The last few weekends have been rather odd in terms of gaming with our group in its entirety. Kilen hasn’t shown a lot of interest in World of Warcraft. Kilen did join us for a bit of chatter in Discord a few times (when the evil foosball (football) wasn’t on). He also mentioned that the adventures in Conan Exiles had come to a close for him, and he’s cancelled the server subscription he had prior. I had tried to login to it somewhat recently, but the addons used by the server would not allow it shortly after the Age of Heroes update for CE.
Aces (Kilen’s brother) started with us last weekend, so to speak. I mean he’s higher level, and mainly does higher level content. Aces has helped my son and I out a few times though, and we both ran through some awesome dungeon runs with several buddies he’s made in the state he lives and works in (long way from The Shire, so to speak. 😉 ).
Even still the gaming adventures have still been rolling along as usual. Aces, Error, and I are hopeful Kilen will come around and join us in our foray into the long missed lands of Azeroth once again. Alas, only time will tell if he should come around at some point.
Game long my friends, and game hard!
Hobbit
Days played: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Comments: Monday evening, Qvaid and I were back at it again, starting where we left off on Rust and Vengeance! We headed over to the Foundry from the Research Laboratory, we cleared the dungeon and got the Warehouse Key.
From there we headed out and to the Warehouse at a furies pace. We also cleared that dungeon and after a bit of a struggle, we defeated the Titanic Guardian Mk-7 to get Gemstone Key A!
We were going to go ahead and head to the next dungeon, the Manufacturing Facility. Unfortunately there were a few things standing in our way for that. Both our packs were effectively full, and we were already having to leave or drop things to pick up any more loot. Our supplies were running low that we were carrying. And finally, it was starting to get pretty late.
In truth the supplies we had in Harmattan were also getting a bit low, save for food, and what we’d collected as we went. We were quickly running through quite a bit in our travels. It seemed we did not bring enough with us from Caldera, and at the time we didn’t have access to our stash.
We headed back to town to rest and restock, alongside having to clear corruption from the Warehouse and battles with the Titanic Guardian and Immaculates (which corrupt you on hit). Now, what we didn’t know, is you can apparently buy the player house before completing the quest. I just presumed you had to complete Rust and Vengeance before the option was available, similar to how all the other towns work. I happened to check the map in Harmattan, and where the player house was located, and on a whim I ran over to that area. Shortly after, Qvaid and I had a nice, cozy place to stay in Harmattan along with access to our beloved Stash Chest!
As you can guess, by this point we’d already been up quite a bit later than we intended. We finished out the night with some major inventory management to prep for our next set of adventures on Tuesday evening!
Tuesday evening, Qvaid and I sat down and headed out to start the adventures in the Manufacturer Facility as planned!
We did end up a bit lost getting to the Manufacturer Facility, but after some time, we found our bearing and were well on our way to exploring the next dungeon.
Unfortunately, even though we watched a guide, we were ill prepared and suffering from the effects of heat in the dungeon. After a few rough starts, we decided to head back to Harmattan and change out our gear because not only was there the heat to deal with in various portions of the dungeon, there was also cold in the lower areas.
Qvaid and I were wanting to clear and explore all it had to offer, so we opted for gear that could supplement both issues. It wasn’t the perfect gear per se, but gear that could allow us to transverse both areas a bit easier. She went with the Pathfinder armor, and I went with Master Trader gear. With those sets, we can do things like drink a bit of water to cool down, or eat a Gaberry Tartine to heat up. Even without any additions to the armors we choose it still allotted us more time to explore before the negative effects would take hold from the heat and cold.
We ended up calling it a night in a Trog part of the dungeon which doesn’t seem to negatively impact either temperature. Our hopes were to make it to the next dungeon before call it a night, but with all the adjustments we needed to make, we ended up having to call it there with hopes to pick back up again on Wednesday evening. We ‘believe’ we have the dungeon cleared now, and just need to head back to the Train Station with Train Key A which we picked up. This should allow the train to access parts of the region it was previously locked out of before.
On Wednesday evening, Qvaid and I managed to complete the Loading Dock and the Mana Transfer Station dungeons. We now have all 4 gemstone keys, and we are ready to head back to the Research Laboratory to face off against the foes that dungeon has to offer, and put an end to the Rust Lich once and for all. Our original plan was to head back to Harmattan, gather supplies, complete some inventory management, and head back to the Research Laboratory so we could start there. Unfortunately, time caught up to us during all the preparations and we ended up calling it a night in Harmattan. We’ll have to pick back up from there on our next adventure in Outward Definitive Edition. As I understand it, Qvaid has a busy weekend though, so that adventure might not come until Monday evening on the 28th.
After things had come to a close in World of Warcraft on Sunday evening, I asked Qvaid if she might be up for some more adventuring in Outward. She was happy to join, and off we went! We headed over to the Warehouse to hop on the mana train! From there to the Research Facility, explored the two side areas in the dungeon, before unlocking the gate to the Rust Lich’s lair.
We managed to clear the dungeon, defeat the Rust Lich, and free Harmattan from the impending doom that was the rust and vengeance of the Rust Lich and his army of Golems! It was an exciting bit of story, adventure, and truly an amazing piece of work by Nine Dots Studio!
Typically speaking, we would continue to explore the region after completing the quest, but Qvaid was in a hurry to get back to New Sirocco and start work on the City again. In truth, I had no objections to that either as I was also very anxious to see how the buildings we left being constructed turned out. On a stroke of blind luck, the Soroborean Caravanner in Harmattan was traveling to none other than, New Sirocco!? Qvaid and I prepped for travel in a hurry (mainly because as we understand it: 1. Where they go is random, and 2. It can change as the new day starts (some time around early morning as we’ve noted)). We scrambled, but managed to get everything packed up, which I add because effectively I had to dump the contents of my backpack in my stash, pick up the Alchemy Bag we were storing food in, in town to preserve it, and waddle over to the Soroborean Caravanner to travel. We did make it to New Sirocco, and I plopped the back down as we ended, Qvaid handed me my real backpack, and we started loading up food to carry over to the bag we left in New Sirocco to combine with our previous sets of food. I also managed to gather the Gaberry Wine from the Stillery and food from the new Community Garden we left being constructed. We did some major inventory management, repairs, and changed out our gear to prep for adventure in the swarming heat of Caldera later. At the time of this post, we haven’t decided if we are going to continue gathering supplies for more buildings, or if we might start the next series of quests in the quest line.
Days played: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Players: Aces, Error, Iron, Kilogre, Hobbit
Comments: On Thursday morning, I woke up a bit early and started playing the druid I made to play on days or times no one was on. I managed to work my way through some of the starter quests in Exiles Reach. I didn’t quite complete the content as I noted work time was fast approaching, and I opted to halt at the Ogre illusion part of the quest chain with plans to pick back later in the evening as scheduling allowed.
After the work day had come to a close, and I took the grandkids out for a short spurt of time to play, we had dinner, and I was back in the lands of Azeroth. I finished up the Exiles Reach starter chain, and headed into Stormwind to try and pick up the Dragonflight path this time around. Unfortunately, I was met with a bug, and I couldn’t start the quest line. At the advice of a guide, I nuked the character (it was only around 11th level), and made another attempt. At least this time, the guide made a character and joined me, so I had some conversation and someone to accompany me on the attempt. No one in the group made it to Azeroth with me on Thursday evening. In a slew of irony the only thing we accomplished was two new characters with the same issue. Neither of us could start the quest line for Dragonflight. Even still, I appreciated the guide’s attempt to assist me, and the company was certainly a welcomed plus. I ended the night standing beside Chromie unsure of where to go from there. I guess for simplicity, I’ll probably just head to Lich King until I get level 18 and hopeful I’m able to correct the issue via that method.
Friday evening, started out on some positive notes! The issues I had with my druid on Thursday evening appeared to be over. I was able to start the Dragon Flight quest line and Iron decided to give the World of Warcraft adventures a try!
Iron and I got the quests, and headed over to The Waking Shores to get started after we got everything lined up in the group. Iron and I quested there until we reached the Embassy close to the port you land at (or portal too depending on how you decided to journey). Shortly after that, Iron needed to turn in for the night.
The adventures didn’t stop there, however! Kilogre had logged in a bit ealier, and was entertaining himself while I tried to work on catching Iron up to the group on the druid I created prior. We both ran through a few quests in Lich King, before heading over to the next quest hub outside of the Borean Tundra. Shortly after that, Kilogre was ready to turn in as well.
I finished out he night with some modifications to Linux Mint, and some bash scripting I wanted to test and toy with.
On Saturday, Error and I picked up and started some questing initially in Lich King (Borean Tundra). We also moved to the next quest hub outside of the Tundra just to clear up a few quests.
Anxious to start the journey to Dragon Isles (Dragonflight), we both headed back to Stormwind to pick up the quests, and start the new adventures! We ran through the quests, one by one, until we came to a quest that we needed to run a dungeon for.
It was there we ran into a slight road block. We have a decent group composition, with him being a Ret Pally and I’m running a Holy Priest. But… he is relatively new to WoW, and I’m a bit of the rusty side from not playing so long. We were making progress, but the second boss (or first if the other qualifies as a mini boss?) of Ruby Lifepools, was giving us fits. Just so much DPS and things to deal with, that I wasn’t able to keep us both alive. Eventually, we got tied of running head first into the wall, and I noted Aces had jumped on. I asked him if he would mind assisting us, and he was happy to oblige!
Unfortunately, Error ended up having to call it while, Aces was on the way. Aces ran me through the dungeon with ease, and then another dungeon a bit later in The Waking Shore!
I didn’t want to get too far ahead of Error on my priest, so Aces and I started discussing other options for continuing the adventures. We decided I could hop on the Protection Pally I had, he would play a DPS warrior (Arms I believe), and some other friends and WoW acquaintances joined us for numerous dungeon runs. My Paladin went from something like 26 (maybe 27) to something around 35 before the early morning time made me have to turn in for the night. (Aces and that gang are 2 hours behind me at worst. 🙂 ).
On Sunday, Error and I were back on the WoW adventures again. We managed to roll through quest a few quests, until the quest hub we were at and moving too started to dry up. It was around that time we decided we should get his Dungeon quests completed and prepare to move to the next area outside of The Waking Shores.
Our initial attempts at the Ruby Lifepools were going fairly well. There was vast improvements on gameplay for the both of us, but alas… we ran into issues on that same boss again. We did progress further than before, but I just wasn’t able to put dots on her, and keep up with keeping us both alive. We implored to Aces for help again, but he was busy with errands that day, and never did make it into WoW before we called it at least.
All was not lost however! Error found out we could speak with Captain Garrick at the dungeon, and we were suddenly well on our way through the dungeon with the help of 3 of our old (NPC Pals) from the starter quests, Exiles Reach! We finished the dungeon, Error finished those quests, and we headed over to Neltharus, the Obsidian Citadel to finish up some more dungeon quests he picked up, and I had already completed via help from Aces the night before! Once again, we had the help of Captain Garrick and the crew from Exiles Reach!
After we completed the other dungeon there (normal difficulty), we headed out to the next quest we had in Ohn’ahran Plains (At least I think that was it?), started the next line of quests, and were ready to attempt repair of the Emerald Dragonflight Oathstone (or restoration of it as it were). We managed to complete the restoration of Red and Black Dragonflights with quests and story in our travels in The Waking Shores. We did end up calling it a bit early on Sunday night however, as Error was wanting to take some time to chill with his wife and the grandkids before the start of the next work week.
