Misadventures in Gaheris

I have been absent from the blogging scene too long. This has been due to heavy work hours this spring, but I suspect with my summer vacation fast approaching, I will be logging in more frequently and updating all of you on what I have been doing mmo-wise. Do you play DAoC? Chances are that you are not playing it, perhaps busy sampling Tera or some of the other shiny new mmorpgs out there, maybe even indulging in some Diablo 3.

For me, I have had the most fun playing Camelot the past few weeks, first leveling up my Midgard Berzerker to 50, then I switched over to doing "glass" questing on TOA, but to be honest, I did not like it as much as running b.g.s, and I dreamed of leveling another class altogether to see how the pve side matched up to the pvp.

Well, I rolled a Bonedancer on the Gaheris co-op server. For those of you not in the know, Gaheris is DAoC's co-op sever, meaning there is no pvp. The battleground NPCs are all there, but I don't think they port you anywhere, and the factions can all work together towards defeating bosses and doing pve questing. Even though I am not big on raiding, I just wanted to try it out and found it lacking, that is until I found the great Gaheris forum. An entire forum dedicated to a specific DAoC server in 2012? And not even one dedicated to pvp! Go figure! (click on graphic above to check it out)

This should convince EA Mythic to continue developing resources for the game, the population may never be what it once was, but there are still dedicated members and subscribers alive and well in this forum.   

So how's it been leveling the bonedancer on Gaheris so far? Well pretty slow going to be honest, and not as much fun as leveling in the pvp servers. The xp gained from doing b.g.s is actually substantial and fun, but here on the pve side of things apparently you gotta join a guild, find a friendly soul to pl you, or take hours to level up on your own. It can be a daunting task if you have a caster or a squishy class, and it can get pretty lonely as you may feel you are playing an RPG, because most won't group with you until you are closer to max level. Is it as much of a grind as wow? No, but in some respects, wow might be  better because with the Dungeon finder, you can pretty much get a lot of xp by running instances as soon as you hit level 15.

So the jury is still out on how far I can go leveling my BD. As much as I love the atmosphere and old school feel of DAoC, wow has a bigger advantage at the moment: more of my mmorpg loving friends are running through Azeroth still and  I know I won't have problems joining the PUGs. It may all be academic anyhow, as summer rolls by and I have less disposable income to spend on games, I may be playing DDO's new expac or LOTRO, or even LOL and Dragon Age 2 as they say, stay tuned!

Adventures in the battlegrounds

Another friday night run in the Dark Age of Camelot RvR battlegrounds, another successfull and fun experience. I had to chuckle a bit after reading this week's edition of massively's Choose My Adventure column. The writer is taking cues from his readers and playing his toon on DAoC, but he's a total noob. I laughed because I encountered similar growing pains upon rolling my warrior, but I am pretty sure it didn't take me three weeks to reach level 9.

User Gramaw has good advice for tackling the b.g.s when he writes: I would recommend doing quests in the level 10-15 zone until you're 15, then hitting the BG's. When you're in the BG's you should keep doing the PVE repeatable quests until you are the highest level for that BG. Once you are that level, then you can try to do some RvR. You should ALWAYS try to get a group for the PVE quests in the Battlegrounds because the kills will come much faster.

In my own experience, I found that once I was 15, I immediately ventured out to the Lion's den and had fun. Usually these b.g.s are hit or miss from what I read, but when I went in I joined groups doing runs and xping, I leveled up pretty fast on my way to Thid.

Thid was by far the most fun b.g. to date, I have since moved on to Braemar, but that one seems less populated in the RvR sense, but we will see. I was in there one night and alternated between doing pve quests there and exploring the instances.

Here are some noobish mistakes I made which others should avoid:

• use your b.p.s to buy the corresponding gear appropriate for your class and for that b.g. otherwise, you will not fare as well, unless you get lucky and you get a group to run with you who will either trade/give you some equipment, or help you get b.p.s for you to buy some from the merchant.
• don't assume that if you see a group of players running around they will want to group with you, but if you message using /tell or /region and chat with them, they might be inclined to. Sometimes they need muscle to RvR or to take the ck, so you might as well join if asked
• RvR deaths do not give you experience debt, but dying against mobs will, so don't aggro too many if you are soloing in the b.gs. because that will lead to you having to port out to see a healer and that can get expensive if you are low on gold. And you should avoid soloing to begin with, in a pvp server, that's just a sure recipe for being ganked by the other realm, if there happen to be any about.
  
• Thid should be fun and a breeze to level if you find groups and if you do the pve quests. Also make sure you clear your quest journal from lower level quests or those you did not complete, so you have room to get new quests in the b.gs.

That's all for now folks! I will be back with more advice and commentary as my level 29 Berserker moves through the world of DAoC. Happy hunting!