Doddler's RO Journal
Kickin' MVPs and More
By doddler on March 13, 2008 in category 'General'
You may have seen the earthquake simulator posted on the main page. You may think, how does he come up with these things?
Well the truth is that we get earthquaked a lot and compare numbers. Millions of experience was lost to bring you the simulator! For those who haven't seen it, you can check it out here.
The formula is really surprisingly simple. Originally I thought it was different because our Orc Lord tests were way out, until we recently realized that Lord's attack power had been increased by the last patch. Basically EQ is 3 hits at 1000% attack, magical, bypassing 50% of the players magic defense. The base attack power is reduced by the number of players on screen. The rest is left up to basic mechanics, differentiation between short range/long range attacks with monsters, etc. Some things cropped up late in testing and were a surprise, like the fact that blinding mist could reduce earthquake by 25% if you were far enough from the monster.
Knowing what we're up against gives us a good idea of how to properly plan on dealing with it. Power Up'd earthquake on the other hand as you can see here, sucks a whole lot.
In the video I posted I survived Orc Lord's earthquake using a ghostring valkyrie armor. To clarify, that armor wasn't mine. A member of Alpha, Ichigo who had the ghostring armor is busy with school and letting members of the guild use the armor.
Surviving Earthquake is one way to kill MVPs, but simply not letting them do it is another. I suppose by now its no secret that you can ankle snare boss monsters by pushing traps under them. Its already a widely used practice on Loki to defeat Valkyrie Randgris. It can also be used on a lower level to kill other boss monsters such as baphomet.
I initially set out to solo him as a test to see if it was possible, but I was joined by a ghostring hunting wizard who happened to be adventurous enough to help me out. No drops, but it was an interesting experience.
I do think that ankle snare MVP'ing should be fixed... its without a doubt an exploitation of game mechanics. The reason it works is simple. Back in the day when Gravity realized that you could cliff snipe hard monsters and gain experience relatively effortlessly, Gravity fixed the issue by giving monsters the ability to teleport when they were attacked without the ability to retaliate.
Hunters around this time felt really shafted because monsters would teleport from their ankle snares, making a primary method of hunting useless for them. This was also abusable though... remember back then boss monsters didn't recall their slaves. Hunters would solo MVPs by using traps to individually teleport each of the boss monsters minions away so that only the boss was left. Gravity added a fix that addressed both problems; they made it so monsters were blocked from teleporting from traps. To prevent abuse, trap duration on boss monsters is reduced to its absolute minimum duration (6 seconds).
This fix is biting them in the back now because now players, running low on mvp abuse options and too cowardly to tank boss monsters are using this to immobilize boss monsters, preventing them from using any skills or attacks. Ankle Snare affects boss monsters now like magnetic earth once affected boss monsters in the past, it blocks the use of teleport. I figure its a matter of time before Gravity fixes the bug due to its absolutely rampant abuse on jRO, but you never know. I would like to see it fixed before we get Beelzebub and Satan Morroc at very least. Beelzebub is already being trap killed on jRO now...
Anyways, enough rambling. Here's my hunter decked out in ASPD gears. 184 attack speed on a hunter... down right sexy!
While it takes more people, we do enjoy killing MVPs the old fashion way. I suppose the old fashioned way would really be in a duo with a wizard or hunter, but I'm sure you get it.
We do a lot of MVPs as a team now, and while we don't get particularly rich off of it, we do have ourselves a good time.
Apparently a flock of likely sadists decided they wanted to hunt Mistress, depriving me of my OCAs and what was once an 'always mine' MVP. I can't really fight them for it because they're members of my alliance though, so I have to move on to other things. No one will take my Tanee away from me, even if she does drive me crazy.
I seem to have all the luck! Atleast nothing valuable dropped... not that I would have expected it from Dracula.
Did I ever mention I have this strange habit of getting rare items while fighting bosses? Its annoying!
I even found this while hunting Doppelganger. What luck.
Speaking of cards though, I ended up opening a good sum of card albums since last I posted.
Looks like I was dealt a pretty poor hand this time around. I guess there's always next time.
The St Patrick's day event is a short distraction from things. While the concept is good, the execution of the event is lacking, making it hardly worth doing. You need to kill snakes for various types of coins. On average, you need to kill some 10-15 snakes in order to get enough to trade in for one green ale. Green ale is pretty nice, and it would be worth it if it were easy to hunt like last year. Unfortunately most maps have maybe 2-4 snakes on it tops, and the distribution is so random that I have no idea what they were thinking when they were picking where to put the snakes at.
Not that I liked last years event, having everyone cram into the airship hunting snakes resulted in a festival of ill-mannered play. If they were going to make the snakes really rare though, they shouldn't make us have to get 10 bronze coins or 5 silver to get an ale. Not to mention they don't drop all the time. There is the gold coin that you can trade 1 coin for 1 ale, but I've only seen one drop in my two hour expedition to look for good snake spawns.
I have been doing some WoE. To be honest I've skipped out on doing some woes... The WoE point system makes it desirable to hold econ on a fort, but when the alliance wants to abandon that and simply attack other guilds, I don't feel motivated to participate. Still, I do play sometimes, although I'd prefer to be on defending, as attacking in the existing system isn't really enjoyable.
If any of the jRO players I know from baldur see this picture they'll probably have a heart attack, seeing the Kaminiji emblem in use. Kaminiji was the guild I was in when I played on jRO Baldur. The full name was "Kami no Tsukurushi Nijiiro no Uta" (_‚Ì‘n‚邵“øF‚̉Ì), which meant roughly "The Rainbow Song of God's Creation". Its an honor for me to see Alpha to be using the emblem.
What would a good journal entry be without me breaking lots of items? Here's some helms I've saved up from many Randgris MVP runs. Ignore the party hat, its just there for a separator during upgrading.
Starting with 29 helms.
23/29 - 79%. Not bad.
...7/23 - 30%. What the heck happened. I failed over 10 in a row.
2/7 - 30%. Closer to average for this level, but I don't have to like it!
Atleast I got one +8 helm. The other one broke. Still only used enriched on the two +7s. 
You thought I was done didn't you? I still have more... items I claimed in my Thanatos MVP runs (does it show I MVP a lot?).
8/10 plates, 4/6 greaves. Not a bad start.
2/8 plates, 0/4 greaves. 16%... I don't know what it is about going to +6 that sucks so bad.
2/2 to +7. Somehow a stroke of luck.
I broke one... but I saved the other. It will be good enough for my purposes.
There's a few spots here that could be tightened up a little here, but overall the gear is starting to shape up to something pretty nice. Wondering about the Anti-Evil? I'll let you know some other time. 
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Orc Lord MVP
By Doddler on March 9, 2008 in category 'MVP'
Sorry for the lack of posts recently! For now, I'll treat you to a video I made. I tried to make it differently than usual, so I'd like some feedback on how you guys like it.
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Thieving Redux
By Doddler on February 27, 2008 in category 'General'
Sorry for my lack of posts recently. A combination of work, forum trolling (lol) and working on future additions to my site such as the 11.3 guide have kept me from making posts to the journal.
Episode 11.3 will bring a lot of awesome to RO, some of which comes in the form of new fancy equipment. I don't plan on being last in line for getting and profiting off of these new items. No, much to the contrary, I hope to be first.
To meet that goal, I employed my amazing personal skill "RO character A.D.D." and created a character that would be optimal for taking advantage of the new item drops; a Gank Rogue.
Before I get started though, I did some gambling.
!!??
Wooooo! Undershirt[1] obtained after 83 diamonds.
It really is a sexy piece of gear for an agi type character isn't it?
And now, its an even more amazing piece of gear for an agi character. Just as planned, I had no mocking garment before now anyways, so this works out good.
Holy flee batman! 96 flee on a level 14 character without any buffs at all... how sexy. 
As much as I enjoyed leveling Akuji Yamamoto on Iris (gasp, the secret is out!), leveling with gears endow and buff slave certainly is much different. Even at the low level of 30, I decimate siroma's and dodge their attacks.
Siroma's got a bit boring after a while, so I took myself down to Sleepers. I didn't stay at sleepers too long to be honest, only for a few levels. Its not that it wasn't fast, but with only 1176 HP, I can't take too many hits, even if they are rare.
What was faster than sleepers though were Anolians. They've a fair bit of HP, but they give a substantial amount of experience to go along with that, so it averages out in the end. I spent a good deal of time hunting them.
You know though, I'm not overly fond of the RO grind. I love the game and the things you do in it but grind leveling has never really been my thing. I guess thats why I always keep making new low level characters. While at Anolians I thought about how nice some of the game features in RO2 were. While not much different than what you see in other MMO's, RO2 had these quest signboards located at several points on each map, where you could pick a quest that you wanted to do for items and experience. These were basic little tasks really, and they never sent you very far. Kill some nearby monsters, find a mini boss, collect some items, deliver something to some other location on the map. When you were done, you came back to the kafra post box to receive your reward. While it never really changed the fact that you were still grinding on monsters, they never sent you too far and these objectives and small quests really broke up what would be an otherwise very boring experience.
Anyways, I encountered Toad a few times while I was leveling there. Its funny to say that in the years of playing RO, I've never actually seen Toad in game. Funny isn't it? I guess since anolians and roda frog maps are the only place he spawns, I never had any chance to see him. At least I wasn't missing much.
And finally Job 50! I have no clue why I really went to job 50. Its not as though I really need hiding level 8, but it was enjoyable. 178 aspd on thief? Its pretty sexy.
So on to the rogue test. These little question tests can be surprisingly ruthless, many times I don't complete them first try (the crusader one was especially hard). This time though, 100%.
When the quest NPC asked me to go collect skel-bones, I don't think this is what they had in mind. But hey, it works.
The maze was amusing. The quest NPC tells you you're supposed to prey on the weak and flee from the strong. Unfortunately for the monsters in the maze, they're all weak.
I'M INVINCIBLE!!
I told you guys I'd be abusing this quest.
Ok ok, so I gave up farming abyss knights cause they hurt a lot and I accidentally summoned a dozen of them by stepping onto the cell multiple times. Whoops!
But yay for Rogue.
This is my current stats on the rogue. Looking pretty sexy! Gotta love that 179 aspd, can't wait to get even more. I still need another 8 levels though before I can get myself into nameless island, but from the looks of things I still have a few weeks to go.
Thats it for now, Doddler out.
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WoE:SE Times Rant
By Doddler on February 27, 2008 in category 'Ranting'
This is a little something I wanted to go into a bit more depth than what I did on the ro forums. Since this is my journal, I have freedom to talk a bit more liberally than I would on the forums. The main topic of discussion recently is WoE:SE and the times that they will occur on iRO. A poll and discussion was recently put up regarding the times. The options are to have woe1 and woe2 occur each once a week, have both occur twice a week, or have some hybrid where both woes occur at the same time on one or both days.
Personally, I voted for one woe1 and one woe2 a week, original on Wednesday, and second edition on Saturday, and I'll explain why. War of Emperium has since the very beginning been a guild versus guild server wide battle. If people want to participate in casual PVP they can use the existing PVP rooms or in the not so distant future use the battlegrounds. WoE is a battle for territory control; holding castles provides benefits to its guild members, including castle item drops and access to the guild dungeons. There are 20 castles within WoE that can be captured... in order to ensure an engaging conflict and battle over territory its paramount that woe sees as much attendance as possible.
Many people seem to argue that by increasing the frequency of WoE, or by overlapping WoE1 and WoE2 times (effectively creating 30 castles), that it would be a good change that allows smaller guilds to get castles. My rebuttal to that is that if gravity is just handing out castles to just anyone who attends, then whats the point? Where's the fun in a server wide PVP battle when there's no conflict? Where's the glory of being able to defeat other guilds for your castle?
Its no secret that RO has less people now than it once did in the past, and WoE's have become less exciting as a result. Even large alliances would go into WoE wondering if they would be able to hold or conquer a castle. The last thing we need to do is spread woe more thinly. The number of woe times are a similar issue. Its impossible to expect players to be online in the evenings for 4 days a week. Attendance is hard enough with woe twice a week. Nothing but the most hardcore players will make all the woes. Some guilds will specialize, and only do one type, some will try to bring as many people as possible to each one, and some guilds will fall apart because their leaders can't meet the requirements of dedicating more than half the evenings of your week to RO. This means the average attendance of WoE will decrease, and the quality of WoE will go down with it.
Having one of each WoE type a week does several things. First, it means that castle holds last one week. Holding castles at the end of WoE is more significant because well, not holding a castle means you can't get one till next week, and holding a castle means you can achieve higher econ and defense rating than you would normally be able to. Guilds will be more motivated to achieve a castle hold, meaning stronger alliances will form, and higher attendance would be achieved. Secondly, since instead of just having WoE1 twice a week there would be two different WoE systems during the week, the variation between each battle your guild does would break up the repetition, which would make participation more enjoyable, and again encourage participation from members.
So thats why I voted for WoE1 Wednesday, WoE2 Saturday.
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