Sad to See it Empty

Woke up this morning to run some fast crafting quests. The journey led me all over the map and the greatest sadness is most of the zones I traveled through were completely devoid of players. Worse these zones were huge and richly detailed — the designers thoughts were to make it accessible to hundreds maybe even thousands of players at a time. For example, Ahgram is a incredible city in the desert and yet it is almost always empty. Hundreds of great cubby holes to tuck your characters into, but now it is literally a ghost town.

So sad because even though marred with so many technical problems, Vanguard is such a wonderful game.

I wish Sony would make a deal with an SSD manufacturer and if you buy the SSD you get 3 months free of Vanguard. Maybe, and just maybe, some gamers would pick up on that. Market it through a chain of magazines and game shops.

Guilds Are Not For Everyone

When I first returned to Vanguard I joined a very progressive guild. Most of the members seemed very helpful but the mistake I made was that it was a very high end guild, limited to 55th level characters. Although my highest level guy is only 35th, they let me in — not sure why? They should have told me, listen come back in 20 levels and you are more than welcome.

I quickly realized that unless I had a 55th level character, I really had no voice or even access to 99.9% of the guild’s activities.

I like how Sony structured guilds in the game. They really serve as a focus for raiding groups but not to abolish the needs of cities or outposts. There are no guild rifts, no guild crafting stations, no guild merchants. All of this still must be performed in town by and large.

Certainly there are guilds in the game that cater to lower end characters. And being in a guild like that has its advantages, mostly as pre-50th level crafted gear is often better than farmed stuff. Its also fun to banter and carry on with a more select group of players, leaning on them for various needs across the gamut of gaming.  Getting groups and finishing quests are so much easier  dealing with a 50 players rather than 5000.  Guilds have a distinctively different feel however in Vanguard than other MMOs.

As for my involvement in a Vanguard guild, I am pulling out for the time until I know really what I want. I don’t think a single person in the guild I had joined ever said three words to me, and why should they as I was only 36th level? I love my characters and their progress, but I want to be able to actively contribute to a guild, and I really hate sitting back in the nose bleed seats while reading what others are doing.

Perhaps six weeks of playing the game again is too short of a time to even think about guilds. More than likely my judgement has been clouded by other games that have guilds — certainly in EQ2 guilds are a must even for solo players, not so in Vanguard.

Are others in guilds? What are your thoughts about joining or being in a guild?

SSD Makes a World of Difference

The other BIG news for me this weekend was that I added an SSD (Sold State Drive) to my computer. I bought a Samsung 840 series, 120 gigabyte drive and with a bit of trouble added it to my computer.

I cannot STRESS more the change in the game that it made. Literally went from horrid to glorious. If you want to do an upgrade to the game, do not add a video card or RAM but buy yourself a SSD.

I got mine for $110 bucks. Make sure you get the kit with cable and bay, which may run another $20. Simple to add, a bit awkward to fit into the computer.

A++ idea: Get an SSD

Moonbe, Toddan, and Darkmaze hunting some giant ants

Vanguard Memory Mod

I don’t generally copy and paste things I read elsewhere, but this handy mod is simply too good to pass up. I did this last night on both of my accounts and after a bit of frustration because Windows did not want to turn my text file into a bat file, I had this working and saw instant improvement in game play

What you need to do is a modification to the file sysconfig.ini. This file controls the modified Unreal game engine that vanguard uses. There is a section in that file that reads:

[Engine.GameEngine]
CacheSizeMegs=32

When Vanguard patches it will always restore the sysconfig.ini file and set the environment for the game engine to run in a 32 Meg sized environment.

The game will run much better in a larger environment, 256 megs rocks.
Here’s how we do it:

Locate the file sysconfig.ini in the games bin folder of Vanguard. It can be stored in several locations, so either search for it or poke around in the bin folder in Vangaurd

When you’ve found the file, copy it to some folder on the desktop or in the C drive. I found it handy to simply copy the path found on the menu bar and make the following change: Edit that file and change the one line CacheSizeMegs=32 to read CacheSizeMegs=256. Save the file.

Next, make new text file on your desktop. Name it Sysconfig.txt — Add the following lines to this new file:

@echo off
copy /Y “C:Users\John\My Documents\sysconfig.ini” “C:Program Files\Sony\Vanguard\bin”

NOTE each of these file locations may be unique to your system and set up. Do not simply copy and paste this into the text file as it will not work. Copy the location of both from the directory bar at the top of your window. It will take a bit of tweaking, but the key is to locate both the edited version and the original.

When you have verified that both file paths are correct for your setup go ahead and save the file sysconfig.txt or whenever you decided to use. Next, rename that file so it has a .bat extension at the end of it. It should read sysconfig.bat when you’re completed — Make sure you have windows showing “Known File Extensions” turned on or you will save the file as a bat file but Windows will simply add a .txt at the end of it anyway.

To implement the modification when running the game, load Vanguard and let it patch. Just before you hit the PLAY button launch the batch file to overwrite sysconfig.ini, now hit play.

The game will launch with the game engine able to use the 256 MB environment and you should be able to increase settings accordingly. This is probably the single largest mod affecting game performance. Enjoy!

Grognards of Vanguard

So this weekend I returned to Vanguard with a list of “things to get done” and as Sunday slowly ends I have reached so many of those lofty goals. What a fantastic weekend to bring out my old toons and new ones!

Ratook and Pidglet continue to gain levels in crafting, with them both doing a bunch of crafting quests but also from Work Orders and just making items that my alts really need.

Malthoria my armorsmith is just peeking towards tenth level, a milestone in crafting in that you really become a specialized crafter. I so need him to get several levels so that my clerics and paladin can get decent crafted gear.

Okthank my weaponsmith dinged 27th and is making all my weapons. So cool to start a process and unsure of what you are going to get until finished. I love how the powders and augments really spruce up a final weapon.

Pumpkinpuss is trying to get to 11th level in mineralogist and start truly making some magic rings. A slow progress offset by him being my primary healer — dinged 22nd this weekend!

I made two new characters this weekend as well, both females. I don’t generally make girls but long long ago I had a female monk in Everquest I and thought it would be fun to immortalize her again in Vanguard, so I made Avanta the disciple and Kimmistifer the druid. Both are 8th level and have gotten their primary harvesting skills to 100 and their secondary to 50ish.

So many other alts too were played for an hour here or an hour there. I am just a nut when it comes to alts. I have just too many and not enough time to play them all.

Two hot chicks ready to kick some ass!

Pidglet Lives

Pidglet and Tarograss out hunting in Renton Keep

Got out Pidglet my goblin necro from 6 years ago and got him all cleaned up and oiled. In the background acting as a healer is Tarograss the Bloodmage. I had to mentor Pidglet down to 18 and that took a bit as well to figure out but the green buddy is back in the action.

Next I will need to retool and polish Ratook who has been just crafting, but he needs to get out and kick some ass too

Saturday Adventures in Vanguard

I got up early this morning and achieved a ton of things on my leatherworker,
Ratook. Got him his tier 3 thestran recipes and he sat down and started making bodacious horse barding, bags, and leather armor.

Okthank riding off to Martok to get his Tier-3 Kojan Weaponsmith quest.

 

Pidglet, my tailor, also got 2 levels and finished up 5 crafting quests earning a nice ring, earring, and dozens of new recipes. He made some killer T2 cloth armor for Toddan my sorcerer.

Dagulas, Daarnash, and Pumpkinpuss all got out and harvested. Very fun, each with new horseshoes, barding, harvesting gear, and a few with weapons.

Tonight taking out some chumps, like Edaw and Darkmaze and trying to get a few adventuring levels in Lomshir. They are complete idiots so it will be a challenge.