in2LOL Interviews Crs extinkt

in2LOL has interviewed Vytautas 'extinkt' Melinauskas, to find out more about the man behind the fantastically skilled AP carry of Team Curse.

Vytautas 'extinkt' Melinauskas was born in Panevevys, Lithuania, in 1993. It’s a small city, with around 100k people living there, and has a calm and quiet atmosphere. This was in stark contrast to extinct himself, as he admits 'I was really noisy and unpredictable growing up, occasionally causing problems for my parents.' Although the entertainment there was slightly lacking, extinkt never really wanted to leave. That is, until an opportunity with Curse Gaming came up.

Extinkt often skipped school to stay home and play Counter Strike, and achieved a high level of skill, but switched to League of Legends as soon as one of his older brothers showed it to him. He was soon in the professional scene, being taken up by the Lithuanian team Leethuanyan around a year ago.


in2LOL: What are your impressions of Germany, now, after you’ve stayed for two weeks already and how did your parents react to the plan to move to Germany and your career as a professional gamer in general?

extinkt: I think Germany is pretty cool, even though I haven't seen much of it yet. I can't wait until we go out to party so I can see what Berlin looks like at night. The prices are really high compared to my home country. My parents are really cautious about my decision, but they support me because this is what I love to do. It doesn't hurt that I can travel all around the world while doing it, too.


What are your expectations of how life is going to be for at least the next 12 months in Germany, together with your team mates?

In near future, I hope I can clear my mind and just relax while being at home. I am kinda worn out at the moment and can't completely focus on the game. A week at home should help me get my mind back into the game. Then, I hope we place in at least the top 3 in gamescom, because it would suck really hard to miss season 2 championship. I hope we can settle down in the gaming house afterwards and just train for season 3, which is our main goal. We are somewhat disorganized at the moment and I hope it will all be fixed when we move into the house. Things like healthy diets and organized timetables are important, even if some people fail to realize it.


You are not living there yet, but have you seen any pictures of your gaming house? What is your impression so far? And what do you think of the concept of having a gaming house in the LoL scene?

I have seen the pictures, and, to be honest, it looks really amazing! It is huge and even has a steam bath. I know where I'm going to spend my free time! All of us are going to have separate rooms, which I'm not really used to, as I used to live in a room with my brother. I think having a gaming house in the LoL scene is very important as it gives a more serious and disciplined approach to the game. Koreans have already proven that discipline and hard practice in gaming houses is really important and gives amazing results.


You will be all living close to each other in one house and you already spend a lot of time offline together with your team mates due to boot camping and staying at the same hotel, sharing rooms etc. Tensions can easily rise in this kind of environment. How is the team-atmosphere at the moment?

I think the most important thing in a team is player characters blending well with each other. I think all of us like each other so there shouldn't be any problems. Of course, when things go wrong people might get upset and have hard feelings towards each other, but that can be fixed by having someone neutral (in our case, Panky or flyy) pointing out the mistakes that each individual made.

You should never have problems with teammates when something goes wrong in a match. However, this is one of our main problems and we sometimes give up when someone screws up and makes a really big mistake. It is our number one priority to fix our in game mood and communication.


Do you have a strict daily schedule as a professional gamer and what does it look like?

At the moment I don't have any kind of schedule. It's something like this: wake up, brush teeth, play some solo queue, go out if there is anything to do, if not, play more solo queue or tournaments, shower, sleep, repeat. Back home: In between those things there are activities like snuggling with mah doggies or taking a nap.


How has your time being under the Curse flag so far, and how do you feel about leaving Absolute Legends? Would you go back?

Being under Curse has been awesome so far. They take really good care of us and all of the personnel there are awesome, genuine people. I felt good leaving AL, as the conditions in Curse are way above anything I had ever expected. I wouldn't go back to AL simply because Curse is the organisation I want to be with for a long long time.


Each one of you is going to make blogs. What do you think will be the first thing you want to talk about?

I think I will talk about things like starting streaming, our team as a whole, the new gaming house and what will happen from now on. I might just do a tour of the gaming house, invading the privacy of everyone on the team. I might get some shots of naked teammates, so stay tuned!


You're the Ap Carry of Curse.eu. What makes this role appealing to you and which champion do you prefer to play?

AP carries are just awesome because I love predicting movements from the opposition and that is the main thing you need as an AP carry. Right now the role is quite stagnant with all the farming going on, but I think Moscow 5 showed in ECC Poland that farming midlanes can be countered with well thought out roaming. At the moment i love playing Orianna, Gragas and Ahri, just because you win with them most of the time. One champion that I don't get to play in premades, but that I love the most is Vayne (as you could probably tell in Poland).


Was the AP Carry your favorite role from the beginning, or did you come into it gradually? Did your preferences swap in between?

When I first thought of playing in a serious team, I was practicing AD carries. Unfortunately, AP was the only role I didn't like playing. At the time Anguish offered me a spot on the team, AP mid was the role they needed so I started playing it. It became quite fun so I stuck to it and now I enjoy it very much, even though I have periods when I spam AD carry games in solo queue.


What do you think of a champion like Katarina? Would you play her in a competitive match and how would the item build look like?

I don't think she's that good cause she is easily countered by CC'ing her ultimate. She has some potential as a last pick, but there are much safer, low risk + high reward champions that you can play. I would never play her competitive as I don't have a clue how to play her, but I would build full AD just to troll around in ARAM's or normal games.


At the ESL ECC in Warsaw, you lost to M5 in the semi-final. Afterwards, you lost to SK Gaming, even though you had a good start as you won the first of the Bo3 matches. How was your mind set before the games and afterwards?

Losing to m5 was tough. Before the games we thought we had a really good chance to beat them, but they prepared a really good strategy that completely shut our game plan down. I took the loss really tough and was frustrated for a few hours. Against SK, we just decided to have fun and not take the games 100% serious, even though that should never be the case. We tried something fun first game and it went really well, but then we went back to normal stuff and had some major mistakes which lost us game 2 and 3. We were kinda disappointed we threw away game 2 completely, but as we travelled to Poland to win the whole event, we took it a lot better than we took the loss against m5.


What went wrong in the matches against M5 and what could have been done better?

They just outsmarted us by picking Udyr, a champion we had completely forgotten about. Their strategy was really aggressive, but centered around having a stronger jungler for 2v2's or 3v3's. Second game they pulled out the Zilean + Jax combo that we had no idea how to shut down.


Why did your team decide to swap roles in the Bo3 against SK Gaming?

As I said, we decided to have some fun as the result would not have any impact on the Challenger Circuit standings. I love playing Vayne so I just said to my team: ‘I don't care, I'm playing Vayne.’ We had done this before, against Eclypsia, and it went really well, with me going 9/0/0 and Malunoo destroying mid as Graggy. Having done it before, we just said what the hell, let's do it! It was the most fun LAN game I have ever played.


As you have already mentioned, you used to main ADs. Do you feel more comfortable playing AD carries now and would rather change to that role? You had a really great time carrying 14/1 as Vayne and also got Quadra Kill. Did you know that more than 80k viewers have been watching you online and more people are going to (re-)watch the VoDs of ECC Poland? How did you feel about it?

In the past, I was much more comfortable playing ADs than APs, but since I mostly played APs for a whole year, I prefer playing them over playing AD carries. That vayne game brought back some awesome memories, but it will not have any influence on the role that I'm going to play in the future. I was not aware of how many people were watching the streams and stuff, but I could hear the crowd cheering really loud whenever we got a few kills. It felt awesome and I hope that game will inspire some people to play more Vayne, as she is not played enough, both in normal games and competitive tournaments.



A few random questions!


How did you get the Teemo hat?

I was setting up on the computer when Carmac came up, as he needed a person for the pre-game interview. He said whoever was going could wear the Teemo hat and i volunteered instantly! I have always wanted one and Riot people were generous to let me keep it afterwards. On duty!


What would you like to be perfect at?

Playing the guitar.


Who do you admire most?

I admire my mom as the most hard working person I know.


Which superhero ability would you like to have?

The ability to fly would be awesome!


Your house is burning. Which are the first three things would you rescue?

My mom, dogs and PC.


Quick-Fire Questions!

Thank you for the interview and the best of luck to you and your team! Any shoutouts?

I'd like to thank Curse for picking us up and being awesome people. Thanks to Gunnars, Logitech and Teamspeak for being the best sponsors ever! You should also visit lolpro.com for best League of Legends content out there. SHOUTOUT TO ALL THE LITHUANIAN FANS! AS JUS MYLIU

Sources: Picture Source: Official League of Legends Facebook Fan Page

Related Content:

• in2LOL Interviews Rekkles
• in2LOL Interviews SK Nyph
• in2LOL Interviews ShLaYa
• in2LOL Interviews Malunoo
• in2LOL Interviews Froggen