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!

Chronology of a TOI 80's hunt

For those who have ever wondered what TOI is like on the really high floors, I was always someone wondering along with you...until I got the chance to experience it myself. Here's the account of my rookie journey up there, for your enjoyment and (for those considering making such a trip in the future), perhaps your benefit in terms of hunting tips for the different floors.

I log on Friday night, stock up, and am on my way to 35f to do some leveling when I get an invite to join three of my pledgemates up on TOI 81f. I must admit, I was a little skeptical, but eventually I got talked into going. So I wander Oren til I find a shop selling an 81f scroll (only 900k, not too bad)(gack), stock up for a LONG hunt, and hang out in bp house until it is safe to go.

Upon arriving, HeavensBlade escorts me to an enclosed room where he, ShadowFyre, and DreamTime had set themselves up...unofficially dubbed "Fort Kismet."

As you can see, it is a good place to set up. Blade can run around and gather mops, bring them to the doorway to 1:1 them, with Fyre and I providing distance attack and DT healing/i2h-ing/coc-ing/etc. as needed.

Floor has Insolent Zenith Queens, Lesser Seers, and Marquise Vampires. Was able to get two of the three in one shot above (with a cut & paste on a title).

Only problem with this spot? It was actually too easy...too boring. So after a while, we packed up to head to 82f. Here's us cautiously making our way to the 82f stairs.

We ended up on 82f, and made our way and set up shop at the base of the stairs to 83f, figuring if things got out of control, we could escape up steps. Once again, here is the set-up.

With ZQ's and Seers, it is important for the tank to engage the mop far enough away from the support crew that the area attack does not "get" them.



After doing this a while, we were having much success at killing mops, all was working very efficiently...however, our inquisitive nature was getting the best of us. We noticed that LineageDB had absolutely NO drop info for one of the mops on 83f, the Zombie Lord of Fear. So we very cautiously headed up there. Upon arriving, we found a nice enclosed room not too far from the stairs, set up our support peeps against the back wall, and sent our bait out running around looking for some fun.

And here's our first ZL kill.

We learned that ZL's have a TON of hp, but their attack is not that bad. They have a distance/area attack that reaches about a quarter screen. As for their melee attack, it seems to do maybe a little under 200 hp per hit.

After deciding these guys weren't so bad, we went wandering around 83f looking for a little higher spawn. We didn't have to look long.

So after some hunting on 83f, we went back to 82f a while, then towards the end of our night back to 83f. Our second time wandering up there, we came across a sort of dead-end hallway that had at least 10 or 12 mops all gathered together. This shot is only a small portion of them.

So after scouting out the immediate area, we set up "trap" area at a doorway with the hopes of luring the mops out and ending them one at a time.

The spot worked great on the Queens and Seers.


With ZL's, we had to back up the bow peeps a little to stay out of range of the area attack.

And so we worked, til we had systematically lured & slaughtered that whole huge group of mops. To say we were feeling pretty good about ourselves at this point would be an understatement.

We had every reason to be confident. We had been up on the 80's for at least 4 hours, almost 5 hours. We had killed everything we had run across and really done it without any major crises or even very many "close calls." I was so confident myself that I had even taken the hotkey I normally use for escape scrolls and hotkeyed something else in that slot instead.

We were standing where you see us above, talking about how tired we all were (it was past 2:00 a.m. my time!), how both Fyre and I were totally out of wafers, and so forth...when off just to our left comes one mop (ZQ), then a second, then a 3-pack of Seers all right on top of each other (so it looked from across the screen like it was only one). Before I knew what happened DT was down, the other 3 of us scatter to try to separate mops, but even more started coming, it was clear things were out of control, at some point Blade and Fyre escaped, I see DT's dead body yelling at me, "esc esc," and I'm hitting the button BUT THE DARN THING WON'T ESCAPE WHY AM I NOT ESCAPING WHY WHY WHY AM I NOT ESCAPING.....ARR....GAHHHHH.......

Note to self: no matter how well a hunt is going, when hunting on TOI 83f, never, ever, EVER decide to un-hotkey escape scrolls.

So...that was the end of our adventure. In the end during our 5+ hour adventure we got one 91f scroll, maybe 6 or 8 ndais (Zombie Lord's seem to drop ndai maybe 1 in 4 times), and 4 czels. 91f scroll worth a million, so basically I made back about 400k of the 900k scroll cost. But it was a darned good time. Unlike the last trip up there that Blade, Fyre, and DT made (when they got SB Advanced Spirit), we didn't get any uber drops. Definitely not the kinda place someone can hunt everyday, but for a once in a great while kinda trip, it was worth it.

Didn't get a shot of my exp bar, but around 18.2% or so now. Tuesday marks the 1 month mark since hitting 50, maybe I can be up to 20% by then. Until later, have a great day!

Some great progress

Been a couple of days since posting, but going back since my last post, first thing to report was a good 35f hunt. Dancing swords on that floor are a pain, and the marksmen can hurt, but what makes it great (as a bow elf) is seeing one of these "easy experience" 3-pack spawns.

These were my drops of note after about 90 minutes.

Using those zels, I already had enough irons in storage for one ib. Oh well.

Had a couple of hunts to 42f the last few days. Here are some screens of the action. (Reminder, you can click on the image to pull up a larger version of the picture!)

I must say, besides the good times and pretty good exp, the drop gods have been starting to look favorably on me again.

Last thing, this was a kinda neato sceenshot I took of myself in the midst of a NT. I thought it was neat looking, at least.

Here's the experience update. Progress, progress, progress.

Haven't had a ton of time to hunt, but also haven't died again, since moving back to water. Good decision, I think. :)

Weekend coming on, so hopefully some more time for Lineage. Cya all later!