The return to iRO. The never ending grind fest.

So I never really thought I'd get back into the game too much. More like a casual sign on to see what's new and be on my way.

Well, turns out Gravity has done quite of a bit of changes as far as "grinding"/leveling goes. It's almost actually enjoyable. What's even better is the revamp to the party system. People actually love partying with one another as opposed to the straight solo grind fest for endless hours alone.



So, enough babbling.

On to what I did today.



From this,

To this!

To this.

All in all, very good leveling speed towards heading to a Paladin. Which is a class I've always been really curious to play.

Rare find for the day. Not really rare or worth much, but whatever.

Also got a bit of leveling done on other characters too,

Now this character is quite special to me. Never thought of deleting him due to an event that happened. He's the main reason. Anyway, all though he was a quick job 40 priest back in 2003 when it was a must to go job 50 before trans, I'm glad I decided to go job 40 with him. Hey, it doesn't even matter now cause it'll just go back to 1/1 when I trans. :)

My pride and joy. The character that started it all. Finally got him from 106 -> 107. So many more levels to go.

The return

So it's been quite a while since I've used this.

Instead of continuing on here, I will be breaking different events into different sections to keep everything organized.

Street Racing

Authorities have been putting the squeez on underground street racing. This is all a part of a crackdown by police on the illegal street racing subculture that is “suspected” in 13 deaths.

I sit on the fence of this issue.

Street racing is not a recent culture formed by adrenaline seeking youth. Even though now a days it seems like those that did it in the past have some grudge against the racers of today. The muscle car era of the 60’s saw tons of cars coming off the showroom floor built solely for the intent of racing and plenty of them found their way onto the streets late at night “picking up groceries” at high rates of speed.

In fact long before the original Fast and Furious came out in 2001 there was a large and strong “street racing” subculture. I myself was a part of it. At the time we would have 400-500 cars together on a Saturday night, no fights, and no wild things going on. In fact, cops and other authorities would actually hang out with us in the parking lot, sometimes joking and popping their hoods on the squad cars. There was a level of respect between our world and authorities. They knew that it was easier keeping an eye on us in one or two spots than it was all over the city. We lived peaceably for quite some time. We were a sub-culture and liked it that way. Not a lot of people knew what we did and why we did it and we liked it like that. Fast and the Furious changed all of that, it glorified our lifestyle and made it bigger and louder than it was. At first we paid no mind to it and enjoyed the movie from the car and music side and laughed at the Hollywood twist on our lives. Unfortunately it turned our lifestyle into a popular trend. Everyone wanted a turbo charged import, to stay up late, blare their music, drink, do drugs, do burn outs and race anything and everything.

In the past we had an unwritten rule system in place. It kept people safe while satisfying our needs. The new kids came in with no intention of learning or respecting those rules. They knew what they saw in the movies and expected it to be that way. From that point on groups of cars hanging out in parking lots were broken up quickly spilling hundreds of people onto the streets going in different directions. Now instead of 2 policemen being able to patrol and control a group, it now requires an entire unit: cars, personnel, even helicopters at times (yes, just like the movie).

Thankfully over the years since the original F&F and with the second F&F sucking balls, the trediness of our sub-culture has died down some. Yes it’s still a lot larger than what it was but those who were not really a part of our group are filtering themselves out and moving on to the next trend Hollywood is telling them to follow. If the local government would just revert back to their old standings they may be presently surprised at how easy controlling the group really would be again.

Until next time, drive safe and keep the shiny side up and rubber side down.

Inactive

Yeah yeah, people from work have been bugging me like mad to update. Not like I really write anything interesting anyway. :P

Anyway, sorry for the lack of updates I guess. Haven't had too much time to really blog anything since everything has been so busy.

I'll try to bring up an update soon.

Eclipsed

My Mitsubishi eclipse was stolen.

It is a very sad day.

Ragnarok Online (Saturday Run)

Today I spent most of my day on RO which is something I haven't done in quite a while. Not surprisingly, the game is a bit more active with players then it usually is on weekdays. Though, the numbers aren't improving. OD2 is even taking a hit when it comes to "AFKchemists" lol


Anyway, I was up pretty early so I decided to see if I could grab Phreeoni.














no luck on any drops. =/
Spawn time is a bit harder to keep track of, but its not as bad as Gravity originally was going to have it set up.

After I decided to do some job leveling. I want to be able to make my own pots and bombs so I won't have to buy as many. Job level is only 40 which is pretty sad for a biochemist that's almost level 97. Job levels plus the Potion Creation + Potion Research skill is what effects your success rate. None of em are at a decent level.















-Bombs Away-




















Job Level! So many more to go. All at a costly price lol.


Here, I went to help a few friends and the results,


















Bio3 is fun, but it sure does take its tolls on a bad day.



Mid-day, I actually got a AL3 party with my scholar. Which is something I haven't done in months due to it requiring 3-8 hours of party setup, and then another 2-4 hours of actual leveling with the party.


















Party went smoothly without any wipes. Got a couple nice items to that we diced for in the end.













































Not too bad I guess. Not great items but I guess its better then nothing at all.



OD2 was a blast today. Most people get pissed when they DB down their but I enjoy it. Especially when they get lucky with bio3 monsters (except for Hwizard lol). Spent probably about 25~30 min clearing it up along with everyone else. Made a nice amount of job, but I lost 1% lol. I'm soo close to 97, but I always keep dying. =/

Thats about it for this post.

11.3 Patch on iRO Chaos/Loki/Iris

The 11.3 update "Nameless Island" will be updated on the main servers with Tuesday April 15, 2008 maintenance. Several exciting new features like the Abbey, new equipments, and a conclusion to the epic quest storylines that have brought the Kingdoms of Rune-Midgarts to the brink of war. Also 11.3 also introduces the new WoE SE system featuring new Castle maps, strategic battles, and powerful new rewards. The current schedule for WoE and WoE SE is Wednesday 3-5pm PDT Saturday 7-9pm PDT *For WoE points System the new WoE SE castles will begin to be counted immediately on all 4 servers starting with this Wednesday 4/16/2008. For any questions regarding Ragnarok online or this update in particular please visit our Forums. Thank you Gravity Interactive, Inc.









So the patch finally arrives.

A lot of things were added in this update. More of a headache then anything else though.

All my AI's were overlapped by the original (and horrible) AI that comes from iRO directly. Luckily I had them backed up on .rar files. There was en error though. The Homunculus AI was conflicting with my Mercenary AI which was causing constant error pop ups making the game unplayable. It took around 2 hours to finally figure out what went wrong. I won't go into specifics cause I don't feel like typing another paragraph.

So anyway, I myself haven't really experienced much of the patch yet. We'll see what happens through out the week.


Highlight of the patch is the following,






















Yeah, people basically died left and right once it hit the main part of prontera. This MVP is extremly hard, and nearly unkillable when its near so many people. It's probably still alive as I type this.