Fist de Yuma - April 22, 2003

This and That I've been sick for a while but not bad. The problem was it just hung on and on. I have had a constant cough and drainage for over a month. I have had pain and other problems for a month before that. Mostly it was costing me sleep and pain. This week it was really bad. Seems I had a low level sinus infection that built up into a major one. They were treating it at as an allergy. Allergy pills don't do much for an infection. I think the doctors have got a handle on what the problem was so I'm starting to feel much better, at last. Not being able to sleep for a month because I cough all night was getting old. If anyone thought I was a little curt or irritable lately you now know why. I don't think I made but one error in judgment but if more I apologize. I'm still weak as hell and not allowed to ride my bike yet. Word from Jeff I'll print it here in it's entirety. To My Family, Well all it is another week gone by. Things here have slowed to a dying pace. I almost do not know what to do with myself. There is still work to be done but not a lot of it. The planes held up well considering. We have a couple that have some issues but nothing the outstanding Marines that work for me cannot get through. We are for the most part out of harms way and all is well. I made it through in one piece, which is a good thing. God was on my side and the side of all involved. I must say that our plan in the war effort was great, they really knew what they were doing. So I wanted to check in with you all and let you all know that all is fine here. I am not 100% sure when we are going home yet but it is looking like July. When I know something more solid I will let you all know. Well that is all for now. I love you all and hope to see you all soon to where we can sit back and laugh about all this. Happy Easter to all of you. May god bless you all and bring us all happiness. Love Jeff Plains Hunt It started out as a solo run to the slot. It was my first real hunt this week. For the most part I would log to talk and do tinker work. Been too sick to do otherwise. I killed a few things on the way but got there faster than normal. I had just been checking some bodies so I had Buzzard up. As I got close to the first hill heading into the slot a bunch of bodies pop'ed up in Buzzard. As I headed over the hill I saw a group of white squares on my screen. Aaa, an Elder group. I asked to join them. The group consisted of Yanaba, Jaster, Looie Woo and Tryst. We made short work of the second spawn and headed to the first hub. The first hub is easy to solo so it lasted about a minute with this group. Instead of heading south, as I normally do, they took the east passage. Here we were slowed down a touch. A lot of Shadows, Bandies, Tommies and Virindi on a fast spawn made it harder. We finally reached the end. Not knowing what their plan was I figured we would backtrack to the Hub. I got called back. They found a route to the Plains from there. On the plains it can get exciting. Not only do you have to worry about the spawns but you have to watch other monster getting stirred up. As you start clearing and moving forward you have to worry about re-spawns. Nothing like fighting a horde of Shadows and having a pod of Virindi pop up beside you. One of the reason I like the slot is predictability of spawn points. Knowing where the monsters are, and more importantly where they aren't, can really help the solo hunter. Tryst and Jaster had to leave so it came down to Yanaba, Looie Woo and me. We did ok until we got a big group of Shadows to attacked Looie Woo. Shadows are becoming a pain for me. Their War is not hurting me much as their skill seems well below my magic defense. I cannot say the same for their Creature abilities. Of it is only a matter of time before one decides to hit me with Yield and then I have to worry about their War. Looie Woo does not have my magic defense. As the Shadows hit him I went into support mode. I repaired over 100 points of damage several time before the Shadows went back to melee a attack. After his health seemed stable I started vul and blast to clear them. There must have been 10 of them in all. That switch was a mistake as second later Looie was dead. One or two must have switched back to War when I switched to killing. Yanaba and I cleared the Shadows out and hunted while we waited Looie's return. I missed Looie giving me permission. When I found out I had to go search for his body. It was close but covered with monster bodies. I looted it but Looie showed up seconds later. I give Looie his stuff back and we hunted a little more. Our buffs were dropping so we decided to call it. When in a hunt like this I tend to stop looting. I go for loot when solo hunting and when I don't have people depending me to keep them alive. Two more weeks I grabbed the spec magic defense gem today. I only have to wait out two weeks to pick up the last skill-selling gem. I'm still torn between Lock pick and Missile defense. I'll admit that Lock Pick comes in handy at times. Still I don't really use him for that type of hunting much. I needed it badly when Sing hunting in the Hollow Cave but I have not been there for a while now. I'm slowly getting Sings but it is Mage who does the collecting. Missile is not all that great a skill. The one thing that you might use missile for requires far too high a number to work. Lugies and their rocks can really hurt, especially the Hollow rocks. I have a lot more missile defense than most (268 base) and normal Lugies hit me with rocks. I'm doubtful if Lugies at VoD will have any trouble. There are a few monsters with missiles weapons but not enough to worry about. My problem is I can see that changing. The coming fix to missile weapons Archers are getting this patch will also pass to the monsters. I also can see deadly arrows being given to the monsters soon. So I have two skills, one fun to have now and the other with future benefits. Given that Fist is trying to be a max defense, pure survival player I'm leaning toward keeping Missile. One benefit will be the return of a lot of xp. I have almost 500 million into Weapon Tinkering alone. Even after spending points to get Lore back up there (it is being moved to trained) I should have 600 million to play with. The idea with Fist will be to have 360 magic defense 500 melee defense and 360 missile. This might not make me invincible but I'll be darn hard to kill. (All numbers are buffed of course.) It will take a long time to get there. I have not run the numbers so it many not even be possible to have it all this high but I figure I'll get close. I'm in the 460's with melee. I'll be in 345+ with magic defense after I spec it. Missile is in the 330's but has a low relative cost. Cost is a big issue right now. These numbers are in millions and rounded off. Melee defense - 87, Magic defense - 98, Missile defense - 14, Coordination - 93, Strength - 86, and Quick - 49. So you can see it takes weeks to move anything. (To see my players go to Treestats.com and look them up.) Unless I do something very different, such as join Og II and get into a chain, it will take me a year or more to make these goals. Changes coming We have known that Elder is leaving for flight school for some time now. There have been a lot of people wanting to succeed Elder as monarch. In the end it came down to William the Bat or me. I've done a lot for HoE but I have also pissed off a lot of people. I speak my mind and drawn on years of experience that many don't have. Not that I'm always right, I've been wrong and will be wrong again. To be fearful to speak your mind because of the off chance you might be wrong I cannot see. To be fearful to speak because someone with opposing views might decide to hate you never crossed my mind. People can have opposing views and not be the devil. Unfortunately we live in times were many cannot see this. Some have key views and if you have an opposing view, you are automatically hated. It took me a long time to understand this concept. I don't really hate anyone. Hate is a foreign concept for me. Dislike and want to avoid, sure, but hate? For me it does not compute. To hate someone you don't even know because of a belief is beyond the pale for me. An yet I have talked to people who talk hate towards me, not even knowing that the person they hate is standing in front of them. Despite this experience I was shocked to find there are those in Elder who absolutely loath me. Elder was told they would break from HoE if I became monarch. It was still a close call and took much thought on Elder part. I have known Elder for a lot longer than most. When I found there were those who stood against me I figured he would chose William the Bat. For things like this I might know Elder mind better than Elder does. So I took a few steps to insure some reward for my years of service and service to come. I asked Elder and William that when the change came they would place Elder under Mage. That would make it; Elder->Fist de Mage->Balash->Fist de Yuma->William the Bat. They agreed to this with one exception, that Mage move under William. Elder felt that third in line was as low as he wanted to go. That was not as good but it was an acceptable compromise. It would hurt Fist as Mage is his biggest xp source but I expect to be hunting Fist a lot more when I spec magic defense. His inability to defend against War spells was his biggest drawback in battle. For the last year Fist has been a Quest player and had not hunted for xp. My only wish for this compromise would have been that Elder talked to me about it before announcing it. Mage is under Balash and he read about losing Mage in Elders statement. That hurt Balash's feeling so I would have liked to have talked to him before it was announced. I would have if I knew it was coming. Balash is one of my oldest friends and I would do nothing to hurt him. What I did not figure on was the reaction people would have to all this. For one, all that wanted to be Monarch are breaking from Elder. That in itself would not have been bad. The rank part was staying, not that I need rank, and Moby Dick runs the best branch in Elder. Moby told me he wanted an active patron and planned to move under William. This left me with nothing. I asked Moby Dick if he would consider moving under Mage instead. To sweeten the pot I would move Fist under him. Moby and I have teamed well in the past. We talk a lot together and have never had a difference that I know of. So it seemed ideal. What's blocking it is players below Moby. This has no effect on them at all so what objection they might have I don't understand. I heard things like, "You will become too powerful." And "We want to preserver balance." There is only one power in HoE, Elder and now William the Bat. As a branch leader I have had no more say than the lowest member of HoE. Where the power thing comes in I'll never know. So I have to assume it is a dislike of me that is the problem. The question I have is can I stay in an alliance where so many with influence dislike me and have a say on what happens to me? Being a logical person I listed my options. First option is to keep talking to Moby. If I can work out that move I'll follow up by keeping a low profile in HoE. It will mean William will have a lot more work but I don't see an option there no matter what happens. If that does not pan out I can keep everything the same and keep a low profile. That will not make me very happy but it might be what is best for HoE. The next options involved me moving. All but one key player has told me what I want is what they want. That key player is the always volatile Balash. Balash is good a friend. I will not do anything he does not want. So I'll have to run everything to by him. First option would be to become a monarch. This is very tempting. I have turned down two mansions in the last month because of my loyalty to HoE. When I was sure everything was going well with HoE I gave much of the items needed for a mansion to William. So at this point, even if there were a mansion available, I could not buy it. Without a mansion I don't think it would fair to my followers to form a new alliance. There is also the problem with holding rank and other perils if we had a mansion. I think we would do well but I'm not sure if we are quite ready yet. The second option would be to join a small alliance that has a Mansion. There is one (Tracye) run by a former vassal with several of our friends in it. While talking to them they were all for us joining them. I was afraid of overwhelming their alliance as I have twice their followers. I was told not to worry in that they share our standards. The next option is to join a big alliance. This has a lot of benefits. The best is Og II's alliance. A few vassals have had good experiences with that alliance and monarch. They are encouraging me to go in that direction. There are a lot of options within Og. We could be a branch or spread out into the chain. My fear would be losing our group but most of us hunt and socialize together and that would not stop. Og keeps a tight rain on his alliance but it is so large nasty people still get in. It only takes one or two of them to insult a member and cause trouble. That would be the biggest drawback to joining Og. At this point my strongest desire is to stay in HoE under William the Bat's leadership. The hurts I have taken in the last few weeks will pass as I have thick skin and heal fast. Also getting well after been sick for so long is helping. Still I have to think out all options and be prepared to jump at opportunities. More Fist de Yuma Well it would better to say more spread out. I have promised the Vault I'll have a column out for them every other week. I use that column as more a pictorial so I don't see it taking away from this that much. The main thing with the vault column is I'll have to deliberately go out to make the column. With this one I tend to just write during the week. On a bad week, like this one, I might not get stated until Sunday or even Monday but most weeks I have a full column by Friday. Being that I need a sequence of pictures that column will have to be planned. If I had not gotten sick this week you would have seen it already. This week a group of Elder's take on the big boy of VoD. My plan for one column is to test my magic defense by soloing the Present quest. If I resist Platinum, Vapor, Plasma and Pyreal golems enough to solo that quest I know I'm set. Just in case I'll bring along a big box of dispel gems. Good friends on a hunt I had Mage logged at the mansion when Altrish asked me if I wanted to go hunt at AB with him and a few friends. AB is not my favored place in the world but hunting with friends is my favored thing. I quickly switched my second account to the main computer and logged in Fist's Armorer. I lifestoned to AB and started to buff. Altrish said Nabata would rather hunt around Teth so we were going there. After I finished buffing Altrish made a portal to Teth. There were four of us. Altrish is a mage. This is Balash's new player. Altrish is not all that new as he has been around a while. We don't power level that much so he is only 55lv. Nabata is an old friend who is currently in Tracye. She is an 80lv Swordswoman. Wandall Feathersnake is also a mage. This is Monte Cristo's newest player. He is 56lv. The portal Altrish had was BSD. This put us close to the water. After hunting around the flood plains a bit we move to the beach and started west. Three mages and one melee is not the best combo there is but we made it work. Shadows and other mid level monsters fell fast. Being a little farther north most of the stuff there was not that hard. We were growing more confident with each kill. We hit a spot that had a few monster but several of us had to buff. While we buffed Altrish was circling the spawn picking off a monster or two. When we finished buffing it was time to take them out. By this time I had made 88lv with FA. We picked off a few monsters when I saw a pod of Virindi. It had an Inquisitor's with an Adjudicator for company, along with several escorts of Executor's. Of course attacking one brought the entire group at us. I dropped the Inquisitor before it got to us. Three Executor's and the Adjudicator started wailing on me. With a few resists I dropped the Adjudicator. I was pleased that I was resisting the Executors, which kept me in the battle. When it was all over we had lost Nabata and Feathersnake. Altrish got Nabata's stuff and I got Feathersnakes. This put me at burden as I had stocked up with tapers a short while back. With a 10 strength start 2500 tapers will not let you loot much. By this time the spawns had come back. Nabata had returned so we were ready to take them on. I was fighting a Virindi Executor when I heard the spawn sound. Now I had two Virindi Executors on me and one of the bad ass Black Hollows. This was getting dangerous. A few resist by one of the Virindi had me at low health. I healed but the damage took me right back down. Healed again and again I was damaged too much. I was worried about running out of mana before I got ahead of the curve. At last I got enough health to do a stam to mana and start settling accounts. What I did not know was when I heard the spawn sound was there were not just one Hollow, there were two. One of them at taken after Altrish. Altrish was in mage armor at the time. For those that don't know mage armor is all magic buffs. To a Hollow you might as well be naked. Only a quick mind and fast feet saved him. The problem was when he got away it came back to my fight. Seeing one Virindi and two Hollows, I had killed one Virindi by this time, I know this was a lost cause. I had good health so I opted for my beat feet move. Even lumbering along at burden I was allowed to escape. I think the Virindi got bored and retuned to his spawn site and Hollows have never been known for their attention span. Altrish and I recovered our health/mana and started back at the attack. With range tactic's they did not stand a chance. Feathersnake was back at BSD so we decided to portal back to him rather than make him run to us. I give him his stuff so I could move again. We hunted out the last few minutes of our buffs. Last I saw of Feathersnake was him heading east up the beach. He still had time on his buffs and felt like killing some more. The rest of us went back to the mansion to log.