Angie, e92's, and Lady Luck

So - earlier while reading another fellow Pioneer's blog I found out that - lo and behold - warp scrolls are purchasable with vis! Excellent, excellent news for which I was quite happy to find out. Angie's quest was one of the very first quests the Alzeda Family did in their earliest days within the New World. Upon finding out of it's (at then) expensive requirement - the quest has sat there ever since. The approximate date escapes me, but it was a few years ago - at least.

Almost~ but not quite.

Angie is still sitting as a form of a card in my inventory. I suppose this equates to poor Angie standing outside the Alzeda family manor, knocking on the door to listen to the empty hollow knocks. Listening for any sign of someone about to open the door, with naught but patience, a good word, and faith the crinkled piece of paper indeed held the right address. ..Oh geeze - writer mode is kicking in today. This might turn into a short story at some point. I have a small scene that pops up in my head everytime I have to name a new UPC - I might have to write it up here sometime. ^^;; *cough*

Anyway~ In other news! Niyone (Scout) finally FINALLY maxed Arnis. Currently it's being debated which skill to leave unmaxed. Lado Patada or Intoxicacion? Looking back it probably would've been best to have not maxed Asalto, as it doesn't do as well for a multiple-target sort of skill as I'd hoped. Ah well. Currently leaning towards leaving Intoxicacion, but we'll see.

The best news of the day today, came not even three minutes into a Bounty Hunter mission for Skele Dungeon. Lo and behold - whilst kicking myself for NOT restarting the hunt missions >_<!! ..something shiny fell on the ground! Running over the trio (Niyone, Italy, and Jisket) picked it up and found it was an Elite Dragon Coat. Not even a recipe - it dropped made - which is awesome. I wasn't even aware e92's even dropped in the Skele BH mission.

Now - if that wasn't silly enough - things only got sillier after that. After a bit of debate, it was decided not to sell the thing but rather try a hand at crafting it into something useful! So 1 spare EB, 7 chips, 24 UA's, and 1 Vet Lac later.. voila!

Jisket's Lucky Coat (of Win)

Now usually I'm a stickler for having 3DR on my armor, but considering this was a free drop? I really have nothing to complain about, especially considering this is the first e92 the Family has EVER been able to get. Total cost (as all supplies were bought on the MM - sans chips and EB) was about 50m. Apparent value (again, according to the MM) is about 250m. Not bad little investment, all things considered. Not bad at all.

On a side note, Italy is now soloing her way to Expert Lv 4 in Bahamar with her freshly +5'ed Trump sword. Hopefully she'll be able to reach it before Friday. Current rate says she won't make it in the next 30ish hours, but whatever is left over will be made up with stocked-up EXP cards. Like many things - I have been hoarding them. The tentative plan is to start farming cards this Fri-Sat. It'll be a 24/hr ordeal until it's done, but I'm sure it will be totally worth it. :3

5.0, Circus, TA, and Moar Stances

So freaking much has happened lately - and I haven't written a stitch about it. This is bad xD

Lately the Family has been able to join in on some Circus runs. Usually it's just to fill in and be an extra 3rd person/moving anchor. The lowest death record for a run is one death, but that's with staying well out of the way 90% of the time. e84's don't offer a lot of protection in there and Italy gets killed fairly easily. Either way some rough stones, lv 100 chips, a couple ticket recipes, and some boots, and even a Le Blanc have been acquired from it. Not too shabby for just being (mostly) a tag-along/buff monkey.

Not long after acquiring Italy's (fig) Expert stance Equites, she was also awarded with a Leo for Hanging Guard.. which.. still has yet to be leveled. After a small test I have a hunch she will need to be leveled by other characters - or at least assisted - before she can make much progress with leveling that stance. Also~! The Family was given a Symbol of Capricorn so Niyone (scout) now knows Arnis. She's being horribly stubborn about mastering it (read: dying), but it's happening slowly but surely.

Found a very inexpensive Shaggy Bobcut for Niyone. At first I wasn't very excited about this particular hair until I equiped it to her. Then I changed my mind xD

I think she looks adorable. ^^

Strange things have been going on with the servers again. For a time on several maps in the recent past all mob spawn would completely die off from certain maps on a specific channel. This however did allow for some awesome picture-taking opportunities - namely in Errac Dias.

- - - - - And then 5.0 hit. - - - - -

I haunted the maint thread as usual on the Sword 2 forums until the wee hours of the morning. I was there juuust long enough for a few lucky people to start patching ahead of time and cries of 'WE'RE GETTING 5.0' to start ringing out before I gave up waiting for maint to end and decided to crash and went to bed. I - of course - having set faith in certain promises that the community would be alerted ahead of time - internally scoffed at this when I hit the pillow and thought about how (sadly) disappointed everyone else would be when they found it hadn't actually happened yet.

The next morning? I couldn't have been more wrong. It was indeed 5.0 Now on one hand I was a little upset that we weren't told ahead of time and that it was suddenly *bam* 5.0 (and QQ to the loss of every continuing Belleming - my at-then source of income) but who can argue with new stances, maps, quests, and instances? I really can't. Other good news? I had just spent all my remaining vis on Bellems.. which.. I figure should return about 3-4x what I spent.. which is perfectly fine by me. ^^ The trick now is just deciding when to open them for best profit. Since then I've noted some players still sell Warp scrolls in the MM, but not much of anything else. Keys of any sort (AQM, Tetra, Porto, Prison, and Barrow) are completely nonexistant on the MM. It makes me curious what they might sell for now..

On that note - an NPC now sells Enchantment Chips - biiiiiiig DISLIKE. I have a small hoard of lv 32-76 chips.. mostly 32-40 in the triple digits. It's going to be.. interesting getting rid of those sans just discarding them. Good news - there will always be someone willing to buy straight out of the MM. :3 Those low level chips were getting difficult to sell as it was with the slight Belleming rush just before 5.0 kicked in, it might take a while now. Also - I know I'm not the only one hoarding a store of Bellems. It might not be a bad idea to camp on them for a while.

- - - - - 

Now - no proper update is complete without new maps and features. For me personally being able to have a map/quest/location to strive to get to can be a huge motivator for leveling/farming/and general progression in the game. At first it was to get to Ustier, then to Zona Uno, Dos, Tres, and Quatro. After that it was to be able to make it through Bahamar (maps and questline, which I thoroughly enjoyed), to Errac which has been recently completed, and recently the Family has found themselves being drawn to the mysterious land that is Caebolan. And now also Castilla.

Now Castilla has completely intrigued me, and so first thing after a brief glance about the camp (Comprised almost entirely of women no less.) The Family tested their strength at a solo run into the Mine. It all started off well enough.

Entering in, you get a medal just a few steps in!

It all started off simple enough. The Family took out the two Bear Workers with relative ease sans their sillily high hp. Next was a Steel Ararat that took a bit more effort, some rebuffing, and pot spamming to keep my squishy Experts alive in their e84 gear. It spawned three or so smaller Steel Ararats beneath it. They were annoying and didn't drop anything. Next was a pair of Phobitan Imps.. I don't have a ss of it, but I believe that's what they were called. They took the team by surprise and killed off Niyone and Jisket before the trio realised what was happening to them. Italy tanked the Imps and an SC resurrected Ni and Ji. The Imps were taken down shortly after. After that was the Phobitan General. That encounter went okay until it reached a point that cued its summons..

Imp summons are painful.

Needless to say the summons took out the team in very quick order. Not one of them could withstand a round of hits from all of them at once. Italy lasted a couple strikes longer, but not quite long enough.

Since then Gerero was found, fought, and killed once in the Prison and dropped some chips. There have been Reckless Emilias, Catherine Torsches, and Valerias *everywhere*. Prices of any and all Symbols have spiked sharply. Some have settled close to their old prices, several haven't. I missed out on CW over the weekend, but the clan the Family is in still took a colony. Bounty Hunter instances for Joaquin and Skeleton Dungeon have been checked out - and they're very well worth doing - especially considering 92 chips sell well and my team is horribly squishy for being Experts. There has been a huge increase in eLB recipes and (reportedly) DHr's. I was pretty surprised to see broads selling ELB recipes - though while they are probably still very far out of reach for the Family - if Elite Le Blancs are going to become common.. this means many other recipes should become alot cheaper in the near future... quite a lot.

Hopefully at least. ((I'm looking at you e92's!!!!! *shakes fist*))