Just for Fun

Happy St Patrick Day!

In conjunction with tomorrow's St Patrick Day, today there are a lot of St Patrick's Day surprises brought by Ghost Trappers Team!

The main surprise is the new stats called the Leprechaun's Luck, which is a percentage of getting an overdrive (cooldown reset) for any trap type. As the name implies, Leprechaun gets a little tweak here and there, and there is a new donation recipe called Lucky Punch, which has this new stats and some interesting stats as well.

For the completed and detailed information regarding these new features, read the official statement by Andi Huller here.

So what are the targets for this St. Patrick's day? Of course you have to get the Four-Leaf Clover, the souvenir dropped by the St Patrick Ghost. And he also dropped a one-time item called Pot of Gold, which is a permanent item that has 2% Luck. If you don't get them now, you'll have to wait for next year, unfortunately.

Well, let's get those Patricks! As usual, you can always refer to this post for some help.

Happy hunting! :D

Peter Ghost

Just today, Peter Ghost was introduced. I suppose today is Peter Pirkmayer's birthday (he is one of the GT developers). And this Peter Ghost drops a yearly souvenir which is a Keyboard. Another known loot from him is CCF and he is generous! (2 ccf or 3 without loot hunter companion).

So what are you waiting? Go find him and grab his keyboard!

Refer to this post if you don't know how to start.

Happy hunting! :D

Double Trouble - Mission on 5 March 2011

Special mission: Double trouble

Agenst of S.C.O.T.C.H., this week the chairman wants you to successfully trap 4 Vain temptress and 3 Heartbreaking temptress ghosts. If you can do that, you will receive the following as loot: 5 Ghost plasma, 2 Jurassic plasma, 2 Chrono crystal fragments, 2 S.C.O.T.C.H. Badges, 1 Document EG.3, 1 De-augmentator, 200 Whisperwind purple, and 50 Glengreen purple. Good luck to you!

This mission can be hard, but can be easy as well if you know the strategy :D

Firstly for the Vain temptress, go to McDougan (1.4) and arm your highest mystic and your highest attraction mocktails. My recommended setup will be

MM/BDB/DD/MBS/any pet with +++attraction/cosmic ID

I've just finished mine with that setup (with my cu sith that has +2 attraction augment) fairly quickly. McDougan is chosen because there are 2 mystic-immune ghosts there hence you will not waste your stock of Devil Drivers.

Secondly the Heartbreaking temptress ghost. Experience said that this lady shows up more frequently during midnight hours. My recommended setup will be the same as above. Choice of castle will be McKenny (2.4), again because there are more mystic-immune ghosts there compared to the other castles.

While this mission's rewards might not be attractive, however the rare EG.3 and De-augmentator are not something that you can get so easily, so it is worth to try this mission out! Good luck to you all!

Companion Levelling - Part 2

Continuing the last post of Companion Levelling Part 1, here in Part 2 I will describe specific strategies for levelling specific pets. The strategies include discussion of what setup should we use and where should we hunt to maximize your benefit of that certain pet.

Loot Multipliers: Special Pixie - Leprechaun

Both Pixie and Leprechaun are generally safe to be used anywhere, thus the setup is somewhat flexible. If you can manage to achieve 2 min hunts using either of them, then go for it. Our fastest raw setup DM/NL/SHQ/Lepre/Cosmic/MCC will give 11 min reduction, so to achieve 2 min setup we need to use -2 bait (black widow) for example. If you intend to use this setup, Count Church will be the place since the raw is just enough to do 100% catch rate there.

However there will be some people who don't have an enormous stock (or recipe) of Black Widow, and maybe reluctant to use Midnight Riders, so we have the second alternative. We use mystic setup for this purpose. MM/BDB/CW/Nessy/Lepre/Twilight/MCC is already a 2-min setup. Since we use Nessy, Count Church is yet again preferable due to the amount of mystic-immune ghosts there (2 out of 5 types).

Another possibility if you can reach Morgue is to use Scarecrow/NL/SHQ/Lepre/MCC/Cosmic. It will leave you with -3 mins to reduce, hence you can use Nightcap to cover for that. Hunting in Morgue will replenish your supply of Mystery milk so you should not hesitate to use Nightcap. There are ghost plasmas and ccf in Morgue as well, to give you more incentive.

There are bio setup possible too for hunting in Morgue, which is Shark Basin/NL/Lorelle or EPH/Lepre/MCC/Cosmic. Same 2 min hunt but with additional benefit of Hidden treasures from voodoo ghosts. Bait can be -2 (black widow) or -3 (nightcap), I personally prefer nightcap since you can replenish your stock of milks.

Raid: Snake - Phoenix - Seahorse

I decided to discuss about these three guys since they have good stats (x2 loot multiplier) which is considerable, and now they can be easily obtained by the badges in Bayoushi's shop. The loot multiplier and -1 t/sc generally made them to share the same strategy as Leprechaun above.

Special mention goes to Snake, since it has the +10 vintages bonus, you have to make sure you hunt in vintage-rich regions to maximize its potential. And yet again CC is the highest vintage-rich region that you can afford with your fastest raw setup (DM/NL/SHQ). As for Phoenix and Seahorse, since they are XP and GTP based, thus to maximize their potential you just need to ensure that you hunt in the highest area that is allowed by your setup's raw power.

Bayoushi Cheap Whelps: Amber Dragon Whelp - Diamond Dragon Whelp

Here the strategies for these two little dragons are a bit different. Since they both have -3 min reduction, we can modify setup a little bit. First for the Amber, since it has the plasma hunter we should hunt in plasma-rich regions. The most well known plasma-rich region is Kirkyard Morgue, thus we try to craft a setup to hunt here.

Since DM/NL will not giving 100% catch rate in Morgue, we must compromise it by using another circle (Laughing Skulls) or another trap (Scarecrow). DM/LS/SHQ/ADW/Cosmic/MCC will give you 3 min hunts (2.5 if you have the tombstone), but with a burner inside. However in Morgue it is well known that SSG will do well, can even attract Barkeepers with almost no FTA, burning SSG is not a big deal. If you want to use -1 mocktails (Braveheart, Frozen mist) then you can use DDW instead or Scarecrow, both still maintain 100% catch rate in Morgue.

Special mention for DDW, since DM/LS/SHQ/Nightcap/Cosmic/MCC will do very well in Crypt you may consider to go to Crypt instead of Morgue. The XP gained from crypt is higher than Morgue of course, and the catch rate there is still 100%. DDW will synergize with Nightcap in terms of +XP. You can even try DM/LS/SSP/DDW in Morgue to have great boost of money, since DDW cancels out the burner so you can peacefully observe your money increasing quickly.

Bayoushi Expensive Whelps: Lightning Dragon Whelp - Chrono Dragon Whelp

Place to hunt: Morgue. Setup: figure it out yourself! :D

Incubators: Special Little Crystal Spider - Special Little Spookie

I'm not judging that these two is the best among other incubations, but it is their loot hunter which make them very valuable. Spider will give you more ccf and Spookie will give you more plasma. The most well-known place to hunt for CCF is either McKenny, Count Church, and Morgue (practically speaking McDougan and fake High Security Section should be included).

We've already covered Morgue setup above, those options are applied for Spider as well.

As for plasma, I don't know other places to hunt plasma better than Morgue, well maybe fake Crypt can be considered. Besides using the spookie, the same setup still applies!

Nessy Hunters: Ghost Seal - Ghost Goat

These two cute companions (dropped by Selkie and Glaistig) are gifted with +10 Nessy hunter. Thus if we want to level up them we must not waste their great potential. Therefore it is recommended to Nessy-hunt with them, setup will be MM/BDB/CW/Nessy/Twilight/MCC or LR/BDB/EPH/Nessy/Twilight/MCC. Both have roughly the same amount of mystic power. And place for hunt will be Count Church (yet again!) since 2 out of 5 ghosts there are mystic immune, thus it will not waste your Nessy too much. In fact, your stock of Nessy will surely increase!

Power Enhancers: Little Kelpie, Little Cusith

These two companions are a bit different. They are useful AFTER they reached level 5, so practically they are less useful while levelling. I'm talking about the +raw stats for kelpie and +mystic stats for cu sith, of course. However both of them have +1 attraction, which can be exploited to prevent yourself from getting FTA's if you are going to use cheap baits, or to increase your attraction to attract higher-and-rarer ghosts such as temptresses or the villains. Their loot multiplier is good (Cu sith is good, kelpie isn't that good), thus their setup will be more or less the same as Pixie or Leprechaun above.

Two Minutes: Little T-rex, Little Nessy

These two are the only companions which have slightly 'weird' stats, since -2 minutes reduction is uncommon. T-rex is better though (even better than Little Kelpie) since it has extra malty mist bonus. Oh and I forgot that Little Nessy has malty mist too. T-rex will be good to hunt monsters. While T-rex is raw power-wise, Little Nessy is mystic power-wise with the same -2 mins but +1 attraction. Best possible setup will be DM/NL/SHQ/T-rex/Cosmic/MCC with any -1 mocktails in CC. If you notice small details, you should use Braveheart/Frozen Mist since Widow Tears is plenty in CC too.

Wow it's a great wall of text... but I hope it can give you some inspirations... See you on the next post! :D

Companion Levelling - Part 1

There's quite a long time since I posted my last entry in this blog. Now I will share with you some strategies about companion levelling.

First of all, why we bother to level up our companions up to level 5? Well there are two reasons; the first one is that the stats will be maxed (for instance level 5 Phoenix will give you +15% money as compared to 3% when it was still level 1). The second reason is that when companion reaches level 5, it will be able to be augmented. Augmentation might not always be good, but nevertheless it will increase the stats of your companion anyway, and you might get an interesting combination of stats in a single companion :D

This is one of my best augmentations :D

My post here will be heavily based on 2-min hunt system, so I assume that you have the various resources and know the different combinations and setups that made it possible. For a detailed info on this 2-min hunt strategies, please refer to this post.

We will calculate how long it will take to level up companions. This info is taken from GT Wiki:

• Level 1 to Level 2 will take 500 hunts
• Level 2 to Level 3 will take 500 hunts
• Level 3 to Level 4 will take 1500 hunts
• Level 4 to Level 5 will take 2500 hunts

The hunts here referring to any time you click on 'Let's hunt!' button. Whatever the result it will count towards the levelling. Therefore you don't need to worry about FTA's, fail to traps, etc; instead this actually can be exploited. I will discuss it on the later section. Oh and to roughly estimate on how much longer to level up, there is a level bar below the companion in the companion page. The bar was divided into 10 sections, so for example your pet is already on level 4 with 6 blue sections, that means you still need 1000 hunts to go.

There is around 875 hunts remaining before my spider reaches level 5.

From level 1 up to level 5 will need a total of 5,000 hunts, this means 10,000 minutes on 2-min setup basis. With a pointer of 12 hour per day hunt, it will take roughly 2 weeks to reach level 5. Of course you should estimate yourself on how many hours you are able to spend to play GT and clicking on the 2-min hunts constantly.

Basically there are 3 ways of setups that you can choose to level up your companion. All 3 setups will aim on 2 min hunts, of course. Those 3 are:

1. Raw hunt with 100% catch rate
   
   


This is the simplest of all setup. Craft your setup to accommodate your companion to reach 2-min hunts, and with whatever raw power that you have go to an area that will ensure you a 100% catch rate. Then camp there for 2 weeks and surely your companion will reach level 5.


2. Fake raw with 0% catch rate
   This is an inverse of the first way. This setup will suit some lower level players who haven't had a wide range of resources for 2-min hunt setup. Nessy's will be used as bait and the primary component in t/sc reduction. As for not wasting the stock of Nessy's, the mystic power must be as low as possible (possibly zero) so that you will not catch any ghost by chance. And then given whatever number of raw power, you must go to an area where you will NOT BE ABLE TO CATCH any ghost in that area. Camp there for two weeks and your companion will reach level 5.
   
   


The downside is that your XP progress will literally be ZERO on that two weeks. I would not really recommend this to you, but this is an interesting theory that can actually work. For example of setup, I choose hi-tech (hi-tech tends to lower your mystic): PC game/Lava lamps/CPF/Nessy/any pet. CPF is perfect here since it has pet trainer bonus to help you level your companions faster.


3. Mystic based with precaution
   
   
Basically this is just your standard Nessy-hunting setup, using either arcane or bio to reach up to 70+ mystic. MM/BDB/CW/Nessy/any pet is a solid setup. The precaution here is just to hunt in a 'good' place. Good place means the castle has a lot of MYSTIC IMMUNE ghosts. Count Church is the best place, since there are only 5 types of ghosts where 2 of them are mystic immune. One might argue that your Nessy will be wasted. Actually that statement is WRONG, since your Nessy will be constantly refilled. You will often encounter Nessy-only ghosts and they will give you more and more Nessy's. Especially if your pet is Nessy hunter :D

In the next part I will discuss some interesting strategies regarding some particular companions. As you know that if you want to level up your seal, it is better to choose #3 since it synergizes with your seal (nessy-hunting). How about other companions, whelps, etc? I'll keep that to the next post, so just stay tuned!

p.s. Part 2 can be found here

Happy hunting and goodluck for tomorrow's mission! :D

All-Round Setup Made Possible

This weekend we have a very interesting mission titled 'Feat of Strength', where we are supposed to trap 300 ghosts, 15 monsters, 6 special ghosts, 10 raid ghosts, 30 party ghosts, and 50 midnight ghosts.

As you know that all of these type of ghosts requires their own specific attributes:

• 300 ghosts generally need low cooldown time with enough raw power;
• 15 monsters need a considerable amount of malty mist and mystic power;
• 6 special ghosts need Nessy's as bait;
• 10 raid ghosts need a raid team (this is separate case actually);
• 30 party ghosts need mocktail/Nessy's as bait;
• 50 midnight ghosts need some midnight attractions during the day and low cooldown during the night.

Of course the first logical question that comes up to my mind is, can I craft a setup that can satisfy all those requirements? Some arguments arise on whether we should choose raw or mystic based setup, mocktails or Nessy's, or if we choose Nessy's will it be wasted and such.

Surprisingly enough, there is one setup that can satisfy all the requirements and answer all of my concerns above! That magical setup is:

The Black Knight, Wax Pyramids, Black Widow, Mr Alistair Crow, Amber Dragon Whelp, Cosmic ID, MCC, Witch Cauldron, Ice crystal

The raw power supplied by TBK is enough up to Count Church (320 raw by itself). The mystic power supplied by MAC and WP as the main source; while ADW, Cauldron, Blackwidow, MCC, all contribute as secondary source to total up around 72 mystic. Low cooldown supplied by TBK, BW, ADW, Cosmic, MCC, and Ice crystal, reducing the total cooldown up to 2.5 minutes (with tombstone collection of course). Midnight attractions coming from TBK and WP itself, while Malty mist contributed by BW, ADW, and Cauldron are enough (12) to attract monster steadily.

The second trick in this setup is to arm this in Count Church; with BW armed it is quite easy to attract Frost Ghosts as party ghosts and Green-eyed Temptresses as Specials. Why I don't use Nessy? Well, you may use Nessy if you want to, but with one word of warning that it will give you 100% catch rate with 2 min hunts, so don't complain if your bottles of Nessy are gone quickly!

The only drawback of this setup is that I sacrificed all the loot multiplier stats. The only loot multiplier you have is from the cauldron and mini mocktail collection (if you have it). But given such a tough mission, I don't care about the loot multiplier, since the loot (reward) from the mission is HUGE! lol :D

See you on the next post!

Seasonal / Special Ghost Souvenir Hunting

Hi all fellow trappers, it's been quite a long time since the last post. In this post I will share with you about this small-yet-important topic about seasonal/special ghost souvenir hunting.

As you all know that in Ghost Trappers there are a lot of seasonal ghosts that only appear once a year, and special ghosts that appear only on common goal buffs. These ghosts are around only for 24-hour period yet they drop exclusive loots and souvenirs. Therefore we need a strategy to get those exclusive drops or else we need to wait until another time up to one year later!

Raging Demon (buff from CG) drops Little Devil, while Daniel Ghost drops Graphic Tablet.

Fortunately these ghosts are not meant exclusively for higher-level players; they are set so that even lower-level agents can also catch them and get the drops. So what is important here? There are two points to note:

1. The raw power needed to catch these ghosts are low. This is to accomodate lower-level agents needs, which may not have powerful setup in the meantime. In fact, even around 25 raw power is enough to catch these ghosts.
2. Since lower-level players might not afford expensive baits such as mocktails and Nessy's, these ghosts are set so that it can be attracted using low attraction baits such as Silver Star-Green. In practice, any bait can do, but I found that SSG attracts even more of these ghosts rather than using Nessy's.
   
   

Silver star-green works best!

This two points are also stated in GT Wiki, the full article is located here.

So what is the strategy that we should use? My approach is to focus on attracting those ghosts first. This means you need to have SSG armed while maintaining the lowest cooldown time that you are able to manage. I have written another article about minimizing your T/sc here, check it out!

One thing that I always differ from other people is, I don't put too much focus about the loot multiplier. As long as you can keep them coming, soon they will drop their souvenirs for you! Most of people will maximise their loot, and hence make their cooldown time longer, and still they won't even attract any of these ghosts. Of course if you can craft your setup to have high loot multiplier and 2 minutes cooldown, it will be the best! Go ahead and do so :D

Another point to note, while minimizing T/sc is not a problem for higher-level agents, it will still be a problem for lower-level agents which might not have all the gears such as MCC and such. Don't worry! There are some cheaper trap combinations which can minimize your cooldown such as PC Game/Lava Lamps/BDH, which practically can reach the same cooldown as the expensive Danse Macabre/Neon Lights/SHQ.

If you are not satisfied with your cooldown time, there is still one last resort. That is the Nessy's Golden Reserve. With -5 min t/sc it practically will solve your cooldown problems. HOWEVER, use it with caution. I've seen a lot of people complaining that they didn't attract any of these ghosts with Nessy's and ended up wasting hundreds of bottles of their precious Nessy's. That is their own fault. So what should you take into account if you want to use Nessy?

1. If your setup is mystic-based (mystic power 50+), choose a location where there are a lot of mystic-resistant ghosts. This will make sure you won't catch those MR ghosts and not wasting your Nessy's. For R1 it will be McDougan, for R2 it will be McKenny, for R3 it will be Count Church.
2. If your setup is raw-based, try to minimize your mystic power and go to a location where your raw power is not powerful enough to catch the ghosts there. This will ensure that no normal ghosts will be caught with your setup, but only the special ghosts can be caught! For information of how much raw power needed to catch specific ghosts, refer to this site.

This strategy can also be used for common goal buff-ghosts such as Raging Demon Ghost, Ethereal Ghost and such. The principle is just the same.

Next seasonal ghost is the Valentine Ghost on 14 February, it has the Heart-Shaped Arrow souvenir! That will be the time to try out this strategy and get the loot. As for next post, I can't tell you yet what I want to share.. just stay tuned!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2011 to all fellow trappers!

As we know, Ghost Trappers also celebrated Christmas and Happy New Year with the Celebration Week 2. However, to my surprise, a lot of people seems not enjoying it, but rather disappointed. Well, let's enlighten the things :D

1. There is a new donation item called the Ice Crystal which permanently reduce your t/sc by 1 minute. I think this is a great item, since it gives you versatility and more choice in choosing your setup. And since my postulate is "t/sc >>> everything" it really suits my style! However I haven't get it, I think I will get it soon enough.

2. Santa Ghost and the Wrapped Present. Which only appears for less then 1 day, if i heard correctly? Well, I have no problem in finding the souvenir, since it is supposed to be easy. If you managed not to be able to get it, then consider yourself unlucky, or, your setup might not be the best for that case. And for the Santa Ghost Disappears part, that can't be helped. Of course everyone should know that that day is CHRISTMAS EVE, which naturally people are off work to celebrate christmas with their families, including the GT Devs of course. Any problem on the server will then not be able to be solved as quickly as normal day. Moral of the story: if there is special ghost coming, find its souvenir asap and continue your hunt peacefully.

3. The Christmas Present: Snowman companion. A lot of whine on this snowboy. I do think the stats are quite decent, -1 t/sc and 5 max mystic, 5% slayer. With random augmentations it will be more interesting. The complaints are that this present is considered bad if compared to last year's (choice of mechanism and choice of circle). And some other complaints asking the present to be dragon whelps. Wake up everybody, this is a FREE GAME, the developers are FREE TO DECIDE what they want to give, and if you want dragon whelps you are FREE TO BUY IT on the donation page! LOL.

4. Anniversary Ghost and the Badge. No more hiccups from the server side, but still some minor complaints asking why it didn't drop snake like last year. Well, this is 2nd anniversary, while last year is 1st anniversary. Since those two are different ghosts, it is normal for them to have different loot right? I didn't get my snake last year, though, I got it from the normal way - the Dungeon raid.

5. Anniversary Present: Cora the Red contract. Complaints and complaints about the stats that are not good. Indeed the stats are a bit weird, I think, but it is for now. We will not know what would the devs bring on later stage of the game, in which this contract might be useful. Lots of monster slayer stats are being introduced in the game... perhaps we might see lots of new monsters coming soon!

A little hint for next post, I think it will be about the seasonal ghost souvenir hunting :D or about augmentations... so stay tuned!