Soup and Crackers (Alpha Soup Pt 2.5 - Veronif/Cruz Event)

Just when you begin get settled into the new farming routine...

G1 has added yet another event to the crazy montage of events, the Good Samaritan Event, also known in other versions as 'Anxious Veronif and Starving Cruise' event (which, I also hear, was removed due to conflicts with v10.18). Right when one would think we didn't have enough to farm for.. voila.. moar stuff. On the upside, its a very simple event and an easy way to gain lots of princ pots, exp cards (vet and expert G both), pet food, soul crystals, stance exp cards, and even socket fluxes. On the downside, the addition of these new event items required for this event (White Crystal, High Viscosity Liquid, and Unknown meat) has effectively nerfed the rate at which boxes can be farmed for most families.

Don't get me wrong, the boxes aren't dropping at any less of a rate (as, actively collecting with 1 char, I can still acquire the same number of boxes per hour as I did last week), but that the addition of these new drops means more boxes are missed. A lot more boxes. Check this QQ screen of the first 19 hours of farming after Maint ended. The first record (not in picture) began at 3:00, 0 boxes, 0 Samaritan event mats. First line in image was 8hours later at 11:30am, the following line 11hrs after that at 10:30pm.

A normally this should have been from 36 to 100-120 boxes (approx)

That's about 60-80 less boxes a day. /AlzeQQ

Curiously enough by actively looting this afternoon in one hour I netted 7 alpha boxes, 3 liquids, 6 meats, and 11 crystals. For me at least, this seems to prove that the new event items are indeed crowding out the boxes and once again this has become a matter of whether or not a loot pet is able to keep up with the rate at which items are dropping. It was barely keeping up before, now it's just completely underwater.

Complaints aside, this event is truly delicious in it's own respects. How it works is players gather at least 1 of each item: White Crystal (looks like talt), High viscosity liquid (looks like Liquid Gas), and Unknown meat (like any other meat in this game xD). Having one of each forms one set, which when turned into Veronif the player is rewarded with one random item. Amongst these is also Tasty Meat and Tasty Crackers which can be turned into Cruise (or Cruz, as he's called here) for additional rewards. As a result, there appears to be three separate reward tables.

Veronif - per Set:

• Mystic Ampuleb (Ampule) x1
• Princ Pots x1
• Tasty Meat x1
• Tasty Crackers x1

Cruz - Tasty Meat:

• Event Triumph Fillers x2
• Expert G EXP Card x10
• Veteran G EXP Card x10
• Training Card G x2
• Alphabet Box x1
• Principal ampule x2

Cruz - Tasty Crackers:

• Health-Generator x20
• Training Card G x2
• Soul Crystal x10
• Pet food x20
• Expert G EXP Card x10
• Veteran G EXP Card x10
• Event Socket Flux x1

Mystic Ampule grants Lv 20 Bard buffs (Insistendo, Accelerando, and Meditivo) for 15 minutes. Princ pots give the standard Lv 12 Principal buff for 10 minutes. Triumph Fillers grant +1 AR/DR for 10 minutes. Training Card G grants 1m stance exp. Each G EXP (Vet/Expert) card gives 10% exp for their respective name promotion. Health-Generator returns 8k hp to a char upon use.

After I'm able to collect and turn in more sets, I'll make another post listing the percentages these rewards are given at. I must say this event is absolutely marvelous for leveling up characters. It is ridiculously easy to get a character from Expert to Master daily by doing nothing but afk farming. I theorize, it'll be very possible to insta-master one, if not two characters daily by using the Expert G cards alone.

Broken Event x Broken Event = ..Oh heavens.. I do believe Orpesia has turned into a test server. o_o;;

Moar haxness to come..

~Alze

Alphabet Soup: Part 2

The entire week of farming was fairly simple for the most part, though it seems the longer this event draws on the more drama the spikes up from it and malicious gameplay arises. People first complained of spinelles and bms, and later reports of pkers has arisen since then. Given Orpesia is a non-baron server pk isn't something often seen unless it is between warring clans (previously, before the feature was removed) or now between the factions of Sahasrha and Dronarati. Unfortunately, squadding with an opposing faction will make you red, even against your own faction. Not something I was particularly thrilled with at all, but, eh, if someone wants to kill you/your faction/clan/whatever for whatever reason or purpose, they will find ways to do it.

..Anyway, I'll leave that topic for another time.

Over the week the afk farming netted near 500 boxes resulting in juuust eeking by to acquire 30 tokens just in time to buy Punisher from the token shop before Maint began. (Much thanks to a dear friend for helping me with those last three Rs!). The purchase was none-too soon as post-maint Punisher was increased in price from 30 to 40 tokens, and all UPCs' prices rose from 10 to 15 tokens each. In addition, the original words were rotated out in favor of new ones, Orion, Stars, and Queen. I was pretty excited about this move as I had enough letters from the previous week to buy 10 tokens as soon as I could access the shop, and did so with relish.

An additional change was to the Alphabet Basket which I had ignored/skipped over in my previous post. With the Alphabet Basket a player can put in 1 letter (doesn't matter what one) and get back a random item. Previously they weren't of much interest, as half of the prize list consisted of Lollipops. The other items were Elite Treasure Boxes, Swampangler Spinelles, Amrita, AMs Boost, and Teleport Scrolls. Pretty mediocre stuff, well, maybe sans the boxes. Over maint this received an uber boost to also drop every Raiden's Angel series box from I to X. Previously cash shop boxes that have been since removed, they are known for having a chance to drop Angel Series (33 AR) and Draconic Series (32 AR) weapons. A complete list of what box drops what item is available here.

Currently the Raiden's Angel VII box is bugged and refuses to drop anything when opened, so it's generally advised people hang onto them until they can be fixed.

Another little perk added after maint was the addition of an absolute ton of Parasols dotted across Gigante Beach.

Sit back and relax for a nice buff...

If you move your characters beneath and use the 'Sit on the floor' pose, the posing characters will all gain a buff that grants 50% exp for two hours. It makes for an excellent boost to any vesping expedition, for similar powerleveling task.

Utilizing the new words after maint, I traded in enough tokens for Emilia the Sage, Pose Guide Book 11, and a Black Dragon Pet. In addition to a Master Explorer Pack I snagged last week to help with farming (and for SA access) this brings the total to 52 words turned in thus far, and as of writing this nearly 1.1k boxes farmed. Oh, that was another thing over last maint - box drop rate was increased 50%, however due to my now casual farming endeavors, I still gain boxes about the same rate per hour this week as I did last week. (5-6/hr)

Should my more favored maps ever open up at some point, it would be interesting to try farming there once more and seeing how effective the 50% boost is. While some players have reported an increase in drops, some still complain that their drop rates are mediocre to pathetic at best. Personally, I'm of the opinion it's due to area set-up/team composition, but I'm sure it makes things no less frustrating for the affected parties. Currently I'm leveling my Vets and maxing their stances as I farm, which means I have to use different teams than I prefer. I'll keep track of how different team combinations affects my box farming, and post on it later. Until then..

~Alze

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

The Miracle of Coffee

So, I figure it's time for another Ramble Update. The Family recently has undertaken an unusual challenge, one of inventoring the entire collection of the Family's belongings and tallying the amount of their presumed worth. One never really realizes exactly how much "stuff" they have until it starts being listed in an ever-growing notepad document.

The Bounty Hunter roulette and Raff drop tallying has continued, and thus far ratios has remained rather consistent though there was an odd time of receiving const boxes from Raff four days in a row. That was quite entertaining. On that note - Scorp symbols are nowhere to be seen. @_@ The const symbol collection has grown since the last update, but Scorpios still remain incredibly.. not there.

In other news, the Family has acquired their first-ever eln. As everyone else in the Family currently resides in elbs, this is quite an exciting change of pace. In crafting-news, the 'to-make' list has been increasing constantly. Practically all of it is accessories. Quite a few artisans to be crafted.. if only there were a few more magic I'd be more enticed to craft them!

As it stands, the recipes I have I don't really need  to craft due to existing items in the Family's possession. However - the items I actually need more of? Trololol.. good luck scaring up some of those. They're not so much 'rare' or 'elusive' as 'refuse to show up to go into Alz's inventory'.

Went on a little chipping spree earlier this evening. Got completely trolled on a couple braces, and got some decent mods on another few. I finally have a brace with a atk+golem mod! The racial itself is a bit troll, but it's at least something. The only other golem racial in the Family's possession is a gaiter. Handy in some situations - but not when ranged chars are needed more. In addition, a nice life racial, troll daemon, and even more troll double racial was chipped today. Considering I rarely chip, and tend to despise the process, this turned out to be quite fun. ^^

Claire was finally Mastered earlier this week. She was spam-fed exp cards I've been collecting from a daily Viron quest I do for rep. On a whim, Adelina was taken out of the dusty barracks and given Bloody Feast and let loose upon the unsuspecting mobs in Skele. This works as a double-advantage as 1 - she has jack crap for sabres currently, thus pitiful killing power xD and 2 - A chance to gather some items in preparation for the 'Patch of Doom' as I call it, whenever it arrives. Ie: Sword 2 updating to 10.6. Eventually. One day. .. >_>

Also - on a side note - Don't stay up 30+ hours via having a normal day, staying up through maint, then mob-slaying your little heart out til the following afternoon. It's just... bad... bad idea. You end up sleeping 8hrs during the entire afternoon and be stuck up late, awake, writing stuff like this. xD So, maybe not entirely bad - but still. 8hr doze all day on the 4th of July? Tsk tsk!

More shenanigans to come..
~ Alze

An Overdue Report

Since the last update:

Vesping:
- Ralph reached Vet, and subsequently Expert.
- Made a new Wiz (Female) who was Experted, and maxed all stances.
- Lorch reached Expert
- Mia reached Expert
- Grace reached Master
- Lisa reached Master
- All Understudies reached Lv 100, but have not been promoted to Vet (yet) - ie: Auch Infantry (F), Rescue Knight, Claude, Jose, Alejandro, Irawain, Kurt, and Tiburon.

Family Level has reached Lv 48. I'm just two away from 50, now. =)

Dailies: The following will be divvied by month, and a final overall statistic. This does not include raids like Crow, Prison, HWC, etc as they were completed irregularly. Rather these stats come from completing Instanced Raff, 2 Occulta BH runs, and 1 Caeb BH run daily. (Sometimes I messed up and didn't reset Occulta x.x but it only happens once in a while.

Key thing to note: Raff gives 4 lv 100 items, and 2 asos per instance, hence those numbers are considerably high.

February (being this wasn't posted before) Listing began: 13 Days Completed.
- 3 consts (from raff) - Capricorn, Pisces, Leo
- 30 Expert tokens
- 17,000 in rep cards
- 52 Ancient Star Orb boxes (26 from BH missions)
- 74 Lv 100 items
- 2 e92 items
- 17 Vet tokens
- 1 Artisan rec

March - 29 of 31 Days Completed.
- 6 Const Symbols
- 71 Expert Tokens
- 33,500 Rep from cards
- 73 Asos
- 180 Lv 100 Items
- 7 e92 Items
- 1 Magic rec

- 34 Vet Tokens

- 1 Artisan rec

April - 30 of 30 Days Completed

- 9 Const Symbols

- 73 Expert Tokens

- 68,500 Rep from cards
- 91 Asos
- 175 Lv 100 Items
- 10 e92 Items
- 0 Magic recs
- 38 Vet Tokens
- 1 Arti rec

May - In progress.

So far I've noticed...
Instanced Raff:
- Gives a Const box about 25% of the time ie: 1 in 4 runs will yield a Const box.
- Gives 4 lv 100 items, and 2 Asos boxes always.

BH-Occulta
- 40% of the time BH Occulta will give you Expert Tokens
- 20% of the time will be Lv 100 items.
- 20% of the time will be Honor B (500 rep) or Honor G (2,000 rep) cards. Between these two they are about 50/50, leaning slightly more towards Honor B than G.
- 10% is Asos
- 5% e92 items
- Remaining %'s are scattered due to rounding.

BH-Caeb (ie: Sedecram)
- 40% of the time will be Vet Tokens
- 30% of the time will be Lv 100 items
- 10% of the time will be Asos boxes
- 10% is Honor G cards
- Artisan recs drop slightly more often than Honor B, at 1.5% vs Honor B's 1%
- Remaining %'s are scattered due to rounding.

Phew~ So.. yeah.. a little curiosity evolved into a lengthy Notepad document, which morphed into a spreadsheet.. somehow.. still not completely sure how that happened.
I've also noticed - if I tally up all daily runs, it's really easy to spend close to 30m on just extra roulettes when you do all the raids. By that I mean: Dailies, Crow, Basement, etc.. 30m hurts. Omigah. Hence, until Markets decidedly improve - the Family shall hence become moochers and be satisfied with the two roulettes given to them.

More posts soon? Who knows~ stay tuned.
~Alze

Raff Gift of Win and Baffling 'Cold Calls'

So earlier this evening while completing dailies, the Family came to the stark realization that they were out of Yellow Leaves for their daily Raff instance run. MM, oddly enough, didn't have any so it didn't look like it would be an option til a clanmate generously gave a small stack of leaves out of the blue. What came of that now avaliable raff run? A Constellation Box. What came out of that Constellation Box? A Pisces symbol. What's so awesome about a Pisces symbol (besides it's value)? It was the last symbol I needed for a 2nd complete symbol set. :D

Heck, freaking, yes.

On a side note: Helena + Asoka works quite nicely for Occulta BH, however the one trick of it is, is to have Asoka within range of Necro's aoe, and having Helena out of it. It took me a little while to figure the exact spacing, but here it is.

Such a fine line between pwn and pwn't

The two green lines were made directly over actual lines on the floor. As long as Asoka stays *just* behind that line, and Helena doesn't enter the Box area, they're both fine. However if Asoka is even *on* that line infront of her? Helena will get hit. It's very tricky, and sometimes takes a bit of maneuvering to get them situated just right - but it can work out quite nicely.

Also - no spacebarring what so ever. Click-to-attack only, as going on spacebar lessens the distance between mob and character. It's a very slight difference, but here it matters.

- - - - -

Tactics aside, I find myself in another befuddling predicament. At some point in the day when I am in Auch - par daily or every other day - inevitably someone will PM me asking for help/vis/gear. This utterly baffles me. I don't mind giving out advice and how-to do something, but some things I still do not understand.

For instance one person was seeking X-amount mil of vis (not much), yet only asking for 1k increments (clever!) However, for amounts so low, that's easily farmable in low places such as Prison and Fire Isle. Heck, just farm up pure ores and npc them and voila ~ profit. Judging by their fam lv, they at least had some vets if not expert too. Why they didn't so that instead (much more profitable and less time consuming) I have no idea. /baffled.

In short, I just plain don't get it. This rarely ever happened before, but within the last couple weeks it happens very frequently. Perhaps I should whip up some guides so when people ask me 'Can you help me with ____ can you give me ____?' I can say 'Go read this here ______ - it'll give you all the info you need, havaniceday kthxbai. :D' I mean.. not to sound antisocial or anything but.. all the 'Can you give me vis/items' stuff is.. kinda.. ew. x.x

I never asked for items as a lowbie player, never asked for gear, or donations. I stuck it out on my own, figured out the steps I needed to take, and worked towards achieving what I wanted to acquire. That isn't to say people never lent me gear, but rather I never went out seeking it - let alone messaging complete strangers. I guess.. it just strikes a nerve with me. =/ /rant.

More bipolar-esque posting ahead! Stick around. :3

~Alze

Almost missed the 'Title' line..

Omigah, Blogger, y u be so strange, la?!

I'm completely not used to this layout. @_@ It feels so WEIRD.
(To anyone who doesn't have one, they revamped how a lot of it looks from the writing side of things. It feels so.. strange. ._.)

Anyway, time for an update/to-do list.

Update:
- Bought Ralph for a slightly higher sum than desired, but still not a bad price.
..Actually that alone has been holding up a lot of progress. The Family has been hoarding up vis to ensure Ralph would be purchasable, which includes holding off on other expenditures. Most notably expensive upgrading/chipping practices as the Family has... quite a number of items that need both.
- Family Lv has now hit Lv 46 - Just four more levels to go for 50!

To-do:
- Achieve Fam Lv 50 in preparation for 9.5
- Level, Expert, and max Darkness on a new F Wiz.
- Begin crafting Family's first const (evar!) - a LoE
- Craft 1 (possibly 2) e100 Fire Braces in preparation for 9.5
- Upgrade Le Scarces @_@
- Pray to the chipping gods/threaten their oracle (*cough*ench chip lady*cough*cough*)

...aaand there are some others, but that's the main important ones at the moment.

Other news:
Partly out of curiosity, I've been keeping track of what drops I get from my daily BH/raff runs. I've been keeping track since mid-Feb, so perhaps by mid-April I'll post what I find.

Also, ironies and trolldrops, most notably:

Doesn't know the meaning of 'Atk'

A BH Occulta roulette drop.. now where might this sound Familiar?

More to come later. :3

~ Alze