Project Gorgon: Enduring the Axiom of Semi-Real Hassium

Project Gorgon continues to be the quirkiest MMO I've ever played, even at current end game. Likewise, it continues to be frustrating, difficult, and yet rewarding all at the same time.

Lemme break down a few things that are happening in my game as of late.

1- The constant grind of daily quests. 

This is absolutely necessary for me at this point in my game.  If it wasn't for my guild running the Daily Dungeons and Daily Fae Realm hunts, I don't think I could continue on because they are worth anywhere from 10k councils ~ 20k councils (including loot) each. You need that money to fuel skill advancement and at the high end of the game, it gets EXTREMELY costly.

Though I call them a "grind," it is a fun chance to be social in game. They are fun for that for sure . . . especially when we're running a guild group where everyone seems to know each other and feel a bit more relaxed.

I don't know if I've ever broken down the daily quests in a blog post before, but basically . . .

A- You take a daily quest from an intelligent mantis in the Casino named Qatik

Remember kids, hats = friendly mantis.

Qatik offers you new excursions everyday to the far off locations of The Winter Nexus (full of trolls and ogres), The Wolf Caves (full of, you guessed it, wolves), The Dark Chapel (full of occultists and dragon roaches aka droaches), and The Yeti Cave (full of bad graphics . . . and yetis).

Daily Excursions are basically group encounters for 3-4 players around level 40-50: Wolf Caves and Yeti Cave being the easiest, Winter Nexus is a step above those, and The Dark Chapel is the most challenging of the bunch.

B- You also get the daily quests offered to you by Agrashab in the Fae Realm

He's a friendly giant! Rich too!

Agrashab is a Troll God, who has an avatar of himself  hanging out in the Fae Realm.  Every day he sends you out to complete a new bounty of "kill 10" elite mobs.  These are typically enemies you wouldn't want to face alone in the Fae Realm. the payout again is between 10k and 20k councils (including loot) each . . . it also pays in the form of Royal Jelly, which is a needed component in leveling your skills to 80.

Do a dallop of dailies! Now don't be shy!

~~

2- Surveying, Mining, and Geology ftw.

The Developers of Project Gorgon once again turned on the double Surveying bonus event this weekend and once again we were all running around clicking on maps and hunting down gems and precious metals.

I took this opportunity to really work hard on my mining skill because I have a strong need for Superb Metal for Superb Thowing Knives, which is the current cream of the crop best metal (and throwing knife) in the game.

Because of this I was able to see exactly how the game switches things up at high level. Last time I talked about Surveying, I was kinda mid-skill level range.

BY THE WAY . . . huge props to the people who invented the Survey Helper app. As long as you have two monitors, this method of tracking your surveys is an absolute time saver. I talked a lot in that last blog post about taking time to arrange surveys in a path. Survey Helper kind of made that an unnecessary step for me and I cut my surveying time in half.

At low level you're clicking on maps and running to clearly defined locations on said maps to gather a few goods.

At high level you're clicking on similar maps but instead getting a "guess-timate" of where you'll find a "motherlode" of metal. The crafting components needed for the motherlode maps also creates a barrier. For the Ilmari Desert maps, you need magic sand, which is a pain in the kiester to obtain. You basically have to farm evil Raksashas out in the desert and hope for a rare drop. For the Gazluk motherlode maps, you're going to need something known as Semi-Real Hassium.

"A warm crystal that seems to constantly grow and shrink" eh?

So, in the real world "Hassium" is a metal that only exists in microscopic quantities and only lasts a few seconds. There's no commercial use and it's only made in scientific studies by bombarding isotopes of lead and iron. I had to look it up.

In Project Gorgon, Semi-Real Hassium (whatever that is) is only available from a still-to-be written NPC fox named Fluffikins.

 . . . building favor with an NPC I don't know much about . . . yup . . .

. . . can I just end my blog post there? "only available from a still-to-be written NPC fox named Fluffikins"? 

Well bless that little fox's heart . . .  and all the cute little tombstones around him . . .

But to make this quirkier . . . Fluffikins will barter for Semi-Realm Hassium in exchange for yellow glowing gems that will give you "a mysterious illness" that causes you to die if you stay in contact with it long enough.

Don't mind the radioactive gems right near the water well . . . nothing to see here.

. . . seriously, can you sense the frustration of this yet?

But you first have to make Fluffikins like you by giving him large amounts of this radioactive gem . . . or egg-based foods . . . or small metal figurines.

. . . sigh. I'm not kidding.

All the while, you're in the high-level zone of Gazluk, which has a cold atmosphere that eats away at your body temperature and is full of mobs (I'm looking at you cold-magic using skeletons) that shoot beams of energy that also steal your body temperature. Dropping to zero usually means a slow death.

. . . foot starts tapping anxiously

This is the only place you can mine these radioactive crystals, and you can only mine a spawn of them once every 24 hours.

 . . . THROWS KEYBOARD! DUMPS DESK! LEAVES ROOM VIOLENTLY!

Layers . . . upon layers . . . upon layers of complexity and barriers. Do you see that?!

That said, I managed to get my first two semi-real Hassium just this morning.  I may end up actually mining after 3 days of favoring up Fluffikins and dying repeatedly to radiation sickness and cold exposure.

~~

 3- Leveled up and Unlocked!

A- Endurance . . .Figuratively and Literally. 

In the midst of all these dailies endeavors. I managed to open up my player stall again and sell a bunch of stuff the past few days. This money coupled with the money I earned from daily quests I was able to purchase my Endurance level up just last night for 260k councils, which left me at a grand total of 700 councils to my name late last night.

B- Knife Fighting 88!

Here's what's left of the checklist of Knife Fighting Synergy levels:

1. Cooking level 10
2. Cooking level 60
3. Fishing level 35
4. Fishing level 65
5. Orcish language level 25
6. Sword level 25
7. Sword level 55
8. Unarmed combat level 33
9. Unarmed combat level 55

Notes since the last time I talked about Knife Fighting synergy levels:

• The new Sun Vale fishing made getting to level 65 in fishing a breeze.
• Sword 55 and Unarmed 55 were definitely grinds, but the combat exp buffs from a couple of Saturday Poetry Jams really helped.  I basically wandered about aimlessly in the Fae Realm while letting my pets do the majority of the heavy lifting until the deed was done.
• The guild has been hitting Gazluk Keep lately after our dailies were done, and this allowed me to finally grind up enough experience to hit that 25 Orc Language.  It's not easy to do. Period.

So all that's left is Cooking level 60.  I'd love some tips if you got any!  It seems to be a scary impossible slog to get to that level.  Please leave any suggestions you might have in the comments.

whew.

Happy Dueling!