Noob's Guide to the Sprite World

Published here: https://forums.wildshadow.com/node/194159

Bluebird curse still works

All my characters that equipped the bluebird (the new, sandy one) died soon for strange reasons. That's a fact. As soon as death became possible after removal of ammies.

That's why I stopped using the bluebird as a pet. But it can't be true, I'm not superstitious so...

I recently decided to prove that belief in "bluebird curse" is bullshit and I  equipped the bluebird again. Because it looks cool. And after 2 days of playing with it...

Totally unexpected death of my 5/8 (1 att to 6/8) huntress by... Septavius? WTF, I never died by Septavius. I can't even tell how it happened. My health just dropped, almost instantly. Casualties: backpack, clothes, 6/8 pots, dbow, cbow, csilk, nile and over 500 base fame.

I should have dropped that stupid bluebird long ago. But... it looks cool.
It's good that my mystic has a Valentine. Otherwise I'd surely equip that killer bluebird.

I am the bluebird of doom.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Avoid Kongregate

I made a mistake of making a heavy investments into RotMG account created at Kongregate.
Generally it's not that bad but there are some inconveniences:

• When Kongregate is down I cannot play the game.
• Kongregate doesn't use encrypted connection (HTTPS), so the account is less secure. Security is not a big issue for someone who plays flash games casually. However, RotMG accounts may be worth hundreds of dollars.
• I cannot use the Kong name glitch to make myself unnamed or change name for free.
• The "secret" (equivalent of password) does not change. Changing Kongregate password changes the auth token for the loader but the "secret" credentials remain the same. That means if your account is compromised - it will stay compromised. There are cases of people who got hacked repeatedly after they linked to Kongregate. Changing their password didn't help because the hackers could still access the account through Kongregate.
• Kongregate site has flash ads that eat processor power and may cause lag. Fortunately they can be blocked. Also a flash projector can be used with Kongregate account, without entering Kong website. However that may change in the future.
• At some point you may want to sell your account. Selling the RotMG account created at Kongregate may be complicated or impossible without selling also the whole Kongregate account that may have other games linked and invested in, plus all Kongregate progress (rank, badges, uploads, forum posts, friends, followers, etc.)

The possible benefits:

• E-mail is not displayed in main menu, the Kongregate username is displayed instead. That may be convenient for people who stream their gameplay / make videos.
• Kongregate chat. I don't need it but for some people use it.

I knew about this when I invested like $20 and maybe a blue star. I thought it's a big thing then. But now it's something I can now rebuild in one day.

Protip: create your main account at www.realmofthemadgod.com. Avoid Kongregate, Steam and Kabam sites and investing into accounts created there.

The Mystic Way

Some tips about stasis and mysticism.

Orbs to carry

• T0 (or T1) orb for rushing dungeons
• T6 (or T5) for minions (red skulls, cubes, sarc priests, horrid reapers),
• Orb of Conflict for bosses and realm gods, sometimes may be used for rushing

T0, T1 and T5 orbs are cheap, they can be dropped to make space for more precious loot.

Orb of Conflict

• Don't waste MP on Orb of Conflict under Paladin's buff (or when paladin is nearby). It's the same kind of buff.
• Orb of Conflict has cooldown. And that cooldown affects other orbs too.
• Be careful when rushing with this orb - not being able to stasis (because of cooldown) makes you vulnerable.

Godlands

• Don't stasis gods except constructs.
• Use Orb of Conflict to kill stuff quickly.
• Don't waste buff on a single god, try to lure a pack and destroy more at once.
• Stasis gods if you want to safely reach the loot bag or dungeon entrance.
• Blue and brown constructs don't award exp/fame. Stasis the blue, kill the gray and leave them. Or you may kill them all for possible att pots.

Events

• Stasis minions like red skulls, small cubes, horrid reapers.

LotLL

• Stasis the group of 3 big minions right when he spawns them.

Pentaract

• Use EP to kill towers.
• Buff with Orb of Conflict to travel between towers quickly and kill them faster.
• When solo you may make a weakening round first. Damage 4 towers without killing them, then kill all 5 in another round.

Undead Lair

Rushing

• Slimes are easier to stasis in their original form. Turn autofire off to avoid breaking slimes into more small slimes.

Davy Jones's Locker

Boss

• When soloing: weaken all lanterns first, be careful not to activate one. Then activate them all in another round (same strategy as with Pentaract).
• If you got paralyzed and Davy comes to sit on you - nexus out. Even if you have full HP.

Sprite World

Rushing

• Use Orb of Conflict to rush quickly to the boss.
• Ignore all sprites, don't waste MP on stasising them.

Boss

• During the turret phase boss is vulnerable 3 times.
• You should buff yourself just before the boss becomes vulnerable. The behavior of turrets can give you clues when the vulnerability will begin. With correctly timed buffs you should finish before the end of first turret phase.

Ocean Trench

Rushing

• Stasis anything that blocks your path and quickly move on.
• The only thing you really need to stasis are ponies. Stasising other things is optional.
• Remember to breathe. Try to move through air patches to maintain air level.
• If you're out of air, you may switch to T5/T6 orb, stasis stuff in the room and breathe deeply.
• Be careful around corners, pony may sit right behind it.
• Make sure you enter the boss room with full air, otherwise you'll be forced to retreat to breathe and other people will steal your sb.

Boss

• If solo or duo it's good to clear the last room before the boss. You may need to rest there to regenerate HP if things go wrong.

Tomb of the Ancients

Rushing

• Use T0/T1 orb for rushing, stasis everything you can't dodge and move on.
• Autofire behind you to kill monsters that follow you.
• Don't drag too much stuff with you, stasis if too much enemies follow you.
• If a hallway is filled with quicksand switch to T5/T6 orb. You may need more time.
• It's often good to clear the scarabs.
• Move in sync with floor traps and towers.
• You can't stasis towers that are in the middle of the room but you can stasis other ones. That's especially useful if a turret is blocking the corridor entrance.
• Moving along room walls may spare you confrontations with some monsters, it's the "safer" way, the downside is you may not see possible other exits.
• Have a full stack of HP/MP pots.
• It's fun to rush together with another player or group.
• Learn to rush tombs on a safer class first (rogue, warrior) so you know what to expect.
• Mystic is fragile, warrior style is not recommended.

Sarcs

• Stasis some of Worshipping Priests to reduce number of weakening projectiles.
• Avoid weak, weakened mystic does almost no damage.
• Focus your fire on a single priest until it dies, then focus on another.
• With bigger group of people you can stasis all worshipping priests at once and quickly destroy the sarc without clearing the priests.
• You can stand on top of stunned sarc and use EP. The stun waves from sarcs don't hurt.

Bosses

• Buff yourself with Orb of Conflict to get more damage in.
• Avoid weak, weakened mystic does almost no damage.
• Stasis bosses that got activated too early (and save the tomb).
• You may need to damage activated boss a bit more to make it stasisable.
• Take mystic to the tomb if you expect bosses to be activated out of order.
• If activated Bes is moving along with unactivated Nut or Geb use T0 orb to separate them.
• When alone with Geb you may stasis artifacts that block your shots and deal with them later.

Boss rage

• Stasis raging Bes and Geb to allow easy access to them. T0 orb for Bes, T6 orb for Geb.
• Don't stasis raging Geb if a rogue wants to finish him. Rogues are annoyed by stasis.
• You can move close to stasised Geb because he jumps away from you.
• You may drink ghost rum right before the stasis ends so Geb will stay there.
• Unstasised monster is immune to stasis for 3 seconds. Because of that stasis raging Nut only if necessary to save yourself (or someone else). You don't want to have raging Nut that is immune to stasis.

Things to beware of

• The spot where Bes's orange boomerangs return to. It's the point where the boomerangs started. Standing there is bad for your health (more than Stone Guardian Sword).
• Stepping onto artifact may be fatal. Be careful at corners and pillars because an artifact may be right behind and you don't see it yet.
• With doom bows rage may happen sooner than you expected.
• Quicksand. Plan your movements so you don't have to retreat in the middle of quicksand (and start drowning in it).

Oryx 1

• You can do "silent" and "dance" phases without moving inside. First move out to avoid Quiet, then stasis two Anti-spectators (cast one stasis between them), stand between them and fire. Before stasis wears out stasis another two and repeat.

Wine Cellar

Rushing

• Use Orb of Conflict, speed is important to get there fast. Or to catch up to the group when you're screwed by loading screen.
• If a cluster of minions is blocking your path, switch to T0/T1 orb to make a passage.

Oryx 2

• Buff yourself with Orb of Conflict to deal more damage (if high population).
• Stasis minions with T6 orb to get easier access to Oryx.
• The gray oryx-look-a-like dudes are the ones who spawn everything else. Stasis (or kill) them first.
• When solo circling Oryx 2 in final phase, Orb of Conflict's speedy may be used to escape from danger.

My mystic

Not quitting (and so should you)

I changed my mind, I'm not quitting realm. But I'll play less and wait for new content.
And maybe do some things I never did before. Like maxing life first.

"I quit, and so should you"

I was thinking about quitting realm for some time.

Honestly, I already did quit a few days ago but... then I returned. To the forum only. Just to see last posts or maybe some private messages. Then I started reading. Reading the forum made me want to play and I entered the game - just for a few minutes. Then minutes became hours... As always. That's something sick, an addiction. At least it's better than pills or drugs or alcohol.

I realized that it's eating too much of my time. Too much of my energy that could be directed to my own creative projects. From being just a casual game it become sort of a monster that eats a big part of my life. Because not only I'm playing a few hours a day but also thinking about realm during the day. It's interfering with my real life. Is it worth it?

In realm we are busy with solving artificial problems - defeating enemies that don't really exist, gathering artificial wealth based on artificial scarcity of items. Also, there is nothing new there. I completed hundreds of tombs, trenches and undead lairs. And not so many cemeteries or candy lands but they aren't worth it. How many times can one person do these things again and again and again and again?

The content can be completed in a week and perfected maybe in three months (especially tombs). So this game is not about content. The point of this game is social interaction. But it's still artificial and shallow, it's based on solving all these artificial problems together.

You can develop friendships when times are hard, when people are struggling, overpowered by some crushing forces. That force can be a permadeath - when noobs are struggling and give away noobish items to help their brethren to rebuild.

I no longer have economic problems in the game. I'm wealthy. And even if I lose everything, I can rebuild.

Yes, there is still a room for improvement. I can still get better at running tombs. And maybe beat Krayzie in a speedrun one day? That could be a worthy goal. Speedruns give a lot of replayability to any game. Or maybe farm fame for all-time legend? That's too time consuming and there's no real challenge. And it's only a game. All things achieved here are really worthless.

And there is a problem that many parts of the game that were fun for me are no longer fun. I kill these poor gods one by one or rush a tomb and I think: what am I doing here? With a feeling that it's no longer a right place for me. It's no longer playful.

One of my most enjoyable moments in the realm was joining a midland train as a noob. I leveled to 20 by making one circle around the map and the train was crushing everything in it's path. All those scary monsters, hard to take out alone, were vanishing under the train's firepower! That was fun. Or visiting dungeons for the first time...

My best IRL friend didn't want to play Realm. He started, leveled to 20 following the quest marker and said the game is no challenge to him. And he would be a boss there because he beats me in all games.

I was also thinking about improving the game - it's interface and mechanics. I have lot of ideas. I keep them to myself because the developers don't give a shit about player's ideas. Or worse - they may implement it and charge gold for things I'd like to be free for everyone. I should probably make my own game and channel my energy and time into that.

The conclusion is - if you want to quit, don't visit forums, don't enter IRC or mumble.

Now I'd like to say "thank you" to all people who I know and care about, you know who you are. Or you don't. I'm not really a social person. And my oldest realm friends (if I can call them that) don't play the game anyway. There won't be wine cellars, tombs and drop parties. No mass suicide of all characters. I won't even return to the game to say good bye. I'm not even sure if I will really quit. My quitting will be probably instant.

Now the character's death is a good opportunity to leave because I want to fool the all-seeing Sauron's eye of realmeye into thinking it's still alive. Also, according to my religious beliefs, I will treat this highly improbable death as a "sign" (from universe or gods or whatever spiritual forces) that my previous decision about quitting was right. My cruel gods say: stay true to your word and do as you stated. Or we will do it for you.

See you in another life, brothers.

The Legendary Archer

I "achieved" a weekly legend. And I'm not proud or happy about it. 

I was clearing some part of Mad Lab, then I realized that other people are already at the boss. So I clicked teleport and... landed in a death screen. I didn't even see the place I teleported to - instant death. So it's not related to skill. Maybe except that skilled (experienced) person should already know that one does not simply teleport to the boss in Mad Lab.

That archer was one of my oldest characters. I was always careful with that character and broke only one ammy on him ever (well, Geb did that for me). But shit happens and teleport death can happen also in the godlands - you teleport on top of a Ghost God and it's game over. And we teleport a lot.

Did I feel angry? No. Sad? No. I was completely indifferent.

Maybe that's because now I perceive my characters as tools, not as living personalities. So there will be no death videos and no wine cellars in memory of my dead archer (that's silly isn't it?).

Death is not a big problem - I have some spare doom bows and ton of life pots, I can easily rebuild. I can have another archer with similar capabilities in a few hours. Or maybe a huntress. Death of high fame character is even liberating - because you can stop caring about all that fame and play the game more happily because there is much less to lose.

But I guess I won't rebuild because... I'm quitting.