Doddler's RO Journal
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Trials of the Gods - Virtual Okolnir
By Doddler on January 23, 2009 in category 'General'
Continuing my unfortunate tradition of posting things weeks or months after they actually happen, I wanted to describe the experience we had with the new god item creation quest. Currently in testing on the iRO Sakray server, the WoE2 god item creation test 'Virtual Okolnir' requires a full group of 16-20 players to attempt a series of challenges within a one hour time limit. While I was a bit concerned that we wouldn't get experienced players if we organized a team out of random people, but in the end the group we got were a pretty good team.
Those unfamiliar with the god item quest can read up on it at the RO future wiki.
You begin in the Mystic Garden, a hedge maze of sorts with flowers that block your path. These flowers however change position every 2 minutes, effectively re-organizing the maze. When you first start you begin next to your past self; a biolabs 2f monster of your base class that bears your name. Once defeated, the garden becomes populated with your future selves, which is represented by the full family of level 99 biolabs minibosses (18 of them in total), all of which need to be defeated before you can exit.
Unfortunately our attempt didn't get off to a good start. We went in understanding the nature of the shifting maze, and we were also familiar with the dangers that lurked inside the maze. What we weren't prepared for however was how cruel the maze itself was. When I heard the term 'maze' I went in with the expectation that there was always a path from point A to point B wherever those points may be, but it turns out that's just not the case. The maze is actually composed of a series of completely walled off sections, and when the maze shifts, it simply creates a new set of walled off sections.
As you might have imagined, the chance that some helpless members of your team will end up locked in a small room with Lord Knight Seyren and Mastersmith Howard is in fact rather high. We actually wiped entirely when they first appeared, as we were really unprepared for it. Luckily, it turns out that you can freely enter during the one hour time limit (as long as there are less than 20 people currently on the map). The mystic garden probably took longer than any other phase of the dungeon, taking us about 20-25 minutes.
Thats a lot of people! Anyways once you get out of the Mystic Garden, you travel along a path through the sky. Here there are both Garden Keepers and Garden Watchers. The Garden Watcher is a male 'Dame of Sentinel', only differentiated in stats by it's much higher HP, ability to shield reflect, and inability to use snatch. The Garden Keepers here however are your true objective, little guys that flee when you attack them. They drop the Crystal Key, needed to enter the next area of Okolnir.
When we did it we found out that the keys are bound do your character, which ended up costing us some extra time. What it means is that each person will end up having to pick up the item themselves. Since they're boss monsters, you'll want to make sure you have the right party settings for item drops or it'll cost you some time here.
After everyone has their crystal key, you can enter the room of Piamette. Piamette sits on a chair in the center of the room, surrounded by various toy like monsters (Alice / Ancient Mimic / Violy). When she sees you enter the room she recognizes you as birds, animals that need to be caged. She periodically sets a magic trap on the ground, and a party member who touches that trap is locked away in one of the 6 cages around the room. When all cages are filled, barricades appear near each cage. Destroying each of these frees your teammates from the cages, and upon seeing her birds set free, Piamette becomes angry and leaves her seat to attack the party.
The whole process has to be completed relatively quickly, from making sure your party members activate the magic traps to breaking the barricades. We didn't fill all 6 cages the first time, and the script reset and we got it on the second try. It shouldn't be too hard for a real party to do it, though taking the barricades out fast enough is pretty tricky.
Piamette herself isn't actually all that hard, though we failed to keep her properly under control which made the battle much harder than it needed to be. If we had it tanked against a wall I don't think it would have been a problem. Her area status effects and hell's judgement screwed a few people up, and our biochemist heavy party as you can see didn't deal especially well with her 5 vit. It was annoying, but we eventually finished her off and continued out.
With time running out, we fought our way up to the Okolnir temple. This stage has large groups of frus, skogul, and then garden watchers summoned. Of these monsters, there are about 20 of each that are marked as guardians, and defeating them kills the remaining of that type of monster. There is a certain degree of risk pulling 50-60 frus or skogul back to the party at a time however.
We did ok, though we had to rely on stormgust to keep the frus and skogul frozen in order to properly take them on. As a tank, I don't think I could hold that many for very long at all, and I ended up dying a few times while pulling monsters.
In the screenshot you'll have to understand that the Sakray test server has increased exp and drops.
Same scene, a few moments later as a wall of Frus crash into the party.
Battleing our way up the staircase towards where the Wish Maiden is awaiting us. The amount of garden watchers here was quite frightening, like the Frus and Skogul they're not the kind of monster you're generally prepared to deal with 40 or so at a time.
Time is running out...
After clearing the garden watchers the Wish Maiden attacks us. The one minute marker in the screenshot shows how little time we have left. While Wish Maiden doesn't take kindly to being icewalled, the resulting firestorm was better than letting her march through the party, and would be required for us to complete it in the time limit.
Victory! Based on the screenshot times, we completed the trial with just 10-15 seconds remaining, a truely close call.
Oh yeah. 
And there you have it, Okolnir completed on the first run. It was not without cost, we reported over 3000 acid bombs were used, thousands of mastella fruits and sp recovery items, and players were expertly geared using items provided on Sakray for testing. It wasn't easy, but it was a hell of a good time.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to come along. I look forward to doing this all again on Valkyrie, this time for real. 
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The Arrival of Satan Morocc
By Doddler on December 19, 2008 in category 'General'
I'm posting this about a week later than I was expecting, but now that I have a free moment, I figured I'd get on with it!
Valkyrie war of emperium continues to be exciting. We continue to perform quite strongly... while we still maintain a bit of an advantage fort wise, the battlefield is evening out resource wise as we conceed some of our forts to the enemies and they hold economy castles. The longer this goes on, and the more the supplies even out though I'm starting to see more and more that many of our members are very skilled and are a large part in why we've been doing so good. Its still interesting that we remain competative though, because even with this, we've never functioned as a single unit, we are always defending at least two separate forts at a time. Its exciting even with these odds to face off against guilds that are able to go all-in against us.
I've still been making siege videos, but I haven't been uploading them here on a regular basis. If there's any demand I might start making a WoE video playlist like I've done with my other videos.
Maya Purple card is hax!
So as people already know, episode 12 arrived about a week and a half ago. While main servers go the update flat out, what they did on the free server was have a two week early access event. Players who purchased the poring key would be able to access the new content two weeks before the remainder of the server. Obviously things like the new drops, cards, etc aren't restricted but the new maps quests and systems are. Well, its a decent plan, I don't have anything against it. The key is only 200 points anyways, which is somewhere in the ballpark of $1.50 now. With lots of things to do, I didn't waste time to get the key.
Obviously it would be pointless to partake in the Satan Morroc update without ever actually saying hi to the big guy himself, so I set out to do so.
It turns out he was less happy to see me than me see him, thats for sure.
I spent some time in battlegrounds since they're actually pretty fun and the rewards are also nice. We spent most of our time doing Tierra Canyon, since a fact of the matter being that Flavius is too hard for the players on Valkyrie server (the guardians are much too strong). Tierra isn't too bad though, I disliked its direct approach at first but I'm starting to get a feel for it and despite its quick pace it is always exciting.
The map itself has also been very impressive... in fact I think the two bases in Tierra canyon probably sport some of the best visual design of a map in Ragnarok in recent history. RO has not always been known for its impressive scenery, but when you see them, you might think differently. Recent map work such as this, the new world and the new cities really impress me with the looks. I guess you can still make an old game look good.
The Croix food depot in Tierra Canyon. While not quite as impressive looking, its still pretty good.
I did just enough matches to get my battleground spear as a reward. Its a pretty sexy weapon!
Clearly no episode 12 post can be complete without a trip to the endless tower.
To be honest I wasn't too sure how well we'd fair. We had some trans characters with us, but Valkyrie is still a new server, so good gears are still a bit on the rare side of things. Somehow though we ended up pulling a really well balanced party, and ended up doing suprisingly well.
Out of everything we managed to pull off, I never expected to be able to clear floor 80 and defeat the Fallen Bishop. The bishop represents a huge step in difficulty from the lower bosses, and while this screenshot might make it look like we had an easy time, it truely wasn't. Our party wiped a total of about 4 separate times here, and I must admit I even had life insurance on a hotkey since I didn't want to lose experience at level 96. Still, the act of defeating him represents a huge achievement, and most certainly the first Fallen Bishop kill of Valkyrie server.
Overall, endless tower was a very exciting time. It was also profitable... the list of rare items we obtained is too long to really include it in this post. Key things we got though, were several cards (red ferus, lava golem, and something else), spikey band, fortune sword, 2x s1 rings, and the big catch of the day, a hunting spear from the Fallen Bishop. Oh yeah.
Setting aside some of episode 12 content, I decided to make a priest character to assist in doing Abyss Lake leveling. Previously I had just relied on the guild account to do so, which while it worked, meant that lots of times the account would be in use or it would be taken out of the dungeon.
In the end I decided the easiest way to do that would be to hunt for items for iro's repeatable exp quests. While I do have some criticism about hte repeatable exp quests, mainly that it not only encourages botting of the turnin items as well as the purchase of zeny to literally buy levels, they are fairly convenient if your plan is just to leech a character. Realistically the exp turnins are much slower than actually leeching a character and probably more designed to supplement leveling rather than use them to level another char, I didn't have much of a desire to make a character to leech the aco. Not many people hunt the bacillus exp turnin, so I spent some time here to help get the priest to job 50.
Hunting dragons is not always without its risks, and there are always a bunch of angry monsters waiting to get in your way.
This is how you hunt for stone bucklers!
Oh yeah. 
My current stockpile of shields! I might upgrade them, might trade them for something else, I guess we'll have to see.
And in closing, bio3 is a really scary place when there's no one around to clear it. 
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The Really Really Long Catch-Up Post
By Doddler on December 5, 2008 in category 'General'
Its been a really long time since I've done a journal post hasn't it? Screenshots are going back to the end of october! So I guess I'll start there, and do a big catch-up post.
We'll be starting with the halloween invasion event. Aside from a guest appearance by Mr. Beelzebub, it was a fun time.
At the time of the invasion most of the server's players were fairly under geared for the job of taking out necromancers, but I think we did ok.
It was fairly epic experience for a buch of level 80 characters to be throwing down necromancers, thats for sure.
Elsewhere in prontera, Beelzebub was having his way with the locals.
...Ouch.
Of course I had to try, right?
Many people had presumed the GMs had removed Beelzebub, but word has it that a valiant group of players, hiding in a corner of town battled Beelzebub for several hours before he fell. I wonder who that could be, that defeated him? 
Some screenshots we had of an older woe... I think it was November 3rd? Was the first of the epic fights we had against Inertia to take a woe2 fort back.
Even as early as the start of november we've been doing crazy things like this. Valk shields are quite the amazing piece of gear, and its none too hard to get them either. Of course in the end we had to kill 18 valkyries to get our first shield...
Another shot at Orc Lord's Earthquake. This time, we were prepared.
Our party was even capable of killing RSX... though he's nearly faded by the time I took the screenshot. The trick is to hover above 50% and only take him into EQ range once his power up ends. Then you never have to worry about his powered up quake.
In our quest for epic tank gear, our quest took us from odin's temple and the hunt for Odin's Blessings to Abyss Lake, searching for Stone Bucklers and magni's caps.
Hydrolancer isn't so bad when you've got the people for the job!
Seal quest rolled around on Valkyrie mid November, and I managed to snag myself a ballista. I'm kind of disapointed, since I'm in desperate need of an ice pick, but its not a bad catch. I'll probably end up breaking it slotting it if I ever get any zeny.
First Solo kill of Pharaoh using an Ahlspeiss. Remember, don't try this at home. He hurts like hell without a shield!
People will tell you you need assumptio to level in thors. I think thats a lie. Armed with my trusty odin set and heavy stone buckler, I was able to tank Kasa's without the use of assumptio. It sure sucked when I got clashing'd when pneuma went down, dealing 10000-12000 damage, but its not something that couldn't be survived. Thats why we bring tank characters right?
Of course it doesn't always go right. 
So in my need for a Raydric garment I spent a fair deal of time hunting in the Chivalry. Its not cheap, but hopefully it will pay off if I end up getting a card. I probably spend more time killing AK's than raydrics, but an Abysmal Knight card wouldn't be a bad deal either.
After a while I finally decided that its just way easier to spear boomerange the AK's than to tank them. Takes a while longer but its easier on my HP.
Sometimes piercing is fine too.
I'm sure you noticed that the pierce in this screenshot is higher than the one a few above. I decided to test out one of the rental items from the kafra shop, the Baphomet Horns.
These Baphomet Horns. In a way I think I support the rental items. The Baphomet Horns aren't any stronger than the ones you obtain from completing the sealed shrine for example (actually its worse), but in a temporary, kind of pricy kafra shop form. I don't think its bad they allow players access to late game gears in rental form, it makes it easier to play catch up on main servers, which is a good thing. Its less of an issue on valk though, when no one actually has these end game gears. Well it would be really expensive to rely on the rentals!
Yay, slotted helm.
So I made my leveling spear with the help of my guild. SP has always been a bit of an issue, and this spear fixes that!
A cool view!
Just watch that damage fly off! And yes... I am wearing a nekomimi cap to tank Ktullanux. Don't laugh!
More valk mini hunting! Interesting angle.
I've only ever killed a single rideword on my knight, and this happens. Why isn't it a raydric? Well, at least its worth something, sold it for 1.4m.
Did I ever mention just how much I enjoy the Kiel Hyre quest? I suppose its worth mentioning again. Its a pretty awesome quest. Its got interesting characters, it actually flows reasonably naturally for a quest with a good sense of direction, which is something that RO has historically had a serious problem with, and its rewarding. What more could you want?
Our questing spree took us to Thanatos Tower for the Dandelion's Request. Its another quest which I enjoy, though the requirement to go to Thanatos Tower 4F is pretty rough for most players.
A line that you might see used again once Satan Morroc is ressurected on iRO.
Like Kiel Hyre the Dandelion's Request has an interesting showdown and some pretty interesting characters. Its not actually hard but its still fun. Lin and Kidd are actually re-occuring characters, and the pair take a leading role in the Morroc Investigation and New World Expedition in future game updates. Its pretty neat.
When I did the quest I followed Kidd's route, since I think as a story it flows better. Doing Lin's route separately helps improve your appreciation of the two-sided nature of the quest. Its almost a shame its going to be removed, though clearly it makes sense. How can you attempt to stop Satan Morroc's ressurection when he's already been ressurected?
My reward for finishing the quest. Yay for ugly masks?
So I've decided Dark Tychon is probably the luckiest bastard on the server. An MVP card already... quite suprising!
No one is getting past me.
War of Emperium has evened out a fair bit since last time I posted about it. The split woes has really made things much more interesting, its almost a shame they didn't do it at an earlier time. We're down to about 5 woe2 econ forts in our guild, and two econ'd woe1 forts. Its clear the scene is getting more competative, which is always fun.
Barricade battle!
Stepping outside of a castle in woe usually ends up like this. I know you guys like the site but its a bit much! 
My current WoE equipment. Yeah thats pretty hax stuff... even by main server standards!
Ktullanux killing with two hindsight sages as killers. It went faster than I expected but, I can't say I went in with very high expectations!
Rachel Sanctuary status as of a week or two ago. It will probably open before the end of december.
The guardian drop squad! It was actually trapped at the time but yeah.
I think this trip is the first time I've ever actually seen anyone else inside volcano thors, guess other players are starting to get up to the range where they can do it. It didn't really help that the first time I saw someone I was dragging 4 imps from our leveling area and winging. Oops! The threatened to send in screenshots and get me banned for mob training. How kind of them...
More people in the guild being stupidly lucky...
...This is going to hurt.
Bio3 leveling is fairly fun, if a little dangerous. Root killing is pretty effective I think, and fairly safe when you manage to get all the really angry stuff like snipers away. Unfortunately bio3 is a very ugly place and when you're the only one down there no one has done any mob control.
Oh yeah, all solo! Time's are certainly changing on valkyrie.
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Time Passes
By Doddler on October 30, 2008 in category 'General'
Its hard to find time to write entries on here sometimes you know? You'll find today's entry is probably quite disjointed, because I'm quite tired while writing this. Sorry!
Anyways, carrying off from last time.
The grand circlet we got from orc lord.
Somehow I still haven't found my Thara Frog card, despite many hours of hunting. These days the bots, and other bad things are wandering around down there. Some things are a bit much for a solo knight.
This is one of those bad things!
Long image is long! But yeah, without the Rachel Sanctuary open we can't obviously enter Rachel Sanctuary, but it also means that we can't complete the quest for Nameless Island. The whole 500m in donations thing doesn't work so well on a new server.
Well it looks like its going down somehow. My guess though is that its only 12 player donations and some 3000 'mysterious' donations. The GMs are suggesting that the other citizens of Midgard and Arunafeltz are also making donations. I say they're just paying it down over time. Either way it means we will eventually see the sanctuary on Valkyrie, even if it will probably be another month or so before it happens.
It appears as though my 50k donation was worth this apt reward. No wonder no one donates!
Its nice that the price of enriched elunium is so much cheaper now on the Valkyrie server. However, with the near requirement to use it to get any safe upgrading (on all but the most common gears), I wonder how much cheaper it really turns out in the long run. Rumor has it that the regular upgrade rates past the safe point, and even enriched elunium rates are also nerfed. That would be pretty bad though... even 30 points it would be a lot of equipment, and money to get good items.
...The least they could do is put the enriched in boxes so you can gift them or at least not have stacks of individual stones.
Obviously 4/4 success to +4.
Half down 4 to 5, rest gone going +6. Well I didn't do enough to make any real conclusion about the rate anyways.
Just a random mob that seemed to spontaneously come out of nowhere. Almost died due to trying to take a screenshot!
Guild treasures graced me with this rather entertaining item.
It didn't take long of killing hordes of easy monsters to pull together a small stockpile of potions. These guys are pretty useful, and the card certainly made it much easier to get than actually potting them. I guess the actual rate is about 0.5% for each type of potion.
Dead branches are a common issue on Valkyrie, and occasionally we get asked, or simply feel like taking them out. Unfortunately its quite possible to summon monsters that are very dangerous.
2k damage short! 
Probably not the best one of my ideas I've ever had.
War of Emperium has generally been quite exciting on Valkyrie, and we generally get some pretty good turnout. While we still hold the majority of the woe2 forts, there's still some good times to be had.
While we are not directly allied to Crissagrim and Destrado, we did help them out on the Saturday war to defend their woe2 fort. The alternative, Inertia or Ragequit holding those forts would have been much worse.
At this point, emperiums are still fairly resilient objects, taking even a group such as this at least a minute to break. Its my opinion that the emperiums should probably be stronger because while its fairly balanced at this point, later some classes can get some pretty obscene break times and it makes the emperium seem laughably weak.
I've been tasked with checking castle treasures some times when the guild leader is unable to do so. Generally our woe2 forts don't drop much interesting beyond the elemental bows since most of the gear they drop is fairly common, trans only stuff. We do get a decent number of treasure boxes and OCAs though.
The best we've gotten so far!
Of course we've been continuing to MVP still. Some other players are stepping up to kill the Atroces... my guild mates say its probably because I've posted about how to do them! Regardless, we still usually get the opportunity to take out the Atroces when we look for them.
The new zombie event is pretty cool! I have to give them props for the idea, because its fairly unique to a game like RO. Basically, you get warped to a copy of the Payon map, filled to the brim with zombies and ghouls. You can't bring any gear with you (have to be on 0 weight before entering), and can't be using a peco or cart. You can't use any skills on this map, and your HP is set to 1%... generally any attack from one of these monsters that lands will kill you. You have to make your way to one of the exits of the town while avoiding the angry undead.
The concept is actually fairly original and it is pretty fun to do for a bit. I can't help but think the execution is a little lacking though... Payon isn't exactly a scary place. In fact, its fairly wide open, and the zombies while being fairly sparratic and being quick to switch to the nearest living creature, they're easily predictable and its quite easy to simply get agi up before entering. AGI classes definately have an advantage here, because while those of us who don't dodge usually die instantly to a ghouls 300-400 damage melee, its still a ghoul and most agi characters don't have a problem evading their attacks. Also the randomized exits while sound like a decent idea at first, it usually just comes down to sitting and waiting for someone to activate one of the other portals and waiting for the exit you're at to become active. I suppose that does make it so people are always going to different exits though.
The rewards, since they improved them during a surprise maintenance are alright, the event probably isn't worth a whole lot beyond getting your event pumpkin hat (+3 to all stats for the week) and the novelty of being chased by undead through payon.
I got my hat! It takes 20 runs through to get it. The other rewards aren't really that worth it. The Pumpkin Pie is merely passable as a recovery item, and while its cool that it gives SP, even after the patch I can't justify two runs through payon for an item that gives you 5% HP and SP (about 4-5 mins of running). Well I got a few since the zombie run is pretty fun but its not really practical, nor desirable to really keep doing it for the items. A nice distraction though.
iRO has just recently added these little guys to the Kafra Shop, and for a decent price I might add (10 for 50 points). If only all kafra shop items could have similar price to value.
I actually do really like the idea of the Convex Mirror. What it means, is that it takes the weight off of actually finding the boss monster (or when it spawns) and makes it about killing the boss monster. At times you find you spend much more time actually looking for the boss than you ever do actually killing it. All too common on Loki and other servers, is that the actual act of finding the boss, and finding the boss before someone else does is actually the real battle.
Certainly a handy little tool.
While our orc lord run last week went fairly smoothly, it doesn't always go as nice. Sometimes, if people simply don't pay attention, then things can go drastically wrong. In this case a certain killer ignored us when we told him to ease off and caused us to get hit by his powered up earthquake, something we rely on avoiding. 50 DKP Minus!
The Ahlspeiss is certainly a handy spear! Bypassing defense on boss monsters is cool. I'd prefer a brocca personally, but I'm willing to let it slide for now.
I can't say exactly why we decided to do so, but we decided to take on Vesper. We didn't really expect it to be easy, and certainly like half our party dies in 2-3 hits to Dimiks, but we decided to give it a shot.
Of course it goes without saying that the Juperos quest is actually quite cool. I'm quite fond of it really, there's very few party oriented quests such as this one.
Actually killing Vesper didn't go quite as smoothly as planned. Part of the issue was due to the fact that we had intended to bring a dedicated safety waller... however he accidentally returned to town while we were already in Juperos Core. Having our main killer also be the main safety waller doesn't always fly with Vespers massive mob, when Vesper also has the ability to deal fatal crits that one shot the tank.
Still, when we actually got it rolling it wasn't so bad.
Victory! No drops of value though.
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