Doddler's RO Journal
Doddlercon, Back to the Loki Part 1
By Doddler on November 26, 2007 in category 'MVP'
I held off on doing a Loki post while doing the server project, even though I still play quite consistently there, and the reason is a bit dumb. People coming to the site wanting to look up the noob project wouldn't want to wade through the crap I usually post. So I have a solution! There is now a page navigation set up. Feedback is encouraged. 
There's a lot of stuff to go through, so I'm going to start with the MVP stuff in one post, and everything else... in the next post.
What you see here is the latest addition to my MVP arsenal.
While I'm holding out on that s2 Gungnir for the mummy/ancient mummy combo for massive hit bonus, for now this thing is useful for lowering def on demon/undead MVPs such as bapho. And it works quite nicely at that.
You know how I said never again? I lied. Signum crusis level 5 boosts my damage on him by a good 20%, which is a substantial increase. While I'm not cursed (which isn't very often to be honest), I can deal in excess of 8000 damage per pierce. Even his healing can't keep up with my massive offensive. 
Continuing the trend of killing mvps that use agi up now that I have my ancient spear, I decided to kill drake. Even with aqua armor he hurts... Drake is one of those mvps that even if you did get something rare from him, its never worth it. At least people don't usually kill him for that reason.
I decided I'm better off without using the ancient weapon for him. I miss him maybe 20% of the time but the loss in damage is too substantial to warrant using the ancient. On the plus side, he's really easy to tank with the peno buckler I made. More on that next post.
This is something thats been happening annoyingly frequently, and quite frankly it really annoys me. What you are witnessing is Samurai Specter dying AFTER he teleports. What this means is, that he took damage just as he used the skills, and his dead body, and more specifically his drops, land some unknown place on the map in which I cannot find before they disappear.
Samurai Specter is not the only person who likes doing that. Do you see lady tanee around? Unfortunately, thats because she's not there... she warped just before she died, and my 1m+ in items used to kill her have gone to waste as her drops disappeared on some random corner of the map. 
On a happier note, I did get some good items. Ice Falchion from Hatii. 
And Coronet from Mistress. This is in fact the first time I've gotten the coronet. You'd think, that after the dozens of OCA's I've gotten, and even a young twig, that I would have gotten one, but this is the first. Not that I will complain.
And last but not least, our Thanatos party. I would have made a bigger deal about killing Thanatos earlier, but we encountered several serious problems.
When we went up, we invited Dr Azzy to join us as he has not done Thanatos before. Unfortunately, while on the top floor, Azzy disconnected while talking to one of the tile npcs. Gravity has for some stupid reason made it so logging out on the top floor impossible. I can see it as a fix to the Thanatos summoning exploits, and maybe I wouldn't mind if they didn't make their damn game so prone to disconnects and crashes.
Anyways, we lost Azzy, and shortly after while fighting Thanatos, my connection bit the biscuit and desynced, disconnecting me. So both of us were unable to actually fight the boss monster we spent and hour attempting to get to. Good going gravity. Maybe they should just fix the quest.
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The Project: Day 2
By Doddler on November 24, 2007 in category 'Noob Project'
Off to Geffen, where poison spores are easier to find and don't have dragon tails to hunt you down.
So using some of the money I got, I went all out buying some new gears.
Huge risks! Huge payoffs! Even at this point I gamble on my equipment, probably not a good thing.
They never stood a chance against the new improved stiletto armed Doddler!
Speaking of Stiletto, having never really played a thief type character before, I never noticed how sexy they look. They're just a cool looking dagger.
Cheap undershirt GET!
Steal skill already starting to pay off. 
It took about an hour to do, but behold, the fruits of my efforts! 225 poison spores. This stuff is like currency, and converts quickly into zeny. Gotta love it!
GIVE ME YOUR PANTIE!!
It does disturb me that the only way to get panties is from burly, muscular old men who carry big boxes and have back problems. Joking aside, I really want to get the pantie for my undershirt combo, because that is at my level, better than a whisper card. I have no problems with Zeroms myself, but my problem was finding them.
Ouch!
That's where I'm standing right now. The Goggles are slotted, as is the mantle and stiletto (s3), the rest of the stuff is store bought.
Banzai! 
Total Game Time: 8 hours
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The Project: Day 1
By Doddler on November 23, 2007 in category 'Noob Project'
First off I must apologize for my absence here. Not only have I been flooded by work, I found that its a lot harder to just pick up and leave than I figured. So I figure that I will make this more of a weekly thing.
I wanted to talk about what I'm trying to do. Basically, I'm playing part time on a separate server, starting from scratch, in a way that should show that breaking in a character to the economy and game market is not so hard as many people think. Now, I obviously have an undue advantage... I have a great wealth of knowledge of Ragnarok Online available to me, which makes choices considerably more educated. It would obviously take longer for a brand new player to really understand what needs to be done in order to get into the game.
I do however, think that its really not as hard as people think, and I think that new players make up for the increased time by being able to slowly discover what ragnarok has to offer. I would much rather spend a month or two to get to second class and be able to relive the discovery of RO than it I do making a new second class character in a days work.
So thats just what I'm doing. Without further adieu.
The journey starts here. Character #1, a fast attacking, fast hitting, money driving character. In other words, a thief.
Did anyone ever say how good spores are? They really are awesome job experience. If you play your hand right in the novice training grounds testing area, you can hit job 10 by killing only 8 of these suckers.
Aaah, good times. 
So now that I made it to thief, its time to get equipped.
Way beyond my budget... I'll have to get hunting in order to be able to afford it. Morroc isn't very good money, so I'll have to get traveling.
Some monsters are still a bit unreasonable to kill at that level...
Aaah, finally the capital city.
I want to stop for a moment to talk a bit about the experience. When playing a low level character from scratch, something I haven't done in some time, I felt as though it was a familiar feeling... and then it hit me. It felt just like it had when I started playing Ragnarok 2. While I equated Ragnarok 2 as being very different from RO because there really is no RO2 end game like there is in RO1, Maybe they aren't so different after all.
Anyways, after visiting Prontera, I hunted thief bugs and such for a bit until I got some Paragon, which gave me the boost I needed to get the dagger I wanted.
Off to Payon, the land of valuable drops and high exp ratio monsters.
...And sexy hats.
Sweet, sweet blue herbs, adding more fuel to the machine!
I can see people trying to get bots killed, but some people are seriously assholes. This guy spent almost 5 minutes trying to train that remover onto me. Thank god they're slow. I would have reported him if he didn't piss off.
Some people...
Lol oww.
Having made some money finding normal drops, I decided to indulge and get a speed potion. Thats right, I'm spoiled.
The next step up from spores is logically wolves. This was a bit of a surprise.
Maybe not really useful for others, but it is useful for me!
Happy with my thief progress, I decided I should make a merchant to sell my wares.
Damn them spores!
After getting vending and pushcart 10, it was time to take my hand at selling stuff.
Oh yeah.
Looking good.
Total Game Time: 4-5 hours.
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And Now For Something Completely Different
By Doddler on November 17, 2007 in category 'Noob Project'
Alright, this journal is going to take a 180 degree turn.
It has concerned me that, day after day on the iro forums, that people complain about inaccessibility, how players can't seem to get into this game, how the market is so messed up. So I have decided to conduct an experiment of sorts.
I decided that I will play on a different server, completely free of existing ties to my existing characters. No one will know who I am, and I will see how far I can get. I will document my game exploits here for people to see. Its not a permenant change, I just hope to show that this game is not so bad to get into, and that the game market isn't as broken as many vets seem to suggest.
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