A Handy Lil App

Rift has a huge amount of ways to configure your spec. From support, to tanking, to healing, to DPS. The combinations are mind boggling. Now if you are at your computer, you can head on over to zam.rift.com. But let’s say you’re out, or at work, or somewhere where you can’t hop online. Well I’ve found the solution if you have an iPhone or Droid. It’s the Rift soul calculator app. That’s right, s handy little tool that let’s you build, and save, different spec. Oh, and did I mention it’s free too? As far as I can tell, there is no limit to how many different specs you can save, so feel free to build to your heart’s content. So go out, find it, play around with it, and have fun. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

Say Hello To My Little Friends

At first this was going post was going to be a sort catch all pet class write up. But, as I was writing it, I realized that there’s so much that that can be said about pet classes I couldn’t possibly do it all in one shot. So here it is, the first in a series of posts about our little friends who fight with us, and for us. I give you the pet classes.
Way back in the ol days of EQ, there were 2 classes that I loved playing. The ranger and the beast lord. The ranger was the master of bow kiting, but was hard to get a group with. The beast lord was a, pardon the expression, whole different kinda animal. The pet could sort of hold aggro, as long as you weren’t in melee range.
Now flash forward to WoW. WoW had the hunter, a combination of EQ’s ranger and beast lord classes. What could I say, I had found the perfect class. Now hunters weren’t the only pet class, there was also the warlock which was similar to the necromancer from EQ. I had dabbled in both of those caster classes, but neither was as appealing as the ranger, beast lord or hunter class. I’ve lost track of all the pets I ran with in WoW. I remember when you had to train different pets to learn different levels of skills for your pet. When it mattered if it was a caster pet class or not. Back then you had to keep your pet happy or it would run away. People complain now that they have to level their pet 5 levels now, back then if you got a low level pet at higher levels it stayed at that level until you raised it’s level to your level.
Then Rift came out…. and boy did they have pet classes. Each of the 4 callings have at least 1 pet based soul. From druids, in the cleric calling, with their faries and satyrs to beast lords, in the warrior calling, with their big cats. There’s a plethora of pet souls to choose from. Whatever your preference is, they have it.
Right now I’m leveling 3 different toons with pets. Daikaiju the beast lord, Fuzzbaal the ranger, and Finz the necro. I have Galleon the elemental summoner and Quickfix the druid sitting and waiting at level 1 to be played also.
Pet classes, in my opinion, are the most fun to play in any MMO. They bring extra DPS and versatility to both solo and group play. However, they do bring extra responsibility with them. Never expect your healer to heal them. Keeping them alive is your responsibility, the healer’s is to keep everyone else alive. If they have the extra time and mana to throw Fluffy a heal, be grateful. Don’t get mad if they don’t look at Fluffy twice.
So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

Wastin Away…

Sorry for the lack of posts. Been on vacation for the last week and haven’t had a chance to write anything really. Be back soon all.

God I Hate Queues…

The servers went down for the final update for the 2nd phase of the River of Souls world event for about half an hour. So I decided to watch a bad zombie for a bit. When I come back, what do I see but a 4 FREAKING HOUR QUEUE!?!?!?!
That just sucks beyond belief….

Crafting Time

All MMOs have a trade skill system, and Rift is no exception. You can choose up to 3 different ones from a mix of your standard gathering and production ones. At first I decided to go big, and went with mining, weaponsmithing and armorsmithing. Boy was that a mistake. Ore is hard enough to find, and you get so little of it per node, and you need a ton of them to level it. So I dropped armorsmithing and took up runecrafting instead.
RC is so much easier, and compliments most of the production trade skills perfectly.
That’s not to say RC doesn’t have it’s short comings. Runebreaking is extremely random. Where as WoW had 4 or 5 different mats that you needed for each tier, I’ve seen 6 so far items could be broken down in to so far in Rift. In WoW you had an idea of what things would break down to also. Items would almost always break in to the same mats in WoW. In Rift it’s completely random for what you end up getting. You could break several of the same items, and end up with a different set of rune crafting mats each time.
To kinda balance out the randomness of this though, you do get the ability to craft some of the mats that you’re less likely to get. The catch is, you have to buy some of the components from the vendor though.
So here I sit, with little time and out of low level crafting supplies on all of my toons, and I still haven’t hit 75 in RC or WS. Ugh I need to do some gathering so I can keep working on my trade skills. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

A Rift Is Forming…

So where to begin. I haven’t been writing much about WoW, because well I’ve been bored with it as of late. It’s not because of Rift though, the boredom started back in February, and it’s been building. So I was glad when we picked Rift up finally. I know Wife had been so bored with WoW she hadn’t been online in months. That’s all changed now. She’s back to being excited about playing again. I’m excited about playing again. I now have a choice of pet classes to choose from.
So where does WoW stand for me right now? WoW has been put on the back burner for me. I still plan on playing WoW, but it’s more of when I have a bit of free time, or the Rift servers are down now.
So I know Wife has cancelled her WoW account, and she’s dropping hints that she wants me to cancel mine too… I’m just not sure I’m ready to completely quit WoW yet. I still know a lot of people on WoW, and I’ve spent so much time in Azeroth. I haven’t made up my mind about it yet.
Time will tell if I stay, or if I go. So until then don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

And I Forgot To Get a Screenshot…

So Rift has been out for about a month, and they are already having their first world event, The River of Souls. During the event you can get all kinds of goodies from pets and vanity items, to mounts and gear. So far Wife and I have been having a lot of fun with the fights, and we’ve gotten some loot from it also. Now Wife hasn’t been as lucky as me with the drops so far though. She’s gotten more of the other worldly shards than I have, bit I’ve gotten more drops from the rifts. It started with a big old 18 slot bag that I looted from my share of a rift reward.
Then I got the big one, the shade touched weapon cache. See the cache starts a quest for a nice blue weapon. You have to keep hunting death rifts to get a chance to have the items drop that you need to turn in for it. Well, after the weekend, I finally got all of the items needed and turned it in last night. So off we went to turn it in, and het me my new sword.
I turned in the quest, got my sword, and then bing a message goes across my chat window “Daikaiju is the first on the shard to loot the Bharghast Blade.”
Talk about a surprise. I got a round of congratulations from the guild and Wife on the achievement, then proceeded to see if it showed it in my achievements, and unfortunately it doesn’t keep track of them.
We decided to take a break after that, since we had some things to pack for eBay, so I closed the game and did what we had to do. Then it hit me. I hadn’t taken a screenshot of the announcement. I had no proof of it. So, there you have it. The sad truth that a screenshot is worth that a picture is worth a lot more than you might think. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.