GW:EN Sneak Peak: Live Thread 6, Tracking Down the Nornbear

Alright, time to get rolling again. Plenty of time left to get some gold, grab the skills, and get to UAX a week before release. Or to bang my head against the walls of the Norn tournament (I hear there are some hero unlocks in there) and Vanguard defense. I want to see some hot player on environment action. Namely, I want to advance in the storyline far enough that I can run at least one of the promised 18 or so missions.

I've said as much before. I've also said that I'm avoiding spoilers and I spent part of the morning going through varios sites, looking for information on where to go and what to do. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. See, knowing the synopsis of a story isn't the same as having read it. It's in the details and the experience that can't be conveyed in list form that I find the real worth of going through a game like this. Knowing how many quests there are or their names doesn't ruin that for me. I just don't want the details revealed before I can be surprised by them at least once. And, for that matter, I haven't really been investigating too hard.

I'm on the track of the Nornbear right now, for example, which is what my primary quest is telling me to do. I'm operating under the assumption that following it will allow me to get to the next area or unlock a door that leads to a mission or something. But I don't know exactly how that works. Nor do I really want to know how that works. But just knowing how many more steps there are in the journey makes me feel better. It's comforting that there's less road in front of me than there is behind me, that sort of thing.

Okay, a little housekeeping before I start. I'm sticking with the SF spammer plan even though it didn't work so well outside of the Eye of the North on the master quest. I'm still not quite sure why since it's a lot of AoE and a lot of damage and should have chewed through things. But, oh well, it's fast and it works and changing takes time. I am, however, tweaking my own bar. I still don't have much to work with but given my experiences, I'm tweaking things to fit better.

I'm dropping the Boon idea entirely. Subbing in Holy Veil in place of that. Shield of Absorption in place of Mend Condition since my pals have been taking care of condis far better than I have. And Gift of Health in favor of Guardian to add a little more healing omph. I'm now in a 12/10/8 attribute set up with the points in DF, Prot (with a hat bonus), and Heal respectively. Not exactly optimum but I don't want to waste time figuring out the breakpoints and everything.

So, this is my bar.
Sausaletta Regina
lv20
OwAT0wnC5JMeXnJ1jBwlukUTAA
Gift of Health
Shield of Absorption
Reversal of Fortune
Protective Spirit
Signet of Capture
Zealous Benediction
Signet of Devotion
Holy Veil

I'm sticking with the SoC even though I haven't seen a Monk boss yet. But this should make me a little more resilient to hexes which have been troublesome. And I've found the biggest thing I've been doin is laying down the PS and preprotting, so Shield of Abosorption will help there, better than Guardian anyway. And taking off Boon means my raw healing output suffers so I want GoH to help along with ZB, it's almost like a mini-Infuse (especially when the DP is up).

Anyhow, the quest I'm on is to head to Sif's hall to talk to Sif to find a Nornbear to get Jora, the big gal on the box art, to like me so we can take long walks and talk about the many advantages of tall women and...uh, I mean ally with the Norn so we can fight the MacGuffin or whatever. I need to head north to the next zone and, presumably, the next outpost. I found all the zone portals earlier while sludging through the Norrheat so this shouldn't be too hard.

Hey, my heroes get the Norn track bonus, too. That's pretty neat. I'm less than 1.5k away and with some heavy grinding I could hack it out, I'm sure. But I'd rather just get going on the quest line so I'm just going to be following the green arrows here.

The green arrow says I want the portal on the far side of the zone. Which is right through Giant/Jotun territory. And the location of the green dot is just as far from that portal as the portal is from Gunnar's. This could take a while. Since the Norn fun bucks are earned by killed, I'm not exactly looking for combat. But I'm not exactly seeking it out, either. I'm basically going from rezpad to rezpad, killing what patrols my way.

My three Heroe Eles are set up as SF spammers. Since I'm a little worried about their aim, I don't have them bring the things I would, like Meteor Shower and Mark of Rodgorts. Instead, I stick with the basics. SF, Glowing Gaze, Liquid Flame, GLE, and Fire Attunement. That's a lot of e-management but the Heroes are stupid and I don't want them running out of make stuff burn juice in the middle of a fight. They're my main offense, after all. That leaves me two slots to play with slots to play after the required rezsig. I set two up as E/Mos. The first is loaded with condition hate. Draw and Mending Touch. The second hex hate. Spot removal of the day which at the moment is Remove Hex, and Convert. The third is an interrupt bot with P-Drain to help out with the energy and Power Retrun. Sure, it gives energy back and a whole lot of it but all I care about is zapping an enemy spell every five seconds. And the AI is marvelous at that.

Yeah, I'm handling the Jotun a lot better now. They were really giving me problems yesterday and, really, are what prompted me to change things up. It helps not to have a lot of DP, of course, but I think my changes have had the desired results.

The Jotun are the only new monsters I've seen. They're big nasty brutes with clubs and they're all lv28 and they have lots of knockdowns - including the infamous Giant Stomp - and can kill very fast. At least they could yesterday. Now, I'm not having such a hard time with them. But there's still this one boss group that wanders roughly the whole zone that I'm going to steer clear of. Best not to tempt fate, but I'm wondering if I should. The only one I can't keep up is Eve and that's okay because she sacs herself to death with alarming regularity - I really only keep her around for the battery power. Oh, there's also a little group of Jotun in the far Northwest corner of their map having a little fight club moment. Disturb them and they swarm on you, I'm not going to do that today, though. But cool little touch in the design.

Made it to the portal without incident. And it's on to Drakkar Lake. I ran the -image update last night so no more loading screens for me. At least, no more long ones. First impression of the new zone? It's a lot more wide open. Blue. I can see the pale sun shinning in the sky and a vast sea of tall pines stretching out before me into the hazy horizon. Can't see the eponymous lake but I can see a bunch of centaur milling around. I smell revenge for the great fall of defenders of the Eye of the North.

Okay, here's what happened first thing in the zone. After marching over a corpse there was a little bunny rabbit by a cave, he hopped away when I came near and being the curious sort, I followed him. At the bottom of the cave were a bunch more bunnies. They turned hostile as I approached and then roughly 258 Sahdow beasts popped out of the ground, encircling me. Trapped, I had to fight my way out. Now that's how you design a game, folks. They're mostly lv15s so it's not that hard but BEWARE THE DEATH BUNNY! My Norn rep thanks him though because although those enemies are weak, the kills count. I'm up to 50 and I'm barely two steps inside the zone. Oh, and the little cave grotto is nice looking, too.

Shadow things are apparently all over in the zone as pop-ups. I understand why they're in the game and all, and I don't mind a few. But I hate when there are a lot of them.

Hello, hello, what's all this then? A map piece just dropped. Someone mentioned to me the other night they were looking for these things which apparently have a chance to drop randomly from every creature because there's a good reward for them. Somewhere. The map says it's Koris Deeprunner, whom I haven't seen, but I'll keep it in mind.

Saw an interesting little structure by the walls of the zone. Went in to investigate and guess what happened? Yeah, a bunch of shadows popped up and tried to kill me. That right there, though, is a perfect example of the kind of pop-up I like. Just like the bunny encounter earlier. Wasn't nearly as exciting or well done but it's much more effective to be surprised just as your sense are hightened with the thrill of discovery. If that makes sense. But that would be the separation point between a good pop-up and a bad one for me.

Found the lake. It's big and frozen. Lots of elementals and djinn-thingies on it. The green arrow says I must go past it to the north and so I shall.

Hey, there's Jora. Hi, sexy blonde nordic giantess. What's new? Nothing, okay. Thanks for standing there for a future quest, anyway.

The slaughter of the centaur continues. 100 kills and I'm not even trying.

Found Sifhalla. Unfortunately, I went up a side path in the mountain and I can't get down without backtracking. There's a cave off to the side with some red dots in it. Seeing the fun I had before, you think I'm not going to check? Oh boy, Jotun. No, doesn't look like any cool encounters, but maybe there's a path through the cave to my next outpost. Ach, bad pull. Just me and Mhenlo left. Fortunately, unlike me, he has a rez. Recovered and there was, in fact, a path through the cave. It probably would have been quicker to backtrack but, hey, not as much XP that way. I'm up to just over 3.5k Norn points now, by the way.

On to Sifhalla. There's a Dwarf with an exclamation point over his head outside. He's a mercenary and he'll follow you around with blasting kegs, apparently for a mere 100g. I'll have to keep that in mind. As for the town itself is a nice looking place. Big giant bowl, really, but very...Norn.

After looking around, no new mini-games to play which is a shame. But a few quests. And some markers warning me to be on the lookout for a few bosses. Interesting little device there for pumping up the boss fights. I know they're bosses because I slaughtered one on my way up here. Sif, who, by the way, has killed a rabbit (After that cave fight, I can understand her boasting about it), sends you on a quest after them. There's also a quest to kill some Jotun, a notion I thoroughly agree with.

It's mini-mission time. And it's really just an excuse for a cutscene. The Nornbear shows up, is pwned, then escapes after Jora drops. Then it's movie time. Well, that's one part of the quest chain done. Now it's on to the next which takes place in an instance, there's 500 Norn points on the line, which'll put me at rank 2m easily.

Rolling towards a wolf shrine with a pair of Nornettes in tow. Life is good. Oh, hey, this is that cave I just went through. The shrine's in a little room with an altar dealing that I though severed no apparent purpose the fist time around. Beating the badies around and I get my first taste of Nornforming. You get a skill that turns you into a wolfie and while a wolf you get special skills. I'm not sure it's a great idea for me to be using it because, again, I'm a Monk. I can't heal while I'm ripping people to shreds and this place is crawling with Jotun. But, hey, it'll be fun. The worst part is when it's over, I'm drained of energy. So I have to go from full on melee banging (Which is easy thanks to the brass knuckles I still have) to scrambling for my life, then back to healing duty. For any other character, not an issue but for a primary Monk, this this isn't so good. Especially when it leaves only Mhenlo scrambling to keep everyone alive. Ah, well, my little trip through the cave earlier pays off as I know the layout pretty well so tracking down the Nornbear isn't a problem. Cutscene time and Jora is my kinda gal, that's all I'm gonna say.

I'm now a Slayer of Beasts, I've unlocked Big Mama (A Warrior, in case it's not obvious. She starts out with Sword stuff and some defense. Nothing good, really.) and advanced the primary quest. Big Mama says to talk with somebody in the next region, Jaga Moraine. And I've got a quest which leads there as well. So, I know where I'm going next. Seems as good a time as any to take a break.