We Was Robed

The past week Bamboobill and Zigwee have been running missions out of Meetemedere and managed to go from level 56 to 60.  At least three of the missions took place just on the other side of the huge easterly cliff wall south of Rhinoman Cockpit in a very small oasis-like patch inhabited by several Rhinomen and a Dynacamp Rhinoman.

Each time the Dyna had a different name; Warchief Skullgrabber the Destroyer, Warmaster Backbasher, and Chief Ribbasher Thunderthews. They each had unique Auras and varied in size from normal, to half again as big, to double size. Baba made an outline of these Auras and what they indicate a while back, and this wiki Newbie Guide goes into more detail.

The missions alternated between the easy large Boss rooms to the cramped dreaded tiny Boss rooms.  They got several this time where the Boss and the minion were practically sitting on the elevator. In these cases Bill and Zig either dropped straight in and winged it, or only on of them would drop in, avoid the mobs as much as possible while picking up or fixing whatever the mission objective was and then taking the elevator out. Unless the Boss is the mission objective, you don’t have to kill the Boss or minion, if you kill 90% of the mobs before the Boss room, you usually still get your token reward.

After a few nights of this they soon hit level 60, and felt almost ready to take on the Temple of the Three winds.  They needed one item before they could set off for TOTW, a quality level 83 Motivational Speech: Bravery Overcomes nanocrystal that provides +15 offence and 60 defense to the team.  It's not sold in stores, but can be rolled in missions. 

They did not feel up to trying to run a 83 level mission, so they asked Babaente (lvl 83 NT) to roll the mission and then she gave a duplicate mission key to Babacratus (lvl 187 Crat) so he could clear out the mission quickly with no fuss, letting Babaente stroll in and pick up the mission objective which happened to the nano they wanted which she then passed later to Bamboobill. (Baba’s toons  don’t generally accept missions where the objective is to spot or kill individuals, it is too easy mistakenly spot the objective before killing all the other mobs to get a token and sometimes the kill objective is a Boss in an impossible tiny room with an above average minion .) While on the way to the mission, Babacratus passed an odd looking cave formation just outside of 4 Holes.

Onward to the Temple

If you have been away from Rubi_Ka for some time, a couple things have changed about the Temple of the Three Winds regarding getting there and leaving there. The mini quests to get access to a portal that zaps you directly there have been moved to ICC, and there now is a ICC shuttle close to the Temple Entrance that will zap you back to ICC when you want to leave.

The last time any of Baba's toons saw plenty of teams and lots of players looking to team at TOTW, was back in 2008 when Babaente made her pilgrimage there.  Since then every Baba sponsored toon that has gone there has found almost no teams or players looking to team, and instead saw mainly a mix of multi-boxing duos, outside buffed twink wannabees, and real twinks (self buff only.)  Bamboobill did not see a single player under level 59 inside on his visit.

It is still nice to remember the good times of 2007 through 2008 when TOTW was a place where 70 to 80 players under level 60 would show up and be busy outside the entrance forming teams, and then fighting as teams in the dungeon. These days so many new players just buy Heckler Juice from the store and go straight to 200.

So they made their way to the Temple.  The outside entrance is rather plain and unimpressive, however once inside they learned the main thing you need to know about the Temple which is it is filled with trash mobs in passages where it is impossible to go around them, and that other players often deposit trains of these mobs on you.  After a while of this tedium, Heckler Juice starts to be more appealing.  Not wanting to create a huge train, it took our pair quite a while to slog through hall after hall of these trash mobs.  In fact, they spent more time in those halls than they did eventually at their objective, Aztur the Immortal's room at the far end of the Wing of the Future.

The trash mobs are called Cultists and they turned out to be very weak charm pets, many died before the charm wore off.

When Bill and Zig reached Aztur's lair, they found a multi-boxing MP+Engi duo and a couple of independent twinks already working the room.  These folks were mainly focused on taking on Aztur which requires killing two mini Bosses in order to get Aztur to spawn.  During a lull between those battles, Bill and Zig successfully pulled Exarchs one at a time, and after only two, had the looted an Exarch robe for each plus a few nice rings (Notum rings and ring of Tattered Flame.)

Bill and Zig, giddy with having what they came for, forgot they could just zap out of the dungeon using Zig's Team Grid Phreak nano, and instead started the long run to the entrance.  It was slow and tedious to have to kill gray Cultists every inch of the way.  About halfway to the exit, some other player dumped a medium sized cultist train on them.

Bill and Zig decided to make a break for it for the exit, picking up even more cultists with every step. Near the T junction where the east and west tunnels meet, Zigwee got stuck, the train was upon him, so Bamboobill had to double back to help.  The managed to survive, it just took a while to burn all the Cultists down individually since neither Bill or Zig have any area of effect attacks. Bill has some AOE roots, snares and calms, but they don't reliably work for him at this level.

After getting out, they sat down and equipped their new Exarch robe back items which basically increased most of their armor ratings by roughly 200 points over the ICC cloaks they had been wearing. Feeling cocky they thought, Let's try Foreman's!

Fiasco at Foremans

After making the long flight in from Bliss to Foreman's they were running their first Ace Starr mission just inside the Foreman's entrance.  On the short run to their objective in the dungeon to a friendly NPC, Bill charmed a guard and they had no trouble killing any resistance on the way. 

When BambooBill approached the first security monitor which was located just by the inner door of the dungeon he made a fatal mistake.  He assumed the mobs on the other side of the door (which they had killed coming in) would not have respawned yet. As he was trying to apply the device to turn off the monitor he tripped the door to open, and instantly all three respawned mobs were on them. Just as our pair managed to fell one of the guards, another player came running by which caused one of their attackers to set off chasing the other player.  Bill thought great, that leaves us only 1 mob left to kill. Then to his horror his Droid was now running away chasing the guard chasing the other player.   After recalling the Driod, just as it arrived, 3 or 4 more regular guards and one elite guard came out of no where and joined the attack on Bill and Zig.  They are not sure what drew the extra guards in. Was it the returning Droid? Was it another player training them?  It still puzzles them.  With their health plummeting faster than the rate they were killing the guards, they tried to make a run for the exit.  Bill made it, but Zig did not.  

The nightmare was not over yet for Bamboobill, there was a patrol guard standing right next to him when he came out the other side of the dungeons door and the guard attacked him right away.  Bill actually managed to outrun the guard, run past several others out the base's entrance and into the woods.  He then had to run about a quarter of the way to Bliss to lose one persistent guard chasing him.

Bill and Zig decided run missions in Varmint Woods for a while and not return to Foreman's until they were at least level 75 with their chops a bit more together.  It was nice to be back doing comparably low stress missions.

 

Getting Belted

Bamboobill and Zigwee's buff up sessions before missions have been hampered by them running out of NCU to load buffs, even with Zigwees NCU compressor buff.  It was time for the Anarchy Online tradition of equipping higher capacity belts and NCU as required.  This involves researching which Belt and NCU items have the least requirements, sorting everyone's inventory and bank to see if they own any of the desired items, then running the various toons to the bank and then out to drop the items off to Bamboobill and Zigwee.

AO Item Assistant+

AO Item Assistant+ was a huge help in finding which belts and NCU Baba and Friends already owned.  AO Item Assistant+ does a fantastic job of keeping track of multiple character inventories and bank content with a great search function included. Another nice feature is if you right click on the listing for any item, it gives you a link to the item at AOITEMS or AUNO for more information.  I highly recommend it. 

5 Slot Belt Requirements

So research took an hour or two.  According to AO Item Assistant they had two low quality five slot belts and 10 low quality 32-64 NCU chips. It took a while to log the different toons, take them to the bank, then run out to Meetmedere to hand over the goods to Bamboobill.

As Bamboobill had the lowest Computer Literacy (the requirement for belts) he got the lowest quality belt and NCU.  They both had to put a few points into Computer Literacy and use the general Comp Lit buff, but the 5 slot bests and 5 32-64 NCU each went in with no issue, and now they have close to 200 NCU each. 

The cherry on this cake is the extra NCU is enough for Zigwee to load an Matter Metamorphosis Infuse needed to run the next step up NCU buff, so even more NCU can be on tap.

The night was getting long, and they decided to run a few missions rather than spend time seeing what combination of new buffs they could load, so they set out with their usual complement.

Hammerheads

The pulled 3 level 55 missions, in the Newland Desert.  The first two missions turned out to have rather small levels, but the mobs made up for that in size.  Giant Spiders and huge Hammerheads populated both missions.  The Hammerheads are a pain as charms.  They are so huge, when they follow you, you cannot click on anything around you, so you constantly have to tell them to wait behind while you loot stuff.  You are also stuck looking at their rear end often.

Spiders

The spiders on the other hand, were some of the best charmed pets ever.   They never once lost aggro. Usually the Droid pet and the charm pet are terrible at keeping aggro, even with buffing the Droid. The spiders seemed to be on par with Mech Dogs in terms of damage output and defense and just as durable, so they are now Bamboobill's favorite charm pet even if they are a bit too large and sometimes obscure the view.

The team is still getting used to the vagaries of AOs Line of sight issues with targeting.  Often you can clearly see a mob in full plain sight, but AO acts like there is something blocking line of sight, and if you press tab to target the nearest enemy, it will ignore that mob and target any other mob that is within line of sight.  

They both dinged 56 in the first floor of the third mission, and decided to call it quits for the night, so they retired to the Newland Desert Outpost that was close by. 

Dis-Connect, The Game

Zigwee and Bamboobill, fixer and crat (level 54), were rocking a team mission in Rihnoman valley when it happened.  They were enjoying the benefit of Zigwee’s latest HOT Kitchen Sink Surgery and also having Bamboobill’s level 66 Director Grade Assistant Droid along to deal handily with typical mission Bosses.

Bamboobill
Froob Crat

They are the latest sponsorships of Babaoroody.  He had been in suspended animation for so long, He and his many alts had forgotten so much.  When first coming out of suspended animation he had tried reviving his paid Crat, but soon realized he had no clue on how to play it any more or any of his alts.  He decided the best way to get going again on Rubi-Ka would be to start new toons from scratch at Arete Landing, so Froob Fixer Zigwee and Crat Bamboobill started life.

The Fixer/Crat combo so far seems to be a really good one.  Between the Fixer's HOTs and the Crats droid and charmed "pets", it works really well and is far less complicated than some of Baba's previous combinations like Engy/MP.

Depending on the MP's heal pet is way more problematic than staying alive with Fixer HOTs.  Heal pets often catch aggro and die, or like all pets have pathing issues, and may not be able to get to the party that needs healing fast enough.  Crat also seems better than Engineer since Crats have a pet and at least one charmed pet.

Zigwee
Froob Fixer

They have been pulling missions mainly for the XP and tokens so they have been rolling them in Meetmedere and accepting only ones located in Newland Desert.  That way they can fly to the mission without having to zone or make a lot of grid and/or whompa hops.

Missions are a mostly low stress avenue for them to learn how everything works on Rubi-Ka.  They are still debating if they will go to Temple of the Three Winds when they reach 60, theres really not much there they want other than Exarch robes and perhaps a few notum rings.

Newland Desert is one of Baba's favorite zones, it was really the first zone he had explored when he started out. It is full of interesting places like Meetmedere, Rhinoman Valley, one of the oasis where techno-scavengers could be farmed, and Newland Desert outpost when it was the location of the portal to the Temple of the Three Winds.  

After getting buffed up in Meetmedere by Babaempee, the pair headed off to their first mission of the evening in the far west of Newland Desert.  The mission turned out to be the cramped cave style, with tiny rooms and corridors, which resulted in pulling unwanted adds several times.  Things went well anyway as between the HOT and the droid and charmed pets damage, the adds were dispatched with Zig and Bamboobill's health never going below 90%.

After completing the mission in the extreme far eastern part of Newland Desert and starting on the flight back to Meetmedere, they spotted a small outpost with a couple of mission terminals, so they saved some time and stopped there to roll the next mission.  They picked one in Rhinoman valley and were soon there bashing away and made it to the last floor before the Boss floor. They came to a long stretch of cave where they could see an open door with the Boss room elevator symbol in sight.  There was a mech dog about half way down the corridor, which Bamboobill thought he would pull. He hit Tab and sent the droid to engage the mech dog.  There turned out to be a second higher level mech dog in the room with the Boss elevator and inexplicably his tab had selected that mob over the one closer in the corridor.  As mech dogs are social, this brought both down on the party, but still it should not have been a problem, they have survived worse.  It was at this point that the Internet service did the conk.

When they logged back in curiously, the mobs were dead, Zigwee was still alive, but Bamboobill was back at reclaim in Meetmedere. After rebuffing Bamboobill, they went back to the mission and completed it.  The Boss room turned out to be one of the easy ones, a huge square room and no minions.  They collected loot from the Boss and added their latest Clan mission tokens to their boards. Only about 100 left to go for Dawn level boards.

Got Muddle!

Spinklecove's entrance can be seen
from the east bank.

Just a few days ago Babacratus was level 103 and had started timidly exploring the path to Ergo in Elysium only to be totally intimidated by the 105 to 110+ level mobs guarding the approach.  With just one dungeon run, a few Ely missions, and a couple of Rubi-Ka dailies and suddenly he is level 110.  The really sweet part is that with hitting 110 he can finally self cast Muddle Psyche, a great Area of Effect Calm.  AOE calms on one of the defining tricks of the Bureaucrat class. Baba is really looking forward to trying it out. 

He started his run to 110 with a nice run through the Sprinklecove static dungeon in north Central Ely.  Starting at zero, he dinged a level before he reached the final Boss level.  He really likes this dungeon.  It has a minimum number of those Crat pet traps sections where there are a series of staircases.  It also has quite a few really, really big rooms/areas which is always welcome.  (Baba can get claustrophobia.)  This dungeon can be hard to find so see our previous post on where it is.

But not from the west bank.

Next he ran a few quests in Ely.  The first one was the quest given by guard Elmo Fitz at the base of the ramp at Port Seven.  Kill 3 Devourers of Life and get practically a full level of experience based on your level in addition to the reward promised at the beginning by the NPC.  Baba's Nube Tip: Don't skip this quest if you are looking to level quickly.

The next quest he tried from the NPC "One Who Wins Over Mind" turned out to be quite simple, but he had read the online description is such a rush, that he went to the wrong location to look for the mushrooms he was tasked with collecting.  The quest requires mushrooms that can be found quite close by, just a short ways slightly north east of the quest giver.  Baba's Nube Tip: Just because there are no red mobs around, don't try doing it if you have just rezzed and are at less than full health.  He did and almost died.  Each mushroom is toxic and you get a pretty hefty poison hit as soon as you pick harvest them using the bag given to you.  So definitely have stims/kits or get a nice Heal Over Time buff if you are really squishy. 

The next quest from the same NPC sounds easy to, deliver a letter.  It is a two part delivery.  Take the letter to one NPC, then go talk to a third on the other side of Ely.  It has a 30 minute timer, so it is a really good idea to scout out the route to the two NPCs before starting.  Baba's Nube Tip:  Make sure you have your garden key and have saved in your Ely garden before starting. Getting to the first NPC involves crossing a bridge over some Hecklers which will from time to time, aggro you and climb out of the gorge and do you in.  Save at garden, start the quest, get to the first NPC quickly and complete giving them the letter, and pow, there is a good chance a 180+ Heckler will send you quickly your last save in the garden.  From there you can use a statue to quickly travel to a point close to the next quest NPC and finish it with tons of time to spare.

Now it was time to get back to Rubi-Ka and run some daily missions.  The first mission the alien Spaced Out mission, but unfortunately he got the cocoon version, which he could not complete since his cocoon terminator (a unique item) has vanished, but the game says he still has it so it won't give him a new one or let him buy another.  He uses AO ItemAssistant, so he is absolutely sure I does not have this item on his person or in his bank.  The only way out of the mission was to die, which was not a problem as he had remembered to save before the mission. Note: Funcom is aware of this issue and working on a resolution. In the meantime they recommend that players petition in game when it happens to have the items flag reset.

So with a little time wasted, he proceeded to pull a regular daily, and got the "Extraction" mission for the first time.  At first it was kind of a pain as it is in Omni territory and while he could fly there with ease, bringing along his top level 136 Droid (which he relies on Babaemphee and trader Tireen's buffs in order to cast), was problematic.  It might have gone better if he had scouted the mission entrance first.  As it was, in order to get low and close enough to make out the doors meant that his Droid would end up running around aggroing every Omni in sight, which meant if he stuck around his Droid would be toast and require a recast.  He high-tailed it out of there by flying north east to the nearest player city to take a Bar whompa back to civilization. 

He called on Babaengy to team with him and fly out there first.  Once Babaengy was there and situated safely on top of the mission building, he beacon warped Babacratus and his Droid safely there.  Babaengy logged off to wait for Babacratus to run the mission as Babacratus was fairly confident he would not need any help.  After one failed try, he completed the mission. The first time he failed it was because he made the mistake of drawing the Omni aggro first, rather than letting the NPC do it.  Even though you can clear the place before getting the NPC to sign up, more Omni spawn, often with several in a room.  So the object is to keep the Omni from killing the side switching NPC long enough for it to reach the exit. 

Baba's Nube Tip: The Extraction mission varies in difficulty based on the profession of the spawned NPC that wants to switch sides.  If it is a soldier of engineer, they are quite strong and able to defend themselves, while the other NPC professions that spawn are comparably weaker, so if you get an NPC that is not a soldier or engineer, simply exit the mission and then re-enter.  This will spawn a new NPC as well as re-spawn all of the Omni personnel in the building. The Omni re-spawn can be a good thing, as they do give good experience.  After finding the exit and the NPC that is a soldier or engineer, kill all the Omni personnel, then talk to the target NPC. Follow the NPC and hang back slightly.  Let him acquire Omni aggro before sending your Droid in to help and casting any debuffs etc. yourself.  Make sure you talk to the NPC when they stop just before the exit.

Babacratus now mulling over what to do next.  There are more options to level rather quickly now than compared to how it was for Babaoroody as a froob years ago on Rubi-Ka.  You can now level so fast you out-level your gear and nanos quickly, meaning it becomes more important to budget time to work on bringing those up to par. Although Babacratus has stocked his player shop well, it has yet to make a dime, not a single sale, so perhaps he needs to drop prices as he needs income now, not top dollar later. The alternative, i.e. running dungeons or killing mobs in the wild for drops, is the ever inviting classic grind. 

With Shadowlands mid-levels have a ton of choices for leveling.  At 110 he realized he at max level to get into Crypt of Home which is one of Rubi-Ka's classic dungeons which also features a couple of nice Crat pistols.  After looking at the requirements, he realized they are something that will take serious twinking or many levels to be able to equip.  Should he continue to take the fast track leveling to get to the next Shadowlands area Scheol, or take some time to farm for better gear in Ely and Rubi-Ka?  After sleeping on it, he decided to stick with one simple plan, level, level, level.  He has always been under-geared and it looks like that is just going to be the way it is for him for a long time.

As the leader of Angels of the Night AO guild used to say "Get out there and level Nube."

Sprinklecove

Sprinklecove is a dungeon in northern central Elysium.  The mobs are remants (Cripplers, Kolaanae, Malahi, plus a few Mortiigs and Dryads) ranging in level from 95-105.  It is a fairly large dungeon with lots of mobs and chests.  Access is easy with only a couple of 95ish mobs guarding the entrance area. The exact location however is very easy to miss.  Babacratus first read about Sprinkelcove at Jexia's AO website which provides Shadowlands hunting maps and nano lists.  He also used AOVault's map as the basis for the map which he edited to show the dungeon entrance here. 

Here is the story of how Babacratus eventually found it.  Babacratus has spent a good portion of his leveling time in Elysium in the Stormshelter dungeon.  After hitting 100 however, the experience started to do down as the mobs there are 80-95 unredeemed.  Baba has been using Jexia's AO website as a hunting guide, but when he started looking for the next higher dungeon, Sprinklecove which according to Jexia's site would have level 95-105 mobs, he could not find it.  Jexia's map shows it to be just south of the big pyramid west of Ripwell.  He made several trips to the area and eventually decided it must have been eliminated or one of the places not included in Rimor 2. 

He tried hunting level 90-105 mobs in the wild at places like the area south of Barter, and while the Mortiigs there gave good experience as well as making good charms, they also have excellent eyesight and are very social, so it is not unusual for pulls to go bad and emergency crowd control panic measures to not always work.  While he as able to grab a level or two this way, it was slow as a bad pull could send him back to a garden and loose a good chunk of experience. 

Baba decided to look once more for the Sprinklecove. Arriving at the spot pointed out in Jexia's map, there is no dungeon door insight.  The only thing nearby is a dam in a small river running south from the pyramid.  From the west side, Baba peered down into the chasm and could see nothing down there except water and the bottom of the dam.  He did notice there was two clues this time.  There were guard fences along the lip of the chasm on both sides and a little ways south a foot bridge.  He crossed the bridge and walked north.  He again peered into the chasm, but could see nothing interesting.  He next investigated a strange looking power house at the top of the hill which he hoped might be the entrance, but he found nothing there. 

He as about to start thinking about where to go next to hunt when he noticed that there was a spot on the east side of the chasm where there was no guard rail.  Curious he walked over to it and peered down.  No dungeon but he did spy a couple of 90ish mobs in the water.  He jumped down to the water, which was a foot or so deep, and looking north up the chasm, he then saw the dungeon door at the base of a tower like structure behind the dam. On his first night there he dinged 105 after approximately 8 days of playing time as reported by the 'played' command.

Babacratus joined Events By Jill, a clan org recently.  He is really glad he applied.  It seems to have mostly mature, easy going, and accomplished players.  They have been really helpful and appear to be well organized.  One of the first things he did was get some critique of his current Crat setup and general advice to work on getting symbiants.  Crat symbiants, the 'Control Unit' class, happen to run into the 10-30 million each if bought from player shops.  Baba is still researching which pocket bosses drop the symbiants.  Babacratus spent some time going through his AO Inventory Assistant to find potentially valuable items to put into a player shop in the Events By Jill city.

It took a few days to collect it all as the pieces were scattered over 5 alts and various bank toons.  Eventually he stocked his shop and opened it up as "Babacratus Boutique".  On opening day it featured an Instruction Disk Summon Grid Armor I, various buffing weapons, and a few dyna or mission only soldier or doctor nanos.

How to Fish in AO?

Baba was interviewed by a Clan org as a potential member recently.  One of the comments made by the interviewer was along the lines of "we don't want to give out fish, but would rather teach new players how to fish."  This is the crux of Baba's current situation.

Babacratus is starting to realize his gear is in bad need of upgrading.  The implants he put in back at level 60 and just not cutting it now.  The deal with the expansions is basically this.  You can get by up to level 100 with Rubi-Ka grade average gear and implants, but once you start in on 100+ SL mobs your old Rubi-Ka stuff just does not cut it.  You need full symbiants, and at the minimum full Jobe armor.  The path to the armor is pretty clear.  He probably has all the insignias he needs, but 15 million credits total is a long way off.  So far he has not made a profit at all, but has been draining down credits previously earned by his Froob predecessors that was farmed in Foremans or got by selling a few lucky mission drops like Grid Armor discs. etc.

He has no clue as to how to get symbiants other than to buy them somehow, by farming something (?). He has only found complete patterns for one boss at this point, and it is for one that drops stuff that a Crat can't use.  This is after killing hundreds of Ely mobs in the wild and dungeons.

Last night he applied to an active clan org and was accepted for the usual 'trail period'.  They were a friendly bunch of people and most welcoming. He got plenty of helpful advice, mostly regarding his need to get a full lvl 120 set of symbiants in order for him to be able to effectively use the crat tool-chest in Ely.  He got to inspect several other toons near his level and could see how they can meet the requirements for level 120+ crat nanos of 800 or more in nano-skills by having the right gear. 

So it was instructive, but also a bit depressing, since he has no idea at this point exactly what to farm or 'how to fish.'  Clearly what he has done in the past on Rubi-Ka as a froob is not sufficient. 

Some people, i.e. the ever shrinking core of end-gamers around, obviously never blinked on this issue and somehow solved the getting credits issue.  Baba is convinced this issue is precisely why AO's player base continues to shrink.  It has nothing to do with graphics, Look at on of the biggest hits around now, Minecraft.  It makes AO's graphics look like a Hollywood production.  Graphics is a non issue and at best will bring in a few curiosity seekers if it is ever released, but the grind to farm for gear essential to level and get teams remains and most likely will continue to discourage all but the few who somehow intuit or luck into a way to credit independence in AO. 

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.