In Search of Trays
I could start this post off with a grumpy rant about changes to a game that I found out about over the weekend. However that would just end up creating a general down point for the coming week, so instead I am opting to try my best and push it out of my mind. Instead I am going to focus on the fun that I had this weekend and the positive points. The weekend also involved quite a bit of chasing wild geese, which in itself was a little interesting. My wife is of course a teacher, and over the summer she does what I figure most teachers do… obsess about the upcoming school year. For the last several years Target has had some multi colored trays that serve well as hand in baskets, but unfortunately the last set became brittle after sitting in the incoming sun for an entire year. So one of the things we have been watching for is them to start stocking them once again, and while we were in Kansas City we found two of the six colors, but did not end up picking them up because we assumed they too would be plentiful in our area. That however was not the case and this past week over lunch I went to check a few Targets, ultimately finding none. Saturday we wound up at our own local store and they happened to have four colors, allowing us to pick up most of a set.
The challenge with the Target dollar spot… is that every teacher ultimately stocks their classroom with the stuff located in it. That meant that we had a very limited window to be able to get the last two colors of trays. So Sunday after my wife got back from church we went roaming around the Tulsa metro area hitting quite literally every single Target store looking for a yellow and a purple tray. Fairly early on we found the yellow tray, but it was not until the very last store we went to that we managed to find purple. Ironically it was at the last store… the one furthest away from us… that they happened to have all six colors in one place. Had we reversed the order it would have likely been the one closest to us that had all six. As I commented this weekend on twitter, this is the life of a Teacher’s spouse. I cannot count the number of times we have made such trips hunting for this specific item or that… be it office supply stores, dollar stores or in this case a Target. Over the years I’ve spent many an hour sifting through disheveled bins of stuff looking for that one item that matches whatever other item we happened to be looking for. The sheer dedication that the average teacher has is just phenomenal, and even more so is the rapid sharing of tips that happens when you get two together. In Kansas City we rolled into the Target dollar spot and found the obvious signs of other teachers… and before we knew it folks were sharing tips on best ways to clean white boards or where you could find this or that item at a better deal. Long story short… we managed to complete the set of bins which marks this mission off the list… which I am certain will only be replaced by a dozen other similar adventures before school starts back up in a month and a half.
Of Artifice
As far as gaming goes I spent the bulk of my weekend running around in Rift, shifting back and forth between several different activities. Out in Twilight Highlands there was a limited time event called Arclight Ascendancy that allows players to run a couple of quests to get a currency… that can ultimately be saved up to purchase an Arclight Rider or Lifter mount. At some point I have apparently completed this event… either that or some account entitlement gave me a slew of currency. Essentially this event allows you to slowly gather the currency needed to purchase what would normally be a store only mount. In the past I have participated in similar events for the Budgie mounts, and in the grand scheme of things these are not intended to be completed in a single pass but instead over the course of multiple events. The interesting thing about them however is that one of the daily quests requires you to mentor down to within the 25-30 level range to accomplish it. As far as that goes Rift’s implementation of that system is probably the best I have seen because you simply right click your name and choose a new level… and then bam you are functioning at that level without having to give up any of your abilities. The other thing that I am enjoying about doing the quests is that it puts me back in Twilight Highlands and Scarlet Gorge on a daily basis… two zones that I absolutely loved from Telara.
The other big thing that I worked on this weekend was leveling my Artificer skill. This is of course slowly bankrupting me, but nonetheless I still felt the desire to keep pushing forward. I spent many an hour this weekend roaming around Gelboro Reef doing quests that I never finished out there… and farming up Thalasite ore and Sarleaf that would ultimately be converted into fuel to feed the fires of industry. Yesterday evening I managed to push ahead and get to the current level cap of 450. Now will I actually do anything with that level other than daily crafting quests? I honestly am not sure… I’ve never had a max level artificer before now. At this point in the cycle I doubt there is anything I can craft that is not better than the gear I can get from a combination of weekly patron chests and instant adventures/experts. However having a whole slew of crafters means that I can rapid-fire through the crafting dailies and get patterns quickly. I need to some time researching what if anything I can craft that is a damage upgrade… or more importantly a hit upgrade. Now that I have finished with another crafting obsession I really need to get back into the process of digging into the Planetouched Wilds. That area is huge and full of all manner of weekly quest opportunities, and I have barely scratched the surface.
