Rift Archives - Page 19 of 43 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Halloween 2013

October 19, 2013 by Belghast

Spooky Pasta!

One of the things I love in the various MMOs I play or have played… are the varried Holiday events. Some of them make an extreme effort to fit them into the lore of their world, and others just cut and paste a real world tradition onto their land. Both have their merits and both are enjoyable so long as they don’t involve too much grinding. Each game seems to pick and choose holidays, but there are two that every game seems to have… Christmas and of course Halloween.

Halloween time is generally my favorite holiday because the traditions itself usually involve killing lots of dark denizens of the night. Additionally the playing dress up theme usually means some cool weapon and armor skins that you can use throughout the rest of the year. Currently we are in the run up to Halloween itself, and as a result pretty much every MMO has some form of event going on marking the holiday. Going to take a few minutes this morning to talk about some of the cooler ones.

Nights of the Dead

This event runs in Everquest 2 from 10/15 through 11/11 and is probably the grand daddy of all Halloween events. Each year they keep adding new content, but still leaving all of the old content in place. Zam has a really great guide to the various quests and events. If you are one of the new to EQ2 folks who just partook of the free level 85 event… I highly suggest checking it out. However even with a brand new account you can still participate in most of the fun. My personal favorite event is the hedge maze that drops lots of nifty cosmetic gear.

Blood and Madness

Guild Wars 2 supposedly has a really amazing event called Blood and Madness that kicked off on October 15th that involved a series of limited time events (one day only) finally culminating in a big event that only exists Halloween night. Dulfy has a pretty comprehensive guild to the events, but for the most part if you are not already doing this series you have missed out this year. This has been my key bitch about Guild Wars 2 to date… I hate the concept of short run limited time events. The amount of busy work needed really only allows someone who ONLY plays GW2 to keep up… and because of this I just can’t be bothered to attempt it. I would love to see this as a long term event that ran the entire length of the holiday, but until then it will be out of my reach.

Autumn Harvest

Rift has an event called Autumn Harvest that starts on October 17th and runs through Halloween and potentially a little bit past. They have chosen to focus on the harvest aspect of the holiday and as such have sent you to a special version of the Realm of the Fae where you help Atrophinius and his minions bring in the amber sap harvest. There are a ton of cool things you can get, including a phantom version of several popular mounts. The coolest feature of the event however is that you can get these short time use potions that make tons of artifacts show up on the ground in the realm of the fae. This is a huge catch up on collections event. This year around there are a ton of new items to be gotten and you can check out this preview guide on Rift Junkies.

Hallow’s End

Hallow’s End is an event that occurs in World of Warcraft from October 18th through November 1st. There are tons of nifty things going on like trick or treating, but the meat and potatoes of the event is the Scarlet Monastery Headless Horseman instance. I have a love/hate relationship with this holiday. Every year it has been available (and that I have been playing wow) I have participated in the event… all for a shot at the extremely awesome flying headless horseman mount. Every single year I have come up empty handed. When a game company places an item in an event, like a mount… that is usable every day… and makes it a super rare random drop… I want to stab them.

All Saints’ Wake

Currently there is an event going on over in FFXIV that is completely new to me. All Saints’ Wake started a little early, but was intended to run from October 18th through November 1st. All of the time zones get a little discombobulated in the translation. While I am not partaken in the event yet, so far the other one I have seen has been what I would call “Holiday-Lite” in that there is a FATE going on that awards some sort of currency that you then use to purchase things off a vendor. Since the vanity gear system is not in place yet, this makes the things you can acquire super limited, but I plan on gathering them up just in case. One of the most humorous observations from last night is that apparently the Pumpkin helms… are repaired by Cullinarians.

The Rundown

That is the rundown of the big ones I know of that are going on, but like I said in the first part of the post… this is the one holiday that pretty much EVERY MMO celebrates. I can even remember in Hellgate: London there being a Halloween event of sorts that took its form in a Guy Fawkes day celebration… that happened to have a lot of Halloween themed stuff. I would be curious to hear about any events that are your favorite that I missed.

Much Ado About Mathosia

October 6, 2013 by Belghast

Much Ado About Mathosia

A few days ago I wrote about the upcoming zone event that had been advertised for Rift, called Mayhem in Mathosia. So I have to say it sounded really cool, major invasions going on for a few days in certain areas of the world. I did not have a chance to log in Friday night, but after running around town I logged in yesterday evening and participated for an hour or so. I have to say overall I am extremely disappointed. I expected there to be more going on than there actually was.

I wandered around Freemarch did several major invasions and quite honestly the entire time I was wondering why exactly they made a big deal about this. The invasions themselves felt absolutely no different than the ones that NORMALLY happen in Freemarch. As far as the loot that was supposedly available, I saw no sign of that either. The only thing out of the ordinary I managed to get were a bunch of gifts that you could give to the people of freemarch. I am guessing there is an achievement for giving these out, as it did not seem to really do much of anything otherwise.

Maybe after doing FATEs in FFXIV I have come to expect more out of an event, or maybe I had just worked this up in my mind to be something bigger than it actually is. In either case I found the experience overall disappointing. I fear that in order to see any of the loot they are touting you would have to literally grind events for hours… and the frustrating part there is there was a significant amount of time that passed between the spin down of one event and the start up of the next. The event so far seems like “much ado about nothing”, and while I am sure I will pop in and participate in some of the other zones… it is no longer a priority for me.

A Fitting End

Since the Rift event was a massive disappointment, I ended up back in FFXIV with the guild. For awhile now we have been trying to get eight players to 50 so we could finish out the storyline. The final arc takes place over the course of two eight man dungeons, and I really wanted to experience it with my guild members and freshly. One of our members got impatient and finished things up on his own, since he was the first 50… but he has generally been really good about keeping the surprises silent so we can experience dungeons together for the first time. Dallian was the last to reach 50 of the 8 man team, and as a result we spent a bit of time last night killing random stuff in Northern Thanalan to push him across the line.

The conclusion felt as epic as this game deserves, and the fact that it takes place over two eight man dungeons and an eight man trial only adds to this feeling. There has only been one other MMO that I have played that had anything close to an ending, and so far this game sets better with me. At the end of SWTOR you had a nice clean tie up… that went nowhere… nothing in the world changed around you. However in Final Fantasy you essentially have completed one chapter of the game, and are treated to a nice epilogue.

This would have been cool enough alone… but the moment you finish the sequence… you are given the NEXT set of quests to start carrying on AFTER the events of the finale. The peace you just fought for is only the opening act of a much more dangerous tale. The thing is… while you are playing out the finale, at no point does it feel like anything other than the end of a game. You are even treated with credits upon finishing the quest. It feels like finishing any other Final Fantasy game, but in the continued traditional of being the most inappropriately named series… there is nothing final about it.

I am really looking forward to seeing new content released. It has been rumored that the 2.1 patch will include a new 4 man, 8 man and the 24 man raid content. If we can somehow manage to keep our entire guild interested… we might someday be able to do the 24 man content by ourselves. At very least we seem to have a really well balanced 8 man team. The two 8 man dungeons were a bit of a letdown in one area however. The 8 man guild hest was extremely awesome in that there was no main tank… and as fights progressed both tanks were equally active. However in the two Garlean dungeons, there was definitely one main tank and one tank dealing with everything BUT the boss. After how equitable the division of labor was in the hest, it was disappointing to see it fall back to the old standby of main tank/off tank.

Mayhem in Mathosia

October 3, 2013 by Belghast

Just a Gigolo

Last night I was feeling fairly antisocial. I logged into Rift for a little bit, but was feeling overall meh about the game, especially since I knew the bulk of the guild would be in FFXIV anyways. I still feel bad about the fact that almost all of the Rift guild moved rather abruptly to Final Fantasy… but that just kinda happens with recent games. Since I was not super amped about doing things with people… I decided to run around as a Bard and grind FATEs. I have been working up the class so I could have something dpsy to play when we had too many tanks and not enough other things. I had originally intended this to be my Dragoon that is sitting at 32…. but as I started to play the Bard it just leveled so much faster.

At level 45 in FFXIV you get a series of quests that give you four of the 5 pieces of your archetypal class look armor. This is commonly referred to as the Artifact gear and through the first series of quests you get every slot but your chest piece. This often leads to some bizarre looks, but honestly I am not sure the bard set COULD look goofier. I am somewhere between a rockstar, a gigolo and a movie style gypsy. In no case does this make me feel epic and awesome… and in the matter of a single quest I went from looking like the Dread Pirate Roberts to David Lee Roth.

Vanity Slots to the Rescue?

Supposedly there are vanity slots on the way… and they seriously cannot get here soon enough. I am mildly depressed to think I will have to wear a pair of pants that look like they were crafted from a circus tent until then. The above image is the set I loved to wear… Foestriker. This comes from the first three dungeons… and I have been slowly gathering the rest of the pieces of the outfit. Everything about the look seems epic to me… and I felt like the elite archer I was supposed to be. The bard outfit on the other hand looks like I am 5 years old and got to dress myself for the first time.

Apparently I am not alone in this assessment, as most of the major forums have at least one “wtf is wrong with the bard gear” thread. Overall most of the other class outfits I have seen have been amazing looking. Dragoon looks like everything you would expect it to be, as does Warrior, and Paladin looks very much like the defensive tank that they are supposed to be. Even Scholar with its quirky “I bought this jacket at an army surplus store” looks pretty cool. So right now the bard outfit seems to be the “Moon Moon” of the crowd. Which is kinda sad… considering just how amazing the bard class as a whole really is. If I knew just had bad I would end up looking… I might have focused on leveling up the dragoon instead.

Server Shuffling

Yesterday it was announced that Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn would soon open up server transfers. In an attempt to reunite friends and loved ones… the first five days of server transfers will be completely free. This is generally an extremely good thing… since there were a few Stalwarts who were not patient enough to play the “get on Cactuar” game that usually involves creating characters at odd hours. The only negative is that if you look at the list below… our realm is specifically flagged as one of the three US realms that are extremely highly congested.

As a result… the opening of server transfers may make our server queues even worse. Essentially every night there is a very small queue when we attempt to log into the server, the hope is that even if the queues increase we will never have to go back to using our login macros to get through the sea of 1017 errors. As a guild we would consider moving elsewhere, but it would mean starting over from scratch and moving separately. It feels like they planned this poorly in that they did not offer a guild move option. Currently we have essentially maxed out our guild, and all the frenetic questing of the first few weeks in part is what pushed our level up to where it is now. Without the assistance of the quests… it would likely be far harder to reach.

Additionally we have almost maxed out our faction with the Immortal Flames… which means we could consider switching factions and starting the process of leveling our reputation there. So the prospect of having to discard all this progress and start from scratch just does not seem like something we would want to do. We have very few people on other servers, so for the most part it is not a huge ordeal. I imagine that the folks transferring TO Cactuar however will have to do it during off peak hours, which could be a bit tricky since there is only a five day window to get that free transfer in. No word yet has been posted as to when the server transfers will begin.

Mayhem in Mathosia

I think this week why I have been so focused on trying to push up the Bard is that I know I will be spending most of my weekend playing Rift. Last week they announced a brand new server event called Mayhem in Mathosia. The goal of the event is in essence to get Rift back to its roots… massive large scale invasion events spanning multiple zones. During the event there will be unique planar drops that include new colors of Hellbug Mount, a unique Kirin, and some cosmetic gear. I want it all… I want it now.

The schedule looks a little something like this…

Phase 1: Friday, Oct. 4 – Saturday, Oct. 5 – Silverwood / Freemarch
Phase 2: Sunday, Oct. 6 – Monday, Oct. 7 – Gloamwood / Stonefield
Phase 3: Tuesday, Oct. 8 – Wednesday, Oct. 9 – Scarlet Gorge / Scarwood Reach
Phase 4: Thursday, Oct. 10 – Saturday, Oct. 12 – Moonshade Highlands / Droughtlands

RIFT_POSE_CinderHellbug_02

So I will likely be spending most of my time over in Rift this weekend and most of next week trying to gather up all the goodies. I will of course be popping back into FFXIV if someone needs a high level dungeon run, or to help out with instances as needed. We have been trying our best to be available anytime a guild member is on high center due to needing to do a specific dungeon run. I still would like to get my rogue to level 60… but the 50+ leveling just feels like a tedious process. Which is a bit disturbing considering I am right now playing a game where I am forced to level unaided by quests. By completing enough of the various invasions you can win the unique appearance Hellbug above, so that will be what I am working towards.

Garuda Sucks

September 22, 2013 by Belghast

Casey Jones?

I was extremely slow starting this morning, continuing to fall back asleep from 7 am til roughly 9 am. When I finally got up and around I did what I do every morning, and ran off to forage for food. Generally I run to QuikTrip for sausage rolls, which is a gas station chain based in Tulsa. If you do not have the miracle that is QuikTrip… you won’t really understand how gas station food can be that amazing. On the way back into the neighborhood I saw two young boys, one chasing the other. I could see he had something in his hands, and as I drove closer I noticed it was a rubber katana and a golf club. My immediate thought was… whoa is that kid playing Casey Jones?

I think of the Turtles as being a figment of my childhood, as I can remember buying the original indie black and white comics, and the first series of playmates toys where all the turtles had trademarked red bandanas. But the longer I thought about it… the more I realized that sure enough that kid COULD be playing Casey Jones. The TMNT franchise has been rebooted every few years to a point where kids of almost any age could easily recognize everyone’s OTHER favorite psychopath with a hockey mask.

As a tween I thought Casey Jones was the coolest, some kind of cross between a ninja and the punisher (another favorite character of mine). Likely the two boys were just fighting with whatever they happened to have their hands on. I remember my friend and I used to sword fight with baseball bats. That was when I learned that a wooden bat can pretty much cleave an aluminum bat in two…. but that is a tale for another day. Seeing the two kids running around like that made me super nostalgic. I remember my cousin and I went through a phase where we went NOWHERE AT ALL without a slingshot and a bag of rocks. Granted I grew up in the country… so that was entirely reasonable given that I have used said slingshot to thump a bull and get him to go the other way.

Tokyo Game Show and FFXIV

This week the Tokyo Game Show has been going on, and unlike the various western game conferences it has been pretty closed door to the public… or at least closed door to anyone who does not have a fluent understanding of Japanese. Luckily Dual Shockers has posted a pretty good write up of the various 2.1 announcements for Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. The awesome part is… there is a TON of content expected to release for the first patch. So far the items that have been confirmed… Good King Moogle Mog primal fight. New extreme modes for Ifrit, Titan and Garuda… and after doing normal mode Garuda last night, I don’t want to see what Hard mode looks like… let alone Extreme mode.

Additionally they are adding player housing for each of the three grand companies, daily beast quests, and treasure hunting mode… neither of those two I understand but they both sound extremely enticing. Additionally they are adding a pvp arena system at Wolfs Den, one completely new dungeon, and two new hardmode dungeons with new boss strategies. They also announced that there would be limited time free transfers to a server of your choice in October, to help join together the various people that were split up by the server caps. Finally later this year they announced that there would be cross over events with Dragon Quest X and Final Fantasy XI both of which appear to reward unique pets for FFXIV.

That is a lot of goodness, but I have not heard a timeframe for 2.1. Considering I have yet to cap out, and I have an army of alternate specs to level… I am sure I can hold on the current content for awhile. I have always loved the art style of the Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest games… so I am looking forward to collecting the cute little golem pet. Here is hoping they do this as a duty… and not some random spawning fate. The whole random drop pet/mount thing has not really worked out too well for any of us in Rift, and most of us have not collected more than one color of Hellbug.

Garuda Sucks

Both Ifrit and Titan were extremely enjoyable encounters. They introduced us to the concept of a primal fight, and I believe eased us into the difficulty of the encounters. In both cases there was this one thing you had to watch, and if you did it… you pretty much won. As various guild members have gotten up in level I have looked forward to tanking or dpsing these encounters to get them through. They are both extremely fun fights to participate in. Last night we took on Garuda… the third primal encounter… and I have to say no one will be looking forward to repeating this one.

The problem is… I am trying to think of ways to explain how big of an increase in difficulty the fight was from the other two without really spoiling the fight OR the other two. We have tried really hard to go into every fight cold and figure things out on our own. This of course has meant a lot of deaths as we figured out just what the mechanics were doing. I think we had somewhere less than ten deaths last night… but not sure just how far from that number we were. We latched onto one of the central concepts of the fight extremely fast. As Tam said… this is not our first rodeo… so if a fight gives you a thing to hide behind… chances are they want you to hide behind it at some point.

The big problem that I saw was the sheer amount of damage I was taking as the tank. The various people in the know have all said that they wait until they have completed their 45 class quest to do this fight, since that fight rewards you every piece of an armor set but the chest piece. Additionally I could have outfitted myself in at least a full set of the level 45 heavy mithril armor set… which self buffed gives me about 300 more hitpoints from what I did the encounter with.

Being the stubborn bastards that we are, we pulled and pushed and prodded on the encounter until we finally beat it. I just have to say though… this is the hardest fight to date… filled with “all manner of fuckery” as Tam commented last night. I have so much fear and loathing about what the various hard mode version of the primal fights could bring, especially considering how close a call making it through normal Garuda was for us.

Wrapping Up

Well time for me to finish this up and get on with the day. I am sure I will be logging into FFXIV to hang out with the guild, maybe even venturing into Rift to try and finish up 58. Yesterday we did a lot of running around town, so I think today for the most part will be a stay at home day. We have to go out this afternoon to meet someone to buy my wife another Miche shell. For those not familiar with this concept… it is a weird purse with changeable appearances. My wife has suddenly become enthralled by them… and since she is always so damned good about my Lego expenditures… I figure it is only fair that I am cool about her growing collection of purses.