Got My First Real Armor Master, the Summon of 69

...Seriously stretching that old Bryan Adams tune there...

Breaking the Armor

Well, it takes a while, but the armor breaking quests can be done without any use of PVP/brod. Helms can be annoying if used to always wearing CoL. But I can handle up to MCWs without one. (I currently train on Frost Trolls when I do rare training. Those need a CoL... which sucks since they're good at breaking stuff.)

Primary breakers have been Phantom Warriors, Forest Chims, and Mountain Chims. Though I've had a few items break on random critters like a falcon.

Having noted what was breaking things the most, with those three specific creatures in mind, Ruins of Tirnym became a place to go. When on red astro, I'd go there wearing break-needed armor and a break-needed weapon. PWs I'd do without a weapon, giving them more chance to break the armor, while the chims would be done with weapon to give the weapons a break chance. (Only 1 weapon left on the first weapon break quest.)

Tit Helm was the last piece to break, and it took a while to break it. But it did finally happen.

Under Attack

Training is again rare these days, but the dailies continue. So a/d levels do come, just very slowly.

You advanced to level 136 of attack!

The Summon of 69

Taking full advantage of at least 2 of the gods I recently switched to of all 3.

Following the continued plan of mixing spider stones on normal days at the gypsum, returning with those and extra gypsum to storage that is saved for Day of Summoners.

Bought some tiger furs, and as well spent time collecting them in NRM on the triple spawn. Those get used on Summon Day.

This has led to three summon levels since last update. Could have been more but also been focusing on other skills.

You advanced to level 67-69 of summoning!

Slow Motion Potion

The 1 god I haven't focused as much on of the three I recently switched to is potion. The other two skills are really my priority at the moment, while Potion is more of a long-term plan.

Mixing SRs for summon stones has been the primary leveler. Though I did one school day when out of crafting supplies head to the potion school to finish off a level.

You advanced to level 113 of potioning!

Power Crafting

Polished Saps in the school, along with ring mixing for personal use (and sold some on my bot) were the start when I returned to this skill.

But I've reached a point where, even with pretty high fail rate, it's still cheaper and faster-exp/min to mix blank paper in the school on school day than it is polished saps.

So I've switched to that. Lots of wood stocking of late, and of course mixing of WEs... something I refused to mix when I was still working on my alch level, but now that I'm not caring about that I don't care what essies I mix. And it's made for another change of pace from past play.

But back on track: Crafting has gotten my heaviest attention, as of the 3 gods I just took, I expect it to be the first I in the distant future switch off.

Several school days where I fortunately had already stocked (mostly) for when they appeared led to many levels here.

You advanced to level 75-80 of crafting!

Moving On

I do tend to do a lot of random stuff, to avoid the boredom of doing just the same planned thing all day, every day, but I do keep plans.

1- More wood and WE stocking to prep for school day.
2- Mixing LEs/SRs for stock to do more summon stones
3- Continuing to break other stuff on red astro (esp. via Tirnym)
    3a- With that, stocking up S2Es from PWs for distant future hydro runs
4- Various things to earn gc, since currently the only income other than random critter drops is selling the summon stones I mix. Need a bit more than that.

Summoning My Inner Crafter, Among Other Things

Besides hitting my Alchemy goal of level 140, been quite busy with other stuff.
Did a brief run of more pear hunting recently, just for a change of pace. Found every pear during that period that I hunted for with the exception of one that was determined to be unreachable. Brought my total pears found count up to 522.

All 3 Redeemer Perks

With finally getting the No Hope perk, I now have all three of the perks currently offered by Redeemer.

Changing of the Gods

As mentioned in a previous post, after reaching Manu 100 I switched to the Summon God, killing the Defense god in the process as well.

Since then, I replaced Defense with Potion Goddess.

After reaching my Alchemy goal, I switched that to the Crafting God.

So the final result, where I had Alchemy-Manu-Defense before, I now have: Crafting, Potion, Summoning

This is going to make for a big change to how I used to play...

Starting the Summoning God

Summoning has been the heaviest worked on lately. While Tiger Stones are of course the best option for higher-level leveling, Furs are scarce unless you go collect them yourself.

I've bought what I could find, and I've even hit the triple spawn in NRM at times to collect. But I've realized that the best thing I could do is work on some Spider Stones as well.

Why? They require thread, which is easily stocked buying from the NPC in EVTR.

So my current plan is to continue work on stocking up White Tiger Furs, but save them for Summon Days. Mix Spider Stones on non-summon days in the meantime, both to keep gc flowing and so I'm not limiting my leveling to just that special day.

The combo of spider and tiger stones seems to be working so far.

Since taking the Summon god, I've made another 5 summon levels. That included mixing what tiger furs I had on a summon day along with mixing spider stones at the gypsum on normal days.

You advanced to level 62-66 of summoning!

While mixing the tiger stones before that...

Your overall level is now 167!

Starting Up the Crafting God 

The Potion Goddess has yet to provide a level, mainly because I've not mixed much and it's still new. I have mixed quite a few SRs, as well as the MoPs needed for the Potion Goddess quest, and about 520 creature food for my personal use. Still not enough to level, though.

Crafting on the other hand is off to a start, gaining 2 levels from a combo of mixing rings for personal use (I eat them like candy), and tossing out pol sap ings in the school on school days. That's led to 2 levels so far, and a third is close.

You advanced to level 73-74 of crafting!

Currently stocking for a full school days' worth of polished saps. After which, I should be able to switch to blank paper for much better experience. Testing at current levels, I deemed it not worth it to try yet, but close.

All Those Other Skills

While my current plans consist primarily of working on summoning and crafting, other skills do not remain ignored.

Ranging 68 - On a recent ranging day, I got level 68 and am very close to 69. (No screenie available.)


Engineering - Any amber I stock up continues to be used in the school to level this skill. I don't take advantage of the full 6 hours for this reason of an Engineering day, but when those days appear I'll use up whatever supplies I have.

On the last Engineering day, that led to 3 levels.

You advanced to level 108-110 of engineering!

Defense - I continue to do dailies for a/d, but haven't focused on any training of late. I did take advantage of a Sun Tzu since I was close to leveling defense at the time.

You advanced to level 136 of defense!

Harvesting - Hasn't been focused on since level 100, just whenever I happen to level it. Got surprised by this level since I wasn't paying attention to it.

You advanced to level 119 of harvesting!

That's All Folks...

Current plans:
1- Continue mixing summon stones
2- Stock pol sap ings for a school day
3- Stock TF ings for engineering that are enough to mix the amber I have
4- Heavy stocking/mixing of LEs and SRs for summoning

And when I'm bored and my astro is red, go out and continue trying to break stuff I need to break for quests.
For the first weapon break quest, I only have Dragon Blade left.
For the "newbie" armor break, I have leather torso and helm left.
For the first normal armor break quest, only the tit helm remains.

Close but no cigar for all 3 of those.

Pushing for a 1.9.4 release

During setting up RPMs for OpenSUSE users, while I knew there'd been updates to the client code in GIT, it dawned on me just how much had been changed.

1.9.3 official client users were actually at a disadvantage compared to those of us who compiled the GIT code for the latest updates.

So with that in mind, I decided to push for an interim 1.9.4 release.

Interim? There were no plans to do another release for the current client. The intention was to move to the new gl2 code. However, work on that has progressed much slower than expected (a beta test was originally planned last June or so), and the GIT for the gl2 client hasn't had a change in over 5 months now.

Not a complaint, though I would like to see work on it continued, but stating facts as they currently stand.

And since the gl2 code is on such a holding pattern, it seemed only right to go ahead and make an interim 1.9.4 release, updating users to almost 22 months worth of updates, bugfixes, and tweaks.

In order to prove the case for making such a release, I went through all the GIT commits to the client since 1.9.3 was released and made a list of all the changes and fixes, and the more important bug fixes and internal upgrades. No easy task, but it was something to do while harving, heh.

And then, made the case for the update. You can see that, including the entire list of updates/changes/bugfixes I made, here:

EL Official Forum Thread
Semi-complete list of changes since 1.9.3 was released (the case for 1.9.4)

OpenSUSE RPMs Now Available

Eternal Lands client RPMs are now available for OpenSUSE, versions 12.2, 12.3, 13.1, and Factory. (i586 and x86_64 builds for each.)

The builds are from the current GIT repository code, so it's the absolute latest and greatest with added functions and bugfixes since the eons-ago released current 1.9.3 release.

As well, I stuffed in the current updated Encyclopedia and Knowledge list into these.

Music and Sound RPMs are also available as optional installs.

Updates will occur whenever something useful is added to the GIT code (rare).

If you're an OpenSUSE user, you can now keep your client up to date with YaST/Zypper just like any other program, no more compiling!

To install via 1-click, or Zypper instructions:
ELC (Eternal Lands Client) Build Download Page

Eternal Alchemist - #1 Alchemist!

That Awesome Moment when...

Okay, technically I'm tied for the #1 spot with giove, but that's still #1, hehe.

That happened with this:

You advanced to level 140 of alchemy!

How I Got There

Alchemy Goddess is of course a necessity if you're wanting high alchemy levels. That 20% bonus means MUCH less ings needed and mixing.

From level 100 to level 140 is 264,076,682 experience. To example this, with my rationality, it would take the following to get that much exp just by mixing HEs:
- With goddess (99exp per HE): 2,667,442 HEs
- Without goddess (83exp per HE): 3,181,647 HEs

That's over 514k HEs difference... a.k.a. 514k mums and 1.028 million silver.


There are many who think focusing primarily on bars and magic essies for experience is the best way to level.

Personally, I didn't. I did of course make those things, but primarily for actual use. I did on occasion in the past mix Magic Essies and sell them to the NPC, occasionally to other players, but that was rare, and mostly in my earlier play days (before Alch 100).

Bars on the other hand, they take a lot of time due to ings. I mixed those almost exclusively for personal use. (Rings, S2E projects, etc.)

After alch 100, I determined two methods to use for leveling focus. I of course had a lot of mixing outside of these two things since there are many essences and bars that can be mixed for actual usage, but these two things were done for the purpose of leveling:

1) Mix HEs - Those who harv silver in the MM cave regularly have most likely seen me sitting on a bag next to one of the silver-buying bots. I took food and mums to the bot, bought silver off the bots, mixed at the bot, left the cave with the HEs and silver with any free emu. Placed the HEs on my own bot (IWannaRock near gold-side entrance) and took the silver to storage for later at-sto mixing.

I found this better than magic ess for several reasons. Primarily, HEs are heavily used and sell quickly. Silver can regularly be quickly accessed on the bots in the cave. (Remember rule 5 if you do this, don't buy from bots you or any alt you have sells silver to. I never sold silver to the bots.) Having such quick access to silver, and mums being fast harvests, it made more sense to mix these than it did magic essies. Magic essie ings are much harder to come by for sale, so they mean self-harvesting, taking much longer to do than HEs. "Higher experience" does not equate to faster leveling, all things considered.

2) Mix Magic Essies in school on school day - While I did have to mix some outside of school for my own use (magic leveling and such), I would always work on keeping in stock 12k of magic ess ings reserved for school days. This was a good use of my "red harv astro" days... red astro + harv med = non-stop harvesting with essentially no medallion breakage, so I could focus on real life while leaving my char to harv stock for this.

If you remain focused for the full 6 hours, you can do 12k or more mixes of magic essies in the alchemy school in Glacmor.  With my rationality, I'd make 334 exp per mix... over 4 million experience for a full school day.

Mercury in the school? I tried it before alch 100, but times have changed... energy essies got more expensive due to rising silver and iron costs. Cinnabar once used to be regularly available on market, but it hasn't been for years now. That means stocking your own cinnabar, which is a very slow harvest and heavy requiring lots of storage trips. Add the higher energy ess cost and as well breaking alembics, and it's simply not worth it.

Better to try stocking for titanium bars if you're going to do something higher than magic essences. But even still, that's 96k titanium, 36k coal, and 84k fire essies to stock for a full school day... plus food.

My Stats

With only very few occasions played on different computers, my stats are as close to accurate as you can get.

Here's my full alchemy non-school mixing list. I said I'd mixed HEs heavily, and it shows:

Some of why I mixed so many (or so few) of certain items:

1- Health Essence - Explained above, it was a primary non-school leveling item.

2- Fire Essence - Honestly, no explanation needed. These are heavily needed. Sold them in early play, but only mixed for myself after level 60 or so, as I did S2E projects and such.

3- Magic Essence - I did use these for leveling pre-Alch 100. After I mixed outside of school for self-use: magic leveling (rad shield, MI, true sight) and engineering stock (items for the engineering daily)

4- Energy Essence - I tend to use the portal room a lot, so I eat these like candy on a daily basis. As well, I spent a period in the Eng School on Eng days mixing Point Defense. With heavy use, these are also good to mix to sell should you be looking for something to make gc on.

5- Air Essence - I never took the Mana Drain route for magic leveling that so many others do. I have mixed these items for others with their ings. And of course I've needed many of these myself to mix fabrics for tailoring.

6- Life Essence - For summoning of course. And now that I've just taken the Summon god, I expect this may well be my next "1,000,000+" mixes item. Possibly will end up mixing more of these than I have HEs.

... Honestly, most of the rest are self-explanatory, mixed when needed. A few of the lower-mix items:

7- Wolfram bar - Only 8 mixed, and those were done way, way, back, many moons ago when serpent stones didn't cost anywhere near what they do now. And as well, at the time I was unaware of their NPC price. I do not mix these anymore.

8- Tin Bar - Another from way, way back in my early game play when I thought it would be good to mix for experience. I stopped quickly though at 21, since it didn't take long to realize that mixing stuff that requires swords to harvest is not a leveling option.

9- Seridium Bar - Another I stopped simply because my only use for them was harv medallions, and it took forever to get the conglomerates mixed and such. Simpler to just buy the bars from the NPC.

10 - Matter Conglomerates - Gods, how I hated doing these. I haven't mixed one in years... with exceptions of the alchemy tutorial when it was added, and the harvest tutorial, out of necessity. Otherwise I would never touch these again without one hell of a game play change.

11 - Hydro Bars - I do plan to do more S2E/hydro projects in the future so this will continue to rise.

12- Spirit Essence - The mixes I did were from many moons ago when I was barely over the rec level for mixing them. Mercury was a lot cheaper then on market as well. Unless a drastic change to mercury price occurs, there is never, ever, ever a good reason to mix these when they're much cheaper to buy from the NPC.

13 - Mercury - All mercury mixes were done way, way back when cinnabar was in abundance on market and energy essies were cheaper. I have not mixed mercury in years, and never intend to again (short of a game change that makes it worthwhile).


If you're curious about any other items, post and ask about them.

Never mixed: Alch items that don't appear on my list above that are mixable:

1- Dvarium Bar - Mixed once for the alchemy tutorial, but otherwise they're very low use and those that can use them can most likely mix their own. I never had a reason to mix for this reason.

2- Bronze Bar - No reason to mix. Cheaper and easier to buy from NPC.

3- Copper Bar - Only use is for bronze bars. So no use.


They were of course mixed for the alchemy tutorial, but that's a mandatory exception.





That's it! I figured hitting the #1 alch spot was a good time to fully break down what I'd done in the skill. And done.


My alchemy future? It's a necessity skill, so I'll continue mixing, I just won't be focused on leveling. I'll mix what I need. Heavy mixing will be:

1- Life Essies - Summon god now, and many levels to go to reach my 100+ goal for it. As I mentioned, this could surpass my HE mix count.

2- Water Essies - I hate mixing these, but I will as needed. Crafting is replacing my Alchemy god, and I plan to use the school a lot. At least two full school days of polishing sapphires (24k WEs per full day) before I can upgrade to blank paper, which would need even more (60k WEs). Note that I plan for 12k of mixes, whether or not I can do that many.

3- Air Essies - I'm still slowly working on tailoring, and need to stash a ton of these for that.

4- ... magic ... Health, Energy essies primarily, I still go through a lot of these and will mix them myself excepting emergencies where I need some quickly.

5- Iron/Steel bars - I still plan S2E projects to mix hydro bars to buy nexus. The FEs... well, I'll mix some, buy some.

So despite ending my attempts to level this skill, I will continue to heavily use it.

Players Telling Me What I Can or Cannot Do

I can't believe this actually has to be said... Eternal Lands is a game. You play as you choose to play, the only limitations being those in the official game rules.

There are actually people out there who don't believe this.


The absolute worst cases have been those who are high on getting the global quest done every time.


I wrote back in January 2013 about why I gave up on the global. (See: My Lack of Interest in the Global Quest) That post is still relevant, though may be dated a little in what's required for the global. Even still I've seen no changes to that which would change my views about it.

But I posted several problems I had with it. Broken down there was:

1. The Rewards weren't useful enough for my game play.
2. The Requirements were just wrong for something that's supposedly for "everyone" to do.
3.  The "Do It or Lose It" syndrome, that these days is being pushed on players by other players.

Details for why I've had problems with those three reasons are on the link above, so I won't go into them here.

What I'm writing about now, though, is that latter trend of certain players expecting or even demanding that others participate. Some getting all huffy and whiny about others who don't or won't.


Yeah, last I checked, participating in global wasn't obligatory, and just as I wrote in the above-linked post, I won't respond any better to those who try and force me into doing it than I do to the "use it or lose it" threat that tends to loom over every new thing that gets added.

I do not feel the global is worth bothering with in its current state.

1. The requirements need to be drastically reformed. As I explain in the above link.
2. The worms... that part needs changing as well as those few who have become privy to a private list of them show some serious snideness when talking about them with those who aren't. (BTW, snide ones, I actually managed to get your list from someone many months ago. I've actually considered posting it just to force that to be changed solely to knock you off your high horses. I'm still considering it. I've never posted secrets here but I will if you keep that snooty shit up.)
3. Only 1 of the 4 rewards is even kinda useful to me, and weighted against the other 3, I can live without it.
4. Certain players trying to force it into being an obligation make me want to do it even less.

I won't name names. Those who do that know who they are.


It's become more apparent of late, though. As I posted recently, I'm hitting goals and in the midst of changing my gods in a major way. One of those changes was taking the summoning god, as it and crafting have been ignored for far too long and I want to work on goals for those skills.

Working on summoning when already at level 62 by default means a lot of time on Arius Gypsum Mountain.

Oh yeah, the global ones end up there a lot as well, since gypsum was deemed the only harvestable that was worth being over-required in the global, both by itself and for potion mixing.

So since I started working on my summoning levels sitting up there mixing, I've come across more than a few asking if I'm harving for the global, if I wanna work with them to carry it to storage, and so on.

My answers:

1. No, I'm not working on the global. I have my own goals to work on.
2. No, I'm not helping with the hauling or harving of gypsum just because you are doing it.
3. No, your attempts to push me to do it after I have said no will not influence me to help.
4. Oops, I accidentally added you to my ignore list on purpose.

No player has the right to tell another player what to do. If I wanted such game play, I'd be in a guild.

 I definitely don't take kindly to such people. Zero tolerance for them, even. I don't play a game to be forced to do things. I do nothing that's not what *I* want to do. It's a game, not a job.

I have no qualms in ignoring and bot-banning players who do insist on this, though.Asking me is one thing, trying to force me to work on it is another. Once I've said no, that's my final answer.




My current goal for Summoning could require up to 2.2 million gypsum to harvest. Less of course depending on Summon days and access to other ings. Regardless, just like those 100+ summoners who sat there before me, I'll be up on the Arius mountain a lot in the coming months, so I expect to end up having more people end up on my ignore list. No, with my current goal in place I won't be harving for a global quest that I don't find worth doing. Pester your guildies, that's what guilds are for. I'm not in your guild.


You don't nor won't see me saying the global should be removed. As I posted before, I'm not the kind of person who asks for the removal of something just because I don't personally do it. I've stated my opinions on why I personally feel it's not worth it for my own game play, and those reasons aren't necessarily applicable to others.

But in the same way that I don't demand it be removed, I expect not to be demanded to participate. Just because it's important to you doesn't mean it is to others.