Mmmmm, Silk…

I spent most of today in EverQuest, but this time I felt like finally leveling a bit. I headed off to Halls of Honor to see what the actual level xp is like there, and I was a bit disappointed with the movement at first, as I only got a bit less than a fifth of a blue bubble per kill, versus the 2-3 full blue bubbles I was getting for AA xp. But, it actually started to add up fairly quickly, and by the end of my stretch there I’d gained two levels, putting me at 67. I still need my 66+ spells though, and I’m not finding them in the bazaar and I’d probably need a group to get them from the OoW areas…

I was also pleased to see that the monsters in HoH remained dark blue even at 67, so I think I’ll hold the leveling there for a while and milk some more AAs out of the place. There’s still a handful of them that look important that I haven’t picked up yet, like improving chances of channeling through stuns and reducing the reuse time on Gather Mana.

I also discovered that I’d goofed up a bit — some of the monsters that I’ve been describing as stun-immune actually aren’t; I was just using the wrong stun… I had a lower-level one ready to be fired first since it casts faster, and that’s the one that I kept getting the ‘immune’ messages for. But then I noticed that the description of the second stun says “…works on creatures up to level 65.” The first stun doesn’t say anything like that, and I’d forgotten about the level restrictions, and after switching to the second stun it works on a lot more monsters now. Recovery from charm breaks should be a bit safer now.

Grinding xp in HoH was getting boring, so I struck out exploring again, this time in the Dragons of Norrath areas. They’re connected via Lavastorm, which has also undergone a map revamp (old vs new), which changed things like the positions of dungeon entrances considerably. There’s probably other new stuff there too, but I was just passing through.

It was a good thing I stopped to look at an NPC merchant though, as one of them had an Elegant Defiant Silk Robe for sale that some other player must have dumped on the merchant. I’d been looking for that robe, and it normally goes for 10K+ plat in the bazaar, but the merchant only wanted just over 2K plat for it. Sold! I can’t wear the Elegant Defiant stuff yet, but I now have almost a full set ready for when I hit level 70.

Off of Lavastorm was the Broodlands, which kind of felt like a less craggy extension of Lavastorm. I didn’t see a lot of it though, as I stumbled across a teleporter in the middle of a bunch of pillars and it took me to Thundercrest Isles. It’s an odd little place with a handful of large buildings with an Asian-ish theme, all connected together via walkways and bridges. The monsters here were a nice mix of blues and light blues, so I tried a bit of charming in the inner area. That turned out to be a really bad idea though, as a lot of wanderers started coming by and I was forced to gate out before I got too overwhelmed.

The New Old School

The parallels between The Witcher and Drakensang continued today, as I finally entered the city and discovered that there was, gasp!, a murder! Which I now have to investigate, of course. Though to be fair, it’s a pretty stock plot device.

I finished up all of the quests in the starting area before moving on to the city, and also managed to recruit two party members, an amazon and a thief. They’ve made combat much easier, since I can rely on them to tank the monsters instead of my wimpy skeleton or even wimpier self, and filled in some much needed skill roles like lockpicking.

It’s refreshing that there’s even a party system at all, since most modern real-time RPGs have largely discarded parties and have you operating alone most of the time. Drakensang is kind of old-school in that sense, and in others like how you’re free to smash every crate and take everything that isn’t nailed down, rather than worrying about guards chasing you.

Fun In Russia And Germany

The Steam weekend sale coming up reminded me that I already bought Red Orchestra in a previous sale but never got around to trying it, so I fired it up and played around in practice mode for a little while. It definitely lives up to its hardcore reputation — maps are big, movement is slow, your durability is low, vehicles are unwieldy and unavailable to a lot of ‘classes’, there’s no crosshairs, and aiming is extremely inaccurate unless you use the iron sights, which often obscure a lot of your vision.

The practice mode kind of sucks though, since it only spawns six bots on each side, and you wind up running around not doing or seeing very much. I’ll have to give it a try on a big multiplayer server sometime, but didn’t have time tonight.

Instead, I started the next major game, Drakensang: The Dark Eye, an RPG based on a pen-and-paper game from Germany. It’s a fairly complex-looking system, with all sorts of skills and combat talents, but I started off with a fairly basic “metamage” template. I’m not sure what a metamage is, beyond being able to summon a skeleton and cast a frost attack to begin with.

So far I’ve just wandered around the starting area, picking up a whole bunch of quests but not yet getting any of them done, with the eventual goal of getting into this nearby city which is blocked off for now. Hey, that’s just how The Witcher started out…

It’s pretty competently-executed so far, with decent graphics and voice acting. The controls took a bit of getting used to, since it uses WASD but the left and right strafe instead of turn, and you have to right-click-and-hold to turn the camera. Not *that* unusual, but it’s been a while since I’ve played one like that.

Better Than Perfect

In today’s round of Disgaea 3, I wound up making a “perfect” Baal Sword for Laharl, except that its defense rating is even just slightly better than what the guide said it should be for some reason. Hey, I’ll take it… The sword made a bigger difference than I thought it would, taking his ATK from around 50 million to nearly 88 million, and he now does 1.4 billion damage with his Dark X Slash skill.

That’s the best his equipment can possibly get, and any further improvement will have to come through raising his aptitudes and buying more skill levels. It seems kind of unnecessary now though, now that he can pretty much kill anything in one hit.

Next up for improvement was my own fist fighter character, so I leveled up another Trapazohedron, this time focusing on SPD. Technically I could have just duped more of the ATK ones I’d already made, but SPD helps both attacks and defense for fist users. I managed to make a perfect one this time, duped it a few times, and put them on my fist fighter.

He’s still not as powerful as Laharl, since I hadn’t raised his aptitudes nearly as much (that part is way too tedious) and he doesn’t have his leveled-up rank 40 weapon yet, but he can still do 140 million damage per special attack, up from around 12 million before I made these Trapazohedrons.

With two powerful characters, I could finally take on the Baal fight in Land of Carnage, taking out each pair of guards before they had a chance to attack, and then sacrificing my fist fighter to draw Baal out so Laharl could get in the killing blow.

And…that’s about it. That’s the toughest designed fight in the game. There are still other things that could be tougher, like floor 100 item gods in LoC, or trying to steal the obscenely-powerful magichange weapons, but it’s all random stuff from here on, so this might be where I finally consider Disgaea 3 “finished.” And it took a mere 130 hours, according to the save screen…

Mixed Bag

Tonight was a variety of things, starting off with Crystal Defenders, a Final Fantasy-themed tower defense game just released on XBLA. It looks fairly simple, but it’s harder than it looks, and I haven’t successfully completed a wave yet. That looks like it’s intentional though, as there’s only 6 maps in total, plus a hard variant of each. I’m not sure if it was really worth the money, but it’s still kinda fun.

Next up I was inspired by a forum post to play another Hinterland session. There have been a couple patches since I last played, but nothing revolutionary. I took an Outlaw on long/hardcore, which starts you off in a fame debt that you have to pay off within four days or lose, but that attempt was cut short by some rather hard-hitting monsters instead. I tried again and managed to win that time, though it took about four hours. I really had to be careful since my equipment and town growth was awful for a long time, but in the end things evened out.

And finally I gave Unreal Tournament 3 a whirl. It was cheap and I was curious about modern shooters, but I only had time to play through the tutorial match. There’s a ‘campaign’ mode to it, but I imagine it’ll just be a series of bot matches, much like previous versions and Quake 3… There’s a fast pace to it that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with yet.

Slightly Imperfect

Back in Disgaea 3, it was time to level it up the Trapezohedron for a rather dramatic improvement in stats. I duped a few of them first, so that I had fresh copies I could level up in different ways, and then tried to follow a guide to creating “perfect” items, which requires passing certain bills early on, double-killing bosses, finding enough level spheres, reverse pirating, etc.

I thought I followed it pretty strictly, but in the end I wound up with stats slightly lower than what the guide said they should be. I think I might have found a level sphere too early, before all of the ATK bills had been passed, so that some level ups didn’t get the full effect. Oh well, it’s only something like a 0.1% difference, so it’s good enough as is.

I then wanted to dupe more of them, of course, and discovered the hard way that someone equipped with one of these is tough to beat. I had to rearrange my equipment and give Laharl the Puppy Paw Stick before I could reliably beat the dropouts. And, in the end, Laharl now has a complete, rarity-matched set of these Traps and his rank 40 weapon, and in total he now has over 50 million ATK and does over 207 million damage with some of his special attacks. The only improvement left for him will be to level up his weapon as well, though that’ll make a smaller difference.

I then finally went back and defeated Baal easily, now that his 47 million HPs wasn’t so intimidating anymore. Baal was also available in the Land of Carnage afterwards, and I took a shot at that, but…one of his guards killed Laharl in one hit. No matter how obscenely powerful you get, the game always has something worse to throw at you…

I Knew I Was Forgetting Something

The EverQuest updates have been pretty sparse since lately I’d only been watching the bazaar, looking for good deals on new equipment. I think I’ve milked it long enough though, so tonight I got back to some actual adventuring.

It was the Omens of War expansion’s turn, so I headed to Dranik’s Scar first, but it’s way too low-level and rather plain-looking. Connected to it is Noble’s Causeway, which was a bunch of long, winding paths with an upper and lower part. There were plenty of blue-con murkgliders there, and I charm-soloed them for a little while, but again they have the annoying stun immunity.

I moved on to Wall of Slaughter, a big circular area split in half by a wall in the middle, and a much better job at attempting to portray ominous architecture. My attempt to charm-solo some of the wanderers there ended horribly though, when I got overrun. There were just too many wanderers in that area, and of course they’re all stun-immune as well.

I couldn’t enter one connected zone, and the other led to the Muramite Proving Grounds, which was another maze of corridors that was filled with yellow and red cons, so that’s as deep as I dared go. I went back to WoS and got killed on another charm attempt thanks to them summoning, and I think that’s all I’ll try for now. I’m still missing my level 66-70 spells that drop here, though, so I may have to buy those on the bazaar.

I wound up going back to Halls of Honor and did some charm-soloing there for a while. It’s nice and easy compared to most other areas, and it didn’t take long to get 5 AAs there, though it gets dull after a while. I bought the last two points of Innate Enlightenment, and I’m still capped on INT, but it’s probably time to focus on other AAs for now, though. I also found an earring there that was a good upgrade for me and that must be a new item, since its stats are way too good for that era.

Searching For Sensible Shoes

In yet more Disgaea 3 (I’ve really got to do something else with my vacation time so far…) I managed to get a legendary Arcadia, thanks to a little druid trick involving changing the bonus table. I entered its item world and stole the Trapezathingie from the item god, and this will be important since it’ll be the replacement for the Testaments everyone has in their accessory slots right now. I even managed to get a rarity 0 one first try.

I then spent a while looking for more rank 39 items and eventually found the axe I was missing before. I still need a rarity 0 Barefoot X, though. I have a few of them already, but wouldn’t get the rarity match bonus with them. Oh well, I’ll just continue working on the Trapezamabobs and hopefully run into one along the way.

Finally, Some Carnage

I started off in Disgaea 3 today by duping more sprinter specialists, while also working on the class worlds of various story characters. I eventually got enough of them to fill Laharl’s equipment, and with a full set of sprinter-enhanced Testaments, he now has an ATK rating of over 11 million. The number doesn’t even fit in the screen’s field anymore.

I cleared more of the X-Dimension maps, though I had to skip a few since they were too tough, annoying, or needed things I was still a bit weak at, like long-range non-special-based attacks. All I needed was to complete 25 of the 43 total though, and it didn’t take too long, finally unlocking the Land of Carnage.

The Land of Carnage is…well, it’s just like the regular world, really, except that the monsters are much higher level. But higher levels means more xp, and after filling Mao’s equipment with Statisticians, a single round in the LoC version of HoO4 took him from level 1 to 6645. It only took three rounds to get to level 9999. I could probably do it in two if I put statisticians on his weapon as well.

I spent a while repeatedly reincarnating Laharl and getting him back up to level 9999, to maximize his reincarnation stats bonus, but that’s only part of what’s needed. I then spent some time reverse pirating to farm for legendary weapons from green chests, and when you do it in LoC you can find the rank 35-39 weapons. The monsters are extremely tough, often with dozens of millions of HPs, but all you really need to do is run in and smash as many chests as you can before dying.

After a bunch of aborted attempts (you can only reverse pirate items a finite number of times, so there’s no point in saving if you don’t find anything good that run), I eventually wound up with the rank 39 versions of the bow, sword, gun, fists, staff, and spear. I also found a pair of Barefoot X shoes, the best you can get and with a whopping movement bonus of 3, but I’m still missing the rank 39 versions of an axe and an emblem. The emblem will be particularly important, to replace the Testaments I’m using now.

The rank 39 weapons aren’t really important by themselves, though. Instead you have to enter their item world to get the ultimate rank 40 weapon of that type, and I started in on it on the sword I found. I skipped most of the levels, as usual, but it became tougher later on. The monsters started getting to the point where I couldn’t reliably kill them in one hit, so I had to start relying on using martial arts specials to knock them off the exit gate.

Around floor 80 it was getting too tough to continue, so I went back to the regular world and undid all of the Stronger Enemy bills I’d passed earlier. Even with the enemy difficulty back down to normal though, they were still quite difficult and couldn’t be killed in one round. I eventually made it to level 100, where the Item God is, and managed to steal a rarity 0 Baal Sword, the rank 40 sword, from him (though it took a few reloads to get that particular rarity — it’ll be important later on when trying to make a matching set).

But it’s still not over — now I have to do the Baal Sword’s item world, and then reverse pirate it and capture the level sphere all five times, trying to ensure I get the sword to level 200, before it can be considered “finished.” And then repeat that for all of the other weapon types as well. But at least once I’ve done it once for each type, I can then dupe them for other characters that use the same type, and I’ll probably actually do the fist weapon first, since most of my main characters use that.

Dupety-Dupe

It was another day of duping in Disgaea 3, as I spent a few hours duping mastery residents and statisticians. Despite some slow stretches, I’ve got enough now to fill up one person with statisticians and cover the weapon masteries of my main characters, so I think I’ll stop there for now. Along the way I also remembered to enter the hidden 10th floor portal (opened by clearing all the geos on the 10th floor) and use it to increase the sizes of clubs and get the legendary skills. I only saw the legendary skill trainer once though, so all I have is one of the sword skills so far. I also swapped roles and used Laharl to work on my character’s class world for a bit, getting him the movement and throw range increases.

I tested some of the new mastery specialists out on my personal character, and, the results were rather, um, dramatic:

Just the addition of the Fist Fighter and Guardian specialists were enough to quintuple my ATK rating.

I then filled Laharl up with Statisticians after one round in HoO4, he shot straight from level 1 to 1849. Soon afterwards I used them to level myself, Laharl, and my female ninja all the way up to level 9999 fairly quickly, though still slower than how I’ll be doing it in Land of Carnage…

Speaking of which, it’s almost time to start delving into LoC. I just need to dupe up some more of the dual-specialists to fill out more accessories (I only have enough for one right now) and beat enough of the X-Dimension maps. I started on some of them tonight, beating enough of them to get the Naive Glasses reward (makes you guaranteed to hit), and although they reuse the same chapters and names from the story missions, they’re definitely a lot trickier and tougher. I gave up on them for the night when a stray shot from an enemy archer destroyed the geo block I absolutely needed to complete the map.