User talk:Caithe/Archive 1

Too 1337 to de1337?

My userpage has been tagged for 10 days. I'll just copy the old one over here instead of moving, but was just wondering why it hasn't been deleted in so long. Rose Of Kali 16:02, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Lol, so after 10 days, I get an EC with a page deletion. :P Rose Of Kali 16:12, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

:P I don't normally look at user page edits from RC. If you had mentioned "delete" in your summary, I probably would've seen it. —Dr Ishmael 16:17, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Isn't someone supposed to watch the category? Rose Of Kali 16:18, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Derp. 16:21, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Haha! Btw, thanks for the account merge. What does it do, exactly? I just saw that my new account now has all the contributions of the old one, is that all? My number of edits is still at just 24. :P Oh noes! What happened to the other 11 thousand? :O Seems like it's only my preferences page that shows my edit count as 24. Special:Editcount says my new name has 11k. :D Rose Of Kali 17:46, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, no.

The male images have the right hat. The tux has the top, as does the wedding attire, the formal attire has the short hat.--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 22:49, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I'll have to double check that, I could have sworn the tall one was only for the wedding tux. I guess they did that to pretend the sets aren't duplicate. :P All the trivia notes need to be fixed either way. Rose Of Kali 23:09, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I double checked, and I'm glad I'm not crazy this time. :P Dapper Top Hat = Formal Headwear = short. Thus the two suits are identical. Rose Of Kali 01:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Huh, I could have sworn they were different. I must have gotten confused while taking pictures at some point.--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 02:15, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Can't blame you. I just spent 5 hours on the female galleries, and my vision is trying to play tricks on me too. x_x Rose Of Kali 02:20, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

omagawd

Bot flag, we nust give you one o.o
Quest Reward Accepted: RC Dominance You receive 9001 wiki points. O.O — Scythe 20:30, 14 Dec 2010 (UTC)

LOL! I sense a userbox. :P Rose Of Kali 20:35, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

^__^ — Scythe 21:28, 14 Dec 2010 (UTC)

Armor Galleries Question

Are the guidelines for displaying armor very strict and inflexible? Specifically, if an armor gallery is perfect but "enable post-effects" is on/enabled, does that part need to be retaken and replaced? Or is it "good enough"?--BladeHanover2 16:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Let's put it this way. We (or specifically, I, as I can't speak for others) strive to be good, not just good enough, so if there is a noticeable flaw, then there is room for improvement. I consider post-processing effects (glow effect), aliasing (heavily jagged), bad compression (blurry), too small size (not able to zoom in at all), and really bad shot angle (big head tiny feet) to be noticeable flaws, ones that can and should be improved on. Thus "perfect but enable post-effects" is a self-contradictory statement, because post-process effects blur out details and change lighting, making it not perfect. If the flaw is very small and not easily noticeable, then I wouldn't worry about it, this isn't rocket science. And lastly, "good enough" is always better than bad or none. I hope this makes sense. Rose Of Kali 18:13, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

You sound like your usuall self. Completly geek. Man, I wish you where my age.... Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 19:13, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Geeks are fun to be with at any age. ;-P --◄mendel► 19:57, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Meh; my gf doesn't even know what the hell a game is. And I'm a *junkie*, so that sucks. Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 20:55, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

This user is a geek and proud of it.

Are you saying I'm too old? o_O Rose Of Kali 21:08, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

*engages in pointless discussion* (in all honesty, no less) No I'm not! I'm just saying you are older then I am. And that I wished I "knew" more female geeks, of my age.... Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 21:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Biblically?--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 00:43, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Don't we all. 16:16, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

More on the original topic, there were still (last I checked) armors screenshots that were taken with more serious problems (ie: dyed). I'd try to focus efforts for new screenshots there (eg: start with the obvious problems). As for post processing effects, I might argue whether such effects are bad. The goal is to present armor as it appears in game. If post processing has an effect on how armor appears, then turning it off is going to present to the user a false-view of how the armor looks. I'll be fair, with many of the paragon armors, which favor white shiny surfaces, you do get area's where you can't make out texture (Might look at Parago Male Asuran), but that's more because there's no texture there to see than because anything significant has been rendered hidden, or that minor detail would remain hidden when shot from other angles. I've come to look at the screenshots to see how the armor looks in-game, and even when my character is blind drunk, I keep post-processing on. Yamagawa 18:19, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I never play with post-proc enabled, so all the armors look as-is to me. Also, should we then take screenshots for every texture detail level? After all, my Win98 cannot run High, so it looks different for me.

Post-proc obscures the looks of an armor; that's why we chose to have it disabled for armor screenshots. --Vipermagi 18:26, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

The purpose of armor galleries is not to show it "as it appears in game," since, as Viper pointed out, it appears differently in-game depending on each player's graphics settings. The purpose of armor galleries is to show the armor with as much detail as possible, which is what the image quality guidelines set out to accomplish. Post-processing effects tend to obscure a great deal of detail, which is why we don't like them in our galleries. —Dr Ishmael 18:55, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Precisely. ^^ Rose Of Kali 21:10, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Gz

On your recent promotion to admin. :-)  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:52, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Too bad it was on the wrong account :P–alistic 04:43, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Too bad mendel immediately demoted himself. :P And thanks. :] If only I had as much time now as I did a year ago. I have a lot of RL coming at me in the next months. The good news is that I should be coming home very soon, we're hoping by the end of February. :D Rose Of Kali 06:08, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Yay America!–alistic 06:22, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm guessing that is sarcastic "Yay America!". Also, congratulations on your promotion. Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 07:43, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Oooh! Never mind the promotion — molto gz on being able to return finally! Awesome.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 07:50, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Yay for living in America; Boo America! :P (Congratulations :) ) --Vipermagi 10:50, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

America is great, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 10:59, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

It was better before the Teabag Party. 16:15, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Spend a few years in a post-Soviet country, and then we'll talk. ;) Rose Of Kali 21:12, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

She doesn't have to be afraid. When the Teabag Party gets to power, she'll be back in the USA. And she's white, not your ordiniary next door Mexican ;-) Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 22:17, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Like me D:--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 00:53, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we do like you, Gig. (However, near as I can tell, you are never ordinary.)  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:14, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

When I was in the US, my politics teacher taught me about Habeas Corpus. He taught me about free speech, and the right to bear arms (onto airplanes or whatever). I wonder what he'd teach me today. --◄mendel► 09:03, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

He wouldn't, he'd "mysteriously disappear" and the government would say "oh well, he wasn't that important, right *cheese fake forced smile*". <-- or something like that. — Scythe 2:53, 25 Dec 2010 (UTC)

Well, nobody's perfect. I pick American poison over Ukrainian. ;-P Rose Of Kali 00:10, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and Scythe, that shit is happening in Ukraine to this day, to important people, and they don't even bother to hide the corpses, because they still get away with it. I'd prefer at least not knowing about it. :/ Rose Of Kali 14:39, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Live in Mexico for 2 years; Observe government corruption; ???; Win all politic sob story wars.--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 00:40, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Cuba tbh, Fidel Castro's brother is a mean SOB — Scythe 1:14, 29 Dec 2010 (UTC)

True, but at least they aren't pretending nothing's happening and trying to join the EU. :P Rose Of Kali 01:29, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Guys. North Korea. End of story. 08:17, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Hmmm, well, I don't know countries that have it that badly, but Belgium is the proof that anarchy works. We've been without government for about 6 months now (longer I think) for the second time in perhaps 2 or 3 years. Also: Italy, the only EU country that still has a dictator.--El_Nazgir 09:30, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Italy is the shit D: — Scythe 15:06, 29 Dec 2010 (UTC)

colspan hack

You asked, Had to hack "Dragon Festival" with a pointless colspan=1 pipe to make its text size match "Halloween" and "Wintersday" - what's the deal with that? The navbox class really needs three types of cells: content, column headers and row headers. Because wikicode and html only let us indicate "header" and "content" easily, the class identifies column headers by the "colspan" attribute they usually have, and thinks everything without a colspan is a row header. That's why you adding the colspan fixed it.

A possible non-hack-ish solution is to extend the class and then add class="columnheader to headers that need, which would be more effort to achieve the same thing (and not as easy to figure out).

Anyway, good job getting this to work! --◄mendel► 21:36, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, okay, I was in the middle of ranting about that on your talkpage, but since you noticed this anyway (I made it non-minor edit for that reason ^__^), I'll just reply here. ;-P

So, my little "hack" is the simplest way to get around that? Do you think it would be better to just make both header types in the class to be the same (normal) size to prevent occasional colspans and rowspans from making things look lopsided? Rose Of Kali 21:50, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it's not quite like that. What you call the column header is actually the table header - our specific implementation of navbox CSS does not account for standard column headers, only a single overall header that spans the full width of the table, which is why the CSS identifies the table header by having a colspan attribute. And which is why the styling "broke" when Rose got all fancy and split up the Halloween/Wintersday lists (which really wasn't necessary, it looked fine the other way). If anything, we should "hack" it so that those column headers are identical to the row headers, they shouldn't be equivalent to the table header. —Dr Ishmael 01:25, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, thank you, Dr Smartypants. ;-P I do find the hats easier to "browse" that way, it looks less cluttered. Now it's literally a copy-paste between the Costume article's table and the navbox, save the header detail and the dye asterisks (and of course the class itself).

The reason I did that is because the old table in the article was a pretty bad collection of words and lines arranged into a relatively rectangular shape, and I spent a good 20 minutes messing tinkering with and rewriting it, and then it struck me to go check out the navbox, and it was a done deal — they are now one and the same, if something is added to one, it's a moment's work to add it to the other. Rose Of Kali 08:36, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Good point! If the semantics is "table headers", you could change the navbox class to find the table header at table.navbox tr:first-child th (i.e. always use the first row, instead of the colspan), and avoid hardcoding the column headers altogether. --◄mendel► 06:40, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

rowspans aren't affected, and I don't see how we'd have a navbox with row headers spanning several columns - that'd be quite a complicated design! --◄mendel► 06:43, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

But we do. :P

Using the first row is probably smarter than colspan. I can't think of anything that would not have the table header in the top row. Although, who know what I'll break next. ;-P Rose Of Kali 22:05, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

A little bird told me...

Well, Happy Birthday! Ariyen 08:24, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

oh gz, tell me I'm not too late! Happy Birthday! brb slapping around the Ukrainian and American governments for some papers and other relevant documents. — Scythe 14:30, 5 Feb 2011 (UTC)

Happy Birthday! :)–alistic 16:08, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! :D Not late at all. :P And they might need a little more than a slap, methinks, but my visa is so close now, I can almost smell it! >:D Rose Of Kali 16:58, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I hope the visa isn't too smelly. Happy birthday :> --Vipermagi 17:10, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Happy birthday! —Dr Ishmael 17:26, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Many happy returns! Jink 17:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Happy birthday! Cress Arvein 23:30, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Haps burp 00:15, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Happy birdday! --El_Nazgir 09:22, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Shame on me. Happy Birthday! Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 15:33, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Think the little bird told many others too. ^.^ Ariyen 20:18, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

No, you did. So unless you're a little bird... :P --El_Nazgir 20:40, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone! :D The funny part is that more people congratulated me online than in RL. *sigh* Rose Of Kali 21:44, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Exile ending

It's been two winters - time to get re-adjusted to America soon! Do you consider that time "lost" to you? --◄mendel► 12:59, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, unfortunately. While my husband was at least advancing his career, earning raises and slowly paying off our mortgage, I was the equivalent of sitting in prison. You might as well take those 20 months and cut them from my life entirely, and nothing would change (well, other than me finally being eligible for a green card). It's also lost "family" time that we could have spent preparing for parenting (read: me preparing my husband XD).

Also, like my dad likes to say, it takes no time to adjust to a good thing. Rose Of Kali 13:17, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

As I always say, WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT! ∵Scythe∵ 19:15, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Erm, Scythe, you never say that. (You usually only woot with 19 Os.)  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:47, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I hear that Roses bloom in the Springtime

Congrats...and I hope that means we get to see more of you, too.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:23, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Quite possibly. :) I've been wanting to get back into GW for a while now. I need to finally get Rose's Survivor and hit GWAMM, and maybe get some sexy armor sets for my alts or something. I made a really nice mixed set for my assassin. XD All I've been doing for months now was just getting Nick's stuff and exiting until next Monday, so I have a nice stash of gifts I'm trying to decide what to do with. No, I'm not giving them away. XD Rose Of Kali 19:19, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The change to survivor was my toon's ticket to GWAMMhood, too. I did NM FoW runs with xp scrolls, which made it reasonably fast, safe, and got me close to enough shards for Obi. On GWW, someone suggested using storybooks, which also seems like a less grindy way to hit max while maintaining a safety net.

Good luck on the gifts: I think I've opened about 500 to date; I've gotten a reasonable mix of the cheap stuff and at least a few of each weapon. But, I've yet to see any of the rare stuff (e.g. no minis) and haven't even scored one of the eggs.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:42, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I know my luck all too well, so I was leaning heavily to trading them for minis. I've got going on 200 unopened gifts right now. And 5th year minis should be dropping in price soon. :] I haven't decided how I wanna do Survivor yet, I'll have to do some maths on the various HM books, they were cake for me even with 4 henchies. Rose Of Kali 21:06, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

If you would be so kind to share that math with the wiki, it would very much be appriciated.... Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 10:47, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I will when I get to it. :) My flight is in 11 hours. OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!!! O_O Rose Of Kali 00:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Have a nice trip! Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 07:37, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

3.5 hours!  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 08:09, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I can't imagine (insert time apart) without my husband. It's hard enough during the times that mine has to work out of town. :-( Ariyen 08:47, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

They were separated for ~ 15 months, as far as we know. --◄mendel► 09:38, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Yay, for Rose! Glad to see it worked out, eventually.--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 09:57, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

15 months was the requirement I had left over. I actually spent 20 months there before I was able to leave. And yay, I'm home now! :D Just got my driver's license today and a new phone. Waiting on my green card in the mail. Rose Of Kali 02:44, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

YAY! \^o^/ —Dr Ishmael 03:31, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Now that you have your driving license, can you pick up some things for me at CostCo? Thanks! (Translation: welcome back!)  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 00:57, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Welcome home

We missed you. 09:27, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

^ What ever he said. Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 10:04, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

She said* ∵Scythe∵ 19:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

He said aka Felix, not Rose. >.<

You missed the joke. ∵Scythe∵ 03:02, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

A birdie...

said

WELCOME

         _|=|__________
        /              \
       /                \
      /__________________\
       ||  || /--\ ||  ||                  HOME!
       ||[]|| | .| ||[]||
     ()||__||_|__|_||__||()
    ( )|-|-|-|====|-|-|-|( )
    ^^^^^^^^^^====^^^^^^^^^^^

Ariyen 22:32, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Aw, you guys are so sweet! Thanks! ^_^ Gonna start job hunting next week, and working on getting a car and waiting on a new PC in the mail. Yay for slowly getting my life back together. :P Rose Of Kali 06:52, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

sorry I'm late :/

welcome home :D

Also on a topic that's unrelated, I missed you :< That sounds oddly like I live near you... but havn't really spoken at all recently is what I meant :P or is it? o.o A F K When Needed 19:39, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. :D I haven't really been doing much GW-related stuff lately. That might change, though. Just got a sexy new computer and a 1920x1080 monitor, woo! :P Rose Of Kali 19:15, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you're not making use of it... I would be happy to see that it doesn't go to waste ;-) (However, I happy to give up my request to mooch if it means we get to see more of you.)  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:20, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

This is going to sound sad, but... my main monitor is a 1920x1080 - and it's one of the little things in life I appreciate every day. A F K When Needed 13:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

...My laptop is 1920x1080...--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 19:39, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Dude, that is a fucking huge ass laptop. How much does it weigh? Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 20:38, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It's called a desktop replacement, they're not really meant for travel, and weigh anywhere above 12LBS. I hear the have either heat problems or shitty framerates. ∵Scythe∵ 20:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Don't know weight, but it tends to overheat if I play Crysis 2 and don't have the standing fan blowing directly over it.--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 22:54, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that, for laptops, it's par for the course to overheat running something like Crysis/2 (that, or get a crappy framerate). --Vipermagi 13:26, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

My friend manages both on his :P A F K When Needed 15:48, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I have a DTR laptop that I was using in Ukraine, and it was working great for a while, I could run 2 instances of GW just fine. Then something happened and it started overheating horribly when doing anything game-related. I'm guessing fan or heat sink problem. But the things I put it through... I don't blame it. :P (It was running almost 24/7 for 20 months straight... It handled it quite well, all things considered.) That's why I have a new desktop now. The laptop is still pretty portable, it's one of the smallest DTR's, so I'll keep it for travel, just can't really play games on it anymore, frame rate sucks once it heats up. :( I do love my new Win7 and huge-ass monitor. XD Rose Of Kali 16:32, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

If laptops are overheating when gaming and they didn't used to be, the fan or heat sink on the graphics card died. Same thing happened to my brother's laptop, went from ~190F (good for the power of the card (nVidia 9000GS [yes, not the mobile, the big card])) to maintaining 230F, which is 'redline' and thank god, the driver auto-underclocks it at that point so it doesn't uhh, oh yeah, melt itself. If the frame rate dies when it heats up then it's just preventing itself from melting :D ∵Scythe∵ 19:54, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

It could also be as simple as lack of airflow. Playing near a(n open) window, elevating the back, or vacuuming the vents (more if you can and want to open the case) can all help to varying degrees (ha-ha). --Vipermagi 20:28, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Playing near a window for better airflow won't help when the card is hotter than boiling water ;) But no, now that he has his shiny new G73 (best laptop in the world, hardware wise) we've opened up the machine and run it a little with the case off. The GPU's fan is dead, and a little bit of plastic around it is melted (oops). ∵Scythe∵ 19:34, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Survivor with Books

As promised a while ago, here's a quick run through of how many full books it would take to get Survivor 3, which requires 1,337,500 XP, with a little of my commentary.

Book	missions	max XP		books for S3		Notes
		NM	HM	NM	HM
	18	80k	120k	16.7	11.1	longest book; highest reward; many missions are very long and some can fail close to the end
	11	40k	60k	33.4	22.3	short; Eternal Grove and Imperial Sanctum may be tough with AI team
	17	60k	90k	22.3	14.9	long; Dzagonur Bastion and Gate of Madness can be a pain with AI
	12		67.5k*		19.8	short; HM only; simple starter missions; * XP reward varies depending on where you turn it in, and is highest from Gordon Ecker
	11*	40k	60k	33.4	22.3	shortest book; easy once you master DD and ATFH; faster than Young Heroes; * 5/16 entries are automatically complete after the first time

• In conclusion, I would place my top bet on Young Heroes of Tyria or Hero's Handbook.
  • YHoT is relatively short and very simple, even in HM, since these are starter missions. You can also choose to get 4,500 SS or LB rep or a cool 90k Kurz/Lux title points at the cost of ¹⁄₃ of the XP, increasing the number of books needed from 19.8 to 29.7. If you do 30 books and take them to Cantha, you will get an impressive 2,700,000 faction title points - more than rank 8 if you start from scratch, or over ¼ of the entire title track! - Note these are not actual faction you can spend, but go straight to your title track).
  • Hero's Handbook is easy and fast if you can run Destruction's Depths reliably, and provides nice rep rewards for EotN titles, if you don't have them yet.
• I think it's best to complete the entire book, as the reward difference for the last missing pages is usually worth the worst missions in the book, and may ease the repetitiveness of the grind by doing more various things. If you do consider partial books, Hero's Handbook is the only way to go, since you start with 5 entries filled, and can cash in for your first reward after only 3 easy missions.
• HM is always preferred for +50% reward, if you can handle it, as it shouldn't take 50% more time to complete vs. NM. (I have not ran these with 7 heroes yet, so I'm speaking from my extensive HM H/H experience and guessing.)
• Master Dungeon Guide shares all numbers with The Flameseeker Prophecies, but takes much longer and requires more effort to finish, and thus was not included in the table.
• Note that the decimal points in the number of books required do not scale with the number of completed pages because of the "buffer" missions. They're only there instead of just a straight rounded up integer to show how close you are and if you'll need most of another book or can go kill a couple of worms in Ice Cliffs to finish up the title.
• Speaking of which, those worms are absolutely safe to kill with any ranged damage, as they are immobile melee attackers, and award a hefty 396XP per solo kill in HM before any scrolls. These make a great finisher if you're too close to go do another book, and you can even pick a Locked Chest or two on the way, just watch out for Pinesouls and the hidden smiting seed popup across the bridge on the right (they sometimes lure you with a locked chest, just to blow you up with KD's), investigate with another toon before stepping on unfamiliar snow.
• Now free up a storage tab for all your coming books, and make sure to have the correct book at the top of your inventory when you complete the mission, as it only checks the first book encountered on you in the order of Western written text (left-to-right, top line first) (unless that was fixed without my knowledge).
• Rose Of Kali 21:18, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Discussion without books

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I'm probably gonna do 30 YHoT for the cool title points. I am cringing at the sight of my overstuffed Xunlai box... Rose Of Kali 21:37, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Here's an idea, put them on other characters that you don't use... That way, when you get done with them all... you can turn them in. may take a lot, a while, etc., but it's an idea. Ariyen 21:47, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Wooow! I think I might just go for 30 YHoT too :D Great job, should be somewhere in mainspace.--El_Nazgir 21:55, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Awesome job, Rose. I can't decide if I'll do 30 or 20 YHoT - I don't need the Kurzick title to get GWAMM anymore, but I might want to do it just because. And I would kick myself so hard if I decided to do it after I skipped out on getting 25% from the books here. ...Argh! —Dr Ishmael 21:58, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, my Xunlai box and all of my characters are pretty full, I would have to basically fill a couple of my alts to the point of non-playable for the time being. And yeah, I don't need the factions titles for GWAMM, but I want to do it just because...

There's also another thing to note. The number for books for survivor can be shortened by quite a bit if you can confidently do at least some of the missions without dying. A good estimate would require knowing the approximate XP you get from the mission, and then you can guess the number of books you can save with this XP, fill in the "risky" missions in the rest of the books first, in case you die in them, and then breeze through the easy ones for all your books, adding up the mission XP on the way. I'm also gonna look into picking up a few Zaishen and other HM quests on the way and saving the turn-ins. I can always do more of these books or VQ's later to finish the faction title, but I just don't play enough to do 30 books right now, I don't think. :P Once I start doing the missions, I'll post the XP I get from them here. Rose Of Kali 22:10, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, after the embarrassment of forgetting that HH starts with 5 entries filled, I updated this a bit. :P I think I'll still stick to YHoT, since all my EotN titles are maxed, and I want the faction titles. Rose Of Kali 22:50, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

"(unless that was fixed without my knowledge)" No, it still only updates the first book.

And Chahbek Village gives 993 xp per 5-minute run, or 1401 xp if you kill the corsairs on the ships before sinking them. (Assuming you take 3 heroes. If you can somehow do it with only Koss, double the numbers.) —Dr Ishmael 23:06, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Blacktide Den, taking the mission-critical route to kill as few enemies as possible, gives ~2.6k per 10-minute run. (I feel like I should start tabulating this somewhere...) —Dr Ishmael 00:53, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, please.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:52, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Time/XP/risk

	XP gained	time	risk	notes
Great Northern Wall	3,500	12 min	low
Fort Ranik	4,600	17 min	low
Ruins of Surmia	8,700	28 min	med	popups, patrols and Rurik can cause overaggro
Nolani Academy	5,000	19 min	med	patrols and Rurik can cause overaggro
Borlis Pass	4,700	19 min	low
The Frost Gate	5,300	19 min	low
Gates of Kryta	3,800	17 min	med	lack of corpses for meatshields, spike dmg, Hablion overaggroes and fails the mission -> best not to trigger him
Minister Cho's Estate	4,200	11 min	low
Zen Daijun	3,200	12 min	high	multiple eles with Mind Burn targetting backline -> my only deaths -> keep Prot Spirit up at all times
Chahbek Village	1,100	4 min	low
Jokanur Diggings	2,800	11 min	med	traps
Blacktide Den	2,400	12 min	med	Grenth's Balance + Skale stampede
Total	~49k	181 min	med	should be 0 deaths with experience and caution -> learn the spawns

• This is a summary of my hastily slapped together discord/SoS run in HM, with experienced caution, mostly offensive tactis, steady pace. Only primary mission path was taken, no bonuses. I can confidently repeat this with little variation. I did not use any consumables whatsoever (summoning stones, scrolls, candy, etc.), but they would speed things up and increase XP gained. No Air of Superiority. Risk of death is the likelihood of an unexpected spike damage, such as focus fire from rangers or ghouls (my only hero death in the whole run, I did not come close to dying with just a discord/resto Olias).
• My survivability was based on an my N/Rt army of spirits, bone minions from Death spec Livia, and a few fiends from Curse spec MoW, and it worked like a charm except for Gates of Kryta, where corpses were in low supply, and I had to be more cautious.
• The rest of the missions I will finish tomorrow and make a summary. Rose Of Kali 04:43, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

• Finished the rest of the missions. The whole book took 3 hours 1 minute (+ time to vendor drops), with almost 50k XP on the way. Consumables and XP scrolls obviously will make these numbers even prettier. My only death was from stupidity of not pre-emptively placing Prot Spirit on myself before aggroing the 2-ele group in Zen -> Tahlkora failed to prot me on time. The only hero death was when MoW got swarmed with Ghouls in Gates of Kryta.
• In conclusion, if you can survive all the missions, which looks to be very manageable, you only need ~15 YHoT books with faction turn-in (instead of 30!) and 45 hours + 1.35M faction points, or 11.5 YHoT books with XP-only turn-in and 35 hours.
• If anyone wants to run the other books, I'd love to see the results! :)
• For completion, and in case you were wondering, here are my builds:

Me 7 SR, 11 Comm, 12 Chan, 4 Rest Livia 16 Death, 10 SR, 9 Command MoW 14 Death, 9 SR, 11 Curses, 6 Resto Olias 10 Death, 11 SR, 12 Resto Kora 15 Heal, 11 Div, 8 Prot

Zhed 15 Fire, 12 ES, 3 Resto Suke 15 Fire, 12 ES, 3 Resto Marg 13 Exp, 10 Wild, 13 Marks, 1 Resto Koss 14 Str, 12 Sword, 8 Tact Melly 13 Scythe, 15 Myst, 6 Earth

• These were used in this order of priority, limited by party size or requirement. The last 3 bars could use improvement, I haven't touched them in months, but they worked well enough. The first 6 heroes all have armor insignia and runes, including M. vigors, vitae and attune, and all have fully modded weapons. Rose Of Kali 17:30, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

You can certainly reduce time by optimising builds. Discord is SO pre hero update, mesmers are king now. But that is all trivial. Rose, we can't thank you enough. Now, while you are on a spree, would you mind updating the survivor guide page? ;-) Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 18:07, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Mesmers, you say? Link? And what hero update? Most of these are 4-person party anyway... Most of my damage is from spirits, death nova and barbs. And I sure do like the cannon fodder, draws attention away from me. :P I'll look into the Survivor page, I might want to get some data on Hero's Handbook first, not sure yet. Rose Of Kali 20:09, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

This is for knoking out whole groups. Or a rather detailed guide. I'd be running a SY warrior (myself) a Panic Mesmer, N/Rt healer and either a a SS hybrid spamming splinter weapon, or a minion bomber running prot prayers (I prefer this, you can put splinter on the mes). If shit really hits the fan, change out the N/Rt for a UA, or a E/Mo. If you have to, (because you have to take a defined hero) switch out the Mes, as it isn't really neccesary to do these missions.

Hope that helps, Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 21:33, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I'll consider this for Hero's Handbook and maybe Gates of Kryta and Blacktide Den, not sure if I want to take this into the 4-man missions. I can't bring SY, which makes my party more vulnerable, so I prefer safety in numbers. XD My spirits and I can solo the level 30 HM Pinesoul group right after the worms in Ice Cliffs (like 4 or 5 of them there?), so the heroes are there just to speed things up and save my bum from spikers. :P Rose Of Kali 21:53, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

WOuld it be hard to average out the XP gained per minute in your chart above? For the people that may rather run the most effective mission a mind numbingly insane amount of times? :) Mauirixxx 00:07, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

That's not the point of doing this, though. You get no book reward at all for the first 4 missions, and skipping just one mission out of the book will cost you 15,000 XP or 22,500 XP (depending where you turn in), or 33% of the entire reward, so it's absolutely not worth doing if you're going to skip even a single mission. Whole book or nothing. If you want partial books, consider Hero's Handbook, but I haven't done the math on that one yet. Rose Of Kali 00:54, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Loyal reader responses to "surviving by book"

(New section, for easier editing.)

Great idea! I did some more number crunching to look at this another way: Young Heroes HM might represent 67.5 kXP and require a mere 20 books, it also requires repeating 13 missions, 20 different times, i.e. roughly 258 missions. In this light, the best deals are Flameseeker's and Hero's HB, representing 201 missions each.

The other thing I looked at is whether it could ever make sense to turn over books with the minimum number of entries, given how anemic the rewards are compared to the full book. The question is: how much faster do you have to be? In this case, the worst is for Flameseeker and Young Heroes, which require that you complete missions five times as fast, e.g. you would have to be faster completing 1,338 missions for YHoT at 6 mish/book compared to only 258 mish using the full 13/book.

However, the differences are much smaller for the Hero's HB (because you start off with five already completed). The question is: can you complete the faster missions 365 times versus completing all the missions 201 times... meaning just under twice as fast.

Regardless, whichever way you look at it, it's a lot of grind. My current favorites for farming XP are: the post-Proph anti-titan quests (NM only plz!) followed by runs of FoW with max XP scrolls running at all times. The first generates about 100k; the FoW runs at least 150k each.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 22:14, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, the main reason to do books is that you can put off cashing them in until they are all full, so you can die as many times as you want, there is no real risk, as opposed to repeatable quests and other things.

Also, I completely forgot that you start with 5 completed in Hero's Handbook. That makes it substantially faster. >_< DERR! And I've ran those books like mad to finish all my EotN reps... Been away too long. :P YHoT may still be very attractive to anyone wanting a faction title, though. Rose Of Kali 22:34, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I can't do any of the YHoT mish as fast as I can do most of the ones in factions. I also like some of the factions missions and dislike most of the n00b island ones. However, I haven't done the math factoring in time spent per mission; like you, I only counted how many.

Mostly, I think any survivor candidate should have at least a couple of books complete to finish off the scary 300k at the end: there's no longer a reason to risk your 1,000,000 XP to anything, lag, inattention, your cat, or whatever.

Also: good luck!  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 00:40, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

YHoT is only 12 missions (1 page intro), some of which are ridiculously short, half are 12 min or less, and the whole book takes 3 hours (see above). Flameseeker has super long missions like THK and Hell's Precipice, and most will probably be least 20 minutes long. Many also have scenarios where you can fail after investing those 20 or 30 minutes, so I imagine FSP having a much, much higher time/XP, as well as you are likely to die at some point. See above for my scenario with no deaths running YHoT books - cuts the number of books in half, and is very possible to do. If you can survive 12 YHoT books, you can do the title in only 144 missions and about 36 hours (180 missions and 45 hours if you want the 1.35M Kurz/Lux title points instead).

Shiro's Return has only 1 less mission than YHoT, but some of them are pretty long too, unless you don't care about dying and rush through them, so it has no apparent time advantage (wanna test it? XD), and you have to like Kaineng City... (Eww.) It's also much riskier, I would not consider it possible to run these books and not die at some point.

Hero's Handbook is the only other one I would consider, especially if I needed EotN rep. Full book has a very high risk of death, so you pretty much have to assume you will die at some point. Minimum (or close to it) turn-in is interesting, as you can survive it and you get good XP for completing each mission, so this XP can supplement the books nicely. I wonder how long that would take to max Survivor this way. Rose Of Kali 18:12, 7 June 2011 (UTC)