2008-01-18 The "Questinator"

Last night the Grunt Foundation assembled at the Inn without a name at Tranquillen in the Ghostlands. I thought we might exhaust all of the quests in Ghostlands this outing but after last night I don't think we've even scratched the surface. Philly ended the evening with more quests than she started with. We are getting into a kind of ritual each time we get together that includes getting everyone buffed, and handing out whatever crafting goodies we were able to do in between runs. Philly has been handing out healing potions. I plan to start asking what other potions they'd like to have and will make them as Philly continues to level her crafting skills. The tailor, Kon, always has one or two crafted green gear upgrades for the clothies. Brae is the enchanter, and did chest and wrist enchants for everyone. Wild is envious of the group enchanter, as he gets all unused gear to DE to help with his levelling. It cost Wild a fortune to level up enchanting.

Our "Questinator", Arq, had traffic problems last night and so was a little late getting in game. Arq knows where every quest is located and in what order they should be done for maximum efficiency. It is a remarkable talent that we are already addicted to as a group. When it looked like Arq might not make it, we all asked each other, Ok, we can quest with just the four of us, but what should we do first? Philly opened her quest log and perused the dozen plus Ghostlands quests in the log. They are listed alphabetically. Locations scattered all over the place. Organizing that would take half the time we had.

We wrung our hands for a few minutes and I was about to just pick a random quest to get us started when Arq made it in game. Saved! Arq got us ready to go once again, but I'm going to have to do a little research and have a backup plan for future questing. It won't be anywhere as efficient as Arq's, but it will at least get us going.

For the first part of the night the group spent a lot of time in the water. There were multiple quests that required killing sea creatures and collecting things at the bottom of a winding lake. Undead have a racial ability that improves underwater breathing. I wondered why it was only "improved" since undead don't have any lungs and can't breath anyway - but then what do I know. The good thing is that Philly could stay underwater a whole lot longer than either Wild or JB. In one sense, though, Philly is still at a disadvantage as Wild has an aquatic form that can breath underwater, and JB has a spell that allows her to breath underwater. Philly eventually has to surface to "breath".

After killing the requisite number of sea creatures, we went to turn in the quests. I discovered that Philly'd missed a quest giver and did not have one of the quests the others had completed. Since it meant going back into the water to find more things on the bottom, I suggested that Philly could do that on her own time, so as not to slow down the rest of the group. But the quest had a follow on boss quest and so everyone had to get wet again. Luckily it didn't take that long. The underwater boss fight was anti-climactic as the beast wasn't an elite and never knew what hit him.

Then we started on a multiple part set of quests involving a large area of trolls. What trolls are doing in the Ghostlands I'm not sure, but I'm going to have to weave that into the GF storyline somehow in honor of the one troll in our group. The quests involved killing thousands of trolls (well, it seemed like there were that many), clearing bosses from several dispersed huts, and collecting several of six different types of weapons. Doing this solo would have taken Philly a week to complete. Even in a five person group this set of quests took us the rest of the evening. Philly healed like crazy and weighed in with spell and wand DPS as well to keep the kills coming. We were in such a groove we fought through and killed the troll bosses without realizing they were the bosses until we had a chance to loot.

By the end of the evening Philly had DINGED! to level 18, and is well on the way to level 19.

Our Wailing Caverns adventure this coming sunday will be a whole lot more fun knowing we have opportunity to improve our gear in addition to the experience and the fun of conquering it with friends. When JB did WC, she was already geared (thanks to Wild) better than most anything she could have gotten in there. Philly's way is a bit more magical, I think.

Speaking of WC, this long, many levelled dungeon is going to really test this group. Not a single player has died in any of our group outings to date. Philly does not have the mana pool to keep everyone alive if too many start getting hit. I am already noticing that Philly's one HoT spell can no longer keep players health topped off during combat and I am resorting to longer cast spells more often. I am not jinxing anything with predictions one way or another, but we are really going to have to game up for this one.