Doddler's RO Journal
A Little Less Complaining, A Little More Action
By Doddler on February 13, 2008 in category 'General'
Its the season for events I suppose, so I figured I'd get on the bandwagon and enjoy them myself.
The coolest thing about this years Valentine's Day event quest is that it has re-occuring characters from last years quest. It wasn't quite as involved this year, the basic quest, but it was interesting to see all the old faces. Its interesting to run into characters from an event I did a year ago still recognize me.
So bonus props to Gravity for an interesting quest. Of course, the main attraction for me, again like last year, is the sale of chocolate.
キタ━━━━━(゜∀゜)━━━━━ !!!!!
White chocolate again, 4k zeny. For those who arn't familiar with white chocolate, white chocolate costs 4k zeny, its identical to a blue potion, but weighs less. Whats not to enjoy?
Oh yeah, buying them one... at... a... time... is... so... time... consuming. But atleast I can contribute to massive market deflation and drop a dozen million on so a good stockpile of SP recovery. Might take a few hours though.
Last weeks event was pretty good too. I wish it was longer; I ended up spending about 15m zeny on pouches getting the items I was really looking for because I couldn't dedicate myself to hunting tarous the whole time. Overall though, I think it was a pretty solid event. There was some low drop rate items while I was down there though. I got a good deal of rares from the Tarous and Martins, if you can really refer to them as such.
That one should be slotted goggles. I got 3 of them while down there, and one Safety Helm. Let me tell you, safety helm goes good with Hahoe! Its a shame I don't have a screenshot of that yet. 
Last minute turning in of items seems to have been popular. Durring the event there was always a crowd, but not like there was at the very end. This is where I got a good deal of my pouches for cheap, ranging from 8k-14k per pouch. Not cheap, but not bad either.
My stash after the event. I wish I could have stocked up more... most of these items we'll never see again on iRO so I wanted to get a lot. But I think I have a decent amount to last a while, as long as I use them pretty sparringly.
Aside from pushing quests, we've been leveling our monk in the hopes to get him into labs in the near future. Abyss Lake is pretty good, with a mental sensing party and manual we pull some 14-16m/hr (durring 1.5x exp), asuraing well, as you can see just about everything. We can probably even do Detar now, now that we found the secret about getting past shield reflect. 
Hint: You can dispel it.
We've also been doing a fair bit of thors leveling on monk. Its a bit more dangerous, and requires a higher level of control than we usually have in Abyss Lake. Learning to control the guardians and properly pulling the monsters is a good stepping point for getting us moving towards Bio3 leveling, which we intend to do in a fairly similar fashion.
At this time, the monk, who was named by some twisted mind "Softcore Monkey", is now level 89. Getting there!
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Breaking Things, the Bad Way
By Doddler on February 8, 2008 in category 'General'
So I finally got the courage to attempt to make the +9. It was a tough decision really, but I decided in the end that the +8 valk shoes won't help me much beyond my existing shoes... its +9 or bust. I've already thrown everything away for them anyways, so I figure, I may as well take the dive.
One step...
...and a deep breath...
What!?
Close up please!
And thats the end of the story.
Expenses
| 42x | Enriched Elunium | $42 |
| 15 | Valkyrian Shoes | 300,000,000z aprox. |
Rewards
...nothing!
And you know, I would be upset, but I'm not. Or maybe I tell myself I'm not upset. I can live with busting 300m on a gamble, but my main beef is with the enriched elunium. For the hefty price tag, it doesn't show a strong enough benefit. I feel that I can understand why kRO charges $0.15 for enriched elu; because its not worth more. I would hope iRO would reconsider their pricing rather than gouging users on items that shows no obvious benefit. 
Edit: I made a signature for use on the iRO forums!
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Catching Up
By Doddler on February 7, 2008 in category 'General'
Its been a while since I've made a real post on my site, and I suppose thats because I've been pretty busy lately.
But what have I been doing in RO? Well lately we've decided we need to make a monk. See, we have a pretty small team that we use for various MVPs and things such as bio parties and such, but we lack several competent players in specific roles. We eventually just gave up on finding a monk/champion for our parties, and simply decided to make one.
Poorly disguised in here is a recruitment message for Alpha. We need more people!
So in order to make a monk, I made a character to leech it on my LK account. With several people helping, it would be job 50 in no time.
All characters have to start somewhere, and killing wolves is a must for all low level characters.
After doing some time in wolves, we moved on to hill winds. We stayed here for a few hours until the monk became job 50.
I ended up turning my archer into a dancer, simply so I could have more SP for leeching purposes. Later, we decided it would make a good Mental Sensing slave.
Binoculars: The least sexy headgear ever.
Once the monk got asura, we switched gears and began using asura to level. In our particular party setup, with 1.5x experience event, mental sensing, and the odd experience tap, these gold acidus were putting out 100k-180k experience each. The monk himself was making aproximately 16m exp an hour. Not bad!
At this time the monk is level 81, three days after we started him.
It would be bad of me to skip out on the current event, considering how nice it is. I only subjected myself to hunting tarous for a few hours, the remainder of my food item collection would come from other players. I did get a new year doll egg though!
My army is growing!
The name of my newyears doll. A nod to touhou players and my Lif, named Shikieiki Yamaxanadu. Props to anyone who gets it.
So something I've been working on for a long time, gathering valkyrian shoes. My ultimate goal was to make superior valkyrian shoes. I realized it was a foolish plan from the beginning, but I did want to make them.
In order to realize my dream, I had decided I would use enriched elunium. It would be pricy, but at aproximately 20 million zeny per broken valk shoes, I could justify the cost, as long as I got my goal. Or so I told myself.
2 down going to +5. 86% rate, thats acceptable.
5 down going to +6. 61% rate... pretty bad I think. Especially considering it cost me $13 to do...
3 casualties going to +7. Still on track. 62% success. I've seen worse.
....................
20% success. $41 dollars in real money, 280,000,000z in items down, and all that is left is a +8... I'm speachless. Just what are they marketing this enriched elu for? Its just not worth it, not for this level of failure... On kRO where enriched is affordable maybe I could live with it, but a dollar a pop is just stupid.
The worst thing is that I can't bring myself to break the +8 valk shoes (well, attempt to +9 the remaining one), and throw everything that I've put into it away.
At least woe wasn't as stressful as my upgrading failures. I missed our defending, but attacking was pretty fun.
We took out some of the stress by polying mushrooms at our guild spot. By continually polying monsters that have Eske on it, you can stack the Eske effect to give the new monsters considerably more attack power. This abyss knight is the strongest thing we got. What you can't tell here is that it is quadruple esked, giving it a monstrous 1600% attack power! Watching the 50000's fly off the people was sweet. 
We did get two threats from users that wanted us banned. How fun.
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WoE:SE Again!
By Doddler on February 7, 2008 in category 'Random Stuff'
Just when you thought I wouldn't make another video post, I did anyways!
A higher res version of the video can be downloaded here.
I decided I would break down what is going on in the video, so that people may be able to get a better idea of the flow of WoE:SE. Note that there may be some error in my interpretation, but it should be pretty clean!
Start - Red Mirage begins attacking the enemy fort.
0:22 - The guild begins pushing toward one of the Gate Stones.
2:00 - Directly attacking the Gate Stone.
2:16 - The gate stone is destroyed, and the point abandoned. The guild pushes toward the second Gate Stone.
3:40 - Recalled next to the second gate stone, the guild destroyed the second gate stone. The main gate to the castle is now down, and the first barricade now vulnerable.
4:20 - The guild begins attacking the first barricade.
5:05 - The guild is recalled next to the first barricade. You can clearly see that the main gate has been restored, indicating that the defending guild has restored the Gate Stones. The attacking guild's re-enforcements can no longer reach the main attacking force from the entrance. However, the attackers are already beyond the main gate, and so the defending team can not abandon their posts to ensure the gate stones are not taken down. This move will by some time, but its too late to rely on the gate stones.
5:20 - The first barricade is broken.
5:30 - Re-spawning players in the attacking guild move to re-capture the gate stones. Since the gate stones have been restored, the castles guardian force have also been restored.
6:02 - The gate stones have again been destroyed, destroying all defending guardians.
8:06 - The second barricade is in range and begins taking damage from the attacking team.
8:45 - The guild is recalled past the second barricade. While the video does not show it, the second barricade must be destroyed at this time.
9:16 - The third and final barricade comes under attack.
10:00 - The final barricade is destroyed.
10:16 - The guild has captured the castle, and begins defending the entrance.
10:38 - The guild cannot hold the entrance portal, and begins defending one of the Gate Stones. Its presumed that by focusing defense on one, the other gate stone may be quickly destroyed.
11:01 - The player uses the flag outside of the castle to warp directly to the emperium room. From the emperium room, the player warps directly to the area they are currently defending. This occurs several times allowing quick access for the defending guild to any part of the castle.
21:25 - The enemy guild pushed back, focus can be put on preventing players from entering the main entrance.
Till End - The guild successfully holds the attacks against the gate stones. While the gate stones are intact, the enemy guild cannot pass the main gate, which leads to a perfect defense of the captured castle.
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