I’m starting this very late tonight – by the time we finished up with Rift, and I’d done my evening treadmilling, it was dinner time! Anyway, here I am now – we had a very good day in Telara, all things considered, though we were very disappointed with the powers that be’s handling of the final end quest in the King Khan part of Into The Wilds! As usual, the quests are so poorly worded that several times we had to go off and read the Rift forums to find out exactly what we were supposed to be doing! But we muddled along, with Julian dying three times, and me having to Feign Death (i.e. play possum) twice! The entire final quest chain (well, we presume it’s the final quest chain!) ends with an Instanced “solo” battle. In other words, you have to pass through a portal that only one person can access – so playing as a group is out – you’re completely on your own! Once in there, you have to do battle with this semi-ghod-like creature. He has two henchpeople with him, who you bump off fairly quickly – but… you don’t fight this semi-ghod-like creature, oooh no! He has a very large – gigantic, even – ravening dinosaur-slash-dragon that you’re supposed to vanquish first – and then presumably polish off the semi-ghod-like creature IF you survive the fight with the dinosaur-slash-dragon thing. Which of course, you can’t, on your own! The consensus in the forums is that you might stand a very slim chance of besting the dinosaur-slash-dragon if you have a pet to fight with you, but solo? without a pet? No way! You will not survive! And Julian didn’t. Twice. Put it this way. We’re both very experienced players, playing very powerful characters – we’re at the peak, as high as you can go, at level 65. This dinosaur-slash-dragon, like the one I was telling you about a while back, is a Special Elite – a lot higher that a mere, humble little level 65 character! He has a Stun attack, and he has either a totally lethal flame or a poison attack (I’m pretty sure it’s flame though – I’m sorry, I shut my eyes while watching Julian get slaughtered – I couldn’t bear to watch!) So first he stuns you, and then while you’re unconscious and unable to retaliate, he flames you. You’re instantly dead. According to the forums, you need to use what are called “interrupts” – in other words, you “interrupt” his attack so that he’s unable to stun you. As a Cleric, Julian does have an ‘interrupt” ability, but he can’t use it very often, and after he has used it, it takes quite a while for it to become usable again. Which is not really ideal in that situation, as he found out to his cost! Of course, I do have a pet, but for some weird reason, Trion seem to have overly weakened Mage’s pets, or somehow made them a lot more fragile – it’s all I can do to keep my ruddy pet alive in a normal fight with an ordinary, run-of-the-mill monster! If I’d gone into the Instance (which I didn’t! I’m a very devout Coward, and I’m also allergic to the sight of my own blood!) I would have had to spend all my time just trying to heal my pet, which against a creature like that wouldn’t have worked, anyway. We were both extremely disappointed in this rather one-sided “solo” end Boss Fight – judging from the messages in the forums, I think there are an awful lot of very disgruntled players at the moment – and the new Blizzard “World of Warcraft” expansion next year is looking pretty damn good! I think it’s about time for Trion to do some rather major balancing patches! Anyway, after lunch we reverted to our two new Primalists that we created a couple of weeks ago, and we took them through a couple of the really easy, almost beginner level quests – hopefully, by the time they get to level 65 (they’re both level 17 at the moment 😉 ) Trion will have sorted out this “Into The Wilds” end Boss-Fight mess!
Well, tomorrow is “D” Day – “D”, as in “demolition of my bathroom”! 🙂 The cleaning lady will be here in the morning, though with workmen tramping through the house and dropping bits of grot all over the place after lunch, one really does have to wonder “why is she coming???” I still haven’t emptied everything out of my bathroom – there’s so little actually in there (because there’s so little room in which to put things!) that I should be able to move it all out in one foul swoop as soon as we see the whites of Clarke’s eyes… Then I’ll just have to find somewhere in the en-suite to put it all! I thought I might commandeer a stand of four pull-out shelves, and put all of my stuff in that – it could fit quite well in the bathroom-tidy corner of the en-suite.
Weigh-in this morning. Was a very big disappointment! Yes, I went up again! I am not a happy little Vegemite! I went from a happy little Vegemite of 67.8kg – to a very not happy little Vegemite of a whopping great fat 68.2kg! Four wretched points! This is not the time to be doing this to me, body! Do it next week! Do it on Wednesday – I don’t bloody care! But don’t do it to me now! Would it hurt that much to keep me in the 67.something kg area until Tuesday bloody night?! Obviously, the answer to that is “Yes! It would!” 😦
Well, I’ve been using the tape on my feet – as well as the triple socks, and I have felt a lot more comfortable… until tonight! I have the biggest blister you’ve ever seen, right on the “bunion” joint of my right foot! The strange thing is, it’s not all that painful – yes, it stings a little, I suppose, but with the tape, and the three pairs of socks, it’s felt fine to walk on – except for the occasional twinge, but I’m used to twinges like that in my feet, and mostly I just ignore them… I think I know how I got the blister though. Julian put the expensive, blue, peel-off paper-backed tape on this morning, but instead of winding it around the top half of my foot, I got him to put it on in strips, just across the parts where I don’t want the friction of the socks rubbing against my skin (if that makes any sense!) That worked fine for my morning walk, but after my lunchtime walk, I noticed that the tape had pulled away from that part of my foot a little bit – so when it was time for my evening walk, I just held it down when I put the first sock on (which isn’t as easy to do as it sounds!) and then just pulled the other two socks over the top. Well, I reckon that’s what did it! The skin was taped down tightly in two places, but there was a gap with bare skin slightly bulging out between those two tightly taped places… and guess where that gap was! Yup, right on the “bunion” joint of my right foot! Now I have to devise a means of protecting the blister that doesn’t involve sticking tape over it, because that sort of tape would just yank the skin right off the top of the blister! Most painfully, I suspect! Anyway, once again, that’s about all I have for you tonight – apologies once again for the lateness of this post – I’m going to have to think of a way to play Rift on Sundays and still get my blog written on time… no ideas spring immediately to mind, but… where there’s a will, there’s always a very stubborn Winter! 😉 Drop by again tomorrow night and find out how the “demolition derby” of the bathroom went, how I managed to patch up my blister, and what my stupid weight has decided to do to me on the eve of my appointment with Dr. Y.! Until tomorrow night, though, please bee good (Christmas is a-coming! 🙂 ) don’t forget that if you obey all the rules, you’ll miss all the fun; always remember to look after yourselves, to drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on the weather, but above all, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 