Through my time playing RotMG, I have always been a cautious player. This is why my ppes always last so long, and why, after over 8 years of playing, I still haven’t yet hit 100 deaths. I play defensively, build sets defensively, and choose content and circumstances that is unlikely to kill me.
However, this has had a downside. You see, as of about a month ago, I had 0 O3 and 0 reworked Shatters completes. These dungeons, while quite worthwhile, are simply too dangerous for me to risk a high-value character in them, and I’m not one for building armies of throwaways to hurl into the meat grinder. I was happy enough just hanging out and doing the easier content, gradually making my characters stronger and better with that. I enjoy calm, casual progression a lot more than stressful, heart-pounding action, so this works for me.
But there comes a point where you have to make the push; eventually, the only direction for progression is up. While I chanced an O3 or two previously (as you may have noticed, Grugo completed one a few posts ago but as of the last one hasn’t gotten the 5 points necessary for an exaltation), I wasn’t ready to make the serious push into unexplored endgame content. I considered pausing this ppe to make some throwaways so I could get some practice in, but then the alien event came around and I got a good look at the reworked Protective Matrices.
For those who have been out of the loop (I certainly was!), the alien armors, while once only really useful for completing the set because the invincibility proc was almost certain to fail you (it only kicked in when you took damage below a certain, very low threshold, and then only kicked in after that damage was applied), they have since been greatly improved. Now, if you take damage when below 50% health, you get 1.4 seconds of invulnerability applied before you take that damage. This means that even if the shot would have killed you, the armor will save you. Even if you’re hit with an instakill shotgun, you will survive, though your health will be below half so you might not want to stick around. You then have a 3-minute cooldown before the armor can be used again.
The advantage of this is obvious. Since I need to learn content where you can die absurdly quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing, the ability to be saved from instant death is huge. Thanks to this armor, I can learn the content stress-free, and focus on dodging and learning rather than worrying about whether my 100k base fame baby is about to get sat on by some stupid bird.
Now, this isn’t perfect. Because 3 minutes is a really, really long time in this game, I have plenty of time to mess up again before my armor has recovered from the previous save. But this lets me use my high-value characters to learn content, rather than cheap throwaways which are a pain to rebuild. With that being said…
“THE REALMS ARE FOREVER MINE!” Oryx shouted as he died, leaving behind loot for the adventurers who had slain him.
“Bro is coping hard” Grugo muttered under his breath as he waltzed forward to grab his first-ever red bag from the dude.
It wasn’t anything he could use, but he could give it to his friends nonetheless.
It was in there that Grugo finally got his first full life exalt, meaning that he was a staggering 1/15th of the way to being done with that stat. Unfortunately, he was only making it through to the end of about 1/4 runs, so this was going to take a while.
But Grugo was pretty good at killing the minibosses, and Chief Beisa certainly wasn’t an exception. So after slaying centaur guy, Grugo was happy to see a white bag appear on the ground:
The famed pizza star!
But despite his relative success in Oryx’s Sanctuaries, Grugo still felt the pull to the Kogbolds. After all, he had never upgraded his Ancient Stone Sword, and really wanted that Enhancement Core. The Kogbolds, however, had other ideas:
This means that Grugo had now received all the white bags in the dungeon except for the two that he could actually use for himself!
Then some guy named @Mialli died three times in a row.
This game is too hard.
In an effort to diversify his skillset from just violence, Grugo joined the Nexus Band and took up the trumpet:
Unfortunately that gig fell through when everyone realized that Grugo, in fact, sucks at music. He’s kinda like me that way!
Trying some other things, he learned how to spell from a spelling spell:
Now thanks to this improved literacy, he could read so many more blueprints! Which was great, because they were coming in fast:
Then Grugo developed a brief alcohol addiction in back-to-back Oryxes:
Well, the Nexus crew got together and realized that life in the Realm kinda sucked. Coming to the mutual conclusion that the Mad God himself was a bit too drunk to really make any substantive progress towards improving life for his subjects, they decided to go instead to Chancellor Dammah to get things sorted out, and maybe form an exploratory committee to investigate the major issues and identify a grassroots solution to the current madness.
But unfortunately, as Dammah was beginning his speech, some idiot decided to attack him and everything fell apart. After a whole lot of bloodshed and needless suffering, the adventurers finally defeated Dammah and discussed how to split up the loot.
“I want his staff!” one mystic announced.
“Give me the spell!” a wizard proclaimed!
“A robe, if you don’t mind?” a bard sang.
“I want his severed head.” Grugo said.
“Grugo, you need to talk to a mental health professional,” the wizard replied. “You need help.”
Grugo may need help, but now he has an excellent ring!
And for those keeping track at home, the OSanc white:blueprint ratio currently sits at 2:4. Quite interesting, given that the blueprints give you nigh-unlimited access to the items… We’ll keep this tally updated as time goes on.
). But as I get more practice with Shatters, I’ll definitely have to bring better hp gear.
