Live action super hero!

It has already been established that I am a furry and I have mentioned having made a rudimentary tiger outfit.

When I started playing City of Heroes my natural instinct was to create a super hero catwoman—but not a ‘Catwoman’ super hero—and Sue Purr was born. My penchant for tiger-style patterns is reflected in the City of Heroes character creation tool. It’s not so much that the tiger is my favourite big cat but more that their fur pattern is suitably distinctive that it is immediately recognisable as being that of a tiger, unlike a panther or lion, for example. It is thus no surprise that the City of Heroes character creation tool has a tiger pattern available.

The tiger outfit of Sue Purr is similar to the little tiger outfit I made for myself. They were both created separately, with my outfit inspired by something I saw on the internet and Sue Purr’s from the options available in the character creation tool, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that one tiger outfit closely matches the other. The only part of my outfit I didn’t make myself is the ears, which is actually a hairband bought from London Zoo, although I have a long-standing plan to make my own pair.

As I quite like dressing up occasionally, I thought I’d share how my outfit compares to the City of Heroes character.

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Tags: furry, sue purr, tiger

Gnomesblight visits Underbog

Whilst flying to Ashenvale after failing to find a campfire in Felwood on which to cook my bear flanks I am offered a spot in a group that is looking to conquer Underbog, part of Coilfang Reservoir in Zangarmarsh. Despite normally being shy with new people, as well as the quality of pick-up groups tending to be rather random, I am keen to enter an instance with Gnomesblight, my Death Knight, to see how I fare in a group. I don’t mind being there for DPS or to tank, as both options are available to a Death Knight. Having already got a good idea of the kind of damage I can produce from running through solo quests, when the question is raised of who wants to tank I volunteer.

Having already levelled two protection spec warriors to 70th level and run through just about every five-man instance with one or the other I am confident that I know the basic principles of tanking in World of Warcraft, it only remains to be seen how the Death Knight’s abilities achieve the same aim. I switch in to frost presence, which buffs my armour and increases my threat generation, but apart from that I am not sure how much more I have to change about my spell rotation. I’ll use area of effect spells a little more regularly and cycle through the mobs as we fight, but I don’t yet have too many more abilities that seem specific to tanking. I’m not too worried, though.

The party is comprised of myself, two other Death Knights, a Paladin and a Hunter. That’s four plate armour wearers. Even if a mob runs astray the damage mitigation we have between us really shouldn’t cause a problem. Everyone but myself is 65th level, with me at 64th. Feeling confident, mostly because I am really enjoying being a Death Knight and have slid comfortably in to the role, the early pulls are fluid and assume that everyone is ready, instead of a cautious tip-toe. It pays off, as we plough through group after group of mobs, chain pulling our way through the instance. We don’t even bother to mark the mobs, they present little enough trouble for the group.

We barely pause before the bosses too, even when one member of the group goes AFK briefly at the first boss. Two Death Knights and a Hunter wreaking massive amounts of damage and me in frost presence and managing quite well to keep all the mobs focussed on attacking me, yet still hitting hard myself. We find that there is no such thing as a bad pull with our group composition, diseases being spread amongst all the mobs, boiling blood coming from the ground, and anyone trying to get away is pulled back with a death grip.

It is a fast and smooth run, awfully good fun! The only problem through the whole run was my computer locking up, which may be a problem with my graphics card, but a quick hard reset and I was back to continue soon enough. The Death Knight is immense fun for me to play. I doubt I’ll get Knifey, my rogue, out for the foreseeable future, because Gnomesblight appears to have comparable, if not better, DPS combined with the survivability of someone who wears plate armour. I just hope that Gnomesblight doesn’t also supplant Sapphire, if only because I like the character.

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Tags: death knight, gnomesblight, mmorpg, underbog, world of warcraft

The Death Knight cookbook

Death Knights may have good first aid skills when starting out, but just as trained professions start from scratch so does cooking. My initial plan for Gnomesblight was to complete quests as I mined ore for blacksmithing, allowing me to gain faction reputation as well hunt beasts to let me increase my cookery skills. As it turns out, mining can be increased pretty quickly when you are high above the level required for the zones in which the deposits can be found, which is mostly because there is no threat from the wandering mobs. The low-level mobs can be avoided with casual ease and even if they attack when I start to mine they are despatched quickly.

Because mining is so easy the notion of completing quests at the same time becomes more of a chore, an activity that gets in the way of the aim of levelling the gathering and thus crafting profession. Without completing quests, mobs are not defeated as a matter of course and the ingredients for cooking are not gathered incidentally. Just as levelling a Death Knight in the Outlands without being able to gather and use the ore found there can be frustrating, the same is true about the cooking profession. Animals provide meat for recipes that can be bought or are given as quest rewards and without being able to use them the ingredients and recipes either end up taking up room in the bank or are discarded only for them to have to be regathered at a later date when the skill is latterly increased to the appropriate level.

Luckily, it is possible to gather cooking ingredients quite efficiently and somewhat more reliably than mining. The cooking skill can be increased initially by the new trained recipe and ingredients bought from vendors. Running through the still-enjoyable quests in Westfall gathers me enough ingredients to level a little, but the real benefit is in the cluster of crawlers half-way up Longshore. The crawlers drop two types of meat that can be used to gain plenty of skill in cookery and the crawlers respawn at an amazing rate. No sooner have I wiped them all out than new ones appear, even when one-shotting them.

From there, I use the clam meat from the clams dropped from all the murlocs I take too much pleasure in attacking, also on Longshore. There may be some holes in my memory now, but I think I was able to jump from cooking in Westfall straight to the beaches of Southshore. Come to think of it, I nabbed a bunch of raptor eggs from the guild bank and bought a recipe that used them from the waitress in the inn in the Old City of Stormwind, which helps my cooking skills along. Back in Southshore I grab even more clams from murlocs, this time for zesty or tangy clam meat. The added benefit of collecting clam meat in Southshore is that the chef in the inn gives a quest for a turtle meat recipe. Cooking with turtle meat is enough to get me to skill level 225, after which I head to Gadgetzan to see the goblin chef there and complete his quest to gain the next skill mastery in cookery.

After completing the cookery quest I buy the recipe for tender wolf meat and head to Felwood. I start in the south and run north, collecting wolf meat as well as as many bear flanks that I can get my hands on, in preparation for the next stage. In his chronicles, Kinless points to the new recipes available to level cooking up close to 300 available in Felwood that make use of bear flanks, bought from the vendor in the north of Felwood for the Alliance. The tender wolf meat and bear flanks allow me to get cooking up to 290 easily enough. From there to Silithus.

The innkeeper at Silithus asks me to find a recipe for sandworm meat from a nearby hostile camp before getting me to use the recipe to make ten sandworm meals. The drop-rate for sandworm meat is terrible, but it is still probably more enjoyable to collect it than to try fishing for ingredients. Cooking the ten sandworm meals takes my skill level from 290 right up to 300. Job completed! I go back to the Outlands and pick up the skill book to let me learn the next level of cookery. A quick visit to Sporeggar and I have two recipes, one for skill level 300 and one for 310, using ingredients I have been picking up already. Before long my skill level is half-way to the next level.

If only blacksmithing were as easy as cooking.

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Tags: cooking, gnomesblight, mmorpg, professions, world of warcraft

Probing the Death Knight

I have been a bit unsure as to what powers my Death Knight’s abilities. Certain talents refer to ’spells’, yet they certainly aren’t powered by mana, and other abilities are based on melee attacks. I think I’ll try experimenting to find out what stats would be best to boost.

I’m not exactly hard-core when it comes to gaming and am happy being able to find out effects with liberal use of tooltips, preferably where they are easy to find. The tooltips for my powers were not overly enlightening, although I have since found that more information is given in the spellbook’s tooltip, so I need to find a way to reveal the effects of changing stats. I could try looking it up, as I have no doubt others have done this already, but I like the idea of finding out for myself.

My idea is simple: buy some cheap items from the auction house and make use of the new target dummies in the cities whilst wearing different items. I will wear items that boost only one stat, as much as is possible, use an ability a few times on a 60th level target dummy and note down the damage numbers. To cover my blushes I will be wearing a simple dress as well, which happens only to have spirit-boosting qualities. Mind you, as I normally wear full plate on a female toon my blushes cannot be spared as I run around in what appear to be crotchless trousers, but for this experiment my underwear will not be visible, thank you.

My first stat to try boosting is +spellpower. Death Knights apparently have spells, but does spellpower boost our damage output? I don a few cheap items that increase my spellpower and throw several icy touch spells at the dummy. There is no change between having spellpower and without it, so I suppose I’m casting spells that aren’t actually spells. Taking a look at my basic stats and mousing-over each one shows that strength looks like a good candidate for changing damage, which wouldn’t be a surprise for melee-based attacks but doesn’t directly follow for the ranged spell-like attack of icy touch.

I throw on a bunch of +strength items and start pounding on the dummy again with icy touch. To my surprise the damage from icy touch is increased in relation to my strength. It doesn’t really make sense but it is a definite change. I don’t have many other items that I can play around with, as I really only started wondering about spellpower, so coming away with the knowledge that I need to boost strength primarily for increased damage and to ignore items with spellpower is a good result.

Later, I search for some death knight theorycraft, to see if I can get any information from people who are more experienced at digging in to the underlying mechanics. I quickly find myself at the Elitist Jerks forum and find that strength and weapon damage are apparently the two most important stats for a DPS-focussed Death Knight. This ties in with my simple experiment as well as the spell powers that key off weapon damage directly. I also delve a little in to spell rotations and am pleased to see that I have already worked out a fairly optimal rotation for heavy damage.

One change I make as a result of my research is to my talent spec. When I first started the Death Knight, which begins at 55th level, the talent points are handed out as quest rewards like sweets and the talent tree fills up pretty quickly. Quickly enough, in fact, that you can assign talents to abilities that you won’t be trained in for a few levels, which, unless you are keen and examine all the powers you’ll be getting up to 80th level, can make it tricky to work out the relative utility of the respective talents and trees. I liked the sound of the frost tree so worked my way down the tree in a hopefully intuitive way.

I was curious as to what the other trees may offer that I haven’t really examined, perhaps putting fifteen or so points in to another tree to gain a significant boost in effectiveness without sacrificing too much frosty goodness. One frost-spec looked appealing from the Elitist Jerks forum, which I modified slightly to suit my own designs. I now have a frost and blood Death Knight talent spec.

The blood talents are essentially to get me bladed armour for the extra attack power from my armour value, which is a splendid boost to damage output. There is a similar talent for the protection warrior. Although the warrior can carry a shield, which is a huge armour gain, the plate-wearing Death Knight still benefits significantly from this talent. The reduced threat generation and extra runic power will help to maintain high DPS whilst not taking away the opportunity to be a tank whilst in frost presence, so having to take those talents to get to bladed armour is not a problem.

In the frost tree I removed icy reach and added annihilation. Increasing the range of attacks is normally useful, but icy reach extends the range from twenty yards out to only thirty yards, where thirty yards has generally been the standard long-range attack that gets extended even further. Being able to cast from thirty yards away is not a change that is worth spending two talents points on.

Annihilation is a talent that I overlooked because I hadn’t got the obliterate power by the time I spent most of my points. Because some powers hit for increased damage on a diseased opponent, the diseases themselves are damage-over-time effects, and replacing the diseases would require wasting global cool-downs and resource-limited runes, being able to use obliterate without having to worry about its side-effect of removing diseases allows for a good DPS gains.

By moving some points to the blood tree I am now going without acclimation, which is an excellent talent when dealing with spellcasters, and particularly enemies with continuous auras but it may be too narrow in focus. As my current talent tree is only constructed up to 63rd level there is room for expansion as Gnomeblight gains levels, so I can consider adding it back in later. I will also have to consider what other talents will be useful soon, as my now even-more-efficient Death Knight romps through the Outlands, leaving a swathe of destruction in her wake.

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Tags: death knight, gnomesblight, mmorpg, talents, world of warcraft

Gnomesblight, Death Knight weaponsmith

I have some time outside of grouping with my Death Knight friend at the moment. I thought I’d try to get the weaponsmith quest out of the way, as it isn’t the most exciting of endeavours to undertake when twenty or so levels above the requirement, as well as it being a task of gathering materials. It will also give me something to do that won’t see me advance in levels and get ahead of my colleague in destruction.

With the notion that I would complete the weaponsmith quest clear in my mind I set out my goal clearly. Whilst flying down to Nessingwary’s camp in Stranglethorn Vale, to pick up the missing pattern for one of the weapons that is available from a vendor there in limited quantities, I list all the weapons I need to make and the materials needed to craft them. Broken down completely, I come up with:

• 88 x Iron Bar
• 56 x Mithril Bar
• 48 x Heavy Stone
• 16 x Solid Stone
• 16 x Gold Bar
• 28 x Heavy Leather
•  4 x Thick Leather
•  8 x Shadowgem
•  4 x Citrine
•  2 x Black Pearl
• 12 x Lesser Moonstone
• 16 x Strong Flux
• 32 x Coal

The list of materials is quite long but doesn’t seem quite as imposing as all the mithril I remember Tiger gathering to become an armoursmith. There seem to be more cross-profession items needed, though, particularly the leather. Undaunted, I start hunting mineral deposits. As I am in Stranglethorn Vale, and as luck would have it manage to buy the missing pattern from the vendor, I may as well run around the area to mine a whole bunch of iron, gratefully accepting any mithril that comes my way too.

After a full circuit of the Vale I am a bit weary of mining and hope that I have at least enough materials that I can economically buy the rest from the auction house. First, I send some tin that I happen to have lying around to Sapphire, who prospects some lesser moonstones and shadowgems from them and sends the gems back to Gnomesblight. All that is left are a few gems and a couple of stacks of leather, of which the auction house has plenty at reasonable enough prices.

A quick trip to the blacksmithing supplier and I am hoping that my simple arithmetic isn’t flawed. It would be a pain to have to go out gathering again, plus it would be awfully embarrassing to make a mistake on such simple maths. I smelt the metals I have collected, adding the coal to some of the iron to make steel, before opening my smithing interface. I am pleased to see that I can create the required quantities of each of the four weapons. I start hammering away at my metal bars to create four moonsteel broadswords, four massive iron axes, two heavy mithril axes and two big black maces.

Within a couple of minutes all the items are made. With that kind of speedy crafting they must be masterwork quality allowing me the title of weaponsmith. The dwarf weaponsmith agrees with me, surprisingly enough! A brief flash of light and I am now Gnomesblight, weaponsmith. And that’s it. It’s all a bit anti-climatic, particularly as I remember Tiger heading off to complete the quests for the Mithril Order and ending up with a trinket that conjured an epic mace for her.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it is all a big scam, to be honest. I rush around gathering all this ore, create a bunch of relatively expensive weapons, and all I do is hand them to someone who in return simply tells me ‘you are a weaponsmith’. I bet he headed straight to the auction house after I was out of sight. On top of everything, I now need a whole new heap of mithril just to increase my blacksmithing skills enough so that I can start to use thorium, which is only a stepping stone to fel iron and a vague opportunity to craft something useful for my character.

Why am I crafting again?

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Tags: blacksmithing, gnomesblight, mmorpg, professions, world of warcraft

A new Cormorant for more efficient salvaging

‘Ah, Cadet Ibramovic. You’re looking chipper today!’ My Minmatar agent was happy to see me as always. Although her second sentence may have been only in my imagination it would have been rude not to comment.

‘Thank you, I’m feeling pretty good. I have just bought and fitted a new ship specifically for salvaging.’ After being reminded of the utility of separating mission running and clearing up the wrecks it seemed foolish not to spend a bit of ISK to recreate the successful set-up I had back when I was running missions in Caldari space.

‘Oh, really’, my agent says. ‘Tell me all about it.’ I find that if I don’t mentally add these second sentences the conversation tends to stall.

‘It will be my pleasure! I’ll take a seat for this, it will probably be long-winded. I bought myself a Cormorant, because it has eight high slots that can be equipped with many tractor beams and salvagers for the quick collection and salvaging of the wrecks. I have a Cormorant back in Caldari space somewhere, which I didn’t bring when I moved because it was a bit inconvenient at the time. I can’t remember what the rest of the fittings are on my other salvaging vessel, but my time spent in New Eden is again showing me how I am picking up experience even when it isn’t immediately obvious.

‘I may not know the best set-up for a salvager, but I know that the salvager modules themselves are a considerable drain on the ship’s capacitor, as is the micro-warp drive in one of the mid slots. I also don’t know the full extent of the modules available on the market, but my experience has shown me that if I have a need for a certain type of module there is a good chance that it exists, I just have to find it.

‘The single low slot of the Cormorant was easy to fill, selecting a expanded cargo hold, allowing for more intact equipment to be looted from wrecks before my hold becomes full. That leaves some mid slots to fill. I don’t need any offensive or, hopefully, defensive capabilities on a ship that should be picking through empty hulls long after the battle is over, so I can focus on the salvaging capabilities. With the drain on the capacitor from the salvaging modules I could use some optimisation of the ship’s capacitor.

‘My direct experience is knowing that there are ways to boost the capacitor directly or to decrease its recharge rate, which I have gained from either looting modules from wrecks or having fitted a similar set-up in the past. I think a passive set-up would be preferable, so I start looking at the market for cap rechargers. I know that there are low slot fittings that would help, but the single low slot on my ship is used. I need mid slot fittings. This is where I draw on my experience of the market.

‘I know the type of fitting I am looking for, so it is simply a matter of looking through all the options available to find a mid slot fitting that decreases the recharge rate of a ship’s capacitor, and it is only a short time before I have found the exact unit. I buy three to fill up the mid slots and my cap recharge rate drops significantly, hopefully allowing for continuous use of the tractor beams and salvager modules, with some MWD use in-between.

‘On top of that, my training experience means that I don’t have to worry about CPU or power plant drain when fitting all of these modules. I have gained enough skills in the time since last fitting a Cormorant that I know how to equip all the modules without draining all of the ship’s power.’ It can be difficult to see direct progress in EVE Online because of the long duration of training and the slight incremental gains at each level of skill training, but it is times like this where it is useful to reflect on the positive changes that have occurred.

I can tell my agent is enthralled with my wondrous tale of buying and fitting a new ship. She is leant back in her chair savouring every word, eyes closed to avoid distractions of the physical world as I weave my tale. ‘And that’s why I’m so chipper! I can fit my Kestrel, Chewy Centre, to be a purely combat vessel and clean the battlefield afterwards with the Cormorant Life Imitates Art.’

My agent stirs, ‘So are you saying, in a long-winded way, that you’d like some work? Good, because I have just the job for you.’ It’s terribly exciting, getting ready for battle and looking forwards to taking Life Imitates Art out in to space to rip systems out of wrecked ships. I am on the edge of my seat as my agent pulls the mission file out, wondering how many enemies I’ll be asked to engage and destroy, how many wrecks I’ll be able to salvage from!

‘Here we are, ‘Save the Trees’. I need you to deliver some seeds to another system. It needs to be done quickly, are you up for the task?’ Oh, sure, a courier mission is just what I was after. In fact, I hope this is a three-part courier mission so that my hour of preparation and millions of ISK feels well-spent.

Maybe my agent wasn’t listening when I told her about my new salvaging ship after all.

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Tags: cormorant, eve online, kestrel, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, salvagin

Mining 300 on my Death Knight

My initial plan for Gnomesblight, my Death Knight, was to level up my mining and blacksmithing concurrently, and hopefully take advantage of running through the low-level areas to gain some faction reputation and cookery ingredients. The idea was that if I didn’t do this initially it would be frustrating to level through the Outlands without being able to mine any ore there, as well as more tedious to have to revisit all the areas at some point in the future in order to be able to craft anything of any use.

Unfortunately, mining ore increases skill more quickly than that recovered ore will advance the crafting profession, which means that either more ore needs to be mined than is necessary to advance only the gathering profession or the crafting profession is left behind at some point. Mining in low-level areas also doesn’t require much in the way of protecting yourself from wandering mobs, which could provide at least some cooking meats, so it is easy to bypass cookery too.

There is also the decision as to what my blacksmithing specialisation will be. For Tiger, my previous blacksmith, I chose her to be an armoursmith. This choice reflected her desire to be a tank, thinking that armour would be more important than weapons for that role. I’m not sure quite how much armour she made that she wore over high-level instance loot, but it seemed like a rational decision at the time. For Gnomesblight I chose weaponsmith, if only to be different. I know that weapons take more materials than armour to create, in the sense of types of materials, often requiring items from other gathering professions, but I didn’t quite fancy gathering a few hundred bars of mithril again for the armoursmith quest.

The weaponsmith quest is, perhaps unsurprisingly, just as involved as for the armoursmith. I don’t think as many pieces need to be crafted but those that do require about as much gathering and cost, as well as requiring iron and mithril combined. As my mining skills no longer find extracting iron to be any sort of challenge completing the weaponsmith quest will require time to advance my blacksmithing that has no effect on my mining, a significant time contribution at that.

My desire to get mining high enough to mine in the Outlands was two-pronged. First, so that I could mine the ore I find when levelling Gnomesblight, rather than leaving it behind and having to return later only to mine, which seemed a waste of time in itself. Second, so that Sapphire’s jewelcrafting skill could be improved. Sapphire is a jewelcrafter and enchanter, so has no way to gather ore herself and is not affluent enough to buy the ore she needs from the auction house. Having a second character send her ore is the most effective way I have of improving her professions.

Up until the dash to 70, prior to the release of Wrath of the Lich Kind, Knifey was her miner, also being my main character on the server. Then Sapphire overtook him and is now sitting ready in Northrend, but with her professions lingering below the level required to train to the highest level. To increase her skill she needs more ore, but it seems that Knifey likes the environment of Zangarmarsh and is unlikely to move from there any time soon. Gnomesblight will take on the mantle of mining for Sapphire.

With plenty of ore required to raise Sapphire’s jewelcrafting profession skill, and hence enchanting, it makes more sense to concentrate on that first. Now my plan is to get Gnomesblight able to mine in the Outlands and gather as much ore as possible to send to Sapphire, which I achieved last night when hitting the 300 skill level in mining. Once Sapphire can train in Northrend I’ll feel more comfortable to send her questing there, as well as getting Gnomesblight caught up in her own professions. It is still going to be a long path and my main concern is that my guild will not race past me in Northrend or levelling with me content to take my time and enjoy the Death Knight class and the scenery of the new continent.

I have a companion Death Knight with me, also in the guild, which is helping both to enjoy the class as well as the Outlands content again. To be honest, I really quite like Outlands still, even if there is so much more awaiting me in Northrend. I’ll get there soon, but I don’t feel any great desire to rush there lest I also rush past it. With the speed boost given to levelling in Outlands it also means that I can send Gnomesblight in a different direction to Sapphire. Whereas Sapphire headed south from Zangarmarsh to Terrokar Forest and Nagrand quite early, Gnomesblight can head north to Blade’s Edge Mountains and beyond. I get to experience all the content, merely split over two characters.

The only problem will be in levelling cooking and blacksmithing at some point, but I don’t see that spoiling my current enjoyment at all. It’s all working out quite well right now.

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Tags: blacksmithing, death knight, gnomesblight, knifey, mining, mmorpg, outlands, professions, sapphire, world of warcraft

Some quick missions, minus one ship

My new plan to run missions quickly to gain faction standing more efficiently, ignoring bounties, loot and salvage, starts off well. I pop in to New Eden and pick up my first mission of the evening from my agent, the Repair Station. There isn’t a better mission for my new work ethic. I leave dock and warp to deadspace where I find the repair station sitting unguarded in space. I target and destroy the auxiliary power generators first, leaving the station alone, as these generators help the repair station regenerate more quickly if they are intact. I leave the station alone because the first hit on it causes pirates and gun placements to appear to protect the station, as well as the station launching waves of repair drones to repair itself and anything else allied to it that has been damaged.

My tactic works as expected. Without the auxiliary generators the repair station is much easier to destroy, and no ships appear until I start attacking the station itself. With the speed I destroy the repair station the pirates and mercenaries are only just coming in to range, but despite the promise of bounties, loot and salvage that await should I engage them the mission completion is triggered solely on the repair station’s destruction. I warp back to the agent’s station before a single target locks on to me, leaving them to sift through the debris of the repair station. One mission completed in about five minutes and I’m ready to pick up the next.

The next couple of missions involve actively engaging hostile forces in order either to complete the mission directly or to unlock acceleration gates in the deadspace complexes. With the enemy ships being destroyed and leaving wrecks tantalisingly close to my ship the temptation gets too strong and I end up locking on to and salvaging from a few wrecks whilst finishing off the destruction of the rest of the ships in the area. Of course, by the time I am a few battles in to the evening’s piloting I am telling myself that it won’t take long just to grab the last two wrecks and that I would be foolish not to see if there are any of the lucrative armour plates or melted capacitor consoles to be salvaged. My efficient mission running has dropped a notch, but I’m still running fast through the missions.

By the time my agent asks me to deal with a Pirate Intrusion I am almost grabbing each wreck as my missiles blow up the ships, justifying the tactic as being even more efficient because I am completing missions just as quickly yet also getting loot and salvage, as long as I balance my locked targets between active threats and wrecks. It’s not such a bad plan, really, but I must amend a previous assertion I made. I pointed out that flying level one missions in EVE Online, with a few million more skill points in my head than when I started, is as much of a challenge and threat as running my World of Warcraft Death Knight, Gnomesblight, through the Deadmines.

I think it it more apt to state that running level one missions at the moment is as challenging as running Gnomesblight through Uldaman: it’s straightforward and unchallenging if I am paying attention. I feel I need to make this adjustment because of two events that occurred. The first was when Gnomesblight bit off a bit more than she could chew and was overwhelmed by irritating troggs in Uldaman and killed. This was mostly down to not paying enough attention, caused by being overconfident in my invulnerability against lesser foes. Having played with 70th level characters for a while it can be easy to forget that I am only on a 60th level character and that those ten levels can make a significant difference. It is easier to forget when confronting mobs that are still conning grey by a couple of decades, but there don’t need to be quite so many for them to become overwhelming when only 60th level compared to being 70th level.

In much the same way, my overconfidence at surviving level one missions in EVE Online ended up causing the loss of my Crucifier frigate. It happened quite quickly and whilst I was trying to salvage. I broke off the salvage attempt and tried to recover my position but I couldn’t even warp out in time. It was my pod that eventually got away. I would point out that I was flying uninsured as well, but it was only a frigate and the default payout covered the basic cost, but not the modules and insurance, for its replacement. I even bought and fitted a new ship quickly enough to recover a few modules and salvage from the Crucifier, as well as completing the mission to get the bonus reward.

My overconfidence was tested because of various reasons. I am still not entirely experienced enough to run an armour tank, being used to shield tanks instead, and could probably use more skill training in that area as well. I was also being cocky in trying to salvage whilst under fire from two or three ships at once, rather than keeping my speed up both to mitigate some of the damage and to maintain a suitable distance to negate some weapons fire entirely. I essentially made myself a huge sitting duck and was penalised for my arrogance. It is good to be reminded occasionally of one’s vulnerability, though.

I don’t replace the Crucifier with another frigate of the same type. To help complete the mission quickly and to feel more comfortable I buy and fit a Kestrel, a Caldari frigate. To be honest, it is perhaps a mystery why I bought myself the Amarr Crucifier when I had moved to Minmatar space, but that was simply because I wasn’t paying enough attention in the first place. The Kestrel is much more familiar, being a missile boat with a strong shield that I augment with some extra modules. It doesn’t take long to fit the Kestrel and I am soon back in deadspace wiping out the last of the pirates and scooping up the remains of my Crucifier. It is my final mission of the evening as well.

It is a good session that has seen me complete about twice as many missions as I would have normally, had I been salvaging everything, although I probably could have fitted another mission in had I not lost a ship. It is all good, though, leaving me with an even more renewed interesting in continue my adventures as well as giving me aspirations for skill training and experience gains. Onwards and upwards!

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Tags: crucifier, deadspace, eve online, gnomesblight, kestrel, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, uldaman, world of warcraft

Cost versus benefit in PvE mission running

I jumped back in to a pod to blow up more spaceships in EVE Online. I knew I wanted to and that I would have a good time, but another factor that became apparent after a little more thought influenced my decision. Having joined a corporation in a different faction’s space than my own I had to abandon my good quality level three agents for mission running to start again with poor quality level one agents. This isn’t terrible, because I still get to blow up lots of spaceships and as my skills are suitably more advanced the level one missions have become feasts of explosions, but it is still a demotion. The ships I am fighting can often be destroyed with a single missile, I am limited to flying frigate-class ships, and the mission rewards and bounty payments are pitiful compared to what I was getting.

To be fair, destroyers are frigate-class ships and any one of those available could make me even more potent an adversary in deadspace, but I don’t think there are any destroyers that employ missile bays extensively, which is where my limited expertise lies. This is one area that I am hoping to expand upon once my learning skills are complete, moving in to training how to use cannons more effectively. Even so, running level one missions is straightforward and not much more of a challenge than running my Death Knight through the Deadmines. PvP operations are more interesting but also more time-consuming. I realised my balance in New Eden was compromised in that I either had to dedicate a lot of time or accept a lack of challenge.

When I bought my new Drake and headed out on a level three mission with my corporation they were running the missions to increase their security standing, offsetting the losses incurred from their PvP operations. The mission ops were interesting, in that the missions were accepted, ships were blown up, and missions were handed in, to be repeated as quickly as possible. ‘As quickly as possible’ meant that the wrecks were left floating in space without being scavenged or salvaged. I was encouraged to take what I could in the time it took to hand in the mission and pick up a new one. Still languishing with my level one agent it occurred to me that this is the approach I should be taking currently.

There is no doubt that salvaging has been my primary income for most of my time as a capsuleer. The big level three missions offer high rewards and higher bounties, but even then the number of salvaged modules pulled from the many wrecks could end up netting me even more ISK from the market than the rewards received. There is also no doubt that salvaging earns me far more money when running level one missions, by at least an order of magnitude per mission. However, the amount of time it takes to clear a deadspace mission area of wrecks also takes a great deal longer than the time it takes to create the wrecks in the first place. When I was struggling to make money when I first started in New Eden this time-reward ratio was a worthwhile venture, enabling me to buy better equipment, more suitable ships and not to worry should my own ship get destroyed, as well as paying for expensive skill training books.

Now that I am back to level one agents my aim is, or at least should be, to raise my standings with the new faction quickly so that I can get back to the more worthwhile mission running. To achieve this I am going to learn once more from my corporation and leave the loot behind. It is not that I couldn’t use the money, as it will come in handy in the future if nothing else, it is more that there is no point in being able to afford a battleship if I am still running missions that won’t allow cruisers through the acceleration gates. My primary focus should be gaining faction standing and I can best achieve that through faster mission running, which means leaving possibly lucrative salvage behind.

I head in to New Eden with my new plan of more efficient mission running and find that the first mission fits quite nicely with this plan, in that it is a simple courier task. Whilst I am warping my way to the pick-up system I am invited to join a corporation member on level four mission, after I mention that I am only on for a short while to blast through some missions. The level four mission will probably gain me much more in the way of standings and money than the few level one missions that I could run in the same time, so I head off to swap my frigate for the Drake battlecruiser and get ready for some heavy fire. After getting two systems confused again I finally find my Drake, Lightness of Being, in the station where I left it and make sure all the systems are on-line and suitable for the mission, before undocking and making the jump to the destination system.

With my far more capable corporation colleague piloting an armour tank and designating targets my heavy missiles and his drones make light work of most of the cruisers and battleships in the deadspace region. Even when a new wave warps in and starts picking on me the shields on my passive tanking Drake are coping without a problem. My colleague suggests aligning to a station ready to warp out just in case, but not normally using the ‘align to’ button I instead accidentally warp to the station immediately. This isn’t a problem, as the aggro switches back to him and my shields get to recharge even more whilst I’m gone. The only issue is that I abandon my drones by warping out unexpectedly, so I have to fly out to retrieve them.

Getting closer to the enemies draws more fire and there are some really neat explosions going on! I check my combat log and find out that the huge, ring-like explosions are caused by torpedoes. They look really cool, even if they happen to be bouncing off my shields at the time, and it makes me want to learn how to use them in anger. My colleague mentions that they are generally ineffective without a target painter, which I counter by saying ‘but look at the explosions!’ As luck would have it, our own bombardment of the enemy doesn’t destroy all their systems and I am able to pluck some siege launchers and torpedo ammuntion from the burning wrecks once the battle is over, perhaps giving me a cheap opportunity to give them a trial.

I hop in to EVE Online to blast through some quick level one missions and end up getting involved in a huge scrap and seeing even more cool explosions than before, picking up over five million ISK in rewards and bounties as well. I definitely want to be doing this more often.

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Tags: deadspace, drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, salvaging

More Death Knight mining

After motivating myself to spend some more time as a space cadet I disappointed myself a little when I procrastinated slightly before ending up loading World of Warcraft. It just seems like I have so much to achieve in World of Warcraft at the moment. I would like to take my warrior Sapphire out to Northrend but I know that if I did that too soon her professions would falter, as Knifey was the ore gatherer that fed her the raw materials. Knifey has been left behind now and is probably going to be replaced by Gnomesblight, my Death Knight, who is a miner and blacksmith. Having a gatherer and crafter on separate characters pretty much requires both characters to be almost equal in levels, otherwise the crafter will either lack materials or the gatherer will have to revisit areas solely for gathering. With Gnomesblight starting at 55th level and mining from zero skill there is quite a journey for her to go before being able to pass on suitable materials to Sapphire.

Essentially, I need to get to the point where Gnomesblight can mine fel iron and adamantite for Sapphire, which requires both some levelling and a lot of mining. I try to avoid words like ‘work’ when describing my gaming as it can easily give the wrong impression, but starting a gathering profession on a high-level character can certainly seem like a chore. In a game where progression is nominally expressed through character level, with perhaps a secondary measure being equipment level, having to run through all of the low-level zones gathering ore secures no feeling of measurable character progression. My mining and blacksmithing skills are progressing, certainly, but nothing I am making will be of any use to me and I am neither gaining experience nor better equipment in the process. Trying to combine my gathering with low-level quests is at least garnering some reputation gains, which again isn’t real progression but it can give a sense of some.

At the same time, gathering the ore is not difficult at all. I am in no direct danger at any point, regardless of the mobs I aggro or my inexperience with the class, simply because of the disparity in levels. I have cleared the Deadmines, inside the instance and out, of all its ore several times without needing to slow down from running pace. But, again, I want a challenge at least some of the time. This is why I suggest to a fellow Death Knight that we head out to Hellfire Peninsula to gain a quick level and wreak havoc proper. It is my second visit to the demonic red landscape and have my hearthstone set to Shattrath City already. Running through the familiar quests is an entertaining diversion to mining, even if I have to leave several mineral nodes alone being unable to mine them at my skill level, and again I am having a splendid time as a Death Knight taking on mobs two or three levels above me without giving it a second thought.

My companion dings 59th level quite quickly and we plow on through some more quests, even getting a random world drop of a cloak that is better than our standard equipment. I finish the excursion half-way through 59th level and am happy with how I am getting to grips with my abilities and powers. We ride to Shattrath City as a pair, getting knocked off our mounts by pesky mobs twice only to cut them down efficiently and continue on our way. Hopefully I will be able to spend more time in Outlands soon, as one small progression I have made is moving my blacksmithing skills past needing copper and brass and on to iron, so I don’t need to mine any more copper or tin. Soon mithril, then thorium. I am making progress, it is just in small steps at the moment and I am setting myself targets that help me realise my progress. Exploring the world and taking time to make more tangible progress also means I am having fun in the process.

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Tags: blacksmithing, death knight, gnomesblight, knifey, mining, mmorpg, outlands, professions, sapphire, world of warcraft