Himitsu's Adventures

I'm leaving the library again, and am looking at Eyes of Puddleby and what I should do with it, if anything. During my time away Puddleopedia and CLUMP have taken over what I was trying to accomplish and since they actually have people contributing are much more successful than I was.

Encyclopedia: Puddleopedia
Manual: CLUMP
Forum: Sentinel
News: ThoomCare Media Network

I have little desire to repeat what someone else is doing and I can contribute to Puddleopedia and CLUMP so I can work with them to do what I wanted to do with Eyes of Puddleby.

I can't really think of what I could possibly do to contribute to Puddleby that isn't being done by someone else. It saddens me to shut it down but it would be better then wasting my time on doing something someone else is doing or something no one wants.

I could always work on having an active knight group although to do that I'd need to be promoted by an existing knight, or so I think. Are there any knights left?

Or maybe a monk group? The two that used to exist don't anymore because their two leaders don't play anymore. Oddly enough they were both led by Full Mystics so the Monastery is pretty empty at the moment. It is pretty there and I could have full control over it. Hmm, that does sound appealing.

As promised I changed the style of my journal. Sure it took a lot longer than the day or two I thought it would but I got distracted with studying this and that and so on and so forth.

The 4th annual Newbielympics has come and gone. As usual I did most of the events and most of the same people showed up to all of them which meant that a few folks got more money and items than I have managed to get in all of the years I've been playing. I wonder if they know how fortunate they are to be newbies when we decided to hold Newbielympics. I know quite a few other exiles who attended our events realize this and wanted to be newbies again themselves, if only for a week. :-) I kept some of the better events such as Indoor Pushball and the Footrace and the Clue Hunt the same but changed the Boat Race so that the newbies raced on the River Tunnel instead of the ocean. I also got to make the clues for this year's trivia contest since Bob the Archer is unavailable and that was a lot of fun too. All in all I am glad to be able to participate in the Newbielympics and challenge some of our newest Puddleby exiles.

There have been a lot of changes recently and I need to get serious about updating Eyes of Puddleby. Rockodile Armor was added recently although it uses iron and that's not so easy to get. I have wish it used copper since I have two copper ore and it would mean I would be able to wear armor. Getting iron won't be quite as easy. Besides I heard it matches the same color as underwear and I don't want to be walking around in my underwear even if I actually wasn't. Maybe in a future chaos storm it will change.

Lots of other changes too. Exiles can go to Peaceton, red healing potions for healers, a potion that lets you breathe underwater and which Mystics can actually make, new types of Zu, a coral necklace which does something (no idea what), advanced Sylphstone training, and a lot more. It's great that Puddleby is always changing and always evolving to new and better things. Although even now the ever present Sentinel reminds me that technically Puddleby is a prison and the Empire is a looming threat that shouldn't be forgotten. I wonder when it will show itself and how we will react.

It seems my desire to make a steady income through fishing and Kudzu growing are failures. Fishing poles cost 100c and it's a gamble as to whether I'll catch 100 fish before it breaks. Nothing else seems to be caught that can be sold for money so it seems to be purely for hungry folks who don't mind snacking on fish. Kudzu growing also seems to be at a dead end since I have a full bag I've been trying to sell and have gotten no offers. Maybe everyone is full of kudzu or they don't mind farming themselves? I'll try to get rid of the two bags I have just to have some space in my backpack and try to figure out other ways of earning money.

I have gotten a bit better at locating and that's always fun. Although I use it most often to locate Ma Tota. She still is too busy to see me but I have hope she will clear her calendar soon enough.

Mystics have also decided to help move the Cloud down to the Mirror so folks can get in and maybe move it to the parachute mountain as well. The details are on the Sentinel in the announcement thread so go there if you want to know when to leave the library. I always like seeing us Mystics come together to help out Puddleby.

That's all for now. Great to be back and amongst the people I have missed.

I'm going to update my journal's look and have a real update later today or tomorrow but until then I wanted to write something just to not have people think I've left Puddleby because I haven't.

I learned today that Altir, the Knight I was a Squire to, has left Puddleby without a word. I don't think I was a very good Squire anyway and I never had the time to revitalize Knighthood as I wanted to. I made plans to do so but without a Knight it was always harder for me and so after hearing Altir had left I resigned my Squireship and removed my tattoo.

You might be thinking that I should have enough initiative to do what I wanted to with the Knighthood without needing Altir around. That's true but without Altir around there'd be no chance for me to be promoted to Knight and the only way to do that would be to find another Knight to be a Squire to and until I can do something to be a worthy Squire and Knight it just seems to me that I shouldn't try to be either.

Anyway, I have to go soon so I'll end this entry now.

Fishing has been updated again with new graphics and a fishing cooler which can hold up to 15 fishes. This has been a great boon to my backpack since I can fish for a longer time without having to return to town to sell the fish and I can keep fewer items in storage which saves me money in the long run. I'm very happy the gods made the fishing cooler and am very grateful.

I just wish I hadn't broken a fishing pole and nearly had two break today. I hope I don't end up by losing money by taking up fishing since I did so to have a source of income which doesn't rely on my weak fighting skills or solely on people needing kudzu.

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My quest to solve the quest of Ma Tota has had its ups and downs. On the plus side I'm learning a lot about locating and how to use the clues of where a person has fallen and the habits of that person to figure out where they are most likely fallen. Then when I know that I can get closer to them so I can use my locating ability to find them exactly. I've also found some deficiencies in my training that I'm going to work to correct sooner rather than later. On the down side I have a tendency to fall just before I actually find, spend a lot of time resting to recover my energy, and have her disappear just as I manage to find her. This has happened many times to me and if I was paranoid I would think that Ma Tota does this just to annoy me. Thankfully I am not so I'm just going to chalk it up to extremely bad luck.

I'm not going to give up on completing the Ma Tota quest no matter how many times she forgets me and how many times I have to visit her and how many times I have to return spirit animals to her. I have heard that she may give out something in return for patience and diligence and I intend to find out what it is.

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I've also become the Co-Director of the New Exile Program at the Puddleby University. While I haven't taught any classes yet or really done much of anything as of yet I look forward to developing an interesting class for new exiles to learn about and love Puddleby as much as I have.

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Now for a little bit of OOC talk hidded behind this handy cut tag.

( Himitsu in WoW )

I exited the library hoping I'd find Ma Tota and to do some more fishing and Kudzu growing. I discovered recently that the Lilly Pond is a great place for both fishing and farming kudzu so I can do both at the same time. I've been keeping track of what I fish up and will be writing a fishing guide for the Eyes of Puddleby soon.

Well, Raldin asked me if I wanted to go to the Ethereal Plane. I agreed and got my ethereal items out of storage and Raldin used his EPS to get to the right plane once we all gathered.

It was an exciting trip and we weren't in danger at any time. It was a far cry from my last trip up there so I overreacted at times when it was completely not necessary. Like the time the five Astral Guardians came at once and I suggested to run a few of them so we wouldn't have to face all of them at once. Well, they barely hit the fighters and even I got a chance to tag one. Or the time I advised just ignoring the Ethereal Drake in the snell and going to the next one. That was killed in about 5 seconds which made me quite embarrased at thinking it would give us trouble. I then decided to just be quiet about what was and wasn't too tough since I obviously had no idea. While I was embarrased at my mistakes at the same time I was quite happy to see everyone act so calmly and cohesively as they slowly tackled each challenge as it presented itself. This is why we were able to make our way to the Forge.

Once there I made an Ethereal Portal Stone and some amulets for myself, an amulet for Omega, and sold one I made to Shakyamuni. I have one piece of metal left over but I'll need to get more materials if I ever want to make anything more. I'm very happy to have finally gotten to use the materials I have been keeping for months and months.

Now is when it got interesting.

Raldin opened another portal and we all exited. I didn't remember at the time that the portals don't lead to purgatory but to the portal island so I accidentally entered the portal and fell on the Ethereal Plane. Raldin's rescue attempt failed so I had to depart from there at his recommendation.

Once back in town I met Vagile for the first time in quite some time. She expressed disappointment in the failed rescue and wanted to do it the right way. I admit to being a little tired so I asked her if what she was wanting was me going to the Ethereal Plane and falling so she could rescue me. Vagile confirmed this was what she meant and I said that I couldn't tell if she was kidding or being serious. I learned that Vagile was always serious so I opened up a portal, jumped in, fell, and gave Vagile, Raldin, and Mujin-Kun among others the chance to rescue me. I had to go to bed and so I go missed the tail end of the rescue (I'm going to ask Raldin for his visionstone) but when I woke up I was in town. Unfortunately, I was nibbled on by ethereal slugs for so long that I had to depart because there wasn't enough Horus on at any one time to raise me. Maybe there would have been if I had waited a couple of days but I don't want to spend all that time fallen so I decided to depart instead.

Even though I departed, I still consider the rescue a resounding success and even more importantly the rescue team had a good time. If I had a chance to redo this decision I wouldn't at all.

I've also been working on the Ma Tota quest but so far all she has told me is to speak to her tomorrow. Once she tells me where my spirit animal is I'll get help to find it and hopefully will be able to return it to Ma Tota successfully.