Weekend Update Nov. 23, 2009 Follow

Did all of Octavia's Ranger's 1.5 and 2.0 quests. For some reason I was sure we had finished the 1.5, but I guess not. With her having Final Blow maxed, it was a tough go on some of them. Killed Grinbik a few times due to it. Finally had to end up turning her back to them, and only using nukes to keep them below 10%. Although somewhat unique fighting, there's way too much of it, 6 (EDIT: 'er 4) captured groupable mobs, and 3 raid encounters for the 1.5, and another group encounter for the 2.0 where you have to keep mobs at low health for extended periods of time. This in addition to the hours of foraging for the required items.

BTW, a tip for any one doing the captured mobs, you don't actually have to hit them for them to appear on your cursor, just have the weapon equipped, and them be at low health, and you can have your back to them without attacking and all damage shields off, and they'll eventually appear on your cursor.

Started on Bayle's Heraldic Crest series. It's going slower than I had anticipated, but hopefully can wipe it out in a week or two, if not less.

Been trying to get my favorite raster graphics program to work with Vista (Picture Publisher 8). Got it narrowed down to some filters, and the File Open / Save dialog boxes not appearing .. may have to debug it and see what external functions it's trying to call to figure out why that part isn't working. I wish Corel would of continuted that product line after they bought it from Micrografx. PP interface is so much more intuitive than Corel's Photopaint or Adobe's Photoshop. I only used the other programs when absolutely necessary for their extra features, but for general use PP beats them easily.

I should of really worked harder on my own graphic program years ago. I don't have the energy now-a-days to work on such a vast project. Basically I wanted a Corel Draw like program that incorporated raster and vector features, which the latest versions of Corel Draw have seemed to added (I have seen any Corel Draw past version 11). I also wanted some Z-axis control in the program as well, even if it was only setting layers to particular depths, and being able to import / export such laryers from / to 3D formats such as DXF and the like, as well as making it viable to slightly alter perspective of the entire drawing. Not so much that it's a true 3D program where you could rotate it 360 degrees, but be able to draw it on center, then view it slightly off center with some artificial but realistic looking perspective. You can do such things in Corel Draw, but have to apply them to each object, and make adjustments to each one to appear consistant across the entire image. Well, I'm babbling off topic again.

Anyway,

Have a good week all, and have fun everyone!

Yther Ore.

Edited, Nov 25th 2009 2:19am by Yther

During this weekend I dinged 55 on my druid and picked up 4 aa's. Did most of this with a group of aude sapere folks in griegs on friday. I think this was friday. I know I ran to iceclad with winjon the paladin. I also played the beast a bit in Griegs.

Saturday and sunday I killed lodizal 3 times. Dinged 70 on ranger doing task in burning sea with always lost, but not before killing his bard in the deep.
Leveled the beastlord a bit in griegs. Bought some spells.
Watched Dark Knight dvd, not a bad film.

From looking at the spells it does seem to get better. I'm caught in a catch 22 though: I really like collecting easy AAs by going to Sebilis, Droga and Grieg's. Seb and Droga were just great up to 62 but exactly at 63 the Juggs go light blue and experience goes down (I am assuming the blues flip to LB in Droga as well since it is a similar level zone). Grieg's also flips to light blue early in the 60's and I've heard from talking to a necro that loves the zone that by 68 it's better to go elsewhere.

I just want to get a leg up on AA, say to 500 or so @lvl 65, before I head out into harder content. It sounds like a lot of us are working Grieg's right now. There are clearly different levels and zones (class dependent) where you can sit back, relax, and get a few 100 AAs before moving on. Grieg's is one of those places and I don't want to level past it until I'm ready.

Does anyone have any fun level 65-70 zone suggestions for solo/duo (no mercs)? I'd stick to the hot zones but Nightmare just doesn't seem like such a fun place. I've read that The Hole is quite good up to 71 but that will have to wait 'til after the clicknar invasion.