Guild Crafter

This is one of those mornings when the content is just not flowing freely from my brain to my fingers and eventually onto the digital page.  Last night was completely set to be another good night of sleep.  I left Rift about 9:30 and we went on our walk shortly after.  Then while we were out walking we noticed a massive storm system coming towards us.  Ultimately while I tried to get to sleep the sheer severity of the storm kept me up.  This combined with the fact that I happened to check my email during this time… and there was an issue with one of the websites I manage… kept me up until roughly 1 am.

Air Rift

Last night was one of those odd flukes that sometimes happens in Oklahoma that produces tornadic style damage… without actually forming a Tornado.  When we were out walking we kept seeing the sky light up in the distance with massive amounts of cloud to cloud lightning.  It looked extremely eerie, and it was a struggle to keep focused on walking and not watch the electrical ballet in the sky.  My wife checked her phone while we were out on the loop we walk, and it looked like we had about 30 minutes or so before any of it hit us.  I attempted to go to sleep and then it hit all at once.

Instead of starting slowly we got hit with this wall of wind that started shaking our backyard gate and causing a tree to start thumping up against the house every now and then.  I put back on shorts and went out to investigate and it was just really odd out.  It didn’t feel like a normal wind storm… everything was blowing every which way but I didn’t feel like I was walking against the wind at any point.  I came back in because quite honestly it felt a little dangerous to be standing outside.  I figured we would have to deal with whatever happened anyways in the morning.

Currently the sun is still not up, and as a result I have no clue the extent of any damage that might have occurred during the night.  Looking out through the kitchen window and front door, it didn’t look like there was much debris in the front or back of the house.  After the wind came hurricane gale force rain for a bit… then as quickly as it had happened it just passed over us.  I went around the house to see if anything was leaking, figured that was as good a sign as any that we still had a roof.  Once I finish up this blog post it should be light enough for me to go out in investigate.

Guild Crafter

In Star Wars the Old Republic… we had an awesome guild member named Shyris.  She was the consummate guild crafter, and if you did not ask her for upgrades… she would hunt you down and force them on you.  I on the other hand have never really been that much of a serious crafter.  In every MMO I have maxed out whatever profession I chose to do…  but never really used it much other than to craft one or two items at the highest level for my character.  Something has changed deep down inside me… and I now take more than a certain amount of pleasure outfitting my friends in gear.

When Rift went free to play, I got a large amount of free store currency due to the longevity of which I subscribed.  I used most of this windfall to outfit Belghast my main with as much awesome stuff as I could.  Since Everquest 1, I have always been drawn to Smithing… having done a small bit of it myself in real life.  If given a choice, I always end up going for Armorsmithing in fact, so since release Bel has been one and had the two supporting crafts of Butchering and Mining.  With the ability to add extra tradeskills I have added on Foraging to complete the harvesting trio, and then added Weaponsmithing and now recently Artificer.

When you factor in Belgrave my rogue who is a max level Outfitter, I can essentially make all armor and weapons and I am slowly grinding my way through the Storm Legion levels of Artificer so I will be able to make the rest of the equipment slots.  I find something extremely satisfying about hooking up a character with a bunch of upgrades.  As a result I have spent a lot more time recently harvesting materials so that I can consume them making goodies for the guild.  I’ve been trying to make regular trips out to my cloth farm, and depositing the proceeds in the form of 24 slot bags in the guild bank.

Ironhide Rollout!

I have yet to develop quite the forceful posture that Shyris had in SWTOR, but I still want to see stuff get used.  Additionally I have developed a new obsession…  guild harvest quests.  Over the last two years, I have existed in guilds that were essentially already maximum level, or damned near close to it.  As a result I have never really put much focus on completing guild quests.  If there was a fun one up like closing rifts or killing planar creatures I would spend a bit of time helping out on it.  However it was never the focus that it has become recently.

When I found out there was a daily way for me to contribute guild xp and help us level faster… I have been traipsing around Ember Isle and Iron Pine Peaks harvesting all manner of lower level goods just to turn in for experience in the manufactorum in Meridian.  The bane of my existence and that of pretty much anyone doing this quest seems to be Ironhide.  It is supposedly a 5% chance when skinning level 50ish mobs in the world.  The problem is… this is very much dictated by your luck with the random number generator.  You only need 10 Ironhide per turn in… however you will likely gather up about 200 normal leather in the time it takes you to get those.

Personally I have found a nice little area of Ember Isle skinning crocodiles that seems to produce Ironhide fairly well.  Additionally Ember Isle has tons of Orichalcum nodes… which is another component to the turn in… and I will take any excuse to run around this zone because it is STILL really amazing.  Then I tend to pop over to Iron Pine Peaks… because I absolutely love that zone and finish gathering up the foraging that I did not get on Ember Isle.  For whatever reason Basilisk Stem does not grow on Ember, even though pretty much everything else does.  The end result is roughly 150 guild xp per turn in… and I can do four per day.  While this may not seem like much, it is a little bit that I can do personally to help push us forward.

Wrapping Up

It was a pretty chill night overall other than the wind storm.  I am just about to go out and look around our house for damage.  I hope that things are okay, and we still have a fence and a roof.  Since I was up crazy late doing work.. I feel zero obligation to get into work bright and early this morning.  That said I will still beat most of my office into work.  I hope you all have a great day, and that hopefully everything is safe and sound when I survey the damage.