September 21, 2012

Alphabet Soup: Part 1

So after months of very little of anything going on, an unexpected custom-made event for the Sword 2 servers was added this last Maint consisting of a very delectable Alphabet Event. In short tradable Alphabet Boxes drop at random from all mobs in-game. When opened, the boxes drop a random non-tradable letter. These letters in form of three pre-determined five-letter words can be traded in for prizes to a designated NPC. Depending on how completed the word is at time being traded in, dictates the tier of rewards the player can pick from.

Prizes of Note: A minimum of # correct letters to any one word will grant some of the following prizes.


  • Two Correct Letters: AA passes, Ti/Te runes, 1 day 80% combat manuals, 7-day crystal wings, and a smattering of lesser interesting items.
  • Three Correct Letters: Letizi boxes, Const boxes, Expert chips, Lv 32 weapon crystals, and other misc.
  • Four Correct Letters: HQ Spod and HQ Obs items, Aries Symbol, DH, Red Tiger Box, 30 Day Exp Explorer Pack, and Magic Earring Rec.
  • Five Correct Letters: 30 Day Master Explorer Pack, Princ pot, Rose Wing coupon, Sage Necklace, Capitaine Costume for Fighter, Pose Guide 11, and Diamond Tokens.


The last two, in my opinion, are the most exciting items of this event. Pose Guide 11 has thus far never been released in our version, though it was been requested and sought for ages. Diamond Tokens can be spent in a shop (avaliable at the same UPC) for a myraid of extremely valuable items.

Diamond Token Shop: Sage Necklace, Black Dragon Pet Box, AtP, EtS, BSI, StF, ICP, Ralph, Asoka, three different never before released 33 AR Mechanical Series Weapons (Sword, Pistol, Bayonet, and Fire Brace), and the ever elusive, coveted, and drooled over Punisher Manual.

Personally, I'd absolutely love if they'd add Innocento if they're going to be so brazen as to include a stance as elusive as Punisher.

Even if the boxes decide to just be bishes and not give everything at all - you can trade in random letters for basically crap items. Hey, at least at the end we can empty our inventories of these letters when the event finally closes! Oh - did I mention Raiden gave no end date to this event? It's going to run at least for several months. Theories speculate until we get our patch update which - thus far - we have had virtually no news of whatsoever.

Now, gleeful news aside. Nothing would quite be right in Orpesia or it's sister servers anymore these days without a bit of drama. Now something to note is that the player presence on the forums has been incredibly restless and increasingly disgrunted of late due to lack of information updates and general visual absence of most everyone G1-affiliated. Frankly, I haven't seen the player base this frustrated/up in arms in.. well.. ever.

Anyway during the first 18 or so hours of the event, Alphabet Boxes dropped like absolute rain. It was definitely possible to farm 18-20 an hour in high spawn areas, if not a tad more in others. Considering it would then be possible for a single family to farm upwards of 400+ in a day (in semi-ideal situations), the 35 diamond tokens it would require for a single Punisher manual in the Token Shop would be laughable, let alone the other rewards.

There is little doubt in my mind it would have been possible to complete the entire shop within a week. It really was no secret this was broken, something more or less the entire player base could agree on. Fortunately (or unfortunately) G1 agreed on this as well and in a brief dc, they adjusted the rate.

Currently I theorize the drop rate was reduced to 1/4 or so of what it was previously, based upon my own farming experience. For me, this is still okay as in some areas one can still farm an avg of 5-6 boxes an hour, which still isn't too shabby. The great downside to this is this requires afking in an area with a very high spawn rate. The number of said type of locations in Sword is incredibly limited to just a few maps. ie:

In short, unless you can secure yourself an ideal location in 2-3 maps, most of the player base is somewhat screwed in more normal/slower spawning maps. As it is, I've heard from several people of only collecting a handful of boxes over many hours, some, collecting only a couple if any at all. Though a nerf was needed, I do believe it's currently a bit too rough. Given as the event is still very new (and not even a full 2-days old yet) I'm sure there will be more tweaks in the future. I just hope they're the best ones.

~Alze

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