Sword 163: Halloween

Ryuk (Kurt) reached Expert Lv.10, while passively collecting more Ancient Runes. Gloriana (Female Soldier), Geryon (Trooper), and Mistilteinn (m/fig) also reached Lv.100, bringing the family up to Lv.47+0. The weekly Griffon mission dropped only Symbol of Leo. Team Arena missions yielded 2 Symbols of Libra and Symbol of Cancer. These new additions completed our existing 2nd and 3rd symbol sets.

For a very long time now, we were constantly harassed by a beggar asking for 10,000 vis in Coimbra, and we finally gave in and threw some money at him, asking him to go away. He claimed to be a royal guard of Ciam, on a diplomatic mission to Katai. Somehow, the clueless guy ended up in Granado Espada instead. We told him that we didn't care and he should go away, but he won't listen and continued chatting. This "renowned fighter" had his wallet and id papers stolen by a bunch of thugs. We agreed to recover his stolen stuffs, if he would just go away. After defeating those thugs, we discovered that they were part of a gang led by Flatulus (Gracielo), who cheated by taking drugs during the fight. We told the kick-boxer to go away to nurse his wounds as he just got his head bashed in, but at least he got his stuffs back.

However, he did not take the hint, and started asking about Ferruccio's Legacy. We told him we didn't know about any stupid legacy, and that maybe he should ask Invierno about it by going away to the Frozen Waste. Maybe Montoro had been talking to him as well, since he pulled the same scam with another thick-headed martial artist (Baek Ho). Then, Fritz showed up uninvited (again), and we told him that he can go away too and take the other guy with him. The cheeky old man ignored us and told the Ciam fighter that he should team up with Flatulus (Gracielo). Since Flatulus (Gracielo) was currently in our family, we hurriedly said, "No way. You should make your own fortunate by going away."

But he thanked us for accepting him into our family, and gave us some Shiny Crystals. We told him, "Thanks for the crystals, but now kindly please go away." He shamelessly walked right into our quarters and stuck his butt on the couch. Later, Gloriana (Female Soldier) came back after training in Errac, and shouted at him, "Hey you! That's my spot! Go away!" But he seemed to be hard-of-hearing, so the tired soldier had to stand by the side, glaring at him. Thus, we named him Phlegethon (Irawain) after the river of flame in the Greek Underworld, since we got the feeling that he would be getting toasted and sent to the Underworld fairly soon...

Thelandira (f/mus) took the new guy along to Tetra Ruins and Dr. Torsche's Mansion for a bit of training while doing the monster hunts for the witch. Adorabelle (f/ele) revisited the Haunted House again. Since each Haunted House mission lasts for 5 minutes, she had to spam [Thunderstorm] skills for 1 whole hour for every 12 keys possessed. She managed to use up all 24 keys before succumbing to sleep. This Halloween 2011 event is getting a bit dull and repetitive after a while, but then so is everything else... Those back costumes just take up already limited inventory space. It was kind of a nuisance that they made a non-stackable item as a common drop. We weren't sure at this point if we should bother collecting more keys. It was getting somewhat boring.

There was a bug that was fixed during this week's maintenance, which some players exploited to gain selective control over the random rewards (especially, Event Ring Box). In Singapore servers, exploiters were banned for 15 days (first time) or permanently (repeated). See Exploitation of Halloween Event Box. Recovery of a permanently banned account will cost USD200-600. [Source] Kaching! In Taiwan servers, exploiters were also banned, with Wayi releasing a list of some banned players - see 《GE王者之劍Ｒ》停權名單 10/07-10/19 and 10/20-10/24. The bug was also fixed during their maintenance this week. See 10/26《GE王者之劍Ｒ》伺服器開機公告.

For Singapore servers, the drop rate of Spirit Coins was apparently reduced over there, as an administrator (Xanxus) cited the following reasons:

This Halloween Event is a freebie event where players only need to play, to exchange for premium items. The previous rates were found to be too easy and had to be reduced. Comparing to S2, we have almost twice the duration of event. After the exploit was discovered, IMC helped to remove the exploit, and also to stem the overload of the premium items in the game. Please consider that our duration for this event is longer than S2, and that you will also have enough time to get the premium items. [Source; bold mine]

For Sword 2, we have tested the Haunted House mission after the maintenance to find no significant difference in coin drop rate. The Sara's Bewitching! (Singapore) event was originally due to run for 4 weeks (later reduced to 3 weeks). This suggests that Sword 2's Willow the Witch event will run for only 2 weeks, although G1 gave no official end-date for the event. If this is true, then the event witch will probably be going away by next week's maintenance. It will be advisable for pioneers to use up their event keys and coins before then.

The Halloween Mass Orgy Event at Dr. Torsche's Mansion Savage Garden (ch1) turned out to be a lag-fest as expected. The boxes were handed out at the end by sending a specific private message to the hosting G1 staff... and wait. We waited for about 30 minutes, and was then auto-summoned to the G1 staff who opened a trade window to give out the boxes... We didn't get anything special out of our boxes though, just the following:

AM's Touch Triumph Potion (1 hour) x5 Socket Flux x10 Strength Potion x5 Enchant Sedative x10 Upgrade Accelerator x20

Jeepers Creepers Pink Lollipop x20 Red Lollipop x20 Soul Crystal x20 Bloody Coffin (2 days) x3 Witch's Hat x1 Enchant Sedative x20 Sweet Candy x50

As expected every fortnight, The Devourers introduced 2 new boxes in the Bazaar (250 Gold each) -  Quinzel's Penderie & Raiden's Angel III. The new items are Blue Serpent Costume (f/sco), Phshi Rastere Costume (f/mus), Arcanero Plate Costume (m/fig), Pigeonne Hair (Valeria), Angel Azriel's Wand (AR33 special rod), and Dragon's Scales Sabre (AR32 sabre).

Some of this week's broadcasts were brought to our attention.

And they claimed back here that the association with the known scammers/thieves is no longer true. Rubbish to the 12th power.