So after having fun in Albion and seeing what's changed there, we decided to check out Hibernia, our home away from home. Because we had characters on Percival, we picked that server. I was a little "grumbly" that for some reason even though I deleted "Velea" I couldn't recreate with a character named "Velea" right away, but I guess the name doesn't clear right away.

What has been the best part of starting over is that the first 20 levels go FAST! (And no, I don't mean because we used the /level command.) We started again just looking for quests in and around Tir na Nog. Not only did these quests provide us armor and weapons, by the time we were "done" both our characters were around level 14. And we'd only spent about 12 hours playing over the couple of days. (Again, keep in mind that some of this time was spent just relearning our way around the world and exploring some, so other's might be able to move faster.)

So having pretty well exhausted our possibilities in Classic Hibernia, we descided to move on to the Catacombs. Minor mistake, unfortunately. The Veil Rift is great if you want stories and enjoy questing for storyline because there are TONS of quests, but for us the experience we got wasn't worth the time spent. Many of the quests required killing grey mobs, spawns that had to be camped, and completing the quests became more of a chore than it would have been if we'd just going to do kill tasks in SI if we were after coin and experience. None of these quests have items as rewards either, so we were finding that we were quickly outgrowing the armor and weapons we had, so needed to do something different. With a few gold pieces in hand, we headed to make some purchases and then to SI to run tasks.

Kill tasks have changed since we last played too. When we played last we you'd have to find the right guard for your character and your level. Now it seems that all guards will give you tasks, and you can pick one guard to do tasks without having to change guard when you level. Kill tasks give you a huge bonus to your experience when you finish one. The guards give you a task to kill something that cons anywhere from green to yellow to you and tell you what general direction to find the mob in. You might not always be able to FIND a mob that cons between green and yellow (sometimes all you can find easily is a grey con, and rarely an orange con), but they do exist. It isn't the experience from the kill which really counts, though, it is completing the task without dying. Thanks to kill tasks, we finished leveling to 19 before our long weekend was out.

At this point we decided to see if there was anyone in the first battlegrounds. Midguard was in control of the center keep, and not all that well guarded by NPC's. We'd hoped that by attacking some of the NPC's and killing them, a notice that the center keep in this first battlegrounds was under attack and we'd get some defenders, but apparently that doesn't happen. If we were really committed, and wanted to spend a lot of time, we might have even been able to take the center keep with just the two of us, but as there were no rewards (no experience and no RP's) for fighting NPC's, we left the battlegrounds for bigger and better challenges.

Unfortunately kill tasks stop at level 20, but we finished up and got our "ding 20" before the weekend was done. Personally I'm pretty happen that in one long weekend we were able to get 2 characters each up to level 20. Things slow down signifigantly now, unfortunately. Kill tasks no longer exist. There are no quests for level 20 exactly, though they kick in at 21 again. Those quests haven't given much experience in the past, however. We'll see if that's changed. There are certian mobs that drop items which you can turn in for extra experience to some NPC's, but last time we tried these "collection quests", the drops were so rare that they didn't make much difference. And, of course, the next issue will be finding level appropriate equipment for our characters. Neither of us wants to craft this time around, and we don't know anyone on Percival to buy crafted gear from, so it might get interesting. I'll let you know.

So it has been a couple years since I played DAoC. Having gotten a character to level 50 on Gaheris, and life changes, took me away from the game. News of massive changes over the last couple years and the latest expansion (Labyrinth of the Minotaur) brought me back. More on the Minotaur later.

So the first descision upon return was what to play. Having had the most experience in Albion, my husband and I first decided to go back to there. I was amazed to say the least at the new content. The first thing that struck me was the tutorial. I don't even REMEMBER a real tutorial when we played before. And while there's a lot of things missing from it (we had to ask someone how the heck you "use" an item when we had to do that in a quest), it is a good start. Since I'm not sure when they added the tutorial, I'm going to hope it is just a recent addition that is still being worked on.

When we got in to the actual gameworld, we discovered that everyone starts in the same area now, and of course, there is a "newbie guild" (I think this was added just before we left, but never had a new character in it). We started in Cotswold, and while it looked vaguely familiar, the architects have definately been busy rebuilding and redesigning the towns. There has also been a population explosion in Cotswold, with many new people willing to give quests.

One of the things that used to bug me about DAoC is that there just were not a lot of quests. Now you can easily level on quests alone, at least through level 10 I've been able to. I started with a cabalist, wanting something that would be both good solo or in a duo. The first four levels were WAY easier than I recall them being when I last started a character, requiring only a couple hours of play time to complete. The longest part of that time was spent trying to figure out how to do things that weren't in the tutorial. We had an awful time figuring out how to fill a bowl with water for one of the quests, for example. The "use" interface in the game is still highly counter-intuitive. Instead of having a "use" button when you right click on an item, you have to have the item picked up and type "use" into the chat window (the shortcut for "use" doesn't work). It wouldn't seem to hard to add buttons on the same window where you have the "info", "salvage", and "repair" buttons that say "use" and "equip" to make the UI a bit easier.

One of the best changes is the "quest indicator" that shows up on the map and under NPC's that have a quest for you. It makes it SO much easier to find something to do that is level appropriate. The quest indicator on the map can be turned on and off if you don't want to know, but personally I love this feature. A red dot also shows up when you have a quest to give you an idea of where to go to complete a quest. If you don't know a realm, this REALLY helps. And there are many new quests for every level. The new quest interface it great too. For many of the quests, a single window comes up which tells you the storyline of the quest (or at least a summary of it), you can see the reward ahead of time, and then decide if you want to take the quest. No more guessing what you will get from a quest, or if the reward is "worth it". And the new quests are most definately worth it, I think. One of the quests gave me a full set of level and class appropriate armor. Others give out jewelry, and accessories to fill in around the edges. And, of course, experience to level with. We also felt as though there was more coin in our pockets when we finished the quests than we'd had last time we leveled up new characters.

Now I have to confess, the reason why it took me years to get to level 50 with one character is that I flip flop... a LOT. So though we spent much of Thanksgiving Day playing in Albion and refamiliarizing ourselves with the game, by this morning we'd decided to try our luck with Hibernia, our 'second home'. More on our time there to follow...

It would be nice if we knew what the new expansion was all about, we were promised a peak at E3, was Mythic even at E3? Then it was every week in July, now next week in August! Whos fault is it? No one will take the blame, but the DAoC community grows restless!

We did however get a leak, there was a Minotaur option for race customizing on Pendragon (the test server) so .. one of the new races is Minotaur. We were under the impression that every realm was going to get the same class, something new for the new expansion. But the new class seems to be Mauler and uses Wraps, very similar to a Savage.

I will make an educated guess (basically I am more hoping this than guessing) and say that they decided to go with three new classes along with three new races and that is why the delay is taking so long. With Warhammer down the street they decided to send DAoC off with its last expansion, with a bang! Or so I hope, so dearly hope ... please don't tell me we waited this long for a MAULER!

Also some people are saying that EA has put in their two cents and that has created the delay in the expansion, which could also be true.

Either way we have a little tiny peak, or leak, and hopefully this week we get the rest of the info. Dang, almost rhymed that entire thing!

I figured I'd better give DAoC some equal opportunity blogging time. In this case I've been crafting with Foremond and finally got his alchemy to 903. Only 96 more points to go till LGM, yea!

My ranger Dualle is leveling and killing Xithiar to get body parts for his lower level characters. This would be in the range of level 38 to 44 which would just be right for my valewalker. I also got my Fools Bow to level 2 which gives me a 3% increase in bow speed which is nice to have. I guess I'll need to find armor with strength increases since my strength should be higher then it is currently is for his level.

There isn't really much more to say then I'm doing boring stuff to level the bad boy for frontier work, and raising money to do his crafting skills.

Last night was a trip! I logged in to get credit for trial 5.10, went on ML6 and 7 battlegroup steps. Well after three hours I finally had enough and logged after the last bg trial in ML7. That one broke my camels back as it took 45 minutes to complete. I could have been crafting there instead of just standing around. Thank goodness my computer can handle all of the graphics now, otherwise I would have lagged out with 50+ players all in one area.

I've one more step in ML6 to complete, I think 6 in ML7, another 3 in ML5, and 9 in ML4 to catch up to ML8 which is complete. That leaves ML9 and ML10 after that. We'll see what happens there.

Yes, it went live yesterday and all ready they have bugs, Muuuwahahaha! God, I'm so cynical lately. Some neat things were added, including new guild commands for guild managers.

A new battle ground was put into place. It's called Cathal and it is for level 45 - 49 players. I'm not sure how it's pronounced, either it's CAT HAL, or CATH AL. I kind of like it, but the no climbing steep hills feature really puts a damper on some aspects of it. Why? Because you hang up on an invisible wall when that happens. You've no idea how far it extends, or how low it goes down, It then becomes a pain in the ass to get around the damn thing. The terrain is very hilly and it seems the most action is in the middle of it which is a valley. Really makes no sense, but oh well.

They have made changes to the crafting features which is a blessing, but they aren't finished yet. It will probably be a few more patches before they finally revamp the whole thing, Well we shall see. On the side though is I've finally got to 880 in alchemy. I need just 19 more points for the big 900 grand master title. Thank the lord for that! Now to beg some pestles from my guild mates so I don't have to run around doing the quest.

There's lots more, but I got bored reading all the changes about a quarter of the way down. Especially after I had to keep repatching as the patcher kept going down. In the mean time have fun, and I'll be back later.

One of the artifacts that I wanted for Dualle was the Fools Bow! There were two problems I had with getting it though. The first dealt with being the correct level to receive credit to use it, and the second required you to hunt down the octopus that was carrying it.

The first was just a matter of getting to Lv46 so I could be able to use the bow. The second part is a bit harder, since the octopus that would give me the credit was one among a big pod of his brothers. Once I hit the appropriate level, which seemed forever, I then proceeded to tackle the second part solo. For those who have never done this even with a group, doing it by yourself is even harder.

Picture a skittish eight armed squishy bag of flesh. Now this guy can actually double hit you really hard, but will scatter really fast when the damage to it gets below 34%. On top of that he will call for help. This means a gank squad of up to three of his family members will start wacking on you. Now you do this for a few hours and you can imagine the frustration that sets in.

Well an alliance member who had promised to help out awhile back came to the rescue and picked off the correct one to give me the credit I needed. After expressing my gratitude I went to get the last scroll needed to make the book, which to my joy only cost me 50 gold. After finding the right sage I was awarded with my Fools Bow. After doing all that I decided to log for the night.

The next day I went to level the bow in a task dungeon. One thing I discovered was the base range on the bow was 1680 units compared to the bow that I was presently using, which had a range of 2500 units. The next thing was the loss of four points to my bow skill, since I wouldn't receive the five points the bow awarded till I earned the required level on the bow.

You can imagine how bad I was feeling, as the bow is a slow leveler as well. With the shorter range on this bow, I had to get closer to hit my prey, and this meant less damage as they could get to me faster before I had to revert to melee combat. On the whole, it was a very boring game period.

I'll grab that torch for Scorpgee ...

Name 3 good things about the game you're playing.
1.) This is a popular response, PvP. The best PvP in any current MMO, hands down. Balancing two sides can be tough, not a lot of games can pull it off, Mythic pulls off three fairly well.
2.) Compared to a lot of other games, DAoC has an almost painless re roll process. Most people who have played this game from the beginning, or relatively close to the beginning, know how hard of a grind 1-50 can be. We have all earned our first 50 the hard way. In DAoC once you earn that 50, and get yourself set up with good items and Master Levels, creating the next character becomes that much easier.
3.) Skill vs. Items. This does tie into PvP a little, but I feel it deserves its own mention. A lot of games will require you to get the top level, top items, and then you can always compete on some type of level with the best, DAoC doesn't do this. You can get 50 and all the best items, Master Levels, Champion Levels, etc .. but if you do not know how to play your character, and play it well, you will not be able to compete with the best. Skill wins.

What is your in-game pet peeve?
People who cry "Cheater!!" every time they die in The Frontiers to a more skilled player than themselves.

I dare you to tell me your most embarrassing moment!
I would say when I decided to go swimming in the ML5 dungeon in front of a 60 person raid. Luckily someone had their Egg of Youth equipped at the time.

What do you think could be improved?
RvR. I love the PvP, open field fights are a lot of fun, but the RvR aspect needs a major overhaul. The siege system is outdated, and especially the relic keeps. Hopefully we will see this in the next expansion.

Passing this torch along to Scorpgee now.