More Dragon Age (and possible spoilers)

So I’m still having a lot of fun in Dragon Age.  I’ve moved back to my first character, an elf mage.  I’m really having a tough time diversifying my party make up, however.  The Morrigan, Alistair, and Wynne combo is simply “teh win” combo for almost every situation.  I think I’d really like to hear the banter with Leliana, Zevran, and Shale though, but I can’t seem to find a viable place for them in my party. And Sten is just boring so far – one or two-word monologues seem to be the rule with him.

I’ve also played a few scenarios differently than I did with my rogue (who is now ahead of my mage in the quest progression) with some startling results, usually for the worse.  I’ve accidentally killed a few NPC’s that I didn’t really mean to – oops!  But apparently I haven’t lost favor with any of the party members – at least I didn’t see any minus favor messages after the unintended deaths.

All things considered I’m really liking the game, and it’s really eating into any and all of my other leisure activities – so that’s always a good sign of a great game!  I think I’m a bit hesitant to use the other available party members since I’d lose so much swapping out my existing party members. Here’s how I see them:

1. Wynne – Awesome Healer
2. Alistair – great dialogue, and DPS Sponge (aka – Tank) if you keep his shield skills up and keep him in the best avail. armor.
3. Morrigan – great dialogues and awesome DPS combined with pretty good crowd control
4. (My Human Rogue) – pretty good DPS trained up in Dual Wield, Archery, poison, and chest opening
5. (My Elf Mage) – well I kinda screwed up his template early by cross training in too many things, but now he’s back on track as a combined Arcane DPS Fire mage and DoT/Death mage.
6. (My Dwarf Fighter) – my least favorite character so far. I mean, there’s already a great “Sword-N-Board” tank in Alistair and a 2-handed warrior in Sten.  I’m training him up in 2-handers ‘cuz Sten is boring to me and I can keep my “holy trinity” of Alistair, Morrigan, and Wynne.

The other potential party members that I have are:

1. Zevran - an elf assassin, I’m guessing he would replace Morrigan or Alistair, ‘cuz I won’t give up my healer in Wynne for anybody
2. Leliana - another rogue like Zevran
3. Sten – a 2-hand weapon fighter, again I guess he would replace Morrigan for DPS, although she’s much better at it
4. Shale – he has awesome dialogues from what I’ve heard, and he could probably tank nearly as well as Alistair, but then I miss out on A LOT of the back-story that Alistair contributes.  Alistair still hasn’t admitted all of his information to my mage – but my rogue is certainly “in the know” at this point.

Anyways, I’m probably about to get new party possibilities in the Elf and Dwarf areas as well, so maybe they will offer something more tempting than my current line up. We’ll see.  I hope all is going well for you – Enjoy!

Dragon Age – Good stuff!

It’s been awhile since I’ve played a really engaging RPG.  Dragon Age: Origins tells a great story with the benefit of great graphics and decent game mechanics. And it’s long, and by long I mean I spent the better part of the Day and well into the night just getting through 2 of the “preliminary” quests (Origin and Warden), and 2+ of the “Main” quests (the Circle, Defend against zombies, and about half of the possession quest).

I also like the voice acting and the banter back and forth between my hirelings.  I wish  my character was voiced more often, however (at least in cut scenes would be nice).   And of course, being an alt-o-holic, I wanted to see more origin stories, so I now have at least one of each race and each career.  To be honest, I think I like my rogue the best, which kind of surprised me since I’m usually some kind of caster.  My mage is my second favorite, so I’m sure I’ll play that character all the way through as well – and he was my first creation, so I kind of feel like I have duty to get him through the game.

If you liked Dungeon Siege, you’ll probably really like Dragon Age.  The two seem somewhat similar, I’d say Dragon Age is a kind of cross between Dungeon Siege and NWN.  The hardest part is selecting who you want in your rather small party.  I wish it were more like Dungeon Siege, where as you progress you can add members to your party, but alas in DAO you’re limited to a 4-person party at all times.

[SPOILER ALERT] it’s a small spoiler to me, but some might see it as large (?)

Anyways, I’ve got my rogue heading for his turn at The Circle quest, and he also has Shale, which my mage did not have at the time.  So my party consists of me (rogue), Shale (DPS/Tank), Wynn (healer/Mage DPS), and Morrigan (DPS Mage).  I kind of miss the banter with Alistair though, so I may swap him back in at some point, probably removing Wynn, but she’s such a good healer I hate to lose her, and I’d hate to gimp Morrigan by training her up in healing. Hmmm.  If you’re playing Dragon Age, what party members do you seem to use consistently?

In other news, since the acquisition of DAO, my NaNoWriMo task has taken quite a beating.  I’m hoping to make up my word deficit this Wed, since I’m one of the “lucky ones” that’s actually gets Veteran’s Day off as a holiday.  I’m only a couple thousand words behind, so I should be able to make that up with the upcoming extra day off from work.  Either that, or I’ll get sucked back into Dragon Age again – OY!  I hope your week goes well, and do something fun! Enjoy!

October roll-up

Well October was a slow month for posting as well as traffic to the blog.   Number one on the reason for that is that I’ve just been extremely busy and I’ve also not been feeling well.  And the fact that I’ve dropped all of my subscription games for now to take a rest from most of them while I goof around in DDO.  November will probably be another slow month, since I’ve signed up for the NaNoWriMo challenge to try and write a 50,000 word draft novel manuscript.  So my free time, what little I have left, is pretty much spoken for in spades.  But, without further ado, here are October’s stats:

Traffic slowed considerably from September’s 899 hits to October’s 756 – but that’s still much higher than October of last year, which only had a total of 310 hits.  Bringing my 2009 total up to just over 7,600 – so I’m still well on track for my goal of 8,000 hits this year.  Basically I wanted to double the traffic I had last year which totalled nearly 3,900 .

Top Posts this month

1. Enochian Tablets… Building Your Own with a whopping 127 hits
2. Gardening Bug with 77
3. ScreenShots with 75 (again I think someone  is just linking their page to my screenshots, so it’s kind of skewed)
4. EVE related posts dropped to tie Screenshots for third with 75 hits as well.
5. DDO posts round out the top five with 45 hits

The strangest search term was: “my perfect gadget” sex

I dunno – it just struck me as funny   The top three searches were concerning plants, enochian tablets, and EVE – in that order.

Plans for Novemeber are pretty much to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge and to play a little DDO on the side when I feel like I can spare a bit of time away from the writing schedule.  It should be a good month for writing since I’m one of the few that actually get Veteran’s Day off, and of course Turkey Day near the end of the month.

I hope all is going well in your world, that your Halloween was Awesome, and that you’re able to do something fun this month. Enjoy!

Computer Snacks

With NaNoWriMo fast approaching, I’ll be spending some marathon time at the computer keyboard, rivaling my gaming sessions of the past.  And I started wondering what kind of goodies to have around to keep me going on with my mad typing skillz.  Here are some of my (mostly) keyboard safe snacks:

• Cookies
• Crackers (with cheese if avail)
• Those pre-filled veggie trays you can get at the grocery store
• Beer and/or soda (preferably in bottles – less tendency to get knocked over)
• Coffee (in sturdy mugs, again less liable to be knocked over)
• microwave burritos – the smaller ones, for easier handling
• actually any microwavable “finger food” that doesn’t end up greasy (some taquitos & egg rolls, for example – tater tots or pizza bites etc. etc)
• Sandwiches that are mostly dry – bread or bagel with ham and cheese or cream cheese, etc.
• Low/Non buttered pop corn that’s not very salty either.
• Pizza can work, but sometimes not – depends.

I tend to avoid anything that requires cutting or balancing food with utensils, it’s too easy to accidentally make a mess. I also try to avoid anything greasy or with powdery seasonings (fries, Doritos, Cheetos, donuts etc.).  That stuff just makes a mess.  How about you? What do you munch on when you’re gaming or otherwise engaged with your computer?

NanoWrimo

OMG!  Say goodbye to November, ‘cuz I went and did it.  I signed up to participate in NanoWrimo this year.  A crazy typefest where one tries to write a 50K word novel (first -very rough- draft) before the end of the month.  I’ve had a project lolling around in the back of my head for quite some time, so I figured this would be a great opportunity to completely massacre it – I mean work on it and actually get something produced besides vague ideas in my head.

It’s time to put pen to paper and just get something written down!  Actually I’ve got a pretty good outline including a semi-cogent plot line, so hopefully that will help.  The “kick off party” for local Prescott participants is tomorrow evening at the library – which is oh so handy, since I work there   The biggest problem this is going to cause is that the Sunday “Write Ins” that I’d really like to participate in are at the same time as one of my other time commitments, a Jungian Tarot Course.  Hmmm.  Kind of a dilemma, but maybe there will be other spontaneous write-ins I can attend.  I’ll see if anyone is interested in doing some on Saturdays tomorrow night at the kick off party.

Not much else going on – TONS of work, and not a whole lot of gaming.  I did mess around with my Ranger in DDO the other day, and she’s definitely one of my favorite ‘toons, although I do think the pally has a big advantage over her with his self healing.  I probably won’t be gaming much in November either, unless I can keep up with my daily word-count quotas.  We’ll see how it goes.

In any event, it should be a fun month!  I hope y’all are having a great time, Enjoy!

CRASH!

Ugh!  Had a hard drive crash late Friday night, so I spent most of the weekend rebuilding my system.  It wasn’t obvious that it was a HD failure either – the error after the BSOD implicated the video card, so I replaced that first, and no dice.  So I swapped in a “known good” HD from another PC and voila it booted up just fine.  So I went and got another HD and (finally) stepped up to Vista from XP Pro. Everything seems to be running OK so far. 

One lucky thing is that I was able to mount my old HD in a spare PC and recover almost all of the data, so it wasn’t the devastating crash that it could’ve been.  I have a couple backups, but they’re a month or so old, so it would’ve been not too fun to figure out what was missing.  Photos and music I’m better at backing up once a week or so, but writing and other projects I’m not so vigilant about. 

In other news, I did get my DDO Ranger up to level 5 and I’m currently working on getting my Pally from 4 to 5 as well. I’ve also got a level 4 Fighter and Cleric, and a new Monk and a new Rogue, both about midway through level 2 or so.  The Ranger is by far the easiest of the bunch to get through tough situations, with the Pally a close second. 

I hope your work week goes well, Enjoy!

DDO – One month in

So I dropped all of my other subscriptions for now and have just been playing DDO for a bit.  I even ended up subscribing just so I could get access to all of the content – which you don’t get if you’re just doing the “Free to Play” version of the game.

Which brings me to three things that have turned me off to the game a bit:

1. Lack of content for “Freeps” (Free Players)
2. Monster “cheats”
3. Game/DM Cheats

I guess #1 works as a ploy to get people to subscribe to the game – Hey! I did!  Mainly because as a freep, I only had access to about 1% of the quests/dungeons in “The Marketplace” (the zone you go to after your character gets up to ~level3-4 in order to get up to level 5-6.

#2 is where MOBs (particularly kobolds) tend to jump away from you until they’re up in the wall or ceiling, where you can’t target them, but they can target you.  This seems to happen at least once in EVERY dungeon crawl I’ve been in, and it’s really annoying.

#3 is what I call “The Lazy DM.”  I remember back in the PnP days (That’s “Pen and Paper”) where if a DM was bored and wanted to end the night’s gaming session he would just throw in something like a dragon or a mind flayer or some demon and say, “You’re all dead. Goodnight.” 

DDO is slightly more round-about, but every time I run into an ooze I think “Lazy DM.”  The reason being is because an ooze can wreck your weapons AND your armor in just one encounter – and oh hey, here come 50 kobolds to clean up – Yay!  It’s the ultimate in lazy DM’ing, and poor (lazy) game design. 

Other than those three points, I have been enjoying the game, but I’d be much more likely to continue my subscription if I didn’t have to deal with MOB bugs and lazy DM’s – I could even put up with the monthly subscription if those other problems were fixed. 

BUT – since the game has been out for quite some time and those problems are still around, it’s VERY unlikely they’ll ever be addressed.  Which translates to the conclusion that it’s just as unlikely that I will continue to subscribe to the game. 

I’m already starting to get my EVE Online itch.  So I’ll probably do a game switch around the end of the month, about the time my initial month of DDO time expires.

I hope things are going well in your world, Enjoy!

Slackin’

Well, really I’ve only been slacking on the blog posting – mainly because I’ve been so busy doing a bunch of other projects at work and around the apt.  So much so that I’ve actually cancelled all of my monthly subscriptions for now (!) – I never thought that day would come, LOL.

Anyways, I have been playing a bit of DDO when I can find a spare minute here and there.  Other than that, I’ve been taking a class or two, doing some writing, and even a bit of programming – Some personal, and some work related – it’s all good. 

With the end of September, it marks my 2-year anniversary with the blog, so that’s pretty cool.  Hopefully things will ease up a bit in the next few weeks and I’ll be able to resume a more consistent posting regimen.  And with that, I guess I should post some (late) Stats for September:

Top Viewed Posts:

1. EVE related (195 views) EVE 2009 being the top of that set with 52 views
2. Gardening Bug (with 190 views)
3. Enochian Tablets… Building Your Own (121 views)
4. ScreenShots (59 views)
5. A weekend in DDO Unlimited (F2P) (19 views)

I had 897 views this September over last year’s 593 total.  Last year at this time all of my posts were about the newly released Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, save one post about my 1-year anniversary

I think that’s it for now, I gotta go get some writing, coding, and reading done!  Yikes!  I hope things are going a bit more smoothly in your world, Enjoy!

Weekend Report

It was a mostly uneventful weekend.  Did some chores, read a few things, played some DDO, and attended a tarot workshop.  In DDO, I did re-roll my cleric.  The one I had been using was one I had tried to build myself, and she didn’t seem to be working out too well.  So I derezed her and rolled one up using the prefigured “battle cleric” or some-such.  And this one is working out MUCH better for some reason.  I also goofed around for a bit on my Pally.  I’ve tested him with a few different weapon configs – dual wield, two-handed weapons, and sword-n-board, and sword-n-board definitely seems the way to go.  It seems to offer much more consistent damage output and mitigation than either of the other two combo’s.

In reading, I started a new book/workbook called “Book In A Month,” which promises to inspire me to write at least a full manuscript (albeit un-edited) within 30 days.  But in order to do this, I’m going to have to put my gaming on a serious back-burner, so I’m going to unsub from EVE and Warhammer for now, and maybe pick them back up around the New Year. We’ll see – I’m not sure I have that kind of will power, but you never know. 

I’m also participating in a fairly interesting tarot workshop/study-course that will probably last until well into 2010, so that’s also got a significant bit of my time for now.  But I think it will do me good to take a bit of a break from gaming and start up some other interests and hobbies that have been languishing over the past several years.

Anyways, I hope this week finds you well and doing things you … Enjoy! 

More DDO

As I (slowly) advance in DDO, currently Level 4, I’m still enjoying the game quite a bit.  I was a little worried the first time I went into a dungeon solo that didn’t allow “solo” as one of the difficulty settings, starting instead on the “normal” setting.  But my dual-wielding Ranger didn’t really have any issues other than running out of arrows once in a while.  I’m very much looking forward to when she’s levelled enough to be an “Arcane Archer” so I don’t have to keep loading up on arrows.  Either that, or getting “Returning Arrows,” which apparently return to your quiver after dealing their damage – I wonder if they’re clean upon return?

I’ve completed all of the quests in the “entry zone” of Storm Reach, including soloing the dreaded “Kobold Assault,” where you need to kill 200 kobolds that continually stream into your position.  And I’m working on the rare encounters out in the Cerulean Hills. After that, I’ll start moving through the rest of Stormreach’s quarters. 

In other gaming news, I’ve only been logging into EVE to keep my training up to date.  I’ll probably revisit the game once the honeymoon is over with DDO. I venture that to be sometime around the beginning of October, we’ll see.

And in totally un-gaming related news, I started attending a local Tarot workshop over the weekend, and it was pretty interesting.  I found the group through MeetUp.com and the organizer is a local reader and I believe she’s a social worker by profession - so it’s kind of mesh between the mystical and more Jungian archetypal views toward the cards.  Any ways, it was an interesting first meeting and I’m looking forward to future workshops where we’re planning on working our way through an excellent book on the subject: 78 Degrees of Wisdom.

I hope your week is shaping up well, Enjoy!