Rant 401 / Getting Into It

12 Rounds wasn't as bad as I expected. When I saw that "WWE Films" label I thought it would be another bad action flick with shitty acting.

I was wrong, at least on the former.

The latter, shitty acting, was spot on. John Cena, the star of the movie, couldn't act to save his life. The plot was pretty decent though, with a twist that made the movie worth watching. This kind of offset John Cena's performance.








Ceylon tea isn't as good as Assam. It's more acidic than Assam, Earl Grey and Lady Grey, though it has a different fragrance.








Been helping the newbies in RoM quite a bit lately, while spending the rest of the time gathering crafting materials for sale. I've managed to raise my 3 gathering skills to lv43, so the stuff I gather sells for 5- to 6-digit figures. So now I'm making roughly 300k gold a day when I farm for those materials and gaining a lvl a day. At this rate I should hit 50 soon (for the gathering skills, not my class level) and start gathering stuff from the highest level areas.

As a lv50 Rogue, I can gather them while invisible, so I can even enter really dangerous areas with lv50 elite monsters (elite means they're about 10-20 lvls stronger than what their levels are). Currently my aim is to farm for materials in the Cyclops Stronghold, which I have already explored while invisble. I don't know if they will sell, but chances are they will.

Anyway lots of low-level players have apparently added me to their friendlist in the game. In this game, adding someone to your friendlist doesn't automatically add yourself into theirs. Thus I've been getting requests for help from people I don't remember meeting and it gets quite annoying sometimes.

I can't stop people from adding me and I've already tried to discourage them politely. Whenever someone asks if they can add me (as if they require permission), I tell them I don't care. Really, I don't care; I don't have even a single name from them in my own friendlist. I'm just helping them because it feels good and there are too many people farming what I want to farm at those hours.

I have also been soloing a lv20+ instance known as the Forsaken Abbey. Getting confident at doing the whole dungeon alone and without using a single healing potion now. I'm now considering offering to help the newbies run the whole instance regardless of their lvls (even if they're below lv20) as long as they need to complete quests in this instance. I don't need them, but I'll let them tag along to get their quests done.

Why is this any different from the usual? Because in normal circumstances they would need to form groups of 5-6 people with everyone above lv20 and have at least a healer and a tank. If I run it for them, anything goes. I don't gain anything from this, other than an opportunity to show off. Well if everyone is happy about it, a little showing off doesn't hurt.

Experience-wise, they don't get much experience during normal dungeon runs except from the quest rewards they get from completing quests. Hence, there is almost no reason why anyone would reject a run if they have quests for this, which all lv20+ has.

I'm doing all these instead of improving my character because it gets boring after an hour of farming stuff to sell. Farming lots of stuff for sale is necessary because I'm severely handicapped in terms of ways to improve my equipment. This is in turn due to my absolute policy of not spending real money on this game.

Hence I have to upgrade my stuff very, very slowly compared to the real hardcore players who spend hundreds of dollars and become so fantastic they have Youtube videos of how they pwn bosses that normally require 36-man raids.

This is one of them. Here, a well-known RoM player named Zarth solos Worr Binpike, one of the huge Binpike brothers at Ystra Highland. Note her 20k HP as a Rogue. I'm a lv50 Rogue just like her, but with no upgraded equipment at all and hence have only 2.8k HP. No typo here.



This is a free2play (f2p/ftp) game, but you have to pay2pwn (p2p/ptp).

However slowly, I will upgrade my stuff. It's getting faster now because the rate increases. As I gain levels in my gathering skills, I can farm higher level materials. Higher level materials always sell for more gold. Gold is used to buy diamonds, the ingame currency players use real money to buy. Hence I'm able to afford more and more diamonds by the week. Diamonds, not gold, is used to buy the really good stuff.