Fist de Yuma - April 29, 2003

This and that When I woke this morning I had a two thousand-word column that I figured was finished. The problem with that is I went out hunting and ended up with a bunch to write about. By the time the day ended I had a five thousand five hundred-word column. My main worry now is errors. When I write a section I read and re-read it over and over again. It is seldom when I read a section that I don't find an error or rewrite a sentence or two. With me already late in publishing the column there is no time to give the three thousand words I wrote this evening the same scrutiny the others got. So if you find sections, not necessary at the end, which seems less readable than the rest, you now understand the reason. Please forgive the errors you find. I know they are there. I just don't have time to hunt them out. Dialup and big columns As you might know I have a column on the VN Vault. This is a column with few words and mostly pictures. It still takes me a while to do. After picking a set of pictures for the column I need to convert them to Jpeg. During that process I also move them to a directory. I bring up Word to edit them in a web format. This is not hard as it looks just like word at this point. I'm use to adding pictures with word as I have created many newsletters in my day. I also used Word extensively on papers in College. (My art teacher was very confused. I had three required classes with her. She felt I had the soul of a poet. She could not understand how I could be a hard-core conservative.) I type the relevant text as a lead in to each picture. Even with a relative short amount of text I have to edit it a lot to remove errors. Editing is different from viewing but only takes a few clicks. Lastly I save it all in still another folder to be sure all the trash I don't need is not in the final package. So now comes the hard part. If I had a different system, broad ban and the vault could take large files, things at this point would be a few clicks. Unfortunately none of the above is true. The problem was I had to find this out the hard way. First I did it from the fast computer the way it should work. I would select the files, right click, pick zip and send as e-mail. That brings up the e-mail with all attachments set. I type the address in, a few words then click send. Like I said in a perfect world that would have been it. There seems to be a problem with the e-mail on the main computer. I never noted it before because I use the other computer to do most e-mail work. The e-mail works very slow on the main computer. Even opening up the program takes a full minute. I felt as long as it was being sent that was no problem. I went off to read a book while the column was going out. (Firebird Trilogy, a great book.) Several hours later I came back to discover it was not even a third of the way done. To make matters worse it was not showing in Outlook so I could not stop it. Finally I had to restart the computer. Norton is doing something strange to my e-mail so I had to turn that off to clear the mess up. So after two tries that way and tying up my computer all morning I was ready to do it the old way. There is no zip and send on the slower computer so I just zipped the main file in one zip and the pictures in another. That tied up my computer for a few more hours. It was about done when it all crashed. Error message was the file was too big for my e-mail provider to send. Well @#$#@@#$ and all that. I go back to the main computer and ziped the pictures in two files. Again the computer is tied up for hours sending them. At last I have it all done. Rosa is home and time to make dinner and watch a little TV. A full day wasted and no playing. I got back at 10 PM and have two rejection messages. It seems that the files were small enough to get by my provider but to big for the Vaults system. Now I have to redo the pictures all over again, this time in four zip files. So it is now 11:40 PM and I still don't have my computer back. I must have played 50 games of FreeCell today. (No losses) Patch Day! One major item and a somewhat useful item have gotten into the game with this patch. Well one is a fix and the other could have been better. First they have fixed the Awakener! I was disappointed it did not work on self but this is still a major item. This will be a key at VoD. I expect to be burning a lot of stones on this. It is time to start adding to mana conversion again. The second seemed like a fun but not useful item until I thought more about it. Ulgrim the Unpleasant will give you a Casting Stein. This will let you cast stam2mana IV without Life skills. If they had made it a health to mana item I would be shouting to high heaven about how great it is. Still with stamina elixirs it will make buffing a little better for the no life melee. It took me a little while to figure out what they were taking about with the GSA. While it will be a nice item for first time, no idea if we can survive, no recover ability quests but for anything else I'll keep what I have. Where I see this being used mostly is by melee's in PK. Having four major wards along with the shield from last month might help melee's for a while. It will not take long before the mages figure out the holes so it will not be as big as some think. I think we will see melee's with several GSC pieces that have different wards. This will keep the PK mages off balance. So far I have not seen a lot of content. I have not looted so I cannot say much about the loot balancing. I'll know more later when I hunt The Slot/Plains. Tommy Training camp After reading the notes I decided to do something I normally avoid. The first patch day there are those who cheat by comparing map sections to see where changes are. This lets them narrow down the search for the new stuff after a patch. Unless you cheat as well you have no chance of beating them to it. So normally I don't even try to do the new quests until things die down. This lets me go do the quests the way they are meant to be done. This time we had a good hint as to where the trouble was so I decided to join the horde at Dryreach. I hooked with Illuminator and Borderline. I was using Fist de Yuma Jr. After getting into the town proper we spread out looking for something new. Other than new spawns there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. I got a call from Paraduck, who I had talked to in Dryreach, as to the location of the Tommy Training camp. I met the other two there after a bit of a run. It is a maze but other than one spot fairly straight forward. The monsters were weak and there was no real danger. We got the end and had to go, "Is that it?" I guess this will be expanded a lot in the coming months but for this month there was not much content. Olthoi Arcade part one Sho Man Fu, Winter Ravens new UA is having a blast in the Olthoi Arcade. He had asked a few times if I wanted to go. I decided this would be a good time. I loaded up Fist de Yuma Jr and met him at Redspire. Sho really knows the sections well. We only spent a few minutes running around the upper parts and hitting portals. I knew I did not learn much about the layout this way but I figure I'd get it down later. We hit what I think is the lowest section. Here we had two monsters that had no trouble hitting me, Olthoi Warriors and Olthoi Mutilators. There is a rumor of Broods in there but I have not got to the end to find out yet. Sho is only in the mid 50's so OW's and OM's both were darn hard for him to fight. Nevertheless his being there made it a lot better for me. If nothing else they were attacking him instead of me. From time to time I even had a chance to pull my magic and do a little de-buffing on them. We hit one room I'll call the room of endless EV's. They were not endless but for a while it seemed that way. We did meet another guy there and added him to our fellow. A short time later our buffs were falling and there was really no good place to buff. I decided to come back here later fight my way to the end. Assaulter Tusk Every time I log Jr now I get a message that the Assaulter Tusk quest is ready to go. My last attempt ended in failure. I decided that with the good set of armor and a nice shield I might make it this time. I ported to Tusker Island and was surprised to go direct to town. Why they had us going into that garden before I don't know. I expect they had plans that never worked out. After buffing and checking my dispel gems stock I headed out. I lucked out on the run and arrived without de-buffs. Three Assaulters at the start met me. Even with 460+ skill, 260 strength and a darn good Fire UA weapon I was hitting from the upper teens to low thirties with crits in the middle fifties. With that low of damage it takes me a while to wear one down. This shield was working. My damage was ones and zeros with crits of threes. So other than stamina I did not have any immediate worries. I knew that would change when they got around back of me and I started hitting the traps. It took me a very long time to clear the top. I don't know how many Assaulters are there but it is a lot. In the next section I had hopes to run and get as far into it as possible before fighting again. That did not pan out very well. I ended up at the bottom of the ramp with a whole lot of tuskers on me. I dispelled the Bludgeoning Vuln after they started hitting me from the rear. When their damage goes from ones and zeros to ten to thirty I worry. With a lot of healing and having to drink several heal and stamina elixirs I was able to break free. I got as far as the second ramp and was trapped again. This time there were even more of them and I could not see anyway to fight my way free. During the fight many of the Tuskers moved away. Every time I killed one they would converge. I could see it was a lost cause and used a gem to port out. Pulling a magic item, even with good health, had a better than even chance of getting me killed before I got away. After that I broke down and hit the net for a map of the place. I think I have a fair imagine of it now so I'll likely make it the next time. If I can I'll go with a few people and make it easy. Olthoi Arcade 2 I decided to head back to Arcade and try to make to the end. I knew it would be hard but with a little luck and smart play I felt I could make it. First part was finding my way through a bunch of mazes. I did ok with the upper section. I lucked out and found the portal with a minimum of fighting and searching. I was not so lucky with the second part. I must have killed 50 Soldiers and Legs before I found the exit. Now the hard part starts. First were simple nobles. Strange how one of the hardest monsters to defeat in single combat at the beginning of the game is now defined as simple. There was a time when very few melees could take one in single combat. I tried the right hand passage but that led to a dead end. The left I remembered from the last trip and did not go into the room of endless EV's. I cleared to a center section and found a place to buff. I would have to break my buffing to kill Warriors but it just extended the time it took to buff. I got to a rectangle room with a ramp in the center of a wall. From there I advanced a bit and ran into six or seven Mutilators. I defeated them but it took so long that the back spawn came at me. One of the tricks to a place like this is to keep moving. With a high spawn rate standing in one spot to long will get you trapped between two spawns. I cleared the back spawn but in hindsight I should have keep moving forward and not worry about the back spawn unless I had to. The time I wasted killing them I did not have to spare. After advancing a short way I ran into another group of Mutilators. This seemed a bit bigger than the last one but nothing I could not handle in time. I had only killed one or two when the first group of Mutilators I had killed re-spawned. Now I was trapped between two groups and health was dropping fast. As it took me two hours to make it this far I did not want to die. I made an attempt to get the entire mob in front of me but there were too many. Both sides of me had four or five and no way to make it through them. It was a total lost cause so I hit the portal gem. Yes I do keep them on my hot bar and know when to use them. Plat bug Just when plats were starting to mean something a bug gets introduced that lets the cheaters get rich. There is a bug that allows people to get large amounts of cash using a trade macro. I have heard of players making 50+ plats an hour. Turbine decided that, while it is a bug and exploit, it was not bad enough to make them do a hot fix. This will mean those of us who hunt for cash items will find our hard work devalued. There is nothing we can do about it but Fafhrd on Frostfell had an idea and that might help the game in the long run while solving this problem. If they devalued plats and scarabs in general to a far lower price and matching that with plat peas at the current price of plats, the problem is solved. Those that decided to let their macros run for weeks on end will gain little. Fafhrd pointed out that scarabs in general are a hold over from the old system. It is time to bring them into the new age. I have a feeling that Turbine let this go because they have something similar in mind. What really hurt was this hit our house bad. Some felt that there was no reason to keep our house broke if everyone else was doing it. I felt it was a dishonorable thing to do and may not be worth the effort in the end. Why stain our soul for a dubious reward. Like many things it is getting carried out of proportion. Those that are against it feel we have lost our way by not outright banning it from the House. Those for it dislike the preaching. Those that don't care one way or the other hate the controversy. I feel those against it should not do it. I had my say on the boards. I feel it is wrong and would rather we not do it. That said there is nothing illegal about it so leave those who do it alone. I hope it all cools down but it would have been better if Turbine had not created the problem to begin with. Making people mad There are times when playing in a certain way will make people mad. I had two very angry people this week. Strangely the others I was with approved of my actions so I guess it wasn't all that bad. I was running a fellow in the 60+ tusker dungeon. The fellow that was there broke up just as I came in. With no one but me there I just started a fellow and added people as they came in. In a short time we had a line. I had only intended to be there to make 89 but I hate to run out on a fellow when I'm the leader. So I ended up being there almost eight hours. Of course 65 million points made it worthwhile but I was dead tired when it was all over. There was a guy that was mouthing off in the fellow. It hit me that I knew him. He is one of the big grifers on the server. After be use the "B" word I asked him not to repeat that and show some respect for others. I had heard this before from him so it was no surprise. He gave me his typical spiel about real live speech having curse words and my need to lighten up and let people do as they please. I'm paraphrasing that that is the just if it. He was in Elder for a while and told me the same thing when I asked him not to curse at the mansion. I was surprised that he had not learned a different speech. It never works so why not try something else? As I had only been looking for an excuse I quickly removed him from the fellow. The members were quite happy and surprised with my actions. It seems that most fellows will never remove a producing player, no matter what. I was told he cursed everyone out and left. A bit later I got a tell from someone who wanted into the fellow. I added him to the list. When his name came up he asked me to go to a spot and add him. He said he was going to eat lunch and did not want move. I had placed myself at the start so people could find me easy. I told him where I was. With traps I try to move as little as possible. I have a good supply of gems but would rather not waste them. Then I got word that this player was a 126 archer who was macroing. Not illegal mind you, he was macroing attended. This was a rare thing these days. With the lowering of the level of Tuskers it is no longer worthwhile for very high-level players to go into the Tusker dungeons, especially a 126. Rampages are 95lv and xp drops quickly as your level goes above that. I had already pointed that out to several members of the fellow who were over 95lv. The highest one was 112 and he got a full thousand less points per kill than we did. That loss was after the fellow percentage so with a full fellow it amounted to a nine thousand xp loss per Tusker. I told them I was setting a limit of 115 to people joining the fellow. The xp is only part of this. While they do get less their ability to kill faster makes up a bit of that. To me it was a matter of fairness. There was a line of people waiting to get into the fellow. Most of those were players below 80lv. It would not be fair to keep them out while a 126 player, one who will not leave for some time because he is macroing, fills a slot. The archer was quite angry over this. He claimed there was no lowering of xp. I tried to explain how the Tuskers were 95lv now and he was getting far less per kill than we were. He would not agree there was any drop at all. He said he got the same xp as before the patch. I'm thinking he did not know they raised the xp for Rampages. They added seven to eight thousand to a Rampage's xp. If he was getting the same as before the patch the xp loss is greater than I thought. I would rather not make people angry but there are those who feel the can run over anyone they please. I try to be nice or at worse just ignore them. I have gotten a lot faster with squelch these days. I'm betting that if they are running a fellow when I go there again I'll not be allowed in. So be it. I can do as well in the 70+ as a solo player. These days there is no one there. The 80+ is not so easy for me but with team play I can do very well there. Standing for your beliefs I have strong beliefs and I'm out spoken. This gets me into hot water more often than not. It has been especially harsh on me this year but I felt it was all behind me. William the Bat has taken over the House. Just what we are calling ourselves is not set in stone but House of Bats is getting a following. I decided to keep my currents setup for a few reasons. My number one reason was not messing with Balash. Moving Mage out from under him was not a good idea. Also Mage is quite good at creating XP on his own and Fist is only used for big events that need a melee. JR is still the future and will be very strong after I switch him to sword. So my line was Fist's Armorer->Cliff's Carrier Cook->Fists mule two->Cliff Bowman->Deadeye Fist->Abin->Fist de Yuma Jr->Fist de Mage->Balash->Fist de Yuma. Elder swore to Fist de Yuma who swore William the Bat. I figured that would be that for years to come. Then controversy showed its ugly head. I blame this on several things; Turbine lack of foresight, Alliance in flux after the change, Strong feeling on macros in general. Balash is one of the most honorable people in the game. He has also been a great friend to me for years. He is known for crazy acts. There have been few big quests where his pack pet is not pulled out to help with the battle. His doing Bobo naked is legendary within Elder. (Trained melee defense to boot.) Balash was appalled that there are people in our House running the money macro. While I disapproved I felt this was a battle we could not win. There are those in life that lose because they refuse to pick their battles. It is often better to give up on something you have no chance of winning so you can gain in the next battle. In our House we have won a lot of battles on things that corrupt other alliances. There were too many people doing the macroing. William has set a policy. He did not like it but he was not going to forbid it. Each person is left to decide what is best for him or her. Balash felt this was an out right cheat. He is right but it is not against the CoC. He pointed out that we stood against combat macroing long before Turbine did so how is this different. That was a strong argument and I for one did not have an answer. So Balash decided to force the issue. He said he would be leaving the House unless things would change. I could see when I talked to him that he was firm. Nothing I could say would change his mind. So when the time arrived he broke. I contacted Elder and moved Fist de Mage under him. Some of Balash vassals have moved back. He still hopes this move will force the issue but don't think it will. I can see that there is no way Balash can move back to the House while this is an issue. It could possibility result in his leaving the game. It is a great loss to the House. Balash has been our conscience and soul for some time. I hope in a few months things will get better and he returns. I have two key vassals/friends who feel as strong as Balash over this. I feel we need to give things time. The alliance is newly reformed and William is learning how to run it. I have great hopes that nothing like this happens again. I play for fun and this is starting to get stressful. Breaking/Swearing bug I knew about the swearing bug. If you swear to someone you will shortly be kicked to the desktop. This seems to happen to everyone. I guess it is not such a big one that Turbine feels a need to fix it. I don't know about others but I also have a break bug. When Balash dropped Fist de Mage I shortly after locked up. It was not such a good place that it happened and that will be outlined in the next story. To get my vassals back into the House I swore to Xan. When Elder got into the game she dropped me so I could swear to Elder. I locked up again. Both lock ups required me to reboot the computer. That is one nasty bug. The swearing bug is predictable. We had a funny conversation as we re-set up things. I had one person swear to Mage and I told him he would crash any second. "I never crash when I swear" he said, a few seconds later he crashed. We had a good laugh over that one. When Xan dropped me I so I could swear to Elder I was standing to close to the mansion. After being ported away I ran back to Elder. I was almost to him when I locked up. I had forgotten about locking up before. As my computer rebooted I logged the other computer and told Elder what happened. He said he was chasing Fist de Mage. Now that must have been a sight. VoD I was having a good hunt in VoD today. Balash was leading a group. I got in when I read about it on the board. I rushed out there to have some fun. They had found a spot with two Virindi spawns. This insured us a goodly amount of xp. We would clear it fast and then hunt other things until the came back. Some of those things were Lugies. I found that those hollow spiked clubs can hit me for over 90 point of damage so I vow to stay well away from them if I can. After buffs ran out people started to leave. We had only three people, an archer, our healer and me. With me doing the de-buffs and supplying good offence, the archer supplying good offence and forcing the monsters to split their attack and the healer keeping me alive we did not need any more than that. It should be noted that what many would consider the weakest member of our group was one of the more important ones. Any player that can use a Healers Heart, no matter what level, can be a key member of a VoD group. I cannot stress this enough. A player that cannot touch a monster at VoD can be a key member. A group without such a player is far weaker than those that have them. Keep this in mind when you are setting up a VoD group. Don't discount that 65lv player as useless. Balash dropped me while we were in battle. It was not a hard one. The one monster we were fighting was well in hand with the three of us were working as a well oiled machine. Freeze! Even as I rebooted I was not worried. I was not close to a spawn and I was sure the healer had my back. The Archer should have had no trouble finishing off the monster. I was right as I got back at full health. Unfortunately without me they could not fight. Our healer was to low a level to de-buff and the Archer knew without de-buffs it was not worth it to fight. So when I got back I was alone. With 12 minutes left on buffs I decided to see what I could kill. First thing I noted was our Virindi were back. The Virindi were in two groups, one with three and the other with two. The group with two were slightly more powerful. I started on the group of three first as the other group was harder to get to. It was likely that hitting the second group would have all five on my tail. Tactic were simple, fight one and only one at a time. If two charged I would run and try again. The Virindi for once cooperated. I de-buffed one but a different one charged. I retreated a few steps and de-buffed that one. I had it almost dead when it retreated. This was not a big deal as I figured I would kill it at the spawn site. I was after the 1.1 million points, not the loot. It got out of radar range but I quickly chased it down. Something very strange, all three Virindi were at full health! I have no idea how it healed so fast, a bug I guess. So I had to start over. I finally killed all three of them and now I could start on the two harder ones. While great xp and not as many hit points as many of the VoD monsters these are very nasty. I had several times where two War spells in a row would have killed me. I cannot say that about any other monster I have faced there. It is one of those heal and hold your breath things. Is that spell he is winding up a War or a de-buff. If War I'm dead. While fighting the last two I had several times when I was in total heal mode. This is where they damage and I heal until they either kill me or switch off of War. What more can you ask for, a monster that required careful and fast thinking, a chance to die no matter how good you are and worth over a million points when killed. After I had taken down the five I found my xp per hour rate was 28 million! I got 5.6 million points off five monsters! Of course that is a rare event but amazing nevertheless. Frustration I'm getting a touch frustrated in VoD at times. I have what I consider very high skills I go into combat with. There are times when the monsters treat me like a n00b. The Olthoi are especially irritating. It is not uncommon to get 5 or 6 resists while trying to land a yield. With 417 skill I don't expect that. Even after a yield my 414 Life can have trouble landing. The lowest costing skill of my three is 65 million. I can raise that in a few days but just how many points do I need? I understand this is meant to be hard but it can be very frustrating for a non-chaining mage.