Moondog - Part 4 (What Already)
Well more ramblings from the dog, nothing specific this time just more experience I have picked up along the way.
Currently I am Laser Sniper Hit Level 18 and Ranged Laser Damage 14.69, just waiting to get to level 15 so I can upgrade my weapon, so what's been happening.
Well my hoverpod has finally died and I have stuck it in storage, it served me well but as a limited item , all good things must come to an end. i could by another but at the moment the prices on auction vary from 30 ped buyout to 495 ped for a salmon coloured one (March 18th 2012), bit of a waste of ped if you ask me as you can buy a full TT Sleipnir for the same price so I think I will stay clear of these. The general trend on the price of Quads has dropped so now is the time to buy one, i dont see them going much lower unless the market becomes really flooded, currently cheapest buyout is 140 ped and even then you can can probably find one cheaper in private trade. My son's avatar bought one very cheaply that was about 75% of TT from a private trade and currently on Calypso there is one with 17 hours to go, current bid 52 ped.
I have got into the habit of storing a lot of stuff, which decluters your inventory but more importantly reduces the weight you carry around and thus speeds your avatar up. Good things to put in inventory are Nova fragments, Blazaar Fragments and any worn out (L) item that has no TT value,like the aforementioned hoverpod. Similarly a lot of stuff I loot on Rocktropia I tend to put in storage (remember storage is planet based so sweat you store on Calypso is only avaiable from storage on that planet)so in particular records, tapes, cd's and phones I keep in storage on Rocktropia, the records are required for some missions so dont sell them at TT.
I have finally found a use for Nova fragments and Tier 1 components. You can Tier up your armour when its gets to a certain level, to do this you need certain raw materials, these include Nova fragments, Tier 1 components, oil, Garnets and Blausariam. You have to wait till each piece of armour is ready to be tiered up and the process is similar to crafting in that when you try to do it you may or may not be successful. Having said that I succesfully tiered up 2 pieces of my armour, very satisfying when it happened, i have already collected the rest of the raw materials for when the other pieces are ready to be tiered up.
A Bit of a Mellee.
I get bored quite easily, and in my last post I had started to excperiment with mindforce and while the attack chips are ok I am very impressed with the regen chip, think of it as a mindforce FAP. It looks great when its activated and has a pretty good heal rate.
A couple of weeks ago I went out hunting with a proper veteran, the leader of my soc "Oscar Skyquake Hurrikane" who due to internet issues had not been online for a while. We hunted robots, me with my Herman LAw 202 and him with what can only be described as a baseball bat with nails sticking out of it. Hwe strode right up to the robots and literally beat them to death, it was quite a sight to watch.
He gave me a Rep Edge battle Axe and i bought a Castorian Combat Enblade (basic TT sword 15 ped). Using the basic armour recieved from the ARK noob mission and the 2 melee weapons I went to the swamp just outside Port Atlantis and hacked away at every puny mob I could find. It was great fun, put your avatar in third person to get the best visual effect. No ammo burn and some reasonable looting (for the level of play). After that I got a bit more adventurous and went to Fort Medusa,if you go uphill through the argos molisks and foul there are some lower level shinkiba and snarblesnots. I used my armour and had a good old fisticuffs with them. Be aware though that mellee weapons decay very quickly, well you arent paying for ammo. I got my basic mellee skill levels up and really enjoyed getting up close and personal with the mobs. Use no armour or the free stuff and you dont even have to worry about the decay on that either. I have been short on the old ped for a couple of weeks, but the first thing I did when i Depo'd was repair my mellee weapons, its a cheap way to waste a few hours in
EU.
It can get a bit depressing when you keep having to depo and dont seem to get a return. I have felt the drain recently, but yesterday I went out with some soc members and was happy to see that whilst i wasnt getting the biggest loots I was holding my own and after spending 80 ped on ammo I managed a return of 70 ped, no bad, however the icing on the cake was I got the last shot in on a proteron and looted an ISIS CB28 which is a level 47 blp rifle, TT value 325 ped with an average of 150% mark up, between the four team members that should see a return at auction of about 125 ped each which means my 80 ped ammo returned me 195 ped (minus armour and wepons decay of course)
What a happy chappy I was so tonight I went out hunting with my long term RL friend and
EU mentor "Rooster Matty Gee" who is well above me in the heirarchy. Not phased, I thought, well I did OK last night so if I loose a bit of ped on the hunt, I'm not that bothered (after all i dont expect to play for free). So another 80 ped on ammo and off we went. We did some mining robots and another mob feruk (or something like that, dont really remember the name) loot not to bad but nothing huge. After that Rooster suggested that we go do some ATROX (now in our soc the rule is that to move from grunt to veteran you have to solo an ATROX guardian, witnessed by another soc member, so I think he was gettting me used to the idea of it ). We went to fort Ithica which is an Atrox haven. They are quick and come at you in groups although their damage isnt that high, even for me. Its brutal 4 or 5 at a time and you just shoot, shoot, shoot, FAP, shoot, FAP some more and shoot. Most of the time you are not sure whats going on, but while Rooster was taking care of 4 of them i was hacking away at just one mostly one my own. I would have never killed it solo but I did most of the damage and the reult was a 368 ped hof of which i got 190 ped. Coupled with my other loot this gave me a 250 ped run off the back of 80 ped ammo. To be fair I have to give total respect to Rooster because I couldn't have done it alone and he was constantly looking out for me,but hey ho thats what friends are for.
I would like to take a moment to thank all the people who have not only read my previous posts but taken the time to respond to them. This is a great way for me to learn and I think I should comment on an issue that I haven't properly understood until recently. This is to do with SIB weapons and your skill level. As far as I can work out in order to make the most economical use of your PED you should use SIB weapons that say "NOT ANYMORE" under the two learning sections. This means that you are getting the maximum effectiveness from the weapon. So while I get slightly faster increased skills with my Herman Law-202 it is not as effective or economical as my Riker UL3 which is "maxed out", ie I am always getting the best effect from it.
Ranged Laser Hit vs. Ranged Laser Damage.
Having started out using rifles as I progressed My Ranged Laser Hit increased faster than my Ranged Laser Damage. This difference meant that it is sometimes awkward choosing weapons as Ranged Damage is lower. To compensate for this I was advised to start using a pistol. I didn't want to do this at first as my pistoleer level was only half my rifle level, but I persevered for a few weeks and am now using a Breer P3a, which is a great little weapon, approx 50 ped to buy and good enough to take on the mobs at Fort Medusa, to the extent that the Riker UL3 I bought a few weeks ago remains largely unused. I always keep a sollomate Opallo and a M2100, both UL weapons that are available from the Trade Terminal. I keep these for hunting very small mobs, they use very little ammo, so you dont need to loot massively to keep them going.
Important note to self and other players who get on the bigger, better bandwagon. "YOU WILL LOOSE LOADS OF MONEY FROM DEPOING AND IT WILL BE YOUR OWN FAULT" Why do you need to hunt level 65 Rexteleum. There are plenty of ugly nasty mob that are much lower level. The game play is the same amount of time, the mob (or you) still die and you still, hopefully loot something. I am beginning to believe that in
EU bigger is noy
So from being down to 50 ped 48 hours ago I am sitting pretty on 410 ped which is good cos my poor old herman law 202 is nearly warn out, but I have reached level 15 ranged laser damage which means i can blow my winnings on a new gun and not have to depo this weekend.
Thats it for now but before I go, a massive thank you to my soc especially Rooster, Trix, Omen, Raptor and always Coz
GL out there Moondog signing off
April 18th 2012