Fist de Yuma - April 8, 2003

This and that Several people have asked me about sending packages and letters to Jeff and those he is serving with. My first reaction was to give out his e-mail and address. Then I thought better and asked his wife. Markey asked Jeff and we discovered something that makes a lot of sense. With most shipment space needed for war materials and humanitarian aid for the Iraqis there is not a lot of room for mail. There is a long back up of mail from loved ones that is having a hard time getting through. (Protests at shipping docks do not help.) When things get better and more shipping can be directed to mail I'll ask Jeff if we can send him stuff for the troops. I'm sure the readers here can keep his squadron filled with M&M and Wipes for years to come. (grin) Instead lets pray for a fast end to the war and a quick return to normalcy. Then pray for a safe return of our loved ones. A short word for those against the war. The best way to end the war is to show total support for the troops. If you cannot do than refrain from doing anything that might hurt those fighting it. Protesting only prolongs the war and adds to deaths. You cannot stop what is happening by protesting but you sure can extend it. Aid and confront to the enemy will not help us end the war. Unless your goal is to see us lose people protesting an on going conflict will only cause more death and misery. Please save your protests until after the war is over and at the ballot box. Hamud's Pyreal Katar Sho Buzz (Winter Raven mage) was telling me that Hamud's Katar had been upgraded. After looking at it I decided it was something I needed. I like to have a quick and dirty self-buffing weapon in my pack. I had been using the Singularity Katar for this. The upgraded Hamud's Katar is better and well worth going on the quest for. Sho Buzz had the tooth but, if the quest is unchanged, you only need one per group. Sho Buzz and I headed out to Qbar and then ran to the Mountain Fortress. The last time I did this quest was around three years ago. It was not really hard if you had a good group. They have upgraded the quest with harder monsters but Jr sweeps through them with ease. The big surprise for was Shadows. It was not long ago when Shadows were a threat to any melee. A Pan or Umbris was fought by healing in front of it and only fighting after it ran out of mana. An LT could be battled but it was not fast or safe. Today Fist de Yuma Jr was killing packs of them without trouble. I resisted most of their spells and, with new weapons, did fast deadly damage. I battled two Pan's in the final room and they were not much harder than LT's. Just months ago this would have been a battle I would have to fight with care. I remember when the Shadows first came into the game. Deadly killers, fighters never resisted them and mages had a hard time landing on them. We would gang them and still have deaths. How things have changed. From the Mountain Fortress we needed to go to the Foundry. I told Sho Buzz a short cut I knew. Housing portals sure make it easy to get around these days. The Foundry has also been upgraded. Much higher level Mosswarts and Snakes. Still, with the changes in Magic defense and good melee defense, it was a walk in the park. Then back to the Mountain Fortress for the Katar. I gave my Sing Katar to a Crier and will be using this one now. I will still have to do this quest with Fist. As I remember this quest from before we were always lost in the maze. Sho Buzz had the maze down pat so it will take a little more work when Fist does it solo. Kwip I pointed out there was voting for your favorite columnist the other day. While I was disappointed Ben did not get more votes the only real competition was from the fans of Kwip and his NeenerNeener column. I won but it was not a sure thing. To understand why he is so popular you need to read his latest. http://www.neenerneener.net/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=58&z=8 FA in Dires After getting my AB tie I decided to hunt the Dires a little bit with Fist's Armorer. While interesting I was eating far to many de-buffs to make it fun. Key for me these days is getting Magic defense to the point where I stop eating de-buffs. I learned to stay well away from Pyreal Golems. Not so much that they are hard to defeated but because of the de-buffs. Drudges are easy meat. Shadows and Virindi are great to hunt and both are dropping Sings. Without lock pick I might have to just dump the sings but I have pack space for now. I have hopes that Turbine makes un-carved sing keys givable someday. If not I'll just keep them in a pack until I make 105. In any case I think the Dires will be a better place for Mage than FA for now. Tusker Hunt I got a call from Fei Qwen the other day. He was in the 80+ Tusker dungeon and alone. I figured it would be worth a run to go give him a hand. At this point I was not sure why but it and many of the Tusker dungeons were empty of hunters. I learned why a bit later but for now it was a mystery. With the recall spell getting to the island is very simple. Only Deadeye needs to do this quest now. He will be 80 in a month or so and I'll get it. If nothing else it will be a good for Tusks. I found Fei Qwen at the start. He did not want to advance too far in because of the traps. Such a pain those traps. Even without the burgeoning vulnerability the tuskers hit hard. With the de-buffs they are deadly. Of course someone with good melee defense is a lot better off than a mage. Both of us were surprised to see me landing well. Before the patch it was around a 1 in 3 thing. Now a resist was rare. Of course there was an over 20k drop in xp to balance that out. With me de-buffing and Fei swinging we soon ran out of Tuskers to fight. Fei had hit a trap so he said what the hell and started drawing the Tuskers up to me from a lower levels. We fought there for about and hour. The xp for these is lower but not so low that they were not worth hunting, if you don't exceed their level. FA Tusks My quest tracker came up with a message that I needed to go get Tusks when I loaded up Fist's Armorer. With this program I can stop worrying about syncing my quests. I was working to have all the timed quests on the same day. That let me get them all out of the way at once and only worry about one date. With this plug in I can do the quests as they were due. It keeps me from having to spend a boring day doing he same quest over and over again. Doing all the Tusks would let me get an idea on what dungeons were being hunted these days. I found that some were empty and others are packed. First dungeon was the Silver. There are other tusks lower than this but really not worth me doing. Silver was empty at top but camped at the bottom. The people seemed to be in their 60's. Before this was camped by 70 to 126 level players. Second was the Armored. This one seemed about what it was before the patch. I had a few small battles getting to the tusk but for the most part it was camped. This had always been easy so I was not surprised. I did not check the level of the players hunting there. The next was the 70+ as the 60+ is harder to get to. Here was my first surprise. It had no one at all in it. Completely empty of hunters! Before the patch there was a line and it took hours to get into the fellow. Let me tell you, a lone 83lv mage had his hands full getting to the bottom of this one. Only Turbine lowering the magic resistance of plated tuskers made it even possible for me to do. As it was resists were rare with my 383 skills. I was using my crit stick, which drops five points off my skills but gives me a shot at a one-blast kill. One-blast kills were very rare and some took three. A bigger advantage to my crit stick was the 22% bonus to mana conversion. I'm thinking of making a wand without infusing so I can max the MC bonus instead. It was here I found out why no one was hunting some dungeons. I was ID'ing something and clicked on a Tusker. The level was 105. This meant that anyone above this level would get greatly reduced xp. Without the 110+ archers/melees keeping them clear the hard-hitting tuskers dungeons are a touch intense. Many of today's players want it easy. I think I'll form up groups of under 100lv players go to hunt this from time to time. Properly set up it would be great leveling. Being empty there would be little worry about competition. I was able to clear and advance right up to the Oval. In the Oval the spawns were about as fast as my kill rate. I knew I was in trouble when I had not finished off all the tuskers and heard them start to spawn. I decided the best plan was to make a path and run to the end. It was not far from the end and only one trap to worry about. I killed the ones in front until I had a path and ran. I had a dispel gem on my hot key so it was a quick click to clear the vuln. I headed to the ramp as I did not want to get swarmed. I was trapped for a time when lag pulled me into the center of a pack but I killed a route out. After a little running around I got into the ramp. It was still a continuous battle that I could not win. The spawn rate was above my kill rate. By carefully keep my health up I was able to start checking bodies until I found a tusk. I then headed to the exit. During all this I was building up a lot of points. At 45k a kill, added to what I made with the other dungeons, I was building up a little pad of xp. It was not enough to use as I need over ten million for my magic skills. This proved fortunate. I had a little over four million points saved up when I hit the 60+. Now this was packed. Every corner had someone standing with a pile of tuskers around them. I was just running through, eating the traps, and just going for the Tusk. At the drop there was a few Tuskers that I should have cleared. I didn't and ended up missing the jump while trying to get around them. Not a biggy, kill a few to clear a path and jump out. Well that works fine for all but FA. FA did not have close to the jump skills to get out of there. I ended up putting all the free points into jump and I still could not get out. I guess a 10/10 strength/coordination start is not the best if you need to jump somewhere. (grin) I had to kill some Tuskers for points before I could jump out. Even then it took several tries to make it. It was not a total waste as I may need the jump skills in the future but not what I had planned. Mage in VoD For two nights I hunted VoD with Mage. At first it was just testing solo. Solo is possible but not really worth the time and effort. It is far better in groups. Combined arms rock. Rizean said there was a fellow going and invited me to join them. I took a little time to transfer the good armor off Fist's Armorer to Fist de Mage and ported to my buff spot. After buffing up with my 84 spells 6 minute plus VoD setup I was ready to go. Man I hate doing that but not doing it is even worse. I was in no hurry and killed the Virindi as I ran to VoD. Since Turbine has made Virindi a mostly mage monster I might as well take advantage of them. When I got to VoD I asked for their coordinates. It was frustrating trying to find the group. In hindsight I think I was in the first valley and they were in the second. In any case I kept running into impassable hills a few clicks from their location. I had to run from the big boy for a while. I got lucky when he was trapped by some trees. I had to rebuff in a bit and had done very little hunting. Mostly I had run around looking for the group. Given that VoD is not all that big this should not have happened. I think we were passing each other somehow. I saw what looked like a group hunting and asked to join them. To my surprise the group was only two guys, one a 69lv melee. The other was a 116 mage named Og Magik. Two mages and one melee is not the best grouping. We started out hunting Olthoi Primordial. They were not much trouble unless we did not draw. Being smart players we retreated enough to get one to stick and have the rest leave. While it was ok xp, loot never being much to brag about there, it was not the 10 to 20 million you could get at VoD before the patch. This being my first trip to VoD since the patch I was beginning to wonder if high levels were being helped much. Og Magik said the Virindi were worth a million or more. We found a spawn of 3 Virindi but I had no idea what to expect when fighting them. I think they were called Profatrix but there are others with different names we fought as well. This is one monster that I would rather not fight one on one. Nasty level VII spells and de-buffs. We spent the time separating them to one on three battles but there were times we had to fight three at once. The good thing about the Virindi is they don't seem to have the massive hit points most stuff has at VoD. So if you have the right power you can kill them fast and minimize the danger. After the first one fell I understood Og Magik reason for fighting them. We received 700k plus each! After that we actively searched them out. I had several close calls when fighting them. Getting a 100 point heal in just before a blast that puts you to 20 could just as well have been a death. It was just a matter of timing as to whither I lived or died. I had more times like that I care to think about. Between spawns of Virindi we killed Drudges and Olthoi. They are harder to kill but a lot less danger than Virindi. For the most part we stayed in the center valley. The fighter had to leave and my buffs were running out. I thanked them for the fellow and headed back to the mansion. The next day I got a tell from Og Magik. He wanted to go hunt VoD again. I said if he could round up some melee to go I would be willing. I find a melee/archer is key when fighting in hard places. Even the 70lv fighter was a key part of our success the day before. Og Magik rounded up a 96lv archer named Uberman. He had never been to VoD and was a touch apprehensive. After a few hours of hunting with us I think he is sold on VoD. We had a great time fighting. We of course killed all the Virindi we could find. Instead of Olthoi filling the valley today it was mostly Drudges. There were also several spawns of Knathtead that are a pain and a half. We took out several of the Knathtead, mostly so we would not run into one by accident. Not seeing them and getting close would be deadly. By themselves they can hurt but together they are deadly. We saw a lot of bodies around them. After a few hours of hunting they had to leave. I still had a few minutes on my buffs so I decided to hunt it out. I had one of those times when waiting for action before taking action would have been a lot better. I hit on a spawn of Drudges. I landed a yield on one and had four or five charge. I retreated and had four on me. My first target retreated as I tossed a yield on it. I switched and hit the next one with Yield. As I wound up the spell it started to retreat. I switched again and hit one with a spell. Again it had started to retreat as my spell was winding up. If I had waited a short while before tossing spells I would have worked it to one on one. The result was three of them that were pissed and sticking with me. One on one they are not that hard. Two on one is very hard and three on one is...well you get the idea. I was healing more than attacking but finally got one to die. This left me with two Drudges and a hat full of de-buffs. There were several times when I was in a heal mode. This is when all I do is heal, over an over again. Sort of like how we fought Shadow before they were nerfed, only with fives times the damage. Finally they would either run out of mana or just decide to go to melee mode. I had one at half health when they both switched back to war attacks at the same time. I have over 300 hit points and I'm quick to start healing when needed. I was at full health when they started their attack. Two lightning bolts, a heal, two lightning bolts, a heal, two lightning bolts, a heal, dead. What really sucked was there was not enough time on my banes to do a partial buff. I did not have any trouble recovering my body but decided to go hunt the plains rather than try and solo VoD any more. Virindi Warning I was reading on the boards about this. If true, and I have no reason to doubt it, Turbine needs to look into it. A guy was hunting solo in VoD. He is a hybrid archer. He had finished de-buffing a Virindi and pulling his bow when he died. He was at full health, level VII protects/banes and no de-buffs. In other words there was no reason for a one shot kill on him. He scrolled back to see what it was that killed him. I'm sure he expected a vuln followed by several blasts from unseen enemies. To his shock he saw he was killed by a life bolt! Given that a life bolt spell will damage based on the casters health, and Virindi have a lot of health, no one, I mean no one would survive such an attack. It is not in Turbines interest to have one shot kill monsters in the game. I hope they take a look at that and remove it as a weapon. Return to Tuskerville Late Sunday night I decided to log Fist's Armorer and do some hunting. I had parked him in the Plated Dungeon that morning. Plated is not as good was it was. The Tuskers are worth 15k less. This is balanced with a lower magic defense and augmented with higher missile defense. I started alone. The start has enough Tuskers that a single player can hunt there and never run out of targets. There might be a few breathers between spawns but even that is rare. Winter Raven said she was headed my way. She just made 70 so this would be her first trip there. Slowly people started coming in and I added them to my fellow. We had been doing around 5 to 6 million that morning. That fellow had several players above the 105 Tusker level and it hurt us. This time the highest player was in the mid 90's and we were doing much better. My plug in had us doing from 7 to 8 million and hour. After Winter Raven got there my xp really picked up but I could not say how well the rest were doing. Someone said we were doing 9 to 10 million and hour. I was doing around 12 with the passup from Raven. I had to spend some time fixing up my other bar so I could buff Raven. She self buffs with VI's but with traps that is useless. After breaking Raven shoes the other day I decided I needed to make a bigger push at Armor Tinkering. Getting that seventh tinker on will require at least 30 more points. It is getting expensive. I also need to keep adding to magic skills so I can move to the plain and other high-level hunting grounds. Hunting FA also pushes the other mules with the main focus on Fist's mule Two. Cliff's Carrier Cook is about done with 500 magic Item, 413 cooking and Alchemy. He is more there to feed FA's xp to Fist's mule Two who is going to be the Weapon Tinker. I'm selling back Weapon, Missile and changing Lore to trained on Fist de Yuma. This will give me 12 points to spec Magic defense with. I'm still not totally sold on selling Missile over Lock pick but I have a few weeks to decide. I'm not saying I hunted there a long time but everyone who arrived ended up leaving before I did. In the end I was back to hunting alone. I was surprised to find I could pull 6 to 7 million an hour solo. With about 6 minutes on buffs I logged there. Someone gave me 1000 tapers and I started with 2000 but after that hunt I was down to 800 total. I'll have to buy a bunch and have Raven deliver them. After making close to 30 million I had 10 million in pass up to the mules. It is fun to log each in turn and watch the light show. (Two mules and Deadeye leveled.) Whereas this type of hunting is a good way to level my mules it is far to boring to do more than once or twice a week. Changed expectations Some people are very upset about the changes. I know one person that is quite pleasant to be around. She has decided that leveling is what makes her happy. I have watched here move up as I hunted FA. She had leveled twice as fast as FA but of course that is her only player. She complained that it will take her to September to make 126 now. Given that she only started a few months ago I did not understand the complaint. The people in the fellow gave her a history lesson in leveling. Given that Tusker island was here when she started she did not understand some things. I said that the first 126 did it on 14k Tuskers with a limited spawn. We had to explain BSD and how it was the only leveling spot for some time. We explained how one of the first mages to make 126 did it on the western Corals using several people to hunt 24/7. Today a player can legitimately hunt to 126 in a year or less, even without vassals. That would have been impossible only a year ago. Of course most who do that will burn out and be gone. They will also be very limited players and lack the knowledge and training of a player who takes longer and hunts rather than levels. I think she got the idea but not the jest of what we were saying. She will keep hunting Tuskers I think, that is all she knows for now. I hope to see her expand her range and get the feel of something other than Tuskerville. I'll give her this. She could easy join a chain and make her goals. Instead she is hunting hard every day and getting nothing for free. And, like I said, she is a blast to be around. Vindicated I took a lot of heat for suggesting too many players were hunting below their level. From this patch I would say that Turbine agrees with me. The level of many monsters are far lower than before. This means a 126lv player hunting in the 70+ dungeon will be getting far less xp. The xp is so far less that it is better for fellows to cap the levels allowed in. I saw this in the 70+ plated Sunday morning. We had several players above the 105 level of Tuskers. We were pulling in half what we were before the patch. At first I felt it was just a new era and we would have to live with it. When the people above 105 left the xp picked up dramatically. We were getting a third more xp hunting with below 105 people in the fellow than with people above that. Of course I cannot say for sure if Turbine did this because to many high-levels were hunting in mid-level places. They could be saying that, after a point, you should not be hunting Tuskers. Nevertheless I feel vindicated. Lost Mule, please return when found It seems the Mar-Hill alliance has lost their buff bot. He was last seen in front of their mansion when a 7lv got chased by a monster to their door step. The 7lv escaped but the bot was not so lucky. Here is a post by Guinevere on it. It was a traumatic experience! I may never recover from it. I get to the mansion, and a plaintive voice cries out "I tried to heal him, I wasn't strong enough! Who do I tell?" There, in front of me, stretched out on the ground, his blood still red and seeping into the front lawn was our beloved Janx. He looked so small in death, the air no longer filled with his indecipherable puns. Where oh where could he possibly have been resurrected? Sigh, I'll have nightmares about this I know it! Such a shocking experience! So cruel to be cut down by a shadow in front of your own allegiance mansion. Asheron only knows who might be next! Now the funny part. They cannot contact the person running the bot and have no idea where his LS is! So there is a buff bot out there somewhere, who knows were, standing at his lifestone. Hopefully it is not a hot LZ. I'm sure by the time this column is posted the bot will be found and returned to the mansion but meanwhile we can get a laugh over it. Buff Bot found! This just in; Falodrin reports; Well, found him at the D Note Emissary, trying to run him out of comps or something so he logs off =( All I can say is they were lucky. I have not been there in a while but it use to be a very hot LZ. It was especially hot when people used the tent to fight from.