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Downfall of a video card? And Double XP Weekend Report
Well shoot. Okay, what computer deity did I piss off this year?
Maybe it is past its prime, but my computer is certainly still working. Today was the day that I spent pretty much playing City of Heroes because of Double XP weekend. Last one this year I believe. (I'll have to check out the CoH calendar to make certain.)
I definitely did not get my highest level Blaster Sirian out to 47 like I had hoped. But I did get him to 45.4. I think I started playing just before noon. I decided to go ahead and work on Tina Macintyre's story arc, which I just started. By the way, I was so damn close on finishing that 10 minute timed mission. I only had one more glowy to find and I knew where the sound was coming from. I just had to get there. But the time I took to rest to recouperate the HP I was losing from racing through the enemies and my connection settling times were against me. Really, you're supposed to fail it, though if you have a team or are just lucky and know to race to the glowies, you can possibly make it.
I had to drop one mission with psychic clockwork because the boss level Cannon Princes were kicking my ass. It was weird, because I wasn't expecting so many bosses. I found out the cause later.
I lost steam about 4pm when I decided I better talk to Indigo and start the Malta arc before I outleveled it. Bad idea. I finished the first one which was a Crey/Malta one. And the two to take down at the end where both level 45 bosses. Ouch. I was level 44 at the time, though very close 45. It hits me after the second defeat that maybe my reputation had been changed and maybe I should go check it out. And indeed it had been. I was running on the third toughest setting, Rugged. I usually run on Heroic because, well he's a squishy Blaster and I die enough as it is. So I moved it down to Tenacious and see if that went any better.
With enough Lucks to keep the two bosses from hitting me, I took them down and went on to do more in Indigo's arc. I heard about it, but its another thing to see the time wasted on it. Get used to traveling back and forth fedexing information between Indigo and Crimson. Because they're a tandem team of spies and damn if they don't want to use cell phones. And to think this must have been even more annoying before Ouroborus was put in with its extra ways of traveling.
Let me say this up front. The Malta bosses are OMG hard, and the rest of the group is not the definition of a cake walk. Ow. The Malta trashed me several times each mission. If it wasn't the Operatives stunning me and making me useless, it was the Gunslingers ripping my HP down to nothing. Then there are the Sappers. Apparently my first run in with them last Double XP weekend doesn't even begin to describe the annoyingness of these people. The Titans were nothing compared to those three...so far. I haven't ran into anything else than Lt. Hercules Titans yet. I heard about Titans combining though. That should be interesting.
Though, running Malta on Tenacious may not be the best idea in the world. I'll have to change the rep and try again later. So, after a few missions, around 6ish I went back to working Tina's arc. Praetorians aren't a bad thing to fight. Lots and lots of blue Clockwork-like mobs. Oh and random Carnies as we try to figure out what's going on.
So I take a break around 7pm from fighting and refit Sirian with some cheap-ish Invention Origin sets to help him out against psychic enemies. He has no resistance to them, and so they hurt a lot more. And I was hoping to find something to help with the mezzing and stunning that keep taking him down.
At 7:30pm I went out jogging. I got back to playing about 8:30-ish. I decided to go do the Midnighter Club missions so I can open up access to Cimerora. See, I had done these before with Shelke, my new Scrapper, so I didn't expect them to take too long and it would help in gaining XP. Forgot how easily the Rikti mez my Blaster, and that I was running it on Tenacious. And really, does Tenacious really cause so many Chief Soldiers (Rikti bosses) to appear in missions? Because that was damn annoying.
Lets just say that I saw the inside of the hospital many times this weekend. I even ended up using the Holiday Debt Protection gift I hadn't used yet to make it a lot faster to work off the debt. (It gives like half debt protection. Pretty nice.) I just really need to remember to work at range and to carry a lot more Break Frees (mez protection). Really, the easiest part of the entire arc was a) talking to the latin student, and b) taking down Ci'Dion twice with lots of Lucks.
I make it to Cimerora, and yes I'll post pictures later, and holy crap are those level 50s on patrol? I didn't know if they were on my side or not, so I kinda held back and followed them to the village I was supposed to go to. See, I was sent here to meet Imperious, the disposed ruler of Cimerora. And I did go see him, and hear the tale of the villagers. But since its a small zone and other than the Imperious Task Force and the repeatable missions (ala Borea from the Rikti War Zone), there's nothing to do there. So I went back to working on the next thing to catch my attention: the Origin missions.
And here's where my computer problems start again. While I was on the third mission, I started seeing verticle striping on my screen every so often. Not good. And my computer case feels pretty warm. Okay, well, the video card's probably overheating. Lemme get my character to a safe place and stop so I can open the case up. In which I managed to park my character in front of Manticore. By then, more glitches had popped up and verticle striping.
I went ahead and shut the computer down, took the can of air and blew out the fans carefully. A bit dusty but not too bad. I started it back up with the case off, made sure that all the fans were moving properly and made sure it loaded all the way back up. And little tiny square glitches were making their way onto my screen after login. I did start City of Heroes up again, but I got a few quick verticle stripes before I saw a checkerboard pattern not long after logging in. I logged off, then signal to the monitor was lost while the program was closing. I just held down the power button at that point until the computer shut down.
So, yay, video card's overheating again. Goody. I've lost the last two video cards to fans that tried to die on me. This one's fan is moving but I don't know how much airflow I should be feeling from it. Its going to sit off overnight and I'll see how it behaves tomorrow.
I wonder if those loud plastic snaps I've been hearing was from the video card. The snap sounds like when you depress the side of a water bottle and when it pops back out again by itself... that's the sound I've been hearing. I've heard it three times now, once tonight.
Also, if you're wondering, I'm posting this from my mom's machine.
So overall, this weekend wasn't a total bust gaming-wise. I did level Shelke up to level 24 on Friday, so that's going well. And at least I got Sirian closer to level 50. One of these days I'll get there. :>
Maybe it is past its prime, but my computer is certainly still working. Today was the day that I spent pretty much playing City of Heroes because of Double XP weekend. Last one this year I believe. (I'll have to check out the CoH calendar to make certain.)
I definitely did not get my highest level Blaster Sirian out to 47 like I had hoped. But I did get him to 45.4. I think I started playing just before noon. I decided to go ahead and work on Tina Macintyre's story arc, which I just started. By the way, I was so damn close on finishing that 10 minute timed mission. I only had one more glowy to find and I knew where the sound was coming from. I just had to get there. But the time I took to rest to recouperate the HP I was losing from racing through the enemies and my connection settling times were against me. Really, you're supposed to fail it, though if you have a team or are just lucky and know to race to the glowies, you can possibly make it.
I had to drop one mission with psychic clockwork because the boss level Cannon Princes were kicking my ass. It was weird, because I wasn't expecting so many bosses. I found out the cause later.
I lost steam about 4pm when I decided I better talk to Indigo and start the Malta arc before I outleveled it. Bad idea. I finished the first one which was a Crey/Malta one. And the two to take down at the end where both level 45 bosses. Ouch. I was level 44 at the time, though very close 45. It hits me after the second defeat that maybe my reputation had been changed and maybe I should go check it out. And indeed it had been. I was running on the third toughest setting, Rugged. I usually run on Heroic because, well he's a squishy Blaster and I die enough as it is. So I moved it down to Tenacious and see if that went any better.
With enough Lucks to keep the two bosses from hitting me, I took them down and went on to do more in Indigo's arc. I heard about it, but its another thing to see the time wasted on it. Get used to traveling back and forth fedexing information between Indigo and Crimson. Because they're a tandem team of spies and damn if they don't want to use cell phones. And to think this must have been even more annoying before Ouroborus was put in with its extra ways of traveling.
Let me say this up front. The Malta bosses are OMG hard, and the rest of the group is not the definition of a cake walk. Ow. The Malta trashed me several times each mission. If it wasn't the Operatives stunning me and making me useless, it was the Gunslingers ripping my HP down to nothing. Then there are the Sappers. Apparently my first run in with them last Double XP weekend doesn't even begin to describe the annoyingness of these people. The Titans were nothing compared to those three...so far. I haven't ran into anything else than Lt. Hercules Titans yet. I heard about Titans combining though. That should be interesting.
Though, running Malta on Tenacious may not be the best idea in the world. I'll have to change the rep and try again later. So, after a few missions, around 6ish I went back to working Tina's arc. Praetorians aren't a bad thing to fight. Lots and lots of blue Clockwork-like mobs. Oh and random Carnies as we try to figure out what's going on.
So I take a break around 7pm from fighting and refit Sirian with some cheap-ish Invention Origin sets to help him out against psychic enemies. He has no resistance to them, and so they hurt a lot more. And I was hoping to find something to help with the mezzing and stunning that keep taking him down.
At 7:30pm I went out jogging. I got back to playing about 8:30-ish. I decided to go do the Midnighter Club missions so I can open up access to Cimerora. See, I had done these before with Shelke, my new Scrapper, so I didn't expect them to take too long and it would help in gaining XP. Forgot how easily the Rikti mez my Blaster, and that I was running it on Tenacious. And really, does Tenacious really cause so many Chief Soldiers (Rikti bosses) to appear in missions? Because that was damn annoying.
Lets just say that I saw the inside of the hospital many times this weekend. I even ended up using the Holiday Debt Protection gift I hadn't used yet to make it a lot faster to work off the debt. (It gives like half debt protection. Pretty nice.) I just really need to remember to work at range and to carry a lot more Break Frees (mez protection). Really, the easiest part of the entire arc was a) talking to the latin student, and b) taking down Ci'Dion twice with lots of Lucks.
I make it to Cimerora, and yes I'll post pictures later, and holy crap are those level 50s on patrol? I didn't know if they were on my side or not, so I kinda held back and followed them to the village I was supposed to go to. See, I was sent here to meet Imperious, the disposed ruler of Cimerora. And I did go see him, and hear the tale of the villagers. But since its a small zone and other than the Imperious Task Force and the repeatable missions (ala Borea from the Rikti War Zone), there's nothing to do there. So I went back to working on the next thing to catch my attention: the Origin missions.
And here's where my computer problems start again. While I was on the third mission, I started seeing verticle striping on my screen every so often. Not good. And my computer case feels pretty warm. Okay, well, the video card's probably overheating. Lemme get my character to a safe place and stop so I can open the case up. In which I managed to park my character in front of Manticore. By then, more glitches had popped up and verticle striping.
I went ahead and shut the computer down, took the can of air and blew out the fans carefully. A bit dusty but not too bad. I started it back up with the case off, made sure that all the fans were moving properly and made sure it loaded all the way back up. And little tiny square glitches were making their way onto my screen after login. I did start City of Heroes up again, but I got a few quick verticle stripes before I saw a checkerboard pattern not long after logging in. I logged off, then signal to the monitor was lost while the program was closing. I just held down the power button at that point until the computer shut down.
So, yay, video card's overheating again. Goody. I've lost the last two video cards to fans that tried to die on me. This one's fan is moving but I don't know how much airflow I should be feeling from it. Its going to sit off overnight and I'll see how it behaves tomorrow.
I wonder if those loud plastic snaps I've been hearing was from the video card. The snap sounds like when you depress the side of a water bottle and when it pops back out again by itself... that's the sound I've been hearing. I've heard it three times now, once tonight.
Also, if you're wondering, I'm posting this from my mom's machine.
So overall, this weekend wasn't a total bust gaming-wise. I did level Shelke up to level 24 on Friday, so that's going well. And at least I got Sirian closer to level 50. One of these days I'll get there. :>