Fist de Yuma - August 5, 2003

This and that Some of you may know I do most of the cooking in my house. It has been this way since we were married. I was use to my own cooking and Rosa was happy to let me keep doing it. One of my best dishes is Spaghetti. I put a lot of work into it. I add lots of spices and mix with ground beef. The base for all this is canned Spaghetti Sauce. While I have found little difference between most brands we had settled on Del Monte. Today I made a batch and it turned out horrible! I checked the trash and found that Rosa had gotten a different sauce. The can looked the same but had a different name. It was Garlic & Herb. I call it Water & Paste. I have never seen something suck the taste out of a dinner like this junk. I found a few cans of Water & Paste on the shelf. They are now in a bag to give to charity, and I feel guilty for giving it to them. Honor Many people, especially the young, have no idea what honor is. It is a concept that seems incompressible. Those that have honor will in time become known. They will often be used for cross server and third parties trades. This takes time and testing. A million successes in a test of honor can be wiped out with one failure. It is not often that you can see true real life example of honor being tested. Mostly it is because of a lack of opportunity for such a test. Many if not most will fail such a test. Last week I saw a success while watching a reality TV show. The show is The Amazing Race. Two teams were sharing a taxi and shared last place in the race. At stake was a one in three chance at a million dollars. There are four teams left and they thought one would be eliminated that day. One team had a chance to strand another team. They had finished a test and could take the taxi to the next stop. The other team would be stuck in the middle of nowhere and be insured of coming in last. It would also insure that the third place team would not became the forth and last team. This was their test of honor. Instead of doing the above they had the taxi wait for the other team. They then got their own taxi at a later point. Because of circumstances they were delayed enough that they did come in last. The good news was this was one of the three stops were the last place team is not eliminated. I shall be cheering them from here on. Win or lose the have proven they have honor. Mage Armor upgrade I did the mage armor upgrade once and was in a group who knew it well. That was some time ago so my memory was vague to say the least. I was hoping some expert on the quest would show up to help us get Jeff's armor upgraded. A lot of people said they wanted to go but things came up. In the end it was just Mage Sailor Bane and Fist de Yuma Jr. My choice of Jr over Fist for this was because of Jr's ability to imperil. There are a lot of times when the Olthoi are trapped behind a door and you can imperil them in safety. This is balanced with Fist's greater hitting power and survivor ability. Jr having the armor also helped the choice and that was the account loaded. Fist and Jr share armor and he had it. I also have a slow and fast computer. I only quest with the fast one and Jr account was loaded on that one. We met at the Mansion and headed out to Qbar. We ran the house/portal system to Stonehold. I had two M notes and Jeff had one. I gave Jeff one of my notes as I figured he would he was most at risk for dieing. We got the gems and were off on the adventure. Knowing the place was a nightmare of different portals and twisting paths I printed off a hint sheet from Maggie's. It was not the greatest instructions and in a lot of places it had us totally lost. First thing to do was to get the keys. Unfortunately I was ready for Olthoi and not much else. My only weapon was my Olthoi Slayer. Fist had the all the other ones. When I discovered I would have to fight a bunch of Acid Diamond Golems I was not a happy camper. To make matters worse this was when I found that whoever wrote the instructions was less than accurate. Not everyone is good at writing instructions but I'll admit it would have been far worse without them. The lack of a clear path delayed us a lot. What got us through it was my memory of doing it before. I have a good memory so when we hit the right path I knew it. We finally got to the room where we got the keys. I did not bother with getting the books, as I did not expect us to need them. Now we backtracked to the main room and were ready for the next part. The instructions were clear for a while. Then they became very vague and we were having trouble. With a 30 second spawn rate and Jeff having a hard time landing Imperil we were fighting most of the time. After taking the door to the right and getting to a ramp I knew we were in the wrong spot. We backtracked to a room where we were to find a switch. We found it in another room and that opened a door for us. After that the instructions were a lot clearer, which is good, as I had not done this part the only time I was here. We go the UA weapon and Mace. Not sure if we will use them and I'll likely skip this part the next time we come. We backtracked to where the instructions said but they were wrong again. We had to go farther back then it said. Fortunately the path we followed got us to a big room what had a catwalk going around it. As the instructions did not make sense I figured this room was where we needed to be. The instructions talked about a ramp so we went down a ramp into the room below the catwalk. After a long battle, where Jeff almost died a few times, we ended up in some rooms that had no exit, other then where we came in. We rebuffed there and fought our way back to the ramp. It was not as hard this time as the door let us imperil the Olthoi before fighting them. From there I followed the catwalk to the end. That looked like where the same spot I got the helm before. The only thing was the door should be locked and it wasn't. With no chest I decided to try the other end. So we backtracked again and followed the catwalk to the other side. Remember we are fighting the entire way. I'm not taking much damage but Jeff is hanging on for dear life. We ended up in a room that was identical to where we just were. Sure enough the first door needed to be picked. That got us the helm. Now we needed to get the stones. This part was easy except for one error by Jeff. I think he was use to the first quest where there was a chance of failure. You need several stones to infuse the armor in the first quest so Jeff must have figured he needed extras for this part as well. Jeff said the blue color was good for him. That suited me find, as it was the easy one to get to. We imperiled all the Olthoi and charged in. With Imperil VI on them it is a fast two or three swings. If not it took a long time to take one down. With a 30 second timer I knew we had to hurry. I grabbed the stone for my helm and encouraged Jeff to get his as fast as possible. I told him to get his four and run. I kept pushing him to hurry. I asked Jeff if he had his stones. He said yes, and one extra. Hell we did not need an extra. I ran to the door. It was to late. I made it to the door but Jeff got cut off. I rushed back and found Jeff trapped in the corner tossing heals on himself. I charged in but with them not being imperiled it was a long battle to break him free. We finally got out of the room after what seemed forever. Now we only needed to get the armor forged. The instructions were clear at this point. There was not much room for error so we quickly got to the forge room. Clearing the first few room was not hard. We tried to clear the gate without opening it but that did not work. The back spawn kept coming on us and costing us time. I decided to open the gate, move into the room and close the gate. That would keep the back spawn off of us. When I did this part with Mage I had a lot of help. There were five of us and all could kill them well. This time we only had two and Jeff was playing hell landing a spell. I found out later that he is below the minimums for Korr. It became clear that we were not keeping up with the spawn rate. I told Jeff to heal to full and forge his armor a piece at a time. It took us a while to do that and Jeff was in danger of dieing a few times. He finally got it all done but took some big hits with his last attempt. He was running around the room with a sliver of health. Just how he lived is a mystery to me but somehow he found a corner and healed before one killed him. I was unaware he was finished with his armor. I attacked what was he was fighting with the hopes they would all attack me. Other than stamina I was doing well and Cher's rations were keeping me healthy. Jeff told me he had the armor done but I was to far from the forge to get mine done. I need another 600 million points before I get 315 Life anyway so I let it pass. I'll get it forged some other time. I told Jeff to get out. I had forgotten something about Jeff's spell bar. When Jeff was overseas I did a pincer run with his player. I got trapped one time and tried to escape by porting out. That was when I found that Jeff does not have any portal spells on his main bar. I die because of that. So when I told Jeff to get out he did Lifestone recall! I could believe it. The only thing that kept him alive was only one attacked him while he was doing it. I knew better to even pull my Drum with what was attacking me. I keep Tusker Island recall gems ready for escapes. The second I knew I did not need to recover Jeff's body I hit the gem. Back at the mansion Jeff told me he would not put on the armor. I had him tell me his base War. At 307 he needed 8 more point before he could use the armor. No wonder he would not land on them. His Life is base 305 and that is the main skill we needed. So it was a hell of an adventure for his first quest. In hindsight we should have waited. A mage is darn hard to play and after months away from the game he needed time to hone his skills. How we lived with that many attackers, a 30 second spawn rate and me having us lost most of the time, I'll never know. The pure luck of the innocent I guess. Jeff's Take on the Mage Armor Quest As everyone knows I just got home from Kuwait. While I was gone I was often able to get my brother's column. That enabled me to be able to keep up on most information about the game. So that led to the discovery about the Mage Armor Upgrade. Cliff and I talked at his house and said when I came home we would do the quest. So I come home. I played for about 6 hours. Cliff logs on and we decided to do the quest with just the two of us. So we take off on the quest. I am stoked about doing the quest as I use my Mage Armor a lot. I was also pretty stoked about the Life Helm, a definite plus. So we are on the quest, things are going pretty smooth. I think I am doing pretty good since I was way rusty at my skills. Then we get into these catacombs, and the lag monster hits, and it hit bad. I had Cliff on 6th sense so I was not too worried about being able to keep track of him. Then the problems set in. First problem was he was too damn fast. I only have a run skill of 343 buffed, so he would take off like greased lightning and leave a pile of beasts for me to run through. The second problem was the lag monster. I would lock up looking at Cliff and then all of a sudden he was gone. I mean nothing there. Not even on 6th sense. So I would get lost and then surrounded in a ton of beasts. If I could remember how to do a screen shot, you would see what I mean. So now I am all stressed out, smoking like a chimney trying to calm my nerves. With some luck and Cliff showing back up I made it through. I am really surprised I did not die. So we get through all the hard stuff, so I thought, and Cliff goes "now for the hard part." I am like Sh--!!. Thank god my wife (Markie) was not near as I was cussing up a storm. We choose our colors and go to the room. I get the stones, plus one extra, still not sure why, but I like to have a spare I guess. So Cliff asks me if I got them and I tell him yes, then he takes off. I am getting the "extra" stone, then the spawn hits. Damn, I am surrounded. I was able to find a hole and run for the wall. Cliff comes back and I was engulfed in Olthoi. I was trying to vuln them but I got more resists then I landed. So after a fierce battle we made it out. I had gotten my Mage Armor Upgraded and was really happy. Then came the disappointment. My Life/War needed a 315 base. This meant 10 pts to life and 8 to War. Not a real big deal but I really wanted to at least try the armor on and see how it looked. Not happening. So what did I get out of all this, some good armor, a lot of stress, and my skills back. I think if not for the lag I could have done a little better, at least keep up some. All in all it was a lot of fun. To all my friends in the game. I hope to see you soon. I look forward to hunting with you. Jeff PK Skill Today I read a column by Grumpy Old Gimp. (http://acvault.ign.com/features/columns/gimp/07-29-2003.shtml) He could not be more right on. Forever I have heard how people should be restricted on what they can do when fighting in PK. If they use legitimate tools they are said to have no skill. I have heard people saying that geming is bad because it wastes all the hard work of putting de-buffs on your opponent. Well, that's the idea! I have heard that using inept's are bad because it weakens your opponent. Well, that's the idea! Just why it is bad to weaken your opponent I don't understand. Just why it is bad to erase things that make you weaker I don't understand. I always thought the idea was to win? If you cannot win as a single player then fight with a group. That is not bad, it is smart. Nevertheless you will hear the whines about gang banging all day. I disapprove of some things, such as portal camping. Even this has a legitimate use at times. Balash's trap is a classic example. Balash would go to AB and start the PK's chasing him. Then he would run to the portal to escape. On the other side was a nice group waiting for the victims to port in. What really surprised me was several cheats were admired and considered skill. I agree that there was a twitch factor with some of it but it is still cheating. What really amazed me was the cheaters got angry when some used a gem of stillness to stay alive against the cheats. Cheating is ok but using a legitimate object is not? I'm sure that when the first general trained his troops to hit flanks and fight as a team the other side thought they were cheating. Their idea of war was one on one fighting. Well that is good for sports but for war the object is to kill the other guy before he kills you. In the battle of Stalingrad the Russians avoided the Germans and attacked the Romanians. That led to the envelopment and defeat of a German army. Would the Russians have been more admired if they attacked the Germans head on instead? In the Korean War the Chinese probed the lines until they found South Korean troops. They avoided the US troops but because when the South Koreans broke, the US troops broke as well. This allowed an inferior army in every sense to rout the Eight Army. You could say the Chinese had no skill but they won. (We stabilized the lines in time but only because we could run faster then they could chase.) There was an old detective show where a boxer told the detective he was going to beat him up. The detective said, "I was not a contender, I would have to blow your kneecap off." A gun is not skill to a boxer, but it works. The boxer had skill, but he needed a gun. My favorite line in another movie was when a skilled knife fighter showed the cop how he was going to carve him up. "Just like a stupid (Italian insult) to bring a knife to a gun fight." Skill is good if it will win fights. If not it is useless. Hiding behind a tree is skill. Geming is a skill. Using teammates is skill. Running is skill. Anything that keeps you alive and helps kill others is skill. The rest is sport. Sunstone Gantlets I was in Martine's retreat with Fist de Yuma Jr getting comps when I saw a portal I had not seen before. I remembered someone saying something about a quest for Gantlets. I've been really busy this month and had not studied all the quests so this was one I had yet to do. Someone said Hi to me and we started talking. I asked if I needed to be buffed to enter the Subterranean Farms. I sort of meant to do the quest but I guess he thought I was asking if the landing was safe. He said I would not need buffs so I went in. Well that is what I get for not doing some pre-work for a quest. With no buffs, protections or armor I was lucky that all I ran across was some grubs and a white rat. I killed the rat with my bare hands and retreated to put on my armor and buff. I was still thinking this was a walk over so I did not bane but I use my shield for a little added protection. I buffed my Katar. That would give me piercing and slashing. I figured that would do. There were a few others working their way though so I had it easy. Some Olthoi caught one poor guy at a dead end and I could not clear it before he had to port out. It was too bad because if he could not get past that spot with most of them dead there was no way he was getting through later. I got to the end and still had no idea what I was looking for. I found a bunch of the fake humans Martine uses to use. Some players were fighting them. I joined in and helped them clear. I asked what the object was. Instead of answering all but one ported out. I asked again but the guy did not answer. I was thinking he might not understand English. That is not uncommon for that time of day. A Swordsman in armor appeared and the guy started fighting it. I cleared the fake humans and imperiled and vuln the Swordsman. The guy was still having a lot of trouble taking him down. He asked me to heal him. Humm, guess he understands English after all. I healed him a few times until the human monster died. I then repeated my question. "What is the object here?" Instead of answering he ported out. No thank you, no nothing. Very strange. I waited a bit and they all spawned at once. I quickly found that they could land on my magic d so I cleared the fake humans before facing the Swordsman. He was well armored as I was only doing around 8 to 9 damage a swing. He was not hitting me so I did not bother to imperil and vuln him. After a minute or so he died. I found a head on the body so I figured this was what I needed. I did portal recall to get back to the top. I found someone who wanted the head and he gave me some Sunstone Gantlets. A quick check at Maggie's site showed I needed to find some broken amulets. I knew from experience that there was no more boring hunt than trying to find the amulets. I also saw that I needed to get Drudge Stalkers for Sword. I'm still UA but will be swapping to Sword in 4 levels. (121 now, swapping to sword at 125.) I decided to try hunting around the Mountain shortcut. I knew a few Stalkers spawn there and I also needed Granite Hearts. I ran to the portal and buffed up. I started north but did not find any. A few Granite golems fell but they did not drop a heart. I looped back south and found a few Drudges but they did not drop anything but salvage. I kept going south until I was out of the canyon and headed northwest. I found a North Black Claw Raider with some Stalkers but they did not drop anything. I knew I was too high a level to go into the portal so I ignored it. A while later I cleared another group of North Black Claw Raiders. This time I clicked the portal just of the hell of it. Turbine had made changes so it was worth trying. It worked! Now this was a lot better. There is a lot of Drudge Stalkers there. I spent half hour hunting before one dropped an amulet. I figure it would have been days of hunting if I had to do it the way I was. So I have my Sword Sunstone Gantlets. Now I needed to start Fist's Armorer on the quest. I will later have to do it for Fist and Deadeye. I logged FA and headed to Martine's. That was not hard as he is tied there. I buffed up and headed in. This time there were no others fighting there so I had a harder time getting through. It was not dangerous as they could not damage me much but there were so many it took a long time to clear. The Wasps blocked the way so I could not just run to the end. I finally worked my way to the bottom and quickly dispatched the fake humans and the guy in the armor. He is no push over, it took a few spells and he resisted once. He was even able to damage me a bit. Nevertheless it was easer than with Jr. So now I need a war amulet which the Mosswart Idolator's drop. That will not be hard, as I know a spot where I can hunt them and the Mosswart Soul Trappers. I'll also need a Mosswart of them to drop the Life amulet. I figure I'll get a Life and War for the Mages. I know I'll use the War more often than not but the Life will prove useful. Where I have to do a little research is for the other two. I have no idea where I can find an abundance of Banderling Strikers and Burtish Monouga. I'm sure there are dungeons packed with one of these two somewhere, just a matter of finding it. The next day a member said he had a War Amulet he did not need. He applied it to FA's gantlets so that is done. Coming changes There are a few changes this month. One that affects me will be the ability to create gems that will toss spells on you. Deadeye Fist is not self-buffing yet and it will be some time before he is. This prevents him from doing any quests that takes over an hour. With the gems he can gather a few sets together and do a long quest. It will also make for a fast buff in places that don't give you a long time of safety. I'm not sure if you can make a gem for Creature spells but I know you can for Life. I might un-train Life and take Creature if the gems only work for Life. I hope it is both because Life only will be somewhat limiting. Ken Karl I'm going to step carefully here because Ken Karl is a real person who did what he thought was best for AC. He was loyal to Microsoft and for that some might praise him. I praise loyalty until it crosses over into lap dog status. When loyalty is maintained at the cost of your honor then the loyalty is no longer honorable. I cannot say Ken Karl did this but at least on one case, he came very close. I first heard the name Ken Karl on the CoD boards. He was an active poster and gave us some information. So I was aware of the name but that was really about it. When Ken Karl name came to the forefront was during the Sentential/Advocates scandal. Unlike many I was reading the news and informed as to what was going on in the world. I therefore had more of an inkling as to what was sure to happen. A big group of volunteers decided to sue for their service. Now why a volunteer would think they should be rewarded in some way is beyond me. Of course "volunteer" today seems to have a different definition than when I was a kid. While they had some points suing was not the way to resolve them. A mass quitting would have made the point or at least resolved it for the individuals. All it did was force all on-line organizations to reevaluate their volunteer programs. It was clear to me that AC's volunteer program was doomed the second the case hit the courts. The Sentential/Advocates asked Ken Karl to give them a vision of their future. Ken Karl was in charge of the program. While it was clear that Microsoft was terminating the program Ken Karl lied! I can only assume he was told to keep the volunteers hanging until the new program was in place. Ken Karl had two choices; stay loyal to his employers or be loyal to his volunteers. He of course sided with MS. You could well assume his job was on the line if he did not obey so take that into account as well. So rightly or wrongly Ken Karl took the blame for this scandal. I was not one to blame him, as I would be hard to say what I would do in the same situation. Lie to volunteers or be fired. I doubt anyone can say that they would have done different. If so they have a far higher sense of honor than I do. Where I had my differences with Ken Karl was his obstinate to how to handle cheaters. It is clear that Turbine has been on our side of the issue. Getting rid of the cheaters would make a healthy game. Of course Turbines tactic was to get rid of the cheaters by getting rid of the cheats. As the game started this worked. Other games had a reputation of being hostile to the players. I remember hearing that shooting an arrow out of one window in EQ would get you banned from the game. While this seemed extreme at the time I have now seen they were right. This feeling of hostility was something Turbine wanted to avoid. So they would fix the cheats instead of punishing the cheaters. Like I said this worked for a while. Unfortunately Turbine, and me, underestimated the ingenuity of the cheaters. It quickly became apparent after six months or so that the cheaters were out of control. Still Turbine wanted to do what they could. They had patches programmed in to fix chaining and macros. This is where, rightly or wrongly, Ken Karl got his hated reputation. The word got out that it was Ken Karl that stopped these fixes from being implemented. We have no idea what the behind the scenes problems were but the blame fell on Ken Karl's shoulders. It took forever for macros to be partially banned and it is now clear that the partial band is less than effective, if not useless. The chain fix was never put in. So Turbines plan to fix cheaters by removing cheats was blocked by Microsoft. Ken Karl is our only link to MS so he took the blame. Because of this we now see players getting 700 million xp a day! On Treestats.com the number 50 person on the xp per day list gets 123 million a day! These players are being sold on E-Bay so only strong steps will end it. When there is a profit motive all the gloves will come off. Clearly the system is broken and badly. The War alliance in WE has cheating down to a science. They will even charge for letting people into one of their cheating fellows. This is level of cheating is rapidly moving to the other servers. MT is now second on the cheating list because of one alliance. At one time MT was the least cheating server. The blame falls on Microsoft and as MS representative, Ken Karl. We can only hope that whoever takes over for Ken Karl is aware that a game run by cheaters is not what they want. I'm getting off the subject so it is time to say what I can in support of Ken Karl. He has seemed to want to keep us informed. While that is hard because of all the jerks on the boards he did a fair job of it. I'm not sure of the timing but he gave me credit for putting pincers in the game. He read how I traveled to the end of OHN and was disappointed at no reward for doing so. You have to remember that at the time getting to the end of OHN was an accomplishment. So on a personal note I appreciated that. I took an informal poll on the boards to see how Ken Karl is perceived. With 271 people voting 67% felt Ken Karl hurt the game a lot. 5% felt his hurt it a little. 4% were neutral and 17% felt he helped the game. The rest had no idea who Ken Karl is. (Most polls have only a handful of votes so you can see this was a hot issue.) So the players seemed to have placed a lot of blame on Ken Karl. Without more information we really have no idea if he deservers this. There could well be some boss above him who gives him no leeway. This boss could be setting policy and letting Ken Karl take the blame. All we really know is the problem is MS and the solution must come from MS. Whoever takes over for Ken Karl has a hard job ahead of him or her. It could well be the long-term success or failure of AC could be decided in the next six months. Bob Hope This week Bob Hope died. At age 100 he gave us more years of joy than we could have expected. While mourning our loss I also celebrate his life. When I was a young immature kid I was struck by the thought Bob Hope might die someday. The thought was devastating to me. Just why that thought affected me is lost in the 35 years since but it points out the great affect he had on others. I raise a glass to you Bob, Thanks for the Memories.