Doddler's RO Journal
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Hocus Good Time
By Doddler on January 18, 2008 in category 'General'
So having given it some thought, I worked out the average cost of getting an MVP to spawn, in accordance to the average profit from getting each MVP with hocus pocus. The numbers wern't pretty, but that didn't stop me from resetting my sage ot hocus build. Don't ask why, but I felt like doing it.
I don't know why the 's' got cut off in my scribble though.
Did I ever mention that LoV looks cool? It also looks incredibly painful to be in, its a shame it isn't actually incredibly painful!
The best one, full guillotine fist as a sage. Way too much fun.
Unfortunately, we burned through 4000 yellow gems and didn't get a class change to summon an mvp (roughly 8m worth of yellow gems). I really wish they would adjust the skill to some degree, thats pretty harsh. The success rate should be 0.03% from my understanding of the skill. I'll probably hold off hocus'ing until the next batch of high level mvp's come out to help drive up profitability of spending millions on gems.
Finding a minstrel willing to come to thanatos tower is hard, its probably the only limiting factor to us being able to go up frequently to kill him. Anyone have a minstrel on loki? 
This screenshot here describes a failure to coordinate. In a perfect world, all monsters would be on the tank, and people would coordinate to kill those monsters and support the tank character. In a less than perfect world, the tank holds the monsters and the remainder of the party dies to additional monsters that they've pulled. We've been doing much better with practice, but we probably need a few more runs to get it going well.
While being uncoordinated for thanatos is one thing, lacking coordination for Randgris can lead to disastrous results.
As some of you know, gravity has changed the Valkyries in Randgris's mob so that they no longer drop shields. Or atleast, thats what you're lead to believe. Randgris spawns with a mob of normal valkyries that have full drops, including valkyrja's shield. However, should her initial mob die, she'll replace it with a bunch of ghost type valkryies, which have no drops.
Attempting to turn knowledge into profit resulted in this screenshot. I guess we just don't have the coordination yet to properly pull this off. In the time we took to kill two mob members, we could have killed the two valks on the map twice. And its a joy to know that when you kill two of her mob members, that she summons 3 more, making her just that much harder. The main issue really is that when she recalls her mob, which happens every 30 seconds or so, its hard to tell which one you were killing.
So I've been working on various looks for my LK. While my biochemist sports the instantly recognizable, stylishly ugly hahoe mask + sunflower, I don't have anything for LK. Until now. Behold, the wonder that is diver goggles + angry snarl! 
No comment. Just no comment at all. 
So I've been lucky again, and have more ocas! What kind of exciting things lie inside?
One out of three ain't bad! Tarou also has some uses with combination with cramp card, so I suppose I can't complain about 2 of them. 
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A Lot to Do About Nothing
By Doddler on January 16, 2008 in category 'General'
I've been slacking on journal entries recently, so I decided I'd get around to making a new post.
Things have been going pretty well much the same as they were. Apparently the secret is out, and Aesthetic guild now knows how to kill Valkyrie Randgris, leading to very few runs without competition. Luckily for us while they certainly bring a lot of manpower (around 10-20 people at times), they certainly don't seem to be well enough prepared, because I don't think they've won a single MVP since they started showing up about a week ago. I'm pretty proud of our team to be able to compete, because I don't usually think of our group as being top geared or equipped players. But what we lack in gears, we make up with a solid team that knows what its doing. I can only be appreciative of Insurrection in dealing with us, since by all respects they don't actually need to share MVP times with us. Its been great working together with them, and I hope that its helped both of us.
Also lucky for us, is the fact that there is not yet any competition for Ifrit. Admittedly Ifrit isn't nearly as profitable as Randgris, due to the almost mockingly low drop rates on his valuable gears.
In the screenshot shown here, is us finishing up Vesper. It was probably our best vesper run so far.
We got two vesper core drops at once. Definitely impressive. While core 03 isn't the greatest, 04 is probably the most sought after core, and hopefully it will fetch a decent sum.
Dark Tychon was our wizard on that run, one who is the center of a lot of drama on Loki now. Tychon was the leader of the guild I'm in, Alpha. I'm not too certain what happened but he's no longer the leader, and recently he's put up an auction for Alpha's Brisingamen pieces. I don't blame him for being upset, since most of the guild mates seem to treat him pretty badly as of late, and we haven't taken him to any of our big MVP runs lately. Part of that is that his characters aren't particularly well suited for what we do (and I'm partially to blame here), but some people (Momaro) are really vocal against his participation. We have noted that perhaps we shouldn't call it Alpha guild mvp's if we don't fairly take guild mates a long. I guess thats rude to say, but I do hope he gets the mess sorted out, he's a pretty cool guy.
I was feeling particularly lucky, so I grabbed 6 magni caps off the market, in the hopes of making a high upgraded one. At +7 I switched to enriched elu.
Apparently my luck isn't quite as good as I was hoping for. 
We've been doing Thanatos boss runs fairly frequently lately. My LK geared up for tanking is a beast, and can tank fairly comfortably at least 10 angel monsters on me without needing pots if I'm getting heals from a priest. You'd think the snatchers (Dame of Sentinel) would be a problem, but since their regular attack range actually out ranges the maximum distance of snatch, as long as you tank them right they can't actually snatch you. Barring any disastrous pulls, we've gotten very efficient at getting up the tower and killing him. Our fastest run so far was about 35-40 minutes. Not bad at all.
Apparently Silly Bear is crazy. We've gotten two slotted fire armors so far from Ifrit. While they are rare, I don't think they're particularly useful. Silly Bear, who plays Soul Linker as his main character, appears to think that it could have a use on his linker for Kaite killing wizards in WoE. I always knew he was crazy.
A fan of the site has donated freezing snow powder to me for killing Ktullanux. Special thanks to Suiryu, we'll make good use of it. 
Leveling on LK seems to be going smoothly. It looks like as long as WoE goes smoothly this week, that we'll be getting an exp event next week, so I'm cutting back my leveling until then. Still, its a good feeling to destroy packs of high level monsters.
Its OCA time. I've gotten lazy, so I'm no longer screenshotting the albums themselves. Hope thats not an issue!
***drum roll***
Phen card pays the price of admission I think! I'm disappointed at seeing another thief bug card though, I think I have enough of those already. Too bad about venatu as well, since I actually found one the other day. Better luck next time I suppose. 
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Crashing Good Time
By Doddler on January 9, 2008 in category 'General'
So today I wanted to issue an apology to people on Loki. Yesterday evening, around 8pm, doing with some guild mates what I usually do, testing all sorts of unusual things, we ended up causing serious server instability which caused players across the entire server to disconnect and broke the guild functions for several minutes. I have discussed what caused the problem with Heimdallr on the GM team, and personally we won't be doing it any more, but I apologize for problems we caused.
This is a real shame, because I initially wanted to discuss how much fun the tactic was. We dropped Orc Hero and Drake very quickly dealing damage in excess of 100k a shot, and is within all respects, a legitimate use of the skill. However, in certain situations, it appears as though the server side processing increases exponentially. I was aware of the possibility that all players on screen would instantly get disconnected if you did it too much, but I was not previously aware of the fact that it could drop the zone server. It sucks that one of us shelled out for a neutralizer to try it out too.
Unfortunately this also means we can't explain what we were testing out. Many apologies!
Anyways, on to our regular programming.
Leveling crusader is fought with many perils, but overall, its been going pretty smoothly. The limited HP and lack of any fast dealing skills makes it considerably slower than it is hunting on my Lord Knight.
Current stats of the crusader. Now that he's hit level 85, I've been toying with the idea of using the LK account to leech the crusader. The LK levels roughly twice as fast, so it means I could level both at once. I'm not a big fan of leeching, but its an idea I'm currently toying with.
So we've been continuing to do Ktullanux, much to the displeasure of some people who level down there. Ktullanux is hard, and he's even harder when you don't have a decent team.
This time as you can see here, we attempted to use a pure Beast Charge hunter. For those not familiar with the skill, Beast Charge is a skill hunters receive when they are soul linked by a linker, which is a combo skill used after double strafe. The kicker is that beast charge's damage is based on strength. The damage mod is impressive, each point of strength increases your damage by approximately 16%. A high strength high dex hunter could hit very high numbers. Unfortunately, I wonder if its really worth it. Our beast charge hunter hit Ktullanux for 14k-15k as you can see here, but sacrificing agility and maybe even some dex means that your high damaging hits come much slower than what even a normal hunter could do with 5k DS's.
One interesting thing we toyed with was actually using Eske to increase the damage on Ktullanux. Since it does not affect his magic attack power, and the tank should be safety walled at all times, it worked pretty well. When we were there with sniper, it boosted his damage by about 30% and did not negatively affect our ability to hold him in place.
So we got one of these from Ifrit. I'm unsure if the ring is overly practical in its usage, but it certainly a lot of fun to use. A member in our guild Silly Bear rolled on it using the DKP he's been hording. Word has it that he plans on making a character solely for use with the ring!
Ignoring the horded kafra shop items in the second screen shot that I got while they were cheap, its time to see what comes out of OCA's today.
**drum roll**
Maybe luck shines on me after all. Neither card is particularly useful, but they are still rare cards. The Dryad card however is valuable because it is required to make the Valkyrian Helm, which is sought after by many players.
One thing that I've become interested in is co-ordinated parties in dungeons, its one thing that I've wanted to organize or be part of. The following video is one that I wanted to share, that shows one such party in Biolabs dungeon 3f. While these characters are very well geared, I wanted to point out how well each of them plays their specific roles. They're like a well oiled machine, always coordinated, very few mistakes. I also wanted to point out just how much fun it looks.
Note that the video is hosted on MNcast, so it may take a moment for it to load. This is the first time I'm going to try embedding an MNcast video, we'll see how it works. Also if anyone knows the songs used in the video, let me know!
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Crusader Crusading
By Doddler on January 6, 2008 in category 'General'
One aspect I really think is interesting in RO is that a players worth and equipment mean a lot. You only ever have to go through being a noob once, because as you get any sort of money or gears, your future endeavors are easier. While there are certainly pro's to the other side, such as WoW where many of the equipment is character bound, I enjoy how... malleable your account is. Your wealth becomes the power to equip and create your characters, and that can easily be exchanged or swapped simply by buying and selling gears. You aren't restricted to playing a single high level character, instead you can create and adapt a series of characters that you can use how you like.
This used to be a detriment to the game, but I think that as the economy is stabalizing at something more reasonable, its becoming easier than ever to poke your head into this unusual game environment. While it might take you days to get to second class the first time, its always considerably faster the second time. And in my case, its a lot faster the 11th or 12th time.
So the story here is that I wanted to make a tank character. During our MVP runs, I usually play hunter, which while I feel that I'm probably one of the best at the role I'm given, there's honestly half a dozen people that could do what I do. So I wanted to play a character where I would feel valued or my participation would be desired. Priests seem to grow on trees, and while those trees are sometimes out of reach, we hardly have a need for a new priest. Afterall, I have access to a friends high priest when he left, and I can simply use that. Momaro plays a mean scholar, and he does his job well, so no need there. We have main killers lined up at the door waiting for a shot at Ifrit and Valk, so maybe I'd have to look elsewhere.
But tanking the hardest bosses, its something we have a room for improvement. My Lord Knight is a good tank, and to a reasonable extent he can tank Ifrit using liberal usage of potions, the LK is really more of an attacking character, not a defensive one. He can't however tank Randgris due to her heavy holy element attacks, and future bosses such as Beelzebub require something more than just high defense. I envisioned a paladin, who is both immune to status effects, could guard and resist attacks using guard and defending aura, heal himself and others, and use resistant souls to bless others with a seriously hefty 25% reduction in damage from demon monsters.
And so, Entaris was born to fill the role of my vision. I had previously started him as a Grand Cross sader, but then I realized that perhaps GX isn't the fastest way to reach my goal, and decided to remake as a pure combat sader, with the goal of blitz leveling to trans.
So on January 4th, 4:25pm Entaris was remade.
Unlike my previous attempt at making a crusader, this one would be pure str/dex, made for solid leveling. Crusaders don't get much in the way of attack skills, so I would have to make due with Bash.
Novice grounds is super easy these days, just find the nearest spore. Once swordsman, I killed Wolves until level 30.
From 30 to 53, it was all hill winds. I love these guys, they have a fairly high exp to HP ratio, which makes them optimal for the kind of leveling that I'm doing.
In this screenshot, its me achieving job 40.
Under two hours from new character to job 40! Damn nice. 
My character upon changing to crusader. Similar to last time, except a lot more str.
Even as a crusader, F. O. E! ... wait, maybe I shouldn't be using internet memes here. But even as a crusader, Hill Winds are optimal leveling till about 60-70. In optimal conditions I received about 1.5m an hour base experience.
Crusaders are pretty damn huge. I thought my LK was big and bulky, but my crusader appears to be even larger. Atleast I stand out.
Did you notice the close confines in this screenshot? Damn those Drosera can be annoying sometimes!
But one can't keep doing hill winds to 99, so my plan continued, with a change of pace.
Step two of the project was clock tower High Orcs. High Orcs are another type of monster that have a high Exp to HP ratio. While they take two bashes, they're nearly as easy to find as hill winds and provide nearly double the exp. The downside is that you can't abuse the inn's HP/SP regen features in clock tower, so you become reliant on potions (I used fresh fish), and SP items (ranked blues... lots of them). On average it was 3m/hr base experience.
Sometimes, I think I have the best of luck in all the worst places. A card is a card, but it would be better if it was a good card!
High Orcs used to be the end game leveling for some players, but I have plans beyond here. What might you ask, would be faster than High Orcs?
You didn't even have to guess did you? My LK has been fully geared out for Thor for some time, so I figured I'd try it on my crusader. From the very beginning I planned to have enough dexterity to hit them, so that leveling here would be possible. While they take some 16 bashes, about half my SP, the leveling is a step above high orcs in terms of rate. The nice thing about thors is that I can make use of the Inn to recover my HP/SP for only 5k zeny. Of course I use a hefty sum of whites and I do bring royal jelly for SP (sometimes you can't JUST kill two kasas), it tends to work out.
Experience rate for Volcano Thor on crusader is roughly 4m - 5m/hr, without battle manual. Over the course of one hour, I burn approximately 1300-1400 white potions, and 120 royal jelly. Total expenses is roughly 2 mil for one hour. Its expensive, but the exp pays off I think. Before I began I was aware that it would be expensive to blitz level a character in this way, so I've been stockpiling zeny, having nearly 70m in my name before hand. I still have 60m at this point, but I have more levels to go!
And my crusader, in leveling mode. Not bad for 48 hours after creation, roughly only 12 hours of game time. A weekend well spent I think.
I apologize for having such a wordy journal entry, I'll try to make things more interesting and have more pictures next time!
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