Major change for Fin!

As the title of my blog indicates, I have been and consider myself a water elf. However, I have been intrigued by earth ever since entangle and earth bind were added to the game. So on a whim I decided to switch lines for maybe a week or so and see how I like earth.

For those who have done this before, you know that the first thing you need to do when you go see Ellyone on the 2nd floor of Ivory Tower is to rid yourself of your old line.

So after ridding myself of my waterly powers, I took upon myself the sacred power of the earth.

Here's a pic of my spell window with the new spells.

Having made the switch, I went with pledgemate Ebony up to TOI 41f to go try out my new earth spells on some lesser dragons. All I can say is...hmm...takes a while to get used to how to use them effectively.

:-( Yep, death #7 at lvl 49, for those of you counting at home.

Anyhoo, after a good night's sleep (aided by the extra hour due to "fall back" on the clock), I woke up refreshed this morning and decided to try to gain back some of the experience of the last few days. Spent some time hunting on 24f and experimenting with my new spells on some slightly less dangerous mops. Had a good hunt, here's the drops from my hour or maybe 90 minute hunt.

Having feeling like I had gotten it down, I went back to 41f, this time alone, to try things out again. I must say, I have been less than impressed with earth bind. It tends to work almost always, but from my experience, things only stay frozen for 4-5 seconds on average...barely time to make a difference. In fact, only real use seems to be on pledge hunts if a pledgemate is getting creamed, you can bind him and he will stop taking damage, giving mages/elves an opportunity to heal the person. Anyways, here is the one pic I was able to take of an earth bind in action, and even then, it's not the best pic in the world.

Now entangle, on the other hand, is a fabulous spell. I love it. Extremely useful in helping an elf to kite mops. If a mop (or a person) is hasted, then the first cast of entangle cancels the haste, and you need a second cast to truly slow the person. I must say, seeing fire eggs entangled is hysterical, they are SOOOOO slow. Anyways, here's some shots of entangle in action.

I spent maybe 90 minutes up on 41f toying around with all this. Didn't die (which is good!), but it takes SO long to kill these darned things, I didn't exactly gain a whole lot of experience either. However, had some real good luck with drops.

After that, spent an hour up on 34f/35f to get some experience.

So, I've only been earth for a day, but I have a feeling this is not going to be a permanent switch. While it is true I love entangle, overall I found myself having to stop and regen a lot more often than when I was water, which means overall killing everything slower and gaining experience slower. It's great for hunting for drops (no way I could solo lesser dragon's without entangle), but right now my main priority is trying to hit 50, and I just don't see earth being as useful to me for accomplishing that. Look at it this way: with Nature's Touch being +15 hp per tick, and a con elf getting a hp tick every 6 seconds while hunting (some ppl even say every 5 seconds), that means being water means an extra 150 (or 180) hp per minute. Considering my average hunts last 90 minutes, being water translates into potentially an extra 13,500 (or 16,200) hp of damage I can take.

SO...we'll see. I'm gonna give it a few more days and see.

Well, here's the experience. See you tomorrow, hopefully the boss part of this event will finally be something all of us can enjoy. Ciao!

weekend update

Started out this fine Saturday morning with a few things non-hunting-related. First, I think this is the first in-game acknowledgment of my blog. Thanks Excalibur1!

The other thing is I was wandering around Oren shopping around, saw this (very rare) item in a shop.

After that, headed up for a 42f hunt. Had some really nice spawns, lots of 3-packs of hig's and plenty of ghosts.

No powergloves or bzels, but did get a nice variety of drops in only about one hour.

After that, decided to go hunt dvc 6f. For the entire time I was down there, everything seemed very laggy...almost like the (slight) lag I get in the steamy areas of fire valley. Anyways, that combined with getting jumped by a few things, resulted in this.

Damn. Death #6 at lvl 49. Not good.
Well, since event is boring and the death has me bummed, figured I'd take a break for the rest of the day, at least until tonight. Thus the early "daily" blogging. Who knows, if I play tonight and something exciting happens, I'll add an addendum. Otherwise, with that death, my exp is back down to 10.9748. Good luck all, cya soon.

My first event prize

Well, despite the spawn spots being horribly camped, I did manage to kill a few of the event mops and even got a pumpkin.

With great expectation I double-clicked my prize. What would it be? Ascroll? Maybe an eva shield? Bdai? I could hardly contain my excitement as I tentatively moved my fingers to click the mouse...

>.<
So much for event. Back to leveling...

3...2...1....EVENT HAS BEGUN! (um...I think. Maybe.)

Okay, here it is, the massive event we have all been waiting for. To quote from the NC release, "Gran Kain’s dark servants pouring through in droves."

Here was the shot on LoA at about 3:49 PM CST:

From the first half hour, it appears that Gran Kain has fewer "dark servants" than anyone expected, as there is nothing "pouring through in droves" so far. :/

My take so far: one pumpkin candy. Woot! [sarcasm off]. Hopefully things get better soon.

killing time 'til event

Well, even though I had the day off work, I found myself not all that interested in leveling today. I think it is the calm-before-the-event-storm. Did do a little solo hunt to dvc 6f. Saw surprisingly few of these.

Seemed to run around (or tele around, didn't matter) and just find Ettin after Ettin, the rare succ, and the rarer queen. Then, after searching for 3 minutes and finding no queens, I'd be fighting an ettin or two and THEN 2 or 3 queens show up at once (ouch city!) Oh well, such is life in dvc I suppose. Not much terribly fascinating in the way of drops.

After that, did a short hunt to TOI 11f. Got a nice screenshot of a classic, 3-pack succ spawn.

My hunt got cut short (maybe a half hour), so very minimal drops. Didn't get an exact count on the scrolls.

After that, went killing lastabads a while for a change of pace. Killed some thieves outside Kent (congrats to pledgemate ZUL00, who has been hunting thieves for Holy Walk for eons and FINALLY got it as a drop today, woo hoo!), then went to desert to maybe try and find a few generals. Didn't get any of those, but when I tele'd to desert to begin my hunt I did meet with a nice little 3-way ambush.

No drops but the usual mega amounts of nteles, greens, and wis pots. The only slightly interesting drop?

Last, once again decided to press my luck. Took my last two nzels out of storage. And...

Damn. 0-for-my-last-7. Starting to get old. And yes, for those who read this blog regularly, that is the same dark cloak that only went +1 with the bzel I put on it a few days ago. Grrrrrrr. What a waste. Oh well...it's over, can't get it back, so gotta deal with it and move on.

Speaking of moving on, my experience bar moved on, just under 0.75% for the day. Probably shoulda been more, but even though it was a day off work I had tons of errands and stuff to do, so only played for a little while.

Well everyone, tomorrow it all begins. Sharpen those blades, fill those quivers, polish off those spellbooks...the event is coming! In case you haven't heard, it begins at 4:00 PM CST tomorrow (Friday). See you there!

Some significant moments

Day started out sorta humdrum, had a few solo hunts to various locales. A few interesting drops, some slightly valuable, some entirely not...but here they are.

However, the MOST unusual drop of the day was this one. I've hunted 42f a lot over the last year or so. Gotten earth ring, power gloves, lots of bzels and 51f's...but never one of these.

Then I was between hunts, opened up my alt (virtually retired) dark elf and saw he had a +4 cop I didn't remember him having. So on a whim I pulled out an nzel.

Oh well. That makes me 0-for-5 on n-enchants and 0-for-2 on b-enchants over the last week. I figure my luck has gotta start improving sometime soon.

Later this evening we welcomed a new member to the pledge, DR4GON, a knight new to LoA server after having previously played on Dep (where it seems he was quite uber). Just minutes after joining the pledge, he and I went for a little hunt up to TOI 7f. Here's a shot of DR4GON getting mobbed by kfc's while I watch.

Lol, actually I was HELPING as well, though you can't tell that from the picture. And if you look at the chat, you can see the kind of sophisticated, tactical hunting advice that has earned me the title of Chief Officer of the pledge. o.O

Anyways, we were up hunting 4f through 7f for quite a while. How'd we do on drops? Well, this shot says it all.

Here's my experience update. Another day of getting somewhere around 0.75%, which seems to be (all things taken together) about where my average per day is settling. Big thing is, I have now surpassed the 10% mark. Woo hoo, go me! Just gotta do this much 9 more times over, and I'm there. :)

To end with though, I want to share an experience number for someone other than myself. Big congrats go out to the prince of Kismet Legends, LordTeeber, who hit 49 today! He's got a long road ahead of him, but he knows what it takes-he's already leveled a knight (SirSteve) and an elf (Teeber) to 50, so let's go LT!!!

Bye all, cya tomorrow.

Would someone explain to me fv etiquette?

Ok, had a confrontation this evening with a dark elf (Laryndra) in fv. I'm trying to figure out what happened, just can't do it.

I'm hunting and I see a taurv, almost a full screen away. I start heading towards it, but haven't started shooting at it yet. (Why? You'll see in a sec.) Out of the blue, this unpoly'd de, Laryndra, who is farther away from the taurv than I am, comes flying by me and starts whacking it.

So I make a comment out loud, "not very nice" and a sad face, and head off. She whisses me back something along the lines of, "you hadn't hit it yet." So I respond, "No, but I was CLEARLY moving towards it and closer to it than you were." She in turn responds, "Then why did I hit it first?" My reply: "Lol maybe because you're a de on moving accel and I'm an elf?!?" To which her reply is, "YOU HAVE A BOW."

Ok. So what's going on here? I'll tell you...one thing I have learned as an elf in fv is it is VERY easy to "mop steal" without even intending to. In other words, if I see a mop on the very edge of my screen and immediately shoot, then often as I get closer I see there was a knight, or de, whatever, just a few cells away from that mop already-but on the "other side" of it (in other words, off-screen from me). I always feel bad when I do that, because I know it has got to be frustrating for melee chars when bow users do that.

So I have made it a point when hunting fv, at least when it is crowded, to intentionally NOT shoot a mop immediately. Instead, I walk towards it, confirm that there is no melee char just a few cells away before I go shooting at it.

In other words, I AM TRYING TO BE NICE! I AM TRYING TO BE ESPECIALLY CONSIDERATE OF MELEE CHARACTERS.

Anyways, back to Laryndra, in light of what she said, I replied with a, "So next time I see a mop and you are closer but haven't hit it yet, you're telling me I should shoot it?" To which this is her reply.

So...I don't get it. On one hand her earlier comment seems to indicate that, as a bow user, I should shoot at things immediately. Yet this comment right above also says, if I do that, she will "end" me. So which is it? You can't have your cake and eat it too, honey, you gotta decide. If every mop is free until someone hits it, then even if I see you chase a mop halfway across the screen, as long as I pluck it with an arrow 1 cell before you get there, it's mine not yours, and you have no reason to want to "end" me when I say I am going to do that to you. Whereas if there IS an etiquette that says when a player is CLEARLY moving towards a particular mop, and they are the closest one to it, then it is essentially theirs...then Laryndra, you were clearly out of line tonight. In essence, you're a mop thief. (Or at least you were to me in this instance.)

Anyways, what do you all think? What is the etiquette here? Please respond in my comments here and let me know which one of us was out of line. If it was me, fine, I'll accept that, but then someone explain to me exactly what the rules of etiquette are so that I can take advantge of them as well.

P.S. - It's always a sign of someone's personal integrity and character when they feel the need to respond to a disagreement by threatening the other person.

Ok, enough of that rant.

In other news, was doing a little low-key hunting in dv and ran across a huge fight in progress. Someone had actually Area-of-Silenced while I was there; it was the first time I had experienced that spell, it was kinda neat (and annoying at the same time.) Despite the numbers of people, only 2 or 3 were ever fighting at one time, mostly it was a lot of people standing around trying to look intimidating. lol.

Very boring day for drops, not much of note at all.

Really didn't have much time to play today, actually, which accounts for the lack of drops as well as a minimal experience gain. Still, got my bare minimum half percent, so guess I can't complain.

That's it for me. Busy week ahead, so things might slow down some, at least until the event this weekend. Cya all soon!

Up, Down, and Up

Started off the day's activities with a quick hunt in TOI 11f. As always, this is something I saw frequently on my screen.

Hunt lasted only 50 minutes, but netted me a lot of 21f scrolls plus a few other things.

Then I decided to focus on experience by going up to the TOI 30's. Had gotten as far as 32f when I was jumped by two 3-packs of Pikemen, several of whom also had popped hastes. Stupid me, rather than venz, I was stubborn and refused to escape since I had probably been up in toi no more than 3 minutes. Result? The pic speaks for itself.

This marks my 5th death since reaching 49. That's something I really need to change, or at the rate I'm going, I'm going to have to earn 150% experience before I hit lvl 50. :-/ As you can see, my 3 minute hunt did net me an nzel. Hardly consolotion for the death, though.

So after that, I went on a hunt with JaegerSpirit to dvc 6f. Especially after a death, it's always nice to hunt with someone else. Sadly I don't have any really good pics of us actaully hunting, only this one.

Nor do I have any ss's of any of the drops. Nothing special; 1 ndai, 1 nzel, and adena. Used very few pots, however, so all in all a good hunt.

Last, I did a little soloing on 42f to end the evening. Lots of people up there tonight-it was like Grand Central Station. At one point I counted at least 6 other people hunting up there besides myself. Since I didn't get any valuable drops, I thought i'd share some of the unusual-but-not-really-valuable ones.

That's it. Here's my exp bar, up just a tad since yesterday. If it wasn't for the death, this would have been a pretty good experience day.

Hope everyone has a good week. Halloween event is coming up, so start planning and stocking accordingly!

Lots of luck lately...(but is it all good?)

Those who read this blog regularly know I ended last night with a very lucky hunt on 42f that netted me 2 bzels in just over an hour. So first thing today, went back to 42f seeing if the luck would last. After only a few minutes, I kill a fire ghost and see...

Heh. Bet you thought it was gonna be another bzel, eh? Anyways, fire ghosts rarely drop adena, but every once in a while one will, and it is typically in the 2k-3k range. Interesting, huh?

Anyways, I decide to try to get some good exp by hunting 21f. I tend to do very well on 21f/24f in terms of experience, almost as good (or sometimes even better) than 31f/34f/35f. A half hour into the hunt, I get one of these.

Always nice to get something I can put to use later. :-) Then maybe a half hour or an hour after that...

Woo hoo! That's a pretty darn rare drop from Nightmares, so once again, the "good luck" bug seems to be buzzing around Finarfin.

After I finish my hunt, I think to myself, hmm...bzels last night...dark cloak today...+5 dark cloaks sell for a nice chunk of change. So I put the two together, and here's the result.

Bummer. Oh well. Then I get to thinking, I know on my (basically retired) dark elf I have a +6 shadow gloves. So I get those out, get out a czel and the bzel, and try my luck again.

Doh! Zero-for-two in the bzelling department. Oh well. You win some, you lose some. I've been blessed with some good drops lately, so I suppose it's only fair the Lineage gods look down upon my and smite my hopes at some overenchants.

Not much else on my end, however, we did have something VERY exciting today. Mage extraordinnaire DreamTime became the first member of the pledge to hit lvl 50 since the retirement of Lord Kismet and the formation of KismetLegends under LordTeeber. CONGRATS DT!!!

Bigger and better things await, I am sure! (And on a personal note, thanks for your words of wisdom/advice you've given to me as I have begun starting my own quest to reach lvl 50.)

Speaking of that, gotta love the weekends, another day with over 1% gained. I'll leave you with that, and also the promise of my prayers to all Lineage players (and everyone else) living in south Florida as they prepare for Hurricane Wilma. Be smart, stay safe, and join us back in the game as soon as you can.