I haven’t actually been doing any online gaming in the interval — travel, illness, more travel, holidays, just not been in a gaming sort of mood.
Margie has been plugging away solo in both systems in the interval, though. Her Hobbit thief is up to 26.
My play drought might be shifting, though. Margie and I did some LotRO last night (let me say, I think Weathertop is faboo, visually), and I’m feeling a yen for some CoX building up in me (esp. to do some of the new I12 power combos and see what they’ve done in the Hollows — except that I12 isn’t in beta yet).
Chatting with Margie yesterday, she opined that one of the frustrations she finds is that you really need to stop active adventuring about an hour before you need to get away from the keyboard — since it take that long to (a) get someplace safe, (b) check mail, (c) hit up contacts you need to hit up, (d) sell stuff that you want to sell (to get things out of your pack, and to earn enough to spend on needful activities), (e) craft stuff you need to craft (to get things out of your pack), (f) put things up for auction that you’ve acquired or crafted (again, to get things out of your pack and to earn vital money).
While the same is true to a lesser degree in CoX (Wentworths can easily be a half hour visit every session), it’s less so because (a) you don’t really have to craft in CoX if you don’t want to, and (b) encumbrance / pack overflow is far less of an issue in CoX than in LotRO.
And, yeah, that is a bit annoying.
More as I ponder it.
I have a nice screenshot of Weathertop at night. Also one of the Midgewater Marsh at sunset. Ooh! Aah! 🙂
I usually just turn in my quests and sell junk at the end of my sessions. I’ll devote time specifically to crafting, usually while I’m doing something else. Lots of afk time while I hammer out all those ingots. Just keep your map set to wherever there’s an appropriate crafting facility for your trade. Pop there at the end of a session, and craft the next day while you do housework or have lunch.
And you certainly don’t have to craft if you don’t want to. Before I started crafting, I just sold my raw ore and wood to vendors. Tier 1-3 materials don’t seem to sell for much more on the AH than they do to vendors, and it’s a lot quicker to just dump it for the fixed price. Wood especially, as it requires expensive wax to treat.
It gets tough when you have five characters. I’ll devote lengthy sessions to bringing them all to my house to swap stuff in the chests. I have every profession covered, so just about every trophy I acquire needs to go to someone.
And, of course, there are my notorious spreadsheets to maintain, a source of amusement to my Kinnies. But they stop laughing when they have a question and I find the answer on one of my 33 Excel pages! 😀
I guess I am the odd one since I usually do this stuff when I log in.
WoW: If I log out away from a city I just start off where I left off Emptying packs, mending armor. In inn I check mail (moving things around to alts, AH wins, losses, sales, and things from friends). AH stuff. Emptying packs and dealing with the bank and guild bank.
If I logged off at a safe place I just start up from where I started.
EQ2: If I logged off in my house, Check sales on the Broker, go out and check and move collection items between alts (shinies, spells, equipment and recipes), empty packs (selling, bank and guild bank), and up grade abilities if needed.
If I logged off at a safe place I just start up from where I started. One advantage that EQ2 has is that while it only lists one quest at a time, it stays listed when you relog in and much handier for you to figure out what you were doing.
Both games take between 5 and 30 minutes depending on the amount of items in the mail box I am moving around.
I’ll tend to sign out a lot faster than Margie, to be sure. I’m also a lot faster to “Oops, I guess I should have auctioned that” than she is.
I prefer to auction before I sign out, since the auction can be going on during time logged out.
And when I sign on — I want to Adventure and Be Heroic, not start off the day running errands for myself. 🙂
Well, Auction (WoW) v Broker (EQ2) I am sure works much differently than it does on LotR.
WoW is a set time of 48, 24, or 12 hours, and all auctions of all your alts can be running at the same time. You can only do auction house things in one of the major original cities or in one of the three (?) Neutral Auction Houses. You get your money or things you bought via the mail, which is very annoying. Also, only folks from the same side can buy from you.
EQ2 is a Broker. Only one auction per side will appear for sale at the same time, so I tend to alternate between good alts and evil alts. Brokers are in the city and two are at major Docks (transition points between many zones). You can buy from aligned/neutral brokers, drop off things for sale, pick up cash from sales and every thing you buy shows up in your pack right after you buy it. Also, in your house you have either a (or bigger houses allow multiple) sales board that you can get your cash or put things up for sale but not buy, which is nice when you log out from your house (or anyones House/Guild Hall).
All items on the the broker stay for sale until sold. This works great for driving down the prices of items. You can go in and chage the prices of things that you have for sale at any broker or sales board.
While in CoX auctions are “when someone bids at the price I set, they get it,” auctions in LotRO have a minimum threshold price of what you could sell it for, and you define the duration (paying more up front for a longer auction).
All alts can be auctioning things. No limits there.
Auctions can only be held from some major cities — but they are, indeed, major nexii for adventures, so that’s not much of a hardship. Because mailboxes are much more ubiquitous, it’s painless that you get results (your earnings or your stuff back) that way; it’s more convenient than CoX having to go back to an auction house.
I think I prefer the LotRO mechanism (to CoX), as it lets you know what you’re likely to earn as a baseline and the results are convenient to pick up.