A Merry Ri-Shin To All!

Project Gorgon doesn't celebrate Christmas, but it does observe the Human celebration of "Ri-Shin." No idea where the name comes from. Perhaps it's a head nod to the anime character in Kingdom? But according to the P:G wiki, it's the name of a druid that ended up being called the God of Plants and Trees. TREES!

The Kur Mountain tree, where the weather outside is frightful.

And "Trees" or rather "Decorating Trees" is what this celebration is all about in Project Gorgon!

In each town across the map, you'll find a tree and a quest giver. Each quest giver has 4 quests that will net items that eventually decorate that town's tree.

The Serbule Tree looks great next to Echur, a kooky monk who likes mind-altering drugs.

Once you fully decorate a tree, you can then head back and collect a present from underneath it every day.

The players like to pitch in too. There's a legendary player in the game known as "McNasty."  He's taken it upon himself to top each tree every year with his tombstone as his own kind of tradition.

Good on ya, McNasty!

I've only completed 4 or 5 of the trees so far, but my very favorite tree can be found in Rahu.  I love it solely because the person in charge of decorating it is a rather naïve Raksasha named Zhao who doesn't know much about the human celebration of Ri-Shin.

He's turned to a human, edgelord necromancer named Daniel MurderDark in his town for help and advice on what should adorn the tree.  Mr. MurderDark told Zhao that it'd be "awesome" to have a skull for a star and to wrap it in severed ears and lemons. I love Daniel for that . . .

Daniel and McNasty share similar goals.

It's definitely been a fun distraction from the daily grind. Also, any NPC "friend" you've made in game through gifting and favor quests will also give you a prize when you talk to them. My bags have been overflowing with junk they've been handing me. I've gotten everything from Dirt to epic quality rings. Friendship during Ri-Shin is a beautiful thing!

One cool thing I discovered during the celebration of Ri-Shin is a skill called "Gadgeteering." Say you're a player and you want to give random gifts to other players . . . you could sit somewhere and hand them out, but through Gadgeteering you can create your own gift box of sorts and place it under the tree for others to discover!

Candy Canes for everyone! Um, or at least the first 10 to click the box . . .

I'm not very high up in the skill yet, but I took the opportunity to clear out my bags of 10 Mint Candy Canes. :)

Ri-Shin should only be around another week or so and then the decorations will be packed away. Hope you all have had the holiday spirit this year and had a lot of fun in whatever you're doing.

Happy Dueling!

Project Gorgon: Of Gazluk Caves and Treasure Cartography

My daughter made a comic for me that shows how things have been going lately in the Gazluk Caves.

It's always the respawns behind me that end in a tombstone ;)

In all seriousness, I've had a great time in the Caves lately. I've been farming like a madman and I'm closing in on that 360k council mark for unlocking the last ten levels in Knife Fighting.

I've been undertaking a bit of fun with Treasure Cartography in Eltibule as well. I mentioned Treasure Cartography briefly in my past post about surveying since they work very similarly. It's netted me some money this go around, but most importantly it's been . . . "different." Farming those Gazluk caves over and over and over can get really mind-numbing. It's good to spice things up.

~~

Time for Treasure Cartography!

1- You're going to want to befriend Yasinda in Eltibule so she'll teach you her ways of treasure finding, so gather up a bunch of magical necklaces and give 'em to her stat.

2- Any time you're running around in Elitibule and you see a grave sticking out of the ground, dig it up. Sometimes they'll have boring stuff in them, but other times they'll have treasure rumors!

3- You'll want to collect these treasure rumors for when you can actually use them. I recommend building faction there in Eltibule with Sie Antry. The best way to do that is to give her snail shells. Snails are all over the place there in Eltibule. It's an easy win. Even at the lowest level of friendship, she'll open up 24 storage slots. Stick your spare treasure rumors in there.

That's a lot of storage for very little work

4- Use a little lore skill called "Moon Phase Check."  It's a level 2 Lore crafting recipe and super easy to come by.  This skill tells you the current phases of the moon . . . both in real life and inside Project Gorgon.  You'll need this piece of information for getting free treasure rumors from the sacrificial idols.

5- Run around Eltibule and map out where each of the altars are on your map. The map on this wiki page is absolutely a god-send. Do it exactly as they have it (except maybe change "Third quarter" to "Last Quarter").

Should look a little like this

6- Gather up the following grocery list of resources and place them in your bags in the following order: A gem, a "drug-like" potion (potions with positive and negative effects), any mushroom, any animal part (like an eyeball), a fish, a piece of wood, a femur bone, one vegetable or cotton seed, a basic potion (not to be confused with a "drug-like" potion), a flower seed, a flower, a piece of jewelry (Rings/Amulets), a piece of fruit, any skull, any recipe, any vegetable (not vegetable seed).

The list on this page might be easier to follow.

Your grocery list should look a little like this

7- The Moon Phase Check you did in Step 4 is going to tell you which altar you're going to start with.  The altar that matches up with the current moon phase is "1", e.g., if the moon phase check said Waning Gibbous, you'd be starting with the altar  at the center north position in Eltibule.

Time to sacrifice!

8- Starting with this Altar, sacrifice the first two items on your grocery list (i.e., a gem and a drug potion). you'll get two treasure rumors in return. If it eats your item . . . you screwed up, return to step 4 and make sure you have the right moon phase.

9- Run to the next altar in a clockwise rotation. If the moon was in a Waning Gibbous position, the second altar is the one found in the Full Moon (North East) position. Sacrifice the next two items on your grocery list and get two more Treasure rumors.

10- Repeat this pattern of sacrificing the next two items in your grocery list with each of the remaining altars as you sacrifice to them in a clockwise fashion.

11- Run to Serbule and buy parchment and ink from Joeh for only the treasure rumors you can actually use.

12- Run back to Eltibule and craft your treasure maps once you zone in.

13- Use the treasure maps to run to spot it tells you, click the map again and PROFIT.

Now . . . a word of caution . . . if you're on a really steep incline when you click on your map, it may get swallowed in landscape geometry and you won't be able to get your chest. I cri everytime.

~~

And that, my friends, is the basics of treasure cartography in Eltibule.  I haven't gotten to treasure cartography in Illmari yet, but it's on the list.

Happy Dueling!

Project Gorgon -- Something Smells Fishy Here . . .

I did it! I hit level 70 in Knife Fighting yesterday and then stared down that long long tunnel hoping to find a way to gain 360,000 councils to buy access to levels 71-80.

via GIPHY

It's not all hopeless though . . . I mean I did this before for Animal Handling. It can be done again! It just takes a lot of self-control to not buy anything for a couple weeks and as long as you play steadily and do your daily missions every day . . . I got this.

In the meantime, I turned my attention to something else: Knife Fighting Synergy levels. What are those? Lemme explain that.

Each combat skill has a certain number of levels that can be earned by hitting milestones in other skills -- both combat skills and other skills alike. It's how I was able to obtain level 83 in Animal Handling when level 80 is the cap. That's nothing though, if I was to get all the synergy levels for Knife Fighting, then my cap would be level 89 instead of 80 because there are the following 9 possible synergy levels for Knife Fighting:

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

This morning I took a quick look at what I could get done as soon as possible.  I already had Cooking skill way past 10, but my Fishing skill was close as well as Sword and Unarmed Combat.

So I got a basic sword and headed to the Goblin Keep dungeon in Eltibule for some level farming with my high level Animal Handling pets by my side. They make this kind of stuff a lot easier. After an hour, I had level 25 in Sword and that made me level 72 in Knife Fighting

Next I unequipped my weapons and started punching zombies in Kur Tower. I should have brought along some poison resistance by the way, because being poisoned by zombies is the worst part of this experience. After an hour or so of punching zombies, I was level 33 in unarmed combat and level 73 in Knife Fighting.

I guess punching things is the same motion as stabbing things? shrug. SYNERGY!

The next synergy level on my list . . . fishing.

Thanks Shallow Eltibule lakes . . . you helped.

So here's the deal with fishing lately in Project Gorgon.  It sucks.  Why?  Well, they made a change recently that improves swimming.  Unfortunately at the same time, this change kind of ruined the ease of catching fish pre-change.

You used be able to simply click on a fish and tap the "Catch Fish" button. At that point Auto-swim would take over and you'd be guided right to your fish.  Easy stuff.

Now you stay on the surface when you swim unless you press the "F" key to dive down into the water. If you press "Catch Fish" now, it gives you an error message in the middle of your screen that says, "Can't auto-move while underwater. You must swim closer!"

SPAM CLICK, SPAM CLICK, SPAM CLICK, GOTCHA FISH!

Now it's all about how great your depth perception is as you manually swim toward the fish's direction. (Shallow lakes in Eltibule help as well, jus' sayin'.)

The two other options for raising your fishing skill are filleting fish for experience (although it's in the Cooking crafting skill, it gives Fishing experience not Cooking experience) or Ice Fishing.

"Collect Fish" is a little misleading here . . . 

Over in the Kur Mountains a guy named Ukorga will teach you the arts of ice fishing, and even will sell you a saw and string to help lay your traps.  The higher the level of trap, the more time it takes and the better the yield (I would assume . . . I only have the 5 minute traps currently, but they go all the way up to 8 hour traps).

Basically you lay a trap down on some ice, go away and do something else for a while, then come back and see what your trap caught. Super easy and no grabbing of fish.

Also, super boring. I don't know how fun fishing is in any MMO. Free Realms and Wizard101 were about as fun as I've seen fishing get.

Now, the thing that's interesting to me in Project Gorgon is that the Swimming changes that were put in the game were "in preparation" of something else. It said so right in the patch notes.  My initial reaction was . . . OH MAN WE'RE GETTING AN UNDERWATER ZONE!  But, I don't know. It would kind of make more sense if fishing got a little bit of an overhaul.

There is a lot of room for improvement here, and especially considering that fishing isn't even really fishing. It's more like catching fish with your bare hands or setting a trap. I'd love to see fishing boats and nets make an arrival into the world! I'd love to see an actual fishing rod that you cast out into a lake!  There's so much that could be done here.

Not to mention the horrible dead zone that is currently Fishing Skill levels 20-45.  You're supposed to be catching eels and sharks in Sun Vale at this level, but the spawn rates and availability of these fish is abysmal . . . and that's probably because Sun Vale isn't a finished zone. The large rivers that run through the zone aren't even operational at the moment.

Hopefully that changes soon though (like in two days) since we had this cool announcement:

YES! Fun in the sun and sand is exactly what I need.

An overhaul to fishing would certainly make that skill grind up to level 65 more appealing from my point of view.  What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Happy Dueling!

PG Theater Presents: ATTACK OF THE WORLD BOSSES!

Rumor has it that about 3-4 times a year, a special event comes to Project Gorgon and this weekend is one of those times.  This is the first time I've been present for the "Attack of the World Bosses" event, and it's pretty crazy.

That's a pretty rowdy crowd of people, Project Gorgon . . .

In a way it reminds me a lot of the nights spent in Guild Wars 2 as you'd run from World Boss to World Boss as you track a timer on when they'll spawn next. Groups of people both formally and informally form up and pass the time while waiting for the Big bad to spawn.

Insta-death skulls make fighting "Claudia the Hag" a scary affair.

When the Big Bad spawns, you hit fast and hard until they drop. Everyone gets some loot from the body, and then you can run over to a chest and get a second pull for loot.

Yes, I will take some level 80 rarity boosted loot please! Yum!

Unlike Guild Wars 2, a nearby portal will whisk you away instantly to the next World Boss that you need to defeat . . . unless you didn't defeat the boss that was near the portal, then it's locked down and you'll have to hoof it old school style to the location of the next boss.

This year, since the Fae Realm is new-ish to the game, the event has a new added boss in the Fae Realm that is your final stop in the event before it resets in four hours time.

Behold the Hot Flash!

Yes, that's a giant phoenix and yes, her name is Hot Flash.

Hot Flash has been causing a few problems, and the devs even paused the event for a bit this morning trying to improve the experience. Really the problem here is two fold:

1- The portal leading to Hot Flash is actually quite a run to where you fight her.  This leads to everyone dying on the way to the fight spot as they agro Basilisk Controllers, War-Trolls, and all kinds of big baddies.

2- After everyone is actually at the right spot, Hot Flash is surrounded by two other giant phoenices named Spark and Ember. To make matters worse, Spark and Ember also have boss level Blinding Wasps that accompany them . . . so . . . it's a lot of death and dying while just getting set up.

Basically, everyone dies 4-10 times just trying to get to the area and separate Hot Flash from her sisters. It's a bit of a mess, but that RARITY BOOSTED loot at the end plus two event keys is so worth it!

Hot Flash subsided . . . now bring on the loot!

The event only lasts a couple days, so now is the time to log on before it's gone for another few months!  It's really fun to be in a mass of that many people and see how you're stacking up to the real heroes of Project Gorgon.

Oh . . . to have the damage output of ProfessorCat or Mirromorka . . . 

All in all the event is a huge blast . . . just don't be like me and forget to turn down your graphics quality . . . I crashed out when running Ultra graphics.  My computer just couldn't take it. Missed out on some great loot a couple times because of it.

There's a lot of particle effects flying here . . . just sayin'

Happy Dueling!

Arisetsu, Vol, and Zek: Love and Lore Notes from Project Gorgon

I've been playing in the cold and snowy mountains of Gazluk lately trying my best to win the friendship of one Rick Snapley. I've talked about him before since he's the go to guy for training Knife Fighting.

If this was real life, there's no way I'd really want to hang out with this guy, but in Project Gorgon I'm trying my best to become "like family" with him so I can train all the deadly Knife Fighting skills.

You see . . . Rick's favorite thing to do is to get drunk and play with knives. Sounds fun at first, but it's going to lead to a lot of blood, bandages, alcohol poisoning, and hangovers. As for things Rick likes as gifts? Yeah, he'll gladly take poison of any kind . . . even poisoned food and drink (LOVES 'EM!), and he'll also gladly take any spare magical knives you've got floating around in your inventory.

Can you really trust a guy like, Rick?  Really?

Rick runs a little shop in the New Prestonbule Ice Cave where he'll buy anything you throw at him. Luckily for cash strapped travelers, he's good at that. Before this gig, he was (get this) a happy dealer in stolen goods from Jawas and Sand People, erm, well, uhh . . . "desert thieves" types if you get my drift.

His saving grace of course is his heart of gold for his Raksasha girlfriend named Sona. He saved her from the Jawa and Sand People types and hauled her off to his super cold cave in Gazluk to protect her as he nursed her back to health. I guess that's one way to get a girlfriend! OHHHHHH!

Anyway, while trying to become thick as thieves with good 'ol Rick, I've also done a few of his favor quests. The one I completed most recently is called "Blankets from Ghosts," and it has some very interesting lore behind the strange abandoned city nearby that's full of ghosts.

Behold the ghost-filled town of Prestonbule

Now, ghosts in Project Gorgon ain't your typical undead. Upon first glance they appear shiny and golden and when you start to attack them (because they will attack you on sight), you'll notice that you aren't doing much damage to them. Why? Well, you need to "stun" a ghost first before you damage it. Yeah, I don't get it either, but it's a cool mechanic, right?

A "Horrific" Ghost? Well, she is trying to punch me I guess.

When a ghost turns white, THEN you can damage it. Shield or Hammer skills are perfect for fighting Ghosts, btw. Between the two there's tons of stunning potential.

My turn to punch, Ghost Lady!

I digress.

Now, Rick lets  you in on a little secret. The "New Prestonbule" cave is actually the old storage area of "Prestonbule" aka the area of Gazluk with all the abandoned ghost houses.

The other odd thing is that the people that originally lived in that city were worshipers of a goddess named "Arisetsu." She's the goddess of Hope and Warmth. What in the actual heck are a bunch of goddess of hope and warmth lovers doing in Gazluk where your body temperature drops like a rock the moment you step outside? Nobody knows but old Arisetsu herself I suppose.

Anyway, the reason there are ghosts here is because orcs raided their town and slaughtered all those followers of Arisetsu.  But get this, Arisetsu HATES undead!! Feels like salt in the wound.

Let's rewind a bit . . . who is this Arisetsu besides the goddess of Hope and Warmth? Hmm? So here's the deal, you can find a book about Arisetsu in a house in Serbule. It's called "The Gods, XI: Arisetsu." By reading this book you find out a few things:

1- Arisetsu used to be called simply Aris. She was only a minor goddess of Warmth. She became the goddess of both Hope and Warmth after the rebound from an event called the Autumn Felling where  half the population of elves died including the grand poo-poo of Elven Gods, Cae-a-lee.

2- She birthed three minor gods named Elshana, Errana, and Dreva, which kinda took care of Arisetusu's newfound responsibilities of "Hope." since . . . you know . . . her kids all were minor gods of things which give hope to the world, like creativity and sex (blush).

Inside new Prestonbule Cave you find out just a little bit of extra lore about our dear Arisetsu from a Lorebook there called "Classic Stories: Arisetsu and Vol."

3- Arisetsu, the Goddess of Hope and Warmth, hooked up with Vol, the God of Death, in order to escape death of her own. They have love spats, but it works.

And finally, if you do a hangout with Gloria Stonecurl, the priestess of Arisetsu in nearby Mountains of Kur, you find out this cool Lore tidbit:

4- Both Arisetsu and Vol hate undead.  In fact, it was probably Vol's influence on Arisetsu that makes her hate undead so much.

. . . so, back to my original thought, ain't it weird that a bunch of Arisetsu followers now inhabit Prestonbule as undead? I THINK SO!

Undead are typically the work of Vol's angsty emo brother named Zek. In a book titled The Chalice Saga, we learn that Zek likes chilling with Necromancers . . . the unfriendliest kind of necromancers.

So . . . to complete my lore-conspiracy-theory-post here that you've been reading . . . My thinking is that the orcs didn't just raid Prestonbule for kicks, but that Zek himself riled them up and swooped in with his undead-ways to completely piss off Arisetsu and Vol.

GASP!

Wouldn't it be interesting if someday players entered into the realm of Acur, the dark dimension of Angst through a portal in Prestonbule, which was opened up by Arisetsu and Vol themselves? I SAY YES!!!!

This pulpit in the Prestonbule church would be the perfect spot for a portal to Acur . . . just sayin'

 . . . and that's all I got to say about that . . . but let me know what you think in the comments below.

Happy Dueling!

Luck be a Survey Tonight!

For some reason our friends over at Project Gorgon headquarters like to spice things up every once in a while by throwing down a bonus to a random tradeskill. I like it! It reminds me of the exclusive member benefits they run for Wizard101 subscribers.

This weekend was all about the Surveyor's Luck benefit, which doubled the harvests you get from the surveying skill.

Rather be lucky than good

I was looking for a great time to jump back in to the Surveying Tradeskill and this was it! I've been needing a bunch of metal for improving my Blacksmith Skill, so this weekend's event was the perfect excuse.

Lemme break this down a bit for those that may not know how to get started with this tradeskill. First, head on over to Serbule Hills . . .NOT Serbule . . . Serbule Hills. It's a different zone. In fact, it used to be the newbie zone in Project Gorgon before they got that fancy Anagoge Island newbie zone.  It's the zone just south of Serbule.

Next, find the inn in Serbule Hills. It's actually called the Tapestry Inn, and it's off to the left of the road from zone in. Inside you'll find a lady named Jamie Fatholm hanging out in the corner just minding her own business.

Go bug her.

You'll need to build faction with her first by completing a couple of her quests or by giving her gifts of things she likes . . . like magical bows, gold, silver, etc. If you click "Small Talk," in her NPC dialog box, she'll tell you the things she likes.

After this you can then train with her in the arts of Surveying! . . . which eventually are also the arts of Mining! . . . which are also eventually the arts of Geology!  Never forget that this is Project Gorgon, where one skill leads to a bazillion more skills.

Once you have the skill, buy parchment and ink from Jamie and use them in the tradeskill window to craft Surveying maps. Once you have a Surveying map, click on it while looking at the map, and it'll show you a big red circle and some text telling you how far away the metal is.

GET THEM METAL SLABS BOIS!

Run to the middle of that circle, click the map again, and BAM! Your map disappears and you are given whatever gems or metal was hiding in that spot. AND, you'll get a bonus if you did that quickly.

I typically like to load up my inventory with about 20 maps, click them all, and drag and drop the maps in a kind of a big circle. Since I have four inventory tabs, I'll usually divvy them up by dragging and dropping maps into an inventory bag according to which section of the map its deposit is in.  In other words, if the target is in the top left of the map, it stays in inventory bag 1; if top right, bag 2; if bottom right, bag 3; and in bottom left, bag 4.

When you 're dealing with 20 maps at a time, organization is the key.

Then you just run alllllllll around the zone clicking on maps and collecting metal and gems for like a half hour.

Now the big question . . . is it fun? Well, a few of us were complaining a bit about Surveying in chat the other day and it went something like this: "If you like wasting your time by running around in circles and clicking on things, then boy have I got the tradeskill for you!"

It's a necessary evil, but I think it still has a little bit of fun to it given the find and chase aspect, and it's definitely profitable. At the end of the day, do you mine in any MMO for fun?  I doubt it. Surveying in lower zones actually feels relaxing to me. You just zone out and do it zen style.

NOW . . . if you want to step up your Survey game even further (and have even more fun) . . . you should give Treasure Cartography a shot, but that's a different post for a different time when I'm feeling up to the task of explaining how phases of the moon in the real world affect the way you hunt for treasure in Project Gorgon. whew.

Happy Dueling!

That Sweet Sweet Smell of Industry in P:G

I remember the first time I ran past all the vendor stalls in Serbule and laughed out loud at all the people standing in a row selling stuff. At the time I thought it worked just like Everquest where you step up to a platform and type a slash command to set yourself as a vendor. Spoiler alert: it doesn't work that way at all.

There's an NPC called Selphie that will train you in the arts of "Retail Management." It'll either set you back ~18,000 councils to train Retail Management outright, or (if you're a sucker like me) you can raise your Industry skill up to 25, and then it'll only cost you ~1,000 councils.

yes, yes Selphie's gaze is unnerving  . . . is her name a pun? I think so?

The way to level your industry outside of retail management is to complete work orders. (I talked about those a few posts back.) Yesterday I found two sweet work orders for leather armor I could fashion that netted me just enough experience to crest into 25.

Now that I had retail management, the next thing to do was to find a vendor to hire.  Yeah, those rows of people standing in stalls weren't players, they were NPCs that players hire. (That's a step up from Everquest, right?  Pretty smart on the dev's behalf too because keeping your computer running all night logged into the bazaar was freaking annoying and I'm sure it also consumed a lot of server resources.)

That's when I found someone with an equally unnerving gaze as Selphie, and her name is Nirillora . . . the vendor standing in stall B-13. Hey! B-13 is my favorite vitamin! Orotic Acid! The vitamin involved in the synthesis of phospholipids, nucleic acids, and bilirubin!

It's not her fault she looks like a smurf gosh dangit . . .

I like Nirillora's style, so I hired her for 250 councils and gave my shop a brand new shiny name.

Am I right?

I have a surplus of leather! Let's do this! Now for a shop tagline . . . hmmm . . . .

GET IT, BABY, YEAH!

The next thing to do is to set your items to sell with a price tag, and that's it.

Get yer leather here, fellow Gorgon freaks!

This morning I logged in to see how Nirillora did overnight and waiting for me was ~7000 councils .  . . although none of the profits were actually from leather.  Nope.  You know what sold?  Stomachs, poison, and rage to heat potions. *shrug*

Thanks for the business, Sarsparilla!

So pretty good night I'd say, and I'm up on councils made vs. spent, so I hired Nirillora for a second day and . . . ouch . . . the cost went up to ~350 councils. At least I gained a bit more Industry experience while hiring her.

The cost seems pretty punishing and makes selling by the penny profit model a difficult task. I always wondered why players never sold really lowbie materials in their shops, now I know why. A newbie couldn't afford the prices you'd have to put things at if all you sold were lowbie items.

OH! BY THE WAY! I must say this to anyone reading this post that may be thinking of using the player run shops. Rather than pecking through each shop trying to find the item you want, you click on the little pink golems running around.

These little guys help you search for what you're looking for. I didn't realize this until I was like a month or two into the game. You're welcome.

What's with all the B shops selling Crude Leather? Only the Shop Golem knows . . .

Feel free to drop by my shop "Leather . . . Am I right?" and buy all the stomachs you can. I ain't cheesemaking just yet. Have at 'em!

Happy Dueling!