Taking a good look in the Mirrorworld in Runes of Magic

I've been jumping back into Runes of Magic lately. One, to say hello to my old guildmates and friends. Two, I wanted to play a bit more of the side activities that I never did. Honestly, more reason one than two, but man . . . I kind of fell hard for the Mirrorworld Instances in Runes of Magic.  

Mirrorworld debuted back in March of 2016 in Runes of Magic. It had a different UI and instance cadence back then, but in 2017 everything kind of changed to the way it is now in 2022.

Mirrorworld UI showing its plethora of dungeons

To get started, you just talk to a dude named Hagris Rya. He'll put you on the quest chain. Hagris then kicks you down the line to Aylin.  Once you have those quests from Aylin, you're good to go.

Up in the very left corner of your main screen, you'll find a button that opens up a pop up UI that will then allow you to teleport into a whole slew of daily "level 90" solo instances, but here's the thing, these things are going to be a little tough right at level 90.  That's when I first tried them and nope'd out of them.

I think the real reason most people don't play through these instances is that they overload your backpacks with an amazing amount of "stuff," and you're instantly like . . . "What the heck do I do with all this stuff? This is ridiculous!" That coupled with getting kind of owned right at level 90 probably left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths if they were anything like me.

"Moony" the wolf boss in Mirrorworld

Runes of Magic feels predatory ALREADY with the amount of stuff they cram into your rented inventory space, so getting a metric ton of drops from an instance feels . . . bad. You just know it was done on purpose this way, and that nagging feeling is a turn off. So, now that I've torn away the band-aid on every Runes of Magic player's boo boos, let's talk about why these instances are pretty cool.

Reason one: At level 100, these instances are kind of a cakewalk. As a returning level 100 player that needed to get his bearings for which buttons to click again, it was a perfect combat primer.

Reason two: The main yummy treat you get from doing these instances are called Mirror Shards. Look, you could delete all the other stuff these instances give you and be just fine because there's a vendor in Varanas named Forkas Garry who will trade you item shop potions for those Mirror Shards. One of the main things I used to buy in Runes of Magic was a potion called the "Big Angel's Sigh." Big Angel's Sigh is your 24 hour insurance policy against accruing XP/TP debt when you die.  Playing the game without a Big Angel's Sigh running is nerve wracking, and at high levels, that debt can be scary to work off. Forkas Garry sells these for 30 mirror shards. Done and DONE. 

For me the Big Angel's Sigh and the Golden Eggs to feed to my pet are reason alone to do these instances. Over just a few days I've already stockpiled 20 of these Big Angel Sigh. Outside of those, there's also luck potions for sale . . . if you're an item farmer, you'll want those.

Reason three: Every Mirrorworld dungeon hosts a boss at the end. Every creature in the dungeon drops a "heart" of the boss in the dungeon. If you get 50 of these hearts, you can "summon" that boss to give you stat bonuses while you play.  You don't actually summon them like a pet, which is unfortunate. It'd be kind of cool to have these dudes follow you around, but there is a whole UI built in the character screen to house your summoned Mirrorworld boss.  

You can summon two of these bosses at once. Each boss features different stats, but the real cool thing is that if you summon the correct two bosses that have synergy with each other, they give you an additional skill.

For me, I'm running Garsit and Tatuin. Garsit provides extra intelligence. Tatuin provides extra physical attack. So, while Tatuin doesn't really help me as a mage, the combination of the two gives me a new skill called Prayer of Destruction. Prayer of Destruction gives me a big boost to magical damage every 10 minutes.  Well, it will eventually give me a big boost to magical damage, but at its early levels, it's just kind of a nice little, um, barely noticeable, extra dps.

The laughable Prayer of Destruction Buff at level one

To improve your stats for your summons and your new skill you need to do two things.

Thing one: Evolve your summoned boss.  You do this by collecting hearts. By the end of this whole evolutionary nonsense, you're going to need about 6,600 hearts from each boss. considering you get anywhere from 10 to 25 hearts per run, it'll be anywhere from 600 to 300 runs to get all the hearts you need to fully evolve a boss. Since you can typically only run a boss 2 to 3 times a week, this could take a few years to complete.

Thing two: Level your summoned boss. Each evolutionary step of a boss allows you to then level your summoned boss by an additional 10 levels. To do this, you'll need a metric ton of 12 items, and THOSE ITEMS are what clog up your bags when you run Mirrorworld over and over: regular, good, and rare quality scrolls, shards, bottles of ink, and cards. 

BUT WAIT, IT GETS WORSE! There are three colors of each of those 12 items: red, green, and blue. Each boss likes one of those three, so if you plan on leveling all the bosses, well, that's 36 items. It's a lot and you'll end up having to dedicate an entire bank tab and a half to just Mirrorworld items if you really want to level these guys. 

Is it worth it?  Man, I don't know!  I'm only a week into this and my level 10 Garsit is really only giving me an additional 300 intelligence.  Unfortunately NO ONE has filled in how much intelligence you'd get for a max evolved and leveled Garsit on the wiki, so it's a bit of a mystery for me.

Really it sounds like there are a few ways to play this.

Gather 'em all up, and melt them down

Playstyle one: Collect all the things! Level all the things! Evolve all the things! Keep all the things!

Playstyle two: Collect only the things I need for the bosses I want . . . chuck the rest except for the mirrorshards.

Playstyle three: Trash it all. I ain't doing that.  Just keep the Mirrorshards.

Playstyle four: I'm not getting caught up in ANY of that. 

So there you go, that's basically the gist of Mirrorworld. Every day they give you 3-5 free tickets. If you haven't tried it, give it a shot. The Wiki has a lot more detailed information on this game feature, and if this post has whetted your appetite, go give it a read.

Happy Dueling

Sheesh, Runes of Magic! Enoch already!

Over the past couple days I've had some time to quest through the next island of the Shamtaem Archipelago known as Enoch.  You know, Noah's great grandfather from the Bible.  Just kidding -- I'm sure the zone in Runes of Magic has no relation . . . unless for some reason this entire zone is somehow taken into heaven and never seen again because it's just that good. . . until then, no relation.

Nebula Woods Camp, in the Nebula of Enoch

No Enoch plays out pretty much in the same way that Tasuq and Korris did.  You start out by going to help Kerley Hill set up a camp yet again (which is already set up of course), and then uncover more nefarious plots by the Inexorable League. 

Kerley is again on the hunt to analyze the spatial transfer of the area. Right outside that first Nebula Woods Camp are hidden Angren "lionesses" known as Lurkers.  Invis mobs are a total pain to deal with, but after a few minutes you just come to accept that every 30 footsteps you're going to run into one until you're about 100 paces outside of camp.

Silent but deadly?

Angren are to Runes of Magic as Vah Shir are to Everquest or as Charr are to Guild Wars. You know . . . conflicted war-torn lion people.  The people in the Nebula Woods Camp are convinced their anger has something to do with the Inexorable League, so you know what that means . . . it's cat person killing time!

Don't worry, cat person killing time doesn't last long, instead it turns into cat person HELPING time. Just down the road from the Nebula Woods camp is the Jadefang Outpost where the friendly "Leonine people" of the Angren race are chilling. 

It's Angren vs. Angren out there! We must even the odds!

As it turns out this entire tribe of Angren was living in Northern Janost Forest (remember that place?), and they and a faction of Elves known as the Jyr'na were both transported to the island through some kind of magic.  When they arrived at Korris, the welcoming party there was . . . you guessed it . . . the Inexorable League.

Kadnis!  She's a plant demoness!

Kadnis from the Inexorable League cast a big nasty spell and now a good chunk of Enoch known as the Twilight Marsh is shrouded in Eternal Darkness. Half the of the Angren and elves fell to dark magic, and the other half are stubbornly good, which is good news for us since they will give us plenty of quests and gold to line our coffers in exchange for our assistance.

Twilight Marsh in perpetual darkness. Like my brain around 11pm, but all the time.

Eventually you'll make your way past another camp of NPCs, who send you into the Twilight Marsh -- it's scary in there, and then you end up in the Azure Lake area, which is a breath of fresh air.  There's another really stellar daily quest here where you capture "adorable mutant" flowers.  I also "won the game" when I found the cutest quest item the Runes of Magic offers . . . a little frog.

it's cute

Yup,  that's right. I can finally stop playing Runes of Magic, this frog has won the game for me.

The last stop off in Enoch is a terribly unforgiving area that's densely packed in with enemies called the Demon Bastion.  I've died here plenty of times just running around . . . just trying to talk to a quest giver even.

Why . . . just why?

Side note, listen up designers . . . never . . . NEVER EVER EVER . . . never put mobs next to a quest giver.  You may be thinking . . . oh! It'll be a fun challenge to get over there and talk to the NPCs with these two enemies just standing here right by them. DON'T YOU DO IT.  Just don't.  Ever.

A lot of the quests in this area simply have to do with trying to figure out what the Inexorable League is up to in the area and once again leads to a dungeon zone (as is the reoccurring theme in the Shamtaem Archipelago islands). 

Some day I shall visit the Sun Temple of Eternal Sleep, but for now it's off to Vortis, our next destination in Runes of Magic.

Behold the entrance to the Temple of Eternal Sleep. The very place my brain wishes to be at 11pm.

Happy Dueling!

Of Korris! It's no problem in Runes of Magic

And just like that . . . another island in the Shamtaem Archipelago has been cleared of quests by the Vampire slash Telekinetic known as Stingite in that crazy MMO known as Runes of Magic. 

Korris . . . it's like a poptart. Frosting on the top half, and Regrets on the bottom half.

Well, I cleared it all but two quests up there near the entrance to Ice Blade Plateau.  That's a dungeon. I'd just need to convince a group of high level friends to go clear it with me before I could really call Korris complete, but this is close enough for jazz.

Korris is kind of an interesting island. For some reason, half of the island is covered in snow and the other half is a jungle.  

Hillwatch camp down in southern Korris. They watch hills here.

Why's it so crazy?  Well, I blame the League of Inexorable Gentlemen! That's right, the Inexorable League continues to be our main antagonist as we travel through the end zones of Runes of Magic.

It's freezing up here in Northern Korris. She really needs to put on a jacket.

As it turns out, The Inexorable League was conducting experiments on creatures in the Shadow Camp of Tasuq to "measure their spatial magic adaptability" . . . whatever that means. Seriously, some of these quests are like reading a technical manual on how to gaslight players. 

Said . . . what?!

Basically, the Inexorable League won over the cyclops and minotaur tribes to their cause. The cyclopes are just power hungry. The minotaurs involvement was a bit more . . . hard to understand. Because of this, the good guys, aka the Hand of Balance, need your help with all kinds of crazy stuff in Korris.

One of those crazy stuffs is a great daily quest that my guildie, Misstreat, showed me, and I've been running circles in Korris ever since. Minong Marluqi in the Icefog Camp wants you to take Fluctuation Sensor readings in two locations, one down in the warm area of Korris, and one in the cold area of Korris. Yes, you are playing a fantasy game, and no, this isn't Star Trek; although, I gotta say, a Fluctuation Sensor kinda sounds more sci-fi than fantasy.

That's "Minong Marluqi" or "M&M" for short.

Run that quest 10 times a day and you'll end up with 8.3 million exp and 1.1 million gold. Easy stuff.

All in all, I enjoyed questing through Korris.  The difficulty in the game keeps ratcheting up and sure enough Korris is a bit more difficult than Tasuq, but with the passing of time and a couple premium currency purchases, I'm staying ahead of the curve and surviving the best I can.

I like the variety of enemies you can find in this zone and who doesn't love killing cyclops, right?

Just LOOK at that cute, little stupid face! 

To be honest, and I'm pretty sure you can tell this by my lack of posting lately, I've been busy and haven't been playing a ton of Runes of Magic. Currently the hot thing to do in game is to (once again) farm Coins of Petals. You can turn in 800 coins a day for 8 orbs of 5 million peak experience. Crazy, right? Even crazier, this event is going on all month. This all seems to be part of their 13th anniversary for the game. woot!

So that's it for Korris and it's now on to Enoch.  I've already quested through the main line there, but I still have to conquer those sidequests . . . should be fun!

Happy Dueling!

Tougher than Tasuq in Runes of Magic

It's my 3-month-a-versary in Runes of Magic, and I'm very much sitting in end game currently with a 100 mage / 100 rogue / 100 knight character, but of course, being 100 isn't all that's needed to dominate trash mobs in the end game "string of islands" known as the Shamtaem Archipelago. It's basically Hawaii, but full of mobs that will kill you faster than swimming in a bloom of jellyfish.

The islands get tougher as you travel along them from west to east, and Tasuq is the first you encounter as you travel there from the Moorlands of Farsitan. Just to make sure you're tough enough to handle this zone, you basically HAVE to complete the main quest lines found in Splitwater Coast and Farsitan. I learned this the hard way by having someone teleport me into Tasuq directly hoping to find some new quests there while I was busting my butt trying to level during a bonus exp event.  When I got there, it was quest-less.

If, however, you get to Tasuq by following the "Spirits of Despair" quest line, you'll soon unlock a bunch of quests along the way. For me, my plan has always been to get as far as I can in this quest line on my Mage half and then go back through with my Rogue half and catch all the side quests. So far my mage half has moved past the islands of Tasuq and Korris . . . and is currently sitting at the very end of Enoch about to go into Vortis.  The only island left after that would be Chassizz. That's it . . . That's end game for Runes of Magic.

Peeping in on the Shadow Camp of Tasuq

At the end of every one of these islands is a quest that asks you to go into the dungeon instance associated with the island.  So far, I've just been skipping these. I heard, however, that perhaps a full group of our guildies could do the end dungeon on Enoch . . . if we could ever coordinate a time to actually go through that matches everyone's schedules.  That's the tricky part.  (We're all a bunch of busy adults that live all over the globe.)

So, I paused my Mage's trailblazing and took a break to go back to finish Tasuq with my Rogue half and as of yesterday, Tasuq has been cleared save one or two quests that involve the Vale of Rites (that's the dungeon for Tasuq).

 . . . ignore the tombstone between Repear's Horn and Vale of Rites

When you enter the zone you begin in a place called Silver Streak Camp. The Hand of Balance has set up camp here with merchants and guards. Your main point of contact here is a dashing fellow named Ayden Highlander, the Primary Chairman of the Silvershadow Adventures' Guild. Runic Energy and Spatial Magic have been sensed from this string of islands, and you're perfect for the job of investigating and nullifying threats to Taborea. Go get 'em!

Merchants-a-plenty in Silver Streak Camp

As it turns out, the Hand of Balance aren't the only ones interested in this weird Spatial Magic, there's a group of nefarious evil-doers named the "Inexorable League" led by a demonic sounding Mazzren the Reaper. Every time I read "inexorable league," I can't help but think of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." Anyway, you'll be running into all kinds of inexorable league enemies on Tasuq as they've set up camps all over the central part of the island.

There's the Dust Camp, which sits in area known as the Dustbowl, where experiments the inexorable league has done with this runic spatial magic is causing that portion of Tasuq to become a desert-like canyon. 

Oh no, Inexorable League, what have you done to Hawaii?!

 

There's the Shadow Camp in the Tasuqian Boscage where you'll also find lots of enraged wildlife like panthers, boars, and deer with poofy tails.

Then there's the Reaper's Horn itself, which is a large ominous castle.  That's right, the inexorable league has been here long enough to build a giant castle . . . and so have the good guys apparently as the Grey Citadel is our turf.  

A look inside the Grey Citadel

The Gray Citadel has TONS of quests once you unlock them.  Really the majority of your sidequests all come from the Silver Streak Camp and the Gray Citadel. 

One of the really interesting things here is the re-appearance of elite enemies that are incredibly dangerous. You can even find elite enemies that are boosted with enemy effects like Tenacious, which gives them a 100 percent HP increase. If a battle with some of these elites goes on too long, they'll just hit you with a massive 25k hit or two, and that's a quick trip back to the binding stone.

I would say that Tasuq is the first of your end game "gear checks" as you proceed along the islands the Shamtaem Archipelago. Enemies here are level 98ish and it only gets harder from here. I'm finding that end game gearing is really a money game as you tier up, stat up, and level up each one of your gear items by using mana stones and jewels, all available for sale in the item shop for premium currency.

I've geared up my mage, I'd say about 1/2 of the way to where I'd like him to be. He's currently sitting at around 75,000 hit points with mostly Tier 6 gear that has been raised to +7.  My staff is up to +14 or so as well. All my Jewelry is still Tier 5 as well as my back item.  

The cost of getting gear up to the max of Tier 20 seems to be 100 percent a whale hunter's delight. I mean, 3 Tier 6 mana stones is roughly 90 cents worth of premium currency (let's round up to a dollar to keep the math clean).  3 Tier 6 mana stones equals one Tier 7 mana stone.  Therefore you'll need 3 dollars worth of premium currency to go up to Tier 7.  9 dollars for Tier 8.  27 dollars for Tier 9.  81 dollars for Tier 10.  You get the sequence . . . and that's for ONE piece of gear. 

I don't know . . . maybe I don't have the full picture on gear costs and I've never seen anybody with a tier 20 piece of gear because if you do the math, isn't that like 4.5 million dollars for one piece of gear?  That can't be right, can it? No . . . I gotta be looking at this wrong . . . THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT?! Please someone educate me in the comments if I'm not looking at this right.

Anyway, all I really care about is that I have gear that's good enough that I can do well in instances with my guild mates, and as I said before, I feel like I'm about 1/2 way there from really what feels like spending a minimal amount of money.

Happy Dueling!

Has Runes of Magic Lost their Friggen Minds? Ding 100 AGAIN!

So I log on yesterday and my guildmate, Eni, immediately barks in chat, "Sting, do the event." Therefore, I immediately went to work collecting 100 Coins of Petals, clicked over to Veranas Channel 1, and turned in my 100 coins . . . what came back to me was a 50,000,000 exp orb and 10 1,000,000 talent point orbs. The real shocker came when I saw that turn in could be done . . . 10 TIMES EACH DAY!! That's just insanity.

It's . . . real . . . and . . . beautiful?

So I start thinking to myself, where can I find the largest concentration of low level enemies with the fastest respawn time? I started going around to a few old haunts in Northern and Southern Janost, and they were ok, but they weren't great. Then for some reason I remembered an instance that I've soloed through several times called The Heart of the Ocean.

The Heart of the Ocean is a great instance. You have to complete a quest chain to gain entrance, and I had already done that a month or so ago. The Peak quests I've been doing lately have been really wanting to send me in to battle against the fourth boss there, so I'm pretty familiar with the layout.

Loopy Dungeon is Loopy!

In between the third and fourth boss there's a group of 12 fish warriors blocking your way. Come to find out, these warriors respawn . . . it might actually be the only group in the entire dungeon that does this. If you run the easy instance of the dungeon, only 8 of the warriors respawn, but if you run the normal instance, all 12 respawn.

Thank you for stacking up in a nice AoE right there

Typically none of these respawns drop loot, but during the event, all of them drop a Coin of Petals. So, here I sat and nuked ,and looted, and nuked, and looted, and etc. until I had all 1000 Coins of Petals that I needed.

Roasted Ayum Initiate!

It was boring but effective. The next thing I knew, I was back in Varanas Channel 1 and talking to Frank. (Now that's a good Event NPC name: Frank).

Frank and Friends in Varanas Central Channel 1

Frank gave me back 9 more 50 million experience orbs and 90 more 1 million talent point orbs. I switched my class to my often forgotten 3rd class choice of Knight and made 10 clicks to bring my knight level from 43 to 89 in the span of less than 10 seconds.

It's hard to explain the feelings I felt in that moment. It was a reflection on all the time I spent to get my Mage from 43 to 89 . . . all the quests . . . all the begging for help . . . all the time . . . and really all that I had learned.  Here I was a level 89 knight who had never even played the game as a knight. No, all I ever really wanted from this game was to play as a Mage/Rogue vampire.  That's it.

This morning, I logged on and did the same thing and went back to Frank with another 1000 Coins of Petals. Five more clicks and my knight was level 100.  Five more clicks beyond that, and I had earned maybe half of a peak level.

To be honest, gearing 3 classes for one character seems like it's going to be a lot of work and money. I'm able to survive in Korris with my current gear on the Mage, but my Rogue is still wanting . . . I haven't even thought about gearing a Knight.

Look, I don't want to say that's WHY this event exists (to get a player to the part of the game where they'll spend more money), because if that's the case, they really should have made 1.5 exp the standard exp gain rate in the first place (as I've argued before). 

Overall, this game feels like a multiboxer's delight.  I can't tell you how many people call their characters "toons" in this game, and while that typically gets under my skin because it belittles the time you put into developing your "character." An event like this seems to naturally encourage making multiple level 100 (I'll go ahead and say it) "toons." Throw away characters you can just add to your personal army. Really, it's not odd to see a pile of characters sitting on top of each other with the same name only with a slight variation -- imagine StingiteA, StingiteB, StingiteC, StingiteD, and StingiteE all riding a 7 person bone dragon mount together.  Yeah, I don't like thinking about it either.

I don't know. It's weird. I can't even believe the event rewards are so good right now.  I guess if you really want a max level character in Runes of Magic without all the pains of actually leveling, yesterday was your day to log on and start playing. Not to worry though! You have a full week.  This crazy event is running through January 27th.

Happy Dueling!

Blocked at Level 100/100 in Runes of Magic

So, last weekend on Friday, it happened! I was just doing some simple quest in Splitwater Coast while working through the new Spirits of Despair quest line. Bonus experience was again turned on last weekend, so leveling came relatively quickly. The moment I hit 100 on my Rogue to complete my 100/100 level felt mid-breath. One moment I was getting supply sacks to give to the commoners, then the next moment it all changed.

I'm just a simple vampire riding his spider, helping farmers with their supply sacks until . . .

I immediately received a pop up that told me to stop what I was doing, head over to Veranas, and talk with Leya Peak, who was in charge of giving the quest for peak experience. So that's exactly what I did. I transported back and talked to Ms. Peak about her Peak Quests.

You might say she's well read . . .

I accepted her quest and was immediately greeted with a complex task. Defeat 3 bosses on hard mode in the highest dungeon of the highest zones in the game.  These were zones I hadn't even taken a step in, but the rumors of the difficulty of Vortis had not fallen on my typically deaf ears . . . and I was confused.

That's . . . not as simple as it sounds . . .

I headed over to the guild's discord to ask how one coordinates this task that seemed insurmountable, and I was greeted with the cries of "READ THE GUILD ANNOUNCEMENTS." So I read the guild announcements and found that there was . . . another way! DUN DUN DUN!

That's right. You don't HAVE to do this horrible quest to defeat Zeyj, Sunlight, and the Phantom Anubis, but instead there is a slower and easier way, and that is this: there's a guy who will give you a quest once every two hours. You might be able to do it, you might not. Good luck . . . this is all just part of the grand roadblock between level 100/100 and level 100 (1) / 100.

Basically, you go talk to the Mystery Hermit in Logar (dude's across the way from the Snoop portal on a hill), he has a new target every two hours.  If you finish it, he gives you 3 peak fragments. You exchange 12 peak fragments with the Donkey Merchant next to the Mystery Hermit for an endless star energy. You can get all 3 endless star energies this way instead of doing the hard mode bosses to finish the Peak Level quest.

Me and all the other fools hanging out with the Mystery Hermit and his Donkey . . .

It's now been 4 days since this happened to me, I have 9 peak fragments as of this blog post. Yup. 3/4th of 1 out of 3 star energies. So, the reality here is that most targets from the Mystery Hermit are out of my league for soloing. My lucky 3 targets so far have been a boss in the Heart of the Ocean instance, a boss in the Origin dungeon instance, and (. . . and this is just weird, but appreciated) 30 level 5 bears in Logar.

So, if things keep proceeding the way they have, it'll be half a month before I can proudly exclaim that I have completed this quest. What this has done to me as a player is as follows:

- Completely stopped high level questing.  If I'm going to quest, I don't want to miss out on the exp for peak levels. I'll do low level quests on my 3rd class of knight, which is now level 41. (So technically my levels right now are 100 Rogue / 100 Mage / 41 Knight)

- Increased my daily mini-game playing. While I'm stuck and can't quest, I definitely can play mini-games to earn Phirius Shells, so I can buy a few epic rarity level 100 items from vendors. Malatina the clown, Lylia the child house decorator, Andor the trainer, Mahler the goblin hunter . . . all those crazy weird mini-game types . . . they're my best buds these days.

- Typical Daily Quests are still ok. To play mini-games, you need to do your daily quests because the mini-games all cost Phirius Tokens, which you can really only earn in the mini-games themselves or through daily quests. This is also supplying me with some gold, which is needed for buying crap at the Auction Hall.

My new favorite Daily Quest spot -- 40 seconds to completion

- Logging on every two hours while I'm awake.  Every two hours, I gotta just check to see who's up. Just dropping in to check the Mystery Hermit is my new jam.

- Behold . . . Mirrorworld. I didn't even know this was a thing until yesterday.  I was complaining about how difficult it is to level my pet, and my guildies started giving great advice like they always do. One of them was to make sure to do my Mirrorworld runs everyday.  I'm like . . . what's that? As it turns out, it's a little side system full of mini-solo dungeons where you earn currency to buy stuff like Golden Eggs. Go figure. You can run three Mirrorworld dungeons for free every day.

I probably should also start working on my tradeskills at this point to help feed the money beast. I guess if I'm REALLY bored I'll do that as well. 

Until then, I'll be waiting patiently at the roadblock.

Happy Dueling!

Playing Hoops! Level 70 Elite in Runes of Magic

Seems sometimes all we do in MMOs is jump through hoops, doesn't it? Collect 10 of this, kill 12 of that, run over here, escort this dude over there . . . yada yada yada. It's quests like the level 70 elite skill quest in Runes of Magic that push it over the top though. There's "quests" and then there's "QUESTS!" in all caps and with an exclamation point at the end.

Here's the deets:

~~

Hoop 1: Get both classes to 70.  Not just one class . . . both classes. Got it.

Hoop 2: Head back to Varanas and talk to my man Daris. You remember him?  He's the guy eternally standing in the middle of the ring of class trainers in Varanas.  That dude. Why's he standing in the middle like that with everyone staring at him? I don't know. Seems like that would get old after a few decades. Anyway . . .

Daris . . . forever the center of attention . . .

Hoop 3: Daris sends you to talk to Votakai. Here's the problem though . . . Votakai sits behind a huge army of pixies in the Sanctuary of Balance deep in the zone Chrysalia. Those pixies will agro and kill you dead unless you've progressed far enough in the quest line that they ignore you.  So, not only do you need to be level 70, but you also need to be far enough along in your quest storyline so the fairies don't kill you.

Tread carefully friends . . . pixies . . . yuck

That Sanctuary of Balance is where all the dragons hang out in their human forms when they're doing that dragon astral projection thing they call Sleepwalking, so they need to guard the sanctuary and who knows why pixies were the best choice, but there you go. That's Runes of Magic for you!

Hoops 4-33: So, I didn't get the full gist of why this is happening, but back in a desolate corner of the Ancient Kingdom of Rorazan, Votakai is in his dragon form and is doing his Sleepwalking thing, and you need to protect him from an army of elementals. Somehow you got tangled up in this mess and Votakai is being punished by his elder dragon teacher named Norhonsar?

Unfortunately you can only take the residual heat from 10 of these particular elementals at one time. When you've killed 10, you get a blessing from Norhonsar to protect you and a little trinket called a Proof of Protection that proves you helped out 1 time . . . now do this 29 more times . . . OH!  Did I forget to mention that you can only defeat 10 elementals per hour?  30 hours later . . 

Forever locked in battle!

Hoop 33: You did it!  Now witness your great failure as Votakai dies because he was Sleepwalking for too long thanks to Norhonsar being an overzealous teacher. 

Hoops 34-35: Well, that sucked . . . Norhonsar tells you to take Votakai's soul to 2 random locations all the way out in Tergothen Bay because  . . . and get this . . . Votakai always wanted to see the human realm. Why in the world would you take his soul to Tergothen Bay of all places . . . it's like . . . let's go visit that dingy looking weird zone where bandits are always attacking you out of nowhere for no good reason. That sounds like a nice place! YEAH!

Hoop 36: OK, so now what . . . quest is complete . . . who the heck do I turn it in to?  You'd think you'd go back to Norhonsar in the Ancient Kingdom of Rorazan since he was the one that told you to take Votakai's soul on a field trip to Tergothen Bay, but he does nothing for you. He just sits there looking guilty and depressed. 

No no no . . . listen . . . you need to go all the way back to where you first talked to Votakai and click on a pedestal there. I know, it's strange, and you may not even remember the Sanctuary of Balance after the past few days of jumping through hoops, but YOU GOT THIS!

Hoop 37: Votakai then turns into a dragon ghost, you click on him, and request the level 70 elite. It's a small hoop, but an important one.  I don't know why you get rewarded for failing to keep him alive, but as long as I get my skill, you do you, Votakai. Anyway, yeah, you don't want to waltz away from the Sanctuary thinking you did your quest turn in and now you have your elite skills. Make sure you do that last step or you'll just have to trudge back there a day later when you realize you missed a final step.

Sleep well, Ghost of Votakai. Thanks for the elites!

And there you go!  Level 70 Elites for both of your classes! It's a crazy involved quest just to get a skill that they should have probably just given to you as a reward for your hard work of reaching level 70 in both classes. What'd be the fun in that though, right?!

~~

Personally For my mage / rogue side, I got the Pride of the Baron skill. It encourages me to crit a lot so I can health drain a lot. Time to build a crit monster set of gear?

Pride of the Baron!

For my rogue / mage side, it gives me a nice AOE skill that consumes 10 knives and makes my dps jump while doing aoe damage every tick for 30 seconds.

Got be real . . . this sounds way cooler than my vampire skill . . .

And that, my friends, was an amazing MMO quest. I liked it. Next up . . . the epic weapon?! yeesh I don't know. I have a couple pieces and parts already . . . I just don't know if it's really worth it at this point.

Happy Dueling!

Ding 100 -- Runes of Magic 3x EXP event Redux

This morning at 2am Central, the amazing 3x experience week wrapped up in Runes of Magic, and let me tell you . . . it is HARD to go back to regular experience gains now. It feels slow . . . tedious . . . and all the other adjectives that make you think negative thoughts. BAD! TERRIBAD!

But let's stick to the positive thoughts! 

I ended up as a 100 Mage / 95 Rogue, and holy frickin' crap, I WORKED during that week of exp to get that far. You know how I mentioned the 3x experience ended at 2am Central? I was there.  I was there with 4 other addicts from our guild and a slew of other people talking in world chat. In fact, I earned all of level 95 on my rogue in the last 30 minutes of the event. Saturday I spent well over 12 hours in my chair just busting through quests as fast as humanly possible so I could get my mage side up to level 100. The only thing that stopped me was family, food, cats, holidays, and the new season of Cobra Kai.

You remember how I was following the Morrok line of quests?  All of that went totally out of the window somewhere in Syrbal Pass. I might have been able to tell you how it all eventually wrapped up, but I was too concerned with gaining as much exp as humanly possible before all the goodness ended, so I stopped and jumped ahead to zones the would give more exp bang for the buck.

Jill and Morrok have some serious relationship problems . . . *popcorn*

It's actually left me in a really strange state in the game where I feel a bit . . . exhausted, lost, and under-geared? So here's my plan . . .

1- Chill.

Seriously. I was not chill last week.  Now I need to just log on, do my dailies, work on random stuff like my level 70 elite skill . . . you know . . . minor stuff.  Re-center myself a bit.

Here's a nice Avatar-Esque bodo village to find your zen.

2- Get Back on Track.

Quests back in Syrbal Pass are giving around a million xp each. (Just for frame of reference, some high level quests were giving me 15-20 million xp during the 3x exp event.) It's not bad, but at level 95 it's also not great.  You have to complete 5-6 quests to get a 20th of a level. That said, I really wouldn't mind completing ALL the quests in the game.  It's a good challenge. 

3- Get "Decent" Geared. 

I was asking in guild chat tonight the easiest way to get geared at level 100, and the response was use a credit card.  yeah.  People trade premium currency for gold and then spend the gold in the auction house.  Outside of this though, it does seem you can get decent level 100 gear that doesn't have perfect stats for around (rough guess) 5 million a piece. It'll take some doing to get to that point, but it doesn't seem out of reach.

I could also run minigames to convert Phirius Coins into Phirius Shells and buy gear through a vendor.  It's a slow process, but doable.

I could also run level 100 content with a full group . . . maybe someday!

I'm sure there are other options, but those are the ones offered up in guild chat . . . and mind you, all these solutions don't even involve the tier'ing and stat'ing of items that happens once you have a piece of equipment.  It's a long arduous process that could take a long time to get yourself in a pretty good spot.

~~

Of course, rumor has it that another 150% event will happen this weekend!  I may be at it again!  

A Vampire's Job is Never Done in Runes of Magic

It really would be nice to get to 100 Mage / 100 Rogue.  At that point I could start earning "peak" levels. That's right.  You aren't truly max level at 100.  There are many more Peak levels you earn when you have two classes at level 100. 

Happy Dueling!

3x Experience Week and Chapter V in Runes of Magic

Team . . . team . . . look. I've been playing a TON of Runes of Magic. My company gives me this week off as a benefit and it lined up nicely with this Runes of Magic benefit, and so I've been benefiting . . . a lot. 

I started at level 67/67 and now I'm level 82/82.  So basically 15 levels on my rogue and 15 levels on my mage, and it's been a whirlwind of just GO GO GO when I log on. I've tried to snap a few screenshots of major story plot here and there, but at this point it's a bit of a blur. So, please forgive me if I get some of this wrong . . . let's talk Runes of Magic Chapter V -- Fires of Shadowforge!

The Shadowforge dwarves are now awake after a dark age where they lived in a "deep slumber" thanks to some dark magic gone wrong.  (At least that was the lore they made up so they could introduce dwarves as a playable race five expansions into the game.) Their story all unfolds on the continent of Balanzasar, which initially requires a trip involving a dragon. (after that point, you can just use Snoop)

Yeah . . . let's trust the demon that wants to help us and all that . . .

Dragons are pretty crazy in Runes of Magic. From what I understand, they do this kind of astral projection called Sleepwalking that involves traveling an elemental network that isn't visible or palpable. If anyone was to lose their way during sleepwalking, they'd either lose their mind or just outright die. You'll frequently talk to dragons in their human'esque form. It's all very complicated, and creates a kind of interesting triangle of conflict between the dragons, the elementals, and the demons.

Let sleeping dragons lie

On the continent of Balanzasar you'll be working first through the Ancient Kingdom of Rorazan then on to Chrysalia. From Chrysalia, you'll move on to the Merdhin Tundra. Beyond that is the Syrbal Pass.  That pathway is where I've been questing.  Enemies in Syrbal Pass have been hitting me for anything from 4k to 7k a hit, and it's getting nastier by the level as the enemies catch up to my gear.

Beyond Syrbal Pass is the final zone of Balanzasar: Sarlo.  At the rate I'm going through these quests and leveling, I'll most likely end up there sometime today or tomorrow.

Apparently me getting all this juicy experience all quick like this is both good and bad . . . good because I level and improve my character's stats and equipment possibilities . . . bad because I'm developing a talent point debt by leveling so quickly.  That 3x experience makes me move on to areas three times as fast and so now I'm getting three times less the talent points I'd usually get from grinding . . . or something like that.

It's a future me problem that will probably make it harder on myself at end game content because I won't have my skills at max level, which means I'll be a level 100 character whose powers and abilities (the main source of damage) hit like a level 80 character.  I suppose more to come on that development!

As for the story behind Balanzasar, it all seems to center around getting the true dragons on your side while dealing with a couple questionable demons named Sismond and Maderoth. Sismond makes several appearances throughout the main quest line as he gives you questionable but somehow helpful advice in your quest to take care of Maderoth . . . because Maderoth is going to take down the elemental lord, which would be bad for dragons who travel the elemental network.

It's a council of dragons, who all look like humans, agreeing to help humans . . .

Spoiler alert, you guessed it, they both turn out to be bad: Maderoth is a boss in the dungeon known as Belathis Fortress and Sismond is a World Boss later on in the level 90'ish zones. It's pretty clear to see that Sismond just wants to get rid of his competition and saw a fortuitous advantage with a temporary alliance with the stupid mortals. Demons . . . can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

So there you have it. I've been blindly clicking on yellow exclamation points that turn into grey checkmarks, and then turn into yellow checkmarks. Wash, rinse, repeat.  Bring it on!

Happy Dueling!

Runes of Magic -- Interesting Resource Gathering Mini-game?

I've taken a short break from leveling in Runes of Magic in anticipation of the triple exp week coming up tomorrow at the crack of midnight. Instead I've decided to take some time gathering herbs, which I've never really seen done well in any MMO I've played so far to be honest. 

Gathering in most MMOs goes a bit like this . . . 1- find a node spawn on the ground, 2- click it, 3- get item from node . . . and there you go.  um, yay? The most fun you can have with this activity is probably when you race people to get nodes and win, but it really sucks if you lose. (Also a bit of a jerk move to race like that.) Most MMOs offer you a leveling path for resource gathering and this both gates progression in higher levels and brings players back to old zones.

I've seen it done a variety of ways including the use of special harvesting tools ala Guild Wars 2 or with no special requirements at all ala Wizard101.

Seeing as how Runes of Magic attempts to build off of what you find in World of Warcraft, there definitely is an herbalism proficiency leveling track, but I think where they improved on the WoW model was in the meta-mini game of herb collecting.

After doing this for a few hours, it's seems to usually go a bit like this:

1- Find a node and click on it to harvest 2-7 items from the node.

2- The act of harvesting then begins a buff counter at the top of your screen indicating how many resources you've collected.

Shoot for 100!

3- Every 10 resources collected within the 10 minute "Collected Amount" buff counter, a couple of things happen. First, you gain a secondary "Easy Harvest" buff that helps you collect items faster.

Getting faster the more you collect!

The highest I've ever seen this secondary buff rise to is 9th power based on the counter. Second, you gain benefits every 10 points your counter progresses. For example, here's an example of one run to 100 that I received:

• At 10 points -- Gain the Easy Harvest buff that helps you gather faster.
  
  
• At 20 points -- Gain leveling experience for my Mage. Secondary buff levels to 2 (that's an extra 5% harvesting speed).

First level of combat experience from harvesting at level 67.

• At 30 points -- Easy harvest levels to 3 (again an extra 5% speed).
  
  
• At 40 points - Easy harvest levels to 4. Proc'd Nimble Harvest buff, which meant 30% more experience from harvesting nodes for the next 30 seconds.
  
  
• At 50 points -- Easy harvest levels to 5.
  
  
• At 60 points -- Easy harvest levels to 6. Gain more experience! this time, it was twice as much as it was when it proc'd at 20 points.
  
  
• At 70 points -- Easy harvest levels to 7.
  
  
• At 80 points -- Gained an amazing amount of that yummy leveling experience! Easy harvest levels to 8.

70k experience! Nice!

• At 90 points -- Easy harvest levels to 9. Proc'd a better Nimble Harvest buff for another 30 seconds (this time it was 50% experience gain).
  
  
• At 100 points -- I hit the cap!  My resource collecting buff goes away and is superseded by 3 minutes of super buff where every node I harvest for the next 3 minutes gives me double the experience toward leveling your harvesting proficiency and the fastest resource gathering speed in the game! My Easy Harvest buff expires . . . .

Something like that . . .

So, this kind of creates a minigame in a way where you try to land yourself in an area with lots of resources right as you hit 100 points; otherwise, it's a wasted buff.

Now, you can totally just ignore this little buff game and collect herbs, but I really like the effort they made toward trying to gamify the typically boring experience of collecting resource nodes.

My only wish here is that they double downed on the fun slot-machine mechanic to resource gathering. This predictable mini-game is fun enough by itself, but there can be fun found in randomness and everyone likes extra surprise rewards when doing something as rote as gathering herbs in an MMO.  For example, unearthing a treasure chest or finding gardening seeds! Spawning a rare enemy! Stuff like that!

I will say that as far as resource gathering goes, I kind of like the approach they've taken in Runes of Magic. It at least keeps the interest going while you're out collecting stuff from the ground. 

Happy Dueling!

Magical Reconstructions in Runes of Magic

Let me start with some hard truths to swallow: I think levels 50-65 in Runes of Magic felt more like a trial I needed to survive to progress. Sure, maybe the high level people that multibox accounts have an easy way to powerlevel through those levels, but I didn't.  I personally felt like I ran out of quests in that level range, had to grind the butterflies daily quests hundreds of times, and really only got to enjoy fast leveling at the beginning of the levels until about half of the way through each level when the quests ran out . . . then the last half of each level would be grinding and humbly asking for help in instances to eek out every last drop of experience I could find.

. . . And then the x1.5 experience weekend happened last week, and I once again made what felt like really meaningful progress in the game! I worked through a quest filled zone called Redhill Mountains, ending my weekend at level 67 on my Mage-half and level 66 on my Rogue-half. Perfect! Great! I loved it!

I have to be honest, at the end of the weekend, I thought I had experienced a shift in quest design philosophy for Redhill Mountains, but I don't think that was it. After counting up the quests you can play through in Redhill Mountains versus the quests you can play in the zone before it (the Land of Malevolence) it was clear that wasn't the case.

One thing is for sure, if you play Runes of Magic, you will fight a dragonfly in about every zone

I got to be honest, it really feels like the game was MEANT to be played with x1.5 experience and then because of the free-to-play model they backed off and made it more grindy to make the business model more profitable at the cost of a quality game experience.  That said, it's not impossible to play this game in its current state because you always have daily quests. They are the bread and butter of this game as far as I'm concerned.

This situation has put me in a weird post-traumatic shock mode for questing currently. I find myself not wanting to quest unless the game is running some kind of experience bonus because that feeling of being stuck is so . . . BAD. Now, that said, when I've complained in the past to my guildmates, the response was that, not to worry, it won't always be like what I'm experiencing in the 50-65 doldrums. I really really really really really really hope . . . REALLY HOPE that this is true. 

So . . . as for the game itself . . . both the Returning the Glory quest line and the Envoy of Dragons quest lines wrapped up nicely in Limo Desert. I was knighted for my service to Delanis and now I'm on a quest line that has blended the two quests into a new chain of quests called "Magical Reconstruction." 

Great to see these two standing together as their quest lines merge

Magical Reconstruction picks up in the Land of Malevolence and you begin to unravel a plot to subjugate the masses with something called Divine Fruit. The government controls the drip of Divine Fruit and uses it to inspire and motivate a migration of people from the northern part of the map down to the southern part of the map, closer to Grafu Castle. Eventually you get to a town where the NPCs are pretty much all mindless and endlessly drunk on Divine Fruit. They'll do ANYTHING for divine fruit, including participating in a kind of crazy circus.

I'm in certified carny gear . . . totally undercover . . .

That's right, in the middle of the zone, there's this kooky, totally not dark and creepy, circus, which, as you probe deeper down into the depths in full circus worker garb disguise, you find out that the drunken divine fruit people are being made into an army of monstrous, crazed freaks.

Hi everyone, this is Alice. Alice, this is everyone.

Grafu Castle itself is a wild instance that has a couple really challenging fights that seem to only be able to be accomplished by people well above its level range. I'd love to hear the stories from when this was end game content. I got dragged through the instance and died several times just standing there doing nothing. Thank you for your skills level 100 friends!

Of course it's an oversized creepy teddy bear, what else do you expect to find inside a castle?

The storyline of Magical Reconstruction then carries you onward into Redhill Mountains where now you're part of a royal envoy gathering up allies to help fight against the atrocities happening in the Land of Malevolence and what everyone suspects is a deeper problem involving the folks in Sardo Castle a zone over.

The belly has herbivore teeth and the head has carnivore teeth . . . that's fun . . .

Redhill Mountains is a war torn zone that pits the Rhino folk of the Kingdom of Kalon against the Dwarves of Fireboot Fortress. It takes a lot of helping out to get on the good side of both parties and bring them together to realize who the real enemy is and ultimately save the day and win the support of both parties toward your cause, which brings me to where I am now in the story: Tergothen Bay.

Glad they figured it out otherwise we would have had to launch the nukes . . .

I've enjoyed playing through this content and I'm really thankful to my guildies who have been helping out along the way. There are a few pinch points where I just couldn't proceed without the help of others, and they were there to assist and keep me going.  Good times!

The next big exp event happens just 3 days from now, so you know I'll be there. Before you know it I'll be out of Chapter 4 content and moved on to Chapter 5 content: Fires of the Shadowforge. As it turns out all the work that Frogster did with dwarves in Chapter 4 helped them launch their third playable race in Chapter 5. 

Thanks for reading and . . .

Happy Dueling!