Get naked - the crazy things that happen in TMW

This is a crazy story, bear with me for a moment. So I decided to host a round of Candor. In the last minute before Candor started my laptop wireless bugged out. No matter what I did with the wireless switch it wouldn't turn  back on, so I rebooted...

Of course by the time I logged in again Candor had already started. And stupid me, I had exactly 23,000 GP, the amount it cost to start and advertise Candor, but not enough to get home.

So I decided to get naked in an attempt to kill myself outside of Candor, thus returning home. The first thing I attacked was a Clover patch...

Wouldn't you know it... a 4 leaf clover dropped!

Naked in the clover patches. What luck (bad then good).

Warrior Damage Per Second online tool!

Garrett has created a wonderful Warrior Damage Per Second (DPS) tool for the warrior class in The Mana World. I've followed it for a couple of levels on a new character and it's been mostly accurate (there seemed to be a slight miscalculation of stats for the one level in one area, I was 1 stat point less). It's definitely made a difference in terms of warrior damage.

The tool can be found here:

http://tmw.gjr.gr/warrior.php

Shyro PK'ed

Shyro archer PK'ed in the Terranite Cave

As a rule I don't like to PK (Player Kill) people - I personally think it makes the game more frustrating and less fun.

In fact of all the opportunities there's only ever been a couple of players I've went after. The first player was testing his new archer against me as a tank. I know this player's other archer could take me down given the right set of circumstances. The second player (a recent addition) was Shyro, but the circumstances were different. I had been in the red slime area of the terranite cave for about 5 minutes when Shyro came down from above and started firing at all the slimes, including the ones I was attacking. I think most players would agree it's a pretty rude thing to do, just enter an area and start plugging away at slimes someone else is attacking.

If Shyro asked when I was going to finish I might not have PK'ed him. Of course there is no protocol for playing and a game is a game. Some people would say that because tanks are slower that's tough... but then in places like the graveyard archers would be lost really quickly, so please remember and respect the role of tanks/warriors.

Interestingly this is how I first met Prsm as a player before he was a GM. I was hunting mogguns trying to get enough coal for Warlord armor when Prsm came in to the cave and picked off one of the mogguns... but as soon as he saw me he stopped, apologized and we started chatting. It turns out that at that time him picking off the mogguns was helpful, because they'd go after him and I, the weaker player, got to hit them without worry of damage. We've been friends ever since and I have great respect for him.

Terranite Chest Armor - is it worth it?

Purging of stash

Yesterday I purged a fair amount of junk from my stash and finally coughed up the 500,000 GP, 40 Terranite Ore and 250 coal for the Terranite Chest Armor. Until this point I've stayed away from the Terranite Armor because the cost just seemed too much for the benefit. The Warrior full plate armor has a higher defense, and as a warrior it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

So what changed? How is the terranite armor better? M. Defense goes up significantly by 10 full points, accuracy goes up by 1 point, attack delay goes down by 1 point (good), and damage per second goes up by one point. The armor does appear to have significant benefits, and for a ranger I'm sure it's the cat's meow, but I still have to put the armor to the torture test between a couple of terranites or against fallens and skeletons. The normal warrior armor is pretty solid against a couple of terranites.

Cave snakes at level 49

A couple of posts ago I said it took 400 cave snakes to level. At level 49 I noticed it takes about 8 cave snakes to get 1% of experience, meaning it takes approximately 800 cave snakes to go from the beginning of the level to level 50. I should mention that at this stage you might have more success as an archer targeting skeletons in a group or working over green slimes (which brings both gold bags and better experience).

So why cave snakes? It's partly about the grind, and partly about daily quests. As a warrior cave snakes are no trouble, you barely even get a scratch. Archers have to run around and constantly get killed by skeletons even when they're careful at lower levels (of course a warrior would fare even worse at this stage). As you're killing cave snakes you're also picking up cave snake tongues and cave snake lamps both of which are quite useful. The cave snake tongues are one component of one of Auldsbel's quests. The cave snake lamps are used in the Doug's cave snake lamps daily quest. So why does this matter? Well at lower levels 40-50 the daily quest can really help you level. Say you have 20 cave snake lamps, each 5 give you 5000 experience and 5000 gold. This means each day you're getting 20000 experience and 20000 gold pieces.

To get 20 cave snake lamps it takes approximately 150 kills. The lower level character I tried this with took 143 while Tarq did it in about 170 (though much faster). You could store up cave snake lamps with a higher level character, but why bother, use them for bones (skeletons), and coal (mogguns).

Over the years I keep going back to cave snakes for leveling in this 40-50 range, they just seem really beneficial in the end.

Level 47 archer versus level 46 warrior

A couple of posts ago I posted some progression statistics on a warrior that leveled from level 42 to level 46. When that warrior reached level 47 I decided to switch classes briefly to see how he faired as a ranger. General wisdom in the forums suggest maxing dexterity before any other statistic. So as such his stats were as follows:

str: 1, agi: 4=1+3, vit: 1, int: 1, dex: 87=84+3, luk: 2=1+1

The pluses are because of the ranger outfit and a four leaf clover. This concentration on dexterity makes the character pretty unbalanced. Where the archer excels is the attack statistic, 221, compared to the 166 of the archer (based on his 40 dexterity). The accuracy is also higher at 134 compared to 86 on the warrior.

However one statistic stands out as particularly bad, and that is the attack delay which is 808 compared to 495. Of course on higher level archers this number will drop like a stone as agility is ramped up.

What I find interesting is that agility seems to affect more statistics than dexterity. It's also worth noting that both dexterity and agility seem to have an effect on accuracy (meaning you're more likely to hit monsters putting points in both agi and dex).

Hit points were also lower than the fighters though this is likely a result of vitality.

Looking at overall statistics the warrior actually looks better doing 335 damage per second compared to the archer's 273 damage per second. And keep in mind this is a level 46 warrior vs. a level 47 archer. As this character approaches 48 I'll switch back and stat him similar to before to give more even warrior statistic.

How many cave snakes does it take to level from 46 to 47?

I noticed it takes around 4 cave snakes to get 1% towards a level. This is an approximation because cave snakes are one of the monsters that can be worth more or less experience, the experience you get from them doesn't always remain consistent. Given 4 snakes it would take approximately 400 cave snake skills to reach 100% or level 47. Perhaps an hour and a half of playing given my stats.