Sledge - February 20, 2012

Well, the patch date has been announced and it is tomorrow. It made me chuckle over the weekend and the doom and gloom experts with their esteemed opinion that this would be the death of AC. According to their point of view, too many players had too much time and effort invested in their characters to be willing to change them and their weapons just because Turbine wanted change. Several were comparing this patch to the NGE on Star Wars Galaxies by Sony.

I spent the better part of the weekend reviewing my characters and getting ready for the patch. I really did not want to imbue any weapons as they will all be changing. I did a little hunting and pretty much fiddled around.

Sunday afternoon some players were talking about the Deewain Quest and one group ran it successfully and another was about to go. I decided that I would do this quest with Sledgexbow and portalled to Tou-Tou to join the Fellowship. We got all buffed up and took the housing portal. From there is was a short run to the entrance to the dungeon. I entered and went through a long download as it was my first time in that dungeon.

When I cane out of the portal, the only other player there was someone that was a second character for the leader of the fellow. The other 2-3 players were gone. I don't know if you have ever been in that dungeon, but it is full of twists and turns. I got to one drop off, but it was the wrong place so I had to backtrack. Finally I got to the correct dropoff and no one else was there. I thought they had jumped down and moved forward. It turned out that there was an invisible walkway over the pit that no one mention until I was at the bottom of the pit. At this point, I would have to portal recall and try to find my way back. I had enough of this quest and leadership of the Quest Leader. I did an @allegiance hometown and logged.

For all aspiring Quest Leaders, please follow a couple of common sense rules when running a quest. 1. Communicate. 2. Do not leave members behind. 3. Communicate.

I will probably run this quest again when I know the Leader is someone that knows how to run a Quest.

Josh Slinger - Gear Knight Soldier

My name is Josh Slinger. I am a Gear Knight on the Thistledown Server in the Realm of Asheron's Call. All I ever wanted to be was a Soldier. I wield a mighty sword and fight all manner of beast on the island of Dereath and its surrounding small islands.

I started my journey in Holtburg and made my way to the Drudge Hideout. It contains a goodly number of Drudges in different rooms and a few chests containing loot. I was also on a mission to recover bags of seed stolen by these nasty creatures along with the head of the boss Drudge. With the mission accomplished, I returned to town and gave the farmer back his seed and trophy.

Now, I was off to Sanamar to see about some penguins in a cave outside of town. The little varmits had made off with a gentleman's necklace that had belonged to his mother. They were storing the necklace in a chest way deep in the dungeon. I pretty much ignored the critters and grabbed the necklace and returned it to its owner.

My next task was to put a new light in the beacon northwest of town. I portalled into the platforms and fought my way to the end. The platforms were full of wasps and a couple of Water Golems. I made it to the top and replaced the beacon with a fresh one and returned to town.

At this point, I had gained enough experience and skill that I was ready to head to the Facility and take on stronger and more difficult tasks. The first task that awaited me was the retrieval of an Ice Tachi from a nasty little Mosswart near Shoushi. He fell easily to my sword and I returned with the sword.

My next task was to retrieve a couple of knives from a dungeon east of Yanshi along with a few other items. I had to talk to a lady and get a key and enter the dungeon. Immeadiately, I was beset by 3 Wood Golems that I had to dispatch. I then unlocked the door and headed downward. I had to fight off Mosswarts, Golems, Undead and Sclavis to accomplish my tasks.

Sledge - February 15, 2012

After looking at trying to target a new character and tell his story, I decided that it would be better to just tell my tale of a life in AC with all of my characters. I have 4 accounts and am pretty much an 'Alt-Acholic'. I currently have 10 characters on every world except DT. I bounce around and play different characters at different times to keep everything interesting.

Right now, you can almost sense the anticipation on the worlds over the upcoming February patch. This monthly patch may turn into a make or break situation for AC. Basically, all characters are going from being focused on 1 melee or missile weapon type to a melee Heavy, Light, or Finesse family of weapons and a Missile character will be able to swap between Bow, Crossbow, and Thrown with little penalty. As a result, pretty much all weapons will be rendered somewhat useless.

Turbine is also adjusting the power of the weapons and adding some new skills and removing some skills. Arriving into the game after this patch will be a major shock to most. There have been some complaints and concerns, however, this will freshen up the game and I am truly looking forward to this change.

With any luck, the patch will be next Tuesday and it will go fairly painless. Most players do not remember the very painful patches in the past. They did get all worked out and became smooth after a short time.

When I look at my growing characters right now, I really do not want to invest in imbuing new weapons as they are all changing and improving. This morning I decided to take my Axer, Krille, out for a run through the Moars Egg Towers.I started with the Level 35 Tower in Mayoi as he is a level 83 Axer.

While he has a Lense and a Slash Imbued Axe, he didn't seem to be  hitting as hard as he should. I looked at his stats and saw that I had only given him Strength of 70. After I turned in the egg and scroll, I headed to Q'bar and Craigstone to add 30 points of strength and remove 30 points of Endurance. I added back in the lost Endurance and the change added 10 points to my Axe skill and lowered my burden.

I then headed to Danby's Outpost to the Egg Tower there. I was hitting much better now for more points with fewer misses. I turned in the egg and then headed to Mayoi to turn in the scroll and take the Lady Maila Portal for the level 75 Egg Tower. I slashed my way through there for the egg and scroll. I did find that my Lense was resisted a bunch. I need to add to the Assess Creature skill to get a better Lense.

This morning's activities bumped me up to level 85. I still need to get pinchers and I should go burn some Tuskers.

Fist de Yuma - December 28, 2004

End of an era

This is the last column of the year. It is also the end of my five-year run as a weekly column. From this column on, I'll only be posting when I have something fun to write about. Putting myself into a weekly column was not hard when the game started, because I had so much to write about. In the last year I have had to stretch my mind to come up with a good column. While I have been mostly successful, it had starting to become work. Five years of weekly columns is something to be proud of. I'm surprised I lasted this long. We can thank Turbine for giving us such a fun, action filled game. When you are excited about an adventure, it is easy to write about it. I might have a lot of columns when the expansion comes out. I cannot say for sure, but I have great hopes. Meanwhile, I'll still have columns, but this is the end of the weekly columns. I'll do my best to make sure the word gets out when I have a column. If you are on my mail list, there is no problem. If you depend on logging on each Tuesday for a column, and don't use the AC boards much, drop me a letter. I'll make a special list to tell people when I have a column out.

The future of AC

AC is a great game, but there is a lot of competition out there now. I have great hopes for the expansion, but that is in the future. For now, AC is kind of static. There are a lot of new quests, and new lands, but in the end, it is the same hack and grind, in a different place. Like I said, I expect that to change, and it will be fun to write about when it does. It is my feelings that Worlds of Warcraft is AC's main competition. EQ and the rest are very group orientated. Both AC and WoW will force people to group in order to complete a quest, but they never force you to do a quest. Both games can let you solo, but AC does it better. Graphic is better with WoW, but I expect the expansion will close that gap. The real advantage that WoW has right now, is it is new. Time will tell if it has staying power. With a 60 level cap, and other things, I'm not so sure. The people in my allegiance are worried about my playing WoW. I'm not sure if this is a valid worry. They were not worried when I played Morrowwind. They were not worried when I played Knights of the Old Republic. To me, this is just something different, and has no effect on my AC play. Right now I'm not playing AC much, but that is more Turbine's fault.

The new weapons are coming, but they are not here yet. A lot of my hunting is for gathering weapons and armor. I have about all the armor I need, and any weapon I get will be useless in a few weeks. After the next patch, I'll be back to 24/7 AC, as I try to get the weapons I need. With two swords, three mages, a UA and sundry mace players, getting the weapons and salvage I need will be a take a lot of time. I'm also looking forward to the promised melee leveling spots. For now, this is on the distance horizon, but at least it is there. I'm starting to think that this will be part of the expansion. So we have a lot to look forward to. I don't see it as a choice between AC and WoW, as both are different enough that you can have fun with them equally. In fact, WoW makes it easy to skip playing, as they reward you for not playing. The longer you are logged out in WoW, the more double xp you get when you return. As leveling is kind of slow at times, that double xp is a big help. So a month of hard-core AC play will be rewarded with several levels of double xp in WoW. That is the best of both worlds in my book.

Salute to a great Monarch

When Elder was leaving for flight school, he had two people to choose from, to assume the leadership of the allegiance; William the bat and myself. Of course, he picked William the Bat. This choice created some bitterness on my part. I was thinking of leaving to form my own allegiance, when I was asked to assume the leadership of the Reality Dysfunction group. I can say I have been successful as a monarch, because the people in the allegiance fit my leadership style. That style is a relaxed style. All I asked is you have fun, help others and not hurt others. I don't make demands or try to direct people in any way. If you have fun by logging once a week to hunt a bit, then so be it. If you want to make 150 in four months, that is also welcome. The key is no one player is any better or worse than the next. AC is for fun, and anything else is meaningless. Looking back, I am seeing that my style might not have fit my old allegiance. That old group benefited from Elders leadership until the last year. We sorted of drifted as Elder had a lot of real life things to worry about. When William took over, the strong active leadership was back. I'm not sure I would have had the endurance to take on that role. The result is that the William the Bat's allegiance is one of the very best. I have close ties with them, and take advantage of their greater power for some of the harder quests. So, in the end, it has worked out for the best. Even with 20-20 hindsight, you could not have picked a better result.

Fist de Yuma - December 20, 2004

A start, but lets get to the meat Turbine has a good idea with the forges. They will do two things that need to be done; help the tinker players, and bring more people into the towns. This is a start, if not a great one. I say this because of what Turbine chooses to start with. I feel than any average tinker mule can cap cooking in very little time. Anything above 400, after buffs, does not do much. A 100% shot for dyeing is reached at that, so there is very little need to get more. Lock pick is around the same. I've not cap'ed that yet, but I'm close. With a 96% shot at the harder keys, and a 100% with sings, there is not much rush to make it better. The same goes for Alchemy and Fletching. Both are important, but takes very little to cap them. Where we are all stressing, is getting the main tinker skills up there. Armor and Weapons are the most important, with Magic Item a distance third. We can never have enough of these skills. Even those who have maxed the skill will fail all too often. When you have searched for a long time to get the perfect weapon, lucking out and getting it infused, searching for the perfect salvage to improve it with, only to see it go bye-bye on the 10 tink, with a 98% shot, can make you want to quit AC. So I worry. Did Turbine add forges for these easy skills because they don't want to improve the others? I hope that is just a paranoid thought, with no base in reality. Fist's Armorer's VoD trip Fist's Armorer is the future for me. He is getting there, but has hit the slows, and that is frustrating. FA starting stats are; 10, 100, 10, 10, 100, 100. He spec'd War, Life and Magic Defense. This means that he is pure power, with a solid magic defense, but no side skills. He is a pure hunter, who would rather not find sings, as he cannot do anything with them. Unfortunately, he is at a point where raising skills is very hard, but his skills are not quite where they needs to be. His skills have to be where he can inflict damage without the help of a yield. His Creature skills are far to low to even think about trying to land a yield, and will likely remain that way for some time to come. He buffs out to 415 Life and 428 War. While those are very good numbers, they are barely adequate for VoD or Caul. I can fight there, but the resists are very frustrating. His Magic Defense is at a respectable 365. This allows him to resist from time to time, but not to the point where I can count in it. War is at 80 million a point, and Life and MD are both at 60 million a point. This means that I need 5 hours of 12 mill per hour hunting to move the lowest one a single point. I might get that down to four hours, but it is hard to get solo hunting much higher. The good news is my per-hour VoD will improve as I move the points. Still, it is going to be a hard slow road. One thing I have found with my last VoD trip, is the monsters are very drain happy, especially the Virindi. That is not a big deal with group hunting, but it is a pain in the rear when solo. Then again, solo VoD hunting is always a pain. Solo Hunting The problem with Solo VoD hunting is that it is a lot like WoW. In WoW, I have little trouble fighting one on one. If it becomes two on one, and you are not fighting well below your level, you had best start looking at escape routes. When Solo'ing VoD, I work hard to get things one on one. Like WoW, it is possible to fight two, but not wise. For that reason, my favorite monsters to hunt in VoD are the undead. They tend to only charge the one being attacked. They might toss a few spells your way, but they are easy to side step. Many times they will not even charge, and make it into a long distance missile vs. spell contest. I love that, as there is almost zero risk of dieing in a dual like that. At around 500k a pop, you can make more with Virindi, but the risk is greater and the battles longer. I, for one, would rather keep battling than running back from the LS. So, if solo hunting is so much worse than group hunting, why do I solo? That has a simple answer. When in a group there are stresses and conflicts that lessen the enjoyment of the hunt. I seldom loot when group hunting, as I would rather not get into conflicts over who looted what. Personality conflicts will also rear its head from time to time. I have been in some great groups, where everyone knows what to do and how to do it. I can really say, that it is the norm. Most AC players today are long time players who know how to play. Still, at the end of a group hunt, I feel like it was more work than fun. I play for fun, so I'll do what is the most fun. Sadly, in a group game, that is solo hunting. A great loss One of the things that on-line games do is expand your social horizon. You meet people that you would never have known existed otherwise. I first saw this when I started playing on-line chess. Playing chess with someone from Germany or Russia was mind blowing. I had a good group of friends there, who I miss to this day. That expanded social horizon will also open you up for greater human tragedy. Things happen in this world that are not so nice. A sheltered existence in the real world will see these things, but they are hopefully few and far between. When your friends go from a handful of people to hundreds, these tragedies happen all to often. Such happened to our group this week. A good friend was killed in an auto accident last week. This hit home to me hard. Chargin', B'ob, Qu was a very active member of our allegiance. He started a buff bot service for us, giving our small allegiance two bots to choose from. He contacted me a while back about joining us. After talking, he swore into CDY under one of my tradesmen. He was a smart player, and created a spear, staff and axe player. There are all weapon types I never use, so he got all I found. Qu was always there to talk or give other players a hand. If we had a quest that needed a little help, he was always willing to provide it. B'ob will be greatly missed. For a short time, we have his buff bot going. I'm not sure when his widow will shut him down, but we are grateful to have him to say goodbye to.

Fist de Yuma - December 13, 2004

Higher Wield weapons At first glance, the new high wield weapons might look like more of the same, rewards for the high levels. With a little thought, it is clear that this is a something we have really needed. When the game first started, it would take six months to a year to hit 60. In fact, some of the templates of the time were nightmares. Sidarther did not get Item Magic until 55. Imagine, if you will, being a mage with no banes or portals. The BM template was about as hard core as most got, and many felt it was a horrid template, because of the harsh leveling requirement. This was why we had such templates as Og. While hard, 26 without War was a lot more simple than getting to 60 without Creature. Remember, we also had less skill credits back then. There was one added at 33lv, a ways into the first year, and it was not until the third year, and after and expansion, that the quest credit was added. Then things changed. Chains and macros pushed up levels for many, which forced Turbine to make changes. The changes made it easer for the people who did not chain or macro to catch up a bit. Bigger monster xp, leveling dungeons and fellow advantages were just some of the things added. This caused the definition of high level to move radically. When the game was new, 25lv was high level. The new island moved that to 45, as that was the minimum level to go there. It took some time, but we are now at a point where even a 126 can be low in power, when compared to many of their contemporaries. What does all this have to do with the new weapons? Simple, the old wield requirement was generally met around 60lv. This is far to low for today's players. That level can be reached in a few weeks, by a good leveler. An average player might take a year to make 100, but there is no gear reward worth pushing towards, after you reach 325 weapon skill. Also, mages have never had wield gear. Getting an MCI with a major spell was the main focus. Mostly, any good Mana Conversion MCI was worthy of a Rend attempt. That changes next month. The new wield weapons will change the game. I believe for the better. Of course, if Turbine just beefs up the armor of the monsters to equal that out, then they were better off not making any change, but I don't expect to see that. So this is not a change that only the high levels can look forward to. Depending on how high they go up, most players will benefit in total. If they do make some super high weld, such as 400+, then indeed only the high levels will benefit. That does not affect the rest of us, and give us something to look forward to, in time. So I really do hope they have 400, or even 420 welds. That will be a really nice weapon, and something to work for. Value of good weapons I'm going to start with a story that dates back five years. It will not seem to fit the title, but bear with me. When the game first started, I tended to run around a lot. I wanted to explore new places and see everything there was to see. At the time, this was not a very smart thing to do. The chance of recovering a body was slight. There was no command to get the coordinates back then. We did not have things like last portal recall. In fact, getting a portal tie was something very hard to do. Still, despite the danger, I would travel up and down the land, looking for fun and adventure. One day, I started out from Arwic and headed northwest. After passing a few hills, I kept going north. I had no idea where I was going, or if there was anything to see up there. We did not have maps or any guides whatsoever. I would stop and fight whatever I saw. I found a Mite dungeon, but only stopped there for a short while. After several hours of exploring, I found a fortress. To my surprise, there were several of my friends there. Sidhartha and some other mages were there hunting Matties. It seemed that I had stumbled into the major Mattie hunting grounds. At the time, they had a 100% drop rate. While they are easy to kill today, and far stronger today than they were then, for the time, they were one nasty fight. In fact, no pure melee was ever able to fight one solo. I joined up with my friends to help them hunt Matties. I really wanted a robe, but that was going to be a problem. It seemed like every mage that ever was, hunted there that month. I was able to aid my friends a lot, because of back spawns. The mages did not have the power they have today. Their armor was poor, and they tended to run out of mana quickly. Having a melee with the discipline to guard their backs was very welcome. After we had killed a few, I tried my hand at fighting one. I cannot say for sure how I did, because three or four other things jumped into the battle, and forced me to run. In fact, were it not for a friend of Sidhartha providing me heals, I would have died. After the hunt was over, one of the mages rewarded my work by giving me a hide. It was a short time later that the Matties were removed from the game. So what does this have to do with weapons? Well, that is the second story. About six months later, I was in search of a good blunt UA weapon. I was using a 1 - 4 at the time, with a plus 5% melee bonus, and no attack bonus. That is laughable today, but was standard for the time. I had trade offers, offering a large amount of gear and weapons. I got no takers. Finally I made an offer of my Mattie robe up for one. Someone had a 2 to 6 weapon they were willing to trade. Despite a Mattie being so rare, and the trouble I had in getting mine, just a Mattie robe was not enough. I had to add notes, shards and other items to complete the trade. As we move into our sixth year, we have weapons that were undreamed of when we started. Our power is such, that if one of us when back in time, we would be thought of as a god of AC, or at least a demigod. So as we start another hunt for weapons, and pray as we apply salvage, be thankful. Sure, this is a pain to do over again, but we could be stuck with paying all we own for a 2 to 6 Centus. Social aspect Many of us play AC for the pure fun of it. We could do other things, but we prefer playing AC. Then there are some who play AC, because this is about all their currently capable of doing. I have known many people whom were/are very sick. They are shut in, for the most part. To them, AC is the social aspect of their lives. The main thing for us is not to give them our pity. They don't need or want it. Such sickness is part of life, and they understand this more than we do. Instead, rejoice that technology has advanced so far that these shut-ins have a social aspect to their lives. The one thing I have noticed with people who are very sick, is they spend a lot of time making others happy. They are the ones that will listen when you have a problem. They are many times allegiance leaders. They add to AC in ways that cannot be counted. I pray for their return to good health. Some times we lose them. Sometimes they recover or stay with us long after the doctors have given up. For that we are grateful. Interesting article I got this link on the boards. It is about grifers, their effect on Live games and the efforts to combat them. http://news.com.com/Inflicting+pain+on+griefers/2100-1043_3-5488403.html?tag=nefd.lede Guest Writer R Scott White Well this weekend turned into a bit of an adventure. I'm playing Abin, and had died, so I spent some of that time logging between my characters to mule stuff ect. I was hearing about a problem on the Bobo quest, but wasn't thinking anything of it, after all I've got a corpse to recover, but at this point I'm only logged in as my mule. I log in Abin and see them talking to Fist (the mighty monarch, the spellcasting wizard) and what does he do, he says well Abin just logged in. Abin who, I asked, because I know he doesn't mean me. I don't do quests or fellowship things. I talk to Fist and find out he's heavily medicated, my first response was what made that any different than usual. Anyway he wasn't up to doing it and asked me to go along. I said I would after I recovered my corpse from the VoD. Now here is the killer part, I wanted to shoot Jeff for dying (again), and everyone else associated with the problem at that point. As I'm going to my corpse my alarms are going off, there were 7 separate spawns of Virindi, and no one around to relieve them of living. So, do I do the smart thing, the right thing, and kill every Virindi in sight, and make a ton of loot.....nope I do the stupid thing, I help Jeff recover a corpse. Didn't I do that enough when I was his patron so long ago I ask you? I head to the mansion and find the group that is going, It included Dibbick, Kepi, and a couple others who's names I can't remember right now. In looking at the stats I realized I was the heavy gun and it was my job to imperil monsters. Ok no big deal, we make the run without too much fuss and I'm starting to imperil....oops no I'm not, I'm only lowering melee d. Damn, now I'm searching through my spell lists for imperil. I swear it took me 10 minutes, all the while throwing spells to help out. I finally find it, and put it into a spell bar. At that point we are starting to kill quicker. Then I realized, oh damn I'm getting hit. So I put the most important call out over the fellowship channel "SAVE THE MAGE!!!". They came to my rescue, and we kept going. We listened well to our fellow leader, which made it go well. We get to Jeff's corpse, and I was surprised, after all there was only one corpse there. Usually with Jeff, it is a multiple thing, but he's learning (grin). We form a circle around him while he recovers, for protection. He gathers his goods up, and we move on to a safe buffing place for our battle with the big ape. I'm told what spells I need to use on him and in which order. Believe me that is an important thing when you're not used to doing that damn quest. Mowen comes up the ramp, damn one big ugly ape, then Dibbick corrected me, I was throwing spells at Fist's painting on the wall. (GRIN) Ok I'm in a mood, deal with it. As Mowen comes up, I throw the spells, and I was surprised, they landed. They made short work of the monkey, and Jeff got the kill. I mouthed off that oh sure the melee's get all the rewards, but try taking that hairy beast down without me. The group pelted me with nanners for having a bad attitude, and we got our rewards, 100K went to my life magic. 100K???????? What was Turbine thinking????? I was fuming, after all if you're going to do a quest, make it worthwhile. Don't get me wrong I'll go again if a group needs help but 100K????? I can get that much killing a low level Caul monster. Speaking of the Caul, well I'll get to that in a minute. I'm logged in, and Big K is asking for help. He's got a chance to get multiple cottages in the same settlement, but he needs to move 4 packs worth of items to do it. So, I tell him no problem, I'll log in Gonder, he's my character that can hold the most. I have Zintar' buff me while I'm getting handed packs. In the end I was at 257% burden. I moved slower than I did after Thanksgiving dinner let me tell you. Now poor Big K had to run around like a madman to get the characters in place, so I'm being a nice guy. In the end, it took about an hour for him to give me the packs, get the cottages, and get the packs off of me so I didn't get to hunt but that's ok. I kept track of the football games while waiting for him to finish. Also tried to smooth over Qu's feelings about no one really using his buff bot. I had a bunch of luck hunting the Caul, I pulled a nice major endurance kite shield off a monster that is only wms 6 al 121 so it will tink up nicely.

Fist de Yuma - December 7, 2004

This and That I have a little more about WoW on this column. Cannot be helped, as that has got me hooked right now. I see it no more than some of the stand-alone games I have played over the years. They take up a lot of time, but soon I'm back playing AC. In fact, I did play some AC this week. That really emphasized the things I like about both games. The hard part to get use to was the graphic in AC. Even the lettering seemed out of focus. Old eyes love WoW. I have a lot of complaints about WoW, but for some reason I cannot put it down. So, despite the problems, it is very addictive. It is a good balance for AC, as they are so different that one is a break from the other. My main worry was having a column this week. Then a few things came up in AC, the WoW servers went down, and I suddenly had a column. It is not as long as some I have, but I think it turned out ok. How lucky we are After spending a week playing WoW, I have gained the impression that we have some of the best players around. This is not only in skill, but also in attitude. It is not fair to gauge players after just a week, but the difference is so stark that I think I'm on safe ground. There is no way I can gauge people's solo abilities, except when they are fighting close to me, so I'll focus on team play and player interaction. In AC, people understand their roles. This means, a mage knows he or she will supply ranged power and debuffs. Archers understand they are best in support of the melees, and the melees understand that they are often more a shield than a weapon. Of course, this is a generalization that does not fit all groups, but you get the idea when I say the players understand their roles. In WoW, everyone wants to get the kill. For that reason, priests are few and far between. This focus is so fixed, that it is often hard to get a group formed, even when grouping is to great advantage. Even when you get a group, you have everyone rushing into battle. Rogues are not trying to get back shots. Mages are not on the wings or in the rear. Hunters are standing next to the fighters, with their pet just an added melee. Trying to balance this kind of play is difficult. I will generally die after joining an unknown team. This could be the reason it is so hard to get a good team together. There are many quests where you must kill 15 to 30 monsters. A single hunter must kill them all. A group needs to kill the same amount. So a group of six can kill off five each, and be done with the quest. Instead, you seem then fighting over the same monster, hoping to get in the first blow, so it is tagged to them. Trying to convince them that grouping would make things better is like talking to a brick wall. AC is much more of a solo game, and yet, you can get a group forming for any hard quest at the drop of a hat. If six people find themselves in VoD, they will quickly become a group. The advantage is less in AC, but the players understand that advantage. Then there is the attitude players. I use to think that AC had more than its share of bad players. Boy was I wrong. Whereas the odd griefer plays AC, this type is prevalent in WoW. Sadly, WoW gives this type of player an advantage over the honorable players. I'll give you two examples. My Paladin is a miner. There are places where Ore pops up from time to time. My Rogue is a herbalist. He is always in search of plants. When either finds what he is looking for, there are generally some guards around. You have to clear those, as you need about five seconds of uninterrupted time to get the ore or plants. I saw some copper ore on a mountainside. There was a narrow path leading to it. On that path was a nasty flying fire-breathing monster. I moved up the path, and engaged it. The second I was locked in battle, another player ran past and started mining the ore! When I asked him why he was doing that, he gave the lame excuse that he did not know I wanted the ore. Sure, I was moving up the path for my heath. The same thing happens my Rogue all the time. If there is anyone around that can steal, they will. There have even been complaints that players are camping quests, so they can steal the rewards when other engage the monster. I have taken to asking players nearby if they want the ore or plant before going after it. Mostly that just gives the guy in back of me time to run and loot it, but I feel better. My Hunter is a Skinner/Leather worker. This allows him to skin monsters that others kill. The key is not to attempt to skin a monster until the person leaves. They may have killed it to skin themselves. A guy was fighting a Tiger, and looked to be in trouble. I helped him kill it. Because of the way the system works, I got nothing for doing this. It was just a good deed. After he looted, he stopped to thank me. I was typing, asking if he was going to skin it or not. Before he could thank me, or me ask permission to skin it, someone else ran up and started skinning. He did not say a word, and was not involved in the battle at all. Strangely, this is accepted by most of the players. When I made a point that it was not fair play, I was cursed out. Very strange. Of course, AC had its share of schemers and scammers. To me, the key difference is the response other players give such. The players quickly ran Shortly Portman out of the game. The Mote and Shard Mule is still vilified to this day, 4 years after he disappeared from the game. There will always be bad people, is how the players respond that tells the true story. The best I get from WoW is a shrug. I have met my share of good players. It is always the bad ones that stand out and leave the biggest impression. Still, we AC players are blessed with some of the best. Pace I am finding that there is a big difference in pacing between WoW and AC. AC is fast past and action orientated. If I had to pick one word to describe the pacing of WoW, it would be, "Plodding". There are few modes of transportation, and even those are slow when compared to AC's portals. They look great, more than great, but it is still slow. The only thing to compare to an AC portal is a stone that will recall you to the inn. Even that can only be used once an hour. The rest of the time, you are plodding along on foot. The speed of running is also quite slow when compared to AC. You sort of feel like an overweight mule. When I was running Fist someplace after playing WoW, it was like he was a turbojet. There is no way to speed up this running, and everyone runs the same speed. Combat is better paced, but far shorter than your typical AC battle. In WoW, you must win fast, or you will lose. This is especially true with solo battles. After slowly picking out a monster at a time in WoW, I was truly having a blast taking on wave after wave of Olthoi. Something I would like to see in AC There is something WoW has that I would like to see in AC. This is rewarding players for not playing. That may sound strange, but it works well in practice. What they do is give you an Xp advantage for logged off time. This advantage is best if you log in the Inn, or one of the major towns. What happens is you get a point to which you get double Xp. When you gain the amount that puts you over the line, your Xp returns to normal. This allows the player who does not have a lot of time to play, to keep up with those that play a lot. It is not equal of course, as a power leveler will gain far more, but it gives them a small boost. I'm sure there is a limit to this. I know it will go past levels, as I leveled and was still gaining double Xp. This is also an advantage to players like me, who want to play many players. I can play one for hours on end, and than have a nice little bonus when I go back to my main player. Others are still shooting past me, but I'm at least keeping them in sight. Role Playing I have picked up a new role in WoW. As you read last week, I play my Paladin as stoic and my Rogue as disdainful of all, including himself. I just created a Gnome Warlock. This is a fun class, with a lot of advantages, including a summoned monster that fights for you. He is far smaller than the other players. That is one of the "Cool" factors in WoW. I decided that he is a little pest. He greets the groups he finds, with, "Hi big people." He will then add in, "Whata doing?" Of course I know exactly what they are doing most times. I'll then make comments like, "That is a big sword", to the two handed sword players. Given that the sword is twice his size, I figured it would be his reaction when see sees one. To my surprise, few players get this. Some really thought I was some little kid playing WoW. You would think that players on a RP server would be a little more open to fun. I'll keep at it, as players will get it in time. Then it will be a lot more fun. Don't waste your salvage Turbine has teased about this for some time, but is looks like it will be happening. They are creating higher wield weapons! What this means is; our hard earned weapons are all going to be obsolete. Of course, this will be a boon to those who are not pushing levels. The value of 325 wield weapons will be dropping. Soon, "to die for weapons", will be given away, or sold cheaply on a vendor mule. Meanwhile, don't waste your current salvage material on current 325 weld weapons. On average, we will need three bags per weapon type. For those of use with multiple accounts, and sundry players, this is a nightmare in the making. Of course, it is one I gladly welcome. Gaining power One big thing I have noted as I have gained power with my players, is how hard things can become easy. I can remember when a good group of players would have a hard time with the mage armor upgrade quest. Today, three of us did the last two parts of this quest. I did it with Deadeye Fist, and the other two were a lot weaker than him. Nevertheless, the three of us walked over the quests with ease. This is likely a combination of greater gear and experience, but it is quite amazing to compare yesterday to today. Yesterday; big group and lots of trouble. Today; little group, and no trouble at all.

Fist de Yuma - November 30, 2004

Bobo There are a lot of quests out there that are, "Just to do" quests. Some have good rewards, but Turbine has been notoriously poor at quest rewards. They are getting better, but quests are still mostly a, "something to do" thing. There are a few that fall into the, "must do at least once", category. Bobo is one of those. We can get away with gems, or running through the dungeon, but having the Tusker island recall spell is so much better. So when Bunsen volunteered to lead the quest, many were overjoyed. Dread Lord used to run this quest every week, but he has some real life issues, and has not been on for a while. This is one quest where you really should have someone who knows the route well. Having a lot of power is also nice. We set up the quest for Saturday. I was there with Owanda, my 113lv macer. He finally got self-buffing with VIIs, which is a must for this quest. Well, there are exceptions to that rule. More and more people are going with straight item buffs, and not taking any magic skills, but Item. I can see that working, because at one time we had no choice, but it has been years since I lived without level VII buffs. The time rolled around, and no Bunsen. Hours later, no Bunsen. Everyone went and did something else. Several hours after the quest time, Bunsen logged on, with a red face apology. He had fallen asleep. I have a good memory, and have known a lot of different people. So I understand when someone makes a goof like that. I have a gift of being able to wake up at the exact time I should, but I have never known anyone else who can. (A very valuable skill in the Marines.) So Bobo was a bust, but there was always Sunday. We set up to go then. Unfortunately, we could not get the word out to everyone, and many could not make it for that day. When we got ready for the quest, we only had four people. We had good melee power, with Owanda, and Hot Shot, but Bunsen XV is only 83. That is a good level, but will have a hard time landing on most of the stuff we would meet. We rounded that out with Horror Sparrow, a 108 melee. We were light on numbers and de-buff power. For those not familiar with this quest, it is to get a recall spell to Tusker island. It starts with talking to a guy in a hut. This hut is surrounded with some heavy hitting Tuskers, and sundry other monsters. Many of them can hit through the walls, and it is a small house, so it is a nightmare for a mage or any low melee defense player. From there you run to a waterfall, that has a dungeon portal in it. The run to both places have hundreds of Tuskers and other Tusker island demons nipping at your heels. Stopping, even for a second, is not an option. Dieing out there is the beginning of many a horror story. From there, you go into a dungeon with heavy hitting Tuskers, de-buffing mages and dispel traps, that also add in a nice VII bludgeoning vulnerability. Fortunately, the traps only dispel VI and below, or not many people would be doing this quest. Level VII or item buffs, along with dispel gems, are a must. This dungeon will lead to a portal to the next dungeon. This one is more of the same, with narrow hallways. So, for the most part, the second dungeon is not quite as bad as the first. The exception is at the very end. At the very end is a wide ramp with lots of tuskers tucked away in side passages. They will spill out as you descend the ramp. At the bottom is a maze. It is also filled with lots of nastiness. That will lead to the portal to the next dungeon. The next dungeon is totally different. This one has the green barking stuff you see on the island, along with the scorpion things. People who cheated on buffs, and only did bludgeoning banes and protects, die here. This is also a good place to get lost. This dungeon ends with more Tuskers in a wide series of rooms. If you made it this far, it is likely you'll make to the end with ease. That last dungeon just has Tuskers and no traps. You can still stumble if you get stupid, but the only real trouble is the knowing the route. At last you get to meet Bobo. This is one really big Tusker, with granite blocks for hands. Don't worry, you don't have to fight him, but you do get the next best thing. You talk to Bobo, and he portals you to a small room. This has a portal, and is used to gather your group before the final assault. The final battle is with a heavy hitting, armored Tusker. Just to make things harder, they have missile-tossing tuskers around the top of the pit, cheering their hero on. Every so often you'll see other tuskers join the battle, but that is just lag, and they will disappear quickly. I have heard of people soloing this bad boy, but you will need one powerful person to do that. Paraduck type power. They also need the ability to de-buff, as no amount of pure melee can get ahead of his heal rate. When he is defeated, a portal back to Bobo is created. You talk to Bobe one last time, and he rewards you with a paw. The paw will have one or three fingers. Each finger is a reward. If you got the kill, you get three rewards instead of one. You take one last portal to the reward room. There are a lot of different statues, each with a different reward. The main one is the scroll, of course. There is also a small chance to get a nice, one of a kind mage spell, and an Axe item. I'm not sure if there is anything for anyone else, but there might be. In any case, the odds of getting anything good are very low. And back to our adventure. We did not start out great. We got a little separated while running to the hut. Different running speeds, and the inability to stop, always make that run a nightmare. I got there first, and was off to the waterfall before the others showed. Hot Shot was showing off, and tried to make the run without buffs. That worked ok, after all he is over 200 level, but when he got to the hut, things were different. He had to port out or die. We all laughed at him as he buffed and made the run. We all rebuffed at the dungeon start. Hot Shot and Bunsen helped with Horror Sparrows buffs. It was a strange start, but we got it together after that. We moved well though the dungeon. We would go slow when we needed to, and rushed when we had to. Bunsen did a good job with directions. He was not totally sure he could remember all the turns, and felt he was going to die before we got to the end. Smart play and good leadership made it a breeze. The only really scary part came at the bottom of the ramp, in the second dungeon. This part is really dangerous. I have seen 126+ players leave bodies there. We did not have the power to get ahead of the spawn rate, so we decided to make a run for it. We started by clearing the top section, so we could get a clean run to the maze. When that was done, we girded our loins, and rushed down. I'll admit I will tend to cheat a little with things like this. There are two ways to go here, lead or follow. Sometimes it is far better to lead, others times it is far better to follow. I find that a good rule is, if inside, lead, if outside, follow. So I took advantage of my high run, and shot ahead. I do not know the maze really well, but I have a trick. I had Bandit Sight open and portal detection on. When it detected the portal, I could use that as a guide. It was a good idea, but not perfect. I started in, and quickly came to a dead end. I was quick, and weaving, so I did not get trapped. I was tying to make my way though, without ever slowing down. One misstep, and you are in big trouble. The key is not to stop, and not to panic. Just go. So when I came out the maze, close to where I came in, I just reversed my direction and re-entered the maze. I was not the only one, as I ran past Hot Shot about then. (g) Even with all that, I was the first to the portal. I even had to wait a while before everyone else could make it in. We rebuffed there and headed in. Bunsen really shined here. I have seen many parties get lost in this part, if only for a time. Bunsen had it down pat. We did not make a single wrong turn. In the last dungeon, we did make a few wrong turns, but we quickly recovered. After a few fights, we were ready to fight the last battle. I did not expect to have that much of a problem. We had Hot Shot, who might well be one of those capable of soloing this bad boy. Owanda is no slouch, even with a less than optimal fire mace. Add on a 108 melee and Bensen's spells, and I did not expect us to have any trouble at all. Before we went in, I got everyone to head to a single corner. Nothing is worse than having everyone scatter to a different spot. Well, maybe Hot Shot would be ok, but the rest of us would not want to face him alone. Now, I'm not sure what happened. I'll just give you my view of the battle. First I ran to the southwest corner, and set up for the fight. I could see others next to me, but I was slightly forward, so I could not see what they were doing. I hunkered behind my shield and swung away. Despite Owanda's very high melee defense, he had no trouble hitting me. Of course, without any missile defense, the Tuskers above us were also doing damage. Because a good shield, and high armor, I only had to heal once during the battle. Where things were not going good was our return damage. I saw his heath percentage go down to 97, stay there for a bit, and then go back to 100. I'm not sure if Turbine has beefed him up any, but I was sure I should be doing better than that, even without Hot Shot and the gang. Bunsen was having a hell of a time landing a spell. We were a minute in before he finally got the yield, and a bit more before the imperil hit. I saw him ask Hot Shot for help, and it could be that Hot Shot got the yield. When the spells finally hit, things got a lot better. I think it was around a minute from there that he died. The portal was created, and I jumped in. I hit Bobo, and much to my surprise, I got my first three-fingered paw, ever. How I got the kill over Hot Shot, I'll never know. HS said he was delayed getting into the battle, and might have had to stop to help with the spells. Still, I was not exactly doing much damage before the spells landed. With the three wishes, I got the recall spell, and a million reward, followed by a 500k reward. As you can see, anything after the first wish sucks. Worlds of Warcraft After playing both EverQuest and Worlds of Warcraft in beta, I choose WoW as my side game. AC is still my game, and there is nothing in either game that will change that. Still, I need something else to play from time to time. I should not have done this, but I ordered it from EBgames, and had it mailed overnight. That cost me an added ten bucks. Given that I still had to play sales tax, as EBgames has a store in town, I should have just gone to WalMart and got it. Of course, if I did go that route, Rosa would have wanted to know where I was going at midnight (g). As it was, I failed to sneak the game in, so she knows about it. I stayed up to around 5am playing AC. I figured WoW would arrive around noon, and I did not want to sit and fidget while waiting for it. I hate to wait, for anything, so I figure it would be better to just sleep. An hour after I got up, no WoW. We have the front door blocked, and use the side door. The delivery people know this, but every so often we get a noob who puts deliveries at the front door. To be sure, I walked around to see. No package. I check the web site at 4pm. It said it had been delivered! Now, to say Yuma has poor service is an understatement. Well, to be fair, that is just the mail. Others are very good, but anything sent Federal is at risk. I figured they had messed up again. I checked outside one more time, no package. I checked the mailbox. Nada. I checked across the street, as they have delivered there from time to time, nothing. It took me a while, but I found the phone number for Federal Express. For some reason, it was not in the phone book. I had to get it off the web site. To be honest, they were really nice. I was steamed, but in control. It was a good thing I did not yell at her, but I was really pissed. She read off what the driver wrote. Packaged delivered and placed behind the screen at 1pm. Aaaa, behind the screen? At this point I'm really glad I was not being as ass, as I had not checked behind the screen. I'm talking really nice, as I carried the phone outside and around to the front door. Sure enough, there it was. I thanked her for the help, and hung up, red faced. Role Playing I'm playing on the east coast role-playing server, for those who play WoW, and want to hook up. You'll be very welcome, as most players there are very bad, and I need to team with some players who know which end of a sword to use. The most common thing we see, are players who take advantage of others as a matter of course. They sit and hide, waiting for others to engage guards, and then run in and grab the reward. Some players did nothing but that. It was tempting to just stop fighting, die, and let the monsters kill off the leaches. To our amazement, the role-playing server is one of the most popular servers. There are even times when you have to wait to get on! I'm glad they are limiting the number of players on a server, but waiting for over 200 players to log off, so I can log on, was a sight to behold. So you would think that role-playing is what they want. You would be wrong. While a lot of us are playing roles, most players are not. I'm not sure which is worse, the kids chatting on the general chat, or the role players who argue with them about it. I'm hoping that they will crack down on this soon. With the number of problems they are having, and the slow response for service, I don't expect them to address this for some time The big thing I got, was most of them had no idea what role-playing is. One person said they did not want to talk in old English. Just how they got the idea that, that was role-playing, I'll never know. Role-playing is playing a role. You pick a personality, and play it. When I started playing Fist, I played him as a punch-drunk boxer. Of course, I did not know that UA was not boxing, so it did not work out all that well. Then there was the fact that few ever played a role when AC started. My next attempt to play a role, and one I may go back to, is Death Mute. He was created to PK with a group. I was even given a copy of AC from them. (Not an account, an in the box copy.) The idea was to be an undiscovered tribe. The story was that we came to Dereath, and were enslaved by mages. We had newly broken from them in a revolt, leaving a bloody mess in our wake. We would be full time PK, this was before PKL, and would mostly target mages. They wanted us to use spears, but I had to draw the line there, and made Death Mute sword. To get away from the trash talking that haunts PK, he was going to be a mute. So, for his first few months of play, he never talked. E-motes and other things were all he could do. Like I said, I might go back with that later. His current story is that Asheron cured him, but I might make that a temporary cure. In WoW, I have two very different roles. I'll have to be careful to keep aware, as it would he easy to respond with one, as the other would respond. My main player is Fistdeyuma. Sadly, there is no spaces in the names allowed. That is just one of the problems I have with WoW. He is a stoic Paladin. Always helpful, and forceful with his fight against evil. He is a bit nave; and everything is black and white, good vs. evil. I'll not say the name of this next player, but anyone who has seen him will know him. He is cynical to the max. There is no good, no bad, only fools. The biggest fool of all, is himself. So instead of using general chat to say, "Where is the Den Mother", he will say, "Can someone tell this fool elf where the Den Mother is." (The Den Mother is a monster that you must kill as part of a quest.) So role-playing is easy. Just play your player, and talk and act as he would. Avoid real life comments. When asking a question, form it as your player would form it. I recommend that you not play something too off from your real self, at least to begin with. Whatever you do, have fun with it. If you think you need the freedom to drop in and out of role, talk about the Jets, or complain about your spouse, then don't play on a role-playing server. You'll not like it, and they will not like you. Real Life meeting There have been many times when AC players have had the opportunity to meet each other in real life. Unfortunately, for us West coast players, these have all been held on the East Coast. For those of us without the time or money, I fall into the later, getting there would be almost impossible. Even holding such in LA would be hard for me, with hotel bills, but possible. So I have missed out meeting people in real life, that I know so well in AC. I'm betting I know people in the game better than their friends know them. I have always felt that the freedom of these games let a person's true aspect show through. There are some that I have almost met. There are a lot of players in Phoenix, and I assume a few in San Diego. The one I had the best shot of meeting was Pantine. Pantine lives in Las Vegas. Rosa had a business meeting there this year. My plan was to surprise him with a visit. That fell through when Rosa was set to go to Germany, and could not do both. Then the Germany thing fell through, so we did nether. So I was extremely happy when Pantine sent me a letter, saying he would be in Yuma over Thanksgiving! After a few e-mails, we agreed to meet at the Red Lobster on Friday. I was not surprised that I knew who it was the second I saw him. He said I looked exactly like he thought I did. (g) We had a good meal, and talked a lot. We ended up with a lot of take home, as our "Server", as she wanted to be called, was an old friend of my wife. We ordered the all you can eat shrimp, and she brought us enough to feed six people, and then containers to take it home. (g) She knew she was feeding Rosa, and, as it turned out, Rubin, with enough left overs for me Sunday night when Rosa went to church. Pantine and I hit it off so well, that I invited him home. We spend several more hours talking and laughing. After six hours of that, he had to say goodbye, and prepare for his trip home. I hope to meet a lot more people in real life someday. Lets hope that Turbine will have an LA convention, now that they have moved there. Future of the column So far, I have not missed a column in almost five years. This week is my five-year anniversary of AC, and the column's is in December. This column started as just me posting on one of the boards. That got some attention, and I was shortly invited to write for the Olthoi Lair. The rest is history, as they say. In this five years, I have not missed a week. In fact, I had an added column one week, so I'm even ahead. (g) Lately, I have noted some stress with the column. The demand to have something, anything, just to not break the streak, can really work on me. So, sometime in January, I'm going to deliberately miss a column, just to break the streak. Then, I'll not push to make it a weekly. I'm going to write when I feel like writing. When I have enough for a column, there will be one posted. So it might be weekly, it might be every other week. There might even be times when I miss a month, or even have three in one week. I cannot say for sure. I'll post when I have something interesting to post. When there is a column out, I expect it to be a gem. I want to raise the bar for the column, and make it a showcase for AC. Many in WoW have asked me if I would write a column for that game. It is not likely, but you never know. If I do, it will not be a weekly. WoW is a part time game for me. Well, that is the plan. So far I have spent most of this week there, but it is starting to show cracks. A few hours a week might be the norm. In any case, I have a six month subscription, so I'll be playing that much at least. I'll see you in game, be it AC or Wow. Remember, the key to these games is to have fun. Park your EGO at the door and be ready for adventure! E-Mails ===Aelryinth of Leafcull Noted you did Noble Weapons. I strongly advise not getting a melee weapon unless 1) You want it for your collection and 2) You want the damage type. The Axe down there does piercing damage (a pick) and the morningstar for mace does slashing. The rapier is nice, but, um, burun aren't vuln to pierce, they are vuln to cold. With a Cold Armor-render, you do more damage to burun once fully debuffed then this toy does. Now, the bow is okay, because you can use cold bolts for the extra damage edge (xbow, thrown weapons too). The Wand is also nice (scepter), equal to a virindi slaying wand, perhaps better. It's a nice extra damage stack that comes in very handy if you can vuln the burun or gurog ahead of time. We had a mage using one today against Morgluuk on a Noble weapons quest, and his normal damage doubled, and his crits about quadrupled over his crit strike wand. Against normal burun/guruk, he just used a cold render wand. Two spells landing was all he needed. Much simpler. Thus, if you are doing Noble Weapons, I strongly advise picking up a wand for your mage, or a missile weapon for your other characters. The melee weapons are nice and cool, but not of much use against the burun. A cold render will outperform them solo, and a CS/AR Cold will outperform them in groups with double buffs. The Noble weapons are givable, and it isn't until you run the New Soul stone quest on the new island that you can get Burun Slayer on them and do the extra damage, anyways. Not to mention, level 153 Titans can hit 710 Melee when you are swinging at them, and a I like my +13 to hit Frostie better then a +9 to hit rapier... I have never done the Orphanage, hearing far too many bad stories about it...and I'm not really interested in the rewards at the end. Leaving bods in bad dungeons is something I shy away from. If you enjoyed the column, and would like to add to my emergency fund, here is a link.

Fist de Yuma - November 23, 2004

This and That With Rosa gone for a week, I got to do some things I don't ordinary get to do. I smoked a few cigars, drank a little beer and stayed up later than normal. While that was fun, my big project was to get my den cleaned. It is not totally done, but the major work is out of the way. As a side benefit, I got a workbench put in. That got me motivated to fix my old computer. My old computer stopped working one day, about two years ago. The fans would start, and then it shut down. I brought a new motherboard from Frys. Without a workbench, and with a new computer set up, I did not feel a rush to start working on it. After two years, I decided it was time to get on the stick. First I turned it on to see if there was something odd that fixed itself. It did turn on for a few seconds. Then a chip exploded, so there was no need to explore that route any more. To my great surprise, installing the new motherboard was almost easy. The hardest part was fitting the fan over the CPU, and that was not that hard. Because of the way the things are laid out, I had to put the fan on after installing the motherboard. There was no room to put the motherboard in while the fan was installed. I plugged in the cables and wires, and it fired up on the first try. Unfortunately, my good luck ended there. It would take a while to find the IDE devices, and then go to a blank screen with the curser blinking in the upper left corner. I figured I would have to reinstall Windows XP Pro. I was hoping that I could get it to boot enough so I could get the product ID first. As it was, I could not even get it to boot the CD. After hours of work, and some advice from an Internet tech support group, I was getting nowhere. I decided to take apart my old Dell and use that hard drive. It worked! So when the motherboard fried, it took the hard drive with it. That hard drive has a two-gig storage capacity, not even close to what you need today. Heck, I had to spend time deleting stuff, just to get Windows XP Pro to try an install. It wants a gig free just to start. So I'm going to pick up a new hard drive from BestBuy tomorrow. I figure I'll grab a network card and a new KVT while I'm at it. That will about break my budget for the next six months, but it will get the computer working. Having two full speed computers and one slow computer online, will make things smoother. What I don't want to do is pay for another copy of Windows. I have paid for four copies and feel it is unfair to force me to get another. For some reason, the product ID I have will not work. There must be three more ID numbers floating around my Den, but I have not had any luck finding them. I'm hoping it was some glitch with the old hard drive that prevented it from working. If not, I expect to be arguing with the Microsoft tech support for hours in end, again. Fighting frame rates It has been a while since I fought in a crowded spot, where lots of spells are flying. The last time I had a big drop in frame rate was in EQII. It was a big battle, near a lot of graphics eating items. I was thinking how glad I was not to be seeing that in AC. Stupid me. While getting ready for a quest with William the Bat's group, he got a message about a disaster. It seemed that a group of players went into the Orphanage and died. Several attempts to recover the bodies were met with more disaster. So the quest was delayed while we went off to help. We ran through the Bore and headed to the coordinates. There was a group standing outside, which looked relieved to see us. One said, "Here comes the Calvary." I was using Fist de Yuma Jr for this. Jr is a hybrid Life/Sword. This means that, for his level, he is weak in both Life and Sword skills. His health, while not low, is lower that most his level. He is better solo, as much of his XP is put into a skill he will not use in a group. With time, and lots of XP, he will be great, but for now he is behind the curve. As we landed inside the dungeon, we were attacked from all sides. The monsters were all Caul types. This means, big level VII de-buffs and War spells, combined with hard-hitting melee power and substantial hit points. None of these things scare me in themselves. If you combine that with a steady lowering of the frame rate, it becomes a nightmare. Strobe lights might be before most of my readers' times, but that is the only real life example I can think of. What made things worse, was my mouse was hard to position. I would take damage, from who knows what, and would be almost dead in seconds. I discovered that blue healing kits are a godsend. I was amazed when I would land heals when far down the damage tree. I've been using treated kits for many years, but I'm now going to be using the blue kits on all my melees. It is good timing, because I have five or six un-caved sings sitting on Fist's Armorer. You can trade them for blue kits in Tommy town. This is the same guy you turn in Olthoi claws and Vapor hearts to. While standing in the center, I had no clue about the combat actions around me. I was swinging at stuff, and healing when I needed to. I used a hot key to pick a target, as I could barely see them, let alone have the ability to pick one with the mouse. The flicking mess made it impossible to do anything else. I decided to try and hit a side passage. I had hoped that I would get a better idea as to what I was fighting that way. I ran around a passage, and found that three things were chasing me. I would not want to fight two of the, let alone three. Even with one, I want preparation time, if not with mage support. Jr is more an outside fighter, where he has time to imperil and vuln. After seeing how futile this battle was, I tried to run around a bit, with the hopes of breaking contact. I ended up doing that, and found a spot next to someone. The frame rate was still bad, so I was keeping a close watch on my health. I would heal any damage, no matter how low. It did not help. I saw my health drop to 120, and I was dead before I could even hit the hot keys. I ran back, but was hesitant to jump back in. So far I was only down DI's. Unless things changed, I would likely die before I could recover the first body. I said the heck with it, and jumped back in. Fortunately, William and company had whittled the monsters down enough that my computer could handle it. I recovered, but I don't think I'll be going back. The next time I had this problem also involved the William allegiance. I was about to start writing the column on Sunday, but decided to check the board first. There was a message about a lot of bodies in Caul. I logged in Fist's Armorer to give them a hand. I'm figuring that FA will be my best VoD/Caul player. He is a grief BM with a 100-endurance start. My hope is that his high health and magic defense will overcome the danger of such hunting. I cannot say if it will work later, but it is not working now. FA just hit 126, so there is a lot of room for growth. His magic defense is around 365 and health around 305. Endurance is cheap and Magic Defense is around 80 million a point. I had no trouble finding them. I joined in trying to clear the land around the bodies. Within seconds of starting the fight, my frame rate started its steady drop. This is even more frustrating with FA, because he cannot heal with a hot key. With the mouse being a problem, there was no way I could heal quickly. I ended up having the mouse curser hover over the heal spell, while I used hot keys to fight. There were several times when my health dropped, but I had to wait for a war spell to fire before I could click heal. I lucked out and did not take any more war spells before I could heal, but it was a close thing. Then someone died, and things started getting hard. I backed up to the ridge, with the thought that I could recover there a lot better than in the center. It was a good plan, because I got taken out by three of them, shortly after. Three wars at the same time, will take out most players. For some reason I had trouble getting back. I was running directly north, when I needed to run northeast. Thankfully, MS ported back to the start and showed me what I was doing wrong. I recovered my body and re-joined the fray. I was told that most of the bodies were recovered. I think William had one there, but that was it. With the bad frame rate, I was just hanging on to life. It was at about this point when I got some attacks that brought me close to death. I escaped with a tusker island gem. I was told that William would not have any trouble recovering from that location, so I logged off for dinner. I'm hoping there is a solution to this problem. Will a faster graphic card help? Do I need a more powerful computer? My current card is a Geforce FX 5900 and 128 memory. If you have an answer, drop me a note. (Note, I saw that the water in my water-cooled system was getting low. I filled it today. It could be that it was getting overheated, and the system slowed. I'll test it soon and report back.) Playing while tired One thing many of us will do is play when we should be sleeping. Circumstances keep us going, when common sense tells us it is time to rest. Add in a real life event, like a 16-mile mountain bike ride, and you add physical exhaustion to the mental. I had been playing hard that day. I had a few quests under my belt and was getting tired. I got a call from William the Bat about the noble weapon quest. I was game, so I met them in Tou-Tou with Fist de Yuma Jr. I figured a noble sword would be useful. The above body recovery interrupted that for a while. We got everyone back together after that, but now I was really tired. There is nothing more exhausting that a stressful body recovery. William the Bat really had this quest well prepared. He had people ready with portals. He had the pre stuff out of the way. All we had to do was follow instructions and fight. About the only criticism I could give was not explaining things to the group. This led to some misunderstandings, and a major mistake on my part. First we got a portal to the Lugie fortress. William gave us a note to give to the NPC. Then another player created a portal. That took us to a housing complex, close to the dungeon. We ran to a big fort. After clearing the outside guards, we started pounding on a door. At first I thought they were fighting monsters on the other side of the door, but it was the door itself they were fighting. After that fell, we cleared the courtyard. We had a lot of power, so there was not a lot of danger. We followed William up a passage, and got into the dungeon. Here I got my first surprise. The floor gave out a lot of damage. There was no warning about this, so I stopped in the wrong spot. I did not come close to dieing or anything, but it was a surprise. After we cleared, William told us to check the bodies for something that will improve the noble weapons. What he did not say, was that we could do this later, and this was the worse place to search for it. What it did was create the impression that we needed to get this item before we left the dungeon. William came back to get those of us who were waiting for another spawn. We moved on, but still thought we had to get this item, there, today. So we were moving slow, checking all the bodies, and getting irked that we were not finding it. I could see that William was getting irritated with us. It took a while before he understood what our problem was, and explained that we could get the items at other, safer, spots. We finally got to a ramp with a large bunch of monsters. The floor was doing a lot of damage, so we had to draw them up the ramp. Trying to fight on that floor is not smart, and we are not dumb. Finally one with a strange name came up the ramp. I started beating on it, without much effect. At last, we beat it down, and Xan got the kill. From that body we all got an item. They made another portal to the Lugie fortress and were done with the combat parts. We give the items to the NPC and got a key and a gem. Popping the gem put us in a dungeon. I saw a chest, two in fact. People were lined up at one chest, so I went to the other. Remember, I'm very tired at this point. I've been playing for a long time, and had that bike ride. All I wanted to do was get this over with, and take a rest. As I grabbed the key, something in the back of my mind said, "don't do this, don't do this." My main mind said, get this over with and log off, I'm tired. So I opened the chest. The first thing I saw was a noble staff. Then I looked above the chest, and saw a staff picture above the chest. Looking around, I saw that there was a weapon above the other chests. What I should have done was find the sword chest. That was likely what the line was about. Well, no use kicking myself. I messed up. I had high hopes that I would have a bunch of adventures during the week, and I could forget about ever writing about this mess up. That did not happen. Heck, I would have likely written it anyway, but I would like to have an option. (g) If you enjoyed the column, and would like to add to my emergency fund, here is a link.

Fist de Yuma - November 9, 2004

Questing with a mule It all started out with a comment Punchy Smash made while we were talking. I was hunting in the 80+ Matron with Salvage Mule three at the time. We were talking about the name "Salvage Mule." I was explaining how he was a driver for my tradesman, while at the same time collecting salvage. The salvage mules are very focused on Olthoi, so there should be no worry that he was one of the "loot but don't hunt" type of player. Punchy Smash then said it would be a good idea for Cliff Bowman to go do the Font of Jojii quest. It was a great idea! The quest is a bit long, and requires a lot of running. Nevertheless, doing this quest would add 1 point to my armor skill, and 2 to my weapon skill. Given that we are talking about 60 million (1 point Armor) and 100 million (2 points Weapon), even a daylong quest would be worth doing. Of course, the problem is Cliff Bowman's lack of combat ability. I have long since sold off his bow skill. He does have UA, being Sho, but his coordination is not very high. The thought of wasting xp on building a skill, for a one-time quest, did not make sense. To his advantage, he does have Melee and Missile defense. This is just to activate items, but at least he has them. With a high Focus, he was not that off on Magic defense either. To feel ready for this quest, I had to spend about 10 million points. Those went into Quick, Magic Defense and Heal. The armor was no problem, as I had just finished tinking up a set. It took a bit to unload all the armor he was carrying, to get under burden, but the use of two computers made that easy. The main problem was finding room on the other mules. I was finally ready to try the quest. My idea was to just run through the dungeons, healing when I had a chance. With a moderate amount of Melee, Missile and Magic defense, I was hoping to keep out of trouble. Having max endurance, and having built it up a bit, give me confidence. The running was going to be a pain. Cliff Bowman has no magic skills whatsoever. This means he cannot use ties and recalls. Fortunately, I'm well versed with the portal system, and kept the long runs to a minimum. The first step is to go to Tou-Tou. You talk to a guy and go to a small outside temple. That leads you to Nanto. I took the portal to Lin and ran to Nanto. The next step was to get to Sawato. That was a bit of a run. I took a housing portal in Shoushi to shorten it. After hitting another outdoor temple, I was ready to try the first dungeon. It was also a bit of a run to the dungeon. I noted as I was running that I had forgotten to pick up some portal gems. The gems that get you to Tusker Island make great escape items. As my intent was to run in, grab the item, and use the gem to portal out, not having one was a problem. I figured that this was the easiest of the three dungeons. I could just run back to a portal. I should not have worried, as my defenses held up well. I just ran in, grabbed the note, and touched the object. I then ran back up the ramp and into the portal. Easy, simple and safe. One down. I tried to take the next one on the same buff. A few mistakes prevented that. First, I was in a hurry, and forget to touch the temple in Lin. I was halfway to the dungeon before I realized it. I did another allegiance hometown and started over. By the time I go to the dungeon, I only had seven minutes left. I tried to run to the end, but got lost in the maze. With 30 seconds left, I hit the portal gem. After a rebuff, I ran back. This time I was not as rushed, so I did not get lost. So far so good. I took a little damage but nothing that forced me to heal. The halls are wide enough that I did not get trapped. I had to wait for one monster to go into melee mode, to get around him, but that was it. I knew that the last dungeon was a bit harder, and there was a lot of running left. I rebuffed rather than take a chance of having to do the runs twice. As it turned out, I made it before the older buffs wore off. First I ran from Arwic to the subway, and took the Qbar portal. Then I ran to the housing portals and exited a few clicks from Kara. I ran there and talked to the guy. A short run got me to the last dungeon. I knew the drop was hot. I started running as soon as I was out of bubble. This dungeon I knew well, so getting lost would not be a problem. I ran down a hallway that curves around to a cut back, and into a set of rooms with gated doors. I got close to the rooms, but there was a Lich camped in the center of a narrow hall, right at the cut back. I could not run past him. If he were in melee mode, I might have been able to push him back, using the slow walk that Heideggar taught me. That would not work because it was using throw weapon, and they don't need room to attack. The trick Heideggar taught me takes advantage of a melee needing room to swing. You might note that at times you cannot swing when in a crowd of monsters. You will also see your player, or the monster, have to back up if you are to close to them at the start of combat. That also works for the monsters. If you walk up to a monster, using shift forward, you will press them. They have to back up to attack. This will allow you to push them back and make an escape route. That does not work with archers or throw weapons. I ran back up the hall, and circled around, and back to the problem spot. Most of the undead followed me, and left the passage clear. When I hit that same spot, that same Lich was blocking the hall. I did this several times, but was unable to get him out of my way. I was stuck. I would need help clearing a path. I logged off and logged on Fist de Mage. After a short buff, he ran to the dungeon. It took Fist de Mage little time to clear a path for Cliff Bowman. I kept logging each in turn, so Cliff Bowman just walked in and got the last part. From there I ran to Mayoi, and got a housing portal to the final part. I talked to the guy and got the water. I built up a Font and gave it to Qu', one of our buff bots. I still have a mule that can benefit from doing this quest. He is not as important a tradesman as Cliff Bowman, so I can wait for a group to go. He has little endurance, and, at last check, not many hit points. It will be a lot better for him to just hang back while some real fighters do the work. Instance death It is easy to fall into the leveling trap. This means only hunting in high xp places. When hunting for xp, I will generally try to find a place where I can get 15 to 30 million an hour. The problem with that is you stop hunting in places that were fun, because they only return 5 to 8 million an hour. It also restricts you to one type of player. When hunting Olthoi, I will take a melee. When hunting Tuskers, I can take a mage, but it is easer with a melee. This meant that my mages were getting neglected. I decided that I needed to forget about the xp and just hunt for fun. I loaded up Fist's Armorer and headed to the Plains. This a fun hunt, with average loot. I will generally pick up around 5 to 7 million an hour. Everything was going smooth. I had one string of strange loot finds. I picked up five sing keys in the first twenty minutes of hunting. Normal is one every few hours. Unfortunately, Fist's Armorer does not have Lock Pick, so I guess I'll just use them to get some blue healing kits. One of my goals was to pick up some Drudge amulets. I used to be able to find a lot of them on the plains. I am not hurting for them, but figured to stock up a bit anyway. Sadly, in the two hours I was there, I did not find a single one. After traversing the slot, I climbed up to the plains. I cleared several spawns, and I saw a monster I wanted to kill. It was in a large pod of mixed monsters. This is normal on the Plains. You will have to clear one type at a time generally. I saw some Shadows in there, and decided to take them out first. I got back just far enough to open up with a double attack. This is where you toss a normal war, immediately followed by an Arc spell. Except for a handful of monsters, this will let you get two spell attacks at once. Most monsters will die to that. This time my victim survived. What I had missed was a bunch of Grievvers just behind them. If I had seen the Grievvers, I would have attacked them first. Grievvers will defend Shadows, while Shadows will not defend Grievvers. I saw the four Shadows running up on me. The Grievvers were close behind. I noted that I was at low health, and then I was at 60. Before I could even think about healing, I was dead. All this happened in less than a second. As I stated in my last column, I treat death as if it means something. Fist's Armorer just made 126, and that was only his 23rd death. Scrolling back showed that two of the Shadows hit me with a level VI health drain. I was also hit by a hidden spell. If I had seen the war spells, I would have side stepped and avoided them. There is a small bug in AC. If you stand in front of someone that fires a war spell at a monster, you will not see the effect travel to the monster. This rarely happens with a monster attacking you, but it will happen, especially when working with a large pod of monsters, as I was. I did not see any war spells going my way, but the text showed I was hit by an Acid spell from a Grievver. I did not think two drains followed by a war spell would be enough to take out my over 300 hit points, but I might have had an acid vuln on. In any case, it was my first instance death since Martine took me out at Romside's wedding. Who is the moron who said this was easy? Jeff sent me an e-mail asking if I wanted to go on the 80+ Olthoi armor quest. He had several people lined up. Key was Lifedraynor, because he knows the route very well. I always get lost there. (g) I told Jeff that it was an easy quest, if a bit long. When the day arrived, we did not have everyone we needed. All we had were Jeff and I. I know I could solo it, with Fist, I was not so sure I could keep Jeff alive. Another problem is that Jeff's player, Kepi, is not self buffing yet. This quest generally takes a few hours, and that is not counting the getting lost time. While hanging at the mansion, people started volunteering to go with us. Also, some of the people who were slotted to go started to arrive. Jeff decided to use Mage Sailor Bane, as he can self buff, and it is nice to have mage support. As we started out, Lifedraynor logged on. We waited for him at the Bandit Castle. I decided to take Owanda. He is self-buffing, with a lot of fizzles, and Mace is the biggest Olthoi killer there is. So we set off with; Mage Sailor Bane (96lv Mage), Owanda (112lv Macer), D A C (114 lv UA), Dibbuk (93 lv), and Lifedraynor (80lv Mage). Our route was from Tou-Tou (via allegiance hometown), Arwic, Mountain short cut, Bandit Castle and a short run west to the dungeon. Lifedraynor did an outstanding job leading us through the maze. I still don't have it down, but I might be able to find Queens now. When I tried to find the Queens before, I ran into a lot of different sections. I even found some Brood Nobles. Wherever I was, it is far away from the proper route. I was surprised to find the dungeon very camped. It seemed like there was an attended macro around every corner. Macros are easy to spot, but they did talk to us. When we got to the first Matron, we found two hunters. They were not after the parts, so I just made sure we got the matron kill. One of the hunters commented that we worked well together. I would have taken pride in that comment, if it were not for our later results. I wanted to go hunt the second Matron, in order to speed things up a bit. This is where our teamwork started to fail. Lifedraynor led me to the next part, but everyone but D A C followed us. I saw the call for help from D A C, and quickly backtracked to give him a hand. We finally got organized in both spots, and each of us got the three parts we needed. Now it was on to the Queens. We went a short distance and got to the two Queens. There was a mage macroing in the center between the Queens. This created a small problem, as we had trouble getting back and forth between them. Most of the group was killing off the right side Queen. I headed over to the left one after a bit. I found out that Owanda needs a lot of time to take down a Queen. I did not count, but it seemed like I was only taking off 1% health per swing. Not taking healing into account, that is at least 100 full power swings. We were doing fine, killing and getting parts, when Jeff tried to go over to the right side Queen with D A C. The group around the macroing mage got Jeff trapped, and he died. Dibbuk recovered Jeff's stuff. I showed Dibbuk where the exit portal was. Lifedraynor recalled to help Jeff mule some stuff. That left me and D A C. My buffs were running out, so I drifted back up the passage and started to buff. D A C got his last part just before I started buffing. I warned D A C not to get into trouble, as I would not be there to help. He said he had it covered. I watched him get mobbed, stop to heal, and die shortly after. He said he failed to heal several times in a row. You can imagine my panic as the horde of Olthoi charged down the hall at me. It was a close thing, as I was under 50 hit points before I could get a weapon and shield on. I only needed one more part by this time, so I kept at it. The third Queen kill netted me my last part. Meanwhile, I could hear Lifedraynor, Jeff and Dibbuk talk as they worked their way back. In one nasty part, they seemed in a panic. I did not see Lifedraynor's death, I did see Dubbuk's, and heard Jeff say he had recalled. I decided we needed to have a little more power. After getting D A C's body, I recalled back to the mansion, give him his stuff, and loaded Fist. I was surprised to find that Fist did as well or better than Owanda on Olthoi. I've been disappointed with Fist's performance of late. Of course there is a big difference between Olthoi and VoD monsters. We found Lifedraynor's body a few steps away from Dibbuk's. We did not have any trouble after that. On the way through the Matrons, I had Fist grab two parts. At the Queens, we quickly got the finally parts for everyone, and they ported out. They were surprised that I did not follow them. My intent from there was to get the rest of the parts. While it took a few tries, Fist could land Imperil and a Bludgeoning Vuln on the Queen. I would still have to waste time keeping the guards down, but it only took a minute or two to defeat a Queen. I had to be sure that the Muts stayed off my back. They can hit me, and my armor is made for majors, and only averages around 250 AL. Few things can get past my melee defense, but Mut from the back are one of them. My big problem was trying to Buff. There is no safe spot in that dungeon, that I know of. There were a lot of things that could reach the hall I was buffing in. I would generally get about 10 spells in, before having to go back fighting. My plus 36% melee defense wand kept me from having any exciting points. After getting the six parts from the Queens, I backtracked and killed a few more Matrons, and got the last part. I'll keep that set of armor for quick quests, where I don't need my majors, and don't want to bother buffing the armor. 80+ Tusker dungeon The one place I have left the most bodies is the 80+ Tusker dungeon. Even the Plains cannot match the number of kills that place has caused my players. My last was with Death Mute. I figured I could fight at the start, even with a level VII de-buff. I had picked up the de-buff on the run there. I figured to save a dispel gem by fighting one at a time for a short while. I could not have been more wrong. I was dead with two blows. The first one took me to 60, and I died while reaching towards the healing elixir with the mouse. I've been meaning to swap his armor, as it is high value stuff. I made it before the lower value armor was put in, after using up all my pre armor. So I arrived at the LS naket. No excuse really, I have a lot of highly tinked DI's sitting on mules. I just never bothered to build his DI's up. So I had to let him use Fist de Mages armor for the recovery. I'll fix that up before I hunt with him again. The day before, I got a call from Jeff. It seemed Kepi and Lifedraynor tried to go to the 80+ Tusker, and met the typical fate of new 80 level players. I grabbed up Fist's Armorer to give them a hand. Mages are the best to take there when in a group. Solo I would prefer a sword or high melee Archer. I taught them the route, and helped them recover the bodies. This is a great dungeon. One of the best Turbine has ever made. There are few that can go there, and expect to be safe, while getting the top reward. I'm not sure how well this will stand up when the leveling cap is removed, but I'll expect to see a few mages die there, especially if they macroed their level. Throne of Destiny There is a lot of information and questions about the expansion. Turbine is doing its best to get the information out, and answer the questions. I have some reservations about some of what I heard. Rather than just listen to rumors, I took the time to see what Turbine has written. This will not be a complete list, but I'll touch on things that worried me. One of the ideas leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This is the augmentation gem. These are gems that cost you xp, 1 to 4 billion from the information I get. For must of us, a billion xp is a lot of time and effort, months of not years. I feel this will mainly benefit the cheaters. As it is, cheating is still a large part of AC. I know of many allegiances that use IRC programs to macro in complete safety. I cannot go into many dungeons without finding a macro. I run into them daily. When we saw 200+ players on the new server, within two or three months, I understood that Turbine has totally lost its ability to control the cheaters. Unless they are willing to take the steps necessary to stop it, AC will gain few recruits and many will be leaving for the newer games. Many of the things in the expansion are geared towards rewarding the cheaters, while leaving the fair players in the cold. If Turbine does not address this problem, in a big way, the expansion will be a bust. Many of these ideas are not set. They might go with them; they might go in a totally different direction. I can only hope that whomever they get to test these ideas are hard-core AC players, who despise cheaters, and are not EverQuest rejects. Q: If the level cap is removed, how will a level 200 join an allegiance? A: They are likely going to set a cap on swearing. The word I got was 100. After that level, whatever they decide on, anyone can swear to them. Not written in stone yet. Q: Since much of the expansion will cost massive xp to get, are they going to increase the amount of xp you get from hunting, or is this for the cheaters only? A: IBN has stated that we should not expect the xp per hour to be the same. Not a great answer, so we have to wait and see on this. Q: I have an inactive account that will get more than 4 billion of xp passup if I activate them. As they have removed the cap, can I get more than 4 billion? A: No, current storage is in a 32bit variable. They will get copied to a 64bit variable after you log in the first time, after you upgrade. After it is copied to the 64bit file, you can start gaining more xp. Q: We get lower experience for a kill, after passing the level of the monster. Will this lowering get worse after we can level past 126? A: They are still working on this. Their thinking is, make current monsters have a higher listed level. Change the system. Use gems. (Reward cheaters) Q: Will the number of death items go up as you pass 126 level? A: Maybe. They are talking about up to 29 items dropping. Other options are to lower drop rate and increase the death xp penalty or using gems to lower the amount dropped. (Reward cheaters) Q: Will I be able to use the percentage rewards, such as Tusks, after 126, when I get the expansion? A: Yes, but there might be some changes. Very high levels can walk through them without effort. That will be addressed later. Q: Can I sell back an augmentation if I don't like the results, or want something different later? A: Still being talked about, but likely no. Q: Is the expansion just for the hard working high levels and cheaters? A: There will be a lot added for new players. This will likely be focused on the new race. Where I see things lacking is the middle players. I see a lot about low-level stuff, and a lot about high-level stuff, but almost nothing about mid-level stuff. I'm hoping this is just because the issue has not come up yet. Srand did make a comment about mid-level stuff, so I expect there to be something for everyone. Q: Will we get a new slot so we can try the new race? A: Maybe later, but no plan for that now. I would hate to have to kill off a mule, but I likely will. Q: Will storage increase? A: They are thinking of a gem for this. Current thought is 4 billion xp cost. So all the cheaters will have it, but few non-cheating players will. Q: Will the spec'd cap get raised? (Limit on the total amount of spec'd skills you can have at one time, current is 64) A: No Q: What gems are they thinking of? A: These three were on the Turbine board. 5% increases in infuse ability, from 33% to 38%. Possibility repeatable. (This is one I'll try to get, with my allegiances help.) Cost, 2 billion xp. Lower death penalties; no loss of buffs, less dropped items etc. Cost, 4 billion. Add carrying ability. Will increase carrying ability of strength by 20% per strength point. Current is 135 BU per strength point. That would change to 162. If repeatable, 194, etc. Hard Ride Well, I got froggy and decided to give the Fortuna mine a try. I had done a few 20 mile street rides, and a hard 30 miller in the last month. Unfortunately, both Thursday's I had planned to do dirt rides had gotten rained out. It rarely rains in Yuma. Because of flooding and other problems, it is not wise to go riding in the desert when it is wet. Hard rock mountains will drain water very quickly. The results are called flash floods. While I had never seen one in Yuma, I had seen humongous rocks appear in the washes after a good rain. There is nothing like seeing a two-ton rock appearing out of the blue to give you respect for the power of a flash flood. So I had sort of lost the feel of how bad a mountain bike ride can be on the body. A smooth street ride, where you average 15 miles per hour, will not prepare you for a 22 mile dirt ride, over rocks with an average speed of 9 miles per hour. There was a slight wind. Unfortunately it was at my back for the beginning of the ride. Normally a tail wind is good, but in this case it made me hot. It was around 80 degrees. I was moving at about the same speed as the wind, so I was in dead air. My biggest problem was sweat in the eyes. It stung like hell. I was using a plastic sun filter. This holds fast to your face without the need for other support. It is a perfect item for sun protection under eyeglasses. Because of the dead air, the sweat was not drying, and starting to flow into my eyes. I had to remove the sun filter to help the drying. I was really feeling it during the climbs. This was another thing my street rides had not prepared me for. The hill a dreaded the most came near the end, about a half mile from a spot I call the Bowl. This climb is out of a wash. It was rocky and rutted. There were steep cuts in the slope, so you had to thread your way up it. There were spots where you had to shift from rocks, to hard pack, to gravel. I was dreading it as I approached. Much to my surprise, this was the only real change I saw in the road to the mine. Whereas there were only minor changes from years past in the road, this spot was completely different. It was changed to a hard packed gravel road, wide and easy to climb. I think things would have been fine if I had listened to my body. I got to a point where I was near to the mine, but the path was a steep downhill, over rocks. I call this the Bowl, because it curves around while dropping steeply. You are going in the opposite direction for a time, and then it cuts sharply back. I debated turning around then, but I was so darn close to it. Another mile and a half and I would have made my goal, six months early. One of the reasons I was hurting was because of the rain. It had not rained hard, just enough to wash the sand from between the rocks. So a minor rocky road became a major rocky road. Rather than listen to my body, I decided to finish the ride to the mine. If anything, the Bowl was a lot worse than I remembered it. The rocks were so bad that I could barely make headway, even though I was going down hill. At the mine itself, I sat on a concrete slab, sucked Gatorade, and eat a few Fig Newtons. I knew I was hurting, but at least I was starting back. I hoped the rest and food would restore me. Riding out of the Bowl was a nightmare. Low gear crawling over the rocks, when tired and sore, is not my idea of fun. At the top, in a slight dip, I came close to going over the handlebars when I hit a rock. The back wheel was up, but I was able to get my foot down and prevent a crash. I've crashed like that before, without injury, but I would rather not chance it. The rest of the ride was hell. I was so sore that it felt better to walk than ride. My hands felt it the worse. I still have marks in my palms from the ride, despite thick gloves. There are places in the desert where they have signal beacons. They are used to save illegal's when they get into trouble traveling across the desert. I was joking with a friend that if I came across one, I would have been tempted to use it. (g) The ride took over three hours to do. I was a bit sunburned when done. I was sure that I would be in bad shape the next day. To my surprise, I was not sore at all. So my fitness is getting there, I'm just not quite ready to be riding to the mine just yet.