Baba Beats Borg for 135

Sand Worm Dynacamp in far West Perpetual Wastelands, Baba spotted this on his way from Mort Sentinels to PW Borgs. click for larger view.

Baba returned to Perpetual Wastelands to work on his 135 level this past Sunday.  Having done nothing since hitting level 134 other than sort loot and trade, his experience bar was empty.  This would be a good time to try an experiment, with no experience to loose, he headed for Tir County.  He had seen the Vermin Disposal Unit, a unique Dynacamp many times before as a lowbie traveling around the region.  He could not tell how difficult it would be for him to take it on, so he was going to find out tonight.  Heading west from Tir city, he quickly found it in a narrow strip of green just south of a player city in the west end of Tir.  Perhaps because it looked just like the waste control units back on Shuttleport Island, he thought it would be a push over like they were.  This did not turn out to be the case.

Unusually crowded reclaim in Newland City, click for larger view

It was it is a lot tougher than it’s health bar and warning imply.  It turned to out hit very very hard, slicing through Baba’s armor and dealing him 1900 damage for ‘normal’ hits and 2500 or more for crits.  With hits like that, Baba barely managed to cut the unit down to 75% health before Baba was looking at 25% health.  Baba tried to mongo for enough health to let him run away, but he soon found him self back at reclaim, which was unusually crowded tonight.

He stopped off in the Advanced store to give himself a healing pop from the implant machine and then sat down next to the bank terminal to pass the next few minutes.  Checking his skills window he remembered that he still had to allocate out IP points from hitting level 134.  Due to a virus problem with the ether net, his usual spreadsheet was not immediately available, so he had to do this one from memory.

Baba has finally reached the stage where most of his basic skills are starting to max out, so he is beginning to have a surplus of IP points and can start building up a few areas he has had to short change in the past. These have been primarily evades and duck skills.  After topping off all of his important priorities, he put a large amount into evades.  Hopefully at some point, this will result is fewer crits landing on him.

While he as doing this, two kind souls, both doctors in his range, who happened to also be passing the time in the shop ninja buffed him with various heals, which he gladly thanked them for.    Once his IP were saved, he headed out the door and ran for the grid terminal outside the Newland City Gates.

He took his usual route to PW, which is grid to Sentinels in Mort, and then fly due east to Perpetual Wastelands and then across PW to the north east corner.  For the second time in recent visits, he seemed to be arriving just after someone else had cleared the field of Borg, and only a handful of Borg could be seen.  This was fine with Baba, as sometimes, a full field is hard to pull single Borg from.

By the time Baba had hunted down enough of these Borg to reach about halfway on his experience bar, he got an important sub-galactic phone call, that he did not want to miss, so he retired to his safe spot over by the cliffs and went into suspended animation so he would not waste the experience stim he had running.

Close call after bad pull, click for larger view.

After the call finished, and he returned refreshed, he went back to hunting the Borg.  He had one bad pull that got him a Major and two Generals.  It was a very close fight, with both he and the final Borg being down to less than 20% health at the end.  Fortunately the Borg seem to stop landing crits once you have them down past 30%, so Baba did prevail.  The next pull was almost an exact copy, except the 3 Borg were just Majors, and Baba had no problem taking them down.

Baba has gotten his Borg kiting moves down much better now.  Once he has the Borg(s) kited to the spot where he wants them, and he gets them running in a circle, he first hits his Fast Attack, and then Brawl.  Curiously he has found that his Brawl special will not fire if more than one keyboard button is depressed.  This was preventing him from using it, as he was using the forward and left arrow keys simultaneously to run in a circle.  He found that in order to get the Brawl key to respond he has to lift either the forward or the left key for just long enough to depress the Brawl key.

Baba dings 135 at PW Borg Dunes, click for larger view.

He usually lifts up on the left key, causing him to run straight for a second.  Baba uses his action panel buttons as indicators to show when the cool down for each of these attacks is reached.  After using one of these attacks, the button is grayed out, and it comes back to full color when the cool down period is over.  Baba had two other keys he uses while kiting Borg this way.  He has his hotbar key 1 set to fire his Flurry of Blows and his hotbar key 2 to fire his library of foul language taunt. He often throws in the taunt while waiting for Fast Attack and Brawl to recharge.

Once again, he had to move south to the uneven dunes section close to the Helipad for more Borg.  Tonights loot take of note was a few Miy’s pieces in the 130-200 range.

Borgs and Backpacks

Babaoroody headed out for Perpetual Wastelands from Newland City Sunday evening, determined to get back on the leveling train. His experience bar was sitting just past 50% towards a new level, so he was hoping to tick it over tonight.

He took his usual route there, which consisted of using the grid from Newland City to the Sentinels post in Mort. From there he flew due east in his Yalmaha, passing over sandworms, anuns and mantises.

He paused at the Mantise Dyna camp name Tranquility just inside Perpetual Wastelands, but although he is levels above the 105 Dyna, the enclosed nature of the ‘fort’ style camp and the fact it is packed with 70-100ish mantises, leaves him unwilling to try and find out if he can attack that Dyna without getting swarmed by the rest of the Mantises.

Bridge of Escape, the plateau is too small to out run a Dyna borg.

Baba did drop down at the next Dyna camp with two 105 and 110 type Borg Dynas.  The spot is called ‘Ruins’ on the map, and is in a small platueau surrounded by gorges, with two large suspension bridges for access.  He thought he had had approached so that he could just pull one of them, but when he got close enough to trigger aggro, they both came running.

Baba made the mistake of trying to stand toe to toe with these two, and before he knew it, he was down past 50% health.  As soon as Baba dropped one, Baba started running east and crossed the suspension bridge with the other Dyna in chase.  He needed to run long enough to use and cycle his First Aid stim at least twice.  Once he had done this to bring his health back up, Baba circled around and kite killed the remaining Dyna.  While the loot both dropped was nothing Baba could use, it was good shop food.

Borg Highway, levels 110-140 Borg, in North East Perpetual Wastelands.

Baba headed a little farther east and when the road turns from going due east to heading North East, he could see Borgs every few hundred meters, guarding the area.

Baba got buffed up and started kiting Borg singly and in groups of two to three.  These Borg were for the most part in the 110 to 140 level range, and a fitting warm up for Baba.  Eventually he planned on hopping over the Borg mine and main base and work on the level 175+ Borgs in the dunes north of the Helipad.

His experience bar was gradually moving towards the top the farther up the road he progressed.  Just before he reached the area labeled ‘town’ on the map, he stopped to rebuff and then recharge his nano.

Taking a break from kiting, to watch an Alien raiding a player city nearby.

As he was sitting there, he spotted an Alien ship raiding a player city off to the south east.   By the time Baba had worked his way to the ‘town’, he was very close to getting a level.  There is now a Tower field just west of the town, which eliminates pulling Borg to that area for kiting.

Baba first proceeded around the outer perimeter of the base and pick off the Borg he found there.  He started making careful forays into the town, to pull single Borg out.  When he approached the center portion, he spotted a high level 200 Dyna, General Chira Sulanol, unmistakable in her shiny greenish aura.  Baba took note of her position, and retreated to the back side of the base, where he picked off the remaining Borg that were outside of the Base.

General Sulanol where she made short work of Baba in PW

He was getting so close to leveling that he was starting to think about his return trip from this expedition, when things took a wrong turn.  He tried to stay around the North side of the base because General Sulanol had been spotted on the South central portion.

After pulling several Borg from the North West corner of the Base, he squeezed through an alley between two buildings to try and taunt a few Borg he could see in the North central part of the base.  They came running soon, but they were trailed by General Sulanol.  He guesses that the General had a habit of waking around the base more than the typical high ranking officers.  Baba did a 180 and ran a fast as he could, but her level 200 skills enabled her to up the distance quickly and she sent him back to reclaim in a few seconds.  Baba is not sure if this is a new Dyna, or if it had been trained from a spot located due east of the town on the other side of some hills. Several maps show a 200 level mob located there.

After rezzing to at the Newland City reclaim, (the one on the hill overlooking the city), he was a bit discouraged, but he also knew that when he returns to kite the Borgs his experience pool will speed up the leveling.  He was feeling good about his Borg Kiting skills, had he not gotten too close to Sulanol, he took hardly any damage while kiting this evening.

His many backpacks were mostly full, so he took some time to sort them out.  He had gained almost a half bag of various Miy’s armor, which he is sure Babaente and Tireen will thank him for eventually. After sorting out the Miy’s, the monster parts, 125+ implants and clusters, and interesting items, he handed off 8 bags to Babaente, our Nanotechnician, who in turn transferred the bags to Tireen, Baba’s trader alt.

Tireen took the bags to the Trader terminal in Newland City and was turning in the shop food there, when a fellow Trader, Sypherdias (level 93 male Omni Trader, member Good Old Days) took note of Tireen’s Solar Powered Backpack.  The trader offered Tireen a bag of 60 of the experience stims, which Tireen might sell for many credits.  Tireen had no idea what the going market rate was for these, and had no idea as to just how liquid such a resource might be.

The Solar Powered Backpack was a promotional gift handed out by NPCs during the 7th AO Anniversary weekend celebration.  It looks nifty, and works like a standard backpack in both capacity and function (it gives no buffs).  In the year or so since she acquired it from an NPC at the ICC Whompa center, she has perhaps seen one or two other players wearing one.  So while in a typical stroll down the streets of Borealis you will spot many copies of supposedly rare or hard to get back items, Tireen very rarely sees another Solar Powered Backpack.  Since traders as a profession seem to lack a trader specific back item, she feels her nifty backpack sets her apart.

It is the most unique possession Tireen has at the moment on Rubi-Ka.  She may not sport the best implants, armor or weapon, but she is proud to display her unusual backpack.   She ended up turning down the offer.  She knew how much she got out of wearing the unique backpack and she did not really want to use the experience stims to speed up leveling.  Beyond that, she did not savor trying to sell them.  Even though she is a trader, trying to hawk stuff on shopping chat channel is not her preferred way to pass the time.

So after she declined, and finished feeding shop food to the terminal, she traveled back to meet up with Babaente, to return Baba’s empty backpacks and his new credits (Baba’s 8 backpacks of mostly Borg loot, netted around 800,000 credits).

Solar Powered Backpack and the Refitted Backpack

When she met up with Babaente, they posed for a picture framing both of their special backpacks.   Babaente’s backpack is the second type handed out by NPC’s during the 7^th Anniversary celebration.  It is named a Refitted Backpack and it looks exactly like the Empowered Robust Backpack, which is one of the harder to get rare items since it must be made by combining two items which drop in Camelot Castle in Avalon.  The items are dropped by a mob called Administrator DeValos who spawns following the death of Tarasque. The two items are the Robust Backpack and an Infusion Device.  Combining the two items makes the Empowered Robust Backpack which provides 1000 in all ACs and +80 in all damage to the wearer.