I. MADE. HUNTER.
Sep. 3rd, 2003 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meteordustSome days aren't worth waking up to. Doors slam in your face, everything you try to do bogs down, and you wonder why the hell you even bother.
And then there are days when a shining moment sweeps all that away. When long effort pays off gloriously. When your friends come through for you. When, just for a little while, all is right with the world.
I've been playing Ragnarok Online for some time now. My main goal has been to train up my archer to a high enough level so that he can become a hunter, which is far more powerful, not to mention cooler.
According to physics, when you're inside a black hole, you can never escape beyond the event horizon. The closer you get to your goal, the slower you move. Levelling in RO is remarkably similar - the higher your level, the longer it takes to reach the next.
Also, in a black hole, the immense forces would crush you to death. Levelling often feels the same way.
RO on Sunday was a nightmare of server crashes, failed login attempts, and random disconnects. With only one level to go until I could graduate my archer into a hunter, the disruption was especially frustrating. I'd been partying with Lunakitty and the others in the Clock Tower dungeons, and I'd hoped to be able to cross the magic line that night. Instead, I spent ages just trying to log back into the game. By the time I succeeded, pretty much everyone else had gone to bed.
So I went back to soloing, wasting a lot of time getting killed by argiopes before deciding to return to Payon Caves. Reliable, but heartbreakingly slow - I calculated that I would need to kill over three hundred eggyras to get enough XP. There was no joy in this endeavour, only a long, tedious slog.
Only a game, yeah. So why the hell wasn't I having any fun?
The next day, I was back online with one goal - graduate or else. Through sheer bloodymindedness, I clawed my way up that last level a fraction of a percentage at a time. Even so, by the time I hit 50 per cent, I was bored out of my skull.
I went to try hunting argiopes again. Using what I'd learned from my previous attempts, I refined my strategy and achieved improved results. I had reached 68 per cent when Lenor messaged me, offering to tank sohees for me in Payon Caves.
We spent an hour or two down there, joined by Alby, who was also levelling up, and later Sir Cyrus, who helped tank. It was dangerous work, with no priestess in our party and aggressive monsters spawning on us all the time. Both Alby and I were killed more than once, and eventually he decided to regen for a while back on the surface.
The rest of us continued on, although we were running low on healing supplies. Then it happened - Lenor and I both got killed. Cyrus managed to revive me, but he had no way of bringing Lenor back. There were people around, but no one who could help, so Cyrus went off to look for a priest. I stayed where I was and waited for him, continuing to ask those around me for help.
Suddenly Sixe was there, telling me it was all right, Lunakitty had arrived. She resurrected Lenor, and then started giving out heals to anyone around who needed them. It was like the cavalry had arrived.
With Lenor, Cyrus, and Sixe all helping to tank, and Luna with her formidable support skills, things moved even more quickly. I could hardly shoot fast enough to keep up with all the sohees. Before I knew it, I was at 99 per cent.
And then everything ground to a halt.
I was trying to shoot at the nearest sohee, but nothing was happening. I tried again. It still didn't work. After several frantic moments, I checked the message window.
It said: "Please equip arrows first."
Oh shit.
I'd brought along two thousand arrows, figuring that it would be more than enough to carry me through. How naive of me. I checked my inventory, already knowing what I'd find. All my arrows were gone.
In the meantime, my companions were wondering why I was just standing there, with three sohees hovering around trying to kill them. "Start shooting already!"
It was embarrassing to admit what had happened, but there was no way around it. So I said to the world in general, "Does anyone have any arrows for sale?"
No one did. Cyrus offered to go back to the surface to fetch some, but before he could, one of the others yelled, "Just use your fists!"
Blink blink.
"You're kidding," I said.
An archer is so not built for melee combat. But I was so close, and I'd come so far. I wasn't ready to give up now.
So that's how I ended up tossing my bow aside and trying to fight sohees with my bare hands. The results were as pathetic as I expected - instead of doing over a hundred points of damage per hit, as with my arrows, I was only doing about one. But my friends were cheering me on, even as we were all killing ourselves laughing.
I was so caught up in the sheer insanity of it all that it took a few minutes before I realised I still had my dagger on me. My emergency 'if I ever run out of arrows' dagger.
D'oh.
The dagger, unfortunately, wasn't much better - I was only doing about three points of damage per hit. But then another revelation came to me.
Double Strafe.
Archers use the Double Strafe skill to hit an opponent with two arrows at once. The thing is, it doesn't actually use up any real arrows, only skill points. So I switched back to my bow and launched a Double Strafe attack. It worked, hitting for several hundred points of damage.
Woohoo.
In the end, I got that last one per cent. I made it to the next level. I was ready to become a hunter.
It was time to graduate.
I'd always thought that changing to hunter would be a straightforward process. Once you achieved the required level, you just spoke to the Hunter Guild NPC, and voila! There you were, dressed in your spiffy new outfit.
But everyone I knew on RO seemed to regard it as a big deal - spoke of it as 'graduation', and told me not to go ahead without them. So we prepared to make our way there all together, messaging people in-game or on ICQ to let them know.
Eventually, everyone else arrived: Mystina, who I'd only caught on RO once or twice before; Lillenthal, who I hadn't run into yet at all; and Lumialle, with his new apprentice in tow. All up, it was the biggest and closest to complete gathering of our group on RO I'd seen. It was really something.
We made our way through Payon Forest to the Hunter Guild. The map it was located on was home to a number of high-level aggressives, including a boss monster, Eddga. Fortunately, the most hostile thing we encountered was a hunter who demanded to know what we were doing there. It looked like he was camped there waiting for Eddga to spawn and didn't want us poaching his kill.
I spoke to the NPC who guarded the entrance to the Hunter Guild and was transported inside the building. At the far end of the long hall, a man stood upon a dais, waiting.
I'd never attended an RO graduation before, so I hadn't been sure what to expect. Everyone sat down in a line in front of the dais, so we could take screenshots of the occasion. Then I walked up onto the dais and spoke to the Hunter Guildsman, who told me the king needed more hunters and did I want to become one?
I said yes.
All of a sudden, I was looking at a different sprite of my character. He was dressed in hunter clothes. He stood and sat and moved differently. It was strange - but I could get used to it easily, oh yes.
Everyone congratulated me and started showering presents on the ground. It was just amazing, the sense of goodwill and celebration.
It was decided I should get my falcon as well before we left, which meant going back outside and winning enough XP to get the required skills. That didn't take too long. Cyrus and some of the others actually ran right into Eddga - and managed to kill him, scoring Cyrus an MVP.
Luna took me to Ghast Heim so I could practise my newly acquired trapping skills. After a few false starts (and embarrassing deaths), I began to get the hang of it.
I'm looking forward to roving far and wide across Rune-Midgard, testing out my new abilities. I've waited a long time for this. Being a hunter is going to be fun.
But mostly - mostly I remember how cool it was with everyone there. Whether it was down in the depths of the caves, or later, at graduation - I don't really have the words. But I can remember exactly how it felt.
It's only a game, yeah.
But sometimes, y'know, it can be fun.
And then there are days when a shining moment sweeps all that away. When long effort pays off gloriously. When your friends come through for you. When, just for a little while, all is right with the world.
I've been playing Ragnarok Online for some time now. My main goal has been to train up my archer to a high enough level so that he can become a hunter, which is far more powerful, not to mention cooler.
According to physics, when you're inside a black hole, you can never escape beyond the event horizon. The closer you get to your goal, the slower you move. Levelling in RO is remarkably similar - the higher your level, the longer it takes to reach the next.
Also, in a black hole, the immense forces would crush you to death. Levelling often feels the same way.
RO on Sunday was a nightmare of server crashes, failed login attempts, and random disconnects. With only one level to go until I could graduate my archer into a hunter, the disruption was especially frustrating. I'd been partying with Lunakitty and the others in the Clock Tower dungeons, and I'd hoped to be able to cross the magic line that night. Instead, I spent ages just trying to log back into the game. By the time I succeeded, pretty much everyone else had gone to bed.
So I went back to soloing, wasting a lot of time getting killed by argiopes before deciding to return to Payon Caves. Reliable, but heartbreakingly slow - I calculated that I would need to kill over three hundred eggyras to get enough XP. There was no joy in this endeavour, only a long, tedious slog.
Only a game, yeah. So why the hell wasn't I having any fun?
The next day, I was back online with one goal - graduate or else. Through sheer bloodymindedness, I clawed my way up that last level a fraction of a percentage at a time. Even so, by the time I hit 50 per cent, I was bored out of my skull.
I went to try hunting argiopes again. Using what I'd learned from my previous attempts, I refined my strategy and achieved improved results. I had reached 68 per cent when Lenor messaged me, offering to tank sohees for me in Payon Caves.
We spent an hour or two down there, joined by Alby, who was also levelling up, and later Sir Cyrus, who helped tank. It was dangerous work, with no priestess in our party and aggressive monsters spawning on us all the time. Both Alby and I were killed more than once, and eventually he decided to regen for a while back on the surface.
The rest of us continued on, although we were running low on healing supplies. Then it happened - Lenor and I both got killed. Cyrus managed to revive me, but he had no way of bringing Lenor back. There were people around, but no one who could help, so Cyrus went off to look for a priest. I stayed where I was and waited for him, continuing to ask those around me for help.
Suddenly Sixe was there, telling me it was all right, Lunakitty had arrived. She resurrected Lenor, and then started giving out heals to anyone around who needed them. It was like the cavalry had arrived.
With Lenor, Cyrus, and Sixe all helping to tank, and Luna with her formidable support skills, things moved even more quickly. I could hardly shoot fast enough to keep up with all the sohees. Before I knew it, I was at 99 per cent.
And then everything ground to a halt.
I was trying to shoot at the nearest sohee, but nothing was happening. I tried again. It still didn't work. After several frantic moments, I checked the message window.
It said: "Please equip arrows first."
Oh shit.
I'd brought along two thousand arrows, figuring that it would be more than enough to carry me through. How naive of me. I checked my inventory, already knowing what I'd find. All my arrows were gone.
In the meantime, my companions were wondering why I was just standing there, with three sohees hovering around trying to kill them. "Start shooting already!"
It was embarrassing to admit what had happened, but there was no way around it. So I said to the world in general, "Does anyone have any arrows for sale?"
No one did. Cyrus offered to go back to the surface to fetch some, but before he could, one of the others yelled, "Just use your fists!"
Blink blink.
"You're kidding," I said.
An archer is so not built for melee combat. But I was so close, and I'd come so far. I wasn't ready to give up now.
So that's how I ended up tossing my bow aside and trying to fight sohees with my bare hands. The results were as pathetic as I expected - instead of doing over a hundred points of damage per hit, as with my arrows, I was only doing about one. But my friends were cheering me on, even as we were all killing ourselves laughing.
I was so caught up in the sheer insanity of it all that it took a few minutes before I realised I still had my dagger on me. My emergency 'if I ever run out of arrows' dagger.
D'oh.
The dagger, unfortunately, wasn't much better - I was only doing about three points of damage per hit. But then another revelation came to me.
Double Strafe.
Archers use the Double Strafe skill to hit an opponent with two arrows at once. The thing is, it doesn't actually use up any real arrows, only skill points. So I switched back to my bow and launched a Double Strafe attack. It worked, hitting for several hundred points of damage.
Woohoo.
In the end, I got that last one per cent. I made it to the next level. I was ready to become a hunter.
It was time to graduate.
I'd always thought that changing to hunter would be a straightforward process. Once you achieved the required level, you just spoke to the Hunter Guild NPC, and voila! There you were, dressed in your spiffy new outfit.
But everyone I knew on RO seemed to regard it as a big deal - spoke of it as 'graduation', and told me not to go ahead without them. So we prepared to make our way there all together, messaging people in-game or on ICQ to let them know.
Eventually, everyone else arrived: Mystina, who I'd only caught on RO once or twice before; Lillenthal, who I hadn't run into yet at all; and Lumialle, with his new apprentice in tow. All up, it was the biggest and closest to complete gathering of our group on RO I'd seen. It was really something.
We made our way through Payon Forest to the Hunter Guild. The map it was located on was home to a number of high-level aggressives, including a boss monster, Eddga. Fortunately, the most hostile thing we encountered was a hunter who demanded to know what we were doing there. It looked like he was camped there waiting for Eddga to spawn and didn't want us poaching his kill.
I spoke to the NPC who guarded the entrance to the Hunter Guild and was transported inside the building. At the far end of the long hall, a man stood upon a dais, waiting.
I'd never attended an RO graduation before, so I hadn't been sure what to expect. Everyone sat down in a line in front of the dais, so we could take screenshots of the occasion. Then I walked up onto the dais and spoke to the Hunter Guildsman, who told me the king needed more hunters and did I want to become one?
I said yes.
All of a sudden, I was looking at a different sprite of my character. He was dressed in hunter clothes. He stood and sat and moved differently. It was strange - but I could get used to it easily, oh yes.
Everyone congratulated me and started showering presents on the ground. It was just amazing, the sense of goodwill and celebration.
It was decided I should get my falcon as well before we left, which meant going back outside and winning enough XP to get the required skills. That didn't take too long. Cyrus and some of the others actually ran right into Eddga - and managed to kill him, scoring Cyrus an MVP.
Luna took me to Ghast Heim so I could practise my newly acquired trapping skills. After a few false starts (and embarrassing deaths), I began to get the hang of it.
I'm looking forward to roving far and wide across Rune-Midgard, testing out my new abilities. I've waited a long time for this. Being a hunter is going to be fun.
But mostly - mostly I remember how cool it was with everyone there. Whether it was down in the depths of the caves, or later, at graduation - I don't really have the words. But I can remember exactly how it felt.
It's only a game, yeah.
But sometimes, y'know, it can be fun.
