Go, Legends of Norrath and Magic the Gathering

Well its been a while and much has happened at hockey. I haven’t written about it and I can’t remember it all so that’s just tough. I have also taken quite a lot of photos but I simply haven’t had the time or inclination to analyze, tweak or upload them.

Work has been insane lately and I have only left after 18:00 most nights of the last few weeks.

On the plus side, my brother has taught me to play Go and I even beat him once. Its a nice distraction that uses very little bandwidth and can therefore be played on the slowest of internet connections. This has helped to while away the time while waiting for uploads or downloads where the internet is so slow that the whole computer becomes unusable. This may sound like an odd symptom but it arises as a result of the fact that the customers website I am working with is mapped as a network drive on my local machine so that I can use Windows Explorer to drag and drop many files at a time. The downside of this is that Windows Explorer (and sometimes the whole PC) is almost unusable while the transfer is taking place.

I have also begun tweaking my Legends of Norrath (LON) deck. Last weekend I gave up playing with my light deck because I kept losing by miles. So I took my dark deck which still lost but not by quite so much and began tweaking it. The irony of the situation now is that the deck eventually became mostly light with only a few dark cards remaining. In fact, I now build light faction much quicker than I ever built dark faction previously. So now I win a few games and lose most others. The thing is though, that now when I lose, its only by a point or a turn, i.e. its very very close. Yes, losing is losing and I acknowledge that but at least this means that I have a fairly solid deck which only needs a few more tweaks to make it win reliably.

Belgerath

Last and most certainly not least is that I have started playing Magic The Gathering (MTG).
The most recent recruit to the company (Janke) also plays trading card games (TCGs) and he happened to mention that he plays Magic. It wasn’t long before we made a road trip to go and buy a deck each so that we could play during lunch (we tried playing while working but all we got was comments from the boss about how we should be booking 6 hours instead of 8 because we were playing cards so we probably won’t try that again). I bought two decks: “Dimir Intrigues” from the Ravinca: City of Guilds expansion released a few years ago and “Going Rogue” from the Morningtide expansion released a few days ago.

Theme Decks (Going Rogue is the third deck from the left of the Morningtide decks)

I couldn’t beat Janke’s Warrior’s Code (second from the left in the image of the Morningtide decks) deck with either of my new decks although I could often remove some of his more powerful creatures.

Both of my decks are only capable of doing small amount of direct damage at relatively high cost (not a good combination). I am however going to persevere because I believe that both decks could win if I know how to use them right. I am going to start by tweaking the Dimir Intrigues deck and adding another Szadek, Lord of Secrets, two times Circu, Dimir Lobotomist and three times Glimpse the Unthinkable. I am also going to remove Sewerdreg because it has proved to be the most useless card.

I want these cards

 

Walk the plank!

I finished off the Rise of Kunark (RoK) teaser quests on the weekend and thankfully I wasn’t made to walk the plank. Maybe its just my graphics settings but the reward (a ship in a bottle) looked like an opaque brown bottle when I placed it in my house. I couldn’t even see a ship inside. While these quests were an interesting diversion, they weren’t exactly enthralling.

I returned to Steamfont with my new armor to find that I could now defeat level 35 mobs (yellow con to me at 31) fairly easily. If I got lucky and concentrated really hard (and didn’t watch the rugby or A1 grand prix out of the corner of my eye) I could just manage level 36 mobs (orange con) as well. Unfortunately all the quests I had for the zone required killing mobs level 36 and up so I took a bonus xp potion and settled down to grind level 35 wolves and lions for 45 minutes.

This is not a very entertaining way to play and is definitely a play style I try and avoid, but it does have its rewards. I quickly leveled to 32 and am now in a position where I can start going after the quest lines (I hope). I do have a lot of bonus potions left because I almost never use them. I try and save them for when I can play for at least the full duration of the effect in order to maximise my xp gain. I have two major problems here: firstly I tend to wait until I am in a position to complete several quests and do some serious damage to the mobs in Norrath during the 45 minutes the potion lasts. Secondly: I forget that I have the potion and by the time I remember its too late.

Upgrading two of my combat arts left me with almost no gold (again!) so I headed back to Kelethin and knuckled down to some serious crafting.

No that’s not me with the fairy skirt made of lights. I even bought some severed fir from the broker in order to make some fir salesman’s crates, a bag stand and scroll stand. I don’t usually do this because I think its too expensive but, as I’ve said before, its also as rare as hens teeth. I just hope that the fir products sell for my asking price because that should repay the fuel cost and more.

Using a bonus tradeskill xp potion, I gained three tradeskill levels, bringing me to 29, and also made some useful furniture.  I sold all the items that did not require rares to the merchant because its just not worth putting them on the broker. I kept a wine rack for my house though.