Hi there! I was originally a Telsiai player from CBT. My founder’s pack as well as my Popolion and Hanaming dolls (greatest regret) were both left behind when I moved to Varena because of my friends, who ended up quitting anyway. 
Since then, I’ve always had to solo since I normally don’t find people as meticulous as I am when it comes to gaming.
I’ve seen time and again that people make mistakes and they get discouraged. I saw myself make a lot of the same mistakes, but in the end, I’m still getting enjoyment out of the game and that’s what matters. So I continued to play, just like most of the other old players who are still here today, bittersweet as it may be for most of them.
I named my family after Joe DiMeowgio from the mobile game [Neko Atsume]. I immediately knew I had to be a Cleric, all my friends chose the other three and it seems like no one wanted to “heal”.
I did some rudimentary research on stat distribution and classes and I decided I’d become a Monk, so I went DEX heavy.
My first encounter with a Golden mob got me all excited. I didn’t understand just how much different it would be from a “Silver” mob, it turns out, it was a piñata!
Going into this game, knowing that F2P will come, I knew bots would soon flourish. Little did I realize how oddly spectacular they’d get…
Everything was important and nearly everything was worth selling back then.
I even tried to sell my Battle Bracelet and it was snubbed, so I kept it and later on sold it for 10m+.
Everything I farmed, was for the glorious Arde Dagger:
I meant this one:
I have near 0 tolerance for stupidity, so much so that I don’t let go:
Note: This was only true back in the day.
I got so irked by this that I filed a report with IMC about it, has it changed since? If not, then you guys would know exactly why people feel so averse to IMC because of the little things. They add up!
While people were busy crying about Blue Spion Archers beating the living hell out of them. I was busy not being a bad-player and actually using the available equipment to my advantage.
(Superior Royal Guard Armor and Pants were easy as f*ck to acquire, people wanna go with Cafrisun for life, they died).
Don’t go Chaplain, it falls off hard at R7 (and beyond), echoed throughout this forum and in-game. Everything falls off hard if you keep wearing your Cafrisun set and never invest in anything.
Meanwhile I’m just solo questing the hell out of the entire game.
The only time I ever considered to “grind” with a party was after I installed the EXP Calculator addon. Because I noticed that I only needed about two hours more of Maven (which I normally solo) so instead I went with a party before I popped all my EXP cards (10/11). All cards were acquired from completing monster kill achievements and full map exploration.
This was when I saw an F2P player’s sense of entitlement come into full bloom:
My choice to get an Oracle circle was purely for bot-killing purposes.
Fast forward a bit to the future and high level bots start popping up.
I rarely waste my time trying to stop bots after a while. I lose time, they don’t; they’re bots.
At R8, I’ve been successful in every aspect of the game I wanted to participate in. I’ve been through heavy DEX, heavy SPR and now full INT and the only thing that stayed consisted was that I kept my gear properly updated as necessary.
Nothing over the top though, in fact I’m still wearing two (2) pieces of +10 Zachariel Bangles.
#Your take-away from all of this should be that if you want to play a specific class, go for it!
It’s your time and effort, not anyone else’s.
