JimdaFish's Okey-Dokey PPE Thread

[JimdaFish]

I never quit, I just took a little break/temporary retirement.

---

Seeing as his penguin warrior had been around for a few years without getting much of anywhere, JimdaFish finally decided to buckle down and five-star the class (again). And what better way to do this than with a ppe? He could imagine several other, better ways, but here we are.

So begins the story of Grugo the Warrior. With the power of the force and a giant, apparently bioluminescent tiger at his side, Grugo began his quest for greatness. The going (as usual for a JimdaFish ppe) was slow and unremarkable. Grugo got his first neat find in the ruins of a weird ancient shrine.

You might be wondering about how we got the other gear equipped in this screenshot. Truth be told, I have no idea. This particular screenshot is from November of 2021, and I don’t have the others.

Well, rings are nice, but what Grugo really wanted was a better hat. Something a little more capable and better at letting him beat up the bad guys whose homes he kept pillaging unprovoked. So he kicked down the door of a nearby temple to see what they had in the headgear department.

Not being a musician himself, Grugo found himself unable to use this for anything useful and gave it to a friend.

Continuing his stint as an Indiana Jones wannabe, our intrepid explorer went to another set of ruins to try to find a hat. This time, he was successful.

Also, at some point in there he got a better sword and armor. I usually only end up screenshotting the untiered items. Speaking of Ancient Ruins and swords, one of Grugo’s next runs resulted in a nifty little find:

Now basically a ninja, our diminutive warrior was ready to really get to having fun. But first, he had to get a quick snack.

Oreos make for a delicious treat! Not to mention the side dish of what appeared on first glance to be a vial of someone’s blood. What substance do you guys think is actually in the various stat potions?

Continuing his traipse through early game content, Grugo killed a large angry orange energy creature and got a pretty cool ring.

While amazing for petless players, this one just didn’t stand up to the raw, unchecked power of the Aquamarine Amulet and didn’t see any real use.

Yearning desperately to return to his green roots, Grugo found a green portal that brought him to a green world with green plants and a big green angry monster that gave him a green staff upon death.

Somewhat saddened by the fact that this wasn’t an Ancient Stone Sword, the warrior left in a huff to mug a couple stone giants. Those guys were happy to provide him with what he desired:

Now he was starting to get somewhere!

---

Again, a lot of these screenshots are pretty old. I’ll be going through them steadily to tell the story of our lightsaber-wielding friend here, hopefully with a better upload schedule than I’ve had for the last year and a half. But given how dead these forums are, this also might just fizzle out. We’ll see!

[JimdaFish]

Warriors use swords. As such, any good warrior ppe must get as many UT and ST swords as it can. Thus begins the

QUEST FOR DBLADE

That’s not a dblade.

Grugo found himself on a warm sunny day, frolicking through the forest. This forest was full of apparently carnivorous mechanized squirrels, and a bunch of very, very angry trees. After smooshing their biggest bug, he got a leaf chucker.

Following some other non-eventful side quests, Grugo and his pals mugged the Mad God himself and stole his jewelry and other valuables.

Oryx considered calling the authorities to report the theft, but decided otherwise when it occurred to him that it wouldn’t look so great if the all-powerful ruler of the realm was revealed to have lost a fistfight with a frog man standing roughly two feet tall.

Eager to get back to bug-smooshing (and let’s be honest, who isn’t excited for such things?), Grugo and company raided some nests for loot. They were not disappointed in the slightest:

When in doubt, stomping bugs is the way to go! Still no dblade so far, though…

[Twitchystr]

the comeback is crazy.

[JimdaFish]

Despite being several years old, the pixie sword remains a very useful and powerful item in any sword-wielder’s arsenal. So Grugo wanted one, and tried to get a Desire Troll to drop one for him. Sadly this wasn’t in the Troll’s loot table, and all he got was a weird pet skin:

But when you come to the PPE thread, you don’t come here for weird pet skins, you come here for white bags. So here’s a white bag in a white bag:

Now Grugo could be a real menace to his fellow players! If only he could figure out how to fit this thing in his helmet slot…

Next up, a run-in with an angry Rock Dragon came to an end after our brave hero successfully hacked the entire thing to bits. He was richly rewarded for his efforts with a blade that housed within it the great power of the sun itself. Unfortunately, just like his white-bag-in-a-white-bag, he just couldn’t seem to equip it.

That shield rune might come in handy if Grugo can ever get up the skill and courage to actually start completing O3s, but that might be a while. Yeah, I’m kinda bad at this game don’t judge me.

In the interest of someday getting some actually cool gear, our little green friend starting running some Lost Halls. (Lost Hallses? Lost Halls’? I’m really not sure how to plural a word that’s already plural.) He joined some friends in taking on the Void Entity with a bunch of weird modifiers, and he got a cool quiver to give his archer friend:

Then all of the heroes of the Nexus received an update through their electronic devices: there were new weapons added to the game! They were different! Grugo now had an entire new list of tiered thingamajigs to get his hands on. They looked like this:

(Amazing loot, JimdaFish, thank you for the screenshot.)

Well, after killing a bunch of bosses and collecting a lot of random items, Grugo went to his friend The Tinkerer to see what he could come up with for these new weapons. Grugo handed him a bunch of tokens, and The Tinkster reached behind the desk to pull out…

“An anchor?”
“Yes.”
“I give you all of that, and you give me a boat anchor?!?”
“Yes.”
“…”
“Would you like that gift-wrapped?”
“That would be lovely, thank you.”

---

Following this exchange, JimdaFish took a hiatus lasting several months.

[JimdaFish]

Following this hiatus, Grugo knew what he must do: he had a sword to get, one which had to be pulled from the fiery pits of hell owned by the Archedemon himself. So he slayed a white demon and embarked on another episode of the

QUEST FOR DBLADE

That’s not a dblade.

Now, Halloween was coming once more to the Realm, and no one was more festive than Grogu! He celebrated by killing Oryx a bunch of times to try to get his STs. Oryx obliged:

Then Halloween came around for real, and Grogu kept killing Oryx:

Needless to say, the disappointment was great.

Needless to say, Grogu was having a time.

With Oryx clearly being of no help whatsoever, our hero asked Septavius the Ghost God for a cool hat. Septavius was actually very helpful in this regard.

Still upset about his lack of dblade, our vertically-challenged protagonist went to the pub for a few beers. After getting a little drunk and trashing the place, he stole a wine casket and used it as a shirt:

Then he joined a pumpkin carving competition, and won a pumpkin of his very own:

So, let’s recap our set here:

Ring: a band infused with the blood of heroes long dead, slain by the Mad God himself
Armor: wine barrel
Headgear: pumpkin
Weapon: boat anchor

Yeah, it’s a combo.

[JimdaFish]

Now you may have noticed that despite our many Quest for Dblade episodes, Grugo had yet to get himself a dblade. This made him very sad. And what do you do with a diminutive individual who is sad? You give them candy, of course!

Now holding an even better magic bonk stick shotgun than the dblade, Grugo was finally satisfied… with continuing to complain about his lack of dblade. “Never mind” he told himself. “I shall divert my attention elsewhere.” And divert he did, stealing the stinger off of a big bug that tried to kill him:

Shortly after this screenshot, he finally got to five stars!

Unfortunately, he could not actually use that stinger for anything. So he followed some friends of his into a hole in the ground and wandered around a giant subterranean maze until they all came upon this angry stone monster that tried to kill them. The adventurers blasted him into rubble, and Grugo got a shirt:

Now he had so much hp!

Fighting with a big angry purple dude afterwards (it was a while afterwards), he got another shirt, but this one didn’t fit:

Quite unfortunate, really.

Well, Grugo didn’t want a shirt that didn’t fit, he wanted something good. Something that would make the other adventurers envious. Something with an unfathomable amount of strength pulsing through it. Something that only the most righteous mortals could touch and live. Well, after slaying the Void Entity once again and opening up the latest white bag, Grugo found such an item:

Was this really the best ring for a warrior? No. Was it the best ring for a warrior that he had? Yup. Does it still look cool? Yup.

Now if only he could get a ggen somewhere…

[JimdaFish]

With yet more pumpkins taking up space in his vault, Grugo decided to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a furry. To that end, he began obtaining the items needed to finally turn himself into a giant wolf, starting with the armor:

He also found himself a very dapper-looking hat after killing Oryx (who was looking a little pink today), and added it to his ever-growing collection:

All this Oryx slaying really got our hero hungry, though, so he ate an oreo:

A little later, Grugo was fighting the big scary spider in the big scary spider place, and witnessed tragedy as someone got ran over by the maniacal arachnid:

No seriously, that spider is very spoopy.

But then the time came and the stars aligned. After slaying a mighty Hermit God, Grugo saw the white bag in the shallow waters of the sea. Ignoring it at first (white bags in such locations were usually fake and not worthy of much excitement), this one stuck around. “Could it be?” Grugo whispered to himself.

You see, Grugo had forgotten that Jugg no longer dropped from the Hermit God. So not only was this a Halloween reskin, but it was of the wrong item. “Well,” he told himself, “now I have a backup in case my other Basher of Barnacles falls apart.”

What will Grugo do next? What gear will he get? Will JimdaFish finally catch up to present day screenshots? Tune in next time to find out!

[XBookwyrmX]

Boy, I leave long enough and mythical white bags of the Realm get swapped around? When did that happen, and why, do you know?

[JimdaFish]

I know, right?

For the when, it looks like this occurred in the release when they added the alternate weapons and introduced the Barnacle Basher and other white bags for these new items in the same update.

As for the why, I think they were just trying to put these high-end items in relevant locations. Since Jugg dropped from both Hermit and Sphinx, they felt fine replacing the Jugg with Basher for the Hermit drop. Similarly, they swapped out Kageboshi from the Jade Statue in favor of the new Hama Yumi in that same update (Garnet Statue still drops Kageboshi).

But it definitely feels wrong. Maybe that’s just because I’ve been around this game too long, though…

[JimdaFish]

Grugo, as you can tell, is a big fan of cool hats. He loves collecting them, even if he’s not going to use them. So he was quite happy when the bees finally gave him their hat:

Then he got another one of these thingies:

He also continued in his quest to build his furry suit. It was time for the ring:

He got the other parts along the way too, but he managed to misplace those screenshots (silly Grugo).

And because he spent so much time running around and killing the bad guys, he got enough clout with the Nexus crew to finally get a title. He was so proud of himself!

Grugo the Pretzels Collector was once again ready for adventure!

But now Grugo wanted a big sword. He could only get this sword from the Marble Colossus, so he killed the dude and took his sword:

Wrong sword, but an upgrade from the previous T11 anyhow.

Grugo also made it through enough of the various quests for that season to get a Gilded Chain Scythe. He did not know what this was and it looked pretty bad, but it was a flail and might be useful someday if he ever got the set (this will probably never occur).

Another foray into the Lost Halls once again did not yield a colo sword:

Around this time, Grugo became aware of a new dungeon, one with a lot of swamp and maybe even Shrek. Wanting to meet his idol in person, Grugo gave the dungeon a shot and got a weird taichi:

He also had a bunch of weird chests from all the quests he had been running and decided to open them:

Don’t talk to me, my Jugg or my backup Jugg ever again.

[JimdaFish]

Rather used to the medieval life, Grugo was in for a bit of a shock when the aliens showed up briefly to try and enslave the realm again. Joining the ferocious counterattack, our hero leapt through a wormhole and took the battle to the invaders. He landed in a large yellow place with scary monsters and lots of sand.

“I don’t like sand,” Grugo muttered to his friends. “It’s course, it’s rough, it’s irritating-- hey look! A white bag!”

Now he had an alien sword, in case the game ever had another alien event. I wonder if that will happen?

Grugo also got the chance to hop into a weird arena place full of Oryx’s various underlings, and fought them all for their fantastic loot. He was still a little nervous from that one time in the Mad God Mayhem (rest in peace to the ninja ppe), but he got some good stuff this time around, nonetheless.

Well, it’s back to that Colossus Sword grind! Grugo wasn’t getting any younger, and he wanted to collect all of the bonk sticks he could get his hands on. Knowing that Colo was the best one out there for warriors, he was determined to get his tiny, clawed hands on it. He got a bow:

He got a potato:

He got a brain:

He even, somehow, got the money staff:

But the Sword of the Colossus continued to elude him. As his fame kept in increasing, as the Halls dragged on, Grugo was becoming a little annoyed. He beat up some cultists, and even those guys seemed to be playing games with him:

He also got a random Sourcestone from a chest, but this wasn’t anywhere near as cool as his Omnipotence Ring, so he didn’t bother with it:

And then the Marble Colossus granted him a sword. With a golden hilt and a shining white blade, Grugo beheld the beauty of the weapon in his hands:

Well, yet more disappointment. However, it was a T13 sword (he didn’t have one of those yet) and it was enchantable, so that was cool. He went to that one shady dude in his vault and asked him to make the sword cut through trees and rocks for him, and the shady guy happily placed Cover Passing Projectiles on it for him. No Cube God could hide from Grugo now!

---

Okay folks, we’ve reached the end of November in our story now. We’re catching up, if slowly!

[JimdaFish]

Grugo was fast. Very fast. But he wanted to be faster. He needed exaltations.

So he headed down to the depths of the Lost Halls to find some fugitives who were hiding following some rather questionable human experimentation practices. After killing them, he got some cool swords, but once again he wasn’t able to use these ones:

And then this happened again.

Annoyed, Grugo went to his vault to open some chests he had laying around.

[Very fascinating JimdaFish, let’s get on with it.]

Now, JimdaFish has friends, and a life outside of Realm (I promise, no need to fact check me please). So this meant that Grugo got to play with his friend @Pegasusy. They ran a Void together and it was going great. And then it wasn’t going great, and Grugo had to contend with a good deal of survivor’s guilt after watching his best friend get mowed down by the enemies of the Void.

Following this, Grugo swore vengeance on every Void Entity he saw. But he needed guidance, and you know the only being out there who can provide a comforting hand in such moments of despair: Shrek. So our little warrior friend went back to the swamp. He didn’t find Shrek, but he did find a big tree with some bark he could fashion into some armor:

Then, to remember his friend Pegasusy, he adopted a pegasus:

It was also around this time that he finally got enough shards to get part of the Agents of Oryx set. Gotta collect everything, after all!

Speaking of collection, Grugo got yet another of those alternate weapon white bag items that were introduced after he was born:

And despite all of that, Grugo was still lacking in the Dblade department, and in the Colo Sword department. Hopefully one of those can be fixed soon!

[JimdaFish]

Dragons are cool. Grugo, having just watched the masterful documentary “How to Train Your Dragon”, thought that he too could train a dragon. But he needed some gear first. He talked to his local dragons, and got a thingamajig:

He asked for some more, but the dragons did not oblige.

Now, while rarely screenshotted throughout the process, Grugo had been running quite a few Lost Halls, specifically with the hope of getting that Colo Sword. At one point, he ran a LH with about 40 people, which turned into 20 people when a certain dungeon modifier resulted in four simultaneous Spooky Bois, with a couple crusades thrown into the mix as well for extra seasoning.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1166193008014794856/1183463474593009674/image.png?ex=65c906c0&is=65b691c0&hm=6237e157a855c300acc4175cab01f4856a12769a1b1ec8eacbd3fd79dc5e67f2&

Following this tragedy, group dps skyrocketed.

But Grugo was close to exalting defense and mana, and still had not found himself a Sword of the Colossus. He thought about how many runs he’d have to do after exalting; would it be two? Twenty? He didn’t know. Every time he got a white bag from MBC, it was something other than Colo. So when he got another white bag, he was barely interested.

A couple runs later, he finished up his def and mana exalts. Now we’re cooking!

“JimdaFish,” I imagine you asking. “How is Grugo doing on exaltations at this point?”

Well, that is a fantastic question, and I’m very glad that I imagined you asked it. Here’s where Grugo stands as of December 10th, when the screenshot was taken:

Not too shabby, except for where it’s obviously very, very shabby.

“JimdaFish,” I imagine you inquiring further. “Why do you not have any vitality, life or attack exaltations yet? Are you bad at the game?”

Well, I have to say that the hypothetical version of yourself is quite nosy, and rather rude. But yes, it would appear that Grugo has not completed a single Kogbold, O3, or Shatters. You see, there is a reason that JimdaFish PPEs last so long and get so much fame: by avoiding the really challenging content, I keep my characters alive for a long enough time to eventually accumulate cool fame numbers and neat items. When it comes down to it, as previously mentioned,

I am a coward.

But there comes a time when even the most cowardly of individuals must rise to the challenge. When there is nowhere else to go, they are forced to finally confront their fears, to face the evil lurking in the-- hey look a weird bow!

---

Will JimdaFish finally get over his fears and run the remaining exalt dungeons, or will he simply stick to running Abysses in the hopes of getting a Dblade? All of this, and so much less, in further installments.

[JimdaFish]

Oryxmas had arrived, and the Nexus heroes were feeling festive. All set for another month of partying and robbing the Mad God blind ('tis the season!), everyone was on the hunt for keys to Santa’s Workshop, because not even Santa can catch a break with these guys. Grugo was lucky enough to get one of these keys:

After all, sword classes are known for getting through the Workshop easily, right? This should be no problem!

But first, he had some side quests to get through. For one, he had to run a few Fungal and Crystal Caverns to get some extra experience for a Battlepass, whatever THAT was. So he ran a few, and got some interesting-smelling armor:

And then a katana:

And then an axe and a katana:

And with that, the Frosty farm session came to a swift (and happy) end!

But now came the time for the Workshop. Grugo did not prepare at all for this. He had no consumables, and hadn’t given this any trial runs. But how hard could it be?

Turns out not too hard (despite the earlier sarcasm), because he finished on his first try once he switched to his boat anchor as a weapon. He got nothing of interest, though.

But what to do next? Should he continue running the Oryxmas event? Should he try the other exalt dungeons? He couldn’t decide. I guess you could say he was…

Conflicted!

I’m not sorry.

Then he got cold and unfortunately got frostbite in his hand.

I’m still not sorry.

Then someone opened a Belladonna’s Garden, which Grugo also had not done yet. Figuring that he may as well, he hopped in, hopped on some sentient plants, hopped out, and got the Season’s Beatins fame bonus:

Then yet another foray into the Fungal Caverns resulted in him putting a crystal worm’s head on a stick and waving it around to spook his enemies:

Item descriptions get a little wild sometimes.

Then Oryx called him a jerk:

That was rude.

But finally, the time had come. No longer able to just cower and hide from his fate, Grugo set off into a new dungeon, one which neither he nor JimdaFish had ever completed before. With some tight dodging, a little careful circling and a tasteful amount of panicked screaming, our hero did it:

Folks, our first Kogbold complete! Yeah, turns out that taking a huge break from the game while that dungeon got released resulted in me not running it at all.

[JimdaFish]

Grugo had a good Oryxmas, fighting the Mad God’s minions so much that he completed the campaign and got a necklace:

In addition to this, he also got a bunch of those random loot items from the various quests, and decided to open them:

That particular engraving could only be applied to an Oryxmas ability, so now he needed that helm. But unfortunately, all he could find was a flail:

Annoyed by his lack of Reindeer Brain Bucket, he beat up Oryx and stole the dude’s sword:

Following this, he rescued a lost traveler that he found in a bag after fighting a crab:

Then, on his next O2 after getting the greatsword, he got the anger armor:

For those keeping track at home, Grugo has now collected all of the parts of this set that he can use. But will he use them? Probably not.

Figuring that he was on a roll, he fought O2 for the third time in a row:

Sadly, Grugo is illiterate and cannot read the book.

Angry that this little green man had robbed him three times in a row, Oryx countered by summoning three Skull Shrines in quick succession:

However, the Mad God seemed to have memory issues from all the brain damage he had suffered from his recent clobberings, and was blissfully unaware that Grugo’s futile efforts were in fact more than a match for a Skull Shrine.

But Grugo still had a desire to train some dragons, and he was ready to get the other, non-ring items of that set. So he hopped into an LoD and discovered a fellow fish man:

JimdaFish smiled smugly, knowing full well that regardless of what Noahdafish might think, JimdaFish was the cooler fish.

Unfortunately, the dragons did not recognize JimdaFish/Grugo’s levels of coolness, and only gave him another of those amulets:

“Next time.” Grugo told himself. “Next time we’ll get a different part of the set.”

Then, to round things out, Grugo finally saved up enough shards to buy himself something nice:

Just two more items left and he’ll have that full set as well!

And finally, after many long years, JimdaFish was ready to start learning O3s (for the second time; see my graveyard for info on how my first learning attempts went). So he sent Grugo off to explore, and hopefully get a white bag. But Grugo didn’t get a white bag; all he got was a blueprint:

“Next time.” Grugo told himself. “Next time we’ll get a white bag, and definitely not a blueprint.”

He then proceeded to Nexus partway through the O3 fight, but he was steadily inching closer to his goal of finally someday conquering the Mad God himself!

---

Okay, we’re only about a month behind now. We’ll catch up soon, maybe? I dunno.

[JimdaFish]

Oryx liked it, so he put a ring on it:

Leucoryx did not like it, so he put a blueprint on it:

And the Avatar of the Forgotten King got a little confused because he thought he was a skull shrine, which made the whole fight much more relaxed:

But Grugo wasn’t satisfied with just killing stuff in the Realm. He had other adventures to pursue. After a whole lot of attempts, he finally did it:

JimdaFish’s first ever O3 complete! Now he just needs another 50 or so to exalt.

This also yielded a neat fame bonus, because apparently DECA has completely forgotten that they made the Moonlight Village, Advanced Next and Advanced Steamworks:

Following this, Grugo went back to his usual job of collecting blueprints:

And don’t forget about getting swords, too:

This completes the Agents of Oryx set!

[JimdaFish]

“Well,” Grugo said to himself. “I should probably get around to getting some more exaltations. Let’s ask this factory if they have any exaltations!”

The factory did in fact have exaltations. It also had blueprints:

Grugo the Blueprints Collector was having a blast, and had even more of a blast when he got the real thing:

Now he had a dagger on a chain, which I guess is pretty cool.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled exaltation farming with another episode of the

QUEST FOR DBLADE

That’s not a dblade.

Getting back into the thick of farming for an ever so slightly higher vitality stat and an Enhancement Core, Grugo ran Steamworks after Steamworks. On one of these runs, he got a weird shield:

On another run: he got a blueprint to build someone’s head:

Then he got someone’s severed head, which was a little weird:

You might also have noticed that there are event chests in many of these screenshots. Unfortunately, the DECA employee in charge of adding loot to that chest had apparently decided that Shards of the Advisor were the only thing the players really wanted from the dungeon, so Grugo got nothing of interest from those.

A little saddened, he did, however, get a neat little laserpointer:

Grugo was quite pleased with this, and Shuriken (despite being a full-grown tiger) loves playing with laserpointers like he’s a house cat. So everyone came out happy!

Grugo, in a last-ditch effort to stave off Kogbold Brain Rot, went outside, touched grass, and slayed a dragon:

Then Grugo kicked down the door of an undead pirate hideout and took their clothes:

Now recovered from his Kogbold Brain Rot, Grugo the Blueprints Collector got back to running more Kogbolds:

After a whole lot of blueprints, and not a whole lot of Enhancement Cores, Grugo was finally starting to get somewhere with his fame:

He was also still getting blueprints:

And so ended the Kogbold event. Grugo had run a whole lot of them, but was still severely lacking in the Enhancement Core department even after fully maxing out his vitality exalts. A little disappointed, he vowed to return to the factory someday to give it another shot and maybe get it. In the meantime, the Kogbold Brain Rot was returning, so he left to go outside, touch grass and slay a dragon.

[JimdaFish]

Now he had an alien sword, in case the game ever had another alien event. I wonder if that will happen?

Spoiler: it happened.

The aliens had returned, and Grugo joined his fellow heroes to defeat the aliens. Even Oryx seemed eager to see the extraterrestrial invaders gone, and had offered a bounty of some cool alien gear if the Nexus crew could take care of this for him. Grugo hopped into a portal and got another yellow sword:

As payment for his work, he got a cool armor:

Then a giant robot alien rabbit popped up and tried to kill everyone by summoning a bunch of little UFOs that definitely had balanced HP bars. Grugo punched the giant robot alien rabbit in the face and got a bathrobe:

Now, these are far from the only screenshots associated with this event; Grugo got an absolutely disgusting number of white bags from the alien dungeons, and in the mix the Acidic Slasher screenshot apparently disappeared into cyberspace, never to be seen again. But he got it.

You see, Grugo had run into some friends and headed into a Forax. The adventurers did a good job, slaying the minions and the occasional boss. They got through the first couple levels just fine, but on the final wave of aliens before the last boss, all of the other bosses in the room swarmed the middle platform and made a bunch of people nexus. Grugo considered nexusing as well, but then remembered that as an 8/8 jugged warrior with a maxed divine pet, he was basically immortal and had no need to nexus. So he and this rogue (the only other person to make it through) finished off the rest of the aliens, and then faced the big green dude that really wanted to give Grugo a hug. Grugo considered giving the big green dude a hug too, but upon realizing that this big green dude was not Shrek, declined the hug and killed him. Then he got the green sword, and was happy.

So then it was just a matter of combining the Alien Cores to make the Infinity Gauntlet Loaded Core and become a cool alien guy:

And smush them together…

Big alien man!

Grugo actually figured that the alien set might be good, so he ran with that for a little bit while he gathered the fragments needed for a Locked Reactor. In the meantime, he had a neat little find:

Well, maybe he hadn’t needed to farm so hard after all.

But after a whole lotta alien dungeons, he finally got it:

This concludes the Alien Event chapter. What will Grugo do next? Will the new set play a pivotal role in turning Grugo into even more of a beast than he was before? Who knows? I sure don’t. Tune in in a couple days to find out!

[JimdaFish]

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…

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“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.

[JimdaFish]

Going through another slight wardrobe change, Grugo set off for glory, and another attempt at training dragons. This one went slightly better than the previous efforts:

He also talked to the Tinkerer guy and bought a pet saddlebag off him:

Always keep your tigers properly saddled, folks.

Now, despite his best efforts, Grugo still didn’t have all the swords in the game yet. In the hopes of adding another one to his collection, he joined a bunch of other adventurers in raiding the local pirate syndicate. He opened a treasure chest and found…

…an accordion.

Then he killed a giant crab and got…

…another accordion.

But third time’s the charm. This time when he killed a crab, it gave him the thing:

"And it’s even an enchantable one!’ Grugo shouted triumphantly.
“They all do that now you idiot” replied another adventurer, clearly annoyed by their own lack of cutlass.
“Oh. Yay anyways!”

Then Grugo got another blueprint:

Running around the Realm later, Grugo faced many of the toughest challenges that Oryx could muster. Cube Gods were easy enough. Rock Dragons were manageable. But he had to admit that the Kogbold Expeditionary Sentry was a little much:

Then he got another OSanc blueprint:

The OSanc white:blueprint ratio is now 2:6!

Then he fought Oryx 3 with a bunch of his friends. Someone decided to funny Oryx when he was just trying to smash everyone to pieces, and then a whole lot of people made some very poor life choices:

Well, so much for them. Grugo carried on with life, and decided to try his hand at The Shatters. He hadn’t made it past the Bridge Sentinel before, but maybe this time would be different.

It was different! Despite the chaos on a pogo stick that was the first boss, Grugo dodged enough of the bullets to survive! Then he ran forward with his friends to confront the Twilight Archmage and his friends. But before they could get there, one of the stone guys in the dungeon rushed at the group and tried to kill Grugo’s friends. Rather incensed by this, Grugo pulverized the dude and was richly rewarded:

Invincibility armor number two!

Then Grugo navigated the fun of the second boss with his companions and somehow made it through! He got his first point towards an attack exaltation, and a robe:

Time to make this a 3/3 on bosses!

Unsurprisingly, Grugo had to nexus partway through the fight. But with an awesome new armor and some newfound confidence, he had found the whole experience quite worthwhile.