Creeping towards 150

Baba showed up at PW dunes ready for some borg action, only to find a team leeching experience off an NT dominating the spawns. Before he left, he observed for a while, taking notes for Babaente our own NT. Standard practice seems to be to fly around in a yalm to gather up as many of the Borg as possible on the helipad. Once all all the Borg have been pulled from the dunes to the Helipad, then the NT ditches the yalm and starts the usual kiting procedure.

Area of 110-120 mobs in Eastern Foul Plains, click for larger view.

We have not had our NT Babaente out in a while. We have decided to concentrate on getting Baba to 150 and in the process also upgrade his implants. Hopefully once he hits 150, leveling will go faster, as he will be able to participate in the title 5 Froob RL2 Group. Its a loose group, not a organization/guild, but more of a series of organized raids.

With hitting Borg out of the question, with the NT dominating the PW Borgs, Baba decided to try hunting mobs in Eastern Foul Plains. He first tried the an area south east of a player city in the upper north west corner of the region, but this did not work out too well. The mobs there were running from 120 to 135 and they sent him to reclaim several times.

He moved further south east until he reached a patch of desert surrounded by verdant land. This turned out to be a perfect hunting ground. It held a good number of infectors and desert eremites in the 110s and they re-spawned fairly quickly.

Baba fights and kills his first Desert Eremite, click for larger view

Baba had been using his hot key to tab through the nearby hostile mobs and almost panicked when he saw the dreaded words ‘desert eremite’ appear. It was only after he got his breathing back under control that he realized that it was not deep red but, light orange. He had just done a save at a terminal, so he figured he had nothing to lose so even though he could not see the eremite, he went ahead and fired off a taunt at it. In a few seconds the eremite was towering over him while he cycled through his alpha attacks and specials.

During the fight he had time to inspect the eremite to see that it was QL 110. He only lost about 25% health before the thing went down and Baba got to take his first desert eremite trophy shot.

Baba's first Desert Eremite Trophy Shot, click for larger view.

He went on to spend about an hour at that spot and brought his exp bar about 2/3’s of the way to the top, however his bags were getting full and he decided to head back to civilization to fence his goodies. Back at Newland City, Tireen our trader logged on and proceeded to fence Baba’s most recent take.

The next evening when Baba returned to PW, he found it occupied again with a different NT and tag-along-team. With that avenue blocked he decided to go work on completing the first shoulder pad quest. He had started it more than a year ago, and had collected all the pieces except one, the scrap of notum. Baba spent two nights at the crash site dunes north west of Newland city bopping mechanical mobs looking for the drop, but despite felling over 200 mobs, he did not see a single scrap of notum. He did see several copies of pieces he already had, but over all the drop rate seemed to be one quest item for every 40 or so mobs.

Baba grabs a scrap of notum, completing the first of the Dodga pad quests, click for larger view.

The third night he was about to give up, when he decided to try the junk yard just east of Rome Blue in Galway. He had been avoiding it previously because it is often over crowded with other questers. It paid off because in about 20 minutes after about the 27th mob, the scrap of notum dropped. While he was there he observed another player and learned a nifty way to help out your alts. It was a fairly high level player, (140+) and they were clearly methodically killing the mech mobs and looking for quest pieces. However when they found one, they did not pick it up. They had an low level alt (that they were teamed with) in a yalm set to follow behind them at ground level. It smoothlyh followed them around and when he did find a quest piece, (he was obviously dual boxing), he would have the lowbie pick the item up. So

He then flew off to Wartorn Valley to restart the quest and then hand over the finished object made by combining all the pieces. He was rewarded with the first set of pads, but disappointed when they did not display when he equipped them. He tried taking off all his other armor, and even tried submitting a petition. After about an hour, with not reply, it was time for him to call it a night. Scratch one up again for Funcom’s lousy petition system.

So why you might ask is a level 140 enforcer even worrying about these pads? The do add a very healthy 75 max health and that’s always a good thing, especially if you are a froob like Baba, and are shut out of the really sweet buffing armor and pads that expansion players can choose from. He is is thinking of doing to do the second and third parts of the quest.

Baba has been working on designing his next set of implants. They should be around level 200 and he has most of the pieces narrowed down. He had found three slots to be a puzzle.

• Leg – Faded cluster: Max Health or Heal Delta?
• Waist – Bright cluster: Max Health or Body Development?
• Chest – Shiny cluster: Max Health or Body development?

For the leg, he had no idea which would be better. He did some number crunching and what he found was that taken individually, Max Health looked like a better deal in each slot, however a design that buffs heal delta in all three slots could be another story.

Baba was all set to make these his choices when he stumbled accrose this post which lead him to this thread “Heal Delta and Stamina Tickrate for froobs“. Baba is intrigued with the idea of a high heal delta Enforcer and may decide to give that a try. The arguments seem to be that the high delta set up would be good for RK mobs and missions, while the high health build would work better for raiding where the super mobs hit for insane amounts of damage.

The next evening Baba returned to Perpetual Wastelands and found it deserted of other players. He only had about a third of his experience bar to fill, so it did not take long to take down the required number of Borg and ding 141.

140 Rolls By

Baba at max detail settings, hunting bots in Omni Forrest

Baba was getting a little tired of PW Borgs and thought he would try some leveling off mobs in the wild.  He found a canyon in Southern Foul plains that looked like it had a mix of snakes, Drills, and big cats, at around level 120 which he thought would be tough enough to give some decent experience, yet not be risking reclaim all the time.  Well it turned out that yes he could handle them smoothly individually, but the layout of the canyon was too tight and it was impossible to keep from picking up more adds while kiting single mobs.  He picked up a train of 4 or 5 120 level mobs which he had to run across half the zone to lose.

He then spent some time hunting low level bots for the last piece in the first part of the Alvin/Dodga quest.  He had started this quest back when he was in his 60s, but gave up after collecting 6 of the seven pieces.  That seventh piece was just not to be found by him.  He killed about 90 in one trip which yielded two drops of quest items, but not the item he needed, the scrap of notum.  The next day he killed about 150 bots in a session which yielded 0 quest pieces.  Somebody noticed what he was doing, and could not resist mocking him for still doing this quest at his level.  I guess compared to expansion shoulder pieces, the ones from this quest are pretty wimpy.  Maybe so, Baba just hates too leave things like that unfinished, so every once and a while, he goes out looking for the last quest item.

Strange clump of mobs in river, click for larger view

While traveling around he came across one of those strange clumps of mobs, this time in Athens near a bend in the river.  It must be something in the virtual geometry that causes so many unlike mobs to congregate in one illogical spot.   AgentBaba our agent alt spotted a similar thing near one of the player cities just north of the Rhinoman valley in Newland Dessert.

Speaking of AgentBaba, she leveled up to around 25 out in Newland Dessert, and then returned to the Subway in Borealis to see how far she could level in there.  The  Gripo-Com AKR 1K21rifles recommended by Hahnsoo’s guide worked out extremely well for her.  She was doing damage close to what several true twinks were getting in the Subway.  The Gripo’s are fairly fast and have a very nice crit.

On her arrival to the entrance to the stairs to the deep subway she was challenged by Eumenides, who she was quite able to put away with little fuss or muss.  To her delight, he dropped the best bit of subway loot, the ring of Nucleus Basalis, so she then had no need to join suicide Abmouth teams.  She then spent a day or two leveling up.  With the great damage from the rifle and her evades, she had no trouble with any mob in the subway.  The only one that was a threat were Virgil Aneid and Abmouth, which she did her best to stay away from.

One of the more curious mobs in the subway is a small female is the deep subway named “Redundant Scan”.  During AgentBaba’s extended Subway experience, she must have fought this mob 20-30 times.  Very often “Redundant Scan” will break off from combat when her health gets to about 40% and start running away.   For a ranged toon like AgentBaba, this is no problem, as poor “Redundant Scan” is unable to outrun projectiles.

After she hit level 32, the number of mobs that would give her any experience was reduced to a very small handful.  The two giant spiders, the shades in the Vergil Aeneid section, and the two cyborgs in the room before Virgil were the only ones to give experience after hitting 32.  It was getting boring having to sit around waiting for them to respawn, so AgentBaba decided to quit while she was ahead and was in the process of leaving when she reached the stairs that go up to the rooms with the sand fleas.  At that point she got a join team pop up.  She had been posted on looking for a team the whole time, and gotten 0 invites so far, so she just as she clicked yes, the ugly form of Abmouth filled her view.  A trox doctor that had been teamed with a semi-twink looked to have lost his team-mate to Abmouth, and was now determined to avoid reclaim.

AgentBaba first impulse was to flat out run away, run away, Monte Python style, but decided to try and help out as best she could.  Not only was there Abmouth, but the doc/trox had also picked up a train of several infectors and cyborgs as well.   AgentBaba was surprised that even though she was pouring damage into Abby, neither Abby or any of the adds, paid her any attention.  The doc/trox seemed to be going into that slow motion, death spiral dance, so AgentBaba knew that it was now time for her to split, or she would be next.  She ran for the exits and was quite surprised that she managed to escape.   I have got to note at this point, after taking an Enforcer, Agent and Adventurer through the subway, that the Agent was by far the most effective.  The Enforcer’s non twink weapons were too weak, they lack self healing, and have no evades.

Player City south of PW notum mines, click for full view

Baba did go back to Perpetual Wastelands and resumed hunting Borgs there.  He used to be able to expect to grab a level in about an hour there by himself, but ever since he hit around level 135, the experience each Borg gives has taken a nose dive, and it now takes him 2 to 3 hours to get a level at the same spot.  It has become less dangerous.  He can flub a pull and survive pulling 3-4 Borg at a time.  Baba still has his eye on moving up to a Pained Panther from his Panther.  While trying to compare the two, he ran them both through the Auno damage simulator. The simulator asks for the input of your initiatives and your add/def setting.  This nudged Baba to to check his Agg/Def setting at the Unity of the Rose site.  The Agg/Def calculator told Baba that he could set his all the way back to 25% and maintain the same attack speed.  He tried this on his last Borg hunting trip and it did seem to help with fewer Borg crits landing.  This is an easily overlooked benefit of the Panther weapons, and most likely other fast melee weapons.  Once they are in the less than 1.5 seconds range, they enable enforcers to adjust thier Agg/Def settings quite a bit at no loss in damage.