Journal - Return To Orpesia

It has been almost 7 months since my previous journal post. When the server transfer was completed in January, all items in the inventory and vault had their enchantments removed. It took T3Fun 4 months to get their act together to restore the lost enchantments. ^[1] (They wasted no time in releasing cash-milking Lyndon Box, however.) I submitted 6 tickets now, and yet after waiting almost another 3 months, nothing was restored. There wasn't even any response other than automated e-mail replies ("Thank you using customer service. etc etc."). I hate spam, and I'd like to be patient, but this is starting to get vexing.

Anyway, there were play-time (AFK) events every month since. The featured rewards for the latest Playtime Event 7 required 2,000 points, which amounts to 333 hours of game time. After almost 3 weeks, I finally got Evil Shotgun Costume and Evil Rod Costume.

In the new server, I started with Legacy faction, which was basically the small Schiavona clan remade. But due to lack of active players, it was later merged with uh, AtrawhatisnameAsomethingorotherAdunno... AAA, anyway. Then, the active players of AAA faction merged with Halcy faction, so that was it.

With the new version update, I have recruited a host of new characters, and as usual, named them after assorted characters from mythology/history/fiction:

	Ororo - the mutant who manipulates weather and lightning in X-Men comics.
	Cthugha - the living flame, one of the Great Old Ones in Cthulhu mythos.
	Thrym - the frost giant who stole Thor's hammer in Norse mythology.
	Ankhesenamun - the half-sister and royal wife of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
	Chrysopoeia - the term used in alchemy in reference to transmutation into gold.
	Morgiana - the slave girl who saved Ali Baba from the 40 thieves in 1,001 Nights.
	Shahrazad - the Persian queen and story-teller of 1,001 Nights.
	Dunyazad - the younger sister of Shahrazad in 1,001 Nights.
	Horus - the son of the murdered Osiris in Egyptian mythology.
	Avicenna - the Persian polymath and philosopher during the Islamic Golden Age.
	Godot - the absent character in the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.
	Charybdis - the sea monster (or whirlpool) featured in the epic The Odyssey.
	Scylla - the six-headed monster opposite Charybdis in the epic The Odyssey.
	Venus - the goddess of love and beauty in Roman mythology.
	Veneralia - the love festival in honor of Venus in Ancient Rome.
	Arianna - the maid of Erica Blandelli in Campione! light novels and anime.
	Nehushtan - the brass serpent used to cure snake venom in the Hebrew Bible.
	Baba-Yaga - the old hag with a hut on chicken legs in Slavic folklore.
	Bibulous - the god of wine and foe of the Oh God of Hangovers in Discworld novels.
	Unicron - one of the robotic heralds created by the Allspark in Transformers franchise.
	Nymphalidae - the largest family of butterflies with 6,000 species worldwide.
	Valentinus - the theologian and heretic in Gnostic Christianity.
	Avesta - the holy scriptures of Zoroastrianism.
	Saya - the Lovecraftian entity from another dimension in Saya no Uta visual novel.
	Garuda - the bird deity who serves as Vishnu's mount in Hindu mythology.
	Fenrir - the monstrous wolf-son of Loki in Norse mythology.

Since I do not buy T-Coins, a lot of the premium characters are simply unavailable - Pioneer Queen Grandma, Sniper Bernelli, Cherlyn, Valeria Vendetta, and Spy Olivia. I hope these characters will eventually be available via events, as were Cadet Elisa, Cadet Adriana, and Sorang.

In any case, I think this is a bad precedence. The game used to have more free characters with a new premium character once in a long while. Now, it's like most characters are premium, with only 1 free character per version update. Free-to-play is going down the drain...

I have completed Kielce Scenario, along with all the sub-quests to date. The family has also advanced some of the daily favor quests. At first, all Kielce favor quests were done almost daily, but eventually some were dropped for being more trouble than they were worth.

One of the annoying ones is Durant's Kielce Research daily quest. Acquiring 100 Surveys With Doodles usually take some time, if you are not actively hunting. And if you don't finish the quest in one go, you will end up with 3 quest items taking up inventory space...

Another nuisance "feature" is Kurt's Promise of Baron favor quests. You need to talk to Johnny in Los Toldos daily to accumulate favors, which costs Otite Perfumes if you are not a baron. The Soul Crystals reward offsets the cost somewhat, but the annoying part is that the quest ends with two stupid quest items taking up space in your inventory - Cursed Pistol and Cursed Dagger. And so far, it doesn't seem like there will be a quest update to remove them...

After persistent hunting, the family was promoted to Rank B for all pioneer merchants - Vent, Magia, and Tempestar. Some may prefer to use 3 accounts with each dedicating to 1 specific merchant. However, there are 2 main benefits of doing all 3 merchants on 1 account:

1. Always benefit from the bonus points and favors of the urgent requests. Having an account that is dedicated to 1 merchant often results in bonus for a different (unwanted) merchant.
2. Spend less game time per day on this activity, assuming you cannot run 3 game clients at the same time. If you do it in sequence (i.e. login/farm/logout for Vent, then login/farm/logout for Magia, then login/farm/logout for Tempestar), it will take a really long time to farm 40 points per merchant.

Of course, this results in negative favors for all merchants, but this can be offset by other things. Firstly, the bonus favors from urgent requests grants 10-50 favors to a random merchant. The remaining can be offset by buying Letters of Credit. If you do not want to spend points on your main account, you can even use alternate accounts to accumulate 10 daily points for each merchant, then buy Letters of Credit to transfer to your main account. In the end, points (being limited) on your main account are more important than favor.

I have acquired 3 Recipes - Enhanced Hope of Argus from Vent B Shop, and sold/traded them so far. The 4th one should be available soon...

When first introduced, I visited the personal farm daily, using Yetzirah (Angie). It usually starts with the setting up of a Scarecrow, followed by building cannon turrets and rotating blades around it. She bred chickens for Cockatrice Eggs and Elemental Jewels. I have encountered Rabbit King a few times, but never gotten Rabbit Liver... After completing Panfilo's favor quest for [Diable] stance book, it starts to get rather repetitive and boring. Eventually, after the last chickens were released, the farm was closed indefinitely, leaving the rotting crops for the Wild Wild Wild Wild Boars.

I have been doing Time Paradox missions regularly to collect Time Crystals. Dr. Torsche made 2 Evil Ice Bracelets and 1 Evil Fire Bracelet so far. The crystal collection is almost done for the 4th bracelet... but enchantment for the latest bracelet is horrible. Enchantment and enhancement are the only things that really piss me off in this game...

In addition, I crafted Strata Devil Ice Bracelet for Thrym (Ion). Devil's Dreams are a pain in the ass. Alchemy sucks, and the Lonely Musketeer only gives one per day. The event which supposedly rewards it (see Playtime Event 6) sucks even harder, since there wasn't even one out of 1,000+ points.

I have been joining raids on Montoro as well, and got [Soul Bringer] stance book for Morgiana (Grandies). Montoro is usually quite stingy though. Many runs yielded only 1 book plus 1 skill ring... Other local editions of the game actually have roulette for this raid mission (e.g. see visiは今日も元気です). Ours look rather lame by comparison...

Oh, and getting all those Veteran G EXP Cards from Hunter June had the side effect of giving me enough reputation points for the 4th place... Heheh. Unfortunately, I have been missing some Clique Wars though, so war title remains at Lv.5 Squire with 376,663 contribution points.

That was it so far, until Bristia Season 2 update in the next maintenance...