Congratulations Prsm and thank you readers!

Prsm in his GM digs

A big congratulations to Prsm on becoming a GM on The Mana World main server. Also a big thank you to all the readers who read this blog and who voted for Prsm.

Today Prsm got to stretch his GM legs with a few events with the other GMs.

I think Prsm will be a good GM. Time will tell and there's lots to learn. For now, congrats again Prsm.

Nice spider cave

Lately it seems like a lot of the usual haunts are crowded with more and more people on the main server. I've come to realize that Tarq's a bit of a tank. There are a lot of faster players doing more damage, but they're like chickens who hit and run, a few chops of a truly powerful monster and they're squawking home to Hades. That said, even at a higher level its easy to miss drops when you're not stated to do heavy damage.

I still don't understand how archers do a lot more damage than a warrior swinging a heavy sword, but it's how the game is currently set up so no point whining about it. Because more and more areas are getting crowded I've been looking for spots that are a little more quiet. The spot pictured above does from time to time have players in it, but it's nowhere near as popular as the spider corridor in the cave north of Hurnscald. And this spot is only a cave away - just bypass all the spiders and scorpions and take the north cave. This cave is strictly scorpions, no spiders, it's a nice spot to collect black scorpion tails if you don't mind waiting a bit.

Tica leveling after level 40

Tica kill stats after red slime bout

I've already mentioned killing cave snakes is a good idea between levels 20 to 40, but it also appears to be one of the best methods to level after level 40.

I've noticed a slow down in Tica's ability to level. More powerful monsters like Mogguns, that give more experience, are too difficult for Tica as he's currently stated for a warrior.

Monsters lesser than cave snakes don't tend to spawn fast enough to equal the experience per minute - with one exception - the red slimes in the caves north of Hurnscald.

I did some kill stat analysis concentrating mostly on cave snakes and noticed Tica gets between 600 to 1000 exp / minute killing cave snakes. Killing red slimes resulted in about 900 exp / minute. The down side to killing red slimes is that Tica seems to take more damage from the red slimes - 8 to 9 hp per hit. Cave snakes hit with 2 - 3 points of damage, but take a little longer to kill. The up side of killing red slimes is they drop a variety of items that can be sold for gold.

For the next few levels Tica will be concentrating on upping the vitality stat.

Tica the alternate, leveling between 20 and 40

Tica the alternate pounding on some cave snakes

Tica is an alternate player I started on the main server about 2 weeks ago. I've played Tica for a few hours here and there. Playing Tica instead of Tarq lead me to a few observations, some I've noted before, some new.

Cave snakes are good for leveling between levels 20 and 40. Find them by going north in Arkim's "Bat cave." Why are cave snakes so good? You only need 20 cave lamps to do the Doug quest which adds 5k experience and 5k gold. Cave snakes also occasionally drop jean shorts. Jean shorts are one of the components needed for jean chaps. And here's the kicker, you don't need to fight mountain snakes to get skins for jean chaps - just be sure to visit Aidan and Ishi when you start your character to collect monster points. Trade in monster points and sometimes you get snake skins (and other goodies like Iron Ore).

As long as you don't create a new login your stash is shared between characters. This means your level 1 character can have decent armour, helmet and perhaps weapon if you've not traded everything away with your main character. I equipped Tica with chain armor and a crusade helmet.

When you reach level 40 make sure you do the Bone Knife quest, even if you already have one from another character. The bone knife quest is worth 50,000 experience. At level 40 this is almost half a level for you. Probably your other character already has the components (black scorpion tails and mushrooms), Tarq did (actually he needed a couple of scorpion tails).

I also noted that at level 40 there are significantly more points available to be put into stats. I think I had something like 60. Be sure to use them wisely.

Prsm for GM!

I've known Prsm now for about 6 months. He's up for election as a GM on the main server. I think he's an excellent candidate, always helpful, never selfish. If you know Prsm, please vote him in on the forums.

Getting Ubuntu to recognize current manaplus

There are several The Mana World clients floating around. The Mana World web site links to a really old client in the downloads section. Many people switched to the 4144 client which until recently was located at http://tmw.cetki.com/mana/. Recently it's been updated and switched to http://mana.cetki.com/.

Linux users if you installed the old client 1.1.2.20 and go to install the new client you'll find both your Gnome menus and the command line link to the old manaplus client. But if we find the paths we get:

$ whereis manaplus
/usr/games/manaplus /usr/local/bin/manaplus


Both the command line and menus recognize the old manaplus because the /usr/local/bin/manaplus is part of the PATH statement:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games


The simplest way to change our Gnome menu is to click system then preferences then main menu and select the games tree then click on the manaplus icon and click the properties button. Chance the command from just manaplus to /usr/games/manaplus.

But this doesn't solve the real problem, which is the path for manaplus is looking to /usr/local/bin first. And why does it do this? Because it's before /usr/games in the $PATH list. In Ubuntu we can change this by editing the /etc/environment file at the PATH section:

sudo vi /etc/environment
PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/games:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"


All we had to do is shift /usr/games from the end of the file to near the beginning. As long as it's before /usr/local/bin the newer version of manaplus will take. Note that if you do this you do not need to change your Gnome menu as per above.

The PATH doesn't take immediately. You need to log out of your xsession (but not reboot) and log back in for the PATH change to activate.

Manaplus 1.1.2.20

Recently I compiled the 4144 Manaplus 1.1.2.20 as per these instructions: http://tmw.cetki.com/4144/ubuntu/. One of the things I noticed that was slightly different was when someone killed a monster any drops I tried to pick up too early were labelled as not mine. I like this slight change. Of course all drops if ong enough can be picked up by anyone.