General

A crossbowmens story.

My friend introduced me to this game a very long time ago, back before pirates were released. It was hard but fun. I started my first character with 5/6 stats with the dice, and made it a mage, even though my friend told me that mages were not very good. Unfortunatly, I didn't make first job advancement until level 15 because I didn't have enough mesos for potions to walk there, resulting in the loss of.. Well, alot of SP. Maxed energy bolt (does this skill even exist anymore?) and magic Armor. No magic gaurd, and I was dying alot. Never the less, I decided to build my stats not into INT, but to HP. That was fun! I had 500 hp by level 30! Unfortunatly, I trained so slowly with only 50 or so INT, that it took me over two months of playing. Then, I quit because I couldn't make the old job advancement to 30. I couldn't even hit the monsters properly.

One month later, pirates came out. My friend (same one) convinced me to play again. We both made new characters, and he made a pirate. I made a bowmen. This was before big bang, so bow wacking still existed, and I was doing things like sniping monsters from the platforms in HHG1. In a few weeks, we were both level 20. EXP was slow (20% an hour), but we kept at it, partying at ant tunnel, among other fun things like Kerning PQ (before it got changed). Back then the challenges were different.
I got an overall dex 10%! Comeing from the person who started out the game with 20k from my earlier mage, that seemed like unimaginable riches. I saw someone in FM merchanting, although I did not know at the time that they were.They were offering to buy the scroll for 250k! Not knowing any better, I sold it. Three minutes later, I saw someone buying the same scroll for 700k.

Oh well. Never the less, we continued together, (4th job advancement had been out for a while now), and we got to level 30. My friend, who had about 600k, and class hopped alot and got up to 30, told me that hunters were better then crossbowmen. Hurricane was great at bossing. We never imagined that we would get there, but in case we did, we wanted to be the best class, and not some useless class like a mage (no offense to mages). Unfortunately, As I was making the decision, a HUGE lag spike occured and I became... A CROSSBOWMEN. He became a brawler. More training, at evil eyes, and we finally got to level 35. Being an archer, I was very useful in the PQ (ranged sniping of the rats in the old PQ) before it got changed. This was great fun, and great rewards. Saraku cellions also provided great cash, and we both had about 2 mill by this time.

Now, I kept moving on! LMPQ was great (before it got nerfed, and later removed) Tarcamoras or w/e room 6/7 rush was decent exp, and about 2 million an hour in mesos with a good party! Before long, I had saved up 30 million, and was about level 60. I wanted a zakum helm, but this was when people ACTUALLY went on runs for helms. I tried going on a run with the old guild Energize/Intensity, and I eventually got the helm. Over a year later, I joined the guild. So continueing on, I made a lucky purchase of the level 70 crossbow, with 5 30% scrolls worked (before hammers and crap) for about 4 mill. I was godly, I got my 6 attack work gloves.

I got level 70, and became a sniper! I was hitting 2.5k at level 71. Several long hours of grinding later, I died at windraiders, and got killed by bigfoot, and headless horsemen, and bigfoot again. Back then, they were not hunted to extinction, so there was a large possibility of finding one (and dying). Eventually, I got to level 90. I upgraded my gear, started merchanting, trained at typhoons. This was back before the new exp curve, and before big bang, so I was getting about 20% an hour. Still nice exp, by the standard of the time. Trained at gobys, newts, squids, typhoons, even snipeing crimson gaurds.

Within another year, I made level 120. Advanced to a marksmen. So cool, I still remember that day.
Continued the newt grind, I did not have enough hp to take a skelegon hit.

At this point, cyganus knights came out. My friend restarted, with a CK. Got up to level 60, then quit.
I fell for a really stupid scam, and lost about 1.5bill. I merched it back up, slowly. I joined intensity.

Lots of fun! I was level 140, maxed snipe, so I could bring down bosses like papulatus easily solo, assumeing I didn't get touched and die, or get bombed by 4k bombs, or bombed by 8k bombs.
Life was good. I still only had 3k hp.

Then the new exp curve came out, and tons of new classes and stuff. Tons of new characters, the community really started to go to major butthole.

Continued merchanting, MTSed a shop with mesos, and took pride in never buying nx cash.

Now with the new exp curve, it was very much easier to level, and there were high levels that were stupid 10 year olds. This was impossible before, because it took a few years to get to 120, and most 10 year olds did not have the determination, and if they did, the were smart.

Aran, Evan came out. I got to level 139, and went on a horntail run, the boss of my dreams. With over 100 mill in a ton of hp gear, hb, and merched nx hp wash. I helped a bit, with snipeing stuff (200k damage every 5 secounds) Mostly though, my great guild did it and let me watch. I also CWKPQed. I also royal gaurd S, once that came out. Lots of fun, BGA/BGB/BOSS runs, Angelo, Bigfoot, Pianus, all with my great hb mule friend.

Then, big bang came out. The world fell apart, bigfoot, RGS, got nerfed, marksmen got screwed over by potential gear, and life sucked. Now, any noob could do what took us over two years in less then a few weeks.

I quit for good, when starcraft two came out, marksmen got bandwagoned by a ton of noobs. We used to be special, because we were the slowest training class to 120. Now, it was so easy, and with the 1 mill snipe buff, everyone wanted a marksmen.

I quit.

Then, lionheart castle came out, 4x exp got nerfed, and it didn't take effort to level.
Also, hackers and scammers slowly became more abundent, and I noticed how bad the security in this game was.
I decided to write some bots, to see how bad the anti bot software was. I made a new account, and named it botmule101 or something.
Then, with a few scripts I wrote, I got to level 70 within the day. No vac hack or anything, just a simple script to move around and kill stuff.
Three more days, level 120. No ban. I was disgusted. Tons of bots were common in the game at this point.

I realized that it was so easy to level, that all my work had been pointless.

[b]TLDR version[/b]
I played for ages, got to 140 or so, then new classes got realeased, the comunity went to trash, it got to easy to level and I quit.

RIP ytrewq8421, quit a few weeks after big bang. Probably no one here knows or cares, but I just wanted to explain my story. Just went on basil, and had a strange urge to tell people what happened.