Permanently retired from Lineage; now on WoW

If anyone comes by this blog anymore (doubt it, but who knows?), I have permanently retired from Lineage. I played the game for close to 5 years, a good long time to play one game by any standard, but as the game became less enjoyable I finally realized it had run its course, for me.

My gaming life has now taken me to different pastures, World of Warcraft (WoW). I must say, having played the game for about a month now, the game rocks. Tons of fun. Of course the best part is that almost all of my former friends & pledgemates from Kismet have now moved over to WoW. Prince Kismet is our guild leader, we have about 120 characters in the guild (many are alts but still, it's awesome). I created a Night Elf Druid, who is now lvl 46. WoW currently has a level cap of 60, so I am actually starting to approach "end-game" material. Here is a picture of my character.

Don't worry, he's not a werewolf or anything, that's just a particular helm I'm wearing called a "Wolfshead Helm."

Here's another pic of me, this time as I am entering an inn.

Anyways, the game is tons of fun and just sooooo different from Lin (yet in some ways similar). If anyone from the Lin/LoA world is quitting Lin and wants to try WoW, if you remember us Kismet folks and what we stand for and want to hook up with us in WoW, go ahead and get in touch with me. We play on Greymane server, our guild name is "Kismet," all you need to do in-game is type "/who Kismet" and you'll get a list of everyone in the guild that's on. My character there is named Amdir, feel free to whis me and say hello!

exploring episode 4 on test server!

I really wasn't planning on making a character on test server this publish, as I wanted to just focus on leveling Fin. However, I've had two deaths in just over 24 hours (didn't even have the heart to blog 'em), my exp bar is going backwards right now, so I figured I needed a break.

So I went to test server and made a dex elf, Elwe. Spent an hour or two leveling him up to lvl 12, and then fearlessly set out to explore some of the new areas...or at least die trying. The easiest way of getting to any of the new areas is via Pirate Island. How do you get there? You start out by talking to a new NPC at the southern end of Orc Town, Duvall.

When you talk to him, he offers to teleport you to a secret, hidden dock.


The whole hidden dock area is barely larger than one screen in size.


Like the FI boat, the boat to PI departs four times a day.


Unlike the FI boat, the PI boat is a lot less expensive!


On the boat I happened to bump into a few friends from the Lineage forums, who were kind enough to party me in with them (even though, at lvl 12, I would be virtually useless to them in terms of actually fighting anything.) Here's a shot of the arrival on PI.

Upon arriving we all escaped to PI village, in order to talk to some quest NPC's, etc. Kinda an interesting place, definitely a different feel than any other city in the game. Lots of cool, thatched buildings that would make GREAT pledge houses in the future.

The village has just about everything you need: storage dwarf, pot shop (prices slightly higher than in the shops on the mainland), weapons shop, and so forth. For you pet users, you'll be glad to know it even has a kennel!

After a few chats with some NPC's and a little time for buffing up, we went out hunting. The most common mops on PI seem to be these wild boars of various colors & attributes (Wild Fang, Wild Venom, Wild Magic).

The magic one has the ability to cast healing spells, and will heal itself or any other one of its kind that is getting attacked, so that's something to keep in mind.

Another common inhabitant is the Blue Tail, which is sort of a multicolored (but mostly blue) newt-looking thing that has the ability to shoot a distance magic attack that reminds me of an ebolt only done with fire (red) rather than blue.

The highest level mop on the island (other than the boss that spawns) is the Kiwi Parrot, which at lvl 25 is not exactly super strong...unless you're level 12, that is. :-)

Unfortunately I had to log and leave my companions after maybe a half hour on the island. I logged on later and tried to explore myself. I discovered that, by pumping a lot of pots, I can take out one of those boars by myself, but more than that, no way.

I did eventually find one of the two entrances to the PI Dungeon. Pretty cool looking entrance, if you ask me.

I went down the stairs, within seconds I was hit by two call lightnings, and the rest (as they say) is history...

Yep, there are a variety of lizardmen in PI 1f, and one of them (the high lizardmen) are magic users. His CL spell hit me for around 70 hp a pop, that was with about 40% MR. So they hurt a little bit, though I'm sure it would be radically different if I had Finarfin down there. ;-)

SO...that was the end of my adventures in PI. I decided that I needed to get back to the mainland and level Elwe up some before I could really do any further exploration. If anyone gets over to test server, feel free to look me up. Take care everyone, and see you around Aden!

been a week (I know!)

Sorry everyone, no new posts recently. First, I was out of town for the long Thanksgiving holiday (gone Wednesday through Sunday night), so didn't get to play at all.

Then, since being back, I've been working with Stub & the rest of the site staff at LineageDB.com to start uploading info for episode 4. Yes, for those who didn't know, I am site staff there, have been for almost a year now. Unless something is changed, I am the only one who plays LoA as my main server, so that is part of my contribution to the site.

Anyways, been working on adding the new mops as well as getting some images uploaded, like this one.


That's the "Abyss Master," lvl 60 boss in the Elemental Ruins. (Yes, I know, all he is is a blue-colored demon. Don't blame me, blame NC!)

Anyways, another busy week at work here but hoping I can actually get on and do some hunting later this week. Cya and gl!

more demons being stingy

For the second night in a row, went back up to TOI 25f. Had a good time going toe-to-toe with a bunch of these guys.

Was up there almost 2 hours, and in the end, not really a lot to show for it.

I was getting really tired, so I figured, before I escape, why not try 27f and see how it goes? So I went up there, traveled a few screens, and ran into an iffy.

Unfortunately, almost as soon as I started hitting him (and took the screenshot), a lesser demon appeared as well. I knew enough to know I could not solo an iffy and demon at the same time, so prudence was the better part of valor and I escaped.
That's it, here's my exp. Going to be away for the long thanksgiving weekend so no Lineage until sometime late in the day Sunday. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

demon hunting on TOI 25f

Decided to do a little lesser demon hunting on 25f. Lasted up there about an hour and 20 minutes on 80 ojs, and really, what ended up causing me to leave was having drops too heavy to allow me to continue fighting.

Demons hurt but I found it tolerable as long as I didn't start getting ganged up on. In case any are wondering, I was hunting up there with 92% MR and 70% fire resistance. Here's a listing of my drops.

All told, not too bad a place to hunt. Because of the greater downtime to regen after fighting demons, experience I found to be okay but not great; I was getting about 0.31% per hour, whereas on 24f (no demons) I can get about 0.46% per hour. Still, for at least some hunts it is worth it, as the money is definitely better than on 24f (just look at the drops I got...pm 18k, cmomr 4k, 2hs 9k (x2), firewall 100k, etc.), plus lesser demons have a small chance to drop some really nice things, including rof, str ammy, int ammy, demon armor, etc.

Sorry I hadn't posted for a while, but I was out of town and away from my computer all throughout last weekend. ep4 went to test server today, can't wait to start hearing the scounting reports! Anyways, here's my exp. Good luck all, see ya soon.

wide variety of things

Been a few days since my last post, real life stuff has been coming up at work so been playing a little less than usual, and that also means less time for blogging. SO...here's what's been up.

Went back to dvc 6f for the first time since my lag death there a few weeks ago. I must be an important person, because as soon as I headed down the stairs from 5f to 6f, there was a welcoming committee there to greet me.

As you can see from the pic, not a whole lot in the way of drops during my 45 minutes or so on 6f. :/

Then went with pledgemate Persiphone (welcome back to Lineage, my friend!!!) to TOI 50's. I mostly went to pick up sgems and then to serve as backup in case he failed on a bunch of TU's in a row. We're walking, and suddenly his necro morph runs out and he's standing there unmorphed. A few seconds later, I see this:

Omg I almost died. So I'm sitting there...waiting...waiting...waiting. And then finally...

I was laughing so hard, I could barely breathe. It was really funny. (Luckily for him, I did have a few poly scrolls on me, even though I often don't since I never poly.)

Then just did a little low-key hunting in fv--not something I do very often. Got a drop I had never gotten before.

Also had something else nice happen while I was there.

Thanks Revm!

That's about it for hunting. However, did play around with a few other things. As part of me fully and finally retiring my de, I looked at what he had to try to figure out what to sell and what to try to blow. His +6 maphr's pestilence fell into the "blow" category, so I got out a few dai's, figuring if I could get it to +8 it might be worth selling. Started out ok, but couldn't complete the final step.


I also decided to do a little crafting. Currently Fin uses a sbos, but several elves (higher lvl than myself) suggested sbom instead because the added mp more than makes up for the slight loss in hp. So I figure I'd try it out for myself and see what I thought. I'll report back in a week or two.

Last, I was walking around oren the other day lookin' at shops and saw this. Since it's not everyday that you see a +10 weapon, I figured it was worth a blog mention.

Here's my exp count.

Past 20%, woo hoo! I think I'm getting a little in the groove as far as leveling goes, so I expect things to pick up some, at least until ep4 hits. Good luck all, cya around Aden!

Lots of hunts, lots of (okay) drops

Ok lots to report since my last update so I'll get right to it. Had a nice duo hunt with pledgemate Bravestones up to TOI 20f. Elf + DE is a pretty good combo when heading up through the TOI teens. Spawns were pretty managable until we got all the way up to 20f. At that point, we ran into some pretty crazy spawns, like this one.

No uber drops on the hunt (Absolute Barrier seems to have eluded me again), but considering we each used under 100 ojs total, the drops we did get more than paid for the pots used. Plus, it was a great time and pretty decent experience, so you can never complain about that! :)

Next stop was a hunt early this morning to 24f. I had very few "massive" spawns but happily, a pretty regular stream of 2 or 3 mops on my screen at once. Perfect for maximizing experience while minimizing pot usage. Once when my hunting took me near the stairs, I did poke my head up and take out one of these.

He didn't drop me much, but the hunt was certainly not a complete loss.

Although I have only been keeping data for a few weeks, from the numbers I have crunched, I seem to do better on 24f than any other location...even better than the undead (30's) floors. My exp on 24f runs about 0.46% per hour, which is slow I know compared to some other classes, but is the best I have been able to get anywhere.
After that, later this afternoon a group of us headed to FI. Our group was myself, ZUL00, Oak, Rosalynde, and ZUL00's cousin Darkjai. Since we had five people, we had no worries about charging into the middle of the forests and thus, we were able to generate some fun crazy spawns.

We even were able to take out a few of these.

Drakes were being stingy today (best we got from any of them was an sgem and a lvl 2 scroll), but we didn't leave the island entirely empty-handed.

Anyways, was a fun hunt, I think we all came back with more pots than we left with, so add to that the experienced gained plus the share from selling the ohow, can't really complained. Plus, it was our chance to show Rosalynde around FI...welcome to the world of the 45+ Rosa! ;)

Last hunt for me was a trip late tonight to 42f. As is typical for that floor, had some slow periods where it seemed nothing was spawning, and then some times that were a real blast. (Don't forget to click the pic for a larger version!)

At the end, after I had exhausted my 3500+ arrows I had brought with me, there were still two ig's following me around. So I looked at my (full) mp bar and decided to wind shuriken them to death. Killed them both without even running out of mana! Heh, felt almost like a mage for a moment there.

As for drops...once again, 42f is being very good to me. This is my take for a hunt that lasted just over an hour and a half.

So, when my night of hunting was finished, I guess I was feeling lucky (as a result of getting yet ANOTHER bzel). So I pull a czel and that bzel out, get my +6 ets, and go to work. Result? Bzel went +1, so back to a +6 ets. :( So I pull another bzel and czel out of storage, repeat. +6 again. :( Pull a THIRD bzel and czel out of storage. Result?

That really, really sucks. That means, during my entire time on LoA server, I have never had a "success" using a bzel. Putting bzels on +5 ib, I am 0-for-2. Putting bzels on one-under-safe armors, I am now 0-for-5. Yech. Damn, my luck better improve soon. :/

Anyways, that's it for me, overall a very successful weekend. Here's my bar.

Gonna be a busy week for me but hopefully I'll get a little time each day to play. Cya all around the world of Aden...gl!