Downtime

Today we will update eathena. These is a part of what’s coming:
- Sealed Shrine
- Hidden Enchanter

Please report any bugs you might encounter!

Maintenance starts at 17:30 server time and finishes at 20:30.

Apparently the server's down for 3 hours today.

Unrelated: is there a way to get email notifications of comments to blogspot posts?

The Endless Tower

The observant reader will notice that I have no part in Timmie's story of reuniting with his friend. The reason? I was probably out cold at the time. My sleep "schedule" has been so messed up lately that...well, here's an example.

This post is being made at 12:20 PM, which feels approximately like 12:20 PM, since I went to sleep at a reasonable time last night. The pictures in this post come from approximately 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM yesterday...which at the time felt something like 5 in the morning. Never mind when I went to sleep before that.

Onward.

So I logged in at my 'ungodly hour' to see what mischief I could get into as long as insomnia wouldn't let me sleep. Instantly I got a party invitation for some party called "Endless." Turns out I'd logged in right in the middle of the gathering place for people headed for The Endless Tower - a special dungeon of 101 floors filled with the hardest bosses in the game.

As people gathered, it became pretty obvious that I was outclassed: everyone here had 'tranced' - trancended, or rebirthed into the next level of character.












They also came with killer equipment, where I was using the basics: here's screenshot of one guy's equips (he'd unlocked it briefly to show a party member his helm). The pic was, if you couldn't tell, taken out of envy for his sprint ring...













Eventually, once people stopped arriving, we set off for the tower. I didn't take any pictures of it, but basically you go south a little way from where we were in the last screenshot, talk to a captain guy, agree to pay him 10k, and listen to his story. After he's done talking, he'll take you to a tiny island with a rock on it. If your party leader has created the instance already, click the rock, and it'll let you in.

Here we are on floor 23, blasting things apart:












We had some truly amazing priests along with us, by the way. There were three of them, and keeping track of who had been buffed with what at what time, who needed what at any given time, and who had done what so they didn't overlap buffs is an unenviable job. I don't have screenshots of it, unfortunately, but they also did an amazing job of keeping everyone alive - healing people (and yourself!) in the middle of a gigantic battle is no mean feat.

Of course, this is hardest dungeon in the game, and they couldn't protect us from everything:













I believe that's floor 45, with the Samurai MVP (Most Valuable Player; a kind of boss where players get prizes depending on how much damage they do to it) and his loyal Shinobi followers. Never mind the little guys, that boss did some kind of AoE attack and BAM everyone but the Lord Knights was dead.

As it said in the picture, we had to wait for one of our priests to run back up the tower - I think it's possible to skip to floor 25, 50, etc, if you've been there already and use Ashes (special item automatically acquired in the tower), and the floors are extremely small maps. That said, floor 25 to 45 is still a bit of a jog.

Eventually they began to cautiously revive people, starting with those furthest away from the (offscreen, fortunately) gigantic boss.













I wish I had a picture of him, but, well, this will have to do:













So we moved on. In the course of climbing the tower, it'd become apparent that I'd have to frantically bail out my inventory as we went: items are acquired automatically, and if enough built up, I wouldn't be able to regenerate HP and SP any more. For a mage, that means a swift, magicless death.

Losing items didn't really bother me, as I was in Endless for fun and exp, but there was one item I was really sad to part with: a massive 250-pound weapon known as "Bardiche." Given that Timmie had created a cast of Nanoha characters...well, who wouldn't want to see Signum with a Bardiche? ('Fate sama' wouldn't be able to use her precious weapon because she's a mage and this weapon is only for swordsman characters.) Alas, 250 pounds was too much for my feeble mage. It joined the litter on the floor.













Much bailing later, we arrived at floor 50, home of a motionless monstrosity known as Amon Ra. You would think that a monster that never moved and was unimpressively sized wouldn't be much of a challenge. You'd be wrong.













It's kind of hard to see, but take a look at that max HP: 1,214,318. What you can't see is the reason those people are dead: Amon Ra insta-casts Meteor Storm on anyone in his range. Additionally, he summons a deadly group of peons if provoked.

The fact that we got him down to anywhere near half HP is a testament to the kind of firepower we had, and the awesomeness of our priests. Apparently we were supposed to have brought a sniper along; when I looked up Amon Ra I discovered why. If you're in range, as I said, MS and summon. However, there's also a list of certain spells that will set him off (50% chance to summon more monsters). One of those spells was Storm Gust, which one of our High Wizards had been casting as much as possible on him...Add to that the fact that Amon Ra is weak against fire, not water, and you begin to see our problem. (Which is to say, most of us didn't know what we were doing.)

Add to that the fact that half of us spoke one language and half another...

...Well, in short, we didn't beat him. Around the time that picture was taken, our priests began to run out of blue gemstones (necessary to resurrect), and people began to give up and leave.

So while I was impressed with our group's firepower and priests, the teamwork and preparation left something to be desired.

I'm looking forward to trying this tower with a guild.

Hello, old friend!~

--Monday, 4/13/10--

What a wonderful surprise awaited me when I logged onto RO last night!  I got a PM from a character named Illyria, saying "guess who!".  I had a slight inkling that it was one of my drawmates or something, but I figured it was another char that Natalie had created.  Or perhaps Colleen or Michelle.  But lo and behold, it turned out to be a friend from high school!

She hadn't played RO in years, and I think when she had played it was on one of the official servers, so no custom Gaia town; no teleporter/job change NPCs, and of course extremely low exp rates xD.

She was planning on making her character into some kind of priest...so after telling her about the handy-dandy job-changer NPC (no more having to do the actual job-change quests...), she became a cute lil acolyte! <3

We headed to the left of prontera and whacked some porings/fabres/etc. to get her a few jlvls, but then I realized that instead of following her around with Reinforce-san I could just switch to one of my 4 unleveled characters and party with her ^^;.  I decided on Miyuki-san (ninja) since I still have NO IDEA how the taekwon classes actually work, and I already have a mage (fate-sama) so Caro-chan wouldn't be that exciting (not to mention a mage and a priest leveling together probably wouldn't be the best combo ^^;).  Of course, I didn't know that much about ninja builds -either-, so I had to look up some stuff (e.g. pump strength because it affects your throw damage).  She had to take a shower anyways, so that gave me some time to figure out what the heck to do with my stat/skill builds.

We headed to payon dungeon and I taught her some more of the basics while we levelled a bit more.  I got throw shuriken at first, and then throw kunai as soon as possible.  And...it was really good!  I think it always hits too, so I just pumped pure strength and didn't have to worry about dex/agi at all.  No cast time either--fun stuff!

Some random person in town.  Sooo cuuteee~

We then met up with Taro (and his Homunculus), who had logged on in the meantime, and went hunting Les monsters in Moscovia dungeon for more Sharp Leaves.  The ninja hunts them REALLY fast actually; you just have to throw two fire kunai (instant cast!) and they're dead!  Also, I have no idea why there's a random dead guy in the picture here.

After amassing enough exp and sharp leaves, I handed 50 to Vina and took another 50 from storage and we handed them off to the NPC.  We both hit jlvl 50 I think, yay!  So it was time for Illryia to become a priest!  .....boo ugly outfit.

I switched over to Fate-sama and we decided to see if we could do any good in the Clock tower with the three of us as a party.

...again we had some problems at the entrance T_T.  We eventually managed to get past them, with the help of this guy named Noob3rt, who acted very friendly.  I pmed him about whether the quest after the sharp leaf quest was worth it (he said no, since you can't buy the requisite item anymore), and went and friended him with my main account (reinforce-san) later.

After hanging out in the second floor a bit we decided to go deeper, into the level with the alarms.  It wasn't too bad at all; it helped a lot that Vina had gotten Suffragim (I had totally forgotten about that spell, btw), so she was able to reduce my cast time by quite a bit!  We walked around awhile and chatted about some random things while I nuked stuff ^^;

Eventually we got owned by some books or something or other.  By this time Vina had to leave anyhow (it was about 2:30AM).

And me and Taro...decided to just lie there for awhile.

"see me, i look dead.  but you...you look like you're just taking a nap.  leaf on head and all."

And at some point an Alarm decided to STEP ON ME.

Back in town, Taro showed me some of the headgear he picked up randomly while killing stuff, and I handed him a set of dragon equip that Enki had given to me.

Taro making some potions.

The last thing I did for the night was to respec my Priest.  I got rid of ME (I hadn't been able to actually use it anywhere anyways; the cast time is way too unwieldy) and respecced to full support, with suffragim, gloria, etc etc etc.

--Tuesday, 4/13/10--

Natalie PMed me and said she had this dungeon she wanted to try, so I took Reinforce-san and we headed to Rachel Dun.  She said some/one of the monsters there were weak to holy element, but...uhm, I tried healbombing all of them and it didn't work on any xD.  Later I grabbed the aco and priest quest skills (holy light/redemptio) and tried using holy light, but it wasn't really that great.  Hm, I wonder if ME might have worked.  Ah, but there still wouldn't really be too much point anyways; it's faster and safer to do what we did, which was have Natalie nuke the crap out of things with firebolt/SG and have me support with suffragim and lex aeterna.

The experience was slow, but that's how it is when you're at such high levels ^^;  We both managed to get a 

level each, so that was good.  We might look into doing Abbey or Endless for better exp...

Gas mask xD

Guild get!

--Sunday, 4/11/10--

Logged in and Taro was on with his alchemist, whacking elder willows.  He didn't tell me where he was, but I teleported around Payon field until I found him. =P  He wanted to try Endless tower with me but apparently you need a party of at least =10= people to do it.

A few hours later, Natalie emails me and tells us that someone by the name of "Enki" invited her into a guild, looking at MvP and then WoE/PvP later.  We met up with him and he gave us 400k zeny each, as well as dragon armor.  He gave me a Divine cross too!  After some tips on what to do as far as leveling goes, we left.  Natalie went off to get the Energy Coat quest skill while I was doing something else or other (IMing or reading or something).  Then she made a Hunter (as per Enki's suggestion) and we went off to Payon to have her level for awhile.

We found 2 Spring Flowers, and commenced whacking...haha.  Apparently the magic paint sells for a pretty good price, so more money for us (hooray!).

Speaking of money, apparently Taro got the skeleton worker card to sell for 3 mil.  I guess we're filthy rich now xD

Oops?

#main : [DiabolicConjurer] i rip off many people
#main : [DiabolicConjurer] sorry wrong chat XD
#main : [TaoNeko] real smooth

hahaha...

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...