Some Rubi-Ka downtime

Baba spent most of his time logged on during the past day or two, looking at his complete profile, (skill levels, implants, armor, etc.) with the intent of mapping out his next implant and armor upgrades. Baba’s at level 127 has implants ranging in QL from 126 to 157.

Baba's armor set at 127, click for the rest.

After some initial calculations, Baba figures that in just a few more levels he should be with a comfortable froob striking distance of some QL 200 implants. This is based on only the most basic health buffs easily available to froobs, the surgery clinic for 100, a Doctors buff 80, his ring of presence 1, a med suit for 86. With one round of laddering treatment implants, at his current level would allow him to equip ql 194 implants, so once Baba adds 6 more points to his treatment skills it will be time start working on the upgrade.

On the armor side, Baba is still getting value out of a full set of QL111 carbonum. Surprisingly, even though he has found lots of Miy’s in the 110 to 200 range, there is very little that he can equip that would present an improvement over his 111 carb. He did switch to a ql130 Miy’s Melee helmet, some ql 127 Rhinoman gloves, and a Miy’s ql 145 ranged breastplate recently. He really doesn’t need the 2HandEdged boost any longer from the Rhinomen gloves, so he will definitely looking for another full set. At this moment he could easily equip some QL 140 carb with not extra buffs. With buffs he could equip up to around 160 and not be over equipped. He is going to wait until after he gets his next set of implants thought as they should up some of the needed skills enough to make a few levels higher difference in the carb.

Baba is pretty confident in contemplating pulling together the materials for the carb and thinks he knows what to expect in trying to find a tradeskiller to put it together. The implants are another story. He is saving all implants he finds over 129 and has a good cache of 150 to 200 ql pieces. He needs to review the information out there regarding stripping implants and bumping up their quality levels. From his initial review of what he has in stock, it may be a long time before he finds all the pieces he needs for a full set.

Tuesday evening, Baba made a Borg hunting expedition again to the dunes in northeast Perpetual Wastelands. The luck of the loot drop tables tonight seemed at first to be against him, as he was getting quite a few Borgs with no loot, or only filled with low quality shop food, and only one or two pieces of Miy’s armor. He did come across two Cyborg waist implants, one of which is very noteworthy as it gives 232 Heath! It is Atrox only, but conflicts with the need to get 2hedged skills from that slot. It could be something to keep in mind for after when IP gets capped, and he could spare the slot.

He had the dunes to himself, and had filled his experience bar to about 50% when he mis-judged a pull and could not fight his way out of 3 tough Borgs. When he returned after reclaim, he patiently worked his way accross the biggest dune a the far northwest corner, eventually clearing it completely of Borg and again filling his experience bar to 50%. After losing that much previously that evening, he decided to return to Newland City and hit the insurance terminal.

Room variety in missions

Baba dinged 116 running missions Thursday evening and brought his token count up to 784. He got lucky again and found another ‘extra’ clan token in a mission crate. He continues to pick up several QL 129+ implants or clusters on missions now, though it may still be a while before he has enough to start thinking about upgrading himself with a full set. He also found two nice rings recently. A Ring of endurance which gives 4-8 stamina and strength and a Ring of Essence, that gives strength 20, stamina 10 .

Baba set them aside to place in his banked buffing items backpack. It always seems that when it comes time to try and equip something difficult and all the major contributing items to the meet the requirements are in place, but then the total comes up just a few points short. That is when items like these come in handy. The nice thing about these is they have rather modest requirements.

Baba tried exiting the Lush Hills omni grid on one of his missions, and got two 100k hits for his efforts from an omni guard. Baba recommends holding down your forward button when rezzing out of this grid exit, so that your Yalmaha is moving and will be out of range before the guard can react. This time Baba got caught because he paused for a second before starting to fly his Yalmaha away from the grid exit. At least his yalm was fast enough to get him out of range before his health ran out. This prompted him to go back and edit his list of clan friendly grid points to show that 2HO is a 25% zone. The guards there may be avoidable while in a yalm, but it is also a popular Omni player ganking spot. High level Omni often lurk there on busy nights, just waiting for low level clanners to show.

Tireen was delayed from her further Omni reconnaissance, as Baba put in a request that she use her access to well stocked Omni trade shops to find him a higher quality Flurry of Blows. Somehow Baba has overlooked upgrading his, as he was still using a QL 29 one. At first Tireen tried running back and forth from one advanced shop to the next in Omni Trade. We needed to multitask with the real world for a few minutes, so she used the ’sit and wait for 2 minutes’ method where you enter a shop, check the appropriate vending machine for your needed item at your desired quality level, and walking out of the store and sitting down for 2 minutes, and then repeating. Since the shops change inventory every 2 minutes or so, when no one is in the shop, this method takes advantage of that and lets you do something else during those waiting 2 minutes. (Chat, read shopping channel, read a book etc.) After several cycles she found a QL 79 Flurry that Baba could equip and purchased it.

The last mission of the evening had one of those medium sized rooms with a small boulder/wall in the middle, which a mission target mob walks around. If Baba is careful, he can then sneak past around the wall in order to kill the last regular mission mob in an adjoining room. This is probably the 2nd or 3rd time Baba has recognized this room design since hitting level 100. He seemed to get many new mission room layouts when he hit level 100 For a while, he was seeing new room designs that were unfamiliar to what he had seen in levels 1-100.

Level design has such a great deal to do with the overall quality of the experience in first person games, and it is one area where Baba wishes Anarchy Online would do better.