Uncle Matty’s Blog

Back to the Sanctum of the Scaleborn this week to carry on our hunt for the Qeynos Claymore.

After a while waiting for people to join, it settled down to five of us this week: Leader, Note, Ash, Florance and Nobbi. When we all turned up we grouped back at the entrance and made our way up the stairs.

This week, we were far more organised collecting the scrolls for those of us that still needed them, with Note helpfully knocking the idols off the ledge in order and us taking a more disciplined approach to clearing the mobs out of the way while people collecting the rewards. Good stuff, and very usual for the Squad: the second visit to a quest or a dungeon results in the same amount of work being done in (at least) half the time.

It was then back to talk to The Shade of Bylze to talk to him for a little longer about what he was doing there, and then off to retrieve various armour pieces from the silent sentinels.

This was soon done, with plenty of mobs in the room that spawned quickly, and so it was back to the Shade to finish off this part of the quest and on to find the Apparition Chest. This led us out of the main chamber into one of the side-halls, where the mobs were a lot tougher and so it was time for Leader to unmentor and show his worth a little more.

While examining the chest, Flo noticed another quest triggered by examing the floor, and this led us on an easy side-jaunt for some XP and, importantly for Leader, some really nice level-specific gear.

Then it was off to the Ready Room to kill Awakened Spiritualists, but despite heroic fights on the way in, we eventually got wiped due to an accidental multiple-pull by Leader, and by that time a few people had to head off for the night. Despite this, we were all really pleased with the progress we’d made, although we were noticing that it was getting tough for the lower-level members of the group, so next week it’s back to learning how to speak dragon…

After last week’s start, it was time to continue our hunt for the Qeynos Claymore. This time, we had a full house, with Leader, Ashborn, Wodi, Florance, Note and Nobbi all on.

We started by playing catch-up on Burglars Afoot to all of us to get to the same point where we had gathered loot from the three corpses around the Tangle. Then, it was on to answer the questions in the card puzzle (I have to hold my hand up here and admit I cheated with spoilers…), and to make our way to the plank on the Breeding Grounds island.

It was an impressively-treacherous plank, to be sure, and to add insult to injury when I was right at the end inspect the note, Drippy appeared and knocked me right off the island with his ‘nasty knockback spell.’ Thankfully, I had enough time to scoot back to the island before the fifteen minute timer expired, and managed to spawn him again, kill him (staying safely island-ward of him this time…) and bing the quest update.

We then all headed over the valley to the chest to complete the quest. Job done.

There then followed what seemed like an inordinate amount of time with us all speaking in Druzaic to warn Wodi that he didn’t know the language… but he didn’t pick up on it so we entered in to the Sanctum of the Scaleborn to get the next part of the quest (which, of course, required him to speak the lingo…). The rest of the session was then all about the scrolls, with plenty of disorganised fighting and grabbing as you’d expect with the SDS; and - to be fair - the odd amount of good work and co-operation (again, as you’d expect). We ended the night with two or three of us scrolled-up, and the others needing them all…

…roll on next Monday!

Last Monday it was time for us to start the Qeynos Claymore timeline - one of the four major quest arcs as listed on EQ2i. We were two men down that evening, but Leader, Nobbi, Note and Wodi turned up to kick this off.

First it was off the North Qeynos to meet up with Highkeep to get the quest starter and uncover some of the lore surrounding the quest.

This was going very well until Nobbi belled in to NQ and promptly went AFK for ages. It got so bad that at one point we all trampled over to the zone-in point to stare him out good-and-proper. With plenty of dicking around taking showers underneath the small waterfall he eventually turned up and we got to work.

This was my first ever visit to The Overrealm (bar zoning in when Kingdom of Sky was first released with Humphrey, but at the time he was too low a level to do anything there). Oh. My. God. What an amazingly pretty zone.

I was particularly impressed with leaping over the waterfall to land in the Hidden Refuge pond…

…and more beautifully, the cool cloud transportation mechanism, which are like tricked-out griffons. Good stuff.

Back to matters at hand, though, and we soon picked up The Burglars Afoot quest which had us scrabbling around a couple of treehouses, the second of which we got royally owned on a couple of times, quite possibly due to me rushing in and unleashing a non-encounter AoE each time (I didn’t tell the others about that at the time, though…); and then on to the Temple of the Wurmking to kill the Herald of Dar (one time each!) and then fighting the drake mob at the top of the pyramid. (I love the fact that you have to go through each successive level of drakes before he wakes up).

After that we started on the run to gather loot from the three corpses dotted around the islands. Much to my delight this involved a lot more cloud-travelling; and less to my delight also involved a fair amount of waiting for the loot to respawn…

All-in-all, a really great session, and I’m looking forward to delving deeper into this quest in the coming weeks…

We briefly visited The Silent City last week, and - although I didn’t personally enjoy it that much - we decided to give it another crack tonight. As it happened, a quick look on EQ2i before I logged in revealed that there were a couple of quests there which we’d all benefit from later on during The Peacock Club, so I was instantly a lot more interested this time around.

Florence couldn’t make it this evening, and Wodi didn’t turn up, but Note had found a quest near the entrance, so Leader, Jez, Nobbi and Note had fun quickly running between the switch…

…and the chest it opened.

If only Nobbi had actually managed to get the chest to open, but after several attempts it still wasn’t happening for him (too low a level at 55?).

Nevertheless, we pressed on and killed the Enigma of Ice very quickly to allow us to climb the fire wall; and then farmed placeholders for what seemed like ages before we finally got lucky the Enigma of Fire popped. It was, naturally, easily dispatched by our elite fighting force, and we were able to then climb the ice wall, unlocking the last part of the zone.

Best thing about this were the hilarious recoil sentinals, which had a lol-worthy knockback if you got close to them, which had us all bouncing around upstairs, nearly bouncing off the ledge on a couple of occassions (and, sometimes, right off it). At the end of the zone were a couple of Epic x2 level 59 mobs, so we called it a night at that point and officially declared the zone ‘done’ (for the time being…).

I found out about Roster Master the other day, so thought I’d install it on this site. Installation was painless, and it provides a nice way for the guildies to look at the guild stats at work as this site isn’t net-nannied unlike the official SOE one.

It’s available here (also accessible via the link on the home page).

The time has come for the Shattered Death Squad to take on the four major quest arcs of the high-end content of EQ II, and we started off tonight with the start of the Prismatic Weapon Timeline. To start with we all needed to speak the magical language of Druzaic, so the four of us that were on zoomed around Norrath seeking out magical shrines in the Thundering Steppes…

…the Enchanted Lands…

…Rivervale… 

…and Lavastorm. 

Except, of course, us being us, it wasn’t as straight-forward as that, with plenty of jumping around picking up some characters and waiting for others; calling the DPS back to help us down mobs that were grey to him; and generally dicking around. And the end of it, though, the four of us (Squadleader, Jexrax, Nobbi and Note) got all the shrines that we needed, and therefore it was off further into Lavastorm (the more dangerous way, I may add), to track down Sebir the Historian and enter the Maiden’s Gulch to face a couple of Epic x2 ^^^ dragons…

 Needless to say, we died, but at the same time we surprised ourselves at how long we actually managed to last… So with a full group and a couple of levels (or three), we’ll head back…

The initial installation of WordPress was exceptionally painless - I have to admit I was very, very impressed. But on writing my first post I had problems uploading images. These two posts helped me out no end:

• http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/wordpress-25-image-upload-error-wordpress-fix/
• http://forums.asmallorange.com/lofiversion/index.php/t5987.html

Basically, I had to:

• Update .htaccess with the following:

<IfModule mod_security.c>

<Files async-upload.php>

SecFilterEngine Off

SecFilterScanPOST Off

</Files>

</IfModule>

• Create an uploads directory under wp-content.
• Change the permissions of wp-content and uploads to 777.

And now: an image!

Earlier on in the day we’d been discussing starting the Big Four quest arcs as defined in EQ2i - Prismatic, Peacock Club, Claymore and Swords of Destiny - and agreed that this would be a Good Thing, but only if all six of us were online on a given Monday.

As it happened tonight, there was no chance of that. Nik was still having connection problems, Nathan was busy (but no baby news as yet…), and Ad joined us pretty late on. So we decided to head to Klak’Anon, explore that, and get rid of any names we could find.

Things started off well heading to The Clockwork Factory and easily dispatching of Factory Overseer Klankbolt, but then Jez went LD, and people starting falling off the metal beams, so we headed through to the Ore Extraction Site ready for the first group wipe of the night.

Regrouping, we headed back and got rid of Wreckrock the Awakened Havoc before another great death and party wipe trying to progress through the Extraction Site.

After this, Leader decide to head right at the castle, and we quickly scooted in to The Clockwork Assembly Plant to harvest a ?, and then up to The Clockwork Commons and Maintenance for a couple more kills and the final party wipe of the evening.

One thing to note was the astonishing number of great NO TRADE cloth drops throughout the night… and no casters present to grab ‘em. C’est la vie…