Character Update

                I like doing these updates. But as I progress, I see it has become more me just speaking about what I did with the characters and less about the characters themselves. And, it lacks in character to me too. So I am changing the format in which I write these updates. I am going to write them from the perspective of the character itself. So I will start doing that from this one on. Please bear with me as I figure this out and find the voice of each character. Thank you for your time.

                The format will be as a report to some authoritative figure of some kind. Hopefully this will make sense as time goes on.

 

Airholen the Explorer (WoW)

 

Prophet Velen,

                May the light be with you. As you know I have taken command of the human-built garrison in this alternate Draenor. I must admit that it was very strange watching you sacrifice yourself to heal a Naaru. And your chosen replacement, Yrell, was a good choice. She initially very unsure and timid, but as time has passed and things been done, she has grown in confidence and wisdom.

                My duties related to the garrison has kept me a little busy. The new shipyard has been working working overtime replacing the three ships I had lost recently. Once they were complete then a fourth ship was sunk by Gul’dan’s fleet. So that transport is even now under construction. My other ships are still operational. The composition of the fleet is being maintained as 2 Battleships, 2 Carriers, 2 Destroyers, 2 Transports and 2 Submarines.

                The Battleship “The Flame of Hope” is crewed by our people, the Draenai. She is fresh from construction docks. The crew is still being sent out on simpler engagements. My flagship is “Airholen’s Arrow” and crewed by the Night Elves. She has survived many naval engagements with the Fel Orc fleet.

                My Carriers are the pandaran manned “Danielle’s Vengeance” and the draenic “Light of Elune”. They both are experienced crews with many missions completed between them.

                The Destroyers are the worgan crewed “Emma’s Fury” and the gnomish “Tyr’s Hand”. Both have been solid additions to our naval operations.

                The Transports have had some the issues. The dwarven “Kobald’s Candle” has been lost at sea. While the human vessel “Booty Bay’s Bounty” has been on only a couple of sorties. The Fel Orcish force has been targeting these vessels of recent. I need to see about how to protect them better.

                The Submarines “Deep Sea Nine” crewed by gnomes and the “Eye of Kilrogg” crewed by the humans have been good but are replacements for recent losses.

                I have a bodyguard, a dwarven Death Knight named Delvar Ironfist. He has been traveling with me as I travel about Tanaan Jungle trying to counter Gul’dan’s plans. There are Draenai that have left the light and have joined forces with the Legion. Archendoun has been under constant threat. And they have suffered an internal betrayal that we never did. I feel quite sad about our brethren that have turned to Legion. And if not for my companion, Panterra, I would surely have fallen into depression. But my spirit beast knows how to keep me connected to what is my true purpose here.

                Khadgar has promised to empower a ring for me if I can just collect enough tomes out of the Hellfire Citadel. So I make regular forays into that fortress trying to collect the things he needs.

                As I bring this letter to a close, I am informed by aides that “Emma’s Fury” has been sunk. So I will have to commission a new destroyer to replace it.

               

My peace be with you

Airholen

 

Grodah

 

Warchief Vol’jin,

                I have headed into Silithus from the Ungoro Crater. I am working with the local commander in weeding out the vermin that live about the encampment. My pet, Rommel, and I work well together and make quick work of these oversized insects of the region.

                I hate writing, and I have nothing more to say.

 

Grodah

 

Fleet Admiral Zombee Scorpio Danus

 

Stardate: 93311.62

TO: Admiral Quinn, ESD

Subject: Status of USS STRONGBOW, NCC-92959

 

Hello Admiral Quinn,

                The defense of Qo’nos continues to occupy most of my time. The Iconian Heralds constantly assault the Klingon home world. The battle in space on the ground is very fierce and draining. I have had to travel back to ESD on many occasions to affect major repairs and then return to once again this particular battlefront. On the trips to and from ESD is when the crew and my senior staff relax and unwind. Well, except for Memak’kiclan, who uses that time to review all battle data looking for weaknesses in the ships and tactics. He has not been very successful in their ship designs, though we have seen some measure of success using certain counter-tactics. He continues scare the new recruits assigned to our ships to replaces losses. Personally, I think he actually enjoys that. He has a very weird sense of humor.

                Commander Syoet, Commander Nhey’silia and Commander Scot have been working with the Okampa Dhalar and Specialist She’zag Alletyv in upgrading the onboard weaponry. These changes have increased the power output ratio and increased the damaged. Also some improvements to the targeting array and software are being made to get the predictive algorithms to be better against the Iconian threat.

                Captain Kagran has been keeping me in the loop on the progress of the Krenim temporal weapon platform. I question the logic of using it but I understand the necessity of pursuing the technology. Captain Nog and Captain Paris both have voiced their concerns with me too. I hope that the Allied Command is truly thinking this through before deploying this weapon.

                Well, the Doctor Syler wants to take a look at some of my battle wounds from the last ground engagement I was involved in.

               

Signing off…

                Fleet Admiral Zombee

                Captain of the USS Strongbow

Legion of the New Dawn

                Hello everyone! I know it’s been sometime since I have posted here. I have been very busy with my new job and looking into all the things that has been going in my games. In fact, now that I have had time to cogitate on these announcements, I have decided to talk about the new expansion announcements for STO and WoW. I will catch up with what my characters have been doing in another post later on. SO on now with my thoughts.

 

Star Trek Online: New Dawn

                So STO has announced Season 11.  New Dawn is supposed to be the start of the new story arc dealing with what we do in the aftermath of the Iconian War. The story is supposed to focus on rebuilding and hope. We supposed to discover a new unknown civilization. Meet a strange traveler from another time. Go up against Mirror Leeta as she leads the Imperial Terran forces invasion of the Badlands. A new system, the Admiralty system, is going to be added. The Admiralty systems states “Take command of your inactive starships to complete dangerous assignments and gather exciting rewards, while advancing your influence in the Admiralty campaigns.”  All of this is important for you to understand my thoughts.

                I watched the announcement trailer for the new expansion. One of the highlights, for me, is that the Tholians will have a more important role in the coming story.  DS9 is going to get figured more prominently, but the Cardassians were not shown at all in the trailer. Which I thought was very curious.

                Given all of that I have several things to say. The Iconian War is probably the lowest key war I have ever participated in, without knowing I was. The war stories and FE’s state how dire the situation is, but that information does not translate at all into the gameplay.  The Vaudwaar had a larger presence and more stressful to me than the Iconians have been. So an “Epic end to the Iconian War” falls flat in generating any emotional response about the war coming to the end. In fact, the announcement that the war is ending is quite anti-climactic. And I think this is because they didn’t tell the war story well with this. The FE’s were nice, but the queue could have been better utilized to tell the losing aspect of the war. Maybe they could have had more planetary defenses and protecting escaping civilian craft, and seeing the destruction of planets and civilian ships. They should have put in a battle ground area, space and ground, which could have been waved timed assaults of forces against a fixed location…like Qo’nos. It’s a formula that they used in the past with the Voth and the Vaudwaar conflicts that was effective in relaying that conflict as actual conflicts. They could have added even patrols or red alerts too to help heighten the feeling that we are at a war. But it was missed, and this is going to be hard for them to really make us feel like we fought a superior foe and won.

                The one mechanic that they have announced is the Admiralty system. At first, I thought that I finally will get to my other ships with me into battle. Alas, reality was far less than the original hype. The Admiralty system is a variation of the current duty officer system, but using ships. The ships will be only ships that we have unlocked. And we can send them on mission with a “campaign” for rewards. Details on the rewards and the campaigns are still forth coming. But based on its initial announcement, the details that have come since announcement has caused some disillusionment amongst the player base, based on what I have seen in the forums. Looking at the Admiralty system as it is being presented now, it’s an interesting game mechanic in theory. You send ships out. When they return, they will need some repair time based on how good they did in the mission. Once repaired, you can send them out once again. These ships are “cards” or basically a template representative of the ships you have in your ships list. These representative ships are generic I their capabilities and cannot be altered by anything you do to them in your list. These ships are not unique in any way. So if you match it up with what they advertised it falls way short, but as a mechanic on its own, it seems to be a decent idea. But I want to know more. So I will keep looking into this. No more real details have been released so I will keep an eye out for it and write more on this later.

 

World of Warcraft: Legion

                So Blizzard announced this expansion and Gamescon. And there are a lot of details they put out. I will try to cover all of the most important parts, in my opinion.

                The story is that Gul’dan found and used Illidan to reopen the gateway for the Burning Legion to invade Azeroth at the Tomb of Sargeras. And this is the Gul’dan from the Alternate Draenor of Warlords. Our timeline Gul’dan is dead. So the people of Azeroth will try once again to repel the Burning Legion.  And once again the Horde and Alliance can’t seem to work together well enough to unite.  Because of politics, the various classes decide to band together, cross factional, and work to stop the invasion.

                Legion will introduce a new class, Demon Hunter or Illidari. You get to make a follower of Illidan that has been freed from the prison that Maiev Shadowsong put them in. All Demon Hunters are elves.  They come in two specs, Havoc and Vengeance. Vengeance is a tank and Havoc is a DPS. They also get to transform into a Demon and they wear leather. They also get the Glaives as their weapon. This will be very cool to make. I will be making one of the super agile guys. They also are a Hero class, which means they start around 90 to 95 and have a start area of their own.

                 Every Class and Spec will get its own legendary weapon. This weapon will be possible to alter the appearance. It also has its own development path on each weapon. SO as you do content, you empower your weapon. And the order in which you get the power is purely based on your own choice. If you are dual spec, you will have to get the weapon for each spec, but the empowering process will be sped up on the second weapon so that you can keep them nearly same. But this empowering will not be account wide. Some of the most Iconic weapons from across Azeroth will be what you wield. So that will be 36 personalizable legendary weapons. Cool idea, but I wonder if they will try to keep the weapon relevant in each expansion after this.

                There is a new continent on Azeroth. Or really just a large Island chain, the Shattered Isles. This is where the Burning Legion has established a beachhead on Azeroth, and where the Elves and Vrykul originally came from. Dalaran will also have relocated itself to here. Dalaran will now be run by Khadgar and remains neutral territory. No information on what happened to Jaina was released.

                The classes have come together and formed Order Halls. Locations dedicated to a specific class. And from them you will take command and send champions out to gather intel and scout out regions for you to counter the Burning legion. The Orders are also where you upgrade your Artifact weapon. It is also a shared space among players of class, Horde and Alliance. Basically they will go find stuff for you to go do.

                So classes are getting some changes done to them. The ones that impact me the most are the changes to Hunter and Rogues. Beast Mastery will be ranged with Pet, Survival will be melee with a pet, and Marksmen will be ranged without a pet. I get to be melee again! This will be great, I hope. I miss being a melee hunter.  Rogues will be based on a flavor, Assassin will be about poisons, Subtlety will be ninjas and Combat will be a swashbuckler. So my mug wielding combat rogue will have a more a pirate or three musketeer feel to it. Not sure how I feel about this yet.

                Other system things are that we are getting a 12^th character slot per server. Level cap is raised to 110 and can boost to 100. There will be Demons in various locations across Azeroth to fight.

                PVP is getting reworked. Gear will not be important anymore. PVP gear will be gone.  There will be a ranking system in its place that you have to use to unlock prestige items, mostly transmogs, pets and mounts. PVP will also have its own talent tree, which will have additional options unlocked by the ranking system.

                Transmoging will now have a system more like Diablo, where you can unlock the look and then you can sell of the piece that got you that look, thereby freeing up lots of bag space. This is such a huge thing for me. I have so many old sets that I keep just in case I want to use that look. The bag space this will free will be awesome!

                Professions are going to be focused on too, with each profession getting its own quest line. Other changes will happen but they have not released what those things are yet.

                Flying will be a thing you will work towards from Launch. And will be modeled in some respects like Draenor Pathfinder. I just hpe that rep grinds will not be part of this. But little else is known about this at this time.

                So there it is, the two expansions in a nutshell, with a little input of my opinion with it. Let me know what you guys think! And enjoy!

Character Update

                Hello all! I know that it’s been a long time since I last wrote. And I am truly sorry about it. But my life has had a lot of upheaval. And a lot of that upheaval is directly related to changes in my personal life. They are changes that I am not comfortable with talking about yet. Suffice it to say, life has been quite mean to me lately and until all of this gets worked out, I don’t feel that talking about it will be helpful to me and this also means that I will not be regularly, or even consistently, posting here. With that said, I still have intentions of posting here when time permits. I still play, and I still review all of the game patch notes. And I still have opinions over it all. So I will do my best to remain timely and appropriate in my posts.

                So given that, I will be giving an update on my STO and WOW characters. Starting with STO and moving on to WOW.

                Fleet Admiral Zombee has been busy. His profile has been updated so you can take a look there for the stat changes and skill progressions so far. Zombee is currently hanging out on Risa doing the Summer Event working on getting the Ferengi Nandi Warship. I am currently about 48% done. Cryptic also announced the release of the Manticore Class Heavy Destroyer, a Tier 6 upgrade of the Chimera Class. This ship is a 1000 day Veteran ship reward. It is a Tactical focus ship, as I look at ships, and so he will be getting this vessel. The Iconian War is progressing it’s storyline with the new expansion and Featured episodes. Of which, Zombee has completed them all.  Zombee is also Tier V in the new Iconian Resistance reputation. Once the Nandi has been acquired, Zombee will outfit it with the Iconian Reputation gear.

                Admiral Bel is a new character. He was created for the Delta Recruit event. He is an Avalonian working for the Romulan Republic and allied with the Klingon Empire. I stopped leveling him once I completed all of the Delta Recruit storyline. I will pick him back up sometime in the near future. He is an engineering officer like Grell. I also created a Delta Recruit for the Fed and Klingons to complete the Delta Recruit for those sides and pick up all of the rewards. I am currently working on Lieutenant Commander Boher, a Saurian Starfleet Engineering officer. Boher will be deleted once all of the Fed rewards are unlocked.

                The rest of the guys have been in a holding pattern while I do this. I plan to leveling and outfitting their best ship on each guy. Once every Character is at max level, completed all the storyline missions, and have decked out their best ship, I will then work on each guy getting their second ship to be decked on and so forth, until every ship is completely decked out.

                In WOW, Explorer Airholen has entered Draenor and leveled to 100. Currently working on maxing out his Garrison buildings and then moving on to completeling all of the stuff needed to get flying. After that I will work towards getting the best gear I can get for him and then move on to my Horde gal, Grodah. Once I get her to 60, I will boost her to 90. Or at least that is my plan.

                So that is it for now on an update. I need to consider how I am going to update these characters.  Until the next time, Enjoy!

Character Update (Torc Edition)

        So here is another mini update on just one character. Since today is the release of the Delta Recruit system, I will probably being doing very little with my mains.
         Torc though has been working on getting himself set up. He is not nearly as developed as Zombee or Grell and still needs to complete the Delta Rising story line. He is up to the ground battle portion on Kobali Prime. But his two Tactical officer are just not cutting it on the survival side of things, I will have to re-look at the away team and make some choices as to who will continue the story with him.
         Torc is going for the true Klingon setup of things, with disruptors being the focus on his ship. Eventually, I will get the ship decked out in Counter-Command gear and all upgraded. But that really does take time. Torc I have been able to control the BOff bloat pretty good. But the other characters after him will have even better control, based on what I have learned from him. I have updated his Character Page just so you can look at where he is now in skills and gear.
         After today, I shall be going back to my regular character updates covering all of my characters in the same post. Though, I suspect, that I will be covering my Delta Recruit more than my other three faction mains. The new one I make today will be the fourth 'faction main'. Fleet Admiral Zombee is my Fed main. Dahar Master Torc is my KDF main. Fleet Admiral Grell is my Romulan-Fed Aligned main. The new one will be a Romulan-KDF aligned character.
         All of my Mains are Avalonians. It's part of the mythos I am building for my gaming experience and the stories I write connected to them. Some day, I will get the alignment corrected on the webpage so that I can make those Character Pages look correct and then tie the stories post to them. But I don't know enough about HTML yet to do that. Nor have I had time to figure it out.

        Well, that's it for now. Delta Recruiting has called me up and I plan to sally forth and conquer it. Good luck to me and everyone Enjoy!

Character Update (Grell Edition)

     I have update Fleet Admiral Grell's character page. He has done quite a lot since the last time I did an update on him.The new page show's where he currently is at in gear and weapons for both himself and his ship.
     As for updates to STO in general, the Crystalline Catastrophe is over. Grell, Zombee and Torc all got the Crystalline Torpedo. They are also currently testing out on the live servers some adjustments to the Azure Nebula Advanced STF mission to make it possible for pugs to complete it. So far it is a good change except for one issue. The optionals are really random on your ability to complete. You have to "rescue" a certain point value of ships, in this case 10, with in a 4 minute (I think) time frame. The problem is that there are only four spawn points to rescue ship from. And if they don't spawn a total of 10 points amongst those points on the initial start of the optional, you will never be able to make those 10 points. Ships don't respawn fast enough to get a second set and get them rescued within the time frame. This means that the majority of the time, the optionals are not possible to be completed. The scenario doesn't provide the ship points to complete it. But, unlike before, if you fail the optional you do not fail the mission. You just don't get bonus marks. This change alone is great. If they can make it so that enough ship points are guaranteed to be present when the optionals start then I think they have a model that can be applied to all the other Advanced STF queues.
      Grell has completed all of the story line including the Delta Rising portion. Grell is far behind in gear quality and and rarity when compared to Zombee. SO most of my efforts are focused on getting his gear all upgraded to the right level. This means I have to do certain STF's at advance to get the crafting materials to make the upgrades. It's slow going, but I will get there.
     
      Couple things to note...STO released a new story episode with weekly rewards. The rewards are to get a a three piece Imperial Romulan Navy ground set. Grell will be using this as his primary armor. The other thing of note is that on April 2nd will the new Delta Recruit event. This requires that you make a new character and take it through the leveling process. But there are some modifications to the normal experience and apparently there is an Temporal Agent that will be helping you prepare for the fight against the Iconians as you level. This will also unlock special rewards for your already created characters too. I will be creating at least one Delta Recruit because that is what they say is all that I need to unlock things for my account across all factions. So expect to see coming character updates for this new character. I am planing on making him a Rom-KDF Engineer Alien (Avalonian). Haven't settled on a name yet.

       Well, I hope you enjoyed this update and I will see you later!

Character Update (Zombee Edition)

                So I updated Fleet Admiral Zombee’s Character page. It shows what changes I have made in gear, skills, reputation, commendations, research, traits and specializations I have acquired. But I wanted to detail it a little more here just so that everyone will know why some of the changes have occurred.

                First off, we should cover what has changed in STO overall, so that you can get a sense of why some things are there and what is new to the game.  With the end of the Winter Event came a little breather before the next event, the 5^th Anniversary of STO. In this Event you ran a new story mission that covered some details about the Kobali. At the end of the first run through you can get the Vaudwaar Uniform. Also you get a significant number of Qmendations that is used to get the Kobali Samsar Command Cruiser, a Tier 6 ship. The Anniversary also brought us a new specialization called Command.  Once one character got the Cruiser, and then all remaining characters on that account can get the same ship at a significant reduction in cost. Within the new Story Mission there was the option to find and accept a Kobali BOff that would be an Engineering Command Officer. Also reruns of the Story Mission will get additional pieces to the Kobali Space Set. I picked up a couple of the pieces but haven’t put in the time to what pieces I am missing for this guy.

                After the 5^th Anniversary came the Crystalline Catastrophe event. In it you need to collect 14 crystal shards. Which you can get once per 20 hours, and turn them in to get a torpedo that acts like a Anti-Proton Beam. It gets affected by some beam powers and by some torpedo powers, and deals out Anti-proton damage instead of kinetic damage. I am in progress on this and have collected 10 fragments so far. You also will get a big drop of unrefined dilithium ore, fleet marks, and marks of reputation choice. Also, as each mission is run you get to select a choice of marks and dilithium payout.

                I was also able to complete the Delta Rising story line. I had discovered that I was playing the missions on the hardest setting. The fact that I got as far as I did on a suboptimal setup made me feel good about my piloting skill and gear choices. I have since tuned the setup to up my DPS. In fact, the game has made a decided switch in its mission structure to actually support DPS’ing over any other play style, they added timers that if you don’t complete fails the entire mission. Most of these timers involving killing a certain number of things in a specified period of time, so high DPS will always get the team through on these missions.

                As for the upgrading of gear, most everything but the shields and deflectors are Mark XIV and at least Very Rare.  I just recently was able to build an Omnidirectional Phaser Beam Array. It’s Mark XII and Ultra-Rare quality. Replaced the Omnidirectional Kinetic beam with this unit and will now upgrade it to Mark XIV, The Shields and Deflectors are Mark XII and Very Rare so they will be upgrade to Mark XIV. If the shields or deflectors gain any more quality along the way then good for me, but otherwise I am not going to worry about it. Very Rare Quality is good enough for me right now.

                SO that’s what Zombee has been up to date. I am going to try and catch up with all of my guys and then get back to a regular schedule again. Until then, Enjoy!

Character (and Life) Update

                Hello again everyone. Long time since I last wrote to this blog. And I am sorry that it has been so long. My personal life has had a bunch of turmoil recently. I found myself without a job do to another person’s shenanigans. With this sudden shift in employment came a desperate search for a new job. During this search, I took ill. While generally a very healthy person, this was quite an issue to deal with when you have no health insurance. As I recovered from that, I did find work at lower pay and responsibilities than I once had. I happily worked there till a better offer came along three weeks later. When I tendered my two weeks’ notice, they just told me to go home.  So I spent another week unemployed, getting sick again, and trying to do things around the house.

                While all of this was going on, my relationship with my wife became strained do to these stresses we both are under. Between her school work, job, kids, my sickness and lack of income she was not handling the pressure well. And my own sickness and, admittedly, depression over my job loss did not help to alleviate these issues. We argued, loudly and frequently. Our children, while not involved directly, heard us nonetheless and were upset themselves. Suffice it to say it’s been a bad couple of months.

                But, I do have a new job. Which has eased some of the tension between my wife and I. And I have been feeling better and healthier these days. So I am clearly making a recovery on all my Real Life fronts.

                As for gaming, while all of this has been going on, I still played STO and other games to help me deal with stress, take my mind of bad things for a bit, and for something to do when I couldn’t sleep. So I am glad to say that I do have some progress to announce about each of my characters. But I will hold on to that for a different blog for right now. There is a lot to go over in regards to the characters.

                What I really want to write about now is the passing of the amazing Leonard Nimoy. The character of Mr. Spock is so iconic that there is no equal to it. Spock was first character that, as a kid, I actually connected with and felt kinship with. Even to this day people will call me Spock just because of my ability to spout out details on the discussion topic at hand. When I first learned I could play in Star Trek Online, I made a Vulcan modeled a bit after me in looks.  Admiral Danic still is part of my stable of federation characters and is most obviously a science officer.

                In Star Trek Online, they have honored the memory of Spock, Leonard Nimoy, and other Star Trek connected people with putting in two statues and three plaques. The Statues are of Spock doing the Vulcan salute. One is placed on the planet Vulcan and the other is on the planet of New Romulus. They are very large and very well done. And is a very good resemblance of Spock as an Ambassador. The Plaques are placed in at the command centers for The Federation, Klingon Empire and Romulan Republic. The plaque lists the name of all of The Original Series important people that have passed away. Among them being Leonard Nimoy, Gene Roddenberry, James Doohan, DeForrest Kelly and Majel Barrett. Once you have clicked on the plaque, there is a continue button which takes you to another screen listing a bunch of important contributors to Star Trek that have passed away. My understanding is that the members of The Original Series will be placed on that front panel and the rest of the major contributors from all the TV series and movies will be placed on the second panel. There by immortalizing all who had and major contribution to the Star Trek Franchise after they have passed away.

                I think it is great that they are doing this and recognizing everyone of importance connected to Star Trek. At some point I will get every one of my characters to get a picture in front of the plaques and statues that they can go to, so that I can always retain that memory for me.

                In the near future, hopefully over this next week, I will get my notes all updated and then do an actual Character Update. Until then, Enjoy!

Character Update

                So I have been busy looking for a new job. So I have been doing more Job searching that gaming. But I have been able to sneak some time in for gaming, all for STO though, so not much else to report on.

Star Trek Online (STO)

                Winter Wonderland is still in full swing. They have made some changes to it and removed the Tides of Ice is no longer required. So now all of my guys are just doing whatever they can to get the glossies of Q and the Winter Currencies to buy the Ship and Warp Core.

                The only other thing of note has been that the Elachi Alert Event happened this past weekend.  Running this nets you any Rep Marks. SO I just ran that for each person for my marks this past weekend. Otherwise, I have just been running the appropriate STF to get the marks that I want.

                And now we move on to the individual efforts in STO.

Fleet Admiral Zombee

                Making good progress with the getting the winter event ship. And I need very few Targ Earmuffs to get the warp core. Other than that, I was working on Omega gear but stopped to use my refined Dilithium to upgrade my gear and to enhance my ship so that I can up my DPS and finally complete the Delta Quadrant Storyline and start working on Advanced Queues.

Admiral Grell

                Making progress towards the winter ship and getting the warp core. But have a long way to go. Also just running whatever will get me Delta marks so that I can get the Delta Gear. He is now Tier IV in the Delta Alliance Rep.

Admiral Torc

                He has been making progress towards getting the winter ship and the warp core. Running what I can to get the Delta Marks. He is now Tier III in the Delta Alliance Rep.

And that was it for this past week. Hope you enjoyed!

Character Updates

                Hello again! Once more I will cover what I have been doing since the last blog. So here we go!

Star Trek Online (STO) Characters

                So the Mirror Invasion Event came to an end. Zombee, Torc and Grell were the only ones who completed it.  I didn’t have time to play the others. Even so, I did enjoy the event as it was going.

                The Junior Officer Weekend I didn’t do. There just was not enough time for me to try to do any of it.

                There also was a Bonus Marks Weekend. This event will give you about 50% more of the reputation marks than normal. I used this to stock up on the marks that I was lowest on for those guys that ran it.

                This brings us to the Winter Wonderland Event brought to you by Q. This event is where you get sent to a pocket dimension created by Q where you fight snowmen, assimilated snowmen; eat pie, race on ice and many other things. In particular, there is an event where you can race against and NPC, called The Fastest Game on Ice. If you win, you get the Autographed Q pictures that you need to get the special ship. There are three Breen Ship up for grabs. And it has the same mechanic as the Risian event. Once one guy gets the ships, the alts can pick it up after just one race. They also have a new piece to the Breen Space Set, a warp core.  But you have to complete the Tides of Ice activity ten times before you can buy it.

                Some updates were also made to the game that lowered the materials needed to craft things. This makes it a lot more feasible for me to craft things and try to upgrade my weapons and gear.  Another update they did was to lower the difficulties on certain STF’s and up the rewards across most content. These are steps in the right direction to make this better but it’s not there quit yet.

                And that’s the major things for STO, now on to the individual efforts.

Fleet Admiral Zombee

                He is now level 60. I have gotten Beams to 16, Cannons and Engineering to 13, Ground Weapons and Projectiles are at 12 and Science is level 3. I also upgrade three of the Flickenger’s forward weapons to Tier 14. All of the Nukara Space Set has been built and all of the Nukara ground gear has been bought. I have now started on making the missing pieces for the various Task Force Omega space gear. The Delta Alliance Reputation has reached Tier V, but I don’t have the necessary Delta Quadrant special currency to get the gear yet. You have to run Advanced Missions to get them currently.  They have announced that they plan to place it other things to get them so I am waiting for that to hit the server for me to start tracking done those things.

                In the mean time, I have been running the Winter Wonderland events to gather the currencies necessary to the Breen Chell Grett Warship. This is the only tactical ship amongst the three that you can get. I have 5 days out the required 25 days done for this ship. I also have picked up the tactical Kit piece, Cryo Grenades. The Cryo and Plasma grenades cannot be slotted at the same time, I currently have the Cryo’s slotted to see if they work for me. I also have picked up a winter weapon so that I can fight the snowmen effectively and gain the winter currencies as fast as I can so that I can get the Breen Warp Core. He has also completed the Tides of Ice assault all ten times. So I can buy anything now.

                Another thing to note, I have gotten 2 more specializations beyond the 10 that you get from leveling. I am still working on Commando Specialization. Once it’s maxed out, I will go on to the Intelligence Specialization.

Admiral Grell

                He is now level 55. He completed the Mirror Invasion Event and got the big payout.  He ran the Bonus Marks events but did not do the Junior Officer Event.  He also is working on the Delta Quadrant Alliance reputation, currently at Tier II.

                The Winter Wonderland Event is in progress. He is working to get the Breen Plesh Brek Heavy Raider. Of the three ships, this one is the closest to being an engineering ship. With Zombee finished with getting the ten Tides of Ice completions Grell has started on getting them.  But since I can only throw snow balls, it is very hard to be effective and get much in the way of rewards. But he will have the necessary currencies soon and will be able to purchase an event weapon to use.

General Torc

                He is now level 55. He also completed the Mirror Invasion Event and the Bonus Marks Event. He also did not do the Junior Officer Event. He also has gotten to Tier II in the Delta Quadrant Alliance reputation.

                The ship he is going for in the Winter Wonderland Event is the Breen Sarr Theln Carrier. This ship is completely geared towards science operations. Also this ship is Tier 6, while the other two can be pushed up to Tier 5U. Once Grell has completed the 10 required Tides of Ice runs, then Torc will start down that path.

                I would like to say that I played more than this, but I can’t, at least not MMO’s. I have been playing Sims Life Free play, XCOM: Enemy Within and Galactic Civilization II. 

Character Update

                Hi All! Once again found some time to write. I have a lot to cover so I hope you guys stick it through.

Star Trek Online (STO) Characters

                So I have been running the queued events a lot. The new Borg queued event is interesting on normal and not completely impossible. Though I haven’t had a run yet in which we killed all three of the final bosses in within the time limit. Best I have done has gotten two down. Still it’s a decent amount of marks, though not much Dilithium. Cryptic though figured out from watching all of this that their award structure wasn’t good and upped them.

                They also brought in the Mirror Invasion Event for three weeks. Collect 14 Multi-Dimensional Transporters and you get a big payout of 50,000 Dilithium, 500 Fleet Marks, 250 Marks of your choice and Zefram Cochrane’s Shotgun. Since this is a three week event I hope that I can do this on all of my characters. But as it stands it looks like my main three will get this done and the rest will get real close. After you get the 14 turned it, you can turn the Multi-Dimensional Transporters one at a time for 2000 Dilithium, 50 Fleet Marks and 35 Marks of any type.

                They also had a Junior Officer Weekend event. This is an event in which you go to the Fed of KDF Academies and train cadets. DO the training long enough and you can get a purple Duty Officer (DOFF) out of it. You also get a unique DOFF from the event for just showing up. That just ended this past weekend.

                So that has been the changes of note to the game…now for the Individual efforts.

Admiral Zombee

                So running the queued events is slower advancement. But I have gotten to level 58 now. Beams are still level 15. And I have gotten the ship and gear situation worked out to know what I need to do get him and his ship geared properly. He is flying the Phantom Intel Escort, USS Flinkenger. I have done pretty well with him. But like all escorts, her hull is weak. So I have to do a lot of engineering hull heal powers to keep me going. I am 8 out 14 for the big bonus at this time. I almost have all of the Nukara Space sets built and have started on the ground gear.

Vice Admiral Grell

                I have been running the Mirror Invasion only. I have reached level 53. I am flying the Aelahl Class Light Warbird Battlecruiser, the RRW Itaeru. He has collected 8 of the Multi-Dimensional Transporters so far. The lacks a little fire power because I still have Rare Mark XII gear on this along with the Very Rare Mark XII. But she is slowing getting better gear. Besides doing the Doffing missions and leveling the R&D branches, I do nothing else with him.

Lieutenant General Torc

                Also has only run the Mirror Invasion Event. He has reached level 52. He is flying an upgraded Varanus Class Support Vessel, the old IKS Roturrom. With low number of weapons this old girl has, she isn’t a DPS monster, but what she does do is weather damage very well and closes rifts extremely fast. She has can do some shield healing to others on occasion. This ship does still have some Uncommon Mark XI gear so upgrading this stuff will be of importance, but not till Zombee has done it first. I also have done Doffing and R&D missions.

Vice Admiral Daniel

                Only occasionally run the Mirror Invasion Event. He has reached level 51. I also got him flying the Eclipse Intel Cruiser, the USS Cambrian. With weapons ranging from Mark VII to Mark XI and Consoles ranging from Mark II to Mark XI, this ship is really not in the best setup yet. But she seems good enough to get through the Mirror Event in a good enough manner. She is tough as she is now and very easy to turn. And I can get the stations defenses up very quickly with her. Just need more time to get the gear up to snuff.

Vice Admiral Danic

                Making Mirror Invasion Event runs only. He is also level 51. He also is flying the Scryer Class Intel Science Vessel, the USS Scryer. With mostly Very Rare Mark XII gear, she is a very capable little ship and very durable. It will be interesting to ship how well this ship does in the storyline missions.

Lieutenant General Sisteric

                He is running Mirror Invasion Event only. He has made it level 51. He also is flying the Qib Class Intel Battlecruiser, IKS Aremtha. She mostly has Very Rare Mark XII gear on this beast. She is very maneuverable and tough. Pretty good ship so far.

Lieutenant General Kan

                He is level 51 from running the Mirror Invasion Event so far. He now is flying the Mat’Ha Class Raptor, IKS Hangraw. With most of his gearing be common or uncommon and as low as Mark IV, this ship is still very respectable and hardly ever blows up. I think once I get to this guy and get his ship up to snuff that He will be very formidable.

Vice Admiral Zemo

                I haven’t run him much in the Mirror Invasion Event. He still is only Level 50. But he did get his new ship, a Faeht Class Intel Warbird called RRW Ludelvius. She is a fun ship but with Mark IV gear and up on her she is not quite good as a DPSer yet. But she has been effective in supporting other ships killing things so that’s what I do with her so I follow one other player and help kill his targets.

World of Warcraft and other MMO’s got put on the back burner for many reasons. Chief among them is time and cost. With my work schedule being scaled back my money situation is getting tighter, so things like WoW get cancelled for now. Once my income rises back up, WoW will be fired back up. Until then, Star Trek Online, Neverwinter and Champions Online will be my MMO’s with STO being the primary game to be played.

                So that is it for now. I hope this is informative for now and hopefully I will be able to do more in the future, and more often. Until then, Enjoy!

Character Update

                Hello everyone. I have been very busy. Between work and family I haven’t had much time to write. But I finally found some time and so here is the report.

Star Trek Online (STO) Characters

                So over the past month, The XP Boost Event ended, Delta Rising was released and the Bonus Lobi and Dilithium Weekend has happened. Once the XP Boost ended I went back to my main Fed character Vice Admiral Zombee and focused on leveling him to 60. Once he is done then Torc will be leveled and then Grell. I will also continue to get all of the Rep gear and try upgrading Zombee’s  space and ground gear. But the amount of Dilithium needed to do this is massive and will greatly delay things.

                The new changes to STO have added a new difficulty structure to queued events. But this difficulty increase is really just a buff to the hp of the NPC’s. This means for most casual players, you will not be effective or generally successful on the content at the lowest difficulty setting. It takes me hours just to complete one mission in the story content because of this buff. And this on a ship that has been upgraded and with the gear that used to make it Elite queue runs take only 15 minutes.  This is a step in the wrong direction.

                And then they shut down one sector of Space because people found a way to efficiently get skill points in a short period of time. Those people that were found using this exploit had their skill points and specialization points taken from them. If you’re going to make the game an incredibly boring grind to get anywhere, expect people to find any means to shorten the grind.

                With all of these changes, I have relegated my time to just running the queued events just to level. And will go back to the story content once I am maxed level and can really effectively fight.  At least with Zombee. I have a feeling that my Eng and Sci Officers will find it easier to play the content than my Tactical Officers. I will know more once I get Zombee leveled and get ready to move on to Torc, a Sci KDF officer.

                I also won the Delta Rising Operations Pack on one of the livestreams. So I have opened and added the appropriate ships, gear, duty officers and bridge officers to people as I play them.

Admiral Zombee

                I have been leveling this character towards 60. I have made it to level 57 as of this writing.  He also gained 3 Intel Bridge officers and one new ship. Also I got to upgrade three ships for free. I can upgrade another ship using a token but I have not done so. But my new best ship for my fed tact is the intel escort ship that I got from the pack. I also have gotten to level 15 with Beams crafting and now working on other crafting paths to get them to 20. Not going to craft anything till I get everything to 20 on 3 paths. Then I will look into crafting. Until then, I am going to work on upgrading on main ships gear to Tier 14 and Legendary Quality. One of these days I am going to back through all of his gear and Bridge Officers and update his info page so that everyone will know exactly where I am at.

Vice Admiral Daniel

                Got him maxed out in level before Delta Rising was released and moved on to my next guy. He is currently parked.

Lieutenant General Kan

                He is my new KDF guy. He is a Liberated Borg Klingon Tactical Officer. And I got him to max level before Delta Rising was released. He is now parked till it’s his turn to run the new leveling content.

World of Warcraft (WoW) Characters

                So the next expansion came out. I logged on to see these changes and got so busy cleaning up the guild bank that I have not even played my guys. At some point I am going to have to do that. Otherwise, the new bag space features are great. And the character models look nice. But I haven’t had the time to do more than look around.

Airholen the Explorer

                Logged on and starting doing maintenance on the guild bank with the new changes.

Champions Online (CO) Characters

                So cryptic did a live stream of CO. As I was watching it, I got the itch to play and so loaded up Blue Adept and took off to try and have some fun. And at first, it sucked like normal. Try to do low level content (Level 15) with a level 21 character means you face level 21 guys to fight. This type of designing hurts solo play greatly. But I tried doing their version of dungeons called Alerts. And this actually was fun and allowed me to actually level the guy. I got him to 23. Blue Adept is a magic based healer so I am not very effective in combat but great at keeping others alive. But once I get this guy to max level I am going to make a more combat oriented guy.

Blue Adept

                I leveled him to 23. The Alerts give bonuses to xp, resources and other rewards so I try and rotate through them to get all of the buffs up. They made some other changes to the game which will require me to look into how that affects me.

Pocket Legends (PL) Characters

                I have been playing this game off and on for year now. And I just recently got back into it. It’s an iPhone MMORPG set in a fantasy world of Anthropomorphic Animals as the characters. Race determines class. In my case I went with a range combat type guy.

                This game auto loads you into a dungeon and then has people try and do the same content it auto joins people with you. This keeps the game fast moving and you see lots of other players all the time. And you can solo the content if you play it right. But it’s always better with others present. And the loot is shared. So no ninjaing occurs. It’s fun this way.

Airholen

                 He is an Avian Ranger, with Bird-like powers and a bow. I have him up to level 15 now.  I just like doing the missions. They are light hearted fun. And I don’t feel pressured to get better gear. Just to play smart.

                That’s all of the MMO’s that I have played over the past week. I hope something here perked your interest. I had fun figuring out what just to say here. I have rants building up in me about the state of STO and WoW, so I may just have to take the time to do my rant post soon.  Until that time, Enjoy!

Character Update

Star Trek Online (STO) Characters

                Welcome to the new format for these reports. As I expand my play time to other games again, this will make it easier for me and you to read the activities based on the game I was playing at the time. This will include a general paragraph that will be about any plans being applied to these characters as a whole and the timing of any in game events. Hopefully it will eventually contain some news about future writing projects that will be posted based on that game.

                As for STO, the R&D Weekend has ended. All the characters were used to run various crafting projects. And the first Upgrade Weekend ended and so every one of the characters got the freebie pack. Next weekend will be the second Upgrade Weekend. So expect all of the guys to run out and get the freebie pack. Otherwise, I haven’t had time to actually record the specifics on each character for the side bar so I need to sit down and do that, but after the Delta Rising goes live at this point.

Vice Admiral Zombee

                Beam School is 15. I also have 3 new schools leveling. And the Plasma Thrower has been bought and placed on Commander Lameran. He is now working on the Deflector and Shield for the Nukara Strikeforce Space Set. This will be placed on USS Warrick. I have not upgraded any of my gear yet. It requires too much in Dilithium for me to be able to get all the rep gear and upgrade. So I remain focused on getting the rep gear. Once that has been achieved, I will then turn my eye to dil farming and upgrading.

Captain Daniel

                Now rank 32. Also started on R&D projects, and flying a cruiser. I am still focused on just leveling this guy quickly so that I can go on to the Tactical KDF and then a Romulan Republic Science Officer.

Vice Admiral’s Danic, Zemo and Grell, and Lieutenant General’s Sisteric and Torc

                These guys did the R&D projects to level several schools during the R&D Weekend. Now I just park them. They will see activity once all of planned characters get created and leveled.

                I didn’t get into any other games at this time. SO I hope this was informative and you did Enjoy it.

Character Update

Vice Admiral Zombee
         Beam School is now Level 14. USS Schafer now has the Romulan Prototype Space Set completed. Now working on getting the Romulan Plasma based flame thrower weapon. After that it will be to work on the USS Warrick, a Defiant Class Tactical Escort, is next up to get the Nukara Strikeforce Space Set.
         The Bonus Skill Points Event has started. And Zombee gets nothing from it. But they have also started the Upgrade Weekends and so I am going and collecting the free upgrade modules and going to try and upgrade the gear on First Vice Admiral Zombee and the USS Sorrick.

Vice Admiral Danic, Lieutenant General Sisteric, Lieutenant General Torc and Vice Admiral Grell
            These guys have been parked while I work on other projects.

Vice Admiral Zemo
            Zemo has made it to level 50. And now he is parked while I try to level the next Character while the leveling event is going. This will be the trend till I have all of the characters leveled that I want leveled or the event is over. Whichever comes first.

Lieutenant Commander Daniel
             The current new guy being leveled. He is a Human Federation Engineer. He will specialize in the Cruiser style of ships. This will be the first Fed character I have that went through the New Federation Tutorial missions. And the first Fed guy with the freebie purple officer Flores. I has have been making a point of taking the purple BOff's that Zombee has and transferring them to Daniel so that he will just have purple BOff's from the start and never get rid of characters or wast any points. So far it is going well. I will get into this guy more in the next Update Blog, But for now, he is being focused on leveling. Once the event is over I will go back through the max level guys and finish up their story missions so that all are done and then work on getting their reps.

    SO that's what has happened. I hope this was informative, and Enjoy!

Delta Rising Soon

                So I am going to try and cover some of the changes coming to Star Trek Online and what they mean to me and my characters. This is work of my opinions and what facts that have been presented on the forums and whatever interviews I have been able to hear. Do not take this as the gospel of what’s coming. I have no special insight into this expansion. With that said, on to the show!

                Announced Features

                                So I wanted to start off with listing what they announced was coming with Delta Rising.

1.       New Level Cap to 60. Gaining the ranks of Admiral (55) and Fleet Admiral (60).

2.       New Tier 6 ships

3.       New Advancement Specialization Tree starting at Level 51.

4.       Tier 5 ships can play all of the content.

5.       Some of the Tier 5 ships will be upgradable to be comparable to Tier 6, but not the same.

6.       Old ships will get some updating.

7.       Ship upgrades will not be connected to crafting.

8.       Tier XIII and Tier XIV gear will be added.

9.       Raising the Level cap will allow them to rebalance content to combat power creep.

10.   Content will be released in stages throughout the year.

So that was what was announced as features for Delta Rising at Star Trek Las Vegas 2014.

                Level Cap Information and Thoughts

                                So getting to Fleet Admiral does not mean we will command fleets in space. It does mean that we will get to hear leveling congratulations. It also means that we will no longer have our skill points converted to Expertise Points. Currently, we get this buff to expertise points which allow us to pay for bridge crew skills, bridge crew promotions, reputation missions and duty officers missions. Being aware of this change, Cryptic has stated that they will up the expertise rewards to be on par with current level 50 gains.

                                Meanwhile, skill points will not be used to up our skills. Instead, at each leveling point you will get a specialization point which you can apply to the new specialization trees. No data has been released on what these trees contain, but what is known that this provides the leveling experience of improvement without the character actually having to level beyond 60. And that this will be expanded so that no one will be able to max out the specialization tree. I don’t think that this is reasonable to assume, but could be possible if you can do more than one specialization tree.

                                At certain levels, your character will gain things. 51 will get you a small pack of Duty Officers as a reward. 52 will upgrade you Fleet Support ability to Rank III.  At 54 your Class Ground Ability will be upped to Rank III.  55 will give you a new Bridge Officer.  57 will upgrade your class space ability to Rank III. And 60 will expand your Captain Trait slot by one. All I can say about these additions is that I hope they give people more Doff and BOff space because most people will have maxed out their current cap on both groups. I hope the new BOff will be a purple Intel Officer; otherwise it will get sold off or dropped immediately.

                Tier 6 Ships

                                Tier 6 Ship will be the next Level cap on ships. They also will come in Normal and Intel variations. Intel variations will be geared towards Intelligence gathering and scouting efforts. Normal ships will be more as next generation ships.

                                Also, these ships will come with a new ship mechanic of Ship Mastery. This is a system where you gain passive abilities that increase your abilities with that class of ship. At Tier V Mastery you will get a Passive Spaceship Trait which you will be able to slot into your New Four Starship Trait Slots. The first four traits are passive buffs for that ship class only. The tier 5 trait will be available to you on any ship at any tier. Each ship class has its own Tier 5 ability to gain.

Tier 6 ships will also get increases in Hull and Shield strength as you level from 50 to 60. It also should end at a higher amount that is greater than Tier 5. So these ships will be tougher than Tier 5 eventually.

                Tier 6 ships will also have Intel Hybrid seats for BOff’s. This will allow those positions to either use Class or Intel powers, depending on the training you put into the BOff.

                New Level Advancement System for Levels after 51

                                There have not been many details released on this subject yet. What we do know is that is Specialization Trees. These Trees will be something you get passive buffs from. As you level, your Skill Points will collect and you will get Specialization Points at certain breakpoints. Initially these breakpoints will be the same at when you get a level, but once you are max level it will continue to give you specialization points at break points beyond your level. These Trees will be expandable, and maxing out the Tree will take time. And they plan to extend these trees in future expansion. Hopefully before many people have maxed the tree.

                                What we don’t know is what the Trees are, how many there are, how many powers are in a tree, or even if you can put points in more than one tree at a time. Hopefully those details will come soon.

                Tier 5 ships can play all content

                                They say that the new content you will be able to play with your current Tier 5 ships. The content that is being created you should be able to do without needing to upgrade your ships or use Tier 6 ships. At least the story content and the Normal Queue events will be doable. Playing at Advance and Elite will require better gear and probably better ships.

                Some Tier 5 ships will be upgradable to be comparable to Tier 6

                                So upgrading a Tier 5 ship will give it 10% more Hull and Shields and one more Console. They also will be able to do the Ship mastery till Tier IV. They will not have Tier V Mastery skills. Certain ships will get free upgrades and certain ships will not get to upgrade at all. This upgrade will make these ships only less power in the fact of not having that extra bridge slot. I don’t see this as a bad thing and actually delivers on their promise of them being comparable.

                Some Old Ships will get updating

                                The models for some ships, like the Intrepid Class, will get its visuals updated. These updates will make things look better on our higher resolution screens that people have and bring the beauty back to these ships. Not all of the ships getting the updates have been announced.

                Ship Upgrading will not be connected to Crafting

                                The ships will need to get ship upgrade tokens or spend dilithium to upgrade it. It will be a button to click on the Ship Interface, my understanding, and you will only need to unlock it once per account. So if you have multiple toons, then every ship of the same class will be upgradable for free after the first one across all of your toons.

                Tier XII and Tier XIV gear will be added to the game

                                But how we get this gear has not been released. At least outside of a new feature that they are adding that allow players to upgrade their gear in Tier and Quality, maxing out the Tier to XIV and Quality to Gold (Legendary). This upgrading will apply to almost all gear in space and ground gear. You will be able to upgrade the gear without crafting. And you can get these tradable upgrade resources. The upgrade resources add a certain amount of Research Points to the unit. Once the Research point’s set point is reach you will level the Tier. As you collect the points, you will get a percentage change to level the Tier and or the quality every time you add more research points. The percentage chance is retained and built upon until that particular category is advanced. At that time it is reset to Zero. This in fact means you can buy a Tier I white item and level it up to Tier XIV Gold item. It only takes some dilithium to level it.

                Level Cap will combat power creep

                                This is true in the fact that all of the content will be redesigned to Tier 6 gear and Tier 14 gear for Elite content to be challenging. And the lower difficulties will turned down from that so that Normal will be challenging for Tier 5. This is probably the Best Quality of Life change they could do to the game. With current content being destroyed by Solo Players in less than 5 minutes, I think that this is going to be the best thing that STO could have done to it.

Well that is what I have for now on this subject. Tune in next time to for the next Character Update installment. Until then, Enjoy!