Mobsters Guide

I know that the social media apps have become vastly popular over the last year or so. I play Mobsters myself, which seems to be one of the better ones. In fact, many of the other games like “Heroes” and “Vampires” are based off of it, and the system I’m going to talk about in this post will work very similarly in the other games as well. All you have to do is understand the elements at play, and know how to interchange words like “energy” and “blood”.

Here are a few tips to become a notorious “Mobster” on Myspace. I’m going to approach the game from a “fundamentals” perspective, so it might be better suited for a newer player.

Essentially, three things determine how powerful of a Mobster you will be. These are money, stats, and mob size. Before we get into that, I wanted to mention the specs you can choose when you first start, of which there are also three: Tycoon, Insomniac, and Bulletproof. Tycoon type gains money faster, Insomniacs regenerate energy faster, and Bulletproofs are stronger in combat. I chose tycoon, and I still feel like this was the wisest choice. My personal “strategy” is to essentially build a “fortress”-- by that, I mean stack defense, and income. Have you ever heard the saying “the best offense is a good defense”? That’s exactly what I’m aiming for.

Money

The best way to gain income is through the use of territories. The primary reason for this is that you get money even when you aren’t online. Now that’s a powerful advantage to have. For this reason, I highly recommend re-investing all the money you make from fighting, missions, and other territories into buying new territories. Another reason to do this is to avoid the 10% deposit fee at the “bank”. Also, I urge you to SAVE all of your Favor Points. Later in the game, they are extremely hard to come by.

Fighting can yield a decent amount, if you spend time scouting out the best players to attack around your level. Typically, it’s safest to attack those who have a Mob Size smaller than yours-- of course, there are exceptions. I believe the maximum amount you can earn per attack is $70,000.

Missions are really minimal money, rather they are designed to gain experience, which is also important. You don’t want to make a ton of money and remain low level, having your stats lag behind. For this reason, it is important to balance your efforts while you play. Make sure you use all of your stamina for fights, all of your energy for missions, and then use all of your money to buy territories. After that is accomplished, it’s just a waiting game until you regenerate properly.

Stats

There are five stats in Mobsters: Attack Strength, Defense Power, Max Energy, Max Health, and Max Stamina. My personal strategy involves stacking defense and energy as high as possible. I just feel that the others are dismissible. Attack is overrated, because ultimately your mob size and equipment determine how “strong” you will be. Not only that, but to be useful you would have to couple attack with stamina, so that you could fight more often. As mentioned earlier, this is not the most effective way to earn money. Health is essentially useless if you have such high defense that you won’t lose fights often, or won’t take much damage. So voila! The only logical choices remain.

Mob Size

When it comes down to it, mob size is what’s going to determine how well you do in the game for the long run. The reason is that you can only use one armor/weapon per mob member you have! This being said, if you have a very small mob size, not only are you more susceptible to attack from others thinking you an easy target, but you will put out very minimal damage. So try and convince your Myspace friends to play, and if they don’t want to, I would recommend making some posts on the Myspace forums. That has been the best resource I have found yet for getting mobsters. Do NOT attempt to use any of the “add-trains” or websites. Use your head.

Hopefully, these fundamentals will boost your game play in Mobsters. Once you get the techniques down, it really just becomes a waiting game for the majority of the time. Enjoy, and have fun playing!

WoW Gold Guide

Hey everyone,

Haven't had much time lately to update, so I apologize for that. Hopefully over these holiday months I will have more time to invest here. I've been playing WoW though, and that's been good fun since WotLK was released. As such, I figured I'd include this article (since I don't have time to write one of my own) in the spirit of the game. So, check it out, I think these are some useful tips!



"Great Gold Making Spots"

Angerclaw Maulers

Head into Felwood and find a nice cluster of Angerclaw Maulers. These guys respawn pretty fast so when you kill all of them in an area, the first ones you killed will start to respawn and you won't have much downtime. Even though they don't necessarily drop a lot of higher end items, you will get a lot of stackable Claws, Jaws, Bones, etc... that sell very well as vender trash. On top of that, you can skin them and make even more money off of the Leather that you sell at the Auction House. On average, this will bring in about 40 Gold per hour. Whelps in the Badlands

A good spot for a low level 40 is the Eastern Side of the Badlands. Here you will find a LOT of Whelps, mainly the Scalding Whelps. They can do a good amount of damage but their hit points are low so you should be able to solo these just fine. They drop a lot of leather, a handful of blue items and a lot of very nice greens. I wasn't even grinding these guys and I got a Dark Whelpling for one of my drops. If you're a skinner, you'll definitely love this spot because you will get experience, gold/loot, and you can skin these guys.

Power Crystals

There are several different colored power crystals needed in order to complete the Crystals of Power quest which is given by J.D. Collie in Un'Goro. These blue, green, red, and yellow crystals can be found all over Un'Goro and are very easy to collect because they are usually a safe distance away from most mobs. When you go to sell the crystals, I have found that they sell best in stacks of 7 because that's how many of each color are needed to turn in for the quest. I have seen a small stack of 7 sell for as much as 1 Gold which equates to about 3 Gold for every 20 that you collect. In an hour I was able to collect about 90 power crystals which comes to about 13 Gold. Another thing to be aware of is that you can utilize the Gatherer Mod to help you locate these a LOT faster. While this isn't a 50+ gold per hour strategy that everyone is looking for, it is something that is very easy to do. Also, because there are a few other Un'Goro gold making strategies listed in this guide such as Skinning Devilsaurs and Gorillas or collecting Essences of Fire, you can essentially be doing one of those in addition to collecting the power crystals all at the same time.

Crusader Enchant

The Formula: Enchant Weapon - Crusader is one of the most sought after formulas in the game. There is only one place to get one of these (besides the Auction House) and that is from the Scarlet Spellbinders which can be found at the tower on your way up to Heartglen. Click here to see a map of where you can find them. While you may have to invest some time before it drops, don't forget that this formula is worth anywhere from 250 to 350 Gold! In addition to the Crusader Enchant, you will find a lot of other nice green and blue items along the way including some of the cards that make up the Elementals, Portals, and Warlords decks. As long as this place isn't being farmed, you will have no problem making the money to justify your time up here. If this area is heavily occupied at the time, you would be better off using one of these other strategies and try coming back at a different time when it's less crowded. I have personally done this before and found mine in about 4 hours. With the profit I made from the formula as well as the other items I found during this time, it came out to be about 100 Gold an Hour for my time. If you are looking for a little more encouragement to get you going up here, someone else in my guild got it around their 15th kill which they obviously got very lucky but just to let you know that it could drop at any time.

Demonslaying Enchant

Over in the Southwest Corner of Azshara west of Forlorn Ridge, you will find some Highborne Apparitions and some Highborne Lichling. They don't have too many hit points which means you can kill a ton of these things in a short amount of time. These guys drop a lot of mageweave, as well as some nice green and blue items. I have also gotten quite a few Patterns and Plans such as Formula: Enchant Weapon -Demonslaying. On average this should make you about 40 Gold Per Hour depending on how much this area is being hit at the time.

Credit:
Andrew Sander
http://www.WoWtips-Tricks.com
http://Worldofwarcraftacademy.com

Article Source: Andrew Sander, EzineArticles.com

Ultima Online: Your First Character

It could be argued that new players are the future of the game.

Creating your first character might not seem like that big of a deal. A few point-and-clicks, choosing your appearance, alright. But appearances can be deceiving. The skills you choose as a new player are really all you will have in the game to begin with, so they are important! Although you do have 5-7 character slots to begin with (depending on your expansion packs), you must wait 7 days to delete a character if you happen to make a mistake-- So pay attention. After you click on the "new" button (regardless of your server) you should be faced with a screen similar to this (1-1):

Picture 1-1
I would advise against choosing any of the premade templates. They tend to spread points among a number of skills, granting you no real advantage. Later, you will find that you can buy these same skills for a low fee from NPC trainers. For this reason, choose the ADVANCED button. After making this selection, you will see this screen (1-2):

Picture 1-2
This is where you will make the choices regarding your stats (strength, dexterity, and intelligence) and skills. Many skills are resource intensive, meaning you need a good deal of gold or items to build them up to a practical level. Any of the crafting skills are this way, likewise is archery. Magic skills (magery, necromancy, and chivalry) are similar in this way, however, if you are patient and find a way to obtain a LRC suit. One of the best characters to create as your first, which is also one I build my accounts around when I make a new one, is a resource gatherer. A strong build for this type of character is as follows: 40 Mining (first skill), 10 Lumberjacking (second skill-- so that you begin with an axe and a little skill), and Tinkering (third skill-- this will allow you to create your own tools such as shovels for mining). For stats, I would recommend 59 strength, 11 dexterity (for stamina reasons), and 10 intelligence. You can vary this slightly for a bit more dex, but a good rule of thumb is to keep all of the strength you can, to increase your ability to hold the resources you gather. Next, you get to choose your appearance (1-3):

Picture 1-3

You may customize your appearance however you see fit. If your account has the ML upgrade, you may change your race to an elf. However, it is most likely in your best interest to remain as a human, because they inherently have more carrying capacity. After you are satisfied, and choose a reputable name (make it good, later you will be doing business with other players!) you may continue to the next screen. Although a map with a list of cities appears, it doesn't matter which you choose; you will be started in New Haven. New Haven is rich in tutorials, beginners quests, skill trainers, and areas friendly to the new player. If this is your first time ever in Ultima Online on a new account, you will have the (young) player status. This means that you cannot travel to felucca, or be harmed by monsters and other characters. Again, it is in your best interest to keep this status until you feel comfortable.

So you have began, and you see you character embodied now for the first time in New Haven. In your backpack you have a couple tools related to your skills, and 1000 gold coins (1k). The best thing you can do is familiarize yourself with the basic game controls- movement, skill and item use, opening and closing interfaces, etc. You should also orient yourself with your envrionment. From where you have started, open your radar/map (alt + r). Directly to the West is a white building, the bank. Here you can store items, resources, and gold that you don't want to lose during your adventures. Any time you save up a fair amount of gold or resources, store them here for safe keeping.

Once you are comfortable enough, it's time to get down to work. Let's begin with some lumberjacking. Outside of the Eastern gate of New Haven, there is a small forest which you should travel to. When you get within a few tiles of a tree, double left click on your axe, and target the tree. Upon a success, you will have some logs deposited into your backpack (11 to be exact). Since you only started with 10 skill in lumberjacking, you must be patient; it could take a few moments. Now we will get into some technicalities that will save you from burden and carpel tunnel. If you open your options menu (alt + O) and click on the tab in the lower left of the menu (that looks like a 180 degree arrow), you will be presented with the MACROS menu. Click on the ADD button. Under Keystroke, in the KEY field, enter a key you wish to use (I often use F8 for this macro). Now, under Actions, left click on the first blank field and, while holding your mouse down, scroll down to "LastObject", and release the mouse. On the second blank field, use a similar action to go down and select "LastTarget". Hit Apply and Ok on the macros menu to accept and close it out. Now, give it a try! Hit the button that you opted to use in the last step for this macro. It performs the action of chopping the tree, saving you from manually clicking. Please note: you must do the first double-click and target of each new tree you want to chop before using your macro.

Finally, it's important to keep in mind how much you can carry. If your lifebar is open, you can double click it to bring up the large status window. Alternately, press Alt + S to achieve the same effect. Near the bottom of the status window, you should see a small icon representing a weight. The number next to it is a ratio: How many stones you ARE carrying / How many stones you CAN carry. Each item in Ultima Online has a weight. One log, for example, weighs 2 stones. While you are out chopping wood, it is a good idea to keep this window off in the corner of your screen, or to check it often, to make sure you don't go overweight. If this happens, you will be unable to walk, and the only cure for it is to drop items to lessen your weight. Another method for dealing with your weight restriction is to buy a pack horse or llama. (You can get them from an NPC Animal Trainer for about 550 gp). Because you only start with 1,000 gp, it is a substantial investment for a new player, but if you guard your animal from monster attack and keep it near you, it is a tool you can use forever. A pack animal is capable of carrying 1600 stones, and will give you more time between trips to the bank. I would recommend it, because as you stockpile and sell resources, you will quickly make back the gold you spent.

The best thing you can do is to stockpile your resources, even though it may get dull. Mining works the same as lumberjacking (you can even re-use your macro from the last section, provided that you manually mine each particular spot the first time by hand). On a side note, you may get a message saying that your tool was destroyed, if you encounter this, use your tinker tool to create more; you must have ingots in your pack to do this.

If you wish to sell your goods to players, it would be best to sell in quantities of 1000 or more. If you wish only to start saving gold right away, then you could sell to NPC's sooner than this. Make frequent trips to the bank to deposit your earnings, gold and resources alike. Keep at it, and work on building up a stockpile of gold!

Note: In this tutorial, I assume you are using the 2D client. However, if you wish to create a new account, or even try Kingdom Reborn (the newest Ultima Online client), click here. They also offer a client download through other sites.