Kizmia's Island adventure

Yesterday I was alerted to the Pirates of Lok'Groton Lootin' Time which I had not attended for a few weeks because I didn't know it was still being held. I decided to leave the library in order to be a good pirate, unfortunately Stinkfist was no where to be seen. I was about to go back when Azel asked if I wanted to have a trip to Kizmia's Island. I hadn't been there in quite some time so I donned my Catsbane's Necklace and headed out.

The group consisted of Azel, Borzon, Brahtz, Ravenstorm, and myself. We started in Kizmia's Island Cove on the east part of the island and headed underground through the one-way path. Once there we hunted throughout the caves following Borzon's directions since he had a map. We even visited Groar's statue and its amazing glittering jewel.

Borzon wanted some tar for a future trip so we exited on the west side of the surface. We weren't able to spend much time there since Azel had to go, but we did scan a few of the snells in order to find the Albino Maha that can be turned into clothes or a rank (one-time only). The general consensus was that it was probably already found and killed, probably by Mujin-kun. We weren't able to find it regardless.

It was a great trip with enough challenge to not be boring and enough coins so that I started out with 2c and ended up with over 1,600c. Borzon and Azel also got some studies done.

I definitely noticed the improvement to my usefulness with the extra histia I trained over the past several months. If I was here with the 300 histia I had instead of the 450 histia I have now it would have been a lot riskier. Especially since at one point I got surrounded by junk and Lyfelidae and was getting low on health. Thankfully Ravenstorm came and freed me and I was able to get to safety to heal the fallen and myself. If I had only 300 histia I would have fallen and put the group at risk. After I finish getting to 400 faustus with AnDeux Faure I'll get to 500 histia before doing anything else. I thought I could avoid damage with proximus, and I did for a long time, but that's just not possible anymore.

I think I've said this a couple of times before and am sounding like a broken record. I just really like the extra health and how it keeps me from looking like a noob when I fall. Having fast reflexes and knowing where to run to avoid feraling mobs helps a lot too, but sometimes avoiding everything becomes impossible.

Kizmia's Island shouldn't be forgotten as a good place to hunt. It's great for experience for a long time, and if you have someone with good skea it's great for coins as well.

A Blind Amphibian was an odd sight.

Groar's statue hides secrets.

Glad to be there. ^_^

More Fun in Estuary

Tabatha: Mirror Pond, Lorikeet: Bruised Sapphire, Azel: Floodwater, Moon Kitty: Gathering Dusk

Talas: Deluge

These are some of the pants you can get with a Caustic Gland (drops after you kill the Lord of the Undermarsh), Tangleberry, and 1500c. Both the name and the color are random, although he's only made shades of blue so far. You can see all of them on Stylunk, except for Deluge but it should be added soon.

Back to AnDeux Faure

Moon Kitty reached the 450 Higgrus mark a few days ago and is back with AnDeux Faure (2 respia to 1 faustus) until Faustus reaches the 400 message. After that I'll return to Higgrus until 500.

Borzon must be awesome at parties.

Lasties make hunts challenging.

Azel was afk and came back to this.

We fell to lack of oxygen. Sligh was never raised.

The first sighting of a Snowcat. Tabatha later learned the morph.

People still like hiding Stora. Why?

Debuffs on the way?

Repairing my Sungem.

I finally reached the 900 respia message after reaching 350 faustus which took a lot longer than expected. I had no idea my respia was as low as it was as I thought it would have been a lot closer to 900. That might explain why my self-heal was a bit poorer than expected as well.

I'm on to training with Higgrus now with my aim getting to 450 before returning to AnDeux Faure until faustus reaches 400. I think I need the extra health as my self-heal isn't one of my strong suits. My sespus is low and compared to other healers so is my respia. I have no plans on getting a lot of additional sespus, although I may get to the next message, and I think 50 higgrus will help me out a lot more than getting 50 respia.

Estuary is going smoothly. It seems that even if I hadn't decided to switch from Jeanne to Moon Kitty I probably would have had to anyway. The numbers of healers has not been high lately with just Lorikeet and myself many days. Even though Azel told me she'd switch to her healer that would have swapped an excellent fighter (Azel) with a mediocre Bloodmage (Jeanne). Even though Mujin-kun doesn't need anyone else to dominate anywhere she chooses to go most of the time, I prefer to enjoy fighting not watching someone else do the fighting while I lay fallen.

The next expansion has all of the required materials and I'm looking forward to it being done. Based on what Yappy has said on his blog, that is still being worked on which makes me happy just to know what's happening. So many GMs refuse to talk to the players that it's easy for me to think that no work is being done at all.

In fact, Slartibartfast actually posted on our forums to tell us that he's working on the debuffs as promised. All 3 debuffs in one trainer and he's tweaked the blood so that we get more spirit back based on our health. That means even if it's a slaughter we'll get more blood back than we used to which means we might be able to debuff at weaker areas even if we don't vanquish the stuff there. I say might because I don't know if anyone's tested it (I really have to do that.) which may mean our debuffs will be usable in more areas. It would be great to be able to debuff and use hemorrhage in areas where I vanquish stuff without running out of spirit.

Even though Jeanne is still going to get to 100 Crato Defeal (spirit trainer) because better to be safe than sorry if the numbers get tweaked as Slartibartfast threatened to do if they were too good. :-(

Time to go to bed. Sweet dreams!

Update

I haven't written in a while and don't want this to be one of those Clan Lord journals that end up dusty and forgotten so I'll tell you what's been happening recently. No pictures though, sorry.

Moon Kitty

I've stopped going to Mujin-kun's Rainforest hunt because I've been much too busy writing, but I've learned that she's disappeared suddenly and hasn't been around for three zodiacs. We all hope that she's doing well and will be back soon.

Her absence did make Azel's Estuary hunt more difficult since we didn't have strong fighters and so stayed in the first area. On the plus side that enabled us to find more Reed Cats for Azel and since Tabatha hasn't been showing up we didn't need to get to the frogs for her to lasty. However, I advertised and we've been getting some strong fighters recently including Stinkfist, Ravenstorm, Kalian, and Hel so it's been going much better. I hope that continues as it was easy to take Mujin-kun and her immense strength for granted.

Azel is down to less than 120 Reed Cat lastys so she'll get the morph soon. She said that once she gets the morph we'll continue the hunt and that I can switch to Jeanne and she'll bring out one of her healers. That would be nice since as much as I enjoy healing, I miss being able to kill stuff too and Jeanne has improved as much as possible while being stuck in the library.

My training is going well as I've been with AnDeux Faure for a while and will be training with him for a long, long, long time to come. What he trains is 2 respia and 1 faustus for every 3 lessons with him which are precisely what I need. I started out with 300 faustus and 800 respia which is pretty low for my level and when I'm done I'll have 400 faustus and 1,000 respia which is much better.

I don't know what I'll do after that though I have a few ideas. My original idea was to alternate between Sprite and Respia with some extra Horus every now and again but I'm not so sure now. My 500 horus is more than enough, and I don't really want to be a rod and many healers never heal me anyway even if I'm at low health so my 600 sprite is probably enough. I'm not sure if I want to focus on improving my radius healing since it is situational although I do have 100 ranks in it already. I was thinking of doing AnQuart Faure (4 respia/1 faustus) and/or AnDeux Faure and Higgrus for better healing and survivability. I really don't know how I survived with 300 higgrus all this time as I really underestimated how powerful having lots of health is and overestimated how much damage I can avoid by having lots of proximus. I still love proximus, don't get wrong, there's just too much stuff that ferals and no reliable way of tanking. Anyway, it'll take so long to get to my goals that I'm sure I'll think of what I'll need when I get there.

Jeanne

Not much has happened with Jeanne since she's been stuck in the library working on getting her Bloodblade to 200 ranks so she can then further increase Cryptus and work on other Bloodmage skills before returning to the Bloodblade to get a total of 400 ranks. Primarily I want to get enough Bloodblade to have the atkus to hit anything whether on high or low health and get most of my damage through hemorrhage.

This will take a long time and while I try not to be impatient, because without going on daily hunts to places with good experience such as Estuary, Rainforest, and Ash Barrens the amount of experience gained is small. However, I don't think I'm at the point where I'm ready to go on hunts to those places until I get the 200 Bloodblade and all of the Bloodmage skills that will make me useful in a group. Maybe once I get the Cryptus, Dantus, and Crato and am working on my second 200 ranks in Bloodblade I'll try to get in a regular higher-level hunt but I doubt it will be easy. People would much rather me bring Moon Kitty out than Jeanne.

Himitsu

I still haven't reset her but I'm pretty close to doing so. I just need a good time when I can devote some hours to taking her through the rat towers.

Back from a Break

Accomplished an easy goal, now to AnDeux Faure.

I came back after a brief time away since I wanted to go on vacation and was a little tired of the Rainforest and Estuary. They're lovely places but when you only go there they can get a little tedious and I just wanted a break from it all.

On the plus side my trip enabled me to get to the next stage of my radius healing development so now I'm on my long trek of learning with AnDeux Faure. The speed of my healing and spirit regeneration have been low for a long time and I have to focus on them. At one point I thought I could get all of the faustus training I needed through Sprite, but I need more than her teachings provide. It'll take a long time to go from the 300 faustus I have to the 400 faustus that's my goal since I'm not training with Faustus directly. I could and it would be a lot faster but then my Respia:Faustus ratio would be 2:1 and I'd probably would train with Respia after anyway. It will take a lot longer to get to my goal with AnDeux Faure but when I'm done I'll have 400 Faustus and 1,000 Respia which I think will make me a much better healer overall.

After I got back from the Estuary I decided to take the 6th-circle healer's test thinking that it was going to be another failure. After all I was told that most who passed were stronger than me, but I put on my Iron Breastplate and started the test. I had a feeling something was different when I only had a bear and a feral hitting me for the longest time instead of the three or four. I kept healing and healing and then she stood up. I passed!

How the heck did this happen?

I must not be dreaming.

There's not even a comfy couch to sit on.

Since I didn't expect to pass I don't have a visionstone or even pictures of the actual test, but I can tell you that I was healing her from the southeast and didn't move at all. The 400 higgrus combined with the full iron armor set and being in the right position were necessary for me to pass.

I tried the 7th-circle healer test and while I healed her more than halfway, much better than expected, I'll need more faustus and respia training in order to pass that test.

Accomplishments

After what felt like forever I reached 400 ranks with Higgrus. After exploring further in the Estuary and Rainforest, I wonder how I ever managed to survive with just 300 higgrus. Many times I've survived with only a little bit of health which means I would have fallen if I hadn't trained with Higgrus. It makes my previous assumption that I could avoid most or all danger by just having enough proximus as being naive and silly.

I may train more health in the future, but for now I'm getting a tad more radium until 100, and then getting enough AnDeux Faure until my Faustus is 400 since my healing speed is woefully inadequate at 300.

The next area of the Estuary has been released and it's incredibly awesome. Tons of folks to talk to, a new story with the Orga, new pinkish clothes, maybe even something new for mystics, and best of all there's a pier that needs fixing so the area will get even bigger. The folks who worked on this area definitely put a lot of love and care and it's gratifying to see.

Ansset came with us on our trip and I was glad he came because not only did he find a mystic illusion but he was able to get a cage and capture his very own parrot. It sits on his shoulder and makes a lot of noise but it still makes me a little jealous. As a pirate where is my parrot?

I want to write a long article about the Estuary but I'm afraid I have many other things to do today and can't spare the time. I will say that it's definitely a place that everyone should experience at least once.

Even Mujin-kun gets tired of the same look!

Finally I left Daimoth's clan and returned to the Sun Dragon Clan since he isn't clanning much or at all, isn't doing anything to expand the clan, and since only he did the inviting I didn't see any point to staying in it. Even though most clans are dead I'd rather have Sun Dragon Clan on my label than anyone else's.