Maplestory EU money making guide.

 Gam3s  3 Responses »
Mar 102016
 

TL;DR version:

Farm herbs and ores. Kill bosses and elite monsters. Get the loot. Go to the market in Channel 1. Sell everything that is in demand. Reach higher level and dismantle items level 140 to crystals. Sell the crystals to higher bidder. Never leave unknown drops laying on the ground, because they may turn out to be priceless.

A bit more detailed instructions.

I played this game few years ago. It was way harder back then. Now it seems you can start a game with a Paladin and never actually die. Just use shield.

So, let’s start.

Create a fighter and level him to Paladin. Find a good shield and equip it.

Kill the Balrog as many times as you want. Until you are bored. Gather drops and soul pieces. Only one of the attacks of the Balrog is dangerous for Paladins and you can easily just gulp 1-2 potions to stay alive. He falls quickly after he starts using it.

Balrog soul is untradeable, but you can hoard them for your Paladin or your other chars later. It can enchant a level 75+ weapons and is quite useful until late game.

Get the skills Harvesting and Mining, because they are one of the best chances to make 50-70 millions of mesos from just one drop.

If you are funded (playing the game with real money), you can open shop and sell the items you find.

If you are not funded (playing the game for free), you can still  make quite a lot of mesos, just by checking what is in demand in the market.

Cubic blades

Cubic blades

Cubic blades

That’s some uncommon drop from elite monsters and bosses, but it’s non-funded account main economy fodder item for sale.

They go between 2.5 and 3.5 million mesos for the ordinary and 5-7 million mesos for the Chaos version.

Find the best buyer in the marketplace and sell them. They are used in Cube recipes and are ALWAYS in high demand.

So unless you can craft cubes (Mastery skill) – you don’t need to hoard them.

Boss monsters are a little bit stingy on cubic blades, so you better focus on elite monsters.

Elite monsters appear after you stay in one room for at least 100 kills. Have patience.

It pays.

Brilliant dusk essence

Brilliant dusk essence

Dusk essences

Gather ores from Mysterious veins and give them to your Smith.

Sometimes while gathering ores, a bottle with essence will drop.

Price goes around 1 million meso for plain version and around 3 millions for the Brilliant version.

They are in very high demand too, but the price is lower than Cubic Blades.

Used mainly for creating bags and purses to collect your herbs, ores and coins.

So if you are not a high level Alchemist – sell the unused Disk essences.

Primal essence

Primal essence

Primal essence and

confusion fragment

Good luck finding those.

Primal essence is incredibly rare harvest material.

Found by harvesting Hearstones (Looks like a crystal heart) or by harvesting Gold roses (Small flower with distinct yellow color).

Prices go above 60 million most of the time.

Confusion fragment

Confusion fragment

Item itself is used for crafting very fancy jewelry but is in lower demand. It takes time to sell one.

Confusion fragment is rare drop from Temple of Time, but sometimes bosses also drop them.

Prices can reach 120 million meso, so stick on this until you find a good price.

Regardless of the rarity, those items can beat all other drops and harvests.

Just don’t throw them away if you happen to find any. Wait for good market price and sell them.

Deluxe Android (F) recipe

Deluxe Android (F) recipe

Android recipes.

Drops are rare, but the price is good.

You need one recipe per android, so the demand is not very high. Most people craft one and just change hearts.

Drops from all kinds of androids in Magatia and Ludibrium.

Android hearts recipes drop from Bosses. Unfortunately they are not in high demand.

A recipe goes around 14 million meso, if you happen to find a buyer.

If you are selling in your own shop, check the prices of the shops around you and try to beat them with lower.

Dismantling level 140+ items.

This can be done once you reach higher level.

Don’t ever sell the items to the NPC.

Ever.

Dismantle 4 items to 4 crystals

Dismantle 4 items to 4 crystals

If you have 4 items level 140+, you can get 1 to 8 Superior Item Crystals from them.

1 crystal sells between 150 and 300k meso.

Sometimes by dismantling items you also get philosopher stones.

You can use the stones for melding items together, success can give you better item (or total junk).

In all cases – selling 4 items to NPC will give you around 240k meso.

Selling 4 Superior Item Crystals totals in 600k to 1.2m mesos.

The only inconvenience is – you need to go to the alchemist book to do this:

Alchemist book

Alchemist book

————————————–

* All items above are priced for EU server Kradia. YMMV, but they are in demand in all servers.

 Posted by at 10:18 am

Simple BGP peering with Quagga (ex Zebra)

 Netw0rking  Comments Off on Simple BGP peering with Quagga (ex Zebra)
Nov 062015
 

This is a small setup instruction for BGP peering test, followed by a small group of test scenarios.

I did a lot of job interviews this year. Some for QA, some for Network Administrator, etc. Lately, for a job interview, I was asked to do some routing configuration. As a home-work. So, I hope by sharing this, I can help you get the basics of this simple routing setup.

In the past, when I was working as an ISP network administrator in Telecable SA, I had to set a BGP session to my main ISP. For this I used Zebra.

Zebra was discontinued in 2005, but a brave group of open source enthusiast grabbed the idea and continued working. Since then the product grew into a better routing software supporting even more protocols. They called it Quagga.  The list of supported protocols now goes as:

  • BGP
  • OSPF
  • OSPFv6
  • ISIS
  • RIP
  • RIPNG (RIPv6)

and of course

  • Zebra

So this is a small tutorial, how to set a BGP session between 2 virtual devices running Quagga. For this tutorial, I avoided my preferred distribution, because It is a bit more complicated there. I also used virtual appliances, because I don’t have the spare hardware. Named the 2 routers BCN and TKY (Barcelona and Tokyo).

So, there goes…

  • First, we need a VirtualBox installation (get it from here).
  • Then we need an easy to maintain and install Linux (Like Ubuntu LTS 14.04.3 from here)
  • Create a new virtual box with default values, just increase memory to 1024.
  • Add 2 more network adapters attached to “Internal Network”. Don’t alter the first network adapter for now. Leave as is.
  • Set Adapter 2 name to “BCN2TKY” and Adapter 3 to “CustomersTKY”
  • Mount the downloaded image as a DVD ROM.
  • Install Ubuntu into the box.
  • Start Gnome Terminal and execute the following:
apt-get install quagga
 (confirm when asked).
  • Edit /etc/network/interfaces with your favorite editor. I prefer Midnight commander (sudo apt-get install mc). Ubuntu has bad behavior with virtual network adapters and tends to disable and remove IP addresses if you are not sending traffic, so we need to force it not to touch them by issuing static IP addresses. For each interface we are going to use, we need a static entry like this:
iface eth1 inet static
    address 10.1.1.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0
iface eth2 inet static
    address 192.168.101.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0

(you have to be root. e.g. sudo mcedit /etc/network/interfaces)

  • Restart the network manager by issuing:
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
  • Alter the /etc/quagga/daemons file to enable Zebra and BGP daemon. Just replace “no” with “yes”. Disable all else:
sudo mcedit /etc/quagga/daemons
  • In /etc/quagga/ – Touch (create) the files bgpd.conf and zebra.conf.
cd /etc/quagga/; sudo touch bgpd.conf; sudo touch zebra.conf
  • Change ownership of all files in /etc/quagga/* to be quagga:quagga (both user and group).
sudo chown -R quagga:quagga /etc/quagga/*
  • Restart Quagga, and it will run the zebra and bgpd
sudo /etc/init.d/quagga restart
  • Stop the virtual appliance.
sync; sudo halt
  • Wait a bit and close the window. Confirm you want to power it down.
  • Go to VirtualBox and clone the image we just created.
  • Use hard clone, check “generate new mac address”.
  • Use name “BCN” for the cloned virtual machine.
  • Wait for the clone to complete.
  • Go to the Network adapters and alter the 3-rd one to point to “CustomersBCN”. We need this for tests later.
  • Boot the machine.
  • Alter the entries in /etc/network/interfaces :
iface eth1 inet static
    address 10.1.1.2
    netmask 255.255.255.0
iface eth2 inet static
    address 192.168.1.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0
  • We are almost set with the setup. Alternatively, you can clone at least 2 (or more) machines with names “BCN-Customers” and “TKY-Customers” and set their second network adapters to “Internal” with names “CustomersBCN” and “CustomersTKY” respectively. We are going to use them later for testing of the BGP peering.
  • Set their adapters in the corresponding group and set the IP address in /etc/network/interfaces. E.g:

BCN:

iface eth2 inet static
    address 192.168.1.2
    netmask 255.255.255.0

TKY:

iface eth2 inet static
    address 192.168.101.2
    netmask 255.255.255.0

You don’t need Quagga installed there, so you can remove the package after cloning or just disable its run-script by issuing

sudo chmod a-x /etc/init.d/quagga

In the end, you need something like this:

BGP diagram skeleton

BGP diagram skeleton

This is the skeleton of our test-bed. We are going to set it up in a minute.

Quagga’s daemons of interest listen to the following ports: 2601 for Zebra and 2605 for BGP. You can access their CLI like this:

telnet localhost zebra

(alternatively telnet localhost 2601)

telnet localhost bgpd

(alternatively telnet localhost 2605)

Here is a basic config with 2 AS:

TKY

BCN

 
! Zebra configuration saved from vty     
!   2015/10/29 23:44:17
!
hostname TKY
password zebra
!
interface eth0
 description Serial0
 link-detect
 ip address 10.0.2.14/24
 ipv6 nd suppress-ra
!
interface eth1
 description toBCN
 link-detect
 ip address 10.1.1.1/24
 ipv6 nd suppress-ra
!
interface eth2
 description CustomersTKY
 link-detect
 ip address 192.168.101.1/24
 ipv6 nd suppress-ra
!
interface lo
 description loopback
 ip address 1.1.1.1/32
!
router-id 1.1.1.1
ip forwarding
!
!
line vty
 exec-timeout 22222 0
!
 
! Zebra configuration saved from vty
!   2015/10/29 23:46:39
!
hostname BCN
password zebra
!
interface eth0
 description Serial0
 link-detect
 ip address 10.0.2.15/24
 ipv6 nd suppress-ra
!
interface eth1
 description toTKY
 link-detect
 ip address 10.1.1.2/24
 ipv6 nd suppress-ra
!
interface eth2
 description CustomersBCN
 link-detect
 ip address 192.168.1.1/24
 ipv6 nd suppress-ra
!
interface lo
 description loopback
 ip address 2.2.2.2/32
!
router-id 2.2.2.2
ip forwarding
!
!
line vty
 exec-timeout 22222 0
!
 
! Zebra configuration saved from vty
!   2015/10/29 23:52:42
!
hostname TKY
password zebra
log stdout
!
router bgp 100
 bgp router-id 1.1.1.1
 network 192.168.101.0/24
 redistribute kernel
 redistribute connected
 neighbor 10.1.1.2 remote-as 200
!
line vty
 exec-timeout 32768 0
!
 
! Zebra configuration saved from vty
!   2015/10/29 23:53:01
!
hostname BCN
password zebra
log stdout
!
router bgp 200
 bgp router-id 2.2.2.2
 network 192.168.1.0/24
 redistribute kernel
 redistribute connected
 neighbor 10.1.1.1 remote-as 100
!
line vty
 exec-timeout 32768 0
!

You can enter this configuration via CLI (command line interface) or just write it in the files zebra.conf and bgpd.conf and restart Quagga to apply them like this:

sudo /etc/init.d/quagga restart

The detailed diagram looks like this:

BGP Diagram, detailed

BGP Diagram, detailed

Tests.

Test 1: Simple ping test between TKY-Client and BCN-Client:

linux-qk59:/home/stoil # ping 192.168.1.2
PING 192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=2.26 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 time=1.78 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=2.24 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=62 time=2.21 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=5 ttl=62 time=0.847 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=6 ttl=62 time=0.836 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.2 ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 6 received, 0% packet loss, time 5006ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.836/1.697/2.264/0.626 ms
linux-qk59:/home/stoil #

Test 2: Simple traceroute between BCN-Client and TKY-Client:

linux-qk59:/home/stoil # traceroute 192.168.101.2
traceroute to 192.168.101.2 (192.168.101.2), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  0.247 ms  0.180 ms  0.142 ms
 2  10.1.1.1 (10.1.1.1)  1.442 ms  1.409 ms  1.301 ms
 3  192.168.101.2 (192.168.101.2)  1.632 ms  1.603 ms  1.765 ms
linux-qk59:/home/stoil #

Test 3: Copy a small file via ssh:

linux-qk59:~ # scp stoil@192.168.101.2:/home/stoil/Documents/Some*.txt .
Password: 
SomeSmallFile.txt           100%    0     0.0KB/s   00:00    
linux-qk59:~ #

Test 4: Copy large file via ssh:

linux-qk59:~ # scp SomeLargeFile.txt stoil@192.168.101.2:/home/stoil/Documents/
Password: 
SomeLargeFile.txt                           100%   922MB  21.8MB/s   00:01    
linux-qk59:~ #

Test 5: Sniff control plane traffic between BCN and TKY:

stoil@stoil-VirtualBox:~$ sudo tcpdump -i eth1 -w RouterDialog.pcap
 tcpdump: listening on eth1, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 65535 bytes
 ^C12 packets captured
 12 packets received by filter
 0 packets dropped by kernel
 stoil@stoil-VirtualBox:~$

Have a look at this in WireShark:

BGP keepalives in Wireshark

BGP keepalives in Wireshark

Test 6: Learned from BGP routes are inserted into kernel:

stoil@stoil-VirtualBox:~$ route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
2.2.2.2         10.1.1.2        255.255.255.255 UGH   1      0        0 eth1
10.0.2.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth0
10.1.1.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth1
192.168.1.0     10.1.1.2        255.255.255.0   UG    0      0        0 eth1
192.168.101.0   0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth2
stoil@stoil-VirtualBox:~$

Additional tests:

  • Traffic loss during BGP route update.
  • Latency and loss using Y.1731 and/or RFC2544.
  • Line capacity.

[Unfortunately, for those you need a traffic generator and more sophisticated test equipment]

  • Both routers in one AS. Just a small change in configuration. Then, repeat all tests above.

Pleasant hacking and I hope this article helped you.

Brave fighter RPG.

 Android RPGs  1 Response »
Oct 152015
 

Was bored and decided to play some hack and slash RPG. Except some annoying bugs and the lousy translation, the game turned out quite addictive until end-game. Then it is repetitive and boring, unless you pay to buy gems.

The worst two bugs as of the moment of writing this article are:

  • While scrolling right when moving, sometimes the controls freeze and you can’t attack and use skills but your enemies can. You often get stun by hellknights. Quite annoying.
  • Dryad bosses and the final boss tend to go to the edge of the map and force you to follow them. It happens a Dryad walking left until the beginning of the map.

Funded players (those who pay real money to buy gems) will have it easier and faster. You can buy some really cool things with gems. Fast HP regeneration, additional mercenary slots in early game, better drop rate, faster skill recharge. Fortunatelly – you can still end the game without gems. It’s just not that easy.

Be sure to play 12 days in a row, so you get the 2 good mercenaries and some spare money, potions, gems and scrolls:

Play 12 days in a row!

Play 12 days in a row!

Passive skills are valid for the whole account, so you can max them up by playing another game slot and buy some of them there. In the beginning, the game is generous on gems.

Delete the second account and start another game. Repeat until you have all passive skills. If you do this, you can probably buy any of the premium mercenaries, so they help you in the end-game fight.

So, let’s start. You get few things from the intro-tutorial:

  1. Your father “signor” Glenelg rushes to die to protect the realm.
  2. The realm is attacked by a demon named Beld.
  3. You are named Arthur.
  4. You rush to help your father.
  5. You have the same skills as your father.
  6. You can’t play different class than sword fighter.
Area 1: Imperial city.

Area 1: Imperial city.

Area 1: Imperial city.

Nothing much to do here. Follow tutorial, save Lydia and upgrade her. She is useful healer. Until you get Irina.
Beat the (@#$*) out of the first bosses and take them as a pets.
Get all possible stars from the area. Rewards are not very good but will sell for money and you need them quite a lot.
If you are funded – Get 15 stars and enter the dungeon. Best area items are there.
If you are not funded – keep the gems for later. You need a lot of spare gems to get all good passive bonuses.

DO NOT enter dungeon. Rewards are useless and you will soon get better stuff.

Get all bosses down and march to …

Area 2: Alcala land.

Area 2: Alcala land.

Area 2: Alcala land.

Replace your monster with the obsessed knight Cougar. He is way better tank but costs a lot more to upgrade.
Get Irina. She is weaker healer than Lydia but she buffs defense and her main attack is vampiric.
Up to you to decide whom you will use as a main healer. Irina will keep healing you every 10-12 seconds. Even off-battle. Quite useful when you want to max your health before boss-fights.
Work your main char to level 20 and get 3 slots for formation. Lot easier to complete the area after this.
If you are not funded – Ignore the dungeon. Keep the gems for later.

Area 3: Crimson area.

Area 3: Crimson area.

Area 3: Crimson area.

This is where the easy romantic part ends.
Play for 5 days in a row to get the demon knight mercenary Breeze as reward. He is way better DD than you and has shockwave.
If you listened to my advice to keep all gems and if you are not funded, you can probably afford a passive skill by now. Get the party expansion x 2.
Now you can have 2 healers and 3 tanks. Plus additional ranged damage dealer on the back. Seth is very weak but does good damage. You can get Seth the timid mini-dragon from map 3-4.
Kill the last boss Gu-Vano 5 times. Stella sword is not bad at all. If you are lucky, he will drop a 4-star Muramasa which is a bit worse than 4-star Stella and also Altai stone with +15% damage.
The only really hard thing in this area is to get 3-stars result on map 3-7. Every other group comes from behind and you have to get back to kill them or your healers die. You need timing less than 2:40 minutes. Take your time. Not necessary, no reward but you need money for upgrades after all.

Area 4: Frozen land.

Area 4: Frozen land.

Area 4: Frozen land.

Arm with patience on this map.
Level up everyone you can.
Level up your items.
Last map needs 15000 party power and you will barely make it there with just 15k.
If you have been listening so far about no gem spending on dungeons – you probably collected more gems. Get rapid skill cooldown. You will use a lot of skills.
Now the fun part 🙂
You have to kill Deal-Murdo 6 times for the reward of 4-star “Leonhreat”. Best armor you can find if you are not funded. He also drops a 3-star Casely-ann sword and 2-star “Lord dangler” shield. Be sure to check them out if you don’t have better. If you are not funded – you probably don’t. Keep killing him until 2-star “Lord stone” amulet drops. It has 15% chance of instant skill recovery. Very useful and goes to 21% for the first few cheaper item upgrades. Don’t overpay you will get the 4-star version in the last area. No need to over-upgrade any item until you are in the last map 5-8.

Area 5: Lava valley.

Area 5: Lava valley.

Area 5: Lava valley.

This place is deadly. Literally.

If you are not funded:

  • Get back to lower levels and blaze 10000 kills for 20 gems.
  • Collect some more from daily rewards and buy HP regeneration. Very useful passive skill. Even with all your mercenaries dead – you still have a chance to complete map or duel someone.
  • Grind yourself to level 50 for some more gems and buy “Drap” rate increase (if you can collect that many gems).

Funded or not, Level up everyone and everything. Level 20 party goes down from one slash of the first mobs.

  • Make Gu-vano raids. 3 minutes. 4-5 mini bosses. 2k+ gold. 40 kills. Some items.
  • Map 3-8. 4 runs are worth 10k gold.
  • If you feel strong enough (20000+ party power), grind map 5-2. 3 bosses. ~3500 gold per run. Some potions and some very useless items will drop on each run. Experience is good though. Sell the items and repeat.
  • Later, if bored – grind 5-5. Good drop rate from the barrels.
  • And of course 5-8 which is full of mini-bosses all over the place.

In all cases, you can’t end the game with less than 25000 party power, so you need to level up items, skills and party members quite a lot.
If you are not funded – this involves much grinding for money.


You can try to get premium mercenaries. The authors decided to raise the price of everything, but if you can spend the gems (or listened to my advice to play another char and get the passive skills there):

  1. The boar king is an excellent tank. Was 30 gems, now 80.
  2. The dryad is weak but can mass attack and ensnare. Was 40 gems, now 100.
  3. And the golem, who can mass attack and tank well. Was 50 gems, now 120.

My personal choice is the boar. Cheap and sturdy.
And option 2 of course – spend the gems for the last map dungeon. Best items drop there. 21 gems per entry. Beld drops them too, but if you are in a hurry 😉 …

Last fight with Beld/Bled

Last fight with Beld/Bled

Last fight.

Many copies of all bosses and mini bosses.
Beld is weakling.
Don`t know why you have to be with 25000 party power to enter last map.
He only has one special attack which will probably wipe your party but you will stand (if you have all passives).
By now Arthur is probably level 60, with almost 100k hitpoints. Not really a hard solo fight.
My first attempt was with 25008 party power and I only had to gulp 3 potions to finish him.
Cutscene with your father fading away.

The end.

Brave Fighter End Game

Brave Fighter End Game

Now get back and kill him 7 more times for the achievement and the 4-star “Lord stone”. 30% chance of instant skill recovery. 60% when max-upgraded. Beats the premium passive skill, but still good to have both. With this Lord Stone upgraded to level 10 you can spam-kill everything.
You may also try to make 24 stars on area 5 (quite useless, no hidden achievement). You need to kill Beld in less than 4:10 minutes for this.

Game already ended. But…

End-game fight with Beld’s kill will always count as a newly finished map. With bonus in the end. You can use this to make 2 additional gems every day. This is probably a bug which will be fixed by the game developers sooner or later, so use it to unlock everything else while it is still there. 2 stars per day + some stars every other day, just for logging in.


You can also buy a 4-star Casely Ann for 22000 gold as spoils of the last battle. So, be sure to have the money.
The only item you can’t find with unfunded game is the 4-star “Lord dangler”. No-one drops it and nowhere to buy it. Probably only accessible as a part of the premium full armor set, but I decided not to pay EUR 20 for the necessary gems 😉

Have fun!

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