Latest Accomplishment Thread

JoeyDee9 · May 11, 2023

What's your latest in game achievement?

Did you break an erg? Did you get a lucky drop? Did you deck out yourself in some new fashion design?

Post it here, have some fun, share your achievements, don't be shy, even if all you did was pick up 1G dropped by the rich person in Emain Macha, share a little bit of what you've been doing.

Helsa · May 16, 2023

Along with latest, how about greatest; and in addition to that, how about whatevertheheck you care to share?

I was late to the jousting mini-game. It went live, with G10, here in June of 2010. I started poking at it in December of 2012. When I first tried it, I couldn't buy a win from the NPC's; finally I just let my computer auto-play it for me and I finally beat an NPC. At this point I was just mashing keys, more or less, at random. With that and my character being blessed with an overabundance of heightolocity, no wonder I had trouble (when it comes to jousting, giants were shafted). I read the game rules; that always helps. I got better.

The game rules suggested a basic strategy, which I started to employ and my fortunes improved. With more familiarity with the game rules comes the realisation of where the opportunities, within the rules, lie. Where to take a chance, where your opponent might take a chance, and so on. I got better.

For any of you that have spent some time at the jousting arena, during your time, there was probably someone who was "The Guy" to beat; they seemed to always get the best of you, always had your number. I had one. I won't say their name as doing so may conjure them to the mortal plain but it was then that I realised that I had to joust the way James Bond said, in "Casino Royale", how to play Poker; "you don't play the odds, you play the man." Basically, learn their patterns because everyone has them. So I started writing down my matches. It helped. I got to see people's patterns and I got to see MY patterns. I got better.

At the arena, there is a sign, right in front of Lileas, that explains the game rules. Lileas will do so as well, so this sign seems a little redundant. Anyway, after several weeks of poking and getting poked (nowadays the Naowegian terms poiking and poiked are the fashion), I decided to click on one of the many other signs at the arena. I hadn't bothered, until then, since I figured it would just be more of the same; it wasn't. These signs let you view any match from the eyes of any of the contestants but it also allowed you to view the damage bars of all the concurrent matches. This was great! I had a way to view the activity of matches I was NOT participating in! The thing is the sign does not say what the attacks used were, so I had to learn how to read the damage bars. To do that I had to figured out how damage worked in jousting; I did. It was, and still is, hard to read the damage bars of a match in real time, never mind doing so for 4 matches at once. Plus, the game considers signs as NPC's and their windows as dialogue windows. So I would dismiss the window before entering my own match. Despite all this, I got better.

One day I forgot to dismiss the window and it did not scupper my match at all. In fact, during the match, the window kept giving me real-time telemetry on the other arenas; cool! Of course, it was hard enough to read the damage bars on their own but to do so during a match was basically impossible. Then I discovered the in-game video-recorder. I realised, right away, what I had here. I had a means to accurately record EVERY match going on where I was present, and no one would be the wiser. My data collexion rate went through the roof and it's accuracy improved greatly as well because I had video which I could pause and analyse. I got better.

I was putting in a LOT of time, outside of the game on jousting, going through the database, looking for patterns, for each player, working out strategies and tactics for each. Despite being a giant, which is the most difficult game race to win a jousting match with, I managed to work myself up to be, at least one of "The Ones" to beat.

The thing about giants is that their jousting combo is terrible and the human combo is the best. Many times I lost matches to humans, that I knew I was better than, but lost due to their combo; that was frustrating. So, after I'd had enough of that, I retired dear ole Helsa and started jousting using a human character. It took me a few weeks to get used to jousting as a human. Once I did, I steam-rolled. Sorry to sound arrogant but that's what happened. Then after about nine months of jousting, at my time commitment rate, I burned out and quit competing. I still kept collecting data and helped out by registering for the finals but I stopped participating. I'm not sure why I kept collecting data, maybe I thought I might come back one day, who knows.

In fact I did come back, briefly, a few years later. I had already won as a giant and as a human but not as an elf. I came back secretly, and did very well. I went until I had the best elf record on Alexina; it was since surpassed. By the way, I wasn't the first to win with all three game races, that honour goes our dear forum friend Habimaru, who is also the only person that won the jousting finals AND the fashion finals on the same date; not bad!

After a while, I decided to "go public" as it were, by creating a YouTube channel documenting Mabinogi Jousting and the finals. Because of this, I started reading every match, analysing every match, and commenting on every match, rather than just simply cataloguing them. Over time this allowed me to uncover more sophisticated strategies and more sophisticated means to understanding matches than before. I got better.

Members of the community started tuning in. So many expressed, to me personally, how much they appreciated my efforts. They got better.

The jousting community is so much better at the mini-game now than in the pass that, as a post script, the guy who was "The Guy" when I was new, came back and tried their hand at jousting. They were crushed.

Niought · June 5, 2023

I got the achievement (and finished the quest) of taming 60 animals. Also got to collect a lot more mobs for transformation that I felt good about. (Really can't wait to finish collecting all of them!) On top of that, I got an Eluned 2012 winter outfit that I wanted for ages, and at a much cheaper price than I saw it at for before.

Honestly, I've been getting up a lot of stuff, it feels really great. Still got plenty of things to still finish though!

LoomyOfPi · June 14, 2023

It had been months since I last earned a master title. But I got one this past weekend. And I got it while AFK.

If you know what event is going on... well, I've given you enough information to figure out which skill I mastered.

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