Fist de Yuma - August 19, 2003

This and That I put Rosa on a plane Sunday morning. She is off to New Orleans for training. Just before she left she remarked that she could have taken me but did not think New Orleans was anything big. Darn, I could be on Bourbon Street eating hot southern food and partying all night instead of sweating over this column! Rosa is one of the most kind and caring persons you could ever meet but knows nothing about partying. Troubles The 1 switch on my Linksys switch box has been broken for a while now. This is the box I use to switch computers. The box allows me to use one monitor and keyboard for both computers. I figured to move from switches 1 and 2 to 2 and 3 when I got around to it. For a long time I could work the switch by pushing my fingernail into the slot. Well today it broke completely and I had to make the switch. That took up the better part of the afternoon and it had not been my first trouble. When I got to my computer in the morning the screen saver was on. That was strange because after a few hours it should turn off the monitor. I figured one of the kids staying with us moved the mouse. My sister's house has their AC broken. As it is a touch hot here they are staying with us until it is fixed. When I logged I saw FA needed a pincer. While running the river route I got kicked to the desktop. I logged back and was kicked again after a few seconds. I re-booted the computer and decided to buff before I moved again. While it was rebooting I got an error and the system did a scan disk. It rebooted again on its own and I hoped that fixed the problem. Before I was finished buffing I was kicked to the desktop again. I turned off Decal and tried to log back. I was kicked after a few seconds. I figured it might be a bad land block so I loaded up Jr at the mansion. That locked up the system completely. Now I'm worried. I cannot afford a new computer even if Rosa would let me buy one. Fortunately it seems to have stabilized and I did not have any AC problems while getting the pincers. I don't have any problem as long as AC is not loaded. It could be that AC is the only program I have that will stress the system at all. It did give me a video fault, which forced me to reboot twice more during the day. I can only hope that the readers take pity on me and send me a little cash. I have a bad feeling the computer is going to be unusable soon. This computer has always been a problem child. I got a highly recommended motherboard that turned into a highly un-recommended system a few months later. I know the main problem is a video incompatibility. The new graphic boards will not work on it at all. So the only way to fix it is a new motherboard. For me that means a new computer. Armor Upgrade - Pre Work I got a message from the William the Bat's board manager about the Mage Armor Upgrade quest they were doing. It was set for Wednesday at 6pm PST. I still need FA's Mage Armor upgraded so I made sure I was ready to go for it. "Ready to go" means a few steps I need before the player I'm questing with is ready. First I need that account loaded on the main computer. I have two computers running at this time. With a third account I'm thinking of breaking out my 166mh computer and setting it up as well. Before I do that I want to get a wireless access point and I don't have the money for it. My second computer is capable of running AC but at only 500mh and a low-end graphic card I would rather not. That computer is mostly used for minor movement and muleing. The second thing I need to do is transfer armor, weapons and items to the player I want to use. I have to share armor between players. What armor I use depends on the player and the situation. I have some really high AL stuff with no spells that is mostly used on the mages. I also have some nice armor with minor spells that mostly goes on the melee players. There are times when the melee's need really high armor or the mages have need of minors but that is rare. Weapons swapping will end soon. My UA weapons get swapped back and forth between Fist and Jr. When Jr changes to sword that will end. Of course I'm soon adding Death Mute to my list of players so that will add to swapping. Where the swapping is really a pain is when I need to transfer stuff between Deadeye Fist, Jr and FA. They are all on one account so it takes logging a middleman and player swapping to make the transfers. So I got the armor and my one RR staff (Bludgeoning) transferred to FA from Mage. I also had to find my Creature/High-AL helm, which was on Deadeye at the time. Lastly I had to search the mules for FA's Mage Armor. I found them stuck on a mule in the forth pack. It had been a while since I used it. Mage Armor Upgrade With everything ready to go I ran over to the William the Bat's mansion. They were just getting setup. O Wicked Wanda had a Stonehold portal so people could get gems. I had two Korr gems in my pack so I could skip that part. Everyone buffs up and we hit the gems. Some of us had the gem that allows you to bypass the three tests but I'm cheap. The tests only take a second and cost an M note rather than a MMD. The members for this quest were; O Wicked Wanda, Xeia, William the Bat, Roland Delgado, Dew's Pistol and of course Fist's Armorer. We got everyone together and were ready to go. Unlike when Jeff and I did it there was no getting lost in the first section. William knew the exact route. With his powerful sword and my Bludgeoning stick I'm sure we could have solo'ed it. With the others along it was almost easy. I was killing with one or two spells. Between William and the rest the Golems died so fast I barely had time to find one, power-up and toss the spells before they would die. We got the keys and book and headed back. We did it so fast there was no need for battles on the way out. We beat the re-spawns. Next up was getting the weapons. This is where I got to lead. William had never done that part and I had done a few weeks before. I was surprised to see some of the Olthoi Swarms dieing to one spell off my RR staff. That really made me happy. That should have been no surprise as I one shot the Matron with this staff. Mostly it took two spells but even that was great. Not needing to land a Life spell made everything so much easier. I led us to the first big battle room. After seeing how long it took us to clear the room I started to wonder how Jeff and I had ever did this alone. The second battle was even longer. Everyone got the weapons. We battled our way back to the catwalk and William took back over. My main goal for doing this quest is the helm. With Sunstone War Gants my War is set. I really only needed the +10 to Life the helm gives you. I figured that if I was there I would get the Mage Armor done as well. It would only take a few seconds more. With our powerful group there was little risk. I only heard one shout of pain. This happened when an Olthoi ran past and hit someone behind me. Someone had been feeding me heals and other help so I figured they had non-tinkered armor and were playing support. The Blue room was our first stop. We cleared that in record time and a few got the stones. Next was the Green room where I got my stones. Lastly was the Red where one person got a set. Again we were so fast that despite several people getting stones we never had to re-fight a spawn. Now we were off to the Forge. The Forge is nasty. The Olthoi are hard to fight and spawn fast. This is where we really needed our power. Anything less than we had would have trouble getting the armor done. We had a hard battle getting the room clear. We rushed to the Forge to get the armor done. I got mine forged fast and was ready for the re-spawn. We had to fight about three or four spawns before everyone got their armor forged. Rosa had hit the door just as I finished the quest. I hated to run out so fast but she was yelling at me to help her get the food out of the car. I knew if I waited even a minute I would he hearing about it all night. (grin) Trip to Teth I've heard a bit about Teth but have not had time to visit. The word I got was Teth was under siege and hard to get into. Tommies and Lugies were just outside the gates. There was also something about a General. I buffed up with full armor banes in AB. Before going I wanted to cash in three of the new keys I got when hunting The Slot. I found a chest just down the hill guarded by three Lugies. I dispatched them along with three Drudges who were close by. Nothing good out of the chest but it was worth the pulls. Abin got a major Life girth out of one so it is just a matter of time. From there I headed to the statue and the Teth portal inside the dungeon. I bypassed the Golem as I had no need to waste time killing it. Heading down the hill towards Teth I spotted a few Lugies and Tommies. I attacked one and got a sky full of hollow rocks. Fortunately I was sliding left so they did not hit. To my surprise a Lugie I only have seen in VoD charged out of the pack to attack me. I spent a good two or three minutes taking him down. After that I cleared out all the gate guards. Through the gate I saw more Lugies and Tommies so it is not just outside the gates. They seem to have totally overrun Teth! It makes me wonder why some big groups haven't cleared it yet. Makes sense that clearing it all might have an effect. Going around the corner had a bunch more Lugies tossing rocks at me. I moved out of range and started to circle to get a better look at the fort overall. That was when I saw a formation of Lugies and Tommies. The Lugies and Tommies were almost standing in ranks. You could almost imagine some officer moving down the ranks asking some stupid questions and pretending to inspect. I attacked one of the Lugies and two Tommies charged out. I was about to dispatch them when I saw a Lugie charging out and decided to target that instead. The Tommies were wailing away at me but doing little damage. I vulned the Lugie for Lightning and blasted him with a good shot. He hit me and I mean hard. Suddenly I'm in a totally defensive mode. It was the General and he had a hollow axe! I hit heal after heal but his damage kept coming. Each heal and hit had me starting with a little less health. I healed with 56 points to 120 and died to two fast hits before I could heal again. It was so fast I never had a chance of running. With those kinds of hits I needed full health before turning my back. I guess it is time to get Mana to health one on my spell bar. (grin) I was praying the General did not have a lot of health because he will be a pure hit and run target. If he has the health or healing of a VoD monster a mage might not be capable of defeating him alone. I did a painful fizzle fest rebuff. This time I killed the Golem so I could hit Teth without Vit. I had no trouble recovering my body as it was out of range of the monsters. I was trying to clear the Tommies to I could make an attempt at the General again. After killing several of the Tommies I got the main Tommie to fight me one on one. Despite me hitting him a lot I never got him under 98%. It reminded me of fighting the biggest stuff in VoD. In hindsight he was a lot harder than anything I had faced in VoD. Well that trip was a total failure. FA is just not strong enough to take them. My next plan is to take Mage out there and see how he does. It could be that it will take a combo of a strong mage and Fist to take that general down. I hope he is worth the effort. Cannot come any closer The Slot is fun and returns fair xp. I could get more xp hunting Tuskers or even Olthoi but The Slot is more of a challenge. I like the material and ever so often I find a weapon worth keeping. The biggest problem with The Slot is de-buffs. There are times when it is covered with high level Shadows of all types. It seem their favorite starting spell is Yield VI. When I'm hit with that I have to gem as the only way I live is by resisting the War spells. The rest of the time they are tossing Focus, Self, Life and War de-buffs on me. Ever so often I see a Coordination and Strength de-buff but mostly they are attacking what a mage needs. They can quickly drop my 415 war and 400 Life into the 360 range. When de-buffed that low I have a real problem landing spells. I'll even fizzle one ever so often. Mostly I try to fight through the de-buffs but when it gets really bad I hit a gem. I'll he very happy when I hit 115 and spec Magic D. After clearing up to the Hub I hit one of the side passages. I cleared out a section that was infested with Virindi, Bandies and Drudges. The top Drudges are dropping some good loot so I target them a lot. After cleaning two spawns I was working a third. The danger in that is standing on a spawn point. While not as bad as last month there is a re-spawn rate that can surprise you. I was just finished taking down a Drudge that landed a few level VII de-buffs on me. I was about to loot when there was a re-spawn. I was hit with several war spells, some of which I was Vuln'd for. In seconds I was in deep trouble. I quickly decided that there were to many and my only option was to run. I disengaged with 2 hit points left and several Shadows chasing me. The Drudges were tossing spells and did not chase. I got to a point with enough distance from the Shadows to try a heal. I'm not sure if it was just bad luck, bad de-buffs or if lag had the server thinking I was still moving but the heal fizzled. The Shadows came up and started swinging. I thought there was no way I was surviving this. I hit heal but had little expectation of being alive long enough for it to land. The only good sign was my natural healing kicked in and I was at 7 hp. Still I was mostly taking 10+ damage from melee swings and that is without Vulns. Now these Shadows must have been the most incompetent sword swingers ever created. I mean I'm a mage with a melee d of what, 30? I don't even buff it! Somehow they were not able to inflict 7 points of damage before my long windup for a level VII heal could get through. It has been a long time since I had a close shave like that and lived. Mostly if I drop under 20 hit points I die. It is good to know I can still be luckily. Pure Luck Sometimes it seems you can never catch a break. The US is in a string of bad luck right now. Every time the economy starts to make a good recovery something happens to make it harder. The blackout is a good example. There are times when I feel that way. No matter what you do there is always something to block you. In reality luck will always even out over time. We all go through strings of bad luck and good luck. Every so often an event will happen that will surprise you with good luck. I was taking Jr to the skill sellback temple. I'm working towards getting Sword at 125 and need to sell back UA and Lockpick to I have the 16 points needed for Sword. Because of the Asheron's Island I'm ahead of my xp goals. It looks like I'll make 125 next month. I have 17 days before I'm done with the temples. I found out I'm three days short on getting a gem but I did not know that until after I got to the temple. It is not a hard trip for me but there is a lot of hard monsters in the general area. I was running in the general direction of the sell back temple. I did not intend to fight anything and had no weapons buffed. I had a full set of protects but no banes. This was a get in and get out run. As I hit the top of some hills, with the "Q" button hit for run, my modem clicked off. Darn I hate that. There was an off chance he would get trapped running into a hill or tree and die but other than that he should keep running. I started to shut down AC so I could get back fast when the modem finished redialing. I finally had all the AC windows closed and the modem had finished be-bopping and hissing at me. I clicked the link and waited for it to log on. Because my player is still in the game it will generally take a bit before it will log on. I logged dreading that bright sun in the upper right corner. I sighed with relief when I logged with no vit or even damage. In fact I did not even have any de-buffs. Where the luck and surprise comes in is I'm standing right next to the Temple! Somehow I was pointed in the right direction and stopped running at exactly the right time. Now that is pure luck. Grand Adventure It started out with a simple request that would have been hell for anyone but me. Big Kahuna had jumped into Teth without knowing that there were a lot of monsters inside as well as out. He had gotten trapped on one of the walls and died. With great melee d and adequate missile I could recover him without danger. When Jr gets sword Fist will lose missile but it was useful for once. I need a melee with lock pick or I would keep missile on Fist. I did not know it at the time but the Lugies inside are VoD types. This means you really need a powerful group to fight them. Fortunately I had no need to fight. Maddie's Revenge was at the mansion when BK asked for my help. She buffed up and headed out there with me. It turned out to be simple for me because none of the Lugies could hit me. This was lucky as there was no time to waste. BK's body had rotted just as I arrived. BS/2 hit on his robes just after I jumped over the wall. At first I tried to fight. I quickly discovered that fighting was not an option. VoD Lugies are far to hard solo. O' I could have killed them in time but that was time I didn't have. I raced to the wall and recovered BK's gear. The main item was his leggings but I also got his DI's. A few big jumps later and I was out of the fort giving BK his stuff back. Maddie was doing a little fighting and William the Bat was there. I asked if they wanted to team up and take on the General. The General had killed FA the day before I was eager for revenge. We quickly found The General in the same place he was the day before. I figured he was always there but learned later that he will move. We pulled him by having Maddie de-buff one of the Lugies. Of course she got a rain of rocks that she narrowly survived. She had not expected them and I never warned her, my fault. That got the General out alone with a few odd Tommies. I ignored the Tommies as I knew they could not hurt me. William on the other hand does not have my Magic D so he had to clear them out. Maddie had to land the spells while being careful not to get hit too much. That axe is deadly and will kill a mage in a hurry. For that matter anyone without massive melee d will die fast. Maddie's Revenge was playing hell trying to land. Even after she got a yield on she would only land around 1 in 5. We had the General on a hillside, which allowed us to be above him. I find that even with 498 UA and a good plus's I will miss a lot if I don't have some terrain advantage. Maddie had to put the de-buffs on repeatedly as this was taking a long time, despite two very high level fighters pounding on the General. Someone offered to help but we felt good about the battle and declined. That was when he said we had 20 minutes from the first blow to finish the battle. Now that was a lame thing for Turbine to do. The health of the General was falling very slowly. Well in fact we were hitting very hard but with 500,000 hit points not hard enough. We had it around 30% when it disappeared. Darn, that was a fast 20 minutes. Now we had to decide whether to re-buff and try again or just call it a day. You know what I wanted but without Maddie and William there was no way I was taking the General in 20 minutes. Fortunately both wanted to try again. We rebuffed and started searching for the General. That was when I found out he is not always in the same place. We found him in a very bad spot. Finding a dead zone between spawns was hard and he was too far away from the hills to get him there. We started the battle. I intended to check my timer so I would see if we were doing it in time but in the excitement of keeping Maddie alive I forgot. I know from experience that a mage has a hard time standing up to The General for any length of time. One crit and it is all over. Because of that William and I had to attack and pray it turned on us before killing Maddie. If she died we had no chance. Fortunately the General seemed to focus on those doing the most damage and would swap to me or William after a few seconds. We could not find a dead spot so there was always one or two Tommies in the battle. Every so often William or me would take them out but they would soon re-spawn and be back at us. The key this time was Maddie. She had to add in a lot of war attacks if we were going to kill it in time. We had already proven that William and me could not damage it enough to kill it without help. To make this worse I was missing much more than in the first battle. Varying my attack height seemed to do nothing but slow my attacks down. I found out later that William was missing a lot as well. We were missing that terrain advantage a lot. William had a major disadvantage. He was PK at the time and had muled his good armor, weapons and Majors. I could not be sure but it seemed we were behind time. I was sure it took us over 10 minutes to do 50% damage. A member of my allegiance showed up on BS/2. I asked him to join in but he was only 50lv. A bit after we got him to 50% I saw Jasmin' on BS/2. I gave him a tell and he rushed over to help. Jasmin' is a Crossbowman under Cher. I had not met him before and this was a great way to do it. With Jasmin' adding in his bolts we started to gain back the time we had lost. It was still going to be very close. Ever so often The General would take a swipe at Jasmin' and his health would drop drastically. He told me one blow was for 212 damage. One blow! At one point I saw him with a sliver of health. I told him to heal for god sake. (grin) The General was under 10% when he turned on Jasmin' with a vengeance. One swipe had him hurting and the second had him dead. Now it was a race with the clock. 5%, 3% 1%, dead at last! To my amazement I had the kill! I'm sure if William had his better equipment he would have gotten the kill as Sword is much more powerful than UA. The Axe now graces one wall of my mansion. Other than that there was not much on the body and I never checked the xp. I'm sure it was a lot. Maddie and William had to leave so I parked at Jasmin's body. He buffed up and ran too within a few yards of me before some Lugies killed him. Well that sucked. I had him permit me. I recovered his stuff and we met at the Mansion. All and all one grand adventure. Next up is to get the xbow for Jasmin'. He told me he had battled it for a while but never got it below 98%. Guest Writer; R Scott White Boredom Well this weekend covered everything in the subject line. I don't know what it's been but I haven't been in the mood to just hunt. I actually want to hunt with others or something. I must be sick or in need of heavy medications, hell at this point I'd even eat Nabata's cooking for the challenge. I'd been hunting VoD feeling powerful when I kept hearing about how interesting Teth had become. Now doing the stupid thing I did no research onto what was going on there. So I made the run to Teth and came in from the side, which we used to call the killing fields. The first thing I saw was the renegade area. Now I thought that might be interesting but after hunting there for a bit I found nothing thrilling. With my buffs on the short side I decided to run into Teth. Unfortunately the city was surrounded on all sides. This is where the lack of research hurt me. I see that it is surrounded but I didn't realize the consequence of attacking a monster. Instead of just that monster type coming at me, they all did. It was a wall of orange surrounding your favorite neighborhood battlemage (always wanted to throw a spidey reference in). Within seconds I was dead. I scrolled the screen back and saw that I had been hit with hollow weapons....can we say OUCH (among the other words I used at my computer screen that I won't use here because I'm a gentleman). Now I had to find a portal back because I hadn't had time to tie. I got my tie and came back. I recovered then tried to get into the city. I found my way barred by a closed gate. I didn't realize that the NPC on the ledge could open it so I climbed one of the towers and jumped in. There were a couple others there and so I decided to work off my vitae on the outer ledge. I saw the boss monsters and decided what better way to rid vitae then to kill them. BIG mistake. I landed my debuffs, vuls and bolts on the sucker and I barely scratched him. I don't know how many hit points he has but he must rival the Obliterator in VoD. I said the heck with it and decided to leave the area. Excitement/Death I talked to Mage Sailor Bane and he told me he'd been doing some hunting in one of the hives for salvage. (Editor: Mage Sailor Bane is my brother Jeff.) Since I'm in need of every type of rending wand I decided to follow his example. But being the idiot I am do I decide to do it in a safe place...NOOOOOOO I decide to do it in the 80+ matron hive. Now never being there before I tie to be on the safe side as well as fully buff/bane. I port in and I'm immediately dealing with eight of those nasty bugs. They aren't hitting really hard but they are nasty so I have to smoke them fast. I did learn a few good things though, both the guardians and warriors are good to drain, the mutilators aren't but that will come later. I clear the entry area and loot, nothing fancy but worth my while to pick up. Again without research I just decide to explore. I go to the four-way intersection and go to the right, down a ramp where there is a "T". Bugs are filling the hall on both sides but I'm far enough back that they can't get at me. I search the area and see there are doors, which are perfect for me; I could use the old OHN trick of getting inside one of the cubbyholes to have better protection. I do this and after what seems like forever, more like 20 bugs, I'm clear and do some more looting. Again nothing great but some good salvage and high value items to sell. I make a dash and I'm at a dead end, unable to get into a corner I try to fight and die. It was great, as dangerous as the VoD is, it is predictable. Here it was dangerous and death was at my doorstep constantly. When I thought about it afterwards I was lucky to last as long as I did. I rebuff intent on getting my stuff back. This time I'm fighting and had three mutilators on me at once. They hit much harder than the guardians and warriors did and when I drained I only got back 30 instead of 60 hit points. Yup you guessed it, kissing the lifestone dead again. I buff up again, trying to get at least one of the corpses and I die right at the entrance. Screw it I thought, forget the first two and just get the last one. So I buff...again and get the corpse. I head straight out this time following the people who had been there at the beginning with me when I first got there. A lot of the bugs were dead so I made my way down past the acid pools killing when I needed to and got to the matron cave. Two others were there but they were in trouble. They were both melee and couldn't land so they were fighting just a holding action in a corner. A few vuls later and we cleared the area. We worked together and killed the matron three times for each of us to get a carpace. It was nice because we didn't have a fellowship going but it was understood that we would all stay there till we all pulled. I got my carpace and after the next matron we parted ways. Rewards I ported to my cottage because I had to turn the carpace in to an olthoi hunter and the only one I know of is in Arwic. I ran to Arwic from my cottage and hit the Olthoi hunter. My luck held and I got the rainment with moderate focus. YIPPIE, just what this old mage wanted. From what I've heard it is pure luck as to which one you get. I believe it because I've seen them offered in trade on the boards. I have to say that the hive was fun only because of the threat of imminent death. Those damn mutiliators were hitting me for 10-30 points a shot. Between that and their speed at attacking I felt like a pincushion. I'd be healing and as soon as I was done healing I'd be only a little bit above what I'd started with in hit points before casting the healing. If it hadn't been for learning that the guardians/warriors gave 60 hit points when drained I'd have died much sooner. It wasn't about exp for me but more of just trying something different. I'll tell you this I want to do Garlean's quest. I want the wand with the bug slayer properties. That wand would kick ass in the hive, as well as give me one more monster to fight in the VoD. Hunting VoD is frustrating without lockpick. In the past month I've had to leave 100 sing keys because I couldn't carve them. I'm really thinking of going from the spec'd life/war/magic d to spec'd life/war/creature. That would allow me to train lockpick again and do something useful, unless Turbine does something nice and makes the pink keys able to be dropped. SO WHAT DID YOU ALL DO THIS WEEKEND HMMMM?