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.

Seventh 100+ Skill Reached, Changing of the Gods

Before the break, I did some leveling of course since the last update here, but decided to not bother posting those. Instead, just focusing on things since my return.

New Computer

Since the break, I've gotten a new computer. Put together piece by piece, all parts individually studied and chosen in order to get the best at what I could afford, which was a limiting factor. The end result was a very nice setup that is a good 4-5 times better than an equivalently priced computer that's sold whole.

I'm no longer, after all these years, playing in almost-poor-man mode with a max of 20fps that crawled down to 10 in forests or MM. I can now have full high graphics on with no FPS-killing in even the worst areas. (I am intentionally limiting the FPS to 30 though, which is more than enough and doesn't affect me doing other non-game stuff. It can go much higher than that. 60 fps while sitting mixing at Naralik sto, for example.)

At any rate, it'll also make for nicer screenshots in the future.

Pear Hunts

I have done a few hunts since my return. As of this post I've found every pear I hunted for with the exception of one that was unreachable.

But I don't intend to return to regularly hunting. They're still not worth it due to low sales.

Did it mostly just to test my new computer, and as well get used to the higher graphics... shadows, fog, water, etc... feels almost like playing a brand new game, hehe.

Future hunts when done will mostly be out of boredom. Changing plans as I go into below will limit that anyway. Lots to do, and stopping every 6 hours will be more an annoyance than anything, esp. considering it's not really worth doing.

Tailoring Day

Having just returned, I had left not really prepared for anything. So when tailoring day arrived, I had just enough to take advantage of about an hour of it.

You advanced to level 72 of tailoring!

School Day - Manufaturing Level 100

I used another school day stone, as I have a past habit of doing. And with it, I finally reached my manufacturing goal.

You advanced to level 100 of manufacturing!

Yee-ha, unless I get to the point where I want to attempt to be #1 in the skill, which I have no intention of at this time, I won't be spending any more school days doing Manu.

After finishing off the bag I was sitting on in the pic, I spent the rest of the day in Alchemy school. As of this writing I'm 6.5 million experience away from my goal in that skill.

Changing of the Gods

With my manufacturing goal reached, it was time for a gods change.

I had Manu, Defense, and Alchemy gods.

Crafting and Summoning are my big "have-gods" skills that I wanted to move to, both having been mostly ignored for years now.

In order to take Crafting, I have to drop Alchemy. As I mentioned I still have 6.5 million exp to go to reach my goal in Alch, so I didn't want to do that yet.

So Summoning: For it, I had to drop both Manu and Defense gods.

So I did, and now have the Summoning god.

That leaves me with two gods currently, Summon and Alchemy. I'm working on items to soon take the Potion goddess as the third.

Once my Alchemy goal is reached, I'll finally drop that goddess and replace her with Crafting.

So after my Alchemy goal is reached, I'll have: Summoning, Crafting, Potion

Taking Summon God for a Test Drive

I have plans in place to work on summoning. There's simpler methods but they're much more expensive, and I really don't have the gc for that.

I'll see how my plans go before discussing them. Meanwhile, I spent some time yesterday finishing off one summon level, using spider stones since I had a massive excess of thread.

Did one final Tiger Stone at storage, as I only needed to mix one to finish off the level and didn't wanna do another gypsum bagmix trip just for that.

You advanced to level 61 of summoning!

"Only" 39 more summon levels to go for that goal.

The Near Future

My game play will be changing a lot over the coming month. Primarily as I finally reach goals in skills that are leading to changing all three of my gods.

Primary future goals:

1. Finish off Alchemy level (6.5 million to go)
2. Get Potion Goddess
3. Change Alchemy Goddess to Crafting God
4. Stock for Summon Days, work on summon mixing at the same time (can't just rely on special days)
5. Stock for Potions and Crafting for school days.
6. SR mixing like a MoFo after I take the Potion god, for mixing summon stones
7. LE mixing like a MoFo for summon stones
8. Stone mixing at gypsum only, saving gypsum I return to sto with for summon days.

Yeah, that's more than enough. I'm stocked with training arrows for another ranging day as well, just waiting for that.


Mixing through rain or shine...

Here Come the Levels

Yesterday saw plan changes again, as Joule happened and my ings were limited to certain skills. But it was enough for those skills at least. Plus I missed several hours of it as I had to go offline.

You advanced to level 41 of summoning!

I had just enough gypsum in storage to quick-mix a summon level. Glad I hadn't already used it as I was tempted to on several occasions trying to get past levels, heh.

You advanced to level 49 of engineering!

Joule was over by the time I got this level done, but got a lot of it during the day. H/D indicators, then for the final few k of experience stock-mixed some ropes.

And not long after...

You advanced to level 54 of crafting!

Didn't take long to mix up that level... had read a bunch of crafting books and only needed about 10k experience to finish off the level.



Did a motherload of alchemy during joule as well... mixed all essie ings I had, even did some mercury which I hadn't done in a while. No school since I needed the results. Nice chunk of experience that brought me up to the halfway point to another alch level. Still a long way to go on that though.


Switched away from experience books for a while to get more regular knowledge books read, mostly engineering books since I've got that god for quite a while to come.


Spent some time on the chims last night, but called it an early night so not long.

This morning I hit the chim/fluffy spot in Melinis for 2.5 hours to get 1 million overall experience and almost 10kgc in drops. Pretty sweet for a normal day.



Mix-wise... got a lot to do as always. Currently taking a break by just harving a while, coal for my eventual next batch of S2Es.

Still haven't done hydro runs since that latest quest has got too many people going there. Gonna wait till the quest hype dies down, which it will once most have done it.

Need to mix matter, magic, and air essies for my next batch of grizzlies/magic experience. Got the energy essies done. Considered matter essies now since that would give me plenty of "down" harving time mixing in the feros cave, but considering there's invasion critters in Bethel I think I'll wait.


Ah, that's it for now...

Here Thar Be Ranging Levels!

Plans change... I say that a lot. ;) Actually did start to work on my plans from last post.

I got the essies done and mana drained 500 more grizzlies with 500 radiation shields. That's not enought for a level anymore, but not aiming for a full level when I do that anymore. Not doing more than 500 at once since just that takes quite a while.

I got sapphires polished, got the FEs and coal needed to make bars for 700 moon medallions. Started the silver bars this morning mixing at harv, about 5k silver away from being able to mix the rest at storage.


Off the planned path, I spent several hours kicking desert chims on a Day of the Dead. Not quite Sun Tzu, but better than a normal day since it means less time waiting for a respawn and catching the respawn.

You advanced to level 107 of defense!

That was yesterday.


Today, as I said worked on the silver bars this morning, but then we got a random Robin Tell day.

Now honestly, I'm not quite rolling in gc at the moment and seriously considered skipping it because of that... but the inner power-leveler in me couldn't resist.

Especially since I knew I'd get a level with my first 2k+ mule load of bolts at the arena. :P

You advanced to level 40 of ranging!

But that wasn't enough... I still had time in the day for another full mule load of bolts, so I did that.

And ran out of ammo only minutes before the end of the day.

With only about 3.5k experience needed for another level. That would annoy the hell outta me if I left it that way, so I did something I hadn't done in a long time... ranging outside of the arena. Heh, Egratia Point specifically since there's rarely people training there and plenty of targets.

And...

You advanced to level 41 of ranging!

Sweeeeeeet. Two ranging levels in one day. Not bad considering I'm in the 40s levels now.



Anyway, guess it's time to get back to plans. Same as previous entry... the moon medallions are priority (need the gc), then some potting for gc, then... eh, whatever I wrote before. Those two alone will take a while, esp. the potting part, hehe.

School Day, Good Old Golden Manu Day

Plans can change... even though I note in entries stuff that I'm planning to do next, I don't always end up following that.

Yesterday was supposed to be iron/bars/S2Es and such. Instead, the morning was a Fasting day and I wanted to do the bars mixing at the iron rather than just haul iron to sto.

So I went out and hit some desert chims for a couple hours. Not close enough for a level but just working on it.

Later yesterday was another day of Schools. I'd used all my spare ogre toes/white chans during the previous school day only a few days ago, so I decided to throw away a chunk of gc and do some manu levels instead... something I definitely wasn't planning to do.

You advanced to level 67 of manufacturing!

And apparently Radu wanted to see the large number of people who were tossing money into the school gc sink, as can be seen in this next one:

You advanced to level 68 of manufacturing!

Nice, 2 more levels in a skill I still rarely work on these days.



Anyway, went back to the S2E work. Between last night and this morning I got all the bars made for the S2E batch. Saving actually making the S2Es for when my astro goes back up but they're essentially done.

Need to get some potioning done, for the gc. Esp. after the huge chunk of gc I threw at the school yesterday.

And need to get essies for 500 more mana drains and radiation shields done...

An all-rounders work is never done ;)

More Tailoring, and Odds and Ends

Spent some time on the grizzlies the other day, 500 of them total. Not enough for a magic level but close. Working on essies now for my next 500, should hit a magic level in the first 100 of those.

Did some random mixing for a Joule day the other night, but really didn't have much in the way of mixing supplies thanks to a Recycling day the night before, so didn't really get much out of that day. :/

Yesterday included a lot of time mixing water essies and eventually blue dyes.

You advanced to level 33 of tailoring!

Back to work on essies now as said, currently working on AEs. Got almost all the EnEs I needed done in the feros cave yesterday, though had to stop due to a Bethel invasion before completely done.

And a random batch of HEs this morning while harving silver for AEs.

Um... yeah, just been hitting a lot of random stuff due to special days and well, I've been sick so have had to avoid things that take longer to do at times.



Current plans:
- AEs/MagEs/EnEs/MatEs for mana draining and radiation shields
- Kick another 500 bears
- Some potting for gc
- Start first of 4 batches of S2Es for next Nexus purchase (Artificial 6)

Preoccupation Hasn't Stopped Me Yet, Hehe

Despite being preoccupied with some RL stuff of late, still going strong. Currently on a break from my usual goals just to work on some stock essies.

Also spent 2 hours this morning kicking desert chims, "just because". Seemed like as good a time as any to do it.

But the power leveler in me hasn't been completely on vacation. Like 2 days ago...

You advanced to level 37 of summoning!

Or yesterday (you know I had to do it now that I got Eng god, hehe)...

You advanced to level 44 of engineering!

As well, woke up this morning to find a whole 20 minutes of Joule day left... *cry* But I took advantage of it, mixed some indicators, and got another half an engineering level in that little time. :P


Anyway, back to mixing Energy essies in the feros cave. Think this'll be my last batch, wanna get some other essies stocked a bit as well...

Oh My, Yet Another Sun Tzu

So I went out to test the desert chims to see what my att/def exp was if I tried to train them... turned out (at least on my current bad astro) that I got much more defense, even with the attack god, so that's not an option yet.

So as I was heading back to try working on my potion level... Sun Tzu.

And what the hell, I took advantage of it again.

You advanced to level 104 of attack!

...and...

You advanced to level 105 of defense!

Used the whole 6 hours of it, and well, at least I'm now halfway to my next Overall level, heh.


But back to the mixing now. Hopefully still time to get my potion level, though after the a/d levels I'm not in a rush, heh. That and it'll take quite a bit of mixing to get there...

Holy Crap... Double Sun Tzu!

Yesterday bla bla bla... hehe, yesterday was just harving and mixing FEs and WEs. Gotta work on my gc and get back to my levels now that I sold most everything to take care of my bot.


But today... Two Sun Tzu Days in a row!

Double combat experience for 12 frikkin' hours straight. Seeing how rarely I train, I figgered I'd best take advantage of this.

And I did.

Thus the "Holy Crap!" :P


During that...

You advanced to level 103 of attack!

...and...

You advanced to level 104 of defense!

...and...

Your overall level is now 136!

Frikkin' sweet!

But tiring. Think I'm done for the day. Just some background harving until I log off, heh.

Still Harving After All These Days...

Heh. Hard to come up with posts to keep this up to date when all I'm doing is harving, walking to storage, harving some more... Not exactly the most thrilling of subjects. :P

Off a bit more than normal as well for real life reasons, so that's not speeding up the process either.

Still stocking iron for the 8k+ steel and 1k+ iron bars I need to make for my "Burn Needs a Nexus" project.

Last night, Joule appeared just as I was thinking of calling it a night. Ended up staying up an extra 3 hours to take advantage of it, but was too tired to click to take advantage of the full day.

Guess I'm getting too old for that kinda stuff. Er, no, just too tired.

But I did mix all the iron I had into steel bars during those 3 hours I had. 3k steel bars done, as well as mixed a few other odds and ends, whatever I had ings for. Tried to work a bit on potioning towards the end, but was just too tired. Had ings for at least 5k BRs on hand, only got about 1k done.


Current project status: Need about 42k more iron. When I'm not as busy in real life I'll of course "bag it" and make some bars at the iron, but it looks like for the most part I'm just stocking it in storage. Guesstimated time it'll take to harv 42k iron is around 26 hours of non-stop harving. I'm looking at possibly 3-5 days just grabbing iron with that.

If you see me in-game, it'll most likely be in EVTR at the iron or storage. And there's a decent chance I'll be AFK. Lots to do in real life, so I'll be checking in when working on that just to click as needed for harving. Slow harvesting method, but better than nothing.

Sun Tzu Was Bad for the Fluffs

Okay, I had intended to do some mixing today after getting the attack and defense and overall levels this morning. Even did a couple batches of HEs.

But then Sun Tzu happened. I'd actually joked with someone that the new day would be Sun Tzu just because I'd already spent all morning fighting, just a few minutes before the day started.

So, double attack/defense experience in mind, I quickly rushed back to a fluffy spawn because I knew they'd be full up. And sure enough, saw tons of people walking by me in Melinis looking for spawns the entire time.

So 6 hours of non-stop fluffy bashing. Even had a friend bring more HEs/SRs to me so I wouldn't run out, though the ones I'd brought myself actually lasted well over 5 of the 6 hours.

And the levels came... can't believe I got 2 attack and 2 defense levels in one day, it's very "not me", hehe.

You advanced to level 91 of attack!



Followed by:

You advanced to level 91 of Defense!





Sweet... um, my hand's worn out now. Think my a/d-ing is over for a few days at least, heh. Although, this time also got me well over half of my next overall level... nah, need to get some mixing done. And the gc level is still desperately low since I was going to be working on that when this day happened.

No complaints. ;) Just a ton of experience. 3.75 million in 6 hours is sweet. (Yeah, yeah, you high level fighters giggle at that, but at my level I've never seen better.)

MoPs, Harving, and Special Days

Harving was the name of the game yesterday. Finished collecting ings for MoPs and made about 30 of them.

And some mixing, mostly potting but got some more HE stock made as well.

Special days yesterday (invasion reward type)...

Recycling Day - Used my EFEs, but no bonuses. Pretty much done with the day at that point since I didn't really have anything else special to use. Mixed some extracts I needed for eventual creature food but not so much.

Instead, knowing Sun Tzu was coming and how hard it is to get a spawn when it starts, I headed to a fluffy almost an hour early and just stayed there. 170 minutes of Sun Tzu led to 1.84 million overall experience, not too bad. Got my only level just before Sun Tzu started though.

You advanced to level 88 of defense!




Sun Tzu led to getting very close to another attack level, and over half my next defense level.


My night ended when the special day ended though. Was getting quite late.



Just waking up today, no real plans. Though I'll be heading off shortly for a few hours for real-life stuff. Guess more alching and potting in my near future. And harving of course. Always and forever, heh.

Wake Up (almost) Dead

So I logged in this morning as usual while waiting for the coffee to brew.

It's Sun Tzu day. Double experience for att/def.

On the Invasion channel, there's political ranting going on.

So I Suit-Up and head to Egratia Point to take advantage of the 2.5 hours of the special day that's left.

I ring directly into EP, to find myself standing right next to a giant. :/

Considering the day, and the political crap being discussed on invasion channel, I didn't think to check #il for invaders.

Managed to survive thanks to diss ring. But with the special day, I had no intention of wasting time on invaders. Made my way to Idaloran mines and hooked up with a cyclops spawn or two there instead.

Invasion on Sun Tzu? Not the brightest idea, very few invaders died before the special day was over.