(PP-F4-NK) Snake in the Grass <<FtE>>

[Hakai 0]

Hakai smirked, adjusting the golden armband on her wrist. She had never been much for jewlery, but for some reason gold just seemed to look great on her, and the enhancements on these items would certainly help with the quest she wad about to do. She was waiting for Xion to show up so that they could get started searching for this rare golden snake that she wanted to try to tame. The snake was rumored to be able to sit still as stone for hours and hours on end, and to strike its victim with a speed that human eyes could barely percieve. It was a dangerous venture to try to tame one, although finding one might be even harder. Luckily she had a list of places that they usually spawned. She leaned against a large rock just outside of the main settlement, as she usually did when waiting for him, although this time she wasnt completely certain he would show up, especially after the last time  they had teamed up.

Equipped:

Dungeon Hunters Armband: +2 LD, +1 EVA

Dungeon Hunters Earring: Skill Rank: Search and Detect (+1 LD)

Limbos Fangs: +2 Blight, +2 Envenom

[Xion 0]

"I need to stay away from this floor after last time..." Xion muttered to himself as he walked through the snow covered streets of snowfrost, the tank's last visit to the floor hadn't been the most positive, he was forced to fight an extremely hard to kill phoenix the last time, the battle drove him and Hakai insane due to it's sheer length and monotony. "Never again" he said before he looked at his map, finding his friend Hakai on it. Luckily the girl wasn't too far away and Xion could walk to her quickly. And so he did, the snow of the floor crunching easily under the tank's boots as he strode with purpose towards Hakai's location, eventually seeing her in the distance as he approached. Quickening his pace, Xion quickly made his way to her. "Hakai...good to see you" 

[Hakai 0]

Hakai smiled to Xion as she saw him approaching. "Hey Xion. This time im going to lead the way, and we won't be fighting any enemies, just searching." She stated with a smirk. She was a bit traumatized from the last fight they had done together, but she didnt blame him for it at all, although he had led them to the mob. She blamed the long battle on her own incompetence and the genius or stupidity (she wasnt sure which), of the phoenix. She was a bit dissapointed that he hadnt mentioned her jewlery, but he was a guy, so that really was expected. "Really we're going to walk around in a few known spawn points and keep an eye out for small golden snakes."

[Xion 0]

Xion chuckled in response to Hakai, it would seem that despite how badly their last venture in the fourth floor went she was still in a relatively good mood. "Good to hear, I need a break from fighting and some good old familiar hunting sounds like a pleasant respite..." the tank said to the girl with a smile, sighing as he rested against a tree next to where they were standing, the player deciding to put away his glaive and shield, but leaving his armour on just in case the need to fight arose. "Well, seeing as we're just going to be searching for some snakes we can take our time and relax with this one..." he said, yawning before taking a piece of bread from his inventory. "You know, after we get your familiar I need one. The new updates make them really good for tanks" 

[Hakai 0]

"Yeah, the new updates make familiars a lot more important than they used to be. Its almost like being able to equip another item." She stated. "And we might not have a choice about taking our time. These snakes are incredibky rare and I sincerely doubt that it will be easy to tame one." She sheathed her claws as well, although in such a way that she coukd easily get to them if she needed to. "With my claws I dont get much basic damage, so having a familiar will really put me on par with the other damage dealers, once I get enough SP at least." She explained. "Maybe soon ill be able to fight at your side at one of these floor boss fights."

[Xion 0]

Xion nodded as he agreed with the girl. "Indeed, they now have the ability to greatly augment the fighting capabilities of their masters. Although as far as I know they still obey the enhancement rules, so I can't make one increase my mitigation even more...maybe I'll get a healer pet so that I can stay in combat even longer" Xion told the girl as he idly played with a few stray locks of his hair, the teen was in thought about what he was to do with his build, as he was at a crossroads of sorts. He could either continue to increase his defensive capabilities into the extreme, or hold off for now and focus on increasing his damage output. "Decisions...defence or offence..." he said to himself, not thinking about whether Hakai could hear him or not. He stayed like this for a few seconds, crunching numbers in his head as he tried to think about what was best for him as a front liner before snapping out of it. Shaking his head, the boy sighed. "Anyway, let's get going so that we can find this thing.." 

[Hakai 0]

Hakai nodded. "Thats why its perfect. Damage is a weapon enhancement, but I cant get it as my demonics have my DOTs on them. But with this ill be able to have that max damage and my DOTs as well." She leaned against the rock for a while longer, Xion looking to be be deep in thought, probably about his build. She had had to do a lot of thinking lately about her build as well. Her suspicions were quickly confirmed as he muttered something about offense of defense. "Go, defense. A frontliner once told me that specialization is the best way to become the best in this game. Specialize until you cant anymore." She stated with a smile, before standing up and leading the way into the woods, towards the location she had marked on her map.

[Xion 0]

Xion thought for a second as Hakai recommended that he continue to increase his defences, as she told him to continue to specialise as a tank. "I agree...to hell with damage...I'll never be able to make much of an impact with a spear.." he said to the girl as they walked onwards, the boy cursing his choice of weapon. "Why are spears so bloody weak..." he mumbled before sighing and deciding that he shouldn't make Hakai listen to his ramblings and complaints, the girl had her own problems to deal with.  "So...I assume that with a familiar you'll be pumping out some respectable damage along with your DOT no? If not then wild dance must be extremely underpowered..." he said, trying to maintain some form of conversation as he wasn't all too good when it came to familiars or anything that wasn't combat related, having dedicated nearly all of his time to fighting and bettering himself as a warrior. 

[Hakai 0]

Hakai looked over at him as he mentioned that his sword arts were terrible. "Well, my best sword art is a ten hit one. I wont be doing nearly as much damage as a dagger or rapier wielder, or even a one handed curved sword user. My weapons special thing is that when I crit, if I have a few ranks in martial arts, I get some extra hits in my sword arts. Even then im nit doing as much as a rapier or dagger user. I think my weapon needs a buff, as well as quite a few of the other weapons. Im not acquainted with the spear, but im sure it needs it to." She stated. It seemed like everyone these days was complaining about how strong daggers were, except for the dagger wielders themselves who insisted that it made sense and was completely fair. "Im not following my own advice. I need defense as well, especially seeing as my dots take time to work. Im hoping for some sort of unique enchantment to pop up on some armor when I eventually do my appraisals..." She mentioned.

[Xion 0]

Xion nodded as he listened to Hakai talk about exact;y how strong her weapon class was and explaining it's special effect. "It's similar to spear in terms of power then..." he said as he thought about the best sword arts that spear was able to use. "Our highest damaging skill without martial arts is a ten hit combo called merciless flurry so it's the same as yours.But with martial arts we have a one hit sword art at eleven times the power called gungnir so our max damage without a crit or buffs is 143...which is horribly weak when  combared to dagger and rapier which have nearly 100 damage on all other weapon types" he told her as he continued to walk, thinking some more. "It means less to me as my job is to take damage, not deal it. But it means a lot to you as you need something other than your DOT so that you're not useless if you don't crit..." he told her. "You know with the new changes I may get a burn weapon until I GM my weapon skill...well if I ever GM it" 

[Hakai 0]

Hakai nodded as Xion expressed his own disappointment with the damage output of his weapon. "I'm certain that it's going to change soon. Wild dance is bound to get a buff, as well as all of the other weapons that need it. My logic for Wild Dance is that im already spending sixty three skill points on it rather than the normal fifty, plus i need a critical to get the special effect from that. And even then its pretty bad. So, basically the weapon im using is so broken that i cant see how Kayaba would fail to fix it." She stated with a smile. She raised an eyebrow as he mentioned getting a burn weapon. "Go for it, if you can get your hands on one. Burn is a unique enhancement though, so you might have a bit of trouble getting one. My dream weapon would be a pair of claws with one slot of blight, envenom, burn, and bleed." She mentioned the last part, seemingly out of the blue.

[Xion 0]

Xion nodded in agreement as he listened to what Hakai had to say. "I agree...you're spending more than most weapon types fore very little payoff, it makes no sense that a weapon class that only requires 50SP to be invested to be good would be better than one that requires 63 like wild dance or Katana..." he said, thinking about the disparity in power between the weapon types, especially dagger and basically any other weapon. It made no sense to the tank that the smallest weapon of all would do the most damage, if anything he would have expected dagger to be the weapon class with an on crit special effect. "Oh is it? I'll just go for bleed then as they're basically the same, although I prefer the aesthetic of burn, fire is always better looking than  blood in my opinion" He told Hakai with a chuckle before raising an eyebrow at her mentioning her ideal weapon. "Sounds monstrous, all of the DOTs stack so that would be a scary amount of mitigation ignoring damage...although I think I have a build in mind that could give yours a run for it's money" 

[Hakai 0]

"Im sure you do. And if I had to guess, just from what you've said, that your going for a paladin build. A bruiser build would certainly do better against me than just a normal tank build, but that wouldn't solve the DOT problem. And if you became a healer tank hybrid that wouldnt really outdo my build in any way. And, I would go so far as to say that its obvious that it would. The tank build is the strongest in the game right now by a fairly large margin. Your build right now would give me trouble." She explained. She disliked the lack of balance in this game, whether it was builds or weapon types. "Just some advice on damage over time. Effects such as burn, envenom, and blight cant be healed. Bleed, however, can be healed easily with a crystal. So you might be better off with other enhancements if, for example, you planned to fight another player." She explained offhandedly before heading further into the forest. The sooner they tamed this familiar the sooner they could head in. She disliked being out in this forest, even with Xion right there to protect her. It was a creepy place, but thankfully they were approaching one of the spawn points.

[Xion 0]

"Not strictly a paladin build, paladins tend to heal others  rather than just themselves while being able to take a significant beating. The build that i'm going for is what I like to call a regen tank. The idea is that I'll get a protector familiar so that my armour slots aren't taken up by mitigation. I then replace the mitigation slots with two more slots of regen and then something else. After I GM block and heavy armour including getting the stonewall mod I'll go for battle healing, and once I GM that I'll be healing around 170 each time the skills trigger. So basically unless something kills me in one hit I'm not going down" he told the girl, although he shut up at the end as he felt like he was talking too much about himself. Remembering that they were looking for a familiar Xion's eyes scanned the forest around them, although he saw nothing of note. "So, where do these things spawn again?" he asked Hakai. 

[Hakai 0]

D# 65957 results:

 Loot: 6 Fail

"Same thing. Your a tank and you heal yourself. Your name for it sucks, so im just going to say paladin." She said with a laugh. That certainly sounded like a broken build, she wondered if it would end up being nerfed eventually. She glanced around the trees and then consulted ber map, leaning down and inspecting the ground. "This is one of the spawn points for them, but there arent any here. As a rare type of mob they dont spawn very often..." She explained before leading the way towards the outer edge of the forest. "The next spawn point is in the more mountainy part of this floor."

 

Edited August 13, 2016 by Hakai

[Xion 0]

"Not the same thing, but I can't be asked to argue with you" Xion said with a chuckle as he looked at Hakai, the girl seemed to be inspecting the area, searching for the mob that she wanted to tame, although it appeared that there wasn't one nearby. "They're slippery bastards aren't they?" he asked with a frown, he had hoped that they would find one in the first spawn point but it seemed that he would have to search with Hakai for some time to find the snake.  He chuckled at her use of the phrase Mountainy. "Very technical term you used there Hakai" he said with a smile before continuing in their search 

[Hakai 0]

"Quite." She said, to both him calling the snakes slippery and his comment on her use of the word mountainy. "Its really annoying, but its critical that I get one of them." She mentioned with a sigh. It would take them a good bit to get to the next place, and she both was and wasnt looking forward to the trip. She always enjoyed her time with Xion, but she didnt want to spend a ton of time going somewhere only to be dissapointed when she found out that all of that work was for nothing. Still, they wouldnt know until they got there. "We might as well get going to the next place. The sooner we get there the sooner we know if we'll find one there or not." She stated. looking back over at Xion with a frown. She had known that this quest would be stupid and long, but it didnt make it any more bearable.