Terranite Cave

Double trouble Terranites

Lately I started spending some time in the Terranite cave again. I'm usually in one of a couple of places for you PKers, either the red slimes or Terranites. If you see me at the red slimes spot I'm likely gathering cash to host Candor. Lately it seems the best way to gain the most experience in a short time. Kill me if you will, but if you like Candor you're shooting yourself a bit in the foot.

The Terranite spot is all about experience, though I'm also trying to get the components for the Illia Sisters quest again. My last bit I gave to another player so they could attempt it. I still haven't completed the Illia quest once and I'm quite close to level 95 (69.7% as of this morning). It's not for a lack of trying, made it once to Valia with Veryape, but two warriors alone were not enough to beat her.

One down, one to go

So my strategy in the Terranite cave has been to try to take on two at a time. Normally I have concentration potions and iron potions stocked for when there are three Terranites, but I find it mostly unnecessary when taking on two Terranites.

Still far away from a beanie. For some reason I never saw Candor as being much fun, though lately I have to admit it really is. Perhaps it's the wait period, but it's nothing compared to waiting for the Illia Sisters quest, so Candor has become more fun.

I still usually don't get drops (mind you I don't try too hard, I'm usually concentrating on experience and don't even bother pressing z most of the time) in Candor, though a few weeks back I picked up several while I was on the raging stint (didn't like it much, hit too often).

My last word is on the glove quest, which I haven't forgotten, but kind of sidelined. I stopped counting the number of mountain snakes I killed. I'm up to 7 sets of gloves (1 from Candor which makes me wonder because I didn't think Mountain Snakes showed there).

Yes, I was a developer once...

Under My Projects: TheManaWorld

What happens when you use a search engine other than Google, sometimes you find surprising results: apparently I had developer status in The Mana World back in April 11, 2004. All I remember contributing back then were ideas for monsters, still it's cool to see that I wasn't imagining things and that I have been a part of TMW since 2004. So where did the 2004 come from - an XML file I found here: http://sourceforge.net/api/project/name/themanaworld/doap

Spectacular defeat in candor

The Candor jig

About a week ago there was an update that included a Candor update to prevent people from squatting in Candor while others did all the work. That update seems to have made it a bit more difficult to win.

Today we tried with a crowd of over 20 that included several people with Banshee bows, Bull Helmets and other 90+ level items, and we failed miserably.

In the end it was Nitayandarama, Baeda and myself (with Nitayandarama falling [but healing us] first, myself second, then Baeda). The stacks of monsters were pretty intense (the screenshot above really doesn't do it justice).

But it was fun. We usually don't fail at Candor which makes me wonder what was different this time, especially with so many high level players.

10 Pairs of Leather Gloves

Fighting Mountain Snakes

So begins the next crazy quest, to obtain 10 pairs of leather gloves. If you haven't guessed yet it's not a real quest. In the past I've set created several of my own quests to keep the game interesting, there's only so much you can do before the release of new quests. I find making your own quests up makes the game more interesting, especially when masses of people are grinding on a particular quest.

So what about the statistics? Well there's about a 0.02% chance of a snake dropping a pair of gloves. My first pair dropped at roughly 130 mountain snake kills. The second pair dropped before I hit 200 mountain snake kills. Now I'm up to 326 kills, but no pairs of gloves have dropped since. Other drops include 22 Mountain Snake eggs, 19 Mountain Snake tongues, and 5 snake skins.

At 326 mountain snake kills I've accumulated 166602 experience points. At this rate it will take over 26,000 mountain snakes for me to level on mountain snakes alone (no, not my goal here and even I'm not that crazy).

The rules: no killing other monsters (except red slimes who live in the same cavern), pick up everything, stick to the same spots (it seems to help).

Take this job and shove it

Skill points are determined by job level

In most RPGs people pay attention to character level and experience points. The more experience points the higher the level.

Job and skill points work a little differently. Once you've acquired a skill you need skill points to increase the level of that skill. It works out pretty simple. For each skill you need that amount of skill points to increase to that level of skill. However, you have to have done the previous level of skills. For example: to get level 5 in a job you first need to put 2 points for level 2, 3 points for level 3, 4 points for level 4, and at last 5 points for level 5. To get skill points you need to kill monsters and get job experience.

This is where it gets interesting because the monsters that give the most experience are not necessarily the best monsters to kill for job experience. I posted before a chart for lower level players that outlined the best monsters to kill at lower levels: Monster kill statistics. At higher levels you're looking at significantly more job experience points. Ice Elementals for example are in the 630 point range. Here is a list of a few I've recorded so far:

Skeleton: 1467 job experience
Poltergeist: 1265 job experience
Wisp: 1210 job experience
Lady Skeleton: 957 job experience
Drunken Skeleton: 530 job experience
Tipsy Skeleton: 493 job experience
Drunken Lady Skeleton: 389 job experience

Job experience can vary if someone else has hit the monster before. The poltergeists I was killing had hit points in the 10k region so they were not quite as nice to kill as the 7k skeletons. Spectres gave less experience than Poltergeists and are quite a bit harder to hit, so I didn't bother even including them. I'll update this list with a more complete listing soon. For now just realize that there's more to killing monsters than just plain old experience.

No Alexander the fighter I will not give you my password

Alexander the fighter's whisper for password

This evening I was sitting in Hurnscald when a player named Alexander the fighter asked for my username and password (see screenshot to the left in the dialog).

Not sure if he things I'm stupid, but the answer is no. Takes begging to a whole new level.

Raging skill - high level tanks, you can do it!

The Raging Skill

I must have spent about 1500 apples trying to get the Raging Skill. Part of the problem of getting the raging skill was that when the quest came out I was already over level 90 (92 I think), which meant killing a lot of fluffies. The other obstacle was the fact that as a tank Tarq was pretty slow... at least this is what I lead myself to believe.

The real obstacle, however, was the fact that I was dropping like a sissy, I just didn't know how to drop correctly. Once I figured out how to drop correctly, combined that with concentration and iron potions, it only took a couple of rounds to kill 87 fluffies, enough to get the skill at level 94. While it's not nearly the 400+ of the best players, it's enough to move on.

87 Fluffy Kills

To drop correctly use the w key to open the drop window. Then open your storage and and drop apples in the first slot. Now when you're in the wilderness or somewhere like the quest press y to drop the apples in that first slot. You can set the amount that drops by opening the yellow bar at the top (hover) and press the i key to change the drop amount. I set the drop amount to 10. Yes, this spawned Yetis occasionally and was the cause of me dying a couple of times (3 yetis on me I just couldn't survive). Much of the time it doesn't spawn yetis and with one (even two) I was still able to kill between 84-86 yetis (thanks to tank defence and water). Remember part of the goal is survival.

I should mention that I did this alone, with no healer sitting outside. At one point another player came to watch (I did it a second and third time to confirm it wasn't a fluke). So high level tanks, it is possible, you just have to drop fast, drop 10 and hit like the wind with concentration and iron potions.