The Washing-is-still-doable-Journal

Yeah so since Ainz's previous journal went to a better place after like a week and a half, I decided to make one for myself in the same spirit (that is, demonstrating that it's perfectly doable for a new player to start with a playable ranged character without needing to be crippled with base INT). Since I didn't want to do it when an event is so near (the character would lose a lot of demonstration value with an event making things easy for them), I waited until anniversary event is close to the end to do this. I'm not sure how far I will take this character, but I'll strive to at least go to somewhere in late 3rd job.

Unlike Ainz, I'm going to be doing this on a gunslinger, mostly because I already have a Marksman and I'd rather do a class that I haven't done before (that, and I like to hoard my old weapons so I still have all the weapons I used since like level 60, and I'd feel tempted to sell them to this character if I do another crossbowman). Gunslinger is actually a bit harder to wash for than archers (some free HP and same HP gain, but more MP lost per wash) so it works out fine anyhow.

Rules:

• Since the purpose of this character is demonstrative for new players, I will obviously not fund it with my existing ones, or help it out in any way - with two exceptions. I will use NX on my other accounts for the purpose of smegas and owls (since new players can and should make a secondary account and vote on it as well to achieve the same result), and I will give myself MW20 on levelling after level 50. For new players, you can ask your friends/guildies/random people in FM to do the same for you. I'm still undecided on whether I'll give myself echo, but I'm kind of leaning towards "no" at this point.
• I will buy stuff from other people and buy leech when I deem the need to. I shouldn't need to buy leech that much but if I ever get to late 3rd job I'm probably gonna prefer skipping a few levels.
• Also, I'm not gonna be taking donations or free boss items like zhelms. I might do a self carry for BF toe since people commonly give those out anyways but I also might just do it myself. I mean if I've done it once before then I can do it again, right?

 

Day 1

* Did standard maple island stuff. Added points to INT until I need to start getting 20 DEX by level 10 for job advancement, and realized to my annoyance that starting with 4 DEX 10 INT means that I have to keep my INT just 1 off multiples of 5, meaning I'm gonna lose out on like 12 or so MP. Oh well, not gonna lose sleep over it.

*After job advancement, I went around Nautilus doing quests. The Whalian quests gave me 2400 exp for 620 mesos, and instantly got me almost all the way to level 12. Next, I started Baine's quests to do concurrently with the first training quest, though I had to walk all the way to Amoria to find a decent amount of Red Snails to kill.

*The main reason why I did Baine's quest is because the last step of the questline involves finding and killing some Black Mage's Disciple hidden amongst a whole bunch of Pigs, and Kyrin's first three training quests involve killing a lot of pigs, so this means I can use this quest map to get the second and third ones done easily. I needed to forfeit and re-accept the quest once so I can hand in the second quest and accept the third one, but the two training quests, combined with Baine's quest itself, gave me enough exp to get me all the way to level 15.

Spoiler: End result for the day

Goals:
* Get my base INT to 100 and then stop for the time being (I'll add 50 more later)
* Work towards hitting level 30 ASAP so I can get that 30% shoe jump to sell for capital to buy some cheap INT gears with

 

Day 2

*Got two more quests in Nautilus about pigs; a cleaning lady wants 50 pig's ribbons (and Olaf still wants 20, so 70 total), and a chef wants me to kill 30 pigs and 30 ribbon pigs, so I went to Henesys Pig Farm and killed some pigs. My very low damage is starting to show at this point, but the map is filled with sniping points and ribbon pigs are not that tough so I was still able to finish off the quest in decent time.

*Afterwards, I headed to sleepywood to accept the 99 Green Mushroom quest, as well as picked up some sleepywood scrolls for quick travel. I then got some more free exp quests out of the way - John's Present 1 for 30 screws, then Thailand for Toon fixing roof (which wants 10 of the screws) and the Protection Squad quest. The three quests were able to get me more than halfway past level 19.

*I headed for Ellinia to accept Arwen's quest of killing 100 green mushrooms, and used the two common gach tickets, which got me two mid level armor that I NPC'd for about 200k in total. Using these capital I went to coke town to buy some coke pills, and went to the tree dungeon south of Ellinia to get all three green mushroom quests out of the way. Having almost no stat is really starting to kick in at this point as more than half of my damage lines on them were 1's.. There were plenty of sniping spots still and the coke pills were able to carry me through, but having to take almost 20 shots to kill a green mushroom depleted the free MP pots I've picked up so far. At this point I was beginning to think that trying to go for 100 INT at the start is a bad idea, so I noted to myself to stop at 90 INT instead.

*I handed in all three quests, did another totally free quest in Nautilus from the Chef (gotta click a single cow 3 times in a row; so challenging) and then went to Kerning to do Shumi's lost coin. B1 was quite a bit harder to jump than Forest of Patience, but for some reason half the stirges in the second room were frozen mid-air which made it pretty trivial. All the free quests got me to just a bit over level 22.

*Next, I decided to skip Mano because I don't really want to wait for it (and I probably can't really kill it anyways), and just headed for Ghost Stumps in Perion for the next quest (54 seedling for Winston). However, I realized that my stats were so low that I actually can't hit ghost stumps 100% now, and even when I can I could barely do damage due to them having 40 wdef. Realizing that following the 1-35 guide exactly is really unviable now at this point, I decided to skip the quests and instead head for KPQ for some free carries. A few PQs got me to level 24 before the party disbanded to do a cake fight (that ended up going beyond reset and thus got us all absolutely nothing in the end. What a waste of time). There was no 10% overall INTs but at least free potions and NPCable earrings are better than random def scrolls.

*Last thing I did for the day was to kill some Blue Mushrooms (since I finally got some DEX beyond the minimum now, I could actually start doing damage to things again) to hunt down 2 Maple Special Bentos, as well as do Camilla's quest for more free exp and a book worth 20k to NPCs.

Spoiler: End result for the day

Goals for the next day:
Finish the seedling quest so I can hit level 25, and do all the quests involving Horny Mushrooms/Zombie Mushrooms/Evil Eyes/Wild Boars, as well as collect 50 Genin stars in preparation for the 30% shoe jump scroll. Hopefully those quests will give me enough exp to hit level 30, but if not I could always get carried through KPQ some more or do some other quests like Sabitrima's JQ (though I hope I don't have to resort to that; Sabitrima JQs are a lot harder than John or subway ones). I'm gonna save Ariant quests for after I hit level 30, to minimize any hassles with actually doing them.

 

Day 3

*Finished the 54 seedling quests. The extra 10 DEX I picked up from the two levels in KPQ really came in useful, and while it still took a while it didn't feel futile any more. Picked up a rare gacha ticket as well.

*Headed off to sleepywood and used the rare gacha and scored a 70% face avoid scroll. An owl reveals that it's worth about 2.6m, which makes it a really nice addition to my (currently mostly non-existent) funds... when it sells, anyways. Picked up a vendor from cash shop and tossed it somewhere to put up this scroll.

*Went and did the 99 kills quest for Horny Mushrooms, Zombie Mushrooms, and Evil Eyes. The mushrooms aren't difficult to kill, but trying to kill Evil Eyes in Cave of Evil Eye is basically not happening as the maps are too narrow and there's barely any safespot, so I did all my killing in Deep Ant Tunnel II instead. Once I got 99 Evil Eyes, I went back to Ant Tunnel 1 and killed the mushrooms until I got 120 Horny Mushroom Caps and 100 Charms of the Undead.

*Headed off to Kerning to accept Jane Doe's quest, then went to Perion and killed some wild boars until I got 100 teeth and the mirror shards that Jane wanted. Nothing particularly exciting happened here.

*Unfortunately, all these questing still only left me at about 90% past level 28 (not even level 29), and Sabitrima's JQ turned out to only give like 10500 exp and a 10% overall def (though I did manage to jump the thing in like five minutes so it didn't take as much time as I thought, at least), so I just decided to screw it and head to Ariant. Doing all the quests there as well as in Magatia got me all the way to level 33, then I went to Ninja Castle and got my 30% shoe jump, and headed back to Victoria Island to get my 2nd job advance. By the point where I got to Magatia, my damage was already looking almost respectable (I could see triple digit lines on Double Shot occasionally), so none of the quests really gave me any trouble any more.

Spoiler: End Result for the day

Goals for next day:
Hope that the scrolls sell so I can use the fund to pick up some equipment, like a Maple Gun and some better bullets. I'll continue to follow the 1-35 guide up to the KFT section at least, which should take up at least 1-2 days.

 

Day 4

*Woke up and found that the 70% face avoid scroll sold, though the shoe jump did not. On a whim I did an owl for Maple Gun and found a 38 one for 2m which seemed like a steal, so I snatched it up. I also tried searching for Split Bullets but it seems like nobody is even selling any.

*Accepted several quests that needed me to be in Ossyria/Ariant, and did the warp card quest to get to Omega Sector, then went about doing quests. I hit 35 while doing the last quests in Ariant, and bought some 60% gun scrolls to use on the Maple Gun. Sadly it only went +4 which was disappointingly average, though it seems good enough that I'm probably going to hold off on upgrading for a bit since there are other things I want to save for (a low attack glove and zhelm). Unfortunately there were several quests in KFT that I had to ignore since Hodori is way too tough for me to kill in good time, but I was still able to hit level 38 at the end.

*Also, at level 35 I started raising my base INT again. My goal is hit 150 as this means 5 APs on MP washing gets me enough MP for 4 washes. It's pretty arbitrary but 150 is also a nice round number so eh. (Honestly I can get away with a lot less base INT by just leaning harder on MP washing, but this also lets me demonstrate that even with a slightly higher base INT, you can make a perfectly playable character even if it wouldn't seem like so when you're still at level 30 something.)

*After finishing the quests in the guide (except the area bosses ones; I don't fancy waiting around for them), I went and did the drumming bunny quest. It has a chance to give 60% overall INT which would be a really big boost in finance, but General Maestro decided to roll 10% overall DEX instead. What a scam. I might still be able to use this later so I threw it in the storage for now.

*With just a little bit of time left for the day, I did some epm 5s in the areas accessible from ludi. The best spot seems to be Ninja Castle 2 at about 250k eph, with Teddies being fairly close behind at about 220k. A single LPQ run would give 90.9k exp (plus extras from monsters) and a well coordinated party can easily manage 3-4 runs per hour at least, so it seems like the superior option, but a well coordinated party is really hard to find sometimes so I might just stick to Ninja Castle for the most part.

Spoiler: End result for the day

Goals for the next day:

Hit level 40 and get married to some other character I have so I can start doing APQs, which would be crazy good for funding at lower levels. This is the reason why I have yet to spend my NX on anything other than the shop, as a wedding costs 20k NX and is really helpful early on. After that, there are two more very valuable scroll quests to do (that are thankfully guaranteed instead of a crapshoot like the drumming bunny one), then it'll be grinding/LPQ for level 45 so I can do EPQs for crazy exp (assuming a party can be found).

 

Day 5

*The 30% shoe jump scroll still didn't sell, but the raggedy cape that I put up for 1m did.

*Even with today's voting I realized I was still a few hundred NX short of 20k, so I went and did a few runs of LPQ to get some extra NX. Eventually I got enough after 3 runs (plus 1 failed run due to leader DCing), getting myself to level 40 in the process. I also found out that gunslingers SUCK in the shadow eye rooms; even if I can hit 200+ lines consistently (which I can't), I can't keep shooting at the eyes just by holding down double shot like I could with other classes due to the skill firing too quickly.

*With 20k NX in my belt I went back to Victoria Island and started working on the wedding ring tasks, which were relatively simple. After I made the ring, however, I realized that at some point the price of a chapel wedding got raised from 20k to 25k, meaning that I have to wait one more day to actually get the NX necessary. At this point I pretty much got tiled and stopped playing on this character for the day. (Well, the bigger factor was that I had a HT run to prepare for and actually run as well, but this certainly did not help.)

*On the bright side, after logging on again to take the end-of-the-day screenshot after the HT run, I found that the shoe jump scroll sold, so now I can probably afford a low attack glove next.

Spoiler: End result of the day

Goals for the next day:
Get married and hopefully do at least one APQ, and grab a low attack glove from somewhere. After that, do the next two valuable scroll quest and if I still have time after that, start grinding a bit.

 

Day 6

*The shoe jump scroll finally sold today. With more funds I owled for gloves, and found a 8 atk yellow marker being sold for 2.5m, so I grabbed it.

*With 5k more NX under my belt I have enough to buy the chapel ticket, so I went for it and got married. I was able to do only one APQ for the day though, and got only 2 black crystals.

*Did the two Elpam quests in NLC, and the Sakura/Boss Kitty quest in Showa. The former gave me a 70% glove att scroll and the latter another 30% shoe jump scroll, which gives me enough funds for the zhelm at level 50. The quests and the APQ were enough to get me to level 42.

*Grinded on Ninja Castle Hallway 2 for a couple of hours. I was able to hit level 43, and found several gach tickets that got me a few junks, a 30% wand scroll and a 30% bottom dex scroll. Once the scrolls I have sell, I should have more free funds to make other upgrades and/or buy a few piece of cheap INT gears.

Spoiler: End result of the day

Goals for the next day:

Hit level 45 and start doing the Elin Forest quests (except the last one; I don't fancy buying all the etcs to get ring early and there's no way I can kill wild kargos efficiently at this point). Also think about what I'm going to spend money on next (after reserving enough for an afk zhelm).

 

Day 7

*The 30% wand scroll sold, and I looked to see if I can get a storm pistol for cheap. Found a 45 atk one on sale for 2.5m, so I bought it along with some 60% gun scrolls, but only 2 out of 7 passed. Seeing that the storm pistol is basically useless at this point (it's only +3 attack over my maple gun), I used some of my last anniversary event points to upgrade it, and it turned into a 64 atk canon shooter, which is pretty nice, though I won't be able to use it for a while. Since I wanted to reserve the rest of the money I have on the zhelm, I didn't go for a second storm pistol (nothing else looks to be decently cheap while having not under average attack, anyways).

*Did a lot of PQs today. I did a few LPQs to get myself to level 45 (but all I got for rewards were a lot of ores), then did about ten EPQs and got myself halfway past level 48. By that point though there was no party open to invite any more, so I went back and started doing Ellin Forest quests. The Tree Rod and Stone Bugs gave me quite a bit of trouble due to my rather lacking power at this point (I've been raising my base INT instead of DEX for the last ten levels), but the moss mushrooms don't seem too bad. At this point it looks like monster defense is a really big factor in how well I do against them, but it should hopefully improve in a few more levels once I get my DEX higher. I didn't have enough time to do as much as I want to do at this point, though, so the rest of the quests will have to wait for tomorrow.

Spoiler: End result of the day

Goals for the next day:

Get myself to level 50, and maybe finish the quests if I have problem finding parties for EPQ, then start looking to buy an afk zak sombrero from someone. There seems to be a decent number of afk sellers lately, so hopefully it won't take me several days to get it.

 

Day 8

*All the valuable scrolls I have so far sold at various points today, so now I definitely have some free funds to play with even after the zhelm. Having said that, since I'm pretty much halfway to level 64 (starting from 35), I decided to save up for a deputy star instead of attempting to scroll another storm pistol.

*Finished off the rest of Ellin Forest quests (except the last step) and did some EPQ to hit level 50, and managed to find a group selling afk zak helms pretty easily. Unfortunately I couldn't find anyone doing EPQs afterwards so I wasn't able to get much exp after getting the hat. I tried to see if Ninja Castle Hallway 3 would be faster grinding, but it seems even with the helm it's barely competitive with Ninja Castle Hallway 2 in terms of exp, so it seems grinding is still much inferior to EPQing at this point.

Spoiler: End result of the day

Goals for the next day:

Continue to try and EPQ to level, as the grinding situation would be difficult to improve until I can upgrade my weapon at level 64. Since getting to find a party is such a bottleneck, progress is probably going to be slow until i can get there, though this isn't necessarily a bad thing since this gives my NX a chance to catch up.

 

Day 9

*I got lucky and found great parties to EPQ with for most of my playing time, so I was able to do enough PQs to get me into level 55, which is high enough to start PPQing. I also did one APQ in interim and finally got an apple, though it hasn't sold yet. When I was EPQing yesterday, my damage was so bad that I could do almost nothing to poison golem's 3rd phase (thanks level 85), bu by the end of the today's stint I could actually almost carry other washed attackers (well sort of, it still takes a pretty long time), and it felt really great.

*What I did to keep my parties going was to station another character in the waiting area on channel 1, and whenever I'm running with a party of less than 5, I'd put up a chalkboard on that character saying "R> EPQ whisper Gaidar". It was pretty effective at getting new party members in when old ones leave, and I will probably continue to do this while PPQing (if I do choose to PPQ).

*I was also finally able to find a few higher level bullets - more specifically, a set of mighty bullets that I found from owls, a set of split bullets from a common gacha I got while collecting keys, and two sets of split bullets from someone who was just giving them away in a smega. I was getting really annoyed with the level 10 bullet's lack of capacity per slot, but bullets seem so difficult to find on sale.

*Oh and I finally gathered enough NX to get a pet and a full set of equips for it. I didn't really feel the need for it before since I spent a lot of time PQing and the only time I grinded was in Ninja Castle where a pet doesn't really help much (due to all the terrain), but I will definitely want one for PPQ, and grinding beyond.

Spoiler: End result of the day

My DEX is almost catching up to my INT at this point!

Goals for the next day:

Do some EPM tests to see if eph from grinding has caught up a bit, and decide whether to continue with PPQ or go pure grinding. I'm actually not very keen on PPQ since it's located too far away from Victoria Island meaning I'd have a harder time joining APQs, but even with my damage normalising, I'm still using a level 35 weapon and I'm not sure if I can get enough exp from grinding to make it viable against PPQ yet. How much exp does one PPQ give, anyways?

 

Day 10

*Played very little today due to IRL stuff. I went back to Victoria Island to test out if I could train in Taipei 101 yet. Alas, I don't have have enough accuracy to even hit cheap amplifiers consistently, so that's a no go. I was trying to look for a party to PPQ with, too, but couldn't find one for the entire time I was playing.

*Instead, I did a few quests around Herb Town and Mu Lung. None of them were particularly lucrative but at the end of the day I was able to get one more level out of them, at least. I also considered doing Muirhat's golem exp pinata, but decided to leave it until at least level 58 when I can do the whole package.

Spoiler: End result of the day

Goal for the next day:

There really aren't that many quests around Mu Lung/Herb Town so if I have to wait for parties again tomorrow, I'm probably going to finish off a few quests in Korean Folk Town instead. Still gonna try and do PPQ, though.

 

Day 11

* **** PPQ. Each run is only worth about 130k exp (plus a bit more from killing stuff) and parties take forever and a half to find. I can actually get upward to about 400k eph from Straw Target Dummies, and I think I should be able to get a similar amount in some other locations.

*I finished most of the quests around Herb Town and Mu Lung (except ones involving PPQ and the one that requires 100 Krus and Kaptains), as well as a couple more in Korean Folk Town. Did a couple of PPQs (and an OPQ run) and grinded a bit in Straw Target Dummies, and got me to about level 58. Then I headed back to Victoria Island and started working on Muirhat's golem-flavored exp pinatas, but ran into an APQ (nothing dropped sadly) halfway through and ran out of time.

Spoiler: End result of the day

Goals for the next day:

Finish the golem quests and then do a bit of exploration and do some eph tests to see where I can grind in. My preliminary list of places to check out include Truckers, GS1, Voodoos and Windraiders.

 

Day 12

* I was busy preparing for HT runs today so I didn't play on the gunner much. I was able to at least complete all the golem quests, and did another APQ where I got no apples yet again (that's 1 apple out of 5 runs), but I did get some black crystals and two 60% gfa scrolls so it wasn't a total waste of time.

*I also did some eph testings in voodoos, and it turns out to be around 400k as well. Since they already have pretty good drops and are located at a really convenient location, I'm probably just gonna stick to them instead of bothering with other places.

*Finally, I used 5 AP Resets to wash some MP back into HP. I don't actually have that much surplus MP right now because of my lack of INT gears, but most of it is going to come from MP washing anyways, and I'm not aiming too high so I'll have plenty of time for that. For now I'm going to stick to using APRs on getting more HP until I have about 3.3k or so (since it lets me survive most things of interest), then start thinking about MP washing.

Spoiler: End result of the day

Goals for the next day:

Continue grinding and saving up mesos for Deputy Star... is what I thought, but I just looked it up on owlrepo and it seems really really expensive right now. I don't want to sink so much mesos on it (even though the sink is temporary), so I might just invest the money somewhere else and just try to get the Deputy Star through the quests at level 80 (by getting help with Bigfoot and Headless Horseman). Of course, the question remains on what to invest the money in, so some FM browsing will likely be in order somewhere in near future.

 

Day 13

*Did a bit of FM browsing and found a 72 atk, 2 slot canon shooter on sale for 15m. Since it looks like my 64 clean canon shooter is worth about the same price and I don't like gambling, I decided to pick it up and put my clean one in the shop. I also picked up a 9 DEX yellow gaia cape for practically free (123456 mesos), so that's pretty nice too.

*Grinded in Voodoos until I hit level 60, then decided to finally get the Ellin Ring out of the way. I bought the firebomb pieces since there was a shop selling them at a fairly reasonable price, but I collected everything else on my own. The Wild Kargos were pretty annoying to fight as a ranged character with minimum range, but the rest of the items were pretty doable. I also did a number of quests on the way; there were a couple of Cold Eye related quests while killing Kargos, and while in Magatia I did most of the quests there (and in Ariant) that didn't require me to leave the region (or wait for an area boss to spawn). Magatia exp is kinda of OK at this point and the quests pay out decent experience, so I made quite a bit of progress to my exp bar.

*Aside from the Ellin Ring quest, I also did Muirhat's new pinata which involve skeletons in Perion, and John's last JQ. This was literally the first time I tried it and the last map was pretty brutal because I had no idea how the swinging scythe knockback worked, but I was able to blow through it after a while. I also cashed in the gach tickets over the past couple of days, they were mostly crap but one of them gave me a 30% earring INT scroll, which should mostly cover the money I spent on the prescrolled canon shooter (since the clean one I had might take a while to sell).

Spoiler: End result of the day

Goals for the next day:

Go back to voodoos and grind towards level 64 so I can finally get a new weapon and hopefully have enough power to move on to greener pastures. I'm also still undecided on how to spend the early SP as an outlaw, so I'll need to give it some serious thoughts soon.