Totally Useless Items (Staff Version) in HOTL3

For any gaming developer, it is a constant battle to balance between fun and challenge. Like any games, items or equipment makes or breaks the game. Players will not be attracted to a game if equipment are useless like props. In a game where good item designs are widely available, the items soon lose their significance. If coveted legendary items takes far too much resources to attain, players eventually lose their motivations to play. A pay-for-benefits model used to work until developers realise such a model may not be as sustainable as it was initially perceived, as their core non-playing players eventually leave the game due to the vast differences between paying players and non-paying characters.

In Guildwars 2, they tried something different. Players are encouraged to pay for "extras" but these are often nothing but aesthetically pleasing effects. For example, a paying player will be able to buy a staff of the same stats of one where non paying players will be able to obtain with their own effort in the game but it will look way better and invoke awesome effects when activated in battle. Other examples include items designed for fun or spoofs during festive or story events in the game. The game managed to hold their audience for years while obtaining adequate profits by the creative selling of a constant spectrum of items. Population has only dwindled recently due to other reasons, irrelevant of this topic. Overall, GW2 has done well with item management.

In HOTL3, the challenges that game masters face is far more challenging, due to the fact that a MUD is after all, a text-based game. The best thing that can be done to a newly introduced item is making it look better than ordinary items by the creative use of ascii codes, without putting the game out of balance. The real challenge though, is to decide how powerful an item it shall be. If it is useless, it will automatically be binned to the depths of oblivion like thousands of items in HOTL3. In my opinion, the game have way too many of such items. To be fair, I know little of the game's history. Thus some of these items may be designed many years ago as a joke and players of the past may have enjoyed their fair bouts of amusements. Fast forward to today, game items are introduced in mythic form, at a very modest rate due to the the lack of manpower in the developing team. I will have to say that most mythic items in the game at the moment are not bad. It has a good share of bad ones (maybe intended) that players head to the shops for immediate extraction. I know that because my clannies share the legendary drops moments with whoever online and I counted the number of howls and moans as compared to tears of joy. You should have been there when someone gets a Hateful Shard. The comments were hilarious. In my opinion the mythic items are still a the conservative side, hardly tugging the imaginative feelers of players yet. There are positive signs that may change for the better in future. For example the newly introduced Transcendence Rings will no doubt have a place for any player's bank slots.

What we really do not want though, is an introduction of totally useless items that players will never, ever use. With the limited resources at the moment, it will be a total waste of time to commit into such designs. Such as the following examples: (please take it in a light hearted manner) 

Name: a teapot

Level: 31
Area: Wonderland
Type: staff
Mat: ceramic
Stats: 1403/1403 charges of level 35 create spring
Attrib: mana 25 int 3 glow

That's some hardcore water producing mage there.

Name: an [Evil]->Gem
Level: 35
Area: Ultima
Type: staff
Mat: crystal
Stats: 1035/1035 charges of level 60 fire breath
Attrib: dark anti good anti neutral int 6 mana 50

How the fuck are we supposed to use this?!

Name: box of matches
Level: 44
Area: Descent to Hell
Type: staff
Mat: wood
Stats: 1704/1704 charges of level 48 prot fire
Attrib: glow

Would you expect a Fire Mage to fight all the way to hell to have a mob beating the daylights out of him in order to obtain a staff - as heavy as it can get in the inventory - that grants him a slight bonus to cast .... protection from fire?


Name: a green serpentine staff
Level: 17
Area: Old Thalos
Type: staff
Mat: poison
Stats: 1068/1068 charges of level 20 plague
Attrib: glow

Just 1 question. Since no player can possibly cast plague at level 17, why will any item designer expect any players to be interested in casting a level 20 version of their level 32 core attacking spell?


Name: a golden flute
Level: 22
Area: High Tower of Sorcery
Type: staff
Mat: gold
Stats: 1352/1352 charges of level 22 iceball
Attrib: int -6 invis

Same as the above. They purposely made this invis and deduct 6 from your intellect to show how stupid you are to use it.


Name: a wyvern mount
Level: 17
Area: Castle Reinhold
Type: staff
Mat: wood
Stats: 1272/1272 charges of level 15 fly
Attrib: move 30

That's a lot of flying to do, considering some newbie's E0 fly do nothing more than my E12 fly, do we need an item to "make a difference?"


Name: magic Carpet
Level: 26
Area: Playpen
Type: staff
Mat: wool
Stats: 1598/1598 charges of level 20 fly
Attrib: hitroll 2 damroll 1 glow

If it isn't enough, here is another design to assist the aerodynamically handicapped.

Name: the Ancient Vessel of Aquarius
Level: 21
Area: Galaxy
Type: staff
Mat: wood
Stats: 1357/1357 charges of level 10 create spring
Attrib: glow anti evil

An awful drought might have occurred in ancient days.


Name: the Red DragonOrb
Level: 33
Area: Sewer
Type: staff
Mat: bone
Stats: 1528/1528 charges of level 20 sanctuary
Attrib: anti good wis 2 int 2 mana 15

I am a level 33 Holy Cleric with the ability to cast Sanctuary of the same level but I am going to wear my staff and cast a level 20 Sanctuary on you! #becauseihatemyclannies


Name: the staff of the dragon
Level: 41
Area: Dragon Tower
Type: staff
Mat: wood
Stats: 1164/1164 charges of level 25 lightning bolt
Attrib: damroll 5 glow

And my powerful level 41 party member sanctified with my level 20 Sanctuary is going to cast his level 25 lightning bolt on that hydra over there!


Name: the lamp
Level: 27
Area: The Great Pyramid
Type: staff
Mat: brass
Stats: 1243/1243 charges of level 25 fly
Attrib: ac -10 hitroll 1 damroll 2 wis 2 anti evil hum glow

What's up with all these flying fetish, can anyone enlighten me?

You Fail to Masturbate

Chiobu failed to rebirth TWICE in consecutive days and I happened to be online to read his desperate rants.

Unfortunately I was questing and pages were refreshing really fast and before I had the chance to do screenshots, the information was already behind my history limits. Lousy client I have, what to do.

While I could not quote word for word, they went something like that,

"Sibei sian, come fuse me! Anyone, gen 1 also can!"

- boredom after finishing all quests. 

"No more moons already!!!"

- after failing to find a fuser on time. 

"Fuck! I'll rebirth."

- masturbation as the last resort.

"Nabei need 1200kps to rebirth!!! Anyone can lend me 50kps?"

- after finding out the hard truths. (Celine lent the 50kps because I was questing)

"WTF! WTF!!! My blessings potion give me stoneform instead of blessings!" 

- more miscalculations

"Nooooo. I can't play Gen 1 anymore!"

- when someone suggested playing another toon in the meantime

Rains of Fire Testing for Update on 20/7/15

After the recent change in Rains of Fire, I did a test at a Magic: 145, Mana 30 setting. Mob chosen was Almuhara (lazy to walk) in a fully dispelled state. I stacked AP to 120 and did continuous blasting so it is easier to do a screen capture without snitching up multiple screen shots for the same effect.

According to the changelog  

Rains of fire has been buffed to have higher subsequent damage (+50%)

That sounds like a huge buff. So naturally it got Eken (probably the only other active firemage) and me excited at the prospect of a real boost in our games. Within 5 minutes of the change, Eken tested it and concluded that "play with handphone, cannot see that well."

Upon seeing Eken's lacklustre response, I was considerably less eager in leveling up to 48 to test ROF. I just fused a few hours before the change and my max hp gain dropped to 134 per mob (even if I kill, say, Esper the Gatekeeper) I think Nobody must be insane or feel terribly alienated in real life to somehow Gen Up to >20. But he can do some cool botting tricks to help out and I can't. Thus I am not going to get there for sure. When my tnl reaches the 10k mark, it will be where I'll stop because it is a classic case of diminishing marginal utility. My enjoyment of the game nosedive with this illogical XP gain system. I'll probably play another Gen 1 if I want to bring the grind/enjoyment equation closer to equilibrium. Perhaps I should join Eken in the near impossible project of getting hands for a wraith to play a proper class.

Cutting the bullshit short, this is a result of an E8 ROF at Magic 145, Mana 30, on a fully dispelled Almuhara with a binded ROF staff and a full Integen Set.

And this is my review:

My take remains the same. For me, to make this skill logical, we should choose between a random number of fireballs and a diminishing damage but not both at the same time. Else the skill will be nothing but an over-rated aesthetically pleasing skill. I'll pick diminishing damage as the main issue here. With the diminishing effect, it is probably pointless to have more fireballs. As you can see from the screenshot, the damage beyond the 2nd fireball is negligible, unless we expect players to be fighting fido mutants and get XP out of it by the time we obtain this spell at level 48 (excellent mage rating). Thus, even if ROF is not capped at 5 fireballs max and I will be able to potentially rain 10 fireballs down with high E, the damage remains insignificant after the second fireball. This entirely destroys the beauty of the idea behind the spell.

I think a random number of fireballs is a good idea to keep the spell from being OP. From my observations (can provide data if requested), I rarely achieve 4 fireballs during my battles, seeing mostly 1-2 fireballs for the majority of the casts. So I don't think removing the diminishing effect, leaving the subsequent damage random will make the spell OP. Even with random damage, I will rarely get full fireballs raining down anyway and due to the wide range of damage, it is probably going to get me 2-3 small damage and 1 big one during the luckiest strike. I think that's not a lot to ask for at E8. In fact, it won't be even close to DS, even after its recent nerf. I'll still take the option of getting 1 guaranteed (potentially 2) Megawrecks of typeless damage over 1 Annihilate, 1 devastate and a series dark green fire damage any day.

I'll still recommend potential mages to stay out of the Fire School due to the fact you can't depend on the spells to level up. The only AOE is firestorm, at level 45 (if you can even reach there killing mobs at 134 xp per pop with your magic missiles and flamestrikes hacking away a TNL close to 10k) and the most bitter pill of it all, when you finally get to the grand prize of ROF at level 48, it sucks.


If you think I am over critical on this Spec Spell,  let me put things into perspective. I can achieve this kind of damage with an E5 Iceball (3E less than my ROF) that only requires me 6 slots to obtain (don't even need adept) compared to 21 slots for ROF at 8ap and 11ap respectively.

And the most bitter pill of it all

How to kill Ti'amat, the Ruler of First Hell

I know everyone knows how to to do these. This blog isn't really put up for them anyway. It is compiled for the HOTL3 newbie population (which we have 0 of). Anyway, in the event of a miracle of any who comes our way, he or she will probably enjoy this guide.

Cut the bullshit short. We want to kill Tiamat, the Ruler of First Hell. How?

First, to get there, we have to get through a few areas, notably Descent to Hell, which can be daunting for newbies to navigate, due to the amount of agros lurking around.

Directions:

Getting to Descent to Hell

1) recall;s;s;w;w;w;w;w;s;d;w;w;n;n;n;  (this will take you to a maze)

2) find gold pile or hunt for farmer's guarddog, it will take you to a room called "A Farmer's House", which leads to... hell?

3) Unlock e; (Kill the dog and get key) e;u;e;open s;s;open s;s;w;d;w;open w;w

Getting to 9Hells from Descent (continue)

Note: It is preferable to have a higher gen player who can cast a higher level of invisibility on you. If you are a base thief, your sneak should be high enough to get through the agro mobs by the time you are ready to face Ti'amat. For other classes, it is highly recommended to get a wand of invisibility along. I'm not sure if the wand can grant invisibility powerful enough, or where to get the wand. I'll update this when I get hold of it and test it out. With yourself properly shrouded, this speedwalk should get you to the entrance of 9Hells from the entrance of Descent to Hell. (you can cut and paste)

w;w;w;w;d;e;s;e;e;n;e;e;s;e;e;n;e;d;d;s;w;w;n;e;s;w;w;w;w;n;w;w;d;d;d;e;e;s;e;e;n;e;e;s;e;e;n;open e;e;s;s;d;open n;n

Getting to Ti'mat from Entrance of 9Hells

n;n;open w;w;w;n;n;n; (this point is recallable);n;w;n;e;open n;

You made it. Ti'mat is just north of you from here.

To kill Ti'mat

To date I have only played two main characters, Dragonspawn and Erdah (the Irda Reines gifted me). So I am unable to write a guide for every class, unless players of other classes are willing to write and contribute. Since you know your own build the best, it's up to you to derive the best way to handle this mob with the following information I can provide from my fight with it. The fighting conditions may not be fully documented. For example, Chaichen mocked at me when I was stunned by Amosdeus a couple of days back because he claimed that he had never saw it stunning during his decades of HOTL3 career. Well, I was very sure I wasn't hallucinating. I was clearly stunned by one of his earth spells (not special ability). A stun is a stun.

From this I am pretty sure I will probably leave out some details that you may encounter in your own fight.

Ti'amat's fighting style:

• Since this boss is supposed to be a boss, it has pretty high hp so the fight may drag on for a while.
• Its weapon cannot be disarmed (or maybe it's just me). Thus he will deal high damage throughout the fight.
• It casts conditions very often. I received Iceball, Electrify, Poison, Disease, Plague and worse, Unholy Pact.
• Its main damage comes from his melee attacks with occasion Water and Evil spells.
• Edit: He DOES cast complete heal.

To counter:

• Most high gen players are trying to max out every possible resists to deal with any mob. Obviously, that isn't attainable at earlier stages so for this fight get your resist phy, resist fire and evil as high as possible. Protection from poison is also recommended.
• It is a non-recall room but you can flee anytime to a safe room. Just take note the door behind you (south) is open at the crucial moment.
• Backstabs (that hit) will always be the best solution for any mob in a flee-able room.
• Ti'mat is weak against Water and Holy. I tried Wind against him and it worked as well as Water. Make sure you equip the right element if you plan to melee him to death or throw your divine shots.
• Ti'mat does not seems to spell up at all. I did not encounter any spell buff up during my fight. However, I think he probably cast an occasion Sanctuary.

Its loot:

It's nothing to shout about, since I have a great disdain for alignment-locked items. It's just my personal preference. My entire set of equipment has no alignment requirement, which makes me even weaker, coupled with the fact I am probably the only player around my gen without extra limbs.

Azrael the Shambling Shambler

Do not let Azrael's current race fool you. She was born a Shambler one night, under the full moon of Nuitari when the wolves howled miserably. Trained under a master with a wealth of experience, coupled with natural talent, Azrael grew to be one of the deadliest assassin that walked the realms of Krynn. Her reputation gained her such vast recognition among heroes that horny Irdas flocked to mate her, leaving their perfect DNA far within her depths. Eventually, she evolved into one of their kind. Azrael continued to train hard to reach the peak of her potential. 

******

When I was trying to kill a Shambling Mound this morning, I was hit by a high damage attack somewhere along the lines of "Rubbish throwing attack" or whatever it called it. My mental image of a Shambler was crushed. Azrael was responsible for setting up an unreasonable image of a slick, suave,  beauty of an elite assassin. So I googled to find out what the heck a Shambler is. In the end,

Expectations

Reality

This is how Azrael looks like

Where to Find the Common Quest Mobs in 9Hells

Even with Portal, questing in 9Hells can be a chore. The mobs are not particularly difficult to kill, just terribly annoying. For example, you can be humbled by a lame Erinyes in the mood to do a perma-stun on you. Then, the area designer decided it was a cool idea to grant some quest mobs the ability to log you out of the game.  That is spectacular.  I have never played an online game where a mob kicks me out of the game and make me re-login only to found that I have -20 ap and pounded a few more times while I was away. Well, I learn something new everyday in this game. Back to the topic, what is more challenging (for me) about questing in 9Hells isn't the annoying mobs or the fact that every single mob will be healed by my main attacking spell Rains of Fire but the navigation part. 9Hells is one of the biggest areas in the game, if not the biggest. To make things worse, many of the rooms have the exact same title and room description. So I decided that enough is enough and did a little chart to keep my mind sane while I take 9Hells quest. This post will not be enough to cover all the necessary knowledge to quest there efficiently, but that's one for the start.

Common Quests Mobs of 9Hells
1hell	Ti'amat	Abishai
2hell	Dispater	Titivilus	Erinyes
3hell	Mammon	Bael	Barbed Devil
4hell	Belial	Bearded Devil
5hell	Amon	Geryon	Bone Devil
6hell	Moloch	Horned Devil
7hell	Baalzebul
8hell	Hutijin	Mephistopheles	Ice Devil	Pit Fiend
9hell	Amosdeus	Glasya	Hellhound

Separately, I stole borrowed Maps from Morit to attach here for personal use. The last time I visited his website, all the maps were unavailable due to broken links. We can't let this happen again. Resources of this game is far and between and we should do something to keep them up if we want to continue playing this.

Does Magic/Cost stat really matter?

Had a talk with Chaichen the Legend formerly known as Chaichen the Legend before HOTL3 was relaunched by Thor and he told me HR/DR and MAGIC/COST is not really that crucial as the damage is more or less taken care of by Class Level instead.

I don't disagree with one of these wise sages in the game, especially when I found fighting gradually easier for me as I gen up. It could be due to the higher "E" in the skills or the increase in Class Level itself. There is no way I can test it so I can't see how much it impacts us in damage dealing.

What I can do is, though, test out if there is any differences in damage dealing at 3 different MAGIC/COST levels. I did my damage test on good ol' Almuhara, who was standing there doing nothing useful today.

My results are as follow;

With Magic: 56 Cost 64

Setting

damage

With Magic: 168 Cost 15

With Magic: 270 Cost 9

I did several tests for each level but it will be too tedious for me to post every screenshot but I believe I have done enough tests to get a general feeling of the impact of these stats. My conclusion is that the Magic stat does affect damage, as it is obviously shown here in the screenshots but it appears to me that it is not on a straight-line, proportionate setting but rather on a curve that gives diminishing return on the high side. That means damage should be significantly improved from low to medium Magic but more gradual from medium to high.

Another conclusion you may want to draw from this is that, Rains of Fire sucks even at E7. As you can see, I hardly dent Almuhara even on a respectable Magic level of 270. Not only that following fireballs are not guaranteed (in fact, I get 2 balls 75% of the time), most crucially, they will be of half the damage of each of their precedents. Thus even if I have 4-5 balls guaranteed on each attack, I will be dealing next to nothing in damage from the 3rd ball onward, unless you consider dark green damage as something to cheer about. 

Not surprisingly, Eken took my advice to ditch Fire and told me he is loving his new class.

Getting out of midgaard underground (need boat/waterbreath)

Blog is set up for noobs. So if you are starting out you may be caught in a situation where you are locked in town without passdoor. There are another known way of getting out (picking the north gate) but if that isn't an option as well try:

Through water:
Directions: (need to transverse water, so take a boat)

recall;s;s;s;e;e;s;s;w;w;w;w;w;w;n;n;e;e;n;e;n;e;n;n;e;e;e;e;e;e;e

Credit to Itchy for tip


Through air:
Directions: Buy a flying potion from (recall;s;s;s;e;e;e;n;), quaff it then

recall;s;u;u;s;w;w;w;d;

Credit to Darryl Wang for tip

The Irda Gift

The real Santa Claus in HOTL3 was not stationed in a remote corner away from the record workers along the descent to hell. Instead, you'll find him loitering in timely precision between the holy grounds of Canterbury and the sinful heights of the Hotel 81. Occasionally, you'll find him lying dead naked at the heels of the sentinel of Midgaard, after the Archbishop decided he had imposed long enough and rid of him with his holy smites. Santa was of course, Reines. Some regarded him as a time lord, a traveler from the future, roaming the corridors of the long past in ataraxia. Judging from the way he casually tossed me the Irda he conjured, I would have thought he was Fizban.

I'll just settle for Santa.

With an Irda, my HOTL3 adventure came to a complete halt. Prior to that, I had never expect there would be a day I would get a chance to play this spec race. It felt like a hot potato in my hands. I didn't know what to do with it and left it for a few days until the New Year. Then I decided to level it up first, then decide what to do with it. Many valid suggestions was offered. That went to show how versatile and powerful the race was - to open up so many possibilities.

I do not know if it is just my imagination. Interestingly, the Irda was powerful beyond my expectations. High stats aside, during my leveling at the lowest levels, it seemed to hit more accurately and a tad faster than any other races in Gen 1 that I tried leveling before. Though, these differences seem to fade in mid levels but eventually became apparent when I qualified for the epic skill - drain, which boosted my survival-bility. For a new player who chose a fire month Smurf with 300 HP as his starting character, an Irda felt like Normal Mode, with the smurf experience being Hell or Hardcore mode. Having said that, the tnl of the Irda was high. I might have leveled 3 Gargoyles to L45 with the amount of experience I gained with the Irda. I guessed that was how the differences were compensated. Designing the character plan aside, another tricky issue was how to fuse. With an Irda, it would be twice as hard finding the correct fuser, especially with a small pool of players at the moment. That probably explains why many Irdas remains low gen as players are reluctant to fuck the Irdas up. Unlike another race, we can simply re-roll and restart. 

So what would it be? Go thief, go earth, go fire, go anything but poison because it is so weak. The many opinions only add to the confusion. But it's a happy problem. I'll ponder that over the new year.

Thanks Santa. 

Gold Making for Noobs Part I: Scavenging

I hate it when I see players asking other players for money because I feel it is due to pure laziness if a player runs out of money. Money run is part and parcel of every MMORPG, MUD is no exception. Like it or not, it's here to stay.

Alright. Not everyone can do money run like Nobody. For instance, I tried and spent 20 minutes or more to kill a single mob with Nectar in Olympus when I was a low gen. That's hardly a run isn't it? So is that the end of the story for new players with low gen toons too weak for anything the game offers? Not quite. Today I am going to show you how a Gen 1, Level 1 player can make some money instead of relying on online begging. In fact it's 10,000 gold in just 3 minutes. To do that I have to make a Gen 1, Level 1 player. 

Here it is:

Next, I have identified these two shops in Midgaard for noobs to start out with.

The armory and weaponsmith shown above will be the shop who will buy the items we are going to find in our scavenger hunt.

First off, go to Cloudy Mountain. Go to the Void (recall;s;s;s;e;e;e;s;u) and look for 1 coin, then a pile of gold coins then exit via the Mountain Road exit then w;n;e;n;n; and hey presto, you reached the gates of Cloudy Mountain. That will take you a minute once you get the hang of it. It's time to walk about the perimeter of the fort or even through the market areas for free loot. Don't worry if you bump into agro and  die. You are just a Level 1 toon, as good as a ghost. What's a little bit of dying? Anyway, soon I found stuff lying on the ground left over by some crazy leveling nut earlier. That took me another minute.

Pick these up

Sell these items at the armory and weaponshop highlighted earlier.

There you go, 10,000 gold in 3 mins.

The method can be repeated as you go higher level at popular leveling areas such as Canterbury (rings, earrings, cloak etc) and Hotel 81. (bedroom slippers, whips etc). Shops that buys in your scavenged items are not limited to the above 2 either. There are more shops in North Midgaard, for starters and other shops in non-agro areas such as New Thalos or even Canterbury itself. Explore around and you'll find more. Then tell me about it.

Thief is a go

This article is about why Thief is the strongest in HOTL3. Note that I'm very specific about picking out the Thief school instead of the Rogue class. That is because Bard school, as everyone knows by now, is well and truly broken - along with the hearts of the players who attempted to make something out of it. Along a similar line, my time spent building a Mage-based class felt like a waste of time too, because I was constantly outplayed by Thief players not less than 3 gens below me. That was when I need to reflect if it was truly game mechanics or I simply suck as a player. To verify that, I spent the weekend leveling a Gen 1 Thief and proceed to test it out.

My target mob was Lady Mara of the Realms of Wizardry. She is afraid of typeless and water. To make it worse, fire damage heals her. Fair enough. As a mage, we are expected to know everything in the book of elements. If a page or two is missing, tough luck. As such, it happens that I did not have Adv Water learnt at the moment. So my only feasible attack is Cyclone from the Wind School. Even at E7, it did modest damage. Lady Mara was healing faster than the pathetic damage I could deal, along with nice spells up such as Manashield, Counter, Reflect not to mention Complete Heal at ridiculous intervals. Ok. It was my fault that I didn't have Water damage equipped so I deserved to get my arse skewered by Lady Mara's Dagger of the Sun.

Up stepped the Gen 1 Thief. Haha! Noob. What could it possibly do? Scratch Lady Mara's eyelash? Surprisingly I could land a Double Backstab on her and brought her down to yellow, A Few Wounds. What?! Even if I used Ice Ball against her as a Gen 8 mage, I would be very lucky to take Lady Mara down to Few Wounds state within the same time frame - not even factoring in the high possibility of stopping to dispel her endless defensive spells. Alright, how did Divine Shot fare? I was able to unleash a double beauty of Atomise damage on Lady Mara. That made E7 Cyclone look like a miserable failed card trick.

I guess it's time for a re-roll.

Alright, let's discuss the disadvantages of a Thief commonly lamented by Thief players who must be either in mock horror or honestly unaware how difficult it is to play the other schools. One - high mana usage. That is true. All thief skills takes up extremely high mana and according to these Thief Masters, it doesn't seem to improve with Gen ups. 

What's my take on it? If I have to cast 5 Iceballs (or any spells) to match the damage of 1 Divine shot (of the same E), would my mana usage be close? How about the AP taken to do both? You do the sums. To me, I'll take the ability to deal the biggest damage in the shortest possible time. Besides, a Thief is not designed to spam attacks to kill their mob. What makes a Thief special is Backstab, not dagger attacks. The powerful skills are just icing on the cake to finish their heavily wounded mobs. With that in mind, high mana usage is a disadvantage that should and can be managed.

The second major disadvantage I was told was that it is hard to level a Thief up, especially in later Gens. I would respectfully disagree with that because other skills can be taken up (even temporarily) once we gain a couple of slots. By Gen 3-4, a Thief should have enough alternative skills to help out in leveling. The argument is that we have to get to Gen 3-4 first and it is really hard to level a Thief especially in the first two generations. Try that argument on a Wind Mage and you have no case. I have been playing a Gen 8 Wind Mage.

Now the advantages of a Thief. 

The Master of the Elements

To be an accomplished mage that can kill almost any Quest Mobs of your KP range, you need a decent mix of skills. To be fair, if you have Fire and Water, you should be able to kill most mobs. Until you meet a Margoyle or friends like that. Even so, how many slots will a Mage needs to hold up opposite skills of at least 2 schools? How about the Thief then? 22 slots - because a switch of dagger is all a Thief gotta do. It makes Wands usage looks like complete tool in comparison. What can a mage do when the mob is only afraid of typeless damage? No problem for our Thief. A modest Jewelled Dagger will finish it off. Suck it up.

Backstab

Enough said. However, the biggest advantage of a Thief happens to be its biggest disadvantage in a no flee room but as I mentioned earlier, by a couple of gen ups, a Thief will have enough tricks up his sleeve to kill a mob that he cannot backstab repeatedly, at a normal pace.

Stealth

A Thief's stealth ability will be as high as his gen. For a mage, cleric or fighter, that is a minimum of extra 4 slots for Invisible, and even more slots for hide. 

A bit of fun

Unlike the other schools which are basically spam-the-keys type, the fighting style of a Thief provides a refreshing difference.

My conclusion - A brilliantly designed school

In my opinion, there are no other school as well designed as Thief. For a start, none of its skills are completely useless as compared to skills like Ventriloquate. Each skill is also designed for a purpose so there is no wastage, unlike in the Wind school, skills like Armor, Shield, Bark Skin and Golden Skin basically does the same thing, robbing a Wind Mage of variation. Peek is a incredibly useful skill for Spec Book hunting. You wouldn't mind having a skill like Pick Lock in your pocket. Heal blade heals for an extremely high cost but the thing is - it heals. Being able to heal, bringing a mob down to its knee before the battle starts, impressive damage, able to hide the in shadows and the fact that all but a few locked doors stand in his way, a Thief can roam anywhere and survive. Even without skills from other schools as a complement, it is already the complete package.

I love it.

My Reflections - 2 Months into HOTL3

A week or so more, it would be almost 2 months since I stepped into the precarious text world of HOTL3. I woke up this morning and felt a strong urge to pen my reflections about my gaming experience with HOTL3. Reflections being reflections, are not meant to entertain or hurt though it usually will, if it is done the way it should be - honestly.

I believe most players who interact with me in the game would agree I have a strong interest in the game thus far. I have been playing the game (a lot), actively coming up with suggestions (bad or otherwise), helping and getting helped by others regularly. Some may even describe me as a passionate player. If there is passion, I feel it comes from not just the game itself but the fascination of the rich history of the game. When I say history, I meant the ex-players, the crooks and the legends. Without incredible players, any game (however good) is just a few bytes of data, dead and cold without life. So there I was, absorbing any great tales any old players would stop and share. There was 'that bastard Cyrano' who killed mindlessly (and PKed me!). There was this living legend Uglyduckling who completed all his quests in Gen 1. Kaori the Obsessed, who got himself to Gen 30, enough said. Etc. Etc. I never grew tired of legendary folklore. Unfortunately, you will not hear of old players gushing about how a particular IMPlementor coding an entire area in 1 day and stuff like that.  Legendary tales are about players and always will be so. If you think about it, that's the way things are in many aspects of life too. The star lead singer or the star striker will usually get more limelight than his band and team respectively.

That led me to wonder if we understand this basic principle. However great a game is, the players, the community defines the true greatness. Thor probably (hopefully) understands the fact and shared with me his ambition of tripling regular players in the game. To do so, he felt a compelling need to complete a new tutorial for newbies before he sends his invitation to his huge mailing list. Regarding the tutorial, I have been roped in to test out the tutorial. In my opinion, it wasn't going too well and Thor must know that, judging from his clear frustrations last evening, which I felt he vented some on me. He was unhappy with the way I did my test plans. Truth to be told, I felt I was unfairly treated. None of the bugs we encountered in the last test was new. I have been actively noting them down in our shared chat but it seems that no one bothers to read or address them. True enough, when Celine was roped in to test the tutorial and went through it 'stage by stage', he/she found nothing wrong and pronounced the tutorial 'a go.' From my testing point of view, the tutorial remains broken. However, I don't need anymore hints that I am regarded as someone who is playing the fool in my testings and I decide I shall take part no more in this. After I moved to Perth from Singapore, I came to realise and adopt one important principle in my life that makes me a much happier person - I don't work with angry people. In any case, without me, these unsavory bugs wouldn't surface, since I get the impression none of the earlier testers seem to have pointed them out. The future testers shall make the testing work less frustrating. 

Having said that, I am not out of the game - yet. I'll come to that later. At the moment, I will still be contributing by updating stuff on this blog such as the Hint Area Specialise Books project and other useful information such as the latest Pet Shop navigation guide. I told Az, who is currently updating the official website, to lift any information he find useful from me. As for suggestions or ideas, Thor told me he was focusing on nothing except the tutorial. Oddly enough, for my short 2 months stay here, I've experienced multiple changes to the AP system, a complete nerf to my money-running method (which I believe I'm the only one doing so recently) by making the entire Keep of Mahntor anti-transportation and I also just found that unlike previously, I am unable to gain anymore gold after 100 million gold. (the number just froze.) Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to tell someone how to arrange furniture in his own house. The key fact remains that I am a guest and I know exactly where I stand. That shouldn't restrict me from sharing the irony though, for a lighthearted laugh.

Like I shared in the beginning of this blog, I'm a newbie in HOTL3, but I'm a veteran in gaming. I have been there, done that as much as any players in HOTL3 - just that I did it elsewhere. There isn't anything that will really surprise me. I've seen games rising to greatness and falling to dust. I've participated in close knitted gaming communities. Stepping away from a game one day is inevitable. The officials and community define the length. That's all. They decide the demographics of the players they want to keep and alienate.

I couldn't help but be amused each time someone give me comments such as, 'Wah, Dragonspawn so fast!' They were referring to how fast I progressed in the game. I respectively beg to differ. The last time I checked, I have chalked by more than 50% of the time logged in held by the 'No-lifer' record holder Pris in less than 2 months. With that kind of hours, doesn't it seem natural my toon will progress the way it is? From my observations, players who joined the game around the same time as me, such as Eken, has at least 3 toons higher than Gen 2 by now. That adds up to about 6-7 Gens easily, about the same as my only significant character in the game. Kregar, a player that recently joined, got two toons to level 50 in 2 weeks. I believe there is no real need to make any changes to the game to 'slow down players' because we may be under an illusion that is due to the imbalance of the game, masking the fact some players are just more obsessed than the others. For one, I will still be among the richest players in the game as long as I play because of a simple fact - I run and most others don't. I have to agree with Az on this - If it ain't broken, don't fix it. There are surely more things worthy of attention, such as a tutorial.

Or is it?

If you ask me as a 2 month old not-so-newbie, what will a good tutorial do for me when I first join the game? Before I answer this question, I will like to share that there was a player who joined the game almost at the same time as me. He chose a Titan as his race and he was obviously struggling like me trying to figure how the heck this game works. He did not advance beyond level 2 and I have not seen him since. If I may make a wild guess, that is a scenario Thor hopes to avoid when he open the floodgates to the expected influx of newbies. But if you think about it, for the Titan who quit at level 2, there is another Dragonspawn who advanced to Gen 6 and is still playing today. What is a possible reason behind this and will the tutorial change this? Of course, I don't have an answer for that. On my personal note, I wouldn't have stayed in the game for long if Thor did not teleport to me and chatted me up, pumped me up with some newbie EQ and enchanted my Dagger of Intellect which I still fondly kept with me till now. I wouldn't have advanced so far after he weened me off without ridiculously helpful players from my clan or the rival clan alike. I would have strayed mindlessly in Gen1 and quit the game eventually if Cee didn't offer to fuse me to let me have a taste when E1 skills actually meant. From time to time, I learnt new things from players who taught me intriguing things about the game, such as hunting for Specialise Books, which I eventually include in my daily routine. With due respect to the smashing new tutorial to come, these players offered me much more beyond at a profound level. Personally, I concluded that is what made me stay, along with the play-ability of the game. (for now). I believe if we want a HOTL3 population to flourish, we should garner the existing players together to pay attention to new players. The tutorial is a good tool, but not the key. Already, I've seen the population almost doubling from the time I started out even without the tutorial launched. I believed how I 'cared' for Goran and Groot makes a bit of difference just like what Thor did for me. 

And that will probably work wonders for the future Glint, Devona or Patsy.

The Pet Guide

I've included a speedwalk to the respective locations of the pet shops. All you need to do it to copy my speedwalk, paste in your client and hit enter! Pass door will be helpful.

LEVEL	Pet	HP	Cost	Location
1	Kitten	20	10	Migaard
5	Puppy	100	250	Migaard
10	Reindeer	200	1000	Migaard
13	Macaw	260	1690	Town of solace
13	The Spearman	160	1690	The Bazaar
15	Pidgeon	300	2250	Migaard
15	Raven	300	2250	Town of solace
19	Hawk	380	3610	Town of solace
20	Horse	400	4000	Migaard
21	Falcon	420	4410	Town of solace
22	The Bowman	440	4840	The Bazaar
25	Wolf	500	6250	Migaard
28	The Swordsman	560	7840	The Bazaar
30	Cyclone	600	9000	Macross
35	Nimbus Cloud	700	12250	Dragon City
40	Green Dragon	800	16000	Dragon City
solace	recall;s;s;w;w;w;w;w;s;d;w;n;n;n;n;n;e;e;s
midgaard	recall;s;s;s;e;e;n
the bazaar	recall;s;s;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;n;n;n;n;n;
dragon city	recall;s;s;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;s;w;w;s;s;w;s;w;w;w;n;e;n;e;open n;n;n;e;

Fusion Dates for 13 Oct - 30 Nov 2014

For you Nuitari Assholes

2339	19	Aries	GN	-	S	Thursday, November 13, 2014, 3:31:00 PM
2339	12	Virgo	CX	-	S	Friday, November 14, 2014, 6:07:00 PM
2339	13	Virgo	CX	-	S	Friday, November 14, 2014, 6:19:00 PM
2339	9	Capricorn	GN	-	S	Saturday, November 15, 2014, 3:55:00 PM
2339	10	Capricorn	CN	-	S	Saturday, November 15, 2014, 4:07:00 PM
2340	3	Gemini	CX	-	S	Sunday, November 16, 2014, 6:43:00 PM
2340	27	Virgo	CN	-	S	Monday, November 17, 2014, 4:19:00 PM
2340	28	Virgo	CN	-	S	Monday, November 17, 2014, 4:31:00 PM
2340	1	Libra	CN	-	S	Monday, November 17, 2014, 4:43:00 PM
2340	25	Capricorn	GX	-	S	Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 2:19:00 PM
2341	18	Gemini	CN	-	S	Wednesday, November 19, 2014, 4:55:00 PM
2341	19	Gemini	CN	-	S	Wednesday, November 19, 2014, 5:07:00 PM
2341	15	Libra	S	-	S	Thursday, November 20, 2014, 2:43:00 PM
2341	16	Libra	S	-	S	Thursday, November 20, 2014, 2:55:00 PM
2341	9	Pisces	-	-	S	Friday, November 21, 2014, 5:31:00 PM
2342	5	Cancer	GN	-	S	Saturday, November 22, 2014, 3:07:00 PM
2342	6	Cancer	GN	-	S	Saturday, November 22, 2014, 3:19:00 PM
2342	7	Cancer	GN	-	S	Saturday, November 22, 2014, 3:31:00 PM
2342	3	Scorpio	GX	-	S	Sunday, November 23, 2014, 1:07:00 PM
2342	24	Pisces	GN	-	S	Monday, November 24, 2014, 3:43:00 PM
2342	25	Pisces	GN	-	S	Monday, November 24, 2014, 3:55:00 PM
2343	17	Libra	-	-	S	Wednesday, November 26, 2014, 5:31:00 AM
2343	18	Libra	-	-	S	Wednesday, November 26, 2014, 5:43:00 AM
2343	19	Libra	-	-	S	Wednesday, November 26, 2014, 5:55:00 AM
2344	10	Taurus	GX	-	S	Thursday, November 27, 2014, 7:19:00 PM
2344	11	Taurus	GX	-	S	Thursday, November 27, 2014, 7:31:00 PM
2344	12	Taurus	GX	-	S	Thursday, November 27, 2014, 7:43:00 PM
2344	3	Saggitarius	GN	-	S	Saturday, November 29, 2014, 9:07:00 AM
2344	4	Saggitarius	GN	-	S	Saturday, November 29, 2014, 9:19:00 AM
2344	5	Saggitarius	GN	-	S	Saturday, November 29, 2014, 9:31:00 AM
2345	24	Gemini	CN	-	S	Sunday, November 30, 2014, 10:55:00 PM
2345	25	Gemini	CN	-	S	Sunday, November 30, 2014, 11:07:00 PM
2345	26	Gemini	CN	-	S	Sunday, November 30, 2014, 11:19:00 PM

For you Solinari Losers

2339	6	Aries	CX	S	-	Thursday, November 13, 2014, 12:55:00 PM
2339	7	Aries	GX	S	-	Thursday, November 13, 2014, 1:07:00 PM
2339	28	Leo	GN	S	-	Friday, November 14, 2014, 3:43:00 PM
2339	24	Saggitarius	GX	S	-	Saturday, November 15, 2014, 1:19:00 PM
2339	25	Saggitarius	GX	S	-	Saturday, November 15, 2014, 1:31:00 PM
2339	26	Saggitarius	GX	S	-	Saturday, November 15, 2014, 1:43:00 PM
2340	22	Aries	CN	S	-	Sunday, November 16, 2014, 11:19:00 AM
2340	15	Virgo	GX	S	-	Monday, November 17, 2014, 1:55:00 PM
2340	16	Virgo	GX	S	-	Monday, November 17, 2014, 2:07:00 PM
2340	12	Capricorn	-	S	-	Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 11:43:00 AM
2340	13	Capricorn	-	S	-	Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 11:55:00 AM
2341	6	Gemini	S	S	-	Wednesday, November 19, 2014, 2:31:00 PM
2341	2	Libra	CX	S	-	Thursday, November 20, 2014, 12:07:00 PM
2341	3	Libra	CX	S	-	Thursday, November 20, 2014, 12:19:00 PM
2341	4	Libra	CX	S	-	Thursday, November 20, 2014, 12:31:00 PM
2341	28	Capricorn	CN	S	-	Friday, November 21, 2014, 10:07:00 AM
2342	21	Gemini	CX	S	-	Saturday, November 22, 2014, 12:43:00 PM
2342	22	Gemini	CX	S	-	Saturday, November 22, 2014, 12:55:00 PM
2342	18	Libra	CN	S	-	Sunday, November 23, 2014, 10:31:00 AM
2342	19	Libra	CN	S	-	Sunday, November 23, 2014, 10:43:00 AM
2342	12	Pisces	GX	S	-	Monday, November 24, 2014, 1:19:00 PM
2343	11	Gemini	-	S	-	Tuesday, November 25, 2014, 5:55:00 AM
2343	5	Libra	GN	S	-	Wednesday, November 26, 2014, 3:07:00 AM
2343	6	Libra	GN	S	-	Wednesday, November 26, 2014, 3:19:00 AM
2343	4	Capricorn	GX	S	-	Wednesday, November 26, 2014, 7:43:00 PM
2344	26	Aries	CN	S	-	Thursday, November 27, 2014, 4:55:00 PM
2344	27	Aries	CN	S	-	Thursday, November 27, 2014, 5:07:00 PM
2344	25	Cancer	GN	S	-	Friday, November 28, 2014, 9:31:00 AM
2344	19	Scorpio	CX	S	-	Saturday, November 29, 2014, 6:43:00 AM
2344	20	Scorpio	CX	S	-	Saturday, November 29, 2014, 6:55:00 AM
2344	18	Aquarius	CN	S	-	Saturday, November 29, 2014, 11:19:00 PM
2345	12	Gemini	S	S	-	Sunday, November 30, 2014, 8:31:00 PM
2345	13	Gemini	S	S	-	Sunday, November 30, 2014, 8:43:00 PM
2345	11	Virgo	GX	S	-	Monday, December 1, 2014, 1:07:00 PM