Coupon Shadow

Jun2

So ok, now I get Nightshade.  He has a 1 to 1 heal that is fairly quick and can be used in a pinch or for off healing in a group.  He uses the lowest shots of them all at only 2 per hit, which is an enormous savings in shot cost and carrying weight, not to mention less trips back to town.  He has like 300 patk less than the strongest pet, but that’s not really that big of a deal.  With a zone with herbs him not having VR isn’t much of a problem, and he has the highest mdef so he’s GREAT around mobs with magic attacks. He also has an AOE taught which is super useful if you have to pop pet UD and pull ranged mobs in so you can hit them.

I basically only use him when grinding solo these days.  I call him Coupon Shadow because he’s so cheap to run.

This entry was posted on June 2, 2023, in PvP.

You Just Need One Drop

Apr5

Funny story, so I had plans on going back out to VoS to grind but with all the sieges going on I couldn’t port hardly anywhere.  I ended up in Aden and thought I would just got to Seal of Shilen for a bit.  Well, like 5 minutes into it, a Guardian Sword dropped.  Top B!  I sold it for 115m, bought my BW light set outright, bought a maj necklace and ring (sealed though, I forgot unsealing costs so much, like 880k aa!) but held off upgrading my weapon or shield.  I’m not meleeing with my pet so I’m going to keep my balance around 100m for the moment.

This entry was posted on April 5, 2023, in PvP.

The Money Situation

Dec19

This game is interesting money-wise, especially when it comes to gear.  There are no repair costs, but literally everything costs money, and a lot of it.

  1. Ports: it costs a small fortune to move through just one town, anywhere from 1200 to 10k or more.  This is cost prohibitive to new players, which is why newbie travel tokens came into play.  How about just reducing the port cost altogether?
  2. Warehouse fees:  Why does it cost money to put stuff in a bank, or send it to someone else? WoW came out the same time as L2 and sending mail to anyone cost nearly nothing, and your bank was free, outside of optional purchase of bags to make it bigger.
  3. Weapon and armor upgrades: Holy beans does this get out of hand.  For example my no-grade (level 1 to 19, technically) gear was probably around 45k.  I skipped D grade but a mithril set was probably 1 mill.  My C grade set was 3 mill.  So from no grade to C grade, a 6500% increase.  You can see how it’s basically pointless to sell your own gear to help with newer gear.  Letting a 3 mill C grade set go for a 30 mill B grade set is ridiculous 900% increase.  3 mill is nothing in that case.

Then even if you do come up with 30 mill, you need more than that to account for other increases, especially in the realm of weapons.  Shots and spiritshots cost more as your weapon gets better.  As any class but especially summoner, you can’t drop all your money on your armor because you need some at a minimum for shots and crystals to even summon your ‘weapon’ which is your pet.

I still want BW light because I get hit quite hard just once or twice if I can’t get my pet to pull aggro quick enough, but I’ll have to buy it at 30m but have 40 mill just in case for other things.

This entry was posted on December 19, 2022, in PvP.

Nightshade

Dec10

 

I learned Nightshade the other day, then decided to pull in Excel and document all my servitors stats, crystal usage, shot usage, skill, and downsides if any. The summary is as follows, at level 56 and all servitors levelled up:

Shadow: Slowest speed, passive (and undocumented) VR, highest crystal usage but otherwise Patk only about 88 lower than soulless. An absolute boss for 2-3x hp mobs, only really needs heals on 2 or more mobs at once, or mobs in the yellow/light red range.  Since he’s so slow, you can easily run along side him and melee if you so desire, which is what I do.  Takes 30% exp though but well worth it.

Soulless:  Fastest speed, highest patk, two skills (poison and corpse explosion, neither really worth doing imo), only takes 10% experience BUT has a MP draining debuff they place on the summoner that brings your mana regen to a standstill.  Should stick to 1x hp mobs that are white or lower, or you’ll be doing a lot of healing that will slowly drain you to nothing thanks to the debuff. May as well just stand around and let him attack though because he’s quicker and the mana drain is a bitch.

Nightshade: Second fastest, only takes 5% exp but has patk far lower than the rest.  Think like 500-600 less.  Has a taunt+curse combo that includes reducing pdef and mdef both single target and AOE version.  However has ZERO mitigation skills to go with those taunts and unbelievably his pdef is the SAME AS THE OTHER PETS. He has a big heal but it’s a 1 to 1 health transfer from the servitor to the selected target.  Could be used as an off-healer though if like, all the other healers were afk or oom or something. No idea why you’d have this guy out at all though. As of right now I have no clue what niche he fills.

Silhouette: Slow as Shadow for some reason, and takes a whopping 90% exp.  Only takes 1 D crystal to summon though.  Has the same patk as shadow and a Steal Blood attack to attack the enemy and heal the servitor. Likely just for pvp.

With all that being said, I will use Shadow for yellow mobs, 2-3x hp mobs, or when I need to be pretty safe.  He’s a fucking BOSS.

Soulless is quick and strong if you are in a safe scenario with 1xhp mobs that won’t gang up on you, white or green is perfect. Also takes considerably less exp.  You really need herb drops to keep his hp up because your mp won’t keep up otherwise.

The other 2 are not worth using as far as I can tell at the moment.

 

 

This entry was posted on December 10, 2022, in Lineage II.

In my 50’s

Dec9

So! I’m about to hit 56 and things have been going pretty well.  I did finally get an invite to a clan but I’m honestly shocked it didn’t happen before it did.  I am glad I picked phantom summoner because I can easily solo white mobs even 2-3x hp mobs with Shadow and I barely even have to heal.  Beast shots are cheap and I can carry like 15k of them easily.  I don’t have to stop and rest basically ever, unless I’m resummoning and rebuffing but at no point do I have to sit down and wait.

As I understand it, on this server there are clearly classes that no one plays.  I guess no one bothers with any tank and bishop is considered the best healer but otherwise completely useless because he has no damage buffs of any kind.  How it was back in the day too I guess.  #noregrets though playing one for so long.

Anyway apparently a PS is the worst summoner because it doesn’t have features for a party.  Like a warlock has buffs that are good for melee, I think, and elemental summoner has good buffs for mages.  But PS has nothing.

Class balance in this game was always trash, though.

But since I basically do nothing but log in and solo, PS fits me just fine.  I made enough money to purchase a homu with acumen and I’m hoping to buy BW light at some point.  I melee with my shadow because that’s the play style I decided to take.  I don’t buy shots for myself though because earning money is hard enough as it is.

It’s enjoyable though, and my clan is fun just chatting.

This entry was posted on December 9, 2022, in Lineage II.