In some previous cases I’ve needed simple databases: Books for sale on EBay, a DVD database list and a 2Moons Character database. For Books, I used MySQL and php here on this site [ But I didn't maintain it.] For the DVD database, I used Open Office connected to MySQL to store the data and image thumbs of covers. For the 2Moons characters, I used an Open Office Base application.

When I selected the Open Office solution to avoid high costs and to allow me to move the application around between computers and operating systems. Open Office works on Windows, Mac and Linux. However, the problems of backing up and saving versions of the application as I enhance it are a lot of work. Which version on the various computers is the latest one? Sure would be nice for it to be in the Cloud so I wouldn’t have to worry about those issues.

After a little searching, I found ZOHO Creator. Here’s two views of the 2Moons database that I build in an hour or so.

So it seems to work pretty well. Here is a list of weapons filterable by Character name.





CAUTION: Do not use the JavaScript snippet. It breaks Wordpress layout.

One of the issues that I struggle with in OOBase was building a form that filtered by character. I had to get an obscure script from a fellow in a forum to solve the problem. But with ZOHO creator, it was easy. Just drag a LOOKUP field into your form and set the field. Problem solved.

You’ll notice that he embedded views look pretty generic and don’t match this website at all in style. Sure would be nice if ZOHO provided “Themes” or worked with the stylesheet of WordPress or other CMS where the embedding occurred.

I did find a minor problem. If you build a Dropdown list field, and then later you try to add or modify the choices, Creator will likely kick out some errors. Based on a forum post, they will consider this as a future enhancement, but as a workaround, you can edit the form script to fix the order of the entries.

ZOHO provides useful and free subscriptions for each of their Office features. For Creator there is a free subscription that allows 3 applications, 1000 records and 200MB. But if you want more, the next upgrade is $15 / month. Sigh… There is a reason that I don’t spend $15 / mo to play World of Warcraft. That seems way too expensive compared with my hosting service which gives me UNLIMITED MySQL databases and UNLIMITED storage for $5 / month.

But the good news is that it works just fine and is easy to use, even for a novice with limited database experience. Force.com provides a solution too, but their solution requires a database administrator level of knowledge to use. ZOHO is much better.

You can share your application for $$ or for free, with or without the data, and with or without the ability for them to modify the application. Pretty slick. They also have a place for developers and clients to meet base on requirements of work that clients need done.

- windy

Demon Spear

We are all level 72, or more for Christmas. Some of us are wearing our Christmas hats. At level 72 we all get to wear those new helms we killed the bosses in Castor and Norak to get and we all have new weapons.

We have included a gallery of our latest photos with this Christmas Card.

To work up from level 68 to level 72 has taken about a day and a half for each of us. We started doing the quests and hunting in Crespo and then at about level 70 we were able to move to Draco Desert and do the quests there. There are two types of quests, the normal quests and the Commission Quests. Commission quests are purchased at a special commission center.

The commission center for Crespo is in Parca Temple and of the several quests the two that were interesting were the ones to hunt Kolaiger and Clay. There were other quests to hunt Ellipse and Elaiden. These monsters are quite powerful and it takes a long time to kill each one. So the first day for each of us was taken up with working in Crespo to reach level 70.

While we could have gone to Draco Desert at level 65, we found that it was best to reach level 69 or 70 before going to Draco. There are a few quests to accomplish there, but the best quests are again the commission quests to hunt Altar. These quests pay high numbers of experience points and are quickly accomplished if one works in parties of 2 or more members. The women warriors among us found that we could more easily attract party members or join parties. “Level 70 Spear Party Girl looking for a Good time” was a line that worked best for me. But many players realized that since everyone got credit for all the kills, that partying is the way to go in Draco.

There is a rise in bullying in Crespo and Draco. High level players stand around and fight among themselves near the Merchant NPC and Commission Center and often beat up on lower level players. Or for some reason, players steal mobs of players that are working in the desert. It seems very silly since players can quickly level up by working together. Those that understand this progress rapidly. Although there are no Akris horses in Draco, the loot drops are good and prey plentiful. Another problem in Draco is the hackers that sweep through and steal all the prey. This reduces the prey for a time, but by chasing a hacker one can sometimes either steal their mob, steal their loot and often they leave the area since they don’t want to be photographed while they are hacking.

We have all made it to level 72 or above. VengefulBreeze, our summoner brother, has made it to level 74 where he has picked up two new skills. We’ll have a nice Christmas and get back to work progressing through the game with our new weapons and helms.

Have a happy holiday and may the five gods protect you,

DemonSpear, Aloken Warrior.

Christmas in Loa Castle

Hi, Demon Flayer here. I’m a younger brother of many of the folks you’ve seen before, and as such I’m often given the task of selling things that my other siblings find along the way. But that’s a small annoyance compared with the large advantage of getting the hand-me-down armor and weapons from my older brother Windy Flayer.

As you can see, 2Moons has been decorated for Christmas. The main towns of Loa and Braiken have trees and Santa. I’ve not checked yet but Parca Temple usually has a tree outside on the walkway too. Last year they left that tree up until July as I recall. But Heiharp is a cold and snowy place, so the tree seemed right at home in the cold weather.

Another new item has appeared with the recent release that helps me in my selling and will no doubt help you in your Holiday Shopping tasks. The Agency is a place where you can go to check prices or buy items that are for sale anywhere in 2Moons. In order to buy inside the agency you must carry a special amulet that is available from the store, but anyone can enter the agency and use it to check prices of items that are for sale.

Pricing Silver Argates

Here is the price listing for Silver Argates, a popular and very powerful upgrade stone that high level players use to enhance their weapons and armor. As you can see, the items are easily sorted by price and by selecting the middle of the list, it is easy to determine the median selling price for the item.

I”ve included some other pictures of the agency.

Once you price your goods in your shop, then you must sit in the square and wait on passers-by to buy your items. Or of course, folks visiting the agency will see your goods in the lists sorted by category and can purchase directly in the agency. But while you sell, you can’t be doing anything else in 2Moons. It can get awfully boring sitting for hours waiting on those buyers I can tell you. You will notice only a few folks selling in the square. I usually sell in Asray rather than Kalibus. As you can see in the gallery, Kalibus is quite a mad house with all the sellers.

But there is plenty of time after the sales to kill monsters and do quests, and I get hints about the best places to hunt and the best quests from my older siblings.

May the five gods protect you,

Demon Flayer

Demon Spear

I am Demon Spear, an Aloken. I’m writing this to let you all know that my brothers and sisters and I have all reached level 68 here in the world of 2Moons. It has been a long road to get here, and we have far to go, but by helping each other with loot, and sometimes DIL, and by working with other folks here in parties, we have been able to progress to level 68 which gives us our new armor and a new weapon at level 66.

Our little brother Windy Lancer is at level 56, but he is following  the path of the dual axes and is progressing rapidly. He will receive hand-me-down weapons from Windy Flayer and will be able to save his DIL for his wings at level 102.

We all look forward to working for our wings at level 102. That is the true reward for all of our hard work. While there are many levels beyond that, we all see obtaining our wings at a major step in our lives here.

Good luck to all of you and here is hoping that the five gods will protect you in your journeys.

- Demon Spear

Closeup of Sandy

Whew, we made it. It was quite a struggle to get to level 67 and my new armor. I’ve tried several places to work, but Castor Cave L2 has been the most productive. I worked some at Crespo but this often took too many pots. I quckly found that Draco Desert did not work well. While I can get a lot of Exp from the monsters there, one mistep and I’m dead and the pot cost is very high. I have had the best progress in Castor Cave working the sections with Algols.

I joined a Guild for a while, but soon found that the guild was really just a private chat channel for the leader and a few of his friends. The guild chat among a few members is a constant annoyance while you are trying to work. I finally just left the guild after a few days.

Now that I have my new weapon and armor I can work more effectively in Crespo and perhaps after a few levels, I’ll go back to Draco.

During my work I did run into a group one day in Castor and we partied for a while. I was able to gain about 50% of a level during that afternoon. The Mage class really works best in a party since the AOE [area of effect] skills that I have are not well used when I work by myself. All my skills use a lot of MP [energy] and recharge slowly, so working in a party allows me to level more quickly since my skills take advantage of the mobs.

May the gods protect you,

Sandy

WindyLancer

Hello. WindyLancer here. I’m a level 56 now after working up through the levels to Castor Cave L2. I was born in a separate server from my brothers and sisters, but in the great update that brought Aloken to our world, I was moved to the same server as the rest of the group. This allowed them to share loot and help with funding my armor. I have progressed quickly with hand-me-downs from WindyFlayer.

I’m at level 56 now and have a full set of fortified Radiance armor and some powerful axes. It may not be long now that I’ll catch up with WindyFlayer and have to wait for his hand-me-downs as he levels up. That won’t be a problem. I’ll be patient has he works toward level 102 and his wings.

We have recently found that Argates sell for 8-12M Dil so saving for our wings may not be as hard as we once thought.

May the gods protect you.

WindyLancer

Sandy Dunewinds in Crespo

I’m working from level 60 in Crespo – a place of strong monsters. I can kill the monsters with my powerful fire, lightning and ice skills, but they cause a lot of damage, so it takes a lot of pots. Since the skills have long cycle times I need to use several skills rapidly to do damage to the monsters and if I also have to manually trigger pots it’s way to complicated. So I’m trying some Auto Pots. But at first I messed up and purchased pots that were not automatic.

Automatic pots are placed in your F key slots and will automatically trigger themselves the level of HP or MP [ Health or Energy] reaches a lower level.

These auto-pots reduce the keystroke load to allow me to level up more easily. All the other characters have skills that are such that auto pots have not been required, but for this character at this level, auto pots make it possible.

The auto pots are purchased from the Acclaim store for real money. It costs about $2USD for 1000 pots of any of these types. I made a mistake and purchased the manual pots first, so I hope to use those up later.

After working a while in Crespo without auto pots, I hooked up with a level 86 mage who wanted to make a party for the Treasure of Crespo. So together with a level 66 knight, we three headed off across the snow to try the Treasure. The knight and I were able to kill some of the early mobs, but after we met the mobs of Zombies we both died quite quickly. After that I tried to stay back, but got caught once more by the mobs and had to walk back into the dungeon to join the group. After that I stayed well back from the mobs as our leader pressed on into the breach to kill the mobs and bosses. I was able to help though, since twice I passed health pots to our leader to allow her to press on toward the goal. In the 30 minutes of the dungeon, I made up about 25 % toward my next level.

With Auto pots I was working the monsters in Crespo and making some progress. I was able to kill the Kolaigers and the Clays one or two at a time, but if they ganged up more than that I was easily killed even with Auto Pots. After a time I decided that I might be able to make better progress in Castor Cave 2F. After selling off my loot, I TP’d through Loa Castle to Castor Cave and did the run past the Vermouths to the area of Peccare. The beasts were easy to kill using alternating Ice, Lighting and Fire skills.

Lightning Skill

For the past couple of weeks, the loot has included health and energy candy that gives a boost for 5 minutes. This can be a great advantage.

All Candied Up

I hope to be able to continue to work in Castor Cave using the Auto Pots to reach level 68 and my next level of armor. I find that it takes about 500 pots to level up and each 1000 pots costs about $8USD. It is good that the other character types can level easily without the pots and I hope that soon I can move beyond their use.

It took about 500 of Health and Energy pots to level up about 70% to level 61. Assuming that I could progress two levels with 1000 HP and MP pots, which is very optimistic, then it would cost ( 70 levels * $5 = $350 ) to progress to level 140. This is very optimistic based on the progressive nature of leveling. Also it is very expensive compared with the $15 / mo to play World of Warcraft.

May the five gods protect you,

Sandy Dunewinds

Level 36

On September 24, 2Moons went down for a day to do the upgrade that allowed me and my sisters to come to America and Europe from Korea where my kind have been playing in Dekaron. At the same time the servers were reorganized. This had the effect of moving eight servers to four, so things have been quite a bit more crowded recently. Many high level players have been helping my sisters to level up, but I have worked mostly by myself. I had some great help from my brothers and sisters to get powerful stones for my armor and weapons and DIL to allow me to upgrade my equipment.

With powerful equipment and armor I was able to reach level 24 in only one day. Today I’m at level 55, have my new weapon at level 54 and my new Violet Armor which is fully fortified with level 21 medials. I thought you might like to see my photos that I have taken along the way showing my armor and weapons. I am working to catch up with my brothers and sisters who are almost all working at level 68.

I’ll talk to you again when I make some more progress.

- DemonSpear

Windy Flayer here. It was pretty easy for me to level up to 60. Using Brandish, a dual weapon skill, I was able to kill the Monsters of Crespo and level fairly quickly. I look forward to working to higher levels at Crespo. While Crespo is a good place to level up, it’s not that good a place to hunt for stones to fortify armor and weapons, so I often take sorties to other areas to harvest stones from Akris.

Hello there. I’m Windy Squall. I too have been able to work in Crespo. While I don’t kill as quickly as Flayer, I have amazing strength to resist attacks while I kill, so the Kolaiger elephants can’t kill me as I work to reduce them to dust with my repeated pounding. My powerfully fortified Phobia Gauntlets are ready to reduce Crespo monsters to bloody masses of flesh.

Hello, I’m Vengefull Breeze. As a summoner I have minions from the under-realm to assist me. In Crespo, Selaime and my fortified twinswords have helped me to vanquish the Kolaiger and Clay monsters as well as the weaker monsters of this area. I will continue to work this area for some time to reach higher levels.

As a Segnale, I have been working in Castor Cave killing Lasputin Knights and Valkrie. Crespo monsters are too strong for me to attack efficiently. I have good healing, strength enhancement skills and so I am very effective at helping a party.

Hello from Loa Castle. This is Sandy Dunewinds. As an Incar mage I have powerful skills but my killing rate and protection is not yet good enough to make efficient progress in Crespo. I’ve had the most luck working in Castor Cave killing Lasputin Knights and Valkrie. I hope soon to be strong enough to work in Crespo so that I can make faster progress. Leveling is long and painful work now, but soon I hope it will be better. I have a strong fortified Lenovare wand to use in my future work and strong armor, so I hope soon to be hunting in Crespo with my brethren.

Hi, Lady Stormwind here. As a Segita Hunter I have some amazing dagger skills and these have allowed me to hunt with my brothers in Crespo. Someday I’m sure that my bow and crossbow skills will be more powerful, but for now I’m content to kill with my Silent Killer and Rolling Attack skills using a well fortified dagger.

Sandy Dunewinds

Lady Stormwind

Soul Aura

Windy Squall

Windy Flayer

Vengeful Breeze

Folks keep saying that it works, but it does not work for any of my characters on any of the servers that I have tried.

If you look at the interface casually it appears ok, but if you actually try to send mail, you can’t.

The Mail Interface Previously Looked like this:

Notice the SEND and CANCEL buttons at the bottom of the left mail window.

Here is the new interface as of 4.6.16.

Notice that absence of the SEND and CANCEL buttons in the left window.

It would seem that the mail interface is being removed. And this version allows mail messages to be retrieved for the 29 or fewer days that mail messages are being held until they expire.

I never saw an announcment or rational for why mail is being removed.

If mail does not look this way for you, then take a screen shot and show me your interface.

- windy

Hello, from Requies Coast. We brothers and sisters are all at level 30 or above now and are hunting monsters in Requies Coast. We expect to be here working until about level 50. At this point we are hunting lobsters called Sylvans.

These lobsters are plentiful and relatively easy to kill once we are at level 30 or so. Some of us have starting hunting here before the others. Windy Flayer and Vengeful Breeze were first to hunt lobsters. I was able to start as soon as I reach level 30. At that point I was able to kill them quickly using my Flame Burst skill.

After a kill like this, lunch is served, and these lobsters are mighty tastey as you might imagine.

I do not yet have an area destruction skill and it will be some time yet before I get such a skill. But I am able to make progress in my training.

- Windy Squall

Hello from Requies Coast. I’m Soul Aura and I’m hunting lobsters too. As you can see my new Level 30 weapon and my Blood Hit skill can kill lobsters pretty quickly.

Each hit of the blood whip gives me more than 500 damage, often as much as 600.

Using the Blood Hit skill I can get many powerful hits in a row to quickly dispatch a single lobster.

Using this skill, it only takes only a few seconds to dispatch a lobster. At this point I do not yet have an area damage skill, but I’m able to make good progress here in Requies Coast killing lobsters.

- Soul Aura

Hello. I too am hunting in Requies Coast now. Since my skills do not allow me to direct power quickly on a single target. My skills since level 24 have been directing on multiple targets close by.  I have been concentrating in Denebe killing mantis and miners. My brothers and sisters were long since able to move on to Requies Coast to hunt Heilom and Sylvan Lobsters. I played the mantis and miners to my strengths using the Fire Blaze skill and Lightning Chase skill. The mantis will chase you and surround you, up to three of them at a time. By running around and collecting them and then triggering a Fire Blaze and maybe followed by a Lightning Chase I could kill all three quickly. This required that I constantly boost my health and mana energy power. The Miners do not chase you, but provide more exp points per kill. So I ran around and hit them with my wand or sent a fire ball to hit them to draw them to me to kill them with Fire Blaze.

When I reached level 34 I was able to move to Requies and killed Heiloms using the same strategy as I used with Miners. Now that I’m at level 36 I can skill three Heiloms or two Sylvan lobsters using this technique.

I now have powerful skills for lightning, fire and ice to help in my training. Here is Fire Blaze on some Heiloms.

Here is Fire Fury on a Lobster.

Here is Lightning Chase

So I have a clear training path to high levels.

- Sandy Dunewinds

Hello from 2Moons. We have all made good progress since we last spoke. We brothers and sisters are all above level 30 now, although it has been a trial for some to get there. Most of us are beginning to get our wide area damage skills now, but Soul Aura, as a Segnale, and Windy Squall as a Bagi Warrior do not have these skills until much later in their training. So they are struggling.

As an Incar Magician, I got my first area damage skill and a very powerful lighting skill recently, and let me tell you, it is a real help in gaining a higher level. Here are some pictures of the skills in use and you can see what a benefit they are:

This is Lightning Chase and you can see it does serious damage to a single foe in the path of the lightning strike.

This is Fire Blaze and this is the first of my skills that does damage to more than one foe at a time.

I have used it effectively by rounding up a number of foes at the same time and then triggering the fire as they are standing close to me attacking. Every two or three times I need to use a health boost, but it is worth it for the increased experience points I get from killing all those foes. Lizardmen Knights and Mantis are favorites for this method since a few of them will attack me at the same time if I run past them. I can collect two Lizardmen Knights and as many as six or eight Mantis before triggering the Fire Blaze.

As you can see in this picture, some folks spend real money to get mounts to ride in the game.

There are several mounts available for purchase and you can purchase them for a limited time, or for more money you can purchase them permanently. I think I’ll continue to walk for quite sometime.

In other news, I saw a summoner using his demon to help him gain experience while he just stood around.

This only works with a Summoner. In this case the fellow has just found a placed where mantis spawn every few seconds. When they spawn, they notice him and his demon and attack. The demon kills them and he gets the experience points. This works fine as long as your armor is strong enough to avoid any damage from the Mantis, and your demon does not die. You’ll see Vengeful’s new demons in his part of this letter. His demons are very strong. I’m not sure if he is going to be doing this or not. We shall see.

Well that’s all for now.

- Sandy

Hi. This is Soul Aura. Whew.. I finally made it to Level 30 and it was quite a struggle. No area damage skills for me for quite a while. I have some more powerful whip skills and as you can see from the glow a very powerful whip. But my skills only allow me to kill one foe at a time so far. That makes it more difficult to gain experience since I need to deal with each one separately. But I’m making progress as you can see. I have my new weapon and armor now that I’m at level 30.

Here is one of my more Powell skills in action – Blood Whip. This skill performs a rapid lashing of the whip several times across one foe to cut it to shreds.

As you can see, the Blood Whip does quite a bit of damage compared with the normal whip.

So the good news is that I can now attack powerful foes and dispatch them rapidly. The not so good news is that I still need to attack foes one at a time. Oh well, my time will come. My weapons and armor are the best, so I am ready for the challenge.

- Soul

Hello. Lady Stormwind here with my new level 30 cross bow and a wonder it is too. I have not yet fortified it, but Windy Flayer found this one with slots already forged into it and my brothers have the stones, so it won’t be long before it glows. I have a very strong bow that glows very brightly and kills very efficiently. I’ve been using that bow since level 24 and it still serves well. And I now have a new glowing dagger too.

With the rolling attack with the dagger I can take out several nearby foes all at once with multiple dagger attacks. Like Sandy, I can attract several Lizardmen Knights or Mantis to me and then send them all to the netherworld in a very short time. And like Sandy, this requires that I use a health pot every so often to stay healthy. But it means that I can train faster.

At this point my bow and cross bow are so powerful that I can take on strong foes from a distance with only 2 or 3 arrows, so the dagger, while important, may not be my best training strategy.

My new Tempest armor is bright and shiny don’t you think? It is much more feminine than the previous Fairy armor and the Tempest armor gives me much better protection. I continue to wear the fortified helmet that I have been using because it is more powerful than the Tempest helmet.

That’s all for now. Keep your fletchings dry.

- Lady

Hi. This is Vengeful Breeze. I have now reached level 36. While I do not have any area attack skills like Sandy and Lady do, I have the Twin Swords – now in the Denebola style – which are very quick to kill. So I have been able to train very quickly. At level 36, I have now retired Grewpain, the demon parrot and have two new demons at my command. My favorite is Regulus the lightning Lion. He is quite powerful as you can see here.

Here Regulus has dispatched a Lizardmen Knight with a powerful blow sending the pieces of the knight flying in all directions. Do not attack me while I am in the company of Regulus.

I also have Aldebaran, a genie from the underworld, at my beck and call.

He is quite formitable too, but his attacks lack the raw power of Regulus. I will be working with both of these powerful demons as I train.

We haven’t heard from Windy Flayer for a while. I hear news that he has reached level 31 as well and I’m sure we will be hearing news from him soon.

- Vengeful

Managing a stable of characters in an RPG is a complicated process. My limited experience with MMORPGs indicates that it can be more efficient to build more than one character at a time. At least it is more interesting. In the two MMORPGs that I’ve tried I’ve built several characters to try to learn more about the game and the character classes. In 2Moons I’m currently running six characters. This is efficient since as they level up all the interesting loot is saved for the other characters and one higher level character can finance a lower level character’s purchase of expensive items.

But, the downside of doing this is you have to keep track of all the loot that each character has and what they need. In Guild Wars this was easy because there is an account-wide storage facility where all the loot is kept. But with 2Moons, each character has a separate stash, or storage locker, so you have to remember what’s in each one to avoid wasting time with items that you already have collected.

I’ve started to build an Open Office database to store this data for my 2Moons characters. I’ve got the data scheme designed and some reports done, but at this point I need Forms to fill out the various data. The data is in Normal Form and I’m not sure how to build a form to allow entry of the data. First let’s review the data design and the queries.

This is the character table.

This is the armor table.

The details are not important unless you are a 2Moons player. There are too many types of armor to have a table for that. Instead of a Armor Name Table, we just list the armor name. Each armor type has 5 matching pieces. Some intermediate armor types only have one or two parts, but we ignore that detail. This table allows us to keep the status of each bit of armor that we need and which pieces we have.

But the interesting case is the stones case. For the collection of stones, there are only a few types so that there is a table of stone names. And we want a report of the number of stones kept by each character.

This is in fully normal form, just a list of the character id, stone type id, and the number of stones.

Here is a query that gets the list for a report:

So that is clear enough.

But what about the forms to fill out the data. So far I’ve been filling out the data manually by editing the tables. This is ok for the characters, but for the Armor, Weapons and Stones, this is not convienent since the numbers of the character records and stone types have to be entered manually.

I’d like to have a form for the Armor that allows the Character to be set with a pull-down, and a Stones form that allows the Character and Stone Type to be set from pull-down lists.

Can someone show me an example of this?

Here is the Open Office Database file: 2moons_characters_example

Thanks,

- Windy

Update:

Thanks to VooBase on the OpenOffice.org Forums for suggestions and pointers to using a listbox to solve the problem. I have solved the problem and the forms work just fine.

Here are the forms to modify the Armor, Weapons and Stones held by each of the characters. The characters entries can be made or modified by using any of these forms. The list of stone types has to be modified manually by editing the table at this point, but adding a form to do this is trivial.

[All the data in the database is correct- these are my 2Moons characters. But the account names have been modified obviously, for security reasons. See you in game if you like. ]

Here is the Armor Form:

By selecting any field in the character field above, you can scan through the characters and modify any fields you like. By selecting the subform below, you can add or modify entries in the armor table. Note that the character field is a list, so you can pull-down from the available characters. This allows you to move armor among characters. Note that the armor is sorted by the highest level first, which is normally the most interesting armor.

Here is the Weapons form with the character list pulled down:

This form works the same as the Armor form.

Here is the Stones Form. This form has two pulldown lists, one for character and one for stones type:

And here is the Stone_ID column open showing the settings:

The Wizard does not work in the Spreadsheet format of the subform. But I was able to create a field in the form using the wizard and then copied the settings from the List Control to the column to get it to work. The character_ID column control settings are identical to the separate control. I wrote the Select statement for the Stone_ID column by example from the Character_ID field.  I have no idea what the bound field means.

The other issue I ran into is how to add the label for the entire form above the fields. To solve this problem, I changed the anchor point for all the controls to Page and then moved them down. Then created a label, anchored it to the page, moved it and set the font to size 24.

Each time you save the form, you need to go to the database dialog and save it all too. If something crashes without you doing this, you will lose all your work, as I did. BTW, this was built with Open Office 2.4.

Here is the updated example:2moons_characters_example2

Enjoy, if this application helps you with 2Moons or in any other way, I’d prefer an acknowledgment and a note saying how it helped. DISCLAIMER: Like all software you find, your use of this is at your own risk. If there are bugs, I’ll help if I can.

Cheers, and see you online.

- windy

This is a report from we brothers now that we are all near level 30. Vengeful Breeze was the first one to cross level 31. Level 31 is a significant milestone since it is the level where we get new shiny armor. As you can see, my Thunder Armor set is quite nice and shiny. The miracle coating sheds all the gore that is a constant problem when killing the monsters required to advance in this world.

You can also see my bright and glowing swords. These are new at level 30 – The Royal Bastard model. As luck would have it, an advanced knight dropped a fully fortified version of this sword near the Stash – storage locker – back when I was a level 24 or so and I snapped it up and saved it. I knew the value of a fortified sword. My last set of swords were Amazing Horns that I fortified myself with 3 times +33 damage for an extra 99 damage. They packed quite a punch for a level 24 weapon set. My experiments have indicated several things in the choice of weapons for my class – Azure Knight, and we have all learned similar lessions for our classes.

High Damage Weapons are key to success. Armor needs to be sufficient, but nothing can help one progress more than high damage weapons.

For the Azure Knight class, the best weapon combination that I have found is two swords. These have a high damage rate and if properly fortified do more damage per second than other classes of weapons. Double Axes, also fortified, are also good, but as luck would have it, I have found sword pairs that are more easily fortified, or have come that way, in the case of my find of the Royal  Bastard. Here is a view of these new swords and their specifications:

As you can see, the sword I found, in my right hand, has lightning damage which contributes to its purple glow. The one I fortified has pure physical pain, which glows orange. The damge they deal is truely awesome. As you will see in Windy Squall’s report, with these powerful weapons we are able to achieve the next level in about an hour of heavy work with the right level foes. Pick foes that are too easy and you spend too much time chasing around to find them, and if the foes are too powerful, then you spend too much time killing each one and even tho the experience points are higher, your leveling time is increased. If you can kill each foe in just a few blows, in 3 to 5 seconds, then your leveling time is minimized. We have all learned this lesson in our travels.

I have been working in Requies Coast killing Heilons. These are tame foes that are plentiful and easily killed. The coast is quite a walk from Denebe town, but the loot drops and the plentiful foes are worth the trip. I was able to find many weapons and armor pieces for me and my brothers and sisters there. I only had to buy two of the five pieces of Thunder Armor – the helm and gauntlets. All the rest was collected during my hunts.

Happy New Year, and good hunting,

- Windy Flayer

Hello from Denebe and Happy New Year. I too have reached a milestone – not yet to level 30 for my new Oxhorn Armor, but I have reached level 26 and have been using my new fortified Mach Punch gauntlets. At one point I thought I might continue to use the previous Ogre Knuckles that I fortified back at level 18, but I found that after a few levels I had all the stones and DIL required to upgrade the new Mach Punch weapons. They do much more damage; each blow averages about 500 damage points as I typically am configured with my damage boost rings.

At level 25 I obtained a new skill as well, called Chain Burst. This is the first skill in the spirit side of my training and it brings a whole new level of pain to my adversaries. While each blow brings about 500 damage, the chain burst skill sends a burst of over 1000 damage to all the foes in front of me. Here is a picture of Chain Burst in action.

This wipes out much of the health of any set of foes and this allows just a couple of punches to finish them off.

While I am a formitable opponent and can take on very powerful monsters with my great armor and vast health reserves, leveling up quickly requires quick kills, so working on Lizardman Knights seems the right mix for rapid leveling. About three blows are all that’s required to scatter their remains and let me move quickly on to the next one.

Keep your armor clean and your boots dry. Happy New Year.

- Windy Squall

Happy New Year. As you can see, I too have reached level 31 and have new armor and swords. There is a poweful staff too that can deal great damage, but nothing beats the dual swords for quick killing power. These are Denebola twinswords, first available at level 30, and I have fortified them. I have great sympathy for Windy Flayer for when he fortifies two swords, each sword must be fortified with three stones at great cost in time and DIL. But to fully fortify both of my twinswords requires only three stones. My armor is complete now at level 31, although I am keeping my previous helm since it is more powerful and gives me great energy and health. I will upgrade when a better helm is available.

You can see my constant compainion Grewpain, the parrot demon. His lightning bolts now exceed 300 damage, so he is quite a help in killing monsters. As I progress, level 36 is a large milestone for me since at that point I gain the assistance of the huge Genie called Aldebaran. I look forward to his service in my progress toward level 100 and beyond. There are many other demons at my command as I progress as well as skills to vanquish the monsters and foes of this land.

To all my brothers and sisters in this land, Happy New Year, and watch your back.

- Vengeful Breeze

Greetings and Happy Holidays from Braiken Castle and surrounding territories. I am called Windysquall and I’m a Bagi Warrior. I’m sure you can look my race up on the 2Moons site, so I’ll move on with my Christmas letter. We are now six, we brothers and sisters in 2Moons. I’ve started the letters since I’d like to thank all my brothers and sisters for their great sacrifice to provide me with my new enhanced weapons.

Here is a picture of me with my Ogre Knuckles beside the Christmas Tree in Braiken Castle.

My brothers and sisters have paid and provided great stones to allow me to upgrade my knuckles. To get maximum power and this great glow, you apparently need 4 stone sockets in a weapon, although some daggers glow with only two sockets. We all found this process of sockets and stones very confusing at first, but we have figured it out with a little trial and error. Even the 2Moons wiki is not very much help with the actual process, or at least we could not find it. Lady Stormwind was the first one to figure out the process so here is a description of the process she discovered:

1. If you find a weapon as a drop that already has sockets, then you can continue directly with fortifying those sockets. Continue with step 4.
2. If your weapon doesn’t have any sockets or if you want more sockets, then you take the weapon to an alchemist along with some stones that you also find as drops. The stones you will need are the ones that say they are for weapons. This is very odd, but apparently the stones that you take to the alchemist do not actually contribute to the weapon, but only to the process of making the socket, so you should use your low level stones with the alchemist and save your high level stones for the later step of the process.
3. You ask the alchemist to fortify a socket and hand her the weapon and some of the low level stones. The more stones you give her at this point the higher the possibility is that the process will proceed, so give her a lot of stones. The process is quite expensive – 10,000 DIL for a low level weapon for each socket. If the process fails, we are not sure what happens. At least you lose your money and stones. I am not sure whether the weapon is also lost. I would hope not.
4. Now you have a weapon with one or more sockets. These show up as empty indentations in the weapon in your inventory. If you are lucky enough to find a weapon with the sockets already there you can begin to drop the stones in there in the next step. You should create as many sockets as you can afford if you want to have the weapon glow. As I said, Lady Stormwind has two daggers – one she passed to Soul Aura – that glow very nicely with only two sockets.
5. Pick your strongest stones – those with the most weapon upgrades – for this step. Click on the stone in you inventory and then drop it in the socket you desire in the weapon. You will get a chance to confirm that this is what you intend to do. Apparently it is possible to remove a stone from a socket, but this costs more money, so avoid it if possible.

Here is a picture of my Ogle Knuckles with their sockets filled:

As you can see, the stones that Windy Flayer provided as his Christmas present to me are each +33 Damage, so the knuckle is a total of +132 Damage more powerful. This is quite an upgrade for a weapon of this level. The normal damage is normally 112 at most, and so this more than doubles the damage of the weapon.

As you can see from the following picture when I’m using it, my level and the other upgrades that I’m using cause much more damage to be dealt.

Here’s a picture of my new weapons just before I started using them in the cave:

You can see they are glowing nicely. When I was using them in the cave though, something very strange happened: After about an half an hour, one of the knuckles blew out:

I had to take them off and put them back on to restart them:

So thanks very much to all my brothers and sisters that collected DIL and stone to allow me to upgrade my Ogre Knuckles. I’m killing monsters much more quickly now so I’m leveling up much faster. I may delay the weapon upgrade for quite a while since these weapons may be more powerful than the standard weapons at the next level. I’ll have to test and see what happens.

Thanks again, and happy holidays,

- WindySquall

Hello and Happy Holidays. Just a short note to wish you a happy holidays and to let you know how I’m doing. I’m trained as a Segita Hunter, so I use Bow, Crossbow and Dagger.  I was the first to discover the weapon upgrade strategy and have discovered that when I use the dagger and the right skills I can kill faster than with the bow or cross bow. I’m sure that will change when I get stronger skills for the dagger, but right now the dagger is best. My Christmas presents were  level 24 and level 30 daggers from WindyFlayer and Vengeful Breeze along with some armor pieces.

Thanks again for all the presents.

- Lady Stormwind

Hello, and Happy Holidays. I’m a Vicious Summoner with swords and a magic staff. I’m very powerful with my standard weapons and my pet Grewpain – a parrot sort of demon that I can summon to help me fight. I also have a Tarantula, but it is ugly waddling along behind me so I rarely use it. With my powerful weapons, spells and demons, I have not had to do weapon upgrades to make very good progress in my craft.

Here is a picture of me in Castor Cave with my Grewpain.

Happy Holidays and I’m happy to have been help with funds and stones and equpment for all my brothers and sisters.

- Vengeful Breeze

Happy Holidays. I’m Sandy Dunewinds. I am an Incar Magician which is like an Elementalist in Guid Wars, so Sandy Dunewinds of Elona and I are kindred spirits.

I have had much trouble with my studies. While I have plenty of energy and health, my weapons and skills do not kill with enough power to allow me to level up quickly. Now that we have figured out the secret of powerful weapons, I understand that I’m next on the list for a powerful staff upgrade. When I reason level 24 – I’m now 23 so not long – I hope to receive funds and stones to allow me to upgrade my Divine Staff with 4 powerful stones so that I can make much more progress and keep up with the rest of the brothers and sisters.

Talk to you again soon and thank you all.

- Sandy Dunewinds

Happy Holidays! This is Windy Flayer an Azure Knight. I’m at level 23 just today and thought I would share some upgrade experiments that I’ve been doing. I’ve been using double axes, not upgraded, and  have been getting about 370 or so damage per hit with that. The double axes do more damage than the larger two handed weapons because the hit rate is higher. Double swords work in this way as well, but do less damage per hit than axes.

One of the sword types that we have been collecting is the Amazing Horn, and I have three of these. I’ve not been using them since I have some Twin Spades and those cause more damage per hit. With the normal swords I was getting about 350 per hit and the axes give about 370. I decided to experiment with a weapon upgrade to the Amazing Horn that we found that had one socket already. I collected a few stones from the others and with funds that I had, I added another socket and added two +33 Damage stones to the sword. The results were quite amazing. Upgrading one sword apparently has the effect of upgrading the hits from both swords. With only two sockets, the sword does not glow, but the effect is to give about 100 more damage per hit. Here are some pictures that show the damage points.

First the unmodified swords. This is from a pair of Amazing Horns.

Now for the pair of Amazing Horns, only one of them is upgraded, remember.

Notice that the typical damage is about 100 points more than with the normal swords.

And the magic damage is about 100 points higher too. At least I assume that this is what the blue number means. I’m not really sure.

Here are the stats for the normal sword by itself.

Here is the stats for the upgraded sword when it’s used with another sword. Notice the upgrade to the damage just because there are two swords.

Dual weapons can be either two swords or two axes or a sword and an axe. All the combinations get a dual weapon benefit.

Happy Holidays.

- Windy Flayer

2Moons is an MMORPG that is free to download and free to play. As we have seen, Guild Wars is purchased and then is free from monthly fees, while World of Warcraft is purchased and there is a monthly fee to play. This article will compare 2Moons with Guild Wars. I’m by no means an expert on MMORPGs, but my extensive 3D and software experience may allow me to lend some insights into what is going on with 2Moons.

For the legal stuff see this post.

The first question that arrises as one considers 2Moons is the issue of profitability. How can a company make any money with a game that is free to download and free to play? If one reads the terms and conditions, one finds that advertisements are mentioned even though at this time, none appear in the game. At this time, there are materials for sale at an Acclaim store for real money, which enhance the game experience. These materials come in several general types:

1. Pets. These are animal companions – side kicks which do not apparently effect game play- or animal mounts – horses and other beasts to ride. Pets are available for purchase, for a limited time only.
2. Starter packages – packages of materials to help with game play for low level players. None are available for high level players.
3. Costumes – These affect appearance only, hence the name costume, and are not armor or weapons.
4. Storage upgrades – for your on-character storage – or for your Stash, which is like the Xunlai Chest, except that it is per character and not per account.

It seems quite clear that Acclaim is not allowing one to purchase a means to become more powerful or successful in the game, but only to allow one to look cooler in the game.

2Moons is not like Second Life. The 2Moons currency, DIL, does not exchange with real money. Acclaim coins are used to purchase 2Moons things on the Store and these are purchased with your credit card or from your bank account with real money. They are very sensitive to those trying to charge real money for game loot.

I first took a look at 2Moons about one year ago in November 2007. At that time, there seemed to be several problems with the game.

1. Leveling up took forever. I worked for many hours and was not yet powerful enough to kill more than a few small insects.
2. Based on the leveling problem it looked as if the game would take forever to play successfully, however, there seemed to be lots of folks running around with very fancy and high power weapons and armor. I presumed at the time that these enhancements were purchased for real money. I may be wrong. Certainly, it does not appear that this is possible now.

My recent experiences are very different. Perhaps there were real changes in the game, or perhaps my experience with Guild Wars allows me more skill in my playing of the game.

2Moons has several problems compared with Guild Wars. Here they are in order from more serious to trivial:

1. There is no complete and comprehensive wiki as there is with Guild Wars, so it is not easy to find out what you should do next and how you should approach it.
2. The map and travel system is complex and not easily used. If you walk a long way into a map and want to get back to the castle where you started, and where there are services, it’s a long walk back. There are something called return scrolls, but these apparently cost money. This seems to be pretty silly. Perhaps dying is the easiest way to get home. I’ll try that next time. Resurrection shrines do not appear to be local, although there are things that look like shrines in areas, but their operation is not clear.
3. The help system is very incomplete. Ok to start playing, but not for an advanced player. The wiki is missing again.
4. There does not appear to be a cohesive story line that keeps one’s interest. The goal of the game appears to be to kill things and look cool doing it. Looking cool is a big part of the game. The high end armor and weapons glow and the pets and mounts are huge and ostentatious. Guild Wars campaigns each have a boogy man – or more than one – and the story is all about saving the local or global civilization from the boogy man. I don’t see any such thing in 2Moons.
5. The Ranger – Hunter- character has to purchase arrows. How lame is that? None of the other characters have to spend money to keep their weapons running.
6. Some of the characters are very weak and their attacks are not obvious OOTB. Out of the Box, the elementalist – magician- is easily killed by the smallest spider that she attempts to attack. All characters should attack the same way and have about the same power OOTB. Clearly the magician lacks something. I need to learn to play her to kill a spider.
7. The trading design stinks in the extreme. You must sit and be a vendor and at the time your account is frozen. You must stay logged on and can do nothing else or sit and spam the world about your warez. This is like GW, but nowhere in GW does one see dozens upon dozens of people camped out trying to sell things for 100s of K DIL. Thank goodness there are merchants, who do not give good prices, but let you unload your inventory and get some DIL [gold] for your loot.
8. Chatting with someone else in-game is hard. The system is there, but it’s cumbersome. Much more so than GW. Since the game is 17 and up, it’s not clear why they don’t have a voice system. The problem with voice in GW, which is PG rated, is that there is no way to censor a voice system. The GW chat system is censored so that bad words like f___ and s___ are blanked out.
9. 2Moons does not have a shared tactical map that you can draw on, like GW. This is essential for party play since any chat system will be too cumbersome during battle.

Other things are just different.

1. The Stash is like the GW Xunlai Chest except that it is free and is per character rather than per account. But there is a mail system that allows moving items between characters, so a high level character picking up loot can pass it to another character in the account, or anyone else for that matter. Upgrades to the size of the stash cost you real money – Dollars not DIL.
2. The skills are built into a tree like system and so which skills you will have is pre-ordained. You purchase them as you level up. This is much simpler than GW, but allows much less flexibility.
3. The leveling system does not cap at level 20, but keeps going through level 60 or perhaps farther.
4. The costs in game currency are quite manageable through at least level 15. The loot easily pays for good armor and there is no collection of crafting materials required. The biggest issue is getting the XP to level up and not purchasing the armor and weapons when you do. I find I often had collected the weapons at or shortly after reaching a level anyway. Not sure if this will continue after level 15.
5. The 2Moons Attribute point system is simpler, but strangely constrained. All character classes have the same four attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Health and Spirit.  Each time you level up you get 5 points, apparently. If you make the wrong choices in how you allocate the points to your Strength, Dexterity, Healing and Spirit, you are stuck. Do not do a Skill Reset since this simply wipes out all the skills out of your skill panel that you have purchased. I can see no point to this at all. You can choose which skills you equip on your tool bar, so having skills that you don’t use does not seem to be a burden. Not sure what they intend with Skill Reset. The inability to adjust your point assignment to Strength, Dexterity, Healing and Spirit attributes is strangely restrictive. You need to look carefully at the weapons that will be available at the next level and adjust your attributes upward to match those requirements. For example, if you want to use a new sword and a mace at the high level you need to examine them both. The sword may use Str:9, Dex:13 and the mace may require Str:11, Dex: 10. So you need to have Str:11, Dex13 to use them both. If you guess wrong, you have to live with it until you accumulate enough additional points to adjust the attributes. This could mean that that new level 15 weapon that you just got can’t be used until you go to level 16 or 17 and accumulate enough points to adjust the attributes to match the weapon. GW allows you to use a mismatched weapon, you just don’t get all the rated power of the weapon if you aren’t matched perfectly. And in GW, a big part of the game is adjusting the attribute levels to match the upcoming requirements of the mission or quest. You match the attributes, skill set and weapons together and may save this as a “build” that you can easily equip for future missions. No such thing in 2Moons.
6. Foes do not necessarily, or normally attack. You must attack first. This is fortunate since you are often surrounded by too many high level and low level foes and if they all attacked when you came near, you would not last long. There are a few foe types that do attack first, and their names usually start with Death, so they are easy to spot.
7. Parties are possible, but not necessary to level up at least through level 15. I have not yet seen a quest requiring a party. Again, the wiki would help here. Except for a few obvious quests, the right ones to do next are hidden. Lots of characters have quest markers, but after a couple of dialog panels, you often get “You must be a level 36 to take on this quest.” or something annoying like that. Seems that the quest hats might be hidden if you aren’t the right level to take on a quest. That’s what GW does, of course.
8. The foes are pretty stupid. AI is certainly not the word here. As I said, the foes, for the most part, do not attack you unless you attack them first, and this is a good thing given the number of foes. But they show no AI behavior either. They do not swarm, or move in groups or cooperate when attacked.
9. There is no such thing in the game as healing, or cooperative fighting. No Monks or Ritualists like Guild Wars has. In GW, we should remember, just like people work in parties, with heroes and henchmen, foes travel in mobs and have different roles in the mobs. Many mobs have monks and other specialized members and since the monks are healing the others, you had better take out the monks first. No such think in 2Moons. The only way to be mobbedin 2Moons is to use a range weapon on a couple of foes so that you end up attacking more than one. This is more of an accident than a feature of the game.
10. There are no heroes or henchmen. Heroes are AI NPCs that your character owns and controls. Henchmen are AI’s that you pickup at the nearest outpost and then take into battle in your party. In GW they are essential, since after level 20 you don’t really get any stronger, only smarter about how you fight. In 2Moons, you can’t have one or more AI NPCs fighting on your side. Of course, there is basically no AI that I have seen in the game, so heroes and henchmen are not really possible.

Here are some screen shots:

Leveling up is most easily done by finding a series of these at the correct level and killing it. It drops lots of loot and allows lots of XP and they are easy to kill. Just keep looking, they are not hard to find.

Characters

Here are 4 of the 6 character classes. Of course they provide Christmas hats for a nominal fee. Not sure if they will stop working after the holidays or not.

No way to customize your face, hair color or style or anything else. Everybody is a clone of the six character class prototypes. Cover it up with armor to customize yourself. GW has a number of ways to customize your hairstyle, skin color, face look and body height.

2Moons is 17 and up for blood and presumably for partial nudity, or at least very suggestive costumes. Clearly more skin showing than with GW.

Someone in the forums has compared all the character classes with WOW. Probably only the original version of Wow since I’m sure they have many more classes now.

Lots of folk camping out selling their loot. There is no crafting by characters, so all this is found loot being sold for exorbitant prices. It is possible to avoid all this.

It is all about how you look doing it. All areas are persistent, so you will run across other players killing there. Although the clip distance is very short, so you may not see them for long as they come in and out of view. You may find their loot they don’t pick up. The loot is reserved for the person killing a foe for the first few seconds, but after that it’s up for grabs. Presumably, the loot disappears after a while if no one picks it up.

Bottom Line

2Moons is a toy MMORPG, not a serious experience. But it can be an interesting way to get started with the genre as long as you don’t get stuck there before you move on to something more serious like GW or Wow- presumably. The price is certainly right. I suggest going into it with a friend so that you can investigate cooperative game play. Use Skype or Teamspeak or another voice system beside 2Moons and enjoy the persistent world together.

- windy

I was unable to find a disclaimer on the Acclaim site and so I’ve made up one which I believe is in the right spirit.

© 2003-2008 Acclaim, Inc. All rights reserved. All logos and trademarks connected with 2Moons are copyright by Acclaim. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Based on the normal rules for establishing a fan site, this site can refer to and use 2Moons references, game screen shots and other material. This site is non-commercial and does not solicit money or make profit in any way from the display or reference to 2Moons materials.

This is a 2Moons Unofficial Site in every way.