Ho hum..

Back from my job-hunting, sleep-and-girlfriend-filled hiatus... To say a few things. [ For Aion stuff, look after the 1-2-3 ]

1: I've decided to start a Blogger page, simply because they allow monetization immediately, with Google AdSense, and I want to see how well it works for me, with the steady 5-15 people I've been getting per day. Nobody is interested in commenting at all, except for my lovely mother and her readers, but that's how things are. Not everyone has a Wordpress account with which to post.

2: I realized that NCSoft charged me for my next month of playtime.. But didn't give it to me. It's not in NCSoft Account billing history, but it's in my paypal's bills list. Weird. Sucky, too. Means I have to stop playing as soon as the 29th ticks around unless someone wants to give me another month so I have something to do after coming home from job hunting.

3: Yes. I am unemployed and looking for a job. If anyone knows of a job I can get, online or in the Western Washington area, please, say something, anything. This is getting old and I'm starting to feel really bad about living here for free =/.. And contrary to parental belief, I am actually looking for a job and am going out there at least once every business day, sometimes only for a few hours, other times for a full 6-8 hours. It depends on what area I go to, and I do make trips back around every week.

AION! I've been sitting at level 28 for, I swear to god, a week and a half now thanks to my lovely girlfriend and my cousin, waiting for them to take forever to hit level 25. For-ever. Why? There's an instance (A dungeon crawl, dungeon-like thingy, place where you go that isn't connected to the rest of the server, place full of exp, phat lewt, etc..) called the Nochsana Training Camp. It has a level cutoff of 25-28. I told them I'd run with them at least one round. Had I not waited, I'd have easily been level 35 by now, even with the running-around-town I've been doing.

Well, I may as well give some sort of wordy guide on NTC: It's small. Really. But as small as it is, at level 25, when you can first get in, you can get a level off of it by doing all of the quests and clearing the instance. The instance consists of:

Many, many elite balaur, along with a number of non-elites that die in like, 5 hits. Lol.

4 minibosses. The minibosses are: The artifact guardian, who.. Just hits hard. I don't remember if she's anything special. Then there's the Gate Guard, a big drake guy that the tank -must- turn around, away from the group, or the group takes a large amount of damage. Next, you have.. The.. Aether? Guardian? I think that's her name. She's surrounded by single or double pull groups, but she's just a big pushover. The annoying part is that she has a strong damage shield that essentially prevents her from taking any damage until it's broken.. Also lowers her enmity counters by quite a bit, which is an issue for the tank if his skills are on cooldown when the shield breaks. I've only had this issue once so far. Next? Teleporter. She summons an additional balaur, you can literally ignore him as he doesn't hit hard, but generally people have him off-tanked with a gladiator or chanter, or just CC'd with a sorceror just turning him into a tree, or sleeping him. She dies ridiculously fast.

And last? The BBEG, Nochsana Fortress General, don't remember his name, don't care, he's big. Tips to the tanks? Turn him around and pull him to the wall. This does two things: It eliminates AOE damage done to your group.. And when you get feared, so long as you have enough enmity on him, you won't move. Other things he does? Pulls people in and does an aoe stun, which can be avoided if the ranged people stand out far enough. What else... The fear is aoe as well, if I remember it right..

Oh. He pulls all of the mobs [ balaur ] in the fortress to him when he gets aggro'd. And for this reason, you must clear out the fortress first.

Those of you new to the MMO scene don't understand a number of these words, as I've been told, so I'll give a quick description.

Tank: Guy that stands in front and takes all the damage, making sure to keep everyone on him with skilled use of enmity/threat/hate/aggro generation skills, depending on which game you're playing. In this game: Templar, sometimes Gladiator or Chanter.

DD/DPS: Damage-dealer or damage-per-second. Your typical damage class. In AION: Ranger, Gladiator, Assassin, Chanter, Sorceror, Spiritmaster.

Healer: Should be pretty simple.. The guy keeping your group alive. Due to mechanics in Aion, you can either take a Chanter or a Cleric for your healing, but it's generally advised to take a Cleric AND a Chanter for the best buffs.

Buff: The opposite of a debuff, a skill that stays active on you to increase a skill or effect, such as giving you more health.

Debuff: See previous. Only, instead of giving health, it might be a poison, steadily ticking away your health.

Uhm.. What else.. Ah!

Hate/Aggro/Threat/Enmity: What the tank uses to keep the mobs on him. Some games actually have a meter to show you how much threat you have [ WoW... ] but Aion does not, and also uses a different system, Enmity, which is far more flexible--It can decrease as you ignore the mob, or can increase based only on proximity and hitting other targets that aren't it. In general, unless the tank isn't a total retard, the healer will have one or more mobs on him/her as, in Aion, the enmity that healing puts out is MASSIVE.

Mobs: Killables! This is the name for the guys running around that you can kill.

Elite: Stronger than your average monkey.

BBEG: Big Bad End Guy. Someone like the fortress general. He's big, he's bad, and.. Well, he's at the end!

Did I miss anything?