(Old) Post minor achievements/woes here!

[Madge]

Woohooo! My sporadic attempts at beating NQ2 (i.e. I play it when I have time off of uni) have borne fruit.

I have now beaten it on evil difficulty! I won the halo of devilpuss which I believe is one of the two lame prizes, so that kinda sucks.

I was terrified because KT2 killed Mipsy, but fortunately she was really kinda crap anyway and Velm and Rohane managed to continue to kick his arse.

I played without Talinia, because I heard she sucks. It was pretty good, my levels were nice and high and I only had problems with KT1 (yeah, for some reason, KT1 almost destroyed me but KT2 was a case of "click click click". I guess it's having skills).

But for iNsAnE I'm guessing I'd better use Talinia. I'll lurk an NQ2 forum after I've beaten NQ1 on evil. (I want gold trophies in both, damnit. It will be impressive!)

[Fjorab_Teke]

Aww, Talinia is my favorite! I'm actually impressed that you beat it without her. I wonder what benefit could possibly come from not having her. Then again, my battles were pretty easy for the most part, just the game took for-freaking-ever.

My suggestion is to read up on the best skills for everyone to have and max out on those. It's been so long since I've played, I've forgotten which.

[Wingsrising]

I liked Talinia a lot, too. How do you play without her? And, what's the advantage? I thought she appeared automatically at the start of Lost Desert if you didn't pick her up on Terror Mountain.

[mellaka]

From what I've seen, some people like to play without Talinia because it makes the game faster. It also helps you level up more quickly since your experience points are only divided among three characters rather than four. In my 20+ NQ2 games I've never played without her though - I find her big hits against KT/KT2 too valuable.

And she does appear at the start of every land if you don't pick her up in Terror Mountain, but you still have to talk to her and ask her to join you.

I remember some people on the NQ boards trying to play through with only Rohane. Now, that sounds challenging. (I was a NQ chatter for a while and still geek out whenever NQ is mentioned, sorry. =P)

Oh, and congrats Madge ^^

[Wingsrising]

I'm still confused. I get why you level up faster, but why does it make the game faster?

[mellaka]

Maybe because you are only taking three turns rather than four? I'm not really sure and am just going by what people have told me. I'm sure there's a no-Talinia guide with some reasons out there, but I don't know it offhand.

[Jazzy]

I think the main reasons are the increased time it takes to heal (both via Velm's group healing and healing potions) and the fact that she tends to break Mesmerisation. I'm not sure if Meghan's around much anymore, but as far as I remember, she used to do NQ2 speed runs and said when doing so, it was best to leave out Talinia. This guide explains it better than I can, given I only ever completed NQ2 on the lowest difficulty:
http://disasterlabs.com/Seppel/nq2/

[Madge]

It really was surprisingly good, it would've been nice to have her for KT2 but I didn't have any troubles and I played normal with her. Basically, Mesmirisation is pretty awesome, and Mipsy kicks ass with Obliterate and Rohane kicks ass with critical hits.

And it's pretty clear that leveling up faster makes the game faster, because you do spend time wandering around trying to get XP to get to the next level so you can take on the boss.

The FAQ I used seems to have gone offline mostly but here's the quotes from it. (oh, wait! it is online again. Well then. Whatever. Here's the quotes anyway)

"But wouldn't this also work with Talinia?"
No and yes. Let's first look at Talinia's skillset.

[OK!] Increased Bow Damage
[Bad] Shockwave
[OK!] Slowing Strike
[Bad] Multiple Targets
[OK!] Ranged Attacks
[OK!] Innate Melee Defense
[OK!] Innate Melee Haste

Shockwave and Multiple Targets are unusable, as they break mesmerization. Any weapons that give you Shockwave are also bad, because Shockwave is a passive skill and needs no activation. With the remaining skills she has left, she would be a formidable fighter, most likely surpassing Rohane and Mipsy in average damage per turn. Sounds great, huh? Why don't we just toss her in the party? Because even with that advantage, she has many more disadvantages.


"Why does Talinia make the party worse off?"
First and foremost: Experience. When there's more members in the party, they get less experience per battle, meaning they'll have to go through more battles. "That's not true," you might think, "After I got Talinia, I was getting about 300 experience per battle instead of 200!" That's because there's now a norm of three enemies per battle instead of two. How many people here have gained up to 580 experience from a three-enemy battle in CHAPTER 2? Anyone? No, I didn't think so. So what would you prefer? 300 or 500 experience for the same battle?


"But doesn't she make the battles go faster?"
She does, but only marginally. Two or three clicks less per battle -- but then you also have to heal her after battle in Chapter 2 and at the beginning of Chapter 3. This means MORE battles, LESS gold, and MORE clicks. After you have Velm, she just becomes a liability, because Velm now has to heal four characters instead of three.


"Well gee, I'll just use Group Healing, then!"
WRONG. Group Healing can take more than twice the delay of Direct Healing, thus leaving Velm vulerable for over 6 - 10 seconds, depending on his speed. All it takes is two or three strong hits to make Velm fall, and many enemies later on in the game use delay attacks very often. As any experienced NQ2 player knows: If Velm falls in a boss battle, 95% of the time the rest of the party isn't far behind. Also, that's 6 - 10 seconds that Velm can't be Mesmerizing enemies, which is pivotal for the No-Talinia Speed Challenge.


"Well then I won't get Mesmerization and I'll ignore your advice!"
Remember, this is for the speed challenge. Talinia significantly slows your party down by hours (thousands of clicks). If you're not trying to get the NQ2 Race trophy... well, then maybe you should try for it anyway! If you particularly ENJOY THE GAME TAKING LONGER, then by all means, grab Talinia and make up your own skillset.

[Usul_Princess]

*has nothing relevent to say in the above post*....I have no patience for NQ, so good job Madge.

*FACEPALM* Come on!!!

Spoiler: open/close

...You just had to be a hybrid. I got screwed outta that avatar.

[Rah]

Just had the smoothest trade on the neoboards ever.

Step 1 - Put robot kyrii UFT for either an island, halloween or disco kyrii
Step 2 - bump board three times
Step 3 - Someone offers well named island kyrii on my robot
Step 4 - Immediate trade. WOO!

None of this waiting until July, or neomailing for days because they suddenly go offline after offering, or being stuck because their inbox is full and they don't list any other accounts on their profile. That was so smooth and instant and now I'm only two sets of kyrii clothes away from getting my final and permanent kyrii! DD

[Wingsrising]

Food club with the Wocky's bets paid out 70:1 today. Whoot!

[Usul_Princess]

I fed my first kadotie today, and I figured what the heck, lets go trophy up my lookup more.

Spoiler: open/close

The other new ones are the Altador Astronomy, (I could barely get through that thing. I don't know how people had the patience for that.) , cheat, and snow wars. It actually looks like I've been there for 8 years instead of 4.

[Gumdrops]

The other new ones are the Altador Astronomy, (I could barely get through that thing. I don't know how people had the patience for that.)

Heh, after enduring Anubis Toxicology Report (LDP), anything else is a breeze.

[Rah]

Well, today was just a great day for me.

Firstly, I traded my UC grey ixi for Jhaiq the desert draik YAY I FINALLY HAVE A DRAIK! Been waiting for months and months to get one, finally found one with a name that I LOVED and was nice and short.

Then, my dailies just wouldn't stop being nice to me. I won something on nearly all of them xD But the cream of the crop had to be the fruit machine:



YAY! First time i've won a paint brush from that!

[Usul_Princess]

YESSS! I got a silver trophy (5th or 6th place) for Food Club with 497K. (No picture necessacary).
I was banking on people impulsively collecting that 70:10 winning a few days back. It's been unusually difficult to get one these past 4 months. Bets are usually lousy near the end, and people were still collecting 3 and 4 million on the 1st.

Now my essential trophy collection is complete ^_^.