Where Has All the Time Gone?

Six hours! SIX!

They spent all that time fussing over the stupid birds. And it’s not the first time, and not the last…

Some people say that a paddock makes you instantly rich. It’s a lie, a big lie! We have 5 paddocks of our own plus 2 more paddocks that our friends gave us access to. And what? Do we take bath of gold? Or maybe we can buy whatever we want? No way! Paddocks eat all our time. Every one in our team in one or another way is involved into breeding.

When this insanity started cra promised me a chameleon dragoturkey. Almost a year passed and I haven’t  seen promised mount, but I have to train more and more birds.

It would be fine with me if breeding didn’t interfere with other activities, but it does. I need materials for my new clothing (and I’m not alone in this), but because of the birds who constantly need attention we don’t have time for gathering materials. In fact we have time for nothing except stupid creatures. And they can’t even fly.

Well, thanks to breeding we have a lot of scrolls, and also some income. But I bet we could do much better if we used professions to make money…

But all this whining is pointless. They won’t listen to me. And they will never stop neglecting their duties…. I’d better be back to training ugly things…

 

Scrolls Calculator Template

Some time ago cra made a scrolling template. It was meant as a tool to facilitate all the calculations needed to gather scrolls and materials for them.

Unlike similar calculators hers takes into account already used scrolls and also scrolls that are already collected but have not been used yet.

The calculator also contains all the formulas needed to estimate the costs of scrolls when buying materials for them.

It also allows to use both ways of gathering scrolls: buying/obtaining scrolls and buying/collecting materials for scrolls.

It appeared to be a very useful tool.

Template preview can be found here.

Template for Excel.

OpenOffice Template.

Template Instructions

All other fields will be calculated automatically.

Please, do not touch them unless you are 100% sure you know what you are doing.

How to Keep Sanity

Recently I was thinking how  to keep sanity and not to burn out with all the repetitive monotonous activity needed to achieve my goals. And I came up with this list of rules:

• Set multiple goals and switch between them
  This prevents “burning out”, and also makes life more interesting due to the change of activities. Also switching from my task to another may provide some relaxation and rest for both mind and body.
  The shortcoming of this point is slower progress in each of the activities.
• Take breaks whenever it’s needed, but make them reasonable.
  Breaks are needed, and pushing oneself to the limit makes no good. In my experience full focus on one task and attempts not to stop till it’s completed lead to the depression and apathy when the goal is achieved.
  Too long breaks are no good as well as they ruin the established routine, not to mention that the changes in the world can be so drastic that it’ll be hard to catch up.
• Don’t split up tasks into too small steps
  If one has too many steps to complete he/she can be overwhelmed with them. So, while splitting difficult tasks into smaller is needed, it should be taken under the control.
• Focus on one thing at the time
  While several goals can be achieved when doing something, it’s still better to focus on one thing and put aside everything else.
  Although, it doesn’t mean that you should get rid of all the by-products if you need them later.
• Make friends and spend some time with them
  Even grinding can be much more fun if you do it with friends.
• Don’t try to catch up with everything and everyone. Live in your own rhythm.
  Probably, this is the worst mistake people do, they try to be on par with other people disregarding the differences in situations and personal capabilities.

Of course, it’s not the full list, and It’s not like I always follow all these rules myself, but even using one or two of them on constant basis makes life easier and less insane.

 

Feeding Pets… A New Approach

We are busy feeding pets. Again. But we changed the style.

Some pets eat simple food: nuts and seeds, fish and meat, and so on. Some pets are very picky when it comes to food and eat things that can be obtained only in the areas of natural habitation of these animals, like monkeys or koalaks. But the pets we are trying to raise now are nothing of a kind. Our new (actually, they aren’t new, but they were neglected until now) pets eat the remnants of the souls. And, of course, they are very selective and won’t be happy with any monster’s soul.

In total we have 7 foxes, plus 1 fox which belongs to Kanni (it’s quite long story why we are raising his pet). Each fox has to eat the remnants of 550 monsters souls to be fully trained and to achieve the peak of its power. So, we should kill at least 4400 fire foxes to raise our pets. Sounds scary?

On the bright side foxes hunt gives materials that will be very useful for the ongoing runes making project.

One More Step Is Completed

Several new chameleons have been born, and one of them is purebred Ivory. This is the second breed of chameleons for which purifying is completed. The first one was Indigo and Orchid.

Sixty four more left.

Notes on Runes Making

Some useful information for runes making: item statistics values and corresponding runes output.

I only translated this table. The original table can be found here.

Runes Shortage

We managed to obtain over one million runes while mastering professions, but inevitable have come – we are short on runes.

Cra, sadi, eni, enu, and I are reviewing recipes to make a list of crafts that can be used to create runes and at the same time won’t require expensive or hard to get materials. But here is the problem, good for runes production recipes include rare ingredients. So, after making a list of somehow acceptable recipes we’ll have to check how they work on practice.

Another problem is that the rates for runes like Ga Pa and Ga Pme are unknown, which means that we’ll have to do all the testing ourselves.

On the bright side rates for Ra runes are known pretty well, we just need to find recipes suitable for mass craft. And half of the work is done already.

 

Hunt or not to Hunt?

Obtaining all the precious eggs is the ultimate goal of any follower of the World of Twelve Gods. Of course, it’s not the goal of any living being in our world. In fact, it’s not the main goal for the majority of the people I know. Probably, they don’t believe in Gods, or they don’t think that Gods have the right to give them a goal. Whatever…

I’m not sure I’ll be happy to have all the dofuses myself. But I’m sure some of my teammates would be happy to lay their hands on at least one real dofus. And the question is what strategy will be the best to obtains these eggs.

There are only two ways to obtain them legally (excluding inheriting one from kind and prematurely died uncle): to hunt the keepers of the dragon eggs or to buy them from the lucky hunters.  For quite some time I thought that hunting may bring results faster, but lately I was surprised with the number of dofuses on sale. And the prices are relatively low. If this tendency continues there is no need for us whatsoever to hunt anything. We just need to return to money making and convert our time and abilities in shiny coins. Not that hard…

I need to talk things over with the enu and cra, they are the “financial geniuses” of the team, and what’s more important cra keeps all the company’s gold.

Mrs. Grumbler is Happy! Finally…

She is finally happy, our old lady!

Today (one day later than we planned, unfortunately) we presented her the scrolls. We were lucky, she didn’t know about our preparations. Or maybe she was polite and didn’t show she knew all our plans beforehand. However, she was really touched and even cried a little bit.

I know, I often say bad things about old lady, but I still love her. And today I was happy to see her smiling and behaving like a child who was given a new toy. I also was impressed with her kindness and care about all of us. When we gave her scrolls of fire, earth, and wind magic she asked whether we have enough of them for others. It took cra and me quite some time to convince her of no need to worry, cra even had to demonstrate her abilities to wield different kinds of magic. But at the end enu accepted scrolls and studied them carefully.

It was really a very happy day.

Old Lady’s Grumble

Enu often complains about our friend Kanni. She says he gives her information in such a confusing way she can’t recall later anything he says.

Well, it’s true to a certain extent. He is very confusing when he talks about his plans and schedules. I always have to ask again and again to understand what he means. I even thought that sadidas used different concept of time and their measures weren’t the same as ours. So, I went to my friend sadida and asked her.

She laughed for so long, it even made me feel uncomfortable (not often happens to me). When she was able to talk she told me that Kanni was the only sadida who used different approach to time and it all came from his concept of happy sadida life: 22 hours of sleep and 3 meals a day. Then she went in very long, detailed, and very confusing explanations… I couldn’t bear it and fled. I guess, only xelors can be worse interlocutors to talk about time.

I had no choice but to return to enu and suggest her to find something that will make Kanni more understandable. And she came up with the brilliant idea!

Our guild is pretty small but we have a guild hall and a message board. And the most important thing there is a standard calendar there. So enu proposed that Kanni should write about his plans and schedule on the board.

I really hope it will work. Because right now we skip planned guild activities due to the misunderstandings and mess in the schedules. Of course, it has something to do with cra, who was neglecting her duties for quite some time. But I saw her note where she apologised and promised to improve.