Year of the Tiger

Sword of the New World has began its Year of the Tiger Event for 2 weeks (Dec 30 - Jan 13*). See Ho the Tiger forum topic for event details. Also, be reminded that the Snow Drop Challenge Event (i.e. typing Christmas carols) will end by the next maintenance (Jan 6, 2010).

Update (*): The bug will be fixed on maintenance (Jan 5), and event will be extended by 1 week, ending on Jan 20 instead. [Source]

Essentially, the New Year Event works like this...

1. Talk to Wandering Blacksmith in Coimbra (H3, Channel 1 ONLY).
2. Give him 1 Suspicious Red Ore or 10 Pure Talt + 10 Pure Ionium + 10 Pure Quartz + 10 Pure Aidanium + 10 Pure Etretanium.
3. Talk to the Tiger next to him.
4. Type in any 3 numbers (e.g. 123), and the Tiger will respond. Tapping its fore paw means a digit is the right number and in the right position. Tapping its hind leg means a digit is the right number but in the wrong position.
   
5. Guess the correct number and talk to the Wandering Blacksmith for a reward and to accumulate points.
   

Materials Required To Play
Suspicious Red Ore drops in every map (higher drop rate in low-level maps), and cannot be traded. Every hour, the Wandering Blacksmith will only accept up to 30 Suspicious Red Ores from the entire server (and not 30 per family). Thereafter, you have to wait for the next hour or use Pure Ores (10 of each type) instead.

For the benefit of low-level players, Pure Ores drop in Lv.80+ maps, such as Prison de Joaquin, Ustiur Zones, and Joaquin Treasure Chamber (Diamond Coupon required). You can also convert 3 Refined Ores into 1 Pure Ore at the Smith in Reboldeaux (E6). Since Pure Ores can be sold to NPC, each game will essentially cost you 20,000 vis.


What Is My Number?
You have to keep guessing the number, and see the Tiger's responses for clues. For example, let the target number be 372. When you guess 321, the Tiger will tap fore paw once ("3" is correct) and hind leg once ("2" is misplaced). Since "1" is not among the 3 digits, the Tiger does not respond for it.

The numbers do not repeat (i.e. you won't get 666), and "0" will not appear as the first number. Otherwise, it is basically a matter of logic (via elimination), luck... and bloody-minded persistence.


Rewards
Each game will reward you a random item - 20 Pure Ores (random type), 1-2 Pure White Fur of White Tiger, or 1-2 Sharp Claw of Black Tiger. The last 2 items are "potions" which provide party-wide unique buffs for 150 seconds. Both buffs do not stack with each other, and the "potions" cannot be traded.


White Bless Buff: Immune +5, Movement Speed +10%, Defense +10


Sharp Claw Buff: Penetration +5, Attack Speed +10%, Critical +10
If you got the correct number on the first guess, you should receive 3 White Gold Bars (1m vis each) instead. However, a bug currently exists that hangs the client when the NPC tries to give you the first-guess rewards. After client restart, you will be locked out of Coimbra channel 1.


Event Points
You get points for guessing the correct number. The less guesses you take to get the correct number, the more points you will get for each game. After you accumulated certain amount of points, you must guess the number within a limited number of guesses or receive no point at all.

Guesses	Points	Not Valid After...
1-3	8	-
4-7	5	3,000 Points
8-12	3	2,000 Points
13-40	1	1,000 Points

To buy a Tiger Pet Box, play one more game with the Tiger after you accumulated 1,000 points. When you talk to the Wandering Merchant for reward, he will allow you to buy the pet for 400k feso. The price is reduced to 250k feso (at 2,000 points) and 100k feso (at 3,000 points). The pet box cannot be traded.

• White Tiger gives White Bless buff for 20 minutes + heals 1500 HP
• Black Tiger gives Sharp Claw buff for 20 minutes + heals 1000 HP
• Golden Tiger loots the item drops every 2 seconds

The top 3 players with the most points in each server will also receive bonus rewards (Lacquers, White Gold Bars) at the end of the event. You can check your current points and the top 3 players by talking to the Wandering Blacksmith.


Personal Thoughts About Event
Like the Christmas typing-carols event, I personally find this event too tedious and time-consuming. On average, I think most players get it with 4-7 guesses, which amounts to 5 points per game. This means you need to spend hours after hours in order to guess about 200 numbers to be able to buy the pet~!

The fact that the Event NPC is located only in Coimbra Channel 1 does not help matters. Massive lag and event bug caused some annoyances to the players. IMC really should place Event NPC in all 3 towns and all channels to distribute "traffic" and avoid congestion. A tip shared by some players for reducing lag in town is to reduce Model Render Quality: Characters under Game Options (Alt-O).

The NPC also talked too much. You need to click 4-5 times just to get to the main event menu. They should disable the introduction speech after the first time you talked to him. Assuming you take 200 guesses to get 1,000 points, getting to the event menu essentially requires 800-1,000 clicks!

I will edit this entry again when I get the 3 pets... still at 800 points at the moment. But luckily, I still have about 30k Pure Ores in my inventory, so it should be enough... Yay, I got bugged at 2,013 points when trying to buy the Tiger. And the maintenance "fix" doesn't help me.

So... after weeks of waiting, those who were bugged after the 1st week will not getting the Tiger at all. The tigers will be released again in the future, but I doubt it will be anytime soon.¹


Related Links

• H3llBurner's Nest: The Tigers
• Christmas Adventure (Russian)
• What Number Bugged You?
• Tiger Pets (Screenshots)
  

Edit: Added some bug-related information. Added more related links and Raiden's update on bug and extension. Added first-guess reward of 3 white gold bars.