Category Archives: Triumphs

I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of this,

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but I’ve found a new way to delevel characters for SP farming. I have a level 53 wizard that I’m using to farm SP for a new character I created. A level 53 wizard is not able to one-hit kill party Ongs, so I thought it would be best to do the SP farming at Chakji Workers. For this to work properly, I decided to simply leave the mastery levels for all skills on my new character at zero. Ideally, the character should be about level 8-10 to be farmed at Chakji Workers. The spawn rate there is fantastic and I can one-hit Chakji Worker party mobs. It’s also good because Chakji Workers are non-aggressive and won’t attack the character getting farmed, so you don’t even need to worry about protecting him or her.
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I love the Forgotten World now

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I had been doing runs to the first treasure box in grade 1 Forgotten World with my glaive character, but now that I’ve made a wizard character for a change, I see that I was an idiot using a Chinese character in the Forgotten World. It’s too slow.

You just need the bard skill called “Noise” and you can run directly to the first treasure box without bothering to kill a single monster. It took me two minutes with my wizard/bard. It’s no use going past the first treasure box alone if you ask me; it’s too much wasted time.

iBot works on Windows 7 x64!

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botters

Goldbots at Hashades/Ishades and Sonars will sometimes auto-invite you to exp share parties. You can just get on a horse, go afk and be a leech off of them for as long as you don't disconnect!

I’ve been using iBot successfully on Windows XP for months, but I had never gotten it to work on Windows 7 x64 until today. Other people seemed to have problems registering the required ocx files in Windows 7, but that was never an issue for me. I didn’t have any of the problems that people seemed to typically report; I simply couldn’t get the bot to run at all.

I would open the bot and click “Run client” and the game would start, but it wouldn’t capture the information from sro_client.exe. It wouldn’t say “Connected to login server” when the game started. I could login successfully through the client, but as soon as I did, I would get disconnected. The bot window would never display any of my character information. It wouldn’t say a thing, not even “Login successful”.

I tried seemingly endless combinations of firewall and antivirus settings, even going so far as to completely turn them both off trying to get this thing to work. Everyone seemed to insist that it does indeed work on Windows 7, so I had no idea why I was having such a ridiculously difficult time getting it up and running. Running it in compatibility mode for Windows XP Service Pack 2 or 3 didn’t work and neither did running the bot as administrator. I really felt I must have been some type of an idiot since, as far as I could tell, no one else was experiencing the same problem I was.

I finally figured it out today, after having given up for some months. The problem was that I had my language for non-Unicode programs set to Japanese, which caused a problem with srodir.ini. I would type in the correct path to either my Silkroad directory or sro_client.exe itself in srodir.ini and it would look correct in Notepad, just like this:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Silkroad

I also tried variations on that, such as adding a trailing backslash or specifying the path to the sro_client.exe itself instead:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Silkroad\

C:\Program Files (x86)\Silkroad\sro_client.exe

So in Notepad it would look just fine to me, the human reader. But it seems that what was getting passed along to iBot was this:

C:¥Program Files (x86)¥Silkroad¥sro_client.exe

Of course, I’m well aware that the backslash displays as the yen symbol in file paths and the like when you’re running a non-Japanese version of Windows in Japanse locale, but I didn’t think it was the problem since I couldn’t actually see anything wrong with the way I was typing in the path. Notepad displayed it correctly, so I thought there was no problem. For the hell of it, I changed the language for non-Unicode programs to English (United States) today and the bot instantly starting working perfectly, just like it does on my XP machine. Turns out the problem had nothing to do with the OS at all; it was just user error. I fail again, it seems.

I completed The Phantom of the Crimson Blood Collection

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phantomofcrimsonblood06

Yay. Of course, I’m very happy that I completed this quest since I now have my SOSun level 64 glaive, but I still can’t help but think that these quests are one of the things have the have contributed to the ruination of this game. I really don’t play SRO at all. I bot all the time. If I’m not stalling, I’m botting. That means that I’m probably not very good at actually playing the game. I know I would die instantly in PVP. People like me don’t really deserve SOSun stuff. But quests like this make it possible for me to get one, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain.

Party mobs are worse though. Damn party mobs. Can’t grind anywhere because of them. They should at least make it so that party mobs don’t spawn in the Donwhang Stone Cave.

I documented the entire quest by taking a screenshot of every treasure box I encountered right before breaking each one open. I started the quest as soon as I could enter the Forgotten World. I’ve only done grade 1 runs and I rarely go beyond the very first treasure chest in Togui Village. I’ve tried to defeat the Togui Elder about five or six times, but I’ve never done it. I initially thought that perhaps you could only get the “Elder Staff” talisman by defeating “Togui Elder”. That would make sense, right? Since he’s the “elder” and actually holds a staff. But no, you can get an Elder Staff from any treasure box, even the first one. I read that online though; I never got an Elder Staff on my own.

I bought most of my talismans. Since on my server, Maya, at least, they’re all very cheap except for Elder Staff and Spell Paper, I bought everything except for Red Talisman, Red Tears, and Western Scriptures. I got a good deal on Elder Staff for 65 million gold and some weapon elixirs when it usually sells for 75-85 million gold. The rest of the talismans I got for about 1 million gold each, even Puppet and Dull Kitchen Knife, which sometimes sell for up to 9 million gold on Maya.

Spell Paper never seems to sell for less than 100 million gold though. Since I bought Elder Staff I had no way of paying that much money, so I figured I’d just keep going to the Forgotten World and sell the talismans I got there for as much money as possible until I either got lucky and found Spell Paper myself or had enough money to buy it from someone. I also noticed that on consignment some people don’t realise that, when selling more than one unit of an item, you have to type in the total price, not the price per unit. As a result, you sometimes see people selling three Togui Masks for 500,000 gold or something like that. When I see that I buy them and resell them for 3 million gold. That’s another easy way to make money. I suppose people will stop making that mistake soon enough though.

I was amazed yesterday that I found Spell Paper in the first treasure box in level 61-70 Togui Village, making my collection complete. It’s absolutely true that you get more talismans in the 61-70 Forgotten World than in the 51-60 or 35-50 Forgotten World. It is not a myth. I went to the first treasure box about 20 times in the 35-50 Forgotten World and never got a single talisman. I went about 20 times to the first treasure box in the 51-60 Forgotten World and got one talisman (I think it was Red Talisman). I went only about 10 times to the first treasure box in the 61-70 Forgotten World and got maybe 7 or 8 talismans, one of which was Spell Paper. The pattern is clear.

Of course, here are the screenshots I took in triumph:

alternate text

I have about 40 screenshots like this, but this one is different because it immediately precedes the Spell Paper drop!



The Elder Staff I had purchased before this


The completed collection


Unknown error

When I tried to get the reward I encountered this error that I had seen reported a few times on rev6 forums. I logged out and logged back in normally (i.e. without launching the game through ibot) and I received the reward without a problem. I was scared for a moment though.

The best part of this may be that the SOSun reward is NOT ACCOUNT- or CHARACTER-BOUND! I can sell it when I'm done with it!

I'm too poor to do much alchemy on it right now to fix the stats, but I at leat got it to +3

I got a +5 ring drop

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I had been botting all night and when I woke up I saw in my inventory this ring:

I wish I knew whether I got it from a mob or if someone died and dropped it. I also woke up one day to find I had picked this up:

I can’t believe I haven’t been banned yet. I’m using ibot and even though I have it set to teleport back to town when I have low weapon or armor durability, it seems to only actually do so about half the time. As a result, I end up stuck every night in the middle of Karakoram without a weapon, probably looking like an idiot, standing there until I run out of HP potions and die. Short of running into a wall, that’s about as obvious as a botter can be.

Success! I fixed my laptop

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So I bought this laptop on eBay with a broken screen for virtually zero money. I was sort of vaguely thinking about setting up a dedicated MythTV box or something to leave by my TV but then I got scared since I don’t know how to use MythTV so I decided to use GB-PVR, which I already use but only inconveniently since I need to run a 50 foot cable from my STB to my desktop computer, which is a fire hazard since you’d probably trip over it when trying to leave the apartment. Whew.

Anyway for more or less this reason, as well as the fact that I evaluate my self-worth in terms of the good deals I find on eBay, I was half-heartedly browsing for reasonably priced laptops with cracked or broken screens to set my plan in motion.

A desktop would have worked, I suppose, but I like the idea of giving an abandoned laptop with a cracked screen a nice home and steady work. I also don’t have much space. A desktop needs desk or floorspace but a headless laptop could just sit on top of my standalone DVD/DivX player, which, incidentally, I also procured on eBay.

Among the broken laptops I found on eBay, however, was the one I’m currently using to write this. It was listed as fully working but with a broken screen. The auction even explicitly mentioned that when connected to an external monitor via HDMI it worked fine. So I bought it.

Dual core 2.0GHz processor, 3.0GB of RAM, expandable to 8GB, 802.11n (which is actually useful to me finally since the Actiontec router Verizon gave me for FiOS supports N), and a CD/DVD±R/RW/BD-ROM drive. That means if I ever brick my PS3, which I also bought broken from eBay and fixed, by neglecting to read the readme before flashing it with some CFW, I’ll still have a working Blu-Ray player.

When I got it though I liked it so much that I decided I should try to get the thing into perfect working condition. It looked completely unused with barely a single blemish on the plastic cover, body or anywhere else. The screen was really beautiful without a single mark on it. There is just one small stain on the left side of the speakers. If it weren’t for that though you’d think this was a brand new computer, so I thought it was a shame that the screen didn’t work.

When I got the laptop I went ahead and turned it on, not expecting to see anything. I did not, in fact, see anything on the screen. I connected it via HDMI to my nice ASUS monitor and it POSTed fine. I was surprised though when I entered BIOS to see that it had an HDD installed. I didn’t realise that it was going to come with one. Not wanting to spend more money than was necessary, I was planning on using a 40GB laptop HDD that wasn’t getting much use, but I was sort of considering buying a larger capacity HDD since 40GB is not much for a PVR system.

That’s why I was happy that the thing came with a 160GB HDD. I tried to format it with gparted but it kept saying it couldn’t find any disks. I tried to use DBAN and got some cryptic error. I tried to format it using an Ubuntu installation disc and got some other error. I tried to use an XP install disc but that just hung indefinitely at the disk partitioner screen. I then boot into BIOS and tried to do some HDD self test diagnostic feature that this laptop seems to have. No problems found. Tried the Ubuntu disc again, got same error. Oddly enough the Windows 7 installation disc didn’t complain at all, so that’s the OS I’ve got on it right now. Don’t torch my house, pl0x.

Anyway, once I had an OS installed I realised eventually that the screen wasn’t broken; it was just really, really, really dark. It was so dark that you really couldn’t tell it was turned on at all unless there were some very high contrast images on the screen at the time. I set the following image as the background and could kinda sorta see Nino’s left eye if I placed my face close enough to the screen so that my nose nearly touched it. If you didn’t get that close, you probably wouldn’t notice that it was displaying anything at all.
Nino

So that was a great discovery. It meant that the screen was probably fine; the backlight was just out. That’s easy. Hell, I thought, it might just be a loose cable somewhere. I open it up and have a look-see. I cut my left thumb trying to open it. The damn inside corners of the screen enclosure are sharp. That was not the encouragement I needed. I disconnected and reconnected everything I could find, reassembled the computer and powered it up, not expecting it to work. It didn’t.

Now I was determined. This was a nice computer. I bought a compatible screen, installed it, tested it and was disappointed. No luck. After installing the new screen I had the same problem as before; image was fine but very, very dark. Being naïve and never having done this before, I thought the screen would come with an inverter, but it didn’t. Since the problem was exactly the same with the new screen as with the old screen I put the old screen back in since it was now pretty clear it was actually perfectly fine.

So I went ahead and bought a new inverter from Hong Kong for USD14, 1/18th of the price some US-based online stores were selling for (I kid you not, one site listed the exact same part number for USD252). I was disappointed since I had spent about the same amount on a new screen as I had on the damned computer. But as I said, I was determined now, having cut both my thumbs by this point.

The inverter arrived surprisingly quickly for Hong Kong Post SAL. On a related note, I bought an item from ShopTemp on November 30, 2010, had it shipped by China Post Registered Airmail and didn’t get it until two days ago. They shipped it within a day or so, so ShopTemp gets all the praise in the world for that. ShopTemp did everything right. I am sad they are no more, since this was the very first purchase I had ever made from them and it was a great experience as far as ShopTemp was concerned. On the other hand, it was a terrible experience with China Post and I would caution said post that they should prepare to feel my wrath. Hell, the tracking number still said it was in Beijing on the day I received it in my mailbox. My experiences with Hong Kong Post have been mostly good though, with items usually arriving within 1 to 4 weeks.

Anyway, I receive the inverter and install it. Same problem as always. Now I was utterly baffled. I thought this must mean it was a bad CCFL. That’s something I don’t know how to replace. Perhaps it’s easy, but I didn’t feel like learning anything after my ordeal.

Just before giving up I decided to triple check all the connections inside the computer and screen enclosure. While doing so, I noticed this:
backlight cable

THAT’S THE BACKLIGHT CABLE! IT IS COMPLETELY WORN THROUGH! I NEVER NOTICED IT! I MUST BE THE LEAST OBSERVANT PERSON WHO EVER TRIED TO FIX A COMPUTER.

So I bought a replacement cable and the screen works fine now. Beautiful too. Not a single dead pixel. The only thing is that while I was replacing that broken cable with the new one I cut my left thumb again. I suppose the lesson here is that you should buy broken electronics even if you don’t know how to fix them because the solution is often as simple as replacing a broken cable. Whoever sold this laptop really lost an opportunity to make a fair amount of money since, as I said, the thing is basically brand new. The screen and one small brownish stain on the speaker were the only imperfections.

Now I have one brand new screen I’ve got to resell.

I got an SoS drop!

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In all my years of playing Silkroad Online I’ve never found an SoS, SoM or SoSun drop. I trained a character to maximum level and never found a single SoX drop. When a friend of mine created a new character to try the game out he got an SoS drop from a Mangyang within about 10 minutes of starting the game. This was on vSRO though if I remember correctly, since at the time iSRO was impossible to get into without a premium ticket.

My theory is that each character has some kind of hidden “luck” statistic that determines how often a player gets equipment drops and maybe even how often mobs drop quest items. Sometimes it seems like the quest items never appear (like that Stolen Sword quest from the Blacksmith in Jangan at Bandits). I got to level 80 without botting even a single time, bought lots of Astral stones and still failed over 9000 times to make a +7 level 72 glaive before getting banned for 100 years for nothing more than using a no DC client. The most infuriating thing about that is I used the no DC client because back then, every time you tried to log in but weren’t able to do so due to the server being full, you were required to close the client, open the launcher program and then start the client again. Each time required a CAPTCHA code and some amount of loading time (especially since I had a slower computer at the time). They’ve since changed the client so that there’s a “waiting list” to log in and not only do you not have to close and reopen the client, but you don’t even have to type your username and password in more than once. After failing to log in, you can relax, whereas in the old days it could literally take hours of typing in your username and password, typing in the CAPTCHA code, failing to log in, closing the client, reopening and repeating ad infinitum.

There was nothing bad about using a no DC client, which merely allowed you to keep on hitting “enter” without closing and reopening the client. You still had to type the CAPTCHA code and wait like everybody else.

Anyway, I digress. I started playing iSRO again a few days ago. They’ve added three new servers located in USA and they’re not very crowded, so it hasn’t been difficult getting on without a premium ticket. This new character seems to have a high “luck” statistic, if such a thing exists. I say that because I’ve already found so many equipment drops that I’m having quite a difficult time of selling them. When doing quests that require the collection of quest items moreover, it seems that mobs drop the quest items with a higher frequency than I was used to.

I think I may have proven my wild theory about the “luck” stat to myself today by getting an SoS drop from either a Gun Powder or Meek Earth Ghost behind Donwhang. I was doing the “Big Win” quest for the alchemy merchant in DW for the third time when I found it.

SoS drop

I’m not sure if it was a Meek Earth Ghost or a Gun Powder that dropped it, since I killed one of each at about the same time. I wish I had taken a screenshot of the box it came in, which is different from the usual reddish-coloured equipment box, but I was so frantically hitting the “g” key to pick it up that I forgot to take the screenshot. This screenshot was taken about one second after picking it up.

I am a full STR glaive user, just like my character that got banned.

Why you do me liek this, Joymax?

I miss my old account. I really was 80, you know. I just can’t find screenies from then.

I’m only level 32 at the moment though. When I get to level 37 and can use a full 5th degree equipment set I’ll switch permanently to garment. At the moment though prot/armour is working best since I’m still very low in level. I’m not sure if I’ll continue playing or not. School will keep me busy I suppose, so if I do keep playing I’ll have to just go ahead and bot. Screw Joymax. They banned my legit character so I have no reason to play legit anymore.

…although I may still have to buy some silk for a PT…

I should just quit watching everything that’s not on noitamina

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But that would be unfair, I suppose. But c’mon, noitamina had Ayakashi, Mononoke, Moyashimon, Kuuchuu Buranko, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, Eden of the East, Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei, and Kuragehime. That’s a good track record of shows I’ve enjoyed. Other noitamina shows may have been great, but I haven’t seen them, so I can’t comment. That means, however, that I’ve never disliked a noitamina show (although I’ve enjoyed certain of the above shows quite a bit more than others)

I’m not going to go ahead and write extensively about what I liked about these shows, since I’m not introspective or smart enough to pinpoint why I like what I like, but Hourou Musuko and Fractale are probably my favourite shows this season. Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika or whatever it’s called is also looking pretty good and has succeeded in keeping my attention for the first two episodes with its bizarre artwork and cutesy magical girl protagonist, but outside of that, the only other show that I haven’t dropped yet is Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne, but I may drop it anyway, since I haven’t seen the second episode yet. The first one didn’t have much of any newness to add to the wincest paradigm and barely kept my interest. Everything else is rubbish/boring like Infinite Stratos and Beelzebub or has value only as fap anime, such as 95% of Freezing. If it’s not in either one of those categories, then I either haven’t seen it yet or I concluded it was garbage and dropped it before even watching a single episode.

I may drop Level E and Dragon Crisis, but I will at least wait until I watch the second episodes of these series. Level E had a couple good laughs though, at least.

But everything about Hourou Musuko seemed nice. Cute, meek protagonist, cute shota friend of protagonist with best teddy bear evar, beautiful watercolorish artwork, great character designs and voice acting as well as remarkably fluid animation that makes the viewer feel like he or she is watching real people move about, rather than cartoon characters on a screen. All wonderful. Very gentle treatment of the subject matter, which I can’t really comment on seeing as I don’t read manga or light novels, so I’m experiencing this story for the first time.

As for Fractale, to employ an overused method of succinctly summarizing one’s reactions, at first I was like “wtf?”, then I was like “lol”, then I was like “Fractale FTW!” and then at the end of the first episode I was like “wtf?” again.

Again bearing in mind that I choose which anime to watch based on how much I like the image on the AniDB page for the show, rather than on any knowledge of content matter, all I knew about the show before watching it was that it took place in some kind of futuristic setting. I certainly didn’t think it would take place back in the Old Country! The protagonist, despite his smart lederhosen-inspired getup, lives in what the viewer must be meant to take for none other than the hilly landscapes of Éire.

After establishing that we’re in rural Ireland, the protagonist, Clain, sets off on his bicycle to go to some kind of yard sale, accompanied by his best friend, who appears to be a bottle of Coca-Cola.

There’s a lot to like here, such as Clain’s parents who look like they came right out of that Catherine video game,

And AIRSHIPS! Anything that reminds me of Skies of Arcadia or Final Fantasy IX gets bonus points on my scorecard:

Finally, to put the icing on the metaphorical cake, the final element in the winning combination that is Fractale: rubbing a medicinal salve on a mysterious bishoujo’s back who fell from the sky whilst riding a flying machine,

Don't know if want...

Yes, want...

DO WANT

VERY WANT!


The credit ending sequence gives us another glimpse of that beautiful Irish scenery:

I don’t want to speak too soon, since for all I know the remaining episodes may consist of Vanna White and Fabio as Lear and Cordelia, respectively, but these are the types of shows which, were they to see BD release, would certainly end up on my shelf if I also won the lottery beforehand. It’s not that I don’t have respect for IP; it’s that I only have respect for IP that I like.