Train, Train, Train, Farm, Farm, Farm...

The title about sums it up! It's pretty much what weekends have turned into; major pet training and farming days. It's been kinda fun, though very chaotic at times. In fact it has really taken away from the little bit of family time I usually get.....well, that and certain people that don't get that I am busy when I tell them three times or so.

After training Emeraldflame's and Winterbane's pets that I am working on...getting the energy down to zero, I took them both to the ravens where a friend, Michael Owleyes, joined me. A friend of his joined us and we all spent about an hour and half, I think, farming them. We all got pets...I think I got 3 more Silverback Wildclaws(at least) between my two wizards.

We then went to farm Kanago for the Myth Leprechaun. Michael's friend got one. Michael wasn't so lucky there, hope he gets his soon! I wish I could have given him one of mine cause I ended up with three between my two. Winterbane got her second and I took her out in hopes that it would let Michael get his...but that didn't work. Before I left to help out other friends Emeraldflame ended up with The Last Leprechaun....almost sounds like a movie, eh? (Hint:Think Friendly Necromancer here.)

First Myth Leprechaun drop:


Then it was on to farm the secure house...which I am not convinced does much, but I enjoy the company of my friends...so whatever.

After that there was more training for Emeraldflame, then some for Nightshade, I am not entirely sure what happened after that. I think I was going to start on Jadeblade but was asked about going to Kensington...so I did that...twice.

Hmmm...Saturday...Most of it was a blur, more farming, I'm sure. Then there was the party for Autumn from Homework in Graveyard. It was total chaos. My old friend Blaze Rubyleaf ported in to me not knowing what he was coming in to. After all he didn't know me as a blogger, nor does he care that I am one, nor does he read any blogs. But he was always a great friend to me. It actually confused and freaked him out some when he saw the crowd of people and all the running around and screaming in CAPS. He left soon after and we continued to talk in whisper. He is a really good, solid kind of person and seeing all those people acting so insane was a bit much.

I really felt bad for Autumn, even though she couldn't be there...and in a way; maybe, for her sake, it might have been good she wasn't. I mean the party was for her and all anyone could talk about was "Where's Friendly?"....*sigh* While Friendly is very important and respected by us all, there are times when people need to give a little respect and admiration to others as well. After all; are we not all members of the community? Well, then, we all deserve our moments to be ours and not overshadowed by another. I think Friendly would probably agree with that too. I so wish people would think before they act and speak more often, but that is asking too much, obviously.

Friday, I did do some farming then. I was on a real roll with the Hall of Valor...and I mean I was enjoying it. I really enjoy those dungeons there in Nidavellir, For one thing it has really great snack drops for Storm pets. For another thing; it's such a different atmosphere to battle in compared to the same old DS garbage. And while I actually do enjoy MB and the characters there, as well as the music...it is a city; and I am not a city person. Besides, there, in Nidavellir, is so much blue, aqua and green there...it's so beautiful.

So I was farming there and our beloved Pet Master, Edward, wants to drop in. He is always welcome farming company. We always seem to have a good time when we battle together. So we went through there maybe 5 times or so in the Hall of Valor. I got more Lifebats and Death Trolls. But I also got this Silver Colossus...

...now I just need that zombie out of there.

How about all those Firebats, guys? My Fire wiz is now well stocked in flappy-winged friends. Nice on KI's part to give those to people. Of course I had spent 3 days, at random times, trying to farm it from the Gurtok Barrier Demon and had finally won one beforehand...LOL!

Well, hopefully the weekdays can be a little more calm. Maybe mom and I can actually talk on the phone and go farm for her missing Ice gear.....that would be nice!
She started up a Death wizard a week ago and is already level 16 or 17! That is awesome-sauce! She has been doing it completely on her own too, so that is really great! I know I will try and help her out when possible and when needed.

Other than that I am hoping to do a little solo farming early in the day...if I'm awake. Sometimes it's nice to go back to the basics of that and do it all at your own pace and not have to worry about what anyone else thinks/wants...haha!

And, of course there is always: more training! Taz, my Stormzilla is up to Ancient. I am not seeing anything wonderful out of him and really hoping he will get SOMETHING at Epic. Of course that will take forever, though. However I think I am making pretty good progress with him. I am also working on my Storm Serpent and so far it's giving me both Storm Resistance and Storm Damage bonuses....not bad!
Most of my other wizards...I am working mainly on their defense pets, except with Death I am working on the Wraith. Wraith pets seem to, at least, consistently give health.....Umm, gee, don't you think Storm could have used this more??? But it's still nice to see some actual progress being made with the Wraith...instead of wondering about my poor Taz ever having any potential at all.

One thing I can say safely, and really I don't care one bit if you disagree: The pet does not make the wizard. So even if my Zilla isn't great(*still loves Taz anyway*) it makes me no less of a Storm wizard *sticks tongue out*

Until next time...

See ya in the Spiral!...

Has KI Opened the Door to the "God" Character?

It's just a thought, but I think that KI may have produced some "monsters" in the creation of this new Advanced Pet System.

I can understand and I can appreciate the new pets and their possibilities, but I am wondering if there should be more of a limit on certain talents(and possibly some derby skills...but I am not going to speak derby here since I don't know enough on those to form a good opinion.)

There are certain pets which, we, as consumers of the game who have bought Gift Cards or bought crown item pets, may now give us a huge advantage over others in the game. Is this really fair? Certain pets that, before the APS(Advanced Pet System) went Live, came with what we now call "talents" or "skills." An example is the Defender Pig with it's 6% (now starting) Global Resistance, or the Dream Ghoul with it's +50 Health and +50 Mana(the ghoul is a minor example as that is nice to have but really doesn't "give" much advantage, really.) Although for the heck of it I trained Val and Esmee's ghouls up the other night until they ran through the 5-6 snacks I allowed them to give their pets, and I did see a rather steady increase in the health and mana, just in that short time they trained them.

But there are other talents out there, such as resistance, pip boosts, accuracy, which could create the feared "God characters." No longer will everyone's stats from the same school with the same gear make and level you "equal" until you duel and find out who is really the best strategist. Now, there is the addition of what extra boosters the pets give....and many of them differ from one pet to another, even with the same pet types.

Some of the pets that give these bonuses are no longer, and may never be, available again. And even if you could get one; in the future you will start with a blank slate when you buy that gift card/pet because it has yet to hatch and will only be a baby. You will not know exactly what to work on for a certain pet. I know it's reasons like this that my friend, Kevin Battleblood, is working on his Petnome Project, and that is with the help of the community, and also is in need of even more help. Read Kevin's latest post to see why this is so important and that even if you post something someone else has already that your post is just as important as the one who did it before you.

My issue with the entire pet system is that there are some pets that will probably never be available again, and those pets are also able to manifest certain skills that would make a wizard in PvP(or even PvE) nearly unstoppable, especially if they know what they are doing. I think some of these pets need to be tuned down a little, like all the pets with Dragonblade that were released over the holidays. Those pets were already special without the added skills. And I am not saying they shouldn't have those skills, but how high do these skills really need to go? I am sort of glad that the sheep pet is basically an extremely rare ornament, because how fair would it be if Friendly's and Olivia's sheep did something that none of our pets could ever hope to do? And what if they came with an especially rare card on top of that?

For PvP Storm may already have an advantage since we are the ONLY ones, now, who can even have Wild Bolt. It has been discovered that anyone other class that had previously held an enhanced Wild Bolt in their treasure cards have now turned into Lightning Elves so KI was on it with leveling the playing field with the Bolt situation that was causing such a problem in PvP. It IS actually fair that we(Storm wizards) have it when you consider the weaknesses of Storm...it really is a spell that no one else ever should have been able to use in PvP because people stopped using their own schools and relied on Bolts to reach the highest ranks, thus taking away any strategy that a real PvP person would enjoy.

But imagine a Storm wizard in PvP with full Grand gear or the best accuracy arena gear(whichever is higher since I have never compared the two,) and a pet that makes their regular Storm attack accuracy better than Life when applied to their own school card attacks, plus the pet gives a rare card that makes them even stronger. KI has just created the "God character"....and it's a "monster."

With pets giving additional accuracy(as well as resistance or pip chance,) and the possibility that you might be able to mate certain stackable characteristics into future generations of pets, it could be possible, for Storm especially, to obtain 100% accuracy(and if it could go above 100...it would also be that,) or at least close to it. And if enhanced Storm spell attacks are used in combination with all this gear and pet as well; we will never miss, unless a Dissipate, or Black Mantle, or Smoke Screen is used. No other school gets the accuracy modifiers we already do with just our regular GM gear. Our GM gear brings our regular 70% accuracy to 85%, comparable to Death and Balance...and getting us closer to Life. Now, if you have a pet that gives you even more...or even better a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th(or even farther down the line) generation pet with stackable manifested accuracy talents....it could be very possible to approach, and even surpass those numbers(if going above 100% were possible in this game.)

Other schools could possibly use this to their advantage too. I do believe some pets give other school specific accuracy boosts. I know I have seen Ice, Fire, Myth, Balance, Death accuracy modifiers in pets(as I have at least one pet from each that gives all of these. I don't know if there is one for Life(I only checked my main account so it's possible I might have one on another account that gives this....though I doubt that this would exist. Actually, all a Life wizard needs is a pet that give a global accuracy boost and work on that and see how far it gets you, though I have doubts you will reach 10%, but I could be very wrong about that too...maybe you can. I would believe that after seeing pictures. But, really, that already 90% Life has is high enough. Even I, as a Storm Wizard, do not think it's fair for any school's accuracy to be higher than Life. Equal to Life; sure...why not? It's no longer a game when you can virtually guarantee a result.

I always thought it was the intention of MMOs to NOT give such advantages to the very, very few, and I thought that most of them tried their best to keep a pretty even playing field so that everyone could at least have the chance to excel if they applied themselves, and without out the use of such rare, and mostly purchased items.

Has anyone out there ever read or watched .Hack//SIGN or any of the other .Hack anime? In those shows and graphic novels there is always someone within the game with an extremely special and rare item which unbalances the game.

By the way, for those that don't know .Hack//, it is based on a game called The World, which is a MMO, which all the characters in the book/shows are playing. I recommend it to any gamers out there as you will really be able to appreciate the thoughts and feelings that those characters have who are playing characters in a game....just like we are. They also develope the same sort of relationships/friendships with each other and the feeling of community, much like W101.

The difference with .Hack// and reality is that in .Hack// the ones with these items didn't chose it to happen. In fact they are just regular people who were trying to escape reality a bit and be in a different world(called an MMO.) In fact the first character introduced in .HACK//SIGN was a loner with a serious health issue occurring and they were actually physically stuck within the game. They really just wanted to be left alone but they were given this gift(a hack) that made everyone want to come after them because it didn't belong in the game, it was a hack(not created by them) and gave the character access to areas that gave him special privileges, even though he really didn't want the attention that was received because of these privileges. He was only trying to escape and be left alone, and was also trying to figure out who he was since he had sort of lost his own personal identity on being stuck within the game.

Now, in reality, one with these additional abilities could also be making the game unbalanced, but to the point where they might start believing themselves unbeatable. Not that anyone is truly unbeatable. All it takes is one slip up. But when the chances are increased so far in someone's favor because of an item it really creates a huge imbalance...not to mention the ego trip that the one with the item would suffer, making them almost unbearable to be around.

Anyhow, those are my thoughts on that. I do think we all have some serious potential in our pets. The problem is no one knows what it could be right now, for sure, unless the pet already had a bit of a headstart....such as with old crown and gift card pets with resistance(Defender Pig for example,) pets with extra pip chance(possibly other than the level 48 pets,) accuracy, the crown ghoul and spider that use to give health and mana from the get go. By the way has everyone noticed that the pets in the shops, now, that use to have these bonuses, are now clean slates since they have yet to hatch? But I think we should all try to contribute to Kevin's Petnome project, even if you only fill it out one time; it will help everyone when it is finally able to be put together into something that we all can read and obtain information from.

The only thing that I can say stinks on training pets right now is that we could seriously mess up our pets to the point where they are useless house decorations. I have a suggestion I wish KI could hear:

How about having an XP buy back for pets? Some of these pets we have and are trying to obtain and train might be impossible to near impossible for us to get again. AND if we train them and the pet is forever ruined because we were trying to figure out what it could do; well, that is a HUGE loss in my book. I don't plan, nor do I care to, have multiples of any one pet, so usually the one I have is the ONLY one I have...and I really don't want to mess them up :-/
But if there was at least a way I could wipe my pet's XP back down to zero and start over if I messed up(and even if this is only do-able with Crowns,) I might feel a little better about experimenting with my pets.

I have other news but will post it later on. I wanted to keep this post only about this topic.

See ya in the Spiral!