Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone in The Mana World community! Over the past 3 months I've gotten to know a lot of great people on the main Mana World server, on the IRC chat channel, and on the auldsbel.dyndns.org server. There are so many people I'd like to thank for their friendship, their help, and their inspiration. I'm going to name a few people from memory:

Thanks to Big Crunch, Mr Grey, PjotrOrial, Kage, and Thorbjorn for suggestions and help with the Christmas quest.

Thanks to Sugar, Prsm, Nard, Knight, ChefChelios, Falloutboy, Hello=), Jim Morrison and Tema for their help either through items, or helping me kill certain monsters and get 'back' relatively quickly.

Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Platyna for running the main TMW server!

Thank you to everyone and a great 2011 to all!

Auldsbel Web Server Hardware / Updates

I've already pimped my own TMW server a couple of times, but I thought I'd post a few more details about the server for those interested in the hardware and software behind the server(s).

There are actually 3 servers in the Auldsbel network: web server, game server, and development server.

The picture to the right, the IBM eseries xserver is the main game server. It's a IBM eserver xseries 220 Pentium III 1.1GHz with 256MB of Registered ECC SD-RAM and 2 x 18GB hard drives. You'd think the server would be slow, but the 2 18GB hard drives are 15,000RPM Ultra-Wide SCSI hard drives. Memory is a concern, and I've had 1GB of RAM on order, but the company it's on order from has been delaying shipment since November 2010. At this point they have 1 week to prove they've sent the RAM before they go on ripoffreport.com. The game server runs Debian GNU/Linux. I actually tried Ubuntu Server first, but it seemed to have issues with the IBM hardware. Surprisingly the 15,000 RPM hard drives are almost whisper quiet. The IBM box is quieter than my wife's desktop machine.

The web server is run on a Dell GX60 with 1GB of RAM and an 80GB IDE hard drive. It runs Ubuntu Linux server and Wordpress.

The development server, which isn't available to the general public, is actually the most powerful machine in the network (it's also my wife's Linux desktop). It's a quad core 2.5GHz box with 4GB RAM running Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop.

Christmas Quest rewards

In the comments of my last post I mentioned that I was able to complete the Christmas quest, but only with the help of some of the friendly people on the main TMW server. I feel a bit bad that I moaned so loudly about the quest, but it was frustrating because I gave away that first white present. In the end things turned out and after paying 100,000 to goldbenz (sp?) I managed to rescue Santa who gave me a top hat. Thanks to those who helped either by suggesting ways to get around the present dilemma or by a loan of money.

Another player gave me an item that probably would have been part of the quest. I tried to refuse it, having already got my top hat, but then they left it lying around for anyone to grab, so I took it. But I really would prefer to earn items. Charity is nice when you're struggling with something, but in this case I did finally finish the quest.

Thanks again to everyone who helped out!

Christmas Quest bug / feature and other reasons you hate TMW

When I came back to The Mana World after a 11 month absence I tried to think of the reason I left in the first place, but couldn't. And then I started working on the Christmas quest and understood why people leave TMW. In the screenshot above I've circled "I've Collected all the White Boxes" part of the Christmas quest. One problem, the last box didn't show up in my stash, so I couldn't complete the quest and get my "rare" item. When I went to town to mention this bug, and it is a bug, not a feature. Others said, "you can't give away boxes." So let me get this right, if you're generous to someone else you get punished. I gave away my very first white box, which means I collected all the white boxes, spent hours of work, for nothing... but of course I could buy a white box from someone for 100,000k. 

But could I? As the gm on Auldsbel I gave a bunch of boxes to a player while in the ice caverns and he couldn't complete the quest. 

I understand the thought behind this quest, because when the Halloween Quest was on I saw lots of people botting to collect sweets, it really wasn't fair to those who collected sweets with only one player. However, I would rather suffer people multi-botting than have a NPC script that punishes players for giving to other players. You don't take away from the large amount of players who play honestly to punish a few that are cheating the system. 

I was so furious last night that I really considered just leaving TMW altogether. Who wouldn't be furious, it took hours to complete, only to discover it can't be completed. My wife was pretty mad at me because I spent so much time trying to cram the quest in to our time, all that for nothing... I'm sure I'm not the only player in that kind of boat with other responsibilities.

I'll update any progress on the Christmas quest, but so far it's a bust for me, not a good quest at all.

Warlord Plate Armor and Leather Gloves

Tarq finally collected enough iron ingots and coal for Warlord Plate with the last 10 coal coming from Prsm. I also exchanged a 8 lice filled hats for Leather Gloves (+4% def) which mountain snakes drop on a really rare occasion. You might think it was a bit of a lop-sided trade, the lice filled hats are part of a new quest that begins in the hospital (the result is the green ranger outfit you see on Mr. H. Solo sitting beside Tarq in the screenshot), but the monsters you need to kill for these hats are simpler to kill than mountain snakes. And while I can kill mountain snakes fairly easily one on one, I still fall victim when they group attack, so the trade was worth it for me.

 I spent a bit of time this morning hunting mogguns and they no longer do 10+ damage, it's all 1's as long as I don't get attacked by 4 or 5. Now that I can handly 3 or 4 mogguns at a time it's time to go after the coal for other helmets.

Hello=) world and the case of the dying skulls

With 55 Dex and a similar amount of Strength I'm still very much toast against Fire and Poison Skulls. For the last number of levels I found fighting skulls quite frustrating, I seemed to miss them almost all the time, and if I got a pot shot or two in I ended up only getting between 250 - 500 experience per skull, hardly worth the amount of iron potions and healing items I was consuming... That was until the magic users switched from using Lightning to summoning maggots. The maggots would swarm the skulls doing minor damage allowing the fighters like me to swoop in and do some better damage, the result between 2000 and 4500 experience per skull, a remarkable difference! I'm not sure what the magic users were getting for experience, but I sure appreciated the amount of experience I was getting from the skull kills and the fact that the maggot distraction seemed to allow my fighter to hit more often.

Both Hello=) and Jim Morrison helped out a great deal.

Gak's Sweet Rewards

Gak is now doling out rewards for the sweets given to him, but don't be hasty in cashing in... there are quite a few rewards and the price of the rewards is fairly high. Gak isn't fond of marshmallows, so each marshmallow earns you one credit. Other sweets earn you more credits (how many I missed, so don't you miss it). My guess is that it was only 2 credits for each of the other sweets. The rewards are as follows:

• 9000 credits - Opera Mask
• 7000 credits - Jester Mask
• 4500 credits - Witch's Hat
• 2500 credits - Goblin Mask
• 800 credits - Guy Fawkes Mask
• 500 credits - Scissors
• 200 credits - Shock Sweet
• 1 credit - Bone Arrow

In the screenshot below Cody is wearing the Jester Mask and I, Tarq, are wearing the Goblin Mask. I didn't quite have enough to also buy the Guy Fawkes Mask and you cannot go back and give Gak more sweets for credits. Once his stomach drops, that's it. I also was a little shy of the Scissors, which allow you to change your hair style without seeing the barber. The shock sweet changes your hair colour to white. I picked up one of these.