Projected Soul 2 from the event  

Posted by SpearDriver in , ,

First of all I want say thank you and well done to [VGM]Olix and the VGM team. There was a 100% improvement in their effort in this weekends collection quest event. I personally saw Snow, Hawk, Aster, Tian and Hypatia at the event stage taking collection items. Getting a VGM to show up to Bardo for the last collection event was harder than pulling your own teeth. It's nice to see the change in attitude.

In exchange for that work the Bardo players filled the collection lists in darn near record time, even the ridiculously difficult Needle Cases of Secret Needles from Tibet. Today I was grinding on those mobs for several hours and I got exactly 5 of the needle cases. There will be no point to have that item on a future list for some time to come because we scratched everybody to turn theirs in. There aren't any more in storage, so Olix? Just don't ask. Ok? Thanks.

The event wasn't completely smooth. Last night the start was well over an hour late, and the official excuse is that there was a problem with the GM tools, and they weren't able to start the event. I find it suspicious that the event was started shortly after the end of the Germany-England game in the World Cup. They made it up to us though, for being late, and we got 6x for almost 6 hours. My own words in chat were, "welcome to the marathon".

One of the things I do when playing the game is keep track of my base experience rate. That's the rate you can grind on white/green mobs without any extra buffs like the Carnival of Souls. Your own stuff, and premium are fine and what ever you can get for one hour. Just go grind and keep track of your starting and ending experience percentage. That's your base rate.

When I know that base rate I can plan to grind as much as I need to when I know we're going to get a really good event. I do it anyway just so I can plan my grinding for the usual events. I don't like to work too hard for my levels because at Projected Soul levels it's hard enough, thank you very much. At Hermit 11 last week I was getting 2.75% per hour of grind.

Last week I knew I needed to do a little extra work if I wanted to reach Projected Soul 1, so I did that most evenings while watching the World Cup games with just one eye. By Friday night I had Hermit 11 level with a few extra percent for padding. I knew that with a 5x event for 4 hours I could easily reach Hermit 12, at least 50% of the way to Projected Soul. As you can imagine I was looking forward to Sunday.

My plan for Sunday was to reach PS 1 and be most of the way to PS2, so you can imagine how disappointed I was when the event didn't start on time. That's really, really annoying when you've put the work into reaching a nice goal. Obviously I was ecstatic when they announced a 6 hour event with 6x the normal experience rates. Because I knew my base rate it took me only a few moments to realize that I could reach PS 2 if I really pounded it, and late in the event I got it.

I was a little surprised late in the event that my xp rate went down rather badly. By that time I was the highest member of the party and a few of the others were as much as 4 levels below me. I've written about that sort of thing before, and sometimes you are better off grinding alone. I stayed with them almost to the bitter end and went to bed happy. Getting some extra results is always nice.

Today, just for the hell of it I went and did another base rate test and I'm now getting exactly 2% per hour of grinding time. I'm not real happy about that number. That is one hell of a big drop from just 4 levels ago, and it's no wonder that Goodgrrrl and RedCross have quit the game, and that Gehrk is taking a break.

Still, I have 30% of Projected Soul 2 collected now. There are some nice quests at these levels, and with my base rate and the normal weekly events I will easily make PS 3 next weekend, if I continue to keep one eye on the World Cup games.

- SpearDriver

This entry was posted on Monday, June 28, 2010 at Monday, June 28, 2010 and is filed under , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

5 comments

Im on a break with TS, taking my time to lvl up my nukes(i started late) but as u know my rate isn't that good... so who knows what ill end up with.

June 29, 2010 at 11:22 AM

Xp rate never really changes in Tibet.
At least it hardly did for me from PS to DB
With Xp cards i usualy was between 2.6-3.8% all the way to cap.

But it is a hard grind alright

Grtz
Ace

June 29, 2010 at 5:58 PM

The needle case mobs give me 2% per hour, and they are a reasonably dangerous grind even for my ultra-noob spear. They are green to me.

Or I can grind orange mobs that have a very low attack rating, and do very little damage. They have boss level hit points though and take a while to kill. I get 1.6% per hour on those guys.

What a lousy choice of grind spots.

June 29, 2010 at 6:26 PM

Yeah your right, not a lot of choice at all.
During events its terrible if your not ahead of everyone.
Luckily i grinded rather fast.
So i was all on my own shorty after launch.
2nd half of tibet should fix that though.

June 29, 2010 at 8:16 PM

lol GRATZ to ps *___________*

June 29, 2010 at 9:42 PM

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