Hey all, former merc here who dropped by when I saw the returning mercenary event. I thought I'd stop in for a hot minute, see what's changed, maybe see if the ol' guild didn't die while I was away - spoilers, it did.
Now, I'll admit, I had originally come to gripe like the old fart that I am (when did Clash get a 20 minute cooldown!?), but when I saw the overwhelming list of updates, I had a change of heart; instead, I just want to take a seat and look back at the various memories I've got of Vindictus, and how different our gripes used to be.
Now, some memories...
-Titan was our very first level 60 raid boss. Two people would be designated to the Ballistas on either side of the room - you had to load, aim, and fire ballistas nearly simultaneously, and if you succeeded you could pin him down and give the rest of the party a chance to do damage. We often left the job to Evies, who could make a Golem out of spears and move them closer to the ballistae. People had less health back then (almost nobody had over 5k), and Titan could 2-to-3 shot most players, so this was pretty necessary!
-The release of Karok was utter madness. A new friggin' character. He didn't have two weapons like the rest, true, but we were promised they'd come later. He was a total beast, and rivaled the unstoppable Fiona's survivability, even though we quickly found he didn't do all that much damage. Also, he was the only other male character in the game aside Lann, so there's that.
-12k attack boats. Even before Explosive Enchant scrolls existed, we would endlessly debate how ridiculous it was that people had arbitrarily decided 12k was required for a raid, even though classes like Lann should be focusing on crit, and Hammer Fionas naturally got an extra 1k over almost everyone else. We would endlessly argue whether 12k was a ridiculous and short-sighted requirement, or whether people had a right to label their own boats however they wanted.
-Spear Lanns were the top damage dealer. This was not debateable. Whether they could actually live long enough to deal that damage was another matter entirely, and when Irukul was still hot, people would sometimes post "NO LANN" on their boats. Also, you HAD to have a Fiona to do Irukul because of the hallway segment, as she was the only one who could hold Irukul back until Karok showed up.
-Swift-Hammer set. All three physical damage classes were encouraged to have at least two pieces of the Swift set for the huge bonus, and either Black Hammer for the other three, or the recently released Raider's set to max out their stats. You were also encouraged to try and get Zeal on your boots for the stamina regen.
-Speaking of sets, you were encouraged to gather every armor set you could get your hands on to finish all the armor stories, which granted actual stats. If you knew friends who had each set, you were in luck. Almost no one had the Chiulin set; that crap needed Bloody Thorns which were a rare drop from the Sewers. Also, some sets mixed both heavy armor and plate, or heavy armor and light armor, so you sometimes had to farm multiple armor proficiencies to wear a single set!
-Predating Season 1 raids, we had Tokens. You could only run a certain amount of runs every day unless you purchased Crimson/Platinum tokens for extra runs. Whenever a free token day happened, everyone would spam Hidden for easy EXP.
-There was this one place in Thor where, if everyone stood still, he would do nothing but spam his electrocution move that zapped all the water in the room. This was one of the only attacks where you stood a good chance of hitting his breakoff point with a spear, his tongue, without needing chain hooks to force his mouth open. This was pretty important since the breakoff was really expensive, and a necessary material for the strongest weapons in the game: Dreamwalker.
-Glas was freakin' broken, or at least everyone thought. The first couple days of his release, we would constantly use dozens of valuable party rezzes, and the price of Party Feathers was a whopping 100k - five times what it normally was! Not only that, but his air strike had a strange property that could sometimes deal WAY too much damage; for a long time, people thought he was "critting" , but what was in fact happening was that he was multi-hitting you. Also, getting grabbed and praying that someone had a Goddess' spear to save you, or hoping that you got the normal grab and not the red grab OHK.
-Transformation basically turned everyone into gods overnight. You had massive damage, flinch immune, extra health, and absolutely unlimited stamina. People were endlessly debating which was better. Some went after Dark Knight for the extra attack, while some like Spear Lanns decided they had enough damage anyways and went for the defense so they could spin-2-win endlessly. The price: it cost AP every time you went into it, and it only reset at the top of the hour.
-Everyone was WAY weaker. Lann's immunity time was only .3 seconds on Slip Dash, and non-existent on Spears - good Lanns would sometimes use the running poke attack to duck under boss swings. Sword Fiona's damage was crap, and there was basically no reason to play it instead of Hammer. Scythe Evie's Blink cost upwards of 40 stamina of her normal 130 or so, and had no Battle Respiration to help, never mind Staffies who only had the bunny hop (but at least it was free!). Also, nobody had higher than 5k health; a level 60 Lann fighting Thor could be killed in 2 or 3 hits, depending whether they had at least 6k defense.
-We endlessly debated whether Meditation was a worthwhile skill, since it passively generated AP but rank A took over a year to pay for itself. Nevertheless, because of passive AP generation, everyone had one of every character, just in case they wanted to play them one day.
-Gnoll Chieftain could kill a level 30 player. I think my jaw about dropped when I saw our group's high level player get KO'd. We finally beat him by collecting rocks, throwing them at him to stun him, and then beat him down while he was on one knee.
-They were called Stylish Shades, and they were the most expensive item in the game, peaking at 500 million... until they renamed them Badass Shades, rereleased them, and dropped their price to exactly worthless. Whoops!
