Naggy and Friends

In a recent patch Nagafen was given some "unique abilities." Scott explains why in this thread. Remember, just because Naggy now drops loot, it doesn't mean he's not still a level 100 mob. Unless his new special ability is to bake me a delicious pie and do a funny dance I'm not going be to be attacking him anytime soon.

As for mobs I can take down (with a little help of course), Rognog is back. This fishing aficionado is a raid mob located in the Cove of Decay. Moorgard gives a funny explanation of Rognog's long disappearance. Ah, but before you know it - he's gone again. Slippery as a fish.

In more recent news, the Splitpaw Saga begins. I will give you a report when I get a chance to try it. According to Moorgard there is a feature for Splitpaw which was never advertised or discussed before. Most of the zones will actually allow you to choose from three levels of difficulty (with commensurate reward). This is in addition to these zones scaling to the average party level. You can read more about it here. I think this is a terrific idea, if it is balanced correctly in terms of risk-reward. I'm sure some of the more hardcore roleplaying types will say this sort of option breaks immersion and to some degree I understand: I mean did Aragorn get to choose from moderate or high difficulty at the battle of Helm's Deep? Personally, I'm willing to make some sacrifices in "realism" for the sake of improved gameplay.

Along with Splitpaw comes Live Update 11. It's nothing earth-shattering but there are a bunch of minor changes which will hopefully add up to improve the overall feel of the game. I haven't logged on since the patch so I am only commenting on the notes and not the actual patch itself. Hey, I was raiding late Monday night and I needed some sleep. Okay, that's a lie...who needs sleep when you have robust Antonican coffee? Actually, I would have tested things out but my server was locked (at least in the early evening) so I decided to, gasp, read a book instead.

The changes from the Live Update notes which stand out to me the most are the reduction of the camping time for Grimfeather and the Seraph and the introduction of a mender in TS and Nek. I am kind of a fanatic about having my gear mended. If I drop below 80% I start to get a nervous twitch and have recurring nightmares of showing up for a raid naked.

Another great change is that the font size in the chat windows will now save so you don't have to fiddle with it each time you log on. Well, that's not so much an improvement as a bug fix. Either way it was driving me insane.

Also, how many times have you looked at an item and said, "Hmm...requires 145 staff skill. Let me open the skills window and check my staff skill. Okay, so that's two more levels." Now, you can just examine the item and see what level you can use it at and what classes can use it.

Oh, and Rognog's back again. Again.