User:Byakushin

Byakushin's Journal

This journal is an experiment at reporting contemporary events at The Mana World. If I get totally hooked on writing again, maybe there'll be a Tulimshar Times at some point (let me know if you'd be interested in being a reporter and e.g. do interviews / read the forums for social news). For now, it's just the adventures of Byakushin, fighter-mage of level 61ish level whose nemesis is the mountain snake.

Update 4 July 2010: Sweet, MrDudle has set up The TMW Times in blog format. Update 30 July 2010: Drats, he has fled the scene and left the site unmaintained.

9 August 2010

Dear diary,

I recall I promised to tell you more about Candor.

It starts like this: there is a person with 20 000 gp, a minimum of 4 friends and a great big death wish shared among all. The more the merrier of course. Friends, that is, not death wishes. Although those help too.

The person with the cash goes and starts the game by talking to Parua and convincing him that the fellowship will not just end up as a messy stain on the floor. Parua, luckily, is easy to convince with just numbers, and off you go: now monsters start crawling from every nook and cranny. Whenever you have cleared most of them or enough time has passed more and ickier monsters appear. With tough enough a party, this will be the most JackOs you see gathered in one place ever.

A mage or few will run around the central circle trying to kill off the worst cases of undead with lightning while the fighters coop up in the middle dealing with the types they can actually hit. Once the last mage dies, the fighter(s) collectively go "uh oh" and try to fight off the growing number of nasties until they have to give up and start running.

I've witnessed multiple cases of 4144, also known as The Meat Tank, fending off the Fallen until Mistakes (the mage type who has a strange tendency to stay alive until he dies by... mistake ;)) ends up dead on the floor, at which point 4144 enters The Zookeeper mode and starts running in circles, collecting a cavalcade of monsters behind him.

There are levels/rounds to this all, and typically 4144 has been running for some 200 rounds worth before a few dozen JackOs finally manage to catch up with him in an odd turn. The highest level I've seen is 1127; Mistakes says he's beaten Candor at level 1600 multiple times, but Kage, the source of all the blood on Candor soil, says the max level is now 3000, which would imply a reset of bragging rights and more challenge to come!

For me, of course, the aim is to survive for a few hundred rounds and then watch from a comfortable lying down position as the rest of the troupe struggle against insurmountable odds. And comment away like a sports reporter, of course.

8 August 2010

Dear diary,

Yesternight, I managed to brew Monster Oil. That was positively crazy! I even had Malivox perform a little but rather pricey operation on me that made me feel like the greatest scientist of all time for a moment.

Oh TradeBot, how I love you! I do love you too, AuctionBot, for you have brought me much joy in the past, but TradeBot brings with it such instant gratification that one anxiously searching for ways to avoid skinning mountain snakes is primarily going to prefer dealing with him. 4 skins at 5000 each, and I was ready for some serious brewing! (I even got me 4 extras in case my brewings would blow up in my face. Luckily, they did not!)

As a result, I now have a new weapon! It strikes faster, it strikes truer, it is sharper, and it even cures heartburn! It is called the Setzer, as in Alka Setzer! ;)

At long last, and after an additional 4 points of luck I gained upon level 64, I am able to kill mountain snakes without spending all my time waiting for their poison to wear off! I even got my first snake skin now - of all times.

PS. I also read the instructions of the strangest ritual after following some of the most confusing directions. A soul of an undead? Will I ever be free from this hunting for (read: killing) completely preposterous items (read: opponents)? Woe is me! ... now where did that TradeBot go?

PPS. I jinxed it now; so much for not getting poisoned by every darned snake. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. X-)

7 August 2010

Dear diary,

Today I hear a rumour that a new salesman had arrived. I looked all over for him, and stumbled into a bakery I had never been to before. I bought an orange cupcake and wandered around while nibbling on it. It turns out that the bakery storage room opens up to the roofs of Tulimshar. The view was great!

I also eventually found the trader, who I think may be slightly dyslexic. That would also explain the outrageous prices he demands for the items he carries. On the other hand, I hear there are some people here who are very, very wealthy too...

1 August 2010

Dear diary,

As I was complaining to the Ferry Master about completely unacceptable pricing policies, he pointed out that my money had in fact been spent for a good cause: a new ferry line had been set up to deliver travellers to the lost island of Candor!

I shall continue my report on the mysteries of the place later, as I hear someone is about to re-enact the Epic Battle of Candor and I must prepare myself!

31 July 2010

Dear diary,

More people missing! All of a sudden, Richard's brother William has vanished from the Hurnscald General Store. Richard has taken it upon himself to run both the bank and storage services now. I wonder if someone is going to show up demanding ransom for the missing brother; I imagine the banker family is quite wealthy.

I've heard rumours that a similar disappearance has happened in Tulimshar, but have not gone to confirm this yet: after the ferry noticed it now has a monopoly on travellers, it raised the prices so high I'd rather take my chances with a pair of crazy wizards than suffer the seasickness and 'landlubber special prices'. Hmph!

30 July 2010

Dear diary,

I guess I will have to believe it: my job was a hoax! MrDudle ran off before signing a single paycheck! I feel tricked. Also, he took the print house key with him so it appears that we cannot reorganize to run the paper without him either. Oh dear.

4 July 2010

Dear diary,

Today I ran into horrible lies and vile gossip in the TMW Times. They blamed my teacher, Sagatha, for protecting a drug addict, when in fact the poor sick mouboo in question is suffering from a bad injury and has to use medication that causes it to feel dizzy. Of course I immediately left a message to the editor, who must clarify this matter.

I see no future for this kind of scandalous "journalism" in our realm. What will they do next, start paying people who send in pictures of celebrities they caught in awkward situations? Disgusting!

(Also, please contact me if you do; I have to fund my studies somehow!)

25 June 2010

Dear diary,

Good heavens! Today, I found AuctionBot dead in the garden! This is terrible! What could have killed him? Maybe he caught the Ponderpox? Does the Investigator know anything? Oh, the horror!

24th June 2010

Dear diary,

Today, I got my black cowboy hat at last, and celebrated my newfound freedom from snake skin hunting!

This lasted for all of five minutes, after which I found out I need some 12 more for another project. Foiled again.

I have killed at least 20 mountain snakes but am yet to receive a single tongue or skin from them. It seems that my best strategy remains to kill everything else in the world and then go see if Ishi's lottery brings me luck, skins and snake tongues.

21th June 2010

Dear diary,

I was just discussing the birds and the bees with Sagatha when the news came in: the climate change had caused a huge flood that washed away the land bridge between Tulimshar and Hurnscald. The horror!

Being my aptly delegative supervisor at any complex things related to nature, Sagatha promptly sent me off to organize rescue parties for the poor slime population that would surely be badly struck by this event. As I got to the shores, I was amazed by something else than the extent of environmental disaster: a building had been revealed by the flood! It was still quite moist inside, so it's no wonder no one was living in it despite the splendid view to sea. If the student apartment prices keep going up, I'm definitely going to go squat in there.

In other news, Sagatha keeps complaining that I'm way too distracted these days. I can just go "oooh, butterflies!" in the middle of her no doubt important lecture on the sleeping habits of mouboos.

PS. Went to the mines tonight to study whether the red slimes show any signs of growing tentacles like the sea slimes; Sagatha suspects its a sign of environmental stress. Man, were the spiders always this creepy?

By the way, TMW is raising funds for more RAM for the server, see the related forum thread: [1]

20th June 2010

Oh TMW, how I love you! Let me count the ways:

• Free-as-in-freedomness. If I had done my contributing years on here rather than my home MUD, the work wouldn't have gone to waste when the single server no longer attracts players. Not to mention upkeep's a lot saner when the code repository is designed for open source.
• Equipment and location saving plus the lack of death penalty on eAthena is the central reason why I can play in the first place, given that I can be interrupted at any given time.
• Stacking bonus and experience from player healing. The two greatest social playing innovations that got me to interact with people.
• Competing clients. The total awesomeness of being able to choose between stable vanilla and a hackish munchkin version (not to mention others). I haven't even bothered trying the competing servers yet.
• IRC, wiki, bugtracker and forums. This game has a definite presence beyond the one server instance where the actual game is. Not to mention that I hardly see any politics in the gameworld itself; people work them on the forums mostly. And did I already mention there's an actual bugtracker?
• Transparency. You can actually go read the walkthroughs and monster item drops if you want to be spoilered silly - the gameplay cannot be dependent on hiding things when anyone can go read the code.