Majesty 2 – The Royal Feat
I picked up fantasy kingdom sim Majesty 2 a while back, and though I found the tutorial and first few missions fairly easy, I ran into a bit of a brick wall at The Royal Feat. In order to prove my worth to the people of Ardania, I must perform a Royal Feat: that is, kill Rafnir, the oldest and most cunning of dragons! As Rafnir is nearly invulnerable, thanks to various magic, I also have to seek out a witch and do her bidding so that she will remove this protection.
My Sean Connery sound-alike advisor said that Rafnir would attack if he sees my flag.. but I found him marauding through my kingdom on day 2, before any of my buildings were even completed and certainly before I’d set any flags!
On this first visit, Rafnir informed me that he didn’t come here to eat my underfed heroes. Well, as I didn’t have any buildings yet, I didn’t even have any heroes! Before he flew away again, he blasted away the progress I had made on my Ranger’s Guild..
Skyrim’s Vampires and Werewolves
For the second time in Skyrim, I caught Sanguinare Vampiris.. the disease that leads to Vampirism. In Oblivion, the disease was called Porphyric Hemophilia; either disease can be cured by the Cure Disease spell, a potion, or by visiting an altar, and both lead to full-blown Vampirism if left uncured for three days.
I caught the disease early on in my game, but didn’t want the hassle of remembering to feed regularly, or the risk that NPCs might refuse to talk to me.. I wanted to explore the game without too many restrictions.
However, this time, I’d had many hours of exploration, and decided to risk a few annoyed NPCs. Three days later, I had Vampirism, an increased resistance to Frost, and weakness to fire and sunlight.. this last not being quite as I’d expected. I also had three new powers: Vampire’s Servant, Vampire’s Sight, and Vampiric Drain. I only really liked Vampire’s Sight due to my level.. neither raised minions nor a few points health drain could compare with my lovely enchanted swords 😉
World-First Diablo III HC Inferno Clear Confirmed
Blizzard have confirmed the world-first Diablo III Hardcore Inferno Clear, which was completed prior to the 1.0.3 patch. Canadian gamer Kripp was playing a Barbarian, and had help from a Wizard friend, Krippi.
He’s uploaded the video of their fight with Diablo, from the Barbarian’s perspective: and it’s a long fight!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaDA7GxAtXM] (more…)
One Week of Diablo III!
Well.. I say a week.. heh. Launch day was a no-go, with Blizzard having somehow been unaware of how many of their customers would actually want to play, and the servers being unable to cope with this demand. These problems continued the following day, with connection problems, lag, and maintenance on the Battle.net servers.. and still they weren’t finished, as there was yet more surprise downtime and maintenance later on during the week.
The only positive thing that could be said for Blizzard in this was that they got on with the maintenance straight away.. but they should have had some indication of demand from pre-order and sales figures, and from the open beta weekend which was plagued with the same problems, and they should have ensured that their systems were ready to deal with it.
Anyway.. I went with the Demon Hunter, with plans to play the game through alone, at my own pace.. with exploration, reading all the journals, watching all the cutscenes and playing with the crafting system a bit too. I had a friend drag me through Diablo II ages back, and didn’t get to explore or enjoy the story; that isn’t going to happen again.
The first part of the game was available during the open beta.. and available as a trial of the game via the Starter Edition or Guest Passes. The first part of Act 1, up to the Skeleton King, seemed to play the same as during Beta, ignoring the random elements of course!
Minecraft for the Xbox 360
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, 4J Studio‘s ported version of Minecraft, came out on Wednesday, and apparently broke the Day 1 sales records for the Xbox LIVE arcade and becoming profitable within the first hour! Tim won a copy of the game, so he finally had a go.. watching him encounter zombies and creepers was amusing 🙂
I planned to have just a quick go, to compare it against the PC version which I’ve sunk many, many hours into. As usual, I spent my first night up on a pole.. I’ve never been keen on the hole in the ground method! Once I had some resources gathered, it was on to the crafting..
There have been a few changes to crafting, making it a lot easier to use! The system allows you to navigate through categories and then just click on the item you want to make.. and as long as you have the ingredients to hand, the item will appear in your inventory.
Netherwing
Since a friend showed me his Netherwing Drake, I’ve wanted one.. however, it required Exalted reputation with Netherwing, and this has taken rather a long time to earn via quests in Shadowmoon Valley.
I met a random player in the Mines, who was looking for Netherwing Eggs. He was under the impression that the only way to reach Exalted was via turning in the eggs.. but I found the quests were a more reliable source of reputation gains, and while slower, they were less frustrating. I only found a few eggs after I’d started looking for them, and when I came across a suggested route, I discovered that flying and looking around gave me motion sickness! This has to be due to flying, as I had no problems running around looking for Easter eggs during Noblegarden.
I finally made it to Exalted yesterday, and went back to Shattrath to claim my own Drake 🙂
I picked the Veridian Netherwing Drake as the quest reward, but have also been back to Netherwing Ledge to purchase the others for 200g apiece 😀
100 Pets and Nuts’ Acorn!
I finally got my 100th pet.. the Darkmoon Cub, redeemed for tokens at the Darkmoon Faire!
Children’s Week Pets and the Sea Turtle!
Children’s Week brought the opportunity to grab a few more additions to my pet collection, with Speedy from the quests in Orgrimmar, the Curious Wolvar Pup from Dalaran, and Peanut from the quests in Shattrath!
The Last of the Wandering Isle
I just had a few more quests to do in the Pandaren starting area: helping the Alliance survivors with a few quests. An NPC in the Alliance camp had a plan for removing the wrecked ship from Shen-zin Su’s side.. blow the ship free with explosives, and then heal the wound.. I was amused at the NPC’s name here: Makael Bay 🙂
While the Horde refugees had been under attack from tigers in the forest, the Alliance camp was under attack from more aggressive attackers. I found it surprisingly awkward to snag enemies as they ran past me.. the Mistweaver specialisation at this stage has no ranged attack. This was a first for me; most of my playtime has been as a caster, and when I started levelling a Warrior I had a gun during the early levels.
Other quests had us gather lost supplies, and then there was the None Left Behind quest, which had me rescue Injured Sailors..
Mists After the Brazier
Over the weekend, I got caught up in a second bottleneck during the quest called The Challenger’s Fires.. as masses of players clustered around the Brazier of Flickering Flames, so thoroughly blocking it that nobody could click it and make progress.
