Doddler's RO Journal
Atroce Solo
By Doddler on November 5, 2007 in category 'MVP'
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. ^^;
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A Day in the Life
By Doddler on November 5, 2007 in category 'MVP'
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? 
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For Love of Leveling
By Doddler on November 4, 2007 in category 'General'
So today, driven by my mad desire to get that last point of STR, I decided I should make use of the 1.5x exp event and get my LK another level.
Thor is a pretty scary place... its a bit frustrating, especially when you have no shield for the job. I died frequently, and used an obscene amount of pots.
This kind of scene isn't entirely uncommon. I have this kind of unnatural desire to mob up monsters, including big scary ones that hurt me a lot, which generally isn't very good for my health.
Level Up~! That puts the LK at level 94, and I finally got my STR to 99, and put the remaining points into AGI. From start to finish, I used about 5000 white pots (4.6m worth), 5 battle manuals, 19 insurance, about 120 stays at the inn (600k worth), taking just under three hours. Final EXP rate is approximately 20m/hr. Not bad. 
I don't usually use battle manuals but I do sometimes indulge for exp events such as this. Aren't those things terribly expensive? Even on jRO they're much cheaper...
A completely off topic screenshot. I've been doing some Atroce lately, and usually either I die, or he dies, but not usually both. Apologies to the Defiance MVP party I fought against today too, it was rather cruel of me to trick the sniper in their party into getting Atroce to activate defender by hitting him while trapped. I don't usually play so dirty. 
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MVP Extravaganza
By Doddler on November 3, 2007 in category 'MVP'
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. 
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