Fixer Discussion / Week 3 - Blitzing

[Argulace]

The how to, what for and where to blitz.

Let the discussion begin.

[Azzy]

Anima nano's nice cash from the shop
V.E. scopes various QL (to order, after the nerf)
ql 159 ish 6 slot NCU belts ((lowest comp lit for a 6 slot) usually go for 1 mil on RK-2)

Other Stuff:
NCU's
full armour sets (what a pain)
anything your Alt needs
stuff for your clan, the goodwill outways the credits in the long run
anything to order for an agreed price (up to you to decide if the effort = payback)


Get a buff to cast best runbuff possible!! (speed is your friend!!)
get Ess. ( nice when you can )
Full Def on slider
Best slow&fast hot you can manage
make a personal lock pick!!!
While locked doors are fun XP the build up of mobs as you fumble to unlock them can be a b... avoid mystery / hidden



& er Install Clicksaver!!!!

I'm still a blitz noob so flame away :P

[_____________Kasimir]

Kas' blitzing guide.

-DO NOT FORGET TO SET 100% DEFENSIVE!

-runbuffs are your friend.

-HoTs are your other friend.

-Blitz smart. Pick rights or lefts, and stick to em.

-kill all windows but your inv (lockpick/FA kits) and map

-low graphics settings. You're not gonna be looking at much anyway, and it helps with framerate/lag

-My slider suggestion is money ONLY, everything else at mids. That will get you 3 find person (easiest to bliz imo) and one repair (2nd easiest and one find item (a PITA)

-remove anything else that might generate aggro, aka dmg/reflect shields/bracers

[_____________Rowhinn]

Where to:

-Personally I like blitzing missions that are located in a city or an OP, some of those cavern missions can get rough with all the extra rocks, bridges and crap you have to run around/though.

-Another little tip that I use is to set the one slider bar to Physical. Every once and a while if i don't set it to all physical I'll get hit with a nuke while stoping for a sec to lockpick a door.

Kasimir and Azzy did a awsome job in thier posts explaining the most important aspects about blitzing, just thought I'd add what works for me.

BTW i'm new to the forums how do I get my bio pick over there
<----

[_____________Kasimir]

Oh yeah, the other important thing is locales.

-Grey caves: Great for blitzing! Very small, few mobs.
-Brown caves: Great for dying! HUGE, lotsa mobs, often 2-3 in a room.
-Office buildings: vary. Lotsa of doors=lots of locks. the one in Home and Aegean seem to be less hostile.
-Giant Worms: does anyone still get these? my low level clan alts way back when used to..they would be GREAT for blitzing if so, very linear
-Subways: Usually gigantic, but very few mobs, and lots of chests! I've gone through an entire mission more then once without ever getting aggro and actually being able to stop and pop some chests for stuff..watch for rollerrats!

[Bima]

I haven't seen a giant worm/serpent mission in ages.

[Bima]

Originally posted by Rowhinn
BTW i'm new to the forums how do I get my bio pick over there

Top right corner of the screen, "user cp" button. Edit Options. Change Avatar.

[Earle]

My views on it that hasnt already been pointed out or cant be pointed out enough :

- Never stop if you don't _have_ to because of a locked door. When you're faster than 950ish or so , the mobs will rarely have time to hit you.

- Missions in Home (Broken Shores), most parts of SFH and EFP are usually easy.

- I set my mission sliders to bad/order/money to get the best cash reward, human mobs and three pickup item missions.

- take right turns until you find the person/thingy, mission items/persons/machines are most oftenly in one of the missions four corners (can be distorted somewhat).

What, then?

As Azzy said, anima nanos (at QL212) are easy to get as rewards and sells for nice amounts to the shop.

NCU memory, nano formula recompilers and 6-slot belts are really the only thing I find easy to sell, along with a few weapons (QL199 ithacas etc).

And finally - practice makes perfect. When I started I died all the time, but after a period of training I could blitz in a swimsuit. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again (and again.. and again.. and again) =).

[_____________Eidolus]

I'm not much of a blitzer, but, I have some questions.

First, is it of any use to snare mobs during a blitz?

And, what about team missions (admit it, we've all at least tried to solo/blitz team missions...)?

People have mentioned slider settings, but not the types of missions that are easier to blitz. Find item? Find person? Use item on machine? I'm curious to know what everyone's preferences are.

[Bima]

Check out the minimap before you even leave the foyer. You might be able to get a good sense of which direction the target is likely to be. On rare occasion you might even see the target right on the minimap if you have a Find Person mission, without having to even leave the front door.

I make my best guess as to which door on the far wall of the main room is most likely to lead to my target. For my first pass, I skip all of the doors on the right and left walls of the main room and just go for that opposite wall. This is a winning strategy probably 75% of the time. Another 25% of the time I actually should have taken the last door on the right or left of the main room, so if I don't find the target behind doors on the far wall I go back to the main room and try those other two. The last 5% of the time, the only way to the target was through one of the first two doors on the right or the left. (All statistical numbers are, as is usual with statistics, completely made up with only some semblance to reality. I'm just going by feel.)

If you're getting beat up too bad, there is no shame in exiting the mission, either via grid evac or the front door. Try to remember what rooms you already covered though, so you won't have to it again.

[Bima]

Originally posted by Eidolus
First, is it of any use to snare mobs during a blitz?

In my opinion, no, though I know some people like to do that. The way I blitz, however, I have found I am at much greater risk if I stand still for a moment with the intent of snaring the train of mobs that is following me. Usually only a couple are close enough at any given moment and if you wait for more to catch up, those couple are getting some free hits in on you. I'd rather save my nano for a possible evac or short HoT recast (on those blitzes that actually take so long that the short HoT runs out).

And, what about team missions (admit it, we've all at least tried to solo/blitz team missions...)?

In my opinion, not worth it for a traditional blitz where you don't have any intention of killing the boss. Mob difficulty is raised for the same QL mission, they have a little better perception, the mission is bigger, you are at risk of freezing up for several seconds when you hit an elevator, and all that for only an extra item or two of reward (depending on how big your pulling team is).

The only circumstance I can see for blitzing team missions is when you are "blitzing the boss", not the mission reward. You might want to do this when looking for Grid Armor or for items that are boss loot only, like maybe some of our fixer nanos. I prefer to blitz for a reward I want and will be assured of getting, rather than random boss loot.

People have mentioned slider settings, but not the types of missions that are easier to blitz. Find item? Find person? Use item on machine? I'm curious to know what everyone's preferences are.

Easiest to blitz: Find Person or Use Machine. For Find Person, you can often see the person/monster right on your map as a differently coloured dot from all the rest of the mobs, or perhaps it will stand out as being an extra dot for the room type he is in. When you see the target all you have to do is click him/her/it and keep on running. Use Machine are nice because the machine usually stands out, even in one of the obscured locations; the very minor downside is that you have to pick up the item to use on the machine. In a rush you might find yourself stumbling with that, or not actually right clicking on the machine even when you think you did.

Find Item missions are next in line. The major advantage of a Find Item mission is it doubles your chance of rolling the item you want from every set of missions you pull at the mission terminal. At worst you'll end up with an extra item to sell to a shop, at best you'll get two items you want in a single blitz. The downside is that the item to find can be much harder to see. Once I helped a friend find an item that turned out to be underwater in a notum mine playfield. Another friend and I spent an hour searching for his item in another notum mine, til finally he petitioned and a GM thankfully showed him exactly where the item was (and agreed that it was pretty retarded). It was a pyramid icon with its base below floor level, meaning just a couple of pixels of it were visible -- in a dark room that we had gone over carefully several times because we thought the room was su****ious.

Return Item missions are close behind Find Item. They have all the drawbacks of a Find Item mission without the benefit of ending up with an extra item to sell/keep, and the additional drawback that if the item you really want is the item to return, then you will not be able to complete the mission and get the cash reward. Still, when you've been rolling missions for half an hour and finally the item you want shows up as the item to return, it would be silly to not take the mission and forego whatever the reward is.

Find Item and Return Item do have one other benefit that Find Person/Use Machine do not. If the mission QL is above 200, the target item will be QL 200.

Kill person missions are just not blitzable under the traditional fixer definition of blitz.

Speaking of "an extra dot for the room type he is in", become very familiar with all mission playfields. Know where chests can be located, particularly the obscured spots, since that is where the item/machine will be. Know how many mobs to expect in a certain type of room.

[_____________Kasimir]

Hop up there..I did mention it.

Find person are the best..just spam tab if you think you're near the target. All you have to do is select it for a moment, and you claim your reward while you're casting RD.

Repairs aren't too hard..grab the item, hold it like you were going to use it, and start running.

Find items are a bit annoying..that stupid tiny grey cube is usually in a dark unseeable corner somewhere with a mob standing on it.

Return items are worse..you don't get to keep what you picked up and you waste time returning to the mission term!

Assassinates are more or less impossible about 50%, unless you have GA. And then not always.

Team missions: Yes you can blitz them. I generally don't..they're HUGE, more mobs then normal, laggy, and those elevators don't kill aggro, so you can't stop to heal. It's like blitzing through 4 missions worth of rooms, then there's the 3-4 baddies and the boss up in the top room. And team mission rewards are hardly any better then solo. The good stuff in team missions comes from the bosses, and you don't kill bosses above 50% missions unless you have GA, pretty much.

Oh, and for find person? if you have a mission full of human mobs, you'll be happy to know the target shows up as a red blip (monster) Makes it a bit easier.

[Bima]

Originally posted by Kasimir
Find person are the best..just spam tab if you think you're near the target. All you have to do is select it for a moment, and you claim your reward while you're casting RD.
...
Oh, and for find person? if you have a mission full of human mobs, you'll be happy to know the target shows up as a red blip (monster) Makes it a bit easier.

I basically agree, but sometimes the target is your same faction, and sometimes it is a human in a full human mission.

[_____________Kasimir]

Yup, but even then, use your map. if you see two mobs in a small room, or 3 or more in a large one, that's your target. As for the side thing, well, jst have to click on em then :P

[eahenryii]

Originally posted by Whatsamatta
Know where chests can be located, particularly the obscured spots, since that is where the item/machine will be. .

This point deserves reiteration. Pay attention lowbies as you solo missions. As you understand map layouts, you'll realise that chests are always in the same 1 or 2 locations in a particular room. The same rule will apply with find items.

When I finally grasped this, and believed it, it made find item missions about as easy as repair item missions. In missions without too much terrain changes, I can find an item with no problems.

Another thing to keep in mind is that, in the red cave dungeons, the target for find person missions will not always be walking around in the middle of a room. On two occasions, the bastard was hiding in a stack of crates that I had to jump over and fall down through in order to see him. Alternating between tab and ctrl + tab as you run can save you those kinds of head aches.

And practice. Building confidence is key. I blitz about ql 198 with only GPA running, and I seem to have avoided death quite a lot lately. Just keep reckless d equipped on your hotbar for when you've completed the mission.

Oh, and make sure that you're not set up to auto-attack monsters. That one used to hang me up in the lower levels. Keeps you from picking up the item, and just jacks you up in general.

Good times, good times....

[_________Neurofreeze]

If you find yourself afraid of locked doors, pick up your lockpick and hold it out in front of you while you run. That way you don't have to shuffle around in your inventory. You should probably have a personalized lockpick if you do this though, as I can imagine a misclick will send a normal lockpick tumbing down a corridor. Once you use the lockpick, just pick it back up from your inventory while you're not too busy (ie. running down a hallway).

Of course, this doesn't work for everyone since there's a lot of blitzers that use mouselook over the keyboard.

Also, pre-QL212 anima blizing phase, I find that plasteel and Omni-pol battle suits are good for blitzing. ~QL150 Omni-pol battle suits go for about 300k and plasteel goes for around 250k even with my horribly low comp. lit. when I sell in Omni-trade, if I remember correctly.

Rolling battle suits can be tricky at times. For some reason I have better luck rolling them in Tir during off-hours (4-5am GMT-5) when very few people are around. I'm not sure if the time/people have anything to do with it. I also haven't experimented too much on location, I primarily roll at major cities (Athen, Tir, Newland). So there could be a much better location. Generally, I try to roll a mission or two if I get into a conversation via OOC or messaging, because you can still type while ClickSaver is running.

I remember not being able to roll QL100+ missions, if you're that low level there's really no item you can sell to vendors that will gain a significant amount of money because items don't scale in price linearly (for instance, a QL75 Omni-pol assault issue battle suit won't sell for 150k, even though it's half the QL of the 300k QL150 suit). So what can you do then? Well, you could you can do player requests. Back in those days I sold full suits for a mill a pop (usually around QL70-80) and there are always twinkers looking for low QL stuff.

There's also some sweet spots for items, the ones I can remember off-hand are:
QL10 Concrete Cushions
QL22 Quartz Rifles
QL160 NCU belts

Once I was able to get those QL150+ battle suits though, blitzing armor just was never worth the time anymore, even when accounting for roll time (rolling for that second sleeve or the last two pieces always took FOREVER).

[Azzy]

have to agree with the Instinct theory, after just a few missions you get a feel for where the goal will be, heading to the corners etc.


Beyer T70 Pistols QL44+ are good at the mo, blitz 2, they add something like +20 Comp lit each. High lvl players building towers are willing to pay for this boost.
Going rate seems to be 1 mill per pair (and high lvl chars just can't blitz that low) damn their alts

some areas / terminals seem to roll what you want more often, or sometime at all. i.e out of 4 or 5 mission terminals in TIR only one ever produced a specific item I was after, and for another the term outside S.gate was best. really don't know why. SO don't give up if you can't see the item try another mission term

AZ

[Bima]

Originally posted by Neurofreeze
Also, pre-QL212 anima blizing phase, I find that plasteel and Omni-pol battle suits are good for blitzing. ~QL150 Omni-pol battle suits go for about 300k and plasteel goes for around 250k even with my horribly low comp. lit. when I sell in Omni-trade, if I remember correctly.

This brings up a good adjunct to blitzing ... where do you sell the fruits of your labors if you are blitzing stuff to sell to shop terminals?

Your single best alternative is to make friends with a trader you can trust and have them sell your loot to the specialized trader shop terminal. They will get double the price that you would get selling to a Clan or Neutral shop terminal.

If you have no trader friend, the best option is to sell to an Omni shop terminal. These offer 50% more than Clan/Neutral terminals. Unfortunately, most Omni shop terminals restrict their trading to only Omni employees. If you're Omni, this is of course no problem. There is one type of Omni shop, however, that clan and neutral can use, the OT Maps terminal.

Neutral should have little trouble going to an Omni city even at low levels to find a general store and sell there. For a Clanner, the journey via normal routes is quite hazardous. Not for a Clan Fixer though! Once you get Fixer Grid, you will find that the Fixer Grid exit for Omni-1 Trade comes out right behind a general store, with no guards nearby. Simply circle around, duck inside, find the OT Maps terminal on your right, and sell away!

For those who wonder, Trader terminals in Omni-land do not get both bonuses. All Trader terminals are the same.

[_________________Jak]

If you're on RK2 and can blitz bags of 212/239 Anima's Armycastawry is willing to buy em for 7.5/9.5 repectivley.

Although I haven't seen him in a while.

[Bima]

Originally posted by Azzy
ql 159 ish 6 slot NCU belts ((lowest comp lit for a 6 slot) usually go for 1 mil on RK-2)

160 is the lowest 6 slot. You can't pull 160 exactly until level 107, but you can pull 161 at level 90 and they'll sell for a million as well.