Flying High: Archeage

     Gliding high over Sandeep. I think I technically did this quest a bit wrong, but I don't care. Long glider flights are fun and that is all there is to it. I didn't realize how much I was going to enjoy the glider until I upgraded it and started using it a lot. It's fun. I'm not always very good at it, but it's fun. Flying will never not be fun. (Blizzard take notice. I don't think anybody actually wants flight taken out of WoW no matter what they say on the forums.)
      Aelithar has reached level 43. I think he might have reached 44 today if the Tahyang server hadn't been down so much of yesterday that I didn't get very much done. In fact it was down so long that I finally used the last character slot I'd been sitting on for another independent character on Calleil.

     I knew I'd be wanting a Firran. They and the elves are the races in Archeage I was most interested in playing, so this is Vahyarr. I didn't do much besides make him and level him to 5. I don't know what he'll be yet, just that archery and songcraft are involved. He won't be seeing much, if any leveling or anything until Aelithar is at least level 50, if then, or if Tahyang's down for ages again, but I'm happy to have him. He's cute.
     I don't really like the female Firran at all. Their faces are too childlike for my taste and look creepily like little girl faces stuck on adult Firran bodies. I just can't warm up to them. The male Firran on the other hand look just as they should, like fierce cat people. I like the feline cast to their faces which is very lacking in the females.
   

     Last night when Tahyang was finally behaving the hubby and I gave our Harani some love. Some of that included getting mentored through Palace Cellar and then riding over to Falcorth Plains to get ourselves Snowlions for that handy riding double function so Kiranai can carry Mirzai around while I exercise my google-fu occasionally. And questing, lots of questing. Mirzai is a cultist  so very much a stand in the back, cloth wearing caster which is a very unusual thing for me to be playing. I'm very much enjoying it though, even if I can't decide whether or not I like his new robes. Redheads shouldn't really wear red, I think. But the quest guys missed that memo and didn't make special blue robes for him.

 

     After that, last night and this morning it was back to Aelithar who finished up Sandeep and mystified poor Blackthorn with his dancing. Hey, he needed something to do while his mana regenerated and the flute hadn't cut it. Paladins use a lot of mana I'm discovering. I gave him a mana regenerating passive talent from vitalism and made a new flute this morning to help out but he still drains his mana bar like it's going out of style during anything sustained. Blackthorn's level 30 now, twenty more levels to get him to max and somewhere during the course of that Aelithar needs to make about 500 more gold. That should be a project.

     Finishing Sandeep gave me a surprise when one of the quest givers promptly sent me off through a worldgate to Rookborne Basin. Aelithar's in Haranya, which is I'll admit, a little nerve-wracking. So many red names. The local Firran don't seem to mind an elf paladin at all but those traveling adventurer types keep looking at Aelithar in ways that make him very nervous.

     I'm not very far into it, but the zone is pretty and I like the concept of the questing so far. Hoping to catch it in peace later in the day so questing can be a little less unnerving for a bit. Steadily working his way toward 50, and then I'll have to figure out what to do. If there was land available on Tahyang I'd be ever so tempted to put at least one month of patron in and try to use that time to earn the gold to buy more months with Apex. But without land available it seems like even the labor regeneration wouldn't make it entirely worth it. One of my guildies showed me his manor last night. I have to admit I've got a little bit of house envy. Maybe someday.

Tirasiel gets an apartment

     I'd been meaning to get the last level, I thought, I needed in Aion to get level 20 and get some housing. Turns out when I hit 20 I found out that the housing thing happens at level 21. Luckily when I was looking that up I also found there was a solo instance about Tirasiel's level that sounded interesting. So off he went. 21 halfway through and several pieces of new gear later he finally headed back to Pandaemonium to get his apartment.
     I was so curious about what the housing system would be like. Turns out it's sort of a happy medium between Lord of the Rings Online and Rift. I like it. It's not quite as open to creativity as Rift but Definitely isn't as confined as LOTRO.  The studio you get for free is just that, a studio and it was bare bones and empty of all but the butler and relationship orb when Tirasiel went to check it out. Luckily a few quests award you a table, a cabinet, wallpaper and a plant and then he blew a bit too much Kinah picking up a decent bed, and a shelf, chairs and a picture for the wall. It still looks quite spartan, but it'll improve.

     The view from the front porch is nice.

     The bed seems a little too big for him, but it's got to be more comfortable than loitering on the streets of Pandaemonium all night. There's a 5% increase in the speed the rested XP regenerates when you log out in a studio, I think that's pretty neat.

     A table and chair. If he ever makes any friends he might have to get a second chair.

     Bed, cabinet, and shelf. The studio is surprisingly spacious... and free, which is a nice change from LOTRO. If you want a bigger house later you have to buy it and pay upkeep but the studio apparently is always free, and for now it looks huge and empty so Tirasiel is quite content with just  studio size home. Maybe later if he levels a lot and makes loads of kinah he'll upgrade to something else. In the meantime, though I'm just looking forward to finding more furniture here and there and making it look a bit less bare.

     Another shot on the porch. He picked up a second earring and a necklace in the solo instance and I still can't help being ridiculously thrilled about being able to see them on him in game instead of just as stats icons on his character sheet.

Alts and Screenshot Spam

      I hadn't really meant to make an alt on my main server in Rift (Faeblight) unless another friend came to play there with me. But then I saw Kaozz at ECTmmo had a post on Dimensions and the Dreamweaver profession which had mildly intrigued me but which I can't really looked into enough to realize what it actually did. When I found out... I really wanted one. But Daethrys has put a fair amount of work into keeping his Outfitting, Butchering and Foraging leveled so I didn't want to drop any of them. Well, there's an alt for that. At least there is now.

     Meet Falharan. He's a Silenus Cleric for the sole reason that I wanted the fae pets. Turns out that so far it's also a lot of fun. He's a Dreamweaver, Daethrys is dumping all the artifacts at him to salvage now and he's set up his default Dimension as a workshop from which to make lovely things and dole them out to Daethrys first and foremost but also to the two rl friends I got to poke into Rift a bit with me.
     I love the idea of the Dreamweaver profession. It got me all enthused over Rift professions and over playing in Rift again, just as I am having a big slump in WoW. So Daethrys has gone from level 34-37 in the last couple of days and Falharan's already level 13 (mostly as a side effect of trying to get more burlap.)
    And because Rift is one of my very favorite games to screenshot in... there are lots of screenshots.

Falharan and his Satyr, Silaun.

Falharan and Alarie look like they hear something.

I don't usually leave the helms showing, but I'm kind of getting a kick out of this one, so for now it stays.

Some of my favorite shots of Daethrys are in moonlight. Shortly before he left Scarwood Reach.

Managed a half decent archery shot finally. Poor Friend sometimes dies because I dropped the UI and stopped paying any attention to anything but screenshotting :P

I don't think I was supposed to really get up here. But looking for the way up to a quest that I couldn't find I climbed way up on Lantern Hook. So of course. Screenshots.

Nice break on the hammock between killing things. I seem to have a thing for nighttime shots of Daethrys.

One of the many shots I took attempting a decent archery one... kept because the bloodspatter was too much fun to pass up.

I love going into new zones in Rift. Or in any MMO really. That feeling of exploring all over again. Didn't think I was a fan of desert zones really, but I love Droughtlands (and Uldum for that matter.)

MMO Housing

     This wasn't a feature I thought I'd be super into. WoW doesn't have it and I'd never thought about it being necessary. But then I tried a few other things that did and...I really like housing. In my head all of my characters have a home anyhow, a place they go to rest after a long day's journey, to lick their wounds and sleep. I never realized how excited I could get about having something like that in game. Then I tried Rift.
     They give you a free dimension pretty early on. It's not much, just a shrine on a hill, but it's mine. Daethrys has picked up a few things in his journeys beyond what he was given to fill it and they've all found a home there. A few more things I bought for it because I wanted him to have a home that looked like one. It isn't much, someday I want to make an alt and try the Dreamweaving profession and maybe make something bigger. But for now:

      The whole thing pretty much. It's really not big or impressive. You can't see the gravestone he added off to one side, or the weird makeshift hammock bed under the tree that he got from some quest mobs, but it's an overview.

     Standing in the doorway. It's cozy enough for a hunter who just wants a place to keep the rain off for a while.

     A closer view of the interior. It's amazing to me what you can actually do in terms of customizing. I haven't done a whole lot here, but everything can be moved and rotated and scaled and left where you like it. The two planks in the past of goodies he got with the dimension became shelving. I bought a bed, some flowers, an inkwell, a journal and scaled down a vase to fit on the shelves and suddenly it looks like somebody lives there. It's not spectacular, but it could be.
   
     Lord of the Rings Online has housing too, though it's a bit more annoying needing to pay an upkeep on it. You don't get to really own it, just rent. Still as soon as Sadrondir had the coin he had to have one in the Elven neighborhoods.

     It's lovely on the outside, especially at night with all the windows lit. And rather small on the inside. The customization isn't nearly as impressive or freeform as Rift. There are set slots and certain types of things that can fit in them, and you can rotated them, but other than that, they are as they are. Still his house has music... and a story. When I had first got it I didn't have much gold so I was sparing with it. He bought the music and a piece or two of furniture. I had picked up a wall coloring somewhere and there was a painting in his leveling box.

     Furnished mostly with quest things and with a changed floor it looked a bit like this downstairs.

     And this upstairs. Cozy enough but not really very attractive. Still it was a work in progress. Well then one evening at the Prancing Pony I met an elf looking for a Kinship. Mine was kind enough to invite him but while they were busy in an instance I ran around with him. He bought a house... and then we ended up traipsing all over so he could buy lots of furniture and then spent an hour furnishing the place. He asked for my opinion a lot. Joking comments were almost made about everybody assuming Minstrels were good interior decorators, but I bit my tongue.
    And then he gave me -all- of his leftover and extra furniture along with some pieces he'd picked up deliberately for me.

     The downstairs now looks like this from one angle, much cozier and more attractive.

     The upstairs has a bed and pictures now. It looks like a place he can get some rest after a long day in the Barrow Downs.

     From the bed, the door leading downstairs. I've since used up every last interior slot. Nothing more can be placed in his house and though things could be changed some... it's done. And I wish there was a bit more I could do with it. Still it's got pretty green walls and a nice tile floor and down stairs there's a bookcase.

     What more could a simple Minstrel really want when he can't afford a bigger house? I did change the music and add a bit more in the yard. But it's done. And though it might not be Rift's Dimensions... it's a whole lot better than nothing. I'm anxiously waiting on time to get Tirasiel his last two or three necessary levels so I can see what housing is like in Aion.