kuroari wrote:1 - It's WAY too hard to get the components necessary SOLO. The amount of time spent gathering components + collecting death penalty so far has not proved to be worth the time spent on these things.
Night....lemme give you the benefit of your little group's experience. When I say "group" we don't generally collect mats as a group....just the recipe breaking. My 1st two trips down to KL resulted in max DP. First time down I was a KL n00b. 2nd time down, season changed and all the rules changed. Since then it's been cake....well cake when I'm solo....or in an experienced two person team. Going down when less experienced players are there is suicide. Couple of tips:
a) I guess just about everyone's figured out the "drag pestas to the guards" thing. Not a bad idea to take out the Terminator puka and the herder kinch if ya get the opportunity.
b) It's not necessary to "dig the requested level" only be in a room that gives at least the needed level and adjust your stanza accordingly. The "reception room" as I call the room with the pestas, is a PITA as the pestas continually respawn....so I dig the cattle room at level 60 when I only needed 30.
c) Cattle Room has several rules. Normally, when KP are in their cubby holes, the north and south sides of the room are completely safe. The west side is patrolled by the herder kincher. The east side is patrolled by the kizzies. Watch your compass and orient your toon properly (and stay outta chat boxes) and you should be fine. It gets a little dicier when KP go to the floor of the cattle room but not very once you realize that the "livestock" area is no longer a safe spot. Other tips....if attacked, don't hit back....this releases KP. If someone is killing livestock, just leave and dig somewhere else, otherwise DP is inevitable. Finally gas explosions that mobs walk into can result in attacks....took few deaths via kiban for me to figure that one out.
d) It gets real dicey once other players get down there who can't adjust from "solo mode" to multiple player mode. MPA + Speed is the normal aggro response but if there's more than 1 person in the room or surrounding tunnels, if players would resist the urge to run and just drop when attacked, it becomes "piece of pie, easy as cake"[2010 movie reference]. Mob goes boink boink on head, lay down, ask for rez ....simple. Run and drag the mobs over your potential rescuer and you're both dead.
e) Tunnels to old mines present a new challenge but two steps make this easy too. 1st, if there are two peeps there, simply don't dig in the same spot. Kizzies can't be in two places at once so they can't kill you both unless you (see d) above). While I recommend setting your compass to 125 "going down" as the pestas have a 75m or so aggro range, switch to 50m in the tunnels / cattle room. 1st easy top pick up approaching band of mobs on the compass and again 2nd orienting your tune to face possible approaches will cut off 50% of the attack opportunities.
f) It helps to know that mobs have limits on how far they will chase you. Coming down, pestas will chase you into the cattle room but not into tunnels to the old mines. You can literally stop just past the entrance and stare at each other for a minute or so before they head back upstairs. Returning the favor I guess, kizzies will not go much past the entrance to the "reception room:.
g) The egg room is where I go regardless of the QL needed when their are new peeps in cattle room. I mastered this room in much shorter time than the others as the rules are simpler....1st don't hit eggs, 2nd watch compass for pukas and 3 , be careful of wondering pestas and terminator when at south end as their aggro range extends from the tunnel outside thru the walls.
h) Use region chat to announce your arrival in KL. If you get half way thru the reception room when pesta band spawns, players will appreciate the heads up when you drag them thru cattle room on your way to safety in the tunnels beyond.
2 - I've yet to see any logic in the recipes.. We had these things thrown at us from the blue.. do I want to use Thick Larva and Flambe it with Shooki Liquor after soaking for 10 hours? I dunno.. I guess?
Our small group has been working out the logic. Forget the names of what's in the recipe. As in crafting don't expect logic (personally, I gave up on that after searching all thru the original desert noobie island looking only under trees for bark and wood). Think of recipes as a series of numbers 17467 .... once you come up with a > 30% recipe, there's only 30 possibilities left to a 100% recipe. In the example above, there's only 6 other choices (2 thru 7) for slot one...there's only 6 other choices (1 thru 6) for slot 2. 6 choices x 5 slots = 30. Working with a group of 5 peeps, you can nail any 100% recipe in 6 days after the original base.
Kaly's put together a nice little article which hits most of the relevant points right on the head:
http://www.adcguild.info/index.php?opti ... &Itemid=63
3 - You can either USE the items you spent so much work making, or you can get XP. Personally I haven't taken a SINGLE item from my occupation because I was wanting XP (thinking that obviously with a higher level it would be easier to make things.. right? WRONG) Why can't the master look at my tasty flambe'd larvae and let me have em back after?
My guess is that rarity equates with value. Getting to 150 in Ech 3 for example would leave you with 168 whatevers. At least I am guessing that was the intent. Seems off though that after reaching Ech 5 say, you can not go back and get stuff for Ech 1 thru 4 stuff....meybe the devs wanted to be bringing a constant stream of new layers up the ranks and wanted to shut out the more high level players from flooding their market.
One thing that was not addressed, intentionally or unintentionally, is that peeps w/ a lot of alts will have an extreme advantage. I find it odd that you can't exchange mission mats but that you can exchange lucky flowers, amber and stimulating waters. Having 2 accounts and 9 alts each working 3 professions can result in a lotta goodies. Not saying it's a good or bad thing, just noting the impact.
And for Marelli, The chapter IS called "basic occupations" .. I assume that means we'll have "advanced occupations" at some point (or are supposed to anyway).
Yes, I had planned to mention that too but I wanted to add .... I'm thinking, perhaps wistfully, that the advanced occupations will have something to do with their names and a toolmaker will actually make a tool and we can stop "eating" hammers.
