LucidMagic.net

OK, for all you super geeks out there, here is a little hard core role playing item you might enjoy:

Forgotten Realms Calendar Tool

-420

Here is some helpful information for players just starting out in Guild Wars!

Starting Out
First, create a role playing character, this is required to unlock skills and item upgrades for PvP only characters. Whenever any of your role playing characters learns a new skill or identifies an item with an upgrade that skill or upgrade is unlocked for all your PvP only characters. You will choose only your primary profession and your gender/look in the beginning.
NOTE: Mesmer is considered an "advanced profession".

Ascalon
You start the game in pre-searing* Ascalon, it is a relatively small tutorial world designed to get you aquanted with the different professions and skills as well as introduce you to the storyline and terrain. Make sure you explore the towns/rest stops thoroughly and talk to every NPC with a green "!" above their head. Return and check NPCs after completing quests or gaining a level to see if new quests are available.

Resurrection Signet
One of the first quests you may want to do is get a Resurrection Signet from the monk just outside Ascalon City. You must be teamed up with another player in order to get this unique skill.

Choosing a Secondary Professions
Depending on what you chose as your primary profession you will be able to try each of the other professions out as a secondary by doing quests. Make sure to try all 5 of the other professions before accepting one as your permanent secondary or you won't be able to get the experience and unlock the skills by trying out the others.

Skills
Even though your characters can learn/unlock EVERY skill for both their primary and secondary professions you may only choose 8 skills to use on quests and missions. These eight skills can be assigned in any town/rest stop but not in any wilderness/mission area.

Storage
You can get 5 extra inventory slots by getting a belt pouch. A belt pouch can be gotten from the collector just outside Ascalon City, he will trade you 3 scale fins for it which can be found from the scale fin creatures just south of him. You can also trade 3 worn belts (found on bandits) for a belt pouch from a collector in Ashford (just outside the Abby).

In post-searing you can get 2 bags that each hold 5 items and can be expanded to 10 items later. You can also buy a "storage locker" that you can access from any town/rest stop and is shared by all characters on your account.

Joining the Academy
Once you choose your secondary profession you can join the Academy. Make sure you are finished with any open quests before you go, if you have done all the quests your character will be between 7th and 8th level. Once you join the Academy you can't go back to pre-searing Ascalon.

Expert Salvage Kits
Once you are in post-searing you will be able to purchase an Expert Salvage Kit. This is the only way to salvage rare crafting materials, runes and weapon upgrades from weapons, armor and generic salvage items. Even if the Expert Salvage Kit only recovers common crafting materials it will usually get much more of that material than a normal salvage kit.

*Make sure you watch the movie at the end of the Academy to find out all about "The Searing".

Looks like there was a major update to Guild Wars yesterday and they even implemented some of my bug reports!!! I was tired of firestorm failing to cast when my target died before I finished casting, so they fixed it! Makes me happy to know they are going to listen to suggestions from the user community.

Update â?? Wednesday May 11

    * Major changes to PvP Arenas! Previously, each Arena had a separate outpost. When you joined an Arena, you continued playing on that map repeatedly until you lost. Now, the various high-level Arena maps all share a common outpost. When you enter the high-level Arena, youâ??ll play on many different maps with many different victory conditions, and youâ??ll need to master all the maps to keep on winning.
       
    * After each consecutive PvP victory, the game now displays the number of consecutive wins.
       
    * A new screen at the end of PvP character creation allows you to choose the starting location of your PvP character.
       
    * We retired the old â??Dazed," â??Shock Sniper," â??Divine Healer.â? and â??Trapperâ? PvP-only character templates, and rotated in some new templates, including three new templates created by guilds that won our April ladder contest. Additionally, we tweaked the skills of many other PvP character templates. These changes only affect the creation of new characters; existing characters created with an old template may continue to use that old template.
       
    * You can now store gold in your account storage vault! The vault can store up to 1000 platinum pieces, and individual characters can now hold a maximum of 100 platinum pieces.
       
    * PvP-only characters can now access the account storage vault for free.
       
    * Entering â??The Underworldâ? now costs 1 platinum piece, the same as entering â??The Fissure of Woe." Rewards in both maps have been significantly improved.
       
    * New quests! In Post-Searing Ascalon: â??The Weaver of Neboâ? and â??Iron Horse War Machine." In â??The Fissure of Woe:â? â??Tower of Courage," â??The Wailing Lord," â??A Gift of Griffons," â??Army of Darkness," â??The Eternal Forgemaster," â??Defend the Temple of War," and â??Restore the Temple of War."
       
    * Primary quests in Pre-Searing Ascalon now chain together, making it more straightforward for new players to complete Pre-Searing Ascalon and gain entrance to the Academy.
       
    * Increased drop rates for Uncommon and Rare items in Explorable Areas.
       
    * Implemented various minor fixes and clarifications to existing quests.
       
    * Implemented various tweaks to monster difficulty and loot balance.
       
    * Added new boss monster encounters in the â??Ring of Fireâ? area.
       
    * Added new bonuses on certain collector and quest items.
       
    * Instituted skill changes: â??Watch Yourself!â? correctly affects characters who were already affected by another instance of the skill. â??Firestormâ? now continues to cast even if the target enemy dies during spellcasting. Weâ??ll revise other area-effect spells to work this way in future updates.
       
    * The party window and account storage windows now correctly remember their position and size.
       
    * There are many new hints displayed in Pre-Searing Ascalon, and a new option to disable the display of hints.
       
    * When you gain a level, a button now appears prompting you to spend your newly acquired attribute points.
       
    * Quest destination points now appear on both the Map Area and Map Travel windows.
       
    * Most NPC text is now logged to the chat window, as well as being displayed in game.
       
    * Implemented various minor fixes to UI.
       
    * Fixed crafters recognizing high-level crafting items.
       
    * Fixed problems which caused excessive scarcity of Fur Squares, Linen, and Silk.
       
    * Implemented fixes for incorrect behavior when a player or party disconnects before the beginning of a competitive game.
       
    * Implemented fixes for miscellaneous rare crash bugs.
       
    * Added the ability to change postal mailing address on account.
       
    * Improved hardware compatibility.

Wizards of the Coast are having a contest! You can design your own room in the Undermountain (as seen in HotU chapter 1) for pen and paper D&D!

If your entry gets chosen your room will become an official D&D addition to Undermountain and you will get credit! Impress all your D&D geek friends!

Undermountain Contest

-420

Telanth Ilythiiri, talinth Ilythiiri, tlu Ilythiiri. Ka dos daewl tlu natha endar dazzan t'yin ragar l' proper translator xor fridj telanth wun Ilythiiri.

The DM Friendly Initiative has a DM training mod downloadable here.

It is a training tool for learning the DM Client interface and running an adventure as a DM.

-420

OK, this poll comes from a little topic of dicussion I was engaged in on GodSpire this weekend.

Basically it is based on 2 main theories:

1. The sun is a giant flaming ball of radiation.

2. We live in a back-water solar system and are basically the hillbillies of the Milky Way galaxy.

Now, you may think I've gone off the deep end. "We need the sun to live!" is the most common retort I get.

But I put to you that no one has ever extinguished the sun before... how do we know it will be the doom of us all? How do we know?

Anyway, our little planet is perfectly capable of sustaining life independantly with a wacky little invention call a borehole. We can just use our planets own geothermal resources for heat and electricity.

Of course we'll all have to take dietary suppliments so that we can process vitamin D without the sun but it's a small price to pay for the damage the sun does to our planet and its residents.

I'm not just talking about heat stroke, sun burns, skin cancer, blindness, drought, famine, faded car paint, bleached posters and comic books, melted tapes and records and Polymorphous Light Eruption (PMLE).

Did you know that by the time our sun becomes a Red Giant it's circumference will reach beyond our current orbit! This blatant agressivness toward our planet cannot be tolerated and I recommend a pre-emptive strike in the next "500 to 900 million years".

I decided not to post the "Planets with more than one moon think they are better than us, so should we steal their moons and show them who's boss?" because it was just too silly.

-420

EDIT: 3rd choice should say:
"Let's just move our planet out of this backwater solar system to something closer to Galactic Central Core."

We really should be able to "edit" our own poles question and answers.

Does anyone remember the old "gold box" TSR D&D computer games like Pool of Radiance, Menzoberranzan and Eye of the Beholder.

Those games used an engine which was later adapted into a game building tool much like NWN. In fact it was the original D&D campaign builder, Throbble and I built our first adventures there before NWN came out: The Adventure Constuction Set.

Anyway, one of those wonderfully obssesive D&D enthusiasts out there is recreating the Eye of the Beholder series for NWN and the first Module is done!

It contains custom creatures and is a fairly big adventure with multiplayer support that can handle up to 4 players. (122+ MB download)

Learn more about it here: The Eye of the Beholder Project

-420

Here is my current list of Guild Wars emotes with a few comments at the bottom:
Please reply with any that I missed![/span]

Total Count: 59

/afk
/age
/agree
/attention
/beckon
/beg
/boo
/bored
/bow
/bowhead
/catchbreath
/cheer
/chest
/clap
/congrats
/cough
/dance
/deaths
/doh
/doubletake
/drum
/excited
/fame
/fistshake
/five
/flex
/flute
/goteam
/guitar
/health
/help
/jump
/kneel
/laugh
/moan
/no
/paper
/pickme
/point
/ponder
/pout
/rank
/ready
/roar
/rock
/roll # (1-100)
/salute
/scissors
/scratch
/shoo
/sigh
/sit
/sorry
/stand
/taunt
/violin
/wave
/yawn
/yes

Comments:

Rock/Paper/Scissors game: type /rock /paper or /scissors to choose which one you want your character to show with his hands after a brief count down.

Many of the emotes are different depending on the gender and primary class of the character emoting.

/dance (all the dances seem to be from a movie or TV show)
Male Warrior -  Vincent Vega's dance from Pulp Fiction.
Female Warrior - Mia Wallace's dance from Pulp Fiction.
Female Necro - Zombie dance from Michael Jackson's Thriller.
Male Elementalist - The Elaine dance from Seinfeld.

/flute
Male Ranger - Plays flute like Jethro Tull.

Have fun,
420

EDIT: New Emotes Added to Original List
420's additions: /pout /ponder /chest /roll /rock /scissors /rank
Throbbles additions: /pickme /shoo /sigh /bored /clap /cough /sorry
Raelias additions: /five /congrats /afk /ready /bowhead /scratch /doubletake /agree /attention /catchbreath
BzK's additions: /excited /paper /goteam /moan /deaths /age /health
Lord Elessar's additions: /fame
Celestial1: /yawn /stand

[span style=\'color:red\']* /chest no longer works, a new command may exist for the "chest bump" emote

Bioware's first 3 premium content mods are out and ready for download!!

One of them features extensive NPC voiceovers, sample them here.


-420

Hey everyone, here is a PM I just got:

Today, 05:17 PM

IM HERE!!!!
   
I didnt expect it to go down until tomorrow though, and I have been away this weekend, which is why the replacement server isnt up.

Ill try get it up within 30 mins

Announce if you like.

- Mod will look the same (accept no imitation)
- Sents will NOT function, as I lost the DB sad.gif
- DMs WILL Function
- Ban Counter will be reset.

Will try get them working tomorrow

- Talon

So there is the Official word on the scene.

-420

Hey everone, post your character names here so we can find each other in-game.

Either "whisper" to someone or type:

"Character Name, message


420:
Four Two Zero
Culanns Hound

Throbblefoot:
Throbble Foot
Killy Mcghee

-420

Those wacky Japanese have done it again. They made discs that store HUGE amounts of data and they are made of CORN!

Biodegradable Data Storage

-420

Well Bioware finally got around to deciding on Digital Download (DD) and it will be up and running on November 10th!!

For those who don't know, Digital Download was an idea Bioware had to make "mini-expansions", basically new adventures with new official Bioware content that you could buy online and download for a few dollars.

There will be 3 adventures available, including a completely updated Witch's Wake! (Which happens to be the module that started discussions of DD)

Find out more here:

Bioware Premium Content

-420

P.S. This is good news for everyone, any new content added with Digital Download will be available to all NWN owners through patches, even if they don't buy the new mods!

Looks like all of the posts inthe Throbbleserv forum are missing except for Throbble's "welcome" thread so discuss the "Rule of Threes" (plural "threes") here.

To Recap:

"It is activated and deactivated in the same way. It is likely activated by someone without knowing they activated it."
- Lord Elessar

"Well, this might be too obvious, but it might have something to do with the number three... "
-Shadowfury

"or reversed.. i dunno!!! weeeeeee!"
-Celestial 1