Fist de Yuma - August 17, 2004

This and That You may notice that the columns are on the short side this month. My average is about 4,000 words, with many exceeding 7,000 and some over 10,000. So a 2,000 word column may seem short. The reason is a small change in attitude on my part, and some real life stuff. We have some people staying with us, so I have been spending evenings with them. I'm also cutting non-AC things from the column for now. I might get a bug and start adding them again in the future. For now, I have cut my paypal add. It has not generated any income for some time and gives my enemies a target to attack me with. Just why I have enemies, or why it bothers me that I do, I cannot answer. I have not added anyone to my debate list in some time so I cut that as well. I'm not sure if anyone is reading my stories. In any case, anyone who wants to read them has the link by now. I might add them again when I have something new for people to read. For now I'm going to focus on having fun, and writing about what I'm having fun doing. Pure Power leveling I cannot say exactly why I was doing this. I think it will be interesting when complete, but I was asked to keep it under my hat for now. To do my part, I needed to get a house on Frostfell. I had to make a new player for it, so we needed to power level him to 20, the minimum level to buy a cottage. The first thing I did was create the player. I was asked to make him with 100 endurance, Quick and Coordination. I figured he would have to carry a lot, and went with 100 strength instead of endurance. I also spec'd Magic D, UA, Healing and Melee defense. To my great surprise, the only one that counted for anything was my spec'ing healing. I ran him through the starter dungeon and did a little hunting around Holtburg. That got me to sixth level and enough endurance to stay alive. I then logged until I was contacted by Damien Sarin. He had me recall to the Marketplace. He supplied me with a buffed robe and a set of gaunts. I was added to a fellow that included Tectonic Rifts and Gfin. They made a portal, and we jumped in. I still had no idea what we were doing. It turned out that we were doing part of a quest I had never done. It has an XP reward and no lower level limit. We ported into a mass of Wasps outside of a dungeon. While they cleared, I spent my time healing. Even with melee and magic spec'd, I was far too low to avoid any damage they wanted to inflict on me. Only my spec'ing healing saved me. They cleared it out and we started into a maze of hallways. There were a lot of twist and turns. We only stopped to clear Wasps. I tried to take a swing or two, but was ineffective. They had not bothered to buff my UA skill, but it is likely that would not have changed anything. We hit a room with some Grievvers in it. They cleared while I hid and healed. In that room they had me grab an item. From there Damien Sarin and I headed to Redspire, and a cross-country run to the river that runs off the waterfall. This is the waterfall that comes from the Plateau. There was an undead there who took the item for XP. That got me to 16. Damien Sarin was disappointed that it had not got me to 20. He did not let that stop him. He had another plan to level me. We recalled back to the Marketplace and got the allegiance members to rejoin us. We took another portal to what looked like the Dires. I had no idea where I was, but I expect it was no place I should never ever be at 16th level. They fought while I pretended to be a plant. Nothing rushed me, but I was keeping a close eye on anything within radar range. We circled a mountain to a spot below a plateau. They kept clearing until we could advance to the plateau. That is when I found out where we were. I saw a dungeon and did an ID on it. It was Mt. Lethe! The last time I had been there was years before, in the first few months of the game. I quickly saw that the dungeon had a restriction a little above my level. Before I could tell them that, I found that the dungeon was not our goal. We advanced up the hill, towards the monsters created when the Ladies Island quest is running. I got the idea what their plan was. The monster there drops a vial that is used on a sword, or turned in for XP. This was still not a sure thing. While I had poured a little XP into health, I was in big danger of dieing. Anything that looked cross-eyed at me, caused me to run in a circle around the fighters, until they killed it, or it got bored chasing me. It was a good thing I started with 100 Quick. We had finally advanced up the hill and killed the main monster. It was still touchy, because we were killing below the spawn rate. If things got tight, there was nowhere to run. The path we took to get up there was now packed with the re-spawns. I did have to do my circle thing once or twice, but finally everything was attacking the others. I was free for a few seconds. I charged up to loot. I got the elixir and we were done. Without the comps or any recall spells, I had to use mansion recall to get out. Fortunately nothing attacked me while I did. We got a portal to the Subway and ran to the GW portal. A short run later we found the guy who took the elixir. We had a show of lights and I was at 28th level. This was quite amazing to me. In less than an hour, they had me to 28. I knew that people had developed tricks to get people leveled quickly, but this was the first time I had seen it. Chakron Flux Dungeon I had been planning to do the Chakron Flux with two of my players, but never found the time to do it. With the Olympics on, I was not sure if I would find the time. I was playing Saturday to do Pincers. There was Volleyball was on, which is not one of the events I prefer to watch. I had it on in the background, as my intent is to watch as much of the Olympics as possible. I had hit a stopping point. I had Fist in the Mut dungeon, to clear it for the mages. I still had one mage left to go, but his timer was not ready for a few hours. That meant I could not use Fist to do the upper level of the dungeon. My plan was to have Fist do the upper while Fist de Yuma Jr did the lower. So I figured to log and watch the Volleyball instead. While talking on the allegiance chat, I found that Hot Shot was on, and wanted to do Chakron with me. We both buffed up and used the Bore portal to get to the South Dires. We did have a little running around, trying to find the dungeon. The route I thought would work, turned out to be a hill away. We finally got it, and I think I have a good route there now. With that much running around, it is hard to be totally sure. With a high-powered Xbow player and Jr's skills with a sword, we did not have too much trouble. The Virindi are a pain, because of their high level armor. Even with a level VII Imperil and a fire Vuln, the damage did not improve very much. To top that off, Jr has nowhere near the Magic Defense that Fist Sr. does. So I took a lot of damage when we faced them. I was not looking forward to soloing the low end. We finally got to the portals. I thought I took the lower but Hot Shot sent me a message saying I had gone into the Upper. There had been a lot of lag this month, and I guess I got bit. I took the exit and entered the proper dungeon. I fought my way to the first switch. I had to spend a few spawns waiting for Hot Shot to make it to his door. I know this would take some time, as Fist had done that part solo a week before, and it is not easy. Hot Shot got by that door, and I advanced to my first door. This was over a pit, and you needed to jump over the pit, into the door. There is a ramp, so of you miss the jump you can get back to retry. Hot Shot said the path dead-ended into a room with a deep pit. We were kind of lost as to what to do. Hot Shot saw a switch inside the pit, so he jumped down. A short time later my door opened. I over-jumped and ran back up the ramp. The door closed and I had to ask Hot Shot to hit the switch again. Either Hot Shot hit the switch again by mistake, or the timer is very short. That led to my own dead-end room with a pit. I found that the pit dropped into a room with an exit. There were a few rooms like that on the quest. The path led to several rooms with pits in front of them. I never bothered to look, but I'm guessing a miss there ends your quest. There were two or three Virindi on the other side, so it was a little tight for the combat. One was Virindi is ok, but any more and there was a potential for their chain casting and taking me out. I slowly fought my way to a switch in a cubby. Hot Shot said he needed to jump a pit to a door. He thought he made the jump, but then was ported. There must have been a touch of lag that dropped him into the portal at the bottom of the pit. This put him back at the start. Hot Shot thought it was over, because I was unable to get back up the pit to the switch. I had an idea. I told him to run to the first door, while I did a last portal recall. I decided to forgo fighting, and just run to the switch. I was almost trapped at the switch, but was able to shake free. I was able to use the tight turn at a wall to shake my pursue. A short time later Hot Shot had the door open. We quickly ran to where we were before, and Hot Shot made the jump this time. I decided to only fight when I had to, or when waiting for Hot Shot. My only fear was bumping into one of the guards as I jumped over a pit. I would do a full jump, to insure I did not have any chance of missing the jumps. I would not stop this rush, except to heal. We both had another pit to jump down and a few switches to find, but I finally got to the end. Hot Shot's last door was opened by a switch in the last room on my side. I imperiled everything before jumping down, so the battle was short and sweet. There were no Red Virindi, so I did not have to play the whittle down game. I got the Amulet, but Hot Shot was disappointed with his reward. For the most part, a Sing fragment is not worth the trip. Next time I'll use Fist on the upper side and let everyone else get the Amulet.