All Skills 60+ and Then Some

It's been a long time since last update. I've been off quite a bit, more so than on. Despite that, in those on periods, managed to get a lot done.



The Fools of April

Well, most figured out quite quickly that my last post "selling" my Burn character was an April Fool's joke.

A few didn't... one started talking on 6 about it before realizing it wasn't real. A couple of offers sent my way... responded to simply with "What day is it?"

And a lot of interest... almost 200 hits on this blog yesterday, very much over the normal amount I get on a new post.

Seriously... it came with mod powers. Certainly that would be allowed. :-D

Mission accomplished. ;-)


Tit Serp of Joker

So there was a contest along with new Joker locations. A Thermal Serp in a hyperbag under one of the new Joker locations.

When first announced, I went Joker hunting a while, but to no avail and eventually had to go to bed.

The next day I'd given up on it as my time was limited. I went on a pear hunt, and lo and behold, there was Joker on the same map. I traded him, then went on to finish the pear hunt.

After finding the pear, I went back to check and the bag was there.

Sold the weapon off of course, as I don't have a use for it. I do have use for the gc though, as seen below with the number of school days and such I've been using.

The Pears Continue to be Harvested

More recently, I've barely hunted for them, thus my name hasn't been seen much finding one. Real life has been more important and keeping me busy.

But they have been hunted when there's time. 60 pears have been found since my last update, bringing them up to 279 total.

Back to School

One of the main things I've been wasting my gc away on is school days. Not just the ones that randomly occur, but since last update I've bought stones to sponsor 5 days myself.

And of course, I used them quite a bit. First time included tailoring, but now that there's a tailoring day I will limit using school day for that. Until I reach my goals in Alch and Manu, those are the two skills I'll be focusing on for those days, and did.


The Levels Spring Forward

In no particular order, there's been quite a few since previous update...

Overall

Besides my school days, I've taken advantage of many other days, random or by others. Even Sun Tzu, though not often, I've done when I've had time.

Your overall level is now 161!

It helped mostly with the overall level.

But attack and defense haven't gone dead. Normally when I've been on I've only had time to get my dailies done, so they've for the most part continued even when I didn't have time for anything else.

Which has led to a couple levels on both. Limiting images below to just the last level to avoid going too long...

You advanced to level 129 and 130 of attack!

You advanced to level 129 and 130 of defense!

Attack and Defense remain low priority, until I have gotten all my other skills that have gods to 100, at the very least. Which will be quite a long time.


The Alchemist in me continues to take advantage of the Alch goddess, and school days to push it even further. Moving slowly up, I've gotten to be the #3 alchemist in the game and have no intention of stopping that leveling anytime soon. The levels come incredibly slowly at this point though, especially since it's not the only skill I'm working on.

You advanced to level 135 of alchemy!

Not mercury? You gotta be kidding right? Correct... we're talking some serious expense to get a level here. Only half of which is coming via schools as I do need a motherload of essies for my magic leveling and as well need to earn gc to afford school use.

Mercury is just a waste. I know some still try to use it, but the cost factor is extreme and gives very little over what magic essies will do. Broken alembics, the lack of cinnabar on the market as people no longer harvest it as they used to back in the day, rising cost of ings for energy essies... all have led to mercury no longer being a good use of the school. Magic essies give less exp each, but ings are much easier to get hold of or even self-harvest.


God use continues... the other use of school days has been for manufacturing, a much more expensive task where the gc provides less experience than alchemy. I get 334 exp per magic essence, but only 208 per leather helm.

Nevertheless, I git 'er done. The several school days have led to several levels.

You advanced to level 89 through 92 of manufacturing!

Not so bad... 8 more levels and I'll drop the manu god to focus on either crafting or summoning, haven't decided yet.


And yet the third god I have... magic. I've been pushing myself to do more random spells while sitting at storage, started with true sights but after lots of calculations determined Magic Immunity to be a better exp per gc option.

On Day of Magic though, exp per mana is a more favorable option despite the cost.

I use Mana Drain when I have the ability, which hasn't been much of late since as I said I haven't been on much. But sometimes when I can't be around I can still have the game on, and click off spells occasionally sitting at storage.

Two levels have occured...

You advanced to level 80 and 81 of magic!

At the point in the image, I chose to use the fast regen spot in Kusamura Jungle to speed along spell casting. Not optimal, but it was a busy time in EL and any good spawns for mana draining were taken.


There's been quite a few ranging days, and I've been taking heavy advantage of those, for quite a few levels. 7 levels to be more precise!

You advanced to levels 56 through 62 of ranging!

Not bad... and definitely not cheap, hehe.

This left me with an impulsive wanna-level-it problem... I'd been almost completely ignoring summoning. It was once my third-lowest skill, with both tailoring and ranging below it.

However, ranging has gone ahead full speed as seen above, and quite a bit of focus on tailoring in the past has gotten it even higher than ranging.

Summoning has in turn become my lowest skill. And at 58, I just couldn't bear for it to be my only skill under 60. It needed some attention.

So, I started taking advantage of Summon days when they came along.

You advanced to levels 59 and 60 of summoning!

And with that, I hit my "All skills 60+" goal! The only problem with that, is that it automatically creates a new goal... all skills 70+. Doh! That goal will mean 10 more summon levels, 8 more ranging levels, and 3 more tailoring levels.

Right, tailoring. It's been on the wayside for the moment, as my gc has been poured into ranging and school day stock and more.

But it did get one power-up, on our very first Tailoring day.

You advanced to level 67 of tailoring!

It'll likely not be leveled much in the coming months. Though I do plan to work on stock for a possible future tailoring day.


Engineering is no longer being worked on. As I said in my last update, I've dropped that god now that I'm 100+.

However, that doesn't mean I won't take advantage of Eng days when they come along, and I happen to have the ings for it. Particularly Treasure Finder ings. I had enough to "almost" get a level on an Eng day during this period. Too close for my taste, I continued leveling that day using indicator ings. Not something I'd normally do, but it was too close to level to let it drop.

You advanced to level 102 of engineering!

And finally (I think) is a skill I don't pay attention to, ever. I harvest what I need when I need it, and rarely pay attention to getting experience. Of course I do the two harv dailies regularly but when it comes to hourly harvs, I just harv what I need... be it amber, or be it low-level flowers.

You advanced to level 114 of harvesting!

And with that... um... yeah, adios. Crafting and Potion remain unleveled this time. I do mix SRs, and my own C1 rings which I eat like candy, but not enough to level, and not caring about levels for either for now.

I'll probably continue to not be as active as normal for the foreseeable future. But I'll be around.

OA 160 and Another Skill Over 100

Been a long time, but finally got another 100+ skill.

Engineering the Amber Away

Two more Engineering days led to 6 more levels.

You advanced to level 96-101 of engineering!

And with that, I hit my current goal of making it a 100+ skill.

Pray to the New God

That goal was what I was waiting for in order to drop the Engineering god. I continue to hold on to both Alchemy and Manu gods. Of the choices available removing those gods and their enemies, Magic seemed to be the best option.

So, Eng god is now gone, and Magic is in.

Which in turn will help with Alchemy. My goal for it is still a long way off, but Magic leveling will require tons of essies, which I'll end up mixing the overwhelming majority of.

And the Overall Is...

Besides that huge goal, another overall landmark was hit.

Your overall level is now 160!

Granted, the power-leveling of Engineering covered a motherload of the experience needed for that OA.

Further OA's likely won't come as quickly. Now that I'm off the Eng god... Magic can't be power-leveled anywhere near as quickly, especially as someone who doesn't PVP as a rule, so MD sessions aren't an option.

The Alchemist In Me

Holy Health, BurnMan!

I'm only 128 a/d, so obviously the overwhelming number of those were put on market.

Part of what led to...

You advanced to level 134 of alchemy!

In itself, a helluva level.

Forest Chims are Magical

Been doing some occasional double FCW bashing, using MD of course for extra magic experience...

You advanced to level 79 of magic!

It's The Daily Show with Burn Stewart!

Okay, that was bad... the occasional FCW bashings of course help with some experience, but I don't do it often enough for it to make a real dent in leveling a/d. That continues to remain primarily from dailies.

You advanced to level 128 of attack!

Just Break It

Steel set is finally broken as of today. The quest continues... my Titanium set is already degraded and ready to go.

Was waiting for the tit set before starting to focus on the swords as well, though I do use degraded ones when I need to use one just in case I could get a break. My coming training/magic leveling and such will require a sword of some sort so I have a pack of degraded ones ready to try and break. Only the scythe has been done thus far.

The Future...

The next big goal is getting Manu up to 100, where I will drop that god. I plan most of my gc to be going into it now, combining school days with Trik runs for lesser expense.

As well, continuing a heavier focus on Alchemy, mixing up tons of essies needed to work on magic. I haven't fully decided on leveling process for magic, but I'm using a lot more where possible, including regular rounds on the dual-FCW spawns for health and mana drain, and regular TS usage "just because". I'll work out a more specific plan for leveling it soon.

Catching Up, Mostly via Alchemy

I've actually been actively playing, despite my silence here. The past few days though I've been busy so mostly in an afk-harving mode. Specifically, harving flowers for eventual mixing of another 3k of creature food. Got all those harved now and started mixing extracts this morning.

Alchemy Mania

But prior to the flower harving, I've been keeping busy, particularly with Alchemy.



I reached the 500k mark for mixing Health Essies during all this. :P

You advanced to level 124 of alchemy!

You advanced to level 125 of alchemy!

Heh, don't be fooled, it took forever and a day to get those levels. Some serious health, energy, and (to a much lesser extent) life essence grinding.


Other Skills

I also got a couple levels in other skills, but those were due to special days (ranging) and dailies (defense).

You advanced to level 118 of defense!

You advanced to level 46 of ranging!

And well, in all that, I finally managed another of these...

Your overall level is now 149!

The Phoenix Shift

I dunno what I'll do with the phoenix. But then, I didn't have big hopes for the mule and it's become quite useful since I fully leveled it many moons ago. We'll see.

In the meantime, this all-rounder is leveling the phoenix as well. Spent some time in phoenix form to get it up to level 5.



Yeah, you can still get into the C2 portal room without magic. Just takes a while. But I was bored. ;)

And I got curious about how the invisible phoenix would look...








Future Plans

Current future plans are...
1- Mix 3k creature food, I'm out of it.
2- Continue mixing HEs and EnEs for alchemy leveling
3- Hopefully get around to leveling engineering, the god is getting wasted of late.
4- Hopefully get around to mixing helms at Trik, the manu god is getting wasted of late.

Eng level, Quests, Lenny, and Such

Gotten a bit done in-game of late, though I've been off more than on...

1) Quests ... finished the medallion quest, and gotten a start on the latest Novac critters. 4 of the 5 have been kicked, only 1 to go on that.

2) Helped Lenny kick the bucket twice while out hunting Novac critters. ;)

3) Found a new Joker location in the process as well to add to my limited list of those.

4) Got an Engineering level, mostly from Eng dailies and as well exp from finishing the above-mentioned quest. (Screenshot not available unfortunately.)





Most of my time has been working on Alchemy. Tons and tons of health essies as well as energy essies when I have the iron. Down to just 1.7 million exp needed for an alch level now, which isn't bad considering the full level is about 6.4 million exp! Focusing on getting ings and bones for mixing the essies rather than gc.

Though I've kept some essies stocked on my bot for sale for gc... had to buy some more books, and will need to again before the week is up.


Continuing to do dailies, attempting to finish the latest Novac, hopefully finally break my damaged iron greaves (gah!), and mix-mania for alch leveling.

Latest status update, done. ;)

Eternal Alchemist...

Been off and on a lot of late, but still regularly playing.

Seem to have gained a primary focus on alchemy, even though it's the hardest skill for me to level these days. (Takes about 65k HEs to get a level, for example. With goddess.)

Been pumping out essies like a madman, trading them for various ings, pumping out more.

HEs and EnEs being the primary ones since they go fast. Matter, Life, and even Death essies to a smaller extent.

Yeah, bars give more exp, but getting the ings can take more time. I trade essies for whatever essie ings I can get and mix those instead.


To good work... Just got Alchemy level 122 yesterday. (Sorry, no screenie.)

Got more plans that will see to more alchemy exp (and even exp in other skills) in the near future. Whatever that can be done to reduce the amount of time spent harving ings.


GC is not a priority in this, trading primarily for ings. However, I do still sell some essies on my bot to keep some gc coming in. Still have to buy things like books. Less than 40 left to read!


BTW... I am not a heavy chatter. I have a select few people I normally talk to, and of course my fellow moderators. Otherwise I'm heavily occupied trying to actually play when I have time. I do not have time to play "500 questions" with anyone. Just because I write this blog doesn't mean I want to sit and chat about it all day, every day. If you have comments on a post, there's a means of posting those here. I have had to take to ignoring people who constantly pester me about this in-game. Which could be detrimental to such people should they actually need me for a moderator issue.

Stats, Part 1

Well over 2.5 years into game play, thought I'd take a closer look at my stats, and where they are going from here...

Part 1 of I dunno... looking at a few at a time.


Harvesting

Holy crap I've harved a lot. And in variety too, hehe. 9.4 million items harvested total thus far.

1) Iron of course at the top due to motherloads of S2Es (iron/steel bars), energy essence, and so forth. Will likely continue to rise heavily.

2) BSFs have been heavily used for both the usual SRs as well as Blue Dye for leveling Tailoring. Won't be rising so much in the near future as I'm not focusing on potion and planning to try other methods for tailoring leveling.

3) Sunflowers got there primarily due to BRs when I was heavily leveling Potion. Though a chunk of course went to mixing LEs. They may continue to be harvested in the near future, though for tailoring, otherwise they'll be stagnant for a while.

4) Silver is always needed. I've mixed over 400k HEs which alone explains the harvesting. I've obviously bought a lot as well if I've mixed that much. Add to that silver for bars to make rings and a motherload of moon medallions when I was leveling Crafting... this will continue to heavily rise.

5) Coal - The necessity of bars. I harvest when I need it, which is regularly.

6) Chrysanthemums - HEs... will continue to rise in extreme amounts.

7) Red Rose - My days of mixing FEs myself are essentially over, so these are no longer harvested. However, I may need them for tailoring so they may go up a bit.

8) Red Snapdragons - No longer mixing FEs, so no longer harvesting these.

9) Sulfur - May go up in small amounts as needed for things outside of FEs. Blackpowder and such. No remarkable amounts will be needed though.

10) Lilacs - Of course, mixing as many magic ess as possible to work on alchemy level, but not dependant on those for leveling. These, along with impatiens and emeralds, will continue to be harved at steady levels.


I have a use for most everything, so only a handful of things won't continue to be regularly or ever harved.


Kills

Rather than list out everything, I put green dots next to creatures that I regularly attack these days.

Some for training (desert chims and things on that level), some for drops (still need a rare book that pandas and pumas drop for example), and still others I regularly kick because they happen to be on the same map as something else I'm attacking.

These days my "training" is not really happening, with most a/d coming solely from dailies.

Of course I'll get back to it in the future, but for now mixing is top priority.




Enough for now...

All Skills 40+!!!

Yesterday saw...

You advanced to level 40 of tailoring!

And with that, my "Jack of All Trades" goal of getting all skills at level 40 or higher is accomplished! \o/


Now, for the next goal, all skills 50+ ... hehe.

That would mean 10 more tailoring levels, and 5 more ranging levels, by the way.




Gotten more levels recently, but wanted to get this goal-accomplished one out there. Harvesting 105 among other things accomplished of late. :)

The Road to 100

Had a lot of harvesting to do the other day. Out of sheer boredom, I decided to do something while harving... see what it would take to get my non-100+ skills to 100.

Particularly, cost-wise.

Att, Def, Alch, Pot and Harv are all over 100. That leaves 7 that aren't.

Ranging - Intentionally left out as it's not easily calculable. Way too many varying factors. And well, it would obviously be blatantly expensive anyway. There's a reason noone has reached Ranging 100 yet.


So with ranging left out, I still had 6 skills to check.


COST NOTE: Costs below are "ideal". That is, if there are no lost ings during the mixing. Of course there's always lost ings, so the actual cost is more than what is shown.

TOTAL ITEMS NOTE: Again, "ideal" using only one item. I of course mix things other than helms in manu (for the daily, for example). And I teleport and heal a lot which would reduce the number of spells needed for the leveling examples below.




Listed as determined to be easiest to hardest, based on cost, ings required, and time it would take to do it.



1 - Manufacturing - Current level 72

WITH MANU GOD!

Cheapest method to get to 100 was of course mixing helms and selling them to Trik. The cost of leather, thread, and food is more than Trik pays, so it's still a loss, but not bad compared to schools.

That leather, thread, and FPs are all NPC-purchasable made this the easiest of the skills left to level as well, as there's no concern on finding or self-harving ings.

Selling to Trik, I determined I'd need to make 526,178 helms. The cost of getting to level 100 would be 1,846,885gc. Oh, and it would take 4349 trips from storage to Trik to mix helms at the NPC.

School would be faster of course, with "only" 263,089 helms to make. However, the cost of poofing the ings for those is 6,185,222gc. More than triple the cost of doing them at Trik.

With a tight budget like mine, the cheaper though longer route is better.


2- Crafting - Current Level 69

WITHOUT GOD! (Determined that my god plans for the future had no way to include crafting god in any reasonable amount of time.)

Fastest route to 100 here is moon medallions, selling them to the NPC.

This would entail mixing 168,502 moon medallions, incuding experience from polishing the sapphires and making the silver medallions.

Purchasing all ingredients and food for the process would be an 18gc per medallion loss. That's a total of 3,033,636gc. Almost double the helms at Trik.

Of course, I do a lot of self-harving so that gc amount would be drastically lower.


Glacmor rings were considered but rejected as my craft level is about the rec level of making them, which means a motherload of lost ings. Maybe in the 90's...

Just polishing saps and selling them to the NPC was also considered but dropped as being too costly unless WEs were self-harved and made. And as a 121 alcher I don't want to waste all that time harving and mixing low-level WEs.


3- Summoning - Current Level 51

WITH GOD!

This one surprised me. I was expecting much worse than I determined.

Yeah, it's bad, but not as bad as I thought.

White Tiger Stones are the obvious choice here. It would take 105,034 stones ideally to get to level 100.

If gypsum was bought at storage, it would cost 2,730,884gc with selling the stones to the NPC.

That's less than the crafting! However, this is ideal. In reality, that much gypsum doesn't get sold at storage so there'd actually be a lot of self-harving.

Buying all ings except for the gypsum, there'd actually be a 74gc profit per stone, though it would also mean 5,252 trips from storage to gypsum to mix at the gypsum.

That's a total profit of 7,772,516gc.

Still, I ranked this one lower than crafting due to all the gypsum runs, which are a nuisance.


4- Engineering - Current Level 61

WITH GOD! (Because I already have this god)

The cheapest method here is surely the slowest one. That is, Harvest/Degrade Indicators where turqoise is self-harved. Turq however is extremely slow to harvest, and you can plan almost an hour doing a full-emu trip to harvest and mix at the turquoise.

It would require mixing 235,992 H/D indicators.

If all ings (and food) except turqoise were purchased, there'd be a profit in that.

However, harving over 1.1 million turqoise doesn't sound like a good time to say the least. If you could "ideally" buy it on market instead at the common 4.5gc price (which, face it, you'll never find that much on market) it would be a loss of 4,129,860gc.


I decided a second option to be better, though a bit more costly... Point Defense mixed in the Eng school.

269,923 point defenses in the Eng school would have an ing cost (at current market prices) of 4,723,653gc.

I chose this as the better option because, being a 121 alcher, I'd harv/buy ings and mix the EnEs required myself. Even buying the ings and food for those, I'd save 1,349,615gc bringing the point defense cost down to "just" 3,374,038gc.


Still, ranking it below some of the other skills at that would still take a lot of time. (Of course, School Days getting 3x exp would be nice, but I don't rely on such days actually happening when I'm online.)


5- Magic - Current Level 73

WITH GOD!

Mana draining by itself is of course the well-known cheapest option. However, that's a PvP solution, and as most know I do not do any form of PK or PvP.

There's always MD-ing desert chims while training on them, but that's still incredibly slow and I just don't train that much these days anyway.


So I came up with an alternate option, one which I have already used before to get at least 30 magic levels.

That is: Grizzly Spawn - MD 30 mana from the bear, kill the bear, Radiation Shield which takes 30 mana. Repeat.

This works great as the bear gives the exact amount of mana needed, and bear respawn time is incredibly fast.

At my level, it would take doing 60,732 grizzlies. That's 60,732 mana drains and 60,732 radiation shields.

Total cost of the essies: 9,170,532gc

However, that's a lot of bear furs to sell too ;) The essies used provide enough space to pick up the full bear drop.

Of course, as a high-level alcher I'd wanna mix all the essies myself, which would make the cost much less. That would mean 240k+ magic essies mixed, a sweet alching thought for experience as well as EME chances.



BTW, if I did MD-ing like most PvPers, it would be 138,678 mana drains at a cost of 8,320,068gc for the essies. Less than 1 million difference.



6 - Tailoring - Current Level 39

(No god exists at this time.)

Wow. Yeah, ranging is probably more expensive. But Tailoring was more expensive than all 5 of the above skills combined!

It would take 1,073,053 blue dyes, or 1,430,737 orange dyes to get to 100 ideally.

Orange Dyes are considered as they're the only ones that don't require saltpeter, making them easier to mix.

Blue Dyes were considered because their flower ingredient is the easiest to harv. Doing these would mean a lot of engineering as well due to the saltpeter.

In the end, I decided to kill thoughts of blue dyes as I determined I'd be better off cost-wise doing orange dyes, and doing the aforementioned point defenses in the eng school to get my eng level up.

With all bought ingredients, and selling the orange dyes to the NPC, the total cost would be: 44,352,847gc

Holy crap...

It would also mean 20,030,718 each of red roses and sunflowers.

The cost of course could be brought down by self-harving, but hell, look at the number of flowers to harv!

And yes, that's sadly the cheapest way to level tailoring. :P

The blue dyes, btw, buying ings and mixing own saltpeter, would cost over 63 million gc.





Well, that's it for that fun. Not really a necessary entry, just something trivial I did for giggles.

The Brief Update...

Had another short period of offline time, but back today, heh.

I made some changes in my path since I last wrote.

1) Focusing on mix skills.

I may go kick chims as a break from mixing and harving, but not planning to do any a/d training for a while. Sometimes as an all-rounder some skills get prioritized over others, and I got a ton I want to do with mix skills. So taking a break from a/d training.


2) Dropped Defense god, took up Manu god.

To go along with my mix focus. I really wanna get the perk that comes with finishing the manu tutorial. In order to get it, I need at least 20 more manu levels, and as well I'm reading a ton of manu books (dragon armor construction) to prepare for it.

3) "Burn found an Animal Removal Stone."

Found one, sold it for 950kgc the same day. Spent the majority of the gc the same day...

a) Bought 30 Archery AP potions (which will take me to the maximum 60 AP when I use them. Waiting for the special day to use them so I might save a few, sell the remains on my bot.)

b) Bought 120kgc worth of manu books.

c) Bought a steel set to eventually degrade and break for the armor breaking quest.

d) Stocked some NPC-only supplies.

In the end, was left with about 100kgc of the 950kgc, 2 hours after getting the gc. :P


All-rounders just can't keep money around, hehe.



I've also killed Lenny about 8 times since my last entry, with hopes that a Lenny achievement had been added. No messages.

But, I haven't logged in yet, and I see that there's new achievements on a server update today. Here's hoping... :P

Playing Catch-Up! Achievements, Levels, Gods, and more...

Been quite a long while since I posted here, mostly because I've been "not playing" more than playing of late due to real life.

Seem to be back in playing mode again, though nowhere near the way I used to. Still, it's enough that I at least feel like an active player again. :P

No way I can catch up on everything, but summarizing can be done...

Achievements

Tutorial completed, Church donator, Alchemist, Big belly

4 of the possible 9 so far.

The missing ones:
1) Armorer - Slowly working on this one, breaking the gear as I can. I don't PK or PVP so relying on chims and clops to break this stuff.

2) Child of Stars - The manufacturing tutorial. I want to get at least 10 more manu levels before attempting this. As well, possibly switch to the manu god.

3) Crafter - The crafting tutorial. Similar to the manu one, I want some more levels first, and possibly even the god.

4) Potioner - The potioning tutorial. I could very easily do this one, but I'm going to wait until I switch to the potioning goddess (see Gods below).

5) Vanquisher - Novac fighting tutorial. Almost done. Only need to kill the final ice dragon. I want to get my Archery AP up to 60 first though. It's currently at 30 so half-way there.

Gods

Still have Engineering, Alchemy, and Defense gods from when I last posted.

At this time I have no plans to change them. If I get heavily into crafting or manu I may switch the Defense god to do that, but for now I'm attempting to focus on the Alch and Eng skills, as those gods were quite expensive to get.

No thoughts on when I'll drop Alchemy god. I want to get a lot more levels in that skill, and at Alch 120 already, the levels are very slow to get, even with the god bonus.

Engineering god... I want to at the minimum reach Eng 80 before letting go of him. Though I'm more keen on getting it to being another 100+ skill so will likely keep him through that.

Leveling and Skills

There's been a bit of it since I last wrote. I won't post all the details, but I've updated my levels and stats to the right of the page.

Attack/Defense - I haven't been focusing on this. I do the dailies as much as possible, and kick chims when I need a break from mixing.

Harvesting - No focus on this at all. I harvest what I need and that eventually brings a level with it.

Alchemy - Heavy focus. Been mixing tons of HEs and EnEs both for personal use and selling on my bot. Plan to continue doing this. Mixing bars as well as needed, and have even done a few more hydro runs.

Magic - No focus on this. I heal and teleport a lot, but have made no real effort to level this.

Potion - I mix what I need (SRs, extracts, and creature food mostly) but no focus for now. I plan to heavily hit this once I'm ready to drop the Eng god and replace with the Pot goddess.

Summoning - Not touching this at all for now. Too much else to do. If I get bored I may go mix some stones at some point, as mixing those at the gypsum brings back some gypsum with me, which I can always use for potioning.

Manufacturing - Looking at doing more of this, to get the levels needed to do the tutorial. So... minor focus. Mostly manu-ing stuff for the daily quest though.

Crafting - As needed. Trying to mix my own supplies, so mostly Naralik/Glacmor/EVTR rings and the ring/polished stones needed for those.

Engineering - Heavy, heavy focus. If it's makeable and doesn't require a rare item, I'm doing it. Doing the Eng daily regularly as well, mixing my own items for that.

Tailoring - Minor focus. My only "under 40" skill, and that annoys me. ;) So I'm mixing blue dyes as I have the money/ingredients to do so.

Ranging - No focus. If I'm online for a double exp ranging day, I'll do a mule-load of bolts at the arena though.

Near-Future Goals

1- Engineering, and a motherload of it. As much as I can afford it.

2- Alchemy, and a motherload of it. Easily affordable...

3- GC to buy the last 30 Archery AP potions needed, then finish the Novac quest.

4- GC to buy gear to break for the Armorer achievement.

5- GC to buy books and continue reading. 310 of 366 done at this point.

Latest Levels

Can't post every one I've screenied or this entry would be a few miles long. Here's the latest and most notable ones...

November 10

You advanced to level 104 of harvesting!

November 14

You advanced to level 120 of alchemy!

November 15

You advanced to level 73 of magic!

November 16 (1)

You advanced to level 69 of crafting!

November 16 (2)

Your overall level is now 147!

November 19

You advanced to level 60 of engineering!

November 20

You advanced to level 116 of attack!

November 21

You advanced to level 117 of defense!

God Changes, and OA, Att, Def Leveling

With less playing than I used to do, I had to reconsider how I was playing, and the gods I had.

God Switching

I was working with the engineering, crafting, and summoning gods before.

However, I realized that these days I was doing a lot more alchemy again, as my cashflow was getting hit hard by working on sink skills and quests.

Crafting was still being done occasionally, but not enough to warrant keeping the god.

Summoning was pretty much dead. I found myself not really having the time to get up to the gypsum for stone making.

Engineering wasn't being done much either, but due to the high cost of getting that god, I am keeping him until at least level 80.


So I decided to drop the crafting and summoning gods for now. Summoning was the first to go, easily switched to the defense goddess.

Then I spent about 2 days collecting and mixing all the quest ings for the Alchemy goddess (not an easy task, heh). Went close to broke doing that, even mixing and harving everything myself.

But I did it, and the crafting god got switched to alchemy.

So my new god lineup: Engineering, Alchemy, Defense


Level Up


Getting levels in any skill these days is nothing short of miraculous, hehe. All my skills seem to be at that point where it takes quite a long while to get one. Nevertheless, I'm managing to pop out a few.

Been doing a load of alchemy, which is at a level so high that all the alching I've done since my last entry still hasn't brought me a new level. But daily quests and actually doing some training on desert chims has made me hit some fighting levels at least.

You advanced to level 113 of defense!

Followed by...

You advanced to level 113 of attack!

And a final payoff:

Your overall level is now 145!

Sweet.


Book Reading

I'd been mostly reading crafting experience books, to help push that skill and get extra use of the crafting god.

But I needed to get back to reading the regular knowledge books. Reading all of those is part of my quest to having the ultimate all-rounder character. So I've read 8 more of those in the past week, and plan to do more.

Meanwhile, I've started reading manufacturing experience books until I get a level in it. I don't seem to have time for that skill either, nor the gc to burn helms in school so... yeah.


Current Plans

Now that I've got the Alch goddess back, I desperately need to work on my lack of gc. With that in mind, I'm planning a lot of alching for the purpose of selling for gc.

As well, I plan to continue training, getting use of the defense god. Not sure how long I'll be keeping him so do it while I can.

And as well, my "all skills 40+" goal hasn't been forgotten. Planning some engineering to get the saltpeter made that will be necessary to get two more tailoring levels.

Also, breaking stuff. The new quest, hehe.

7 levels in 7 skills

Game play has been limited to a few hours most days. This includes spending up to an hour getting all five daily quests done.

Though as of yesterday, I've stopped doing the newest daily. It's been hosed with the inclusion of asking for 3 tit chain mails. Noone makes these due to the EFE, which is sought after for too many other reasons and expensive. So the only ones available on market are drops, and those have pretty much dried up quickly with so many people looking for them for the quest now.

Just not worth it.

But I continue doing the other 4 dailies. I've considered dropping the Tatu mule daily though, as the incredibly low experience given by it doesn't seem worth all the work involved in making the creature food. I mean, really, 4k alchemy experience (one of the possible rewards) for someone who is at alchemy level 118 is pretty insignificant. :/

The other daily quests... dung, harvest, and fighting, will be continued though, no problem.


Since last posting though, I have managed to get 7 levels, in 7 different skills. I've also been doing some incredibly heavy harv-stocking, primarily for creature food flower ings, and over 150k BSFs in stock currently even after using a load for blue dyes. The BSFs are primarily for tailoring leveling. Just two more tailoring levels to get all my skills at 40+!


But, anyway, here's the levels collection since last posting, in order I got them:

You advanced to level 102 of harvesting!

And with a fighting daily:

You advanced to level 112 of defense!

Prepping for tailoring by making saltpeter:

You advanced to level 56 of engineering!

Which led to:

You advanced to level 38 of tailoring!

A double-exp ranging day naturally finds me in the Grubani arena:

You advanced to level 45 of ranging!

More fighting dailies got me close enough to an attack level that I went and trained a bit:

You advanced to level 112 of attack!

And finally, a combo of actual crafting along with experience book reading led to:

You advanced to level 68 of crafting!

Two Years of EL!

I don't recall the exact date of when I started playing, only that it was around the end of April/beginning of May in 2008. So this is approximate. ;)

I did a "One Year of EL" entry last year, and this is the follow-up. Basically seeing how far I've come along since then.

Not as far as I could have, I guess, since I was pretty much out of EL for about two months this year, and at least another month or so I was only sporadically logging in.

As an all-rounder, I look at everything of course. So this entry will likely be quite long. :)

Skills

Attack/Defense (111/111) (since last year: +19/+20)

Training continues to be a sporadic thing for me. I have to really be in the mood to do it. There were periods over the past year that I did a lot of it though.

I currently train on Desert Chims. Forest chims can be trained on during good astro at least, but I don't mess with them much for now.

I'd been doing up to 4 DCs at a time in Bethel when they were available. Kinda stopped after I hit the ignore level for them though. Yeah, I can use mana drain and such to get multi, but I can't be bothered. At least, not for now.

Of late, my a/d experience has been coming primarily from Haidir daily quests.


Harvest (101) (since last year: +12)

I actively got harv points whenever I could, up until I hit harv 100. Since then, I've pretty much stopped caring about leveling this skill, so I just take points off whatever I happen to be harvesting at the time, no matter how low points they are.

Also doing 2 harvest daily quests every day I'm in the game now, to help compensate for that.

But this skill is essentially dead to me now that I've hit the highest rec level for any item.


Alchemy (118) (since last year: +14)

I was heavily alching for a long time to get myself up to this level. As of this writing the only skill I am a top 10 player in.

My alching the past year consisted primarily of HEs, silver bars for own use for crafting, and iron/steel bars for making S2Es. I of course did other alching as needed.

These days, my primary alching is HEs (which I tend to sell quite a many of on my bot), and silver bars for crafting, as I have the crafting god.

I have abandoned making FEs completely, buying them instead via my bot as needed. WEs are semi-abandoned. My bot buys them, and that tends to keep me stocked, but I'll make some if I need them.


Magic (72) (since last year: +19)

I got the magic god for quite a while, and did some heavy leveling of this skill during that time.

My preferred means of leveling this skill was a combination of mana drain and radiation shields.

I would do a radiation shield, then mana drain a grizzly in Nordcarn. And repeat. This also set me up with a nice stock of bear furs for eventual summon use making stones.

I am no longer doing this, focusing on other skills for now.


Potion (105) (since last year: +10)

My first year of play, potioning got a heavy priority, and was pretty quickly leveled.

That spilled over to this year, but then I dropped the goddess in order to work on other skills.

These days, I only do stuff "as needed". This primarily means SRs, both for sale on my bot, and my own stock which is needed for summon stones.



Summoning (51) (since last year: +22)

This is one of the skills that I currently have the God for. A good thing considering the amount of work involved just to get this skill leveled.

I have been mixing bear summon stones with furs I gained leveling magic. I should shortly be moving up to making spider stones.

Actual summoning is a rare occurance, mostly when I'm bored.


Manufacturing (71) (since last year: +7)

I've paid very little attention to this skill the past year. A couple times I intentionally went for a level. Others I used the School Day for triple exp to get levels.

But in general, not really working on this skill.

Not because I don't want to, just that it's high enough for the time being and I've had other gc-sink skills to work on. ;)

I do plan to do a boost for this skill at some point in the near future, likely taking the god again in the process.

But besides making my own S2Es, I've done very little outside of the usual leather helms for leveling.


Crafting (67) (since last year: +26)

A skill I've more heavily worked on this past year. I've had the Crafting god for quite a while now.

My primary means of leveling is the combo of polished sapphires, silver medallions, and finally moon medallions. This combo, with lots of self-harvesting, allows for leveling to be a positive gc experience.

As well, I've been almost non-stop reading Crafting experience books, esp. since I have the god which means an extra 16% experience off the books as well.

The plan is to continue leveling this, at the least up to level 80, though making it my next 100+ skill may lead to continuing to have the god for quite a while.


Engineering (55) (since last year: +18)

Another decently-leveled skill the past year. I've had the engineering god for a while now, and plan to keep him until at least level 80, particularly because of how much it cost to get this god in the first place.

Primary means of leveling: ashes-saltpetre. The saltpetre eventually gets good use in making dyes for tailoring.

I also do indicator stone projects on occasion, though I have to be really in the mood to do that as I self-harv the turquoise which leads to that being a very slow way to level.


Tailoring (37) (since last year: +10)

This is a frikkin' hard skill to level! I made sure to get a level or two on occasion though, as it is my lowest-leveled skill which is a nasty sight to an all-rounder like myself.

At this very point in my game play, I'm actually focusing on getting 3 more levels, in order to accomplish a goal of getting all my skills at 40+.

Blue dyes are pretty much exclusively made. I have 150k BSFs in storage for making them.



Ranging (44) (since last year: +10)

My second-lowest-leveled skill. Not as difficult as tailoring to level, just requires a motherload of gc which I rarely have.

I train exclusively in the Grubani ranging arena. And on the Ranging special day, I'm always found there if I'm online at all.

I've gotten my Archery AP up to 30 now, halfway to maximum, and planning to continue raising it all the way up to 60.



Shapeshifting

I was a fully leveled mule already this time last year.

The phoenix has been introduced since. It was introduced just before I left the game for a couple months though. And as well, the glyphs aren't makeable still so I have only used one due to their cost. With which I overnighted to get my first phoenix level, possibly second as I didn't see my level before I ran out of food.

Planning to fully level the phoenix though, of course. Part of being an all-rounder. :P


Guilds

Last year, I'd had a "non-guild" I created called Lonr. For loners only, people who prefer to play on their own and just want a tag so people will stop asking them to join guilds.

I grew tired of that, gave the non-guild away to someone else who was using it, and have been guildless since.

And no intention of joining any guild anytime soon. I play quite well on my own.


Moderator

I was asked to (and accepted the offer to) become a game moderator. I'm currently a "low-level" moderator, which gives me access to some commands. I am always on the lookout for any issues that may require a moderator, but they're fortunately not that often so most of the time I end up watching various chats and making sure questions in help channels get answered.




Well, that's about it, I think. Until next year...

Just a Few Levels...

Over the last couple days, I've managed to be in the game long enough to work on and finish a few levels. Yippee! ... says my inner power leveler, who's been starving for these of late. ;)



For this one, I actually was out kicking Desert Chims for a couple hours, and finished the OA off with some harv points.

Your overall level is now 144!

After reading a craft exp book, I had only 12k exp left to level, so I polished some gems for future ring making usage.

You advanced to level 67 of crafting!

And this one... I did close to 12k HEs to finish this one off, among other things. Getting an alch level these days is far from simple. (I hear it gets worse! hehe)

You advanced to level 118 of alchemy!

Fun fun fun. Um, I mean, time to get back to more levels!