[AO] Anarchy Online, anyone else a Froob?

Archsorcerer

Sorenson wrote: »

Huzzah! My account is still active, my character still intact (though he's on RK1 D:)! And I'm all in on setting up a PA group.

Will the group be in RK1?

Sorenson

Archsorcerer wrote: »

Will the group be in RK1?

Beats me; someone said they were going to set up a poll for the server, but if they have I haven't seen it. The names that've been thrown around have mostly been mentioned as RK2, hence the D: (not that I'm not willing to start anew or anything).

Archsorcerer

I got characters in both RKs, so it is your choice Sorenson. Which do you prefer Omni or Rebels? We also need a name.

Sorenson

I guess RK1 would work; if nothing else we've got the goons and a larger playerbase due to the client defaulting there. As for side, I'm an Omni guy (though I suspect we might have two different groups if folks are vehament about their affiliations), and as far as name goes we could probably use something Merchy if we do go Omni.

Again, I'm more worried about folks with characters they've been working a long-ass time on being screwed because of server/side choice.

Archsorcerer

Yes! I wanted Omni.

Nimble Cat

Started playing this game. It's pretty complicated. I played WoW for a bit and I guess that spoiled me as far as UIs go. The game is pretty cool, though. I really love the atmosphere.

Norgoth

Sorenson wrote: »

I guess RK1 would work; if nothing else we've got the goons and a larger playerbase due to the client defaulting there. As for side, I'm an Omni guy (though I suspect we might have two different groups if folks are vehament about their affiliations), and as far as name goes we could probably use something Merchy if we do go Omni.

Again, I'm more worried about folks with characters they've been working a long-ass time on being screwed because of server/side choice.

Actually the Client defaults to RK2 now. Alos if anyone is playing Rk2 clan side, I just reached the point where I can craft Carbonium armour, So if you can get the Etcher+plate its all yours.

DEL 707

Just made a Froob account, 1st time I've been back to Rubi-ka in years.
A leet told me "I ownz joo"
A reet asked "CAN I HAVE UR SWORD?"

I'm crying tears of joy 8-)

Bigity

I'LL GET MY MAIN!

The Dude With Herpes

R U NUBI?

The Dude With Herpes

in other news, I don't really like the new non-shadowlands n00b zone. I much prefer the old backyards. They were far simpler, yes, but that's the point.

Also, for nostalgia. Maybe I'll just bail the nub zone and hoof it to one of the backyards, if they still even exist.

Hahnsoo1

in other news, I don't really like the new non-shadowlands n00b zone. I much prefer the old backyards. They were far simpler, yes, but that's the point.

Also, for nostalgia. Maybe I'll just bail the nub zone and hoof it to one of the backyards, if they still even exist.

The backyards still exist. They still lock you down if you are level 1 and have less than 1k credits (I was able to dump a credit beggar easily by dragging him to a backyard). However, the new ICC island (AKA Newbie Island) is probably the best place to level up from 1-10. I normally reach level 10 in less than two hours on most of my characters. It also has loot (*cough* Light Bar *cough*) that you can't get anywhere else. So stick around Newbie Island until you get the phats, then hightail it out of there.

The Dude With Herpes

it didn't even take that long to get to 10 in the backyards. You can get the lightbar in the SL noob area too, but that doesn't do froobs much good really.

And besides, I've leveled enough characters to know that the backyard stuff just takes up bag space and you'll never touch it again after level 10. The old backyards are way smaller and more concise than that new island, it's just quicker to do stuff.

Then again that's likely because I was so used to the backyards and don't really feel like learning the ins and outs of a new noob zone when in the bigger picture it's like .00001% of your playtime and nothing you get there will last more than a few hours.

Hahnsoo1

Ironically, this the same reason I'm touting the new ICC island. I don't like dicking around with the Backyards or Subway mobs, when the ICC island mobs have a HUGE XP boost for their level (something like 3 to 5 times more XP versus an equivalent level monster on the Mainland). Why work harder than you have to? Especially if you have to start out there anyway.

Sorenson

Oh man, trying to get back into this is wierd. It's like they changed a whole crapload of things but then put 'em back while leaving that feeling that something's up, and now I'm finding a whole bunch of information about what's good to use and when. I think I'm gonna' mule my stuff and reroll, unless anyone's interested in a full (I believe) set of 94 Omni-Pol Elite armor.

Also, what names are you using? I'm using my forum one for my main and basic variations of it for alts.

EDIT: Incidentally, I am now staring at a Rome guard doing his damndest to jaggedly scale a building corner. Madness.

darkmayo

I strangely want to give this another chance but the other side of me remembers how lost I was with it.

Stupid weather.. getting all cold and making my MMORPG desires stronger.

captaink

I made a guy on 1, we should reach a consensus on server choice.

How do the classes end up differentiating themselves? So far as I can tell, I could pump up other classes' skills and use them. Do I get spells/abilities/nanos?

I made a big fat (the unisex race) brute/tank. It's pretty fun smashing stuff with my future-bat.

Are the auto-allocate points good for most classes or should I be looking at builds already?

Sorenson

captaink wrote: »

I made a guy on 1, we should reach a consensus on server choice.

How do the classes end up differentiating themselves? So far as I can tell, I could pump up other classes' skills and use them. Do I get spells/abilities/nanos?

I made a big fat (the unisex race) brute/tank. It's pretty fun smashing stuff with my future-bat.

Are the auto-allocate points good for most classes or should I be looking at builds already?

Asides from class-specific equipment and nanos and the like, IP spenditure depends on what skills you're putting it in: green skills are native and cost the least, light blue are a middle ground, and dark blue means incompatability, so while you CAN put points wherever you want, it's only gimping yourself if you don't stick to your proficient ones (exceptions being for things like map navigation and air vehicles and comp literacy which are useful no matter the cost). I'd honestly rather be able to choose which skills I suck/am proficient at, but oh well.

I'm not sure about the auto-allocation, but the forums seem to have some good information on what works well and what doesn't as well as some fan sites - I play Soldier mainly so I can't speak for Enforcers, which it sounds like you've chosen - but there should be a ton of stuff available somewhere.

EDIT: And speaking of which, damn does my engineer have a huge ass for some reason, that or the lighting on him is borking up something awful.

Archsorcerer

I'm on RK1 with a female nanomage engineer named Erandis. It felt weird watching a previous character, a male Sol doctor, butt all the time .

xYUUBINKYOKUx

Going to make a new guy on RK1 I guess. Running the patch right now. It seems I have not patched since 17.2.0. I was in the PA guild thing a while back when we did one of these it was good times. Though there were only ever like 3 of us on ever.

The Dude With Herpes

question for people who have maybe been playing awhile (since I quit way back when) or have encountered this problem.

Offscreen Surface Technology (purdy water reflection mostly). It was implemented back when I played before but my computer couldn't handle it at the time so I always turned it off. However, oddly, when I turn it on now, with a vastly superior computer the strangest thing happens. The water reflects a perfectly clear image; however all the rest of the graphics (i.e. everything that isn't water) goes to total shit. It looks like it's running in 640x480. What seems to be happening as far as I can tell is the effects I'm supposed to get are getting reversed. Everything in the game is turning into what the reflections are supposed to look like, and the reflections are getting fully accelerated.

I ask here in hopes it's a known issue before I go wading through the AO forums for a solution. I dread that because that "community" played a very large part in me quitting in the first place.

EDIT: Nice, froobs can't post/search the forums. /sigh

Hahnsoo1

Auto-allocate stinks. Fortunately, the amount of IP you get for the first 20 levels is tiny compared to the rest of your career. The only way you can mess up your character is if you have maxed out Swimming and Adventuring for the past 100 levels (for the love of god, don't raise either. Unless you have SL and desperately need the map nanos for the zones). Don't raise any Vehicle skills, either... for the lowest QL vehicles, you should be able to get into them with just implants and base skill alone.

Note that just because a skill is "bright green" doesn't mean you have to raise it. It just means that the skill is cheaper for you. Martial Artists get a 1.0 multiplier (bright green) for Duck Explosion, but this evade is relatively worthless in PvM play. Enforcers have a half a dozen green skills in the melee tab, but it's generally a good idea to stick with just one weapon and use that weapon for the rest of your career. All weapon lines (except possibly Melee Energy and Ranged Energy) have viable weapon choices. Avoid weapons that require you to use two different primary weapon skills (the "hybrid" weapons) unless you are a Soldier going with Assault Rifle and Ranged Energy hybrid weapons like Nova Flows. Split reqs for the hybrid weapons are a major waste of IP.

If you guys are Omni and RK1, then you can look me up on my 198 Froob Trader, Ferrell. I'm always ready to give advice and the occasional tradeskilling help.

Sorenson

Eek, going from CoH back to AO is distressing D:. There any kind of UI mod with things like playing sounds when you get team/tell messages?

Hahnsoo1

Sorenson wrote: »

Eek, going from CoH back to AO is distressing D:. There any kind of UI mod with things like playing sounds when you get team/tell messages?

I don't think there is. The UI mods are strictly visual changes (I'd recommend the Notum Dovvetech Mini, personally).

There is a program called Chat Alert, which plays customized sounds based on a chat log parser. You set up chat logging (Shift-C, right click the window title that you want logged. Open Log Window shows where the log is going to end up), then Chat Alert will parse the log as it is logging, and give you a sound cue based on criteria that you set up:
http://halorn.com/chatalert.html

In theory, all you have to do is set up a chat window that ONLY has tells, and set Chat Alert to ding whenever you get a message there. It might work.

EDIT: There are some neat things you can do with Chat Alert, like set it up to tell you when you have taken a critical hit, or when your specials/perks have recharged. You can use your own sound files. I know people who have used the AT+T Text To Speech demo for custom sounds:
http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

Also, a link to the Notum Dovvetech:
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/showthread.php?t=419890

Sorenson

How many of you new/restarted folks are currently around level 23-24? I was thinking that if we had enough people in that range that we could try and take down the subway boss before we get locked out.

EDIT: I actually decided to move on, seeing as (A) he doesn't really drop anything of use for me, (B) What drops ARE of use to me I've already got (and the odd souvaneer) and (C) the nature of the subway playerbase means organizing an effective Abmouth takedown team is all but impossible compared to other dungeon bosses and it doesn't look like we have enough concentration among ourselves to try it.

Speaking of the subways, you really do see some strange shit down there:

Spoiler:

For anyone who doesn't get it, it's a team of five characters all being controlled by one person; seperate accounts, seperate clients running in parallel, all being manually controlled save for auto-defend and a /follow command by the same dude. He even had a 42 "Fixeryouu" outside the enterence doing buffs and the like.

The best part? He got his ass handed to him by Absmouth (and other mobs he ran smack into thinking he had his team of alts behind him when they really got caught in a corner, for that matter) every single fucking time.

Hahnsoo1

Good luck on taking down Abmouth. *grin*

I haven't seen any of you folks online yet.

Shadowfire

Hahnsoo1 wrote: »

Auto-allocate stinks. Fortunately, the amount of IP you get for the first 20 levels is tiny compared to the rest of your career. The only way you can mess up your character is if you have maxed out Swimming and Adventuring for the past 100 levels (for the love of god, don't raise either. Unless you have SL and desperately need the map nanos for the zones). Don't raise any Vehicle skills, either... for the lowest QL vehicles, you should be able to get into them with just implants and base skill alone.

Note that just because a skill is "bright green" doesn't mean you have to raise it. It just means that the skill is cheaper for you. Martial Artists get a 1.0 multiplier (bright green) for Duck Explosion, but this evade is relatively worthless in PvM play. Enforcers have a half a dozen green skills in the melee tab, but it's generally a good idea to stick with just one weapon and use that weapon for the rest of your career. All weapon lines (except possibly Melee Energy and Ranged Energy) have viable weapon choices. Avoid weapons that require you to use two different primary weapon skills (the "hybrid" weapons) unless you are a Soldier going with Assault Rifle and Ranged Energy hybrid weapons like Nova Flows. Split reqs for the hybrid weapons are a major waste of IP.

If you guys are Omni and RK1, then you can look me up on my 198 Froob Trader, Ferrell. I'm always ready to give advice and the occasional tradeskilling help.

It's easy to mess up your character if you don't have a goal in place. However, if you want to raise a fun skill or two, it won't hurt you that much unless you are trying to be teh ubar l33t or whatever. I almost always play Adventurers. I've played dual pistol, dual blade, 2hE, rifle, and bow adventurers... each one was different, each one was damn fun.

Also, Duck-Exp I'm pretty sure is very important once you get past 60 or so. I remember thinking the same as you, and suddenly my MA was getting his ass kicked by several mobs (mostly humanoids... all depended on the weapon they were using, but usually it was soldier-mobs). Raising it half as much as Dodge and Evade is probably fine, but I wouldn't ignore it entirely.

Fleck0

Made an adventurer on RK1 though I'll probly end up re-rolling once I figure out what the hell I'm doing

mains name will be flecko, dunno what profession, tho agent sounds cool... and confusing

Hahnsoo1

Shadowfire wrote: »

Also, Duck-Exp I'm pretty sure is very important once you get past 60 or so. I remember thinking the same as you, and suddenly my MA was getting his ass kicked by several mobs (mostly humanoids... all depended on the weapon they were using, but usually it was soldier-mobs). Raising it half as much as Dodge and Evade is probably fine, but I wouldn't ignore it entirely.

Shotguns and Grenades check against Duck-Explosion. The only humanoid mobs that use Shotguns on a regular basis are Traders, who go down VERY quickly (even the Atrox ones). It is not very likely that it was your evades that were at fault when getting beat up by Soldiers, especially at level 60. They naturally have a high Attack Rating (higher than all other comparable mobs except perhaps Agent and Enforcers using Challenger) and will penetrate evades more often than not unless you are an Expansion player with Dance of Fools and Limber or a Grid Armor fixer. For a MA, it doesn't hurt much to invest in Duck Explosion, since your multiplier is only 1.0, but you are better off maxing out Evade Close Combat, Dodge Ranged, your combat skills, your primary nano-skills, Treatment, Comp Lit, and runspeed LONG before you raise Duck Explosion. Another note is that Duck Explosion often makes it into most implant configurations, due to the fact that the Bright and Faded clusters conflict with few important things until you can use Jobe clusters (which isn't until late Title Level 4 anyway), and this greatly helps shore up points in Duck Explosion.

To give another example, I was messing around with evades on a 125 Adventurer. I reset all of my evades (previously were maxed) and decided to go for a spin. With maxed evades, I'd evade maybe 20% of attacks against mobs near my level (and about 5% against mobs way higher than me, which is pretty consistent with the "3%" rule). With nil evades, relying just on ability trickledown, I'd still evade at a lower rate (12-17%). More importantly, I suffered a few more critical hits, which is the other effect of evades (critical hits are prorated by a value based on Attack Rating vs. Evade skill), but it wasn't anything I couldn't outheal. Now, this Adventurer did not have much Add All Defense and I had Advy polymorph buffs running that boosted evades. If I had a higher AAD value, I might be evading more with maxed Evades (this is the reason that Grid Armor works).

It's more of a "cost-benefit" thing than "Duck Explosion is always worthless" (unlike Swimming and Vehicle Water, which always are worthless). Yes, I'm backtracking a bit. I do this sometimes. When you are level 150 and you have IP going out the wazoo, then of course it doesn't hurt to spend more in some neglected areas, but no matter what your profession when you first start out (Title Levels 1 to 3) IP is going to be tight. In some professions (Fixer, Agent), tighter than most.

korodullin

Man, it's been so long since I played AO that I don't even remember what I played. I don't even know if I have the info for my old account anymore.

SWG is trying its hardest to make me hate it, so I may try out a froob account for AO some time or another.

Oh man. I found my old AO account info through absolute sheer luck, when I accidentally opened Thunderbird, which I forgot I had installed.

zhen_rogue

I'm on RK2 as well, with my 2 froob accounts.

You can feel free to add me to friends!

Kizmet: 60 Fixer (about to run the fixer grid quest, soon as I can afford a yalm )

Callysta: 36 Engineer (bot/tradeskill engi)

I would also be down for a RK2 PA Org.

EDIT:
Froob resource links!
http://www.leetsonline.com/extern/arcanum/index.html

http://www.aofroobs.com/index.php?page=2

http://www.jexai.co.uk/anarchy/rk_navigation.php

Also, don't forget:
/tell helpbot help
/tell recipebot help

Those two bots can answer damn near anything, from recipes, quest items, mob drops, etc. to checklists for what to get before leaving the newbie ICC Shuttleport island.

korodullin

Oh. Uh. I'm currently messing around on a Froob fixer named Yeepstii. I'm probably going to be bouncing back and forth between alts, trying to get a feel for some of the classes I never played before.

Archsorcerer

Not much free time and haven't made up my mind in what to play. Trying a Meta-Physicist and an Agent in RK 1 (14 and 10 respectively).

Links of interest:

- Classic AO Guides : http://aovault.ign.com/View.php?view=Guides.List&category_select_id=8

- OT Tailor equipment (from the same page, useful for low levels):http://aovault.ign.com/View.php?view=Guides.Detail&id=8

lowlylowlycook

Hahnsoo1 wrote: »

The only way you can mess up your character is if you have maxed out Swimming and Adventuring for the past 100 levels (for the love of god, don't raise either. Unless you have SL and desperately need the map nanos for the zones).

Heh, my first MMO character ever was an Adventurer. Based on the class decription I figured Swimmming and Adventuring were important and kept raising them. Also I'd head off exploring by swimming around since I had the skill. It never occured to me that the devs would add skills that were totally useless.

Later on I had a 'crat that was pretty fun. Mostly because you were always on the edge of losing control of the situation and being killed off by your former friends.

Hahnsoo1

More Classic AO Guides:
* Anarchy Online Universe - This site continues to update on a regular basis. It's linked from Funcom's web page and the official forums. (Disclaimer: I've recently joined the staff there, but I've been using AO-Universe for a very long time before then).
* Another mirror for Anarchy Arcanum - Leets Online provides a great service by archiving former "dead" AO sites, but having more mirrors is always great.
* Anarchy Online Wiki - Formerly AOWiki.com. AO Devs is currently maintaining the best wiki for Anarchy online material. Still a bit sparse, but their newbie training guides are fairly decent (written by Berael):
** http://wiki.aodevs.com/wiki/Beginner_Guides
** http://wiki.aodevs.com/wiki/ICC_Shuttleport
* The "official" fansite list - Not much to talk about here.

korodullin

Ah, just when I was getting ready to activate my old Shadowlands account, Funcom goes and breaks their billing system. How fun.

Bigity

It's probably a sign.

The Dude With Herpes

So funcom is launching a virtual item sales thing:

http://funcom.vnewscenter.com/press.jsp?id=1191846050087

Sounds actually not bad for those people who are actual sub's and not froobs. they get points on a monthly basis as part of their subscription.

I'd be curious to see what kind of items they are selling; if it's just vanity type stuff like Hoverboards or actual equipment.

Hahnsoo1

The Dude With Herpes wrote: »

I'd be curious to see what kind of items they are selling; if it's just vanity type stuff like Hoverboards or actual equipment.

According to the game director, Silirrion, it's going to be limited to vanity-type stuff, although they do plan on creating new playfields which are unlocked with Paid Points. For the average subscriber, these fields should be easy to unlock, because of the "free" paid point that you get with your subscription. Since most people won't do a new playfield unless there is great XP or great loot, one has to wonder how far down the slippery slope of micropayments Funcom is willing to travel. Froobs can also get paid points, and maintain their "froobiness" (more than one froob in my org has done so).

The Paid Points system would be a bit more useful if you could buy them in increments of less than 1000 (10 dollars). Still, the Jetbikes are a great "vanity" item, as it pretty much amounts to a free Yalm (flying vehicle) for EVERY character on your account (since Paid Points are distributed to all characters on that account equally). This saves you 5 million credits per non-Meta-Physicist character (who can already fly with the nano-program Quantum Wings).

Other items that can be purchased with Paid Points thus far are AI Social clothes/costumes (which are generally a huge pain in the butt to make, and cost a fair amount of cash) and the old pre-order items from previous expansions, including the Jobe Lux Apartment, Leet Pet, and Personal Mech.

The Dude With Herpes

meh I already get free yalms on my "real" account should I ever resub as a vet reward. The jetbikes and hoverboards would just be for show.

Still, i'll be interested to watch how it evolves.