Mule Turns Alt

Babaente and Tireen, take a break while out hunting.

Babaente, Baba’s NT alt, after getting more familiar with kiting, decided to take a break at level 40 and wait for Tireen, Baba’s former omni trader mule/fence to level up to where she can team with Babaente for kite leveling.  That way Tireen can continue to fence loot, but also can start giving some nice skill buffs and use the trader terminals when fencing loot.

So it was back to the subway with another toon.  Since Tireen is an omni, she could not safely go to the subway in Athens, so she chose the subway in Borealis, instead of the one in Rome.  Borealis is more convenient as Babaente or Babaoroody can meet up with her there if needed.

Although the server stats usually show Borealis to have more players present than Athens, the subway in Bor seems to be less populated.  Tireen guesses most players are in Bor for trading, socializing, rolling missions, or just passing through.  It would be nice if the server stats can’t be filtered by level or playfield.

She started out with her newbie island solar shotgun dual wielded with a home defender, but when it came time to upgrade to a higher quality level, she did not want to put IP into multi ranged, so she chose to go with Tekor ND shotgun line.  She started with a QL16, and after some shopping in Omni Trade, and also bought several higher quality ones to grow into every few levels.  While slow, it does pack a nice punch and the crits are very good.  While the icon is somewhat incomprehensible, the actual gun looks impressive and formidable.

It also illustrates a weakness, at least at lower levels of the Trader profession compared to an NT as least as far as IP spending is concerned.  The NT does not have to worry about keeping a weapon skill high, and mainly just focuses IP on nano skills, The Trader has to dedicate IP points to a dedicated weapon skill that is expensive and is useless for anything else.  She is finding IP much shorter in supply as a lowbie trader.  So far the NT has been able to comfortably raise needed skills with out having to put any on a diet.

Another observation, based on another pass through the subway, is that beginning players seem to find the martial arts profession the most rewarding at those levels.  All the martial artists in the subway seem to do really well.  Baba found the subway as a first toon enforcer with 0 twinkage to be somewhat difficult. So far NT has been the most powerful professionat we have experience with in the subway.

After several teams on Saturday she had worked her way up to level 18.  It was a bit disappointing after playing an NT, as trader combat nanos at that level  are rather wimpy, so in the subway, the shotgun does most of the work. At this point she tends to run out of nano, before anything else, so the benefit of having an NT in a team becomes obvious.

Late one evening, there was nobody to team with, and she was getting bored leveling off slum runners and fleas, she decided try out the charm nano line.  Of course having not read up on it before hand, she was rather perturbed at being frozen for 5 minutes, along with the mob she cast it on.

She spent the next day working with Babaente on preparing a set of custom QL30 implants, with Tireen buying and the plan was for Babaente to construct them.  While reviewing the stats, Tireen saw that as a trader, she had lots of nano programming and could make all but 4 of the implants herself.  After constructing the ones she could, Babaente finished off the few the required a little more nano programming skill.  The actual implant creation tradeskill process itself only took a few minutes, while it too Tireen at least 2 hours to find all the desired clusters at the specific quality levels needed.

With her new set of custom implants in and the satisfaction of now knowing how to create them from scratch, it was time to level up some more.  While she could probably handle some of the cyber types in the deep sub, she just did not do enough damage to face some of the gate keeper types like Eumides or Infectors.

She instead chose to hunt in the wild outside of Newland City to level up.  She did an insurance terminal save and then headed out the north gate.  She soon found out the hard way that not only Rhinomen, but many other mobs in the desert are social. like rollerats, some of the lizard and salamander types, and sand and salt fleas.  After a few trips to reclaim because of this, she gravitated to hunting in the area around the small outpost that is north of the city.  There are guards there that will bail you out if you come running with several mobs on your tail.

Having read up on the Charm nanos, she found a great use for them.  When ever she encountered pairs of social mobs, she would cast the charm on the stronger of the pair, and then issue the pet command /pet hunt and then sit back while the charmed mob took out the weaker mob, and any other mobs in the vicinity, all the while giving her the experience points.  One does have to be prepared to fight the remaining mob when the charm wears off, but this is usually not a problem as the mob has probably lost quite a bit of health fighting the other mobs.

She was able to level up to 24 quite easily there off a mix of blood reets, salt and sand fleas, rhinomen, and a few others in the area that were all in the level 20-25 range.

At level 24 it was time to return to the subway and try and collect some
Living Cyber Armor, as she had spent quite a few fruitless hours checking shop terminals for something to replace her now out leveled beginners starter armor set.  The tunnel section has a very claustrophobic feel to it, and the whole design is just too linear, steering new players to what is most often a doomed encounter.  At least some of the other dungeons like Temple of the Three Winds and Foreman’s have multiple ‘destinations’ and boss mobs who give up unique rewards.

By the time she arrived at the subway, it was rather late in the evening. The first person she found to team with was a level 18 engineer, who must have been new to the subway, as he wanted to rush right into the deep subway.  Just their luck they were greeted by Eumenides who sent them both quickly back to reclaim.  A while later Tireen returned and after a couple of real close fights with paired infectors, achieved access to the deep subway, where she seemed to have it to herself.  She made several runs from the start of the deep sub to the last part of the tunnel section where the L bend is.  She stopped there because she did not think she could take on the group of 4 or 5 cybers that are found there.  She was able to deal easily with all the cybers up to that point, and after about an hour, she had all three commonly dropping Living Cyber armor pieces, the helmet ,the gloves, and the pants.  She was about to call it quits for the night when a two person team showed up and asked her to join.  She decided to go ahead with them. They were both below level 20 and neither had encountered Abmouth before, so she had a feeling they would want to go all the way to Abby and find out just how tough that boss mob is.  The martial artist did very well as the tank, allowing Tireen to hang back and shoot away with her Vektor.   The other person was an addy or agent, and they provided some very timely heals, especially in a couple of tight spots in the very deep subway.  They made it all the way to Abby.  By this time Tireen had level up to 26.  Since she is not planned to be a subway twink, she had the 3 Living Armor Pieces that drop there, and she was quite ready to put the subway behind her, she agreed to go along with the attack.  The fight with Abby was very short, with the whole team finding themselves back at reclaim in under a minute.

Now that the subway was behind her, Tireen decided to follow in Babaentes footsteps and proceed to the Living Cyber Armor quests in order to fill out her set.

The chest piece quest was quite difficult for Tireen since she is omni, and the 1st quest mission requires a visit to the center of Old Athens.  Since the gates are well guarded, and there is no neutral whompa that connects with this clan city, the grid seemed to be the only alternative route.  It took her 3 tries.  She buffed up and drained a mob outside Newland City and then hit the grid.  She exited the grid in Old Athens, to see no guards close by.  She ran east towards the nearest city wall, and then started south along it when she reached it.  She  was spotted about the time she passed the first apartment entrance on the left and she was able to run all the way to the central square area before one of the guards nailed her and sent her back to Newland City.  On the second try she got further, because she was not spotted by a guard until she had reached the middle of the city, and she got all the way to just outside the mission building before the guard shot her.  The third try, she buffed up again, and this time added the quickness running buff.  The guards spotted her at about the same point but she ran like a halfback between a number of buildings, weaving in and out, and was able to reach the mission and get inside without getting shot.  Perhaps she should have waited a few more levels, as the mobs in the mission were in the high 20s.  She managed to avoid all but one, which was in the furthest room between her and the mission objective.  It was a hellhound to top things off.  It was a very close fight.  She was down to about 100 health, and was having to cast a health funnel between each shot, when her Vektor came through for her and delivered a healthy crit that tipped the final balance and allowed her to outlast the mob.  The second mission was just time consuming, having to run from Newland City, cut across a corner of Varmint Woods and proceed to the center of Wartorn Valley.

The next living cyber armor quest was more accessible for an omni.  This is the quest for the boots which actually involves 2 missions just like the chest piece quest. The first mission is a kill person mission in Varmint Woods, just a short run from Newland City.

The first time through, Tireen got sent back to reclaim by one of the hellhound mobs that are in this mission. The hounds are around level 28 to 30 and about a 5050 chance for Tireen, mainly dependent on how many crits she lands.  Anyway, when she returned she brought Babaente with her for more fire power.  The two together were able to cut through the remaining hellhounds with no problem.  Tireen ended up having to run the mission again because she allowed Babaente to attack the mission target, and since Babaente out damaged her, the mission did not complete, since the mission requires the person who pulled the mission to be the one who kills the target.  So they had to repeat the whole run from Newland City again and fight their way into to the target.  Once there Babaente, waited in the hall, while Tireen engaged the mission target alone in a separate room.  She did have an unusual experience.  The mission target person was standing in the lower level of one of those large sunken mining area type rooms, with catwalks above.  Tireen was on the catwalk above. This particular mob was a martial artist so when Tireen cast her NT blind, the mob stayed put while Tireen continued to pour lead into her.  The curious thing was that as soon as the mobs health dropped to around 60% it would pop back up to full health.  There were several large malle type mobs also down on the lower level and Tireen did not want to have to go down there and also spend time killing them.

She decided to try using her charm and hope the martial artist would attack the malles, and kill them, and lose a good part of its health.  Another curious thing happened. Instead of running up to where Tireen was after being charmed, the mob seemed to be teleported directly up there in an instant.  From there they could not see the malles, so it did nothing when told to hunt.  After the charm wore off, and she and Tireen dueled, the health bar issue went away, and Tireen had no trouble at all finishing the mob off.

With her ‘as full as its going to get’ Living Armor Set now, Tireen went looking for a place to level.  Before going hunting however, since she is now over level 25, she made her first visit to the Trader store in Newland City, and got to view all that the trader terminals have to sell.  There is a wide assortment of easy to equip ‘drinks’ that buff various skills there for purchase.  The buffs are just a few points, but nice to know about and have access to.

Next she went to Lush Fields to hunt,and as an omni, she does not have to worry about the omni slayer driods that lurk about there.  First she tried in and around the Mutant Domain area, but either found the mobs slightly higher than she could handle or too dense and too social.  She found she could get good experience points taking on the higher level Chirops she came across.  One skill that she is now starting to get the hang of, which she now wished she had developed from day one, was how during a fight, to quickly select her self, use an health stim, and the re-select the mob and continue fighting.  On her way to the SW Mine and Shade Pipe area she managed to level to 27.

This level provided her with enough shotgun IP points to equip the next higher QL Vektor ND shotgun in her inventory.  She found the mobs around SW Mine to be way to high for her now, and so she then went to the Shade Pipe area.  These mobs are in the 20-29 range and she can solo them one at a time quite well, especially with the additional punch of this latest Vektor equip.  The shades are social, so she has had to take care in selecting her target, and how to approach it so that the other shades in the area do not ‘see’ her.  This involves the basic military”crossing the T” or flanking maneuver.  If there are 3 shades, approach them so that they appear a line from the end.  By the time she had to log off, she had gained about 3/4 of her next level.

Thursday Tireen was quite active.  She did some exploring around Lush Fields and found the Northern edge to be mostly devoid of mobs.  She made several more unproductive forays into the Mutant Domain, but still found them to be too tough.  While traveling she did gain about a half a level mainly off level 25-30 minibulls, and Hammerheads.  She eventually gravitated back to Shade Pipe after where she eventually dinged 28.  She has been practicing the use of health stims in combat and almost has it down pat.  Too bad the stims do not recharge faster.

Once she passed level 28, she stayed at Shade Pipe and over a few days, leveled her self up to 32 which is high enough so that she and Babaente can team.  They met at SW Mine, and on Friday and Saturday Babaente kited the mobs around SW Mine, raising her level to 45 from 42, and raising Tireen from 28 to 35.  Eventually, the level 40 mobs went gray for Babaente and they spent most of Sunday looking for a suitable new kiting ground.  The mobs at the NW mine in Lush Fields proved to be too high.  The mobs there are in the 60 to 70 range, and hit too hard for Babaente to survive anything but a perfect kite.

Meanwhile, Tireen, made a supply run in to Omni Trade, and came back with the highest quality Vektor ND made, a QL 69 one.   Right now she is using a 48, which gives some nice crits.

They enlisted Babaoroody to scout out a new hunting ground using his Yalmaha.  He first sent them to a field of Hammerheads and Goelfs, level 55ish, in 4 Holes, but they took too long to kill because of their very large health bars.  Babaente could easily outrun them, but it took over 10 minutes to bring one down.

Dragonrider, when mounted on a wingless dragon, is known as a Ragerider

Baba basically scouted all the neutral territories.  Although he did not find any suitable 50ish groups of mobs in Mort, he did come across a very unusual sight, a creature he had never heard or read about on Rubi-Ka.  Think of a wingless dragon, with a Lien like rider in a throne like saddle with a triangular awning overhead.  The riders are known as Dragonriders, and look much like the Lien boss in the Temple of the Three Winds.  When mounted on a wingless dragon, they become a Ragerider.  Not only is their health bar red and long, but of the 3 that Baba spotted separately in North West Mort, they bring an entourage of several giant sand worms, a clutch of anuns, some gun beetles, and even a cyborg or two.

Next Baba found them another spot in Pleasant Meadows.  It took some running interference on his part as there were a few pesky omni guards who seem to have been trained there previously.  They were in the 100 level range, so Baba did get some experience out of it.   We will divulge the exact location of this kiting ground, after Babaente has outgrown it.

The going was slow, as Babaente seems to have hit a weak patch in the NT’s AOE nuke progression ladder.  While her run speed has progressed suitably for the level 50-60 mobs.  She currently has Matter Creation maxed, and if she continues to max it every level, she will not be able to equp the next AOE Nuke until well past the level 50.  The problem is the current AOE nuke, while sufficient against level 40’s, is just too weak on 50s and above.  It takes quite a few applications to take the mobs down.  The progression of NT leveling is not all as easy as some might think.  This is going to be a slow and painstaking number of levels.  Hopefully once it is past, Babaente and Tireen will, be back on the fast track again.