Emeraldwind Chronicle - Development of A War Machine! Part 8
Warning: This journal is very long with a lot of pictures and a lot of detailed information. If you find such things boring, click away now!
Things move quickly in the world of Dereth and as such, I can’t slow down. I tend to post journals after major milestones in my character’s career… at least when I started writing them, that’s what I planned to do. But as things in the world change and time passes so quickly, I have to adapt. And that’s why I’m writing another journal so quickly… to give some hints on the newer places to hunt as well as tell you about recent developments with my character and the game world. So read on, as I have a lot to say this time around.
Strength - 60
Endurance - 50
Coordination - 10
Quickness - 10
Focus - 100
Self - 100
Specialize: War Magic, Mana Conversion
Train: Item (my choice) or Creature or Arcane/Healing
Post Skills: (choices are yours but these were mine) Life @ 16, Arcane @ 26,
Creature @ 60
As I've always said, the important thing is to specialize War Magic and Mana
Conversion. This chronicle follows my choice of Item magic at the start, Life at
level 16, Arcane at level 26, and Creature magic at level 60. I know I do this
every journal but I just want to make sure that anyone who might start in the
middle of the journals and read knows what the template is about and knows how I
decided to play my template. Enjoy!
As I said last journal, Dereth’s
monster spawns have changed dramatically and I’ve had to adapt. This isn’t a
bad thing, mind you, as I started to fight enemies that I didn’t think I would
ever fight (or at least have a chance at fighting). I began hunting in the South
Dires, from the Mayoi drop off. It’s not a bad place to be… occasionally
grievvers will pop up to harass you but the spawns are spread far enough apart
that you can skirt them without getting into too much trouble with anything
else. When I first started hunting this area, I hunted the Olthoi, the Lugians,
and the Shadows (Panumbris mostly). This isn’t a bad diet and it’s easy to
protect against all three things. I explained last journal that my buff cycle,
which can be done in under two minutes, lag permitting, involved all normal
(read: physical damage) protections, armor, Impen, Blud. Bane, and Acid Bane.
With the Revitalize – Stamina to Mana trick (I will explain this technique
below), I didn’t have to lay down and get stamina back to finish buffing.
Eventually I decided to fight the banders… thrashers, beserkers, strikers,
manglers, and maulers. These are easy to protect for, and you don’t have to do
any major shifting around. I realized that in my suit of armor, I didn’t have
to buff my helmet. Things almost rarely hit me in the head (which kind of sucks,
considering my helmet is AL 223 with average protects to everything except acid,
which is below average) and only sometimes hit me in the feet. I also realized
that I didn’t have to protect against piercing, since only one thing did that
style of damage and my armors base protections would almost take care of that.
So my new buff routine involved Armor, Slashing, Bludgeoning, Cold, and Acid
protections, Impen on my coat, leggings, and gloves, Bludgeoning Bane on my
coat, leggings, and gloves, and Frost Bane on my coat, leggings, and gloves.
That takes care of everything except for the maulers (I do believe they’re the
fire ones). Around that area there are almost rare spawns of both manglers and
maulers and manglers seem to spawn more than anything else. The thrashers, as
well, use frost, which is why it’s more important to protect against frost
than it is fire. Now, if you want to add a Fire protection into your buffing, be
my guest. I do it sometimes as well, but I rarely ever bane for fire. And with
these slight hunting changes, I realized that the South Dires would become a
nice place to play in for awhile.
I said I would explain the Revitalize
– Stamina to Mana trick. It’s one of those techniques that you should learn
not only to maximize your fun but lengthen your hunting time as well. It
doesn’t involve wasting space with Stamina Elixirs, nor does it involve
wasting time by laying down. You don’t have to cast any Rejuvenation spells
and it can be done anywhere, anytime you deem fit. Before you do this technique,
I’d advise having a base skill of 170 Mana Conversion. This should get you a
buffed skill of 210 or higher (I’m not doing math in my head right now but
this is about what it should be, if you’re lucky). The higher your Mana
Conversion, the easier and more effective this trick will be. You start out by
checking your mana and stamina levels. Stamina should, ideally, be higher than
Mana. As an example let’s say you have a stamina level of 100 out of 200 and a
mana level of 25 out of 250. First you will cast the highest level Revitalize
spell that you can. It should convert nicely. Your stamina will have raised from
100 to a nice level of, say, 190. You will then do the highest, most reliable
Stamina to Mana so that your stamina is low and your mana is now high. Say your
mana is now 150… but you want to get it to 220 or higher. So you will cast
Revitalize again until it’s around 180 or 190 and then you will do Stamina to
Mana. With a high Mana Conversion, you spend less casting the spells, thus
increasing your mana level every time you do it. It should take you twice,
unless your levels are extremely low, to get your mana almost all the way up.
This technique is an extremely useful time-saver. Practice it in town to get it
working correctly and then use it in the field. If you’re not already doing,
then you will see how much longer you’re able to hunt because you don’t have
to lay down (this also replaces having to drain stamina all the time from
enemies), so master the technique.
I wanted to talk about some other things
that I mentioned in some of my earlier journals before I get to all of the
quests and ridiculous amounts of fun I’ve had in the last 3 to 4 days of
playing. The first thing I wanted to touch on, since it’s the easiest, was
your Hotkey set-up. Hotkeys are set up however you want but I wanted to show you
mine to maybe give you some ideas in case you were wondering how I’m set up
and why.
As you can see here, I have armor, a
robe, my Staff of Clarity, my Quiddity Orb, and a ring here. Let me explain. The
armor is placed in my hotkeys simply to help with quick buffing. Hotkeys, for
me, are all about having the quickness buffs or switches possible. Even though I
play with jewelry, I always leave my Focus and Self rings equipped. There’s no
need to take them off unless I’m in town for a long period of time. So those
don’t need to be in hotkeys. The bracelet you see there is actually an Arcane
bracelet. It’s level 5. The reason that I have that placed there is to help in
case I die… I can equip it (since my level 5 jewelry rarely ever drops…
mostly my high mana charges and portal gems drop) to help me use my Quiddity Orb
or anything else that needs to be equipped to buff. The staff and orb are there
for quick switching while fighting. If I’m taking on an enemy whom I want to
vuln, I will wand monkey… switch wands in mid-battle. A lot of mages detest
this form of magic but it will get you by for a long while… besides, there
aren’t a lot of enemies that you can’t blow away in a shot or two after
you’ve vuln’d (if you even need to vuln… I don’t vuln that much
anymore).
The other thing that I wanted to address
was your spell tabs. Your tabs will be set up differently than mine… but I
have made a lot of changes to my tabs since I last showed them to you and want
to show those changes to reflect my style of play. What you have to understand
is that I’m a very organized person… I like to try to put certain items in
certain places for certain reasons. My tabs reflect that.
What you see here is my War Magic tab.
All War magic spells are here. Some people would add vulns right next to their
War spells. I don’t. It clutters things up and I tend to use a lot of
different attack abilities at once (to spread out the usage of components
evenly). I also have ring spells here. Ring spells are very misunderstood
spells. They can be VERY helpful, as you will see a little bit later in the
journal (this is a biggun!) The last two spells you see there I actually don’t
need anymore… see, I use level 6 War spells but when I was starting to use
them and I died I wouldn’t be able to use them… so I put level 5s at the end
as a precautionary measure. They are no longer needed as when I die I still have
a buffed War skill of 270 or higher.
Allmighty life spells. Heal Self 3, Heal
Self 5, Heal Other 4. Stam to Mana 3, 4, 5, and 6. Drain Stamina, Drain Health,
Drain Mana (Virindi don’t like it). Revitalize 5 and 6. Harm 6. Unnatural
Persistence (bugged! It doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do and I use it for
when I’m lazy and running and get hit). Rejuvenation 6 (same as UP). Arcane
Restoration (Something about getting 3 to 4 mana back each time it updates that
makes me giggle). Revitalize Other 3. Infuse Mana 1 (for the vassals! More about
them later!)
Here are my Self Life protections and
Item Banes as well as True Value. I use level 5s because they are reliable
though I have enough skill to cast 6s (I will actually start casting level 6s in
a level or two).
These are the Other Life protections and
more Item spells… Item weapons spells… the Other Life protections are 6s
because I seem to be able to cast them far more reliably than Self spells.
Vulns and portals. There was some changing around since last time. As you can see, I have Item debuffs now. I like messing with Shadows and Simulacras by debuffing their weapon. Also helps if they’re fighting me and I want to buff and I’m too lazy to kill them. The portal spell on number 9 is for Sanctuary… it’s there because there is no pause between portaling and casting… it’s instantaneous and in the thick of battle it can save your life. The vulns are level 4 as I can’t cast level 5s with slight buffs all that well yet… very soon I will be able to though.
And that is my set-up. I do a lot of tab
switching in battle but I’m so used to my organization that I never miss a
beat… and I strafe cast at the same time… both hands work VERY fast.
Remember the quest I went on the other day? Guess what I found out? That’s probably one of the better dungeons for someone my level. In fact, I’m working on my hunting guide and it’s currently listed under the level 35-45 range of levels for hunting. Let me explain how I came to the conclusion that I will now hunt this dungeon for experience and loot, not just for a quest. While I was out at my new Dires spot hunting I happened to get healed by Dark Red Bear. I have to say this plain and simple and everyone on other servers can hate me all they want but people on Leafcull rock harder than anyone alive. I have never had a bunch of people help me along so much and give me things just for being myself and I return the favor as much as I humanly can. Dark Red Bear is a level (now) 46 archer with the title of Master Fletcher… he’s not the guy in the picture up there… that’s Ice Zero, an equally cool guy. Anyhow, Dark heals me after I get torn apart by a Banderling mauler (he got a lucky hit on… guess… my foot of all things) and keeps me healed while I’m taking out the entire campsite trying to reduce vitae. I thanked him accordingly and we got to talking. Come to find out he hasn’t done the Simulacra quests yet. So I told him “I have a helmet, I was going to give it to my Xbower but you can have it” … and I was very serious. So we got set-up and headed to Samsur (He gave me a cracked shard just for shits and giggles!!!) so that we could go to the Asteliary Dungeon (I’m not sure if that’s how you spell it… oh well). We head over, go through the dungeon, and get his helmet imbued. He loves it. He hasn’t even taken it off yet. Well, we were down there for about 20 minutes just fighting and talking… I go to look at my Skills list… I have 435k of unassigned experience… wait… did I see that right? Yes, I did. Apparently Subtle Simulacras give 12-13k experience and the Crafter gives a whopping 22k, at least from what I’ve seen. Of course, at the time, I was level 39… the yields may be lower for level 45s and higher. On top of the good experience (en masse… subtles spawn quite a bit in there), there’s the loot yield. When you can pull a 1-4 +10 melee defense, +8 attack skill, BD VI katar with a value of 15k, you know that those subtles have to have something else in them. And they do. Level 5 and 6 jewelry… and these aren’t rare drops. They drop as often as Olthoi Nobles drop. So I was extremely excited! I went from level 39 or so to level 42 in almost no time… that’s the fastest I’ve ever leveled excluding the very beginning of this character’s life.
There is more! Far more to the story. It
seems that in doing this journal a lot of people on Leafcull know who I am now!
And that’s surprising to me. Dizz told me that a lot of people were saying my
journals were good but I never thought of them as more than me rambling and
trying to give advice. With the changes to the world of Dereth in terms of
spawns and such, I was as confused as everyone else. I had found new places for
myself to hunt but I didn’t know where younger players should hunt. Well,
unrelated to the game in and of itself, I was surfing Dizz’s message boards
and came upon a guy who was starting a new War/ManaC spec’d mage… he needed
a tutor. I told him that I would help him because I knew how frustrating it was.
This would also give me a chance to start working on a side project that I’m
doing for War/Mana C and any other Mage types out there… a hunting guide for
the new Dereth. Well, the guy ended up creating a new mage on Leafcull! So we
hooked up… came to find out that his wife wanted to do the same as him. So I
got two new vassals! And let me be the first to say that they are a joy to not
only talk to but to joke with, hunt with, and do anything else with. I can’t
wait until they get high enough level to frequent the places that I do. Then
we’ll have a complete non-stop blast!
I outfitted my new vassals as best I
could with some things I had on my Xbower as well as two mules and we set out.
They started in Holtburg but moved to Nanto. I’m down in the Mayoi area and
it’s easier for me to provide for them if they’re somewhat in the area. We
went from Nanto to Mayoi along the beach and I learned how much it’s
changed… it used to be a very dangerous place but the danger factor is
lessened… (either that or since they were using Life 6 protections and getting
refills of mana and such from me it didn’t seem so hard). We explored a little
bit around Mayoi and got them pretty set up in levels (they were sharing
experience and I believe they got to level 6 or 7 that night).The next day (or
the day after? Oh, they all just blend together for me when I’m at home) their
brother/brother-in-law joins us as an Axer! Finally, someone I can give those
Sleeves in Inexhaustibility to and all my other Axer crap (well, not crap
considering it’s all mostly 9-18 BD VI stuff). So now the three of them are
under me and having a blast! I wanted to say that ring spells are good for a big
reason… taking out the low level crap that wants to kill your vassals. They
were getting wailed on and though I was healing them it wasn’t good enough. So
I launched ring spells left and right… what resulted was over 15 minutes of
hilarity that made my stomach hurt! Thanks Dark and Shota, you guys completely
made my day with that one!
I could mention things like I got most
of my Other level 7 Life protections or that I finished all of my level 7 War
spells but that seems boring. Instead, I will tell you about how I finally did
what I’ve always wanted to do with Emerald… well, at least part of it. I
will tell you how Emerald finally became the fully fleshed out character that I
have always wanted her to be… how Emeraldwind has finally become that which
she was meant to be…
It sits high on a hill in the middle of
no man’s land protected by nothing but harsh winds. A single lone pine stands
erect nearby keeping vigil over the barren landscape which lay beneath. I stood
at the entrance, eyes mesmerized by the swirling purple vortex inside. My patron
and his other vassal stood off to the side, still buffing. My hands sweat on my
Staff of Clarity. Would we be enough to handle the swarms that would come at us?
Could we prevail against the evil inside?
We dove in. There was only one way to
find out if we could succeed… we’d have to go through. My patron, the noble
Dirk Phoenix, shouted commands. “Heal!” I drew my arms up and murmured words
that I had been taught so long ago as a young child. My energies gathered before
me. I could feel the soft hue on my skin, tickling me. But I didn’t laugh. I
threw my arms out towards Dirk. His wounds mended in the midst of battle, as if
time passed rapidly across his face. He grunted with the effort of the new
spells. Crushing Shame exploded into a banderling’s chest. It wouldn’t wake
up.
Down and through, through and down, we
twisted and turned. We finally came to a door. Haven and I waited. Dirk would
flip switches. But then a woman came out. She wore that which I sought to
acquire. I could only see her brown eyes behind the stark white virindi mask she
wore.
“Need help?”
“Yes.” Haven gestured with his
sword. “Our patron is going to flip switches but he doesn’t know where they
are exactly.”
“I’ll go flip them. Let me buff
up.” We waited. She buffed. She left. Dirk came back. The door opened.
And we ran. We ran until we couldn’t
run anymore. And then we were at the other door. Dirk lifted his crystal of
communication up to his eyes, peering deep within. The pale virindi mask stared
back.
“Open the last.” His voice was gruff
but it had a soothing tone to it that I felt. Or maybe it’s just my feelings
for him. Either way, I watched Dirk with fondness as he spoke.
The door swung open. We ran inside.
“Can anything get us in here?” Haven
loosed the straps of his heamue, sliding the front forward, lifting it from his
head. He combed his fingers back through his hair. Dirk shook his head ‘No,’
his dark finger point towards a dias near the front of the hall. The room had
the design of a meeting hall, the ones that lie near each town.
“Go get them.”
I was excited. I felt like a little girl
in a toy store. I remembered when my mother used to take me into the city every
end of the week and treat me to a new doll or some candy. I would sit in the
wagon of a farmer going into town selling his crops with my mother. Everything
felt so good about life whenever we went to town. Since I had left my home, I
felt lost and alone. Dirk had taken me under his wing and taught me well and
though I had a fondness for him, nothing would replace the emptiness and longing
I felt for my mother back home. This feeling in my chest came the closest.
I stood at the dais retrieving the
blocks. Each one was a different color. Sea blue, Sea gray, Gray. I got a few
and put them in my pack. Dirk did the same. He wasn’t able to hand me it
yet… it was still bound to him. He would have to ignite the magical flame
inside to let me wield it. While he sat on the benches preparing for the ritual,
I explored.
Astronomy was never my strong point but
something about the way the sun was projected, the way the stars and the planets
shifted, made me feel connected to everything. Dirk called my name.
“Yes?” He stood up and handed me the
items. I almost giggled with delight but held myself. Sometimes I don’t want
him to know that I’m a giddy little girl but other times he likes it… I
didn’t know which time this way.
“Start. I will cast Brillance on you.
Work as fast as you can while it stays on you.” I nodded, gathered some more
stones before I prepared, and sat down on the bench. He prepped me for the
ritual and I worked feverishly. I failed many times. Then one item was made. I
wore it to help me with the others. I kept working… worked for hours on it.
But finally it was made… finally it was done. Finally, I was that which I was
destined to always be – a Heiromancer.
I felt my knowledge of the Arcane rise.
Attacking became clearer, as did item manipulation, and animal manipulation. I
felt faster and stronger and more able to lead. I felt my natural mana energies
rejuvenating faster… and I knew that I would be able to use less of my own
energy to cast spells. I was a Hieromancer, like the old Yalaini who came before
me. Dirk’s face lit up in a grin and Haven yelled cheers of delight. My heart
swelled and burst several times over and I couldn’t express enough love for
the two of my colleagues and comrades.
“Let’s go get some blue orbs.”
Haven put his helmet back on. Dirk agreed.
My first test in the field. I felt odd
but, at the same time, I felt good. I was complete. I was whole… my helmet and
sollerets didn’t match. I’d have to fix that when we went back home. I
faired well in my first outing but I knew I would have to grow into it. It
wasn’t like my other standard fare… it was different and worked by different
rules, but I would learn those rules and I would live by those rules. I would be
those rules.
-Kill first before the enemy knows that
which kills-
-Know your own mind and limitations and use even those
weaknesses against your opponent-
-Respect always the code, for in respect it will guide
you to prevail over that which tries to destroy you-
I heard the voices in my head. It was a
new world, a new feeling… I was a new Emeraldwind.
I want to give some shout-outs here.
Why? Because these people are awesome. First, Dirk, thank you for everything.
Without your spare armor, I wouldn’t have realized my dream… the thing that
really made me say “I want to be a War Mage again.” Thank you. Haven, thank
you for just helping me along as well. We don’t talk all that much but still
when we do, I have a blast! Darkken Rahl and Shota the Sorceress, you two little
Sword of Truth fanatics (I am one as well… believe me, I am one), thank you
for believing in me as a patron and a friend. I hope I can do for you what so
many have done for me. Dark Red Bear, thank you for everything you’ve given me
and just for letting me be your friend. Hunting with you is a complete blast and
I couldn’t think of doing anything else but that (well, aside from quests of
course!). Chin-wa Hoshin, we have known each other since the first Kigaru…
that was well over a year ago… thank you just for being my friend through
everything, both in-game and out of game. Jaril Gaidin, thanks for helping me
with my GSC awhile back (last year! You hold a grudge for a long time huh?), and
just being my friend. I wish you could’ve gone with us! Cerulean Dragon II,
Kristopher, Shifter, and anyone I’ve missed who’s @told me and told me about
reading the journal… I love writing it and I hope it can help people… to
know people read it means volumes to me and I don’t know if that can be
replaced by anything, both material and spiritual, in this world. Thank everyone
for taking the time out of their busy schedules just to read what I have to say
and to help me along. Just… thank you. And an until next update, good hunting
and happy adventuring. I know I will have some!