Minifoux Training

Cra decided it was time for us to train minifouxes. We were waiting for this moment for years (literally).

Each minifoux requires at least 550 firefoux souls to be fully trained. We have eight of them, plus one which belongs to Kanni and we promised to trained — nine in total. Previously we would need to kill 550 firefouxes for each pet, but thanks to recent changes pets can share souls. Moreover, they can eat souls of the monsters killed but anyone in the group, not only their master. These changes make training of soul eaters so much easier!

Nonetheless even 550 monsters in total proved to be too much for us. Firefouxes aren’t hard or annoying, but tedious and monotonous grind required for soul eaters training is what upsets us. I know that others don’t like repetitious tasks, but to me it reminds of dragoturkeys training. And I am so tired of it!

I hope that 2-3 months will be enough to fully train all our pets without too much grind. But if cra isn’t joking more training is ahead of us — she is planning to get stings for all of us and get rid of monkeys…

The Jellith Dimension

I can’t say I like jelly. But I definitely like our visits to the Jellith Dimension… Royal Jellies look hilarious with their tiny crowns and funny faces. However, the main reason for my attitude are drops.  Today, for example, we found three gelanos. And we made only two runs through the colourful country.

One thing about this place is that I’ve never managed to understand how it works. Sure, I know that I’m supposed to collect pools of each colour. If I manage to collect more than 10 of one colour I will be able to fight a Royal Jelly of the same colour, if more than 10 of each colour — two Royal Jellies, if more than 15 of each colour — all four Royal Jellies.

I can choose what Royal Jelly to attack if I collect less than 10 pools of one of the colours — just talk and choose to attack the corresponding royal thing. And this would be really handy if I was looking for particular Magesty. However, we need to collect plenty of royal souls, so we prefer to attack as many simultaneously as possible. Unfortunately, we can’t choose which two kings (or queens?) to fight and we never managed to collect 15 pools of each colour to get a chance to fight all four of them. Well, I believe our greedy grandma can collect up to 20-25 pools thanks to her chest, but I really doubt she is able to kill all Royals and capture their souls at the same time. No matter what she says she is unable to fight effectively someone who has 70% resistance to water magic…

I still hope next time (or next after next) we will be lucky enough to fight four Royal Jellies. Last time we were there we were missing only one blue pool. Theoretically it is possible, but luck plays the major role: there are eight rooms, the biggest possible group of monsters is a group of eight, which gives 64 pools. Therefore even if we not always choose the biggest group we still can collect 15 pools for each four colours.

Anyway, experiments with pools require Multijellies, so we will be fighting regular jellies a lot. Nonetheless it’s still less than we would hunt them if cra didn’t reconsider her “brilliant” plans on obtaining vitality bonus.

And more jelly pictures:

See you soon!

New Year Beginning

The new year has started somewhat odd.

Of course, the first day we weren’t able to do anything due to the tumultuous New Year celebration. Normally sober panda seemingly decided to get rid of all the stored bwork beer (thousands and thousands tankards). Well, he failed this quest… but he did it in a loud and disturbing manner. No need to say it was an extremely wise decision to hold our little fest at eni’s place — the Coastal Village (Otomai Island) was deserted as usual.

And on the second day things started to get interesting. Cra checked the souls register and decided that Ancestral Treechnid and Royal Rainbow Blop should be captured by all means. So we went first to the treechnid forest and then to the blop dungeon. And when we were almost ready to set up camp for the night we received a message from Kanni. Kanni and Iiwar (newlyweds, by the way) were left behind by their “teammates” in the Crocabulia lair.

I wish I could say that the rescue mission was organised in a matter of minutes. But it never happens with us — we are really slow and everything always takes a lot of time. Nonetheless we managed to form a rescue team, get the keys, and arrive to the lair entrance smashing all the dreggons who had a misfortune to be on our way.  Cleaning the caverns went smoothly and without any complications. In a short time we were facing the last of dreggons led by Crocabulia itself. And here we found out that Kanni and his wife couldn’t actually contribute to the fight, they went into some strange trance and didn’t react even when they were hit by the monsters. Well, it’s not that we can’t deal with Crocabulia on our own. In fact, I think that cra and sadi could do just fine alone. But I was really concerned with Kanni and Iiwar’s condition: normally they rush into battle. Anyway, we won, old lady captured the soul and rescue mission was successfully completed.

Of course, this incident didn’t come without enu’s grumbling. For some reason she expects to find a feathered dragon egg every time we visit Crocabulia. And every time we find nothing except a few useless bones and skin torn into pieces. Yet she doesn’t give up and continues to insist that that egg is in the cave, but we just don’t search for it good enough.  Maybe she is right, but personally I know no one who has found an egg like this in  Crocabulia remains. I tend to believe it is just another legend old hug is fond of.

One Shouldn’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth?

We unpacked the presents obtained from the Kwismas Island monsters. We had about 500 presents in total…

The only one thing that had at least some value was one great wisdom scroll. All other presents contained stuff usually regarded as rubbish: kaniger hairs and nails for example.

Now I’m thinking that there is nothing to do on Kwismas Island after obtaining the gift giving skill. I heard there is a chance to get some equipment or even dofus inside one of the Kwismas presents, but the odds are so low, that it may be faster to get the same things via regular means.

Well, dungeons and monsters are pretty fun, but they are not good enough to keep me entertained for a month. As soon as the strategies to defeat them are invented they are no longer a challenge, and presents one gets from them aren’t worth all the time and effort.

Royal Bird

As we all perfectly know tofu is the most fearsome monster in all world of Twelve. Hundreds of brave adventurers died trying to fight these creatures. Tofus wouldn’t be so hard to defeat if not for their amazing mobility and speed, only those warriors who excel in ranged combat can safely engage into struggle with the yellow birdies.

Royal Tofu is no exclusion. In fact, it is even more annoying, unpleasant, and troublesome than its subjects. Not only it is really fast and agile, it also can hit pretty hard and several people at the same time. Moreover it casts the spell that diminishes its opponents stamina. However, the throne room is not big enough for the Royal Tofu to avoid all the hits and safely kill its enemies. While being pretty painful His Majesty is not invulnerable. It can be killed one of two ways: either surrounded so it can’t run or killed by ranged fighters like cras, sadidas, and enutrofs.

Nonetheless tofus and even their sovereign aren’t the worst nightmare of Tofu House, they are nothing compared to the maze room… No, there are no scary monsters there, nor the maze itself is hard to find a way through. BUT! the room is teemed with tofus! The second you start a fight with one of them the next takes its place. And unlike other places here tofus are aggressive, so it’s quite problematic to complete the maze fast. The only more or less efficient way to do it we’ve found is starting a fight with one member of the group. While tofu is busy preparing to defend the rest of the team quickly moves ahead. Onу person should wait for the fight to end and attack new tofu, so the first person who let everyone to move further can go, too. This way there is no need to wait till tofus move, and number of fights can be minimised. However this tactics doesn’t help if someone in the group is blind or believes he or she can fly, they all end up in the holes and have to start the maze from the very beginning.

This place is cursed, but we still have to pay more visits there. First of all, Otomai has asked for Royal Tofu souls and we don’t want to disappoint him if we plan to get dofuses. Another reason for these visits is Vibrating Royal Tofu feather. This feather doesn’t look like something special, and very similar to regular Royal Tofu feather. However, it is much harder to find and only it can be used to craft some equipment sadida is looking for. So we are doomed to spend some time visiting Royal Tofu and its hospitable subjects.

The one really good thing about this place is bird meat. Yesterday we got over 600 bird legs. They cannot be considered as a source of good edible meat, but raw they sell well and should pay us nicely for the trouble. Cra and eni are also happy with the regular Royal Tofu feathers which are needed for good patters.

Visiting Dreggons

After weeks of persuading I finally managed to get to the Dreggon Tunnel…

All in all it was not that bad: we captured half of the souls we’d been looking for, found and captured four archmonsters, and had some fun. However, this visit to dragons was somehow unsatisfying. The tunnels had almost only lonely monsters, and it was evident no one had visited that place for ages. Of course, no visitors is perfect for hunting archmonsters, but lonely dragons aren’t that good for gathering ingredients for smithmagic potions.

Today we’ll try Dreggon Sanctuary. Perhaps things are going better there.

Golden Dragoone: Quick Start Guide to Raising

Golden Dragoone is a soul-eater pet. It feeds on temple dopple souls. Theoretically it is possible to fully train a golden dragoone in 60 days, if one can kill all the dopples and doesn’t skip a day.

There are two main strategies for defeating dopples:

• Kill them faster than they can kill you. This strategy works nicely for heavy hitters.
• Prevent them from hitting you.

In our particular case the responsibility for training a dragoon belongs to cra and sadida. Both can’t deal incredible damage for various reasons, but they possess the abilities to immobilise dopples. Cra’s main strategy is to immobilise an opponent, push it if he or she managed to come too close, and occasionally to reduce opponent’s abilities for ranged combat. Sadida’s favourite tactics is summoning dolls to distract the opponents, to immobilise them with the soothing bramble, and running in circles. Perhaps, strategy like this requires more time, but it guarantees a sure win and highly reduced bread costs.

Even if the core strategy is the same there are some special tricks for each of 12 dopples, of course (I saw the fights almost only with the strongest dopples, so my recommendations are based on this observations and can be unreliable for weaker species).

Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining

The fourth Goultarminator challenge for teams’ supporters was a treechnid hunt. I genuinely  dislike treechnids, and not without a reason: Nechto was in need of Ancestral set, so we hunted them, Petrovna was in need of Ancestral set, so we hunted them, Kanni was in need of Ancestral set, so we hunted them, Viisas was in need of Ancestral set, so we hunted them. My guildmates, friends, all at some point were in need of Ancestral sets, so we had to go and hunt treechnids again and again… Even old lady was sick of them and suggested to buy two Ancestral sets for pandawa and xelor.

The Goultarminator challenge seemed like a nightmare: hunting treechnids once again. I thought cra would refuse to participate, even she was intended to support our teams. To my surprise she decided to go to the Treechnid dungeon.

“We will kill four birds with one stone” — was her explanation. “First of all, we’ll help our teams, secondly, we’ll get materials for the Ancestral sets, thirdly, we’ll get the Ancestral Treechnid souls someone has promised to bring to Otomai,” — she glanced meaningfully at our younger friends, — “and the last but not the least we’ll show Ki…”

“Ha-ha-ha” — enu said. “Now we all know what’s it all about. You just can’t allow Ki to look better than you. Ok, let’s visit our old woody friends.”

That’s how I found myself in a company with treechnids… However, it wasn’t as bad as it used to be: no transformations, no maze, more, but fast to kill, treechnids, better drops, etc. In fact it felt almost as a beach walk. Still sram managed to shirk one of the dungeon runs. Moreover she was impertinent enough to demand rescue and blame us for “the unfortunate concurrence of circumstances that prevented her from helping Rosal teams”. Well, she didn’t have much time to talk — cra wanted to be done with the trees as soon as possible.

As a result of participation in this event we got enough materials to craft two Ancestral sets. That was really nice, especially considering that we didn’t have to hunt treechnids outside the dungeon as it used to be.

The last thing that should be decided about the panda and xelor’s equipment is the choice of weapon. Xelor is going to opt for the Axel, as it will increase her abilities to restrain the enemies. And panda, probably, will go for the axe. Axes are the favourite weapon of pandas, and they even have inherited predisposition to axes, so they can use them more effectively than others.

And Another Bounty: Mr. Penguin

Being pushed by Ki and old lady our team continued to look for the Frigost bounties. A little trip to the lake and we saw Mr. Penguin, who was in our bounty list. We were lucky he had only one friend with him, so the arrest went smoothly and without any unneeded complications. Well, probably, one thing prolonged the fight a bit. It appeared that Mr. Penguin could heal himself. Of course, it didn’t help him, just made old lady grouse slightly more that usual.

The dirty work was done quickly and we had offender in our hands, planning to share the bounty. What was our surprise when we discovered seven more Mr. Penguins waiting to surrender.

I really don’t get it! Why they always wait nearby and then surrender instead of fighting for their freedom? Surely I understand the idea of cowardice, but they will be imprisoned and should’ve been terrified by this perspective. But no, they just walk into our hands… However, one of them managed to escape from our xelor friend. She is young and inexperienced, so she attacked too powerful for her monster and while she was busy fleeing from it her Mr. Penguin escaped. Enu was incensed — the bounty reward was about one forth of a million and old miser could bear the thought of the loss. Now she plans to go back to the lake to find the escaped bird.

And here is the picture of us surrounded by dandy penguins. Ki has such a funny face!

Exploring Frigost: Meet The Penguins

This time we went to see penguins — very unusual creatures that can be found only in Frigost. Some people think that they are close to full extinction, so we were asked to capture a few female penguins for breeding purposes.

Penguins appeared to be furious warriors and quite skilled mages: Penguin Mamas, for example, can bring back to life their companions fallen in battle. However, all penguins have significant weaknesses. Some of them are weak to fire, some to water, and some to air. Even though these weaknesses are compensated with high resistances to other elements, a well-balanced group capable of wielding fire, air, and water should have no problems defeating these birds.

We captured female penguins as requested, but, unfortunately, more are needed. The worst thing is that only one penguin at a time can be captivated and brought to Ken Tucky. Actually, it’s a huge problem with Frigost dwellers: they always complicate their requests so much that you need to circle the island again and again, and rewards don’t pay back for all the running.