MMMmmmmmm

So, today is only going to be all about the Moblin Maze Mongers which I had a chance to (very briefly) try out at Fan Fest '08, and slightly more time to try out in game now they have finally gotten over most of the speed bumps that let players use it with any degree of regularity.

BUT, before I digress! Since I have two for you today, I am going to start with this beauty!

Quotes out of Context - 02



OK, now that is out of the way *grin* (Q manages to provide both of the quotes for today LoL)

On to the MMMmmmmmm's. So! Moblin Maze Mongers. New ingame event introduced by SE to tantalise our tastebuds. The trial of it at the Fan Fest was lukewarm at best. About 5mins of effort for a bit of a confusion with a weird selection of jobs to achive the target, which was to kill 1 nm.

The live demonstration was hilarious for all the wrong reasons. First off it broke when they were trying to zone in, so it took about 15mins of surreptitious fiddling to finally get into the maze, with a fantastic "The hand of darkness is preventing you from entering" which sadly they have lost for the general release.

Then the PLD they had walking around doing the demonstration took on a triffid and got flattened, so they got to talk about the remainder of the demonstration with a dead hume in the foreground. LOL a resounding success.

So after that rather limp introduction, my enthusiasm for it was also equally limp. But, as is inevitable with these new additions to the game, someone in the Hive wants to try it out, and I get roped in along the way LOL! Not entirely unreluctantly I have to add ^.^

If you have never started it before you have to go have a natter with 2 goblins in Muckvitz's Junk Shop in Lower Jeuno. Goldagrik and his/her/it's companion Chatnachoq. Goldagrik will provide you with your first maze pouch, and a few basic runes to kick things off with and have a little bit of a play with which SE have had the blessed intelligence to make a key item and NOT something hogging even more space in your inventory.



Having used your precious items and stashed them in your key item pouch, you are just left with the Maze Tabular, which is your building board for creating your maze. As it currently stands there are only 3 voucher types. These dictate the specific goals of your maze, 01 being OBLITERATE ALL to win, 04 is a synthesis run and 07 is an NM run. The numbering suggests there is plenty of room for SE to add a variety of different objectives and goals to the mazes if they want to. After selecting the goal of your maze, you move onto what is IN your maze and this is where the runes come into play. There are 100's of these as far as I can tell, as drops from the chest at the end, or purchasable from Chatnachoq for marbles gained from completing your objectives, like a finite game of tetris you can squash as many or as few of these runes into your tabular as you can squeeeze onto the board to make your maze like a walk in West Ronfaure or an attempt to solo Einherjar Tier III as a lvl 10 THF.

After you have spent 10mins going... "But how do I rotate the pieces?" you can take your completed tabular to the pothole that serves as the Moblin Maze shopfront bizzarely set in the floor of the chocobo stables in Lower Jeuno. First thing that struck me when they announced this was, "wait.. this is .. a tunnel, underground... and under Lower Jeuno is definately Port Jeuno.. so where is this tunnel leading to?" Followed rapidly by the realisation that while other servers may not be particularly busy, Odin has a thriving populous and so the lag in doing anything around this one single target is going to be horrendous.

I am not wrong. You have to spam trade your item to the pothole constantly to get anywhere, and you get tantalised with it negotiating only to find out someone was half a second faster and beat you to it. Since it is a very slow loading time it is kind of frustrating and you do tend to stand around for 10mins twiddling your thumbs while the party leader attempts to get you in.



Once in, your timer starts immediately, you have the chance to fiddle around in a rather pleasant open grotto airly lit and actually rather idyllic in tone. In one corner lurks the moblins who will take you into the maze or sell you temporary items.

It is worth remembering that you only have 30mins to complete the objectives in here just like with Nyzul, and equally just like with Nyzul it is prudent to get your items and get started without gawping too much at the pretty scenery or you are likely to run out of time and fail your objective, particularly with some of the harder settings for the maze.

Even with 6 people it can be quite a challenge on the harder settings. We did a few on the basic settings killing T mobs for about 30exp. They seem squishier than regular mobs to be honest, except the elementals who seem infinately more resiliant. I have not seen how they fare versus magic damage though so I don't have a definitive opinion on this. But just from watching them take down Manticore and greater birds, it is easy to see that these usually high HP mob types were taken down a lot easier than you would have expected for something of the equivalent difficulty outside of the maze. I did win a rune that made everything in the zone IT to the party, and we tried that out. The mobs were considerably harder and we did end up running out of time.



So after getting buffed up and ready to go in, you visit this chap who sends you deeper into the maze and you can begin to wander around. It's the same well lit, airy open cave type inside the maze, and lets be clear here. Maze is a VERY loose term for this. LoL it's not a maze in the traditional "hedge maze" sense with winding paths and booby traps and dead ends, false corners and changing walls.



LoL, I only remembered to take a SS of the first map, but this is what the zone looks like in the first arc.

It is just an inside zone with a series of challenges to overcome peppered with mobs along the way. There is a LOT of space inside between the mobs, I have to say I thought when I watched the demo at fan fest the zone looked different to what I remember seeing in the maze. So possibly there will be different zones coming up? But for now it seems to be the same map and area. There is a passage to a second map on the far East side in the little wriggle that looks like a colon, but that is just a large circular room filled with even more mobs.

If you do get elementals, it will be the elemental corresponding to the day you went into the maze, but it is not always guaranteed you will get them, it can be just two mob types as well. Since we weren't specifying what exactly we wanted in the maze I presume you just have a preset basic list that the maze can generate from. It is MUCH easier when you don't get elementals LOL I have to add.



I love how everything is called the same in this particular tab, we only did the kill everything in your path setup, which is full of "Maze Lurkers" which is the default name of any mob you get in the zone. Lurking with INTENT! *giggle*

INTERMISSION!
*elevator music*

Quotes Out of Context - 03



Q on top form in the last few days *chuckle*

One of the grand delights of doing events is hanging around with your friends, having a laugh (usually at someone else's expense, we heckle a LOT in Versus, if you aren't getting heckled it is more than likely you are not fitting in) as well as doing our events. Events have just started up again in Versus, as I gave the ls 2 weeks off over Christmas.

Now, I know this is a bit unusual, most ls' don't suspend their events or give their members "half-terms" or "ls holidays". But I think it is a productive incentive. It keeps people interested and eager to come to events, you don't feel beaten down because you get a refresher every now and then, and remember how much you enjoy doing events lol and it lets me do something else OTHER than events.

I love hanging out with my ls! It is SO much fun. Hilarity ensues with great regularity, particularly if you happen to send a classic mis-tell to party chat in the middle of Limbus /grin!