Push and Pull; Kiting PW Borgs

Greetings from Baba, click for larger view of his mug

Babaoroody was doing his aerobic routine with some ancient pre-nano musical artifacts as someone called “Rufus Thomas” sang about the “Push and Pull”.  His routine had been fairly unchanged for decades, the last major change instigated by the time they pieced him back together after getting torn up pretty bad by some high level Claws on a day the reclaim service was down.  The Med Vac team had rushed him to one of the best micro surgery theatres on Rubi-Ka, but this was back in the days before insta-grow nu-bone, when they had to use medieval kludges like steel rods, plates and screws.  After that, he had to drop the drop-splits from his routine, and just replaced them with more running in place.

He had just passed the point where the splits had been, always a reminder of that ordeal, when he noticed some activity on his guild chat channel.  It was Heschol, a general in his org “Angels of the Night” with an  invite for PW Borgs.  Although Baba was still pretty rusty, this would be only his second outing since his recent absence, asking an Enforcer to pass up a Borg team can only have one outcome.  He flew his Yalm from his apartment in Newland City, out to the grid entrance next to the city and then took the Mort Sentinels exit from the grid.  From there he had to fly over half of Mort and most of Perpetual Wastelands to get to the Northwest Borg base.  It must be nice to have access to the Fixer Grid and be able to get to PW minus the long slow flight he thought as he watched familiar PW geography pass by below. When Baba arrived the team was  waiting at the Helipad. Baba said hello to the team:

• Aoephreek  131 Nanomage male NT, clan
• Babaoroody 131 Atrox Male Enforcer, clan AOTN
• Habanerina 166 Solitus Female Agent, clan, AOTN
• Heschol 131 Solitus Male Soldier clan
• Thermospy 131 Opifex Male Agent

The previous evening Tireen inspects Newland Guards all trained up 06-05-09, click for larger view.

Thermospy was in a kiting mood and obliged the rest of the team by False Profession-ing as an NT and doing most of the heavy lifting.  He was so skilled he easily had rounded just about all of a full spawn of the dunes area north of the Helipad and they were soon looking for more Borgs.  They found a few stragglers the small base just north of the dunes, and then they headed to the south entrance of the Borg mines, where the NT proceeded to pull pretty good sized kites out of the mine site and finishing them off, often all at once.  They then moved north and while the Agent/NT Thermospy cleared out the Borgs between the mine and the Helipad base.

The NT went ahead, but after he did not come bounding back with Borgs in tow, the team heading into the base in the hopes of catching up with the NT who was probably out on the Helipad by now, pulling Borgs from the Dunes.

This assumption was wrong.  The NT got hung up in the notorious south gate of the Helipad base, and had gotten sent to reclaim as he struggled with the entry.  When Baba got to the gate, he too was delayed, but just enough so that when he did manage to try and pass through the base, he ran into bunches of Borgs near the north entrance.  By the time he reached the helipad he had 5-6 Borg chasing him.

Meanwhile another NT kiting team had showed up and was busy working the Helipad with Borgs from the Dunes.  Before Baba could get things sorted out as to where his team mates were, and who was aggro-wing which Borgs, he got wiped by several stray Borgs.  Baba met up with the also reclaimed Thermospy at OA grid where Baba got his first taste of the Fixer grid.  When Thermo asked if he was ready to grid, Baba said OK, not wanting to admit he had no idea what to do next.  After a minute or so of inaction on Baba’s part.  The Team patiently explained to our challenged brute the simple process of watching for the data receptacle to show up in his inventory and then selecting it and dropping it on the Grid Terminal.

Data Recepticle

Baba can be a bit slow, especially if he has not had done any homework research on a topic.  Even after they explained it patiently he, was having trouble until, his little Atrox brain realized he was supposed to be looking for the data receptacle in his inventory, not his NCU list.  There was some side chatter going on in the team channel about the NCU list, and Baba misinterpreted some of those comments to be related to trying to get into F-grid.

The Fixer Grid, the first time is spooky.

Once inside the Fgrid, Baba was quite dis-oriented at first.  It looks somewhat like the regular grid, except more exotic.  There is one entrance elevator in the middle on the the ground floor.  Each level is circular and has two up/down elevators each.  The exits are arranged around the periphery of the levels.  It took Baba a few moments to get a handle on the situation, find and navigate to one of 3 Perpetual Wasteland grid exits.  After materializing from that he found himself standing somewhere near the far north border of the zone, so he popped into his Yalm and started heading south.

Before long he was back with the team, who were now just south of the Borg mines. After the NT cleared out the mine area they proceeded to the area between the mine and the next base.  This was about the time that Lyanka joined the team.  Some one pulled a group of 3 or 4 Borg out near the group and it turned into a major fur-ball type conflict.  Baba was still pretty rusty, this being his 2nd outing in more than 4 months, so he was trying to play conservatively, but conservative is really not a term used much by Enforcers.

Teams just keep getting better the higher you level. By Title 4 team mates can soup up their team with a wide collection of buffing nanos.  Tonight Baba was lucky to have Dr. Hack N Quack, Grid-space Freedom, an NT nano HOT, and a couple of other buffs he forgot to make note of at the time.  This resulted in him having really amazing run speed for an Enforcer.  He was having difficulties adjusting to the massive run speed buff.  He found he was outrunning the Borgs too quickly, and he did not have the moves down on how to effectively use this speed in kiting Borgs, but he was doing the best he could and was starting to get a handle on it.

He was trying to hold down the forward button while quickly tapping the right key to run a tight circle around 3-4 Borgs.  For some reason, he failed to hit the forward key and was suddenly spinning in place, before he could correct his mistake. 4 Borgs shot him almost simultaneously, and there could be no doubt that 4 900 plus dips in the health bar are an express ticket back to reclaim.

Some of the team had to call it a day, and a few decided to go to  Shadow Lands.  This was fine with Baba, since it was getting later into the afternoon, and he did need to take some time away from Rubi-Ka to take care of some RL business.  Despite getting himself sent to reclaim like a total noob, Baba did get to see an awesome fireworks display by  the team’s Agent/NT and he picked up a few nice Miy’s armor drops.  He took some notes on the NT kiting technique on Borgs which he plans to pass on to his friend Babaente, a now title 3 NT.

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Got Borg?

Lightning and Sandstorms, perfect Mort Borg weather! Click for larger view.

On his first outing since equipping his 1k ‘Double Sun’ token board, Baba chose to return to one of his old stomping grounds, Mort, where the Borg are. Baba used this occasion to inaugurate his use of the Sentinels grid exit. With the extra +210 computer literacy from the board, he is now able to get to the third floor of the grid and use most of the terminals there. Once at the small outpost that is Sentinels, it was time to make a quick save to an insurance terminal, even though he has practically no experience due to leveling before logging off the previous night. He ran the short distance over to the Mort crater and said hello to a few of the Sentinel guards, before buffing up. He then started counter clockwise around the crater. He met a steady string of single Borg until he reached the Borg outpost at the southern portion of the crater. There 8 or more Borg bunched up close together there, so Baba did not feel confident yet enough to risk pulling the whole lot, so he hopped back into his Yalm, flew a short hop over the outpost and dropped down to running on foot on the other side to continue around the crater. By the time he made it around to the northern part of the crater rim, the 90k to 150k per Borg experience points had brought him very close to leveling.

Baba was perhaps was feeling over confident at this point, when he came upon a group of 5 Borg fairly close together. He waited for a minute or two, until it appeared that one had ventured closer to him and away from the others. Baba went ahead and used his 30m range taunt, but the one Borg was still close enough to the others to call them join in. Baba has survived such encounters before, even if it meant losing quite a good deal of health. When he switched from mouse control to keyboard at one point, something unfortunate caused him to start spinning. Nothing seemed to work to snap him out of it. While the keyboard was responsive, the mouse was not, and nothing could be done to stop the spinning.

Spinning in place, is definitely NOT a Borg survival technique, and Baba got a fast but instructive review of just how hard Borg hit, and how few Borg hits it takes to wipe out all of Baba’s health.

Baba has been caught by this technical glitch a few times in the past. It seems to require some very odd sequence of unlikely events to occur in the just the right permutation. We suspect the cause may have been an optical mouse, but so far we have not been able to recreate the problem for diagnostic purposes.

Thanks to his wise decision to do a terminal save at Sentinels, Baba rezzed back there, and used the now briefer rez sickness period to enter the shops and review the various requirements for the higher levels of health kits and first aid kits. Ever since hitting level 110 or so, Baba has started to find very high QL level advanced health and nano kits as mob and chest loot, such that he rarely has to buy any. He has built up quite a stash of such kits that are of such high level that he can not equip them yet.

When he was at lower levels, say 50 to 100, he used to buy these kits in large quantities, because they rarely came up as loot, and it was insurance against running out of them when on a team or far from shops. He is finding now, that with his growing stash of high quality kits, he only needs to buy one or two, at any one time, since with luck, he will loot something he can equip fairly soon.

While in the store, Baba used the surgery clinic to bring his health and nano back up to 100% before leaving when the rez sickness passed. After a quick run back to the crater rim, he was back in business, picking of single Borg. This time with a large experience pool to draw from, each kill gave him 60-140K plus another 20k or so from the pool.

Baba got into a rhythm of running along until he found a good single Borg to aggro, and then taking it out, and soon he was close to leveling again. He aggro-ed one Borg which he thought was alone, but it turns out there were several behind a small rise in the ground that also came running with him. Now Baba realized that the +200 runspeed from the 1k board was still not enough to safely outdistance Borgs. It was still not enough to at least put enough distance between them so that Baba could stop long enough to cast a nano. Which illustrates Baba’s problem soloing Borgs. It is difficult to cast many of his nanos while running. While he special attacks all seem to work fine, if he tries to cast a Mongo, or Challenger or rage, it will not take if he is running. The problem of course is that if he stops long enough to successfully cast one of these nanos, the Borg will catch him and land one and perhaps two hits before Baba can get back into running mode. If your health is down to 10%, one or two Borg hits is all it takes to send you back to reclaim.

Sitting back at reclaim in Sentinels for the second time that evening, Baba fumed a bit at himself for not doing proper recon on that last encounter. Saving a few extra seconds doing recon, had cost him another half hour at least of recovering the experience lost.

After his mind cleared a bit, and his temper cooled, and his health returned, Baba scampered back to the crater rim to resume his counter clockwise hunting route.

On this circuit he came across several rim sitters. Rim sitters are Borg who have been pulled away from their normal spots on the rim, and have gotten stuck down at the base of either the outside or the inside of the crater. While it takes an extra effort to find them and get to them, it is worth it, as they are usually alone. Baba spotted his first this evening thanks to his mini-map. He always uses it when hunting Borg at Mort crater. In addition to doing recon as to the number of Borg in the vicinity, it also shows Borg that may be out of sight, behind the crater wall for instance.

This one was just a little ways past the northern point of the rim on the inside. There were several giant slug things nearby, but Baba was able to use his 30 meter taunt to bring the Borg to him, forcing it to do all the hard work, running up the crater wall.

Ring around the Mort sign, helpful Borg kiting aid.

The next time around the crater, when Baba approached the ramp leading down to the Sentinel outpost in the crater, he spotted a lone Borg. Baba had been using the plentiful warning signs as kiting aides tonight. By kiting a Borg around one of these signs, the sign provides enough of a pathing distraction, that the Borg shoots even less, probably because much of the time the sign is blocking their shot, but not Baba’s Panther strikes. This time, Baba kited the Borg to one of the signs that is right in the middle of the down ramp, next to a street light and a Sentinel Guard. The guard must have been feeling easily irritated that evening because before Baba knew it, the Sentinel Guard unloaded his weapon on the poor Borg, and stole Baba’s kill!

At first Baba thought he had angered the Sentinel and it was shooting at Baba, but Baba’s health did not go down, and when the Borg died, Baba got 0 experience. Baba had one more surprise during that evening’s hunt. He had just flew over the southern point camp and de-Yalmed, when he engaged lone Borg major. During the entire evening, with the exception of the few times when he got wiped, Baba rarely got hit by the lone Borg he was kiting. This meant he hardly used any health kits for the night. This one particular Borg had gotten in a lucky crit and knocked Baba’s health down to 50% before Baba sent it packing.

The Borg dropped an interesting weapon, a type of knife which Baba had never seen before. Baba was inspecting it and not paying attention to his surroundings, when a new Borg spawned just a few feet away and immediately attacked Baba. This was the first time Baba has actually seen a Borg spawn on the Mort rim proper. He has seen them spawn in the southern camp, when teaming and farming that spot, but never out on the crater rim.

After a few more circuits, which included usually flying over the camp at the southern rim, Baba was able to level again to 122 and fill his 5 loot backpacks.

He headed back to the Sentinels grid to take him back to Newland City where he sat down in one of the shops to sort through his finds.

Miy's sorting, the relaxing and rewarding end of a Borg hunt.

Baba loves hunting, kiting, and looting Borg. He had collected so much new Miy’s armor this trip, it was time to re-organize his banked Miy’s collection. After 20 minutes he had 4 Miy’s bags, sorted by quality level. The best part being that one of those full bags is all QL 120 to 200 Miy’s armor, giving Baba several nice pieces to ‘grow’ into as he levels and his skills increase. He sighed when he remembered that he had come across a Cyborg token board, but could not pick it up because he already had one in the bank.