Look Who's (Kinda) Back!

Yes, it's me!
It's been a year and I've succumbed to peer pressure (Heka!) and gone back to Runes of Magic. But not in the regular way. I'm playing on a private server. Not too sure about the legalities of that, so I won't post the name, but the server is Europe-based, gives 10x XP & TP, and is, shall I say, quite interesting.

Sunset on Ystra Highlands



I swear my heart nearly beat right out of my chest when I first logged on to RoM again. I felt so nervous! Not sure why...I think because of some negative personal things that happened in the game around Xmas 2010. But Heka really wanted to go back, and he's my BFF and has stuck with me through good times and bad, so I took a deep breath and created a new Spiral.

At first glance, she probably appears to you to be identical to the old Spiral, but this is Spiral 2.0!
When I created her, I started off with her exactly the same, but I got this strange icky feeling in my stomach so I changed her hair style just slightly and that made the feeling better. I think I needed her to be a little different to symbolize how I've changed and grown personally in the last year outside the game.

Also, she is no longer a Mage/Rogue but now a Rogue/Priest, with a Mage third class sitting on the sidelines in case I get bored. When I was last playing Spiral 1.0, I was just getting into playing her rogue side and found it to be very fun. Stabby stabby stabby!  So I thought I would try Rogue primary this time, and chose Priest secondary so I could heal my Knight/Scout tank, Legitshizno, which is Heka's name for his new toon.

My adventures so far have been equally thrilling and dull. Ten times XP is CRAZY. I'm out-leveling my gear in an hour. Insane. The quests are boring, cuz I've done them soooooo many times. (How many alts did I have?? LOL) But it feels so cool to go back to my "old haunts" and see them again. I can't keep the smile off my face! Heka are I are in voice chat going, "Ooooh, I remember this!!" It's like going back to your home town or a vacation spot that you loved.

We're rebuilding our guild, Knights of Good, but we're only at level 3. Recruiting is going to be interesting as the server is very multicultural. World chat is predominantly English, but there is a lot of German and Russian too, and a smattering of other languages I can't figure out. It's been fun to chat with people from other countries. I love that!

So I can't promise that I'll be blogging about my new adventures or not. I'm pondering it with furrowed brow as I type this. I'm hesitant to think that I'll have anything scintillating to say about a game I've played for so long. But then again, I have yet to visit the Coast of Opportunity.  :)

I hope all my gaming friends are alive and well and having fun in their real and virtual worlds, wherever they may be.

Fare Thee Well

This will be my last blog post. I figure it's as good a time to end it as any, since I started this blog almost exactly a year ago.
I must say it's been an interesting year. I laughed, I cried, I set things on fire! But the only constant thing in life is change, and I'm rolling with it.
I can't say right now if I will be playing Spiral anymore or not. I think it's safe to assume she will be MIA for a while. I really love the game though so you may run into me on another toon or another server or another life. You'll know it's me if you wonder, "WTF is this girl doing? Is she nuts??"   :)

Thanks to all of you who commented here or talked to me in game to let me know how much you enjoyed my random thoughts. A big hug to Ejov, my nicest fan. Your kind words made me smile on many a rough day. Thank you.

Best of luck to all of you! Fight fair, play nice, and beware of a purple-haired pyromaniac with more heart than sense. She'll get you killed every time.  ;)

Ho Ho Ho and All That Jazz

Beautiful Places of RoM #5

I was wondering around AV catching cavies when I found this beautiful sight. I would love to have one of these as a pet!

Detective Spiral Finds a Clue

I may have discovered why the Varanas Bank keeps getting robbed. Check out my evidence in the screenshot.
See anything suspicious?
Yes, those are Varanas Guards...in Boulderwind Village. Damn slackers! What? Do they think they can just take off and go on vacation in the middle of the busy holiday season? They're enjoying Boulderwind's cozy stone inn and fine crab cakes while the Varanas Bank is being robbed! Tsk tsk. Very naughty. No cookie for you.

Taborea Meets Real Life

This past weekend, I did something that I didn't think I would ever do. I met a ROM player, my long-time friend and ex-guildie, Heka, in Real Life. Gasp! Yes, a face-2-face!
Of course, I blame it all on Heka and his charming stalker-ish ways. He had asked me to visit on another occasion and I was too chicken. And then this time, I said no again, but he refused to take that as an answer. It was just too darn convenient that I was visiting my parents for Xmas who just happened to live less than an hour away from him, and he just happened to be celebrating his birthday.

So I swallowed all my nervousness and showed up at an almost-complete-stranger's house. The ice was broken by a pair of adorable wiggling puppies, which immediately made me feel more at ease. Then Heka  was there and I heard his voice and it was so...normal. It was easy. He was just Heka, my good friend, and the only difference was that I was looking at a tall man with brown hair rather than a short jumpy little priest.  :)

So I had a wonderful time and conquered my shyness and made some new friends as well (hello Tammy and Heka's Mom and Salmon and Seb!)
I have to warn you that meeting players f2f doesn't always work out so well, so I'm told. But I am a very lucky girl who happens to have found many wonderful people online. I trusted Heka, I've been playing with him for many months, and even though he googled my parent's phone number to call me (stalker!!), I still felt that he had only good intentions. And it turned out, he was just as nervous as I was!  It all worked out well, and it's opened my mind to the possibility of perhaps, maybe, meeting other players in RL.
Stay tuned...

You Light Up My Life

This is what I see when I go into HOS with all the damn-scouts in my guild.

That is the infamous Scatterstar Storm, the scout item set skill from Unicorn's pieces.

It lags me so bad, I freeze up completely, but I'm not complaining cuz the nice thing about it is that when the smoke clears, everything is dead. Can't beat that.

Now with the most recent patch, (the one that is taking the servers offline this morning and allowing me to blog some more for you lucky readers!) there is an in-game option on the System--Audio/Visual menu that allows you to turn off the spell effects of other players. Look for the checkbox on the bottom right corner. And yes, it does work. I tested it last night against my favorite damn-scout, Medi. It was kinda funny actually cuz all I could see was him waving his arms about and then mobs running at him for no apparent reason. In my mind I imagine they are all yelling, "Damn Scout" as well.  :)

For now I'm actually going to leave my spell effects on. I think I'm visually trained to look for them in order to know if I'm getting buffed, healed or fried over-easy. Of course, the next time I'm fighting Vrantal in HOS and seeing nothing but bright lights, I'm certainly going to flick that switch. Might actually be able to do something in that fight besides stare at the floor and spam 1.

Andaphelmor 7: Evil Empire 1

GM Love!!

Woot! GM Asteriea came online today to give out some GM love and happiness to the huddled masses. A huge crowd gathered around her on Varanas Bridge and paid her tribute. She handed out wonderful foods and stuffs, like Hot Stew and Egg Rice Dumplings. Yummy!

I like it when the GMs come online and give out gifts. It promotes happiness and excessive jumping! Of course, I imagine they get their share of annoying whispers about "such-and-such is broken" but that's not really what they're there for, so I keep quiet. Support tickets FTW. Don't annoy the GMs when they're on cuz I want more Little Magic Biscuits!

And wow, I have to say she is beautiful. I wouldn't spend diamonds on that costume cuz you'd only wear it for a short while, but it is truly impressive. Or perhaps it's just that she's 90 feet tall??  I gladly pay tribute to her.  :)

If I was a GM, I'd go all out with the gifts and contests and free stuff. I'd have Twitter give-aways, Facebook contests, all sorts of things. I'd give away as much as they possibly would allow me. There are so many things in the game that can get you down, but a simple gift from a GM kinda perks you up!

A Girlfriend for Spazzy?

I'm not sure if I'm happy about this or not, but my very unique Spazzy reindeer that Spiral is so well-known for is now on sale in the Cash Shop. Go to Special Offers, Mounts, and you will see the Snowflake Festival Reindeer. That's what Spazzy is, only he is colored white.

You can see that there is also a Royal Reindeer that costs more, but pretty much looks the same. Not really worth the diamonds since you can color a mount for 40 diamonds anyway.
So perhaps this is a good thing and Spazzy can find a girlfriend! Then there can be little Spazzys running around Taborea, causing havoc and breaking hearts.

Sexy Houseguests

Yum, yum, yum!
Look at the handsome surprises I found on my bed last night. Mreow! I'll take both, please and thank you.
Boys, boys! Please don't fight. There's plenty of me to go around.   ;)

Thanks to Pixie, my schmexy lover, for introducing me to the fine upstanding yet still deliciously perverted gentlemen of Carramrod. You guys are welcome to my house anytime for dancing, bed-jumping and all around naughtiness. (But no sleepovers!)

In other news, I played Spiral on rogue side to do ZS and embarrassed myself horribly by dying on the sneak section to pull the party to the boss. I guess it was my first time *blush* so I shouldn't be hard on myself, but I hate being incompetent. Especially when everyone is counting on me. Sigh.
But DG aka Andrei came in on rogue and showed me how it's done, so next time I'll get it for sure. And it's nice to know that rogues are still needed in this game, at least a little bit.

Rogue is Ready

Been ever-so-slowly gearing up Spiral's rogue side and today she is finally finished! Well, I only say "finished" because I have all the main gear I wanted to get and she looks good. Some of the pieces are only half-statted or poorly statted and will need to be redone. And haven't finished the accessory set, but you can't see that in a screenshot so *shrug*. 

Anyhoo, here is The Purple Death herself all dressed up and ready to stab.

Giant Fist helmet
Atrocity jacket, boots, shoulders
Strange Bug legs
Fearless belt and gloves
Savage Precision cape
2 Nemesis blades, main hand is T8

I will be replacing the helmet with a Strange Bug helmet if I can ever find one. They drop from Origin somehwere and are near impossible to find. But I would really like the +240 physical critical hit rate I would get from that paired with the legs.

I'm immensely pleased and significantly richer because most of the Atrocity gear is already a perfect shade of purple and I didn't have to color any of it. The only thing I did was aggregate the Stange Bug pants onto nicer ones, and aggregate both daggers onto more interesting blade skins, Assassin's Blades that drop from Bodos.

Now all I need to do is learn how to play her. Oh, and how to not cringe when fighting so up close and personal with everyone. Two for flinching!!

Raksha Temple Video

I personally have never been to RT. Thinking it's still gonna be a while till I'm geared enough to get there, especially since recently I've been focused on trying to gear my rogue side.
But this popped up on my YouTube list the other day and I couldn't resist watching. It's the last boss in RT.
Warning! Mute the damn music. :)

I've subscribed to this guy's channel cuz he seems to have neat RoM vids every now and then.

Ygather Addon from Curse



ygather menu

I am a level 60 gatherer in wood & herbs, and was feeling a bit frustrated with gathering my fave mats so I decided to rely on the kindess and intelligence of strangers and installed the ygather addon from Curse. Wow, I wish I had done that AGES ago!! It is so extremely helpful.

The addon maps out the location of resources as you pass them, so you need to gallop around the map to mark the locations, but once you've done that you're all set.
The pic on the right here is the menu, which can be found by pressing the Resources button on the top left of your World Map. You can see that I've checked off  Hide Ore because I can't gather that.
The addon automatically checks off the resources types you've found in your current zone, so that is Pine, Foloin, Dusk Orchid and Barsa (so far).
 

I've also gone into the Highlight on Minimap submenu and checked off the three items I am currently looking for. What this does is makes a blinking white circle show up surrounding that mat icon on your minimap as you tour around the zone. You  can see this in the close-up pic on the left here. That is very helpful as previously I had been mousing over the icons as I ran around to check to see if it was the one I needed. This is especially useful when looking for rare mats, like Foloin Nuts. Love this feature!

This last screenshot shows a portion of the World Map after exploring a bit of the zone. The little dots are herbs (green) and wood (brown). You can mouse over them and it shows the name and level of the mat. These little dots will also show up on your minimap if there should be a mat there but it has already been gathered and not respawned yet.

I haven't experimented with many of the features yet but so far in just a half hour of using it I am very pleased. I don't gather all that often, usually for friends or when I'm too poor to buy the items myself, but for someone who is a 'professional' gatherer, I would highly recommend this addon.

BONK!

Does this hammer make my butt look big?

This is the Bonker!!
Don't ask me what it really is, I have no recollection of its true name. I just know that it dropped in my bag and was aggregated onto my Root of Nightmares before the hour was up.
It gives me a little giggle to run around with this giant thing. It kinda looks like an enormous lollipop that's been dropped in broken glass. Freakin' deadly!
I enjoy making stylish costumes as much, if not more, than the next person, but there's just something joyfully silly about aggregating a ridiculous item like this. It makes people stop in their daily grind and do a double take.

In that vein, I'd like to give a high-five to PersonalPitBull. I ran across this fine fellow in Dalanis the other day and did my own double take. I didn't take a picture of him because he disappeared too quickly, but I was highly impressed by his sense of style. Truly a memorable outfit!

Is It Just a Game?

"A mentally and emotionally healthy adult would not become addicted to an MMORPG"

Recently I have heard the words "it's just a game" being kicked around chat a lot and it's really started me thinking. I mean that's a great phrase to calm yourself with when you're mad about a KS, but the fact is that the social and competitive nature of MMORPGs is what attracts many people to the game. Yes, in fighting a boss, you beat a computer-generated set of parameters, but to many players there's also the fact that you beat another person at a task or a skill, like amount of damage done or healing done.
The very popular add-on, StatRating, lets everyone know who is 'winning' in every fight. For those Type A's out there, this is a vital component of a MMORPG that is missing in an offline game, and it feeds their sense of success, accomplishment, and even, unfortunately, superiority.

As for the social side, if you wanted to play a game by yourself, you would. There are plenty out there. But in ROM you can meet people, talk, laugh, flirt, share stories and jokes and knowledge and adventures, learn more about life, REAL life, from the personalities and anecdotes of your fellow players. Like me, a lot of folks don't discover the social aspect of the game until they enter a guild. Then you quickly realize the benefit of having a group of friends who have your back, who care if you log off, who might even lend you a listening ear when life gets you down.
Of course, you also realize how easily it can disintegrate into petty squabbling, hurt feelings and rage-quits. A ROM guild can be like a family, a mental institution, a fraternity, or an orgy, depending on your guild of course!  :)

So my own personal take on MMORPG addiction and social interaction? The thing is, I do have other hobbies but all of them involve solo pursuits anyway. I like losing myself in a good book. I like going for walks in nature. I like wildlife photography and camping and pondering the universe while staring at the stars.
I'm not a team player. I don't enjoy sports. I don't really even enjoy sitting around in a coffee shop chatting with girlfriends a la Sex in the City. This is not something new. In my childhood I spent my recess in the library stacks devouring books. My first boyfriend was the guy who was sitting in the stack next to me, peeking at me through the bookshelves. We read Shogun together because it was the thickest book we could find. We were ten.

A good friend of mine said to me yesterday: "Hate to break it to you, but you're not going to meet anyone locked in your apartment playing ROM." At first I was slightly offended, but soon I realized that what he said was not necessarily true. I have met lots of people. I have met more people online than I ever would have met in real life. My sister and I joke that I am not socially 'ept'. In real life situations I am quite shy and very rarely have the nerve to talk to strangers or mingle at parties, although my 'butterfly' sister insists on dragging me out to them.

Yet here in ROM we are all free from the social stigmas that prevent easy interaction. There are no visual cues. You can't dismiss someone because of their color, weight, acne, age, bad teeth, or any other of the myriad of insignificant physical details that we judge people by. Personality wins. An intelligent, witty, funny, helpful player in ROM is going to have more friends than that handsome jerk with the six pack abs who wants nothing more than to use you and toss you.

Yes, we are all playing a game, but while we are playing, we are interacting. The feelings that players have are real. People fall in love and get their hearts broken. There is jealousy, rage, lying, cheating and stealing. But there is also kindness, generosity and compassion. The entire range of human emotions is here in Taborea, hiding behind an avatar and a screen name.

I urge you, all of you, don't ever, EVER allow yourself to pretend that these toons are not real people. Every comment that you toss into chat, into Vent, is heard by another human being.

In ROM, your words are all you have, so use them wisely and well, my friends.

Really Freaking Awesome Websites

I am in total awe of the Official Runes of Magic Database. It shows pretty much everything there is in the game, including Item Sets, Skills, Recipes, Quests, and tons of other stuff. It's not quite complete, and don't pay any attention to the announcements cuz they're for EU, but it's still the first site I go to for information. Other cool features on this website are a recipe mats calculator, 3D views of armour so you can see the style, and item comparisons so you can tell if something is worth it.

My second fave go-to site is The Rom Wiki. Yes, it's user generated content, but I find it quite reliable and helpful. They have a Transmutation Chart that shows which runes can be made in the game, and also a Black Codex chart that lists the momento shop items. Also a great place to remind yourself of what elite skills mats you need.
Tie me up and call me n00b but I didn't know that stats had different effects when applied to different classes. Check out this Rom Wiki chart to see Attributes Effect Per Class.

When RoM is down, I use MMO Server Status to check instead of obsessively trying to log into the game. Ok, I lied just then. I still obsessively try to log in, just in case.  :)

Now it's time to toot my own horn (wink wink nudge nudge say no mo'). I have two websites that I've made that you might find helpful if you haven't been there yet: a Guide to the Arcane Transmutor and a Guild Siege Guide. These can be helpful to pass on to confused newbies and guildies to spare yourself the hassle of explaining everything in chat. 

If any readers have other useful websites, please feel free to post them in comments so that we can share our knowledge.

Moar Frogs, MOAR!

Good heavens, they're multiplying!! This is Frostwood Valley, now renamed Froggie Forest.
At least these ones were hopping...probably to keep their flippers from freezing.  :)

Crazy Night

Tonight was a very strange night. We were all giggly and goofy and perverted and other wonderful things.

Siege was laggier than a grandma crossing the street but we triumphed anyway and even had a few laughs.

Medi and I duo'd KS on our secondary sides just for kicks, although we did sneak past Goddess.

Everything said in Vent was dirty, except once, ONCE, Streaker said a whole sentence that we couldn't find anything sexual about.

Yaser discovered paging in Vent and tormented poor Pixie until she was ready to strangle him, all the while he was acting completely innocent.

I died at least ten times in WA cuz I'm really good at being lame. And then Medi died because felt he needed to teabag me in the middle of the fight!

Seriously spent most of the night LOL-ing.  :)



I see frogs. Red frogs. Dude, I am trippin'.



To top things off, trippy things were appearing in random places. Take these frogs for example. WTF? Is it some sort of amphibian cult meeting, the Secret Order of Scarlet Webfoots? Or are they waiting for the Froggy Apocalypse? Or maybe contemplating the mysteries of the universe like slimy little Buddhists? 



I know, I know. It's an event. But it really was surreal to see them all crouched there, silently staring. I really wanted to use a Princely Look potion to transform and join them!  :)

Dual Class Musings

Recently two of my guildies rerolled their level 60 secondary sides to Knight just to take advantage of the Knight's awesome PDef and Stam bonuses. They have no intention of ever playing their Knight sides.
It's funny that this was a new idea to me, as in reality I don't play my rogue side at all now, but never considered choosing a secondary based on passive bonuses. I suppose I do enjoy the dual class elites on my mage side, but when I chose rogue it was with the intention of playing it at least occasionally.

I have been gearing up my rogue side for a few weeks now, piece by piece, in order to be able to play it. But now this new revelation makes me wonder if I've wasted my money. My thought was that by gearing both sides, I could easily switch between a melee DPS and a ranged DPS without having to level a new toon to 60. I figured it would make me more valuable as a group player when different DPS was needed, i.e. if there were too many mages in a party.
But considering the overabundance of DPS in general, I have been pondering making a priest or a tank in order to be eve MORE useful to anyone and everyone. Seems as if all parties depend on the availability of one or the other. Everyone else is optional and easily replaceable.

This idea has been kicking around in my head for a while and I have hesitated because it raises the question: Do you play what you love or what is needed?
Or on a more personal level: Would I be irritated as a priest or tank to be expected to run instances all the time? Or would it be a relief to not have to beg to get in a group?

With my abundance of alts already created, leveling a healer or tank to 60 would not take much time at all, perhaps a couple weeks, less if Froggie gives us a double XP weekend (hint hint). But I have not yet taken the plunge as the above questions are still rattling around my empty skull, waiting to be answered.
And what would happen then to my identity as Spiral? She is ME, my first toon and my favorite. Could I really become Sister Agatha or Mousekin or any one of my alternate personalities on a regular basis?

The skull-rattling continues...