Budget accomodations in Osaka, Japan: Dobutsuen-mae

During a recent trip around Osaka over Christmas 2009, I had a couple of days to myself and decided to find afforable lodgings (so that I can have more money for shopping). I found Hotel Toyo from the web and booked myself into a single tatami mat room for four days. I think it costs me 1800 yen (US$20) a day. It looked like a great bargain but I kept my reservations (no puns intended) till I experienced the room first hand. And I was not disappointed in the least.

The room was clean and spacious for a single person, and I had no trouble sleeping on the mattress on the tatami matted floor. It was not the newest room in the world, but it did not stink of cigarette smoke. The toilets smelled a little of urine (but the seat was heated), and the shared shower room on the ground floor can be a freezing obstacle during winter. But I have no complaints for the room itself, to find something at this price range in the notoriously expensive Japanese cities is a real bargain. Free WiFi seems to be a standard. It was in the neighbourhood of Dobutsuen-mae 動物園前駅.

The major benefit of Dobutsuen-mae is its convenient subway connections. It is on the Midosuji line, which any traveler of Osaka will tell you is the most important subway line in the city. It runs north-south and cuts through Umeda in the north: the major rail connection point to the rest of Japan, as well as having many shopping malls, Namba in the south: the rail link to the Kansai Airport among southerly destinations. Namba is also the hub of large shopping malls and many unique shopping streets. And it runs between Umeda and Namba through Shinsaibashi, THE shopping street of Osaka, and its sidestreets filled with food and unique shopping experiences. Midosuji line also connects to the Chuo line which leads to the Osaka Palace on the east and the aquarium in the west.

Dobutsuen-mae is an interesting neighbourhood. It is the border of commerical Osaka and residential Osaka. A real blast from the past with its 70s style building materials and styles. Across the street from the famed Shinsekai neighbourhood of Osaka, built in the 1912 to model cities in the West such as New York and Paris. It was largely undeveloped post-World War II and gained a bit of a nasty reputation. However, it remains a tourist attraction. Dobutsuen-mae literally means Gate of the Zoo. The Tennoji Zoo lies just to the east of Shinsekai and Spa World, and traditionally, the subway station was located to serve the zoo.

We read a lot about the problems of an aging population in Japan, but if you only hang out in the bustling town area of Osaka, the skyscrapers in Umeda, the high end malls of Namba and the hectic Shinsaibashi, you would think “what aging population? everyone here is young and beautiful.” Dobutsuen-mae reveals the other side of Japan, perhaps even the real unglossed side of Japan. While sitting at a little cafe having 350 yen (US$3.90) breakfast (tea, buttered toast and a hard boiled egg) I saw nothing but the elderly in and around the neighbourhood, it was a stark contrast with what you see down town. I thoroughly appreciated having a glimpse of this unseen side of Japanese life, a normal life like the rest of us leads.

Around the single block by the Dobutsuen-mae subway station there is quite a number of budget hotels. They offer single rooms from as little as 1800 yen (US$20) to 2300 yen (US$26). All of which are affordable. I have only stayed at Hotel Toyo and can only vouch for its quality, but I suspect that the rest are also of similar standards. Check out and read online reviews of the hotels below. Around the block there is a 24hr convenience store and a few eateries (like my 350 yen breakfast place). There is a food street across the road and more eats if you enter Shinsekai.

Below are photos of some of the entrances and price lists, and links to the various hotels in that area. Check out the website prices and read any online reviews you can get your hands on. Have fun in Osaka.

Hotel Toyo

Hotel Sunplaza II

Hotel Chuo

Hotel Raizan

Hotel Taiyo

Hotel Shinbashi (Tripadvisor)

Scuba diving in Ambon, Maluku Islands, Indonesia

I went on this dive trip to Ambon from 19 to 26 September 2009 with Maluku Divers. Their Laha Resorts was not completed and we were put up in a hotel in town.

Ambon is an island at the heart of the Maluku Islands archipelago in eastern Indonesia. The archipelago may be more familiar in other names used over the centuries. The Moluccas, Moluccan Islands, or The Spice Islands during the colonial times. These islands, together with India, was the source of the spice trade that attracted Europeans to Asia in the first place, and Ambon rests in its centre.

Majority of diving in Ambon is in the bay by Ambon City. The city pretty much hugs the edges of the bay and forms a crescent of urban life around the inner side of the bay. The two banks of the bay offer slightly different types of diving. Outside of the bay, there are beautiful wall diving as well. Waters went down to 24 celcius while we were there, brrr.

Getting to Ambon from Singapore involves a flight to Jakarta, and domestic to Ambon via a stop over at Surabaya. It was a really long and tiring overnight flight for us, with a hectic transfer in Jakarta near midnight. Travel concerns about Ambon is possible Malaria infection and its history of fatal inter-religious conflict in the community.

Ambon City bay is good for critter watching. I would not personally grade the muck diving here as better than Lembeh Straits in Manado, but it is rewarding for critter lovers and photographers. The dive sites Laha II, and Rhino City are great to see rhinopias, flamboyant cuttlefish, harlequin shrimps, frogfish, and octopus. There is a price to pay, however, most of these critters enjoy staying under the fishing boats. So you would be diving in rubbish strewn waters. You can see some of Goh Siang’s photos.

On the opposite bank is a dive site called Pantai Nama, a wall dive similar to many you can see in the region, but rare as it is in a bay. Barramundi Cod can be found at this sight among all the usual reef dwellers in Indonesian waters. We even caught sight of Devil Rays and even a single Hammerhead shark at 23m, which totally made the trip for two of my dive buddies who spotted it.

Weather permitting, try to go out of the bay to the sites Pintu Kota and Hukurilla. They offer beautiful swimthroughs teaming with fish life, the underwater-scape is beautiful out there. A trip out to Pulau Tiga will also yield sights typical of Indonesian reef diving, you can find Napoleon Wrasse out in the island. Asilulu Point is a dive site that has gigantic barrel sponges the size of small cars. Definitely something wonderful to see after spending days diving with the rubbish.

Ambon City bay is full of rubbish. It was a stark reminder that the developed world has sold its first world products (with first world packaging) to the third world, without providing first world rubbish disposal. So all that fancy wrappers and plastic bags goes into the sea, the traditional rubbish bin, which was fine when for generations upon generations, only organic wastes were thrown in them. Environmentalists groups should look at providing rubbish collection and disposal services to the third world, and make importers of first world packaged products pay for it.

One awesome thing about Ambon City is that the 24 hours no fly time can be amply taken up. Take a 30km drive to the village of Waai where you can play with 1.5 to 2 metre long freshwater eels that are sacred and native to the cold spring water river. Local fruits are also available fresh from smallholder stalls by the roadside.

I rather enjoyed my time in Ambon but I felt that the dive destination lacks a certain focal point to get my adrenalin pumping (this may explain why it took me 5 months to get off my arse and write this). However, I think photographers of critters would truly appreciate the ease of finding species almost impossible to see elsewhere. Relaxing easy diving if a little on the cold side.

Age of Conan: Black Ring Citadel Wing 3 with Screenshots

There is no individual attunement for Black Ring Citadel Wing 3, however, the raid leaders need to have one Ameythst Eye of the Serpent and one Ruby Eye of the Serpent, both of which are taken from the last boss of Wing 1 and Wing 2 of BRC. Completion of Wing 3, and receiving the Hand of Leviathus is required for individual attunement for Thoth Amon’s Stronghold, Tier 3 raiding. The descriptions here are purposefully kept more brief than those of the other BRC Wings and Tier 1 articles.

BLACK RING CITADEL WING 3
Black Ring Citadel (BRC) has 3 wings. Wing 1 is to the right of the “lobby”, Wing 2 to the left, and Wing 3 is straight ahead. The main problem is that BRC Wing 3 and the lobby are the same instance. So if your raid leader has already done Wing 3 for the week, and is taking you through the lobby to either Wing 1 or 2, he will end up locking you out of Wing 3 for the week. Wing 3 begins with a cavern similar to Wing 1 and 2. There are no quests here, so just clear enough of the trash to open a path to the first chamber. Do not forget to kill the trash guarding the large snake statue. Clicking on the statue removes death penalty.

Athyr Bast – Athyr Bast stands in the back of her chamber while her Imp Lord stands in the middle of chamber. She is a basic tank and spank, any tank that can get close to 60% physical mitigation can pretty much tank her for the rest of eternity with heals. Her fight revolves around her Imp Lord.

The Imp Lord – This is another fight similar to Sabazios, where tons of Imp adds are spawned that are meant to be dealt with, in this case by clicking on the purple braziers along the walls, but it just seems easier to ignore them instead. The Imps spawn from the braziers and walk towards the Imp Lord, when they reach the Imp Lord, he places a debuff on the person that has his aggro. If the tank gets too many stacks of the debuff, he’ll die. So the main focus of the fight is to swap aggro and for the tank to move out of the Imp Lord’s platform in the middle of the chamber. He should then get healed up and get rotated back into the tanking and aggro swapping. Tanks must spend minimum time in the platform while swapping aggro. If the tanks do not hold aggro well, the Imp Lord will one-shot someone outside of the platform. Holy Cleansing, heal rotation, unholy magic resistance, all help the tanks survive the Imp Lord’s attention. Good use of Irritate is also vital to keep the aggro swapping steady. The tanks need to keep this up while the DPS team burns down Athyr Bast. She drops Wrists, Helmet and a Simple Relic II.

Athyr Bast herself is so boring, I just decided to take a screenshot of her corpse. Which looks like any other follower of Set.

Entering Leviathus’ chamber will trigger a timer. There is a 3 minute 30 second timer before the boss spawns. In that time, the raid has to deal with two groups of trash mobs inside the chamber.

Agitators, Proctors, Guards, Agents and Supporters - Different raids kill the mobs in different orders, so I cannot say which way is faster or best. Proctors can be stunned and should be kept that way. They spawn Supporters who are minions and can be mass one-shot by minion kill spells, like Shatter. Agents will teleport all over the place but can be rooted. Focus fire on each of the trash and kill the groups as fast as possible and get ready for Leviathus to spawn.

Leviathus - Leviathus is one big ugly slug with arms that sits in a pool of boiling water (do not go in there). There are two altars platforms on either sides of the chamber. Two soldiers should be in charged of using them. They must not ever have attacked Leviathus for the whole fight. Their entire duty is to carry a buff from the altar and dropping it on the raid in front of Leviathus. Leviathus casts a spell called Test of Faith on one of the tanks that are on him, and if the tank does not receive the buff from the altar within 20 seconds, they will die.

The fight involves rotating big heals from the 3 different classes on the whole raid, with the tanks rotating aggro and getting out of range of Leviathus to heal back up. And the two players running the altars not to screw up. This is a tough fight that requires many players in the raid to focus on their status. Leviathus drops Helmet, 2 Weapons and a Jar of 5 Simple Relic II. Killing Leviathus completes a quest that gives the player a Hand of Leviathus that is required for Tier 3 attunment. Thoth Amon’s Stronghold.

Age of Conan: Black Ring Citadel Wing 2 with Screenshots

Attunement for Tier 2 raiding in Age of Conan involved completing the level 80 Destiny Quest, and receiving a quest from Kalanthes and Cha in Kheshetta for a quest for Vistrix’s tooth. FunCom has removed this attunement requirement after the release of Tier 3 raiding.

BLACK RING CITADEL WING 2
Black Ring Citadel (BRC) has 3 wings. Wing 1 is to the right of the “lobby”, Wing 2 to the left, and Wing 3 is straight ahead. Wing 2 begins with a cavern similar to Wing 1. There are no quests here, so just clear enough of the trash to open a path to the first chamber. Do not forget to kill the trash guarding the large snake statue. Clicking on the statue removes death penalty.

Ahazu Zagam – Ahazu Zagam, better known as The Fart Boss looks like The Creature from the Black Lagoon. As his nickname suggest, he farts this poison gas that trails behind him, slowly filling up his chamber. Ahazu Zagam hits hard and it will take a geared and well played tank, and a full suite of healers to keep him alive. The key is to avoid his poison gas, and to kite him around the room in such a concerted way that the rest of the raid has room to kill him before it is all covered in poison gas. Priest of Mitra’s Holy Cleansing spell can help make this boss fight quite easy for a geared raid. The YouTube video below shows how it is done in style. Ahazu Zagam drops Wrists, Shoulders and a Simple Relic II.

Ahazu Verin – Every minute, Ahazu Zagam spawns two adds, miniature versions of itself called Ahazu Verin. They need to be taunted away from the main tank, Cry of Havoc by a Guardian is probably the best way to grab them both. Ahazu Verin hit really hard so they need to be individually tanked and focus fired down.

Black Ring Reanimator – Most of the other trash mobs in Wing 2 are quite standard fare. The only exception is the Reanimators. They need to be focus fired down because they constantly spawn large numbers of regular undead mobs that can kill squishier classes.

Incubus and Succubus – Incubus and Succubus are a pair of lewd demons, whose only interest seem to be in spreading their seeds. They need to be tanked on opposite ends of their chamber. Every so often, they will break aggro and watch towards one and another. If they get to close enough, they will both Enrage and hit like trucks. Both tank groups must fight hard to regain aggro once they start walking off. Our raid usually focuses on Succubus first, killing her before proceeding to Incubus. Both bosses with do a knockback before wandering off towards each other, this knockback also wipes the aggro. On top of that Incubus does an AoE root which can be avoided if the players are alert to the cast bar. Incubus and Succubus drops Belts, Boots and a Simple Relic II.

Rooted, damn it!

Cambions – Adds spawn during this boss fight called Cambions. They can be easily off-tanked, and burn down fast. They are a small distraction for this fight.

Seruah – Seruah begins the fight inside a magical cage in the middle of the chamber. There are four mirrors, one in each corner of the chamber. Out of these mirrors will spawn waves of adds. Starting with large 4 Dust Fiends, and increasing exponentially to 64 small Arctic Beasts. At the start of the fight, the whole raid stays together beside one of the mirrors. A soldier will be at each of the mirrors and will bring the Dust Fiends towards the raid. The raid will burn down each Dust Fiend in turn. While this is happening, the subsequent waves of adds are spawned and must be AoEed down. Soldiers are to keep the adds off the squishies. When the last Dust Fiend dies, the raid must all move to the centre outside Seruah’s magic cage.

Every single member of the raid must clump up on Seruah and be within melee range of her once she comes out of her cage. Anyone further than melee range will cause her to teleport and instant-kill the character. She will knockback characters near the top of her aggro list. She would then follow up with a big hit if the aggro remains on the knocked back character. Cunning Deflection will allow a soldier to survive her big hit. It is a steady fight to swap aggro. Not a hard fight if few or no players died needlessly at the start of the fight. Seruah drops Gloves, Chest and a Simple Relic II.

You may want to drop your particle effects and damage numbers because of the massive number of mobs involved.

Chatha the Commander of Demons – The chamber with Chatha follows straight after Seruah’s. It is a two storey chamber linked by a flight of stairs. The raid should run past the Bottomfeeders on the bottom floor of the chamber to the stairs. Moving too far up the stairs will trigger the boss fight, so raids need to get themselves ready on the stairs first.

Chatha begins the fight as a normal human boss. He can be tanked and spanked for the first half a minute before he teleports away. He teleports to random places on the top storey of the chamber once every minute. He also spawns a Sartorus and 3 Utamons every time he teleports. The 2nd storey of the chamber contains pit traps that are invisible from the top. Players who walk over the pit traps will fall down to the 1st storey.

Sartorus and Utamons – While the Utamons are near the Sartorus, they get a buff that allows them to deal massive reflective damage. They can kill a tank in a matter of seconds while the buff is up. The main strategy for the first phase of the Chatha fight is to have a seperate Sartorus and Utamon tank/DPS groups on opposite sides of the 2nd storey, by the stairs and by the far wall. Once seperated from the Sartorus, and their buff allowed to run out, the Utamons can be burned down easily. Repeat this for every single group of spawns.

Chatha the Giant Centaur Horn Headed Monster with Scorpion Tails – When Chatha drops to 60%, he will stop teleporting and spawning Sartorus and Utamons. He will mutate into a giant centaur horn headed monster with scorpion tails. He hits like a truck in this form and has several special attacks. A PBAoE knockback, and a frontal cone stun followed by a big hit. Avoid the latter and position yourself so that the former does not knock you into one of the pit traps. If you did not lose many or any players during the first phase, then its a game of aggro swapping, watching his cast bar, and a DPS race to down him in his second phase. Chatha drops Chest, two Weapons and a Jar of 5 Simple Relic II. Chatha also drops a Ruby Eye of the Serpent which, together with the Ameythst Eye of the Serpent is required to open Wing 3 of BRC.

A screenshot of an EU guild downing Chatha. I need to get one of my own.

Age of Conan: Black Ring Citadel Wing 1 with Screenshots

Attunement for Tier 2 raiding in Age of Conan involved completing the level 80 Destiny Quest, and receiving a quest from Kalanthes and Cha in Kheshetta for a quest for Vistrix’s tooth. FunCom has removed this attunement requirement after the release of Tier 3 raiding. With the opening of Tier 3 raiding, I will now share Tier 2 raiding strategies with everyone.

BLACK RING CITADEL WING 1
Black Ring Citadel (BRC) has 3 wings. Wing 1 is to the right of the “lobby”, Wing 2 to the left, and Wing 3 is straight ahead. Upon entering Wing 1, raiders should pick up a quest from a box to the right of the cavern entrance. They have to clear out the groups of mobs around each of the cauldrons of blood in the cavern and click on the tiny little ladle on top. Completion of this quest will give caster characters a new spell, Shatter Stone. This spell is critical to the completion of the first boss, Excorant the Gargoyle Master. The cauldrons are defended by a group of trash mobs, some elites, some not. Most are easily manageable and not worth mentioning. Do not forget to kill the trash guarding the large snake statue. Clicking on the statue removes death penalty.

Black Ring Guards - I make a special note about the Black Ring Guards because they hit like a freight train. Under-geared tanks will truly struggle with these guys. Early raiders may need to kite the Guards around, or rotate aggro on them.

Excorant the Gargoyle Master – The raid will enter the first chamber of Wing 1 and see Excorant minding his own business next to a vat of molten lava. In the room are 6 gargoyle statues, and a bunch of broken gargoyles and moulds for making them. Excorant appears human in his first phase. He can be easily tanked and does not hit particularly hard. He has, however, a few tricks in his bag.

The first is that he can turn players into stone. Players first detect this because they get a debuff and move really slowly. Players who are stoned should try to move until they are all together in a bunch.

Every minute or so, Excorant awakens a pair of Gargoyles. There are 6 Gargoyles in total and he awakens them in order from the front of the room (where Excorant was standing at the start of the fight), to the back. These Gargoyles must be tanked and killed before the next pair awakes. Having too many Gargoyles up will wipe the raid. Everytime a Gargoyle dies, it drops a pile of sand on the floor. Casters with the Shatter Stone spell can pick up the sand and cast a cone effect on players who are turned to stone. The sand is on a timer when picked up and will run out in 15 seconds if not used.

So the first phase involve tanking the boss, grouping up the stoned people, tanking and heavy DPS on the Gargoyles, unstoning the stoned, and finally getting Excorant phase 1 down to 0% health.

Once Excorant’s health drops to zero, he falls to the floor and a gush of blood appears, in a couple of seconds, he turns into his second form, a large Gargoyle. In this form, Excorant periodically does an AoE fear and wipes aggro, so after the AoE fear, give tanks time to pick up aggro again. Otherwise, this phase is just tank and spank. Excorant drops Gloves, Belts and a Simple Relic II.

After the fight, a door opens and the players are allowed into another chamber with a corpse of a monster on a table, there is no boss fight here, just some trash. The trash up to the room with Yaremka is quite straight forward with the following exceptions.

Black Ring Cabalist - Do not use any form of Crowd Control (CC) on the Cabalist except for Stuns. Other forms of CC will cause the Cabalist to use an AoE Fear.

Black Ring Sorcerors - Tank multiple Sorcerors away from each other. Their overlapping AoE damage will kill players in seconds. They also do a root, which makes them irritating mobs.

Yaremka the Soul Eater – One of the few big bosses in BRC. Yaremka is a large horned demon in a room full of electrical contraptions. There are orbs suspended from the ceilings, and other orbs along the alcoves in the sides of the room. These orbs are all critical to the boss fight.

The raid needs to assign some low-DPS classes to the clickable orbs in the alcoves. There are 4 orbs on each side, a total of 8 orbs. Raids can assign 4 players to “orb duty”. There should be a leader for the orb team, he will call for the clicking of the orbs.

Yaremka is a tank and spank with a few exceptions. He puts quite a strong Damage over Time (DoT) spell on the 2nd person on the aggro table. So have two soldiers tank Yaremka so the 2nd on aggro eats the DoT. Keep the two tanks healed at all times. Every minute, Yaremka will Enrage and expand in size. The role of the orb team is to click the orb before he or after he Enrages to Pacify him.

The tanks must bring Yaremka to one side of the room between the suspended orbs and their lightning bolts, the orb team needs to be at the clickable orbs on the same side. The orb team will click on the orbs in synchronised timing and Pacify Yaremka. Then the tanks must bring Yaremka to the other side of the room, the orb team must run to the other set of clickable orbs and repeat the clicking. The clickable orbs have a 1 minute cooldown, so the raid has to move from one side of the room to the other every 30 seconds.

Once the raid get the Pacify down pat, this fight is really easy. Voice chat like Ventrilo is necessary for this fight. Again, undergeared raiders will struggle tanking his DoT. Yaremka drops Legs, Boots and a Simple Relic II.

After killing Yaremka, the raid would face some tougher trash mobs on their way to Sabazios. Most are standard tank and spanks with the following exception. Way back in the day, this clickable orbs were buggy and did not show their status properly. Raids used to kite Yaremka around the room and spend 20+ minutes with this fight. This is a case of the exploit being harder to execute than the intended fight strategy.

Black Ring Templars – These guys are immuned to any additional magical effects from skills and abilities. So they take quite a while to kill. Otherwise, they behave like Black Ring Guards, i.e. hitting like trucks.

Sabazios the Insane – This is an insanely easy fight, so much so that it is considered free loot. Sabazios is basically a tank and spank. There are four giant snake statues in the room that many snake adds will issue forth from. The intended boss fight is for the raid to destroy the giant snake statues before the snakes pick off the squishies and wipe the raid. However, it is not hard for higher armoured classes to ring fence the squishies in a corner of the room so that Sabazios because a simple tank, spank and AoE DPS race. Ah the joys of collision detection. Sabazios drops Legs, Shoulders, Weapons and a Simple Relic II.

So that is Wing 1 of the Black Ring Citadel. It is an easy wing if you have a few seasoned raiders to carry the rest through. Some trash mobs drop Shards of the Exiled God which are crafting materials for two weapons, Quill of the Ibis (one handed edge) and Feather of the Ibis (two handed edge), during the Leviathus boss fight in BRC Wing 3. Sabazios also drops an Amethyst Eye of the Serpent, together with another Eye from Wing 2, is required to open Wing 3. Only the raid leader needs to have both eyes.