Long Since Updated, so... OA 176, Alchemy 145 and more

I went full-on map editing for several months, limiting my play to mostly just dailies. A break to deal with real-life. And Acelon and I have already gone through map plans for 1.9.5.

So I haven't actually done an update on gameplay since October 22nd. Doh! I've more recently gotten back into play, when I can...



Triple-digit count on number of invdrags killed.





Pear hunting finally hit the four-digit mark and still going.




And I sat in an egg's icky whites... thanks to a secret I added as part of 1.9.4, hehe. If you haven't found this, you haven't found all that I added to the maps for that release.




Also did a heavy increase in Lenny kills. I haven't actually hunted him in years, having been stuck at just under 100 kills for that reason. But finding him while hunting invdrags has led to getting that number up to 148.

LEVELING since Oct. 22nd...

This has been a challenge, with levels in most every skill so high already, and limited play time the last 8 or so months. But several numbers have gone up since the last update.

I'll stick to just one image per skill, heh. Though several have gone up multiple levels.

These went surprisingly fast considering I spent several months doing only dailies, and more time not playing at all. Only 3 to go.

Your overall level is now 174-175-176!

And my favorite:

You advanced to level 144-145 of alchemy!

So this happened as well. Amber stock is a Very Good Thing.

You advanced to level 124-125-126-127 of engineering!

These were all surprisingly done solely using the daily. I just haven't had time to actually work on it, though I do intend to until I at least hit 100. I've got the god and all.

You advanced to level 82-83-84-85-86-87 of summoning!

Attack and Defense, of course thanks to dailies.

You advanced to level 143-144-145 of attack!

You advanced to level 143-144-145-146 of defense!

Now this... the Invdrag heavily contributed to advancing magic. Rather than playing with TS pots to find it, I used the magic spell instead. This led to a nice load of magic experience killing over 100 of them. Leads to experience in alch and potion as well for the essies and SRs.

You advanced to level 89-90-91 of magic!

Most all of this skill has solely been leveled while mixing leather stuff for Daritha daily. Thus it's been a year or two since the last level.

You advanced to level 101 of manufacturing!

With the high levels of previous skills, this looks sad. Though considering the difficulty in getting ranging levels, it's actually pretty good.

You advanced to level 73 of ranging!

The Future

I'm actually already back at work on getting the maps for 1.9.5 put together. Though not devoting all my time to it like the last release since we've got plenty of time to get done what we've planned.

But as far as play goes, plans include:
- continue occasional invdrag hunting
- continue occasional pear hunts
- Get summoning to 100
- Get magic to 100
- Um... other stuffs ;-)

900 Pears, 173 OAs, and Other Big Numbers

Since last update, I added a 15th guild map exploration (this time Ozu!) and as well did a bit of humor by turning generic well-known meme images into Eternal Lands silliness (Ran-dumb EL Memes).

900 Pears Found

A nice, round number to achieve. My 900th pear was found yesterday, in the Nordcarn PK cave.

Overall 173

Tells you how much I wasn't paying attention to this... I hit it during a period of heavy afk-harving, so no screenie for it. Didn't realize until I finally checked my OA wondering when I'd hit another one. They take so long at these levels that I stopped paying attention.

Alchemy Rising

Just can't seem to get off the alchemy kick, despite already hitting number 1. Well, that and the essies are heavily used so I heavily make them. And well, I don't have any other schools to work with at the moment on Day of Schools so... experience is experience so I spend it in the alch school when it happens.

You advanced to level 143 of alchemy!

Engineering Rising

While I'm no longer focusing on engineering, it's still very good experience. All Action Points go to harvesting amber, then stock other ings for treasure finders for that amber... Day of Engineering they get poofed. So the number 1 engineer continues leveling...

You advanced to level 123 of engineering!

As for other skills, yeah, they're getting done. Ranging has finally been given a bit of attention, hitting the arena for a few ranging days has led to two more levels.

You advanced to level 71-72 of ranging!

Attack and Defense still primarily leveled by dailies, though of late I've been out kicking the Big Chickens. Mostly for feather stock and they give decent gc, but getting experience nonetheless.

You advanced to level 142 of defense!

You advanced to level 142 of attack!

Normally I'd be in training gear for the big chickens, for best experience, but on No Grief, while I don't have the best gear in the world, I took out what I did have and farmed a double spawn.



Summoning has been hit a bit on summoning days, though the levels have been hit while turning in the daily. Keeping a nice heavy stock of every item wanted for that, enough for 10 days worth of each fur and such. Two more levels since last update.

You advanced to level 80-81 of summoning!

Harvesting gets paid no attention, other than dailies. I don't bother with the hourly experience and haven't in years, just harving what I need not what gives best experience. But it levels eventually.

You advanced to level 124 of harvesting!

Break Quest

Besides kicking the big chickens for the experience, feathers, and gc, I also wear primarily stuff I need to break. They obliged with another red dragon set break, leaving me with only two more to do for that set.

Invasions

Not something I generally attend, but I've poked around on a few. Mostly hunting down stragglers on portal invasions, kicking what I can and informing of the others.

One mostly-quiet morning had a lot of leftovers, particularly in Thelinor, with almost noone doing anything about them. After running around Thelinor and killing what I could, I grabbed ranging gear and sat on this spot where I could pin stuff.






Melinis invasions are too much for me, though. I do like to show up and see how many I can pin at once while sitting on the wall. For giggles. In this case, a motherload of black dragons.





And that's pretty much it for this time... oh, right... one last thing.

The Treasure of Nordcarn

Not quite the quest, but I did find a treasure. My 4th find I think.

I'll remind again that you should not think of this location as a place to immediately check when treasures are dropped. If it were like Joker I'd never post locations. Treasures are very randomly placed, and could be on any map in any location.

About the fire... once the general location is found, the F9 "fire" was used to mark where I'd checked for the treasure in that area. Helps prevent rechecking the same spot again, wasting skeleton keys.

The 8th Skill to Hit 100 and Then Some

New Guild Map Exploration! I've just done an exploration write-up for a 15th guild map. This time it's Ozu! that got the treatment.





"Only" 4 more skills left that haven't hit a 3-digit number. Yeah, it's really an arbitrary goal considering 100 is just over 2% of the experience to maximum 179. I prefer not to think about that. ;-)

But since the last update, I did some school power-leveling for several more levels to hit 100 in Crafting.

You advanced to level 97-100 of crafting!

And with that, more God changes. Though two of the 4 skills left do not have gods, so new god thinking is more where they'll help most as I work on these 4 skills. Primary work is now focused on magic, and summoning. Tailoring and Ranging being worked on as best options to do so occur.

Otherwise, I've also taken myself out of the possibility of doing 140-limit invasions as both att and def are now 141.

You advanced to level 141 of attack!

The overall levels continue to roll in at their slow, slow speed as I get closer to the 179 limit...

Your overall level is now 172!

Being the number one alchemist is apparently not enough as well, I gotta continue to work on it in order to keep that spot. ;-)

You advanced to level 142 of alchemy!

Potion really hasn't been worked on, mostly just mixing what I need, be it creature food and its required extracts, or stocking my SRs.

You advanced to level 115 of potion!

I really do need to focus more on Summoning, seeing as I have the god, but recent times I've been off the game more often than on and unable to focus on it. I do of course continue doing the daily for it...

You advanced to level 79 of summoning!

I don't do invasions often... I'll sometimes search for stragglers in portal invasions so others can kick them or such, but I may start getting more involved in them later as I'm wanting to put my ranging to use. In a Melinis invasion not long back, I sat on the wall pinning a motherload of stuff to make it easier for the fighters to walk around and pick off critters. Once it was getting clear I spent some time ranging a few pinned ones, solo.







Oh yeah, started the last armor break quest, though I haven't been fighting enough to actually get it done at any good speed. I did, however, have my first break while doing a yeti daily.

And finally, the most expensive leveling I've ever done... started White Wizard Hats in the school on tailoring days. Once you're able to successfully mix 2 or more of the 22 or 23 that can be carried to the school in one trip, those become the cheapest method to level in the school despite all the critical fails.

So around level 76 I started mixing them in the school, despite them having a recommended level of 89. And it's working, albeit painfully. Since my last update, there's been two tailoring days that I was online to take advantage of at least partially, and 7 levels came from those.

You advanced to level 78-84 of tailoring!

Pear hunts have continued, when I've felt like it. Honestly they don't hold much interest for me anymore, especially now that the market for them is seriously dead. Radu really needs to give them another use as the Big Book market, which they were primarily used for, isn't anywhere near as big as it once was. If I hunt, it's more out of boredom now, the need to do something different than harv and mix. The count is now up to 874 finds. While I'd like to hit 1000 before I "retire" from it, cost effectiveness is a huge factor at this point, and unless the market changes for them, that's not gonna happen. I honestly can't recommend anyone get into the hunting game at this point, as you're going to find yourself losing gc in the long run.

700 Pear Finds, Alch 141, Invances, and So On

Just a few things happening...

New Guild Map Exploration

I've been very slow putting these up. Plenty more ready to go but I just haven't gotten around to them.

But I added a new one now... this time it's Legends of the Empire - ~LE~ I've invaded. ;-)

You can, of course, see all the available guild map explorations I've done so far on the top of the right column on this page.

700 Pears and Counting

Today I hit the 700 mark in number of pears found. Shit, that's a lotta time wasted hunting fruit. ;-)

The Eternal #1 Alchemist

So last time I tied with giove for the number one position. This time, I take seat as the first person to hit 141 in alchemy.

You advanced to level 141 of alchemy!

 

 

 

Invances, Hand Issues, and the Mason

Kept going to invances...

However, my hand issues (sometimes difficult to control my hand as well as I used to) was leading to a few too many bricks at once, and I had to stop again. Maybe more in the future, we'll see. Meanwhile, this happened...

Yay? An achievement.

Playing with Chickens and Stuff

No-break day led me to WVF where I used a double-spawn to farm Big Chicken feathers. For a while, had to go to bed after a couple hours.

But not before testing my abilities on a single chicken for a while.

Day of Invasions 

Out of boredom, I hit a few invasions during a recent day of invasions. Played with Japitas and Nasps.

And the Levels Will Rock 

Finally, of course, alchemy wasn't the only level. I took the potion god a while back but of the three gods, it's the lowest of my priorities. I will later do some power-leveling of it, but the other two take enough of my time at the moment.

Though, summoning being one of those, I do have to mass-produce SRs. And here, I was doing a huge creature food stock since I still regularly use that.

You advanced to level 114 of potion!

As well, another Engineering day led to another several hours poofing treasure finders in the engineering school, for over 40k experience per minute...

You advanced to level 115 of engineering!

And finally, more dailies (besides my chicken hunts and invances) led to more defense.

You advanced to level 139 of defense!

That would be it for this time... Currently working on stocking for both crafting and summoning. No expectation of another level the next few days at least, though it's not out of the question.

Eternal Alchemist - #1 Alchemist!

That Awesome Moment when...

Okay, technically I'm tied for the #1 spot with giove, but that's still #1, hehe.

That happened with this:

You advanced to level 140 of alchemy!

How I Got There

Alchemy Goddess is of course a necessity if you're wanting high alchemy levels. That 20% bonus means MUCH less ings needed and mixing.

From level 100 to level 140 is 264,076,682 experience. To example this, with my rationality, it would take the following to get that much exp just by mixing HEs:
- With goddess (99exp per HE): 2,667,442 HEs
- Without goddess (83exp per HE): 3,181,647 HEs

That's over 514k HEs difference... a.k.a. 514k mums and 1.028 million silver.


There are many who think focusing primarily on bars and magic essies for experience is the best way to level.

Personally, I didn't. I did of course make those things, but primarily for actual use. I did on occasion in the past mix Magic Essies and sell them to the NPC, occasionally to other players, but that was rare, and mostly in my earlier play days (before Alch 100).

Bars on the other hand, they take a lot of time due to ings. I mixed those almost exclusively for personal use. (Rings, S2E projects, etc.)

After alch 100, I determined two methods to use for leveling focus. I of course had a lot of mixing outside of these two things since there are many essences and bars that can be mixed for actual usage, but these two things were done for the purpose of leveling:

1) Mix HEs - Those who harv silver in the MM cave regularly have most likely seen me sitting on a bag next to one of the silver-buying bots. I took food and mums to the bot, bought silver off the bots, mixed at the bot, left the cave with the HEs and silver with any free emu. Placed the HEs on my own bot (IWannaRock near gold-side entrance) and took the silver to storage for later at-sto mixing.

I found this better than magic ess for several reasons. Primarily, HEs are heavily used and sell quickly. Silver can regularly be quickly accessed on the bots in the cave. (Remember rule 5 if you do this, don't buy from bots you or any alt you have sells silver to. I never sold silver to the bots.) Having such quick access to silver, and mums being fast harvests, it made more sense to mix these than it did magic essies. Magic essie ings are much harder to come by for sale, so they mean self-harvesting, taking much longer to do than HEs. "Higher experience" does not equate to faster leveling, all things considered.

2) Mix Magic Essies in school on school day - While I did have to mix some outside of school for my own use (magic leveling and such), I would always work on keeping in stock 12k of magic ess ings reserved for school days. This was a good use of my "red harv astro" days... red astro + harv med = non-stop harvesting with essentially no medallion breakage, so I could focus on real life while leaving my char to harv stock for this.

If you remain focused for the full 6 hours, you can do 12k or more mixes of magic essies in the alchemy school in Glacmor.  With my rationality, I'd make 334 exp per mix... over 4 million experience for a full school day.

Mercury in the school? I tried it before alch 100, but times have changed... energy essies got more expensive due to rising silver and iron costs. Cinnabar once used to be regularly available on market, but it hasn't been for years now. That means stocking your own cinnabar, which is a very slow harvest and heavy requiring lots of storage trips. Add the higher energy ess cost and as well breaking alembics, and it's simply not worth it.

Better to try stocking for titanium bars if you're going to do something higher than magic essences. But even still, that's 96k titanium, 36k coal, and 84k fire essies to stock for a full school day... plus food.

My Stats

With only very few occasions played on different computers, my stats are as close to accurate as you can get.

Here's my full alchemy non-school mixing list. I said I'd mixed HEs heavily, and it shows:

Some of why I mixed so many (or so few) of certain items:

1- Health Essence - Explained above, it was a primary non-school leveling item.

2- Fire Essence - Honestly, no explanation needed. These are heavily needed. Sold them in early play, but only mixed for myself after level 60 or so, as I did S2E projects and such.

3- Magic Essence - I did use these for leveling pre-Alch 100. After I mixed outside of school for self-use: magic leveling (rad shield, MI, true sight) and engineering stock (items for the engineering daily)

4- Energy Essence - I tend to use the portal room a lot, so I eat these like candy on a daily basis. As well, I spent a period in the Eng School on Eng days mixing Point Defense. With heavy use, these are also good to mix to sell should you be looking for something to make gc on.

5- Air Essence - I never took the Mana Drain route for magic leveling that so many others do. I have mixed these items for others with their ings. And of course I've needed many of these myself to mix fabrics for tailoring.

6- Life Essence - For summoning of course. And now that I've just taken the Summon god, I expect this may well be my next "1,000,000+" mixes item. Possibly will end up mixing more of these than I have HEs.

... Honestly, most of the rest are self-explanatory, mixed when needed. A few of the lower-mix items:

7- Wolfram bar - Only 8 mixed, and those were done way, way, back, many moons ago when serpent stones didn't cost anywhere near what they do now. And as well, at the time I was unaware of their NPC price. I do not mix these anymore.

8- Tin Bar - Another from way, way back in my early game play when I thought it would be good to mix for experience. I stopped quickly though at 21, since it didn't take long to realize that mixing stuff that requires swords to harvest is not a leveling option.

9- Seridium Bar - Another I stopped simply because my only use for them was harv medallions, and it took forever to get the conglomerates mixed and such. Simpler to just buy the bars from the NPC.

10 - Matter Conglomerates - Gods, how I hated doing these. I haven't mixed one in years... with exceptions of the alchemy tutorial when it was added, and the harvest tutorial, out of necessity. Otherwise I would never touch these again without one hell of a game play change.

11 - Hydro Bars - I do plan to do more S2E/hydro projects in the future so this will continue to rise.

12- Spirit Essence - The mixes I did were from many moons ago when I was barely over the rec level for mixing them. Mercury was a lot cheaper then on market as well. Unless a drastic change to mercury price occurs, there is never, ever, ever a good reason to mix these when they're much cheaper to buy from the NPC.

13 - Mercury - All mercury mixes were done way, way back when cinnabar was in abundance on market and energy essies were cheaper. I have not mixed mercury in years, and never intend to again (short of a game change that makes it worthwhile).


If you're curious about any other items, post and ask about them.

Never mixed: Alch items that don't appear on my list above that are mixable:

1- Dvarium Bar - Mixed once for the alchemy tutorial, but otherwise they're very low use and those that can use them can most likely mix their own. I never had a reason to mix for this reason.

2- Bronze Bar - No reason to mix. Cheaper and easier to buy from NPC.

3- Copper Bar - Only use is for bronze bars. So no use.


They were of course mixed for the alchemy tutorial, but that's a mandatory exception.





That's it! I figured hitting the #1 alch spot was a good time to fully break down what I'd done in the skill. And done.


My alchemy future? It's a necessity skill, so I'll continue mixing, I just won't be focused on leveling. I'll mix what I need. Heavy mixing will be:

1- Life Essies - Summon god now, and many levels to go to reach my 100+ goal for it. As I mentioned, this could surpass my HE mix count.

2- Water Essies - I hate mixing these, but I will as needed. Crafting is replacing my Alchemy god, and I plan to use the school a lot. At least two full school days of polishing sapphires (24k WEs per full day) before I can upgrade to blank paper, which would need even more (60k WEs). Note that I plan for 12k of mixes, whether or not I can do that many.

3- Air Essies - I'm still slowly working on tailoring, and need to stash a ton of these for that.

4- ... magic ... Health, Energy essies primarily, I still go through a lot of these and will mix them myself excepting emergencies where I need some quickly.

5- Iron/Steel bars - I still plan S2E projects to mix hydro bars to buy nexus. The FEs... well, I'll mix some, buy some.

So despite ending my attempts to level this skill, I will continue to heavily use it.