Rolling On The Secret River

Babacratus and Ohtizz

Ohtizz, a level 27 Froob Adventurer, was still groggy from coming out of extended suspended animation, and wondering who or what had prompted this recall. He had originally been brought to Ruby-Ka as one of Baba's earliest recruits. He had been through the starter Island and the Subway, but has been stalled at 27 for quite a while now.

Rolling on the River from one of THE best live shows ever, Ike and Tina Turner doing "Proud Mary" nice and rough, from Amazon.

Now he was sitting at a mission terminal in Old Athens, rolling one mission after another, while he softly hummed "Rolling, Rolling, Rolling on the River..." to himself as he thought about how Babacratus had asked that he be revived so he could roll missions in order for Babacratus to acquire several "mission only" Bureaucrat nanos. Babacratus only knew about them thanks to Babaoroody filling him in. It is not easy for newcommers  to learn of the existence of these profession specific nanos or to learn that they are only available as loot or rewards from missions 'pulled' from mission terminals. A few lucky new people might stumble across them by reading the full mission description for missions they pull for experience or tokens, or they might ask the right people the right questions, or they might invest some time doing research on the NET regarding profession specific nanos and how missions work. An org-mate had originally clued Babaoroody in to the existence of mission only nanos and how to roll for them.So Babacratus then did a little Net research and found Jexia's Bureaucrat Nano List which list the nanos by level and shows where they can be found (shop, mission only, or dyna only.)

Babaoroody explained to Babacratus that getting your profession specific mission only nanos is one of the early challenges on Ruby-Ka. To be useful the nanos must be at or somewhat above your current level which means completing the mission involved will be tough to impossible solo, but manageable if you can team with someone. Some of these nanos are deal makers/breakers in terms of how viable a low level profession may be, so it is easy to see how the whole obscure knowledge, having to roll and discard missions until you find what you need, and then getting help to complete the mission can be a pretty steep requirement for some new people.

So Ohtizz was on Rolling Duty for a few Bureaucrat mission only nanos. It has to be one of the most boring activities on the planet. About the only thing positive he can think about it, other than the potential end rewards, is occasionally it can provide a nice 'quite' time if one is overloaded from too many manic activities like dungeon crawling, teaming or PVP. After about 30 minutes of trying to do it manually, i.e. push the request mission button, scan the 5 missions offered, and then scan the of the rewards or find items for things he needed.

It was worth it to stop and spend 10 minutes to dust off and update a nifty inexpensive program called "MishBuddy" that does something wonderful. It pulls missions automatically and stops when it has pulled a mission that contains an item you have specified that you want. There is another mission pulling program called "ClickSaver" which Babaoroody has also used in the past which does basically the same type of thing. Babacratus simply likes the look and feel of MishBuddy. He won't recommend one over the other and tells friends to try them both and decide for themselves which to use.
 

Power armor, personal micro nukes, dropships, space marines, and countless other Sci/Fi memes were introduced by Heinleins Starship Troopers a terrific read, from Amazon.

Tonight Ohtizz was rolling for a nano that buffs the Crat and any team members, and pets, with a +5 offense and +35 defense. Babaoroody tells him that direct buffs to offense or defense are some of the most effective buffs there are. While he kept 'MishBuddy' pulling missions in the corner of his eye, he started re-reading a great space battle yarn "Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlen. Eventually after spending around 10,000 credits, the program stopped and let out a little bell to let him know it had found the desired nano in a mission located in Stret West Bank near the Reet Retreat.

He called Babaoroody in to assist. Since it was a kill a level 37 person and get the reward type of mission, Babaoroody could not simply do it for him, they would have to be teamed and Ohtizz would need to be present when the rub out happened. They teamed up, and Ohtizz set out on foot and Whompa to the mission which fortunately was a short walk from the Stret West Bank Whompa. Next Babaoroody took his Yalmaha to the nearest grid point, gridded to Borealis and then took the Borealis Whompa to Stret WB. He met up with Ohtizz outside the mission where Ohtizz used a mission key duplicator to make a duplicate mission key so Babaoroody could enter the mission. Once inside, Ohtizz waited in the first room while Babaoroody headed for the room furthest from the entrance where he found the missin objective level 37 mob, he put it down with about 1 and a half swipes of his 'Pained Panther'.

Since Ohtizz was teamed and was in the mission area, the reward popped into his inventory. A little while later, he handed the nice new nano over to Babacratus.

The next day Babacratus showed up at the Clan Mission Agency to get his daily Alien Mothership mission. This time he got the dreaded "Spaced Out" mission. He was quite frazzled by it. He first came to it after the comparatively easy leveling in the Core dungeons, where adds were few and random. At first this mission seems impossible, every time you kill an alien two more teleport in to alternating opposite corners! Then after your third alien kill, a mini-boss spawns in the center of the room, which if you attack there, will aggro all of the other aliens in the corners.

After three failed attempts he deleted the mission the first time he got it. Babacratus then did his homework on the net, and found that people who were successful at this mission recommended being mindful of two things.

• The first is that the mobs always spawn in the opposite corners of any that you kill. For example if you kill a mob in the southwest corner, one mob will spawn in the northwest corner, and one in the southeast corner. They will not move unless you get close to them or aggro the final boss too close to them. 
• The second thing is to body pull the boss after it appears back to an empty corner before attacking it. This allows you to fight it alone. 

As he had previously found taking on the final mini-boss with only his Droid somewhat iffy, he modified the tactic by charming one of the first pair instead of killing it. After charming one of the first spawns in the southwest corner, he moved to attack the alien in the northeast corner, and while his droid and charm fought it, he placed himself near the wall, and halfway to the northwest corner, as soon as the attacked mob died, he sat and recharged. He left the mob in the southeast corner alone. Next he sent the pets to attack the mob in the northwest corner. When it died, a alien spawned in the northeast corner and one in the southwest corner. Hugging the west wall and staying in about mid way between the corners, he sent his pets to attack the mob in the southwest corner. When that mob, the third alien to be attacked, dies, the mini-boss spawns in the center. Baba had made sure he placed himself against the wall as his pets were finishing off the third mob. He then ran along the wall to the northwest corner and called his pets to his side and gave them the command to wait. He then approached the boss slowly and as soon as he was targeted by the boss, he ran back to the corner, being sure NOT to shoot or attack it until it had run over to the corner. Once it was there it was safe to command his pets to attack and he started attacking himself. As soon as the Warden dropped he looted a strange clump from it, which Baba then gave to the female abductee after a brief conversation with her.

New Token Board Level!

After she had it, she and the other person ran to the center platform and Baba followed them, in a few seconds he was back on Ruby-Ka, and his reward back at the agency was another alien level and a new title "Common." The token reward brought his collection up to 30 which allowed him to level his token board up to the second level "Leaves of Spring" that provides +60 Health and +40 Nano.

His next stop was going back to Nascense Wetlands to hunt Core Hecklers (lvl 80) solo. Thanks to work by Ohtizz and Babaoroody, he now had a nice off and def buff from the mission only Motivational Speech (Lead from the Front). This helped a great deal with the Hecklers, with the result being that when one did lose interest in his pets and come after him, Babacratus could survive a brief attack or two while losing minimal health. Previously a single swipe from these guys would take a third to half his health. Everything else went like his previous Core Heckler Hunts. Send in a short term charm pet first, followed soon after by his long term charm pet and his droid. He even learned to place himself so that when the first short term pet died, he could conveniently charm another and send it to a attack right away. He even worked out a little route based on the first three Hecklers found going clockwise from the bridge from the statue. By the time he had killed the third one, the first one would have re-spawned. He preferred this over continuing around the perimeter of the area, because there were plenty of Spinetooth Hatchlings around in this area to charm as needed whereas further around the Hecks were quite removed from the nearest Spinetooths.

Once he gained a level from this to ding 70, he returned to Old Athens and after checking his new stats realized he could now pop in some level 100 store bought implants with ease. The main thing this did for him was to bring his Matter Metamorphosis closer to the requirement to equip Neleb's Nano-master robe which is his current back item objective.