Baba Beats Babyface

Babaoroody came out this past Saturday afternoon to roll a few single missions from Newland City. His objective was simply to get back into the swing of things as we have been spending more time with our Nanotechnitian and Trader lately.  Before rolling the missions at the terminals across from the Bronto Burger stand in Newland City, he took some time to sort through all the loot/party favors he received recently from the 8th Anniversary AO celebrations.  He filed away most of the novelty and social items into his bank, and just kept the experience boosting items with him in a backpack so he can have them ready for use anytime he hooks up with a good team.

Mission spot at Milky Way Omni Base, click for full view

He rolled two missions, one in the very southernmost part of Stret East Bank, and the other in the middle of an Omni base in Milky Way.  The first mission involved a mix of snakes and cyborgs and went by in a flash.  Having gotten used to team missions, single person missions now seem like just a warm up exercise.  The second mission involved more cyborgs, humans, and several Babyface type mobs.  The incongruity of the foreboding look of this mob with the humorous baby talk type audio coming from this mob had Baba chuckling all through the mission.  Baba had been wiped a few times by very high level Babyfaces, so at first it was taken very cautiously, but after about the second one, it was clear these were lower levels and quite easy to knock over.

Flying from Harry’s at Lush Fields, over the inner waterway, Baba enjoyed turning on the AO music which always is a big enhancement to the experience of viewing Rubi-Ka’s lush landscapes.  The outdoors, open spaces music that plays when transversing long distances in AO is very soothing and really adds to the enjoyment of the moment.

Baba beats up on Babyface, click for better view

Once Baba completed both missions he headed back to Newland to sort through his loot, starting a couple of bags for monster parts.  He had one interesting drop from the missions, a personal grid beacon which Baba plans on sending over to Tireen, or trader.  It will be a while before she levels up high enough to equip it, but it will be waiting for her. He’s glad he found it as it prompted him to look it up at Auno.org and there he spotted ‘Walk the Grid’ which is better and which Tireen should be able to equip fairly soon.

His loot included several different cool sounding projectile type weapons, which unfortunately did not turn up on his handy loot only weapons list, so they most likely will be shopfood.

While sorting loot, he made a quick side trip to a backyard in order to buy 4 more backpacks, mainly to serve as bank storage items.

Baba also took some time to think about what his short term goals should be.  He reviewed his current equipment, including armor an implants, back item and weapon.  He definitely wants to step up from his Panther to a Pained Panther, and hopes to snag a team going to Crypt of Home for this.  Although it seems he is over the 110 level entrance cap, he can still get in with an Engineer warp.  Either that, or pony up a several million credits.

Armor wise, he seems to be doing ok, with Miy’s drops of Borgs.  In another 10-15 levels he may be in the range for a higher quality Alby back item.  Eventually, after maybe 20-30 more levels, he may in range to equip a Black Clan Tank Armor, a friend donated.  At this point, implants are his biggest question mark.  Getting implants over Ql 125 is much more involved than getting implants under QL 125 was.  Previously one can shop for store bought implant components when looking for under QL 125 implants.  Over 125 is another story. The highest basic implants stores carry are 125.  To get basic implants over 125 requires finding finished implants in missions and as drops from mobs and then having a tradeskiller strip them and then combine them with the appropriate clusters which are available in stores in Qualities over 125.  For Baba, the process of designing the desired implant set is a formidable undertaking.  Add to this the great effort required to collect the needed parts, and QL 125+ implants become a very daunting expedition.

There does not seem to be a good rule of thumb out there for determining of often one should upgrade implants.  It seems to be more of ‘do it as often as you can stand’ type thing, as the benefits have to be weighed against the costs in time and credits.  Baba does not have the credits to buy a set quite a few levels above his current level.  His best bet we think is to make do with his current ones and in another 10 or so levels start thinking about putting together a set from what he can find and getting it bumped up some.

Baba then decided to update his equipment configuration at Auno.org.  He swapped back in a Notum Ring of Three, that he had replaced for a while with a Ring of Haste.  The Ring of Haste is useful when kiting Borgs in Perpetual Wastelands as it gives 100 run speed, but for missions the Notum Ring is better for the added damage and extra ACs.  After making an up to date equipment configuration, he decided to look back through some of his equipment setups all the way back to day one.  We decided to dedicate a separate permanent page to Baba’s equipment configurations as they display a rather complete time-line of his progress.

Yalms and Map Upgrades

After Baba’s alts Tireen and Babaente completed their first batch of team missions, it was discovered that Tireen seemed to be missing her token board.  We posted a question to Auno.org forums to see if it was possible to get a replacement.  The answer is yes, the basic start up shop terminals in backyards sell them.  So Tireen ran back to Omni Trade and found a start up terminal and bought one.  When she went to install it, there was a Omni smelling salts in the neck slot.  When she went to move the salts to her social tab, guess what, there was the ‘missing token board’.  Apparently token boards do not function when worn in the social tab and neither does the smelling salts.

The pair, Tireen and Babaente and starting to get the dual logged team mission routine down.  Most of the time Tireen is set to follow Babaente around, while the NT does most of the work.  Auto-attack on Tireen is somewhat unpredictable.  Most of the time, if a mob attacks the NT, she does not react.  Occasionally she returns fire, when it is Babaente who is being attacked, but not often. Babaente has learned that sometime she can train Tireen into a room containing a mob, and hope the mob attacks Tireen first.  This gets Tireen pumping lead, at which point the NT can start throwing nukes.

Boss rooms require taking control of Tireen, having her teleport into the boss room first, drain the closest mob and start shooting.  Once she has started fighting on auto, one has to switch back to Babaente and teleport her into the boss room to join the fight.  The great thing about boss rooms is the teleport is a great panic escape.  If either or both get to low on health, they can teleport back to the previous room to recharge and heal.  It is not a complete panacea, as most boss mobs seem to take the interlude to heal up also, as when they return, the boss mob usually has regained most of their health. This can go on indefinitely, or until a few lucky crits tip the balance against the boss.

When this past Friday evening rolled around, we realized that both Tireen and Babaente were now within striking distance of equipping better belts, map upgrades, and Yalmahas, with the proper implants.  A full custom set was designed for the trader Tireen, and for Babaente an implant set made up of 3 custom and the rest premade implants.

Tireen set off to Omni Trade to shop of the components.  As is her wont, as she made the rounds, she also routinely checked the car terminals as she passed.  This paid off Friday evening when she came across a QL 34 Yalm for 4 million with a very low air nav requirement of 84.  With this purchase sitting in her bank, we redesigned 3 of her implants to give the needed air nav skill.

With shopping complete, the materials were handed off via mule to Babaoroody, who proceeded to build the QL 50 custom implants set for Tireen.  With the generic treatment boost, the surgery clinic 100 boost and a full med suit (+79) Tireen put in the temporary implants for map navigation.  With those in, she proceeded get the monster, pointer, and machines map upgrades. Once the map upgrades were in place, the map nav implants came out, and the full permanent custom implant set was plugged in, which gave her enough skill to equip her new Yalmaha.

It was Babaentes turn next.  Inspired by Tireen’s good fortune with finding the low QL Yalm, she set out to Old Athens to haunt the high end shops in search of her own low QL Yalm.  It took her about an hour and a half of checking around before she located a QL 36 Yamaha which she immediately purchased.  When she went to install her QL 75 implants, that Tireen had shopped and Babaente had built (the 3 custom ones), she came up 5 points short in Sense to equip 2/3 of them.  The ones she did get in did allow her to equip her Yalmaha.  The implants she could not yet install were needed to get her map upgrades. Since she was already using all the boosts and buffing methods for sense she could think of, it looked like she would have to ding a level to get the needed points.

She and Tireen started running team missions again, but now they both had yalms, so they could consider farther away missions. At first they thought they would go to the city of Home in Broken Shores to pull missions, but discovered they were both short the needed computer lit skills needed to use the Broken Shores grid exit.  So they decided to stick with pulling missions in and around Newland City for the time being.  On the first mission, Tireen ran from the mission terminal directly to the mission at the other end of the city.  Once she was inside, Babaente started running across the city, only to see a very strange sight.  There was Tireen running circles around Babaente in the middle of Newland City.  We brought up the window with Tireen, which showed her sitting calmly inside the mission, while Babaente’s window showed her running around in the city at the same time.

We wrote it off as one of those client glitches, that show up every once and a while, like those toons you seen perpetually running into walls in the Temple of the Three Winds.

During the first mission, Tireen dinged to 39.  This had the beneficial effect of upping the level of the mobs in the next team mission she pulled for them, so that Babaente started getting experience from more of the mobs.  After they completed their second and final mission for the evening, Babaente was close to getting her next level.