When spending time in a friend/family member's home, it seems many people like to take a peek in that person's medicine cabinet. I think that’s an invasion of privacy. I don't think its my business to know if you have medicine for explosive diarrhea or erectile dysfunction. I do however, think its my business to know if you have a plastic jar of moldy hummus or a box of baking soda from 1985. I LOVE snooping in peoples' refrigerators. And its not because I want to steal food, since I don't take food from someone unless its offered, and even then I usually refuse. Despite the fact that I will gladly eat just about anything, I feel awkward accepting free stuff from people. I guess I just like seeing how peoples' food preferences differ from my own. Culinary voyeurism, if you will.
So, onward to the RO whinybutt-ism! *deep breath* I haven't played in nearly 3 weeks. Its sort of funny that I would lose interest in RO now, since as of last entry, the text file where I dump all of my ROS entries surpassed the size of the text file I used to dump all of my ROD (this site's predecessor, which you may recall) entries, and it seems like I should treat this as some sort of milestone.
Why have I lost interest? The reasons are getting quite complex, and interlacing with one another like the strips of crust on top of an apple pie (there's that food voyeurism thing again) but I guess I'll start with the most simple one.
I honestly feel like RO has gotten too hard for me, and that the comfortable little niche I've carved for myself is eroding away with each new update. Bold text = srs bizness. There hasn't really been any decent solo-able game content for me since the Rachel update, and all the good gear that's been implemented is either dropped by monsters I can't hunt, or is of Kafra shop origin. So, the most efficient way for me to really get what I want is to hunt and sell exp items, buy gear from other players, and go back to soloing in annoyingly dull, outdated locales, which is an extremely unsatisfying way to play.
Oh, while I'm on the subject of solo leveling content, I did actually try to do something new with my Sniper. It occurred to me some time ago that my being so bored and unsatisfied with the past few updates of RO wasn't really worth anything if I didn't at least make some small attempt to take advantage of their content. In that spirit, Tyr went fishing.
I caught two of these. Unfortunately it didn't make the process of doing this inane, ridiculous minigame any more bearable. Honestly, if you want proof that RO has a terrible quest system, just spend a day fishing. A game that’s nothing more than clicking the same spot once every few seconds, AND the item turn-in has a 24 hour cool down period? I've gotten more amusement out of looking for tapeworms in cat poop.
"Oh gross, there's a long skinny white thing in this one, and its moving. But hey, its moving faster than my fishing cast bar!"
Anyway, once I was able to access storage, I decided to try my luck at soloing the Manuk side. Which went horribly. Honestly, I've always thought I was a good trapper, but I got killed so damn many times. Centipedes were hitting me from halfway across the screen, every single Tatacho I winged next to was aggroed, every time I tried to gain enough distance to lay a trap, I'd run smack into another aggro enemy, my traps were on the wrong cells, etc. etc. I felt so damn noob, and it was even more stressful than being at work. In fact, I'm so stressed now that I need to post an out-of context screenshot. I love going afk and forgetting to turn on /nm, don't you?
So why did I choose to solo Manuk? Because my Champ currently gets 182 aspd with a Lunakaligo. That's as fast as his aspd with a fist, with none of the size penalties, AND a 15% possibility of stun. Do want! However, even if I got really good at trapping Tatachos, I'd probably still be better off selling Antelope Horns and then throwing down the 30 mil each to just buy the damn things... But then I'd need to get them to +7!
Actually, fishing/Manuk was all I had really been doing on RO before my account expired. Even when we got 2x exp, I just felt so discouraged and at a loss for ideas that I didn't play at all. As of the end of '09, I had been planning on paying my account for another 3 months or so and then going on a long hiatus when Renewal hit, but it looks like that hiatus will be coming sooner than I anticipated. Although I may surprise myself by paying right after I post this entry. We'll see.
Hang in there, baby! Someone force me to write more of my fanfic!