Room to spare

With the influx of so much new shiny, you'd think I'd have plenty to keep me occupied when I get home from work. And I do, it's just that presented with so many options I tend to lock up and can't decide what to do.

So after dinner last night, I just went with my old standby, EQ2. Since I played my carpenter up from 50 - 62 primarily on the new TSO instances, I had a backlog of Carpenter recipes to get through. Including the new Wantia recipes from the Village of Shin. An hour or so at the woodworking table, and I was 15% through 64 with all recipes completed.

Taking Kasul's advice from this post I headed to the daily tradeskill instance to grind out the rest of level 64, even though my vitality was shot. Why would I do this you ask? Well... it has to do with space.

See, I'm an altaholic. I've got 24 characters on Antonia Bayle. They are all in the same guild, spread across two accounts, and space is at a premium for me. I don't have enough of it. Malfi (my main) has had a bank account stuffed to the gills since about level 2. I'm an insatiable collector of anything that isn't nailed down. And I never throw anything away. I still have some blown glass tradeskill components on my alchemist, and those have been out of game for over a year - or is it two now?

I need space.

Level 65, for carpenters, has the LOVELY Rosewood Strong Boxes. 32 slots of storage goodness! And I need 334 of them. So my goal was to hit 65 and start grinding out the storage for my bank slots. I managed to upgrade all of Yrkin's (Carpenter) bank slots as well as Maellendy's (Alchemist) before I headed to bed. This weekend I hope to finish off the rest of the characters on my main account and start working on the second.

I'm also going to make some Ebony Furniture Shelves so all the bits and bobs I've made over the past 20 levels can get onto the broker and stop clogging up my bank space!

My next tradeskiller to focus on will be the tailor, as my alt army needs storage space while adventuring. Texl is only in his 20s now, so he has a long way to go, but with experience potions and full vitality he should be able to get there fairly quickly.

Holiday Gaming

I'll admit it. I spoiled myself ROTTEN this holiday season. Despite dire predictions by my manager, I actually pulled in a very respectable end of year bonus for all my hard work in 2008. Enough to pay off the debt I wanted to tackle and leave some left over for fun! My holiday gaming gift(s) to myself were:

Guitar Hero III w/ guitar (PS3)
Guitar Hero World Tour w/complete band (PS3)
Wii Fit (Wii) - Thank you Canadia!!
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party (Wii)
Ultimate Ghosts N' Goblins (PSP) - Circuit City bargain bin
Devil May Cry 2 (PS2) - Circuit City bargain bin
Myst (DS) - Circuit City bargain bin
Lock's Quest (DS)
Lord of the Rings Online Lifetime Subscription and Mines of Moria (PC)

Let it be know I did my part to support the American (and Canadian) economy!! And my amazing family gave me two more Wii Motes and two more Nunchucks. Merry Christmas to me! I can't wait to crack into all of them with friends, especially World Tour and Rayman. I'd forgotten how much fun the Guitar Hero series is and have really enjoyed getting back into it.

For now, though, my gaming is focused on a golden oldy. Like many of the bloggers I read, I have a HUUUUUUUGE backlog of single player games for my consoles that I haven't finished. My current goal is to finish off God of War I, so I can work through GoW II. I last seriously played GoW in April of 2007, where I got stuck on the beam walk section of Hade's Challenge and, after dying many, MANY multiples of times, gave up in frustration. When I fired it up the other night I buzzed right through that and completed a huge chunk of the remainder of the game.

After I finish Kratos' journey I may look in on Dante and work through the Devil May Cry series. Or maybe I'll finish up the Prince's journey through Persia. So much good gaming to be done, and the freezing heart of winter is the perfect time to do it!