Back to PG (Again?): A New Start

I have no idea why I still write in this blog. Perhaps it just feels quite relaxing and nostalgic, haha.

Anyways, a few days ago, I was in the mood to get back into PG. I think this was mostly because I really wanted to see how the HTML5 version would look like. Unfortunately, while it seems to be coming very soon and there’s a “Reborn Event” that’s currently happening, I don’t think a specific date (or dates) was announced. I’m not quite sure what the event involves, but from searching around, it seems to involve those chest collection spots (which I think gives old event chests) that can be seen from season 1 towers, those pesky Reborn Ogres that appeared in CoT 1 (as for why, read on) and the new NPC. I’m still confused about his identity; I can’t tell if he’s only there for the event and is somehow tied still tied to the story or if he’s just a new quest NPC. Lilli told me that Morias mentions him… Well, time will tell us his identity, and quite soon, I’d wager.

Anyhow, it’s been a really long time since I logged on so another unfortunate thing is that my character was deleted (farewell, スポンジ). He did not have any good notable items so that’s a good thing, though I was rather fond of him and he was with me for a really long time even when the English PG server was still up. I believe that he also had some event exclusive items so those are other things that I lost.

The first day, I had my sights on making a decent weapon (i.e. halberd or axe) and then getting decent looking clothes later. I don’t know what I was thinking as the prices in the JP economy are very low and so naturally, the most of the normal weapons are very, very cheap. Between an axe or a halberd, I opted for halberd since it allowed a safer distance, even if the damage was lower. In the end, I got a High Halberd which had a measly max damage of 24. I later checked the price for it and found that you could get one for around 3S (probably even 2S…) In any case, while I wouldn’t say that making one was worth it, I didn’t really have money so I had no choice but to craft my own weapon (and I didn’t want to keep using a Wooden Staff). I should’ve settled for a normal halberd or axe but I didn’t. A big mistake as I wasted most of my dice on making this.

At first, it was extremely difficult to even run season 1 towers. Even more so with the all the event monsters! In fact, when I was hunting for grapes to make Purple Liquid in T3, I encountered the ninja Kobolds (whatever they’re called). When I got to the last few spots, there was a dark fog/mist/smoke covering the area so it was really dark. Alas, I didn’t have any item that would illuminate the area so I died to those strange trap-like creatures. Well, I suppose that was to be expected! All I had were some cotton clothing, a pair of boots from Avalon, a cape (also from Avalon), Vagabond Pants (yes, I know…) and a wooden staff along with the High Halberd that I wasted a lot of my dice on as weapons. Anyway, I stopped running after that as I barely had any dice left and I didn’t want to waste anymore simply for a hat.

By the way, I also briefly went to CoT 1 when I got the halberd in an attempt to get Gold Dice. Needless to say, I didn’t get any and I just lost dice due to Fenrir, spots with no dice collection spots and… the event ogres.

 

This is what the it looks like. When you encounter one, the BGM will change into one that sounds as though it belongs to a horror movie! Encountering one felt as though PG turned into a horror game, especially with how powerful they can be compared to how weak I was.

 

The Reborn Ogres were really annoying, although that’s probably because I kept trying to kill them. I really wanted to see what they dropped but not only were they very intimidating and large, they also had annoying attacks. I can’t tell if it’s a separate move, but I think their normal attack (it takes 2 off your HP) has a chance of inflicting poison which I’m sure you can imagine can be quite annoying. Getting poisoned almost certainly spelled death for me as they were also quite fast and had a very large range of attack. There’s also the fact that I didn’t have good healing items. If I remember correctly, I only had a few Blue Herbs which I just synthesised into Blue Liquid and used that for fast healing. Even when I ignored these ogres, they always tried to kill me. If I was poisoned at those times, it was certain that either one of them would kill me or Fenrir would.

I do wonder what their purpose is. I’ve read some things and I believe there’s a quest where you need to kill some amount of these ogres. The ogres also drop the following:

• Reborn Chest
• Green Scales
• Small Skull

These aren’t that great, though you can synthesise a Skull Axe with Small Skulls and Iron (99 of both). I’m not sure how strong it is, but I’d wager that it’s not very strong.

The chest has some pretty good items, but looking at the probabilities, as well as the amount of (presumably) purely cosmetic items, it’s probably not the smartest to open compared to others. This didn’t stop me from opening two of them, however! On my first try, I got the blue-coloured Wraith Mace. On my second try, I got the Venom Halberd. Unlike the Wraith Mace, it’s essentially one of the “normal” elemental weapons that you can upgrade like the iron weapons so it’s not really any good. It’s sold at a cheap price so perhaps I can someday buy those to upgrade it, though whether it’s worth doing that has yet to be decided.

You may be wondering: how did I get that weapon (which I thought was a staff but was surprised to find out that it’s actually a mace)? Or even: how did I afford to get that hairstyle? Or the frog? Well, after the first day (or the second–I can’t remember exactly when), I caved in and got silver coins and membership, which would later make things a lot (and by that, I mean a LOT) more fun. I thought it’d be pretty nice to find out how it feels to pay for something in PG seeing as I didn’t do that in the English version so I went ahead and get a considerable amount of silver coins. This allowed me to not only buy items that will help me in the market but also to open chests and more importantly, buy dice! Actually, the first thing that I did was buy some Gold Dice. The other thing I did was to search for useful weapons/items. I wanted to see if there were any I could get without opening chests. There’s a whole lot out there, but my criteria was: as high a critical chance as I can find and as cheap as possible. And I did find one! It’s called ジャッジハンマー (literally “Judge Hammer”). It has 20% light and 20% darkness as the elemental attributes, has a 20% chance of petrifying, is a gold weapon, and, more importantly, it has 20% light critical chance! That’s right, a whopping 20%. If you look back to the previous post, I was initially aiming for 10% but now I have one that has a 20% chance of dealing critical damage. It’s a huge improvement from that Iron Anchor which, not only had an almost non-existent 1% water critical chance but it also didn’t have any elemental attribute so it can only damage special monsters if it dealt a critical hit.

So… I set on and tested this. It’s extremely useful and is also very cheap (around 300S when I last checked as of this post). The base damage is around Giga level which is decent at best, but what really shines is the critical and its capability to petrify enemies along with the fact that it’s a gold weapon.  This means that I can petrify enemies that aren’t immune to petrification and essentially stun them for some time. I employed this technique and it worked really well. Even without the petrification, the critical damage of a special attack is around 22 which was really helpful as I could safely attack most enemies from a distance and rely on the critical chance (surprisingly, I seem to be really lucky as I often get a lot of critical hits in succession). Surprisingly, I think it also does around 62 critical damage on Fenrir with the special attack! I wasn’t able to confirm this, however, as other players were present. Though slow, it was a really safe and effective method to dealing with any enemy (*cough*ogres*cough*). It’s now (currently) my most reliable weapon. I do have quite a bit of them, but most of them are not as good as the hammer (the two mace type weapons I got are contenders, but they’re more suited in single-target/1v1 situations). The only other thing with petrifying enemies, though, is that there’s no way to stop pets from collecting from the petrified enemies if all enemies in the field are dead/petrified (I got quite a bit of stones from this). I also tend not to use it if there are other players, for obvious reasons.

If I remember correctly, I’ve opened a total of 13 chests.

 

Except the first two weapons from the top-left, all of these were from chests. What they do and how I got them will probably be a post for another time.

 

I’d also done some quests with the primary aim of getting the basic secret spells. Thanks to Lilli, I was able to get spells up to the zap spell with relative ease. Furthermore, I also went on runs in some of the S1 stages, mostly to get xaps but I did have fun trying to overkill enemies with critical hits. Speaking of critical hits, I encountered Fenrir during my CoT 1 runs and tried to solo it as preparation for Morias’ Fenrir quest but unfortunately, I’ve not successfully done it yet. With that said, I think it can be easily done with my current items, but it will likely take a bit of Powdery Scales as my strategy was to abuse the zap spell and paralyse Fenrir, followed by attacking with 憑きの鎚矛 (Possessed Mace?), the staff-like weapon with the ghost fox perched on it. Incidentally, it’s the weapon that looks the best so I use it as much as I can, even if it’s weaker than the Wraith Mace overall (it’s around Giga level whereas the Wraith Mace is around Paragon level, I think). It still does a ton of damage though, especially with super critical hits:

 

So far, I’ve managed to get Fenrir to just about below half HP, though that’s because I didn’t want to use too many of my Powdery Scales.

 

However, I’m not sure if it’s possible to keep paralysing Fenrir as he seems to gain resistance to it after doing it a few times. I’ll have to find out if the resistance has a finite duration, but I’m sure it does. If not, then I just have to think of a new strategy for it. Edit: After each hit, the probability of inflicting any status effect is halved. This lasts for 60 seconds, after which the diminishing probability is reset.

It was a lot of fun playing PG again, and I think my character in JP is even better than my spongy was in the English version! PG’s current state is quite P2W now, though I think if treated as a subscription game, the experience is a lot more fun as you can get a lot of items very quickly and, more importantly, it’s actually possible to farm dice with it! It never actually crossed my mind that this was how Lilli and other players farm dice, despite knowing that double collect was added.

Anyway, I feel motivated and it feels really fun to play so I’ll hopefully be able to keep making blog posts. Until the next post, goodbye!