The Pellet Challenge

Marck · **Posted:** Sat Oct 06, 2007 4:28 pm

Captainmack's awesome 24 hour non-stop pellet run inspired us in the German community to set another record: We attempted to collect as many pellet points as possible within one hour. Unlike Captainmack, who did his run basically on his own, we made ours a team effort.

Captainmack made an average of 22,257 points per hour. Our team managed to let a single explorer collect 73,044 points within one hour! We used 15 Er'cana instances and dropped a total of 75 pellets. Please, check out the screenshots below showing the timestamps and the displays of the pellet counter before and after our attempt.

We believe that it is possible to collect even more points per hour. Therefore, we challenge you all to outperform our score!

It is part of the challenge to find a procedure which allows an explorer to collect and drop pellets at this or a better rate. Perhaps some people can come up with different (and maybe more efficient) ways than the one we used with our team. Of course, we would like to share our method with you at a later point in time.

[spoiler=Click here to see the screenshots of the KI before and after the run]
Before:

After:

[/spoiler]
The screenshots are genuine and not faked. We used only legal means available within the game and no exploits. If you do not want to trust our word before taking the challenge, then we are willing to repeat our run under verifiable conditions: Our team member who is going to collect the pellets ("pellet collector") will donate all of his or her current pellet points to a neighborhood whose imager has at least two free slots in the pellet highscore list. This will reset the pellet collector's KI counter to zero. After the run, the pellet collector will again donate all current pellet points to the same neighborhood. The score donated then is the score collected during the run.

We had great fun doing this and we hope to see a fun competition.

jclay101 · **Posted:** Sat Oct 06, 2007 5:00 pm

Congratulations! Nice job.

FTLNewsFeed · **Joined:** Sun Nov 12, 2006 6:29 am **Posts:** 132

Here's a tip for everyone:

It takes too much time to watch the pellet drop and the resulting animation so here's what you do...

1) Link in
2) After the letting go of the pellet and standing erect start backing up (down arrow key)
3) You'll end up with your back facing the book
4) Wait for the KI to flash and then click the book behind you
5) Click the book when it pops up

VOILA!

You get the score and you don't have to wait for the animation to finish, just link back to Er'cana and get another pellet, the pellet that didn't drop will be gone when you link back in with another pellet!

FTLNewsFeed

Romer Openfield · **Posted:** Sat Oct 06, 2007 7:04 pm

Awesome, nice going !!

And good tips, too.

Leighana · **Posted:** Sat Oct 06, 2007 7:37 pm

FTLNewsFeed wrote:

Here's a tip for everyone:

It takes too much time to watch the pellet drop and the resulting animation so here's what you do...

1) Link in
2) After the letting go of the pellet and standing erect start backing up (down arrow key)
3) You'll end up with your back facing the book
4) Wait for the KI to flash and then click the book behind you
5) Click the book when it pops up

VOILA!

You get the score and you don't have to wait for the animation to finish, just link back to Er'cana and get another pellet, the pellet that didn't drop will be gone when you link back in with another pellet!

FTLNewsFeed

You don't even have to wait for the KI to flash. I "place" the pellet then turn around, as soon as it lets me move, and run to the book. I click the book and link out. Sometimes the KI will flash before I link, but more often than not, it doesn't flash until I get back to Er'cana. I also start the next batch cooking before I drop the previous batch, and link directly to Relto after the last pellet.

BrettM · **Posted:** Sat Oct 06, 2007 8:03 pm

I would recommend dumping the points from any such competition to the imager in the Pellet Score hood, if it's available. (For that matter, I would recommend everyone making positive points use that hood to dump them.) That hood was created to help gather data on the total effort of the community, to get a handle on the progress that is actually being made since the DRC is being stingy with such information.

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Sat Oct 06, 2007 9:32 pm

I'd love to do this... if I could just get all five of my hoodmates in the cavern at the same time...

BrettM wrote:

I would recommend dumping the points from any such competition to the imager in the Pellet Score hood, if it's available.

Do you mean the Pellet Points' Bevin?
That would be cool because then we could see everyone's score together.

Altydwarber · **Posted:** Sat Oct 06, 2007 10:02 pm

Wow, great job.

congratulations!!

Captain Irem · **Joined:** Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:23 pm **Posts:** 2

Congratulations !

The German community has shown what team work and pulling together can accomplish . great job !

astro · **Posted:** Sun Oct 07, 2007 10:04 am

If you link out too fast from the pellet well you might get the points, but the pellet is not necessarily dropped into the well. I have sometimes, when I was too fast linking out, tried to link back again without bringing a new pellet, and then I could watch my old pellet being dropped into the well!!

What I mean is, you get the points for sure, but I am not sure if the pellet is having affect to the lake if you have not seen it being dropped.

It might of cause also be a bug in the game, and the KI flashing should then guarantee that the lake has "registered" the pellet.

tachzusamm · **Posted:** Sun Oct 07, 2007 2:58 pm

For the people who are reading this thread and thinking "yes, interesting but nothing for me because it seems to be boring to collect pellet points" I should mention:
No, it was not boring! Actually, it was very exciting and much fun.
It was interesting to organize with the team, to develop the procedure in the team, and the final run was extremely thrilling.

Try it, and you will never think: "Can't wait for the next episode." :lol:

Leighana · **Posted:** Sun Oct 07, 2007 4:24 pm

astro wrote:

If you link out too fast from the pellet well you might get the points, but the pellet is not necessarily dropped into the well. I have sometimes, when I was too fast linking out, tried to link back again without bringing a new pellet, and then I could watch my old pellet being dropped into the well!!

But, you're contradicting yourself. :wink:

As you say, the old pellet DOES drop, when you link back. Same basic thing happens when I link directly to Relto after the last pellet. When I link back to Er'cana to drop my next batch, the pellet machine is open, but closes when I link in. This, however, does not stop the new batch of pellets from cooking.

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Sun Oct 07, 2007 5:49 pm

Everything Leighana has said has been my experience as well.

I'd also like to point out another advantage to starting the ovens before dispersing the pellets. If something goes awry during one of the many links between Er'cana & the City Silo and you're unable to get back to Er'cana for some time, then at least the ovens will already be cooking.

Mucol · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 8:13 pm **Posts:** 237

It was an absolutely stunning team-event.

And I'm really anxious to see the results of you all (single or team - doesn't matter)

Mucol

Marck · **Posted:** Tue Oct 09, 2007 7:43 am

Thank you for all the congratulations.

But does anyone intend to meet the challenge? Otherwise our team will have to compete with itself. I am sure that it is possible for a single player to drop 80+ pellets per hour with the help of others.

The Pellet Challenge

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