“I like it in here. It’s private.”
– Mythbuster Jamie Hyneman, from inside his fire suit

I actually have no other reason, apart from high normal defense; honestly, I need elemental defense more. I’m just a very private person in some respects, and this carries online as well. None of my avatars look remotely like me, and the Wolver armor carries such a sense of privacy somehow that I use it as a costume even if I’m wearing entirely different armor “underneath”.

In other learnings today:

• Khorovod has reach. I should use it, because that effectively turns it into a short-ranged weapon, even a 180º bomb, rather than something that lets the enemy hug you. I do not want to be hugged by fire zombies.

• Blast bombs are a vital part of the solo arsenal, if only for the capability of more easily dealing with a Trojan. Set up a bomb next to the Trojan and run around him so that he turns around with his invulnerable front towards you and his oh-so-vulnerable back to the bomb. The bomb then goes off and deals damage. Thank goodness.

• The developers are reading the What bosses would you like to see? forum thread, which is quite an interesting one. I’m all for a Cerebus-styled gun puppy, as well as a LuCEOfer.

Basil woe is short today, because I decided to forget about him and buy recipes directly from other players. There’s somewhere in the range of a 3000 to 5000 crown markup for 4* recipes, but apart from waiting for weeks for the right recipes to turn up, there’s not much choice. Today I bought an Ash-Tail Cap, as I saw a Skolver coat and have decided to screw the Vog Cub. One day there will be another boss that deals massive freeze instead of fire, and until then I’ll avoid Firestorm Citadel. I don’t need it to get to the Core, and it appears those levels would be more hard than fun for me.

In the meantime, there’s a couple of search keywords coming from Google that I’ve decided to answer, at least from my POV:

Is Swiftstrike Buckler worth it?

Attack speed is very much a plus for almost any sword, although the speed increase is most noticeable with the slower swords. This shield has a mediocre amount of health (the heart bar on its stats box), however, so it’ll break earlier than more stout shields. The Buckler works fine, more or less, for most of Tier 2. If you can do very fancy footwork, it’ll still work for you beyond that; but otherwise, it’s definitely a 3* shield.

Is the Graviton Bomb worth it?

For certain situations, it’s totally worth it for the crowd-clearing aspects. It combines the best of both a freeze-style bomb (stage 1, where it sucks in enemies for several seconds and deals normal damage), and a blast-style bomb (stage 2, where it explodes out enemies and deals quite a bit of shadow damage), with a twist of gathering enemies affected in a wide radius in one little spot for your swording teammate to whack. As its strength is shadow damage, it’s not going to work on Fiends or the Undead that well, but will work wonders on slimes, making it useful for at least the first two stages of the Royal Jelly Palace.

Note that while the Graviton Bomb is slow to charge and slows you down considerably while charging, its area of effect is relatively large. If you’re about to lose your charge due to enemies, put it down anyways and kite (run around so that your enemies come into and stay in the area of effect) like mad.