the adventures of reine du fromage de blight

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Author: velveeta

when we left off, soknot had just received her first quest to hunt down and kill a grulet.  a grulet is a small version of a gruok - a boar like creature that can be looted as well as used as a resource of meat and hide.

karkath gives you  good info on where to find the grulets, so off you go!  in the forest just south of spitfyre, you can find plenty of the lil piggies to hunt, so choose one and whack away!

once you kill your prey, you will hear the chime of success and a notice in your game chat that you have completed your task and to return to karkath for your reward.  your quest journal is also updated and telling you the same thing.

return to karkath and listen to the next speech.  karthath asks you to loot a grulet tusk and return with the trophy, but first, he gives you your reward - a dented bell - and tells you about adding it to your hoard.

hoard is very important to dragons.  it provides power for the special attacks of draggys, like gold rage (a personal fave!), silver strike, and the various breath weapons.  you also need a certain amount of it to advance to the life stages.  you add things to your hoard (and choose carefully - what you add you cannot get back - many a draggy has accidently added a precious to their hoard.  losing a teched out weapon or piece of armour can really ruin your day......) the same way you scribe forms or make stuff:  go to your inventory, hightlight the object, right click and choose add to hoard, click the appropriate okays.

anyway, back you go and kill some grulets (think i lucked out and got my trophy with the first kill), looting each one until you get your trophy (the brown coin with the T on it in the screenie) by right clicking and selecting either the 'take all' or the 'browse loot' option.

a word about trophies.  every racial city has a trophy hunter, who will commission alts to seek out trophies of the appropriate level.  these can then be sold for coin or turned in for xp.  anti-powerlevelers love the trophy hunts for adding to the normal grind.

back to the quest.  once you have your trophy, return to karkath and let him tell you about where you go from there.

in my next post, i will introduce you to the character menu and training points, as by now, you should have your first 12 points to allocate.  see ya soon!!

if you remember, spitfyre advised you, at the beginning of the speech, to seek out instructor karkath for your first lessons as a dragon adventurer. take the eastern path behind spitfyre and you will soon leave the forest for more dragonish climes.  just over the border between forest and mountain, on a bluff overlooking the road on your right as you leave the forest, you will find the good instructor.

greet karkath as you would any npc (right click and choose greet option) and listen to the brief speech.  karkath will give you your first quest, and we will get to that later, but first - 2 bits of important info.  karkath makes mention of your quest log and the dragon lore book.

accessing your quest log (in case you need a refresher, as i covered it with derexx a while ago) is easy.  click on the blue gem that provides access to the game options menu and choose the quests option.  this brings up the quest journal, which provides info on current and finished quests - like how many times you have done a quest (quests like trophy hunting, bottle cap collecting, and similiar are repeatable), steps you need to finish a quest, options to delete, etc.  as you can see from the log, karkath gave me a quest to loot a grulet tusk.

both karkath and spitfyre mention the dragon lore book located in the shrine area.  lying on a covered pedestal, a large book holds the answers for newbie hatchies.  it can give you a brief overview of abilities and actions, the life stages of dragons, and other useful info.  next to the enecyclopedia, you will see the binding shrine.  you can bind here if you wish, but really, you prolly won't be on skalkaar long enough for it, and the island is small enough to run around on in very little time.

gonna end for now, because there is a lot to talk about regarding the first quest, and i don't want to make the posts too long and boring!

see you soon with details about the quest and the aftermath!

so after you have created your new hatchling, you pop out on the landing port pad for the dragon tutorial area, skalkaar island.  it is here where newbies to the world of istaria will learn how the various controls work.  i will not be covering things (for the most part) for new players - i am always assuming you get the concept of using arrow keys to move, etc.  i will be covering construction and killing and a couple other things particular to horizons. 

anyway, as i was saying, your finished creation enters the world on the skalkaar island pad.  the movement tutorial window pops up, so you can follow the links for a brief but in depth version on movement. i, of course, am much familiar with movement, so i did not follow this - but feel free!

there is one thing that (i believe) the tutorial will not tell you (unless this has been corrected in the remod) - hatchies, while not being able to fly (take off, gain and lose height, and land), they can glide.  on blight, we have had many gliding parties - finding the highest safe accessible peak and jumping off.

anyway, let me show you how to set your options to glide rather than drop when you fall.  you can do it anytime, but you get more fun out of it if you do it as soon as you can!!  lol

first step is to click the blue gem and open the game menu.  choose options.  in the options function, choose the options tab.  scroll down to the 'start to fly or glide when falling' option and click the box.  make sure you click apply then you can exit out.  then find the the highest safe spot and jump off (use the 'q' key for a little extra distance [q is the jump button]), then use the movement keys to steer.  if you want to land early, you can hit the down arrow button to stop gliding and drop to earth.

the landing pad is located in the middle of the skalkaar forest, so you will see grulets wondering in the distance off the road.  you will also see spitfyre, the hatchling emmissary.  greet him and listen to his speeches, which give you some background about dragons and their place in the world.

spitfyre will also point you toward your first big adventure, which i will tell you about soon!

for a while, i have been thinking - in order to have a 'representive' on every shard - that i need to make an alt on chaos.  then i concieved of doing a series on the myraid of trainers for all skewls - location, chat, etc. - and since mourningwood is far past the tutorial island, the idea to kill 2 treants with one hammer blow came to me.

therefore, i am proud to introduce soknot daqueen (get it?) - one of chaos' newest inhabitants!  i did the character creation for derexx, but allow me to show the process of dragon creation to get started.

after you login and choose the shard you wish to create your new alt on, you see the default 'human' creation screen.  in the lower right corner, you will see clickable buttons to choose your race.  choose 'dragon' and you zoom down the hall to the dragon creche.  here you will see the basic beginning stats for your dragon, as well as any special racial skills and/or abilities.  go to the lower right again and click the 'next' button.

the creation screen shows a default yellow dragon.  before we list the physical characteristics, it is useful to become familiar with the movement.  you can rotate the avatar left and right, and zoom in then back out.  some body choices, like head and eye shape, need to be seen close up, while decals and chest styles need to be seen from afar to make the desired choices.

there is almost an infinity of choices for the physical characteristics of your hatchling.  it is way beyond my scope to show you everything, obviously, show i will just show you a couple screenies i hope will get the point across.

the list of possibilities are as follows: 10 different head shapes (i hate the fin styles, i think they look like sea monsters, not dragons), 15 body textures (ei, scales), 14 scale colors (green all the way for me, of course!), 2 shades of highlights, 8 highlight colors, 13 styles of chest plates, 13 chest plate colors, 17 decals (body 'markings' like stripes or dots) available in 6 different colors, and 4 eye styles with 11 different colors to choose from.  finally, you can pick the height, muscularity, and portliness of your hatchie.

then, it only remains to choose a name for your new alt.  i initially wanted 'knot daqueen'.  istaria naming allows the same surname, but not the same first name, and 'knot' was already taken.  i discovered this when i click the 'play' button - the game checks for name availability and spits you back to the naming screen if it is not.  fortunately for me, 'soknot' was available!  i clicked the 'play button and porting to skalkaar island, the tutorial island for beginning alts - but that is for the next post!  stay tuned, there's a lot of info about to come your way!

so, as the party is winding down, i mention that derexx is not attuned to the isles of ice and fire.  there is a good reason for this - derexx is only level 6 (or maybe 7 now) and those isles are dangerous even for hi levels.  peeps power level at the ice isle on blight, but the safe area is very small and low levels often earn almost as many death points as they do levels.

at this point, the lovely lady cixi offered to guide derexx and nakties to the gatekeeper.  this is a danger filled trip, even before the remod.  however, the gods of istaria did make it slightly easier to get to the isle of ice to start with the remod.  there is now a 'path' of ice across the once open sea (as you will soon see).  one must still be careful, tho, as it is difficult to tell the difference between ice and water until it is too late, and falling in means drowning, a recall, and a restart of the tour - something no one wants!

to start the tour, we ported to acul, the only trandalar port available without attunement (and the trandalar attunements are even bigger headaches than the isles!), then running the south road until you get to brandon's shelf.  head for the coast and find the first ice island ( there are 3 ice islands that serve as landmarks).  

cixi led us across the ice to the first island.  we cut across it and headed for the second island.  it is between the first and third islands that one needs to watch for the ice path and avoid the open water.  there is no way to run fast enough back to a place above water before you drown.

cixi oriented our group toward the third ice island, and off we went.  we landed on the northern end of the island, then cut across to the east coast, to cross the bay to the isle of ice.  and so ends the safe part of the journey, and the time of sprinting and running from nasties starts.  cixi bid us to stay as close to the shore as we could, as the nasties tend to stay more toward the interior.

so we ran and ran along the southern coast to the eastern end of ice isle.  it is a good thing cixi could resurrect, as we ran into a pack of dire icy wolves and nakties was down before cixi could get back to fight them off!

at the southeastern end of the ice isle is the bridge of ice that leads to the gatekeeper's camp and ultimately to teh isle of fire.  the gatekeeper's camp is located about halfway between the 2 isles. dantor the scout is located next to the bonfire (of course, it's freezing!).  greet him and accept the attunements.  it is here where you would port out from the ice and fire isles as well.

and it is as simple as that! if you can avoid drowning, death by gol, beet, and/or wolf to make it to the bridge, you are all set!

of course, it seemed a small waste to come this far and not see something of the isle of fire.  we seemed to have been fairly lucky so far, and cixi was willing to guide us a little further, so we continued to cross the bridge to the 'entrance' of the isle of fire.

we ran along the cliffside until we came to some fire opal gols guarding the entrance to the tunnel that leads to the interior.  cixi managed (barely) to write them in the dead book so we could continue down into the very low ceilinged tunnel (don't jump or you will bump your head!).

the tunnel opens up into a mountain pass with roads leading in several directions toward the interior.  the screenie may look tame, but just out of sight are hordes of giant fire beets and flame ogres,and fire pygmies and more gols (lava, obsidian, and a couple gem types) - all waiting to party with you as long as you can hang!  on that day, cixi was, understandably, not ready to go into battle (no armour and still in her party clothes!), so after thanking her most profusely, nakties and derexx bid her a fond farewell and recalled.

and that was my time at the order shard's gnomekindle event!

i was thinking of starting a series on trainers of all stripes - tracking them down and showing you where and who they are. that will take most of the year, i am thinking!!  had the idea to start with the dragon trainers, so mourningwood has the chance to come out and stretch his legs a bit......  see ya soon!!

lately, real life has me a day late and dollar short, in terms of gaming.  i tried to patch the game in time to get into the event's start, but i missed all that fun.  but i did get to participate in an ancient ascension and gracious cixi guided me safely thru the perils of attunement to the isles of fire and ice.

let's cover the ascension first, shall we?

so, when derexx finally arrived on the order shard, the party was winding down - the partiers were still out on the treasure hunt and so only lovwyrm was at the holiday plot to greet me.  this gave me time to explore the new plot from all sides.

about the time i had finished admiring the hard work to construct the plot, the partiers began to return.  refreshments were served to the famished treasure seekers before we all gathered at the portal area to witness taikeru's ascension to ancienthood.

i would like to take a moment to thank the great peeps of order, who always welcome derexx with glad words and open arms.  here is an incomplete list of the peeps who were so kind during this event: lovwyrm and flameus, the party's gracious hosts; taikeru; mehrunea; chrystalas; mimy; c'gan; nakties; valea; georg; denario; krinharth; janesaph; cixi (who deserves and has my total thanx, but more on that in the next post); lunalove; starailia; lupussan; akumaa; aeroessa; swythe; arcon; kaiku; and disintergrate.

anyway, back to the ascension!  taikeru took a prime place in the middle of the brist portals, where we all had a perfect view.  in fact, we were so close, we got caught in the expanding bubble of change (i am showing the whole screenie - because just showing you the event part would lead you to believe my graphics card had blown!!  ;-} ).  soon, tho, the bubble began to recede slowly to finally reveal the newly born ancient dragon.  the party ended with all due celebration of the holiday and the newest ancient to soar the skies of istaria.

the fun i could attend came after the party, however!  i will tell you all about it soon!

for the summer festival, the mazekeeper offered 2 quests, both to be completed in the maze itself.  i was only able to finish one, seeking the maze.  the objective is to find 6 objects within the maze before the timer runs out.

as the objectives point out, using the right entrance is key.  then it is just a matter of running thru the maze trying to find the objects.  first one i ran across was the painting of the swordfish.  it was relatively easy, being just off the entrance lane at the first turning.  the rest were not so easy!

i did, obviously, find the mushroom cluster, the green topped mushroom, the dolphin mural, the small brown mushroom, and the right park benches (there are several sets scattered about).  along the way, i met the fireworks seller and the food merchant, and chatted with the raffle master.

after finding the objects, i quickly ran to the end of the maze to speak with the maze keeper's husband, so he could give me my reward.

i ran back, hoping i would have enough time to do the running the maze quest, but i was unable to, and i couldn't get back into game before the end of the festival to try again.

that is, unfortunately, as far as i could get on the summer festival!

next time, i will be doing either the order shard's holiday fun (if i get the screenies done in time) or continuing with some high level content stuff!!  it will be as much a surprise to me as it will be for you!  ;-}p

catch ya then!

this year's big event, in horizons, was the summer festival.  unfortuately, rl interfered and i was unable to spend as much time in game as i wanted to, but i was able to do some of it, including starting both maze quests (didn't get to finish one, to my woe), so at least i have something to show you!

as players, we are very happy that the gods are trying to reuse the 'lost' islands (they were training islands until the consolidation).  for the summer event, the island of new korelia was used to host the event and maze grounds.

as with all the lost islands, one has to use the genevia island port to new korelia.  then it is a short run up the road to the town of new korelia.  as you approach the gate, you need to greet the lorekeeper and listen to her speech to find out the background of the festival.

when you reach the maze area, you will see the maze keeper's tent.  approach her and listen to her talk.

we will cover the quests in the next post, but i would like to show you the new draggy wall panels that were created for the event.  i like em, i think they are pretty kewl and almost make me wish i had a lair for mourningwood, so that i could put them in.....

i don't know the names or significance of some of these, so i am just posting the screenies of them - gives you a reason to do some exploring of our great game!

winged star

the torch

tri yang and serpent

harp, gear, and trident

hammer, 'steering wheel', with harp and gear

coat and ??? (heehee, no idea what it is supposed to be!)

well, that's enough for now - will tell you about the event quests next time!  see ya then!

the first time you speak with arghur (after getting the quest from capt. jarthur), he will not give you his standard speech.  instead, you will get more history on delgarath and an entreaty to explore the last known battlefield of the lost dwarven king.

you exit this speech thread and re-greet arghur to receive the next quest in the line - exploring an old but still dangerous battlefield.

this quest is known as 'search the barrows' and we will talk about it at a later day!!!

arghur the brown is also a scout trainer, so if you chose scout as one of your adventure skewls, you already know where he is, but if not, you will find him in the mines.  head in and down, and if i remember correctly, he is in the first chamber, right side, against the far wall (anyone who knows differently, please do post the real position - i am the eternal noob and would not be offended in any way!  ;-} )

as a trainer, he gives a standard greeting that fills in more of the lore of horizons, and of course offers training quests for scouts and related equipment, if needed.  the little speech goes like this:

Arghur tells you, 'Greetings, friend. I am known as Arghur the Brown and I am a scout of the Iron Guard. Do you wish to know more of the Siege of Aughundell?'

Arghur tells you, 'I was there at the end of the Siege, with King Dralnok. The Withered Aegis may be undead, but they are possessed by a most evil intelligence. They are difficult to fight and very cunning. Fortunately, Dwarves are more cunning and so we held out for many years until the Siege was lifted, around the same time as the Battle of Tazoon.'

next post, how he gets you moving on the first real quests of the line!