Aleena's Lineage 2 Blog

Lineage Junkies Returns!

2008-07-23T09:18:00.003-04:00

If you're visiting my blog, then it's more than likely you've already been to the return of one of the historically best Lineage I/II blogs out there. But in case you haven't, make sure to visit Lineage Junkies. It's been one of my most followed blogs for L2 and one of the mnore concise blogs with respect to information on the upcoming chronicles.

-AR

For Elune...

2008-04-08T11:50:00.005-04:00

[Written in the spirit of The Eternal Champion/Elric/Corum]

Grey wisplike forms gathered and dispersed in the distance, their ethereal forms beckoning at times and retreating at others. "How long have I been here?", she asked herself knowing there would be no reply. She willed her senses to comprehend her surroundings, realizing that her corporeal form was no more. She became unaware of the passage of time, the physicality of anything, even of what or where she was.

"She" existed as a thought, or a grouping of thoughts, a disconnected consciousness flowing aimlessly in this abandoned space for a milennia or a minute, it was unclear as time felt unfathomably nonlinear, but considering this existance that might be normal here. The catatonic state of being was calming, womblike, and insulating. "She" was content.

Periodically in this idyllic existance she felt pulses, or fluctuations in her being, which passed quickly but often brought with them sensations of another awareness. They would pass over her such as an arc of light would brightly illuminate an area and command all attention and then be gone to be forgotten moments later. Until this time.

The light and pulse grew stronger, brighter, and did not end. The light brought emotions and sensations, pain, fear, defiance, helplessness. As the light reached its pinnacle of brightness, searing its message into her essence, she remembered.

She watched a small line trailing in the distance, she watched it so far that her vision blurred trying to see the end of its trail. It grew in size and thickness, it spead wider and longer along the trail, its crimson path seemed to never end. Screaming and writhing in pain, Aleena lay on the field of battle watching her blood spread across the ground impaled on the blade of Sjipzor, herald and templar of Eva. A knight of the faction Nova, the light. Good and compassionate Sjipzor would end Aleena's life quickly and mercifully.

It was how she died, how she knew a brief moment of peace in her tortured existance. "Why have my memories returned?", she felt the thought, and she felt her skin and realized that she must once again have returned to the mortal realm.

She felt the fear grip her again, shaking, sweating, and sick with the omen of rebirth. Slowly a vision presented itself in her narcosis-like state, a second consciousness entered her mind. It conveyed only a brief thought "My daughter, the fight continues. I know you are weary, but I will command you to service once more. You will leave this realm. You have not always been Aleena, as I have not always been Shilen. In the multiverse, I am sometimes known as Elune."

She opened her eyes for the first time, felt the cold cobblestone and grass beneath her body. A tear began to form and slowly ran down her cheek. She stood slowly, shakily, and off balance. "For Elune...", she whispered under her breath and steadied herself and exited the grove in Teldrassil.

[playing wow for the first time ever...should be able to hold me over until Aion imo]

Waiting for Aion

2008-03-05T15:15:00.003-05:00

So...I guess alot of you can guess from my last post that I've pretty much stopped playing L2. I quit a little over a month ago, so I think this blog probably will go into hibernation for a while until Aion is released. For anyone who's found my blog entertaining or a good distraction during their workday I'd just like to say thanks for dropping by and maybe we'll see each other again when Aion launches!!

I won't stop playing L2 completely, my guess is that I'll probably log in on occasion to see what the clan's up to or try out some new events, but it's unlikely I'll be playing in and normal/regular sense of playing...it'll be more for socializing if anything.

So...I leave with a few random screenshots of some future hair accessories, and a copy of a small newsletter I tried to launch last year that never made it past volume 1 :(

Demotivated :(

2008-02-06T12:12:00.000-05:00

I don't know what it is lately, but I've just not been very motivated to play L2 these past few weeks. I log in, sometimes I get a group, sometimes I wander around aimlessly and get nothing accomplished. Most of the time I wonder about all the stuff I could've gotten done had I not opened up an account over 2 years ago. I was kind of looking forward to this installment, and it's got some great stuff but at this point in the game I'm not sure what else I can do to just keep myself interested. There's no goal left that's really (in my mind) reasonably attainable. All of the more modest goals, and even some not so modest I've achieved:

attained my third class change and become a spectal dancer
subclassed and attained my third class change as a sagittarius
made a second subclass of warlock and become a noble summoner
attended successful raids of all the epic bosses- Baium, Antharas, Valakas, Frintezza
become hero (not by skill, but by the goodwill of those in my alliance)
fought the most powerful alliance on the server, and arguably all of NA
been part of the top alliance on Bartz (imo by default, since the top alliance went on hiatus)
been given access to boss jewels

I don't see what more there is to do at this point. I had at one point considered trying to get to 80, or at least trying to farm s80 gear...another exercise in futility- here's the number of items you need to get just the mats and recipes (the s80 stuff so far is not spoilable or dropped by any mobs, only known way to get them at this point in the game is thru the farming of these seeds that cannot be dropped or traded). Copied from the CT1 forum on blah:

SEEDS OF EVIL NEEDED:
-where to get them:
Red/Blue = Chromatic Highlands
Green/Yellow = the rest of Isle of Prayer
White/Black = End bosses in Emerald, Steam, and Coral Cavern instances

ARMOR PARTS

HEAVY
Sealed Dynasty Breastplate Part x2
381 yellow, 191 green, 128 blue, 76 red, 1 white, 1 black
Sealed Dynasty Gaiters Piece x2
256 yellow, 129 green, 86 blue, 51 red, 1 white , 1 black
Sealed Dynasty Helmet Piece x2
160 yellow, 80 green, 54 blue, 32 red, 1 black
Sealed Dynasty Gauntlet Piece x2
120 yellow, 60 green, 40 blue, 24 red, 1 white
Sealed Dynasty Boot Piece x2
120 yellow, 60 green, 40 blue, 24 red, 1 white
Sealed Dynasty Shield Piece x2
120 yellow, 60 green, 39 blue, 24 red, 1 white

LIGHT
Sealed Dynasty Leather Armor Piece x2
299 Yellow, 150 Green, 100 Blue, 60 red, 1 white, 1 black
Sealed Dynasty Leather Leggings Part x2
200 yellow, 100 green, 67 blue, 39 red, 1 white, 1 black
Sealed Dynasty Leather Helmet Piece x2
160 yellow, 81 green, 53 blue, 32 red, 1 black
Sealed Dynasty Leather Gloves Part x2
120 yellow, 60 green, 40 blue 24 red, 1 white
Sealed Dynasty Leather Boot Part x2
120 yellow, 60 green, 40 blue, 24 red, 1 white

ROBE
Sealed Dynasty Tunic Piece x2
299 yellow, 150 green, 100 blue, 60 red, 1 white, 1 black
Sealed Dynasty Stockings Piece x2
200 yellow, 100 green, 67 blue, 39 red, 1 white, 1 black
Sealed Dynasty Circlet Piece x2
160 yellow, 81 green, 53 blue, 32 red, 1 black
Sealed Dynasty Glove Piece x2
120 yellow, 60 green, 40 blue, 24 red, 1 white
Sealed Dynasty Shoes Piece x2
120 yellow, 60 green, 40 blue, 24 red, 1 white

JEWELRY
Sealed Dynasty Earring Gemstone x2
126 yellow, 64 green, 42 blue, 25 red, 1 white
Sealed Dynasty Necklace Chain x2
165 yellow, 82 green, 56 blue, 32 red, 1 black
Sealed Dynasty Ring Gemstone x2
89 yellow, 44 green, 30 blue, 18 red, 1 white

RECIPES

HEAVY
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Breastplate x1
1120 yellow, 561 green, 373 blue, 224 red, 2 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Gaiters x1
699 yellow, 350 green, 233 blue, 140 red, 1 white, 2 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Helmet x1
419 yellow, 209 green, 139 blue, 84 red, 1 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Gauntlets x1
280 yellow, 139 green 94 blue, 55 red, 1 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Boots x1
280 yellow, 139 green, 94 blue, 55 red, 1 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Shield x1
294 yellow, 146 green, 97 blue, 59 red, 1 white, 1 black

LIGHT
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Leather Armor x1
839 yellow, 420 green, 280 blue, 168 red, 2 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Leather Leggings x1
524 yellow, 262 green, 174 blue, 105 red, 1 white, 2 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Leather Helmet x1
419 yellow, 209 green 139 blue, 84 red, 1 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Leather Gauntlets x1
280 yellow, 139 green 94 blue, 55 red, 1 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Leather Boots x1
280 yellow, 139 green 94 blue, 55 red, 1 white, 1 black

ROBE
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Tunic x1
839 yellow, 420 green, 280 blue, 168 red, 2 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Stockings x1
524 yellow, 262 green, 174 blue, 105 red, 1 white, 2 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Circlet x1
419 yellow, 209 green 139 blue, 84 red, 1 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dyasty Gloves x1
280 yellow, 139 green 94 blue, 55 red, 1 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Shoes x1
280 yellow, 139 green 94 blue, 55 red, 1 white, 1 black

JEWELRY
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Earring x1
272 yellow, 136 green, 90 blue, 55 red, 1 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Necklace x1
364 yellow, 181 green, 122 blue, 72 red, 1 white, 1 black
Recipe: Sealed Dynasty Ring x1
181 yellow, 90 green, 61 blue, 36 red, 1 white, 1 black

So...to sum it up:

Bleah...just tired...tired of L2...I still log in, I still do "stuff"...but I'm kind of beginning to not feel like there's any point to it anymore, so you may see a bit of a decrease of the frequency of my posts.

Supplemental post- The Guild

2008-01-17T09:35:00.000-05:00

This series has probably already been out for a while, and it might be old news to alot of you but a clanmate recently introduced me to this series of videos that's really funny for anyone who plays or knows someone who plays MMO's. Even though it has more specific references to WoW, we can all relate.

It's called The Guild, over at http://www.watchtheguild.com

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to re-post/embed their episodes on my blog, but I'll keep these here until I'm told otherwise.

Episode 1:

Episode 2:

Episode 3:

Episode 4:

Episode 5:

Christmas Special:

Yay more headgear!

2008-01-16T12:59:00.000-05:00

More fashion accessories, at least overseas, here's some stuff copied over on blah on what we may be seeing over the next year or next installment, or next whatever:

Lineage SEA is having a double xp/sp/drop event starting at the end of the month according to Stratics, an even we probably won't have here. We probably don't need such an event across the board but like a double XP event for everyone that's like 78+ would be nice...god knows in the time it took me to get 10% on my 79 BD I subbed a warlock to 63, got an SE to 48, and a Kamael to 58...how does that make ANY sesne? Way to kill the game off at the high end...I know at least 3 people that just quit after they hit 80...I'm only at 79 and I REALLY have no desire to xp on that class anymore it's just stupid...and they somehow expect people to be motivated to get to 85?

I suppose if we all sat at home ALL DAY and didn't have jobs and social lives then maybe reaching level 85 would almost be a reasonable expectation.

Great weekend for sieges!

2008-01-07T09:33:00.000-05:00

It was a great siege weekend on Bartz, at some point if I get a chance I'll try to compile a small set of fraps from the Saturday Sieges (I usually can only get the wife to let me escape for one day of weekend sieging unfortunately!). So, this weekend I most of TD's Siege action centered around Oren. There were a few small distractionary attacks on our other castles but the biggest push for most clans/alliances were for Oren for some reason.

There was a pretty good showing from both sides, strong skirmishes from the onset. Around midway through Oren was lost to the attackers. The incumbent clan, The Business, came back to cast within the last 15 minutes of the siege, was tranced, began to re-cast and completed casting within the last 5 seconds of the siege!

It basically came down to this:

I can't remember seeing a cast closer than that in my short history of L2.

Another major plus is of course being up 853 rep points by the end of the siege.
Here's our numbers at the beginning of the siege, and part way through. I forgot to take a shot of our ending numbers, but when all was said and done we were up by 853, basically that means if NONE of us died during the entire siege we were killing badguys at the rate of about 7.1/minute. But considering we did take deaths that number's actually higher so I'd consider it safe to say we probably killed the opposing forces of Nova and Dominus more at the rate of about 8-10/minute.

...speaking of killing Nova, here's some more random screenshots:

You'll notice that one of them is telling us not to bring 2 groups for their 1 in pvp, but if you look at the wartags you'll see there are 10 there along with a few other dead nova offscreen/out of range. So...clearly they had more than 1 group there already, AND they had the blackscreen advantage...

Lastly, if you read my previous post- I was trying to get a 4sep group going for like a week or so but never managed to coordinate it well so a clanmate just gave me the recipe in exchange for a few lifestones I had in my wh (he has like 238473298 torches from FoG, so all I had to do was SM him to the NPC)...so this week I just turned in my relics to the NPC for the random recipe and guess what recipe I got?

Oh, the irony.

ps- there has been some talk on blah about the new combine buffs in CT1+, such as Prophets will now be able to do shield3/might3 in 1 buff, btb6/bts6 in 1 buff, SE's can do death whisper3/focus3 in one buff, etc.

There's some details of it on this russian site: http://forums.goha.ru/showthread.php?t=160538 . However, not being Russian I can only use google translate to get a rough translation of it. If anyone can provide some better translation of it and post it someplace like on blah, it'd be awesome!

Random thoughts...

2008-01-02T09:29:00.000-05:00

Random thought 1:
So...I've been playing a Kamael lately, and being the eyecandy whore that I am I've tried on as many sets of light armor as I could get my hands on. One thing in general that I've noticed is that NCSoft definitely seems to have spent more time on the details and finer points of Kamael anatomy and armor. They armor does seem slighly more thought out, and the Kamaels actually have distinct fingers as opposed to a trapezoidal blobs at the end of their arms with lines delineating where fingers would begin/end. However, the price for these higher quality models and detailed armor textures appears to be that half of the armor textures are duplicated!

What do I mean by that? The next time you have a access to a female kamael and several sets of armor, try on doom light and blue wolf light. They're the same texture...My doom light has a small blue wolf on it...It's not like a small hangtag or garment tag inside the collar that says "Doom Light, Size 4, by the Blue Wolf Armor Company" or anything like that, it's a blue wolf logo right smack in the center of the bodice. The same follows for Zubei light and DC Light, for Zubei it looks fine and appears to fit within the rest of the whimsical Zubei family of fabrics...Now put on a set of DC light and it's the same thing, as I said erlier- there's nothing Dark or Crystalline about it. Lastly, Majestic and Nightmare light also have the same texture. The Majestic set of fabrics and patterns looks great on a kamael female, and apparently the people at Nightmare designs agree since they've duped the entire look. Gone are the deep reds and maroons with ivory and bronze accents that are characteristic of a Nightmare set, all replaced by Majestic textures.

Random thought 2:
Recently on Bartz some characters and alliances have come under criticism and scrutiny for the use/recruitment of botted up noblesse characters. In the beginning, I joined in with the general concensus of my clan in disagreeing with the recruitment and tolerance of such characters. However, more recently I have begun to question my reason for my stance on this issue. In the past, if it was someone who just bought a farmed account and never learned how to play their character, then I think this line of thought would make sense. However, if it is a "botted up" or "powereleveled" character from another server, and that person was for all intents and purposes a legit player that levelled their character on their own and learned how to play their class well, shouldn't we still extend to them that same measure of respect that they already earned on their home server? When, and if, server transfers come to pass surely this is how we would/should treat them...If anything I would say they are just currently being constrained by the limitations within the current database design at NCSoft. And also, if we are going to criticize people for powerlevelling, then to be honest few clans can claim total legitimacy. There are many top clans where powerlevelling is the norm, less so in CT1 than before, but who in a top clan can honestly say that NO ONE has say afk in a poleparty just getting levelled while others box toons and do the work? I guess that's probably an unpopular opinion but you know, real life isn't all black and white like some people in the game like to see it. What are we really upset about here? That someone from another server has enough money to drop on a game that they can afford to have parity on other servers by just paying a service? If they have the skills to back it up and they earned it the first time around, then I'm not sure if I really have a problem with that. That's like someone working their way up to CEO from being a mailroom clerk, moving to a new firm and starting back in the mailroom. The guy has earned his chops, extend him some goodwill or at least the benefit of the doubt. I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but that's okay...it's how I feel about the topic today.

Random thought 3:
Speaking about today! (or yesterday) Hindemith managed to almost sweep Olympiad with 29 heroes this month, wow can you imagine how boring that server must be? No wonder why NCSoft is working so hard on server transfers...And they say Bartz is one sided...geez.

Random "cool item" note:

Have you guys seen the new auction system in the game yet? It's been selling some really weird stuff, like the other day there was a +15 NG weapon sold from Rune Auctioneer on Bartz (thats right, +15 NG...what a tease, no way to even try to make it red).

Some of the other cool things it sold were some hair accessories. Such as, a permanent version of the Iron Circlet seen in the philosopher stone event which passed, and also a new accessory- The Dapper Hat which was won by Katts on the Bartz Server, so far the only one of its kind on Bartz afaik.

I haven't been able to catch up with Katts to see him model it yet, but here's a picture of it on an orc that I was able to dig up.

PS- Happy New Year, Cownose, Kukish, Lord Chaos, Deadcandance, Nectaria and anyone else I missed!

Not a bad day in L2

2007-12-28T23:54:00.000-05:00

Started out as a day of just trying my luck at crafting, I made good use of that SE I just made a few weeks back and spent alot of time recharging and making mats on my dwarf, then had a friend set up a shop so I could craft this:

Then did a few sweeps with clannies for fun expecting to die, but didn't somehow!

Farewell 2007.

2007-12-26T09:00:00.000-05:00

This is a non-lineage related entry. Really made more because I needed to put it down someplace and because I know I have some readers that are friends, not clanmates or people that even play L2 that read this just to find out what's going on from time to time. So...if you want to read L2 stuff, skip this post.

Here's to a better 2008

2007 draws to a close, and hopefully with it the end of one of the most unfortunate years that I can remember in my personal history. So, here's my year in review.

January, my father is diagnosed with lung cancer. We spend a week in the hospital with him as a family. The doctors say he will likely not make it through the year. They prescribe a treatment of chemotherapy and radiation. My father is 79 years of age at this point, his body has a bad reaction to the chemotherapy, and discontinues the chemo but continues radiation. My employer is kind enough to allow me a day a week to take my father for his radiation treatment. We begin our weekly routing of going to radiation in the morning, lunch after and the trip to the pharmacy for whatever medication he may be low on that particular day. The routine is comforting to us, I think in the back of our minds we are comforted that we can spend some time together as we are aware of the inevitable.

March, my father's radiation therapy is completed and they say the tumor in his lung has shrunk to just about half of its original size which exceeded their expectations. I turn 37.

Over the course of the year we visit my parents for the various family occasions that occur, such as mother's day, father's day, etc. I notice that my father's decreased lung capacity has really affected his everyday life more than I had anticipated as he cannot walk up and down his block without being out of breath, a trip to the store entails several stops just to rest. The times we visit him we are not always sure of what to expect as sometimes he is talkative and much like his old self, other times he is withdrawn and his weight fluctuates more than we are comfortable with.

June, a former clanmate Ryan's(Mong) life is tragically taken in a car accident. He was a prominent figure on my server as well as a World of Warcraft server.

August Aleena is allowed to become hero on Bartz on the MMO, Lineage 2.

September I take a trip to Germany to pick up my car.

October, my father has difficulty breathing and is admitted to the hospital again. He is diagnosed with pneumonitis and periacarditis, which I think they explained is a swelling of the tissue around his heart and lungs. I spend 4 days there with him until they release him. I spend Saturday taking him home.

Sunday I have a free day after 4 days in the hospital.

Tuesday my sister in law dies suddenly at the age of 51. My sister was an amazing woman who I never really appreciated as much until afterwards, I think this is common with everyone...we don't always realize what we had until its gone (this will be the first of several cliches I will use in this entry). She was a twice divorced mother at the age of 51, she took care of her mother, the mortgage for her home, sent one child to college in another state, and was helping the younger of her sons with college applications. She was very involved in his life, attending all of his sporting events wether he played that game or not, she showed up just to show her pride for her son and support the team. She was the treasurer for her church. She led an active social life, and continued to date during all of this, to this day I wish I had half her energy. The family is devastated, my wife and father in law still have not delpleted their store of tears.

Normally this time of year is reserved for holiday shopping, planning a thanksgiving menu, being with the ones you love, planning our tree trimmming party, making fun of my sister in law's funny christmas outfits and broaches. We spend 7pm monday night-11am tuesday morning in the hospital watching as her heart stops for 8-11 times, I lose count, before the family decides to sign the paperwork to let her go. We all shed tears freely and some uncontrollably as we watch her heart stop for the last time. She dies of a pulmonary embolism. At least we are with the ones we love.

"Do you need any christmas cards for your sister? Because I don't have one anymore...", My wife says as she places a few cards on the table. Few moments have been quite as poignant as this one was for me, I think at that time I felt all the sadness and depression of this year come to a head. It was unexpected and the expression had so much finality to it, I felt my heart sink and I held back as much as I could to not break down again after losing her. I would never think of Donna as an in-law, because she never made me feel like one. It was her way, there was no step-this half-that in-law-whoever, she just treated you like we were brothers sisters aunts uncles cousins or whoever. A person so optimistic and loving is a rarity in this world, and we are lessened with out her presence.

The holiday season will be a difficult one as she was commonly the center of most holiday gatherings, as either she or my wife would host the majority of them. She will be missed greatly. We skip doing holiday cards this year, my wife and I feel as if it'll be okay if we skip a year as my wife sends response cards to all the attendants to her sister's funeral instead.

George (Phalnax), an acquaintance and clanmate from my MMO loses the fight to cancer after several years at the age of 24.

December 23. My father is admitted to the hospital again, I spend parts of christmas eve and christmas in the hospital visiting him. He is much worse than I have ever seen him. His weight loss is staggering, he is unable to walk or go to the bathroom on his own anymore. His legs are barely twice the thickness of his cane. He is in extreme pain, even with the morphene they give him to help him manage his pain. Most of the time he is still with us, but there are times where he speaks and does not make sense. He is unable to swallow free flowing liquids like water easily, the doctors place him on a diet of more viscous liquids that his body can tolerate...this is mostly for his comfort as he is being given his nutrients and hydration intravenously at this point.

I have never seen my father this way before, and I feel helpless. I am completely at a loss. I don't even want to visit him at times, I can't very easily handle seeing him this way. I don't speak any Chinese and I don't even understand it that well, so without one of my sisters with me I'm not sure my father understands or even hears what I'm saying when I'm there. My father is still in the hospital at this point, being evaluated for hospice care.

So, 2007 has brought a great deal of tragedy for me and my family, on both sides. People argue about which is the better way to go, my sister's way which was very sudden, though she did not suffer as much as some her family is devastated. My father, who has suffered throughout the year, but we all have time to make peace with him, to be with him, ask him the questions we always wanted to ask, he can have a chance to say anything he's ever wanted to say...I doubt we will be any less devatated when he passes, we will only be more mentally prepared for it. So, in short there is no "better way" in my mind.

So, farewell to 2007. A year that has brought me a larger portion of life than I had cared to deal with. A year that taught me to change my expecations for 2008, where now I don't even ask for a 2008 that's happy. Not that I don't have hapiness as a goal for 2008, but now I think I would settle for a 2008 without tears, without sadness, without depression, without death, and maybe just a 2008 that was just boring and/or content. Happy would be great, but I think there is alot to be said for being able to just be content.

So, my personal wish for 2008, and for everyone else (and this will be the last cliche as I close this post) is for peace. Peace of mind, peace of spirit, peace of the heart, peace in our time.

Farewell 2007.

Didya make a Kamael? didja didja?!?!?!

2007-12-17T10:07:00.000-05:00

I did, since I never really got to play mine on PTS as much as I would've liked to so I made one on live. One of the cool things about making one on live is that I also have access to more armor than I did on PTS, so I have to see what they all would look like on her as well.

Here's Tallum and Majestic:

I really like the looks of both of these. The Majestic light really does have kind of a stately and elegant look to it compared to alot of the other light armors available. Tallum light looks more elaborate than previous Tallum Lights, without being overdone. It looks like the texture designers really had fun with these. They probably would look more complete if I wasn't wearing my academy boots and gloves with these, but eventually I hope to acquire and unseal the entire sets (but I have a long way to go before A grade anyway)

Dark Crystal and Draconic:

I honestly don't know what to make of the DC Light set. It's just....weird...and very red. At first glance I would guess it was Zubei, and be completely mistaken. I have to admit that the shoulders look really sexy in the DC set though, but that's about it. With respect to the Draconic set, not much to say here, looks amazing as usual. I like the look of Draconic on almost every race.

This also is the first armor texture where I've been noticing that the sleeves are generally asymmetrical, I suppose you need to keep your fencing arm free of as much obstruction as possible...but why does that always mean to make the OTHER arm all poofy!?!?! Look at the left sleeve on the draconic light and dc light, wow what's with the poof factor!? They look like clown sleeves!!

Anyway, that's all for now...stay tuned for more random rants and insanity in a few weeks, hopefully I'll actually have something meaningful to say then, if not it'll be more babbling on a non-essential topic like this one!

My first PvP video

2007-12-10T23:50:00.000-05:00

I finally decided to make a PvP video, not really sure why...but if anyone's interested it's currently hosted on filefront and livepvp (for those of you who haven't visited livepvp.com, definitely check it out).

Filefront download: http://files.filefront.com/untitled+finalavi/;9232741;/fileinfo.html

untitled_final.avi

Livepvp link: http://www.livepvp.com/index.php?p=viewfiles&fileid=1043

The Demonic Sword Zariche

2007-12-07T20:07:00.001-05:00

YEEEE!!! Finally got it!! I know...it's old...but I've never had it before so I'm pretty stoked.

Random Dragon Musings...

2007-12-04T15:07:00.000-05:00

The Damned has defeated Valakas a second time on Bartz with the aid of Vestige... all this dragon slaying kind of reminded me that in the lore (www.lineage2.com), there originally were six dragons that Shilen gave birth to, who fought einhasad and gran kain.

So, now with the creation of the Kamael, hopefully this is NCsoft's way of providing us with a dark attack to fight Aulakiria, the Dragon of Light, should that dragon ever come to be realized in the game (otherwise I guess it's just days of hunting in Pagans and carrying darkness crystals with you).

Five Chronicles, an Interlude and two Kamael content patches and still only two dragons...hmm...Hopefully the playerbase can remain interested in the game long enough to see all six dragons if they are even in the plans.

Anyway...the war with Nova continues...really felt bad for this person who got hit by the firing squad, I know it has nothing to do with Kamael and dragons but it was the closest and most recent image I had available.

Oh well. Happy Tuesday all.

I'm back

2007-11-29T15:59:00.000-05:00

So...stuff is kind of getting back to normal now, although I suppose nothing ever will be normal again...honestly not a day goes by that I don't think about my sister in law now. Anyway, everyone in my household has returned to work so I suppose just little things like that to distract us will help us get our lives back in line or as close to it as we can get.

Part of that in addition to returning to work is getting back to the L2 routine. I made an SE, he finally graduated, woohoo!

KillerAngel had some fun with the letter event in our clanhall-

Lastly, I was lucky enough to have one of my quest guides published by Stratics before I had to take my sudden leave of L2 for abit: http://lineage2.stratics.com/content/library/quests/index.php?id=15231
Although, I typo'ed one thing in the quest reward description, it's actually an Enchant Armor D, not Enchant Armor A that is the reward (oops!!!)

Aleena has left the building.

2007-11-19T13:35:00.000-05:00

My posts have been non-existant lately, and for anyone who reads this on a regular basis I appologize for not posting random happenings in Aleena's small corner of Aden and Elmore more frequently. However, I have not been playing much recently and so have not had much to post. I have been a bit preoccupied lately, once again the dreaded mmo known as RL has managed to usurp my time and demand a larger allocation of it, so my virtual life must relinquish this resource.

Earlier this year my father was diagnosed with lung cancer, from time to time there are complications that I must assist him and my family with related to his compromised lung capacity and radiation therapy that he had back at the beginning of this year. Recently he had an inflammation of his lung and heart (pneumonitis and periacarditis), which greatly hindered his ability to breathe and carry about his day to day activities so I took a small break to visit and stay with him in the hospital as he recovered.

Shortly after this, my sister in law passed away suddenly from a pulmonary embolism. So once my father recovered I was immediately thrown into the affairs of my wife's family. This has been an exceptionally difficult month. I don't know why I choose to vocalize this through this medium at this time...maybe just to set everyone's expectations that maybe you may not see any new posts here for a bit.

Thanks everyone for visiting, I will be back when I can.

M O O P ! ! ! !

2007-10-26T09:03:00.000-04:00

The war with DomiNovaRaged continues!

I have a clanmate called Tonester, he's one of our resident Spartans (i.e. "crazy Greek"). He's always pulling people's chains and instigating and he gives me crap all the time about my uber-low pvp score. It's all in fun and he doesn't say any of it maliciously, if you know him or heard him on vent it's completely innocuous and just funny like 90% of the time.

Mr. Tone-star is also one of the heroes that likes to try to call the warring parties out to fight whenever he can...and in an effort to try and goad them on, he plants himself in front of their clanhall.

I've kind of for the most part been enjoying this war with DomiNovaRaged, because Nova so far tends to fight with very little trashtalking. They put up a good fight and they take their wins and losses with dignity (I speak in general terms, there are always going to be a few people who just love to talk shit no matter what). At least that's my opinion, and...apparently they're comedians ><

Even though I don't participate in many of the fights (because I'm just plain BAD at PvP so I don't want to take the place of a better archer or BD in alot of the fights if I don't have to...), I always download the fraps (alot of them get posted only on our internal forums unfortunately) or hear about them in vent/hero chat.

Anyhow...that's all for now, new event starting today! woohoo!! More accessories/headgear! It's so lame that they're all like "shadow hats" and stuff...that kinda sucks... but I suppose that'll have to hold us over until CT1!

I placed second in the comic contest!

2007-10-18T12:35:00.000-04:00

A few months back I posted a small 3 panel comic about Sopel on this blog. Subsequently NCSoft decided to have a comic contest, so I submitted the aforementioned comic. Apparently 60% craft failures are something that people can relate to on all servers. I wasn't sure if the humor of our particular Sopel would be received as well or as humorous by the general L2 population, but luckily either there were VERY few submissions or they found mine worthy enough to award a prize :)

In either case, I am really looking forward to the receipt of the second edition of the Lineage Ark art book (I purchased the first edition from some online dealer about a year ago...afaik I haven't been able to find the second one yet for purchase anywhere so I am looking forward the to the receipt of this item with great anticipation).

You can view my submission as well as the other winning submissions here

...That's about it for now. Sorry there isn't more to post at the moment, I feel like things have been slowing down a bit in L2...but that's how it is for me right before every chronicle update. Posts will most likely be sparse for a bit...

On some non-L2 stuff... My wife and I are both cat people, she's always had cats pretty much her entire life and I've had them for a number of years as well, so every now and then our friends pass stories on to us about cat related stuff they think we would find interesting.

Recently, a company has genetically engineered these new hypo-allergenic cats (you've probably heard that story already). Now, they also seem to have engineered another breed that they call an Ashera, it's a $22,000 domestic housecat that can grow up to about 30 lbs.! Supposedly has a great temperment and gets along with other cats, children, etc.

They look awesome...but...22k for a cat...way out of my league, but they look awesome..Pics can be seen here

I'm back!

2007-09-28T11:00:00.000-04:00

[Non-L2 related post ahead]

Another delay between posts, I just got back from Germany! As some of you may or may not know I recently purchased a car and went to Germany to pick it up...along the way spending a week there on holiday and visiting Oktoberfest.

Germany's alot of fun, and I think I'm compelled to say that they have better drivers than the states! They seem to drive faster, more agressively, and possibly safer since their lanes are (or at least they feel) narrower than ours! Also...they actually use the left lane just for passing unlike us where we just obnoxiously sit in the left lane and drive slow even when the whole lane is open in front of us ><

...one thing the trip also taught me is that I can no longer complain about the price of gas in New York! Gas here in NY is generally between $2-$3 USD. Gas in Germany is was roughly about $1.40 a liter, which at today's exchange rate is 1.99095 a liter. It's roughly 3-4 liters to a gallon, so that comes out to 7.53 a gallon in USD. OUCH!

Anyway the trip was so much fun, I would definitely do it again in a heartbeat. Now I just have tro wait 6-8 weeks until my car gets back to my local dealer here in NY...here's a few photos for those who are interested:

[Some Aleena News!]
I was recently interviewed by Stratics! For those who are interested you can find the interview here

A link also managed to make its way on to the main lineage2.com community site page (thanks for mentioning this to me Relamyr!)

Lastly, my ss of Piewacket's rare accessory made it the official lineage 2 site as well with a story on the GenCon/Indiana meet and greet.

Anyhow, that's all for this short update! I will be attending the Ziff Davis Digital Life show this evening at the Jacob Javitz Convention Center after work so back from lots of beer, germans and fun cars and back to the day to day grind! Woohoo!! =D

Small infos on misc stuffs...

2007-09-13T13:59:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine from my old clan recently had the opportunity to attend the GenCon in Indiana and visited the NCSoft Booth, and also attended the meet and greet at the brewery afterwards. I would've considered going also had it not been about a 16 hour drive from New York to Indiana (lol!) Anyway, for people that managed to attend, NCSoft rewarded those people with a special unique accessory (I forgot to ask him what this is called in his inventory)

(and yes, I know I'm wearing tank armor in this ss, I know it's bad, but I wanted to try it for a few days, and really...I don't think it even lasted that long)

PM Piewacket on Bartz if you want a closer view of it!

What else...it seems that in Korea or someplace oveseas they are distributing a Lineage II Prime Edition that includes a statue, and the second art book!! (some of you may already own Ark- The Art of Lineage II, first edition).

These photos show the Dark Elf Statue, I've also seen a few photos of a Light Elf Female in Blue Wolf Robe statue as well as a Human Male in Zubei Heavy Statue (You can find them on Mondes Persistants )...although the other two were already out of box, so I can't confirm that those are alternate package options for the Premium Edition...Anyway here's a few photos that I stole from someone else's blog of them!! woohoo!! (lol!)

Aleena's August

2007-09-04T10:41:00.000-04:00

As August came to a close, it signalled the end of certain things. In the United States it symbolizes the end of summer with the coming of our Labor Day holiday, traditionally celebrated with parades and veterans rememberance, displays of the flag, as well as the end of wearing white shoes/skirts (the exception to the rule being "winter whites"). Anyhow, the end of August also end my short stint being hero, and I hope you will allow me to indulge myself a little further and post additional screenshots of stuff that's been going on with me on Bartz (sorry I don't have much "general lineage news" to post. Stratics, l2vault, l2warfare do a much better job covering that than I ever could).

It's been a very eventful month for me, in addition to being given hero I've been granted the priviledge of holding one of the clan's Baium Rings (see screenshot from previous post). During the course of the year I've turned in the Pagans quest about five or six times, and EVERY time I've received an Enchant Armor (S Grade) from the quest. This one last time, I finally got something different.

About time, imo!

Anyway, on my last day being hero I got some farmers killed one last time just because I could. Byebye cancel stick :( most fun weapon in the game!

And I very blatantly abused hero chat on my last day, I think if people could add an extra selection of what chat to see in their windows (i.e. general, shout, party, clan, alliance, trade, hero voice), they probably would've wanted to add one saying "aleena voice" so they could shut that off. However, I'm sure I added to alot of people turning off hero voice this month :) In either case, I do occasionally get PM's from people who read the blog and I never get a chance to post them, so here's a few who actually didn't absolutely HATE me being hero this month (and no, it's not me talking to myself on an alt!)

I get alot of grief in hero chat, especially from the heroes in my clan/alliance. So every few days I would get random PMs asking something along the lines of "why do all the other heroes hate you so much???". Well, to be honest I give them alot of ammunition to make jokes about, but I think (at least I hope), in my clan/alliance it's all in fun and I think that their comments are meant as such because for all the roleplaying and joking around I do in ally and herochat they're meant mainly as entertainment. Somepeople like to trashtalk and just be stupid in general, I roleplay sometimes to pass the time. At the end of the day it's all about what keeps you playing the game and keeps it interesting.

Lastly, we recently attempted a Valakas raid, which was aborted about an hour or so in. We were moving along at a good pace, however since we started the raid about 2 hours later than originally anticipated it began to infringe on alot of peoples' personal obligations and prior engagements so as we lost a number of key classes we were forced to cancel it. However, I still managed to get a few screenshots.

And my personal favorite:

That's it for now, thanks for visiting again!

Wow, what a month!

2007-08-21T09:32:00.000-04:00

So many things happening, where to start? I guess I can start at the beginning of the month. I managed to bribe Seridove over at L2valut to add my name to the list of featured heroes. I figured that there is a good chance that I will never be hero again, or not again for a VERY long time so I might as well take advantage of it. I'm pretty sure I've been overusing alot of hero priviledges, i.e. I pretty much will shout for almost anyone on Bartz unless you're trying to sell like some D grade piece of gear (there's a good chance that I personally have dramatically decreased the number of people who leave Hero Voice turned on in their chat preferences).

About being a hero I guess this probably is the best time for me to be a hero since it does somewhat reflect the state of the server as well. Bartz is in a relative state of peace at the moment, there really is not much large scale PVP going on at the moment. There is some, like that which is going on between Nova and Vestige, but in general my feeling is that there is alot less than what Bartz has seen historically. I am hoping that this is the calm before the storm since, too much PVE = boring...even I can admit that. I think there's a balance in the game that everyone has to decide for themselves what they want to get out of it, some part of it is pvp, some pve, some community interaction, and when personal metrics are applied to each of the various attributes of the game- hopefully at the end of the day they are able to get what they expected out of it. For the most part I have met my expectations with respect to what I would like to get out of L2, and I have no shame in it. Anyway, so as I was alluding to earlier - a peacetime Bartz has a peacetime Spectral Dancer hero.

The Damned has recently become, arguably, the most powerful active alliance on Bartz at the moment. With the departure of the Uprising Alliance, all of our wars pretty much ended overnight. So we've done nothing but the war against mobs...

Their departure seems to be a trend as the general population of Bartz feels as if it is either declining or becoming inactive. Many say the one thing that can really revitalize the interest in L2 is server transfers or merges. I tend to agree, and hopefully an influx of new live players from other servers will displace all of the automated players in the catacombs and other hunting areas.

Let's see...what else, I was lucky enough to be in the bubble when one of our Gladiators used his level 80 skill...here's some stats of my hawkeye (PR's had about 500-1000 patk more than this, mind you)

Some of you guys might be used to that kind of p. atk, but I'm not...so I was pretty floored.

What else...Oh, since NCSoft announced that they have resolved compatability problems between gameguard and the Logitech G series keyboards, I went out and picked up a G15. I haven't really used the macro features yet, but I think the Ventrilo plugin is great! The LCD displays who is transmitting by default, and the various G15 buttons allow you to see other data from vent such as, who is in your channel, system messages (i.e. who logged in/out, left/joined channel etc).

Oh, and lastly I went to my first successful Antharas Raid!

In some non-L2 news, I got bored at work today and took apart a type II CF card...I always thought these were kinda neat because the non-flash based type II cards are basically just tiny hard drives with mini-platters, spindles and heads!

...And that's that, thanks for stopping by!

Spectral Dancer Hero, Bartz!

2007-08-02T11:58:00.001-04:00

Somehow I managed to become Spectral Dancer hero on Bartz! (yeah...I know...it's all about feeding and it's a sham, etc etc.) Nevertheless, still fun as always- here's a few stills.

Now that you have a fun cancel stick, and you're not at war, what do you do? After grinding a bit I decided to mess with some farmers, so easy to cancel their buffs and let the mobs do the rest. Wow, it's going to be SO hard to go back to using Duals again!

OMG Sopel Succeeded a Craft/Dead Bloodsoul

2007-07-16T10:44:00.000-04:00

Only people on Bartz will really appreciate this, everyone else just ignore it :)

(click for the larger image)

Also, we've lately been plagued by the current FOTM of farmer scum, Bloodsoul...So there was a little contention for Lilith tonight. And hey, look- we won (once again, click the image for fullsize image)

Kamael pix!

2007-07-09T10:26:00.000-04:00

This is going to be another Kamael post since everyone seems to be chomping at the bit trying to eat up as much information as they can about them.

Before I repost many screenshots that I've gotten from blah, playforum, thisisgame, and gametsg I'd like to thank everyone for all of their support and welcome back notes! I had no idea I actually had that many readers [I don't keep a counter on the site so I have no idea of traffic metrics]. I'd also like to say that I'm sorry to see one of my favorite Lineage blogs is no longer with us, Lineagejunkies.com has ceased all of its blog functions and currenly serves as just a standard phpbb forum :( . They always had alot of great info and interesting reading and kind of was part of what motivated me to start an L2 blog also...so, best of luck to lineagejunkies and thanks for all the fine posts over the years and your contribution to the community.

Anyway, I also want to take a moment to appologize to people I've offended with my hiatus post, I've gotten numerous derogatory comments on my server about being a roleplayer...so, if it bothers you I will try to pre-label any future posts with some kind of rp disclaimer so you can just skip it...but to be honest it's been a very small majority of my posts that are of that nature, so I think every now and then I should be allowed a deviation here and there...besides, it helps keep me occupied on the almost 2 hours a day I commute to and from work on my commuter rail.

Anyhow, onto the Kamael eye-candy from various sources!!!

Updated inventory and skill windows- looks like the skills are now categorized [they look grouped and collapseable!?]

Fencing stances for the fencing swords, this looks more like french-foil fencing rather than epee/saber/rapier type...but what do I know?

This screenshot looks like it was shot with fairly shallow depth of field, kind of like at f/4 or f/2.8 - I am wondering if this is photoshopped or if there's a new type of selective focus feature in the new chronicle?

Sexy dark elf with the new armor and S80 Dynasty Bow!

Female Kamael with Draconic Leather Armor?

Some more Kamaels from the Korean L2 site, ss from the intro video.

Male Kamael in Formal Wear

Female Kamaels in Formal Wear...They look very Victorian in formal wear imo...also possibly a new flying pet?

New slots...Bracelet or Belt (I can't really tell) and Underwear slots...Underwear slot has been in NA version forever but never implemented...hopefully they will implement one of the two when it gets to the US/Euro shores.

Female Kamael in Maj armor (can't tell if it's light or heavy)

Hihi!!!

2007-06-21T10:15:00.000-04:00

As stated in the previous post, I knew there was really no way that I could stay away from L2 for that long and it turned out that my short hiatus was REALLY short. I just needed a small break to kind of recharge and recover since I had a little bit of l2 burnout at the time. Anyway, the time was really helpful as I've been able to put L2 back into its proper place in my life and not allow it to completely consume everything!! I feel bad though because I really would like to put in more time as I feel that I really owe my clan/ guild/ alliance a great deal that I probably will never be able to repay. Many before have said similar things, and it's even beginning to sound cliche, but I'll say it again- that at this point in the game it's not as much about the content as it is about the people you spend your time with in the game that make it worth playing. Nothing makes this point more poignant than the passing of Mong (Ryan). Those of you that knew him already are aware of this, those of you who don't should know that this particular individual had a significant impact on the Bartz server as well as the gaming community in general, so much that even though he hadn't played L2 in almost a year his death has brought back a tremendous amount of community support and sympathy for his family and friends. Details, for those who are interested, can be found on l2blah.

Anyway, I came back and noticed that one of my quest guides was published on Stratics! Woohoo!! read more here.

I also occasionally wander around some of the overseas sites for L2, especially now with Chaotic Throne coming soon there's alot of interest around the Kamael. On the main Korean Lineage 2 Kamael preview site there's a few snippets of what appears to be either live gameplay or possibly modeling application video of them in action.

...What else...some misc OT stuff: Some of you may know that I'm in New York. One of the great things about NYC is that it's such a foodie's city. We have the offices of the Food Network right in Chelsea Market, and they used to film Emeril over on like 10th avenue. Sarah Moulton can be seen doing occasional signings and appearances at local venues here and in New Jersey. So why the post? This random musing brought to you by Harold Dieterle, the winnner of Top Chef. Earlier this year his restaurant, Perilla, opened downtown and I am lucky enough to be meeting some friends there for dinner...I'm really looking forward to it. Also, if that doesn't work out, it's walking distance from Mario Batali's restaurant, Babbo (Kate Hudson eats there on occasion).

And lastly, finally went to test drive the BMW 3 series convertible. I seem to have gone at just the wrong time, BMW is no longer manufacturing '07 models at this point, so getting a date for European Delivery is going to be very difficult if at all possible. However, if I wait until mid-august the local dealers should have dates and pricing for the '08 production cycle. So, I am still working on my last craft and hopefully will see this message soon:

You have earned 2007 BMW 328 Convertible.
or
You have earned 2008 BMW 328 Convertible.

Anyhow, I will close with a few random screenshots and some fanart that I found interesting (from lineage2.gametsg.com).

What is the deal with this wacky bow?

woohoo sexy light elves!!

Taking a Hiatus from L2

2007-05-02T09:08:00.001-04:00

She awoke with a scream that could not escape her throat, such was her way... an odd noiseless scream that could barely be impelled through her lungs with so much as a troubled gasping noise. At times it would cause her to feel as if she was almost asphyxiated by fear. The nightmares continued. Several days ago they had gotten worse, and in an attempt to seek solace from the pain she began the pilgrimage home, back to Shilen's Garden and her village.

The nightmares began about two fortnight ago, at her new home, so far away from the Dark Elven lands. Her primary residence of late has been in the pastoral border town of Rune, where she was privileged to live in the luxury of the Mont Chamber under the guidance of master Duff of the Elven order of Moonlight Sentinels, an elite branch of Elven Archers. Recent events had reminded her of her induction to this guild, originally under Darktoy, one of the revered elders of her society. She had originally been drawn to this guild to study under him and to further her craft. In doing so, she had learned to be more worldly and not stay so sheltered within the dark elven school of thought and to know of all the races of the Aden and Elmore. She learned archery from humans and thus in addition to being aligned with Narsilia in her guild also owed fealty to Anak Bhaal, the guild's leader of the order of human archers know as the Sagittarius. Most of her career has so far been very rewarding without being plagued by such ambiguous conditions but something drew her home.

She allowed her eyes to slowly linger upon the sites of a town she had not seen in too long a time, there was normally a calming reassurance that she reserved for the Dark Elven village. A reassurance that she did not feel this night as she awoke shivering and trying to claw at some unknown demon, here at her childhood home. The pale light and random arcing of light from the monument of Shilen's hand cast its unusual illumination about the room, causing shadows to dance randomly here and there hinting at shapes flitting about. Dark elves reveled in the twilight and dusk since becoming accustomed to this luminosity, or lack thereof...having become nocturnal and partially subterranean as well since their departure from the wood elves they preferred and were more efficient hunting in partial light. She slid out from under the sheets and sat up on her cot, her hand absent mindedly passing over her bare midriff, and behind. Through the prayers of Einhasad and Shilen no visible scars remained, however some scars cannot be erased through prayer..she was oft reminded of that wound...

Parry, parry, parry/riposte, lunge. The dark assassin's attacks raged in a flurry as fast as they eye and mind could barely comprehend. She stayed mostly on the defensive, even through all the training with dualswords they were not quite as graceful or wieldly as a single dagger. A blinding blaze of steel shot past her throat missing by inches as she stumbled a clumsy slash in his general direction. She swung around to recompose her stance and prepare for the next attack and found him outside the range of her vision. A split second of fear gripped her before she felt the stream of tears from her eyes as the pain exploded throughout her body and knew that mistake would cost her dearly. Kianatre's dagger pierced her back, shattering her spine with a sound not unlike breaking a pile of dry branches, and impaled her on the field of battle. She crumbled to the floor in an expanding pool of her own blood, paralyzed and awaiting death with only the occasional involuntary spasm to even hint at any remaining life.

...Shilen surely must have a greater purpose in mind for her to allow the death of her children at the hands of their own kinsmen and sibilings, even those within the same guild fought with the same ferocity such as Sandas and Sheni who had engaged Kianatre on more than one occasion...such was not for her to question.

Her vision began to waver, and she allowed herself to lay back down, her hand falling across the ashen blue-grey skin of her chest. Her breath quickened for some unknown reason and she continued to dream.

She flailed in her cot, her body undulating in some strange and foreign dance, small beads of sweat began to form on her forehead, down the nape of her neck, on her abdomen. Laying down did not seem to ease this malady, she moaned and convulsed violently, forcing her to her feet, and then back down to her knees as her legs buckled under the sudden and unexpected weight. Her vision began to alter, everything began to become blindingly bright, she was losing her sight. A noise louder than she could comprehend pervaded her hearing to the point where she could no longer hear, she began hearing colors and seeing sounds, her mind exploding and imploding to the magnitude of sensory overload on all levels overwhelming her. She screamed, or at least she thought she did, and lost consciousness.

When she awoke, there were no longer any symptoms of the previous condition. She felt calm, her skin was cool and dry to the touch. She felt almost elated, even as she lie on the floor naked from the ordeal. She slowly stood, she looked around the room and everything seemed in order, her vision had returned and the deafening ringing in her ears gone. Everything was in order, the hand of Shilen outside her window sparking its eternal light, shopkeepers and patrons assuming their daily rituals...

She shook her head and recalled having the oddest dream. A dream where everyday did not involve swords and fighting for her life, instead she recalled sitting with a small luminescent rectangular tablet emanating its own light, hands that were not her own pressing on a number of small buttons in a predictable regulated manner. She was not wearing any armor, nor did she see anyone else wearing any. She was no longer a dark elf, nor was she even a woman anymore and she could recall responding to the name "Mike".

...I've detagged from TD, and I'm going to be taking a short break from L2 as I try to get my real life back (I think my wife misses me!)...So, no need to further check the blog for updates for a bit, this random non-factor is signing out for now! Have fun all, and I will be back soon (no, I'm not going to post one of those "OMFG I'M QUITTING L2 IT SUCKS" posts, I'm not kidding myself, we all know I won't stay away kekeke).

War with the Nova Alliance

2007-04-27T10:14:00.000-04:00

Welp, it's official. We're at war with the Nova Alliance (Renovatio, Stripclub, and Amateras). It's no secret that part of the reason we left the Nova Alliance was because there was always a little bit of underlying tension between us and Stripclub. Since then there have been a few isolated incidents of them flagging on us, us flagging on them, us sweeping or hunting and then other people we're warring with suddenly showing up. There's two sides to every story, and usually the truth lies somewhere in the middle. So in our story, it seems yesterday was the breaking point where a few of them ganked Gicobbe outside of the Varka Silenos outpost.

Oddly enough, the resulting action reminded me of Sean Connery's line from The Untouchables "They bring a knife, you bring a gun; They put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue..."

And here's what happened after they killed Gicobbe and right before we declared:

Anyway, I think it will be a fun and amicable war. Most people in Renovatio and Amateras are good and respectable people and don't trashtalk and in general I expect they will bring this sense of dignity and integrity with them.

Blood Sword Akamanah

2007-04-26T22:22:00.000-04:00

...minor addendum, The Blood Sword Akamanah (aka the duals) just dropped to some farmer/botter by dwarf village and our uberfast ninja KillerAngel snapped that thing up faster than you can say, "GOT DUALZ!?!?!?"

Interlude...set customer expectations first.

2007-04-24T10:57:00.000-04:00

Interlude's been out the last few weeks and I think initially I was a little unimpressed with the content, based on the additions from the previous chronicles there was so much more. However, after rethinking the issue and placing everything into its proper context I have come to the conclusion that the amount of content is actually appropriate based on its namesake.

An interlude can be defined as an intervening period or episode, somewhat of a transitory or transitional. Popular forms can also be seen as the intermezzo in music, an intermezzo in a meal (meant to cleanse the palate and stimulate appetite at the same time). Basically something small between larger more thematic items.

So, having adjusted my expectations I have come to feel that interlude pretty much is as it should be and thus I've become more comfortable with its level of content. This is probably why the PTS for Chaotic Throne overseas launched the same day our Interlude went live, the time to live for them between modules was very shrot since it is an interlude and not a full fledged "chronicle"-like addition.

So, anyway...been playing with some augments here and there, and they really run the gamut from somewhat useless to just plain amazing with the majority of them being in the middle. My duals got lighter T_T

Also, since they introduced new textures for mystics wearing heavy/light armorsets it appears that some of the mobs got some new outfits too- Plague Golem now actually looks like a Golem as opposed to a stack of rocks.

Other related randomness- I've been in the market for a new convertible lately so I stopped by the New York Auto show at the Jacob Javitz convention center and sent a general invite out to Bartz players who wanted to wander the show aimlessly with me, so I just want to say was nice running in to Chapo and Eminem84, and sorry to see that DamienSin couldn't make it that evening. I'll probably send another one of these out later in the year when Ziff Davis hosts its Digital Life show there (it's like the NorthEast version of the popular CES/E3 show in Las Vegas I suppose but not nearly as fun, however I can just go to this one after work as opposed to flying across the country).

So...that's all I have for today...some good news on a personal level... I haven't been able to play and post as much lately since my father was recently diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer so I took some time off to help my sisters take him to his various radition and chemotherapy appointments. At the beginning it was pretty depressing, but now that he's done with the radiation and has only a handful of oncologist appointments left they say his outlook's actually alot more hopeful than expected. After 2/3 of his radiation a ct scan revealed that the tumor had shrunk to about 1/2 it original size and he's started to gain some of his weight back.

...anyway...back to work! Oh...here's that Plague Golem picture!

Holy Kamael, Capcom-man!

2007-04-10T15:48:00.000-04:00

Several pieces of artwork surrounding the new race for the upcoming Chaotic Throne, The Kamael, have been floating around and in case you haven't seen them yet here are two of the more common ones (to me the art looks very capcom-esque, you can almost see Morrigan or Ryu from super championship street fighter 3.14159a alpha hyper fighting blamming flame throwing r-type limited extreme banana pac man tribute edition influences for sure):

More random miscellany! (including the Aleenapella set!)

2007-03-23T10:35:00.000-04:00

Aren't you guys tired of reading what's going on in my small part of the L2 world on Bartz already? Anyway...if not, here's a few more screenshots from the last week of nothing too exciting or interesting but they were kinda fun for me.

Since I finally made level 76 on my sub, I didn't really have too much of a need for my Soul Bow anymore. If you remember, it was +8, and I'm currently trying to sell it. I get bored easily when something doesn't sell, so...Blam...+9.

I have a friend that recently acquired an Apella set (that we've been nicknaming the Acapella set, or that I call the Aleenapella set) and I was able to borrow it for a little bit to try it on...Actually like a ton of us tried it on that day just to get some screenies with a set of armor that we'll probably never be able to own (costs like 20,000 or so rep points per set depending on the set).

So here's how the Apella Light set looks on a dark elf female (please ignore the drac boots/gloves, I really just wanted to see the main piece)

...more randomness- why did I call myself AleenaResron instead of just Aleena? Well, Aleena was taken. I didn't start playing L2 until C3 so definitely the pool of available names was decreasing. From time to time I actually manage to run in to the original Aleena, and here she is, I think she's a SR-

And last, but not least- I have been lucky enough to have continued success in weapon crafting (I SUCK at armor crafting for some reason, and mixed results with jewel crafting). My first 60% craft was a year or so ago with a pair of dragon grinders (got the recipe from a drop in beast farm), sold and made a SOM, sold and made a drac bow. Kept the Drac Bow. After that made a Bloody Orchid (had like dozens of heads from stolen infernium ores quest as well as from mobs in FoD), and now today-

I have to say that as an archer I get SO many more mats than I did as a BD. Being below ground in the catas fighting 4x mobs you don't get nearly as many base mats. Running around one/twoshotting 1x and 2x mobs aboveground seems to yield alot more crafting materials, as well as the two FOD quests which allow you to trade mob quest items for more mats so I really didn't even have to buy many mats to craft this.

And that's all for today!

Negate the Scrunchy!

2007-03-20T10:39:00.000-04:00

This is going to sound really stupid, and I can't believe I'm going to make a post on this, but being the L2 fashion whore that I am I can't resist. A small note on Dark Elven Females- Certain armor sets also come with an unmentioned hair accessory. If you wear your hair long, you will notice that sets like Karmian, Composite, Plated Leather, DC Light, Imperial Crusader, and a few others also come with a free hair scrunchy so you can wear your hair in a ponytail.

If your character preference is such that you prefer to wear your hair long, you can negate the scrunchy with a hair accessory such as a Feathered Hat. (this ends Aleena's L2 fashion tip of the day- let's get that tacklebox ready for Interlude...I have a feeling that a week of fishing is in order).

Oh...and I finally broke the 10k crit barrier for the first time a few weeks ago (woohoo!)

Lastly, a belated Slainte! for everyone who celebrated St. Patrick's Day (Having a wife that is German/Irish has served as insurance that I have not missed a shamrock day in over 11 years)

Long time between posts!

2007-03-12T11:37:00.000-04:00

Wow, it's been a while since I've last posted...so...let's see, where to start?

Aleena made 76 on subclass, so s grade/bluetag on both! She's now a Spectrattarius!

We also raided Frintezza the other night- drop list (following!)

Other than that not too much going on, been playing around on the PTS a little bit...wish there was a bit more content than just the island, but I think everyone will always feel that way no matter what comes out.

Lastly, we've left the Nova Alliance! Immediately after this raid we went back on our own due to some internal strife (kekekeke). Rockin out the old TD tag again!!

OT: More BMW stuff

2007-02-19T11:35:00.000-05:00

Many forums have offtopic posts so I'm adding an offtopic post on my blog. As some of you may or may not know, I've been waiting a while now for the new BMW 3 series hardtop convertible (E93) to be released here in the states. A number of orders have already been built and are awaiting shipment to the US, and they don't even have pricing available yet! ARGH!! I have been waiting over a year for this car to come out!

Anyhow... I'm planning on taking European delivery of the car when I order it (if they ever come out with pricing!), and the more I read about it the more exciting this trip seems like it's going to be. It turns out that BMW is also building some huge delivery/meeting center - check it out at http://www.bmw-welt.com/ . Wow...this is going to be one fun trip this fall/next spring! The last time I was in Europe was when my wife and I went on our honeymoon in Ireland...and that...well...wasn't all that recent!

Bah...fine here's one L2 related comment- My favorite part of Draconic Leather Armor on Dark Elven Females:

OMG WTB Interlude already!

2007-02-02T13:37:00.000-05:00

Waiting, waiting waiting. Is it just me or does it also seem like this is the longest that a PTS has been out in Korea that hasn't gone live yet? Or maybe the last two have just been abnormally short. I can't quite tell.

In either case, so much stuff to look foward too. A whole slew of new top a grade weapons... I think I might have to join everyone and sell my soul bow while I still can, because clearly the new Shyid Bow with Focus is going to blow away today's soul bows...coming in with a higher patk clean and a better SA it's not going to be a hard sell. The new A grade duals aren't really a huge improvement still imo...Wish they would just put focus on a pair...looks like they're just super upgraded keshes...attack speed bonus, high patk and a weight bonus. Clearly seem to be aimed more at bladedancers than gladiators with the weight addition.

With the exception of the duals, they state that all the mats and recipes for the new top a grade stuff is going to be available via quests and stuff on Dino island, which appears to be the only major landmass being added to the world of Aden. Fortresses for smaller clans also look like they should be interesting, I counted about 20 or so I think on the last PTS map I looked at...hopefully some of these will produce the various recipes for the MANY new accessories!

All in all, I'd say the most anticipated thing in interlude for me though will be the weapon refinement system. Let's hope those life orbs won't be impossible to get.

Welp, that's it for this week's randomness! I close with a photoshopped image of Aleena as a human- Happy Friday everyone, as a old friend would say "Good luck, and good drops!"

Once again around the block

2007-01-29T11:27:00.000-05:00

I managed to make it to level 75 again, definitely easier this time in some respects since I have been playing a solo class and have the out of party buffer as well as not having to do those horrible class change quests.

Levelling from 73 to 75 has been more difficult as I have had many visitors of late- mec, epiphonia, solodrago, xlance, zuan, erupt, fur0bat, kianatrethedark, and toldoth have all been by to say hi to give me their personal opinions on what they think of all my PVE (basically all the lovetaps say "STFU noob, and die fighting something other than mobs for once"). I have been lucky so far that the only one who's oneshotted me is Devilhealer (but that's only a matter of time).

One member of Uprising has given me the distinction of being faster on the bsoe than anyone else so far in this war (I think this is probably the only challenge there is to killing me at the moment). That's also made these last two levels somewhat expensive...The only thing that offsets the cost is that the FOD quest yields a 120k adena reward for the vampire hearts, and ClanHall Bsoe's only cost 110k so it's almost even...if I can finish off 200 vamps before I have to bsoe it's pretty much a wash...I haven't made much money these last two levels.

So...all in all this puts me in an uncomfortable lose-lose situation with my clan and ally. Part of the reason I bsoe is because I know I'll die, but I dont mind losing the 0.50% all that much, but I feel bad because we lose the clan reputation points when I die. However, if I bsoe it is a poor reflection on my clan (the unmeasured type of reputation points), so either way I feel like I am making the clan look bad...I think I will have to have a discussion with Duff at some point to see if he would think it would be best for me to leave the clan before I embarass them more =/

"poof" (no measured clan rep points lost), or "gf" (clan rep points lost, but I die fighting) . . . bleh i'm so terrible.

Anyway...so now that I've reached 75 again, I'm also finally noble! Thanks Dekciw for the hero shout and to everyone who sent a gz! It's been a long road to get here, and doing all this stuff during the war's made me SO Paranoid. When I went to port to the lake, I swore someone from UR would be there to kill me and keep me from nobling up. Whenever I hunt now I'm constantly doign 360s to see who's coming, it's almost like when you're playing counterstrike and you're learning a new map so you ramp that mouse sensitivity all the way up so you can just whip around and see everything.

Now to decide what to do...plow the bd or archer to 79 or take up a 2nd sub?

WTB lessons on how to play this game better... also WTB several pints of Guinness, St. Patty's day coming up soon!

Making some crystals, and some cash

2007-01-22T09:25:00.000-05:00

I would post some more news from the frontlines of the war but- a) I'm only a minor player in the war not being uber enough to kill much more than a small fleet of elpies, and b) there's like 1.239218E+21303 posts about it on blah...so no need to be super redundant and make you read more than ya need.

So...with the remaining naked S grade weapons we have out there, we decided to go do a rift party last night since alot of us were tired and a new work week was beginning, and we wanted something easy and safe...so grabbed a bunch of level 12s and went to the hero rift. I'd begun to get a little disappointed with the rift because the last few times I'd been there I haven't had any luck in getting the raid boss, but finally on our second try we were able to. And also, we managed to get some nice random drops as well, so all in all best rift party I'd been to in a while.

Hey look what I made this weekend!

One piece down, 3 to go...as you can see it doesn't look quite right with my DC gloves and DC boots.

Feel free to skip this next section if you don't want to read about my car babble which will come off sounding like a shameless plug for BMW.

In some of the non-Lineage stuff...My birthday is coming up soon, and the last couple of years I've noticed that I'm now closer to 40 than I am to 30...which in some ways isn't so bad, because now I can start to look for my midlife crisis car! Hop over to the BMW site and check out the The new BMW 3 Series Convertible which is slated for release later this year. It is a hardtop convertible like the new Volvo C70 that was released last year.

BMW also has a ton of really great delivery incentive programs with their cars. I'm thinking of possibly taking european delivery of the car...which means BMW will sell you the car at about $2000-$3000 off of the regular price (price reduction depends on model, it's like $4500 off if you buy a 7 series) , as well as spend like half a day helping you get acquainted with your car and then when you are done with the car you just drop the car off and BMW picks up the cost for shipping it back to the states for you. So, by taking euro delivery you save $2-3k on the price, you also save like $500 because you dont need to get a rental car when you're there because you have your new BMW, AND Lufthansa offers a 2 for 1 price deal for flights to Munich to pick up your car so it's like free airfare for your significant other, with all that factored in there's almost not reason to NOT plan a European vacation when leasing or purchasing a new BMW because all the incentives make the cost a wash.

If you're in the states, BMW also offers a performance center delivery option. Every new car purchase/lease is always packed with these miscellaneous fees...one of which is a "delivery fee". The delivery fee in this case can be used to ship the car to your local dealer, which is what usually is the case, or you can use the delivery fee to take delivery of your car at BMW's perofrmance center. If you choose to take perfomance center delivery at their plant in the Carolinas, you purchase a one way plane ticket down there, and you're picked up by BMW, in of course, a BMW. Your hotel and dinner are paid for by BMW for that evening, and the next day you're taken to the performance center where you're given an individual walkthru on all the documentation included with your vehicle as well as the vehicle itself. Afterwards you're taken to the track where you will get instruction usually from ex-racecar drivers on how to drive your car in all kinds of extreme conditions...you don't actually drive your car, but one of BMW's cars...it's supposedly pretty fun where you get to do some really crazy stuff on their closed track.

Brothers in Arms

2007-01-16T09:48:00.000-05:00

Sunday, January 14

Fight for Bartz

Ketra Orc Outpost, Bartz - A call to battle has been made on the Bartz server. The climate on the Bartz North American server has been heating up for quite sometime now. The current reigning regime, Uprising, has held the throne of Aden and most of Bartz for a significant period and has impressed their rule upon the population of Bartz. Their repressive and arrogant ways came to a head when they recently they claimed the Imperial Tomb and Four Sepulchers hunting grounds for their exclusive use, and began killing anyone not in Uprising who dared to venture within.

On Sunday, January 14, three of the major alliances of the Bartz server banded together to declare war on Uprising to fight for Bartz, to fight for what is right, to regain the server in the name of the people. Duff of The Damned, Tyrail of Nova, and Silvereye of Proven lead their clans and alliances forward into what will be a long and enduring battle of what has been called "epic" proportions.

Uprising, which once was a well respected and liked clan has become the server's most despised clan with a level of disgust comparable to that of the farmer clans Lord of Lords, Bloodsoul, and WowoRedFireTruck. Most people interviewed chose not to state their player names due to a reasonable fear of Uprising retribution. Most people will privately speak of them and refer to their arrogance and pompousness as their main motivations for war. Ironically, the Uprising Alliance which once fought for the same rights as everyone else on the server has now become that which they once fought against, they have become the establishment.

In either case, the times ahead will be very interesting and exciting for the community of Bartz. Go forth brave warriors of Bartz, fight Uprising, defeat them, and reclaim Bartz.

With that said, I close with a lyric which I personally will hold close during this war "...and with the power of conviction, there is no sacrifice, it's a do or die situation, we will be invincible..."

woohoo!

2007-01-14T02:23:00.000-05:00

+8!

Plow Mode: ON!

2007-01-11T23:59:00.000-05:00

73!

Happy New Year All!

2006-12-31T15:18:00.000-05:00

Hope everyone has a happy new year!!

I got myself a New Year's Gift...I've been looking for a Bloody Orchid Recipe for quite some time now, a while back about 4 or 5 months ago I got a bunch of BO blades, and then I got a few here and there from grinding so I've had the mats to craft it, just haven't found a recipe until today. (See post- http://aleenaresron.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-won-in-bingo.html for when I got the mats).

So, I took a chance and crafted it and it worked, so now I finally have a dagger so when people ask me to not use my Bow I don't have to use duals anymore, yay!

Two more Stratics Guides

2006-12-29T14:20:00.000-05:00

From time to time I write some guides for Stratics to help fill in the gaps, they're pretty much my go-to place when I'm looking for a walkthru to a quest so I do what I can to do my part. I contributed two more today, I hope they get accepted! =D

http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/lineage2/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=2342&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/lineage2/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=2343&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

more adena than you can shake a stick at!

2006-12-28T09:33:00.000-05:00

We were doing some raiding and for some reason this one particular day we got a bunch of great drops. Usually we'll raid and we'll get some points, and usually alot of mats and stuff for a/s grade gear but this time we got full drops of an Angel Slayer, Draconic Bow, IC Breastplate, and IC Boots! All full S grade drops! We also on a whim did Lilith that day, which was really cool because we also managed to level a bunch of crystals up to 12 [I was dead at the end of the raid, but however your crystal will still level even if you're dead!]

I've been skimming alot of the interlude images/screenshots as they become available, and it looks like there's a new silent move texture/image where you become slightly transparent [as do your clothes apparently]

And lastly, a few shots of some of the upcoming interlude headgear because those of us obsessed with l2fashion keep up with this frivolity for some reason!

yay I got a Santa Hat!

2006-12-20T00:40:00.000-05:00

Last Minute Christmas Gifts

2006-12-19T11:56:00.000-05:00

So...I've been playing WAY too much l2 this year. I decided I'm going to print a bunch of these out (not TOO many) and slip some in with some of my wife's gifts. She deserves it for putting up with all my late nights of grinding I think (and not with her unfortunately).

Antharas Raid and Dead Farmers!

2006-12-18T09:41:00.000-05:00

It's been a pretty eventful couple of days. I've been levelling pretty steadily and trying to keep pace with a few other clanmates who are also aspiring for their Noblesse title. So far I've been able to maintain roughly about a level a week, although I know that once I reach about 72/73 that will become incredibly difficult to sustain. Nonetheless, I should hit 69 with in the next two days. Hopefully 70 next week.

This past weekend we had a temporary alliance with Vestige in order to attempt an Antharas raid. We had the right amount of groups, and almost the right mix [one or two groups kept agro a little more often than they should have]. That being said, the land dragon should've gone down had it not been for the dc's which began to occur about a half an hour into the raid. We kept going, but after about two hours and half of Antharas HP we lost too many kep support classes and had to call it off.

It was definitely worth the experience, and I would definitely do it again. Running into a raid with like 40 or so of your clanmates is always fun.

And speaking of clan events, a few of our members were getting picked off from time to time by the new LOL (Syndicate/Bloodsoul) in MoS. They had like 2+ nuker parties there, so we formed up two groups to go in there and teach them a lesson. I was invited to dance for all our reds :)

There were alot more bloodsoul that whats in this ss, but as we started to kill them some of them would log, and then as we cleared the rooms and worked off some karma they would try to sneak back on to res the dead ones. Which we promptly killed again. funfunfun! no ricecakes for someone that night.

This is one of my cats.

2006-12-14T15:05:00.000-05:00

For no other reason than "just because."

BTW- if anyone else is bored and wants to become a contributor to this blog, just send an ingame email to AleenaResron on Bartz with your email address and I'll send out an invitation.

Drops from Event

2006-12-14T10:41:00.000-05:00

Wow, these drops from the event raid bosses are insane- they just pop like a pinata when you kill them.

The Road to Noblesse

2006-12-11T09:13:00.000-05:00

I personally have never been so acutely aware until recently of exactly how lonely the life of a solo class like an archer might be. One of the things that was appealing to me about being a hawkeye(archer) is that there was a significant difference in gameplay from being a bladedancer. After being in so many archer groups in TOI and DVC as a bladedancer, this seemed to be a worthy path to explore. Although this is not groundbreaking in any way since many other bladedancers have gone the same route (as well as archer classes subbing a bladedancer or swordsinger). And also you can do really cool stuff as an archer lik 7k of damage per hit!

However as of late I have begun to see that this is more a solo class than a party class, although there are still TOI/DVC parties they seem to be fewer and more far between than anticipated. It is an adjustment that I am still making because that aspect of the gameplay is very different than before. As a support class (bladedancer) I was able to fit in to pretty much any party wether it be a duo or a full party. I try chatting with my buffbot every now and then, but I think he gets tired of hearing my voice.

Anyhow, I continue forward on my path to noblesse! After reaching level 65 I attempted to go back and do the Noblesse quests, I left off on the first quest at the Stakatos since at level 50 when you start the quest it really is not a reasonable expectation that you can finish this part until you're higher. I also was unable to acquire the quest item from this quest on my main class for some reason. The drop rate is also horrendous, so keep that in mind that even on my archer it took abotu 45 minutes of plowing before I got the 5 quest items. With that said, the next hardest part was getting the 500 moonstone shards- too which I owe my clanmate, Abarai Renji, a huge debt of gratitude. Without his help on the last few hundred reagent pouches I would've had to kill those 500+ shamans alone (just getting the 370 or so shards on my own was painful).

The second quest at level 60 was pretty easy, mostly just run around and deliver stuff and maybe kill an easy quest mob or two. For the third noblesse quest at level 65 I am required to take part in a raid, I am also required to be in the party that does the most damage and gets last hit. A huge thanks goes out to my clan, The Damned, for helping out on this. Duff, Anakbhaal, Wicked, Shield of Rognvald, Dieslick, Ferrion and a ton of other people in the clan in a list too long to name here were able to mobilize in incredibly short order to come to my aid to help me complete the most difficult part of the noblesse quest.

Since I got everyone into the raid mood, we went on to raid about 7 other bosses. One thing of note, is that the right buffs always mean everything! While we were raiding Queen Shayeed (I was allowed the rare priviledge of remaining on my archer), I was able to land at least 10 crits in a row, a personal record. It might have been even more but I did not have time to scroll through it all.

Lastly, this past weekend in a free for all The Damned has taken Dion Castle. I was unable to attend the siege since my wife was throwing our annual christmas/tree trimming party that day and we had guests over. However, in a moment when the throne was unoccupied I could not resist getting a screenshot.

Long Time Between Posts (sorry)

2006-11-22T09:50:00.000-05:00

Hihi all,

First of all I want to appologize to anyone who reads this blog regularly that it's been such a long time in between posts.

During the time that I have not posted we have been at war with Uprising on Bartz, who pretty much dominates our server. It's hard to war the top alliance in so many ways. So with that said, I didn't know what was appropriate to post and what wasn't appropriate so I held off for a bit. So, now the war's over and I can get back to posting a bit.

So what's been going on with Aleena lately?

Welp, when I first joined this alliance I asked our alliance leader what I should work on/what was best for the alliance in terms of my character. He said to work on getting all your level 77 dances. I already had Shadow and I just got Medusa- w00t! So done with that. My next priority was to get my subclass up so I can be noblesse and help with the hero competition. With that said, my archer subclass is now level 64.

I decided to go with a DC Light Set on Aleena, and over time and alot of nerves I've been able to make her Soul Bow +7 (616 patk, 158 matk). I really would've stopped at 6 but I figured 1 more and I could get the cool glowy flames (yay!).

I also haven't been a DD on Aleena since about level 35 so, now on the subclass seeing how much damage a hawkeye can do sometimes still blows me away [my BD could NEVER do 20k damage in 5 attacks].

Lastly, of course there's always raids! Last night we decided to go on some impromptu raid runs. We had enough for almost 3 full parties so we ran thru about 8 raids.

Someone requested drop information on the raids, so for those of you who don't feel like looking at the screenshots, here's a quick summary (screenshots follow)

Raid Spoils:

1 Blessed Scroll of Enchant Armor (S Grade)
1 Scroll of Enchant Armor (S Grade)
1 Scroll of Enchant Weapon (S Grade)
1 Book of Divine Inspiration (Original Language Version)
1 False Nucleus of Life (A Grade)
41 Draconic LA Parts
22 Imperial Crusader Breastplate Parts
26 Imperial Crusader Shield Parts
6 Nightmare Plate Armor Parts
10 Heavens Divider Edges
4 Draconic Bow Shafts
4 Angel Slayer Blades

417 total Raid Points

Maj Drop and more TD raid runs!

2006-10-05T09:44:00.000-04:00

Okay, so...I think I got my best drop ever! I was in a party in Pagans the other night, and as you know Pagans only allows parties of 5 or less, otherwise there is a possibility that all extra members may get teleported to random places...So any split in a Pagans drop by default can't be too bad. So, we got a Majestic Circlet! The PP was running around picking up all the drops and it almost went completely unnoticed [usually in Pagans the spawn rate is so fast you end up with a room flooded with drops in like 10 minutes]

The only bad thing about this drop was that at the time I only have 6.4m adena to my name so I kinda was out of hte bidding REALLY fast. It ended up going for only 46M. This helm usually goes for over 100M on Bartz, so gratz to Damien on the Maj Helm at a bargain price! (I know, we should've gone to Giran and put up a shop for it...but, no big- I'm still 9.2m richer than I was before the party so no complaints).

Shortly after the drop Darktoy called a general meeting in the clan hall for a series of raid runs, we plowed through like 8 raid bosses. Man, The Damned just make it look so easy- a few screenies.

I made it!

2006-10-04T00:21:00.000-04:00

I was accepted into TD today!! I'm ecstatic over my acceptance!

As I ran out of our clan hall, I ran in to two old friends also-

Guest at Nova Raids

2006-10-02T09:23:00.000-04:00

It has been a really long road, but I finally reached level 77! Woohoo!! Completely missed getting a screenshot of it since we were still surrounded by mobs at the moment, but it is really cool to have the Dance of Shadow. Since I'm able to SM all over the place now I've been running the Hot Springs delivery quests repeatedly trying to get my last recipe, I have all my S grade jewels except for the necklace. Unfortunately, the two quests there (liquor delivery and egg delivery) now both end in Goddard instead of at Jeremy so they take a little longer to do than before, and man the reward chance rate is SO low....needless to say I've gotten the 18,800 adena and haste pot rewards many times over, a few ring and earring recs...and STILL NO NECKLACE!!! (argh). I may just end up selling the extra recs I have and buying the rec in Giran at this point.

Anyway, in other fun stuffs I got to go on a raid run with Nova on Sunday, my friend DeadlyWolf invited me to a guest BD spot for their party. They started with Cabrio, then to the Skylancer thing near the Coliseum, then to the Varka Silenos Raid Boss, and then off to the island south of Giran for 3 raid bosses in a row there. It was alot of fun, thanks so much Nova for having me there! I miss raiding alot, glad that I have been able to do more of it these last few weeks!

Call me a Starbuck's Barista, because I grind

2006-09-22T09:21:00.000-04:00

Man, sorry for the big lag in posts but to be honest not too much has been happening lately since I went back to levelling the main BD class. I have been going strong and hardcore on the BD until I get to level 77. At the moment I'm about 25% away so hopefully in the next 2 weeks I can get my really uber dances.

In other news, The Final Heroes clan, after almost a year, is pretty much done. We have moved the entire core over to the Furions (which I misspelled, it's actually the Furyans). Appologies for the mistake, but by the time I found out I had already spent 2 million adena and approximately 2 million SP on making the clan (whatever the costs were to make the clan level 3). So, with that said- last night the clan did the level 4 quest, woohoo! Thanks so much to Crystalvixen for keeping me alive after being poisoned and immobilzed by Witch Kalis. Thanks to my champions, DaveMustaine, MrHand, and Havoch- an especally huge thanks to Dave who gave his life as a sacrifice to prove his clan loyalty. Uber thanks to Mr. Hand who blew through getting the quest item and then running to complete the quest of eva trial ALONE, where we usually needed a few clan members to whap the boxes. Thanks much to Bisnitchslamfist and Piewacket who joined us as well, it wouldn't be the same without the rest of the orcs to round our the crew! So, we're level 4 and hopefully this coming week we'll be invited back into the Elemental Storm Alliance.

Been messing around and finding out more and more little things in C5, such as- you can now be armed when wearing your formal wear! So, with that- here's another pic of Aleena in "Bringin Sexy Back" mode!

Lastly, I have been grinding in Blazing Swamp a bit working on the Noblesse quest, it turns out that I might need about 500 Moonstone Shards for this one, so...lots of dead orcs, and- A DROP! w00t!

Some raid fun!

2006-09-15T10:24:00.000-04:00

So, I was lucky enough to be invited to a TOI raid run with, questionably, one the server's most 1337 clans/alliances. The Damned allowed me to be a guest BD for a quick pvp/raid boss ninja run, which I was more than happy to go on since I realy miss doing raids and haven't done a whole lot of them since I was in D grade, as well as finding out for myself how much more difficult the C5 raid bosses were. Here's an early staging pic of us in Aden Church-

Man, that's alot of Draconic LA! I felt out of place with so many draconic bows and stuff around so I went to go fetch mine as well for this run. Since I'm only level 76, they had to keep dropping a 77 SD into/out of party from another one of the raid parties to dance shadow for us, I felt so gimp. So, after that I made a decision that I'm not going to level my buffbot or my subclass anymore, I'm going back to hardcore grinding the BD to 77...that shadow dance is pretty uber.

The run started with the nobles porting up to toi 5f while the rest of us ran up, from 5f to 11f they ninjaed their way all the way up and then as they came up to 11f and Longhorn they ran up on Conviction, who they are warring, and just really wiped them out. To be honest, it was pretty one-sided since there were 3 full groups of TD geared and buffed for raid and just kind of swooped in on the mixed conviction/others and took them out pretty quick and stole their raid boss. Convction was really pretty outnumbered, so they didn't have too much of a chance unless all of the other groups there for the raid party defended, which they did not.

So Conviction was cleared out in short order, we took Longhorn. With Lord of Lords taking a hiatus from Bartz to cash in on the adena rush and farming on Franz now, alot more raid bosses are available, so we then went across the floor and took out the other 11f raid boss.

From there we headed up to 13f where we also raided Galaxia (a few snapshots...)

After Galaxia they went up to do Baium. I unfortunately am out of fabrics, so I will have to restock and take that quest again at some point in case I have another opportunity like this. All in all, it was one of the more fun nights I've had in L2 in a while. So much grinding to get to 76 and the third class change and all the waiting for the subclass quest, this was a great respite from that.

Lastly, my old clan seems to be falling apart. The Final Heroes may be disbanding. I have since left the clan and am currently looking for a new one. At the present time some of the displaced clan members want to start a new clan, so I started one for them and am donating some of my SP to get them up to level 4, at which point I will transfer the leadership and most likely leave to find where I should be longterm. It is almost my one year anniversary in L2, woohoo! i m so n00b!

C5 Quest Guides

2006-09-12T09:33:00.000-04:00

Wow, finding out more and more stuff about C5 that is just kind of good and kind of a pain. For one thing, you can port from the Dawn Priest at any time now, however prices have gone up significantly- ports that used to cost ike 1000aa all of a sudden now cost 8000aa. Also, alot of the standard gatekeepers have ALOT more destinations...some prices are lower and some are higher, and some locations are gone...so this might end up even.

One big loss though, is that there are no more dawn ports into TOI, so no more going to 5f/7f/10f/13f from the priest. All of a sudden I am SOOOO grateful that I did my subclass quests in C4, I could not IMAGINE running up 14 flights in TOI. Talk about "ripping your eye out with a spoon" kind of pain!

So, I have contined exploring Schuttgart and in the process I have written about six new quest guides that hopefully will be published to Stratics. I am finishing up the screenshot cleanup for the seventh, they are as follows:

Ominous News- Level 20
Making the Harvest Grounds Safe- Level 21
Ghosts of Batur- Level 23
Pavel The Giant- Level 46
Influx of Machines- Level 46
Resurrection of an Old Manager- Level 49

[kekeke there's my artisan, Grace Steelforge, doing the level 2x quests]

Lastly, have you guys all seen the Dark Elf mage in Apella Robes with the Sword of Miracles figurine that is supposed to be coming out soon?

Looks pretty hot imo, however it's a resin model that must be hand painted [which explains why human flesh tones were applied to it instead of standard dark elf coloration]. That's good and bad in a way...for someone like me with absolutely no artistic talent at all, here's what will happen:

Aleena has acquired Dark Elf Figurine
Aleena has acquired Dark Elf Flash Tone Paint
Aleena has acquired Black Paint
Aleena has acquired Gold Paint
Aleena has acquired Paintbrush
[Begin Painting]
[cat jumps on my lap]
Dark Elf Figurine Has Disappeared
Paintbrush Has Disappeared
Aleena Has Failed to Craft Dark Elf Figurine after paying $75.00 USD

o.O just wrong!!!

In non-lineage news, I bought my first pair of designer jeans...woohoo...as someone who never pays more than $50 for a pair or jeans to jump up to like $200 is a big step. My wife has been buying the designer jeans for a few years now- Sevens, Citizens of Humanity, True Religion, etc... At one point I had looked into getting her a gift for a birthday or valentine's day to Earnest Sewn in Soho, they will actually custom tailor a pair of jeans for you where you can pick out everything from the fabric/denim to the zipper/rivets/buttons for buttonfly/etc. But you have to make an appointment like a month in advance for a fitting and it is also about $600-$800 a pair [[OMG!!]].

I settled on a pair from Paper, Denim and Cloth. I have to admit they are exceptionally comfortable, moreso than something from Gap or Banana Republic...however...it is REALLY doubtful that I would spend that much on a second pair.

One last thing: If there are any Kevin Smith/Clerks fans you HAVE TO download the clip from this website from the Opie and Anthony show where Kevin and Joel Siegel just go at it from Joel being an asshat at the Clerks II screening.

see fahve

2006-09-07T10:15:00.000-04:00

Woohoo C5 is here! Some pretty cool stuff, the "improved solo'ing" mods are kinda neat. Now that I've subclassed archer, I really appreciate the instant mp restore powerups, I read about these and the HP restores but I didn't know that they also had some that buff you as well, the only teaser about them is that the buffing herbs only last two minutes [just like songs/dances]. Overall, still pretty nice and even nicer when you have your buffbot in tow anyway.

I've been exploring Schuttgart mostly (woohoo some new mobs!)until a friend asked me to go with him to farm some of the new spellbooks in the Frozen Labyrinth...Last night was THE night to sell books apparently since the mana burn/erase/magical backfire books were asking anywhere from 1-5m on Bartz (omg!).

On the downside, I made a character on Franz also figuring it would be really cool to relive the game fromm the beginning. I don't mean like a reroll on the existing server, but a reroll while everyone else was rerolling so you could explore all the newbie areas again with actual people instead of just bots.

Sadly, the starter areas were like 80% bots...I could not even find a gremlin to kill to finish the newbie quest to get the free NG-SS. horrible. I'm afraid Franz is DOA. Maybe next time, NC.

In other more personal news, I think my current clan may be disbanding soon. Our leader has pretty much checked out of the game, he's been dealing with alot of real life issues lately and I think he may sink the ship with him. It's a shame to watch a good person deteriorate over time like this. He's been one of the most giving, motivating and responsible people I've met in the game. But over the last few months it's been nothing but moodiness, and now he's kind of abandoning. He simply does not care about anyone else at the moment. The worst part is that alot of clanmembers have entrusted items in the clan warehouse as well as on his person, which I think we may end up losing at this point.

Popular opinion dictates that reputation in the game is pretty important, so at this point he could be remembered for doing the right thing and transferring leadership so at least people can get things done, or he can be remembered as the person who has forsaken his entire clan. His window is getting pretty short to make a decision, here's to hoping he can see past the fog that is clouding his eyes at the moment.

W00t! I'm a Spectral Dancer!

2006-08-26T19:18:00.000-04:00

It's been one really hectic month with lots of activity. First I've completed Fate's Whisper and Mimir's Elixir to gain my Hawkeye subclass. Now, with that out of the way and a little more grinding I've also completed my third class change on my main from Blade Dancer to Spectral dancer. So many people to thank for this, first and foremost L2girl for writing the guide so long ago so I could get ALOT of the grindy parts out of the way. Without her guide this would've taken MUCH longer, but thanks to her I already had my Cryolite, the Level 2 alliance, as well as the magical power of water quests completed. All that was really left to to was finish off the quest mobs and do the 700 ants and scarabs.

Huge thanks to my allymates in FCA who had already completed their third class change, without them escorting me behind enemy lines to complete the magical power of water quest I'm not sure I would've been able to even attempt this part alone [actually, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been].

Wooohoo! so I'm a Spectral Dancer now! Now all that's left to do is become noblesse so I can finally quit and say I've done it all :) [doubtful, but a nice fantasy nonetheless]

So I celebrated by oe'ing my hex, so I have hex +1 chance, yay!

Lastly, I also went to Branded to train some bots just for no particular reason at all. Woohoo, apparently there are some that still don't know how to forcelog well. So here I am sitting over a 8 man bot party, all dead thanks to my train (kekekeke)

Yay I finally have a scammer too!

2006-08-10T14:47:00.000-04:00

Now, now, don't take that too literally. It seems that I've finally become popular enough that someone has scammed my name and is trying the old weapon scam on people with it, so keep an eye out for "AleenaRasron" on Bartz. It still surprises me that the old "xxx is me id, take down the weapon so i can test the damage of the weapon on yyy, i will give back" scam still is used. I feel like this has got to be one of the oldest running scams Anyhow, a clannie got a screenshot for me and here it is! w00t! I feel like I've made it now that I finally am worth some farmer making a fake account mimicking my name!

I was even in party with my clannie when the scammer tried to get his kris! Thanks so much for the screenshot, Lenkin! This made my day! =)

All done, I'm an archer!

2006-08-10T09:53:00.000-04:00

The second of the two quests, Mimir's Elixir tends to go by pretty fast if you've already prefarmed the moonstone shards and other mats you'll need in order to perform all the alchemy that you will need to to create the Elixir. The most difficult part of this quest is the journey into DVC for the Blood Fire from the Bloody Guardians. The rest of the quest is pretty much your kind of fedex agent type tasks [bring this here, get me that, etc etc etc].

I farmed alot of these while I was waiting for Baium [I had my prophet waiting at Baium spawn chatting with other 75's waiting]. So once this quest is finished, you get a scroll of EW-A, which of course I had to apply to the "free" kesh*kesh I got from the first part of the quest and whap! Got the kesh*kesh up to +4 (woohoo!). I'd like to get it up to +12 like my tsu*sls, but I doubt I will be risking that kind of money anytime soon.

So, as dawn stretches across the Tower of Aden castletown, a new hawkeye is born!!

Baium Camping!

2006-08-10T09:43:00.000-04:00

Soo...based on mixed reports I was forced to start camping on Baium at 1:30 AM my time. For anyone who hasn't researches subclassing yet, the last part of the quest requires you to stab Baium once with a special quest item to collect his blood and then bsoe. There's a few challenges to this-

Baium only first respawns five days after his last death. And from those five days he will respawn within 1-8 hours of his last death. So, you have to know his last time of death.
If by some freak chance you are the only one in Baium's chamber and NO ONE comes in [ha, ha] you or someone else will have to wake Baium. There is a good chance that Baium will automatically kill whoever wakes him. There are some people that have been able to wake him and not die, however if you've already gone through the trouble of getting the bloody fabric and camped him out and researched his spawn time, are you willing to take that chance that you'll wake him and not be able to finish your quest? Doubtful.
once someone starts attacking Baium no one else can port into the chamber where he is. Unlike with the otehr raid bosses, you can just show up at any time as long as you are there when they die. Not true with Baium. Once he gets attacked, the port to Baium closes. byebye, see you in 5 days.

Yeesh, no wonder why people hate this quest. All in all I waited about 10 hours from 1:30am until 11:30am EST for him to spawn, and thanks to teh helpl of Cogency and Uprising I was able to whap him once for 0 damage and get his blood, woohoo!!!

This is a pretty expensive quest to do also, since afterwards you also have to submit a top b grade weapon and 945 B crystals which end up getting melted down. In exchange for this you get a mid-low a grade weapon [I traded in a sls*sls]. On Bartz this ends up costing about 43M adena. But you can get it back pretty easy though by just reselling your new a grade weapon.

I won in Bingo!

2006-08-10T09:34:00.000-04:00

So, as part of the subclass quest we're also supposed gather up 100 Moonstone Shards, 2 Quicksilvers, and 10 Volcanic Ashes which can all be acquired from Blazing Swamp. It's a bit of a grind to get all the shards since it comes from reagent pouches that are dropped by Hames Orc Shamans (some other mobs on TOI 3 drop them also, but those mobs are deep blue to me at 75 whereas these shams are still white and 1x mobs, so they're solo-able).

Well, the reagent pouches can randomly open into one of 3 or 4 different reagents so you also end up with a ton of lava stones, and volcanic ashes, etc as well. I hunted a bunch of other mobs in the area also which yield the Stolen Infernium Ore which are used for playing Bingo.

So there was so much grinding to get the 100 Moonstone Shards I also actually managed to get 100 Stolen Infernium Ores and play Bingo, and amazingly enough I actually won! Well, actually I lost so badly that I actually ended up with more prizes than if I would've won! If you win, you get 4 a grade weapon mats, if you lose so bad that you don't even match a single row you get 10. So for once my bad luck ended up being good luck.

Onto subclassing!

2006-08-10T09:30:00.000-04:00

Wow, where to start- After hitting level 75, what's the next logical thing to do but start on the really painful road to subclassing!

First off, the wait for Cabrio. This one's not too bad compared to what comes later- I only had to camp him for about 5 hours. On Bartz I'd really like to thank my friend Marthax who was able to mobilize a ton of people from his clan (Immortal Legends) on really short notice to come help us 75's start our quest!

About an equal amount of people from my alliance, FCA, made a showing as well to support us. Wow, so much love or at least so much empathy from others who have also been through the pain of subclassing!

[Screenshot TBA, I don't have one on this computer at the moment]

After that it went somewhat smooth as I then went on to camp TOI for the 3 TOI raid bosses, I ended up getting lucky and getting all three of them within the span of 5 hours.

Level 75!!

2006-07-21T09:27:00.000-04:00

After two weeks of being at level 74, I have finally made it to the big 75! I know it's not really that big a deal anymore since 78 is the new 75 and that 80 will be the new 78 soon, but hey- I can subclass now!! woohoo! Time to start the most painful quest in the game!

I started by waiting about six hours for cabrio, and cabrio did finally show up- so one raid boss down and 4 to go!! I've heard nightmares about people waiting as much as a month for Baium because they keep missing his spawn, I hope that I will be lucky enough to get him in a week or two [since he only spawns every 5 days once he's killed]

I'd like to thank all of my clanmates from the Final Heroes for helping me as well as all of my alliance friends in FCA, and lastly I'd especially like to extend a thanks to Marthax, and old friend for also mobilizing his clan, who had no vested interest at all in this raid, at a moment's notice to help me to kill Cabrio and start my subclass quests!

Anyway, I will be leaving for a short vacation so not too many posts for a bit, but I will be back to grind my subclass and spectral dancer class change like a demon when I return!! Good luck and good drops to all in the meantime!!

A week of AWESOME crafting!!!!

2006-07-13T00:19:00.000-04:00

I used to be an OE nut. Overenchanting became too risky, no one wants to not be able to hunt anymore because you lost your weapon or lost your armor. So, instead lately I've been selling my drops and buying mats to craft, and I also managed to sell the Dragon Grinders I crafted a few weeks ago to get the Drac Bow rec. This week has been just PHENOMENAL! I can't believe the luck I've been having. Thanks to a thread on Blah, they recommended using Washu to craft a Draconic Bow so I gave hum a try, and of course- he worked! woohoo!! Scariest craft I've ever done, and I'm very happy to have a bow to use in 1.5 levels!

A few months back I started purchasing SOM mats and a rec, withthe intention of one day crafting it and selling it. I also was speaking to a Drac Bow crafter who is 7/8 on Drac Bows, so I figured I would give him a try with SoM. And, thanks to Noods, I now have a SoM to sell!

Broke now, but have some cool gear that I should be able to turn a profit on pretty easily. w00t! Back to more grinding, gotta get that spectral dancer stuff done!

For anyone who's going to do the third class change- a small recommendation, do your Cryolite Quest at level 73, and then choose your alliance with the orcs or ketras at level 74. You have to do them anyway, might as well get them out of the way now. The alliance quest is HORRIBLE in terms of XP...but if you have a BH with you, it's got some great spoils!

Level 74 And another drop!!!

2006-06-29T00:36:00.000-04:00

Wow, a serious benchmark for me has been reached. Level 74. Why such a big deal, DANCE OF THE VAMPIRE! W00T! sweeter than candy.

And, to celebrate- I don't know what it is, but every time I've gotten an armor drop I have been with DeadlyWolf. Our first was an Avadon BP in Witches, then DC Gaiters in Disciples, on Sunday we got our best yet of a Dark Crystal Robe, and today just as I'm about to soe out to get my new skills we kill one or two last mobs and we get Tallum Plate!!

And lastly, as you can see we have joined a new alliance. We're now part of FCA!

All in all, a very profitable and fun week!

Another DC Drop!

2006-06-28T12:00:00.000-04:00

Wow, second Dark Crystal drop in a week. I was duoing with a TH and his OOP SE in Forbidden Path the other day and we got a Sealed DC Robe drop, undersold it at 38m just to move it fast and it sold in under 2 hours. So for a 2 way split it was an excellent drop!

I decided to celebrate by spending my share on a scroll of EW-A and OE'ing my soul bow, so here's my fully buffed stats on a +4 Soul Bow, and the INSANE crits on some level 78 mobs in Imperial Tomb/4 Sepulchers. Not bad for a BD/toon with no bow masteries.

Pretty ridiculous imo.

I also recently have submitted another quest guide to stratics, so if you're level 65+ and solo/grind at the beast farm often make sure you get this quest. You can choose from a set of rewards of mats, one of which is 10 enria, which at current market value on Bartz comes out to between 500k-600k.

Quest Guide: Delicious Top Choice Meat

A drop, I drop, and more wacky textures!

2006-06-19T00:41:00.000-04:00

W00t! I made level 73recently, and around the same time our party got a DC Gaiters drop in Disciples! I celebrated by immediately dying and delevelling [thank goodness for brez].

And, more wacky texture things! Even though NC has never implemented underwear on NA servers, it appears that if you stand the right way and have the right hing blocking you, certain articles of clothing become transparent.

This is my light elf at the track, standing near a fence. I did a change view, and got this-

Some more screenies :D

2006-06-07T10:20:00.000-04:00

Here's just some fun screenshots over the past few weeks including recognition from a reader [woohoo! I'm not the only one that reads my blog!]

This is just a really FREAKY screenshot in hv when I was standing behind the gatekeeper. Apparently she has two faces and one's behind her head peeking out the window behind turbanthing.

This was just a fun "three monkeys" type of pic. Click to enlarge =D

Woohoo! Another reader of blog other than the bot/farmer that decided to use my comment field in one of my posts as a place to advertise adena sales [darn you, LoL!!]

Just call me crafty!

2006-06-07T10:06:00.000-04:00

Man...% crafts just SUCK. I know it's great to have the quests at dev castle and fg to get the a grade jewel and shield recs and mats from, but they're still 60% or 70%. I had to attempt to craft the majestic set 9 times before I finally finished it. I managed to craft one ring, failed the next 4 in a row. I was pretty upset...so I completely stopped crafting again until I got all 4 complete recipes and mats to craft them all at once [I figure it's less likely that all 4 will fail if I craft them back to back rather then one every now and then]. So go figure, when I tried to craft all 4 at once, all 4 worked. So I'm 5/9 on maj jewel craft which is listed as 70%, and i'm about 55% on them.

So, at level 71/72 I finally got all my a grade jewels woohoo!

Also, while hunting at the beast farm a week or two back I managed to get a drop for a dragon grinder rec! I never see mats for this thing, but I kept it in my warehouse just in case. One day in Giran I see a farmer dwarf selling edges for 100k each so I bought 14 of em and went for it, and it actually worked! So encouraged by this I also crafted a set of maj plate [a set of dress armor]. w00t!

Wow, Swordsingers are so cool

2006-06-07T09:56:00.000-04:00

Wow, the SWS is such a great add to a party, small or large. I love using the tsu*sls over any other set of duals, even a grade in pve because crits are just awesome. The best consecutive run I've ever had with crits before the other day was 7 in a row. A few nights ago with SE buffs, SWS song, and tsu*sls I managed to score 9 crits in a row. Just insanity!!!

Which I suppose, makes me 1337!

Woohoo! Aleena's famous! [kind of]

2006-06-07T09:37:00.000-04:00

I wrote up a few little quest guides for some of the more minor quests in the game, just to support Stratics and their excellent quest database. So, as an added perk Aleena now has her 15 minutes of L2 fame in a way, w00t!

Go to the Pastureland-
http://lineage2.stratics.com/content/library/quests/quest.php?id=15151

Bring Up With Love-
http://lineage2.stratics.com/content/library/quests/quest.php?id=15154

Yay level 70!!!

2006-05-12T09:08:00.000-04:00

I finally made it to level 70, woohoo!!! so much grinding done and still so much more to go, but I'm now a member of the 7x club!! :)

What better way to celebate that to further OE my Bow of Peril

Lastly, someone had mentioned something about the mx xp they ever got soloing a mob, here's my contribution- i took one hell of a beating and had to oe still, but wow...thats alot of xp for one mob!

C5 is coming!

2006-05-01T10:20:00.000-04:00

Woohoo! C5 is on its way, tons and tons of coverage over at www.l2blah.com - here's a teaser of the loading screen [woohoo! more dark elves!]

teehee

2006-04-28T01:13:00.000-04:00

made 2 posters today out of boredom :)

I love being a BladeDancer

2006-04-06T09:18:00.000-04:00

Alot of times people ask why I don't really have an alt or why I didn't start an alt until 2 weeks ago for the first time, and I have to say I just love my first class choice. I have no doubts that I made the right choice the first time, it's just so much fun.
Anyway, as you know one of my biggest gripes about my duals is that they're mismatched and that the tsurugi is also, let's face it, pretty darn ugly! And on top of that NCSoft actually paid attention to the fact that they're different swords. This is reflected in the amount of damage each sword does, which is multiplied proportionally when all the buffs are applied. Note that the first crit on each of these pairs is the tsu hitting for the lower number.

In other news... +12 woohoo!! go go super duals!

No one is safe from OE

2006-04-04T20:27:00.000-04:00

HAHAHAHAHA!! It's bad enough that Aleena is cursed with the overenchantment addiction, but now it has to spread to her alts- got 8 scrolls of enchant weapon D from the l2day event, applied ALL of them to my alt's d grade goat head staff.

I miss doing raids...

2006-04-04T09:12:00.000-04:00

Remember the time when we were all pretty low level and we could do a raid boss with just one party of 9? just a healer, a few nukers and the rest dd? I took a few days to return to a simpler time and started an alt nuker just to feel the thrill of being able to level several times in one day and do some raid bosses. We managed to blow through three of them in under an hour starting with the boss in AC who dropped 26 Enchant Armor D scrolls [woohoo!! 3 scrolls for everyone except one member].

Afterwards we went on to the ratman boss, and of course ended the day with good old Bifrons. How can you go on a low level raid without killing Bifrons?

Back to Aleena and levelling- Kittycat dings! She just reached level 76 w00t! If there was a third class change quest for kittycats she would be doing hers before I could do mine! So unfair! And her Accuracy and Casting Speed are higher than mine too!! pfft!! whats up with that!?!! [although I don't think Shadow Sense is on right now...but still, even with Shadow Sense her accuracy's higher!]

And lastly, here's my current stats of my fully buffed character, omg it's SO PAINFUL to not have any armor masteries. However it's pretty nice having a p.atk over 1000! I'm not sure where to go on tats, so any suggestions would be welcome!

Blew One, Enhanced another

2006-03-31T20:49:00.000-05:00

So...NCSoft, we all know how they giveth and they taketh away.

I've been grinding the two quests by FG and Devastated Castle now for a few weeks and finally managed to get enough mats and the rec to craft an a grade accessory. I was about to craft my first Majestic Earring. 70% rec, and POOFTIE! ZIP ZILCH NADA BUPKIS! oh well...what a pain.

So, I decided that I was just going to quit. Lemme blow my duals and be done with it, and what do you know....they made it to +11!! This completely made up for failing my 70% craft- woohoo!!! A new personal record for me. I know it's only a matter of time before they blow.

Smoke and Mirrors

2006-03-30T14:33:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to take a moment off to comment about how beautiful the game is. I can't even image how many weeks or months went into having an art department working so close with a programming staff to pull this game off. I just love the way the lighting effects are rendered in the game in realtime. Below is a pic of one of the new mobs in Goddard Region which uses SS, you can see the shot charging on its weapon. Also note the lighting on the frontside of the mob, which is being caused by an impending hit or, the declination of the previous hit from our party. It's just amazing.

Here's just a small shot of me and telly over the dead mob. Very shallow DOF, crappy bokeh. My guess would be photographer took this one at 1/60 or slower at about f/4 or so with a cheapie lens.

And lastly, I had a little fun with the letter event. Too bad S's are so hard to come by or else I could've finished it properly!

Dark Elf Fashion Show

2006-03-29T11:31:00.000-05:00

Recently we've been having some chatter on our alliance forums about who's the sexiest.

After looking a female Dark Elves, I don't know how anyone could even question it!

Here's Aleena in two of my favorite A grade outfits, Tallum Robes [you can see marthax in the back pacing eagerly in my Tallum Plate- can't blame him though...it looks like ass on DE males!], and Majestic Light [Thanks BloodPledge!].

This is just a photo for no particular reason taken after a rift party.

OMFG WTF H4X!

2006-03-28T14:21:00.000-05:00

Been a mixed bag of a week to say the least. We're kind of at war with Stormbringers now over a pricing error on an item. An untagged toon named larson has been pk'ing our members out at FG lately, we've been having teams hunting Stormbringers people randomly as well.

Dusk Wins! Wow, there's a rarity. Thor seems to have done a ton of festivals and Dusk for the second time in my memory has control of the necros and catacombs.

In other news, I've maded level 66 this week. I also managed to bring my TSU*SLS back up to +10. I think I'm done enchanting now, 10 seems to be my limit before I blow things up. But it's a great place to be...with the +10s and the new dual sword masteries, this brings my buffed p.atk up over 1000!! woohoo! finally managed to break the ceiling!

It's been a pretty profitable week also. I spent some time in the rift, and at the level 70+ rifts with a bounty hunter you can spoil EWA Scrolls, which sell for 6-8m each. So when they went to bid at the end, each party member ended up making about 2m on this run. With the adena I ended up buying some additional letters for the L2day event. No ring of the ant queen, but I did get ALOT of scrolls. A few BSOE's and BREZ's, as well as the standard might/shield/emp/ww/focus/guidance/acu ones.

One night in Giran I also managed to see SEVEN (7) +16 or better weapons. The red glow was unmistakable. One dwarf had 3 of them, she was selling two and one was wielded, one c grade, and one d grade as well as the duals she had on her. I saw PlutoVII with his +16 homu again, another dwarf with shop using his red and two other random people just running around Giran with +16. I don't even see them in the field that often let alone seeing 7 of them within an hour.

[this image is a composite of two images...just displays better this way]

More overenchanting

2006-03-23T12:06:00.000-05:00

Welp, I did it again. I've been addicted to OE'ing still. I can't bring myself to bring my own duals past +9, however I did pick up another pair of b duals cheap that I brought up to +7 which is pretty cool I suppose.

WOOHOO!! The event is starting soon...I hope I can get one of those rings of the ant queen or earring of orfen...that would be SOOOOO amazing.

Weekend Recap

2006-03-20T11:23:00.000-05:00

Wow it's been a pretty decent weekend,

I overenchanted my duals to +9 this weekend MUCH against my better judgement, but I swear those EW-B's are worse than crack. I get within a few minutes of Giran and I just get the itch. Tried a new one this time, stood outside of Witch and OE'ed it in the middle of an SOE for kicks.
Crafted a Doom helmet this weekend, I had a rec for a 60% craft of it and I had helm designs from spending all that time in DVC lately or FG [dont know which]- and it actually succeeded! woohoo! I have a doom helm. [I was SURE that the craft would fail, but at least that would free up the space in my WH]
I made level 65 during reagent quest on the 11th floor of ToI [have an ok screenshot of me standing over the dead angel that gave it to me]

I've kind of been on the "give bots a chance" kick lately. I've learned from hunting in Witches alot that some bots will surrender a room to you if you manage to figure out who the leader is and PM them. I've been fairly successful with this the last few weeks [not ALL the time, mind you, but more than I would expect]
Erpiel lost his duals to some bots in Apostate when he died, but the bots DID return his duals. So, as much as it's become a national sport in Aden to train a bot, they're not ALL bad.
I almost died in ToI 9 this weekend...half party got ganked cuz someone lagged and accidentally pulled a train of tribesmen and angels [asshat]. I ran down and managed to shake all the mobs except one, end even with UD he almost killed me...one of the archers made it out and help bail me out at the last minute.
The recipe quest is excellent. Once you guys hit lvl 63, you HAVE to get it. It only takes a little more than an hour to finish from start to end. It's a solo/last hit quest so...unfortunately buffers and healers can't really do it, but all melee characters should be able to do it with ease. Go to buffer hill, buy 20 minutes of buffs from whoever's selling and just go at it! The drop rate is fairly high, you can get this quest from the head magister in the dark elf guild in Aden.
The accompanying quest at lvl 60 for a grade mats is kinda fun too, it's all the way up at Devastated Castle though and you're not always assured there'll be anyone selling buffs there. However, I think this is a group quest so quest items will drop in party inventory. You can get this quest from the High Priest in Aden.
Partied with the new SK a bit, Shi. OMG. Have you ever seen an SK pole before? This is a first to me. The lvl 69 SK came bounding up to Witch with a pole that had some uber-glow to it. A +13 Lance. scary. [Shi is a character based on a popular comic book by William Tucci - I have a #1 authenticated and autographed from Bulletproof Comics in Brooklyn when I lived there - those of you that follow Shi, there's also a Tomoe in the game too]

Welp, I guess I've been TOO lucky this weekend so something catastrophic is bound to happen to me this coming week. w00t for catastrophes!

The addiction of OverEnchanting

2006-03-20T11:22:00.000-05:00

Overenchanting is SOOO addicting in this game. The allure of quest of the glowing red weapons is much like the cliche quest of the moth for the flame. Here's a piece of history on my first major success in OE-land:

a first try

can't stop now

one of the last times I saw my +10's