February 25th, 2008

It's the last day of pre-open beta. I've decided to go visit all the dungeons I haven't been to yet, as well as Bangor since I didn't check it out completely. First up is Peaca Dungeon, which looks like a cemetary. However, as I was told earlier, it isn't open yet. So I continued west towards Emain Macha.

Back in Emain Macha, I went up to the observatory tower where there was a viewscope and a telescope. These give a panoramic view of the whole city. It's quite nice. Here's the restaurant.

And here's the city center.

Walking between towns and dungeons requires a lot of time and it's a quite a chore at the moment without horses and methods of travel other than by foot. Hence, there are moon gates by every town and dungeon. These 'portals' open at certain times and allow quick access to where you want to go. However, they were not open at this time.

I visited the Emain Macha cathedral. I wonder if this where couples get married...

Continuing with my exploration, I stumbled upon the paladin training grounds. Since the patch we're on is a mix of Generations 1-3, I don't think we can change to paladins yet. Although, I might be wrong.

Bwahahaha~ I'm the new ruler of Emain Macha! (Not)

Northwest of Emain Macha is Coill Dungeon. It looks very similar to Fiodh Dungeon. I managed to kill a few blue snakes before I died.

Heading east from Emain Macha, I arrived at Runda Dungeon, which looks very similar to the training dungeon in the beginner area. However, this dungeon is definitely not for beginners. It's full of gates and spiked fences.

I challenged a pirate skeleton to a duel. It hit me once and put me into deadly status. However, good use of counterattack and switching to bow for a mix of magnum and regular shots that stunned propelled me to a victory! I was rewarded with a hefty 600 exp!

After quickly running out of the dungeon to avoid certain death, I headed southeast to Bangor. Have I mentioned that every time you enter a map outside of Tir Chonaill, Eiry, the fairy inside your beginner's short sword, comes out and tells you to go back to the novice town. It gets annoying and I can't wait to get rid of her once I'm level 25.

Here's my favourite NPC, Ibbie. She's a cute but very depressed little girl sitting on a hill overlooking Bangor. She longs to have fun, but ever since injuring her leg in a fall, she's been pretty much confined here. I really pity her :(

Snooping around at the restaurant/pub. There's not much stuff around here.

Bangor is a mining town with a water mill. You can refine stuff here as there's plenty of anvils. Barri Dungeon is also located in the center of the town, so it's easily accessible. You have to enter the dungeon to obtain ores.

Here's the ores I was talking about. You need to equip a pick axe to mine them.

I was doing pretty good killing zombies until I ran into some imps. Both of them hit me repeatedly with lightning bolts and I went from full to zero HP in a few seconds.

Earlier on my way back, I checked if Sen Mag Residence was accessible south of Sen Mag Plateau. However, it was closed. I tried heading south towards Morva Aisle, but it was also off-limits. That is where you can take a boat to an island and possibly another continent later on.

Having completed my exploring (except for Sidhe Sneachta north of Tir Chonaill), I went back to Tir Chonaill and showed off my brand-new whistle that I bought for 8k gold in Emain Macha earlier. It was difficult trying to compose a song for an instrument that can only play high-pitched sounds. Epona's Song from Zelda is a good choice though.

I met up with Yoshiyuki and decided to splurge the rest of our gold before the wipe. Since he had 25k gold left, we headed back to Emain Macha through Osna Sail to buy a flute. Luckily, the sheep wolves weren't around, so it was a safe, but long, trip. I found some cows outside of Emain Macha. Too bad I didn't have an empty bottle on me, or I could've milked a cow.

Our first ensemble! It worked out pretty well.

My turn to try out the flute! This is pretty easy...

Pretty... easy........... (Air! Running out of air!)

Almost done the song!

One last campfire and some 4-star food from the restaurant I mentioned earlier. Hmm... now that I look at it, I guess it isn't safe to have a campfire on a wooden deck....

Just something I noticed... Shouldn't 11 year old girls not be this well-endowed?

Out of gold and out of time, I bid farewell until next time. I went back to Tir Chonaill and gave away my items for people to try out in the last hour. I'm going to do more research about builds and skills so I can level more efficiently in open beta.

Until then, so long!

- Ari

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