The Friendly Necromancer

After spending a long time running around almost every inch of Eltibule, a Project "Gorgonite" like myself starts to look elsewhere for entertainment, and that seems to come in basically one of two (or maybe even three) flavors depending on your level.

To clarify, "Level" is a little bit of a strange concept in Project Gorgon since there isn't a nice big number anywhere on the screen that says, "Level 30!" I mean, you level your skills up and that's really the only gauge you have to know your level.

In my mind it all comes down to one skill . . . Endurance. Yup, if I was forced to pick a skill to say that's my level, Endurance feels like that yard stick. That and you know you're ready to move on from Eltibule when you can finally face off against these guys.

My vote for scariest insect in Project Gorgon

They're called "Tor-Urak" and are the scariest freaking giant insects you'll ever encounter. They spit boulders at you, have a Sarlac Pit style mouth, and come with a nasty knockback effect. I've left behind several tombstones from these guys chasing me down while I was trying to sneak into Hogan's Keep. They patrol outside there and around the portal to Kur Mountains, which is the real subject of this blog post. I digress.

Once your endurance is around 30, you should look at heading to either Sun Vale or Kur Mountains.

Personally I headed to Sun Vale, and honestly I think it was the right choice. That said, there's really not a lot to do out in Sun Vale. It's an unfinished zone that the developer fully admits has more to come, but the Sun Vale route allows you to kind of grind out some extra experience beating on trolls and the "bad" fairies, which seem to have a little bit of a war going on. You can pick up the Hammer trait here from a friendly Troll, and there's a patch of "good" fairies that have a few quests for you (I'm finding that quests aren't straight forward guides through the content.)

Shrek?

I didn't step foot into Kur Mountains until about a week ago. It's much less friendly than Sun Vale, but seems to be better fleshed out as far as content goes and has absolutely breathtaking views.

Sings, "KUR MOUNTAIN HIGH! PROJECT GORGON! -John Denver"

You'll notice in that screenshot above I have on a different outfit. When I first arrived in Kur Mountains I was getting frost bite from cold exposure really quickly. Once Frost Bite sets in, your character is on a fast train to death until you can put down an emergency fire.

What you really need to do is get yourself a big batch of "tufts of fur." There's a friendly outpost up North in Kur Mountains (it's kind of a straight shot through the icy waters and mountain range in the picture above) that trades Tufts of Fur for Insulated pieces of gear.

Cold weather gear doesn't completely free you from the continual worries of Frost Bite, but it makes this land much more bearable and you go from putting an Emergency Fire down every few minutes to maybe about once every ten minutes, which is way less stressful.

It's a deal!

Once you've secured this gear, Kur Mountains is a forager's dream come true. There are ground spawns of wood, ice water, and lichens all over the northern stretch of Kur Mountains. There are plenty of deer to hunt for meat and the Wolves aren't too bad for grinding exp. The bears on the other hand . . . watch out for the bears. They have a horrible maul attack that ignores armor. A couple of bears can make quick work of your health pool, which makes travel in the dangerous land of Kur Mountains even more dangerous.

Bernie, my pet Fire Rat, is not fazed by the cold like I am.

The Lichens you pick up off the ground actually have a really good use. They're used in a skill to heal broken bones. Lately our guild has been hitting the daily quest pretty regularly and the Ogres in these dungeons have a nasty habit of breaking bones. At one time I had up to 24 broken bones from Ogres. I believe each broken bone means spells and abilities cost an extra point of power. It's a nasty permanent-until-cured debuff on your character.

Speaking of dailies, Kur Mountains features the "Wolf Caves" daily dungeon. It's pretty great and not too bad for the guild to run with 3-5 people.

Buffed up and ready to rock the Wolf Caves with the guild!

The Daily Dungeons have really been the glue for the guild getting together and playing each night. Really enjoying them. Wolf Caves is a good one and super profitable!

Ultimately there's still a lot for me to explore in Kur Mountains . . . there are 2 or 3 dungeons I haven't done much with yet and lots of unfinished quests. But I'm not sure how much more I'm going to explore there though to be honest. The call of the War Caches in the Ilamari Desert might be too much for a Raksasha to ignore.

Happy Dueling!

The Ilmari Desert story is probably one of my favorites that I've read about so far in Project Gorgon. It involves a war between races and the total annihilation of a land by witches who used a magical nature device (dubbed, the naturesphere) that caused a three-year long lightning storm. This storm eventually changed fields and farmlands into a sprawling desert.

Staring into a portal leading to a War Cache . . . so pretty! So loot-filled!

Fast forward to now . . . underneath all this sand are old military bunkers set up by the Witches (aka the Crone Hegemony) and the council's representative, Sir Johnson, is looking for all the weaponized Xendrite from those bunkers that he can get his hands on. But for me . . . it's an opportunity for adventure and to earn money!

The War Caches of Ilmari have been my bread and butter for the past 10 levels or so. Every day I hop in, pick up a new War Cache from Sir Johnson, and head out to find one of these mini-dungeons. At my level they take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on which Cache you get, and they each feature similar mechanics.

In a nutshell:
1- Find the war cache
2- Find the Weaponized Xendrite (or sometime other goal)
3- Solve the Minotaur Chest
4- Turn in to Sir Johnson
5- Wash, rinse, repeat

Grimilkin and Mega dust storms . . . just two of the things that want to kill you in the desert.

Find the War Cache
This took some asking in guild for me to really figure out, and it actually explained a lot about another system I was confused by in Project Gorgon. To find a War Cache, you have to click on the map that Sir Johnson gives you.

When you click on the map, a little red circle descends on to your game map. Run to that location. Click it again. Inch your way to that location based on the coordinates it gives you. Click it again. Inch maybe one more time because it's tricky. Click it again and BAM!! You unearth a portal to the War Cache.

Click the map and let the red circle guide you to the War Cache. NOW I GET IT!

The first time I did this procedure a light went off in my head. I had gained the surveying skill earlier in the game, and I had no idea how to use the map that it gave me. This uses the same technique. You click on the map and it leads you to a location where some valuable mineral is stored in the earth.

Now I get it.

Find the Weaponized Xendrite
Typically you find Weaponized Xendrite tucked away neatly in lead-lined chests throughout the War Cache dungeon. They can often be hidden behind gates that require you to solve a little lever puzzle or just lay beyond rooms full of monsters. Other times the Xendrite is located inside a creature that has swallowed it or some other such nonsense. Just read the quest log if you're truly lost on where to find the Xendrite.

Lots of twist and turns with enemies every direction.

Each Cache usually features 3 different types of creatures and one dungeon boss. Difficulty has ranged anywhere from moderate to OMG NEVER DO THAT DUNGEON AGAIN!

Such was the case just yesterday when I stumbled upon a War Cache that featured mummies and hook horrors back to back. It was a nasty combination -- especially given that mummies can give you a disease that makes you take TONS of damage from bludgeoning attacks. There's a potion back in town that you can barter for that will cure this disease, but I'm just going to not do those instances that feature mummies from this point forward. /shiver

Solve the Minotaur Chest

This is really an optional goal, but each War Cache has a chest with a riddle lock upon it. You are provided 10 random symbols. Place four of these symbols in the correct order and you solve the lock -- thereby earning yourself a couple of really good pieces of gear.

Around the dungeon you'll find these symbols pop up on random walls and tucked away in secret corners. The purpose of this is to help narrow your ten symbols down a bit. It isn't guaranteed that the symbols you find will be used in the lock . . .it only narrows your choices.

Typically I open up my handy dandy notepad the game provides me and start writing these down as I stumble upon them during the dungeon. When I wrap things up, the Minotaur Chest is the last thing I do before I exit the dungeon -- piecing together all my clues to open the lock. (You can still solve this whenever though . . . if you're good with puzzles, no worries.)

You get 12 tries at the lock. If you don't get it, the lock is stuck permanently unless you have a lock pick. Lock picks can also be bartered for back in town. Once you get the hang of how these puzzles work, however, you probably won't be needing very many picks from that point forward.

I tried tracking all my answers to the Minotaur Chest to see if the same combination was used upon second entry into the same War Cache. The answer was no. The combination changes when you re-enter the dungeon. I'm going to keep tracking them and trying them just on the off chance it repeats the pattern or there are two or three different combinations per War Cache.

It's just a process of elimination, really . . .

Turn in to Sir Johnson
After you exit the dungeon, it's just a short sprint back to town (be careful though . . . there are things in the desert that are very VERY nasty). Sir Johnson exchanges your Weaponized Xendrite for "Sir Johnson Bucks". These can be bartered with the fairy just behind him for level 60 gear, lock picks, and mummy rot cure potions.

Just what are Sir Johnson and his fairy friend gathering all this Xendrite for, anyway?

If none of that sounds attractive to you, each Sir Johnson buck is worth 250 gold (councils) by themselves, and you can hold on to them for the next time you're in Serbule. Velkort will buy them in town at face value.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat
Gotta say, I typically really love these little dungeons! They provide a good challenge and pretty good rewards. I've gained 10 fire magic levels from grinding them and died countless times to tricky room pulls and surprise respawns.

It appears to be a pretty long 20 minute timer if you accept a War Cache and then trash the quest because it . . .you know . . . has mummies inside of it, but I'd rather wait the 20 minutes than bang my head on the desk from dying over and over.

Someday when I'm level 80 or 90 I'll come back to these and laugh at how easy they are now. Maybe they'll become a quick farm for gold. /shrug As for now, it's my main method of passing the time in Project Gorgon.

Happy Dueling!

It's been a month now since I took the plunge and paid my 40 bucks for Project Gorgon, and I've put in a solid 186 hours according to my Steam profile. Granted, a chunk of that is just hanging out afk on the login screen, but I really feel like I'm getting a hang of the game and know my way around at least the initial zones.

You might say I've jumped over a few lakes in my days here

Probably my biggest hurdle to date came just a few days ago when I reached level 60 in my Fire Magic ability and found that to earn access to levels 61-70 it would take an astounding 95,000 gold.

Pretty much everything in game got put on hold at that point as I then began an epic gold hunting campaign that lasted three or four days. In the end, I guess the sticker price put more of a shock on me than the actual grind for the gold.

Many Project-demigorgons died to line my pocketbook

Most of my 95k came from completing the Casino Daily Excursion every day. It's worth a cool 10k all by itself as a quest completion reward and you can usually pull an additional 2-5k from all the sellable vendor drops you get alone, and if you spend the resulting casino chips on a Cashfall Match-3 game, you can net an extra few 1,000 depending on how lucky / good you are at Match 3.

I really like doing the Daily Excursion with my guild. My Guild Leader is very smooth at pulling mobs back to the group and we have few mishaps on the "easy" missions like Wolf Caves, Yeti Cave, and Winter Nexus . . . let's not talk about the Dark Chapel . . .

Outside of this I started looking at things like Work Orders, which I completely (and definitely to my fault) ignored while leveling up. What are Work Orders?

The Work Order board in Serbule near Fritz the Boatman

Well, at certain activity hubs you can find these big bulletin boards. Clicking on one opens up a UI that fills with possible "jobs" that will pay money when you complete them. The majority of them are crafting based, e.g., Bake 10 Fried Chicken and deliver it to Fritz the Boatman.

Fritz ate a lot of my fried chicken and more over those 3 days.

While completing work orders, I also went on a crazy killing and skinning spree in Etibule. I'm pretty sure everyone in Etibule was like . . . yikes . . . this guy needs to be locked up, but by the end I had a huge haul of skins and vendor trash that sold for a lot of money.

. . . and of course, I completed a lot of War Caches like I talked about in my last post. They're typically good for 2-5k depending on inventory space and which vendors still have cash to buy all this nonsense.

Pretty much I just sold everything.

Usually I'm much more cautious about saving items and tucking rolls of precious crafting goods away for another time . . . but not when i was on the hunt for money. I was single minded in regards to "Tom's fire magic charity fundraiser." Has kind of a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

The funny thing is, it only gets worse. I don't even want to think about what it will cost to raise my Fire Magic from 71-80. /shiver

On the plus side, I'm one-shotting creatures with fireballs like never before. The power bump is awesome.

Happy Dueling!

Tis the season for all MMOs to undergo a facelift of a spookier sort and Project Gorgon, the quirkiest MMO of them all, is no exception.

Pumpkin Mimics . . . it's a thing

It's Halloween time in Serbule, and it all started about a week ago. There was a strange precursor quest that happened a little bit before the real quests started. Basically, you talked to a goat, he had you click on a box, and you became a giant bat until removed by a potion that costs 4.5k councils.

Weeeeee! Flying!

I had a lot of fun flying around as a giant bat. It took a bit of asking in Guild chat to figure out that I needed to press R to fly and F to land. Once that happened, I was visiting all kinds of weird empty spots in Project Gorgon. Being a bat has a whole skill line that actually just got revamped a bit with the patch that contained the *real* Halloween update.

Side note: Being a Giant Bat helped me uncover a really big missed opportunity. There could be a whole secret bat city atop Serbule castle! That really needs to happen.

With the patch the goat NPC was removed and the *actual* Halloween celebration began. It features a whole lot more pumpkin decorations around town and a bunch of quests.

A Giant Bat between two pumpkins . . . that's me!

We're talking four or five complete quest chains that will have you doing everything from baking candied apples to running 144 kegs of beer to a party for the Goddess of Whimsy . . . to offering a skull to an alter and fighting Lord Serbule's ghost.

Halloween is all about the Goddess of Whimsy

You'll also find various areas that didn't have undead, now have undead. Like these Flapskulls in the Ilmari Desert.

They don't actually have legs, that's my pet biting the flapskull from behind.

Also, it appears about half of the tigers in the lower level zones were replaced with undead archers. I know this because there's a quest to make some spooky punch, which requires 4 cat eyeballs -- they were a touch harder to find with less tigers around. The punch decoration was worth it though.

Reminds me of the old spaghetti brains gag in neighborhood haunted houses.

Overall the Halloween quests are fun and a nice distraction from the usual game, and if there's anytime to be playing Project Gorgon as a bat, it's right now.

Happy Dueling!

The past couple of days have been really cool for me in Project Gorgon. Not just because I was able to attend the in-game Halloween party / play, but also because I've hit level 70 in both my Fire Magic and Animal Handling skills.

Mass buffs for all the party go-ers!

The Party was epic, btw. Tons of people. Everyone died. Mummies everywhere. Loot for all. Lag was off the charts. End of story. There's only one more night to catch the magic in an encore performance if you have completed your party quests and can make it to the Casino:

Encore Performances - Sunday, November 3:

EU primetime - 8pm CET / 2pm US EST / 6am AEDT (Mon 11/4)
US primetime - 9pm US EST / 1pm AEDT (Mon 11/4) / 3am CET

~~

So, for the past month or so, I've been grinding out levels and money working myself from levels 61-70. It's not necessarily hard, it's just as you would expect from an MMO . . . you grind. When your exp bar reaches the top, you celebrate!

For me that celebration culminated in my guild leader running me through the Wolf Caves to get to a portal that led out to the world of fairies, living plants, and trolls. Welcome, to the Fae Realm.

Clashing concentrics and blue grass everywhere!

The color hue during the daytime in Fae Realm is full of bright blues and vivid purples, regular animals are florescent green, trainers are pixies and animals, and the Economy is driven by the trading of Royal Jelly.

There aren't regular teleportation pads in the Fae Realm, so come armed with a special mushroom teleportation spell that you get from grinding a couple quests inside a cave in Guzlak where a living mushroom will teach you his ways of transportation. When you arrive, come armed with Parasol Mushrooms and salt to bind yourself (also a good supply of rations) . . . the NPCs don't even have a drop of salt for sale here.

At night time, there is no setting sun. Instead there is an audible thump of a drum and day instantly turns to night on a different cycle than you're used to.

No one knows what that lifestone does, but it's THE PRETTY!

Fractal wisps of red and yellow dance across a pitch black sky and hues of color explode against the night. During Halloween, this is also when skeletons invade the typically undead-free Fae Realm. Not to worry though, this place is as equally deadly during the day as it is at night.

Certain mountaintops hide 58k health nature elementals. Lightning-spitting Droaches crawl another mountain. . . . But the exp from killing Fae Realm Rhinos is ON POINT.

Many rhinos died this day . . .

But still, watch out for those Rhinos, dear readers. They can knock your pet out of bounds where they become unresponsive and you're unable to heal them. It feels like a bug, not a feature, but you never know with Project Gorgon to be honest.

Remember when I complained about having to grind 95,000 councils for access to level 61? How does a cool 360,000 councils for access to level 71 grab ya . . . and that's for EACH skill!

Being an Animal Handler is pretty great here. You'll be able to get upgraded models of your Fae green bears and Fae green panthers you may have picked up back in Etibule. When you tame them, they come in at level 73. Once you hit level 70 in Animal Handling, the trainer there will also offer you a skill to tame bees.

My name is Stingite. I need a stinging bee pet gosh darn it! Of course the component needed to tame the bee is a flower arrangement that can only be made by a level 60 flower arranger . . . yes, flower arranging is a skill in Project Gorgon. I put in a player work order to see if I could obtain five of them to see if I can withstand the poison and get my own bee pet.

I must say, it feels pretty great to be here as a new player. I've been seriously playing this game for . . . what? . . . a month and a half now? I'm now seeing what the hub-bub was about when I joined the game and the Fae Realm had been released. I'm looking forward to completing the Daily quest chain here with our guild and seeing what more it has to offer.

The big complaint I hear from the old timers is that the Fae Realm lacks a dungeon to play in. From what I also hear, that dungeon is already in the works with the constant reminder that this game is still in Beta. BRING ON THE DUNGEON! I can't wait to leave my tombstone littered all around its terrifying interior.

I'll keep you posted as I gain more insights into this new realm, but for now I'm just learning my way around and trying not to poke too many 22k health trolls in the process.

Happy Dueling!

It's interesting to take a look at the communities behind MMOs and see what's going on there. Ever since being a "community leader" and eventually a "community manager," I can't help but look at what's happening in games and their social networks.

Here's what I've noticed so far:

Company Social Media:

The Homepage! Yup. It's a good place to start.
Facebook -- They have around 1,900 followers, but it's not linked to from the home page of Project Gorgon, so I don't know if it's official?
Twitter 1 -- @ProjectGorgon has around 6.700 followers.
Twitter 2 -- @GorgonMMO has around 1,200 followers . . . but yet seems more active of an account that the other.
YouTube -- GorgonMMO has around 500 subscribers.
Reddit -- Project Gorgon's Reddit page has around 3,100 adventurers to its name.
Discord - The unofficial player-made Discord channel has around 1,200 members. But, honestly . . . I don't know how many people actually use that Discord channel.
Official Forums -- The forums are hosted from their official website and has around 4,650 people registered with probably many more lurkers.
Official Wiki -- This wiki is also hosted from their official website. You can actually access this wiki in game with the "/wiki" command.
Steam community -- The Steam page is always a great place when looking for reviews and news.
Kickstarter Page -- This is the page that started it all!

Looks like Etibule Keep in its early stages

News Site Coverage:

MassivelyOP -- MassivelyOP seems to be the main MMO news agency to keep your eyes on when it comes to Project Gorgon. Justin Olivetti is keeping us in the know or at least dropping the name of the Gorgon when he can.
MMORPG.com -- Suzie Ford has been covering Project Gorgon for MMORPG.com but looks like they've lost track of the MMO as of last April.
Ten Ton Hammer -- Most of this is old news from the Kickstarter.
Gamespot -- Just a few pictures I think?
MMO Pulse -- This appears to mainly just be a general review of the game from around the time of the Kickstarter.
MMO Huts -- This is also a review of the game from about two years ago.
MMO.com -- Yet another review of the game from yet another MMO news site.

Developers:

Eric Heimburg -- I found a Twitter account, but the last he posted on it was back in 2013. He's much more active on the Official Forums as "Citan"
Sandra Powers -- So, she has a Twitter account that I found, but she doesn't post much. There was one post that concerned me, and that was this:

I have a sister with MS, and it is debilitating for her. I certainly hope she's ok.

Connor Brace -- I was happy to see that the Composer for the music for Project Gorgon, which is quite good btw, lives here in Austin, Texas. I should reach out and see if he'd let me buy him lunch!

Picture from ConnorBrace.com

A full list of all the developers can be found here: http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Developers -- I'd dig deeper, but it all began to feel a bit stalker-y.

Community Leaders / GMs / Volunteer Guides:
Not so much a site per se, but just wanted to point out that there is a GM presence of sorts on the game itself and the main one I see while playing is a fella that goes by the name of "Jackncola" -- pointing out his favorite type of drink perhaps?

I caught a screenshot of him in game one day when we were having a party. He had boosted his character size up to double that of a normal character.

Quite the presence in the game . . . Literally!

Twitch
As for Twitch streamers, it looks like Uncle Retro and Straggiz take the lead spot for a "regular" streamers. Both seem like really nice older guys. I can relate. lol. Both seemed very worth of a follow if you're into that scene and both seemed to upload their streams to YouTube as well.

Watch Halloween Events! from UncleRetro on www.twitch.tv

YouTube
YouTube is an interesting beast since it's kind of a deluge of different players, but there was a really nice "Let's Play" from a couple of guys named Battle-Ax Theater. They just wrapped up a nine video series with their final thoughts just two days ago. I appreciated that they bleeped out the swear words . . . um . . . at least for the first 12 minutes.

Blogs
I hunted just a few pages deep on Google trying to find a few bloggers that had written a touch on Project Gorgon. Most had only written one or two posts, but I found what I would call an invested few (and familiar names to me) that made at least three posts or more about the game.

The Ancient Gaming Noob -- Wilhelm seems to have last played the game back in March 2019, but has also mentioned the game in passing. Good stuff here as always.
Inventory Full -- I just discovered Bhagpuss's blog from the recent Blaugust. He seems to have really given the entry part of the game a good go and thoughtfully wrote about his experiences. I'd love to see him write more about the game.
Bio Break -- Syp hasn't written much about the game since March 2018, but what he has written is highly entertaining. He's a true professional.
Endgame Viable -- UltrViolet has a great handful of posts on Project Gorgon. Again, as with all these bloggers listed, it's a great read. Very well written and thoughtful.
. . . and me . . . hi.

Podcasts
A little digging has shown that currently there doesn't seem to be a dedicated podcast for the game; although, it was really fun to listen to the folks at Control Alt Record when they discovered Project Gorgon. They were clearly in love with the game and unfortunately the honeymoon didn't last longer than just a couple of episodes:

Episode 18: Project: Gorgon the new (old) MMO
Episode 19: Project: Gorgon New Player Guide and Quiz

It was also pretty cool to hear how excited one of the guys from The Sandbox podcast was about just getting off the demo island.

Episode 114: A Glimpse at the Gorgon

Other:
This isn't a social media site, but since I've got a big encyclopedia of links above, might as well include this: Gorgon Explorer. This tool pulls directly from Project Gorgon's database library and adds new functionality like the ability to plan out your "build."

~~

Most of the podcasters all had the same reaction that I had about the game play. There's just something really satisfying about this game. It's hard to describe unless you play it. They all talked about that horrible Loot Box UI pop up. It's all a blend of rants met with the highest of compliments.

And that's something funny I've watched myself do when I try to tell someone that I'm playing this game. Every time I buffer the conversation with things like "look, the graphics suck, but . . ." or "it's super grindy, but . . .""There's no mounts or housing system yet, but . . ." or any of the other qualifiers one might put before talking about the game.

I wish I didn't need to do that, but I guess I do. Especially given the amount of games that are out there that you could be playing instead. For me, it's the core game play. It's smooth and addictive. The plethora of skills is the game's strongest point. I certainly am not done with the game yet: too much to do and I'm still having fun.

Speaking of addictive, dang, the loyalty of the small Project Gorgon fan base is HUGE. All the old Asheron's Call players that flocked here is a thing of beauty. They loved their game. They miss their game. Project Gorgon is its natural evolution but yet a totally different game.

My end thought is . . . I guess I don't think the majority of these people care about the social aspects of their game. The Vocal Minority flocks to the Global chat in game, the forums, and the in-game events, and that's enough for them. Everything else is . . . great . . . but I just don't think these fans are also fans of the fans if that makes sense. They just want to play the game and when they go hunting for information, they want to find it as fast as possible.

The vibe I get is "Less talking, more playing." That isn't necessarily a bad thing.

If you have more sites that you know of, please feel free to share them in the comments. Would love to hear about any and all.

Happy Dueling!

I logged on this morning to an interesting wall of text.

1/3rd of the deets on The Civil Service quest

This new event appears to basically be a dungeon clearing event that will take you through all the dungeons in the game that are tied to a town in one way or another, starting with a quest that takes you to the depths of the Serbule Crypt. As the wall of text details at the bottom, you'll need to hit up the following dungeons from easiest to hardest:

The Serbule Crypt
Borghild
Eltibule Keep Goblin Dungeon
Kur Tower
Illmari Labyrinth
Gazluk Keep

You'll want to bring friends to do most of these, the full extents of all those dungeons are no joke with many bosses that can permanently curse your character if you die to them.

I decided this morning to run over to the Serbule Crypt and see how it was looking with the limited play time I had.

Ahh Serbule Crypt . . . it's been a little bit since I delved your depths.

It's a great dungeon tucked away in the corner of Serbule just a few 100 feet behind one of the giant hands.

Hello blue glow of lowbie-death

Once inside, it was pretty quiet for day one of an event at 5:30am Central, but sure enough there were people inside doing the same thing I was doing. I imagine at peak times for the first few days you'll be able to run through here pretty easily as people come and go.

I just cast up molten veins as a fire wizards and just walked my way through as everything died to my thorns damage . . . minus the ranged enemies, but my new pet Bee Wasabee took care of everything else.

We have an understanding

I love my new pet bee btw. He's the best. Super difficult to get, but some amazing crafter took pity on my soul and fulfilled my work order requests for Bee lover Bouquets. Thank you!

I digress.

My Molten Veins walk took me all the way down to the southern-most portion of the map where the Rhino Guardian Boss lives. Thankfully he wasn't up, and I didn't have to risk incurring the "Gored Pockets" debuff which permanently minuses your inventory by five slots if you die to his ugly horn. Instead I just skipped over to the crystal, touched it, and ran away.

touchy!

Then I ran down to Sir Arif in the safe point of the dungeon and logged out . . . because I have kids and that requires a lot of running around in the mornings.

THEN I LOGGED BACK ON!

Again, I made the Wasabee / Molten Veins run down the hallway to where good ol' Khryulek lives . . .because of course the devs are gonna place that second crystal is in the basement with the toughest boss in the dungeon, right? right.

There was another white shirt guy there waiting to do the same thing as I was. You have to kill Khyrulek's first form to enter the second level of the Serbule Crypt you see.

I like other white shirt guy's fashion sense!

That was no problem at all and then I was in the second level of the dungeon . . . sure enough, Khyrulek's second and tougher boss form was down, so it was no problem at all running in and claiming the second crystal in the dungeon.

touchy touchy!

After that it was a short trip through a gaggle of super-spiders to get back up to the top of the crypt.

Sting 'em, Wasabee!

And there at the top was waiting my civil service chest, which awarded me with 250 civil service experience points (seriously, that's a good enough gift by itself since it's a really hard skill to level) and my choice of loot. The consensus from Global chat was that the gem reward was probably the best one to take, so I took that.

Maybe I should have gone with the Random Skill Potion since I'm still kinda new . . . nah.

And just like that, the quest advanced to Borghilde . . . shiver . . . land of the floating skulls of "one shot death" and yellow ghosts of "need to be stunned to be killed."

You're next, Borghilde!

It looks like a fun few days of dungeon delving is in store with the guild! What a cool event!

Happy Dueling!

Things have been a bit dicey so far in the level 70 range. But let me get right to the point. Like this guy . . .

After getting my bee pet I started thinking about all the differences there are in the pets in this game.

One of my new pets has a special trick that makes an enemy vulnerable to poison damage and strictly does poison based attacks.

Basically Buzzter likes to poison things

I did a quick search of my options for taking advantage of this and I came upon the Knife Fighting skill. Actually, my choices seemed to really be Spider, Druid, and Knife Fighting.

As cool as being a spider is (seriously, you can hatch spider babies inside your enemies), I don't know if I want to go through the whole animal experience just yet, and as amazing as all the things that come bundled with the druid are, hmmm I can be a duck, meh . . . just not feeling it. Fighting with knives on the other hand is sexy! Am I right? It's my fight-like-a-Stingite, sting-like-a-bee style!

So, just like that, I'm now working up my Knife Fighting skills. It's a big grind back up to 70-80, fighting all the stuff you already fought once before. Great re-tread on the part of the Developer, but ultimately a touch boring for the player since there are only a limited amount of alternate leveling location options in the game.

So far, my thoughts are that using knife fighting exclusively for its poison skills seems to severely limit you, but hey, I'm still figuring it all out.

Many Worgs are gonna die to poison damage today

As far as I can tell, combat plays out a bit like this:

Open with Animal Handling skills that really get the taunt and damage for poison going. Then apply Poisoner's Cut, followed by Backstab (if the mob is taunted correctly by my bee), followed by Venomstike, followed by Poison Blade (which is an Alchemy Combat Skill) or other knife attacks.

The three main skills from Knife Fighting (and Alchemy) are these:

Poisoner's Cut -- A distracting motion whose main aim is to give you time to add poison to your blade for your next maneuver. On your next attack, gain a poison Damage over Time bonus.
Venomstrike -- This is Damage over Time Poison attack that is classed as "a Nice Attack."
Poison Blade -- Jab a Poisoned Knife into your target, dealing instant Poison damage.

I'm not a huge fan of Poison Blade, however, since it's a constant drip for Alchemy supplies. Every time you use it, it subtracts one vial of poison from your inventory. Personally, I'd rather see Poison Blade be modified to be a short duration buff that's slightly less punishing to maintain.

The other huge constant drip from Knife Fighting is that if you want to use throwing knives (Knife Fighting has a really really good ranged snare ability with a massive 90% speed debuff), you also need to take the Blacksmithing skill to make your throwing knives. Finding metal isn't necessarily easy, which would require me looking more and more into the Surveying and Mining skills. Or alternately using Ice Magic to make Ice Knives, which only works in non-hot environments.

That's how Project Gorgon rolls . . . one skill leads to two more skills, which leads to two more skills, which leads to not really wanting to pursue those skills, to then leveling ten other skills.

The other downside here to my knife fighting build is that there is a good number of poison-resistant enemies in the game, but I always will have the option of breaking out my fire magic. Right?

So, I'll be spending a lot of time hanging out with my new knife training buddy Rick Snapley in the great cave city of Gazluk known as "New Prestonbule."

Yeah, it's basically six people living in an ice cave.

But hey! Farming wolves here for skins is great money and a great way to practice my new Knife Fighting at the same time.

Happy Dueling

I remember the first time I ran past all the vendor stalls in Serbule and laughed out loud at all the people standing in a row selling stuff. At the time I thought it worked just like Everquest where you step up to a platform and type a slash command to set yourself as a vendor. Spoiler alert: it doesn't work that way at all.

There's an NPC called Selphie that will train you in the arts of "Retail Management." It'll either set you back ~18,000 councils to train Retail Management outright, or (if you're a sucker like me) you can raise your Industry skill up to 25, and then it'll only cost you ~1,000 councils.

yes, yes Selphie's gaze is unnerving . . . is her name a pun? I think so?

The way to level your industry outside of retail management is to complete work orders. (I talked about those a few posts back.) Yesterday I found two sweet work orders for leather armor I could fashion that netted me just enough experience to crest into 25.

Now that I had retail management, the next thing to do was to find a vendor to hire. Yeah, those rows of people standing in stalls weren't players, they were NPCs that players hire. (That's a step up from Everquest, right? Pretty smart on the dev's behalf too because keeping your computer running all night logged into the bazaar was freaking annoying and I'm sure it also consumed a lot of server resources.)

That's when I found someone with an equally unnerving gaze as Selphie, and her name is Nirillora . . . the vendor standing in stall B-13. Hey! B-13 is my favorite vitamin! Orotic Acid! The vitamin involved in the synthesis of phospholipids, nucleic acids, and bilirubin!

It's not her fault she looks like a smurf gosh dangit . . .

I like Nirillora's style, so I hired her for 250 councils and gave my shop a brand new shiny name.

Am I right?

I have a surplus of leather! Let's do this! Now for a shop tagline . . . hmmm . . . .

GET IT, BABY, YEAH!

The next thing to do is to set your items to sell with a price tag, and that's it.

Get yer leather here, fellow Gorgon freaks!

This morning I logged in to see how Nirillora did overnight and waiting for me was ~7000 councils . . . although none of the profits were actually from leather. Nope. You know what sold? Stomachs, poison, and rage to heat potions. *shrug*

Thanks for the business, Sarsparilla!

So pretty good night I'd say, and I'm up on councils made vs. spent, so I hired Nirillora for a second day and . . . ouch . . . the cost went up to ~350 councils. At least I gained a bit more Industry experience while hiring her.

The cost seems pretty punishing and makes selling by the penny profit model a difficult task. I always wondered why players never sold really lowbie materials in their shops, now I know why. A newbie couldn't afford the prices you'd have to put things at if all you sold were lowbie items.

OH! BY THE WAY! I must say this to anyone reading this post that may be thinking of using the player run shops. Rather than pecking through each shop trying to find the item you want, you click on the little pink golems running around.

These little guys help you search for what you're looking for. I didn't realize this until I was like a month or two into the game. You're welcome.

What's with all the B shops selling Crude Leather? Only the Shop Golem knows . . .

Feel free to drop by my shop "Leather . . . Am I right?" and buy all the stomachs you can. I ain't cheesemaking just yet. Have at 'em!

Happy Dueling!

For some reason our friends over at Project Gorgon headquarters like to spice things up every once in a while by throwing down a bonus to a random tradeskill. I like it! It reminds me of the exclusive member benefits they run for Wizard101 subscribers.

This weekend was all about the Surveyor's Luck benefit, which doubled the harvests you get from the surveying skill.

Rather be lucky than good

I was looking for a great time to jump back in to the Surveying Tradeskill and this was it! I've been needing a bunch of metal for improving my Blacksmith Skill, so this weekend's event was the perfect excuse.

Lemme break this down a bit for those that may not know how to get started with this tradeskill. First, head on over to Serbule Hills . . .NOT Serbule . . . Serbule Hills. It's a different zone. In fact, it used to be the newbie zone in Project Gorgon before they got that fancy Anagoge Island newbie zone. It's the zone just south of Serbule.

Next, find the inn in Serbule Hills. It's actually called the Tapestry Inn, and it's off to the left of the road from zone in. Inside you'll find a lady named Jamie Fatholm hanging out in the corner just minding her own business.

Go bug her.

You'll need to build faction with her first by completing a couple of her quests or by giving her gifts of things she likes . . . like magical bows, gold, silver, etc. If you click "Small Talk," in her NPC dialog box, she'll tell you the things she likes.

After this you can then train with her in the arts of Surveying! . . . which eventually are also the arts of Mining! . . . which are also eventually the arts of Geology! Never forget that this is Project Gorgon, where one skill leads to a bazillion more skills.

Once you have the skill, buy parchment and ink from Jamie and use them in the tradeskill window to craft Surveying maps. Once you have a Surveying map, click on it while looking at the map, and it'll show you a big red circle and some text telling you how far away the metal is.

GET THEM METAL SLABS BOIS!

Run to the middle of that circle, click the map again, and BAM! Your map disappears and you are given whatever gems or metal was hiding in that spot. AND, you'll get a bonus if you did that quickly.

I typically like to load up my inventory with about 20 maps, click them all, and drag and drop the maps in a kind of a big circle. Since I have four inventory tabs, I'll usually divvy them up by dragging and dropping maps into an inventory bag according to which section of the map its deposit is in. In other words, if the target is in the top left of the map, it stays in inventory bag 1; if top right, bag 2; if bottom right, bag 3; and in bottom left, bag 4.

When you 're dealing with 20 maps at a time, organization is the key.

Then you just run alllllllll around the zone clicking on maps and collecting metal and gems for like a half hour.

Now the big question . . . is it fun? Well, a few of us were complaining a bit about Surveying in chat the other day and it went something like this: "If you like wasting your time by running around in circles and clicking on things, then boy have I got the tradeskill for you!"

It's a necessary evil, but I think it still has a little bit of fun to it given the find and chase aspect, and it's definitely profitable. At the end of the day, do you mine in any MMO for fun? I doubt it. Surveying in lower zones actually feels relaxing to me. You just zone out and do it zen style.

NOW . . . if you want to step up your Survey game even further (and have even more fun) . . . you should give Treasure Cartography a shot, but that's a different post for a different time when I'm feeling up to the task of explaining how phases of the moon in the real world affect the way you hunt for treasure in Project Gorgon. whew.

Happy Dueling!

I've been playing in the cold and snowy mountains of Gazluk lately trying my best to win the friendship of one Rick Snapley. I've talked about him before since he's the go to guy for training Knife Fighting.

If this was real life, there's no way I'd really want to hang out with this guy, but in Project Gorgon I'm trying my best to become "like family" with him so I can train all the deadly Knife Fighting skills.

You see . . . Rick's favorite thing to do is to get drunk and play with knives. Sounds fun at first, but it's going to lead to a lot of blood, bandages, alcohol poisoning, and hangovers. As for things Rick likes as gifts? Yeah, he'll gladly take poison of any kind . . . even poisoned food and drink (LOVES 'EM!), and he'll also gladly take any spare magical knives you've got floating around in your inventory.

Can you really trust a guy like, Rick? Really?

Rick runs a little shop in the New Prestonbule Ice Cave where he'll buy anything you throw at him. Luckily for cash strapped travelers, he's good at that. Before this gig, he was (get this) a happy dealer in stolen goods from Jawas and Sand People, erm, well, uhh . . . "desert thieves" types if you get my drift.

His saving grace of course is his heart of gold for his Raksasha girlfriend named Sona. He saved her from the Jawa and Sand People types and hauled her off to his super cold cave in Gazluk to protect her as he nursed her back to health. I guess that's one way to get a girlfriend! OHHHHHH!

Anyway, while trying to become thick as thieves with good 'ol Rick, I've also done a few of his favor quests. The one I completed most recently is called "Blankets from Ghosts," and it has some very interesting lore behind the strange abandoned city nearby that's full of ghosts.

Behold the ghost-filled town of Prestonbule

Now, ghosts in Project Gorgon ain't your typical undead. Upon first glance they appear shiny and golden and when you start to attack them (because they will attack you on sight), you'll notice that you aren't doing much damage to them. Why? Well, you need to "stun" a ghost first before you damage it. Yeah, I don't get it either, but it's a cool mechanic, right?

A "Horrific" Ghost? Well, she is trying to punch me I guess.

When a ghost turns white, THEN you can damage it. Shield or Hammer skills are perfect for fighting Ghosts, btw. Between the two there's tons of stunning potential.

My turn to punch, Ghost Lady!

I digress.

Now, Rick lets you in on a little secret. The "New Prestonbule" cave is actually the old storage area of "Prestonbule" aka the area of Gazluk with all the abandoned ghost houses.

The other odd thing is that the people that originally lived in that city were worshipers of a goddess named "Arisetsu." She's the goddess of Hope and Warmth. What in the actual heck are a bunch of goddess of hope and warmth lovers doing in Gazluk where your body temperature drops like a rock the moment you step outside? Nobody knows but old Arisetsu herself I suppose.

Anyway, the reason there are ghosts here is because orcs raided their town and slaughtered all those followers of Arisetsu. But get this, Arisetsu HATES undead!! Feels like salt in the wound.

Let's rewind a bit . . . who is this Arisetsu besides the goddess of Hope and Warmth? Hmm? So here's the deal, you can find a book about Arisetsu in a house in Serbule. It's called "The Gods, XI: Arisetsu." By reading this book you find out a few things:

1- Arisetsu used to be called simply Aris. She was only a minor goddess of Warmth. She became the goddess of both Hope and Warmth after the rebound from an event called the Autumn Felling where half the population of elves died including the grand poo-poo of Elven Gods, Cae-a-lee.

2- She birthed three minor gods named Elshana, Errana, and Dreva, which kinda took care of Arisetusu's newfound responsibilities of "Hope." since . . . you know . . . her kids all were minor gods of things which give hope to the world, like creativity and sex (blush).

Inside new Prestonbule Cave you find out just a little bit of extra lore about our dear Arisetsu from a Lorebook there called "Classic Stories: Arisetsu and Vol."

3- Arisetsu, the Goddess of Hope and Warmth, hooked up with Vol, the God of Death, in order to escape death of her own. They have love spats, but it works.

And finally, if you do a hangout with Gloria Stonecurl, the priestess of Arisetsu in nearby Mountains of Kur, you find out this cool Lore tidbit:

4- Both Arisetsu and Vol hate undead. In fact, it was probably Vol's influence on Arisetsu that makes her hate undead so much.

. . . so, back to my original thought, ain't it weird that a bunch of Arisetsu followers now inhabit Prestonbule as undead? I THINK SO!

Undead are typically the work of Vol's angsty emo brother named Zek. In a book titled The Chalice Saga, we learn that Zek likes chilling with Necromancers . . . the unfriendliest kind of necromancers.

So . . . to complete my lore-conspiracy-theory-post here that you've been reading . . . My thinking is that the orcs didn't just raid Prestonbule for kicks, but that Zek himself riled them up and swooped in with his undead-ways to completely piss off Arisetsu and Vol.

GASP!

Wouldn't it be interesting if someday players entered into the realm of Acur, the dark dimension of Angst through a portal in Prestonbule, which was opened up by Arisetsu and Vol themselves? I SAY YES!!!!

This pulpit in the Prestonbule church would be the perfect spot for a portal to Acur . . . just sayin'

. . . and that's all I got to say about that . . . but let me know what you think in the comments below.

Happy Dueling!

Rumor has it that about 3-4 times a year, a special event comes to Project Gorgon and this weekend is one of those times. This is the first time I've been present for the "Attack of the World Bosses" event, and it's pretty crazy.

That's a pretty rowdy crowd of people, Project Gorgon . . .

In a way it reminds me a lot of the nights spent in Guild Wars 2 as you'd run from World Boss to World Boss as you track a timer on when they'll spawn next. Groups of people both formally and informally form up and pass the time while waiting for the Big bad to spawn.

Insta-death skulls make fighting "Claudia the Hag" a scary affair.

When the Big Bad spawns, you hit fast and hard until they drop. Everyone gets some loot from the body, and then you can run over to a chest and get a second pull for loot.

Yes, I will take some level 80 rarity boosted loot please! Yum!

Unlike Guild Wars 2, a nearby portal will whisk you away instantly to the next World Boss that you need to defeat . . . unless you didn't defeat the boss that was near the portal, then it's locked down and you'll have to hoof it old school style to the location of the next boss.

This year, since the Fae Realm is new-ish to the game, the event has a new added boss in the Fae Realm that is your final stop in the event before it resets in four hours time.

Behold the Hot Flash!

Yes, that's a giant phoenix and yes, her name is Hot Flash.

Hot Flash has been causing a few problems, and the devs even paused the event for a bit this morning trying to improve the experience. Really the problem here is two fold:

1- The portal leading to Hot Flash is actually quite a run to where you fight her. This leads to everyone dying on the way to the fight spot as they agro Basilisk Controllers, War-Trolls, and all kinds of big baddies.

2- After everyone is actually at the right spot, Hot Flash is surrounded by two other giant phoenices named Spark and Ember. To make matters worse, Spark and Ember also have boss level Blinding Wasps that accompany them . . . so . . . it's a lot of death and dying while just getting set up.

Basically, everyone dies 4-10 times just trying to get to the area and separate Hot Flash from her sisters. It's a bit of a mess, but that RARITY BOOSTED loot at the end plus two event keys is so worth it!

Hot Flash subsided . . . now bring on the loot!

The event only lasts a couple days, so now is the time to log on before it's gone for another few months! It's really fun to be in a mass of that many people and see how you're stacking up to the real heroes of Project Gorgon.

Oh . . . to have the damage output of ProfessorCat or Mirromorka . . .

All in all the event is a huge blast . . . just don't be like me and forget to turn down your graphics quality . . . I crashed out when running Ultra graphics. My computer just couldn't take it. Missed out on some great loot a couple times because of it.

There's a lot of particle effects flying here . . . just sayin'

Happy Dueling!

I did it! I hit level 70 in Knife Fighting yesterday and then stared down that long long tunnel hoping to find a way to gain 360,000 councils to buy access to levels 71-80.

via GIPHY

It's not all hopeless though . . . I mean I did this before for Animal Handling. It can be done again! It just takes a lot of self-control to not buy anything for a couple weeks and as long as you play steadily and do your daily missions every day . . . I got this.

In the meantime, I turned my attention to something else: Knife Fighting Synergy levels. What are those? Lemme explain that.

Each combat skill has a certain number of levels that can be earned by hitting milestones in other skills -- both combat skills and other skills alike. It's how I was able to obtain level 83 in Animal Handling when level 80 is the cap. That's nothing though, if I was to get all the synergy levels for Knife Fighting, then my cap would be level 89 instead of 80 because there are the following 9 possible synergy levels for Knife Fighting:

Cooking level 10
Cooking level 60
Fishing level 35
Fishing level 65
Orcish language level 25
Sword level 25
Sword level 55
Unarmed combat level 33
Unarmed combat level 55

This morning I took a quick look at what I could get done as soon as possible. I already had Cooking skill way past 10, but my Fishing skill was close as well as Sword and Unarmed Combat.

So I got a basic sword and headed to the Goblin Keep dungeon in Eltibule for some level farming with my high level Animal Handling pets by my side. They make this kind of stuff a lot easier. After an hour, I had level 25 in Sword and that made me level 72 in Knife Fighting

Next I unequipped my weapons and started punching zombies in Kur Tower. I should have brought along some poison resistance by the way, because being poisoned by zombies is the worst part of this experience. After an hour or so of punching zombies, I was level 33 in unarmed combat and level 73 in Knife Fighting.

I guess punching things is the same motion as stabbing things? shrug. SYNERGY!

The next synergy level on my list . . . fishing.

Thanks Shallow Eltibule lakes . . . you helped.

So here's the deal with fishing lately in Project Gorgon. It sucks. Why? Well, they made a change recently that improves swimming. Unfortunately at the same time, this change kind of ruined the ease of catching fish pre-change.

You used be able to simply click on a fish and tap the "Catch Fish" button. At that point Auto-swim would take over and you'd be guided right to your fish. Easy stuff.

Now you stay on the surface when you swim unless you press the "F" key to dive down into the water. If you press "Catch Fish" now, it gives you an error message in the middle of your screen that says, "Can't auto-move while underwater. You must swim closer!"

SPAM CLICK, SPAM CLICK, SPAM CLICK, GOTCHA FISH!

Now it's all about how great your depth perception is as you manually swim toward the fish's direction. (Shallow lakes in Eltibule help as well, jus' sayin'.)

The two other options for raising your fishing skill are filleting fish for experience (although it's in the Cooking crafting skill, it gives Fishing experience not Cooking experience) or Ice Fishing.

"Collect Fish" is a little misleading here . . .

Over in the Kur Mountains a guy named Ukorga will teach you the arts of ice fishing, and even will sell you a saw and string to help lay your traps. The higher the level of trap, the more time it takes and the better the yield (I would assume . . . I only have the 5 minute traps currently, but they go all the way up to 8 hour traps).

Basically you lay a trap down on some ice, go away and do something else for a while, then come back and see what your trap caught. Super easy and no grabbing of fish.

Also, super boring. I don't know how fun fishing is in any MMO. Free Realms and Wizard101 were about as fun as I've seen fishing get.

Now, the thing that's interesting to me in Project Gorgon is that the Swimming changes that were put in the game were "in preparation" of something else. It said so right in the patch notes. My initial reaction was . . . OH MAN WE'RE GETTING AN UNDERWATER ZONE! But, I don't know. It would kind of make more sense if fishing got a little bit of an overhaul.

There is a lot of room for improvement here, and especially considering that fishing isn't even really fishing. It's more like catching fish with your bare hands or setting a trap. I'd love to see fishing boats and nets make an arrival into the world! I'd love to see an actual fishing rod that you cast out into a lake! There's so much that could be done here.

Not to mention the horrible dead zone that is currently Fishing Skill levels 20-45. You're supposed to be catching eels and sharks in Sun Vale at this level, but the spawn rates and availability of these fish is abysmal . . . and that's probably because Sun Vale isn't a finished zone. The large rivers that run through the zone aren't even operational at the moment.

Hopefully that changes soon though (like in two days) since we had this cool announcement:

YES! Fun in the sun and sand is exactly what I need.

An overhaul to fishing would certainly make that skill grind up to level 65 more appealing from my point of view. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Happy Dueling!

My daughter made a comic for me that shows how things have been going lately in the Gazluk Caves.

It's always the respawns behind me that end in a tombstone ;)

In all seriousness, I've had a great time in the Caves lately. I've been farming like a madman and I'm closing in on that 360k council mark for unlocking the last ten levels in Knife Fighting.

I've been undertaking a bit of fun with Treasure Cartography in Eltibule as well. I mentioned Treasure Cartography briefly in my past post about surveying since they work very similarly. It's netted me some money this go around, but most importantly it's been . . . "different." Farming those Gazluk caves over and over and over can get really mind-numbing. It's good to spice things up.

~~

Time for Treasure Cartography!

1- You're going to want to befriend Yasinda in Eltibule so she'll teach you her ways of treasure finding, so gather up a bunch of magical necklaces and give 'em to her stat.

2- Any time you're running around in Elitibule and you see a grave sticking out of the ground, dig it up. Sometimes they'll have boring stuff in them, but other times they'll have treasure rumors!

3- You'll want to collect these treasure rumors for when you can actually use them. I recommend building faction there in Eltibule with Sie Antry. The best way to do that is to give her snail shells. Snails are all over the place there in Eltibule. It's an easy win. Even at the lowest level of friendship, she'll open up 24 storage slots. Stick your spare treasure rumors in there.

That's a lot of storage for very little work

4- Use a little lore skill called "Moon Phase Check." It's a level 2 Lore crafting recipe and super easy to come by. This skill tells you the current phases of the moon . . . both in real life and inside Project Gorgon. You'll need this piece of information for getting free treasure rumors from the sacrificial idols.

5- Run around Eltibule and map out where each of the altars are on your map. The map on this wiki page is absolutely a god-send. Do it exactly as they have it (except maybe change "Third quarter" to "Last Quarter").

Should look a little like this

6- Gather up the following grocery list of resources and place them in your bags in the following order: A gem, a "drug-like" potion (potions with positive and negative effects), any mushroom, any animal part (like an eyeball), a fish, a piece of wood, a femur bone, one vegetable or cotton seed, a basic potion (not to be confused with a "drug-like" potion), a flower seed, a flower, a piece of jewelry (Rings/Amulets), a piece of fruit, any skull, any recipe, any vegetable (not vegetable seed).

The list on this page might be easier to follow.

Your grocery list should look a little like this

7- The Moon Phase Check you did in Step 4 is going to tell you which altar you're going to start with. The altar that matches up with the current moon phase is "1", e.g., if the moon phase check said Waning Gibbous, you'd be starting with the altar at the center north position in Eltibule.

Time to sacrifice!

8- Starting with this Altar, sacrifice the first two items on your grocery list (i.e., a gem and a drug potion). you'll get two treasure rumors in return. If it eats your item . . . you screwed up, return to step 4 and make sure you have the right moon phase.

9- Run to the next altar in a clockwise rotation. If the moon was in a Waning Gibbous position, the second altar is the one found in the Full Moon (North East) position. Sacrifice the next two items on your grocery list and get two more Treasure rumors.

10- Repeat this pattern of sacrificing the next two items in your grocery list with each of the remaining altars as you sacrifice to them in a clockwise fashion.

11- Run to Serbule and buy parchment and ink from Joeh for only the treasure rumors you can actually use.

12- Run back to Eltibule and craft your treasure maps once you zone in.

13- Use the treasure maps to run to spot it tells you, click the map again and PROFIT.

Now . . . a word of caution . . . if you're on a really steep incline when you click on your map, it may get swallowed in landscape geometry and you won't be able to get your chest. I cri everytime.

~~

And that, my friends, is the basics of treasure cartography in Eltibule. I haven't gotten to treasure cartography in Illmari yet, but it's on the list.

Happy Dueling!

Project Gorgon doesn't celebrate Christmas, but it does observe the Human celebration of "Ri-Shin." No idea where the name comes from. Perhaps it's a head nod to the anime character in Kingdom? But according to the P:G wiki, it's the name of a druid that ended up being called the God of Plants and Trees. TREES!

The Kur Mountain tree, where the weather outside is frightful.

And "Trees" or rather "Decorating Trees" is what this celebration is all about in Project Gorgon!

In each town across the map, you'll find a tree and a quest giver. Each quest giver has 4 quests that will net items that eventually decorate that town's tree.

The Serbule Tree looks great next to Echur, a kooky monk who likes mind-altering drugs.

Once you fully decorate a tree, you can then head back and collect a present from underneath it every day.

The players like to pitch in too. There's a legendary player in the game known as "McNasty." He's taken it upon himself to top each tree every year with his tombstone as his own kind of tradition.

Good on ya, McNasty!

I've only completed 4 or 5 of the trees so far, but my very favorite tree can be found in Rahu. I love it solely because the person in charge of decorating it is a rather naïve Raksasha named Zhao who doesn't know much about the human celebration of Ri-Shin.

He's turned to a human, edgelord necromancer named Daniel MurderDark in his town for help and advice on what should adorn the tree. Mr. MurderDark told Zhao that it'd be "awesome" to have a skull for a star and to wrap it in severed ears and lemons. I love Daniel for that . . .

Daniel and McNasty share similar goals.

It's definitely been a fun distraction from the daily grind. Also, any NPC "friend" you've made in game through gifting and favor quests will also give you a prize when you talk to them. My bags have been overflowing with junk they've been handing me. I've gotten everything from Dirt to epic quality rings. Friendship during Ri-Shin is a beautiful thing!

One cool thing I discovered during the celebration of Ri-Shin is a skill called "Gadgeteering." Say you're a player and you want to give random gifts to other players . . . you could sit somewhere and hand them out, but through Gadgeteering you can create your own gift box of sorts and place it under the tree for others to discover!

Candy Canes for everyone! Um, or at least the first 10 to click the box . . .

I'm not very high up in the skill yet, but I took the opportunity to clear out my bags of 10 Mint Candy Canes. :)

Ri-Shin should only be around another week or so and then the decorations will be packed away. Hope you all have had the holiday spirit this year and had a lot of fun in whatever you're doing.

Happy Dueling!

I now have two combat skills (Animal Handling and Knife Fighting) leveled to over 80 in Project Gorgon! Eighty is the current level "soft" cap. (I talked about synergy levels in a previous post -- this is how you get beyond the soft cap.)

So, I always knew I wanted to level Animal Handling. That's a no-brainer for me. I've loved the "beastlord" class since I played it back in Everquest. Knife Fighting just helped bring it full circle. I had no idea when I began this journey that Stingite the Raksasha would have a bee sidekick named Buzz Tightrear and focus on a poison knife / backstab build, but here I am!

Backstabbin' the Trolls FOR LIFE!

Had the necromancer class been easier to unlock, I probably would have gone down that skill path. I mean . . . I "am" the Friendly Necromancer after all.

Anyway, post-soft cap the game becomes a hunt for the perfect Gear and the perfect mods for your play style. It's easy enough to get a set of level 80 equipment, but it's something special to get it with the correct mods.

A couple days ago I handed my guild leader 30ish gems for creating animal handling / knife fighting gear and a few stacks of materials. He went to work and crafted me a pretty nice set of "purple" gear for my class, but to be honest, the mods that came out on it were all wrong. I'm a poison build and it didn't really emphasize that.

To overcome this you either need to keep crafting gear until you get exactly what you want (or close to what you want) or you use the power of transmutation to change mods on your gear.

The Item Workbench is where the magic happens!

Remember waaaaaay back when? You know, allll the way back when I was saying I had joined a guild and my guild leader ran me out to the middle of the desert to train like four months ago? I rarely touched the Transmutation skill after I had gotten it. guess what: It's now important. I need tons of quality phlogiston to change out my mods. It's rare. It's valuable. The only way to produce it yourself is to level Transmutation and "deconstruct" high level magic items into this special dust.

These are the kinds of concerns I'll have in Project Gorgon from now on. How can I get my gear to a state that it rocks? How can I further tweak and play with my build? How can I find 360k to level the next skill to 80? You know what question would be fun to ask during 2020? How do I level my character to 90!!! I will have my hopes set on seeing that come true this year.

Luckily, I'm still having fun with Project Gorgon! There's still an abundance of things to do and I'm always finding myself broke from spending money on new skills. The never-ending quest for money is real for me.

Happy Dueling!

The new Sun Vale revamp hit Project Gorgon a few weeks ago and the consensus seems to be

1) It looks great!
2) You took away all the hogs that were full of delicious meat, like candy all stuffed into a hairy Christmas Stocking. NO!

I waited for the crowds to die down after it's release so I could run around a mostly deserted Sun Vale and really take it all in distraction free. What I found there was almost every answer I was hoping for in regards to the Fishing deficit you see in the 30-45 range. I'm tellin ya' . . . the players who loved all that easy pork really need to switch over to easy shark meat because it is very plentiful here!

There's a new "Great White Shark" enemy among the waters of Sun Vale, and when you kill it, they typically drop a shark meat. If you then butcher the shark, it drops ANOTHER shark meat. There's a nice swarm of Great White Sharks hiding in the new coral reef . . . and that's shark meat heaven right there.

Shark Meat Heaven is so pretty during night time!

Another great fishing boon here is the inclusion of Oyster Shucking to the game. If you buy an Oyster Knife, you can deep dive into the reef and pry open an oyster for even more fishing experience and seafood fare. you can also find . . . dun dun dun . . . pearls!

So, the new Sun Vale is divided up into three islands now instead of one, and by doing this, Sun Vale became a place of living water and interesting surprises. Along the bottom of the sea you can find treasure chests that spawn weekly among the wreckage of the seabed.

What happened to this ancient vessel? No one cares, gimme the loot!

The main large island actually seems the most underdeveloped and empty of the three. Hopefully more gets done with that mostly void center of the island (the devs did note that Sun Vale 2.0 is in alpha condition currently)

The other two islands in Sun Vale play off of the previous areas of old Sun Vale, namely a large abandoned inn and the home of the Ranalon frog race. There's even a couple new models here for enemies . . . Like this friendly fella:

Yup. They went ugly and scary on this guy.

Amazingly these guys only have 125 hit points and drop fantastic loot. You also get treated to the cutest most adorable mean hippo fights in the new Sun Vale.

Forget ham . . . Hippo Meat is what it's all about my friends!

The abandoned inn foretells more tragedy now. It's still full of strange tropical spiders, but ghosts, ghouls, and other undead roam the nearby island. A Ranalon trader sits on the island and boasts that he killed everyone on the island, but . . . did he really? Something more sinister seems at play here.

Just be prepared to get jumped by a whole hive of spiders if you go inside.

And Project Gorgon definitely gets a thumbs up from me for my new favorite NPC name. Behold the majesty of "Squidlips."

Squidlips is super footloose and fancy free.

Why settle for a boring name like Susan or Kate when you can call yourself Squidlips? She's a druid that specializes in all things fishing . . . I suppose it's a good name. Way to own it, Squidlips!

Squidlips will teach you the art of cooking all the new fish that can be found in Sun Vale and even other things like how to make your own conch shell horn weapon, which is amazingly easy to craft. I've heard a few complaints about how difficult it can be for new bards to find their first horn . . . here you go, Bards, enjoy! All you gotta do is collect a few shells on the beach and BAM . . . new horn.

For me, the best discovery was that you can capture a new, blue-colored "freeze wasp" on the island . . . so I dropped 8k on a Bee Lover's bouquet and captured me a bee-uty of a new pet.

That's a lot of Stingite-love right there

I'm having a hard time deciding between the name Buzz Coldrear or Frosty the Buzzman for its name. So far, he seems like a hearty little bee that procs cold damage and some kind of a slow. I still need to level him and really put him through the paces in somewhere like the Fae Realm. It's just pretty cool as an animal handler to have a cold-based option for attacking enemies.

All in all, I enjoyed the new Sun Vale revamp. Definitely looking forward to fishing more here and training up my new Freeze Wasp pet.

Happy Dueling!

The latest Project Gorgon update has removed all the Christmas, I mean Ri-Shin, decorations and brought us a smaller update with bug fixes and something new, Treasure Cartography in Sun Vale!

Just to quickly catch you up, prior to this update you could only do Treasure Cartography in the lands of Eltibule and Ilmari. This skill has you combining scraps of paper known as rumors with ink and parchment to create treasure maps. When you follow the treasure map to the right location, you get a chest of goods. I wrote up a quick guide on Eltibule cartography over here.

Ilmari Treasure Cartography isn't nearly as fun as Eltibule cartography. You can only find the rumors as drops. BORING, and after this update, I'm sure that we haven't seen the last of Ilmari Treasure Cartography. They'll most certainly *have* to come up with a clever alternate system.

Throughout Sun Vale there are "old statues" scattered around the map. You'll find them both on land and submerged in the ocean of water.

Ominous! Spooky! Examine it!

Once you examine it, you are hoping to find slots to place gems, otherwise the statue simple says "Aside from its extreme age, you don't see anything unusual about this statue." If your statue does have gem slots, it looks a bit like the following.

Orange you glad you found this mystery!

I'm not sure what level of Goblinese you need to have to read the word "Orange," because my Goblinese was maxxed out a long time ago. You'll need that skill to proceed any further because the object of this game is to make all of the symbols you see look like orange glass . . . kind of like lining up "7's" on a slot machine. The greater the number of slots, the better the treasure rumor that's going to appear.

Now, colored glass is a little hard to find out in the world of Sun Vale (you can dig it up there from beach combing and killing enemies), but colored glass is extremely plentiful back in the Casino.

All the glass you could ever want!

You can receive a TON of glass by playing Cashfall Match-3 games. Also, a little hint, most people up until this point would run down the hallway from the Cashfall machines and sell their mostly useless glass to a Goblin named Ragabir . . . you might be able to find some glass there unless a friendly necromancer is buying it all up.

Now solving the code itself has been tricky, and I don't think I have it 100 percent figured out. I haven't tried all color combinations together, but I am noticing a few patterns of how to change colors:

Black + White = White
Green + Orange = Purple
Green + Purple = Orange
Purple + Blue = Yellow
Blue + Green = Red
Yellow + Orange = Blue
Yellow + Green = White
Red + Orange = Yellow
White + Purple = Blue
Purple + Yellow = Red
Red + Green = Blue

(Update: Adding more colors as I try the combinations)

It makes me wonder if the system has something to do with complimentary colors on a color wheel? I'm honestly not sure.

When you finally crack the code and align all the glass to the same color, the old statue spits out a treasure rumor.

Small Treasure is still treasure!

Once you have the treasure rumor, use the Sun Vale Treasure Cartography skill that Preta can now teach you. You'll have to build faction with her to unlock all the recipes.

Time to make a map!

Once you have the map, click on it and follow the circle on your map to a treasure chest, but a word of caution about how this differs in Sun Vale as opposed to Eltibule. If your treasure spot is out in the ocean, you'll need to swim all the way to the bottom of the sea bed to find your chest.

LOOT!

Now the real mystery here is that the Project Gorgon community hasn't really figured out is . . . how does one know which statues are active? There are about 10-12 statues (I don't even have enough pins for them all on my map) and it takes a long time to find an active statue. In Eltibule it's based around the phases of the moon, but in Sun Vale . . . is it based on the hour of the day? It's still a mystery that we need to solve.

If you have any great info to share, please do so in the comments or over on the officially unofficial Project Gorgon Discord.

Happy Dueling!

While Project Gorgon doesn't have a lot of raid content currently outside of the random World Boss event, it does have a couple really challenging dungeons: Labyrinth and Gazluk Keep. They are the level 60 and level 70 dungeons in the game with Gazluk Keep being the current top group content experience in the game.

Big Dungeon, Lots of Scary, Much Death!

A few weeks ago I wanted to test my new-found power as a level 80+ character and see if I could solo the entrance mobs to Gazluk Keep. Knife Fighting has an Orc Language synergy level, and that might have also played a part in my curiosity . . .

So I dipped down the front stairs, agro'd an angry orc and pulled him up. I died of course. Players aren't typically meant to solo group content, but I'm stubborn. So I switched up my kit a bit, and swapped out my Fae Bee Pet for my good ol' faithful fire rat. The next attempt was much closer! I got the orc down to within 1000 hit points and screamed excitedly into the guild chat.

There was a lot of death and it took a few tries, but eventually I was able to swap agro with my pet, hamstring snared the mob with perfect timing, and killed my first 12k melee-based orc all by myself . . . even better, he dropped a legendary quality item. (The bow-slinging elite orcs . . . well, let's not talk about those.)

After soloing five elite orcs, I drew some curiosity from my fellow guild mates, who started dropping by Gaz Keep and before you know it, we had a group formed up and were farming the front hallway and entrance of Gazluk Keep for loot.

BTW, those elites that lockdown your skill bar . . . nasty!

Since that time, we've headed back in to Gazluk Keep two other times, and we keep getting further and braver with each attempt.

It's pretty monumental for our guild. Rewind about four months ago, we didn't even have the strength to do the Dark Chapel Daily dungeon without wiping multiple times. Now the Dark Chapel is a cake walk, we frequently run the daily in Fae Realm, and now we're hitting Gazluk Keep. BAM!

Out of all of us, our Guild Leader has the most knowledge of the dungeon. He's got pins in his map at all the bosses and chests and breaks down the strats. He's been through pretty much all of it when the content was brand new (pre-Fae Realm) and everyone who was anyone was adventuring in Gazluk Keep.

Just a couple days ago we journyed to an NPC named Melandria, who . . . and this is uncomfortable to say . . . is an elf being kept as a sex slave in Gaz Keep . . . and she's ok with that.

Oh Project Gorgon, you're so quirky!

As it turns out she has a really cool "hang out" where you discuss Orc Grammar for 4 hours and earn 1,000 orc language exp! That's huge! Especially considering before this you're learning orc at a whopping 5 exp per rare drop. Do the math there . . . that's like getting 200 rare drops . . . yup . . . awesome. I'm now level 23 in Orc with only 2 more levels to go until synergy.

That's one dead golem boss!

Ultimately Gazluk Keep is all about the loots. Every time we go here, my backpack is overflowing by the time I leave. Unfortunately I have all better gear equipped and no "upgrades" drop for me . . . it's phloggin' time! (My Transmutation skill is in the high 60's now yay.)

That's one dead golem boss's loot!

I guess it would be pretty cool to get a full set of Metal "Death Trooper" armor. If you're wearing 4 or more pieces of Death Trooper armor, you can get a kind of set bonus ability called the Death Trooper's Battle Cry, which heals you for 350 health, and this armor does have a cool look for Project Gorgon's standards. Squad goals.

It's easy to see why all the old guard in Project Gorgon are hoping for a new level 80 dungeon. There's really cool stuff in here, it's fun group content, and incredibly profitable.

Happy Dueling!

I ran into a really cool player of Project Gorgon the other night who recognized me from my blog. Mr. 7! One of the questions he had for me was concerning my Fae Bee pet, Buzz Tightrear.

The question was . . . Do I like him?

My response was yes and especially because I'm a poison damage build, but I don't like him if I'm going up against a poison resistant enemy. If I am, Buzz is useless.

That said, if I am going against a poison resistant enemy, I typically switch to my fire rat pet, Bernie. Yup, a fire rat . . . that same fire rat that crawls across the Eltibule hillside. And I switch my kit up so that I'm no longer using poison knife skills and instead am using more Slash type skills. You can quickly do that through the power of loadouts. (Pro Tip: Click that little star icon on your button tray skill bar and level a few skills to 50.)

This conversation got me thinking about the pets I currently have in my stable, and it also made me wonder if most people know that each pet has a special trick and a damage type to it? I have to admit it took me awhile to really figure out what was going on with my pets and how to use them.

Animal Handling Tip 1:

After charming a pet, target it and look at it's damage type and any special abilities. You do this by targeting them and clicking on the "i" in a circle. Here's what happens when I do this with Buzz.

The deets on a Fae Bee pet.

You can see that buzz has high evasion, think armor. He's immune to poison damage. He only deals poison damage. He does a Poison Damage Over Time for his big attack. His special trick is a debuff Poison Vulnerability that's a ranged attack. You also see that I really don't want to pit him toe to toe with mobs that do crushing, fire, and cold damage. Psychic and nature damage don't harm him much.

This is actually what makes you incredibly special as an animal handler. Unlike a person that solely specializes in one type of damage, you can own a whole stable of pets that specialize in a variety of damage types. The downside of course is you have to level all those pets up and keep them happy.

Here's a look at the rest of my stable.

The Blinding Wasp does piercing damage and applies a piercing debuff.

The Fae Bear does slashing and crushing . . . serious crushing.

Fire rat does fire damage, reduces rage, and applies a fire DOT.

Freeze Wasp does cold damage, slows enemies, and poisons.

Grimilkin is all about armor, slashing, crushing, and . . . fleeing

Looking at my stable, my pets do the following damage types:

Fae Bee Pet = Poison
Grimilkin = Slashing
Blinding Wasp = Piercing
Fire Rat = Fire
Freeze Wasp = Ice
Fae Bear = Crushing

I still have room in my stable for one more pet. I hear that "Hissy" the giant red cat is a crown jewel for Animal Handlers . . . I may have to get that.

Animal Handling Tip 2:

Click on your pet and use that big "Check" button to inspect it. There's a lot of interesting information in that window. Here's how Buzz was looking earlier this morning.

Let's break down that information line by line.

Owner, Health, Armor are all pretty explanatory

Pet Level: 80 is the current maximum level for a pet . . . even if your animal handling skill is higher than 80. That's just the way it is.

Bond Level: Per the wiki entry on Animal Handling. "As you fight alongside your pet, its Bond Level increases. A new pet will begin with a Bond Level of 0, or a pet you receive from another player (not yet available in-game). For each Bond Level, pets' base damage increases by 1 or 2, max health increases by 4, and max armor increases by 1."

Happiness: Basically, if you let your pet die, they lose happiness. If they lose happiness, their experience gains slow down. Make sure you're always feeding and petting your pet between combat when you can.

Enthusiasm: Per the wiki entry on Animal Handling. "Pet Enthusiasm is boosted by its owner's equipped items. Enthusiasm determines the chance for pets to critically hit enemies. Higher Enthusiasm is required to critically hit higher level monsters. If a pet performs a critical hit, the pet's direct damage is increased by 25% (for cats), 40% (for bears), or 50% (for rats)."

I don't have any information on critical hit damage boost for bees. If someone knows the answer, you should update the wiki!

Unfortunately I don't have all my mods built out to really increase enthusiasm on my pets. I'll get there eventually. Um, Animal Handling Tip 2.5 . . . get gear mods to increase enthusiasm for your pets. ;) I should do that myself.

Animal Handling Tip 3:

Don't let your pet die and always have a back up pet when you're in combat. If you see your pet is about to go down, do your best to not let him die. In fact, it's better to click on the "x" button under his health bar to dismiss him before he does. Always have a secondary pet summon ready to go if you get in trouble like this. The first two buttons on my side skill bar are always related to summoning pets.

This side bar is what I use for group play.

Animal Handling Tip 4:

Unnatural Wrath is your friend . . . even if it's a pain in the butt to have those Anchor Runes. I've recently been playing more and more with Unnatural Wrath, and the damage you can get out of your pets is impressive.

~~

And that's all I can really think of for now. Feel free to share your insights in the comments below.

Happy Dueling!

Kur-sing the Mountains of Project Gorgon

Cache me Outside in the Ilmari Desert

Fire Magic Fili-greed

Halloween, Project Gorgonified

End Game Near: Welcome to the Fae Realm

Diving Deep into the P:G Community, Buzz, and Other Stuff

Project Gorgon: Civil Service Event Starts Today

Project Gorgon: Under the Knife

That Sweet Sweet Smell of Industry in P:G

Luck be a Survey Tonight!

Arisetsu, Vol, and Zek: Love and Lore Notes from Project Gorgon

PG Theater Presents: ATTACK OF THE WORLD BOSSES!

Project Gorgon -- Something Smells Fishy Here . . .

Project Gorgon: Of Gazluk Caves and Treasure Cartography

A Merry Ri-Shin To All!

Project Gorgon: Seeing this year in 80/80 vision

P:G -- Out with the Ham, In with the Sharks in Sun Vale 2.0

Submerged Slot Machines in Sun Vale, Sorta'

Gettin' Krazy in Gazluk Keep

Project Gorgon: Providing a "Stable" Environment for your Pets