104 Beats That: EQ2

 I spent much of yesterday flying through hoops. Hadn't intended to but sometimes that's just how life turns out.

Norrath's travelling Festival rolled up at Halas last week giving The Flying Freebooters the excuse they needed to charge their boosters and set up the death-trap they call a racing circuit. I have no idea who the Freebooters are, other than yet another set of gnomes with a pirate fixation and a desire to find new and exciting ways to get us all killed testing another half-baked engineering project. 

Psst! Ladies! Wanna see my Crash Pad?

The gnomes offer a bribe for flying in races meant to knock the kinks out of their contraptions at no risk to themselves. It's a "C.R.A.S.H. Pad" that looks like a cut-down Enterprise. You can use it as a ground mount or as an appearance mount for flying if you have an actual flying mount. Most of my characters already have at least one so I wasn't planning on racing, but the gnomes had a juicier inducement on offer and my plans changed.

You get the mount just for completing five circuits. Anyone can do that. But if you can do it fast enough you get a title. Not just a title, a prefix. Everyone wants a good prefix and Mrs Bhagpuss especially wanted this one - Snowflake Chaser. So did I, come to that.

One careful owner

Flying the races gives Mrs Bhagpuss motion sickness so the actual piloting falls to me. Not usually a problem. I learned to do these races in DCUO, which uses the exact same system, and the Norrathian version is generally much easier. Generally, but not specifically. I found the Frostfang Sea course exceedingly hard.

To get the title you need to complete the course in 104 seconds. After a dozen tries my best time was 116. My average time was more like 124. Worse, I couldn't figure out how to improve. I'd have given up had a guildie not logged on for his once-a-week casual session, taken a couple of runs at it for practice and then and nailed the damn thing on his next run with a second to spare.

Frustration This Way

I couldn't tell myself it was plain impossible now I'd just seen it done, so I tried a bunch more times and still got nowhere. I went in search of inspiration. And more inspiration. I watched those two videos and at last I could see exactly what I'd been doing wrong. I got back on the horse bike C.R.A.S.H. Pad and tried again. And I still couldn't do it!

This time, though, at least I was getting close. 106 seconds. Then 105. So many 105s... Refine, refine, refine. Shave that hoop. Cut that corner. Hit every booster, miss every cloud until you find your dream. 

Ratonga pilot + gnomish engineering = fireworks

It took me around six hours to get the title on four characters. Time well spent? Well, I got this blog post out of it. And Mrs Bhagpuss and I are both Snowflake Chasers. Twice.