01.02.10
Posted in Aion, Gear, Guide at 11:40 am by Fedoldinn
Yes, we’re still here. Things have been pretty chaotic lately with work and the holidays coming up, but we’ve still been playing Aion regularly.
Lately, I’ve been working on leveling through the upper 30s and having just recently hit 39, I still have a ways to go in the process. Many hours spent in Mist Mane grinding, and I still have many more quests to complete there which should be good for quite a bit of experience when I finally get to turn them in. I’ve also been working through some of the campaign quests I left lying around, and generally clearing out my quest log in the Abyss when I can. Right now, I’m taking some time to focus on gathering again since my potion supply has dwindled and I’ve lagged behind severely in my Aether Extraction skill.
Anyway, with more time spent grouping and hopefully more opportunities to group for instances coming up, I’ve been debating once again on which Stigma I want to pick up for my open spot. I’d left it for two reasons: because I wasn’t entirely certain that I wanted to get Curse of Roots, and because the general cost of the Stigma Stones was extremely high on the broker in comparison to my kinah supply at the time. Now, cost is less of an issue, but I’m still not completely sold on Curse of Roots.
Let’s take a quick glance at some of the the stigmas available for Sorcerers:
- Lumiel’s Wisdom I – Level 20 – For 15 sec, you can use skills with only 50% of the required MP.
- Curse of Roots I – Level 20 – Transforms the target into a tree for 20 sec. The transformed target cannot move or act, and its All Elemental Defenses increases. Once the target is attacked, the effect disappears immediately.
- Zikel’s Wisdom I – Level 28 – Increases your Magical Skill Boost by 300 for 15 sec.
- Curse of Weakness I – Level 28 – Curses a target within 25m. For 1 min, each time they use magical skills, they take magic damage equal to 5% of their Max HP. This damage will not exceed 500.
- Wind Cut Down I – Level 31 – Deals 687 magical wind damage to a target within 25m of you, causing it to bleed for 6 sec.
- Vaizel’s Wisdom I – Level 37 – Reduces your skill casting time by 25% for 15 sec.
The first on the list, Lumiel’s Wisdom, is the first stigma that we get as sorcerers. I still use it a lot for grinding and soloing, as well as in instances to keep my mana supply up without having to use potions repeatedly. The other stigma that I picked up early on was Zikel’s Wisdom, for those times when you need a mob to die faster or for adding some damage when out killing Elyos. I find these two to be very useful in different situations, even though they are on the same 30 second cooldown.
Taking a look at the others, we have Curse of Roots, Curse of Weakness, Wind Cut Down and Vaizel’s Wisdom. Curse of Roots adds yet another form of CC to our arsenal. Even though we already have Sleep, Root and Aether’s Hold, having another more permanent crowd control ability that also keeps ranged targets silenced is extremely useful in many situations, both PvE and PvP alike. Many sorcerers tend to pick this one up early on and use it quite often. Curse of Weakness does damage to targets as they cast, however, the damage done is fairly limited and so is its usefulness. Personally, I’d recommend passing on this one. Wind Cut Down is more useful, adding a bleed to targets who try to run. This one seems more useful for PvP, and I’ve even contemplated picking it up myself, however I’m not entirely sure how useful it is since I’ve never seen anyone using it. Finally, Vaizel’s Wisdom is yet another stigma on the same cooldown as both Lumiel’s Wisdom and Zikel’s Wisdom, but this time it reduces our casting speed by 25% on spells.
I’m still leaning towards picking up Vaizel’s Wisdom if I can, I’d like to be able to dish out more damage in less time in PvP situations personally. Curse of Roots is tempting though since I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve had an extra mob or player around that Root or Aether’s Hold simply wasn’t useful enough to take care of. Of course, the latest broker prices on both of these has me waiting yet again. The last time I checked, Vaizel’s Wisdom was 3 million kinah on our server, and Curse of Roots was around 500 000 kinah, both far overpriced compared to what they had been before. What are your thoughts as a Sorcerer? Which stigmas do you prefer for PvE and PvP purposes?
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11.18.09
Posted in Aion, Guide at 8:23 am by Fedoldinn
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Part 1 of this article here.
Last week I briefly discussed the variable factors in terms of in game goals and play time, including profession leveling, gathering and questing. I’d like to start out by discussing the latter two of these in a bit more detail considering they will make up the bulk of my in game time and affect the planning stages the most for those of us who have limited availability and are more casual players overall.
The main factors in my decision making process for questing versus gathering were the size of the quest hub I was currently working on and the current state of my gathering skill in comparison to the nodes in the areas nearby. If I felt like I was behind on gathering skill, or knew that I needed to level it up before I moved into a new area, I would focus more on gathering and less on questing. Although the two are not mutually exclusive, sometimes it became apparent that ignoring the quests for a short time and hunting nodes to gather would be more beneficial than focusing on the quest goals. During these periods of time, I would simply farm the nearby mobs for XP gains while waiting for nodes to respawn.
For the most part however, questing is generally better suited to longer gaming sessions and gathering / grinding is better suited to shorter ones. The exception here would be the smaller quest hubs that are restricted to a fairly limited area as they can usually be completed in shorter time frames. Always remember that you can skip a quest hub and save the larger ones for another day when you do have the time to go complete them.
Looking back on my experience, I leveled from 1-16 solo for the most part. It is entirely feasible to level up further solo as well. There were a few times when I found myself killing mobs several levels ahead of myself. As a sorcerer, the main thing I had to keep in mind was that since I’m fairly squishy, playing carefully in situations like these was of utmost importance. Dying is both a costly and time consuming mistake (and one that I’ve made many times). Making sure to take my time and think strategically, I was able to work through them with little to no problems at all. The last few levels in this range become the hardest, just be sure to play carefully and not to rush, and you will be able to work through them alone.
When you hit roughly level 18, you’ll want to work on the quests relating to the Mau and the Black Claw area. For this, you will need to find a group (and it is most likely your first major group experience in Aion). It also means you will want to be sure to set aside a larger chunk of time to play. The area isn’t too large, but the elites are tough and the quests take some time to work through. I had a ton of fun here in the beta, and can say its well worth the effort if you can plan for the time to head over to the area with a group to check it out.
At this point, I’ll have to admit that the next few levels really tested my patience with this game. Going from roughly level 20 to 25 was very rough in my experience, and involved a lot of solo grinding that I wasn’t initially prepared for. Looking back on it I could have probably done it better by strategically choosing mobs that yield the highest XP possible and focusing my efforts, but my haphazard method at the time made it more painful that it had to be. Needless to say, I’m much more used to grinding in Aion and far more focused now, but for those of you who may still be in this range fear not; once you finally hit level 25 the process becomes easier for a while and much more enjoyable when you get to enter the Abyss!
I have a few more tips for casual and hardcore players alike:
- Leveling professions is both costly and time consuming. I recommend doing it in short bursts and make sure you do the first free work order repeatedly, as Middea has already mentioned in another post.
- Make sure you focus on gathering as you go if it is important to you. Going back to do this later on can be extremely annoying!
- Off peak times are excellent for farmed quests, waiting on spawns, drop rates and other tasks that are difficult to accomplish during peak hours. If you can and have the time, leave these for those times when there are fewer players around to compete with.
Overall, my main strategy was to know in advance how much time I had available for the day so that I would have a plan of attack before I even logged on. This helped immensely considering I tend to get sidetracked quite easily and can become distracted with legion chat, browsing the broker or selling items, or just randomly wandering the world around me. It isn’t exactly uncommon for me to spend hours in a game and not feel like I’ve accomplished much if anything at all, so being prepared and organized is crucial to keeping my focus while playing an MMO casually. Of course, this strategy is only really important if you are trying to level in an efficient manner. If you simply wish to enjoy the game at your own pace, feel free to do so.
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11.07.09
Posted in Aion, Guide at 6:51 pm by Fedoldinn
A few weeks ago I wrote about my debate as to whether or not Aion would be worth the purchase and monthly subscription fee considering my limited availability to play. This is a follow-up post outlining my time in game and hopefully providing some tips on how to plan and maximize your own game experience. As always, any feedback is appreciated and we would like to hear about your own experience with Aion so far!
So, what has changed after my initial debate? Well, after a little thought and some discussion, it became clear to me that I did actually want to play the game. Speaking with Middea about the upcoming release, the latest news, and everything else surrounding it only made me that much more excited to check it out. On top of this, there were a few factors that convinced me that it was actually worth my money to purchase the game and pay the $14.99 US ( approximately $16.36 Canadian currently) monthly subscription fee. Middea’s breakdown of the cost of entertainment, as well as our decision to play casually and make sure we enjoy ourselves instead of rushing to the end game both weighed fairly heavily in the final decision.
And so I promptly pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition and have been playing since the head start fairly often, although somewhat sporadically. Some days I play for a few hours, other days I can log on for an hour maximum, and sometimes (fairly often recently) I can’t even play at all. Even with these limitations, and the initially long queues, I’m confident I’ve been maximizing my time in game in order to accomplish the goals I’ve set for myself, and most importantly, I’ve been able to have fun while doing so.
So, what’s the secret to playing an MMO casually? Well, there are three main points to keep in mind while reading this:
- Be patient. MMO’s are designed and developed as a time sink, just like any good role-playing game.
- Plan your play time. I’ve come up with a few points that hopefully will help you with this.
- Have fun! After all, that is the entire point of playing, right?
It would seem that the first point should stand fairly well on its own without the need to further clarify. However, thinking back on the role-playing games (RPGs) I’ve played, sometimes its not so obvious that the games were intended to provide hundreds of hours of entertainment. In the case of MMORPGs, this usually is extended to thousands of hours. I know for a fact that I played WoW for well over 200 days… Just keep that in mind when you approach Aion and understand that there’s no reason to experience everything immediately. The game will be around for years to come and you will have time to work your way through it. The important thing here is to remember to start off with an idea of what you want to accomplish in game early on, and set the rest aside for later.
Once you know what is important to you, you can easily start to plan your time spent in game. For me, there were a few things that I had on my list from playing in a couple of the beta events. First, I wanted to make sure my gathering skills were kept up to the appropriate level with the content I was working on. This was important for a few quests, and I knew that it would help out later on with the professions I had chosen to focus on. For professions, I decided that Alchemy and Cooking would be important to me, but the former was the most important for my class and general interest. So, part of my plan was to level Alchemy immediately as I leveled my character, and set Cooking aside until later on considering the general expense, both in terms of time and kinah, to level a profession. Finally, the leveling process itself was important to an extent (as it always is), so I made sure I had an idea of how I wanted to approach questing and grinding at my casual pace.
Considering those three goals, there were a few things that became immediately apparent to me. My profession leveling could be done at any time, and didn’t have a time constraint on it. This made it an ideal choice for shorter periods of game time. I also knew that the gathering goal could potentially set me back a bit in terms of time spent questing, which was something to consider, but essentially a variable factor dependent on node spawns, general activity level in game, and other factors that were out of my control. The questing and leveling process itself is fairly variable as well, but can be controlled to a certain extent with a bit of thought put into it.
To be continued…
Be sure to check out A Casual Approach to Aion (Part 2) for more information on time management and planning while leveling. In the meantime, make sure you’re having fun!
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10.29.09
Posted in Aion at 4:09 am by Middea
Still working on the moving. Lots of things to be done and really not much time to do them sadly. Well, technically have the time, just Aion is so darn tempting to play.
Aether gathering right now allows me some down time while recharging flight timer and so have been updating the links to point to this blog instead of at Wordpress.
Noticed that quite a few of our Aion blog links just really are dead, either from people quitting or just completely missing in action. So, have an Aion blog you would like to have linked on our sidebar? Feel free to leave it as a comment or email it to us at quirkyquiescence@gmail.com
Have been slacking on new screenshots (continue submitting any you want to see in a jigsaw format!) for our puzzles, so brief hiatus for new ones.
What level is everyone up to? Doing any crafting? Abyss rank?
I’m up to 38 on my cleric. Stuck on the Asvata bow part of the Handicrafting expert quest, premium weapon flux just cost too much.
Currently rank 5, but I did buy a nice blue necklace because being level 28 and rank 5 wasn’t working too well for me back in the day and I really didn’t want the big SHOOT ME FIRST rank 5 tag on my head. Bad enough I’m a cleric.
Have been grinding Mist Mane Mau Hairs for the speedy boots and sneaking into the Abyss for hunting when I can find a partner in crime.
-Shameless plug warning- Also have been trying to recruit folks for our community driven legion <Natural Selection> on Lumiel. Recruiting is a nightmare, everyone has a legion already it seems. Oh well, quality over quantity is the motto.
Enough random ramblings for now, must go back to gathering that aether and beating the bots to spawns.
TLDR:
If you aren’t on blogroll, feel free to leave link in comments.
Also, keep submitting screenshots.
Subscribe to the new feed: The new feed to subscribe to is http://feeds.feedburner.com/QuirkyQuiescence
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09.21.09
Posted in Aion at 5:58 pm by Middea
In case anyone was interested…
I’ve been in game… A lot to say the least. Four hours of sleep >.> Not by design, work going on in the house and it’s going on “very loudly with much banging and drilling.” Not exactly conducive to sleep. Which leads to the next part, I fear I’ll be joining the dreaded queue, power is going off for an hour or so while they work on rewiring.
What have I been up to? Well from levels 1-6 I played with a friend (irl!) and we quested a bit and tried to get ahead of the pack, then he had to go eat pizza, rough life. I pushed on doing mainly only the campaign quests and gathering every single plant I could find. Ascended, chose Cleric, and slowed down, worked on extracting Aether, leveling up Armorsmithing, and just generally goofing off for a bit to let the crowd pass me a bit. Currently level 16, 86 gathering, 57 aether extraction, and 61 armorsmithing.
I’m forcing myself to stop and sniff the roses, enjoy the process. Every time I start pushing myself to level faster, I literally have to tell myself to slow down. It does seem to help. At this time I’m about 7 level behind the highest level Asmodian (Calix, a 23 SM and no level 22’s on either).
Aether Extraction Hint: Find a spawn location for your skill level with a nearby safe landing zone. Gather the spawn completely, land, switch to the next channel. Rinse repeat. With the 3 minute cooldown on channel switching and the time it takes to regain your full wing flight time, it’s a pretty golden method, assuming someone else isn’t camping that same spot.
Crafting hint: This may seem a bit silly, but do Work Order 1p over and over, until it isn’t in the options to do it anymore. Why? It is the only free skill ups you will get, and it gives you free mats/designs that will last you until you hit around 100 skill level. So skill level 1-50 do Work Order 1p.
Why do you want to level up gathering, crafting, and aether extraction skills? Well, they give you exp. Free experience to gather/make things you will do in the long run… Plus it will help you keep up with the expected leveling process. If you don’t gather you might find yourself running out of quests. And later on there are many more “Go gather x items!” and then if you aren’t up to the appropriate level you’ll be kicking yourself!
And the queue… the lovely queue. Before you curse at it, ask yourself, would you rather play in a stable environment or play in a lagtastic one? I’d rather be sitting in a queue for a pretty accurately estimated queue than be lagging/dying in game personally. Massively also posted a survival guide for the queue, my choice for passing the time is MindJolt games on Facebook or chasing the dogs around the house.
Kudos to NcSoft for a brilliant head start launch, spiffy new forums and keeping servers/factions all relatively balanced. I love that they share that information with us rather than us having to speculate. And don’t forget, “real” launch is tomorrow, might be a bit crowded in the beginning zones again.
All in all, I’m having a blast! Nothing is feeling grindy to me yet, players are being courteous for the most part (some channels actually formed a line to queue up for their turn at Cute Ribbit), and it is amazingly lag free.
Only negatives I have at this point are that we are missing several key emotes (sigh, hug, giggle, etc), crafting really does take a long time and is quite expensive (though that should sort out the dedicated)… Nothing game breaking woot.
How is your Head Start experience? Having fun? Any memorable moments so far? What do you do to pass the time in queue?
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