The Journey Continues
Well, it's been about a month since my last Conquer update and a lot has happened!
The last two levels for Whiskeyjack were about what I predicted last post. 128 to 129 seemed brutal, and it took me several days to complete. I don't know if it was the excitement of the impending level cap or not but the final level from 129 to 130 wasn't too bad. I crushed that one out in about two days of grinding hard in WineZone.
Boom, 130!
With Whiskeyjack at the 130 cap, I now had to revisit the debate of whether or not I chose to go as an Archer or as a Fire Tao. I sat around for a couple of days debating this and popping into the odd Event for some level cap fun.
Dis City bi-weekly event
A friend of mine kindly let me do some hunting on his maxed-out Tro-Arch character, which let me spend a couple of days getting a feel for Tro-Arch reborn hunting just to confirm for myself that I preferred it over my regular Archer, as it has been 14 years since I last played a Tro-Arch reborn.
Hunting on Rexan was a lot of fun, and I managed to farm a ton of +1 items, Meteors, and even a few Dragonballs, even though I've only usually got 1-3 hours per day to play (as I only play when my kids are fast asleep).
Hunting on Rexan - thanks buddy!
These I was mostly selling or hoarding, as I knew that once I took the plunge I'd need a ton of Mets and likely a few Dragonballs to level my equipment back up.
With a stock of gold, some relevant archer +1 items, and a sore of 250 meteors... It was time to commit to a rebirth. So, I gathered the necessary gems, snagged a great deal on a Clean Water (an item usually priced around 6 to 6.5 million, which I got for 5), and created myself a Celestial Stone.
It was time.
The Rebirth of Whiskeyjack
While it's been 14 years since I quit Conquer, it has been a hot minute longer since I last did the Rebirth quest (short and simple as it is), which meant I had to figure out where to actually go to talk to Eternity and achieve a rebirth.
A minute or two reviewing the Conquer Origins wiki, and I was on the right track. I just had to visit Dreamland, and hop a bunch to the top of the map before veering off onto a tiny little floating island to find the NPC Eternity.
There's a lot of dialogue to go through with Eternity, but it basically boils down to picking what class you want to become, and then selecting a free Super Gem to receive. I chose Archer, and Rainbow (which gives a boost of 25% exp on kills).
With that, I was Reborn, and the items on me were dropped to level 15 along with my character. I was officially a Trojan(130)-Archer(15) at that moment.
Rebirth gives several benefits as I've mentioned before, so I kept some of my old skills. I also got the ability to summon a Guard now, and to wear any item below level 70 that I can physically wield with my stat allotment.
Because I took the painful path to 130, I also got some extra skill points. I've opted so far not to use these, but they'll almost certainly end up being dumped into HP, as I can't see any reason to put them into the other stats at this time. I'll likely confirm with my guildmates before setting that, but from what I remember... HP was more valuable than any of the other options.
Getting Back to Level 120+ and Gearing Up
Because I'm sane and not a total glutton for punishment, I got a pair of Power Level sessions to pump me back up to level 80. First, power-leveling with Rexan, which got me through the first 40 or so levels before I started to really need to find a stack. Stacks are exactly what they sound like... a stack of players all in the same space. This is useful because only the topmost player can be hit by mobs. So, if you have a strong tank, it ensures your safety while an archer destroys high-level mobs.
Needing a stack, I reached out to another friend on the server, |HoldEm| who is a fully 2 socket 130 archer, to see if he had space in his group. Which he did! So, the next 40 or so levels I spent grouped with him as he farmed some Water tao for himself. As a bonus, at the end of his time plvling, he suggested I rent a bunch of gear and head to Alien Snakes, and mentioned I should be able to take myself from 80 where we left off to 110 in about an hour.
Nothing beats a well-organized power level.
I had forgotten about the Alien Snake map, so this was a huge help. I'd have spent days leveling anywhere else... so I geared up, and true to his estimation, smashed out the levels between 80 and 110 in a total of about an hour and a half. I was a little distracted watching Prodigal Son, which definitely slowed me down LOL.
80 -> 110 in 1.5 hours? Worth the 2 mil rental in a heartbeat!
Once I hit 110, I decided it was time to start working on my own gear. I could relax a bit from 110 onwards and alternate farming with leveling, so long as I had some half-decent gear to do so.
I had, prior to my rebirth, snagged a no-socket no-plus super bow for 15 million gold which was sitting in my bank. I'd also stocked away a few +1 bows, and 7 Dragonballs. So, I took all of this and set to work. In Bird Island, there's an NPC that will allow you to spend Dragonballs to add sockets to weapons. The first one costs a single Dragonball but has a chance of failure, while the second socket costs 5 Dragonballs and has 100% success. Thankfully, my first socket worked in a single try, so I only spent 6 of my 7 hoarded Dragonballs. After that, I got my bow up to +2 for some extra damage and managed to find a shop in market selling Super Dragon Gems for a paltry 1.5 million each. I bought those, and once I'd socketed them into the bow... I finally had a respectable weapon!
Because I was 110 and reborn, I went to collect my free 1-socket unique armor for my level 100 promotion too, which I also socketed with a Super Dragon Gem. With those two new items in my possession, it was time to start spending Meteors like they were going out of style. I thought - incorrectly - that a stash of 250 mets would be enough to get my gear up to the 100-110 range. It wasn't. I burned through those and an uncounted number more getting the gear updated. Sadly, in all my gear-leveling spam, I wasn't lucky enough to get another piece of socketed equipment... but that was okay, because I had plans for that!
Starting on the Socketed Gear Grind
Socketed gear isn't cheap. Unlike weapons, you can't find sockets (barring a few high-effort low-reward scenarios) and you can't purposely make them. Socketed items are luck. With any successful upgrade of an item's level or quality, there's a small (~ 1/800) chance of a socket.
Given the fact that these aren't easy to create, they're appropriately expensive. Normal quality items with 1 socket generally cost 35 million (for things like rings, boots, necklaces) to around 50 or even 60 million just depending on the type of item. So, they're not cheap.
Two socket items are even worse, because it relies on someone spamming meteors to level up an already 1 socket item, putting it on a character that's being reborn, and doing it all over again. And over. And over.
It's a massive amount of work. Most 2 socket items are currently running at 150 million (for a cheap one like a 2soc tao robe), to 300 million for something like boots/necks/rings, all the way up to a billion (or possibly more) for hard to create items like trojan and warrior specific gear.
So, now with the ability to farm items more efficiently and with my gem miners all online as often as possible... It was time to make some money the old-fashioned way!
That brings us up to this week, where I finally bought my first 1-soc item, a Super +2 Necklace with a Super Dragon Gem in it. It cost me 85 million, which, all things considered, is pretty decent. I'm also officially back to level 120 as of last night, so there are only 10 more levels between me and the level cap.
I have my eyes on a pair of 2soc items next, each for about 300 million... but I think that'll be an update for the next post!
As always, I encourage you to join me in this wonderful old-school MMO. Hit me up in-game, on discord, or even through a comment here on Hive, and I'd be more than happy to help you out!