Archive for the Leveling Guides Category

Leveling Guide: Part 4 – Quest Types

Posted in Guides, Leveling Guides on November 17, 2011 by troublmaker

If you are leveling in a modern MMORPG you are going to have to do is fast and effectively through questing. Games want to explain its lore to the general public. The lore is the story and in most games it is what makes that game amazing or crap. In MMORPGs stories take the back road and people are more interested in advancing their characters. In this guide I will be describing the various quest types and prioritizing them in terms of value.

  1. The Quest-line: This is the main frontier of a strong MMORPG’s questing. You want a quest that will link together a single storyline for the player’s enjoyment. However it is important to figure out what a quest-line will look like. Sometimes it might be wise to complete all objectives for the questing zone at once. Quest lines should come with or unlock other quests. If they are just singular quest lines they are only worthwhile with minimal travel. Doing quest lines is important because they will lead you into other quest lines and other zones.
  2. The Breadcrumb: Breadcrumbs will generally lead you to another area or unlock a new set of quests for you. They are usually pretty low experience and not worth doing immediately. Because of this you treat them as free experience once you finish off your quest lines. If they end up being at the turn-in location for one of your quests that is a bonus.
  3. The Dungeon Quest: Dungeons are the pride of any game developer’s library. They spend a lot of dough trying to make super fun dungeons that will challenge people and give them intriguing gameplay that is outside of the box of your normal quest grind. Because of this dungeon quests get a pretty high priority since the dungeon is almost on par with the XP gained from grinding adding in the quest will make it that much more worthwhile. Beyond the quests doing dungeons is only worthwhile if there is another incentive or you have a speed group that out gears the dungeon (high end raid groups doing an expansion).
  4. The Epic Story Quest: Some games will include the epic story quest model into their game. Sometimes these are tied into quest-lines and sometimes they are not. When they are not they are 100% not worth doing. They generally have awesome end rewards but their rewards leading up to it are not worth the effort. What ends up happening is you will get roughly the same amount of XP as a normal quest line except with harder objectives. Alternatively they can be easy as pie objectives that give you little to no XP. On top of that at the end of the epic story quest you will get a massive event that will slow things down. Games like World of Warcraft are designed in such a way that you are not permitted to skip these sorts of quest lines.
  5. Repeatable Quest: These are usually daily or weekly quests. There have been some lazy MMOs that just make a repeatable quest which is done in place of actual quests. These are developers creating cheap and lazy content. The benefit to these quests is that you will always know how to do them. The downside is that they usually give slightly less XP than a normal quest.
  6. The Group Quest: This quest will always say something stupid like needs 3 people. What they usually mean to say is that you need 1 tank, 1 healer and 1 dps. Every now and then there are group quests that three DPS can do but these ones usually involve kiting and threat. These quests offer substantial awards but often require you to go out of your way to do them. Usually the only group quests worth doing are those where some group is being set up and they only need one more for it. The exception to the rule is chain group quests that are all done at one location.
  7. The Introduction Quest: Introductory quests are sometimes necessary to gain access to other quests. They will show up and force you to go meet certain people. These quests are more often than not terrible XP and you’re better off skipping these if you can. The goal of these quests is to show you what your surrounding area is about so that you are less likely to get lost. Of course you will never remember all of that anyway so it really doesn’t matter, right? This can also come in the form of a meta-quest. The meta-quest requires you to do certain quests in order to get full quest credit.
  8. The Escort: This is the bottom of the barrel of quest lines. The reason why is because escorts are designed around the speed and ability of someone who is brand new to MMOs. Because of this escorts are going to slow you down massively. In the time you could do one escort quest you could probably do 3-4 non-escort quests. Some escorts are notoriously bad and honestly I’d just look up the escort online before doing it and save some time.
  9. The Egg Timer Quest: This one is somewhat different from an escort. Egg timer quests will give you a certain amount of time to complete a quest before you fail it. These quests suck because you accept it often not understanding what you have to do first. The second time you do it you understand that this quest just isn’t as easy as you thought it was. After that you will continue doing it until you luck out somehow. All the while you could have just skipped this quest altogether.
  10. The PvP Quest: These are the bane of any MMO games. Basically there are people out there who purchase MMOs entirely for the player vs player aspect of it. Because there may be a 5% of the game that wants to do this they have to give everyone else enticement to do this. They accomplish this by creating various PvP items, reputations and quests. The goal of these is to convince you to do some PvP while we all know, PvP is awful for leveling in any game. The main reason for this is because PvP is dependent on who has the higher leveled team and who has the more skilled team. So yeah, just ignore these quests, don’t even pick them up.
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Leveling Guide: Part 3 – Generic Tips

Posted in Guides, Leveling Guides with tags , , , on November 11, 2011 by troublmaker

Well I knew I would eventually be doing this. In this article I hope to write a guide involving only generic tips. These are tips that I think might be helpful but aren’t meaningful enough to resemble a theme for a full article.

  1. Don’t level as a tank or healer: I don’t know how many people do this and they always think of some stupid logic to it. Some people suggest that by being a healer they never need to drink or eat. By playing a tank they feel the damage they reduce leads them with less down time. It just ends up being a lot of bollocks. Always go as the max DPS spec or a PvP spec with high burst. The server first in any game is always a DPS, it’s not a coincidence.
  2. Be aware: Your DPS rotation is probably something stupidly simple, so being aware will pay off more than focusing on killing something. While you are doing something your next thought should always be “what’s next.” First is check your health/mana to make sure you don’t need to drink up (or use a CD to the same effect). After that you should be looking around for your next objective.
  3. Know thy class: In every MMO there is generally a multi-class system. So before you start leveling make sure to know what your race is about. I mean it’s really cool to be the ranged warrior or the melee hunter but that’s not really what those classes are about. Every class will have a description. If you play within that description you will do well. The game designer will constantly redesign that class to fit its original intent so as long as you are playing within that description you will be better off. Now if you want to check out websites and forums, that will help to.
  4. Use Cooldowns: Every single DPS class and spec in every single game is balanced around being roughly equal to each other. It is presumed in the PvE fights they are balanced around that you will use every single cooldown on cooldown, so why not do the same while leveling? If you don’t use your cooldowns on cooldown, don’t save them because you need them for an emergency. It is always going to be better to one-shot something than two shot.
  5. Don’t Hoard Supplies: This is similar to using cooldowns. Don’t hoard on to raid supplies. That level 50 healing potion is not going to seem as valuable to you at level 60, that Level 9 healing potion is especially not going to be valuable at Level 60. I used to pop potions just so I wouldn’t have downtime from drinking, it’s a good idea, especially if you are a mana user.
  6. Don’t Level PvPing: No matter how game developers make games they never make PvP into a viable way of leveling. The problem with PvP is that it is entirely group performance based leveling and there are almost always going to be people sitting there doing nothing at all. Even when you get a premade you will always have a moocher who is less willing to level in this way.
  7. Only Group Level in Dungeons: Dungeons are a pretty good way to level because you are constantly killing a bunch of mobs with greater and greater efficiency and on top of that they’re always supposed to be comparable to quests. If you have a full group of people, level in dungeons. You guys will upgrade your gear together and will stay dedicated to running 100 9-minute dungeon runs for fast XP. In the Wrath of the Lich King expansion I leveled four levels in Utgarde Keep (9 minute runs) and three levels in Draketheron Keep (12 minute runs). If we didn’t have a full guild group of friends this would not have been possible. If you are leveling alone only do dungeons if you have quests, otherwise they will just slow down your progression.
  8. Just Frigging Kill It: Mobs give experience. Kill mobs. One of the things that bothers me are the quest Nazis who feel that if they don’t kill something they are being slowed down massively. If you have something in your way, dismount and kill it (unless It doesn’t give XP). This rule is of course exempt in the World of Warcraft since you just fly everywhere. But for every single MMO don’t be afraid to get a little bit of extra XP from killing a mob.

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Leveling Guide: Part 2 – Accessories and Computer Parts

Posted in Guides, Leveling Guides with tags , , , on November 5, 2011 by troublmaker

So in my latest series I will be focusing on good habits for leveling. In my last article I listed a good eating diet and strong playing habits while eating and digesting. I explained the science behind these choices and what sort of short term diet you are going for. I should once again note that this is a short term diet and only includes the most important and necessary nutrients and minerals for gaming. By no means is this something you will want to do for a prolonged period of time.

So in today’s article I’ll be looking at the externals. In this article I’ll be focusing on what is outside of the game, how to maximize your atmosphere for leveling. Half of this will focus purely on computer hardware, the other half will focus on your physical space.

Computer Hardware

I remember the first time I upgraded my laptop. I was running an old 1998 Compaq laptop with Windows 97 SE. And then with my first $1,000 I bought a new Dell laptop. Suddenly my gaming went from alright to amazing. After adding in a new keyboard and a monitor I was a god. By the time World of Warcraft came out in 2003. Whether people want to admit it or not, what kind of computer you have and what hardware you have will make a difference on how you play. It’s kind of like when people tell you that it’s the player not the gear. I mean that sounds nice and all, but at some point gear matters too.

The trend in professional gaming has been to obtain a very large and very powerful gaming laptop. Gaming laptops range from $2,000-$10,000. Laptops are portable, compatible and light weight. This makes them perfect for the gamer who is looking to compete in world tournaments or just a group of friends who want to play in the same building.

When I play in the same building as someone I bring my tower and mouse and they provide the monitor and keyboard.

Hardware Piece #1 – Keyboard

It’s important to have a really good keyboard amongst everything else.

A good keyboard is going to have two important features: high durability and ergonomic soundness.

There are so many horror stories about keyboards it’s ridiculous. Gamers are quite possibly the biggest slobs possible. On top of that, gamers have no respect for their own property and see no problem with destroying it. Gamers are such big slobs they’ll drop their beverages on their keyboards all the time. It is very common for small fragments of food to show up between keys. How about those keys falling off because you spam them so heavily?

These are all things considered when purchasing a decent keyboard. Most standard keyboards get sticky, full of gunk and lose their keys too easily. This is a big reason why laptops suck. Those keys just pop off so easily. Most commonly in MMOs are WASD and 1234.

The key to the keys popping off is having thicker keys. You can see the illustrated laptop keyboard has really thin keys that are held on by really cheap materials. If you have nice tall keys it means there is less tension on your springs and less popping off keys. I can remember deciding I was going to reroll for the guild and having my W key permanently pop off during a grind. I ended up having to push the inside of the laptop to get that key working. This caused my fingers to seriously hurt for quite some time and effected my performance come raid night.

Ergonomics are also key. Ergonomics is the study of comfort. For a keyboard this means your finger tips and the bottoms of your palm. Different types of keyboards are available with a light material that will making the keys easier to push and feel better on your fingers.

I am currently using a Razor Lycosa. This is the cheaper model of Razor keyboards at $80. As a note of irony the new Razor Tron keyboard is of inferior design and costs $170. Don’t make the forlorn assumption that just because something is more expensive, it’s better. The Logitech G keyboards are still often considered the standard in gaming keyboards. This is not because of any of the factors I listed, but instead macro keys.

Macro keys used to be insanely useful in raiding, but their value has slowly moved down. Basically a lot of people used to program “legal” bots who would just follow a set program that the keyboard would permit. Additionally people would use repeat commands for very basic one-button DPS rotations. If you feel like you need this by all mans get a macro keyboard. However macro keyboards have fallen in popularity specifically because they are no longer functional in a world where game developers want to make your life easier.

Hardware Piece #2 – Mouse

The mouse used to be one of the most important pieces of equipment… in the 90s. Since the 90s there has been more and more of an attempt to make finger taps replace its functionality. This means that your mouse has become an extension of your keyboard. The mouse is still used for selecting individual enemies/allies, right clicking quest givers, accepting quests, turning in quests, and turning. This does not give it a tone of functionality in the game.

What you end up needing is to replace some of your keyboard buttons with mouse buttons. What you need is a mouse with 5 buttons: left click, right click, mouse wheel click, side button 1, and side button 2.

There are mice out there with ridiculous features. The Razor Naga for example puts your Numpad on your mouse so that you can keybind your numpad and use your mouse for all of your buttons. This is mostly unnecessary.

The reason why you want mouse button 1 and mouse button 2 is so that you can transform them into shift and ctrl keys. Generally speaking if you are using more than 5 buttons (which you probably are) you will want to keybind keys with Ctrl, Alt or Shift modifiers. When I play a game I usually have about 27 keys that I use: 1,2,3,4,5,`(tilde), caps lock, q, e, r, s, t, a, d, z, x, and c. That means I will need about twice as many keys to play the game.

What you want is to go to Microsoft to find out how to do this.

As far as mouse choice goes the cheap choice this time is the best choice. The Gigabyte GM-M6800 has everything you need and usually goes for $20 or less. It is ergonomically friendly with a small hand design and pads on the left and right to cradle your hands. As well it has a DP button which will increase or decrease your mouse speed for precise selection or fast speed.

Hardware Piece #3 – Monitor

Flat screen, you need space for food. Next.

Everything else is optional. Having foam in your head phones is nice but having speakers kicks too. But if you have to put on head phones always have in head phones. If you have to get a microphone you should probably never pay more than $60, and never get a warrantee. If you actually use your microphone (head set) as much as a standard gamer does it should break after a year or two in some manner that a warrantee will not fix.

Non-Computer Surroundings

Behind your monitor should be pretty drab. What you want is a room that looks boring so that it doesn’t take away from the game

If at any point you consider looking past your monitor to look at something (a calendar, a clock) then you really need to move those things.

On that note, have no clocks up. There is always the in-game clock but it is small and people only look at it after the fact. A clock that is large or ticks or has an alarm will always tell you how much time you have successfully wasted.

The only people you want to be around are people who are playing with you. As you will learn playing together is always leveling faster than leveling alone assuming that everyone wants to level fast.    Other than that limit interactions with the outside world.

Your surroundings should contain you in a bubble until you hit the level cap. The only stop should be for a few hours of sleep before you go back at it. If you are fortunate to have a loving mother deliver you food while you are playing that’ll be a plus, but if you’re like everyone else you’ll should only be limited by bathroom breaks, food, and sleeping.

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Leveling Guide: Part 1 – Eating and Excretion

Posted in Guides, Leveling Guides with tags , , , , on November 3, 2011 by troublmaker

After having leveled three characters successfully I feel like I have mastered leveling in Rift. I feel I have mastered leveling so much so in all games that I’ve decided to start a new series dedicated specifically to leveling habits. Most guides that deal with leveling will tell you what quests to do. I have never used one of these guides to level, and neither should you. If that is your bag, by all means buy one. Instead these guides will focus on good leveling habits.

As far as credentials go I was a server first 70, 80 and 85 on a max population World of Warcraft server. I was part of a team of five who leveled together in Aion and made server first. In Warhammer my entire guild leveled together and was the first guild to start taking territory. In Global Agenda I was a sad server second.

So obviously I have spent a lot of time leveling, and doing it effectively. A lot of this comes from organization, not only organizing what quests to do and how to get to max level. What I want to cover are going to focus on organization and good habits.

The first topic I will cover is your diet.

Food and Bathroom Breaks

The smallest downtime you will find in leveling is going to be getting food and excreting that same food.

I think when leveling the best thing to do is go as much in a row as possible. While leveling you make a tone of micro-decisions that can just be easily forgotten. My limiting your down time you will decrease your confusion time.

Whenever you leave your computer turn Rift off. Just X out and leave. You will find that logging in does not take much time. This will give you some rested experience and it will divert from a secondary problem. Rift has a dynamic world environment that is always changing. By standing stationary you may feel that you are safe, however because of roaming and constant invasions and footholds your safe footing can easily transform into a major battleground. By Xing out you are going to avoid this problem.

You will find after you are leveling for so long that your bladder will demand less of the washroom from you. The key is to limit your intake of liquids. I often level with 3-4 2L bottles of Coca-Cola by my side. I might consume a liter of this a day. Compare this to the 8 liters of liquids you are required to drink every day. By limiting your liquid in take you limit your down time from going to the washroom. But never hold it… that can do serious damage to your body.

Food and meal preparation is important while you are trying to grind out anything. It’s important to realize that if you are missing key vitamins and minerals in your diet you will get tired faster and lose hours of play time to excessive sleeping. As a secondary effect you will also find yourself getting more depressed and finding less value in what you are doing.

Below is a standard diet for me as a former pro-gamer:

  1. Oatmeal: Contains high traces of fiber, take 2-3 minutes to make and most importantly contain tryptophan. Tryptophan is also found in turkey and triggers increased serotonin production. This will give you a feeling of being energetic and will reduce your unhappiness.
  2. Chocolate Milk: Milk contains whey which decreases anxiety. As well it is loaded full of protein. Protein is the one nutrient that is easiest to break down into carbohydrates (energy) making them more and more desirable. Having chocolate milk at least some of the time is going to help you a long way to staying awake and at it.
  3. Sliced Pineapple: This is a common aphrodisiac. In short this means it makes you horny. There is a common brain activity found between high stress banking/investing and sexual activity. This essentially means that this stuff will make you want to do more and be more aggressive about it. Sliced pineapple is a little bit expensive but you can buy them in nice round containers at your local grocery all prepared for you.
  4. 8 liters of Coke: Most people suggest you drink really strong black coffee while gaming. I have found that making coffee is too much of a down time and since you’re trying to limit your intake of liquids you cannot drink anything fast. Coffee is a huge problem for gaming. You want to drink it fast because you really don’t want it cold so you often will just down it in 10 minutes. Really what you want is to have something by your side to keep your mouth from being dry and giving you caffeine. Caffeine is great when tied in with a high carbohydrate diet. Combine these two elements and what you will find is that you will be bouncing and high energy far longer.
  5. Salted peanuts: These are cheap and easy. They can be found in your local supermarket and are almost pure protein. This means by munching on these things you can better exercise that hand muscle and stay high energy longer. When you get tired you play less effectively and less efficiently. Peanuts will ensure that you will always have energy.
  6. Light Potato chips: When you play and there is a lull in the action you will (and should) always have the impulse to do something. More often than not that impulse is eating. Providing with a large bag of light or plain potato chips will give you something to chew on that won’t make you super fat while playing. If you are super fat you are already probably low energy.

What not to eat:

  1. Chocolate Snacks: Chocolate is a great thing for serotonin but a terrible thing for your health. The main problem is that when you’re gaming you are snacking so you won’t be eating a small candy bar. What you will probably end up with is bulk barn Glosette raisins which are just going to give you junk calories.
  2. Full meals: It’s fine to cook yourself a piece of meat and eat it, or make a salad, or warm up some delicious corn. But to make a full meal means high amounts of down time. Full meals cannot be snacked on, they have to be eaten when they’re warm and have to be eaten over time.
  3. Fiber One Bars: This can apply to almost any candy bar or granola bar, but Fiber One bars are the worst. Fiber is healthy for you and all but only if you are drinking a lot of liquids. The only thing a high fiber granola bar is going to do for you is make you poop more and maybe give you gas.
  4. No Smelly Foods: Let’s face it, you are probably not going to brush, floss, shower, or use scope during your grind. You are going to be a smelly bag sitting in your chair at your computer desk. So with that in mind it’s probably not best to bring on something that will make you smell less appealing to yourself. My favorite addition to any food is garlic which just reeks after an hour. My girlfriend loves curry, which also smells really bad after an hour. You want to be comfortable, not sitting there thinking about how bad your breath smells (or how bad that meal you’re not eating smells).
  5. Flavored Chips: The best way to screw up your keyboard or dirty your equipment is to eat some sort of chip with a powdering on it. My favorite chip flavor is Sour Cream and Bacon. 90% of the flavoring will always end up on my pants as I wipe my hands. You want to be somewhat clean while you are playing. It basically will take you 3-4x as long to eat flavored chips as any other brand of chips just because you’ll constantly be wiping your hands.
  6. Fruit Juice: This is one of the touchier ones to bring up and people don’t like to hear it. Fruit juices are loaded full of sugar and sugar is a junk calorie. Worst yet unlike soda drink… it doesn’t even have caffeine.
  7. Energy drinks/Red bull: Although drinking caffeine is fine from a soft drink, coffee and Redbull are pretty off the menu. The problem is that they are actually too high caffeine and give you an unsustainable amount of energy. These are great for the zero-hour situation where you are trying to make a push to the finish line. However on a day to day use these are terrible. Drinking super caffeine drinks will just burn you out really fast. Think of this as a marathon you want a steady stream of energy for a 17 hour day.

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