Inventory, Attack Rating, and HUD Tweaking

Sunrise at PW Dunes, click for larger view.

Baba’s still working on level 138. Ever since he hit level 136, leveling for Baba at Perpetual Wastelands Borg spots has slowed way down. Where he used to get 90 to 100k for each Borg, it is has dropped down to around 60-70k now, so it is taking much longer to level there than it did before. As a result of having to fell more Borg per level, Baba is amassing quite a decent Miy’s armor collection.

He went to try and organize it some and turned to a program he has used for several years, the Anarchy Online Inventory System from halorn. Unfortunately it does not recognize Miy’s armor and only identifies the quality level, but not the type. As an alternative, Baba tried out the Anarchy Online Backpack Parser found here.

The AOBP is actually more convenient to use than the AOIS because it only requires you to move a bag from the bank to inventory to get the contents. The extra step of having to actually open each back pack is eliminated. When going through an entire bank, this saves a good deal of time. The program also offers quite a few options in terms of output formats, csv, txt, html, etc. What made Baba happy, is that it does recognize his Miy’s armor and another big plus is that it parses the backpack names which makes it easy to actually locate the items.

Baba relied on AOBP to help him come up with his current almost all Miy’s armor outfit. Using AOPB it was easy to copy the Miy’s entries over to a spreadsheet where he could further sort and organize it.

When he was done he had a list sorted by Miy’s type of his collection. He was able then to pick out and quickly locate the highest level Miy’s ranged pieces he had.

The reason he choose Ranged my surprise you. Why not the Tank, or Scary? Tank would be ideal but for one factor. It buffs 2 hand blunt skill, which is useless to Baba. The Ranged is almost identical except it buffs two useless skills to Baba rather than one, but, the equip requirements are Agility and Strength. With Ranged, Baba can equip higher quality levels than with the Tank that requires Stamina and Strength. Baba can equip QL 172 Ranged and QL 133 Tank, so for the time being, Ranged is the better choice since it yields higher buffs and AC protection.

Another detail Baba became aware of during this exercise was how items that buff your primary weapon skills, increase your attack rating. He had been wearing a pair of 130 Rhinoman leather gloves. When she switched them out for some 172 Ranged gloves, his attack rating went down a point. The Rhinoman leather gloves have buffs for 2 hand edged, Fast attack and Dimach which are supported by his current weapon, the Panther. This also highlights one other reason for using the Ranged or Tank Miy’s. They both buff strength and stamina, which have very strong trickle down to his weapon skills.

Since Ranged and Tank Miy’s buff 2 enforcer primary skills, strength and stamina, Baba realized that it would be in his best interest if he cast all his self buffs in order to be able to equip the highest level Miy’s he could. Once he did that he was able to get into pieces ranging from 184 to 168. See his latest set up here.

Baba has also been working on his always engaged HUD layout and made a few more tweaks recently. He moved several attack special rings out an open backpack to sit in his main inventory. The reason for doing this, is so they can be made into hot buttons on his hot key bars. He moved his health kit and nano recharge hot key buttons to a secondary hot bar. He then put the hot keys for the rings into the recently vacated primary hot bar slots. Now when kiting Borg or in any combat, he can use these rings without having to change hand positions or using the mouse. Baba has found, and others report in the forums that mouse control can lag at times, at least compared to hot key response.

Now Baba’s attack specials available to him on his primary hot bar include,

• Flurry of Blows
• Library of Foul Language
• Ring of Eternal Night
• Tattered Flame Ring
• Bloodleech Ring
• Weeping Flesh Ring
• Memory Loss Ring

Baba uses Flurry as often as he can, but due to it’s cool down, it works out to about every other Borg.

He uses the Library of Foul Language only when everything else is on cool down, or when in teams and then it is used to get and keep aggro. Because of their cool down rates, Baba cycles between Eternal Night, Tattered Flame, Bloodleech, and Weeping Flesh, so that he can use at least one in every fight. He rarely uses the memory loss ring, keeping it around for team situations where it could be used to wipe a mobs hate list so Baba can then hit the mob and become it’s new number one on the hate list, and hopefully saving the squishy that the mob may have been attacking. None of these are knockout or even equivalent of an average hit from his current weapon, but they do help shorten the time it takes to bring a mob down.

Baba usually carries 6-7 loot bags currently, so when they fill up, it’s time to transfer the good to our Trader Tireen who fences them for top credit amounts. Recently while feeding loot to the Trader shop terminal in Newland City, another player noticed her Solar Powered Backpack and commented favorably on it. Baba now sees them listed on the shopping channel for 40 million credits. Then just a few nights later, while waiting for Babaente to show up, Tireen spotted a level 50 twink sporting the same back pack. This twink was an enforcer, so the Solar Powered backpack actually grows or shrinks according to the breed that is wearing it. When worn by an enforcer, it appears to be twice as big as Tireen’s.

Working on 138

Mr. Baba. Click for larger View

Baba spent some time recently studying his stats and the requirements to equip a Pained Panther. He has been thinking of pursuing going to the Crypt of Home, so he thought he should get familiar with who drops what there as well. He is within fairly easy range of equipping a Pained Panther without being over equipped now. To stay out of OE he would need to have Skill of Viking running. To equip it all he needs is 131 wrangle, his skill of Viking, and Rhinoman Leather jacket, the combination of which will bring his 2 hand Edged skill up to the required 1001.

It was time again to fence loot, so Baba met up with Babaente an NT to transfer the loot bags to Tireen, a trader. Tireen dutifully went to the Newland City traders shop and proceeded to feed the loot to the terminal. While there a passing player noticed and commented on her Solar Powered Backpack. Then Tireen split the proceedings with Baba and Babaente.

Once Baba had his bags back, it was time to head out to Perpetual Wastelands again. On the way across PW from Mort, he swerved North just past the two level 105 Cyborg dynas to scout out the area north of there which he had never really looked at. There were quite a few 140+ mantise type mobs with a few lower level ones at around 120-130. He did not find what he was looking for. He had heard some players refer to hunting scorpiods in PW, but so far he has not located any scorpiods in PW. From an area just east of the Mantis hive he proceeded east towards the Main Borg base. Before he got there he found a lone Cyborg Colonel way out in the middle of no where. Baba figured he must have been trained there, away from the small base that is north of the base with the Helipad.

Stranded Colonel in the middle of PW, Click for larger view.

When Baba arrived at the PW dunes site, he touched down and buffed up. He did a quick face palm when he realized he had not brought an experience boost stim. He still has some left over from the anniversary celebration, but they were in his bank. Without the extra experience, it was doubtful he will hit 138 tonight.

He went to work on the Borg on the main dune. Now that they are less of a threat, and give less experience, he does not have to try hard to avoid pulling several. He can handle two or three rather safely now. Tonight he was experimenting with some added alpha attacks. He moved the ring of eternal darkness and the weeping flesh ring to his social tab, so he could place hot buttons for them on his hot bars. The added damage from the weeping flesh was welcome and worth the effort. The Eternal darkness was somewhat flaky. The first few times it worked great, but then after a while it would lock up and not return when it should have. Baba had to go back and see if something else he was casting is conflicting with it.

Baba dings 137 by himself in Perpetual Wastelands, click for larger view.

By this time it was getting late and Baba was starting to think about logging off. By now he had cleared the main dune section and moved down to the ‘pinch’ section. The ‘pinch’ is where section of small dunes between the Helipad and the large dunes. Along with being a great place to level, like many popular leveling spots or dungeons, Perpetual Wastelands also attracts it’s share of undesirables. One of them showed up next and trained practically all the Borg in the North East sector of PW on to Baba.

Baba had been there for about a quarter of an hour taking Borg down in ones and twos when he notices something odd in the distance. Back on the main dune he could make out what looked like a bunch of Borg all standing still together in a clump. A few minutes later he noticed it was moving towards him. It turned out to be a level 126 NT using their yalm to aggro Borg on the ground and collect them into one huge kite. The NT trained the Borg on to Baba, so Baba had no choice but to make a run for it north. Once he had left the main dunes behind, the NT pulled the kite/train back to the dunes section. After Baba was sure he was safe he jumped into his yalm and flew back. Back at the Dunes he watched as the NT flew around the entire North east corner of PW collecting more and more Borg in his kite until he had collected just about every Borg there.

Once all the Borg were in the kite the NT dropped out of his yalm and started running circles on the Helipad while nuking them standard NT kite style.

It is a petition-able offense to deliberately train a group of monsters on you. This evening Baba was too tired and just did not feel like staying up another 45 to 90 minutes that it sometimes takes to get any action from a petition. If there is one consistent criticism we have of AO, it is that reporting harassment is a huge hassle in it self. One has to read the help file on the obscure petition command, then create the petition, and then respond to the auto followups and then wait 45 minutes to an hour for a ARK to show up. After that it could be a while the ARK can make a decision or find someone who can take whatever action it is that needs to be taken. It was late and Baba had been thinking of logging off just before this whole scene erupted. He had managed to fill several bags with loot that included a number of great Miy’s armor pieces and he had managed to bring his experience bar to about 70%. He decided to log off while looking forward to more closely inspecting the new Miy’s pieces soon.