Doddler's RO Journal
Beelzebub
By Doddler on June 9, 2008 in category 'MVP'
Also available on youtube. Ichig0 made a more... unabridged 40 min version which you can find HERE. I suppose that now that its over, I can link to the original strategy. You can find that HERE.
So there you have it! Overall I think it went pretty good. A few things went better than expected... he hurt the party far less than I really expected. Hell's Judgment never really killed anyone, and vampires gift, other than the nasty surprise when we found out that he gained massive HP by draining it from icewalls, was far less dangerous than I expected.
Some things went a bit worse... exile probably being the most notable one. While I anticipated having to deal with it, it became the hardest obstacle for us to overcome. Its worth noting that the tank never once died while tanking the MVP for the party... but after some time, he would get exiled, and then it would be over. You'll see it a few times in the video where I get forced teleported. We planned on dealing with this via icewall, but his draining HP from icewall was a rather unexpected effect.
The plan of having minstrel cover both lines with strings worked only if Beelzebub was standing in the right spot, which it turned out more often than not was not the case. A second strings, or maybe taking the time to better position Beelzebub would be required. Also, monsters spawning on us was a serious issue... our wizard was occupied with removing evil lands, and couldn't effectively kill monster spawns. Lastly, evil land draining the tank's HP was also unexpected. Since the tank can't be healed, anything that lowers his HP is bad... in the end I ran out of % items (ygg berries/green ales), but he died before I did.
I doubt we'll do it like this in the future unless traps get nerfed, until maybe the endless tower patch, but if we did, I think we could probably do it better. I'm not quite sure how yet, but I'm sure we'd figure it out. I'm quite proud of everyone that came out, everyone did a good job. 
Music for the video was:
Guardian of the Sacred Spirit - Clawed Apparition
Noein - Battle Collateral
Rebuild of Evangelion - Angel of Doom
Guardian of the Sacred Sprit - Stand, Brave Hero
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Bad Idea or Terrible Idea!?
By Doddler on June 6, 2008 in category 'MVP'
I'll tell you how it goes later!
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The End of Baphomet
By Doddler on June 5, 2008 in category 'kRO Baphomet'
So unfortunately it turns out that I lost my access to the kRO Server. The original owner returned to play on the free server and has changed the password. So that means I'm out of luck! I plan on writing a full review on my playtime of Baphomet shortly, a long with a complete overview of its mechanics, changes, and even Kafra Shop inventory and pricing.
I didn't get to do all the things I wanted to do, but I enjoyed the time I had to play on the server. I hope perhaps that my writings would have inspired some people, and in the event that iRO opens a free game server, I'll see you all there.
And for the record, Moscovia looks really nice. I had a big post planned but I guess it doesn't matter much anymore if I can't continue playing. 
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Masochist RO Continued
By Doddler on June 1, 2008 in category 'kRO Baphomet'
Its back to 'Masochist' RO, for more half rate leveling and exploring new game content.
Continuing to level the Taekwon, I found some areas were more dangerous when you can't use flywings (or more to the point, can't afford to). Orcs was pretty good, but Choco was not so good.
I stopped by the upgrade NPC. As you can see, its different. Instead of just listing all the item slots and what items are in it, the NPC will actually only list the pieces of gear you currently have equipped. This is really handy for upgrading lots of items quickly... kRO has had this for a very long time so its odd that iRO doesn't have it yet.
Here's a screenshot showing the cost of upgrading a level 1 weapon and an armor. 1000z for Lv 1 and 20000z for armor. I'll hopefully get more info on the upgrading costs later.
Because of my bad case of leveling ADD, its hard to keep in just one place. I found yoyo's were pretty decent though.
Out at St. Capitolina Abbey, I decided I'd look around for the Sealed Shrine NPC. Apparently this is the guy, he's in one of the buildings in the center of the map in a room with one of the Monk job change NPCs (the one with the huge blinding light around him). I'm going to guess by my amazing deductive abilities that he's telling me I need to be level 75 to enter. Good to know.
Here's an interesting leveling method, something I actually saw fairly frequently. A character (best if its a ranged character but it doesn't matter) hits a non aggressive monster, and then a mercenary/second player/homunculus/etc follows behind and deals damage to it while the first guy runs around avoiding getting hit. It works surprisingly well at metalings and wolves and I saw a good number of duo teams doing them at very low level.
Bored, I decided to set up a random chat in Payon to see if anyone playing on the server spoke English. I got a lot more people than I actually expected, though usually we didn't talk about anything particularly interesting. The most common question was 'Where are you from'. Some of them liked to discuss things about the game. It was a good time!
In the end I ended up partying a random swordsman. Taekwon and Swordsman don't make a very good combination, but we still had a good time.
Our party lasted roughly until we realized that wolves was insanely boring and not really worth partying for.
Before he left, and with a few people in the chat before, I asked what people thought about the free RO server. By far the biggest complaint is the reduced experience rate, but most people still appeared to be happy with the free server. Interesting stuff.
Being in a party I can show you some cool things with the world map. Here you can see that it shows where different people in your party are in the world.
If you mouse over a location, it shows you who's there too. Not overly useful, but its a pretty cool feature none the less. At least the world map looks cool!
I tried leveling in all kinds of alternate zones, with varying degrees of success. PSpores was good money, but dragon tail was hard to get away from (in retrospect I should have tried the Geffen field). Golems was actually nice because I could dodge them most of the time, and even if they stunned me they couldn't kill me. I don't think any of them matched the experience I would have gotten at wolves, but again change is good.
Crappy card at 1/2 drop rate!! Nooooooooooooooo!! 
I quickly realized that non consumable etc items sold for less. I suppose from the looks of things, the value of the items is down by 25%. I guess that helps explain why I'm having problems getting zeny.
Servers are filling up fast!
A random shot of the party request zone in prontera. People are leveling up pretty fast even for the rough leveling rates.
Just a quick comparison to show the differences between the two display modes for text. I like the bold to be honest...
So I decided I wanted to make a different character, one that might level faster and cheaper. I headed to Morroc to collect items I (thought I would) need for the quest.
Apparently the game wants to make things hard on me.
Can you guess what I'm making? 
In case you're wondering about dex vs vit, I find that if I don't get vit off the start its 1000x harder to get past the novice training grounds because you take too much damage from monsters, so I like to get vit initially.
Apparently its still pretty hard with 1 str.
Lucky for me, I got an invite into a novice party, which sped up my leveling considerably.
Off to Amatsu~
I should have known something was up when this happened. I entered the ninja guild room only to be ambushed by the guild leader. After talking to him and agreeing to what he had to say, he warped me directly (!!) to einbroch.
At this point I knew there was something different. Even though I got Cyfar (had to buy it) and pracon, the quest wouldn't continue. Not to mention the NPC looks completely different!
Quest window to the rescue? According to the quest description, he wants me to go south of einbroch, and across the bridge to the west there'll be a red tree that I have to find.
Well lo and behold, a red tree.
After going back to the Einbroch tower, I was warped directly back to Amatsu without needing any items up to now. The Ninja guild leader did still tell me to bring him items, but he told me to bring him 5 Iron Ore and 1 Pracon. Much easier than how it is currently on iRO. Annoyingly I had bought Cyfar and didn't have iron ore, but that was pretty quickly resolved.
And I'm Ninja~.
This actually surprised me, the Ninja spheres are cheaper on kRO than they are on iRO.
Unfortunately I had overlooked this small detail. I had no weapon I could equip at this point... my novice party was fast but it didn't net me any drops, and the new novice ground gears can't be sold.
Well it seems I need a weapon... bare handed with 1 str just doesn't cut it.
After getting enough jellopy to get a dagger, my damage improved... though sadly not by a whole lot.
Yeeeah....
After approximately two hours (no joke), I made it from level 11 to level 12.
Its off, in search of better leveling lands. Apparently though, I'm not alone...
Imagine my surprise when I found out I was not the only one who wanted to hunt metalings.
At first my leveling wasn't very fast... In fact, with each level I gained, I would level faster than the one before.
Unfortunately competition for metalings was pretty damn fierce...
My most hated nemesis, players using the mimic monster mercenary. It has the same stats as that of a regular mimic, and scrolls to summon them can be purchased from the kafra shop. They have the ability to kill metalings in a single shot, regardless of the level of its owner (and you can get them at level 1). At medium to high level the mimic is useless but at low levels, people using them skyrocket in level past everyone else regardless of their build or stats. At first I thought it was cool, but everyone but me has one.
Like I was mentioning earlier, this alchemist is running in circles while the metalings chase him, giving his homunculus the opportunity to kill them. Its a good deal for them, since neither of them can take hits from metalings.
I wonder about how some players chose their names!
On the left, the black bunny band, and on the right, custom 'loveholic' font item.
It seems that 99% of players don't allow other people to view their equipment. This is the only player I found that let his equipment be inspected... but what the heck is it with 2x [0] skull rings!?
I decided to make a short video about leveling up there. Note that that I was playing during off hours, there's almost twice as many people during peak time!
A quick look at the Lighthalzen item shop. Expensive ygg berries. Some of the vendors on the field were selling blue gems for approx 1200z, which makes me think that they are increased in price too (1400z-1500z is likely), I haven't checked myself though.
In the end I ended up going to the other metaling map 3 south of Juno. A bit more annoying to get to but it was less crowded than the lighthalzen map.
It can be pretty... dangerous if you don't watch your step though.
At first I thought this emote was supposed to be US flag but I'm unsure because of the odd arrangement in the top left. Edit: It appears I was indeed wrong, its the Flag of Malaysia. I guess the flags all represent teams that participated in the World Cup for Soccer, something Korea was quite into. I guess only nations that were big into it got the flag emotes? It would still be cool if we got some on iRO though.
More alternative leveling locations. Scorpions aren't half bad.
Of course there's a few unfortunate obstacles...
To further test the novice training ground changes of last maintenance, and maybe vend some of the random stuff I found, I decided to quickly make a merchant.
Leveling the merchant was quite a good time. The video I posted of the novice leveling was leveling this merchant.
From the novice training grounds, I got:
- 20 Kafra Storage Tickets.
- 30 Kafra Teleportation Tickets.
- 1 Novice Adventurers Suit.
- 100 Novice Flywings.
- 40 Novice Butterfly Wings.
- 400 Novice Red Potions.
- 2 Novice Magnifiers.
All of those (except the red potions) are account bound. The increase in novice provisions certainly make starting a lot easier. Apparently the last NPC gives you a pretty awesome beginner weapon if you accept his choice for your class, but since I chose my own I didn't get it. Maybe need to find a guide on how to get the right choice of class as a suggestion.
The Novice Adventurers Suit is a pretty amazing piece of gear actually. 8 defense, slotted, and 0 weight. It is however character bound (can't store it) and cannot be upgraded. Its still pretty sexy.
I'd tell you just how much the merchant quest sucked when you can't read the destination for your package, but I'll spare you the details.
After pushing to get vending level 1, the moment of truth... No! The price to rent a pushcart is more than I have. I guess I'll have to work on that later.
Prontera market is pretty crazy still...
I'm not sure how you get this hat, I'm fairly sure its a mobile or netcafe reward (you get old red boxes from it which have random special headgears). This is a really amazing mage headgear, since it boosts your MATK by your current job level. Surprised to see it for cheap.
Anyways, thats it for now. Current stats of the ninja!
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