Fist de Yuma - April 30, 2002

Every week I start this column wondering if I'll have anything to say. Somehow I end up with enough to fill a column and sometimes I end up with more than I can fit in. I have over 10,000 words so far with this and have two posts on DT to go. I'll have to delay them until next week. Meanwhile be aware that this one has a lot in it. Editing it all will be a nightmare. Decision After doing a little thinking I decided I get most upset when reading the VN boards. There are a lot of people there who love to upset others. I think the live for it. I play for fun and really don't want to be upset. There is a lot of good information on the boards but all to often I get involved with people who make me mad. Reading their scribbling on how I think, act and other slanders from unknowing self appointed critic's takes away from the game. This negative is far more than I gain in information. The last straw is a Moderator who made hateful posts on my thread. In that he is a Moderator I wanted to give him a sliver of respect. I sent him one PM. I said I did not know why he hated me but I would do my best to stay out of his way. Sure enough the next post I made on the MT board had this Moderator posting hateful, off topic posts. To add to this he ended it by asking I stop harassing him in PM. One PM is not harassment. With the VB boards upsetting me that much and an official of the board harassing me, while stating I'm harassing him, forced me to make a decision. I will no longer be posting on the VN boards. I was going to say reading or posting but by carefully avoiding the morons and only using PM's I should be ok. If you want to get a hold of me my e-mail is csd2@mindspring.com. If you want to have a thread to discuss an issue there is a board on this site that I read daily. I'm also checking out http://www.acrevolution.com. Their board has might be an improvement over VN but I'll have to use it a while to see. Rambling It is strange how someone can disagree with something only because they don't understand the base argument. I got a post from someone that said the chess player is superior to a checkers player. He went into detail as to why. What he fails to understand is a chess player may be a better chess player but that is all. For everything else he may be inferior to the checkers player. In fact the checkers player is possibly a better chess player. They has no way to know until they plays him/her chess. All we know for sure is that the Checkers player prefers to play Checkers. People many times fail to understand that a God given talent on one subject is not something they should lord over others with. They should give thinks every day for this talent. They should understand that other peoples talents may not be valued today but may be more valued tomorrow. A great actor/actress was given little respect many years ago. They lived hand to month trying to make a living. Today a good actor/actress can make a lot of money and have great influence over our society. A great sword fighter in years gone by might have built a nation. Today he has no skills worth having. Getting back to AC. A great DT player is no better or worse than any other AC player. He might be, and is highly likely to be, a better PK player than any player on a different server. Nevertheless this is unproven. Likely but unproven. It also makes no difference whatsoever. How someone has fun is what counts. They are not a better person for playing a game too much. They may not even be a better AC player than someone who plays very little. I have seen low-level players with more sense and awareness than high levels. They shout warnings before anyone, they have the right spell at the right time or are melee supporting a mage when they need it most. I remember years ago when we had the shadow wars. We had a mage with us who could not land on a Shadow. I think he was 15lv. When the hard battles were fought he was there, right in the thick of battle, healing and providing support. I don't know what happened to that player but I would have him at my side before a 100lv BM who has never done anything but level. You really don't know the true skill of an AC player until you have them in a group. This is where you see how well they can play. I don't know how much teamwork is used on DT. I have been told they are the last to finish the group quests, if they finish them at all. Of course quests are not the focus there so that may not prove much. That is another point to consider. The PK game may mean more or less grouping. I can see it both ways. I don't have enough information to know right now. If it means less than your average DT player might do poorly where working with others. As I said, quests may not be important on DT but that does not make them worse players, just different players. The bottom line here is AC players need to lighten up on this one is better than the other stuff. If you're having fun that is all that counts. The templates, the monsters fought, the levels or PK kills are nothing if you are not having fun. If you are having fun then you are playing right, no matter how different your play than others. Of course if your idea of fun is causing trouble that is a different story. Turbine really needs to start clearing out the trash. DT complaints I found after reading a few things that the DT board people have some legitimate grips with cross-server posts. A player that comes to the DT board asking for powerleveling is a fool. DT is competition. Earning your way is more important there than anywhere else. Of course I'm in agreement, I don't approve of powerleveling a new player on the other servers. The problem with the DT board is they feel the answer to a post like this is to shout it down. It is far better to explain to the poster or ignore them. Cursing them off the board only creates the impression that DT are a bunch of anti-social brats. The same thing goes with trades. Items are much harder to get and keep on DT. Even the best players die regularity. Even the best DI's will fail and have a valued item drop. For this reason people getting an item unearned is repugnant to the DT posters. They feel, rightly or wrongly, that the other servers get to much stuff to easy. To trade an easy to acquire item for a hard to acquire item makes them mad. Again, ignoring the post or explaining to the poster is far better than cursing them off the board. Lastly is something that is bad on all the servers but especially bad on DT. This is the selling of players. Creating a high level player on DT is far harder than anywhere else. Reputations are also harder to live up to or down to there. Selling or talking about selling on their board is sure to have a lot of emotions tossed about. As selling a player is now a clear violation of the CoC now I expect to see this stop, at last the blatant selling on the boards. If I'm sure that a post on the DT board will get a few letters sent to MS. It would be a shame to pay good money for an account that is quickly deleted. I'm sure on DT there will be few tears and rightfully so. Fools and their money Just to satisfy my curiosity I checked E-bay to see if people are still selling players. Now only a fool would buy a player when they can make their own but it is their money. Recently the CoC was changed to reflect the MS Zone agreement. The Zone agreement made it clear that selling was illegal but the CoC did not reflect that. This ambiguity let players feel they could sell. It also created a lot of scams where the seller would get MS to return the account after it is sold. For that matter there is no way to insure that you get the account after paying for it. So now it is clear than any account caught being transferred can be deleted. Whither this is enforced or not remains to be seen. In any case if I was MS or Turbine I would be assigning someone to check E-bay for sellers. Putting up the account for sale would be grounds for deleting it. I guess the sellers are not taking to many chances. I found that there is not that many accounts for sale in the little checking I did. I found four or five on the first three pages. None of the ones I checked had the name of the player being sold listed. Of course a little web searching got one name. The guy forgot to block out the name when he posted a screen shot. I'm sure that many of the others can be found with a little work. There is also the problem of someone sending MS or Turbine a letter telling about a sale. This could be a disgruntled vassal or even the seller themselves. Unfortunately it is most likely the unsuspecting buyer who will pay the price of the CoC violation. Again if I was Turbine I would simply put in the winning bid. A few questions after the sale is finished will get the name. Then delete. There should he no legal problem with that as the seller is selling MS property. I doubt if Turbine or MS will want to spend the time but anything is possible. It would only take a few like that for the word to get out. The accounts of high levels were going from $500 to $750. I don't know about you that that is a lot of money to me. With the new CoC there a good chance you'll be tossing that money away of you buy an account. Right now I recommend you never buy and account unless it is a RL friend. Keep it under wraps and don't tell anyone. Also don't piss off your RL friend. Wintersebb Well I joined an alliance on Wintersebb. I did a lot of study and found there are some outstanding alliances there. I picked The Astral Dragons. I liked their way of running things and thought their website was one of the best I had seen. I posted that I would like to join them on a message board set up for matching members with vassals. I got several messages and ended up picking Talaq as a patron. We click in a lot of ways and I look forward to talking to him. When I attended the first meeting I was met by a lady who seemed to know me. I meet a lot of people and keeping track is not easy. Nevertheless I was sure I had not met her. Later she revealed that she was Fire-lady! After the RL death of her good friend Fire found it to painful to stay on MT. She now has a nice BM about the same level as Fire-lady. I'm not sure if Fire wants me to let her new name out so I'm not going to. If she gives me the ok I'll start using her new name. Until then I'll keep using Fire-lady. BM to the Citadel After slowly leveling to 15 I debated where to hunt next. I finally got my Mana Conversion to a point where it supported my III spells. I'm getting close to where I can use IV's in combat so I still need to work on mana conversion. I think I'll be putting more into Mana Conversion than any other skill for some time. It is already triple the cost of any other skill. After hunting outside in several places I decided that I can do better in the Citadel. I know it like the back of my hand and feel I can get the skill levels I need for bigger game faster in there than anywhere else. Several people wanted me to try another place. This is filled with Drudges and a great place for a BM to hunt. I am too low to get into it but there is a back door. There were two things wrong with that. First I did not want to use a back door. If Turbine wanted BM's of lower level to go there they would lower the restriction. Second I don't have another player on WE who could create the back door even if I was willing to use it. So I headed to the Qbar Citadel. Traveling there is not that fun with a 44 run and 120+ burden. Fortunately I'm experienced in moving slow players around danger. I once moved a 10 run 5 hit point mule from Rithwic to Arwic. Let me tell you, I learned a lot. The new improved radar helps. It is nice when you don't have to examine the land for hidden monsters. There are also times when I can grab a quick 2-3k in points off a lone Drudge. When I first got there I was able to join a fellow with two melee. This let me imperil and then just try and stay alive. The alliance is providing me with cash so I don't have to worry about looting rights. I let the fighters take it all. With a low mana conversion I had trouble fighting more than one. I might kill one but the other was out of the question. I would be out of mana, close to death or both. If three it was drain and run. The fighters kept dieing a lot so it was hard to keep a smooth flow of xp. It was fun and I was able to gain a few points of mana conversion. The next time I had a chance to play was Wednesday morning. After getting to the Citadel I slowly got my skills to the point where I could fight two. More than that was troublesome but if lucky I could kill one before I had to run. By this time I was up to level IV protects so I was not taking as much damage. I debated long and hard about taking Creature before Item at 20. Creature would allow me to fight harder monsters. If I could find a place full of weak melee monsters creature would be ideal. In the end the hard-hitting Lugies convinced me I need banes. When restocking Fire-lady asked me where I was. She met me at the LS and put a few buffs on me. I will not do this to often but a buff or so when teaming it is ok. It helped to have a strength and quick buff. Lumbering around with burden and a low run is painful. We ran to the Citadel and started fighting. I had one body to recover and I thought it would be easy. I was wrong as I was to close to the room not to attract a crowd. With the protects Fire had provided me I was able to clear it and get my body. Fire was hoping to see me level to 19. We were hunting near the exit. There were not a lot of people there so the few spawns were undisturbed. I could run from spawn to spawn and keep fighting. With Fire's help I gained over 60k in xp. At a room that spawns a lot of Lugies we gained the most points. I had cleared that room a few times. This was also where I had died before meeting Fire. We were in battle and without warning Fire died! I'm not sure if she had let her buffs drop or what. With the right amount of drains, vulns and blasts I was able to clear the rest. I also leveled. The buffs were dropping and I had to run to the exit to rebuff. Fire gave me permission to loot her body. I knew that room was going to be a touch of trouble. I figured if I had to hard a time of it I would do a run, loot, run. An archer with a glowing bow, not sure which one, showed up. He cleared most of the Lugies. I killed a few but was mostly just wanted to get Fire's stuff. After looting her body I ported to the mansion. Fire had just done the Armor quest. It seems the armor is light, 50 bu, and worth 100,000p. This makes it an ideal death item. I'm just waiting for the day I see a body rot and have this armor pop up. Jr and Deadeye go Hunting I really intended to push Jr to 75 and get creature this month. After that he will be very close to replacing Fist. His melee defense is not on par with Fists and he has 25 points less UA but with Life and Creature he will be close to him in power if not defense. Two things changed. The improvements to endurance makes Fist a lot stronger. Fighting monsters that drain are no long the big problem they were. Even without a protection I'm at 40% less damage. The other thing was the improvement to Bow. Deadeye Fist had been hanging around 36 for a while now. I quickly pushed him up to 44. My goal right now is to string the new bow. His buffed bow is 320 today. I expect to need 335 and then use a major bow item for added insurance. I got the bow parts when Balash was hunting on the plateau. He told me he found the guy and I rushed Deadeye over there. That was last week and it may be another week before I'm ready to string. With luck I'll find another bow and have two shots at it. I was hunting in OHN with Deadeye. With a full set of buffs he could clear it all. That added up to around 600k in points. Mostly there are others there so the points are less. Someone said I might do better at the Fire Prism. The Fire Prism is harder and has some lag issues. Having to run there after buffing is also a pain. Nevertheless I'm getting 800k a buff so it the inconveniences are worth it. Deadeye is a pure tank Archer. He is made to be teamed with a mage. He might be getting Life at 75 or Creature earlier. Right now the plan is Life at 75 because of the pain to recovering mana without Life. His stats were 100, 10, 100, 80, 30, 10. This means he will never have a great deal of magic abilities. Getting the few buffs he needs will not be easy. The idea is to have a melee defense so high that he can fight the big stuff without a shield. He is starting with 20 more points than Fist. In the end he should have a few points higher melee defense. Fist is buffing out to 425 right now. Of course Fist gets the added bonus of UA weapons, which really helps the defense. I made Deadeye Sho so if worse come to worse he can pick up a shield and weapon. This is one of the reasons for the 100 strength start. The other is he will be carrying the heaviest armor and a lot of arrows. Like I said this is a pure tank archer. Jr on the other hand is much more of a magic player than Deadeye. He started with 60 focus and only 50 quick. This will cost him a few points of melee defense but with VII protects and the ability to imperil he will be much better off. I got him a ride to AB the other day so he could hunt Crystal golems. I decided that Mage took far to much time to defeat one to make it worth his while. Jr can do stamina to mana revit so mana when buffing is not a problem. He can also use revit after a battle to recover stamina. This lets him carry a lot fewer stamina Elixirs. His only problem right now is being on a VI time cycle. After buffing he only gets 10 minutes before he has to rebuff. Jr's biggest advantage is his imperil abilities. A fight with a Shadow of any sort is a long drawn out process. They heal and drain constantly. With imperil I'm doing enough damage that they cannot keep up. One spell other than heal or drain and they are dead. I set out with Jr heading south from AB. At first the only weapon I had buffed was the blunt. I was after Crystal Golems and nothing else. It did not take long to see the flaw in that plan. I ended up buffing a Fire weapon to take down Undead, Shadows and other things. Between the Undead, Shadows, Nobles and Crystal golems I was doing ok but not as good as EVL. Turbine might want to think about that. I'm not calling for a nerf of EVL, heavens no, but outside hunting should not mean losing loot and xp. I know that Crystal Golems are supposed to have Sing key loot but so far I have not found anything worth keeping on one. Extending the time on level VI buffs that will help a lot. It is not only Mages who are hurt by the short time of the buffs. For that matter I see the Hybrid Melee taking more time to buff than mages. Even standard melee would benefit from longer times for weapon buffs and banes. There also the problem with several weapon types that need buffing for outside work. A dungeon dweller can get away with protects and weapon buffs for just one monster. Someone hunting outside must protects for all damage and buff weapons for all attacks. Extending the time on buffs will make all this work worthwhile. I did not try to put a de-buff on the Crystals. I even if it landed it would be countered. Mostly I used Imperil to clear the path to it. When Fist was fighting them he had a hell of a time drawing the other monsters away from the Crystal. A Crystal is not really hard to fight but I would rather not have a bunch of other stuff beating me at the same time. I killed four or five Crystals and a load of Nobles. It was fun but like I said, the same time in EVL would have had more xp and loot. Of course if I had ran into a Crystal Lord I might be singing a different tune. Quest, Quest, Quest, break, Quest, break, Quest, Quest. After breakfast with Jeff and a little shopping with the wife I was ready for some AC. Jeff told me he sold his Virindi Armlet to get scrolls. That left his swordsman too weak to hunt. When Jeff made his BM he about dropped the Swordsman. I told him that sword was far to powerful to totally abandon, especially with the new weapons. I had a Virindi Armlet on a mule as Fist will use Creature VII's now. I would be happy to give it to him. Jeff called me later and said he wanted to get the Pincers for Jeff Sailor Bane. I loaded up Mage and we proceeded to slice and dice up Olthoi. Jeff got his pincers and was ready to do some other things. He had been sent to another base for a few weeks and had not had a lot of time to play. He expressed interest in doing Elssa's Favor. Neither his melee or mage had done this quest yet. I asked around the mansion if anyone wanted to go and Monte Cristo's archer did. Woo was just what we needed. Him and Jeff are both in the mid 50. With a mage, melee and archer we were going to have very little trouble until the end. Of course the end is bugged with double and triple spawns. I expected that would be harder. At first we had a large group join us, both Elders and non-Elders. Jeff had to do something for a bit and the rest of use decided to see of we could bypass the quest. There is a bug were the quest thinks you're done and lets you complete it. You do this by running to the fort, jumping over the wall, using [] to select the trap door and you're in. We got the five or six people there ok. I could not jump over the wall so I started searching for a bush or something. I found one on the north side. A shift jump dropped me on top of the tree and from there it was easy to clear the wall. After teaching my vassal Alala this trick we all made it. Clearing the fort was easy and I selected the trap door and hit 'r'. Nothing. I ran at the wall instead. Ok, Turbine fixed it. Another player said he had a key so we got in anyway. The fight was nasty but we had the power to make it simple. We got there and sure enough we could not pick up the note. The bugs seemed to be fixed and we would have to do the quest again to get the ring. Jeff got back and Woo and I met him. We started in Yaraq. I have always started there but you can start at any of the three. I learned this quest by doing it solo. I guarantee if you solo a quest you can lead it. Not all quests can be done solo. The problem is when groups blindly follow the leader and after that can tell you very little about the quest overall. I know that I cannot lead the island quest. I'm mostly trying to hard not to die to keep track of what is going on. Before I lead it I will have to learn to solo the first two parts. Soloing the last part is possible, not that I would not try it myself. For some reason I know the last part better than the rest. More of a straightforward route I guess. Anyway when I do these quests I try to keep the members aware of what is going on so they can repeat the quest later. There are far to few quest leaders these days. Really good ones are rare. The three of us ran to complete the two easy Yaraq parts and moved on to Holtburg. We finished off the bandit part and were headed back. I got a call from Fox the Foe, a vassal of Fists. He had found a Crystal Lord and needed some backup. I told Jeff we were putting a hold on the quest to go help Fox. We ported to the mansion and Woo loaded up Monte. I did not get their names but I recruited a bunch of Elders to go with us. The Lord was north of the South Dires portal. I got there first and saw Fox the Foe on my radar. I lost him as I moved around a hill. Fox had said it was about dead but I figured to try and help anyway. The reason I lost my lock on Fox became apparent when I got there, he had died. Jeff had been following me and charged in. Seconds later, "your fellow Jeff Sailor Bane has died". Jeff needed to wait for me to buff him. He also had no idea what he was facing. I like to draw out the trash before taking on the big boy. Several others showed up and proceeded to add to the body count. I kept trying to get everyone to slow down. As each person showed up they attacked. I'm guessing the small amount of health the Lord showed drew them in. "Your fellow Jeff Sailor Bane has died" I'm not sure of Jeff's body count but I think him and William the Bat will love to compare scars someday. Monte and I started clearing out the trash. He ran in and got a few swings in and then ran back to me. We cleared the Flies and I would toss a few heals on him. I'm not sure why but we were in slow motion lag again. The last time we did a battle like this in the south dires we had the same thing. The lag prevented me from saving Nebs when she ran out of the fight with a horde of Flies on her. I found later that it was her second body there. "Your fellow Jeff Sailor Bane had died". Finally a group of Elder melees shows up and charged in. I was blasting the flies and they got the Lord. I was sure that Fox got the kill. I check the body, "Killed by misadventure." LOL I got a bit of the loot for Fox and Jeff, looted Jeff's three bodies and ported back to the mansion. I don't know if Fox the Foe was upset or not as he logged right after that. I hope he just had something to do. Jeff was very unhappy. It will be a story to tell around the camp fire someday. So back to the Quest. We had little trouble with the Bandies. About the only spells I had to toss in combat were imperil. I kept them buffed up so it the only worry was a Hollow getting a hit at me. Jeff and Woo's melee defense was enough not to worry about hits. I was only a little worried about the end. There were only us three and a whole lot of Hollows. I lead them to the farmhouse. I got a bit ahead and jumped into the trap door and got behind the fireplace. I did this so they would have find the candle stick to get the door open themselves. I did the same thing on the way out. I just stood there until one of them found the switch. So we were ready for the last part. "Balash tells you, I found a Crystal Lord." Ok gang, we got another battle before we do the last part. Needless to day Jeff was more than ticked. The last thing he wanted to see was another Crystal Lord battle that day. Balash had one other fighter with him. I was a bit off from Jeff as I have my second LS in AB. He took the portal, which is a little closer. I'm faster and know how to run that route so I got there ahead of Jeff. I'm not sure when Monte got there. I knew better. I told myself that I would do this first thing as I met up with Balash. In the excitement I totally forgot. I joined Balash and one other Elder on a hill. The Flies and a bunch of Bandies were around the Lord. I said lets clear the trash first and imperiled a Fly. All the Flies and the Lord charged at me. I was not worried for two reasons. I was very well protected and the Lord always returns to his spawn site after a punch or two. Well this is where my stupidity caught up with me. After running over the dires I was full of de-buffs, including Imperil VI and Bludgeoning VI. I knew I had to pop a gem as I got to the battle but like I said, I forgot. First hit from the Lord was for 68. With dozens of hits in the 10 range from the Flies I was in trouble right off. The Lord never left and continued to pound on me. Balash was hitting the Lord and I was clicking the heal key. No doing, off to AB I went. A good thing I can buff with vit. With only a few fizzles I was up to speed and headed across the dires. This time I remembered to gem as I got there. The battle was hot and heavy. They tried to trap the Lord but he kept escaping. The Flies were the bother as normal but the Bandies were a new problem. I spent my time blasting Flies and Bandies. I hit Balash for a 126 heal when he had only a sliver of health. I healed them when I could but spent most of my time in battle with Flies and Bandies. Also, "Your fellow Jeff Sailor Bane has died." Balash got the kill and I picked up about 2 M notes in loot. Nothing I would keep but I'm always low on notes. Back to the quest. We only had the last place to go. I tend to run through the underground passage to the Fort. Nothing there is worth killing. That held up Jeff and Woo a bit but they figured out what I was doing and caught up. I warned Woo and Jeff about the ambush. I waited until they were in battle before hitting the portal. I figured they would have to download and if I jumped to early I would he a mage fighting a bunch of Hollows. I have done it before but would rather not do it again. We cleared and headed in. Good teamwork and smart play had us sweeping the Hollows aside. Imperil meant a few arrow or sword swings at most. I would just stand back and switch-imperil until they were dead. We all got the note and ported back to Dame for our reward. I was really hoping for another focus. I still have two players who need them. I turned in and got endurance. O'well I can use that. Both Jeff and Woo got Focus, burn. After that we planned on switching players. I would load up Fist, Jeff load his BM and Woo load up Monte. I was tired and tried to call it until the next day. Jeff had a trip to go on and could not play then. So we were off to do it again. This time I got the idea that the bug was on. The message Dame gave Fist made it seem like he could go get his note. He also got three Obsidian golems hearts and the key to the fort, which you don't get until the end. That was great, we would have one less spawn to wait out. At the bandit house I told them to go back to Holtburg and then meet me at the next dungeon. They ran off and I check my map for something. Then I checked the coodi and started to the dungeon. LOL both of them headed in this direction and it is not the route to Holtburg. Before I could tell them they were going the wrong way they had fixed it. The passage down was easy. I told Jeff to just imperil. After he took a few good hits I told him not to imperil, it just pissed off the Hollows. Monte is in the mid 70's and I have a melee defense of over 500 effective. They were not going to hit us and they could hit Jeff. When we got to the end there was a group waiting. I was tired and a little bored by this time. Just for grins I took off all my armor and did a sit back e-mote. It seems that Hollows don't approve of showing off. Every spawn had a full on attack at me. I might have worried if I thought they had a chance to hit me but they didn't. They got the orb and I told them to go back to Holtburg and then meet me at Shoushi. Jeff had to take care of a phone call, being a Marine is to always be on call, so I had Monte run to the farmhouse. He only got a little lost and Jeff ended up catching him. That done I told them to go back to Dame and after turning in the note, take the portal. I took the portal in Shoushi as they all lead to the same place. Monte was worried I was not going with them until I explained. As I got out of the portal there was a group getting ready to go. They talked of bodies all over the last dungeon. They were glad to our group ported in. We ran through the basement again and jumped out of the portal. Monte beat me and the battle was started, and over in a hurry. When we got into the trap door there were even more people there. Seems the bigger spawns were causing a lot of trouble. I was not really a part of that group but they all sort of joined us. With Monte and I leading and Jeff tossing imperils we had little trouble. I lost Jeff at one point and Monte and I doubled back to find him. That was when I knew we were leading as they all followed. We got into the last part and I killed the main hollow. I knew at this point that Jeff was leaving for 29 Palms in 4 hours and needed sleep. (Marines call the base 29 stumps.) I got the kill on the next spawn for Monte and he left. I know he had to be exhausted as well. I had been the first one there so I felt our group could do that. I told Midnight Mist to make a list and I would be last. The action was hot and heavy for them. We had one death. I was rushing around trying to keep them alive. They all got their note and I picked up mine. We were about to leave when they said more were fighting their way up the hall. I moved into the halls and helped clear the way for them. The next group I asked if they could hold without me. They were not sure so I stayed until they were all done. I made a quick run to Dame to get my ring. Endurance. BM new friend and the next skill I was at 19lv and only around 75k to 20. At 20 I decided to get item. I was still waddling around at burden because of the heavy armor. I got an e-mail from Sneaky Snake saying he had a coat for me and to put him on my friends list. I had forget about it for a while. I was in the Citadel when Sneaky Snake logged on. I sent him a "Hi" and we met at Hebian-to. In addiction to the coat I got a few items that I can use later in life. We talked a while and he seems a great guy. It is nice to meeting new people. It makes me wish I had the time to go to all the servers and meet people. After muling my old armor I found with full comps I was only at 90% burden. What a relief. The lack of banes still had me in trouble fighting to many Lugies but I was getting better. I was lucky to get into a great fellow of 18 to 21lv players. We were fighting and dieing all over the Citadel. Strangely there are still 30+ players there. Not only that but they are fighting in the lower level places. I asked one 35lv mage what he was doing. He was camping a room with four low level Lugies in it. It is a great place for a 15 to 20 player but I could not imagine being there longer. Even at that level it would not gain enough xp to camp it. I run there after fighting other stuff. I asked him why he was there. He said he would not do V's or VI spells and was not doing well in BSD. He told me his skills were around 210. That seems rather low for a 35lv. I did not have time to talk more with him. I figure a very weak template (4 school) or a very hard one. (BM) He might be lacking Creature. If he is playing a hard template his patron should be shot as the guy did not have the experience for one. If he is playing a very weak template his patron should be hung as no one should play a 4-school that high, it is a learning tool. I'm thinking he is playing a BM from the start and totally lost. The other 30+ players were mostly just killing what I was fighting as they ran to the jump room. Irritating but there is not much you can do. I put Lighting Vuln on a lugie just as these cowards run up and stick a lighting dagger in it. Hard to respect them. I might have to switch to Acid. After two buffs I leveled to 20. I quickly broke out AK and started leaning spells. I put the spare points I had into Item and started with IV's. I had around 150 skill so I felt IV would be in range. I learned the IV's wit ease but after that something dinged. My skill should not have been that high. Sure enough some passing mage had buffed my item with a VI spell. So I went back and learned my III's. With 117 skill I could just do III with a lot of fizzles. The next goal is to get stamina to mana/revit to work. I tried to buff for all three protects but with five items to buff it took to much time. After buffing I only had seven minutes to fight. As a test to my new skill I cleared a room that give me a lot of trouble before. With the much lower damage I was able to recover mana and stay in the fight until they all died. It took time but I was never in danger. The next time I buffed I only buffed Imp and Bludgeoning. The same room became a nightmare of big hits and I ended up running. I have to keep Piercing and Slashing banes on. So getting stamina to mana/revit to work is a big need. I have to toss far to many spells for using the stamina to mana/rest. Of course if I can get where I only have to bane two items that would help. I have a hide that Sneaky Snake give me. Of course getting the acid will be a big problem. It will be a while before my skills are good enough to fight a Grivvier. Maybe my patron has a Mattie Robe I can borrow. Another Crystal Lord When a person finds a Lord he calls all his friends together to take it down. I prefer to go as mage as I stated last week. For the most part I should not bother. The xp is around 350k for a four-man group. I can make over double that hunting North ML. I generally get an M note of loot but a buff on North ML will do that as well. Every so often you get a keepable off one but for the most part it is only death items. I have a load of death items and don't really need more. The Sing keys I get on NML would also be better as I can trade or use them. So why do I stop everything to join in a battle for one? It is fun. In the end isn't that what it is all about? I had just loaded up Mage to sell some stuff I was cleaning off a mule. It was around 2am PST. Bright Mage asked me if I could help with a Crystal Lord. Liquid Assassin had found one and BM had a tie close by. I told him I would be there shortly, need to sell what I had off the mule and recomp. That only took a few minutes. I met BM at the Mansion and was buffing. I saw that Wuyung was on and told him to get to the mansion. The four of us got to a spot just north of Nexis. I'm sure I did not have any de-buffs but events told me I might have. I vuln'd a Fly and killed it as it charged. There are a lot of Flies to clear before we can start on the Lord. Of course the Lord and a thousand Flies charged me. A Fly will only do 8 to 12 damage. The spells are a little more and there are a lot Flies. Nevertheless I don't fear them much. I'm learning to fear the Crystal Lord. I noted I was under 100 hit points. Hitting the heal key had me in windup as I was sent to the LS. Checking back through the log I saw the Lord hit me for 136 of bludgeoning damage in the chest. I checked my banes and saw I was still at unparalleled protection and I know I had a level VII bludgeoning protect up. From now on I run from that monster if I don't have my shield up. I had BM give me a ride back because I totally forget I could use the new portal recall spell. This will put you back at your last portal used, a lifesaver in events like this. A short run later I was back at the battle. This time if I attracted the Lord's attention I ran. My job was heals and blasting Flies. Blasting Flies is not all that easy. The dam things fly all over the place and never seem to sit still. I saw BM's body but missed him being killed. I saw Wuyung off to the side surrounded by Flies but he died before my heal hit. In a battle like this it is easy to run short of mana. I had to do a stam2mana before hitting Wuyung with a heal. That delay was costly. When we had the Flies cleared I would grab my staff and shield and join in the attack. I would only do around 30 points a hit but I put around 500 damage for the times I could do that. The danger for me is I have to pull the drum to heal. I had a few close calls when a horde of Flies would spawn. BM was back getting Wuyung when LA finished the Lord off. LA did a bit of looting and let me have a shot at it. I grabbed a few orbs and rings and let BM have a shot. When it rotted I joined in the grabbing off the ground. This was not a bad trip. I ended up with what would have been an outstanding UA weapon a few months ago. 2-7 Slashing +11 +13. Unfortunately the 3-9's are the keepable now but some beginner UA will love this one. I also got 5 Death times, including a 19k bracelet. A bracelet is a bit heaver than I like to keep but it will go nicely on Fist or Jr. After it was all over I remembered that portal recall spell. Wuyung did not know about that spell so he gained as well. Wuyung is more of a traditionalist than me and does not use AK. It took him a few minutes to get the right taper. Cut the Hysteria The below was posted by Amenophis on the general VN board. It is a call for reason. I disagree with a little but agree with much more. Theres far too much hysteria on these boards at the moment over issues that are not the most important, instead of proper debate. Reason seems to have gone totally out the window in a lot of cases, many people seem to have lost sight of whats really important. There are also too many people who just jump on any loud bandwagon thats passing. Also, far too many people are more concerned about how other people play their game rather than concentrating on how they play their own game and seem to get very upset if other people dont want to play the game their particular way. Take macroing as the current prime example. Is the issue of macros really that important? Combat macros are lame imho and in the wrong place they can sometimes interfere with play but Turbine were handling that the right way up to now by removing perches from such places as Serac Vault. Ive rarely come across combat macros in place other than a very few locations, which Turbine were tackling (and need to continue to tackle in that way). So what if some people have already gained XP from combat macros? I feel sorry for them; theyve missed a lot of the experience of playing the game but it rarely affects my game. Nor does it worry me that there are others who are at higher level than me, however they got there. This game is over two years old and Id guess only a small proportion of high levels got there with the help of macroing and if they did, so what? Trade macros are a symptom of the way the trade skills have been set up. Its notoriously difficult and tedious to level up trade skills. Thats what needs changing, not the methods people have had to use to do so. Unlike combat macros, I think theres a legitimate reason for trade macros. If people want to play or roleplay a trade skills character, they should be able to develop that character just as easily as developing a fighting character. Why otherwise put alchemy, cooking and fletching into the game? They should also be able to make money from trade skills just the same as fighting characters do. Its nonsense to suggest that making money from trade skills affects the economy. The economy is driven by the killing and looting of monsters and the selling of that loot. Overall, money made from trade skills is small beer compared with that and in any case, theres no reason why characters shouldnt make money and xp from trade skills any more than from killing monsters and selling loot. I think formal XP chains are sad, I prefer to be in an alliance where patrons and vassals become friends and quest and hunt together. However, I couldnt care less if some people want to lose their own experience and enjoyment of the game by locking themselves into xp chains, it doesnt affect my enjoyment of the game. Nor am I worried if as a result there happens to be a few extra high level people around. This isnt a new game and there are plenty of high levels around now anyway. I dont see any need to change the present alliance system just because a few people want to deprive themselves of the games enjoyment for the sake of levels. Something that does need changing imho is the way spells are learned. I want to play the game and enjoy exploring and adventuring with other people, not stand for hours in some corner trying all sorts of component combinations to try to guess some very obscure formulae. That needs doing away with and replacing with something more akin to the way you can find and use better melee equipment as your skill level increases. Thank goodness for Decal and Arcane Knowledge. Its saved me from hours of tedium which could have put me off the game altogether. I dont use Decal utilities while running about or fighting because it causes me little freezes in the game but in town is different. Again, AK is there because of the tedium of learning spells. Its the symptom of the problem, not the problem itself which is the current spell-learning process. What should Turbine/MS really be tackling? The top priority should be reducing lag and issues such as getting stuck in portal space, the random disconnections and some people being able to connect at all. What have we had to date instead? An extension of an annoying log-in process. It might help Microsoft, but it gets in the way of players. I also question why all the servers are in Seattle? Why arent there some servers on the East Coast and in Europe? Other games have spread some servers around like that. They should also be tackling grief play more effectively. There are some retards who seem to get a kick out of things like drawing mobs down on others, kill-stealing and plain stealing and if they are complained about, become very foul-mouthed. Often, these lamers pick on lower level players than themselves. Just recently, I saw a level 38 mage kill-stealing from newbie level players in the newbie hunting areas near the Heb lifestone and drawing mobs down on them. When he got a complaint, he just swore. Getting an Admin on time in such cases is difficult and in most cases the griefer has moved on, sometimes to return later. There needs to be a more effective way of tackling griefers because they do affect the enjoyment of other players. Turbine has started to tackle the imbalance between Magic and Melee skills but theres still a long way to go. Finally, as already mentioned, the weaker areas of the game need sorting, not the methods people resort to to get round them. Get rid of the present method of learning spells. Make using trade skills less tedious and more profitable both in terms of xp and money. AC is the best MMORPG there is at present imho, but its not without its faults, whatever some crawlers might say. People need to calm down and get their eyes back on the ball and recognize what are the real priorities. Turbine needs to continue to do so as well and not start be swayed by those who shout the loudest. Toro's letters A few times a week we get an update from Abin on his adventures. This was a good one. Already to long a column but it was to good to pass. Morning all it is time once again for the boring ramblings of your least favorite battlemage. The weekend started with Abin about 8 million away from 69th and I was determined to get it. Buffing up I did the normal hunting routines on north ML, mostly vapors, virindi, and chaos wisps with casseants and ferals thrown into the mix as well. Very profitable in both terms of experience and loot, nothing worth holding for trades but good to sell, also pulled about 15 hearts/jewels. My biggest problem is chaos wisps. It can toss 5 spells in the time it takes me to cast 1. I can I use the zig-zag running method to get far enough away to regroup. All in all I had fun outside hunting, that is until......................... I decided to try out Maratine(sp) Holding. Now never being in there before I could only ask others and the general response was "youre a mage, dont go there". Since I am Italian and the more you tell an Italian not to do something the more they are going to do it...famous last words. Knowing that my buffs wouldnt help me against the hollows I still buffed and baned all my armor, even put on my al 185 amuli coat. I go in and at first Im dealing with servants and masters with slaves and guards so I thinking to myself what is so tough about this? I press on and get jumped by 10 silver tuskers, which was a rush to fight, sort of being in the lair again. Good thing for me I was wearing my al 224 gaunts fully baned, they saved my butt. So I make like Im a following directions on a box, vul, drain health, drain, stam, war bolt, lather rinse repeat. Finally I clear them all, and push in a bit more, another 2 silvers and my first look at one of the hollows. The hollow took one look at me and started drooling, I think it could read my armor and the message it was getting was Rice Paper. I fight the tusker draining, and thankful at that because the damn hollow was hitting me for 20+ a shot. Im low on health and run dodging left and right, looking for a place to catch my breath. Finally the hollow isnt following, that is when I ran into the Executor who so nicely bludgeon vuls me. That was when that nasty virindi called his friends and I had monkeys jumping in from everywhere. I get into a corner, forcing myself to concentrate, and use my secret weapon, no not portal recall, one of my last gems of stillness, I pop that sucker, take a quick drain off a monkey and target the virindi, who is nice enough to die quickly for me. I finish off the monkeys and my 6th sense goes off, a sing key but no one I knew was on so I left it there to rot or be picked up by someone else. I went back to find that hollow who was after my mage butt, and killed it quickly, thanks to Fist for the advice on how to fight them. It is funny, I took lore at 65th because I honestly felt that without vassals Id never hit 75th. Not that I would use my vassals but you know what I mean, with the way I was hunting I just didnt think it would happen. Now Im not so sure about it, I think Ill be able to get Abin as high as I want.