Yeah… I think I mentioned once before that I hate (hate, hate, hate!) playing underwater… in Rift (or any other game, for that matter – I was hopeless at it in World of Warcraft, too!) And, of course, the bran’ new zone that opened up with the expansion, is, largely, underwater…. I can cope, sort of, if we’re just going from point A to point B – but fight nasty mobs and bosses in a quest end? Not get hopelessly stuck under ledges? That’s what happened today. We got to the tail end of a particularly long and repetitious quest chain – you see, as you work your way through the countryside, looking for the pillar or icon that you have to destroy, you encounter new groups of nasties (herein after called “mobs”) that you get extra points for killing “x” number of. F’rinstance, you have to go over there, but there’s a big monster blocking your way, and no way around it. So, you kill it (as one does!) Then the words “quest accepted” flash across your screen and you find that you now have to kill anywhere between 10 and 18 of the blighters… and sometimes they can be a bit hard to find, especially when you have multiple players all doing the same quest chain. This is a regular occurrence between point A and point B, but we usually don’t mind because after all, it’s all experience points, right? 🙂 However this particular quest chain said things like: “go and destroy that pillar over there”. So fine, we go off and destroy the pillar. Then it says something like: “oh, by the way, would you mind going back a few blocks and pick up some tasty dandelion leaves for me? Ta…” Well, no, it didn’t say that, exactly, but words to that effect. For crying out loud, why didn’t they just say that they wanted this done while we were over in that neck of the woods?! Then, when you’ve finished those bits, it’ll tell you to go and destroy another whatever. And another one, when you’ve finished with the last one. At the moment it wanted us to close a Water Rift (don’t ask!), and it took us ages to find one, and because it was a big one there were a lot of people all joining in and working on it, so it didn’t take as long to close as it took us to find the [rude word] thing in the first place! Then we’re told that we have to close a Fire Rift. I know we trundled past one while we were looking for the Water one – if only we’d known! (grrrr!) Do you think we could find another one? Noooo…. that’ll have to wait until next Sunday… Anyway, eventually we got to the big nasty Boss’s chamber – underwater, of course – and we set about trying to kill him. We did have a bit of help though, one fishy-type guy who could, and did, heal us – when we could find him. He moved around a lot, you see, and it’s damn hard to watch where all the Boss’s hench-guys are, stay out of the way of all the fire balls and killing curses etc. that they’re hurling at you, fighting off their biting and slashing minions, plus keep an eye on the Boss himself – and follow fishy-face around so that he can heal you! Especially for me, who tends to get a bit flustered and confused with a lot of very impressive visual effects going off around me… then when you add the fact that I don’t know which way I’m going when I’m underwater, well, let me tell you that it’s not a very pretty picture! We both died three or four times… Julian got cross with me because we’d got everything killed off and were down to Mr. Nasty Boss himself, and there I was, hurling dots at him (dots = “damage over time”. You hurl a couple towards a nasty, and first they say “Ha ha, you missed me!”, then they say “Ow, I don’t feel so good…”, then they go “aarrrggghh!” and die! 🙂 ) …so there I was, hurling dots at Mr. Nasty Boss, he looked at Julian – and Julian died. Having just resurrected himself, he was coming back into the chamber when Mr. Nasty Boss keeled over from my dots. I completed the quest chain, he didn’t. So he got mad at me, because he had to do the whole thing all over again. So this time, reverse the positions. This (second) time, I got killed (again!), and as he had, I ended up outside the chamber. I couldn’t resurrect myself because I couldn’t reach my body, but that was OK, I could go to the nearest Graveyard and be resurrected there, and wait for himself to come and find me – after all, I’d completed the quest chain, right? There’s a great big button on the top of the screen saying “Return to Graveyard”, so I pressed it. Nothing happened. Well, we tried just about everything to resurrect me and nothing worked! I was doomed to be a wandering ghost for the rest of my life, maybe… then I remembered that there’s an auto fix for people who inadvertently get themselves stuck in walls, or in deep water at the bottom of sheer cliffs with no way up… well, it was worth a try… I typed “/stuck” and guess what! I ended up in the local Graveyard! Yay me! It cost me a very large fortune to heal myself after so many deaths, but at least I’m now back to whatever passes for normal in Telara these days 🙂 And shortly after that we decided to start dusting down for the day.  Still and all, it was a good bash, and we did go up a level, to 61, and I got to have my first look at the new Masteries (wot I told you about a couple of posts ago), and all they did was confuse me (this confusion business is beginning to get tiresome!), so as soon as I’ve finished here, I shall log back in and get himself to advise me…. 🙂

End of Rift Lecture Notes 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was really cool!  I can finally say (with only a little trepidation) “Yay! I’ve broken the 120kg barrier!” I clocked in at 119.5kg! That’s pretty good, I reckon! 🙂 Let’s see what happens tomorrow….

Stay tuned for all the laters news, and whether Winter goes up… or down… or remains static! 🙂