Zak JQ - Conquered!

As you might already know, i really really suck at jump quests… and because i so hate jump quests, so far i've only clear the zak jq ONCE on my hero… that is, until yesterday.

I'm pleased to say that i managed to complete the zak jq on my pala… and in about an hour… that's half the time i took on my hero…! glad to say that my jumping skills have really improved a lot from last time… i guess all the mini jumping from jqs and event quests really helped!

ok, time for some picture spam!

1st stage cleared… took only 15-20 minutes.

And after a much longer time, i cleared the 2nd stage. (even had a 30-40min break for dinner in between f3)

And that's the 6th-10th eye of fire i ever got… LOL… my hero still has like 3 eye of fires left… all from the only time i completed the jq ><

Now that the zak quest is out of the way… i've got to get my ACB basic… after that i'll have to lvl up and worry about all the skill books… since i didn’t train my ua earlier, i didn’t get the free mastery book they were giving out that time… haiz… I'll need to buy pretty much every single book… i wonder how much that's gonna cost me zzzzzzz. The only consolation is that i made some mesos yesterday from selling my aquamarines and bronze plates… now i've gotten my DB, UA and WH all in the business of mining… (now that if i have the time to log in and mine on them all). Gotta earn some $$$ for all the skill books… and than there's the axe my demon slayer will be needing too… (now that's if i train it much in the 1st place)

Wonder if i'll be able to get my ACB w/o problems… *prays that it drops on the 1st zak*

Hmm in other news, palas really have godly defense. I maxed out my shield mastery yesterday and now i have like… 6.2k def! My hero only has something like 2.9k! CRAZY! And I'm not even using a shield with much WD… only using my outdated (but still trustworthy) maple shield. HP pots? What hp pots???? Ani guard hits me 1 damage, angry franken also hits 1 damage… the problem i have though, is that my mp runs out really fast… like at any guard, keep having to go to the healing place cos i ran out of mp (and the pot have yet to cd). Went mltc to level up that last 0.5%… didn’t die, but gave up cos i ran out of mp rounds ago and the mobs keep refusing to drop pots… -.-'''

Ah yes… us 3 musketeers gathered together for scar/targa on sat… (well because i shamelessly asked them to help my ua helm ><)

Pathetic drop rate… not a single scar helm dropped, and only got 2 targa helms… flame's striker gained tons of exp though… and my ua got 12% per boss… not too bad lah… oh that time boss b3 was hitting me like 1k damage? when i remember to threaten that is… (w/o threaten it hits like 1.5k damage) that was w/o shield mastery. Now? I'm positive it'll hit me 1 damage too… noob boss ha! Even than… for the boss run i didn’t use a single pot… neat eh? hp recovery ftw! Now I'm wondering how's gonna eat the tons of milks my hero collected from various bosses over the years… f3

Ah yes… with the free beauty coupons… i changed the look on my UA and hero too… hero i was more shui bian already… cos i took really long on my UA… actually it’s the 3rd time i got this hairstyle already… 1st time i was totally white (actually, now not much diff, but i just sick of hunting coupons), 2nd time was dark skin, which i don't want… and 3rd time i got the hairstyle… is this loh. With the ultra qian bian face… actually, my hero has quite a qian bian face now too… and the eyes look really weird when i smile o.o

Thanks law n flame for the helm! XD

 

Ah found the SS… my hero and the creepy smile

look ok lah the hair… not super nice but not very ugly either… i like it (and kept it) cos it matches well with the wings and the evan hair perm cs item...

Ah this… see that purple number there? that's how much angry franken hits me for XD

as with the any guard… XD

a bunch of 3rd jobbers whacking ani… took us so long to defeat him :( i got 4% exp and a 100% str cape scroll for my efforts… :X

 

Ah… since i made a bunch of meso with the mining materials, i went to get my hog… at 1st i was contemplating waiting till 4th job before getting both at the same time, like i did with my hero (cos that time i no $$$) but now since i remembered abt the hog (and have the $) i decided to get it 1st.

charge blow animation is pretty!

actually i had to try a total of 3 times to finish it f3. 1st time i finished but with about 10 secs or so left. While i was standing there wondering what to do, the clock expired and i got sent out… and when i leave the portal the quest items were gone f3. Hey i thought i have to protect the damn pig for the full 5 minutes! 2nd time i spent too much time hitting the chests for the report and the pig died on me f3. 1st time i was hitting aliens for a while and wondering why the reports weren't dropping… than i saw… OH the BOXes *face palm*. blur right… totally forgotten how to do the quest since my hero got the hog long ago… all i remember was that you have to protect the pig so that the pig will drop something for you… (the pig kept dropping the mardi gras beads too, so irritating!). The only other char that has a mount is my evan - paid $$$ for it only because i like the look of the blue dragon. And i didn’t have to protect the hog for it. 3rd time finally succeeded, and got smarter and actually went to click on the npc to complete the quest f3. 

Ok, so i got my saddle, and the mob riding skill. But no hog… yet.

There goes my mesos… u robber!

now i can go off to catch my pig.

i was like WOW OMG A RARE HOGUL. 1st time i see a treasure mob. But after killing it, it dropped me a wonderful 2 zebra tickets. PAWNED by the penalty. zzzzz

There, finally got my hog. I was looking for my monster rider skill in the beginner's tab and was starting to panic when i can't find it… than i remembered there's the mount tab f3...

hmm… what was this SS for again? Well needless to say, the old fox hits me 1 damage only...

 

k, that's all for now XD

All Play no Work

Ok… so i gave in and wasted the whole of my past two days playing. 1st was trickster, than was maple.

Tried out monster park on my UA, and leveled from lvl 81 to 100… AND collected a bunch of beauty coupons and changed my UA's look. Now i got a nicer looking hair, but whiter skin and a qian bian looking face...

meh… someday i'll sort out the SSes and post them… but just not now yeah...

So now my UA can wear most of my hero's eqs already… just need 1 more level to max CO, and 5 more levels to wear my flairgrave.

Next up will be getting a scar/targa helm… and than i'll have to worry about doing the zak jq and to get my ACB basic… :X sighs… jump quests are my absolute greatest enemy really...

Trickster wise…. i managed to complete almost all the quests in the rose garden - just the garden, not the dungeon… -.-''' with my driller girl pet though, i've managed to dig out over 3000 boxes… and a bunch of quest items (but that's only when I'm not really afk-ing, else I'd die) like rose petals and all...

Digging is fun for a while, but than it starts to get frustrating really soon… and than I'd be worrying about whether my mouse will break from the repeated clicks etc… and whether my parents will starting getting suspicious of my regular, repeated, loud, mouse clicks. At least its quite loud when you consider how quiet the night is.

Ah i went to whack tombeth too… the boss fight itself is easy as pie - its quite a joke in fact… however, the trials to get to the boss is quite a bother…. and involves a bunch of drilling as well… thank goodness i have my driller girl… i shudder to think of all the drilling quests i have ahead of me… such a pain in the ass really… :X at times like this i couldn’t help but wish i was a lion… it'll make all that drilling so much easier… at least I'd be able to see where the items are on the floor so that each drill will guarantee an item...

Thanks to all the $@$@#$#@ of trials you have to do to get to the boss, i got sick of fighting the boss pretty fast… and no boss eqs in sight either… what i really want is the shield. there are like… only 2 shields in game that can be comped with darkness? right now i don't have a single eq with darkness attribute on them… and since i've gotten sick of killing mobs one by one, i decided to go the gravity crash route (I'm not for pvp anyway)… so i won't need darkness attribute for a while yet… but i can't help but start to think about it… the pluto staff in myshop is great with 60% darkness, but i was actually aiming for the lvl 170 set… planning to buy that whole set together with the pet and all… my idea is that if i want to spend, i will buy the highest lvl eq and the highest lvl eq only… the bad thing about being a dark lord is that…. i really have no idea where to get my darkness attribute from… with me being a 1441 dragon at that… my hp is only 1k+ if i were stripped of all my eqs. But since i've gotten my hp shield and tons of other eq that gives some hp (including a hp comped cape), i have about 9k hp now… the rather high luck i have means that i actually block and avoid quite a lot of hits, but when it fails my hp can get eaten up quite fast. So far its quite alright though, i don't have trouble at my training grounds (not anymore that is, before i got all that hp gear it was actually a huge problem). So if i were to comp darkness into my shield, it'll be sacrificing hp… if it goes into the pluto staff (i might still buy that, on top of the lvl 170 set, but it'll still be quite a while before i actually buy it, i need to at least get my skills 1st…!) I'd be sacrificing luck… and luck is very important for arrow rush… maybe we won't use arrow rush much when we have the rest of the skills? i don't know… but I'd certainly have a few piece of eq and I'd switch them around according to my needs… well it's always been that way actually… with trickster you can hotkey your eqs too and change them at a moments notice. The bad thing is that I'm running out of space on my 1st set of hotkeys soon, and if i were to switch between the diff sets of hotkeys I'd have to press the numbers 1,2,3 etc… something that might get things messed up during my fighting… we'll see… when i just restarted playing trickster last year, i kept pressing on the number keys instead of F1 etc and that got me dead a few times -.-''' so i guess I'm a bit paranoid on that.

Hmm one thing similar about my dragon and pala… they both can heal, and i go around w/o hp pots on my dragon… something that I'd soon be able to do on my UA… well not THAT fast… but in doing pqs my hp pot usage was practically none…. even in monster park my hp pot usage is quite low… only limited to say at the boss stage of the higher lvl-ed monster parks… (having a dk in the pt of cos helps…) and my hp recovery skill is only at lvl 8 (9 with CO)…

I wonder how I'd do my 4th job skills. ACB will be up 1st - that is if i can get the basic book… after that… oh yes there's of cos the mandatory 1 point in rush at the beginning. I'd probably do 1 in sanc early on too? After that… i don't know what to add… why? cos the way you lvl up in maple has changed dramatically… instead of the old sch grinding at skele, or TT, or even LHC… now its all about PQs… i guess I'd get blast asap for bossing (even whacking bosses in pqs… but how about the rest? Like the ever so delicious blocking, and the almighty sanctuary aka heaven's hammer. I think unfortunately i'll leave out holy charge till much later… I'm even contemplating putting blocking before holy charge… (oh of cos, stance is a must have, that'll probably go right after blast) hmm we'll see… (if my char even gets to 4th job in the 1st place… i now have a loads of job stuck in the 100-119 level range - evan, db, mech - so close yet so far… just a few more levels but…)

Meh, as with trickster.. reading and contemplating the future possibilities is always more fun than the actual training… especially in trickster where there's a whole lot of stuff about the eqs to read. the bad thing abt trickster is that the documentation is much worst than maple… like even the guides… all of them are like 3 or 4 years old… and not only have some new skills been introduced, the mobs have been completely revamped… and the eqs… ah, let's not talk abt the eqs… I'm still having a headache with my dark attribute thing… (nope, not a single guide suggesting where to get your dark attribute from… they only say u need 114% dark attribute for staff of agony to out damage dark lance, and 134% for scythe to out damage dark lance - both of which conditions would be met if i just get a pluto staff)

okok… i think that's enough for now… till next time!

MapleSEA Ares Gateway - Epic Fail!

Couldn’t concentrate on any work yesterday… and felt the urge to maple so I restarted my comp to XP and tried to maple… was planning on training my UA a bit in the monster park and all… BUT….

The Ares Gateway crashed! Couldn’t get in at all! PRO! After that i went to check the forums and apparently it has been down since like 7pm (was 10+pm when i tried to login).

This afternoon there were still complains of crashes, server instability etc etc in the forums. EPIC FAIL… what else can i say???

In part i forgot that it was the march hols (since its still school/fyp time for me), and during holidays you get more lag etc… but an entire gateway crash??? In the past this was quite unheard of… seems like maple has only gone from worst to… even worst :S

And i don't foresee it to get better either...

 

In the end i went to play trickster… took a long time to patch my trickster since the last time i played was like in Nov last year… My timing to log in was just nice though… it’s the poppuri event now and that means… WHEE!!! the driller boys and driller girls pets are back at last! I got so sick of drilling for quests last time and was really wishing i had a driller pet to help out… so i took the chance and got a 15 day super driller girl… trained a bit at tap1 to get that last level i needed to use the lvl 140 pet… (before i bought it of cos)… decided to get the super driller girl for the extra weight it gives… managed to get like 9X hunter boxes yesterday… and after 1 night of digging at desert beach, my pet drilled over 950 boxes out for me… neat! wondering if i'll continue letting it drill in the desert beach for boxes… or if i'll move somewhere else where i can get some quest items too… only problem is where else can i go where i won't risk dying :S maybe i'll stay in the desert beach place after all… drills are free too there… i'll need to whack some mobs for the hunter boxes tho… intending to get at least 400 of the boxes for the rewards… wonder if i shd whack in some noob place - where i can 1hko with my noob mana storm,  or go somewhere to quest/train at the same time. Ah now that I'm 140, i'll have more quests at the rose garden to do…

 

ok, that's all from me for now.

7th March… so much things happening

So much things happening so the 7th...

1st there's my friend's bday dinner + clubbing (for someone who has NEVER been clubbing before, this IS a BIG deal. BIG deal as in the $$$ I'd be spending in that one day :S)

than there's arashi's 37th single release

and the apple announcement (iPad 3 or iPad HD???)

finally there's the Monster Park release on MSEA

 

i guess i should have mentioned it before, but i totally forgot about it...

 

so tomorrow we'll finally get monster park eh?

that'll make leveling much easier and give ppl an alternative to PQs, since the removed the party exp bonus from areas such as LHC last patch...

 

sighz… maybe i'll try and log in and give monster park a go… not forgetting to take an abundance of screenshots to share here.

fyp's been unforgiving… okay, that's all for now.

Megu and Bejeweled butterflies

My megu finally evolved! its not a flaming fireball… i have no idea what triggered the evolution though… seems like absolutely nothing to me. At 1st i was thinking maybe they'll force me to bring it on an adventure before it'll evolve, but i didn’t do anything other than feeding and cleaning and it evolved… o.o oh wells… that's good alrite.

Bejeweled (iOS) has a new update! Now there's a new mode, butterflies! its hard but fun… some time back i was still debating whether to buy the mac version since it has the butterfly mode, but the price is kinda ex… not to mention that once u played bejeweled on a touch device, you won't want to play it on the  computer anymore….

so this mode is quite unlike the diamond mine mode in the sense that its not timed. i.e. - you don't have to rush. Its a turned based thing. Basically, butterflies will appear at the bottom of the screen, and you have to match them before they reach the spider at the top of the screen. Once even a single butterfly hits to top, its game over. Each turn more gems will turn into butterflies, and each of the existing butterflies will move up one spacing unless they are 1) matched, or 2) the gems directly on top of the butterfly is matched. If you make a match below the butterfly, it'll still move upwards before falling down as the gems below are removed.

The key about the game is productivity. make sure that all you moves are not wasted. Either get rid of some butterflies, or try and make some power up gem… always check and see which column has butterflies reaching the top and work on those columns… quite a few times i didn’t notice the butterfly at the top till the spider ate it :X also happened to me twice was that the butterfly was on the verge of death already, and i happily made a 4-in-a-row match directly below, without realizing that it'll create a gem there and NOT move my butterfly back down and poof! game over -.-''' I'd never thought those power up gems would one day be the cause of my downfall tsk...

but those butterflies can build up really fast w/o the help of power ups to mass remove them… especially at later parts, the whole screen is practically filled with butterflies and butterflies only… w/o a bunch of power ups exploding you're pretty much dead… at 1st you still can let butterflies be if you see that it can make a match on its own accord in a the next turn or so, but soon you shd just make the match manually cos some other gem could just turn into a butterfly and than there'll be no chance to make that match anymore.

hmm, that's all i've got to say… some screenies at the end and that's it for now!

New badges for butterfly mode

my high score so far: almost 1.5m points