started the game yet, being preoccupied last night with Felwood stuff. I'l let you know how it goes. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 26th, 2005
1:56 pm	Weekend gaming update Time for the regular Weekend Gaming Update! DnD: it's an off week for Dragonlance, and AggieCon killed the Sunday game, so it was DnD Free. Sorry guys. WoW: Busy week in World of Warcraft. Started working on a couple alts. Onomatopoeia, a gnome rogue seeking exalted status with the night elves, and Mothoc, a human mage because damn, I miss playing a mage. Ono's going along pretty well. Finally got off the stump (Teldrassil) last night. Lvl 15 currently. Saturday afternoon, Grehan (Trip's lvl 55-ish mage) drug Mothoc (lvl 14 at the time) through the Van Cleef instance. That isntance is geared toward lvl 18-25 parties of 5. Two mages should not be in there alone. However, Grehan does so much damage so fast, that I was working hard just to keep the bodies looted and keep him in sight. Only took about an hour and a half. Good fun. Peanutbutter spent last night finishing up a couple quest chains. The most amusing one of which was a quest entitled Attack on the Tower. it's technically a lvl 41 elite quest, which means a rounded party of 5 lvl 41 characters. I was in a party of three. Peanutbutter (lvl45), Honsus (lvl 44 paladin and a guildie) and Hoturi (lvl 41 pally and someone we picked up along the way). The thing you have to remember is that pallies are *very* hard to kill. Thank God. This quest entails fighting your way to a tower (no problem) and then finding three items in the tower. However, each time you pick up one of the three items, the tower spawns between 4 and 7 elite ogres of level 38 to 42. We didn't know this ahead of time. Here's how each of the three battles went: One of us opens the box to get the item,and ogres spawn. Honsus attacks an ogre and starts gettign beat on. Hoturi attacks the same ogre, but doesn't really get beat on. I cast a shield on Honsus, and ALL THE OTHER OGRES ATTACK ME. I shield myself and start running laps around the tower watching both my shield duration and health and Honsus's shield duration and health. When Honsus takes damage, I reshield and cast regrowth. Same with myself. Eventually, the two pallies bring down the ogre, then grab an ogre from the conga line I'm leading around the tower. Repeat this tactic until the end of the fight. Once all the ogres are dead, I drink to restore my mana, then theother two get the item from the box (we each need one, and fortunately only the first opening spawns the ogres). Repeat the above paragraph for each of the three boxes. None of us died at all in this madness, and to be honest, it was quite fun. Also, preliminary reports are coming in that the Dark Side (WoW) is attracting more followers (dicemonkey). (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 19th, 2005
12:33 pm	Yep, time for the weekend gaming update. DnD: Dragonlance in Austin this past weekend. It was Breakfast And DnD sicne we were awake at 7:30am and playing at 8am. It was a good session, I think. We're trying to infiltrate a... How to describe it. A stronghold of walrus people. But to get to them, we have to go underwater for an extended amount of time in a swiftly rushing river. Fairly certain we can do it, but we're trying to play cautious, and I don't think we'll be able to play cautious on this one. I think it's going to end up jumping in the river with water breathing, get to the next landing, get out, and pray that we aren't immediately in a fight. But that's next time we play. This time we dealt with some ethereal undead which caused massive charisma damage. With a weakness of theirs, bless weapon, and bless combined, the knight was doing some serious damage to them. We also performed a well-executed ambush on some walrus men guarding the entrance to the cave we needed to get to. Beautifully done. The survivors were how we got the info we needed, thanks to some well-rolled diplomacy checks. The biggest complaint from the day is that our rogue is a hell of a rogue. 30+ easily on finding traps and such. In fact, she found two nasty, nasty traps for us during the session. However, she was previously playing a super-effective combat gumby prior to that mountain troll incident. As a result, she was quite upset for most of the session because she couldn't hit the walrus men most of the time due to their heavy armor and such. She seems to not be adjusting to a non-damage dealing class too well. I really hope that changes, so that she can enjoy the non-heavy-RP sessions as much as she seemed to be enjoying our heavy-RP sessions from the last few meetings. We'll see how it goes. Our next session on the 30th is canceled for several reasons, and May looks questionable due to scheduling conflicts everywhere. The Sunday Game was canceled again. By me this time. Dan and Liz had a fencing tournament that Kelso, Heather and Myself didn't know about previously, so rather than out 3:30pm start time, it had to get pushed to 5 with a conclusion time of around 9. That was too late for other plans I'd made, so we skipped this week too. Hopefully next week will be clear for our regular 3:30 time. Sandstorm has some *really* nice abjuration spells, by the way. Antifire Sphere and Banish Water, for example. it's really a nice expansion. Makes me want to get Frostburn, to be honest. (actually, I need that and races of stone...) WoW: No major developments. I take that back. I finally got to do Scarlet Monastery this weekend with Emily, Ché, Little Travis (Evil Gnome), and Jay. At first things were pretty rough since, while we'd each partied with one or two of the others at a time before, we'd never partied as a full five-person party before. After the first half hour or forty-five minutes, though, we clicked, and things got a *lot* easier. We hit a pattern, found our stride, and started cruising through the monastery. Finished up the quest I had for it, and I think I'd like to go back several more times on loot runs, since there is some sweet, sweet gear to be dropped there. Speaking of gear, there was some controversy about the final item that dropped while we were there. I think ti's been gotten over now. Everyone knows why things were done and said as they were, and I think things are cool. However, of the items that did drop that I rolled on and won, nothing was a real improvement over the gear I already had. Basically just a shuffling of bump numbers. (+7, +7, +7 instead of +10, +1, +10 for example on the same three stats). For some reason, I ended up in a poor mood as a result. Em then, out of the blue, gave me a kick-ass staff. Wow. double the dps of the staff I was using, a huge Spirit bump, and a bonus to nature damage. Of course, I don't actually *deal* Nature damage, but still. Great staff for my level (until I can get the staff out of the monastery). Definitely made my night. Paid back the last of my debts that I'd incurred for my mount. Well, the monetary ones. I still owe items for one person, but I'm working on it. Also starting to quest/farm in areas with higher money drops, so the gold is slowly accumulating. Partied up with Emily on Sunday night to take care of a few STV quests she and I had. Ended up partying with a dwarf named Squeedleboch. I'd partied with him before. He's a good warrior (one of the best I've partied with) who knows good party tactics. He, Em and I made quite short work of the passel of Bloodsail Buccaneers we were hunting as well as the other quest we worked on concerning a club foot, spyglass and... something else I can't remember. Had some issues with one mob whose aggro radius was .... insane. But we got around him pretty well after the second or third time. All in all, it was done. Spent most of yesterday playing my night-elf-wannabe gnome rogue (ported him into Darnassus at lvl 1 and am only doing NE quests with him in an attempt to get him exalted with the elves.) That's the weekly weekend gaming update! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, April 11th, 2005
8:51 am	Time again for your weekly gaming update from me. Hold on to your butts, it's a wild one and, once again, focuses mainly on WoW. DnD: It was an off-week for the Dragonlance game, so that meant it was time to play the Sunday Campaign. Except that our DM, kelso, got a little behind on some homework and so took the time to study. It worked out, though. I did laundry instead. Dirt and grime failed their saving roll versus warm soapy water. The Giant Dryer +3 got my clothes properly dry, too. WoW: Whoo-boy. Where to start. Uldaman's a good place to start. Some of the higher-levels in our guild decided to venture into Uldaman on Saturday night. 7pm. it got pushed to 8pm for our start, but that's cool. I had 5 quests in Uldaman I needed to finish. During the course, I technically finished one, but picked up another since it's a quest chain. So I still have five quests. Not really. I have six. However, one of those quests is given by a guy in Badlands, to get stuff out of Uldaman, in Badlands. In the quest log.... it's listed as Thousand Needles. WTF? Over all, I was *very* frustrated and pissed off by that Uldaman trip. I didn't complete any quests or chains while there. I got only one green or better item, and it was some mail shoulders that no one could use, so it was free rolling. I won. I did have the chance to get some *very* nice blue robes off a drop, but the thing is, we had two mages, a priest, a warlock and a paladin in the party. That's a lot of people rolling on cloth. the lowest level person in our party, one of the mages, won the robes. She can use them in 6 levels. I had 20% of a level left before I could use them. Of course they were bind on pick up. This same mage won damned near all of the cloth rolls that trip. I had a chance to roll on a nice belt, but the other mage, our guild master, needed it. He helped me out getting my mount, and I owed him, so I passed on the roll. Combine the utter dearth of items and the lack of quest accomplishment with the fact that our damage dealer kept dieing (tended to take damage faster than I could heal it), two total party kills, and the end boss glitching in such a way that we *couldn't* finish the instance.... I really, really felt that the five hours we'd spent in there were totally and completely wasted for me. The main reason we went in in the first place this time was to help the lower level mage get Artisan Enchanting, since the person you have to get it from is about halfway through the dungeon. So she got that, and a crap ton of items. Our higher level mage got a new belt, got his alt some more enchanting recipes (kindda, I think he wasn't able to make something... not sure), the paladin got a new belt, the warlock mines a bunch of stuff... Not really sure if he got anything spiffy from the trip. I got five hours of headache and frustration with only about 3 gold worth of grey items to show for it. At least it helped me learn one more spell from lvl 40 that I haven't had the gold to learn yet. Whee. On a happier note, I started a mage alt. I have a lvl19 mage on Lightbringer, and it's the only character I've enjoyed more than my priest. SO I'm recreating him. Unfortunately, this means I have to go through the Westfall series of quests *again*. bleh. I'm really getting tired of Westfall. Ah well. The alt's up to lvl 12 currently and doing the Westfall chains now. Peanutbutter (my primary) is up to lvl 42 and my current leveling plan is to grind in the Swamp of Sorrow for a while. 200+ xp per kill is good leveling at his level. In rest state I can get over 500xp per kill. I can generally get two or three kills in on-level before needing to let my mana regen, as well. Skinning's up to 283 now, too. I can still level on the things in SoS. And that's my weekend in gaming. Next weekend is DnD in Austin. I need to go up on Friday this week, since we're playing quite early on Saturday due to my wanting to be back in BCS at a decent hour for various activites (a friend is having a birthday dinner at Olive Garden I'd like to make). Sunday that same friend and I are gonna go have birthday drinks. Not sure where yet. After all, Sunday's my birthday and her's is the next day. I suspect that much of my birthday will be spent playing video games when not drinking. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 3rd, 2005
4:48 pm	I'm pretty ill, so this will be brief. DnD: Making progress on finding the remaining Children of Paladine. We're back on track. Jack leveled to 11 (6 level Wizard, 1 level fighter, 4 level Wizard of the White Robes). WoW: Hit 40. Got my mount (spotted frost saber). Now back to leveling with less grinding. Thanks to all of those who helped. Now I'm going back to bed. (3 Comments |Comment on this)