Fist de Yuma - April 13, 2004

This and That I've had a busy week. Between Easter and family my AC time was cut significantly. Now I'm in the middle of dealing with two big family problems at once. Rosa's sister had surgery for cancer today. Rosa took the day off to be with her and take her farther to the doctors. He has been having problems and Rosa is the only one that can get him to go to the doctor. The doctor in Mexico told her to take him to the hospital, as there was something really wrong. Her farther had a small heart attack this very day. While Rosa seems to thrive on stress, this is a little much. Rosa is at the hospital right and plans to stay there for much of the night. She will likely get home in time to take a shower and go to work. If things keep up this way, I'll not likely get much play in this week either. We will see. On the good side I'm slowly but surely getting into shape. My history has been great strides in the first few weeks followed by slow but steady progress. I've extended my street riding to 10 miles and put in short dirt rides once or twice a week. My only real frustration is I'm not losing any weight at all. Rosa says it's because I'm gaining muscle but I'm not so sure. I am eating less as well but not much less. I have one long dirt ride that takes an hour to ride. I'm not taking it often because it frankly hurts to ride it. When I get into dirt shape it will be fun but for now I suffer. My old stuff is starting to wear out. Another monitor bit the dust this week. It was very old and used when I got it. It has given me years of service but finally gave up the ghost. I looked on the Internet for monitors but there is a problem. The monitors are cheap but shipping is not. No way I'm going to buy a 99 dollars monitor and pay 50 bucks shipping! To make matters worse, Rosa is dead set against letting me spend money. (g) As she will likely pay for much of her Father's hospital bill, it is a good thing we are saving. That monitor was my TV, Xbox and service monitor. I can let working on the three computers go for a while and I don't use the TV that much anyway. I will miss using my xbox. Dealing with the public There is no harder job than one that requires dealing with the public. This is especially true when dealing with people that had wait a time before being served. Add in immature and anonymous people, and you can have a stressful nightmare on your hands. You might as well use the above as a job description for the +envoys. For every appreciative person who gets a problem solved, you have mob of immature brats. Some of the posts on the boards showing immature and stupid PMs to +envoys will demonstrate this. Ordering a food might seem funny, and I bet the +envoy laughed the first time. I'm sure they get a little ticked the 1,000th time. Of course part of the problem is the mistaken belief that if someone is paid to deal with the public, they are also paid to take abuse. One poster actually said that. The players need to grow up and put themselves into others shoes for a change. I keep getting this image of a giggling child learning over a computer keyboard in a small dark room. I'm likely mistaken there but it is the image I get. It is a wonder the +envoys don't get short tempered. I admire their restraint. I'm guessing their hardest job is dealing with macro users who use belligerence to cover their crime. What is bringing this to a head is the current service to unsubscribe items. On MT the crowd got so unruly that the +envoys shut it down. The problem was the +envoys were restricting each player to getting three items unsubscribed. While that seems fair to me, given there was a line, the immature players revolted. While the boards are targeting one person, I heard there were many that caused the problems. The players have to understand that no one wants to take abuse at their job. Next time you're angry at a +envoy, take a second to think. If you were a +envoy, how would I react to this message? If you must let off a little steam, log off and take a ten-mile bike ride. Forgive and FORGET There are people in this world who do evil things, especially when young and in a situation where there is no accountability. Online worlds are, for the most part, totally unaccountable and can bring out the very worst in people. What makes it worth while is it can also bring out the very best a person has to offer. The good thing is that people grow up. Many of the people who created a lot of grief and hate on MT have seen their errors and have taken steps to correct them. I could name them but they are well known. Some dropped their players and re-rolled while others have suffered hard stings. They have been doing their level best to be responsible players for years. They have a very hard job because not only do they have to change their behavior, but they also have to deal with the problems their former behavior caused. It is hard to accept that someone has changed. It is hard to get over anger and hatred. Nevertheless getting over such and giving forgiveness is our job. We must learn to forgive and forget. While many are good at saying they forgive most are bad at forgetting. Even my wife, as good a person as there is in this world, has a hard time with the forget part. There are those who say I'm fool and naive. They don't think it is possible to forget. I say they are wrong. This is not a brag, but I have a very good memory. I use to freak people out by picking up a conversation with them, at the exact same point, after it was interrupted days earlier. It took a while for me to mature enough not to do that. Nevertheless when I truly forgive someone, I do tend for totally forget what he or she did wrong. I can be reminded of course, nothing is totally forgotten, but it is not in the forefront. I'm not sure if it is a gift or a curse, but I really do it. I strongly feel that if you truly forgive you must also forget. If not, then it is sure to be dragged up in some future conflict. They say I'm just open to getting hurt again. I agree with them. History has shown that many I have forgiven were only looking for an in to try and hurt me again. They did not understand that it was not me they were hurting, it was themselves. Most of the time they fail to hurt me because I'm not very foolish. Most scams depend on greed and I've never been greedy. Sure, they have stolen money and items, but who cares, it is just stuff. Believe in heaven or hell, or not, you can still see such actions stain their soul. Stuff does not make you happy. Liking yourself will work a lot better. Another person said that it might be better to say forgive and move on. I might be wrong about this and "move on" could be a good compromise. I don't see it but I'll accept that I'm different than most. (g) If we see that a person, by their actions and not words, has changed, then we must forgive and forget. The forget part is paramount, as without the forget, the forgive means nothing. If you cannot do that then try "move on". Lastly some have taken this out of context and tried to relate it to forgiving Hitler and those who have attacked my country. That shows a complete misunderstanding of whom I am and my deep unrelenting anger at real evil. In the end that does not fit anyway as they have not asked for my forgiveness. If Osama bin Laden showed up at my door asking for forgiveness, he might get it, just after I finish duct taping his arms and legs, and calling the FBI. Logic vs. Lawyers There are two types of proof, logical proof and lawyer proof. Both proofs can be wrong but lawyer proof has a much higher standard, sometimes taken to a degree that makes no sense at all. The reason is clear, to protects the innocent from being falsely accused. Unfortunately too many lawyers have decided that innocent or guilty does not matter, winning and losing is more important. Criminals will do their level best to not get caught. They may well know the law better than the lawyers and know how to break the law without exposing themselves to the lawyers level of proof. In the non-criminal world this translates into an extreme caution. Something that is obviously wrong, with clear actions available, becomes non-actions because it does not rise to the level of lawyer proof. Lets take this example. An officer in a coding division of the army starts driving high priced cars. It is clear that he cannot afford such vehicles. There was suspicion that the codes were being passed to the enemy and people are being killed because of it. When questioned about his newfound wealth, he claimed to have gotten an inheritance. Now logic said to investigate this officer to see if he is the source of the leak. Lawyers said there is no clear evidence of a crime so they are not allowed to violate his right to privacy. This is a true story by the way. He was caught in time but meanwhile it was figured that this slime ball caused a high percentage of combat deaths in Vietnam. A lot of lives could have been saved if the lawyers had stepped out and let the investigators do their job. (Rules have changed now and all they need is suspicion to investigate.) I see the ultra caution with Turbine a lot and I think it is totally unnecessary. Turbine completely owns everything dealing with AC. If they wanted to wipe all the servers tomorrow and start over, they are within their rights to do so. They owe us nothing, nothing at all! If they want to take away my three accounts and give them to someone else, there is nothing I could do about it. This gives them a degree of flexibility they should be taking advantage of. Instead they are using lawyer rules and handcuffing themselves unnecessarily. I have seen this many times but the current egregious event is what I'm writing about. Please don't get emotional about this one way or the other. I'm not here to debate how good or bad this person has been for AC, I'm just covering the crime and the lack of punishment. There is a player in DT who has had a great effect on the game. For good or bad Blood has changed DT forever. Of course when dealing with bad people you need to protect yourself. Blood made an error and was attacked. The Blood PPL was taken over by an unknown person. Blood was deleted. The perpetrator insured it would never be repaired by creating a player with the Blood name on his account. Now logic would tell you this was a big mistake. The perpetrator has identified himself or at least one of his accounts. If Turbine wanted, they could fix this. The owner of Blood does not want any special treatment. Even though Turbine has repaired hacked accounts in the past, all Blood wants is to get the name back. He is not demanding punishment for the perpetrator, he only wants his name. Instead of using logic to say, player deleted, player created, perpetrator exposed, they are using lawyer logic and saying, "There is no proof that the current owner of Blood did anything wrong." Like hell I say. According to the Lawyer logic, someone just happened to try to create a well-known name, minutes after that name got deleted, and was surprised to find he could get it. That stench should clog the proboscis of even a Clinton lawyer. Gharu'ndim I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that there is no reason, other than for racial weapons, to be any race but Gharu'ndim. I have more than just one reason for this. For those without the ability to dual log, using Gharu'ndim is very important. It is obvious that the advantage of having a free tinker skill is a very big deal. It allows a player to remain in the field longer because they can rend and combine their salvage without having to get a mule to do it. This one skill makes the race more important than the others. There is another advantage that some may not have hit on yet. There is an item in the game that give you a big plus in leadership. With the new system this plus can really help. To get this item you have to kill a random spawn on East ML and have high enough staff skill to assemble it. So here is another free skill that gives a Gharu'ndim player a big advantage. The one was bad but both are too much. I understand that Turbine is trying to figure out how to fix the salvage problem. I also think they need to take a look at some of the quest items that are restricted to staff and Gharu'ndim. They should at least give the other races something equivalent. Other than for racial skills and such, race is meaningless anyway. Strange loss We were having our weekly VoD night. I had Mage doing his de-buffing thing and everything was going great. I got smart and was using my Awakener. This gives me plus ten to my Creature, which put me up to 434. VoD can be very frustrating because even with such high skills, you can be resisted over and over again. I had one Virindi resist me six times in a row. By the time I landed the Yield he was dead. After a few hours I noted I was being resisted a touch more than I had been. I checked my skills and saw I was lower than I should be. I checked de-buffs and did not have any that affected magic skills. I figured some item had run out of mana or something like that. I checked each item and they were all up and running. I took off my jacket to see if my Asheron's Focus Robe was charged. It was missing! Now I had it on before we headed out. I was sure because I don't take it off. I don't like the naked look so I keep the robe on all the time. I had a spare one on a mule but it is a mystery to me what happened to the one I was wearing. Monkey battle I have a back door tie to VoD. It is part of a quest. The quest leads to a set of platforms high off the ground. If you jump down from the platform you can run through a pass to where the hill has enough angle to get to the top. From there you jump into VoD proper. I use this when I solo hunt. It is hard to hunt with packs of other players running around. Finding a Virindi pod that is not being attacked by a mob of players is almost impossible in the main valley. Of course, soloing Virindi is not an easy thing to do. My tactic is to make sure that I'm one on one. That may take a lot of running around and swapping targets until you find one that sticks. I will also de-buff their magic skills as much as possible before starting the battle. During a chain-casting/healing battle, even one resist could make the difference between living and dieing. While running through a pass, I hit on an Obilterator. It was not in the greatest of spots, between a pod of Virindi and some Void Knights. It took a little clearing, but I finally had a clear shot at the Obilterator. My first job was to find a couple of trees to trap him with. The first choice did not work because they were aligned wrong. The Ob would run back to his spawn too often for it to be useful. I had about given up trying to battle it when I saw a set of trees on the other side of him that was ideal. Not only could they pin the Ob, but I had a clear shot at the spawn site from between the trees. Even when it ran back I could hit it with spells. It took me about ten minutes to bring it down. When I had it at about 5% health I moved forward enough that it could hit me. My reasoning was simple. Turbine put in an XP reducer to prevent drain kills years ago. What Turbine stated was if you were hit by the monster, or more than one person hit the monster, the xp returned would be full. I took five or six good hits before I could apply the last 1500 or so damage. To my surprise I only got 1.2 mill for the kill. I'm guessing that the XP reducer is broken or that Turbine made an error when they said a few hits would clear the reducer. I was more after the loot anyway so it did not matter. I had a lot of kills over Ob's in the past. I tend to let others loot when in groups. It will prevent conflicts and set a good example of non-greed. While that works it does leave me a bit broke at times. The peas in VoD will quickly restock me, and the other loot can be very useful. That is why I hunt there solo. The loot was nothing to brag about but I had no way of knowing that until I had killed it. I might have lucked out and gotten something grand. In any case, I had never solo'ed one before and wanted to give it a shot. Next time I want to try it with Fist or Jr. Guest Writer: Aelryinth of Leafcull Running Gaerlan. 1) The timer on the Golem to start the quest is about an hour. This is a no log dungeon. If you log out in it, you get booted to the lifestone. 2) The fastest road there isn't Qalabar. It's actually in Arwic!!! From the Arwic mage shop, run due east to the Arwic portal circuit. Take the last portal on the far side...Artifice Cottages (hint, hint). This drops you on the opposite side of the Essence then the Qalabar portal, but it's about 4 clicks closer. 3) IF you get booted or log out in the essence dungeon, just recall last portal to the housing portal you took and run back. 4) If someone kills the golem, you have JUST enough time to run from the Arwic route portal drop to the Essence and get to the bottom to take the portal. The Qalabar drop is too far away. 5) The big crater and all dungeons of the quest are no-log...except the last one. The crater and the first dungeon also have no portal back. So if you happen to die or get booted in the crater or the first dungeon, you are out of luck. 6) A mix of frost and pierce usually works for the high level dungeon...frost for the golems (plat and plasma) and pierce works on everything else. A mage should just imperil and everything dies fast, or use a fire render wand and war away. 7) You can't go thru the portals for the quest without picking up the seal for the dungeon you are in. 8) If you are having problems with the riddles in part 1 (the Proving Grounds), just ask the fellow. Some plugins even have them programmed in as responses. 9) There is a floor trigger at the Entry to the Rolling Balls of Death that regens the door. New arrivals dropping in automatically heal it to full...people afraid of moving until the door is dead can trigger it, too. At the very least get off the drop point and onto a corner. 10) When the door is dead, two balls still roll, so you still have to play dodge'em. It's much easier, however. Always stick with the corners...there is one section of 'safe' alcoves (the ones right before where the archers set up to shoot the door). 11) The door is equally vulnerable to all elements. However, Pierce and Frogs do the most damage of any arrow type...therefore, use a slash or AP rending bow to finish off the door. I can tell you from experience that a +191 Blud render xbow critting for 425 makes for VERY slow progress on the door solo...even a mage with base 80 coord pitching in with a buffed bow helps immensely with its regen rate. So, bring a storebought bow along with a handful of AP's and you can drop both once you are past this section. 12) Looting anyone on the floor is fairly easy. Just don't loot more then three items at a time, and always loot in peace mode for speed. You should basically get it down to one or two steps back to a safe spot. I've looted bodies that sit in the middle of the alley where 3 balls cross. You have to be quick and patient, but it can be done. Once the balls stop rolling, it's even easier. Just watch and only loot while you can see the balls rolling away, and step away with time to spare. Your concern is successful looting without dying, not looting fast. 13) If someone dies, kill the door anyways. Once on the other side, melees can help out and take it down quick. Just make sure they back away once the door is under 10 %, or too often they get a bad surprise when it explodes and a ball comes rumbling thru. 14) Don't follow the ball into the room...run down the sides of the hall and immediately swing out to the sides. 15) If you have 'fragment' in auto-loot, turn off auto-loot or it will try to loot every seal fragment in the chest...highly annoying. 16) The floor tile pattern is on the floor where you get ported if you make a misstep. If you don't have it written down somewhere, do so, or have someone sit back there and call out the colors, placing people at the correct corners to point the path when you change direction. Most quest writeups will actually have the pattern written out for you. 17) In the Temple dungeon, don't use /a, don't use /f, don't say anything at all. Using /f or /a spawns the golems. Saying something aloud, and spellcasting, ports you back to the entry AND spawns the golems. If you are just behind some fools, the golems may also be there and not reset...so be ready with some cold and blud dmg weapons...generally a good archer can just pick them off behind a melee wall at the corner to the chapel...or you can just run like hell, open the chest, get your piece and bail. 18) Be very careful!!! This temple is lag prone...and the portal at the end CAN be passed thru without looting a seal! I've run the whole quest to this point, lagged thru the portal, and had no way back. 19) Two hour timer on seal fragments if you want to go thru it again. Sigh. 20) The No-Kill Gaerlan route is very easy now. Run to the Top of the Stairs. Walk thru the LOWEST level portal (you get the 'You are too powerful to use this portal!' message). You are now flagged. Jump back down to the floor and you can run to the sanctum and get your reward. Make sure you have fire or acid prot buffed just in case you get hung up on the pools before the jump down! 21) Killing GAERLAN. We used to just pull him around the corner to get away from his friends, but now it's pretty much a given to pull him all the way up into the long hallway. To do this, you have to get his attention, which usually means whacking him a few times. NO ONE should be casting spells on Gman...it makes him run away from the puller, which trust me, is VERY irritating. Someone should have you targeted and be healing you, because you are probably taking spells and hits from all his cronies. If you can manage it, back up in melee mode (melees make the best lures, because of the shield), poke him as necessary to keep his attention, around the corner, backwards around and up, hugging the wall all the way. No one should be casting spells on Gaerlan until you are set. This is the ideal formation. / / G=Gaerlan / / S= Anyone with Melee Def and a shield...an archer even, / S G/ with a shield. / SS/ M=Mages A=Archers. They should be sucking the wall. / / / MM/ / AM/ / AA/ / / / / The archers and mages should be a step or four back from Gaerlan, to stay out of reach of his sword (we all know olthoi can hit from the back row, don't we?). The people in front forming the shield wall can stay in peace mode if they have fully firebaned shields, and can heal themselves...Gaerlan will never focus on them for more then a few seconds. Gaerlan is effectively pinned...not only can he not reach his intended targets, but most of the fight he will be running to get to them, which drops his missile defense down by 40%. Ignore him if he seems to 'pop' by you...that's just lag and he'll be back and pinned as is proper. Face shields forward and heal immediately upon taking ANY damage...just in case. You can block him with two people, but everyone must hug that wall HARD or he can pop around the second blocker. Mages should be in front on the off chance some archer might get in the way of a war spell. Everyone being flat against the wall is how it should be. A melee can fight him thru the shield wall easily, and actually can take the kill most of the time if someone else heals them...because when he is in combat mode meleeing, Gaerlan is much harder to hit with arrow fire then with melee attacks! As Fist noted, a high enough melee defense and being firebaned head to toe takes a LOT of his damage away...although the war spells can really suck. If you don't have a shield and melee defense...well, I'm sorry, but a triple crit on you kills pretty much anyone in the game. Probably the biggest thing for fighting Gaerlan is being fire baned head to toe against that crit strike human slayer of his, and having all level 7 prots to counteract his level 7 debuffs. Do that and you are pretty much golden. Fester is essential...he is simply impossible to kill without it. Since you are debuffing him, everyone should have armor rending weapons, although watching someone cut and paste a 4000 HP crit with a Crushing Blow weapon is kind of fun too. Render weapons are a waste of time, he's already being vulned with 7's. Using the above method you can also guarantee anyone a black robe. Just have them beat on Gaerlan solo for two or three minutes, accumulating damage potential towards the kill. Then everyone else pile on and waste him. I used to sit there with rapid fire peirce damage while everyone else used slashing...the mages simply didn't vuln pierce, but because I was hitting so much, Gman focused on me more then anyone else, and someone else always got the kill. Once he's dead and you are in the area, you can either run down and take the portal below, or do the Eastham jig, come back to the library, and take the sanctum portal for your prize. 22) If you get a message saying your timer isn't up, read it carefully. "You must wait a full cycle of days"...i.e. your timer just got reset, you greedy bastard, and you have to wait another week, nyah nyah! Happened to me too...with 12 minutes left. The sanctum is, of course, no-log. J Guest Writer; Han Yu-Ning Hello all! I ended up having time today to work on my weekly rantings. /e picks up her hatchet and chases Chupecabra around the mansion. Han Yu-Ning, gimp mage: Well, I've finally decided what to do with Han Yu-Ning. She's been my pride and joy ever since I was first brought to this wonderful land of ours. However, with all the changes that have been brought in-game it would have taken me months to get her skill changed the point where she was actually useful in battle and could hold her own in the dires. She's speced mana conversion, trained all the other mage skills, and healing. Since she was so gimped when I restarted playing 2 months ago and could barely hold her own with trained magic skills, I picked up a healing forgetfulness gem planning on speccing war at some point. Well, since then I've started and leveled up a new mage Night Song that is spec war/life so the need to play Yu-Ning has diminished. So, a few days ago I dropped healing and trained all the tinkering skills. Putting a few million xp into those skills I was able to get them all up quite a bit. I'll have to work on her base stats to help balance out the distribution later on. At any rate, Bash'em was looking for a weapon imbue last night, and I happened to be standing around, so I buffed up and told him I'd be happy to at least see what the percentage was. I buffed up, he brilled, and it was 33%, so I tried. Landed the first imbue! I was happy, so I quickly checked the other one...33% again, let it go through and I landed the second one! I was flabbergasted! Bash'em mentioned later that he nearly wet himself he was so shocked! I'm very happy to be able to help provide this service. Course I hit 2 in a row...so I'm sure I'll miss the next 6. At any rate, this is just the progression of some characters. I guess at some point I could tweak her enough to be a decent mage, but tinker-girl is what she is now I'll be playing Night Song as my main mage from here on out. Mana Conversion and mana burn on items: I looked around on the Turbine boards and couldn't find any official post by the devs that mana conversion helps in "burn rate" by magic items, but most everyone talking about it seemed to agree that it only helped with spells from casting devices, such as the healer's heart, war spells, etc. Mana conversion does not help item-reliant melees who burn through mana all day. This is too bad. training mana conversion on my item-only melee probably won't be worth it just to cast a few items VII's., too many points for it not to do any good for my melee at least. I was kinda hoping to train it again at a later date to help with mana burn on items. Oh well. Template follow-up: Fist mentioned my posting on templates as a different view on building up a melee. While there obviously isn't any one "right way" to build up a melee, I have to say that I also have a staffer I've been slowing working on that has all three schools of buffing magic, mana conv, and staff/melee def. She's very different from Felicity which requires 2 spells to be buffed. However, after playing all my characters for so long, I have to say that if I wanted to spend my time buffing, I'll play a mage. Sometimes it's really nice to just login and go. I'm buffed all the time, I never get dispelled, it's just easy to play. No thinking involved, just go. Course this go go go mentality comes at a price. I'm not as powerful as others, I don't bane all my armor, so I take a lot more damage than those that do. But I love it, and I'm not the only one. I see countless posts on the Turbine boards about item-only melees, even some that only took item because of the nagging from other players that they were waiting on him to run to the destination! Well, those are my rantings for the week. The valium is starting to kick in, so I think I'll put down my meat cleaver and go play! Love to you all! Guest writer program If you have a story that you would like to see put in here, just send it to me. It can be adventure, tips or comment. I cannot guarantee that I'll print it, but if it is any good it will make it into a column. Allegiance I get a lot of requests for information about our allegiance. Our web site is Casadeyuma.com.