Project [svn]

Ah, the joy of making a new char. The planning, the level grind, it’s all there! For my Spring 2008 character project, I decided to make an assassin. What is this Spring project I’m talking about? Well, every year, like clockwork, I suddenly decide to make a new char to renew that sense of adventure. Last year, I made a ninja. The year before that, priest. The year before that, alchy. Then wizard, then monk. Granted, only one of those ultimately became a success (but still a failure champ), this time’ll be different. My monk was an agi based char, so what better than to make another agi based char?

So I wanted to make a sin, but all 7 slots of mine were filled. Faced with a tough decision (not really) I decided to delete my wizard, whom I haven’t even touched in 2 years, let alone leveled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goodbye wizard-whom-I-could-never-level-because-Draco-never-made-a-priest!

And in with the sin!

I spent a total of 10 minutes in Novice island, no joke. Zoomed through the tutorials for 8 free job levels, and killed 5 spores to finish up job10. Came out, and I was instantly qualified to take the thief quest. I never liked mushroom collecting quests (like the monk job change quest, gawd) but at least this one didn’t have me collecting tons of ‘em.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I ended up having to go back to the mushroom hunting grounds because I was short 3 points.

“No, I must kill all the demons!” “No Temp, you ARE the demon” And then Temp was a thief.

At first, I was contemplating taking it easy and leveling on rockers and lunatics and whatnot. Then I thought, why don’t I just spoil myself with this 2x exp event and go straight to poporings? So I did. And I won.

I stayed in poporings ’till I hit lvl25 or so (which was about 20 minutes, no joke) and then went to payon caves for the nostalgia.

That one spot in Payon caves has meant a lot to me back in the day. Too bad the old payon cave crew has long since retired. Oh well. I got bored so I went down to level 2.

Hmm, not bad, maybe I can take Siroma at the ripe old level of 36?

Well THAT sure didn’t take long. I consider myself to be a rather middle-class player. I’m not rich, but I’m obviously not poor. My gears are very modest in that sense, so if I can do it, heck, nothing’s stopping you.

Powpowpow, 10 levels go by in about 40 minutes. By this point in time, I’ve pretty much planned my skill build to the very last point. I’d go job 45 thief to max steal, as a sin, I’ll max the hand masteries, katar mastery, sonic blow, cloak, and grimtooth. Which leaves me with lvl3 enchant poison and one extra point. Sweet.

At this point, it was late. I had spent a total of 4 hours on this lovely sin-in-training. And it’ll just keep getting better.

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The second day of sinning! I knew for certain that I should definately turn sin on the second day. I mean, it wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment if it took me more than 24 hours to job change when theres a 2x event going on. So I went back to doing the same old grind. However, this time, I was accompanied by a fellow thief going sin.

We came up with a mutual sharing system. That is, I provided endows and warps to ID, and he provided buffs and heals. I personally can live without buffs, but heals are always nice in off setting the thousands of zeny I spend on pots alone. His thief didn’t have a very good wep for ID (and his str was less than half of mine) so I ended up trading a leech for a heal slave. Its not so bad, its always fun to see how high one can go.

I admit it, I’m a str addict. The last point of agi I put into my stats was well over 15 levels ago. A short while later, I hit job 45, and went to job change along with my thief buddy. Only after I had gone past the quiz, target practice, hiding range, and maze did I realize I should’ve made time for thief quest skills. So After I finished the maze, I instantly went and swiped backslide, find stone, anf fling stone. Then I went back and finished the sinning process. Poof sin, wewt. As a present for myself, I bought a +9 MG and 4 drainliar cards for my impending pwnage.

At first, I thought I would be doing something like 1k damage with double attacks and the like, seeing as how My right hand wep was so weak. I put on my daggers and started attacking to find…

I was literally destroying them.

I ended the day at lvl65. Classy~

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Third day of sinning, the leveling has slowed down considerably, but still fast enough for my likeing.

After WoE, I hit 70+ on my sin. Evil wing ears for the added coolness effect ;]. I’ve been leveling so fast the past few days that Draco never actually saw my thief before I became a sin. Draco has a sin too, but his failure of a double dagger sin isn’t very useful. I think it was lvl62 or something after a few months. And I hit 62 in 10 hours. I brought Draco along with me to ID so I could show him how a real double dagger sin rolls.

While I may be a double dagger sin, I don’t actually have an Ice pick yet. Seals recently rolled too, what a shame. I find myself using jurs as well, for the added satisfaction when you double attack with a jur hit. I’ve actually hit damages very close to my double dagger hits, not to mention at a faster attack speed. I ended today with no doubts in my mind that this will be a very successful project.

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So anyways, today was the 4th day of sinning and instead of focusing on leveling like the previous days, I decided to slow it down a bit for Draco to catch up. You see, I initially made a thief so I could help level Draco’s aco at the same time. However, he wasn’t on for two days. And by that time, I had already outleveled his aco by 40 levels. Today, I spent some time tanking his aco and merc at ID. Just yesterday, I managed to hit job 40 and went to get sonic acceleration. Tanking is boring business, so I’d occasionally one-shot a nearby monster.

By this point, you’re probably wondering, “wtf, I thought you were a double dagger sin?!?”. Well if you paid attention to the various hints in the Project [svn] page, you’d notice a few things. One, I described my build as having maxed katar mastery and sonic blow. Two, I mentioned my lack of an ice pick. And three, I mentioned my dps with a jur. My lack of ice pick is really going to hurt me later on, so its probably a good thing I slowed down on the leveling for now. ‘Sides, doing damage tests is always fun.

Draco had to afk for a little while, so I decided to do a little questing. First seal to be exact. Halfway though, I had to go to byalan to hunt some fish items, so I strapped on my jur, endowed myself, and winged all the way to the last floor. I was looking to hunt just one or two items, because I still had a lot of fish items from when HE went to byalan to hunt them to get everyone through the first seal. Noone ended up doing the quest though, and I was stuck with hundreds upon hundreds of fish items. Oh well.

After a while down there, I realized that this could very well be a good leveling spot for me. Chick hat + endowed 3x carded jur = amazing fast kill times.

Of course, I also had to test out sonic blow damage as well.

New record!

Stats as of today:

I told you I’m a str addict /meh

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Today I was playing around with a stat calc to find a nice build for my sin and I came up with something like this:

99 str, 58 agi, 42 dex, 58 vit

It’s already obvious that I enjoy having high str very much. So much, in fact, that I would honestly feel gimped if I didn’t max it. The dex is enough for pretty much all purposes I’m interested in. As for the vit and agi, I am more than satisfied with my aspd right now and I’m only at 50 agi. Flee will end up in the 220 range, which is enough for leveling purposes. WoE cuts flee anyways, so getting more wont help me very much in WoE. Sonic blow isn’t based on aspd, so it wont help there either. My agi slows down my emp-breaking time to 20 seconds, which if given prior warning, is sufficient time to break. Having low agi lets me compensate with vit, which is one of my favorite stats after str. Having a pure vit sin is borderline insane though, so 58 is a good enough balance for both vit and agi. 58 vit lets me get 10k+ hp even with WoE survival gears on, which is a nice plus (my alchy would have 10k hp as well at 99 and similar gears, but my alchy had 90 vit). Throw on an assassin dagger for 12k hp and a cranial, and precast breaking will be a cinch as well. With 58 vit, stun becomes less life-threatening.

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Sin ripping it up in Byalan 5. I’m still working on that “what I did last week” post (actually haven’t even started yet, haaaaaah)

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Thats the plan. Getting both of our sins to 99 before the 2x exp event ends. I personally think it’s impossible. Draco reckons we can do it if we hit 96 by Wednesday. We did some exp/hr tests with an each take party with battle manual, effectively giving the sin the full 3x exp. We came up with a figure of about 9.5m/hr, which isn’t bad at all. If it were a share party with no BM and 1x exp, the rate would’ve been about 1.7m/hr, so if we’re going to 99, 2x exp event is the time to do it. I’m still skeptical, but hell, it’s worth a shot.

I haven’t made any vids for you guys lately, so I thought I’d give you all at least a short vid.

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Bloody roar is nice on things with a good amount of defense, like abysmal knights and Draco’s knight, but on lower defense chars, I’d need something with a little more umph.

So I bought an Infiltrator. I’m not nearly rich enough to afford a slotted one, so I settled for a non-slotted one. Unlike the Bloody roar with all its drawbacks (decreased flee, no hp/sp recovery), the infiltrator has various positive attributes, ranging from increased defense and flee to the hidden 50% demi-human damage increase. It instantly became one of my favorite katars after I gave it a little test run in west HOs. Now if only I could get a slotted one!

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Keeping up with my leveling schedule is one of the few things I can say I’m proud of being able to do. After all, I did plan my original monk’s 98-99 leveling plan too (even if it was a 3 month leveling plan at 2% a day at a 1m/hr rate). Back then, I was content with leveling as slowly as the monsters I was soloing, only grinding about 2 hours a day. My current plan has me leveling a grueling 3 hours a day at 10% a day. But this time, I needed a priest to accompany me as well.

Ah, I’ve taken for granted all the benefits monks have over other melee type classes. Being able to heal one’s damage off free of charge, building one’s stats around the concept of always having buffs on, being a monk, agi no less, was a luxury in itself. My sin on the other hand chugs pots for sustinence, despite having 63 hp regen, and has to rely on a priest to get full damage benefits. Soloing an agi monk in TI2 costed me nothing in upkeep. Soloing my sin anywhere drops my emergency zeny to 0 in a flash.

Which is why I also had to have Draco “help” me on his priest. I use the term “help” very loosely, because in all honesty, he doesn’t really want to “help”. Leveling in ID3 is a boring business, and Draco gets nothing from it. However, as far as priests go, Draco is the best priest for the job. I’ve partied with multiple priests in the past. Some would use every buff in the priest skill library, but get caught in skill delay and forget to heal. Others would drag multiple monsters on me, scared of even the slightest touch of a monster, only for me to spam pots because their heals can’t keep up with 6+ monsters on me (my safe limit is 3). A few others were simply undergeared, underskilled, or simply unattentive, dropping dead in two hits of an ice titan, dying to a pack of gazeti because they didn’t pneuma, or dying to a simple icicle due to position lag. More often than not, I come out of the party an hour later, but with 4 less verdue

Having a priest myself, I often push my strategies and techniques onto Draco, helping him become a better priest. Some of those things include:

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-being able to handle one or two monsters on your own, but knowing your own tanking limits

-using magnificat while your leveling partner is getting pummeled by hits is a bad thing and will likely result in your partner’s death. If you’re out of sp and mag is off, you should’ve magnificated at a safer time earlier

-pneuma your leveling partner when there are two or more gazeti on him/her. Not many people know it, but offensive bless also works on them, cutting their stats, lowering cold bolt damage and making them easier to flee

-it’s not a problem to me, but when you see a snowier casting a hammerfall, be ready to stat recovery your partner, especially when he/she has more than just the snowier attacking him/her

-don’t be a minimalist, heal your leveling partner whenever a heal would bring them close to full. There is always a chance that your partner could stun or freeze and take a bash or two immediately afterwards. If your partner is near full hp, he/she has a better chance of surviving

-know your leveling partner’s limits. If he or she is already tanking multiple monsters, hold off on dropping more onto him/her until it clears up a bit. Unlike you, your partner won’t have a shield to reduce damage from extra hits

-don’t try to mob

-if your gears are below-par, you can still tank gazeti using pneuma. Just hit it once and pneuma yourself while letting your partner handle titans and snowiers first

-as far as what skills you should have shortcutted: heal, bless, agi, mag, stat recov, and pneuma are the most basic and necessary skills. Res and tele are situational. If you need those two shortcutted, something is wrong with the party

-and remember, these priest tips are for priest/sin duets in ID3!

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If enough priests become competant at priesting, maybe I can actually get parties with positive exp gain!

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After priesting for Draco’s sin a bit, I realized just how dull and unexciting the job can be. So boring and dull, that it doesn’t feel like it lasts very long. Time flies when you’re having fun, but time also flies when you’re bored out of your mind. Draco on the other hand has been having the exact opposite problem. After a mere 15 minutes, he felt as if hours had gone by already. To be honest, I don’t know which of us is suffering more. Then again, why are we leveling Draco’s sin? What happened to mine? And why are our priests white? To answer that, we have to go back in time to two days ago!

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Monday came around, and Draco and I grinded through our daily routine of 10% a day for my sin. This particular day was a turning point for us, as we were finally hitting the 50% mark. On schedule and on track for 5 more days of leveling, we signed off for the night, unaware of the news maintenance would bring.

I was the first to log on after maintenance was over. Paying no heed to the fact that the patcher was patching quite a few files, I parked my screen on the char select and went to get a bite to eat. It was Draco that alerted me about the summer event that was patched just today, which included summer clothes, clothes dying, and most importantly (to us) 2x exp! We both got on and began the final countdown…

Just for the record, the summer clothes for guys are pretty cool. Cool towel’s become my new favorite gear for afking in town. Female summer clothes on the other hand…

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Male priest clothes dye is pretty neat. The light blue collar and cuffs match feather berets and white is always a nice color.

The Seventh Wonder of ID3! Ghost Gazetis!

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Did I mention how much I like the summer clothes?

Crowding around Gro, even though he’s afk ;]

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The original plan was to get 10% that day, but with a 2x exp event blowing on our backs, we decided to go for the gold and pump out a full 50m exp in a single day. In essence, I was 99%’ing 5 days ahead of schedule. Of course, I wasn’t the only one 99′ing.

My trusty Vanilmirth sidekick, *judgemental staring eyes*, was 99′ing as well! Unlike my sin, it didn’t take long for him to sport his shiny new slime trail.

 

Gah, crappy stat gains for that final level. Not even a single point of int, dex, vit, or luk. Truly a failure of a vani, but I still adore the little bugger.

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Meanwhile, my sin continues his 50m rampage. This being the final push towards 99, I felt no remorse in taking out my last couple battle manuals. Using a new leveling technique which Draco and I developed, called “aggresive leveling”, we tore through ID3 at a rate of nearly 12m exp per hour. Four hours later, we still couldn’t believe the rate I was going.

Finally within an arm’s reach of 99!

We were planning to get to 99.9% and kill something special/pop a few DBs to 99. As soon as I hit 99.9%, I logged to check the exp: 99910000. I figured I could afford to kill another Ice titan and checked again: 99950000. I make one last decision to kill just one more titan. However, during the last exp check when I logged out, a titan had spawned on Draco’s priest. Having hit Draco, the titan was now exp tapped with 25% extra exp. Killing it had a small consequence.

Nuuuuuuuuu! Ah well, I can’t possibly be angry that I’m 99 ;D

100% pure effort by Draco, any priests I’ve partied with (as if), and I. As an added bit of trivia, I’ve had that very same party since I started going to ID 27 levels ago!

Four months after first creating this character, its journey has finally come to a close. Through sheer determination and will, this sin has conquered all the odds, passed all the tests, and 99′d. This is the end of the line for Project SVN, but the story of my second trans is about to begin. Would you say Project SVN was a success?

Click for a higher definition!

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