Saturday, February 27, 2010

Quick Suggestions for the following classes:

Okay, so I didn't realize how long that last post was. Whoops. Anyway, hopefully this one isn't too tl;dr for you all.

QUICK TIPS: For leveling on other classes

* Acolyte classes! You guys are truly blessed in terms of leveling early on. Once you get Heal on your skills set, you can "Heal Bomb" just about everything in Payon Dungeon. So, type in "/ns" for no shift targeting (otherwise you have to hold the shift button in order to target players and some monsters when you want to "heal"). Get your level 10 Heal out and spam that sucker on those undead monsters!

Once it gets slow in Payon Dungeon head over to Amatsu Dungeon (@warp ama_dun01) and Heal Bomb those Antique Firelocks for a while. When it starts to feel like a grind head over to "@warp in_sphinx4" and "@warp in_sphinx5" and look for Anubis (he's huge you can't miss him.) Heal Bomb him for a while, switching between the two maps because there are only 15 and 10 of each for both maps.

Eventually, it may get too slow there too, so you can access the guild dungeon with "@warp gld_dun04 " and start heal bombing in there too. At this point, you want to work on getting ME (Magnus Exorcismus) and spamming that inside the guild dungeon. It's pretty much your best friend in later levels.

I'd also recommend you build your stats around dex (till about 150 dex), int (go all the way to 255!), and some agi (70 is decent...) to avoid dying in mobs. Vit is also a good idea to put in since you don't want to get stunned a crap load, but I find you can live without it for early leveling purposes.


* Mages play almost the same way, but instead of Heal Bombing you have a whole other arsenal of attacks on your side. You can pretty much follow my leveling process through thieves on the previous post. Just remember to pump into about 150 dex (or until instant cast) and everything into int. Put some vit and agi in so you don't die due to getting stunned or what have you, but don't make those your main focus I'd say 70 is a good start, and after that focus on getting your dex at instant cast and your int maxed. Lucky for you, you get all those fancy AoE spells. So, you can mob like no tomorrow in HD3 and Magma dungeon 2.


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Will update with more classes if necessary. Feel free to comment below if you want more details, etc.

Speed Leveling~!

So, I wish I had images to accompany my leveling, but I don't - mostly because I was still testing the server really quick to make sure it was worth our group's time. As such, I usually speed run/level in a few hours to confirm the environment is still familiar enough to my past RO server experiences.

Most RO private servers rearrange NPCs and even recreate maps, so it's necessary to be familiar with as many different types as possible if you want to jump right into the game and forget the time spent on familiarizing yourself with a particular community's set up.

Of course, this is being said by a person who prefers to PKK (Player Kill Kill). If to PK is to kill another player (hence Player Kill), then to PKK is to kill those players who kill other players. I guess in some respects you can call me somewhat of a vigilante, but I don't actively seek out people who kill other people on my own accord (I only do so when asked by another person). Usually, I wait for someone to attack me and then I kill them. But I think that can be mostly called defense, ha ha!

Anyway, enough about the background, here's my process for speed leveling in a high rate RO server environment:


The specs for this server state it's 8k/8k/10%card drop and 80%items. This basically translates to 8000x more base exp than the official RO server/8000x more job exp than the official RO server/10% increased chance to receive a card (a very rare and useful item in most servers)/80% increased chance to receive regular "drops" or other items monsters/enemies fork over when you massacre them.

What's this mean?

Means I can go kill a hapless pink blob of a Poring and get myself 30 levels in one go.

So, I warped to HD (Hidden Dungeon) using my @warp command because I'm lazy to walk there. "@warp prt_maze01" please! This teleports me to some random location inside the map Prontera Maze01, which basically means Hidden Dungeon first floor.

This method of warping means I probably ended up somewhere I don't really want to be exactly but I'm in the right map. From here, I press up on my keyboard and enter to re-enter the warping code into my text box. Voila, instant fly wing (A fly wing is an item that randomly teleports players about the map they're currently on)!

Okay, now there's the poring room. What do I do? I stab it with my puny knife.

*ensuing fanfare to congratulate my 30 levels increase*

Just as I warped to HD, I'm going to warp back to Morroc (Prontera's too busy for my liking). So, I use another command @go to teleport back to town. "@go 1" go~!

Now I'm in Morroc - Home of the Thieves and one of my favorite locations because of the close by NPC vendors and nice desert scenery. This varies from server to server, but this server happens to have a "Job Master" NPC next to my warp who serves to turn your character into whatever character class (knight, mage, priest, etc.) you want by removing the regular process of completing additional quests to unlock these advancements. So, I click on the lovely lady, tell her I want to be a thief, and off I go once more to HD.

Repeat above process till I hit job level 50. Return back to Morroc, ask the Job Master to turn me into a Rogue because going Assassin is weak and uninteresting (okay, I lied, it's kind of cool, but almost every server is full of Sins! So, I want to avoid that and be "unique").

At this point though, I'm probably level 60 or 70 and I still need 39 or 29 more levels to go before I can reborn (which is a term we use to mean transcend to higher classes and better stats; essentially, it forces you to redo the whole Novie->Thief scenario, but instead of becoming a Rogue at the end you become a STALKER!). Anyway, HD is too slow unless you're an AOE character and can kick ass at HD3. So, off I warp to Payon Dungeon to kill some Sohees, poor dears.

@warp pay_dun03!

Sohees are basically these floating ghost girls. They're really cute actually, but I must kill them to level up! So, I equip some wind arrows and let the barrage of pointy objects descend on the poor girls.

Level 99? Check. cool, reborn time. Repeat basically the entire process above until you hit Stalker mode~! Then continue leveling to the max at 255 (254 on some high rate servers, but it really fluctuates on preference of the GMs). You'll have to check out other maps because these mentioned maps will be too slow for you. Around level 150, I start looking for a mage to SG (Storm Gust) me and then steal that power to run around rampant in Magma Dungeon, summoning snow all over those fire creatures. Light Halzen is another very good choice for bow leveling, but in this particular server, I noticed the GMs restricted access to the creepy biolab. So, that's out of the question for now...


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I guess I should state here that the @ commands are actually GM (Game Master) commands that aren't normally available to the common player. However, in this server, they are. So, damn right, I abuse them because it makes leveling so much faster.

Also, I neglected to mention my skill point and stat point distribution. For thieves, this is my usual formula for leveling purposes only:

Novie (9 dex/9 str/ 9 agi) -> after that first poring, I start pumping into dex and agi with short cut commands of "/dex+ 100" and "/agi+ 100." Note there is a space between the + and the number. This just speeds up the time to distribute your stat points, otherwise you'd sit there clicking each button manually on your stat window (accessible through alt+a).

Thief -> pump in more dex and agi, and if you can get a bow. If not, put some points into str to do more damage with a knife. Bows are pretty easy to come by if you warp to Payon Dungeon and kill an archer skeleton there, looting its body afterward. The increased dex allows you to hit enemies more regularly (think of it like accuracy) and also decreases the amount of delay spent for casting spells/skills. The agi is put there so you can avoid getting killed when a gang of two monsters jumps you. I usually have about 100 agi and then I go pure dex to maximize my damage with the bow. So, play around with it as you go. It won't matter much in a high rate because you're still leveling quickly. Until you hit about 200, then respecing your stats might need to occur to make you more efficient.

Stalker -> same deal with this class as the thief class. Go for dex, agi, and maybe even some vit to increase your hp. For the most part, however, you should be bow-style and DSing (Double Straffeing) the enemies. You could go dagger style, but I find that to be much more risky since you have to go closer to the enemy and manage three different stats (str, dex, agi) as opposed to just two (dex and agi) with the bow mode.


Each class plays a bit differently, but I can tell you the general leveling up maps formula is something like this:

*HD (kill porings and other things if possible)

*Payon Dungeon (kill skeletons on each floor until you get to Sohees. If you can get wind damage on them, great. But you'll probably be moving onto the next map when leveling here gets slow)

*Amatsu Dungeon (kill the Antique Firelocks and Miyabi things. I'd avoid the Shinobi if you don't have any/much Agi. You might have difficulties)

*Turtle Dungeon (kill turtles!) /HD level 3 (AoE things here. Watch out for other players who might try to PK you since it's a popular spot!)

*Magma Dungeon (kill fire things!)

*Light Halzen Bio Labs (not available easily on this server. =().

But, yeah, that's about it. Let me know if you have questions about anything. I kind of just spilled whatever I could think of on my mind!

And off we go...

Ah, RO...while I can't say I have nearly as many memories with it as I have with other games (D2, IWBTG, Super Metroid), there was an ever-so-slight sense of nostalgia as I finally managed to get the client and patch working and I fired up the character selection screen.

Okay, rather than make this a long and drawn-out post (which I am totally capable of), I'm just going to make this relatively quick, since it's 5:00 AM anyways (wtf!?).

The first time I played RO, I had four characters--one hunter, one knight, one wizard, and a monk.

Anyways, my new char is a priest, with the same hair style as Morta, my old knight.  I'm not naming her anything fancy--just going by DDRKirby(ISQ).  Hair is one of the defining characteristics of an RO character I think, but for me (with my trichophilic tendencies) it's even MORE of a big deal.  The first time, when I was making my three first characters in RO, I had this sheet of scratch paper where I was just brainstorming which hairstyles looked good, not to mention hair colors...aggh, it was really hard.

I think acolytes look really cute, but unfortunately I'm stuck with the less-appealing priest outfit.  Oh well.

Anyhoo, first things first--generated my character, went out and whacked on the first thing I saw.  This is my first time on a high-rate server so it was a bit weird to be at lvl 30 after killing one enemy T_T.




Then it was off to the church to become an acolyte...see, see how cute I look? ^^  With my arms crossed so sweetly in front of me~

One of the main draws of RO for me is actually that I get to look cute~.  Which you might think is ridiculous, but if you know me well enough, you'd probably understand.





After going around in some random areas in whacking some more stuff until job level 50, it was time for priest change.  I look less cute now =(...but, at least I still get to cross my arms in front of me ^^;




I went with some random guide from GameFAQs for my skill build, which probably means it's suboptimal.  I guess I probably should have waited for someone (*looks at Kotaro/Michelle*) to just give me a build, but oh well--I just wanted to feel like I accomplished something anyways.  I can always respec later, if need be.  Anyways, look at all the fancy buffs I can apply now...whee...

arst

the obligatory hello world post. (i.e. i'm setting up everything)

+5000 brownie points if you know what "arst" is.