Fist de Yuma - April 16, 2002

This and that I never start a column thinking I'll have some rants in it. Then something will happened to get my blood going. I have a few in this column so beware and skip them of you dislike such. I have a lot of other stuff but if you see the (rant) and don't like conflict, pass over that part. For the most part they are not rants but many have taken them as such so I lacking a better label I used it. I was wondering why this column had so much stuff that can be labeled a rant. Then it hit me. With all the lag and down time I have hit the boards a lot more. The boards are a different world at times. Many times I will delete whole sections I feel, in hindsight, is too harsh. It was very tempting to delete the DT stuff I wrote. I always have felt that DT had promise. It never turned out that way. I think it started somewhat like I envisioned it but has turned into something like Quake. I felt DT could have been like the old, so called, Wild West. This is not generally knows but the murder rate in those days was very low, somewhere in the range of two or three a year. History has shown that a well-armed society is a very polite society. No one is going to pull a weapon in anger when everyone around them is equally armed. No one is going to push to far when they know death could very well be the result. DT could have been that way if death had more sting than it does. Unfortunately there is little sting to death in AC. So it became the kill on sight free-for-all it is today. The kids took over and the server stagnates. I don't see anyway to change that but the boards are another matter. I'll let you decide if I'm right or wrong in my essay. Patch Day This has been a long long day and I'm beat to hell and back. I should go to bed but I'm sure I'll miss something if I don't start the column. The download was smooth and I was ready to check things out. I found that even with a lot of strength and endurance I'm not in the top category. A website had a calculator that said I'm a touch below 40% for drains. With 203 endurance and 237 strength I thought I would be better. Strength is at 24 million and endurance at 16 million a point so they are not getting that much higher. I did a buff in North ML to check things out with Mage. I got two sing keys, which is above average. I got none on my last two hunts so this makes up for it a bit. I did not see a big increase in stamina recovery but I never let Mage's fall to far anyway. I then swung over to WE to play my BM. Before I logged I was checking the VN board and saw a post by Narsil of the Wand. He had made a few posts in response to my column the day before. He is retired from AC and had a set of armor he could give me. This seemed ideal. I would get some armor and, as he is retired, not feel like I'm taking away from someone. I logged Mage after posting I would meet him in Mayoi. The portal bod was not in Hebian-to so I was stuck. I was debating a run to Tou-Tou and then take the subway to Mayoi when Narsil logged on. He could get to the subway easy and would meet me in Hebian-to. We ran to the Hebian-to hall so we could mule stuff without danger. No one uses halls other than macro's these days. He had given me his armor before we started the run. Nice Al 220 for top and 177 bottoms. I could not read the shoes or gants but figure they are close to that. With the weight I was a waddling whale but I got there with a few buffs from Narsil. He gave me all his comps and a few odds and ends. At that point I had to log to fix dinner. After dinner I logged the BM again. My mules were a long way off. Despite the fact I was very overloaded I figured it would be better to bring Mage to the mules than the mules to Mage. I was lucky in that the road was well hunted and I was not disturbed. I noted that there was a portal to Green spire near the mules. I decided to go hunt there. With the armor I was able to hunt stuff that would ripped my old al 70 stuff to shreds in seconds. With the new /lifestone command I could get back easy. I was taking damage and died a lot but I was hutting much bigger game. I'm sure I had killed a few Warriors but one I faced was a nasty fellow. He had one of the glowing weapons so that might have made the difference. Still I almost killed him twice but a few ill-timed fizzles got me. I made 14lv and only a few thousand from 15. I then logged back to MT to see what was going on. I wanted to take Fist out for a run so see if the Endurance love was all that much. I headed to EVL as I need a new piece of armor for Rizean. He lost some good upper body armor in that horrible upgrade dungeon. With the bug of needing to re-due the drum I was not able to go. It seems that was a good thing. When he died he dropped the armor and nothing there is recoverable. It seems they are still doing undefined damage so there is no protection. I hope they fix that messed up quest soon. I had found the armor in EVL so I hopped to find another one. There were not many people in EVL. I got a good test. Normally I would have to suck down stamina elixirs if fighting more than two. I was able to face five without getting low on Stamina. A big help. I had no luck finding the armor and my timer is still on for the pincer. I decided to log Mage after reading some posts. When I logged on I got a message from The Crippler. He was about to face down a Crystal Lord. I got the coodi and hopped to get there before they started the battle. After buffing I ported to the Island and took the north dires portal. That put me around 40 clicks north of the Lord. A long run but I might make it in time. About halfway there I saw a Crystal Golem. They had started fighting the Lord so I was free to see how I would do against this bad boy. First I did it all wrong. I have played a mage too long and really messed this one up. First I put coodi and staff mastery on myself. I put Imperil and Slashing Vuln in the Crystal Golem and pulled my Crop. I was hitting about 1 in 10 swings. Pouring three million points into staff did not help. After running away the second time to heal I got smart. I put HS and SK on the crop. Defender is not worth it as my 81 melee defense is not buffable to anything worth while. That worked much better. I was still missing but not as much. It took over five minutes but I got it. The loot was nothing to brag about but I had killed one. Now I figured I would finish the run to AB. I had lost the tie there a while back and needed my Nanto tie to much to break it. With the new two ties I wanted a good place for dires hunting. It was also a good place to hunt up Sing Troves. While running I found another Crystal Golem. I buffed better and noted the Golem counter buffed my life de-buffs. I was using VII's and I'm sure his counter was VI's so it is worthwhile to de-buff him. I was just not going to get the really big hits a normal de-buff would get. I defeated this one and again the loot was a few high value things but nothing I would keep. I was still not de-buffing properly but I was learning. I ended up fighting four of them in all. The last one I got it right. First I de-buffed his magic defense to cut down on resists. Then I de-buffed his melee defense to the max. Coodi, Quick and melee were all de-buffed. With this and me fully buffed I was not missing. I went from a 10% hit rate to a 90% hit rate. I did not even need to pull my wand to heal on that last battle. I had a Sing key from a passing observer and was close to AB. I figured I would carve the key and use it while I was there, if I could find a Trove. I did find a master Trove but not the Sing Trove. I had one strange thing. I killed a Dires Ursuin that was in the way of a Crystal Golem. Normally I don't loot such but did this time. I found a Heavy Unsin coat on it. Now this is one fine piece of armor! The protects are more than outstanding and there is no weakness. If you ever find one of these they are keepers. On a side note if you have one on Wintersebb and like to trade it for one on MT, give me a shout. The Crippler called and said Ryth had found another Cyrstal Lord in the south dires. It was a long way off from AB. The Crippler said he had a tie to a close spot. I finished my run to AB and recalled to the Mansion after tieing. The Crippler's tie was the South Dires portal. I was about out of buffs so we found a clear spot. I buffed up while The Crippler kept the trash away. It was very laggy in the Dires. We were running along the road to the south/west for a bit. We finally caught up with Ryth, Zakoi and Diago. It was a strange setup. The Crystal Lord was trying to climb an un-climbable cliff. His minions were next to him. Off to the south was three Grivvers, I did not get the type but looked like Destroyers. Add in assorted dires trash around us and you get the picture. As I got there one of the flies flew out and hit Ryth. I landed a de-buff on it but it flew away. With the bad lag and confusion the battle started before we knew it. The flies would streak out and attack us, then rush back to the hill. This made them very hard to hit. The Lord would do the same. I would have nothing in front of me and then I would be facing the Lord and three Flies. Zakoi, Diago and The Crippler were pounding on the Lord. Ryth was tossing heals at the people in battle. I was blasting the Grivvers, Flies and anything else that joined in. I finally cleared all the trash and only the Lord was left. I pulled my crop and charged in to help. I had tried to land a load of imperils on it but my 393 Life was not even close. I was hitting it for around 50 a shot and not missing. I'm guessing it has very low melee defense. Of course with 25000 hit points it did not need much. We were lucky in that most of the time the Lord was trying to climb the hill. When he did hit one of us Ryth would toss a heal. The Flies re-spawned and a bunch more junk charged over to get their hand in. The lag was really bad and I had no sure idea what I was facing or were I was standing. I found myself trapped by three Flies and the Lord. Only some timely heals by Ryth kept me alive. I pulled my drum and started blasting again. I cleared that without to much danger because of Ryth's heals. Before I could pull my crop and rejoin the battle they had finished the Lord off. This is one tough ambary. I hear they plan to make it harder so you need more people to take one down. I hope they change their mind as it is kind of hard as is. They also needs to be a loot splitter such as DaoC has. (I just read they have one, I have never played there.) The way it is now the person who does the most damage gets all the loot. Of course a good group will share but there will always be problems with this system. If Turbine insists that we have team events they need to have a way to have a team reward. Right now it is not there. By requiring a mage support but not giving them any way to gain xp or loot, unless the melee wants to share, is not fair. At this point melee's can win without mage support. From what I'm reading they want to make it so you cannot win without a combined arms attack. If you are going to force teaming you must have a loot sharing system. When I was teaming a lot with melee's I was uncomfortable with the looting system. I would toss imperils and Vulns and the melee's would kill. With fellow I shared in xp but for loot I depended on the melee's to share. Most of the time this worked well but there is always the paranoid part of me that is suspicious. Classic example A post on the boards proved my point about the reward system being out of wack for group events. There was an ongoing battle with a Crystal Lord. A hunting party shows up lead by a person who is now quite hated. He has always had his share of hatred but he is far more known now. I'm not sure if this guy is a monarch or not but he is stupid and ignorant so I hope not. This party joined in the battle. The original group intended so share with this group. They were helping with the battle and there is enough loot to go around. As often happens a few melee's were killed in the battle. One was lifestoned far away. When the Lord fell it was the person who had been killed that got the kill. They were waiting for him to get back because they did not have loots sharing on, a big mistake. There is a short time when a body will open before dissolving. The leader of the second group opened the body and proceeded to steal all the loot. To the original group he stated that one of his people got the kill. They pointed out that the body said otherwise. His first statement is the guy was not in the fight. How someone not in the fight gets the kill is beyond me. Then he states that the name only means he tried to kill it. Tried to kill it? This is getting even better. Next he said that it was at full health when they had arrived. That it had regenerated its health to full so they deserve the loot. Now everyone knows that the regeneration of a Crystal Lord is very slow. It would not be able to regenerate in battle. A horde of people told this false'mage what they felt about his actions. After cursing everyone out he tried to show proof that he was not lying. He shows a picture of an archer shooting at a fully health Crystal Lord. There are a few things wrong with that. The picture did not show all the melee's that were fighting it and the terrain was different. There is no reason to believe that this is the same Crystal Lord they were talking about. In any case, if the picture was totally true, they did not get the kill. This False'Mage stole what rightfully belonged to others. Others that were willing to share with him. So to reiterate if Turbine is going to keep forcing people to group they will have to provide a system for group rewards. Have to shake your head (rant) The Last Blademaster posted his column the other day. I like the fact that he plays a player that by many standards is unplayable. He has shown that AC is not about leveling and having the best template but about having fun. He posted on the VN boards that his column was ready for viewing. One of the places he posted was the DT board, big mistake. I coined the phrase "unsupervised kids in an adult game" a while back. Well DT is unsupervised thugs in a kids game. For far to long DT had gotten away with what ever they have wanted. I have met many mature people who left DT because of the "Lord of the Flies" mentality. Even when there was a degree of supervision on the servers DT did not have them. Cursing, name-calling, racist and sexual comments are the norm not the exception there. The only thing they respect is power. It is a pure example of kids given the power to do as they want with no consequences. One of the strangest things about DT is their feelings of superiority. Lets face it, PK in AC is more about numbers than skill. A fast computer, a broadband connection, a powerful player and a months of training will win the majority of PK fights. I have seen no superiority on DT, only immature behavior by spoiled brats. There was a little skill needed to take advantage of some exploits. Turbine has removed most of their ability to cheat so that is going away. Of course there was a lot of complaints that Turbine took away there hard learned cheat. Of course there are a lot of players there with skill so low that anyone who knows the game can defeat them. Saw a post on a battle and one player clearly had no clue. So I guess this person would not win many battles no matter what advantage he had. Strangely the guy had a very inflated picture of his abilities, but then who in DT does not. I'll give him this, after he was defeated he gave up a big item he had bet. So he may not have much skill and trash talked from a losing position but had the honor to fulfill his obligations. Most on DT think they have great skill because so many around then have so little. I will admit that it takes at least six months of mage play to be proficient. I'm guessing it would take as much or longer to gain the PK skills. Having never played PK, only watched, but I leaned a lot that way. It would be interesting to go to DT and see how my skills match up but DT is such a mess that I'll never find out. I play for fun and being cursed at by a kid is not fun. Of course hacking is a big part of DT. Crashing the server to duplicate armor was a constant thing there. Speed hacks were the norm for a long time. I'm sure that it was the incessant cheating that drove most of the role players away from DT. I can understand Turbine giving a hands off to the DT server, is it is a good trash collector. I don't understand the AC boards letting the same thing happen on the DT board. From what little I read not only did the people supervising the boards not stop it, they would hammer anyone who tried to act responsible. When VN put there foot down one time two mod's quit and there was a big uproar. As mod's are generally pulled from the readership they enforced the clicks rules, not VN's. We live in an age of where people think they can destroy anything they want if they can label it "For the children". All it will take is only person with power to read a few lines on a DT message to call for the banning of AC like games. "To protect the children." There are already laws on the books to restrict internet access because of the fear that a child might see something. A really bad law was defeated in the courts that would have really hurt the internet. There are more on the way we can be sure. VN and other boards that allow children to act like thugs on a street corner need to rethink this. How they act there is beyond the scope. I encourage you not to take my word for it. Go to some of the Dark Tide boards and see for yourself. Don't post! They don't like anyone to post unless you are like them. Sort of like Liberals at colleges, anyone they disagree with must be shouted down. To even allow the other side to present their views is bad. If course their cursing and childish behavior is said to be a pure example of free speech. On a side note the cheaters on DT have finally crashed the server enough that is has become totally unstable. Keeping with tradition they don't blame the cheaters, they blame Turbine. Update (rant) A modulator stepped in and said that half the people who posted to The Last Blademaster's post were being banned. What was really absurd was the DT people all thought it was the non-DT people who were banned. None of the non-DT posts contained profanity or insults. Most of the DT posts did. And still they felt it was the mature posters that should have been banned for daring to post on THEIR board. It should be noted here that there is no rule against posting to another board. It is against the rules to post with the intent of creating trouble. That was not the case here. When it was made clear that it was the DT posters who were banned the comments ranged from, "It was there fault for posting here" to calling the mod names. Their lack of reason and respect is beyond comprehension. The main thought pattern was that if they went to a normal board and cursed up a storm they would be banned. It is normal for a DT post to contain cursing. They got the idea it was not their disrespect and cursing that got the banned on those boards, it was because they were DT. Therefore anyone posting from another board should be banned. Later when people came on they asked why the people were banned. The answers were pure lies. "They just said The Last Bladmaster should not post here and got banned." "It was just a normal response to a carebear post and they got banned." "A bunch of Carebares came here and caused a bunch of trouble and the Mod who hates DT banned our people." I was reminded of a group of thugs being questioned about a mugging. "He fell" "I think he tripped" "The police beat him up". The many good people who play DT I feel sorry for. They are there because the love PK and roll playing. I'm sure the trash talking and racist comments sit heavy on them. The cheating and exploiters make roll playing very hard. It would be nice if MS did step on and clean out the trash. If they did I'm sure the server population would boom instead of stagnant as it has. Of course that would be a lot of work and initially there would be a drop in usage. For the long term I think it would be better for AC if they took the chance. So far Turbine had bent over backwards for DT. People who were caught cheating and given permanent bans there were later reinstated. With this kind of acceptance DT will never be repaired. Save her I tried to do this quest without much information. All I got was where the dungeon was at, not wanting to wander around for days on end. A quick check of ACE showed it was about 35 clicks from my house. The run was uneventful. Fist is fast and very hard to hit. I had some protects on so even if a spell hit me I was not effected. The only weapon I buffed up was my Fire weapon. I took down a few Oak golems so I would have been better off buffing another one as well. I have a vassal who needs the wood. I found one Mattie but no hide. I was surprised to find a mage vender and a LS close by the dungeon. You never know what you'll find in the middle of nowhere these days. I got in and found two people buffing. I asked them how hard was this and would my 7 minutes of buffs be enough. They were not sure but said they did not think it would be hard. Not being stupid I buffed. Seeing what looked like frost on the walls I buffed my fire weapon again. Of course the first thing I ran into were Fire monsters. I had to switch my Q katar, which has a natural BD VI on it. After that I buffed up my cold weapon. With that in hand the next thing I faced were cold elemental golems. O'well, the fire weapon was still buffed and it is fast to switch weapons. I was stuck for a while until I found a hidden door. This is in the middle of a wall with no clue about it being there. I was lucky to find it. This led me to a portal and the next part. I found a room with a pile of wood and a book on the floor. I passed on the book, not knowing what it did. I was just there to vote to not kill the lady. Doing the quests like this makes for a lot of errors. I found a note on the ground. I finally figured out that the notes have to be placed in the book. It seemed there was an order to their placement as some would not go in until others were. There are a whole lot of notes to find. As I put them in the book as soon as I could I lost count. A board said there are eight. The maze is a nightmare of twisting passages. Remained me a lot of the Focus stone maze only a lot bigger. I was sure I only needed one more note. I was in a maze and was having a lot of trouble getting out of it. The lag turns did not help much. I kept returning to a four-corner passage close to a surface portal. I was tempted to just take the portal and fight my way back down. The lag was getting worse and worse. I stopped for a few seconds what seemed like every minute. It is a good thing there is nothing to fight in this maze. I was waiting out a yellow when I got the impression that this time I was not getting out. Blinking red and finally a boot. I quickly logged back in. I logged Mage by mistake and thought I had been kicked out of the quest. I quickly realized my mistake and logged back in Fist. Well I tried to anyway. He was still logged in and stuck. I waited a bit and tried again. I logged the account to the older computer system and tried to log him, no dice. Finally I logged Mage and sent out a urgent assistance call. RL called and I had to log off. When I got back a few hours later I could log in Fist. This time I got out of the maze without trouble. Not sure if it was a new perception after the wait or if I was just lucky. I decided to try a passage I knew I had used to see if there might be a second note somewhere. I knew I was missing one and had exhausted the other passages. Sure enough there were two notes in one passage. Putting that in the book got me fixed up. The other notes fell in one by one and I had a full book. I handed that to the golem and was allowed into the portal. Now the vote. There were a bunch of notes on the ground and the sound of a woman screaming. I could not see her and checked everywhere for a secret passage. There were two switches, one plain the other with a skull on it. I knew one would vote to kill her and the other would give her a life and me vit. I knew picking the wrong one would mess up the quest or at least change the goal. The notes did not give me any idea which one was which. Maybe I needed to read them more carefully but I was tired by then. Ok, one is death and a switch has a skull on it, which represents death. The question was, is the death hers or mine? I figured the death had to be mine as her death was only a vote. I picked the one with a skull. Bingo, got it. I had vit and was ported near the high desert town. I ported to Lin and talked to the house guy. He was very happy that I had helped their lady and give me a note to give a guard, just outside of Lin. Humm, I had been in Lin a lot and had never seen this guard. Up the road, down the road, over to the hall, wide swing around Lin. Finally someone sent me coordi of where he was. I had just missed him in my swing. He gave me a note about getting something and a list of the monsters that had it. It was a long list so I figured I better narrow it down by checking the boards. There is one for UA and Creature. Now my UA is 430 so I might not need any help there. My creature buffs to 333 but I'm still fizzling and it take a lot of buffs to get to that. I'm not sure if I can get both so I decided to get the UA one first. This meant finding the Ruined Amulet of the Pugilist on a Brutish Monoga. I knew there were a few north of Arwic so I headed over there. I killed twenty or so without any luck. This took an hour. I think I'll do a search of ACE and see if there is a place with a horde of Brutish's. It would take forever at this rate. Normal alliance vs. Chains (rant) One of the arguments the chain supporters put forth is normal alliances get xp from vassals so there is no difference. Elder and Fist have gotten most of their xp from vassals. I have set my players up so they are one level away from Fist or Mage so you might say I have chained my accounts. This does not hold water at all. The main thing is the responsibilities of a patron in a normal alliance is not the same as in a chain. There is also the fact that my vassals come to me willingly, not assigned. A typical log on for me will have several people sending me tell. When that clears up I try to hunt. Half way into the hunt I'll get vassal tells asking for a question. This means I have to stop hunting to answer it. This is not a complaint; it is part of the job of a patron with a large following. If you're not willing to do that, don't get vassals. I know many who will not have vassals for that reason. There have been few hunts in the last month where I can do two buffs in a row. There is always something that required my personal attention. Mostly I can hold it off until the end of the buff but then I'll have to take care of it. The pass up xp is the compensation for this. In other words I'm earning it. If allowed to hunt freely I might not get as much xp as my vassals pass to me but it would be close. Elder had it even worse. Not only does he have to take care of his normal patron duties but has to take care of 5600+ other people as well. If a patron is not doing their job it is natural for a vassal to use /m vs. /p. Most of the chains are topped by a non-playing ppl so the monarch is not bothered. What is strange is Elder said he gets more tells from outside the alliance than in. In Elder we have taken a firm stand against chains. Because of this we have lost a lot of good people and caused some hard feelings. I'm becoming more resolved myself. The chains are with us. I will never respect a chain members level because it is not earned but the player himself can gain respect. Many who are leaving Elder for chains will come back. Condemning them will only prevent this. I lost a good vassal the other day because the owner was moving to school. He gave the player to his brother who wanted to be in a chain. The sad thing is his brother is not only missing the training he would have got, not to mention the fun, but will have a super high ppl soon with no knowledge of how to play him. Nevertheless it is his right. With Turbine taking a blind eye to the damage there is no reason to not join a chain if you don't care about being in a family atmosphere. There will still be those of us who are only concerned about the fun of AC, not lording over others. What is a Flame There have been many people who toss insults and curse and think they are doing a flame. This hit me when reading the DT posts. To them, "You're momma wears combat boots" was a flame. Of course their insults were more graphic and quite low. Accusing your farther of being a child molester and describing the event is a bit overboard, thus the banning. I have seen flames and there are many different types. The idea of a flame is to pick apart someone post. Done well you leave the person as a flaking coal cooling on a cement floor. Unsubstantiated insults and cursing does not do this. It does the direct opposite. It proves you have little understanding of the subject and cannot debate. You see this kind of name calling and shouting on TV everyday. It is no wonder that many people think argument is debate. While entertaining it is not debate. To coldly pick apart a persons logic is much more satisfying. The next time you see a post where name-calling and cursing is used as debate, remember, this is not a flame, it is a child jumping up and down screaming to get their way. Lightning Quest This happened a few weeks ago but I never had time to write it up. For that reason this will not contain as much detail as normal. As you know we failed on this one a few times. This time we had more people in the low side than upper. I did know it at the time but the word was that they were going to do it twice, once for each group. Many of us did not know that and only scheduled enough time for one pass. We all met at the mansion and a portal was provided. Run was short and I buffed at the portal. After clearing the Olthoi we hit the lower portal. I ran over and hit the switch for the upper. Then we waited and waited and waited. I landed an imperil on a Pyreal and someone who did not know me was very impressed. I had pushed my Life skills a lot so I could do that. Finally we got word that the upper was waiting for people. It seems I almost got some people killed by opening their gate. I had to assume they were ready by that time. Having had many of these fail because the upper took their time I was not a happy camper. Finally we got going. LP was the quest leader and as I had not been beyond the first set of doors I assumed a support role. With a lot of people we had no real danger. I was landing my imperil more often than not so everything died fast. The lower is a much more complex maze than the upper. I'm not sure if it is harder but sure seemed that way. The upper has some really hard spots for battles so it might be even in danger if not confusion. Only time I was worried was a magic dispel trap I walked into. I was lucky in that nothing spawned before my 3 minute buff was done. We finally got to the end and got the lightning prism. I had to leave at that point. Later there was a lot of anger on the boards because of some problems. LP intended to lead the second pass but had a computer problem. Well more a family problem. His brother pulled the modem plug out of the wall. It took two hours of moving stuff for him to get it fixed. With many of us having left, and LP not there to lead, the second part did not go off. They set up another run later but I was not in that one. For a low 60's mage Lurking Presence is becoming a key member of Elder. Like William the Bat he is a leader. For those that think levels will make them king, take a look at LP. By today's standards he is a mid-level mage but overall has more respect than many 110+ chain members.