cibacrome

Any particular reason this was not communicated to players before the patch? This is the first I've heard NCWest say anything about this.

Yes your temp soul stays at stg 6 even if you fail. You just lose the upgrades mats and gold in the process.

Absolutely remove that garbage 'advance to start'. It's a pentalty for having premium. All the garbage is at the beginning, the best items at the end... how is skipping all the best slots a premium benefit? Even if you are a new player, removing advance to start would have such a minimal effect, and at least would not feel like punishment for paying NCWest RL money.

I guess submit another ticket... they're usually quite good about this sort of thing. Just keep spamming them until they actually fix it.

Yes, bracelet is the biggest improvement for most classes, but the neck is a very close second for some. Anyway, running purple dungeons and finishing the quest who's name i don't remember lol will get you those draken cores really fast, no need to focus just on NS for bracelet.

Thanks - I hope so but several patches later it's still an issue. One thing that baffles me is the reset - what possible reason, other than irritating your users, is the reset not the same as system reset (4am PST)?

Before you even get to BT you'll spam Desolate Tomb for the purple ring of your element, and Naryu Sanctum for the puple earring of your element - the combo effect is worth an additional 700 crit dmg which is pretty damn big. The only basic legendary accessories you want are necklace & belt. Ear is trash and ring is marginal at best.

It's not just the number of button clicks, that's silly and shouldn't happen, but it's also so bug infested - I am, once again, unable to collect rewards. This happens too often, and support is unwilling to make good, they always say there's nothing they can do.

The fees were not reduced for premium as promised, so it's a moot point.

That's not the point. The issue is that back when many of us bought premium the rewards were way better than they became. Many paid in advance for a period of premium, and as time went on more and more was taken away and replaced with... NOTHING. We complained, NCWest listened and re-vamped premium. But this new premium is WORSE than before. We have paid, and now we're getting less than we had. Not only that, but for many of us the 60 days bonus is totally worthless since we'll never be able to use it. My example is that I'm annual subscription, and when I cancel that I'm gone from this game forever. 60 days of premium that i will never be able to use, so it's a worthless gesture.

Just go to F8 and 'LFP' for Desolate Tomb. NS it's better to form parties in lobby, since it's harder. Even though DT is pretty easy with current gear, respect your party and watch some videos to get a basic idea of what to do. They're probably outdated - a while back DT was very hard and included mechanics that if failed cause insta-death and wipes, but the 'normal' mode is much easier and no mechs are required to clear. The accessories drop from normal mode. But the video will give you an idea of what to expect, at least, minus mechs. Definitely watch videos of Naryu Sanctum, but again, the mechanics you'll likely see in videos are hard mode, which have been nerfed and don't exist in normal mode. For first boss let someone with experience line up the adds for mech, and stay out of their way :D For Agoni boss make sure you throw spears when you can since that's a mech that is included in normal. Besides that just pew-pew and avoid boss attacks. For end boss just pewpew and try not to die XD, you can practice in F12 to learn boss rotations. Elemental damage comes from accessories - in this case the ring & earring I recommended from DT & NS MSP soulshields are the entry level 'legendary' soulshield, which the storyline now gives (used to be u had to farm HARD for those lol). BT is short for Black Tower, which is officially called 'Skybreak Spire' in game, a weekly 12 man raid that drops high level accessories and weapon upgrade materials. Anyway, these are the next level up soulshield, pieces drop from all the bosses in Skybreak Spire, but you can easily buy the first 3 with feathers you get from daily dash, daily challenge, weekly challenge (these weekly mini-raids are pretty easy and a good way to get mats & gold, as well as raven king feathers to buy and upgrade accessories). Once you get your accessories to at least DT/NS ring & earring, soul badge and mystic badge, and your weapon to rift/dawn (not required tho), you'll have an easier time getting in a BT raid. PUGs get advertised in faction and local chat, but it's best to find a clan that you can run these with, you'll progress faster through all aspects of the game with a decent clan - they'll help you gear up and run some of the harder stuff. Since I know literally NOTHING about shadow gunner except that most gunners play fire because it's higher dmg and a bit easier to play, I can't help you with shadow badge(s). For fire you can buy the soul badge with solar energies which you get from Daily Challenge. Complete 'DC' each day and you'll save up 120 to buy a soul badge from Dragon Express, which is accessed from the little moneypouch looking icon at bottom of your inventory. Mystic badges you farm Celestial Basin for - get 16k peaches and use either raven feathers or lunar twilight flowers depending on which badge you need. the NPC Vendor in Celestial Basin (Guwon City map) has them, look up the cost there. As far as weapon paths - there are two major paths right now after bale/seraph. Strongest is Raven, but it's also more expensive to upgrade, by thousands of gold worth of mats through all the stages. A very good, lower cost option is Dawnforge / Riftwalker, which is seperate from Raven. You can upgrade to Dawn/Rift 6 and then switch to Raven 6, or go all the way to Dawn/Rift 9 and then over to Raven 9, your choice. Upgrade weapons for 6-9 can be hard to farm, and you'll be doing Skybreak Spire regluarly by then so upgrading Raven would be simpler, but a bit more costly. Raven is strong though, so it's just a matter of preference. To visualize the upgrade paths for weapons and accessories, press ctrl+I in game and you'll get a chart to see each upgrade tree. at the top are icons to choose weapon, accessories, soul, and pet to see how all that plays out, including mats & gold requirements for each stage. VT is short for Vortex Temple, which is the end-game raid, more or less hardest content in-game right now, you won't be concerned with that for a while.

It sounds like you're not comfortable with your class yet, both in how to build it most efficiently (gear, skills), and what your rotation is. Ping is a factor, for sure, but if you have in-game 100-200ms (even if it goes up, spikes, etc...) you should be able to be at least in range of similarly geared players. And this is where the real story is, imho - your gear is absolutely bottom of the barrel. It's all story stuff, and you've picked the wrong weapon, but that's ok since baleful and seraph are entry-level now, and you need to jump to dawnforged asap if you're fire gunner, not sure for shadow as I don't play gunner at all, but basing this off advice from highly geared end-game clanmates. The first thing to learn is your 'rotation' - which is the ideal, most efficient sequence & speed to press your skills for maximum dps. Can't help you there, but there are tons of gunners in game, and plenty youtube videos that should be helpful. As far as dying quickly - in PVE you should be able to avoid almost all damage from NPC / bosses, it just takes some practice to memories their rotations and figure out where to be. Practice against some bosses in F12 (Hongmoon Training Room), it's no-pressure and you can just keep getting hit without dying so you can learn to avoid different boss attacks. You really should link your bnstree profile (like this: https://bnstree.com/character/na/Akuma Aoi) that way we can see all your stuff and stats and give you better advice. In looking at your gear my suggestions: 1) Spam Desolate Tomb and Naryu Sanctum for the legendary accessories that drop there - ring in DT, earring in NS. Dunno if you play fire or shadow, just bid for (and win!) the appropriate element for your build. The set bonus is something like 700 crit dmg, which is pretty hug, plus the @ combined 800 elemental damage which is crucial - elemental is counted on all hits, not just critical hits, so you want as high elemental dmg as possible. 1a) Infuse all soulshields with green or blue (prefered) critical primer. To do this, have a primer piece in your inventory (you buy blue ones from dragon express using primer base which can be crafted by soul warden or purchased from f5), rmb > 'manage equipment' on the ss piece you are infusing, and press 'evelove'. You'll need a quantity of fusion powder (salvaged soulshield dust) and maybe ss crystal, can't remember for longgui pieces tbh. I would use as little gold on this as possible as you really want to get BT set as quickly as possible, but this will increase you dps, guaranteed. Ideal attack stats for lvl 55 is 60% crit, 120% accuracy. You won't be able to get that yet, but just progress through the equipment upgrades and eventually you'll get there. 1b) I can't tell if you have badges (soul & mystic). If you don't, get them now. For fire gunner I believe it's Magnum soul and pulse mystic, but again I'm not a gunner so I'm not positive. 2) Get oath necklace with 200 draken cores. Even stage 1 is better than what you have now, but get it to stg 3 as quickly as possible, stg 6 is a comfy place to slow down on upgrading that. Oath necklace is strong, and it's the best necklace out there until you get to VT level gear, which is a ways off for you. 3) Get 3 set BT soulshield ASAP (!), as this increases the damage of your #1 burst skill (if fire) Bulletstorm by 30%. BT shield pieces are easy to get now, and getting in a pug for the achievement (1st boss only) should be no problem at all if you don't already have it. Basically 1st boss is DKV with a slightly more punishing poison mechanic. 4) Upgrade to Dawnforged weapon stg 3. Cost reductions make this more affordable than ever. Only a single pts and 5 empyrean stones, about half what it was just over a week ago. Notice i place this as a lower priority than the other accessories - weapon is important, but without the right gear combinations it's a small upgrade and won't make you stronk! 5) Get Eternity Belt with 200 Draken cores. I put this lower as you don't 'need' it, but it's super helpful for survivability in harder dungeons. You have a pretty strong pet, the belt will help a lot too. I put an order to these upgrades, but since they're all fairly easily attainable, and definitely important if you want to dps, just get what you are able first, then move on to the next. Weapon should be lower priority as the accessories will be a bigger gain up front. Good luck, have fun!

YAAAAY!!! You are too kind, sir.

And I even forgot to whine about Daily Dash, which is another 10/10 lump of coal in players anniversary patch of wonders!

I get it. You're OP and we're all plebs. Will you sign my man-boobs? Thanks <3 It's definitely nice having something challenging, even though you admit you cheezed it, shame shame lol. I mean pretty much the only thing I enjoy doing in game is VT rn, rest is boring, and I was looking forward to this. But, this is an anniversary event, and it's basically out of reach for a huge percentage of the player base. That would be fine if there were decent alternatives for fun in this event, but it's basically garbage. Couple coins, paywall RNG cosmetics, static 20 min grind or f8 3hr wipefiesta. Yay, you win.