Foraging Sucks

Getting a super late start this morning because… reasons.  Firstly the bed was super comfy this morning, and after not sleeping really well the last few nights I really did not want to leave it.  Secondly I had to shower and get dressed and go acquire food.  Thirdly my wife conned me into a trip to Wal-mart explaining that it would be less busy while folks were in church.  While it might have been less busy, it was still far busier than I would have liked.  But we are now back and it is 10 am and I am finally sitting down to blog.

Foraging Sucks

2013-06-21_214743 I have been in a really spastic way with my new laptop and wanting to download all the games and see how they run on it.  However yesterday afternoon I finally settled into one for awhile.  When the F2P conversion happened in Rift, one of the many things I did with my bonus shop currency was purchase Foraging and Weaponsmithing for Belghast my main.  The end goal was that he would have the ability to harvest all the things, as well as be completely self sufficient in both Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing.  The reality behind this, has not been nearly as exciting as it sounds.

Essentially over the last few weeks since the conversion I have been foraging everything I could find as well as mining all the low level ores so I could level both of the new tradeskills.  One of the stark realities thus far is that Foraging Sucks.  It is hands down the most painful gathering profession in rift.  I have never really spent much time doing it, as I always tend to focus on the armor making professions in any game.  The amount of herbs that you have to pick to get skills raises just seems unbalanced when compared with butchering and mining.

It took me roughly four hours of running around high end Storm Legion zones to be able to gather enough herbs and lumber to level from 350 to 375.  The problem is not necessarily the harvesting… it is trying to find the right level of herbs that give you a skill up without running into the level of herbs that are too high to pick.  Essentially the storm legion foraging spawns are really really poorly designed…  or at least poorly designed for someone trying to level.  I remember being max level in mining before I hit level 54, so as a contrast it was so much easier.

Grandmaster Weaponsmith

It was shortly after dinging 375 foraging that I turned my focus to all the ore and lumber I had collected in the process.  Within another 30 minutes I had finished leveling weaponsmithing to 375.  Now I need to spend a good deal of time doing the daily quests so I can pick up those epic weapon patterns.  While this is not that useful now, I am really looking forward to seeing how self sufficient I am when it comes to the next expansion.  Part of me wonders if picking up outfitting, but not leveling it… would trigger the code that causes cloth to drop faster for outfitters.

Onwards to Fishing and Survival

2013-06-22_214452 Now my new goal is to work on leveling my fishing and survival.  This pairing is an odd one as they seem to be out of sync.  At 160 survival I need materials from the scarlet gorge/scarwood reach area, however at 160 fishing the optimal waters for skilling up are in Moonshade Highlands.  So essentially I will be focusing on leveling the survival skills and the fishing should take care of itself.  Finding shallow and deep water in the various zones is a bit of a pain also.  The pool shown in the image above is one of the few deep water spawns in Scarlet Gorge… and they are way up by the entrance to Foul Cascade.

I am not sure if the shallow/deep water thing is easier if you are doing the guardian zones or not, but at this point I guess both factions are merged together.  I didn’t really run into the problem until this set of zones.  I have a feeling that in Moonshade the opposite problem will occur, that most of the water you find will be deep, as it tends to have ocean and lakes.  Fishing is somewhat mind numbing, but it is a good activity to do while trying to catch up on recordings from the DVR.

Gold Rush

EverQuest2 2013-06-22 12-03-31-26 This week the Gold Rush promotion began over in EQ2 and as a result I decided to pop over and level in my Swashbuckler a bit.

If you’re a Gold Member this summer (June 21 – September 21), you will have access to a special daily spell that provides bonus coin loot (increase of 15%), an experience bump (increase of 10%), and additional mount speed (increase of 5%)! This spell grants these benefits for four (4) hours each day, all summer long! This is in addition to all of the other perks you receive with Gold membership.

You will find this spell in your hot bar or in your spell book under abilities. Look for “Gold Rush.”

With this happy little buff I decided to take Belgrifter over to the Clefts of Rujark dungeon and run around grinding the various higher level orcs for a bit.  The xp gain was actually far slower than I expected, but then I realized that I had my AA slider set to 50%.  Honestly I still have one of those instant 280 aa tokens that came with Chains of Eternity expansion.. so I am considering turning the AA levels off completely for awhile to maximize the xp gain.  With my magical werewolf healer mercenary I was able to pretty much wreck everything in the zone.

While I didn’t end up getting an xp level, I did manage to get 3 AAs in the time spent just from killing all the named star mobs that I had not killed before.  I will have to sort through the loot I got, but I didn’t see anything that was better than what I was currently wearing.  I found running around the zone killing mobs a relaxing experience… that is one of the things I like most about EQ2 is that the combat is so slow paced that you can be doing something… and still do it without raising your blood pressure.  It is far less twitch and far more slow and steady… and there are certain moods where that is the perfect recipe for me.

The laptop runs the game gorgeously, probably far better than any machine I have had so far.  I can crank all the things up pretty much to the highest setting and just bask in the beauty of this aging game.  I don’t care what people say, it still looks absolutely amazing.  They do zone design better than almost anyone else.  The sheer scale makes the world feel far more real than any other online game.  The scale of mountains and valleys and monuments are often lost but this game feels immense.

Daily Dose of Cute

20130623_102941 We have had bunnies in our lawn for years.  I think they end up living in the hedges in the backyard, and since we don’t have much in the way of flowers… or any sort of garden… they have been a welcome addition to our lawn.  However in all this time I have never seen a baby, even though I know they must be producing several for them to survive every year.  Today my neighbor’s son was mowing our lawn, and he almost hit this little guy with the mower.  Thankfully he is a nature loving boy, and is always looking for wildlife…  he shut down the mower, picked the stunned little bunny up and brought it around to show us.

Is that not the most precious thing you have ever seen?  Apparently at this size they are fully weaned from their mother and essentially self sufficient.  We didn’t spend too much time with the bunny, as we didn’t want our human scent to rub off on it too much.  Additionally we placed it carefully under a bush near where it was found.  The little guy hopped around happily in the shade and hopefully will stay there til our lawn is finished being mowed. 

I really hope this little guy makes it through the summer.  In years past I have had to fish the occasional bunny out of the pool… and it is always something that tears me up inside a little when it happens.  Hopefully it will remain a relatively moist year.  If it gets hotter I might have to try and figure out a way to give them a water dish they can more safely drink from.  Because seriously…  who cannot love something this cute?

Wrapping Up

Well I have rambled on at length for a long while this morning.  I hope you all have a great day and get accomplished whatever needs to happen on your Sunday.  I know we likely have to run around a bit later and continue with the whole “preparing for wife to leave” thing again.  Luckily this time it is a much shorter trip, so hopefully it won’t be nearly as stressful on me.

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