2008-03-27 - The way of the shortblade

Log Entry for 23-11-08.

It's been another busy week on Calypso with lots of hunting and mining. Three globals toward the PotM competition, all hunting. I figure over the week I have almost broken even so am quite pleased about that.

The big news from the Guardian Tigers is that Rocky has decided to quit the game, his decision is based on only having one good day in a week with the rest of it being rubbish. It is a real shame, Rocky has done particularly well and both Karl and myself are impressed that he has done this without depositing. Fortunately he has shared his technique with us :). I am sorry to see him go and hope he visits once in a while though he is moving on to another game (I forget which one). Both Karl and myself wish him the very best of luck.

This will bring the Tigers down to only two active players again :) is two enough to be a society? For some reason we are very poor at recruiting! Guess we will have to try harder, the alternatives are to stay with the two of us or disband, I think that would be a shame :(. Anyone want to be a Tiger? We have some unusual practices that keep us amused, you never know you might like it! :).

On Saturday I set off for the forsaken outpost north of Atlas Island North, you know the one, it's where we have all been stuck during our early experiences here, normally surrounded by atrox of varying maturities, I was mining and hunting, the two combined worked out about even, though I was severely atroxed at one point and was revived at the aforementioned outpost which made the journey pass a little quicker :). Once there I figured it would be a challenge to escape it again without using a TP chip, to my surprise this turned out to be rather easy, I headed east and ran into a group of argonauts, I certainly was not expecting that and neither were they, I despatched them with all speed and then continued to wander to the north and slightly east until I reached Fort Argus meeting only a few easy mobs on the way and handful of ambus. That was supposed to be a challenge and it turned out to be ridiculously easy, I'll have to try it again but next time head straight for Ithaca or something :).

This evening was EUC vs SEG, at least that's how it started out. Cantbe, Tigeress, Mora and myself met at Treasure Island Castle at 1800 and proceeded toward the mine, I didn't have the mine so had to be supplied coords until I got the location. SEG were tough for the four of us, we all died at regular and quite short intervals and then TP'd back to the fray. After a while we decided this would work better with six players rather than the four we had and decided to have a crack at the baby spiders north of Omegatron. this proved to be an easier prey, we died slightly less often and took out quite a few before Mora had to leave. The three of us remaining re-teamed, this was basically Team Serious + one, it quickly became apparent that Cantbe and Tigeress had their technique down pat. Standing far enough apart to enable a mob to have to run between them when it decided to change targets and giving them the chance to lay down the maximum fire power while taking as few hits as possible, this also enabled each the chance to heal while the other continued to fire and draw the mob away from the one who was healing. As a knife weilder this left me running backward and forward chasing the mob and only hitting it when it changed direction, stopped or decided to attack me, this is quite a funny sight :) basically I'm piggy in the middle :). I am used to this as I very rarely get to hunt with other meleeists so I know when I reach a mob that I am in someone's line of fire and have to move left or right in between attacks to get out of the way. Team Serious obviously realised this was happening and closed ranks enabling me to stand in the centre and attack without the mob moving away from me. I do hope I have explained that well enough, thanks guys, it makes my life much easier, I'm not in the way as much and I'm not out of breath the entire time :). Of course the best weapon against these spiders would be a really big glass or maybe a huge boot but until MA decides to give us the BPs for these we will have to make do with what we have. We managed two globals from the hunt, at the second one I was at a revive about to TP back, when I got there Cantbe and Tigeress shared the loot with me, which was very generous of them, the Guardian Tigers do this with any items that are looted as a matter of course but it is a practice I have not seen often elsewhere. It's good to know there are still real team players out there even in these hard times :).

 

Log Entry for 30-11-08.

Time for another blog entry :).

It's been quite a tough week out there for me, not had much by way of luck, certainly lost considerably more than I have gained, nothing new there :).

On Monday Rocky returned his guardian Tigers shirt, a shame he is leaving but it's nice to get one back, so far he is the only one of four people who has returned their shirt, knowing he's one of the good guys makes it all the more sad he is leaving. On Tuesday when I spotted Rocky's arrival I RRRRROOOOOAAAARRRRRed (It's a Tiger thing, when any Soc. member logs in every Soc. member RRRRROOOOOAAAARRRRRs in Soc. chat, unless they make an embarrassing mistake, makes it really obvious when someone does log in, you tend to notice the box fill with blue capitals :)) but got no reply, was not till later I figured he had left the Soc. I checked a terminal and sure enough he had gone :(. I have spoken with him via PM since, it seems he is still really fed up with MA. I don't think he will be coming back, but you can never tell.

Some good news though real world related, Tiger Master Lee and The Playboy Girl had a baby girl on the 25th, they are the founders of the Guardian Tigers and although they now no longer play they do visit occasionally. I arranged the delivery of some flowers from the Guardian Tigers, that was quite a challenge, they are in Sweden, the flower site was in Swedish and I have no Swedish at all, I filled in the forms using only guess work. To my amazement the flowers did arrive and PBG came on-line Friday evening to thank us for them, sadly I was not on-line at the time.

Spent some time over the weekend hunting mermoth near Segna. Una needs the skins for a coat and I figured I may as well hunt them as anything else. I was rewarded with a single global for my efforts and posted that in the November PotM thread, it was my last entry there. The Mermoths do not often drop the skins and after several hours I only managed to gain 66 skins, Karl had a further 33, so 99 were passed on to Una late on Sunday evening.

During the week a few TPs were overrun with a selection of bots, I tried to go and have a crack at them but found the amount of lag at the locations too great for me to be effective, perhaps it was caused by the bots continually blabbering in their Soc. chat or maybe it's because they kept changing their clothes :), truth is my PC is a bit on the old side and the graphics card is below the required spec. I do get quite a lot of lag in some places or where there are a lot of mobs or players.

Quite early Sunday morning I reached a milestone, after more than two years I achieved Serendipity when I got to Knife fighter (hit) level thirty (Coolness here I come :)). So far Serendipity has not been particularly serendipitous but I should have expected that :).

Early on Sunday evening I participated in the weekly SEG hunt as arranged by Mora. I was about forty five minutes late. Had some trouble getting there, twice I managed to tp onto a SEG, how come I can be so accurate when it is disadvantageous to do so? :) Mora was just leaving as I arrived so I took his place.

This was a lot of fun and involved a lot of running for me as a blade wielder, I was not attacked that often as I was not doing as much damage as my team mates, when I was attacked I did quite well against them, my evade skills causing them to miss me quite a lot, when they did hit however I was normally killed in just one hit but survived a couple of hits on occasion. I had arrived with the wrong armour and the wrong plates, guess I was just in too much of a hurry :).

Tigeress did get a Tiger Helmet (F,L) which was the first one dropped on Calypso, there was much debate as to it's value, should be interesting to see what it does sell for. Burgerman received a Tiger Helmet (M,L), these were the only two items of note that were dropped while I was on the team. We finished about 2030 MA. It was good to be hunting with Team Serious and Burgerman again, I think the last time was the last but one EUC Beacon Mission.

This is one of those places where I do get quite a lot of lag, it is difficult for me to pull the life bar out of the SEG once they are moving so at times it takes a while before I can attack them, just clicking on them causes me to walk to a location behind them, I am looking forward to upgrading my PC but am still holding off until Cry Engine is released.

 

Log Entry for 10-12-08.

I seem to be a little late with this one, however something has happened to make the wait worthwhile (at least for me, maybe not for you).

Rocky has returned to the Streak :). I was mining in the LA south of Omegatron when I bumped into him and we had a chat in the middle of nowhere. His plan was to just use up his PED playing the game and then quit but it seems this is taking much longer than he at first thought it would, the result is he has had time to calm down a little and is now more prepared to take the rough with the smooth, even though there is normally quite a lot more rough than smooth. So I asked him if he would like to rejoin the Tigers and he said he would, I invited him and processed the application when I returned to civilisation or at least what passes for civilisation on Calypso. Once again we are three :). We could still do with a few more however, if anyone is interested in becoming a Tiger please PM me.

The triple skill increase bonus has been interesting. As I am extremely weak when it comes to crafting I have been spending many hours doing this. I have been making my old favourite "Basic Filters" with some success although not much! I have also been making some "Basic Sheet Metal" with less success, however the skills are going up nicely and I hope soon to be able to make a few PED here and there (fat chance)! Whilst on the subject of crafting, this is something that I tend not to pay very much attention to the screen while I am doing (normally watching a movie or something). If anyone was ignored while trying to contact me I do apologise, it was not intentional.

While talking of the current triple skills bonus. I was taking a look at my Kesmek Bett, having reached level 30 knife fighter (hit) I am no longer gaining SIB for hit, this week I reached level 29 knife fighter (dam). Having noticed the difference between hit and damage is once again increasing I decided to use the Bett much more in order to try to close the gap a bit and have used up my blade. The added bonus is once I get to level 30 damage I will be able to move away from the Kesmek series onto some of the newer blades. I do not know what the economy of the newer blades is like but the initial outlay is considerably less than the 1039 PED I paid last night to replace my Bett.

After getting a new Bett I set off for Atrax Beach and spent a happy hour in the sun slicing up the atrax there, the rewards seemed quite good but I have not yet looked at the cost, in truth I'm a bit nervous about working that out :).

Also on the subject of triple skills, Una and myself spent some time slicing and dicing molisk a couple of days ago, he is using the increase to gain as much HP as possible. It was a fun hour or so for me, I seldom have the opportunity to team hunt using melee weapons and I really enjoyed myself doing just that.

Phunksta has set off a Canley event in the build up to Christmas. There was much activity to start with but this has eased off a bit now as there are less people alive to take part :). Phunksta has asked me to act as a judge in this and since I was killed early in the proceedings by Anna (that will teach me to pay attention while crafting) I am in a position to do this. It is something I enjoy doing. The current vendetta has already thrown up a few disputes, these seem to stem from the Rules of Canley being a bit out of date (MA has updated the way things work, whilst I have not updated the rules to deal with this). Obviously I will not update the rules during an event but I am making notes of the issues and will amend the rules once the event is over.

This weeks SEG hunt was not as successful as the previous one, although I did arrive late, it was still a lot of fun. After the SEG we tried some of the robots from the current invasion. Unfortunately the lag I get from there being lots of mobs or avatars or just being near water made this a very difficult and quite frustrating business for me. I did not last long doing this although Team Serious seemed to cope with it without issue. I am looking forward to ordering a new PC :).

 

Log Entry for 17-12-08.

Be careful what you wish for, you may get it!

This week with all the triple skill gains I have been working on getting my knifefighter damage up to level 30 so I can move away form the very expensive Kesmek Bett and onto the Omegatron Flashfire, well I managed it after burning through a Bett and purchased a Flashfire, the mark-up on these is rather high at the moment, if I remember rightly the TT is 205PED and the mark-up about 165%. I set off fo Atrax Beach with my new blade and set about slaying me some Atrax and Allopyl, well on a slow hunt the blade lasted a little longer than an hour and my returns were about 50% of the TT so quite a large loss. Later I purchased a second Flashfire and had a go at some Atrox South of Zychon, although I spent most of my time slaying Maffoids, after that I went to Twin Peaks and took on some Argonauts. All were easy with the new blade, although it is slower than the Bett it does do more damage. Once again I returned about 50% of it's TT. I ended the day about 300PED down, not a good start for a new weapon.

As the Flashfire has such a short life I suspect it is a blade to use only when things are going well, so in the current climate very rarely would seem to be the order of the day.

On the upside, I have managed my second HoF this week, when I managed to find 273PED of lysterium. I was rather pleased about that and with the triple skill gain got quite a lot of skills whilst extracting it. I also managed my second Basic Filters Global using some of the lyst.

Mr. Pilkington has been away so has not been on much recently but Rocky has spent a lot of time on-line and managed a 700 odd PED hunting HoF at Atrax Beach, good for him although I have no idea how he does it. He has been playing about 6 months, not deposited anything and has recently managed Serendipity, he must spend a lot of time on-line to achieve that :). At the rate he is going he will soon be the most highly skilled active Tiger.

Zack has been concentrating on the Christmas Canley event, he has upgraded his scanner and is often asking me if there is anyone on-line and if I can find out where they are. I am happy to tell him who is on-line but I do not ask where they are, also if I tell him someone is on-line I also let the person know Zack has been asking, got to try and keep things fair but I see no harm in stirring the pot a little :).

There may now be a delay in me continuing my adventures, my PC has developed a fault, It seems to be the sound card, I suspect I can continue to play without sound but I like the sound, it adds to my awareness of where mobs are. So far I have spent about 3 or 4 hours trying to resolve the problem and had no luck. I intend to continue tonight. If it's hardware I am in the position of having to get a new sound card, as I am soon to replace the PC it seems a bit daft, I have raised a support case with MA requesting the PC specs. that will be required for Cryengine. That way I can make an informed choice as to replacing the soundcard or replacing the PC.

 

Log Entry for 22-12-08.

Some big news from the Guardian Tigers. Tiger Master Lee and The Playboy Girl have decided to start playing again. This will bring our number of active members to six. It has been a pleasure to login and RRRRROOOOOAAAAARRRRRRRRR and see soc. chat fill with capital letters again. It does mean I will need to rethink the next event but I'm sure I'll come up with something. Before that however we need to organise a welcome back hunt, hopefully we will manage this before Christmas.

The Christmas Canley carries on apace, there have been a few other issues thrown up which I will need to look at and amend the rules to cope with. I was thinking of doing this in January but suddenly came over all sensible and thought it might be an idea to wait and see what Cryengine does. Many of the issues are to do with the image posted and obviously these will change again come Cryengine so it may be worth waiting, then again how long will it take to be released? I guess the thing to do is review the issues in January and make some rule changes and then to do it again once Cryengine is released and then again a few days later when they have changed it due to unforeseen bugs. Essentially every time MA make an update Canley needs to be reviewed, looks like I will be busy next year :).

I managed to fix my sound card issue from my last post, it was an odd one and I won't pursue a detailed description here.

The triple skilling comes to an end today. I do not think I have made the most of this but then again I could not afford to once I maxed the Bett. I have managed to improve my manufacturing skills which I am pleased with, I am planning on testing them soon with the making of a knife or two, just need to get all the components first, I do have plenty of residue now so this should help a little. I have while doing this managed to increase my Basic Filters Globals to three, oddly many people seem to think this was not possible. The BP rating is still going up and I have managed to make a small profit from this. I will probably try for Basic Filters Global four fairly soon, once I have mined some more oil.

I do not know if a Forum SEG hunt occurred this weekend, with it being the weekend before Christmas I was quite busy and did not get much opportunity to login. talking of Christmas I think Cee deserves a Christmas present not sure just what yet but I have it down to just three options :).

 

Log Entry for 30-12-08.

As anyone who has been following the Merry Mayhem thread will know :-

http://www.eu-chronicle.com/showthread.php?t=6912

I have been taking part in this event. I am not expecting to do very well but we having a saying in England "It's not the winning, it's the taking part", this could be why we are so bad at sports. I have been having a lot of fun with this and have not been able to spend much on-line time with the returning Tiger and PBG but I am sure that will change soon.

After our glorious leader, Mr Pilkington RRRRRROOOOOAAAAARRRRRR'd last night he instructed us all to vote for Tiger as leader of the soc. again. Bit of a surprise there! I followed this instruction just before I logged out. Looks like a shake up is going on within the Streak, it will be interesting to see what falls out (hope it's not me :)).

I am intending to run the next Soc. event soon, was kind of thinking of doing it next year but I may just go for it tonight if we have enough members on. It would be good to get the crew together again.

I have returned to using the Bett as opposed to the Flashfire, the mark-up on the Flashfire makes this very uneconomical by comparison, so although I am not getting as much skill gain as I could I am at least using a weapon I have mastered, it's a bit of a shame but I suspect I will stay with the Bett unless circumstances change.

Zack managed to stitch me up good a proper in the Xmas Canley event. After my announcement that a good kill of me would get a player back in the game he kept asking me where I was and trying to arrange meetings and things to do, all very unusual to my suspicious mind. I suspected him of being in cahoots with Anna and resolutely ignored his requests. However he got Tiger involved, an innocent in all this, Tiger found me no problem, just looked at my latest globals and checked the coords. Tiger then tried to chase me down, I jumped into the lake and headed for a school of rippersnappers, which promptly killed me and moments later killed Tiger, those moments were all I needed once revived to tp back to the Feff hunting area, healing during the transit. Upon my arrival Anna was waiting for me and I was assassinated. Since that time the treacherous Zack, desperate to hang onto his winnings, has not been on-line. He knows only too well that Anna will come after him, chances are I would help her :).

Phunksta and myself had a meeting under the sphere in Hades, this was accidentally made public by Jesus. However, in spite of there being a bounty of 100PED on Phunksta's head and the chance for an eliminated assassin to get back in the game by taking me out, there was no sign of anyone there, very odd! Oh well if people are scared of us that must be a good thing :). maybe the next Canley event should be Phunksta and myself slowly taking out the rest of EUC, it seems that if you want a job done properly then you have to do it yourself.

 

Log Entry for 31-12-08.

Sorry about this entry coming so soon after that last! Didn't intend to start with such a blatant double entendre either but what's done is done!

More changes within the Soc. Firstly it seems we are changing out name, no longer shall we be the Guardian Tigers, soon we are to become the Divine Tigers. It's a good name although I am well aware that I am not divine and having meet all my soc. mates pretty much figure they aren't either! Then again we were not guardians either, except for that one dreadful secret we all share :).

In addition we will be changing our hierarchy, we have been military which is without doubt inaccurate, currently the options are basic or order. of the two I think I would prefer order but either is just fine by me.

Ultimately it does not matter what we call ourselves or how we structure ourselves. The way I figure it, I'm in a group of like minded individuals, all with at least a slightly warped senses of humour, some are more severely warped than others but that can only be a good thing :).

The Soc. event did not happen last night, we were not all on-line at the same time. Zack did stick his head above the parapet for a few minutes which surprised me, I expect he is hiding in a tree or some such :). we were all on at different times but not at the same time, such wonderful organisation :). No matter it will happen soon I expect.

We have the Green Beret for events, I have probably explained before but will do so again now as I have little better to do :). There are two as near identical as we could make Green Berets one is (M) the other (F), the idea is that whoever is the winner of the latest event gets to wear the Green Beret as long as they are ranked Captain or above. It means that even when we are all strapped for PED we can still run a cheap event and there can still be a prize. I guess it must have been a couple of months ago Karl and myself discovered that Rocky did not like the Green Berets, the idea was sound but they don't look too good, which is true enough, it was what Karl and myself could afford at the time, in fact it was more than we could afford :). As we have one member with an aversion to the Berets it looks like we shall need to improve them, I suspect making them look more Tiger like would be a good idea. Think this is something we should discuss within the Streak, hopefully we will get a chance to do that this evening. Although I suspect most of us will be slightly worse for wear by the time we get to it what with it being New Year's Eve and all.

Talking of New Year's Eve, here I am at work and there is no one else here, I am beginning to doubt if I am supposed to be here today but can find nothing on the various calenders.

HAPPY NEW YEAR one and all, may 2009 bring to you good life, good health and good fortune.

 

Log Entry for 05-01-09.

Well it's a New Year and a new day has dawned for the Guardian Tigers, yes the name change has not kicked in yet. The Ranking system has though, apparently I am now "Leader Advisor", I am not really sure what kind of Leader would actually take advice from me, I guess over the coming weeks I will find out.

The Feffing came to an end and the results published, only the top ten in each category were named and no points were given, a real shame that. I am thinking of raising a support case requesting this information along with how well I did just so I can see how much more effort I would have had to put in. Have to say I did manage to do quite well out of the event, I got through two Kesmek Betts and they both managed to pay for themselves, well almost pay for themselves which is pretty good going in my book :).

We had a soc event a few days ago, Tiger had organised it, it was a marathon running from the west coast of the island upon which Fort Ithaca stands through the island chain to a finish point near to Cape Corinth, along the way there were a ores and en-matters to pick up, these were worth different amounts of time off of a contestants actual time. This gave contestants the choice of run for it or take some time and search, there were also clues along the way these pointed to some of the bigger value ores and en-matters. In my run I did come across one of these clues, there was a circle of cells with one BLP cell in it and some other cells in a pattern of some description, it was taking my graphics card ages to render these so I decided to leg it, I did find just one en-matter on my mad dash, apparently it was worth two minutes. It seems my strategy paid off as I crossed the line first and after found items were taken into consideration I was ahead by just two seconds, a close thing. As the winner I received the prize which was an evade skill implant, always handy :). This was a nice event and was good fun, Thanks to Tiger for organising it.

At the end of the event it was decided to set a date and time for the next Green Beret event, it was decided that 22:00 hours MA on the 4th was the first time we would all be on line together for any length of time. Zack was not there to give any input, have not seen him for a week or so now, I am guessing he has either quit or is smarting after the Xmas Canley event. The soc. terminal was updated with the event time and date and I planned to talk to Zack about it at the first opportunity, the opportunity never came.

We kicked off the event on time, a surprise to me, in fact we may have started a little early. I asked everyone to meet at Nate Valley and then told them they were going on a beacon mission. I had been busy clearing the area of atrox before anyone arrived. It turns out that PBG had no armour or weapon to use so I equipped her with a FAP50, a healer is always handy to have on a beacon mission even a low level mission like this one. Tiger, Rocky and Karl all had a set of 6As which was handy. We tp'd to the location SE of Nate and I called down my first ship. On arrival we spent a little time sliding down the ramp and I was about to put the beacon in the socket when it was pointed out we had a stowaway, he had wandered up the ramp while we were messing about. I asked him to leave as this was a soc. event, normally I would have been happy to let someone else come along. We got no response from him at all and after a while the ship vanished and we all fell to the ground. Still no response, after a while it turned out he was having a smoke break and once the situation was explained he wandered off. I summoned the ship again. Basic plan for the event was for us to work as a team to get to the boss and then as individuals to open the boxes, as it's PVP on the ship competitors were allowed to kill each other on the way out, person with the most loot at the end wins. The competitors agreed amongst themselves not to kill each other on the way out as they thought this was a waste of a beacon, damn shame if you ask me :). We went through the ship like a hot knife through butter, it was really easy. When the self destruct sequence initiated we all started opening boxes, it was at this point that Rocky fell down a hole, I laughed so much, I felt sorry for him but it was funny :). After the ship was destroyed, we traded to get the scores and these were:-

Tiger 33.17
Karl 24.40
PBG 0
Rocky 0

I also managed about 20PED of loot so you can tell we did not recover the cost of the beacon, find myself wondering if that ever happens :).

So Tiger received the Green Beret and the prize (a full set of 6A plates at almost full TT). Congratulations to the new holder of the Green Beret.

As events go this was quite an expensive one to run, I had, had the beacon for about a year I guess and got the plates a few months ago, I was planning to run the event last year but my plans were scuppered when Rocky decided to quit, it really was not worth doing with just Karl and myself so it waited until a good time occurred. I enjoyed this a lot, and so did the rest of the Tigers, a pity Rocky fell down a hole, it should have been me I was fairly drunk :). Rocky was a beacon virgin, I suspect he will be a little more careful next time :).

 

Log Entry for 12-01-09.

It seems I am divine! You may well be shocked, imagine how I felt? The Society name change has kicked in and we are now the Divine Tigers, we are slowly building up our numbers and now have three people on a probationary period, only one of which (Zack) I have not seen for about a week. Also on the Society front, we have created an invite only social forum here and are putting together a few ideas for events and guidelines to extend what is available at the Soc. Terminal. So far it is all working rather well although we need a few more of our members to register on this site in order to get the most out of this.

As far as in game experience is concerned it has been a week of poor returns. I run Auto screen, excellent for capturing my globals and more rarely HoFs it will also capture other peoples if they are within range. At the end of each nights playing I normally have 5 or 6 captured images of other peoples success, this week I have most nights had no files at all captured in this way. I have not thought of using this as an indicator before now but it is quite a good one.

I have spent some time near Nymphtown this week taking on the heavier argonauts and being poorly rewarded for it. I did enjoy the challenge however, having upgraded my FAP to an 80 I can now in most instances take on two Hunters at once while wearing Rascal with 5A plates. It is mostly a close thing but good fun :). Being there has given me an idea for an event, I have tested the idea and it seems to work, soon I will write it to our Soc's event thread run it and write a report here to let you all know how things went, bet you just can't wait.

I had one very sleepless night this week, I managed to watch 4 films with minimal dozing and while doing so made a lot of Basic Filters and I mean a lot, I used nearly 5000 oil and lyst. During this time (8 hours) I did not get a single global but I did get my Basic Filters BP up to 92 Quality Rating.

Tiger has been experimenting with plastic surgery this week, thankfully he is not performing this, not sure I could stomach the results of that, rather he has been operated upon and is now muscle bound, think he has the bug for it, won't be long before I can't recognise him.

Saturday, might have been Friday, found me hunting Corns with PBG near to Billy's, this was good fun but we did not do well when it came to the loot.

Spent some time yesterday hanging out with Anna and messing about with pets, we had quite a laugh and guess what, it has given me an idea for yet another event, I need to do some testing first though, if all is good I will write that one up as well :).

In the evening I enjoyed a small Opalo hunt with Karl and his new disciple, Lilly. We had a good laugh taking out the Cadagutus (SP) near to Twin Peaks Stable along with a few Argos and some Exaros as well. During this hunt Lilly decided she would like to try life as a Tiger so Karl invited her and during a break I accepted her. So we have another new recruit on probation :). I even made a few PED on the hunt, I have been told this is easier with a gun than a knife but I am just plain stubborn!

 

Log Entry for 19-01-09.

Wednesday:-

An unusual occurrence occurred. Logged in and there was not one other Tiger on-line, everything seemed slow. I was chatting with Una and I was just leaving Twin Mall when I bumped into Una at the TP, fairly unusual but not outlandish, however within a minute both Man of Honour and Mad Nutter Woman had wandered up, so 3 of EUC's finest and myself had just wandered to the same place by chance. Had to log shortly after that but it was good to see these folk again:).

Later I had what must have been the worse hunt I have had in my time on Calypso! I got through about 30 argonauts and I quit shortly after I had burnt a mentor 5, the cost of the hunt came to about 35PED whilst the loot was just over 5PED. I would normally hunt a lot longer than that but decided it was best to quit.

Thursday:-

Decided on a another mining run as loot had been so dire. I got my self 100 bombs and 100 probes and set off from Bilton Towers to the purple area west of there, this is now an LA and there are no mobs in it although there used to be. The mining was OKish had bouts of no finds and bouts of several finds, nothing really big, I crossed the river and headed south west, guess what I found, Argonuats! Thinking about it maybe they found me,

"Doctor, I am being followed by Argonauts",
"You mean ancient Greek sailors?",
"Fortunately not! Forget about it, it's not as bad as I thought".

The argos mostly had nothing but one was more generous than the rest and I got about 25PED which covered the hunting costs of the trip nicely. Upon my return to civilization I was waddling well and found I had lost about 5PED TT so should be slightly in profit after mark-up.

Talking of mark-up, with the "credit crunch" (whoever thought that one up should be shot), I notice many governments are aiding and subsidising business both large and small. In effect our exploits on Calypso are businesses and although it is normal to lose it would be nice not to lose more, to this end are MA planning on subsidising us? If so I apply, first in the line etc.

Saturday:-

This started off quite slow with some poor attempts at crafting, lost a little over 100PED, decided that was not the way to go for me today and started a mining run, this was going OK. Anna had, had some success crafting and had decided on a mining trip to CND. After Tiger came on he called me to the Lair and on arrival I discovered this was for a discussion about Anna's future in the Tigers or rather her lack of one. We talked about this for maybe an hour or so and were joined by other Soc. members, in truth I cannot see what the problem is but it seems there were several issues, nothing I thought that wouldn't be solvable with a quiet word but others in the Soc. thought otherwise and it was decided that "She didn't fit in". As I had accepted her into the Soc. I thought it only fair that I should give her the bad news.

Anna had achieved a Lyst. HoF on CND and after getting it up returned to Calypso. I asked he to join us in the Lair, the Streak left and only Tiger and myself remained, when she got there I told her we had decided that she didn't really fit in, clearly she was stunned and said very little, I gave her the option of leaving herself or being pushed by one of us and she decided to do this herself, this she did and then logged off.

I have to say this whole thing does not seem right to me, I enjoyed having Anna in the Soc. I found her entertaining and generally the whole thing seemed to me to be more fun with her their but I am only one.

Feeling quite stunned myself I continued my mining run, Anna did log back in and I chatted with her in PMs, she was still very quiet, I did try to explain what had happened but found I could not, I simply do not understand why she was asked to leave, the reasons to me seem so trivial. It was at this point I hit a HoF of Lyst. the biggest I had seen, I felt no thrill at all, I spent six hours extracting this and some more from another global. Just had stuff going around in my head. Writing this I am still unhappy, I feel there is something wrong here.

Sunday:-

Things do not feel right. I did some more mining, Anna and myself went for a team hunt and mine, she was still very quiet and does not understand why she was asked to leave a society she was enjoying being a member of. I couldn't really help with that but I wish I could. Anna tells me there is no longer any joy in playing the game, a feeling I share. When later I managed to hit a couple of globals on some Feffs I still felt no joy. Rounded the day off making some more Basic Filters, I have enough lyst, managed to get the BP up to 96.9 before calling it a night.

 

Log Entry for 25-01-09.

Monday:-

Had some problems with the PC, it has been locking of late and when it does so only a power off will resolve the issue. Tonight it initially managed to lock at the Windows login screen, then whilst trying to load Firefox, then whilst catching up with stuff on this forum and then again a few minutes after arriving on Calypso whilst I was putting some lyst into auction (I still have plenty of that), I know with the mark-up on lyst that it is really TT fodder but I try to auction all I can as that way someone who needs it gets to use it and it gives a little extra revenue to MA, who lets face it, need every penny they can get :).

On reboot I decided to go for some maintenance and scheduled a disk check and then restarted. Watched that for an hour or so, it was very exciting, no problems were reported however when it rebooted it's self it decided to do the disk check again and would not take any notice of me pressing any and every key to stop it. I let it run. On completion I could start windows and could get to Calypso. What lyst I had managed to get into the auction earlier had sold so I put some more on. The only other Tiger on line by now, think it was about 2230 MA, was Rocky so we caught up as I had not seen him on-line for a while. I also looked through the auction as I decided I should try to get something I can use by way of remembering the HoF of late last week by (that's a terrible sentence, see me after!). I was looking for a pair of Ghost feet so as to complete the set, I know these are ridiculously expensive, obviously due the Limited nature of the blueprints but it would be nice to complete the set. There were none for sale so I ended up contenting myself with some black pants, would have preferred Longu but that's another rare item.

Tuesday:-

It seems that giving the PC time to warm up in Linux and then rebooting to windows causes this issue to go away! Very odd, things normally overheat and fail not the other way around. I am slowly selling the lyst at auction and my balance is slowly going up. I set out from Sakura to the North and West planning to mine, managed to take out a small atrox which was kind to me, I was not finding much and decided to head for the LA to the NW but was coming across many atrox and after I burnt my Kesmek Bett I found the en-blade 8 not really up to cutting through atrox on a regular basis so decided to tp into the LA. The LA used to be next to empty but I materialised in an area swarming with red dots, they were itumatrox and I did not last long. I revived in the LA and headed north and west toward Nate Valley, avoiding the now sparsely spaced itumatrox and mining as I went, I found next to nothing :).

Thursday:-

PC issues continue to give me grief, once on line and stable I spent some time at the auction, selling more lyst, I decided I did not really like the pants I had got on Monday, it's a shame that clothes look so different on the avatar than in the display window. I ended up getting some more pants this time I went for the Luna Line Coronas, still not longu but the outline is broken up, I put the black ones in storage as there are a lot on auction at the moment, will try selling them when there are few :). After that I decided on a mining run to the LA south of Sakura. It took me a long tome to walk there, mining as I went and finding next to nothing. When I did get there I was not there long as a cersumon made short work of me, I revived at Sakura.

Saturday:-

After looking for some mutants and finding them at Hades where the lag was just too bad for me I continued my mining run this time south of Fort Pandora. The finds were few and far between and there was not a great deal to be excavated. I find I am having to be much more cautious where I travel now, the best blade I have is an en-blade 8 and it does not last very long, I really should not have bought the pants and got myself another Bett but I do not have a history of making sensible decisions and see no reason to change that now :). However without a good blade I am struggling against mobs I would not normally think twice about so am having to work my way around some herds.

Sunday:-

Today I was not on-line for very long at all but while I was I managed to make some more Basic Filters, I figure the colonists will not be able to make any use of them against the mutants so continued with production. The BP is at about 98.4 now so hopefully it will not be long until it is maxed. My returns from manufacturing have been very poor of late but I intend to continue, lets face it I still have plenty of lyst. and managed to pick up some oil while mining so I may as well go for it.

 

Log Entry for 02-02-09.

P.C. issues have pretty much dominated the week, When it got to the point that it would auto reboot entering windows and just hang starting Linux, it was getting through Grub though, I removed all the cards and memory, cleaned out a lot of dust and then reseated everything, it started OK but still locked after a short while, was much quieter though.

The fact that it rebooted in windows and hung in Linux got me thinking, the graphics and sound continued to work, this has to be to do with the drives, I dismantled it again and this time removed and reseated the drives and their cables. Upon boot it stated and I left it soak testing for a while. The following night It stated, again no locking and I managed to perform a full back up. Still seems a very weird issue to me and I am not convinced this one is solved but it is currently working.

In the time I have managed to spend in game, I have not done a huge amount. I managed to get myself an e-blade 9 which I will carry along with the 8 and the 3 times mentor 5s. It should be of use against some of the tougher mobs as long as there are not too many of them as it burns out rather quickly. I found that out the hard way (of course) while taking on Argos, Mulmuns and Feffs at various locations.

I have bee making yet more Basic Filters, the BP is now at 100, still get BPQR messages though! I am guessing this is it's max but I do not know, assuming it is I am planning on performing a few experiments with the making of Basic filters, after all if it is maxed then one variable has been removed so I may manage some meaningful results, improbable but possible.

This week has been rather dire as far as getting a positive return is concerned, I can only assume most of it is going to the mutant slayers, unfortunately I am not currently equipped to do this for any length of time, I need to get myself another Bett.

I had a mining trip that lasted about four days on and off, I got through about 300 bombs and probes, the returns on this were poor as was the loot from anything I came across. I had a crack at some warrior? robots, I seemed to be able to take up to 05 without too much trouble and that was without the 6A plates, which are currently on loan, being fitted to the rascal. I also tried some argonauting, this did yield a small profit, I was rather surprised by this.

I am still trying to sell stuff at auction (mostly stored ores and en-matters) to get my PED balance a little higher, that en-blade 9 set me back quite a lot and has not proved to be as useful as expected but it will get me out of trouble now and again so is a good long term investment.

Not seen much of the other Tigers this week, I am guessing with my PC problems and a fairly busy schedule I have not been on at the same time as most of them. Hopefully we should be able to catch up this week.

 

Log Entry for 08-02-09.

I am struggling to remember much about the past week, most of it is a blank, it has taken me two days to write this.

Maybe it's the change of armour! Hmm, things are coming back to me :). I purchased a pair of Ghost Footguards (ML) to give me a full set of Ghost, only the feet are Limited (the rest I have had since before there were feet) but beggars can't be choosers. I have been trying out various mobs in the armour and have found it to be a significant improvement over the Rascal. I have kept the Rascal as I may well end up going back to it depending on costs etc. but first some experience of the Ghost.

I also managed to scrape enough together from auctioning ores and en-matters to equip myself with a new Bett ("Mmmmmm Bettyyyyy", Homer or Frank, your choice). Most of the week was uneventful but on one evening I went after longu and got myself a atrax global, the only real score of the week. Later that same evening I joined Karl and Jinx for a team hunt on allo and esto, it was fun and nice to see Jinx again, a pity about the loot though, still can't have everything!

On Saturday night the Tigers initiated their latest full member, Lilly who was formally Karl's disciple. After the secret rite of initiation (about which I can say nothing at all), Lilly, Tiger, PBG, Karl and myself went for a team hunt, we started on piggies but did not bring home the bacon so we moved onto Furor, these seemed to have very shallow pockets so we visited some Hispidus and managed a small global, the only one of the night. This hunt cut over 200 PED off of the Bett and the rewards were dismal, I do not think I can afford many more promotions like that one :) but it was a good laugh.

At various times, mostly late at night I have been busy with secret preparations for an event I have planed, I think I am about half way there now but really can't say too much at the moment, don't want to spoil the surprise.

On Friday night I started to twitter, it seems a nice way to stay in touch with people. I have decided that I will make no distinctions between being in game or in real life. If anyone wants to stalk me on twitter I'm ChelaBias www.twitter.com :) hope you find it fun.

 

Log Entry for 15-02-09.

Over the past week I have not been on line quite as much as usual due to real world commitments and the need for a bit of rest, I spend too long looking at computer screens and sometimes it just gets a bit much.

I started the week seeking longu, they were not very obliging, in fact they were positively stingy. I was lucky enough to bump into a generous atrax which helped a bit, things generally were poor. Almost everyone I spoke with had the same view point.

Later in the week I decided to try out the ghost against some lesser atrox, it turns out to be just the ticket and does an extremely good job of protecting my fragile little body against these vicious employees of MA :). I managed to do quite well from the atrox, I went out to the north of Sakura four times and twice came back with globals, the first time I guess I broke evenish, the second time was a definite profit, which made up for the stingy longu from earlier in the week.

I have also been logging in for a short while quite late in the evening so that I can continue my secret event preparation without being disturbed by anyone. The secret event preparation is now almost complete and I have tentatively scheduled a time between 1800 and 2000 on Thursday the 19th of February for the event to take place, so far only Karl has confirmed he will be there, Lucky is not sure and I have not had a chance to speak with Tiger, PBG or Lilly. The location is set as TI Castle and I for one would welcome spectators. If any one would like to watch the Divine Tigers making fools of themselves please feel free to do so. I will let you know the actual date and time once I know it and I will put any last minute information in the chat box.

I rounded off the week with a few ambu, these have never been generous to me and they have clearly not changed their minds about that :).

 

Log Entry for 23-02-09.

For the most part this has been a quiet week, I have not hunted too much and have not mined at all. What hunts I have been on have returned some very poor results and I was getting close to being pecless when I came across a pair of longu trousers at the auction. I have been looking for these for quite sometime now and at 500PED buyout they were a snap. I had to do it, if I left them to be bided on someone else would have got them, I deposited :(, I got the trousers :), just the shirt to go now. I have been trying not to deposit as the exchange rate between US$ and UK£ is appalling at the moment with $100 costing me about £70. There is a part of me that regrets doing this, the other part is looking for the shirt :).

Anna has decided to make some big changes, she is scraping her old avatar and has created a new one. I assisted in the transfer of goods and wealth and have become her mentor, this is going to be the easiest mentoring job ever :). Anna II is already well on her way to completing he discipleship, after just two days it says 32.5% complete. I am intending to do at least one TP run with my new disciple before she completes her discipleship, however I have a busy week and there is a chance I will fail miserably. Anna has started a blog of her adventures ( http://www.eu-chronicle.com/showthread.php?t=7081 ) and it should prove to be an interesting record as with her experience she will have a good idea of what is important in the development of an avatar. On the evening of the 23rd she got her first crafting global, not bad going considering she only started on the 21st, congratulations my young disciple :).

The Tigers have a new trial member, Ulleh. This brings the streak to six full members and two trial members.

On the evening of the 23rd the Divine Tigers event I had been planning finally took place. "A Day at the Races" had taken a lot of preparation and with Ulleh joining only a few days before it was scheduled to go I had to do some extra preparation in a hurry, fortunately I had the time and the resources :). "A Day at the Races" was a snablesnot racing event. I had over the past few weeks tamed and trained six snablesnot male young up to level three and with full trust. I then named them after the Streak members and abandoned them so they went down to level two, after that there was some selective feeding to get them all to the same energy level and the trust was restored to full with some grooming. I had also tamed and trained a snablesnot male mature to use as a prize and in a test run.

The preparation done the competitors still not knowing what to expect arrived at Treasure Island Castle. Competing in this event was (In order of rank):-

Tiger Master Lee
The Playboy Girl
Karl Pilki01 Pilkington
Lucky TheKid Strike
Ulrika Ulleh Fridlund

Five competitors is unheard of for a Tigers event so I was very pleased to have such a large turnout and also pleased that two of them had not taken part in an event before.

First I talked everyone through mapping the Go To command to a key and/or a screen icon. The snables had been reduced to level two so that the Follow command was disabled, Follow would be far too easy :)! Next we went to the pool at what I assume is the Castle, this was to be the finish line. Then we went to the stables where I handed out the pet deeds and allowed everyone a chance to practice while I re-logged as I could see no pets. On my return things were much better and I marshalled the competitors into a line at the stables where I got a screenie (the first image from left to right Ulleh, Tiger, Lucky, PBG, Karl).

The course was from the Stables clockwise around the lake, passing the TP twice and finishing in the pool at the castle, no training was permitted, only the Go To command could be used and the snables were not to cut corners across the lake.

<In the style of a horse race commentator> And there off! Karl runs into an early lead and is soon out of shot (second screenie shows Tiger and Tiger's snable in second, Lucky and Lucky's snable in third and PBG's snable can just be seen in fourth). As they reach the Castle turn Karl falls foul of the water trap and is forced to double back, Tiger takes first place and Lucky goes into second, Karl manages to hang onto third and PBG and Ulleh are bringing up the rear, as they disapear down the far straight. But Oh what's this? A Furor has found it's way onto the course, Tiger has managed to avoid it with only a minor inconvienience, Lucky is not so lucky, the furor has killed him, my that's going to hurt in the morning, he will be hard pressed to revive and get back to his snable and what's this, Mr. Pilkington is legging it from the furor but where's his snable? Karl has led the furor into the lake and made the course safe for subsequent competitors but can he find his snable? Tiger, PBG and Ulleh are now out of sight and entering the obsticle part of the course (this being a series of houses on the lakeshore). Here comes Lucky running past the finish line looking for his lost snable and amazingly after a short search he finds it and continues the race, he disapears from view after Tiger, PBG and Ulleh. Mr. Pilkington is still desperatley seeking snable. Now it's the long wait for the competitors to emerge from the stable side of the lake shore and after some time a purple dot appears on my scope and I can tell from the health bars that Tiger has managed to retain his lead as he heads in round the lake side of the castle up the steps and over the finish line in a time of 21 minutes and 17 seconds we have a winner! Karl conceedes defeat and comes to the finish line without his snable and it's another five minutes before PBG appears on the scope, she decides to take her snable through the castle then up the steps and across the finish line for a magnificent 2nd place, finishing in 26 minutes and 36 seconds, the wait for third place is not very long and in a surprising turn of events Lucky has managed to pass Ulleh who it seems has had some problems with losing he snable in the lake. Lucky also elects to finish through the castle for a well earned third place in a time of 28 minutes and 32 seconds. The first three are home (see the third picture). Karl has run off and retreived his snable from the stable while we wait for Ulleh. Ulleh comes in fourth place in a time of 39 minutes and 4 seconds. A very good showing for Ulleh as she has only been playing a couple of days. Summing up

First Tiger, second PBG, third Lucky, fourth Ulleh, Karl fell, five ran! <end race commentary>

We all went back to the stables where the snables were returned to me so they can be prepared for their next race. Tiger was presented with Trophy, a snablesnot male mature and we all messed about with pets for a bit. The rest of the streak are welcome to borrow their respective snables at any time should they wish to practice for the next snable race which I am hoping to hold around the ides of March.

All in all, I had a lot of fun preparing for and running this and gained a few skills in whip, taming and training. I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as me and that they are looking forward to the next event in the snable race series.

 

Log Entry for 01-03-09.

It has been quite a week! This is a long one.

Suddenly everything went quiet, I had been busy preparing and planning the snable racing and with that done, it was a "What do I do?" situation. I have a new disciple so I thought TP run, Anna is rapidly doing all of these herself and I wanted to do at least one before she graduated. Anna wanted to do Fort Pandora to Nymphtown so we meet at Pandora (always nice and peaceful there) and headed off toward the south east. On the way we mined, badly and encountered a few mobs, mostly atrax, longu and maffoids. It was good fun and as usual when we hunt or mine together we got separated when we were about half way toward Nymphtown, didn't really matter as the real world beckoned and I had to log off.

The following day I logged in and found myself pretty much surrounded by atrax and longu, I headed for a longu, I like them, they are the classic Dr.Who monster, looking like a bloke in some sacks. Before I reached it an atrax young attacked, I defended myself of course and when I emerged the victor found that, that little atrax was carrying the best loot I had ever seen (http://www.eu-chronicle.com/showthread.php?p=37274#post37274). Normally when I get a global I feel kinda happy, a bit of a buzz, sitting on the sofa I give myself a Mexican wave, not an easy thing to do when you are by yourself but somehow I mange it (don't ask for a video). With this however I just sat there, I didn't even smile, there were PMs popping off like crazy and soc. talk became a bit busy, it took me a little while to respond, just sitting there, last time I felt like that I was sitting in the drivers seat of a car that I had just totalled at 70 mph, I was miraculously unscathed. I caught up with myself and began to chat and thank people while feeling a bit ill! I did cheer up after the shock had worn off and I am ashamed to say I was sad enough to make a skin for my DS from the screenie :).

Well, what to do after that, I was in the middle of nowhere half way between Fort Pandora and Nymphtown, which way should I go? Obvious really, Nymphtown every time, I keep hoping that one day there will be some nymphs there, so far I have been disappointed every time, maybe with cry engine when the rendering can them justice! It took a while, there was a lot of oil in that loot and I'm old and bald, in spite of my streamline scalp I do not move very fast! I was attacked several times upon my way and I in turn attacked several times also, of course the loot was rubbish but I really didn't care :).

At Nymphtown I unburdened myself and decided I should have a look for something on auction that I could get to remember this day by. I could not believe my luck, a longu shirt, the last piece of the longu ensemble (assuming I don't go for a coat). I quickly TT'd some of the oil and paid the buyout, yeah 500PED is a little steep but that's about normal for longu. So I became "longu man" not much of a superhero my only superpower is "carna longus" and I really don't want to go there! I started putting the oil on the auction, not for the 102% mark-up but because it allows others to craft and it helps poor old MA out a little, after all they need all they can get :).

The following night the oil I had auctioned had sold so I put some more in the auction and once again had a little look at what was on offer, must be my lucky week, there they were in the middle of the listing a pair of ghost foot guards unlimited, to complete the set, again 500PED but yes that seems to be the going rate and I can always sell them again should I need to, I suspect the ghost will do me for some time, certainly the reliable rascal did! I am pleased to have upped my game a little, to be taking on the atrox on a regular basis as opposed to only when I had to gives me a nice warm and blood-thirsty feeling.

I finally did manage to do that TP run with Anna, we went from Nea's Place to Palm's Corner and then onto Nate valley (which isn't a valley). Leaving Nea's we took on a few ambu and they were generous for the first time ever, we even managed a global, I have been waiting for Anna to post that so I can add my shot of it to the thread, her shot must be more exciting, I will try to remember to do that this evening. The mobs were not difficult although the lag was a bit of an issue for me. Anna did get a mining global during the run whilst I got as near to nothing as makes no odds :).

Later that same evening while I was in the auction rooms at Sakura (selling some more oil), I came across a pile of BPs for some tools, there were several for the OM 101, I didn't even have the tools book but decided I would try some and spent some time making these, going for quantity I was succeeding more that I failed, for quality I was not succeeding at all. I will slowly auction these off over the next few weeks, they do seem to be selling. The rest of the evening is a blur, I was on line for at least six hours and other than those two things I did nothing that I can remember.

And so to the the weekend. I spent some time on line Saturday morning, mostly chatting but I did go and try Faucervix island, south eastish of PA and at the mouth of the river. I was chatting with Babyback while doing this and she also visited the island, I think we both wished we hadn't, it was quite dire there and the lag was terrible. Later I headed toward Fort Troy mining as I went, again dire.

Sunday morning and Anna has completed her discipleship so I released her and received a FreanD Alpha Mentor which I have repaired and added to the wall with the one I received for Zack's graduation. I doubt I will ever have another disciple that was as easy to tutor as Anna, let's face it, she knows more than me :).

Sunday afternoon and it was a green beret event for the Divine Tigers. As winner last time Tiger was running this event and it was a rather interesting one. Participating were:-

The Playboy Girl,
Karl Pilki01 Pilkington
Lindsie Lilly Lynnie
Ulrika Ulleh Fridlund
Brat girl sweden
and myself.

A very good turn out. We started at Jason Centre where Tiger explained he had hidden various types and quantities of extractors at various locations, when we reported in a PM to him what was there he would give us coords for the next location. The person in the lead at any time was not allowed to use a tp chip but others were. Ultimately the clues would lead us to Tiger, and we had to scan him and tell him what his displayed profession was, first to get it right won. The prize was stuff that had been donated by soc. members and it's TT value came to a little over 200 PED plus of course the coveted green beret.

Once we all understood we were told the first clue was on the soc. terminal so we all dashed to one of those and started reading, I could see nothing out of place, I read bits over and over but none of it made any sense as far a clue was concerned. Everyone else had legged it by now and I was wandering around Jason looking for other soc. terminals on the off chance that there were some extractors on them :). What a fool, I eventually had to be prodded in the right direction, the clue was in the area about Tiger and it gave us some coords and told us we had to go to Eudoria's highest point and approach from the west. By the time I got to Orthos someone (PBG I think) had already been there and got the clues so I was allowed to TP, so I did, I did not arrive quite where I expected to but identified the mountain and found the extractor that was hidden there, I told Tiger and was told some more coords to go to.

While this was going on there was a lot of soc. chat happening, I was not paying much attention to it as I was figuring stuff out and tp'd to somewhere near the given coords, it was a small deserted Umbra encampment and I wandered about and found the three extractors that were there before again PM'ing Tiger. I did not get a response, it seems there had been some confusion with some of the coords and people had been mislead, it was decided to meet at Orthos to then go to the camp I was already at but once it was discovered I was there it was just meet at Orthos and go for the next clue.

There were two next clues one was right the other wrong, the first was to go to the caves near Limnadian the second was the tower thing south of Pandora. I choose to try the tower and on arrival heard that Karl was now in the lead, since he was not there I had chosen the wrong place, so I tp'd back to Pandora, took the TP to Limnadian and tp'd toward the caves, I fell short and struggled with the water taking all he resources of my graphics card but eventually found the way in and located the three extractors there. I was then told to go to the PE exchange at some location that turned out to be Fort Troy. Off I went found the two extractors there and was told to head to, I think it was Fort Ares but I could be wrong where I would find something useful. Soc. chat announced I was in the lead, I still have no idea how that happened but I went to the given location and on looking around found an anti toxic shot, I was then told to go to a location SE ish of Camp Echidna this was in one of the PVPs. Off I went and headed into the zone, I had Tiger's life bar on the screen and this soon lit up, I was working my way though lots of exa and daiks at the time. Tiger stated firing explosive shells at me. I could see them coming so they were easy to dodge and in so doing I managed to collect an entourage of daik and exa, these I lead at Tiger, in the confusion I managed to get a scan of him and find out what his profession was before he and the mobs killed me. He managed to loot some BLP cells from me before I revived. Once I revived, I announced his profession (Sadly I have forgotten what that was) in Soc. chat and was declared the winner. I was surprised I had managed this, with everyone being ahead of me after I went to the wrong location, I wonder if it's the tortoise and the hare? After all I have as much hair as a tortoise!

We all headed to the Lair where the green beret was handed over and the following prize items were given to me:-

Electro Matrix 12 ped
Eye Oil 100 ped
Lyst stone 30 ped
Chikara InvestaFoe ES100 12 ped
Small storage container 12 ped
L/Murdand Groover 35 ped
Emik S30(L) 3.6 ped

This is a very decent prize raised through contributions from all soc. members, I would like to thank those who donated.

This was a well thought out event and a really nice idea with the professional standing and the scanner thing, it's a shame it went a bit wrong at the first clue, if that had been right I doubt I would have been the victor here. I did enjoy this and I think the other Streak members did as well. Nice one Tiger :).

Only issue now is I am left to come up with two events in March, time for some serious ponderings I think.

All in all this has been my most fortunate week yet upon Calypso, I hope the good fortune continues and that I can share it with my friends.

Told you it was a long one :).

 

Log Entry for 08-03-09.

A very short log entry for this week as I have not had a great deal of time on-line.

I have spent most of my time trying to make my new graphics card work 100% with EU and failing. It does work fine with other games, just with EU it is a bit messy (sometimes worse that others) I have raised a support case but I think the real issue is that when I am running entropia.exe it takes 100% of the CPU resources, looks like the whole PC just isn't up to it any more, maybe I will need to get a new one before Cryengine comes out. Talking of which at the Cryengine site there is a "is your PC up to it" test, I failed of course :).

Anna has been away all week so have only seen her briefly, from what I can make out her new avatar experiment is not going very well :(.

I did have one hunt and mine session this week, the return from hunting was very poor but the mining only lost me about 7% which is not bad.

I have also managed some practice for the "Ides of March" Snable race. I am intending to have one a month on the middle weekend of each month (hence the Ides of) for a year, there will be points and small prizes awarded for each event. The points to be tallied at the end of year to see who is the champion and a bigger prize will be awarded then. I know this is very ambitious in terms of getting people to commit to it but if I don't try I will never know :).

 

Log Entry for 15-03-09.

This has been another good week for me :). Several atrox hunts have resulted in some good loots, in particular a 130 PED ESI which sold very nicely paying for the next Vass, very useful :). I also had some limited success mining which was good. It has become harder lately with the advent of the latest skill bonus on mining and crafting, loot has been very slow since shortly after that kicked off :(.

Highlight of the week had to be the Snable Races held Sunday starting at 1600MA, We met at Genesis, the races were to be at New Oxford, we set off with our snables, or in my case a sacrificial Daik (Poor Didums). I had already scouted the route and tried it with Didums twice, I knew the big bridge was a trap and kept to the Southern shore, the first race was to be across the Southern Bridge, this was going to be Snable Drag racing with six races using all the bridges. The image is of the Tigers and their snables on route to New Oxford, it was pretty cool looking back to see them cresting a hill :). It went wrong before we got there, all the pets became trapped, they could not go forward or back unless they were pushed and although they tried they could not cross the server divide. After trying for about 30 minutes we gave up and let them auto-stable.

There was a contingency plan, as this is a series of races I had tried out a couple of other possibilities and elected to try the "Nymphtown Ripper Race", although this turned into the "Nymphtown Ripper Debacle" rather quickly. We reassemble at the Nymphtown Stable. The course was to be run in three heats with points being awarded for each heat.

Heat one was to start from the land and run along the jetty near the stables into the water where there was a right turn and a race to the top of the steps in the castle on the island. A couple of the contestants (we had five) just headed straight for the castle so I recalled them all for a re-start. However once underwater the snables can move faster then their owners so they had to be chased to the island and then returned to the start. A few rippers had a go and poor Brat was killed and her snable lost in spite of a search, we waited for it to auto stable, it was brought to the same condition as the others and once again we lined up for a start. The start was good, all the snables dived off the end of the jetty and headed for the island, their owners in hot pursuit. My plan was to TP to the island to monitor the finish, it was at this point I discovered I had accidentally TT'd all my ME earlier in the day, I had to swim for it and fortunately made it to the finishing post in time:).

Heat 1 results:-
1st Karl 3 points
2nd Tiger 2 points
3rd Ulleh 1 point
4th PBG 0 points
5th Brat 0 points

Unfortunately Brat had further complications with the rippers and died, this time she knew where to get her snable from and recovered it while we waited.

Heat two was from the top of the steps in the castle and off to the Eastern shore of the lake, I was to be the finish post as there was no easily described target. I started the race then legged it and started swimming toward the shore, approaching the shore I found the largest shoal of rippers I have ever seen :(, I headed south and east in an effort to avoid them which I did, sadly the snables just kept going and the poor contestants did not stand much chance. I became the finishing post but in an area the pets were afraid to go so I had to move North, I passed PBG's, Ulleh's and Brat's pets on the way. I stopped on a ridge as the new finishing post.

Heat 2 results:-
1st Karl 3 points
2nd Tiger 2 points
3rd Ulleh 1 point
4th PBG 0 points
5th Brat 0 points

Exactly the same as heat one! PBG and Brat died (more than once), Ulleh died just once all three struggled to recover their snables but with the aid of Karl and myself distracting the rippers this was achieved.

Heat three was a land based race around the northern shore and back to the jetty we started from, this went pretty much without incident although some of the snables got their feet wet which they were not supposed to do, this was overlooked.

Heat 2 results:-
1st Tiger 3 points
2nd Ulleh 2 points
3rd Karl 1 point
4th PBG 0 points
5th Brat 0 points

I totalled up the points and added a few for the number of time people had died, the final result was:-
Tiger 7 points
Karl 6 points
Ulleh 5 points
PBG 3 points
Brat 2 points

These were announced in reverse order to heighten the tension and there was a gap left after I announced third place :). Prizes were given out, these were in the form of nutrio bars, 1200 for 1st, 600 for 3rd and 300 for 3rd. It's not a lot but I have now handed the pets over to the competitors for them to look after themselves, by giving pet food as prizes the cost of pet ownership should be quite low.

This event should have taken a maximum of one hour but with the series of disasters it actually took a little over three. A big thank you to all the patient competitors, I hope it was at least some fun for them :).

Now I have to start planning for the end of month Green Beret event, I was thinking of doing something with pets but maybe I can think of something else :).

 

Log Entry for 22-03-09.

It has been an interesting week, the Atrox at Cape Corinth have been rather obliging, I managed a few globals and a HoF. the Atrox seem to have stopped dropping the nice items of a couple of weeks ago and are now concentrating on oils. I am guessing the boom of a few weeks ago is moving toward a bust as the globals seem to becoming less frequent, only time will tell.

I have been busy planning the Green Beret scheduled for Sunday the 29th at 1700MA (I think). I have called it "Like shooting Fish in a Barrel", In next weeks report you will find out why. In truth I am not yet sure this will work I need to test something but have not had the opportunity to do so. Hopefully over the next few days I will manage this and if it fails will come up with an alternative.

At times I have been continuing my quest to achieve a Basic Filters HoF, so far I have not even come close but was heartened at the weekend when I spotted one go through in the global spam, at least it is possible.

Also this week, much animal training has been achieved, I am trying to get to a point were I can have more than two active at a time, not sure why any more, there was a reason but this senile old fool has forgotten it.

I suspect I have been playing too much, I managed to burn through the Bett I purchased last Sunday by Saturday morning, that is much more hunting than I would usually do in a week, normally one of those will last me coming on a month. The other reason is that I have twice dreamt of Calypso, only fragmentary glimpses but they were both very distinct, the first was of some Atrox (there's a surprise), the second was of stinktree board, very exciting :).

Mining has been poor for me, I have tried several times in several locations and results have always been poor. As a result of this I have decided to keep a record of my expenses and returns, at least for the time being, I am expecting to be disturbed by the results this will display, so I doubt I will keep the records for long :).

 

Log Entry for 29-03-09.

Well it's down to Calypso with a bump! This past week I have almost got through another Bett, amazing how quickly they go when you use them :). The result of all this was four globals, most of which were on the small side, needless to say I have made a loss at least at TT value this week.

Mining was also for the most part poor with the exception of Saturday when I was on a four or five hour mining walk to the West of Fort Troy, there were some big mobs around and I was outposted more than once during my wandering :), although the mining returned no global I was definitely in profit from ores and at a small loss from en-matters, hunting had a positive return due to a nice Allo global so it could just be that at that time MA were being generous.

Karl has not been on-line all week but this was a planned outage, Anna has been in-game more than of late. There were several evenings when I was the only tiger representing the Streak.

I have registered for an event at Jason Centre (details in the screen shot), I have not done one of these before and am looking forward to finding out how this works. For details see the screen shot. It's a shame there are no knives allowed but I have other melee skills so I will have a go with them. I am looking for some suitable weapons for "Fight Pub", hope something turns up in time, don't see me doing very well using the TT fist :).

I spent some time Saturday night out argoing with Ulleh and Brat, I was not actually argoing (much), the intention was to get Brat her first global so Brat was shooting and Ulleh had a go with her knife, nice to see a woman with a knife :), I was healing them both and failed only once I think when a hunter snuck upon us. We did not manage to get Brat her global but we will not give up.

Late on Saturday evening I bumped into Babyback briefly, she tells me she has had a great week with twenty five globals, she had returned to Miniopolis to stash some loot as she was team hunting Letomie with her soc. We had little time to talk much more but I will make an effort to do so this week.

Speaking of Letomie, I had a crack at one of these this week, I like the way they move, their mouths are quite Dune worm like :) other than that they look like slugs. I did not survive long alone but almost hacked my way through one before being killed.

Now we come to the Green Beret event, this was called "Like shooting fish in a barrel" It was to be held in the arena behind the stables at Genesis but we did not have enough competitors to fill the area so I moved it inside and it was held in the stable area between the main entrance and the exit to the arena. My initial thoughts were to equip all contestants with Vumpoor J4s and some shells but Ulleh and Brat did not have the skills necessary to use these so I carefully (well I thought carefully) calculated the damage per second and found a weapon combination which would do the same, for them to use. At the start Tiger, PBG and Lucky were each equipped with a Vumpoor J4 and 2000 explosive projectiles. Ulleh and Brat were each equipped with a Mann MPH DLx with 1000 light weapon cells and a Castorian Survival EnBlade-A. The idea was they would run out of ammo and then as those with Vumpoors defended themselves against those stabbing they would also injure themselves.

Sadly I had miscalculated :(, I had not taken into account the lower fire rates that those who have not maxed a weapon get from it so the Manns lasted almost as long as PBG's Vumpoor, not as long as Tiger's and longer than Lucky's (That in it's self shows the skills coming into effect). In addition moving the fight inside caused the pistols not to be able to fire through walls whilst the vumpoors could.

To begin we brought our pets into the stables and left them at random to act as additional obstacles. While the carnage was going on I waited at the main entrance to the stables and healed all those were revived before they entered the stables. I was also busy noting down who had killed who. When I had time I entered the stables and fired a few random shots with my Vumpoor into the air just to add to the chaos. The whole thing went on for nearly two hours, sadly I did not see much of the action but the competitors enjoyed it and it sounded like bedlam from outside. The competition was due to be over when there were no explosive projectiles left but we cut it short of this as it had gone on too long and people needed to do real world stuff. Both Tiger and PBG were out of shells and had to spend time avoiding being hit by then, had it gone on longer I doubt the scores would have changed the results.

The scoring was based on a simple formula (kills/killed) * 10 this gave the following results:-

1st Tiger 24.0
2nd PBG 11.9
3rd Brat 7.5
4th Ulleh 6.8
5th Lucky 3.5

From 140 Kills :).

So once again Tiger takes the Green Beret and the prize pool which this month was valued at 126.14 PED TT, well done to him but I must try to give him a bigger disadvantage next time :)!

Take a look at the spread sheet, it will show you who killed who the most. My apologies Ulleh :).

Lessons learnt:-
1) It went on too long, half the number of explosive projectiles would have brought this in at about 45 minutes.
2) Need to carefully examine competitors skills and select weapons they have all maxed.
3) Lower health competitors need to be able to do a little more damage either by having better weapons or by having more ammo.
4) Do not make last minute adjustments.

I will carefully look at peoples' skill levels and try to come up with some kind of handicap system probably based on ammo available before trying this again. It would be good to get them all using Vumpoors but that may be sometime in the future so looks like we will be sticking to duller weapons for a while :).