I'm a noob.

     Aion seems to be my game for making really stupid mistakes. Tirasiel has been slowly but steadily questing his way around Basfelt Village, with a few side trips around the zone. Very simple rotation, I'd been thinking, this Templar one. Sure lots of down time, but that's okay, he's a tank, it gets the job done. But then after dying to two successive quests where he got swarmed by groups of mobs and just couldn't take the damage I started to wonder... shouldn't he have an AoE ability or something?
     So since my obelisk is bound to the Great Temple and that's where I popped up when I died I strolled over to the warrior preceptor to have a look see. Picked up a few upgrade abilities... not much... slotted those, flipped over to look at my chains... and that's when I wondered... why don't I have these abilities I was supposed to learn at level ten or anything. Not in my skill list. Check back with the preceptor... he doesn't have them for me... And that was when I looked up at the top and realized there were two little tabs. Templar and Gladiator. It apparently defaults to the Gladiator tab. I switched the Templar one and lo and behold several abilities I should have had ages ago.
     Redoing of the action bar commenced. Still no AoE, though. But the good news is I took him out to hit a quest this morning to try out the new action bars and suddenly he is much less squishy and hits things harder and faster and is far more fun to play. It's amazing what a difference not completely gimping yourself by skipping out on all your spec specific skills makes. Progress should speed up significantly now. And I'm just going to be over here... feeling sheepish... and checking the priest vendor for Malieth. I wonder how many Chanter spells he's missing.

More Aion

     Last night when I meant to pop onto LOTRO for a few quick shots of my housing for a post about housing before popping onto Aion... well I got very distracted and ended up not hitting Aion at all. But this morning I wanted to see what the housing was like in Aion too. What I found was that Tirasiel needs a few more levels before he can find out.

     Since I've been having fun with him and enjoying the music now that I can hear it, I wasn't one to shy away from trying to get a few more. But as I was popping in an out of game for other things I noticed that he'd been wearing this same leather chest since the first area. Well, I thought I should probably go buy him some chain. Guess my brain was stuck in the WoW mindset and I'd actually bought him a chain top from a vendor before I realized there was a plate tab. He could wear the plate and since he's a Templar which I do at least know is the tankiest of tanky things in Aion, plate was probably a good idea. So the chain top got sold and replaced with some plate.

     Well in poking around doing some of the city quests at that point I found the crafter people. Ooo he should probably learn to make stuff. So he took up construction and then armorsmithing, only he couldn't do any armormithing because he needed iron and he couldn't get iron. I knew because I'd tried back in Moslan forest and got that... you can't do this yet message. So he went back and gathered a bunch of fish and things outside Altgard until he could gather iron.

     Mind you, Daeva don't mine, they suck the iron out of the iron with magic and then use it for their own ends. I'm not complaining, looks kinda nifty, doesn't involve toting around a pickaxe. He got lots of iron, went back to do quests, learned some things, gained some skill and then learned a recipe for new plate boots. So after training to make and then making all the components he was all set to make new boots. Only he needed Aether Powder. Back out to Altgard to fly around and suck the powder out of vortexes.

     And after all that he failed at making the boots. And didn't have enough flux to try again. I was sad but decided to pick up a few quests in hope of getting some more. He managed to do that -and- hit level 16 and then not fail at making the boots the next time. In fact he channeled through the first time and made a super nice pair. Only four or five levels until he can check out housing! Which will hopefully be slightly less frustrating than the crafting is.
     Then before I logged off I popped over to say hi to Malieth in his mixed armor. Stared at it and the vendor for a while when I realized -he- could wear cloth, leather, or chain. This time I used google and found out, rather surprisingly (but pleasingly) that Chanters rock the mail gear. So he got some, and did a couple quests before I logged for the night, partly just so I could soak in some Elyos side music.

The post in which I feel like an idiot.

     Aion takes up an insane amount of drive space, though looking at it it isn't very hard to see why. Still I'd loaded it once onto one back drive and then had to reinstall onto another with more room. But when I had gone to patch that hadn't been enough room and it had errored out. After that when I'd been playing I'd just clicked play as soon as it was available and apparently... never actually finished installing the game. I wondered why I kept seeing people comment on Aion's lovely music when I never heard any. I kept wondering how anybody put up with a launcher that was always wanting to install and never finishing.
     So last night for some reason I thought... you know... after that last error you cleared a bunch more space and haven't let it actually sit and run to its heart content since. Yeah. I left it running while I slept and overnight it entirely finished installing. The launcher is no longer obnoxious. And what's more I logged into the game and there are NPC voices and really amazing music. I'm dumb. I've played this game for probably at least 15 hours all told without having it completely installed. I like it even better now and I'd already been fairly sold on the character customization and the wings.

    In playing Aion my original intent had been to make a bunch of characters and figure out what class I actually wanted to level. The first one I made... fairly at random, was a warrior, Tirasiel. I leveled him until he got wings and picked Templar even though I'm scared of tanking stuff I don't understand. Why? Because Templar. How could I not be a Templar? And well because Shields. I freaking love them. But I figured I'd probably move on and make an archer to actually level on. Only the rogue Visiel insisted on staying backstabby and went Assassin so that plan was down the drain but there were still the Elyos guys Malieth and Salafiel I could have picked and the possibility of making somebody else to go archery or something else ranged.
     But when I logged in today what happened instead was that I logged onto Tirasiel and went from level 12 to level 14 in fairly short order while remembering what all my buttons did and enjoying the music I should have had ages ago. Tirasiel might end up being what gets leveled after all just because I got attached to him in the beginning and I can't seem to get over it.

     He left Altgard a bit today and went into the nearby forest to kill some things and marvel at the weird animals and colorful scenery. (Also to look freaking awesome with his shield.) The animations in this game are as good as the character customization, full of movement and grace and life. And now I know from having heard it that the music matches. And I think I like the Asmodeans best. They're like winged dark elves with claws... or they can be anyhow and that pretty much ticks all my little checkboxes right down the line. Tirasiel is probably here to stay.