Exploration stories

[Greenhawk]

My first story was way back when... a couple of weeks after release. I had created both an Omni and a Clanner, not really knowing what was up. Within a couple of weeks, it was clear everyone I knew who was playing was Omni... and I was becoming kinda attached to my little level 6 Nano-Technician... so... I decided to defect.

Now, not having any maps or any idea what the heck I was doing, I decided to try my luck at getting to Omni-1 by myself on foot. I was thinking that I'd get wasted if I switched too early, so I carried the form on me to use when I got close. And with nothing more than the "M" key map to guide me, I headed out from Athen (I didn't realize at the time I could just whompa to Broken Shores, run to the Omni-whompa, and poof I would be in trade).

Anyway, to make a long story short... I spent one hell of a lot of time carefully moving around anything that looked remotely like a mob (they were all red, after all), but I made it... on foot... alone. That NT is now level 54, and still has his old clan board in his bank (along with his newbie gun, which I kept also for some wierd reason).



My other story is more recent, but is one of those reminders that the world isn't what you think it is sometimes. My wife (yalm-equipped) and I (at the time NOT yalm-equipped) took a mission to Southern Fouls Hills in our mid-50s. We successfully snuck to the mission without incident (I out ran a few nasties that agroed on me as an MA with max run speed and implants).

We hammered the nasty mission, and I found myself one kill (literally) from my level. We zoned out, and my yalm-equipped wife started looking around for a mob... but while she looked back north, a big-red-nasty found me and the chase was on.

So here I am... 1 kill from my level (unsaved as I had been just in my level when we left)... running through a zone we don't have the map for. There is this HUGE rock wall to my right... and I'm running for my life south... my wife scouting ahead now. She flies out there and says "it looks like the rock ends up ahead, so maybe you can get around it!"... so I press on! By this time, I have a HUGE train behind me... wolves... scorpiods... and even sand demons. I approach the end of the rockwall and discover, much to my chagrin, the red-flashing-wall-of-death.... zonewall. I turned to attempt to run past my train, but you can guess the results... direct to reclaim, do not pass GO, do not collect 200 creds. Was a hell of a run tho

As an interesting final commentary to this last story... my wife desperately tried to distract the mobs in her yalm (we didn't know at the time that most won't even agro on you) while they ate me. When I was toast, they started talking... stuff about "we come in peace". Pretty cool listening to 'em talk instead of eating ya

[Dyna18]

I got a great story myself as well. It's a bit late now, so I'll write it tomorrow. In short:
I managed to reach Broken Shores as a Level 6 character on the 2nd day I played AO.

I hope to read some new stories here when I write my story down tomorrow

[_______________Aamaa]

My fixer is only 16th level, but I've already run around some pretty big chuncks of the world, and died many times.

Among the coolest was when I was down in Varmint Woods, and I noticed a big lake on the map that had islands. "There's got to be something cool on the islands" I told myself. So I swam out to the first island, finding nothing. But as I was swimming to the second, I spotted a couple of interesting mobs that conned red to me: A Life switcher and a soul switcher (or something to that effect). At this point I'm thinking "well, it's a long swim home, lets see if I can get to shore and sneak to a high point to get a look at these things."

I did get a quick long range look before I was jumped by a whole pack of the things.

[____________WookiHog]

Originally posted by diatribe
Eventually I dumped the character there - where to this day I guess it must be sitting looking out over the lake wondering what's going on in the rest of the world

Ouch. Same thing happened to me once. I ran all of the way through Mort. God know how I wasnt killed since I didnt have a map at the time. Anyway, foolish me saved at Hope and well, i was stuck there for god knows how long. Anyway, A high lvl Eng took pity on me and Beacon Warped me out.

Therefore, if you would ever like to retrieve your character, I'll do the same for you. Give either of my tag names a /tell in game, and I'll warp you out. No worries

[Dyna18]

an other method is to die a couple of times very quickly in a row.
You'll get transfered to a save place then.

(use /terminate)

[Karanya]

This one time, at band camp..

Oh, exploring one's sexuality doesn't count?

--K

[Systembug]

Originally posted by Dyna18
an other method is to die a couple of times very quickly in a row.
You'll get transfered to a save place then.

(use /terminate)

Then there IS a bunch of fixer that can evac ytou out of there i 6 seconds flat

just give Lightshade a tell

[krystanova]

Seeing as this post has been resurrected recently, I wanted to post my favorite moment of exploration: finding the Humongous Baraton.

Since last August, I had heard tales of the Gargantuan Baraton, a gigantic slug-like beast that had attacked MeetMeDere. For months, I searched high and low seeking the home of the great beast.

It was not until the end of March that I heard from a couple of friends, Katzeye and Glor, that someone in her regular hunting team had encountered a Baraton in the wild. Not the Gargantuan Baraton, but the Humongous Baraton. They referred me to Robbyluv, who had been involved in a fight with the beast recently, and he referred me to the valley in the Perpetual Wastelands.

I searched all over the plateau and valley of The Territories and The Mantis Hunting Grounds for days, with no sightings. Then, one morning, as the majestic twin suns rose over the horizon, the beast emerged from his burrow in the ground, its huge body clearing the area of animals around. It was one of the most magnificent sights I had ever witnessed on Rubi-Ka, ranking up there with my first encounters with Eremites, Pit Dragons, and Nokken.

Rhiannon "Krystanova" Pourier

Visit Faunlore: Rubi-Kan Wildlife at
http://beastiary.somnaterrae.org

[Spizmack]

Speaking of pit lizards.. where can I find one? Im doing a photgraphic journal of a lot of the rare and wonderful life on Rubi-ka and the Pit Lizard is one that I am missing.

Also any other wierd and woderful animals will be appreciated.

I have thus far..
Cats
Dogs
Medusas
Nokken
Yuttos
Mantezes
and a few others

[Systembug]

Remember my first Scorp encounter .. with my totaly gimped lvl 15 ish something NT . Decided to run from newland to tir,and came across some mobs i had never seen before, had NO clue what mob was aggro, so i made BIG turns around just about anything. And while trying to sneak past a NON aggro rhinoman .. i hear the screech that i yet today fear .. so whenever i come across a scorp .. i burst the HELL out of it (burst the hell out of rats and parsaplums to, coz of their LOVELY habbit of attacking me when i was already in fight



Another thing .. my main at the time, a LvL 30 ish enf was on a mission in good knows what part of the world, aegan prolly, dodging penpoid baiters .. yes i KNOW they doint aggro .. didnt have that info at the time so i run past a small saving outpost, saves and keeps on sneaking arounbd stuff. I then get a WIDE open space, and starts running. While running i type something in the guildchat and runs STRIAGHT into an Offal larva .. 3 Firehits later i saw the reclaim in a blur

[Dyna18]

K here is my promised story. Keep in mind that this is written how I saw the world back then.
I'm a pretty adventurous type, so the first foot I ever set outside a safe city, I decided to pay some clanners a visit.

I was a level 6 back then, just playing for 2 days and didn't know anything about the world yet. I had seen, on a political map that came with the game, that Broken Shores was Clan teritory and I also saw some kind of strange lake in the south. So that was the goal to investigate.

I took the whompha from Rome to BS. My first steps outside the city were scary... suddenly I didn't had the safe 100% security but it was down to a whole 75%! Carefully I proceeded checking all characters if they weren't clan.

I followed the road and didn't had to avoid that many monsters till then. After a few minutes walk I came to a bridge over the river with a dense thin forest on the other side. Carefully I crossed the bridge and followed the path through the forest.

I swear, my heart really missed a few beats at what popped up in front of me then... Dozens of giant spiders with all deep red bars were lurking in the forest. They looked like they just escaped from the movie set of '8 Legged Freaks'.

I quickly ran south and somehow by luck no spider had noticed me. I didn't had that much time to gain my breath though, because the next danger almost stepped on me. A giant brontosaurus mom wasn't looking closely where it was grazing, having me to jump aside to avoid being crushed.

To make a long journey short, the next 20 minutes I spend avoiding scary desert creatures and dinos. And somehow I managed to reach the mountain side around the lake without 1 enemy coming after me. Woohoo \o/

I climbed the mountain side and had my first look at the pyramid of Broken Shores, just on my second day playing at Level 6.

In the south I noticed a city, being guarded by clanners. I sneaked over the mountains till the temple and noticed a big gathering of clanners at the bottem of the stairs. There were a big number of players of very high levels there and I got just close enough to hear them talking and shouting.

They were shouting about teaming up for a raid.
OMG I got so excited then. I just uncovered a secret terrorist cell who without doubt must been planning clan attacks on Omni Pol installations. I turned around at ran back to Rome to report this to some high level Omni Pol players so they could stop them.

Unluckily a clanner had noticed me and went to check me out. Being desperate to not being detected or worse killed, I jumped off the mountain (took massive damage), ran west and swem across the river...

Well I tried at least, in the middle of the river I got attacked by a flying monster and 1 hit later I was back in rome.
The last thing I remember was getting a message from that clan player asking me 'what the hell i was doing jumping off mountains and swimming across monster invested rivers'...

[Dyna18]

Today 25 days later I worked myself up to level 100. So I decided to explore some more. This time with a Yalm flying through Perpetual Wastelands.

At some point I came to some barracks. I saw a Masked Elite Commando mob there. That was also the last thing I saw of PW, the next thing was a recovery station.

In my chatbox there were 2 red lines.
You've been attacked by Masked Elite Commando.
Masked Elite Commande hit you for 9976 damage critical hit.

OMG, 10k damage on a single hit... who on earth (euh Rubi Ka I mean) can defeat mobs like that?

I learned 1 thing during my 26 days to reach Level 100.
Exploring Rubi Ka is a dangerous task, and the exotic wildlife that was promoted in the recruitment folder is sure not what they told me it would be .....

[krystanova]

I'm not one for blatant advertising, but many of the animals being discussed here are on the beastiary I've built: http://beastiary.somnaterrae.org .

There will be quite a few updates soon (completing the Reptilia and the Amphibia, and half of the Mammalia, including Leets) including Pit Dragons. Until then, I'll give you some info on Pit Dragons and their wingless kin:

Wingless Lizards:
Very frequent in Southern and Central Artery Valley.
Fairly common in Deep and Southeast Artery Valley/Belial Forest

Pit Dragons (actually called Pit Lizards, but there was a time when they were called dragons)

Fairly rare in Eastern Fouls Plain, in a single bowl shaped depression shown on Dovve's map, if you have it.

Fairly frequent in the Dragon Valley, a VERY HARD to get to region. The entrance is near the Cyborg waterfall in the northeast section of Milky Way. It is difficult to enter because the arrangement of rocks to enter the valley is kind of like a maze. Be careful in there, as this is the only entrance AND exit.

Good luck in your travels!

Rhiannon "Krystanova" Pourier

Visit Faunlore: Rubi-Kan Wildlife at
http://beastiary.somnaterrae.org