The Journey of a TR Nublet (Part Four)

This will probably be the last post I do under this series. From here on out I'll likely just make entries on anything interesting that occurs in game, or anything I feel like talking about regarding TR.

So I finished up the Divide, but not quite based on my previous criteria for completion. On Ciderhelm's recommendation, I didn't finish the Targets of Opportunity for Divide. Something regarding not wanting to get all my clone credits right now, in hindsight I should have probably paid more attention to the reasoning. :P

Like with the way I've wrapped up the Wilderness, I finished off Divide with the instances. The prison is the only one I distinct remember, because I attempted to solo it but got owned by Bane cannons and had to get assistance. It was pretty fun regardless and the quests were definitely interesting. I'd have to say that the best part was Cider wondering why I had killed the NPC I was supposed to escort...and I pretty much replied with "because he said so". I really didn't even catch that I had an option, just killed him because he said so. The resulting text lashing by all the NPCs was probably worth it. Pretty funny to be sure.

So wrapping up the quests I headed in to Palisades and cleared through most of the way I normally have found comfortable. Top notch zone, tons of interesting quests, the control point combat was the best thus far, such an insane progression in soloing and damage dealing ability too for the Biotechnician. You start receiving some insanely powerful weapons, and if you're putting points in the right places your damage with Lightning and Reconstruction and Decay become pretty significant too. So generally, good times.

I spent one night (I think it was Thursday) testing out mechanics with Cider, which was also pretty damn fun. The two of us were smacking around Boargar for quite a while trying to get a grasp on the threat mechanics. I ended up sitting there with my cellphone's stop watch function timing specificly when aggro would be lost and gained. Having the mob switch to aggro on my character at exactly 30 seconds was so satisfying to see after the speculation and patterns we were observing. It helped me ultimately understand much more about the game... which is great, but even if I'm soloing and I fire a weapon that presents an immune reaction, I end up thinking to myself "Well it may have been immune, but at least I did my listed damage in threat to the mob."

The quest chain to unlock the Eloh Temple was great and thoroughly entertaining. No complaints at all. Even though I have a pretty significant dislike for "attunements", this at least felt significant with the storyline. I'm just happy that once I got in, the objectives didn't ultimately require me to do anything other than stay alive... since me actually killing stuff at that point was still relatively difficult with the weapons I had (it wouldn't be until after Eloh Temple and hitting 22 that I found it basically the easiest thing in the world to solo previously impossible or extremely time consuming mobs).

Eloh Vale was amazing. Gorgeous zone, starting to sound like a broken record here, but tons of fun as well. I really just have a difficult time complaining about some of these places. There was one bug I had in Eloh Vale where the supply mission would not finish, but resetting the instance and running back in took care of that just fine. Walking over that last bridge up to the Eloh named Gabriel was pretty damn breathtaking. The swirling maelstrom below, and amazing environment. I can't remember the last time I was so impressed with the scenic beauty of a location... It was probably back in early September 2006, when I first stepped foot in Nagrand during the Burning Crusade F&F Alpha. Now, given that it was a time when all the talbuk were actually aggressive mobs instead of neutral... so it made traveling through at barely level 61 pretty amusing... but it was still amazing.

So all that pretty much catches me up to today and last night, where I did Warnet Caverns solo and Eloh Vale with Cider's watchful eye. Then today I did The Devil's Den, which I've already spoken about briefly in another post but there's not too much else to day about that. Its a truly eerie place when you first enter... and throughout a majority of the zone. Entering the cave after the Fithik boss and seeing "normal" light felt like nothing a game has invoked in me for ages, save for being in Molten Core for hours then seeing ANYTHING ELSE... although that's mostly a feeling of frustration, where this is a feeling of refreshment. You've escaped the bowels of this place and don't have to worry about little fithik thingies vomiting you you anymore.

So now, I'm about to head back in game and do the last instance I have left in Palisades, the treebark something or other fields or place. If there's anything worth noting, I'll be sure to mention it. Although I've definitely hit a new peak in satisfaction and enjoyment with the content I've been presented through the Palisades, something tells me it's going to just keep getting better.