My Istarian Story.

Hi all. I havent played istaria when it came out, back then called horizons. but i did start in late 2007 till summer of 2008.

This game , in a way is very special. Not many people will realize it unless they can bypass the old grafics and its horrid past.

When i started to play i decided to make a Dragon  which is prob the only mmo that allows you to play one. Thus Zanukk was born. I was quickly invited to a guild called Timeless. Very nice people  who rped here and there. Now most of em are vets , players who been in the game since it was released. They explained to me many things and the differences of each path the dragon can take. They has a nice pace on how they enjoyed the game, while i am a player who loves to push the limits of his char.

I made many friends as i traveled around. I  prob ended up being well known.  One thing few people realize of this game that it does have tons of ways of customizing your play.  This allowed me to do feats others dared not to attempt. The usage of crystals became my major focus and i was known to  sit in bristogo and hunt for elusive gems.

As i progressed thru the game it was becomming apparent that bipeds could achive many things that dragons cannot. such as takeing down some of the tuffest bosses solo, manage to survive a huge wad of mobs ect.  However in order to achive such you had to master about every class to get a rating of 250+ . While i decided to choose the path of Lunus and actually rp my char to it. I did help bipeds out on things in return for gems.

I had good times, ended up becoming mate to Starseye and an ancient dragon Xanthia became my mentor in terms of pve and the occasional rounds in the arena.

The changing from hatchling to adult is probably one of the most memerable moments of the game. Those who are planning to use a dragon as their main i would advise not to skip thru the story to get to the next part. Its a very interesting read. Infact most of the lore is.  The more i  dug down the story the more i became attached to my char and the game. Knowing how one colony of dragons was attacked by the blight and a generation of hatchlings was massacered is quite compelling.  Ill tell you only that as you may want to find the chars involved and what they know of what happened. 

Thru my adulthood with my dragon i decided to tone down on my lvling and actually try the crafting in this game. I have always dispised crafting but Istaria sucked me in. I ended up capping my crafting to 100 before my actual lvls. This gave me the advantage to use high lvl gear dispite that my dragon was lvl 60 at the time. I even aquired some rare armors given to me, and some i paid for . As i kept progressing in the game i started taking in some new players , explaining them things here and there, scare hatchlings with my zombie costume ect. the way the community is there are many ways to have fun. you dont feel an urge to rush to get to lvl cap. Yet my progress was going pretty fast . I did hit lvl 100 before i could even qualify to become and ancient.

At this timeframe  the devs added a few new changes to the game. adding 2 spells for the dragons. one that gave you faster flying and the most important. an actual heal that was not a heal over time. yet not somthing to say you can become a dragon healer and take over some biped positions. At this same times the devs also destroyed the monopoly of one guild that tried to control the boss spawns, they even changed their tos to make sure no other guild would attempt to do the same. This did somthing i never seen in a community of all the games i played.

It created a player made channel that supported anyone intrested in taking down some of the endgame bosses. many guilds did participate. I ended up being one of em. Not knowing that to expect i joined the fray taking down Son of Gigaroth and General Relkar. Some good loot dropped from them so i became an active hunter, dispite being an adult dragon. I didnt have the dragon rez ect. As we took down these bosses i started to mold my chars stats to my licking , favoring more hp and tooth n claw . with some primal in the mix.

Even as an adult i ended up haveing much more health than most of the ancients who joined us. Xanthia started to contribue to the fights with one of the most high dps builds for a lunus.

I got my dirty claws on the Demon claw, one of the best weapons for dragons. Then after a months wait i was eligible to become an ancient.  Many of my new friends wanted to help me. One person of my guild did not like the fact that i was getting along with the guild the ancients due to an old grudge, and well the drama he started to emit caused me to join the Mithril order where a few of my friends Dakoren being one of them were from. This same person who caused me to leave the guild actually became the herald of our server Chaos.

This game allowed me to leave a mark, somthing i wanted to achive in EVE but ended up doing it in this game. For a long time a big assencion was rarely seen. Due to the communitys guilds grouping up to tackle end game bosses that were once monopolized created a even tighter community.

community.istaria.com/forum/showthread.php

Here was my asension.  Dispite the bad vibes i had with justa . he did interview me  due to the sheer size of the accension which i invited everyone to see. I even did it on a day for one person, who took me into timeless and was sick . I waited for him and had a good nice meeting with many friends i made in the game.

But becomming an ancient was not the only goal i had. For i became a bit envyous of bipeds doing things dragons could not. I would sometimes go SOG hunting (son of gigaroth) with 2 of my friends when no one would hunt him. they would tell me that sometimes they could duo it (biped and a dragon) and well my biped pal was capable of soloing him depending how he spawns (he can spawn with different abilities) I did keep an eye on the battle dialog. and after a bit of reaserch i went quickly to start crafting new armor scales with slots. i changed my crystal layout.

Of course my drunken mentor thought i was a bit crazy, to drop so much much dmg gems to favor defence hp and protection gems to different elements. So i asked her to come with me to fight SOG and duo him. Of course she thought i was crazy and i explained to her how we can prob take him down with our new spell.  as we prepared for the hunt i did have one biped pal who prob helped me the most other than Xanthia to find my crystals, Gianty. we befirend as i started winning a few items he was looking for so a big trade endgame biped weps i could not use for crystals. he helped me complete my sets.

we went and took on SoG and what a battle it was. Still Xanthia had her full dmg build so eventually she did take aggro from my defensive build.  we thought it was almost over as we healed franaticly , this also bought me time to gain aggro via skills and all and i noticed  he wouldnt dmg me as much. (both xanthia and i had a chest scale that had a 15% chance to lower a mobs dmg if it procced)  In the end we won. Xanthia freaked out for what we achieved. But i told her i was not happy till i could solo him. just like bipeds can. i did give an attempt with a few people ready to back me up if things went wrong, and they did. SOG spawned in a spot and i got adds.  so the rest of the crew who wanted to witness the ordeal had to join the fray and save me. Moments later after my failed attempt Gianty did have faith in me and gave me a few gems to consume to do another attempt.

Then it happened. After finally getting everything i needed. potions, and foods plus crystals . I did the unthinkable.

This was even intervied by Justa.

community.istaria.com/forum/showthread.php

Sog was spotted in a good place were mobs wouldnt interfere. I was buffed by gianty as he stood in solo watching. Xanthia was with me viewing from the air. This marked the time a dragon could solo sog just as a biped could. but of course i was buffed to the teeth.

I Did have plenty of fun with istaria, howver now im not active. i do plan to return soon. i do miss all my friends there. I dont think ill ever meet another community like the one istaria provides.