Fist de Yuma - August 12, 2003

Bad Week This is turning into a very bad week for me. Mostly it is a people issue but those can be the worse. I started out getting beat on an item I was bidding on. It was a typical way for me to get out bid. I had the high bid for two days and someone out bid me by one sing 15 minutes before the time was up. Nine out of ten times this is how I will lose a bid. I don't have the time to sit and watch until the last second and then get into a bidding war. I decided to head out to hunt sings. I have a lot of holes to fill and buying is one way to overcome my bad luck at loot. The only good commerce items today are sings. When I got to my hunting spot there were two people there. One was a Crossbow Archer. (Call him Xbow1) He was not a bad sort but he had a control problem. I finally had to log off in the dungeon and wait him out. When things happen that cause stress I try to log and wait the situation out. I still can get into conflicts but I try not to. When I logged in hours later he was still there. I finished out the buff but got a lot less that I expected. While waiting for my hunting spot to clear I took Fist's Armorer to Asheron's Island. I wanted to test out my new bludgeon rending staff. Bludgeon rending rocks on Olthoi! It is great for me as I can now concentrate on just pushing War for a while. When I can land better than 40% I'll be happy. It is amazing to me how a 408 war is to low. When I see Mage's 446 war resisted three times in a row I start to wonder. I got to the 80+ dungeon to hunt outside. The spawns around the dungeon entrance can keep three or four good hunters busy. I found someone perched on the tree next to it. He was naked and macroing! That had me on edge and half ruined my hunting spot. (Of course I reported the macro and of course nothing happened.) The macro was tossing spells and attracting all the Olthoi to the tree. This meant I would have to be close to the tree to hunt. Under the tree was a swordsman taking advantage of the macro draws. He started yelling at me to leave his hunting spot. Darn two hunts and two conflicts. The next day I hit the Hollow Olthoi hunting spot with Jr again and there was another Crossbowman there. (Call him Xbow2) He had even less control than Xbow1. What was funny was he complained about the Xbow1 to me. I told him the Xbow1 was ok but had poor control. That was before I found Xbow2 had less even less control. So I had to log again. When I logged a few hours later Xbow1 was there. He said if I had something to say to say it to his face. This rather confused me. I asked him what he meant. It seemed Xbow2 filled him with a bunch of lies about me talking down Xbow1. Fortunately I have more credibility than Xbow2 and we worked it out. He even was able to find a spot where his control was less of a problem. I still did not get many sings but I'm slowly getting some for biding. I have over bid on a lot of items and I'm trying to get better. It has not paid off because I proceeded to lose two more bids on items. Both were last second bids that were a touch over mine. As this happens over and over again it is my fault. I cannot camp the boards like some so I have little chance to win close bids. It looks like I'll have to spend several late nights hunting. I need to build up a stock of sings that lets me set a high bar with bids. If I have to over bid on items to win then so be it. I also had a small irk in the Matron dungeon. Two times I was on my way to attack her. Before the last acid pit I got into a battle. Both times someone ran by the battle to kill the Matron. It was a small irk as she spawns fast but added to a stressful week. The last thing that happened ended a lot better. I had someone start posting nasty remarks to my column advertisement on the boards. This had gone on for a few weeks but I had ignored it. I got tired of it so sent him a PM asking him why he hated me so much. After several back and forth PM's we found middle ground. I have turned someone who hated me into, if not a friend, then not and enemy. A little less hate and anger in the world is a good goal to strive for. Sometimes I think places like the Hollow Caves really bring out the worst in people. I had one archer who decided to stand next to me and hunt. I asked him to move to another corner and he got all upset. With proper material an archer can out kill any melee but just because you can does not mean you should. Later he stopped being a griefer and we got along but why did he do that to begin with? A UA came in and decided to stand right in front of me. I asked him to move and got a STFU response. Then he said he was sorry and left. The Jeckel & Hide personalities get very confusing. The last stress generator was the 70+ Tusker. I got Tusks for Jr and Deadeye this week. There were three macros camping it. Two were at choke points making it very hard to get by them. The one at entrance to the Tusk room was especially bad as I had to step on the trap to look for the tusk. I guess these people just don't care how much harm they cause, as long as they get their xp. Corrections Last week I said the trap from AB was Balash's idea. For the record Igor the Ignorant was the inventor. Balash was kind enough to send me an e-mail informing me of my error. Last week I named War as the biggest cheating alliance. I also said that MT is now the second biggest cheaters but failed to name the cheating allegiance. I did not post the name because I had respect for them and they are on my server. In hindsight that was unfair. The allegiance in MT that as taken up the War cheats is Exception. Cheats The main cheat War on WE and Exception on MT use is multiple monitoring. There are programs that allow one person to monitor a full fellow of macros. They set up the macros in a good safe hunting spot. One person monitors for any +admit that might show. By changing monitors every few hours and having people run them comps they can have 500 million or more passup a day. If course it is a pure cheat and totally against the COC but hard to catch. If I were in charge circumstantial evidence would be enough. It is very easy to see who is macroing and who is not. If I can do that I'm sure Turbine/MS can. 80+ Tusks As I have said in the past I have a lot of trouble with the 80+ tusk. I have failed trying that one more often than I make it. I make it a rule not to try it twice. I figure my punishment for failure is to wait the 21 days before trying again. Stupid, I know but it is one of my eccentricities. My first attempt this time was with Deadeye Fist. I had not tried this solo with him before. Deadeye is far weaker in levels than Jr. If Jr fails then Deadeye, with 32 less levels, should also fail. The difference this time was I landed a fire rend on a bow. While I was not blasting them I was doing enough damage to hold my own. It was a time push as Deadeye is not self-buffing. I hit the dungeon with 13 minutes to spare. I rushed to the end, only fighting when I was trapped, and arrived in the Tusk room with 2 minutes to go. It was nip and tuck as I also dragged in a horde of Tuskers in with me. I did not count but there had to be at least eight of them. It was a race to see if I could kill them before the buffs dropped. I won and ported out with about 15 seconds to spare. With one under my belt I was determined with Jr. The difference with him was my shield. Tinkering it to 277 made for a lot less damage. Cheokee's rations kept my stamina up and my AR Fire weapon did just enough damage. If I can land fire on a good weapon this will be a lot better. Matron Dungeon Part One I decided to take Fist's Armorer to the Matron dungeon. I did this with some worry because one Olthoi is ripping me apart. I would not think of doing this if I had not got my new staff. The Olthoi that are giving me trouble is the Olthoi Swarm Mutilator. This is one nasty beast. Two are generally more than I can handle. I stayed around the start of the dungeon for the most part. The ability to recall to the entrance was a big help. Twice I got into trouble when a back spawn hit and I had to use recall to get out of danger. Of course the entrance is generally hot but it allows me time to heal before re-engaging. I decided to head down and try my luck against the Matron. I heard she was not hard for a mage to take and I want the robe. Strangely the route down to the Matron has less Olthoi than the other parts. Only a few spawns, mostly at the acid pits and the Matron cave itself, are any danger. At the second acid pit I was thinning things out when someone ran be me and killed the Matron. I was slightly ticked and, because of a few setback that week, not in a good mood. I held my tongue and just waited for the Matron to spawn. The word on the Matron was right. She died fast to a mage attack. I got the Carp and will turn it in later. I had a small problem in that I don't want to go into a portal and lose my Matron Dungeon tie. New Weapons One of the things I have done this week is take FA out to a weaker part of Asheron's Island and hunt for material. With my Bludgeoning staff it only take one spell to kill a low to mid level Olthoi. I can clear a large spawn in seconds. The xp is minuscule but the material will fill up my packs in half an hour. One of the first bags I got was for Bludgeoning. After several failures with other material I was not confidant applying it to a top of the line Cestus. Well glory be, it landed! As bludgeoning and fire are the two I really want I was very happy to say the least. I applied all my granite to it. Three months of collecting granite went into the weapon but it is well worth it. I now have an 8 to 14 RR Cestus with good plus's. One more granite and an iron should finish it off. My first test was in the Hollow caves. It worked much better than an AR. I was even one shot'ing Hollows. I could clear and loot much faster. Some of the few times I had it alone proved the power of this weapon. I could kill everything and loot with little trouble. Before, when alone, I could hardly keep up with the spawn rate, let alone have time to loot. Matron Dungeon Part Two I decided to head out with Jr to test my new weapon on the Matron. For once the tree was not camped. Of course that meant a little work to get into the dungeon but I would rather do it they way it was meant to be done. I had one person helping me clear it. Inside I got into a fellow and started to battle. I found that I was doing around 30 damage with crits over 100. As I swing very fast that is more than good damage. My big problem here and in the Hollow Cave is missing. Fist is almost maxed out with UA and he will miss a lot. Jr is about 20 points lower and will miss more than hit. With over 570 equivalent UA missing like this is strange. I found out why I'm missing so much and will go into that later in the column. I worked my way towards the Matron. At the same acid pit some crossbowman ran by me to go kill the Matron. (Sigh) I'm having a bad time with bow people. I finally killed them all and got to the Matron. After a short wait she spawned and the battle was on. I was not hitting much or hard but her health was dropping steadily. It took me around 30 seconds to kill her. LOL I can remember when it took me 45 seconds to kill a Noble, and I was happy with that. Fist I had to imperil her to win and he has far better skills. I can definitely say this weapon is a winner. The only question now is what about AR, CB and CS weapons? Are they now obsolete? I'll keep them around a bit because I have a feeling Turbine has something in mind but for now they don't seem worthwhile having in my pack. There are two times when AR, CB and CS weapons will be worthwhile. The first is when teamed with a good mage. A level VII spell is a lot better than any RR weapon, though this would mean two spells. A RR gives the equivalent of a level VI vuln so the mage is still most effective using Imperil. To beat an RR weapon the mage would need to toss Imperil and a Vuln. So realistically the only time an AR, CB and CS would be useful is at VoD. The monsters at VoD are hard enough that landing an Imperil and a Vuln is common. That may change but for now work towards RR weapons and forget the rest. Unless you are full time VoD RR is the way to go. Rewards So far I had been lucky. The Olthoi Hunter had given me the Focus and Strength. I was still looking for the Coordination. Well I lucked out again and that was what I got. So my melees, mages and archer all have the robes they need. From here on I'll be looking to get extras so I don't have to swap between players. With two melee and two mages it will be a while until I have full sets of armor for everyone. Until then they will have to share. Matron Part Three I finally got time to take Fist de Yuma to the Matron dungeon. The tree was camped again. I figure Turbine will remove it next patch. Then again it took them six months to remove the holes in the wall at BDC so it might stay. I was rather surprised to see no one hunting in the Matron Dungeon. There is lots of xp and loot to be had and the entrance is recallable. Could it be that people would rather hunt things that have no chance against them? I guess so but this will be Jr main hunting grounds for a while. I was ready for some powerful fights. Fist has such a high melee defense that he is seldom hit. The Swarm Olthoi are the exception so I had my shield out. It is a fair shield. It has minor Coordination on it and I have it tinkered to 277. Even the M's don't hit very hard. Even with a buffed 492 UA I'm missing a lot. I mean strings of five or more misses in a row. Changing attack heights did not seem to make much difference. I hope the changes Turbine is making will fix this. There is only 14 more points I can get. Getting those 14 points will require billions of xp. About halfway down I found some Olthoi bodies. At the end I caught up with two guys waiting for the Matron to re-spawn. In the cave were a handful of Olthoi running against the wall. I decided to head in and clear the other guards for xp and loot. That was a mistake as it got the Olthoi away from the wall and let them attack the two guys waiting. I apologized for that and helped them clear the remaining guards. They asked what to do with the Carp. I told them how to get to the Olthoi Hunter to turn it in. I also showed them one of the robes so they knew what they would get. They got one more kill it was my turn. It was a little wait but not overlong. With my new weapon I had little trouble bring her down. When I faced her the first time I had to bring out my Drum and Imperil her. As I had already tested the weapon with Jr there were no surprises. Matron Dungeon Part Four Jeff was visiting at my house while I was playing. He saw Asheron's Robe and of course he wanted one. He asked if he could last long in the dungeon. Being he is a low 80's Mage the answer is a definite no. I had heard that there was a Matron portal in Baishi. I quickly checked and found that indeed you could get directly to the dungeon from there. That will make it a lot faster for Jr to get to the dungeon. Jr is LS'd in AB and there is a portal to Baishi there. We decided that Jeff would run to Baishi and meet Jr inside the dungeon. I would recall to the entrance when he got there. Jeff and his wife left for home. I had until he got there to be ready for him. I had just enough time to fix dinner and log Jr. It is a 20+ minute trip from my house his. I cleared the entrance and rebuffed while waiting for him. The trip was fairly exciting because we were the only ones in the dungeon. While I was never in danger Jeff was always on the verge of dieing. Ever so often he would land an imperil. After imperil my hits increased to 250+ and they did not last long. At the very end I cleared all but the Matron and let Jeff solo her. He had a little trouble but he smartly landed a Yield and it was all over. Message from Turbine It seems that everyone is having a hard time hitting monsters, especially at high levels. Testing done by Turbine shows there is something broken. This has not affected those that play the xp game all day, as they don't fight anything hard. The rest of us are having fits. They had several ideas and settled on one. Go to the Turbine's site to get the details. For now just be aware that Melees, Archers and Monsters will be landing a lot better after the next patch. This is a welcome change as even maxed out attack skills are missing more than hitting. This is especially frustrating for long time players who have worked for years, only to find they can barely hit most high-level monsters. Of course it is a two-edge sword. This is not an improvement to melee players but the melee attack system. This means many monsters that could not hit some people will suddenly start hitting. I expect to see a lot more bodies in the Hollow Caves. The era of 49lv melee going there and under 70lv archers dominating the place will be over. Direct Routes I was surprised after the hot fix to find my portal to Asheron's Island in Nanto was replaced with a portal to one of the Matron dungeons. Fortunately I learned that Uziz had a portal to the island. I started using the Uziz portal to get to the island and would then run to the 80+ Matron dungeon. The battle to get in was hard because of the spawn rate. A single person would have a hard time no matter who they are. I should have figured that if the Nanto portal had a direct route to one of the lower Matron Dungeon that there might be a portal to the 80+ somewhere. Learning that there is a direct portal to the 80+ Matron Dungeon in Baishi is important. It is even closer than Uziz for me. Other than no portal out of the dungeon this is ideal. One of the keys to this game is portals. There are a lot of players who never learn them. Every day I find something new. I found the other day that the statue next to the Olthoi Hunter in Arwic leads to a Baishi portal. The apartment portal in Baishi leads to Mayoi. Little tricks like this makes for fast moving around. Everyone should spend time studying how to get places quickly. With housing portals, apartment portals, statue portals and the normal portal routes there are few places someone cannot get to in a hurry. If you don't know these routes you are in for some very long runs. Matron Part Five While at the mansion The Dread Lord said he was going with Cherokee to fight the Matron. The Dread Lord needed a coordination robe for his archer. I had not done this with Deadeye Fist yet. I was not sure if he could last against Swarm Olthoi. He does have very good melee defense (430) but I have players with 60 more points getting hit and hit hard. Without a shield I was worried about how effective I would be. We took a different route to get there than I normally take. We met in Khayyaban and took the portal there. Because of all the Olthoi and lag we lost Cher. Fortunately she did not die and I'll show her the Baishi route later. We met up with Illuminator in the dungeon. Illuminator had joined up with another group that was headed in for the Matron. With little problem we cleared the guards. I found that I was not getting hit much and doing good damage, when I hit. With 400 skill and using a full draw I was still missing more than hitting. Again, Turbine's fix might improve that. Everything was going well until we started setting the line. I was placed at the end of the line. I was going to be close on buffs. Deadeye is my only non-self buffing player so I had to finish it off before the buffs expired. The other group had someone at the entrance that needed help getting down. Somehow his name got put in front of mine on the waiting list. I had a hard time holding my tongue I must say. As luck would have it the Matron spawned before the group got back so I got the Carp. Also Illuminator gave me a set of buffs to hold me over if need be. Lacking banes I was still hoping to get out before my timer went off. We had one full spawn with only a few people and it got hot and heavy for a while. I was doing ok but the mages were doing the healing dance. I had to heal once from a back shot but that was about it. From there I turned in the Carp with Deadeye and Fist. I had not had a chance to turn it in with Fist the day before. I got another Strength and Focus. The Strength went on my Weapons mule and the Focus is on my general tinker mule. PK Lite I have called for some system of a no loot PK for some time. I'm not the only one who has called for it of course. Turbine has listened and we are getting what we wanted. Of course those that PK are totally against it and for good reasons. There is a good chance that, at least for the short run, PK might have very few people. Turbine has put out the word that PK Lite will be in the game sometime in the next few months. Just how they will implement it is still up in the air. The way I see it they can go with two extremes. The far right will be no loot dropping but everything else stays the same. Other penalties will be the same as PK including xp for a kill. Death count increases, you get vit and you lose buffs if you die. This is the direction I would like to see them go. The other extreme is no penalty at all. No vit, no xp for the kill, buffs are not lost and no increase in death count. This means that for the time you PKL you might as well be standing around the mansion. While this will be fun I think it will be better if they go the harsher route. I expect Turbine will do something between the two extremes. In any case it will be a lot of fun. I can see full-scale wars between allegiances. I can see town defenders. I can see the Arwic fortress being assaulted/defended. I can see PK be back in force and on everyone's mind. Of course I could be totally wrong. Many of the players today are obsessed with leveling and having the highest numbers. For them PKL would not be worth the time and effort. From what I see in dungeons the xp players hate a challenge, they want it easy. A lot will depend on players playing for fun and not increasing their spreadsheet numbers. How the players react will be interesting to watch. I have been right a lot about things but I have also been wrong a time or two. I truly hope this goes over big. For the short term I see PK's losing numbers. I see this as short term because many will go PK after a time of PKL. They will learn the ins and outs without losing all their items. This is a major hurdle that many never make it over. The debate over PK looting will be over. Anyone who is full PK should loot. There is no other reason to go PK. Of course the PK's that depend on killing off the new and inexperienced for a living will not like it. Suddenly that new red dot might not be a loot source but a real threat. For the PK's that threaten to leave the game if PKL is put in, don't let the door hit you on the way out. (Ok, my bad mood is showing.)