Doddler's RO Journal
A Story of RE
By Doddler on February 20, 2009 in category 'kRO Sakray RE'
So I figured it was about time for a real Renewal server post, so here we are again. In retrospect I should probably do my Valk server post first and the god item quest, but I think everyone is a little more interested in how the future of RO is shaping up.
So what's in store? Some more Rune Knight stuff, some Warlock stuff, two videos, and more screenshots than you can shake a stick at!
You might remember that I 99'd my wizard previously. I gave it some careful thought, and decided that I would trans prior to taking the step and changing to warlock.
Unfortunately they have yet to fix the fact that porings are still savage beasts out for blood. I beat the poring eventually, by respawning repeatedly and rushing it. Once I got the job requirement for storage though, its easy to one shot them even with the novice dagger. Its so much simpler when they can't fight back!
Soul Strike unfortunately doesn't scale well with the other abilities you get later on as a Warlock, but its a pretty kick ass levelling tool as a mage. I think I kept Soul Strike on my hotkey bar up to level 60-70. With a good weapon it still does 2k-4k damage, but its overshadowed by better skills later.
More so than Soul Strike, Fireball quickly escalated to be a favorite of mine. In Renewal the cast time is incredibly fast, has practically no delay, and does a respectable amount of damage against most targets. Nearing the high point on high wizard my fireball was doing about 1.5k-3k AoE on most targets. I'm not entirely sure it would ever be useful in a levelling situation as a Warlock, but I can see the advantage of super-fast aoe's in WoE, especially with the loss of instant cast magic, and the skill served me well during leveling.
More fireballing.
And finally job change to high wizard.
Amusingly after changing to Wizard, it was back to the old Mage skills still with firewall and fireball. The combination works pretty well on most lower level monsters.
Checking out some alternate leveling zones. That's a pretty heavy hitting firebolt!
Ouch! I had forgotten that traps got buffed a lot in Renewal, and the ones from monsters apparently aren't any different. With only 4k max HP, the pitman's trap one shotted me.
Another odd leveling spot I tried out. It was actually pretty good for the 85-90 region, but I took a lot of hits from the undeads. Firepillar works pretty well now that its free to cast, though you notice the lowered blast radius on levels 5~10. Still, its a useful skill, and does a respectable amount of mdef bypassing fire damage.
Approaching the mid-90's, I went to everyone's favorite passive monster, Siromas. I feel a bit at a disadvantage on a HWiz since most people I saw could kill faster than me one on one.
Lucky for me then, that I'm not restricted to fighting 1 on 1. LoV appears to have a much higher modifier than before. All 4 primary wizard AoEs (Storm Gust, Lord of Vermillion, Meteor Storm) had their damage ratios increased, and while it happened after I left siromas, their base cast time also dropped by 20% of its original value.
Yay? I guess I'll throw it on the stack with my 3 others. 
And there's level 99! 
Unfortunately, hitting level 99 wasn't the end of the journey, as I was only about job 65. In order to get the skills I wanted, I needed to get up to job 68. No fun there, thats for sure.
I ended up resetting my skills so that I could get safety wall. Unfortunately firewalling and hunting passive monsters only gets you so far, you need to be able to take down more aggressive monsters, some of which can go through your walls.
Storm Gust level one still does a pretty decent amount of damage. Initially I just kept an SG down over the wolves for when they broke out of the ice, but eventually I changed to LoV.
Here it comes...
Boom!
So here's a video compellation I made of the whole leveling journey of high mage. I apologize for the atrocious recording quality early on, I accidentally had camstudio set to low quality recording. Yeah, I kind of suck playing wizard, but I have fun.
The music in the video is from the World of Goo Soundtrack (amazing game btw). It doesn't fit the video at all, but I'm running out of original music to use! If anyone has any suggestions of stuff along the lines of what I've been using so far, that would be pretty cool. 
Oh, I guess I use Frost Nova a bit in the video. Like Fire Ball, the skill is buffed to the point where it is useful. Fast cast, low delay, higher AoE, higher damage... its a good skill. Like I use it in the video, its really good for freezing things that are currently on you if you need them off quickly. Annoying monsters like Mimics, Ridewords, and Mantis's come to mind (the monsters I used it on!).
And with a bang, I'm a Warlock.
Oh yeah!
For those who haven't seen it, the warlock skill tree.
To start out before having any warlock skills, I began in Niflheim, a pretty nice spot for 100-110.
After I unlocked Frost Mist and Jack Frost, I went down to Veins to hunt plants and Magmarings. Here's Jack Frost in action. It does a lot of damage... only downside is the requirement to have freezing status (not frozen, its a different status) on monsters by using Frost Mist first. Frost Mist however is only 70% chance of success, so its not the most reliable combo skill in the world, but the fact that both skills affect all monsters on screen make up for that fact. If Jack Frost hits, the monsters definitely feel it.
Using Frost Mist, showing off its high radius. Unfortunately I was unable to combo Frost Mist with Jack Frost on magmarings, they just never were affected by the freezing status. After testing I was forced to conclude that Frost Mist can't cause freezing on fire element monsters. On the plus side, frost mist does about 4-6k total and does a good job of pulling them into an SG.
A better shot of the damage from Frost Mist.
Of course you can't spam Frost Mist, you can only use it once every 10 seconds or so, so the usual combo is to mist to get them to come after you, drop an SG down, and when they freeze, use chain lightening between the frozen monsters. The resulting chain lightening does 6-10k per hop, and if there's several monsters there, it will jump back and forth until they're all dead.
A quick shot of the elemental spheres that Warlocks cast. They look pretty neat, and they each orbit around the caster at different speeds. I haven't used any of the orb skills though, but it could be pretty good.
After being bored of magmarings, I went to the slightly more dangerous Glast Heim Chivalry. Raydrics are good killing 110-120 or so, the trick is not getting yourself killed.
In this screenshot you can see Crimson Rock, the new high damage fire element Warlock Skill. Its probably flat out the most dangerous of the warlock skills... like other warlock skills though you can't spam it even with strings because of the specific cooldown (again about 5-8 seconds). I don't mind it, since I wasn't a fan of the single skill mindset of most wizard pre-renewal had (SG SG SG SG).
Earth Strain in action. It doesn't look very good but what it looks like in game is a moving wall of heaven's drive moving away from you. The damage is high, and the chance to divest helm/shield would be devastating in war. Its a bit tricky to use, since you have to be facing the direction you want to cast it. Additionally, the skill will fail if you're facing diagonally. I found it difficult to aim myself for the skill while in my battle stance since it only faces 4 directions.
Still, its a very powerful skill.
The abysmal knight doesn't take much from elemental magic unfortunately, but his Khalitzburgs definately don't like the crimson rock.
They still die eventually though.
There were a few other people leveling there that I saw. This ranger was one of them. The "Camouflage!!" above its head and the dark shadow kind of give it away, but in a light colored area a hidden ranger is actually really hard to spot.
Their skill "Aimed Bolt" works kind of like pierce, in that it does bonus damage based on the size of the monster. It only works on trapped targets and has a long cast time, but I wouldn't want to be hit by it.
Now at Rachel Sanctuary. Moving up in the world! Crimson Rock does pretty good against them as well.
Of course, harder monsters means higher risk.
My Warlock equipment. Some of those items might not be immediately identifiable, so I'll go over them. Equipped are a Dark Illusion Hat, Sprint Mail, Eraser Staff, Hodremlin Orleans Server, Immune Diabolus Manteau, Green Sprint Shoes, Nimble Orleans Glove, and a Sprint Ring.
The idea here as you can guess is all cast time reduction. Since even with my dex there's still a substantial amount of reducible cast time remaining, so stacking reduction gears is a good way to get a faster cast. The sprint gears combo to make 12% cast time reduction, the orleans server and glove combo for 10% reduction, and the dark illusion gives an additional 10%, for 32% cast time reduction.
An unusual sight. In Renewal, there's NPCs vending all kinds of equipment and cards, except headgears. With the addition of Rangers, there was an exploit of sorts that allowed you to get unlimited zeny. But what good is zeny on a server where everything is available from npc vendors for (nearly) free? Well, apparently gambling is where you spend your zeny, everyone gambling on headgears.
A similar sight at the zeny exploit. Basically what happened is that they added an NPC that sells these new Alloy Traps for Rangers to use, which cost 200z each. In order to make them easier to use, they created an Alloy Trap Box, a low weight box that contains 100 Alloy Traps. This box however was also priced at 200z. By buying boxes and selling the traps, it was really easy to get zeny.
And you better believe I did it to! There's no risk because its a test server, but my days of poor leveling were over.
I decided to go back to Rune Knight to check out the various things they've changed. This here is Ignition Break, which now takes your weapon element but deals bonus damage if you're endowed with fire. This is without fire element.
And this is with fire. A 50% increase! Not bad for a skill that's already 1200% at short range.
I touched on it in a previous journal entry, but one thing you'll see on kRO is that lots of the female Rachel priests wear these white hoods. I don't personally see whats wrong with them, as the game does absolutely nothing that would give the idea that there's any racially motivated hatred within Rachel or RO at all, its just a clerical robe. Maybe its because I don't live in the US that I don't understand, but on iRO, they removed all the NPCs wearing the hoods and replaced them with the masked versions. Its a shame because that means we lose the cut-in images for npcs such as Urstialla here.
Did I mention I enjoy Ignition Break? Its definitely more reliable than Bowling Bash at hitting a group of monsters. The downside is the cast time... I've had to use a Phen during leveling because I keep getting interrupted on my skill attacks.
And this is Storm Blast. Again like Ignition Break there's a short interruptible 1s cast time, but it being a Rune skill makes it infinitely more annoying. If your cast is interrupted, not only do you still lose the Rune, you also still suffer from the re-use delay of the Rune.
On the plus side, the skill is a beast, dealing huge AoE damage.
A practical use of Storm Blast while leveling.
This is the new animation for Sonic Wave. The damage is low but its only level 3 (goes up to 5). The damage increase is nice (now 1000% at level 5), and the skill is instant casting and 9 cells range, but it seems they've given it a short reuse delay that stops it from being a spammable skill.
A short test I did to show the defence reduction of having multiple enemies on you. These hornets are very low level... level 12 I think, and don't have very much base attack.
However, if you gather enough of them, your defence becomes worthless, and they start dealing full damage. Its not really an issue with hornets, but most monsters 100+ monsters have a base attack power above 1000, so if you lose your defence, you won't last long.
In a search for strange new leveling areas, I ended up back at Volcano Thor. The Kasa's are still out of my level range, but the Knockers and Imps made good targets.
The damage in the screenshot is clashing spiral, which is a very, very nice skill now.
Wahaha, for years Kasas have been ruining my days with their clashing spiral, its time to clashing back!
Ouuuuch. The Salamander is probably the hardest monster I've fought in Renewal. While its base attack is like most monsters still fairly low, the speed at which the Salamander deals his hits is still insane.
Interested in how the New World looked, I stumbled through the quest. For those that are curious, the entrance to the New World isn't actually on the Satan Morroc map. It looks similar but it is a different area entirely. You don't even need to have started the Continental Guard quest in order to access it, this NPC here (when you're on the quest) will take you to the map with the portal.
I have to admit, its a pretty damn cool visual effect.
Before you're able to make the transition to the New World you're attacked by these guys. You have to kill about 30 of them before you can continue.
And there I am. As you may have guessed from my previous post, I do really like the design of the new world. It seems immediately obvious that the texture design in particular is from a newcomer to gravity. You can see his first works with the Tierra Canyon Battleground and Endless Tower, and it just gets better from there.
I'll skip the tour since you've probably already watched the video in my last post. These spots here seem to be mining points. By using them you get a random stone of some kind. When I did it I got some plain stones, a few green live and wind of verdure, and some special type of ore that I'm not familiar with. You can't keep using the same ore location, so you'll have to wander around the map to find others.
The Bradium Golem, a level 149 monster, the highest level monster currently in game. Sadly, I think the Salamander was a lot harder.
The Nepenthes. Basically a super mandragora, this thing hits fairly hard, but it also does it very fast and at high accuracy. Despite my very high agility and agi gears equipped, it consistently hit me, forcing me to use potions just getting past them. Thankfully they're immobile.
The statue in the city of Manuk. Did I mention I like the new art style?
This girl appears to be the leader of the Faries. How do I know? She's on both login screens, two of the loading screens and the room looks pretty leader-like to me!
In the basement of the leader's building is this. It reminds me a whole lot of the signup rooms for battlegrounds in WoW. Doesn't help that there's one of these rooms in each of the 3 faction towns in the new world, and they DID suggest that they might be adding some kind of faction PVP. Who knows?
Unlike the Ore gathering spots of Manuk, Splendide fields have several locations where you can literally go fishing. The process is quite slow, about 10 seconds, and you get a random fish related item. I have a lot of tails, gills, and nippers, but I never got anything really useful. I hear you can get fishing equipment to improve the speed of fishing too, but not sure how.
My fishing exploits came to an end when I was chased down and murdered by an angry pack of Nagas.
(Edit: Looks like I botched this one up, metadata is still at the end of the file. The video still plays, but it needs to completely buffer. I'll upload a fixed one later)
And lastly, a leveling video of Rune Knight in Abyss Lake. Most monsters there are level 126-130, an optimal range for my level 124 Rune Knight. I use lots of runes, and lots of skills, I'm sure its interesting. Dying at the end is embarrassing, it sucks when you can't use your other AoE skills because they're on cooldown, and bowling bash fails because of the gutter lines. Oh well.
If its not immediately obvious, I'm using several items this time around to make up for my character's short-comings. Equipped is a Phen card in a Pingicula's Corsage to allow uninterupted cast of crush strike, storm blast and ignition break, and a +6 Solid Dragoon Violet Fear. The Golem card does indeed allow casting of Crush Strike without breaking your weapon, which is pretty cool!
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The New World
By Doddler on February 17, 2009 in category 'Random Stuff'
Just a short update, I made a brief video while playing the renewal server of the new world. I wouldn't recommend viewing it if you don't want the place to be spoiled, but for the rest of us who want to see what the future of RO looks like, with the Midgard Three Kingdom Alliance Expedition Camp (long name!), the Tribe of Giants- Manuk, and the Sprite Village Splendide, you may find that it looks very pretty.
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Catching Up on Valkyrie
By Doddler on February 5, 2009 in category 'General'
I have a big pile of pictures, stretching all the way back to, as you can see Christmas, that I figured I'd catch up on. So lets check out whats been going on on Valkyrie Server.
The christmas event brought upon many things, including the Lucky Box event. While I do have my reservations about how the whole thing was handled, the fact of the matter is that the quest unleashed a monster amount of bloody branches on the server, which for a short period of time made is pretty dangerous to go anywhere.
Ifrit summoned in a PVP room. We decided that the lack of death penalty made it worthwhile to attempt to take him down.
Ouch!
I missed the moment he died, but it was the first Ifrit kill on Valkyrie Server.
There were a few other fun things that came from the branches. I never noticed it before but doppelganger attacks REALLY fast in two hand quicken.
Taking on the Valkyries.
Even Beelzebub is afraid of us!
One of the strangest thing I've seen to come out of the bloody branch, was White Lady fighting Thanatos. I guess her sanctuary hit him because he's demon race and he got a bit angry, and they just went right at it. White Lady didn't have a chance.
War of emperium remains entertaining as always. I'm not sure why all my woe shots are from the same perspective and always showing us losing, but I guess thats the only time I remember to take screenshots.
Things are a bit more even now, and we almost always have a good fight.
Battlegrounds runs quite frequently on the server, as many people have a lot to gain with the BG rewards. Most of the time though players do Tierra because of the speed of the matches, most people don't do Flavius. I guess the problem is that most people can't handle the guardians. Its not so bad if you're smart about it, as you can see there's lots of ways to do it.
The most common way is just to put them on the ledge. This is kind of cheap and its really easy for the other team to screw up since they can pull guardians out of the corner.
Random shot of the christmas outfits. I always like the alternate outfits, even if they weren't really useful.
Of course I haven't spent all this time without getting levels. For the most part I did my leveling in Volcano Thor.
Its seems really out of place for fire monsters in volcano thor to drop icecream, but the Snowier card does not discriminate. The snowier cards I got were a really nice investment, as I could level in thors with a very minimal zeny cost. I must admit I use the life potions from the kafra shop to keep the costs down, but ice cream just makes the deal all the much better.
Bow Guardians might be the most annoying monster for a melee character to try to take out, ever.
I never actually use bowling bash down there but it makes for a good screenshot!
Almost there...
Level 99.
Of course keeping with tradition I had to pull it off while killing an MVP. I decided to do orc lord since it was the best I could probably solo.
Stats and equipment at level 99.
Off to valhalla to transcend!
Back to 1/1 novice again.
I decided to use a couple of the newyears envelopes to get some quick levels after transing but as you can tell, it turns out they only give base exp. Level 22/1, oops!
Yeah, its kind of cheating, but I had some mercenaries left over from the lucky box event, so I figured I'd give them a spin. The Bow one isn't too bad, she's quite weak defensively but at least she does siromas well.
After much leveling to job 50, I'm a Lord Knight.
And an incredibly sexy Lord Knight at that. 
I also had a fencer mercenary from the event, so I decided to take it down to Anubis. Damn does this guy ever kick some ass.
Once I got over my mercenary fever I took myself down to Abyss 3f to hunt for stone bucklers. Its not a safe place down there though...
And, inevitably, back to Volcano Thor.
We decided to head back and do a couple more bloody branches we bought from the market. Gloom Under Night is a pretty hard hitting boss, but it seems that its a lot easier if you put the minions to sleep with a hunter's sandman trap.
Ouch!
While hunting bathories with a friend, I had this message pop up. It suprised me, I wasn't aware that we had gotten the last piece required. Good stuff though! 
After a few hours in bathories, my friend actually got the card we were looking for.
I didn't actually find the card I was looking for, but I did find one of these...
Next we needed an armor to put the card in, so we went to odin to kill Skeggiolds. Of course, we had to kill the Valkyries we came across.
Armor complete!
What good is an evil odin's blessing? Why, its quite useful in the crack of dimension.
We partied there with a Taekwon Master, using heat to take down the monsters. It was pretty good! We didn't find any of the rares we were looking for, but we did find a Skin of Ventus, a Nemesis, and two Bloody Eaters. Maybe next time we'll have better luck with rares.
Somehow, monsters that use Grand Cross/Darkness and also using the skill Magic Mirror can hit themselves with their own skill. Combined with the fact that the skill causes them to lose their current target, they take the reflect damage as an attack and end up actually killing themselves. Really strange!
Thats it for this time, hopefully I'll do posts a little more regularly after this.
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Trials of the Gods - Virtual Okolnir
By Doddler on January 23, 2009 in category 'General'
Continuing my unfortunate tradition of posting things weeks or months after they actually happen, I wanted to describe the experience we had with the new god item creation quest. Currently in testing on the iRO Sakray server, the WoE2 god item creation test 'Virtual Okolnir' requires a full group of 16-20 players to attempt a series of challenges within a one hour time limit. While I was a bit concerned that we wouldn't get experienced players if we organized a team out of random people, but in the end the group we got were a pretty good team.
Those unfamiliar with the god item quest can read up on it at the RO future wiki.
You begin in the Mystic Garden, a hedge maze of sorts with flowers that block your path. These flowers however change position every 2 minutes, effectively re-organizing the maze. When you first start you begin next to your past self; a biolabs 2f monster of your base class that bears your name. Once defeated, the garden becomes populated with your future selves, which is represented by the full family of level 99 biolabs minibosses (18 of them in total), all of which need to be defeated before you can exit.
Unfortunately our attempt didn't get off to a good start. We went in understanding the nature of the shifting maze, and we were also familiar with the dangers that lurked inside the maze. What we weren't prepared for however was how cruel the maze itself was. When I heard the term 'maze' I went in with the expectation that there was always a path from point A to point B wherever those points may be, but it turns out that's just not the case. The maze is actually composed of a series of completely walled off sections, and when the maze shifts, it simply creates a new set of walled off sections.
As you might have imagined, the chance that some helpless members of your team will end up locked in a small room with Lord Knight Seyren and Mastersmith Howard is in fact rather high. We actually wiped entirely when they first appeared, as we were really unprepared for it. Luckily, it turns out that you can freely enter during the one hour time limit (as long as there are less than 20 people currently on the map). The mystic garden probably took longer than any other phase of the dungeon, taking us about 20-25 minutes.
Thats a lot of people! Anyways once you get out of the Mystic Garden, you travel along a path through the sky. Here there are both Garden Keepers and Garden Watchers. The Garden Watcher is a male 'Dame of Sentinel', only differentiated in stats by it's much higher HP, ability to shield reflect, and inability to use snatch. The Garden Keepers here however are your true objective, little guys that flee when you attack them. They drop the Crystal Key, needed to enter the next area of Okolnir.
When we did it we found out that the keys are bound do your character, which ended up costing us some extra time. What it means is that each person will end up having to pick up the item themselves. Since they're boss monsters, you'll want to make sure you have the right party settings for item drops or it'll cost you some time here.
After everyone has their crystal key, you can enter the room of Piamette. Piamette sits on a chair in the center of the room, surrounded by various toy like monsters (Alice / Ancient Mimic / Violy). When she sees you enter the room she recognizes you as birds, animals that need to be caged. She periodically sets a magic trap on the ground, and a party member who touches that trap is locked away in one of the 6 cages around the room. When all cages are filled, barricades appear near each cage. Destroying each of these frees your teammates from the cages, and upon seeing her birds set free, Piamette becomes angry and leaves her seat to attack the party.
The whole process has to be completed relatively quickly, from making sure your party members activate the magic traps to breaking the barricades. We didn't fill all 6 cages the first time, and the script reset and we got it on the second try. It shouldn't be too hard for a real party to do it, though taking the barricades out fast enough is pretty tricky.
Piamette herself isn't actually all that hard, though we failed to keep her properly under control which made the battle much harder than it needed to be. If we had it tanked against a wall I don't think it would have been a problem. Her area status effects and hell's judgement screwed a few people up, and our biochemist heavy party as you can see didn't deal especially well with her 5 vit. It was annoying, but we eventually finished her off and continued out.
With time running out, we fought our way up to the Okolnir temple. This stage has large groups of frus, skogul, and then garden watchers summoned. Of these monsters, there are about 20 of each that are marked as guardians, and defeating them kills the remaining of that type of monster. There is a certain degree of risk pulling 50-60 frus or skogul back to the party at a time however.
We did ok, though we had to rely on stormgust to keep the frus and skogul frozen in order to properly take them on. As a tank, I don't think I could hold that many for very long at all, and I ended up dying a few times while pulling monsters.
In the screenshot you'll have to understand that the Sakray test server has increased exp and drops.
Same scene, a few moments later as a wall of Frus crash into the party.
Battleing our way up the staircase towards where the Wish Maiden is awaiting us. The amount of garden watchers here was quite frightening, like the Frus and Skogul they're not the kind of monster you're generally prepared to deal with 40 or so at a time.
Time is running out...
After clearing the garden watchers the Wish Maiden attacks us. The one minute marker in the screenshot shows how little time we have left. While Wish Maiden doesn't take kindly to being icewalled, the resulting firestorm was better than letting her march through the party, and would be required for us to complete it in the time limit.
Victory! Based on the screenshot times, we completed the trial with just 10-15 seconds remaining, a truely close call.
Oh yeah.
And there you have it, Okolnir completed on the first run. It was not without cost, we reported over 3000 acid bombs were used, thousands of mastella fruits and sp recovery items, and players were expertly geared using items provided on Sakray for testing. It wasn't easy, but it was a hell of a good time.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to come along. I look forward to doing this all again on Valkyrie, this time for real.
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