Outlaw's Den Chests

Outlaw's Den chests, or How to Gear for Level 50 PVP in SWTOR

SWTOR's Update 1.2 brought several changes to PVP gearing, one of them being the Recruit set - a blue, unmoddable and ugly set of gear that you can buy for credits at level 50. The stats are poor, but the set is nevertheless a must-have for entering level 50 PVP because of the Expertise stat, which both increases your damage dealt and decreases the damage you take - without it you will get steamrolled in less than 2 seconds (after which it's often customary to proceed to the forums to complain about unbalanced PVP). You can buy the Recruit set at your faction's Fleet, it costs about 10-30k credits per piece, but you know what's awesome?

You can get the complete Recruit set for FREE.

Outlaw's Den is a small free-for-all PVP area on Tatooine, you get a vector quest pointing you there at level 40, but you can enter it as soon as you set foot on Tatooine for the first time, which is around level 25. The nearest outposts are Outpost Salara for Republics and Outpost Zaroshe for Imperials. The reason Outlaw's Den is interesting is that there are chests scattered along the outer walls of the area, containing around 2k credits (a nice sum for a lowbie), 20 Warzone Commendations and, if lucky, one random Recruit piece for your class.



I've noted 7 different spawn points for the chests, they're usually located along the edge of Outlaw's Den or in/around the small huts near the zone exits. I thought of making a map with all the spawn points, but instead of looking at one (or counting coordinates) it's really just fastest to hop on your speeder and do a quick ride around the area - it's really that small. You get flagged for PVP once you enter Outlaw's Den, but I've met another player there only once (we just /waved at each other, and went our separate ways).

So, now that you know you can get the Recruit set for free on Tatooine, you have no excuse to turn up in MY warzones wearing lvl40 greens and zero Expertise. And if you're not into PVP, those Recruit pieces are still better than the lvl40 greens you are wearing when you hit level 50. Get the free gear, your groups will appreciate it.

Back to Rift

I was a bit pissed off at the start of the week because I hadn't got any response from the Rift customer service them to the ticket I sent on Saturday, until I got an email on Monday that my ticket had been closed because I hadn't replied in 48h... turns out there's a 3rd party customer service site where all the tickets are answered but I never got any email notification about it (and there was NO mention about the other site in the automated ticket response) so I couldn't have known. Meh. Oh well, I had to call their customer service in the US but luckily they could just remove the borked Mobile Authenticator from my account so everything's fine now. Yay!


I'm so going to need a beach holiday after these dark tunnels!

I continued working on my Mage, who is now 34 or so. I was also invited to a guild of old LotRO friends, so I hope to get my toon to 50 now and geared up so I could start running instances properly. I've only been to one instance so far (mostly I just overleveled them while questing), and it was fun to work in a group again - which reminds me that I'm constantly amazed at the level of maturity, politeness and friendliness on my server! Perhaps I've just been lucky, but pretty much everyone I've ran into or joined in a Public Group have been nice, helpful and, GASP, used proper punctuation and capitalisation! The make me feel like such a 1337 kiddie..

[me] yey thanks for the company :)
[random nice person] Likewise, safe travels.

Capital letters, baby. Capital letters.



Another thing I've enjoyed about Rift is the knowledge that with the monthly fee I get everything there is in the game. I think I'm pretty good at ignoring the tasteless Store advertisements in LotRO, but when playing another MMO the difference is pretty big — no tacky buttons, no annoying popups, no bypassing content by opening one's wallet. I'm happy to part with my money for another month's sub in Rift, and I'm even thinking of getting the Collector's Edition unlocked for my account for the lulz, because right now I'm having a good time and I want to see what's behind the next hill.

I'm also a bit lonely at times, so now that there's a Free Trial of seven days, you can join me in Rift for free!!1 And do note that this "free" doesn't come with the burden of fugly BUY NOW buttons...

Click here for a free 7-day Rift trial

↑ that link is my "refer a friend" link, so if you register from that page and decide to buy the game later (you can get it online for as little as 25€) we both can get some nice benefits in the game :)

Rattles behind the curtains

Tiny Easterling Hobbit says hi!

So, LotRO finally went F2P even here in Euroland, and the past week has been pretty exciting. I haven't been able to play as much as I otherwise would have (or would have liked to), since I started at a new job last week, my aching arms are killing me if I play more than half an hour, and seems my main PC is, once again, going all drama on me ("baaaaw my innards are at least 3 years old, let's turn the monitor signal on and off and have some overheating-induced flickering artifacts in your face"). If it turns out it's really the graphics card that's dying my conscience should finally allow me to buy a new, beefy dx11 card to replace it. Yay?

I'm also thinking of getting a cat. Or, actually, two.

And I mistyped that as "car" on the first try.

WAAAAAH I WANT A KITTEEEEEH!

Look Back

Here's a tip for you explorers: when running forward in a dungeon, remember to stop every now and then and look back (or up, or down, or whichever way you came from). You might be surprised by what you find.

Lilies

I got stuck raiding and missed a wonderful rp event ;__;. But at least I got some cute screens while wandering around the Old Forest - all alone and very much lost.

On another note, I finally, FINALLY got my thesis done and presented, so now I should have more time for hobbies again. I'm kind of tempted to try or resub some other mmo right now. I've actually still got an unused STO retail key, but on the other hand AoC (which just got a new expansion, I believe) and Aion are also kind of tempting..

And on a completely other note, I also realised Roll100 is one year and three months old now. Yay!

LotRO Speedrun

Shameless plug:



My boyfriend rode from one end of the LotRO game world to the other, FRAPS'd it and sped it up ten times :D. It took him around 1 hour 40 minutes in total. Not bad!

Lost Worlds and Landscapes

Last night, around two hours before the deadline, I sent my entries to Codemasters' screenshot competition Lost Worlds and Landscapes. I've seen some people share their screenies on the forums well in advance, but being a slacker I only got around to choosing my entries last night.

I tried getting some nice screens from Mirkwood, which is, design-wise, my favourite place in the game now. The pitch-black forest in Taur Morvith and the eerie Ashenslades are so unlike anything else in the game. The artists did a really, really great job at bringing different kinds of forest to (un)life in Mirkwood.


The border between Taur Morvith and "normal" forest is always amazing.



It feels as if the sun itself doesn't have enough strength to shine in this plac, where you could practically take a knife and slice off small pieces of solid darkness.


A strange landmark in the black forest, the Verdant Shrine is an eerie place..


..and it doesn't get any less creepier by dawn.



The neighboring Ashenslades are a unique place, where everything appears bone-white and dead.



There's a surprising amount of high hills and low ravines in Mirkwood, so there's always a view wherever you are.


The Warg-Pens seen from the path up to Dol Guldur.

Okay, I did grab some screenies from the older areas too.



Aurora borealis, in Forochel. One of my favourite spots in the game is this lake here.


Annúminas, another old favourite.


I can see my home from here! Viewed from a high terrace in Duillond, across the river from my homestead. I fell down a few seconds after taking the shot, and was defeated by misadventure. Damn you, Misadventure.

Atreian Holiday

So, I managed to get in Aion's Open Beta last week. Most of the blogosphere must be pretty bored by Aion rants already, but since it's the most exciting thing* that's happened in my life recently, I guess I should write something about it.

* shows just how exciting my life has been lately



I like the game, but won't be buying it (I had a preorder, which I cancelled). LotRO is pretty stagnant at the moment, and most of my raiding unit are about to switch over to Aion, so of course I was curious about the game. Also the artistic RP community is something I've really missed - LotRO just doesn't have anything like that. I'd certainly welcome something new, and exploring a new game felt really exciting.

Except it wasn't, because when I logged in and spent an evening grinding myself to level 10, it just felt like the free-to-play Korean MMOs I used to play in high school (meaning you stand still using 1-3 skills over and over until a mob topples over, and then you move on to the next one). Even though Aion has an extensive questing framework, the actual leveling still consisted of killing x amounts of y. Which is all right as long as the quest framework makes it interesting and gives it some kinda twist, but the Elyos side staring area was just awfully dull. Okay, so here's a sparkly lake. Here's a magical forest. Aaaand... the Asmodean side had the very same things! The sparklies kinda lose their effect when they're force-fed down your throat everywhere you look.


Omg, big tree with magical sparklies?! VERI ORISINAL YES


It's only a model.

Once I got my wings, visited the capital city of my side and started to explore the 'real world', it started to get interesting. I giggled out loud when I found a Fashion NPC whose shop had these on the walls:


Base patterns, which I had to learn to draw from day one at Fashion Design. Also, WTFnapoleon? :D


These guys look kinda cool. I wanted to try and fly to them, but was met with a glass wall. Bleh.

However my biggest disappointment with Aion were the graphics. Everywhere it's said that Aion is the most graphically advanced MMO at the moment, and it certainly has its merits, but the quality isn't very obvious, at least not in the starting areas (which you'd expect to look stunning!). Monster and armour design is really cool, but what bothers me more than necessary is the horrible texture quality! I play with a big screen, so low-res textures look really bad (I remember when I got this 24" to replace my old 19", and was shocked how awful Guild Wars looked). Except for some really nice shine effects on armour, Aion seems closer to WAR than LotRO or AoC, at least judging by the outdoor areas. I guess it must look incredibly stunning to WoW players.


The textures don't scale at all according to distance - the mountains in the back look all right, but the same texture is stretched out there on my character's right.

Here's the "shroom" from the previous picture.


Click for original size, and be amazed!

I'd still like to play Aion, but it feels like the kind of repetitive and time-consuming game that I really, really shouldn't pick up at this moment in my life (still aiming to graduate next spring..). Plus, LotRO has a new expansion coming, and me and my bf have just applied to a really cool kinship... let's see what the future brings :).

Home sweet home

I went to Goblin-Town on my hunter last week (mostly just to look around), and found this cute little goblin-home. The door is very small, maybe up to her chest at most. I just love finding these little details in games.