Fist de Yuma - April 20, 2004

This and That I would like to take this time to thank my editor, Jeff Starr. I send my column to him on Sunday night and he sends the corrected copy to me on Monday morning. I'm learning a lot from him and he is having less and less work to do. (g) So far I'm sticking to my bike riding. I'm doing more street work than dirt but have extended the distance. I figure if I ride hard for an hour, I can get a base fitness down. Right now I can ride an hour and still feel strong. My main two problems are my seat and hands. I have always had a problem with numbness on long rides. I'm going to get a new seat on the bike when I can afford it. That will fix it a bit. The new seats have a split in the middle to prevent pinching. That is less of a problem on dirt rides because you are out of the seat more often. Imagine if you will, sitting on a small piece of hard leather for an hour or more. Believe me, it can get really uncomfortable. How people do four-hour rides is beyond me. I have good gloves and bar extenders to help with hand numbness. The bar extenders allow me to shift my grip a lot, which will prevent numbness somewhat. So far it has not been a major problem but history has shown it is something I have to watch. I am riding three to five hours a week now. When I get the new seat I'll extend the street rides until I can do twenty or more miles. I use to ride 20 miles to work and back so I know I can do it. A smaller problem I have is leg length. I broke my right leg, twice, while racing motocross in the mid 70's. It was both bones, which made my leg free swinging from about 6 inches above the ankle. I broke it the second time on my first day back, in practice. I crashed and the bike fell on the leg. I rolled and the lower leg didn't. Needless to say, my doctor was not happy, nor where the Marines. It took me a long time to get promoted after those fitness reports. Anyway my right leg is about a half inch shorter than my left, below the knee. Seat adjustment is critical if you want to avoid knee problems. It is even harder for me because one side is too short or the other is too long. So I have to be careful to judge knee pain and not push it. Still it is worth it, as I feel great. I'm still not losing weight but that will come. By next March I should have my goals. Being a goal-oriented person, both in life and AC, nothing short of a major injury will stop me. I think the reason I quit years ago was the sleep disorder. Even being older I'm gaining back my fitness fast and doing things I had a hard time doing before. Recommendation Part of getting fit is eating right. I have always been a big eater. Over eater is more like it. Because of my good fitness and active life style I never had a weight problem. In fact, most of my life I have been underweight. I joined the Marines at 125lb. The minimum weight requirement for 6 feet was 127. Needless to say, I was one skinny kid. In boot camp I found out that my mother, a wonderful person, is the worlds worst cook. While everyone was turning up their nose at the food, I was shoveling it in and asking for more! Hell, it was the best food I had ever had. (g) Now I'm a hundred pounds heaver and old as dirt. So the days of eating all I want are over. Still, there is no way I'm going to quit eating good tasting food. They say if you eat right you'll live longer, I think it just seems longer. So over the years we have added chicken and rice to our list of meals. I know a lot of ways to cook chicken now. I still enjoy a good hamburger and steak but I do it a lot less now. We have been using instant instance rice for years. It is fast and, I thought, good tasting. It had been getting expensive to buy instant rice so I decided to give a rice cooker a try. I got a cheap one from Wal-Mart last week and 5lbs of rice. At 0.48 a pound it cost me less than half what instant would. I figured cooking it would take a lot longer than instant. I was figuring hours. So I was surprised when it was done cooking as fast as it was. Not as fast as instant of course, but not the hours I was thinking. Now came the shock. This is really great tasting rice! It is so good that I have stopped adding butter. I use to add a lot of butter to the instant. I even like it cold! If you are thinking of adding rice to your diet or are currently using instant rice, get a rice cooker! Not only will you save money, but it is so much better tasting. Hard Week I had a hard week so far. Cancer surgery for Rosa's sister (looks good so far there) and her father having a heart attack the same day started it off. It got better, as it would be hard for it to get worse, but it was not a good week. Not much adventure or anything important to write about, even with the patch. In fact the patch was part of the problem. It forced me to fix a long time problem. That fix ended up breaking something else. So I spent a lot of time in front of the Xbox while programs trudged their way through Slow Mo. Tough old bird Rosa's father is a tough old bird. He is in his mid 80's and works harder than anyone I know, and I know some hard workers. He has lived a hard life but had gone through it with a smile on his face. He was offered a football scholarship, even with a rather short height. He rode the rails during the depression. He was as asked, and turned down, joining the mafia. This was in the 30's when the mafia was a real power. He volunteered for World War II but his hearing kept him out. He has gone through three marriages, all with lots of kids. Despite being very poor, he has raised three grand kids after their mother died. Be has built two houses in Mexico by hand. One washed away in a flood. He built a stone wall for the second house that has rocks I could never move. I was trying to figure how in the world he got the huge rocks up the steep hill. It is darn hard to walk up, let along bring up 200lb boulders. He told me he would tip the rock over once, and then sit on it to rest. It must have taken all day to do one rock. Anyway he was in Home Depot when he had his Heart Attack. All he did was feel dizzy. He sat down a few minutes and then drove home. If Rosa had not already set a time to take him to the doctor that day, they would have never had known he had the attack. Tough old bird. Computer problems After the patch I got my main computer set up and turned my attention to Slow Mo. Slow Mo has had a problem for a while now. It would not access two Microsoft sites. One was the passport log in and the other was the update page. I was figuring a corruption in Java or something. I'm sure there was other sites I could not access but those were the two I know of. All I got was a blank page. This all started when I added memory to the system. After having a lot of problems getting anything to work I removed the added memory and most things came back. Neither of these had been a problem because of workarounds. I had auto-update set so I never had to access the update page. I was using AC Launcher to load AC so I never needed to log in through passport. On patch day, I would launch AC, and it would do all the updates, until this patch. This time it refused to do the zone update. Nothing I could do would force it to access the Passport log in page. I was stuck. The only thing I could think to do was reinstall XP Pro. (In hindsight I should have just copied the files from H2O but I had to fix Slow Mo someday.) The first thing I did was use a utility that Balash gave me to get the MS activation code. I learned when installing XP on my portable computer that I had lost the papers with the codes on them. This utility ran from DOS and told me the current number. I then had to decide whether to reformat or reinstall XP. I copied a few really important files to H2O and stuck in the XP CD. After a few changes to the BIOS to make it boot the CD I was ready to go. I decided to reinstall instead of reformatting. I figured I could always reformat later, and it would save me hours if it worked. I really did not expect it to work but it was worth a try. The install went well. I had a few problems getting it to load SP1, but I got all the updates working in time. Broadband really helps there, as a dialup would take many hours. I did not even have to reinstall AC or any important program. I figured I was done so I loaded up AC Launcher and was ready to play. AC Launcher did not show my accounts. I tried to add them, but the three fields that ACL supplies were blank. Without them I was not able to create an account. I uninstalled and reinstalled several times without any luck. I contacted Paradox and he did his best to figure out a fix. Nothing worked. He thinks it is failing to de-encrypt, but there is no reason for the failure. I have everything set that should be set. Finally I had to give up. I was thinking that I might have to reformat after all. It might seem strange to reformat over one program but, as Triple H would say, it is that (blank) good. (Ok, you have to be a wrestling fan to understand that, sorry.) Someone on the Launch support board suggested that I use AC Dual Client for logging. I use two computers so I never had to use a dual logger. I did not know AC Dual Client had other functions. I quickly downloaded it and give it a try. While not as fast and simple as AC Launcher it does work. When handling three accounts, where only one computer is powerful enough to play, having a program that allows fast, painless account swapping is vital. Dult! It is amazing how something can make into the language. I'm sure that "Dult!" will be part of the official English language soon, and it will be around for a while. We all have "Dult!" moments. We usually feel kind of stupid when it happens. I had more than my share because of being dyslexic. I would misread something, creating a lot of laughter with my fellow Marines. When I found out I was dyslexic, after I retired, some things I did made more sense. Of course it did not help with my embarrassment before I know I was dyslexic. The one that comes to mind was when I was reading restrictions on what a Marine could possess. One of the things on the list was prophylactics. Now I could understand banning a lot of the things on the list but banning condoms? It did not take long for someone to point out that the word was not prophylactics but pyrotechnics. Being dyslexic sucks. (Yes, it oddly sort of fits.) Anyway, back my most recent "Dult!" moment. I finished setting up my accounts on AC Dual Client. I had loaded the "Jr" account but needed to swap to the "Fist" account. (The third is called the Owanda account.) After hitting the go button it gave me an error that I had the wrong password and had tried to log on to often. I would have to wait an hour before trying again. I figured that when the bad password failed to work the program kept trying until it hit the limit and was locked. Needless to say I was a touch ticked. I was sure I had entered the right password. I had to tell MT, who needed some armor tinkering done, that the account was locked for an hour. I thought an hour had passed and tried it again. Got the same message. I figured it needed a few more minutes. After a longer time it still returned the error. I tried to log in manually and it worked. I looked back at the setup and found the problem. Fist and Owanda are both hotmail accounts but the third is not. For some unknown reason I had typed Hotmail instead of the real IP address. It did not help that MS gave me an invalid password error when it was really an invalid account name. I lost an afternoon over that "Dult!" error. Loot I've never been very lucky with loot, so the complains everyone had over the loot in the last few months went over my head. I went from nothing and peas to nothing at all. (g) Still, I was finding some amazing UA weapons and Daggers. Given that my main Melee players today are Sword and Mace, they did not help me much. While playing on an off server I found an outstanding Amuli Coat. Of course it had to be there that I found it. Nevertheless it gave me hope that there was some nice stuff floating around. So I did a long hunt on Saturday. I normally don't hunt on Saturday. I had not had much adventure time during the week so I figured I would fight the crowds. Normally I'll find a piece of vassal armor about once a week. Vassal armor is good but not great stuff. It is normally around AL 220 wms 6, high value armor. I only save it to give away. The first piece of armor I found was an AL 279 wms 4 BP! Not really a BP as it also covers the chest and gut, but I'm not sure of the real name. In any case I had never seen such high AL. I have some leggings with high AL sitting on a mule. They would match up with this piece very nicely. That just leaves me with a search for some sleeves. I'm not sure, but there might be some floating around on a mule somewhere. I'm not a fan of three-piece armor, but I'm willing to make an exemption in this case. It is nice that Turbine is making armor other than Amuli useful. Of course with Fist's Armorer having a 10-strength start, this set might be a touch on the weighty side for him. The second hunt was in a Matron. There I found three coats of vassal armor and one keeper. Now if I could just find some Amuli leggings. I find about one good set of leggings for every ten coats. Of course the value is high, but the days of pre-patch are long gone. I figure I'll need a full bag of 60k+ items for DIs now. My goal is one last set of armor. I have every player covered minus one. Fist de Mage and Fist's Armorer share armor while everyone else had their own set. My goal for armor is AL 350+. Most of my armor is higher, fortunately. With this Amuli coat and that new BP I'll have to decide on higher AL or less pieces. It will also be easer to find the leggings for the BP but I'm not so sure on the sleeves. In any case I'll need leggings and sleeves with AL 250 and wms 4 or less to match the BP. It might take Fist's Armorer a touch more time to buff with a three piece armor set but buffing to AL 540+ will make up for it. Armor decided The armor decision was made for me. Cher'okee had a nice set of red armor. She hated the trim so she had been on the lookout for something better. She finally found a nice set of leggings with the right trim. I was on late and Cher asked me to add the steel to her new set and dye it red. After that was done she gave me her old set of leggings. Now this is a great set of leggings! It is in the mid 400's! I quickly did a mule search and found a coat to match it with. Not as good as the leggings but close. I dyed the set green and got it all on Cliff Bowman. It will take about 30 bags of steel to get it all done but that will only take a month or so. I'll need to do a hunt on the V islands to find a war amulet for the sunstone gants. When I'm done I'll just need to make a few MCI's for Fist's Armorer and my swapping days are over! I'll just need to get them all self-buffing, and, other than mules and muling, I can use one computer. Fast quest With family stuff going on last week, I did not have time to go to our weekly meeting or quest last Sunday. We still have family over, but everyone is visiting Rosa's father. So I had time to log and play a bit. After the meeting, Abin and I planned to do Gaerlan. We hoped to get more people but knew the two of us could do it. Abin was bringing Gonder, his macer, while I was using Deadeye Fist. I would like to take Fist de Yuma Jr, but can only bring him if Dread Lord can bring his Archer. We were joined by a new member, Ken', a high level mage. After buffing we headed off to the subway. Of course, there is a faster route than the Landbridge portal, but that is the one we know. It only means a few clicks so no biggy. I got two fast hits when fighting the first golem. That faster portal will make a difference if you die here. You can run from the closer spot and make the portal, something you cannot do from Landbridge. I fell below the healing point but was able to run around the corner and repair. Ken' had hit me with a heal, so I only needed to hit the kit and charge back into action. We decided to just run through this time and only stop if trapped. I have done this enough that I remember most of the passages. I only got lost once, for about 15 seconds. We were never trapped so we arrived at the golem in record time. Now remember Abin's story a column back or so as you read the next parts. He made fun of me for getting hit by the rock and having to make many trips through the puzzle. We hit the Rolling Rock Bar and Grill. I moved forward cautiously. Gonder ran ahead and was promptly crushed by a rock. Ken' logged off to give Gonder a ride to Eastham. I decided to knock down the door. I had spare arrows and hate standing next to the rocks. It would not do much in the way of saving time but it would make me feel safer. After I brought the door down it hit me that I should have checked the status of the other two. I had an image of them porting in before I got through the doorway and being trapped between the door and a rock. I lucked out and they both arrived a few minutes after I was safe. I knocked the door down again and we walked over the puzzle. Gonder led but made an error. Ken' and I both made it to the end but Gonder missed again. (g) Then he did something strange. About halfway through the puzzle he started walking between the tiles. I had no idea how, but he walked to the end without getting ported! I guess he discovered a bug. We had planned on taking a pass on Gaerlan this time. We had killed him a lot and there did not seem to be any point if we could avoid it. There is a trick of running through a lower portal and getting flagged but not ported inside. You then run down and take the portal for your reward. I have a few items on my wish list. The Slayer bow is not one of them, but I figured to test it out. It did well in the Matron but I'm sure if my Bludgeoning bow is better. I'll buff it and compare soon. In any case it will be useful. I can use it with a starter Archer or as a fast no buff Olthoi bow on Deadeye. Gonder was a touch disappointed. He forgot that the trips Abin made did not count for Gonder. He got the wand, which he has no use for. His next reward will be the shield. Like me, he is wondering how good the Mace Olthoi slayer is. Even with a recovery we did the quest in about forty-five minutes. That is from starting to buff until getting the reward. I even had time to go do a ten-minute hunt in the Matron to test out the bow. I think the true test will be against the VoD Olthoi, but that will be when Abin and I can start working out as a team. Guest Writer: Graybeard First, let me start off by saying that I have only been playing AC since July of 2002. While that doesn't make me a veteran by any stretch, neither am I a newb either. In that 18 months, I have seen a very large part of the player base change it's focus, and it's a change that, in my opinion, does not bode well for the future. Even though there are, and will continue to be exceptions, I have seen an increasing number of players questing for something that is not "officially" in the game at all. I refer to the almost uncontrollable desire to "level cap" their characters. I have overheard many players (on different servers) make comments like the following - "Man, I don't even show up on ACStats (or TreeStats). I've got to get this guy higher so I can register on their rankings." Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to "cap a level" but when it becomes the sole reason for playing AC, the player needs to take a few long steps back and take a hard look at what he/she has turned into. This type of player may say that he/she still enjoys playing the game, but it's nothing more than self-deception. How the heck can someone honestly enjoy the game when their only goal is to reach level 126 (or higher)!!!??? I have to admit that I almost fell into this trap myself. Fortunately, I recognized what was happening to me and stepped away from that character for a while. This forced me to come up with an alternative to the "level cap" joy-killer. With someone very close to me, we chose another server at random and started completely anew. Though it has been tedious and tempting at times, we have held firm in our decision to NOT use or accept any buffs, except those we can cast on ourselves or each other. But, even though it's been difficult hunting at or slightly below our level, the most amazing thing has happened. We re-discovered the thrills and the chills of hunting drudge robbers and slinkers, the mite snippets and scions. All the usual stuff that a new (or re-rolled) player of today just blows right through with the level 7 buffs. **If they even bother with such 'puny stuff'.** Yes, we have already made a large number of trips to the lifestone, but it's all been a fun re-learning experience. If you are one of those who are caught in this 'leveling cap' cycle, I urge you to put your rush on hold for a while. Take the time to do what I have done. Re-discover Asheron's Call as it was when it first came out. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. : If you are a player who thinks this is a rather neat idea, feel free to PM me through the VN boards as Graybeard_TN and I will get back to you as soon as I can. I will respond to PMs with queries, constructive comments, even criticism. But, the messages that are outright flames will be ignored completely. That's it for now. Take care and be well, Gray Guest Writer: Han Yu-Ning Hello all, It's me grabbing up my hatchet and chasing people all over the server yet again. This week I want to talk about the ever-dreaded topics of Loot, 3rd party apps, & Patch Day. Here goes: AIIIIIIEEIIEIEIEIEIEIEIE! Loot: To start this off, I just have to say that after waiting for 3 months, loot is wonderful! I was picking up some amazing stuff off Desolation Moarsmen (I love that hookable Mansion portal, btw, all of my 60-70 characters hunt around that portal drop). In 15 minutes I had found 5 dual-spell jewelry, some stuff that required magic def, some amazing wands I'll have to try to imbue, and tons of peas! I did notice one thing, Cher'okee found gaunts that required Magic Def of 300 base Magic Def. to wield. At first I didn't think that was much till I hit Treestats later on last night and found out that the MAX you can ever get to (Focus/Self/and Magic Def all maxed out with 4.2 BIL each) for Magic Def is like 319. So that means only level 150+ characters even have a remote chance to wear those gaunts! That's just wrong in my book. The only way you can even get there was 100/100 f/s base, and spec magic def! So about 10 people per server could even wear that. Seems a little too high in my book, but if it came with dual majors, then kudos to whoever could wear it I guess. 3rd Party Apps: Like many people playing AC, I run 3rd Party Apps. I don't UCM or even ACM, but I utilize these apps for the benefits they provide. Here is a list of what you'll find running on Han Yu-Ning's computer: -Decal (duh) -Bandit Sight -NefusBuffus 2-(wonderful wonderful buffing program, easy to setup profiles) -TinkerCalc (almost not needed anymore due to the in-game one, but still useful) -Exception (I absolutely love this one, no reason to put any of these messages in the chat window. The HUD is the best!) -RoboChef (for making THE's and TME's). InsaneClient (for utilizing our house-bot's banes) -U.S.T (I can't believe I actually used to salvage manually for weeks till I found this plugin. Can't salvage w/o it! -ZyrcaBot (Han Yu-Ning is currently a portal bot) Might be one more but you get the idea. I used to run Meginjardar, but /a chat pretty much alleviates that, plus if I ever wanted to play incognito, I'd hate to have my character's name sitting in Megin for all to see....and I do play incognito... Well, now that you know what and more importantly why I run these programs, I can get to my real rant for the week: Turbine implementing them into AC. Forum boards across the AC community constantly have people posting that they want Turbine to incorporate more of these apps into AC. I for one agree. Things like Exception, NerfusBuffus, RoboChef, and U.S.T are wonderful time-saving and chat window helping plugins. The only reason I still run Tinkercalc is the ability to project tinks and the broadcast message of the tinker %. Which allows people to know I'm not lying to them when I tell them it'll be 33% tinker. The only one that Turbine might be hesitant to implement would be BS2. Bandit Sight creates more lag I think, because of all it has to download, it allows us to see outside our radar range, which defeats the whole purpose of radar range (on a side notes, why can't monster attunement skill be changed into something that will allow you to expand your radar, oh, whoops, back on track here woman). On the other hand it does allow you to notice items around your character that you were looking for. Helps in ID'ing items, and the ability to paste an entire weapons stats for all to see is invaluable. If they were to implement BS2 into AC, I think best thing to do would be #1, limit it to stuff w/in the radar. #2, give us some kind of key word ability to look for. This still leaves us w/o the ability to ID things on the fly, but maybe a new Third-party app can fill in the blanks. Will any of this happen? I don't think so, at least not all of them. People have wondered why Turbine doesn't #1. Write API's for their software so they can manage better what info is given to/taken from 3rd party apps (3pa's), #2, why not offer a few thousand to the developers of these apps to buy the rights to them, tweak them a little and publish them as "Turbine branded plugins" or #3. Setup a certification process that 3pa's coders can follow to get their Plug-in "Turbine approved". Why do it? Cause patch day you hardly see anyone play! I played one buff cycle of my mage yesterday mostly because I liked seeing the buffing animations so fast (I buffed up like 10 times just to see how fast I could do it). W/O NB2, I don't want to spend 5 minutes clicking buttons and banning armor (Hurry up and make the item spells cast faster, btw). W/O exception, I have a hard time chatting because when I'm knee deep in Moarsmen that are hitting me 5 times a second, chat scrolls too fast to be able to pay attention to what is being said. Everyone gripes and moans that there isn't a bot around...course I believe everyone should also be self buffing (by self buffing I mean via spells or items). W/O U.S.T. I barely even want to salvage, I only salvaged the more important imbue and rend materials yesterday, everything else I sold. While I would love seeing these implemented, I doubt it will happen soon. Turbine has to walk a fine line between allowing these 3PA's to exist, and keeping control of their application they've devoted 10+ years to. I do think the time has come to start working on integrating more of these into the game, at least give the Decal people the memlocs before release or something! Patch Day used to have people staying home from work (I know I did) just to see what's going on, but now it's the slowest day of the month. Well, time to sharpen my hatchet, looks like all that hacking on Shira Brie yesterday dulled the blade. 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.