So this article will be more disjointed since lots has happened since my last big post!
You probably know the drill by this point.
**Drum Roll**
...I think I'm going to cry.
But that's not all!
There was a second one.
**Drum Roll**
...Ok, now the game is just mocking me.
After all this time, I finally found the Gungnir from Mistress.
I'm not sure I've talked about my Gungnir plan. See, Gungnir is one of the only items in the game that provides "perfect hit", the ability to hit the target regardless of your hit or flee of the target. There are three things that can grant this. Gungnir gives 20% perfect hit, Mummy card offers 20% perfect hit, and the Archer set offers 20% perfect hit. If you can get a slotted Gungnir, it would technically be possible to have all 3 active at once... although the archer set involves sacrificing too much gear for a knight in my opinion. As a slightly less restrictive option, you could opt just for gungnir/mummy set and have a Titan Ancient Gungnir and Ancient Mummy Shield for a base 40% chance to hit the monster... any monster in the game, regardless of the flee. Dracula and Tao Gunka, here I come.
I already have my own Gungnir which I use at high flee MVPs, so this new one is made for slotting. Or at least, trying to slot.
**Drum Roll**
This game hates me, I'm sure of it.
I decided to do some more MVPing after all, and check out some more of the new MVPs.
Ok, so it was a bit crazy to try to kill both at once, but it went pretty good. While Moonlight Flower has a lot of new skills, this means she spends a lot less time using the one skill that kills you, mammonite. This is a good thing, and I think her decreased usage of mammo actually makes her easier than she was before. Unless you're a wizard.
I got really lucky and found Evil Snake Lord. The people who were hunting it were probably wondering how the hell I found the spawn time, but in fact I just got lucky.
It did drop a hat though! I didn't even remember it could drop a hat.
Useless... but maybe I'll hold onto it for the new slot enchant system with episode 12.
White Lady is always a good time. She's so nice to me, that she uses sanctuary which means I barely have to use any pots at all.
As I figured, its impossible afterall.
A friend of mine, Dark Tychon found a Despero of Thanatos card (Shield: INT - 5, increases int by refine rate of shield). He managed to sell it for 150 m zenny to one of the top potters on the server. It was at this time that I realized that the INT-5 could be used to actually further boost your stats through the use of marionette control.
It didn't take long to make the connection to the Green Maiden card (Garment: LUK - 5, increases luk and crit by refine rate of garment), and to realize that it would be even better for potting than Despero could be, even if used in a +0 garment or +10. So with this in mind, I decided to hunt green maidens.
They're none too happy with my appearance there, but why should they! No card yet though.
Notice the headgear though? I did find a bao bao off of one though. It looks almost more amazingly ugly on me than the Sunflower Hat.
Lets get a closeup of that.
Oooooooh Yeeeah.
I need money! Anyone playing on Loki, remember to buy my stuff!
I figured I would make a video of me taking the big dog down. It wasn't my best run by far, and I usually just use the inn to get sp instead of using white chocolate, but I figured this would make for a better movie.
From start to finish, it took about 300 whites... which isn't actually that bad. I don't usually run out at the end though, although this is the third time we both drop. ^^;
Today I decided to take a further look at the monster skill Earthquake. The skill is an anomaly, something that I can't quite put my finger on. The skill is magical damage, but is increased by the monsters physical damage. I decided to put various characters to the test. A very, very painful test.
This first shot is with 64 armor def (status window), and 5 magic defence.
This second shot shows my LK being hit with 24 armor def, and 35 magic defense.
In a second test, not shown here, I compared a monk tanking normally with no mdef gears, and a monk with mental strength. The difference in damage was quite interesting. Without mental strength, the monk took about 5600 damage/hit (I was with him so 1/2 damage from my other test). With mental strength (which gives him 90 mdef), he took 3300 damage/hit.
This fact is very interesting. From what I gathered of the tests, even if you had 100 magic defense, you would only cut about 50% of the damage. Another interesting thing is that the damage doesn't vary much at all. I took consistently 13000-13800 damage or so, without much variance. Since Baphomet's base attack power is 3200-4000 roughly, it doesn't make much sense that a skill that we presume was simple damage amplification has such low variance.
There's two different conclusions that you can make with the info here. One possibility, is that earthquake has simply a 50% bypass on mdef, like the staff of piercing. The other possibility, is that the skill is a combination of physical and magical damage, using a soul-destroyer or grand cross-esque hybrid formula. More testing will follow later...
I get to add Lord of the Dead to the list of MVP's that I solo'd. Seriously though, LoD is a serious pain in the ass. And what the hell is up with his drop rate anyways. For such a hard mvp, you'd think that you could get something worthwhile in fewer than 3000 kills, but apparently Gravity didn't intend that to be the case.
I got another Jewel Crown from Pharaoh today. I wish I could be happy about such a thing, but it just gets added to my collection.
The damn things don't sell. I'd over-upgrade them, but I can't afford that much elu.
Mistress treated me pretty well today though. I got two old card albums in a row, opening each after I got them.
**Drum Roll**
Shit my luck sucks. And the other?
**Drum Roll**
Why can't something useful ever come from one?
So today was basically a complete, solid day of MVP'ing. A lot of MVPs were to be had, and while nothing too valuable dropped, it was a fun day. A lot of the MVPs were the first time I've fought them since the patch, so I guess I'll get into a bit more detail.
Orc Hero and his spiral arn't to bad. His power up is quite strong though, and if you get hit by his earth attack directly following spiral, you're as good as dead. Luckily like Osiris, you can wait out his power up, as he won't recast it for two minutes (the skill only lasts 30 seconds).
Orc Lord is, beyond a doubt, quite a bit stronger. The only real change is his earthquake, but earthquake is more than enough. It can be avoided if you're smart and know when to run, but the damage is far too much to take solo. Earthquake hit me for about 10k * 3, and three times that while in power up. His healing power makes hit and run problematic too, but overall it wasn't so bad. I got a bloody axe from him, which would be cool if pecopeco hairband hadn't just come out on Kafra Shop.
White Lady wasn't that bad. Her only new skill is assumptio, effectively doubling her max HP. Fortunately, she's not a very strong mvp to begin with, so I had no difficulties in bringing her down.
Maya is nearly indistinguishable from before. Supposedly she does an aoe silence attack, but I don't really notice it. I accidentally killed her while I had peco hairband on. Woops!
Snake Lord isn't that bad either. He now has a silence attack, and the impressive looking "Dragon Fear". Dragon Fear causes a random status effect to everyone within range. While that makes him a bit more annoying than before, he's still a pretty easy kill.
Dracula was pretty annoying. Overall I think he's still a pretty easy MVP, but people who arn't ready to fight against his Hell's Judgement may run into some unfortunate problems. Lord Knight isn't very well suited for fighting against an MVP such as Dracula because of the inability to do much of anything once it uses Agility Up.
After my rough attempt at doppelganger on my biochemist, I decided to gear up the LK for dop killing mode. I used to kill him with icepick, but his recent vit drop puts him at high physical defense, but still well below optimal point for icepick. The solution? Use a weapon that bypasses demon defense. I took my Exorciser out of storage along with some elu, and upgraded it to +4 for the event.
A lot better damage against him than I expected. That 404 * 5 is his spiral pierce. 2020 damage isn't really much to worry about at all is it. Even in power up, his spiral does 6060 damage total, which sounds like a lot, but since he needs to stop attacking to cast the skill, I don't think it makes much of a difference to his damage output. I wouldn't want to have to tank him without assumptio though.
An easy victory.
I put off trying to fight Samurai Specter, because as I had imagined, he's stupidly hard. With cranial, immune and assumptio, his powered up soul destroyer struck still one shot me.
18872... Not sure if there's any way I could survive that. He spams the skill too. I went down with Tychon and Razabelle but they dropped instantly to his power'd up Hell's Judgment. Only way I could foresee being able to do it is to finish him with a high damage hit such as asura before he powers up. His low max HP means he'll have only 63k hp left when he uses it. With some co-ordination, proper usage of pneuma and safety wall, I think one could do it OK but... is it really worth it? Its only Samurai Specter... for now he'll have to remain as the only MVP I've gone against on LK that I could not kill.
While with Tychon and Raza we decided to hit up Vesper for a chance to get some cores.
Did I ever mention how much I love the back story to some of these dungeons? Juperos and Kiel Hyre are shining examples of great things gravity has done with RO... I just love them. The Juperos back story and entrance quest are really quite interesting.
This will actually be the first time I would have gone against Vesper without a biochemist. Overall he's not much different other than reduced vit and doubled max HP, but you can't vaporize him quickly with bomb like you used to be able to.
Victory is ours. Overall it was a pretty simple battle. Some whites were required but generally a fast, easy fight. Gotta watch out for the jupitel thunder on those apocalypses though, we lost our priest when Vesper switched targets cause I got pushed back too far.
No drops, but I get to add vesper to my list of MVPs.
This is the list of loot for today. Holy Robe, Solar Sword, 2x s1 Rings, Schweizersabel, and a Bloody Axe. Nothing too good, but it covers the some 3000 whites I used, as well as should supply a levels worth of whites for a level on my LK in volcano thor.
A bit of a bonus:
A shot of the web-based MVP time tracking utility we use. An amazing number of mvps on there.