Sunday, April 11, 2010

LuminaRO

Alright, a long-awaited post to catch up on everything.

We've started on a new server as of maybe half a week ago.  It's entitled LuminaRO, and can be found here: http://lumina-ro.net/

Seeing as how I...usually have an ungodly amount of time on my hands, I decided that I'd probably want to create multiple characters.  But in that case, I needed some kind of naming convention that would work out.  Last time I just went with DDRKirby(ISQ) since I only had my Priest, but that obviously won't work here.  When I first played RO I remember having goddess names of some sort, so my Swordsman was Morta (the roman goddess of death), for example.

Anyways, here's what I came up with:
Reinforce san - Priest
Vita chan - Monk
Teana san - Gunslinger
Miyuki san - Ninja
Signum - Knight
Caro chan - Wizard
Reinforce zwei - Soul linker
Subaru san - Taekwon
Fate sama - Wizard

It's an -awesome- naming convention. (Nanoha chars, if you couldn't tell)

Here's screencaps of how all of them look at the current moment.

Reinforce, lvl 92 support Priest.  I really, really hate the priest outfit, so I'm hoping I can rebirth soon.



Vita chan, lvl 74 Monk.  Some sort of combo monk just for pvm fun.




Teana san, lvl 74 gunslinger.  I have no idea what to do with gunslinger builds; I'm going revolver now, maybe gatling???




Miyuki san, lvl 14 ninja.  Miyuki is from Triangle Heart.  She's probably gonna throw stuff...or something.




Signum, lvl 68 Knight.  2-hand sword.




Caro chan, lvl 12 Magician.




Reinforce zwei, lvl 12 Taekwon.  Going to become a soul linker (it fits so well!)




Subaru san, lvl 14 Taekwon.  For taekwon master.




And of course, Fate sama, lvl 79 Wizard.  She likes using Lord of Vermillion (see below). =P



As you can see, I've "only" actually played 5 of the chars...not sure if that number will stay constant as time goes on.

Leveling hasn't been bad at all...it definitely helps that LuminaRO is having special 75/75/25 rates (as opposed to the normal 50/50/25) to celebrate breaking 500 members online at once.

The people are easier to interact with than on osRO...or maybe that's just my imagination.  I did run into a knight (i think) when I was out in Moscovia Dungeon farming Sharp Leaves with Vita chan (monk).  Sharp leaves are really good because the Les monster that drops it isn't particularly difficult, and you can turn in 50 of them to a quest NPC and get from lvl 60 to 70 in a snap.  Anyways I ran into this guy and we partied for a little bit (we both had to run off after a bit though).  He even friended me!

Patacroute : Akyko

Patacroute : I'm
Patacroute : : P
Vita chan : ?
You have become friends with (Patacroute).
Patacroute : That's the name of my sniper
Vita chan : oh
Patacroute : See you Woe : P

...Though, the friend list/party system is extremely awkward for me because I have 9 different characters, and it's managed independently for all of them.  @autoloot and @showexp login settings are independent as well...at some point I need to enable them for all 9 of my chars.  And don't even get me started on trying to handle inventory.  Gah.


Ok, more pictures of random stuff happening, and associated stories.

--Friday, 4/9/10--


This one was funny.  So Natalie tells me through IM that she's on (iirc) and so we try to meet each other ingame so we can friend each other/go do stuff.  I don't know what her character looks like, but I remember her mentioning jokingly (after hearing about my other 8 character names) that she should make a char called Fate...
Well, I was in Gaia (the new special main town of LuminaRO) and I run into this character who...well, looks like fate.  And sure enough, her name's "Fate T Harlaown"!  So I run up and friend request her.
...of course, I was competely mistaken and this just turned out to be some random person who also happens to like Fate xD.  (Natalie later pointed out that I should have remembered that she plays male characters...)
I wanted to friend request them with all 9 of my Nanoha-themed characters (they would probably get a good kick out of that), but after some quick testing, I determined that only the latest friend request stays; so you can't spam someone with multiple requests.  oh well.  Also yes, at the time of this screenshot I had 128 green herbs xD.



--Saturday, 4/10/10--

After -that-, I took Reinforce-san over to Ant Hell to help Natalie level Kannya, her magician.  Worked relatively well since most of the monsters didn't detect cast.



Some random high-level wizard walked by at one point.  I think I managed to catch him with a quick Blessing, haha.



After that, I switched over to Fate-sama and we headed to the clock tower.  Ah, yes, good ol' firewall shenanigans...



...okay, it didn't always work that well.  Particularly when Natalie would lag and then monsters would seemingly pass through firewalls and stuff.  Also the mimics would eat us alive, as would the flying Ridewords (BOOK!) if we weren't careful and quick to react.



Somehow I seem to pick up a lot of Pacifiers (pet armor, so you can't even equip it).  This screenshot shows me having 3, but I'm up to a grand total of =6= at the moment.  Similarly, Natalie seems to end up finding a bunch of Ribbons...but at least those are useful ^^;



More clock tower fun, and complaining about the lag.



At some point there was some server event going on, something like "monsters are invading Prontera!  Help us kill them!".  So I warped in to check it out.  The action was pretty crazy for the first 30 seconds as high level chars just warped in and owned everything...then things settled down a bit as people walked around looking for the remaining straggler monsters.  Somewhat fun~ ^^;



Around this time we got an email from Kotaro with his char names.  The only way to actually tell whether someone is online (if they're not in your flist/party) is to PM them, so I did, and it went through!  So we met up in Morroc and proceeded to do more friending/etc.  Also at this point some random dude named Fatal Knight came up to me and gave me one yellow gemstone.  o_o;;



We had some issues in the beginning...particularly since there was some monster right at the spawn area T_T.



Okay, we had some issues later on as well.  BOOOOKKK T_T



Eventually I got the hang of casting Jupitel Thunder while Taro used frost diver to freeze em (and therefore make them vulnerable to the lightning element).  I still think just plain firebolts would have been easier though.



After this Taro wanted to level his merchant, so I switched to Signum (swordie) who was only lvl 39 at the time.  Taro tried /organize awjeoifjw, but the party creation command is actually @party, not /organize.  So, shortly thereafter I typed @organize awjeoifjw. =PP



We leveled a bit in Payon dungeon; at least until we both ran out of novice potions.



I logged back in a bit later in the night, just to see if anything was going on.  I plopped myself down to the right of Morroc square, and left the game running while I did other stuff.  At some point I heard sounds and realized I was being attacked by an Easter Bunny xD.  So I whacked it for awhile, haha.  Didn't give me any notable drops though.



--Sunday, 4/11/10-- (actually Saturday night)

A while later I got an IM from Natalie and we decided to head into the coal mines to look for a Skeleton Worker card, since it looked like it was selling for a relatively high price on #vending.  It was pretty easy pickings for the most part (we died much less than we did in the clock tower), with the skeleton workers melting to one fire wall each.



Yes, at one point all three of us were simultaneously casting JT on the same enemy.  hahaha.
I managed to find one skeleton worker card, so I'll have to hand that off to Taro to sell eventually.



After all that Taro went back to finding some other card somewhere, and me and Natalie decided to try our luck in Thanatos tower.  I swapped out for Reinforce san so I could buff/heal.  And, I actually ended up tanking as well sometimes xD



Of course, we still ended up having a fair share of problems...including the time we ran into a book and an orb-monster-thing, and then in the process of backing up we ran straight into another book.  argh!  I did manage to get good job exp though.



After this we decided (somewhat foolishly) to head to Abbey so I could try and level my priest some more by healbombing stuff.  There was a high priest at the entrance, apparently waiting for a party or something, and we...ended up dying a lot to a mob that formed at the entrance, haha.  Somehow we joined up with some other people and proceeded to start going through as a party.  Unfortunately I was still only lvl 74 so they couldn't exp share yet (the limit is +/- 20 levels) so they tanked a few monsters while I healbombed them so I could jump to 79.



We got down to lvl 3 or so and somewhere along the way another party came through and we (somewhat foolishly) followed them for a little (or, I guess I did xD).  Interesting to see an actual party go through and own everything (as opposed to our somewhat ragged and disorganized group).



Me complaining about the priest outfit while we waited for the other members of the party.



We ended up getting really good exp though...at the end I was level 92, so well on my way to transcending.  I felt a little bad because I didn't really know what I was doing party-wise at first, but I got the hang of things soon enough.  Our archer ended up running out of arrows and by this time it was something like 5:30AM so me and Natalie decided to call it quits xD.  They thanked us for our help though; which was nice.  And I got friend requested, yay.

All in all not a bad start to newfound adventures on this server.  Hooray!~

Look forward to some more posts; especially when I end up getting to rebirth Reinforce and she becomes an oh-so-pretty high aco =D  I'm actually not quite sure whether I'll stick with the white hair.  I know, I know, Reinforce is supposed to have white hair..but I really, REALLY liked the red hair on my high priest that I had last time.  We'll see...

Friday, April 9, 2010

Lolz

Formal start post to come soon, but first, here's my second significant interaction with someone on the LuminaRO server. (the first was some aco who partied with me in payon dungeon but didn't really do anything.  I don't understand why they didn't just healbomb stuff T_T)



wolfs : hablas espaƱol
Teana san : no hablas =/
wolfs : jejej
Teana san : xD
wolfs : es k siempre hablan ingles
Teana san : o_o;
wolfs : y en k lv bas
Teana san : \/ hablas ingles, japanese, chinese, french
Teana san : no espanol
Teana san : xD
wolfs : wow
wolfs : tantos
Teana san : T_T
wolfs : japanese
wolfs : wow
wolfs : ejeje
Teana san : xD
wolfs : xd

Not all of the people on the server are like this, I swear! (hopefully) T_T

A test

To see how feasible it is to share blogspot posts on my FB wall, as opposed to importing them as fb notes (the first is preferable).

Friday, March 5, 2010

Oyasumi~


Well, today was our final presentation, and thus there is little need for us to stay on this server anymore.  We may find another one (a mid-rate one) to play on together, but regardless, this is a bit of a farewell.  I'll miss you, my darling little high priest--you made me feel so cute, pretty, and helpful!  Though, I guess the good thing about a lower-rate server is that I'll get to actually be a cute lil Acolyte for a little bit longer.  It's just the priest outfit that I really am not quite that fond of.  Oh well.

Overall, I think I got more out of this than I expected to.  For one, I actually worked on the presentation and website more than I thought I would, given how much time I've put into the class for some other things.  But more importantly, I feel like I've expressed my inner "girl side" to three people who may not have ever had the chance to see it otherwise (well...okay, maybe not, as my girl side is pretty prevalent in RL too anyways).  And this blog in itself was already something rewarding for me--anything which gets me writing in a manner like this is probably something that is worthwhile.

I'd have to say that this is my first "real" MMORPG experience, and it was definitely a good one.  Though, I must say that the high-rate kind of ruined things for me, as we didn't really have to work that hard for anything.  And, not having to do any job quests or hunt for items, was also something that I really missed, since those actually gave you things that you had to DO (as opposed to just walking around and whacking random things).  I still maintain that the PvM in RO is really quite a bore when compared with D2, but being able to be a healer in a party made up for it in some way.  Plus I got to be cute ^^

Well then, it's time to say goodbye to Rune Midgard--for awhile, at least.  I'll keep this blog around, and link to it on my website (I try to have my website link to everything I've done on the intarwebs), but this is it for new posts.  If we do start up on another server, I'll probably start a separate blog for that...

Oyasumi~

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Poor Colleen...

stuck at level 140-something while the rest of us are at 255.  Well, I followed her around in Magma Dungeon (and later gld_dun04 and abbey_03, etc) and buffed/healed her so she could level a bit faster, and she's about 180 now.  Yay!~  Still not sure where she should actually be going for good exp...*looks at others*

Also, me and Natalie were on earlier today and just ended up meeting in town and chatting about random stuff (RPGs, CS courses, jobs, my lack of self-restraint, etc.).  Fun times...



Also, when I was at magma dungeon with Colleen some random Sin came up to whack on me a bunch:


He couldn't really touch me tho; I was healing way too fast.  I was mostly just confused as to what he wanted.  Then he asked for buffs, then attacked me -again-, then started killing monsters.  weird people...-_-;

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

"I consider addiction to be a pro, not a con..."

It occurred to me today that while in general we'd probably say something like "games aren't inherently bad--if people get mindlessly addicted to them, it's their own fault for not having self-control"...but in my case it's more like I play games nonstop and have no self-restraint, but end up suffering no ill consequences...=X

Adventures of 3/2/10

Massive post, with lots of screenies! =D

So, yesterday (Tuesday) we met in class for a little bit and discussed some plans and such, but didn't really have much time to play as both me and Colleen had to leave.  Our plan instead was to meet back online at around 11:00 or so.

Unfortunately due to some bad timing, I ended up not really being able to log on until closer to around midnight, but all was well and I met up with Colleen, Natalie, and Kotaro in game (Michelle was MIA for the night =/).



Here's all 4 of us.  From left to right: Kotaro's knight (notice the freaky headgear), me as high priest, Natalie as a wizard, and Colleen's hunter.

After running around and buffing colleen while she leveled for a bit, we met up with Natalie and went to one of the MvP rooms, I think in search of a Ribbon (so I could look cute =D).




We met this guy named "Bendalene" who apparently is from Singapore and doesn't play with other singapore people. *shrug*  I think this was the first person I charmed with my oh-so-cute character and giving him buffs.  He was lvl 255 so he was tearing through the monsters pretty quickly, and just randomly came up and asked us where we were from.  After answering "USA" he just said "wow" and then said he was from singapore, etc etc.  Then he gave me an Angel Wing, haha.  And told us we should go to pront dungeon for ribbon[1] (which makes sense, I vaguely remember getting one there when I played RO before).




So then I had my cute ribbon!~  And slotted it with a Mistress card from Natalie so now I can cast ME/Safety Wall/etc without any catalysts.  Yay!  I remember not really liking the ribbon quite that much when I played RO before, but I actually am kind of fond of its look now. (of course, I always prioritize cuteness over stats when picking out equips ^^;)  This Bendalene guy also friended me, apparently.




Meanwhile Taro was off doing his own thing...and we didn't really know where he was.  He was using beserk all the time, which meant he couldn't chat with us, so that caused a bunch of 9_9 from us.




Astarael: Whack that thing, Timmie
DDRKirby(ISQ): that's what she said
FireJade: dang you

We also had an "I lost" moment happen earlier ^^;




More running around buffing Colleen to help her level.  I'm really liking my role as a priest--supporting people is really fun!  It -does- get slightly monotonous sometimes since you're not killing anything, and since you're just casing the same buffs over and over again...but eh, it's fine.




The top of Morocc has become our informal meetup place, for some reason or other.  We also had some interesting issues, with Natalie and me not being able to trade for some reason (I think it was just because we were too far away from each other at the time), and also for some reason the spam filter doesn't allow you to say "olol". -_-;

Eventually Taro told us what he had been looking for (some card drop i think?) and Natalie went to help him out.  Naturally, Natalie ended up getting the drop after her first kill xD...



Eventually Colleen called it a night, and Natalie and Taro found a Valkyrie, so we met up and formulated a plan to take it down...



Random: I thought the Angel Wing looked kind of cute, but it jutted out a little too much and was too flashy to fit the rest of my image.  Plus I wanted the Ribbon (the Mistress card was useful anyways).



We managed to kill the Valkyrie without too many problems =D.  Though, I don't think it ended up dropping whatever it was that we wanted.  The actual boss that would have that drop apparently summons Valkyries as slaves T_T



We kept running into the "orcface" problem on certain maps, which was really annoying since we didn't know how to cure it, other than just running into a mob and dying and respawning xD.  Taro looks hilarious here though.



One thing about RO is that if you go to a crowded area like Pront, you always see all these other chars and they have such flashy and flamboyant avatars; it's a real stark contrast from the simple look that I always went for.  In a way it's slightly intimidating for newer players to start off and see these people walking around with huge gargoyle wings or whatever.  I guess that also makes the newbies easier to pick out...



xD



At this point we just started looking for accessories.  The lower angel wing ears, added to the regular angel wing, was really weird since you have 4 different wings on your head xD



I really liked them though. <3~  They complemented my look perfectly, and matched the cuteness of my outfit while still retaining the simplicity.  Hooray~



/ho became my most used emote.  And, as Natalie is pointing out here, I was kind of a people magnet since I would just buff random people sometimes (though, other times they came up to me and asked).  One of them gave me a horn card too, haha.  They probably think I'm some cute girl...=X  But, I guess that's sort of the point.  Being able to have an image like this is one of the main reasons I have so much fun in RO in the first place! ^_^

Also note the chat filter message when you try to type "lolol": "Yeah, uh, I don't think so buddy..." o_o;



I went to Abbey Dungeon and ME bombed for a while until I was at level 221 or something, so that I would be able to share experience with Natalie and Kotaro.  At one point Kotaro helped by just aggroing a bunch of mobs and then bringing them back to my ME bombs xD.

After that we went to Thor Volcano Dungeon for a while, to level, and because I think because Kotaro wanted to look for Ifrit.  We never found him, but we did manage to go through the entire map =D.  We didn't have too many problems either, except for a few times when we got caught off guard.  The first time I was actually alone IDing some items when some monsters mobbed me.  I frantically teleported to some random location where a hunter proceeded to finish me off (I was only at like 10% hp anyways xD).  There was also a time when a Sage came at a bad time and got me and Taro pretty quickly.

After finishing, we were all lvl 255, so yay us.  Interactions with other PCs (player-characters) have been interesting I guess.  Most of the time when I run into them as I'm soloing I just give them a quick buff as they run along their way.  Well, except in Abbey, where I just cast another ME bomb and then teleport away xD.  There was one point where Kotaro (?) randomly attacked some hunter who happened to also be in the dungeon with us.  And I remember Natalie tried to Storm Gust me once, haha...



After that Taro went and...did his own thing for a while again.  Meanwhile I was with Natalie, who had gotten a pair of Arctic wings and was looking through different clothing styles.  I went through different styles briefly as well, but honestly don't think I could find anything I liked more than my current look.



And, at this point Taro realized that it was almost 5 -_-;



More messing around in Pront.  I think this stemmed from when I pointed out that Natalie and I contrasted nicely with the Blue vs Red color schemes.


Astarael: Taro be the priest XD
Void_Eternal: o.O
Astarael: ... wow role reversal



We -do- kind of look nice together.  Natalie pointed out that I need flame wings though xD.



Though, we had some issues with Natalie's wings chopping through my forehead.  Owww...



Eventually we stopped goofing around and called it a night.  We ended going to bed way too late, but I don't really regret it--this was the first time I had a real group to play an MMORPG with anyhow, so it was really nice.  And I can't stop feeling happy about how cute my character looks <3~

Our presentation is...uhm...tomorrow -_-, so I'm not sure how much more we'll be able to do between now and then.  Perhaps we'll actually get to see Michelle in game, or finish leveling Colleen...or maybe kick ass in some WoE fight =X.  Natalie and me also randomly got invited to join a guild, but they just ended up spamming a bunch of nonenglish messages in guild chat, haha...

Most (?) of us have expressed some sort of interest in continuing with RO after our project is done, most likely on a different server that's not as high rate, and where less people speak weird languages xD.  I'd definitely be down; I always manage to "generate" enough time to have on my hands to do all these kinds of things anyways...

Feel free to delete this; I'm just saying

Ugh. Okay, no more adventuring after midnight on school days. No matter how close the deadline for this-should-having-meaning is, or how shiny some item looks.