Fist de Yuma - April 6, 2004

This and That I'm getting a strange criticism on the boards of late. This is that I focus on XP at the expense of everything else. Like many haters I see, their logic can be really twisted. Whatever I do it supports their argument. I have a powerlevel day that uses a spot well away from others and is fun to hunt. The spot I picked generates far less XP than a popular spot or someplace less fun. This means I'm just about XP. I let lower levels into the VoD group, which lowers the total XP, because I want everyone to have fun. I'm accused of only doing it because of XP. (I'll admit that the lower levels that play VoD each week are quickly becoming powerful.) The last thing I posted is the essay below about extending the time for lower than level VII spells. Now that has nothing to do with XP. I'll make the admission that I never go out hunting without VII on my players. Nevertheless I still get this, "Fist is more and more about max xp and less and less about the game and game mechanics." This is despite that my post was all about game mechanics and nothing about XP. It does not matter to a hater; everything supports their view, no matter what. Lets face it, XP is important. It is a minor reward but part of everything we do. The major reward is having fun, and that should always be the main focus, but you should not discount the minor rewards. Those that know me know I play hard when I hunt but will still stop to talk and enjoy the social aspects of the game. The game is best done with a balance and a total focus on having fun. What the haters need to understand is that the social game is important, and many other things are important, but are not something people want to read about. When writing the column I focus on adventure. Yes, there are great XP rewards at times and I take joy in gaining a touch more power. I will also talk about goals, which require XP to attain. What is in the column does not reflect everything I do in the game, just what seems interesting to write about. (For obvious reasons I do not write about my DT adventures.) How to be a guest writer If you feel you can contribute to AC with a story or advice but lack a place to publish it? Well your problems are over. I have been asked many times how I find my guest writers. Mostly they find me. Others I see making a posting on a board and ask permission to use their work. I figured it is time to make it more formal. My e-mail address is open to all. It is CSD2@adelphia.net . Sending me your essay is the best way to get it into the column. There is also a board here you can post it to. The board is slow so I will see it, unlike many other boards. Please don't send it as an attachment, as I never open them. I tend to have a theme to my columns. You may send me a great story that does not fit the current theme. There are also times when I write one of my 10,000 word columns and there is no room for anyone else. When that happens I'll put the essay in a folder for future use. Sadly, many things sent there tend to get outdated and are never used. If you send me something that is still relevant, send me a reminder so I'll remember to use it. I'm also open to rebuttal arguments. If you think I was wrong on something, I'll be happy to print it. I'm not perfect so I might be wrong. There are also degrees of disagreement and discussing them improves everyone knowledge. I think you'll find that putting your points to paper (so to speak) will sharpen your view and help both sides of a debate. VB Programmer needed As some know I was a programmer for many years. At this point I'm totally burnt out with it and cannot look code in the face with any interest. What that mainly means is my skills are years out of date and it would take a long time and a lot of work to bring them up-to-date. I'm sure my copy of VB is out of date and not currently installed on any computer I use. There is a great program that has hit the scene. It is a replacement for RainPea, a program hopelessly out of date, but still used because there was nothing else like it. Well ACPlanner more than replaces RainPea. I use it a lot to track and plan my many players. Sadly, the programmer who created ACPlanner is ending his stay in AC. He is looking for someone to take over the project. If you're a programmer looking to help AC this would be a great way to do it. The program is done and you would just be maintaining it. I understand that taking over someone else's code over is a nightmare but he is willing to help with the learning curve. If you leave a post on the Lair board, or e-mail me, I'll put you in contact with him. Groups There is a lot more grouping going on than ever before. I would say that is the biggest difference between the old days and today. Turbine is working hard to make grouping profitable. That is far better than forcing us to group. Turbine needs to be applauded for their efforts. With a lot more grouping and a new awareness of how much fun the old days were, we are hitting against a very big problem. The fifteen minutes difference between level VII spells and the lower level spells is becoming a big hindrance to groups. Our VoD group contains many people who are self-buffing with VI spells. They are either forced to buff on the run or force the rest of the group to re-buff early. With the advent of buff bots, the timing difference is only inconveniencing those trying to play the game without a crutch. Then there is the problem of melees. It takes until 110 or better before a 10/10 melee can start tossing VII's. Even then it will be a fizzle fest. I like the benefit of using VII spells but I would make due with VI's on my melees, if not for the lower time. The game leveling has slowed down a lot now that chains are gone. People are starting to play just to have fun rather than dominating others. With groups being more popular and more melees playing a self-buffing game, it is time for Turbine to extend the lower than VII spells to an hour. Must have points There was a debate on the boards about giving mages more power. I for one think we need level VIII war spells, but I'll let that one go for now. What bothered me was people saying that War cost twice as much as sword but did not do twice the damage. Where that is wrong is it does not count all the skills a melee needs. There are classes that need skills and, not having those skills, make the template far to hard to play, in my opinion. I'm taking about high level and completed templates. I'm also leaving out hybrid templates. Let's start with Mage. I strongly believe that a Mage needs spec'd War. While I would hate to have a trained Life mage, rend MCI (Magic Casting Items) make it viable. For argument sake I'll take both. Spec'd War takes 28 points. Without a doubt the highest single costly skill in the game. Trained Life adds another 12 and Item/Creature takes up another 16. You must have Mana Conversion, at a cost of 6, for a grand total of 62 points. That moves up to 70 when you add in spec'd Life. Let's take a look at Sword now. There are cheaper skills but Sword is the current king of the melee so that is what I'll use. Spec'ing Sword cost 16 points. Now to someone who never ran a melee that looks like the entire cost, 16 vs. 70. Of course they are wrong as someone who thinks a mage can get along without Life, Creature and Item. The real cost to a Sword works up this way. 16 to spec Sword. Then you have to spend 10 to 20 points for melee defense. I know that many templates can get along without spec'ing melee defense so I'll add that at the end, like I did with Life on the Mage. To get around in the world, if nothing else, a melee needs Item magic. To live through any hard battle a melee will also be required to have healing. A melee player will need Lore if they don't take other magic skills. So the real break down is 16 for Sword, 6 for Healing, 10/20 for Melee defense, 4 for Lore, 6 for Mana Conversion and 8 for Item magic. That gives us 44 points for a Sword with most having used 54. (Spec'd melee) Now let's turn our attention to Archers. This is, in my opinion, the hardest class to make. To begin with they need 16 point for Archer alone. In my opinion they are also required to have spec'd melee, as they don't have a shield to cover the hits. They also need all the skills a melee needs, Healing, Lore and Item magic. Lastly they need Fletching. So an Archer needs as many points as a Sword, plus Fletching, for a total of 60 vs. 54 for Sword and 70 for a Mage. Now that looks unfair until you consider that a Mage is totally done at that point. The only thing they need to worry about is comp cost and gathering spells. They are free to pick up side skills or create a powerful Battle Og or Grief BM. Even then they have six points for a side skill. A melee will need to find armor and items with spells, to cover up for missing Life and Creature. They are weaker because they cannot use VII's. To cover this many melee are moving to self-buffing. So the real cost for a completed Melee/Archer template need to add 20 points. You can debate it is really 16 because you can get away without Lore but with Majors/Moderates/Minors in the game I don't see how you can pass on that skill. Now it starts to break down as 74 for the Sword and 80 for the Archer! So a completed self-buffing Melee and Archer actually cost more than a Mage! Now it is easy to debate the benefit of a self-buffing Melee/Archer but I strongly feel that is the direction the game is going. With the high cost of making a low Self/Focus Melee/Archer capable of hitting VII's, most of us are not done with our templates until 110 or more. A 10/10 starting Focus/Self makes it even harder. I'll not compare the strength of a Melee/Archer vs. a Mage but I will say that most think a Mage is stronger overall. When you figure in the true cost of a total self-buffing player, a Mage is really a bargain. One of my guest writers is taking a different direction. Given that many of the developers are item only players I could be wrong about the future direction of the game. In any case here is Han's idea on templates. Guest Writer: Han Yu-Ning Templates: This week I've been thinking a lot about templates and the various ways of playing them. Lately I've been playing Felicity Dawnsong, my axer. She's a ton of fun to play. Right now I believe she's level 63, and I usually keep her up in the BDC or around the surrounding area. The salvage and xp is great, and a lot of the times I can find people in the catacombs to fellow with. Her starting stats are 100/50/100/60/10/10. Spec Lore, Axe, Melee, Train Healing, Lockpick, Item, Missile Def. The intent with her was to make a totally self sufficient melee char that required little to no buffing to get ready to hunt. I only use axes that she can activate, even though they may not have the highest base damage. The idea is that even if buffs drop while surrounded with mobs, I just keep on swinging. I pretty much have her outfitted with all VI's, and a few minors (just starting to kill stuff that drops minors). Most of what she carries with her is stuff she's found herself or gotten on her own, and is level -appropriate. I have a quite a collection of dual VI Gharu jewelry and underclothes to give her usually 6 of the 8 life protects at a time. All main stats for a melee I have VI's for, as well as item V wand, focus/self VI ring (just found that nice little ring on VoD night) that I can use when I'm casting spells or lockpicking. Obviously on dual VI items you need a higher lore req, and for a while I needed to get a VII lore buff then I could equip all my stuff, but I've been working on lore and focus to the point where I can equip all my own stuff now Around level 40 ish I trained mana conversion, which I dropped when I hit 50 to spec item enchantment (more on this later). I really miss having mana conv trained, as the burn rate of my items is significantly increases, but still not too bad. But, as long as I keep a few Greater mana stones on me, I never seem to have a problem with keeping up with the burn rate of all my items (everything I equip burns mana.) (Editor: I don't think MC helps with burn rate, only with casting items.) At level 50 I (stupidly) speced item enchantment. It sounded like a good idea at the time...really...it did.... /e looks around to make sure no-one was listening.... The intent was to boost my ability to cast item spells to help me long enough till I could spec magic def. Starting focus/self 10/10 will mean my arcane lore, and magic def skills will need to be speced in order to get them high enough to be usable in a decent amount of levels (I don't plan my characters to be playable at level 160, I want them playable at all times). So I speced item thinking no problem, I have plenty of time (week wise) to get to 60 where I can drop it to trained then get the gem to spec magic def. Well, I made 60 in one week... So here I am sitting with all the points I need to spec Magic Def, but I have to wait 3 more weeks to get all the gems necessary to unspec item and spec magic def. Oh well... At any rate, she's a blast to play. The only two buffs I cast on my hammer are swift killer and Defender VI, and I'm ready to roll. VII's are going to be a long way off, especially after I drop item back to trained, so I've mentally prepared myself that I'll be stuck with VI's for a LONG time. Consumables as loot or vendor-purchases: In a recent letter to the players, Turbine stated that they were looking at the possibility of removing some of the "consumables" from the loot drops. I figure Turbine may read Fist's articles, so here is my official plea to not do that. As an item-only melee I pride myself on no-buffing, as well as the ability to never have to go back as long as I take enough of the consumables with me. Finding health, mana and stamina potions in the field help a ton to not have to use up my precious Trade Health Elixers and Stamina Rations. The mana potions (which I don't normally take with me anyways) are like extra candy cause I can top my mana off after buffing my hammer (maybe throw a couple banes on my gauntlets). If anything, I would like to see better items of this nature as loot drops. Maybe have 60+ mobs drop Treated or Blue healing kits, or some type of stamina ration that is loot-only that restores 200 stamina. Might help create an economy for these consumables...who know?!? Mana stones versus Mana charges: I've done the research on this extensively as I burn through about 9000 mana in my average 2-hour run. By far the cheapest method of recharging your items is to find them in the field, then find some unusable orb (they carry the most mana) usually brass or ivory with some funky activation req that I'll never be able to use, and destroy the item. I find regular mana stones all the time, which takes 50% of the mana, and sometimes even find greaters (75%) , which I hoard. Using a greater mana stone on a 4000 mana orb I get 3000 mana. Do this three times and I've charged all my items for the run. If I sold the one mana stone that I used and the three orbs destroyed I would net on average (Eastham selling at 90%) about 15000 pyreals. This won't even buy me one superb mana charge (2000 mana) from the same mage. If I relied on buying all my mana charges from a mage, I'd be spending about 90,000 pyreals on the same amount of mana. Even buying the greater mana stones from the mage at 7500 each, you still come out on top. I keep 6 charged greater mana stones on Felicity at all time. Those of you reading this might want to rethink your strategy of recharging items if you have as bad a mana habit as I do. I guarantee you'll save a ton of cash each run, as well as recharging in the field is very easy, as I usually take off all my stuff when I hit the town, and having to put it all back on to recharge is not fun. Well, those are my rantings for the week, hope you all have fun in this wonderful world of ours. Han Yu-Ning Gimp Mana-Spec Mage & Healer Gaerlan It has been some time since we did the Gaerlan quest. For a while we were doing it often. A lot of AC is that way. We do something a lot and then drop it completely. There was a time when the Queen Quest was run 24/7. Today it is not hard to find an open time to run it. Many other quests have had the same thing happen. Gaerlan is slightly different in that it is still run a lot, even after all these years. It is very likely that groups will cross each other when doing this quest. Fortunately Turbine has fix the old problems and crossing groups are not the problem they were. One thing I did not know is that the quest has changed a lot. I liked all the changes but it was a bit of a shock to our system in some places. Chupeabra had asked me if we could do this quest several times. I had a tight schedule that week so I kept putting him off. I finally figured I would have time after the meeting on Sunday. Because of the nature of the quest, I was sure I would have to bring Deadeye Fist. I left it open because we might have gotten a good archer and made Deadeye moot. Dread Lord has a good archer and I think Soul Riper has worked up one. If either of them could have gone on the quest I would have brought Jr or Fist's Armorer. After the meeting we had five people set to go. Nene also wanted to go, but she missed when we left. We had two mages, two melees and an archer. I thought I took a screen shot of the names but I must have missed the button. So I lost two of the names. Abin Al-Sahad was one of the mages, Chupeabra was one of the melees and Deadeye Fist, the archer. We started with a portal to the Subway and a run to Qbar. We took the Landbridge portal out of Qbar and ran to the start. When we did this quest in the past we would have to fight at this site until we killed the right monster. There were times when we spent hours without results. If the quest was broken we would not know until hours has past. Now the portal is open all the time. There is a set one-hour timer on the Golem but we have never had to wait for very long. There had been a group before us as the Golem was missing. We lucked out and it spawned a few minutes after we got there. A lot of our members have never done this quest. It had been a long time since I had done it. While it was mostly the same, an old memory and small changes created some confusion. We decided to fight our way through the extreme dungeon. This worked well until one of the fighters got too far ahead and died. We had already agreed that the first person to die would run and get an Eastham tie for the group. It seems that dieing in that part of the quest end it for you. He could not use any of the portals in Eastham. At least he had the tie, which we needed later. So we were down to one melee, something I was not happy about. I knew we would need a shield wall if we were to prevent deaths and would have rather not have used an unshielded Archer for that. A short time later we got to the Golem, solved the puzzles, and ported into the Rolling Rocks Bar and Grill. With broadband and a faster computer, the rocks were not as much that of a worry. I had little trouble making it to the shooting spot. I waited until the rest of the group was set. Our only victim at this point was Chupeabra. He got a portal from the first victim and was getting back quickly. I found that, while it takes a little time, a high-level Archer can take down the door with no trouble at all. A slashing Rend bow hits hit hard, and you can use the fastest speed. (Average 150 a hit with 350 crits.) The door came down just as a Rock passed and I figured to follow the Rock through the door. The second I hit the run key I realized I was running to fast. I hit the back arrow the second I saw what was happening, but I was too late; I had run into the rock. I wanted to bang my head on the floor for being so stupid, but I did not have the time to waste. I got a portal to Eastham and quickly got back. I found that the body was not too hard to recover. I was greatly afraid I had run halfway down the passage. Instead it was in a spot I could recover while safe from the Rocks. I had to knock down the door again, but I got Chupeabra and me to the next puzzle. The only really problem was I had forgotten to re-buff. It was not one of my better days, IQ wise. We found that I was close enough to Abin that he could buff me as I knocked down the door. I warned everyone ahead of time not to talk in the Temple. It is so easy to let your mind slip and type something. I said it over and over again as we stumbled our way past the floor puzzle. We got lazy and did not think we needed to memorize the floor plan for the puzzle. Even a poor memory is better off coping down the pattern than doing it over and over again. Somehow we kept making a misstep and had to start over. We took a long time getting through that part and it cost us later. It was stupid, as a simple glance at the cheater in the hall would have shown us the route. Being lazy can cost you a lot of time. No one slipped and typed in the temple so that was fast and easy. We got the gem, recalled to the mansion to restock and buff, and used the gem to get inside the fortress. My plan for Gaerlan was to have Chupeabra and I block the passage while Abin and the other mage blasted. I figured I would be hitting hard on him, and it would take us a few minutes at most. That was how it was done in the old days. (It never crossed my mind to not kill Gaerlan, what fun is that?) The only real problem I had in the battle was the other stuff. I've worked hard on melee defense and it caps out at almost 440 now. With the bonus on the bow, Gaerlan was wasting his time swinging at me. However, the spells from the Golems and such were a problem. For some reason I was not getting any heals. I found out the reason later. As the battle went on I noted that the red health line on Gaerlan was not moving. I checked his health and was shocked. He had 40,000 hit points now! While I was hitting well, this was going to take a lot of time. After a few hits from spells I tried to heal. That was a mistake. I should have yelled "heal" and let Abin or the other Mage take care of it. By healing I lowered my Melee Defense enough that Gaerlan could hit me. Let me tell you, when that sucker hits, he hurts. Without a shield it was snick, snick, snick; Lifestone. A short time later I saw Chupeabra's death message, quickly followed by Abin's. This time, I remembered to re-buff. I recalled to Eastham and ran to the portal. We had a short battle to recover the bodies. We then retreated to make a new plan. I figured that the main problem was not, Gaerlan but the other trash. So I figured we could pull him to the upper hallway and fight him there. I knew that Abin was still buffing, but when I saw that Gaerlan was de-buffed I pulled him to the hallway. (Plug in shows de-buffs.) Again my judgment was way off. It was a bad day for me in the thinking department. I really needed to make sure everyone was ready. As I drew him to the upper passage I found Abin there. Gaerlan made short work of him. We got Gaerlan back up the passage where I wanted him, and the other mage gave us support. Chupeabra and I were making progress, but it was very slow. Another group showed up. All the wasted time was costing us. I did not know at the time that Gaerlan will respawn in a few minutes and thought our being slow had hurt their quest. I invited them to join in. They had a maxed out Archer who quickly got the kill over me. He looted, and their group sprinted off without a word of thanks. I'm on the verge of stop being polite because it is almost never reciprocated, or even acknowledged. We were debating what to do next when the portal closed and Gaerlan re-spawned. Abin had not got there yet. Again, not knowing the changes to the quest, we figured we had to kill it again. We really only needed to recall to Eastham and enter the portal for the reward. I drew Gaerlan, and the battle was on. We still had to contend with the de-buffs from the trash, but, without the War spells, I was not in great danger. I used up a lot of gems as they seemed to love lowering my melee defense, something I could not allow. I would say it only took us about 4 minutes to bring him down. I'm not totally sure but he seemed weaker than the first attempt, likely just we knew what to expect. For some strange reason he did not leave a body, so I'll never know if there is something special there now or not. The three of us rushed the portal, totally forgetting that Abin had a body sitting there. It was a real mental breakdown day. I passed Abin in the Library as he went to get his body. We all got together for the reward and picture taking at the end. A Week Later We did Gaerlan a week later. We will keep doing it until we have all the rewards. Several of the items I still use, years after I got them. The mana conversion ring and any Olthoi weapons are high on my list. We had a lot of deaths from rocks. Two were unrecoverable, as they were sitting on the spot where the rock spawns. Don't ask me how he did that, I did not ask. Our only real problem was how late our quest went last week. That forced the three of us to wait at the reward spot for over an hour. Next week I hope to take Fist de Yuma Jr instead of Deadeye. Dread Lord said he would take over the job of removing the door. Guest Writer: R. Scott White Part I Well I did the gman quest yesterday with Fist, Druxus, and Chup. This is the first time I've done the quest where we've gone in for the kill. Usually we just do the run through and get the rewards. But hey, we were a small group and two of us had no experience fighting Gaerlan, so what the hell. We started with two other members, Kulk and someone who I can't remember but Kulk's connection wouldn't let him in and the other guy got lost somewhere. So the four of us go in and hilarity ensues. First Chup dies at the rolling balls of death. No biggie easy for him to recover, Fist blasts away at the door and kills it, but he runs too soon and decides to commit suicide by running into the back of the balls. Now I want to tell you this and I didn't say it at the time but I fell out of my seat laughing my ass off. Here I am usually the impatient one and Fist kills himself. Druxus and I ran into the room and waited. Fist came back but he forgot to buff, so I'm on one side of the door buffing him from distance, while he is blasting away at the door. He finally kills it, again, and we all get through. Next thing it took us oh about an hour to defeat was the tiled floor room. This was the first time I ever attempted to jump in that room and I see Turbine did something right. They made it so you can't jump high the distance you could normally clear, even with a standing jump. Ok, we beat that after what seemed like forever, really about 10-15 minutes of more laughter. We run through and meet up with Gaerlan. Now this is the first time I've seen him and the plan was Drux and I would vul/imperil him and heal the two melee's....oops. Fist got one shotted and Chup soon followed. Part of the fault was mine, as anyone who reads these notes or read about me in Fist's column knows, I'm a solo artist. I've never set up my spell bars anything but magic related debuffs. I've never worried about weapon, strength, melee, missile ect. So as I'm throwing spells I'm also trying to frantically pull the other ones onto my spell bar, not the best thing to do in a middle of a fight. Then the mighty melees ran right up the ramp at me.......can we say Abin kissed the lifestone....I knew you could. Yup, first hit was for 230 the next got me with no effort. So I'm trying to get back. I get back, barely buffed and yup I die again to the G-man. So I buff a bit, hearing messages that the debuffs are going but they are hurting it. I'm frantic, running from Rith to Eastham to get back and I get there to my corpse. Lucky for me I was able to loot without having to draw another attack on me. We got the rewards and had fun. Next time I want to be standing behind a wall of shields and archers. I'm a mage dammit, I'm not supposed to be hit! Guest Writer: R. Scott White Part II Well we did the G-man again yesterday. I have to say that it was fun because we ran straight through and didn't stop to kill unless we had to. That made it go faster, especially since we had a group of people that was 50/50 for doing the quest/not doing the quest before. I had bought a mace from a vendor for Bash'em. It does 2 points more dmg than the best mace Gonder has but the low-end dmg was 4 points lower so it wasn't for me. But it was better than the one I had lent him previously. I bring that up because in the end it was the macer Bash'em who got the kill on Garlean. How that happened I'll never know. We did have fun at the riddle room, where the newer people didn't know the answers and were guessing, sometimes wrongly. Also, I'm not sure how many deaths we had at the rolling balls of doom but there were several. Fist had to kill the door three times, including twice from the inside of the room. I did use the lessons I learned last week and put my magic to better use this week. The only problem was that I was casting spells too early before Fist drew him out. I had G-man debuffed for magic/focus/self/strength/sword and vul'd for bludgeon, slashing, melee d, missile d, armor, and festering. I rarely had to throw heals. I think it was because we had another mage with us more than Gaerlan not hitting. The most important thing to me was that I didn't die (grin). The only debuff I couldn't hit was on G-man's sword. It resisted my every attempt. Finally the message flew across my screen that he was dead and the 80th level macer killed him. We did have fun at Bash'em expense though later on. On the /a channel he put out that it was his first global message so I had to chime in and tell him that G-man doesn't put one out anymore. Fist, Chup and myself had a problem though. We had done the quest last week and the final bit of time hadn't expired. So we all stayed in the stupid room looking at the pillar, clicking it over and over waiting for our timers to expire. Chup wasn't at his keyboard much, I think he was reading a short story, war & peace, while waiting. So Fist and I were left talking and joking back and forth about the quest, the game, politics. It was fun because even though I've been Fist's vassal for 3+ yrs now I don't spend that much in game time with him. But there was a problem, the time where we thought we should be able to get our reward came and went and we still couldn't get our rewards. We came to the conclusion that it was because of daylight savings time. I put a urgent request in and talked to an envoy about it. The envoy was very nice but really didn't know if the time change would also affect the timer for the quests. He said he would check with a Dev today to find out. I'm curious as to the answer because it is either one of two things. Either we did the quest later than we thought by about 1 hour or daylight savings time does not affect the quest timers. For the next week Abin is going to be strictly in armor buffing mode for Gonder. I want to send him on the G-man quest as well and he will make a good shield. What is good is that with both Abin and Gonder able to go on this quest, I'll be able to build up a supply of the swords quickly. I also need to get multiple bags of red garnet for Gonder and Toromada for fire imbued weapons. I'm picky though it has to be 7ws or higher because I want the highest possible chance of success. Turbine makes it hard enough with its insane percentages of success. If I can get the bow imbued for Toro as well as the two bags of mahog applied then I'll hunt a lot with him as well. Probably monkey hunting on AL, I'm not sure yet. Guest Writer: Aelryinth of Leafcull I've been doing some more VoD hunting with an ex-direct and his tight crew of shooters and looters (all real life friends, one is his wife). Photius is the one who, upon hearing that Seraphs are most vuln to Acid, made all the ones in the fellow buff acid weapons (rassum frassum...). He wanted to do the same for piercing on hearing about CS pierce for seraphs, but I begged him off. 5 Weapons was enough. Anyhooz, Photius is the devoted debuffer in that group...the melees and archer if present kill everything, and there's a lower level mage, Chiun, who doesn't get to play much and wrangles his HH with the best of em. Photius pays attention to the xp from stuff, and what to use and how to kill it fast. While he would like endless spawns of oblits and dread ursuins, lots of virindi work too. He'll kill dillos and grommies as needed, and druges, but like most sane people passes up the banders, tummies, and biles. Olthoi are killed if in the way, but once he found out about frost and crit strike, lugians are massacre central. Couple points here with lugians...lugians are fickle. They go towards who violates their dmg/aggro rules..a mage debuffing them will almost always get some short term attention...but it is possible for a single melee to keep three lugians occupied by hitting each of them once and then hacking away. Until they are debuffed, they will all focus on you. The most dangerous ones for him are the ones wielding hollow weapons...he can endure the ones charging unarmed quite some time, but the hollow ones can pop him for 50-100 a hit. You really have to be on the ones with weapons first to keep the mage free to debuff and not heal like mad. This strategy works fine for olthoi too. Getting one olthoi to come out of spawn is almost impossible...maybe it's a hive mind. Stir one, you stir them all, and you have four olthoi to deal with. With three melees, I'd slap one olthoi to get its attention, and start work on another, while the other the Mrs and Pummel both picked on their own. Photius would leisurely get to debuff each in turn, only have to put up with them attacking for a few seconds as the melees kept their attention. The archer in the group, if present, would simply start shooting whatever one was debuffed...with no shield and his melee d not in the stratosphere yet, it was much safer for him. Fully debuffed, an archer and anyone beating on them, olthoi don't last long. If Photius got out his Gaerlan wand...well, 1000 pt shots from that toy don't make an olthoi's day. Recently we had a Spawning Epiphany...5 spawns of virindi close together (!!) in a nice secluded vale, with a spawn of druges and dillos there to satisfy any downtime (which generally wasn't much). Five of us there, I was sure we'd be stoking that divine 40 mil an hour engine I'd heard about. Nope. Only did about 30 at our best point. Which is by FAR the best xp/hour I've ever made, hehe, but makes me wonder how they do it in the VoD dungeon. Heh! The only reason I could really think of for this is we weren't Uber. The Mrs was dagger...Pummel was a lower level UA. While the hitting and dodging wasn't an issue, me and the archer got 90% + of kills. We had enough spawns to keep us busy, and would be running from one fight to the next with only the briefest of stops to loot and salvage. If the archer wasn't present, then out of 100 creatures, I got 90% of all kills as a sword guy...the ones I didn't get were the ones I wasn't attacking. The Mrs has now gone bow, and now takes almost all the kills from Pummel when I'm not there...but also gets beat on more with no shield, and has to be meticulous on her buffing. Pummel is working on getting his UA skill up to increase his damage, and increasing his weapons dmg ratings with iron. His armor is getting tinked up more so he doesn't have to heal as much, too. And FYI, Photius is a manacon-spec only mage with Trained Melee Def, who can tank better then almost any mage I know. Between the armor tinking and dmg reduction of Melee def, he is really looking forwards to melee mods on orbs and casting defender. I expect that the current slew of massively specced mages is going to see a whole new crew of mages with melee defense as they get towards higher skill levels, simply because they can tank so much better. And I did try out the new Falchion from the Blackmire quest out in the VOD. Yes, it owned on the druges with the double max power pierce attack and when it crit...well, I never saw a crit, the druges died too fast. I was not overly impressed with it on dillos...and it seemed to work at best as well as my AR sword on Bander Hieros. Slashing mode on biles meant dropping my shield...and I wasn't impressed much with the damage I saw. It's on my character if I dare to try a VOD dungeon fellow. I've been told that it is just murder on mass amount of seraphs...double 2k crits take a seraph drudge down really quick. Lastly, another VOD tactic for you all...Photius has begun to Bait shields for us. Tumeroks, undead, and skellies in the VOD can be annoying as hell with shields. It forces you to double up on an enemy and 'wolfpack' them front and back so someone is always attacking their shieldless side. Well, when Phots tosses that Fire BaIT 7 on the shield of the Undead/Tumerok/Skel, I'd rather be in the front then in the back. I haven't actually compared crits, due to, um, speed of death, but damage thru the baited shield is a minimum of twice what it is pounding on a Tumeroks backside, once it's debuffed. I really had to knuckle down on him to not Tattercoat the shield. Actually, you'd want to impen the shield...if you got a tumerok's shield to 400 al with a -1.00 Fire modifier...wow, a -400 AL to fire shield. Considering how much damage goes down with a 400 AL shield, and that number REVERSES...O would that not be sweet. Go test it out for yourself. Take a fire render sword into the weeping weapon dungeon, where thieves and fighters run around with shields of the simulcra. Fire Bait 7 the shields. Whapdead. whapdead. whapdead. From about 30 a hit you are now one shotting them...with every swing. It's about 6-7x normal damage. So, if you are out in the VOD and a devoted debuffer, don't rule out using a Bait spell on the shields of the enemy. It may be a standard PK tactic, but I didn't really understand the power of the effect until I saw my first 1600 pt swing on a Shield bearing Tummie facing my way. And I can truly see why PK's use hollow shields. heh. Photius is now raising his item magic so they don't resist the shield debuff so much:) Allegiance I get a lot of requests for information about our allegiance. Our web site is Casadeyuma.com.