Fist de Yuma - December 3, 2002

Anniversary Three years ago I ordered AC. It arrived just before Thanksgiving. I waited until after everything was over and family gone before breaking off the cover. The day after Thanksgiving I started to play. I started with an Archer/Sword ppl. I knew absolutely nothing about the game so I figured this would be a short-lived ppl, just enough to get the bases down. I hit the boards and got advice over the next week and ended up creating a player called Fist de Yuma. That was 12/01/99. I'm writing this section on 12/01/02. It is amazing the breath and depth that Turbine as put into the game. If you asked then if I would still be playing after all this time I would have thought you crazy. Of course back then we though a 40lv player was God. Things sure have changed. We thought it impossible that anyone would ever get to 126. Here I am with one 126 done and another that will make it in a week. (102 million needed) My two 125+ are on top of my 92lv UA/Life and 65lv Archer. Things sure have changed. Most of the changes in the last few years have been for the better. The game is more fun now than it was. Nevertheless it has also made the game a lot easer. When we started a mage was a nightmare to play. They started a hunt overloaded with comps that only lasted a few hours at most. With short buffing times you were about re-buffing after every battle. Archers ruled the game back then, as they are starting to again. As levels increased Archers hit the cap. They were a hurting class for years but the improvements have put then back on top, especially on the new islands. I expect things will be swinging around in other ways as the game moves on. One of the amazing things about this game is how the good people tend to stay while the bad don't last long. The great names from the first year are mostly still playing. The Shorty Portmans and Stay Puffs are all gone. Of course there are new griffers to replace them but we can take confront in the fact that they too will move on. The game can only get better as the good people keep staying while the bad go away. Removing combat macros will accelerate this as the bad are mostly lazy as well. The improvements to AC are not just in improvements of combat and extended times. The content grows and grows. The new islands are worthy of a sellable add on, not a patch. I'm very grateful that MS allowed them to add so much to the game without costing us anything. I'm thanking MS because they are the ones who shouldered the cost of this last patch. Remember the down times for server upgrades a short while back? Well I'm positive that it was so they could make this expansion. Those expecting AC1 to die should take note here. Yes, lag is bad and I expect a lowering of spawns on the island in the next patch. Nevertheless I have seen far worse lag at the start of this game. People have become spoiled over time. That is not a bad thing. Believe me, this game is a lot more fun than it ever was before. What will the next year bring? Only Turbine knows and they are not saying. Free speech I understand that not everyone that plays AC is a US citizen. Those that aren't may not understand this as you have lived under different rules. Keep that in mind if you're not from the US. We value free speech. It is the first thing demanded by the people when the Constitution came out. That is why it was the first amendment created. (The order was not arbitrary. The first amendments were put in order of importance to the people. Keep that in mind when you read the Second Amendment.) Free speech is easy if you agree with the speaker. It is a little harder if you disagree with what is being said. The founding fathers understood this. To guarantee that all people can speak their mind we must also fight for the rights of those we disagree with. Remember that when you call for someone to stop speaking on a subject. You have the guaranteed right to ignore everything they say. You have no right to stop them from saying it. Combat macros Well it took a while but it is here. In a few days running a combat macro will get you a ban. You would think that people, I cannot call them players, who have a computer run their PPL would shrug their shoulders and adapt. Nooooo. That would not fit their concept of how things work. Instead of planning to actually play their character they are trying to find ways to keep cheating the system. I guess they will have fun wasting the time of +admits until all their accounts are gone. I loved one lamer's thought patterns. He said he wanted a 126 player and banning macros will keep him from getting it. He started the game three months ago and now there is no way for him to meet his goals. Of course if you have never played the game you might think that is true. The fact is that is will be far easer to get to 126 than at any time in the game, unless you cheated. It took me 2.5 years to make 126 with Fist. Mage is about to hit it. I'm guessing mid December now. The reason I'm moving up the time is Monkey Island. Monkey Island is a power-levelers dream come true. Those of us who spent our leveling time in BSD or OHN can only marvel at the mass of xp people are able to grab today. We were lucky to get a million an hour back then, and glad for it. Before BSD and OHN people powered in LOD and BDC. Go there today and you will have it for yourself. Of course the xp for the entire BDC would not make 10 minutes in OHN, let alone BDC. Go visit LOD just for grins. Imagine 20 or more people hunting in it. You will see that even the most crowded places today are almost empty compared to what it was before. When the Ladies Island opened up we saw the advent of Coral Golems. Some of the first 126's on MT got their levels on those. They were lucky to be making three million and hour and they had the western Corals to themselves back then. The first 126 ever did it entirely on Tuskers in BSD. Today he could make four or more times the xp per hour. No, what the macro people are really saying is it will take work to make 126, work they are not willing to do. More on PK There was a lot of hate sent out because of my last column. I get that from the current crop of PK players a lot. Most grabbed column points without taking everything I wrote as a whole. Sort like liberal hate speech. I'm writing this because I care about the game. I'm having fun after three years of play and there is nothing other than chess that I can say that about. There is a lot about PK that would increase that fun if only Turbine would allow it. I did not make myself clear last week about buffing the Deadly Hollow weapons. If you read it clearly I was calling for the same damage or at most a slight increase. That increase would be balanced with the 2.0 cap on banes being removed and the better armor available if looting is dropped. I would like to see something like the Crop. It has a set damage that is matched with a level VII buff. So buffing it with BD VII gains you nothing. This would allow attack and defense buffs without changing the damage. For some reason everyone focused on Blood Drinker and ignored the real points. Dropping the looting would make PK better all around. In addiction to Melee's gaining the use of their better weapons Mages would gain with the use of better armor. Overall I'm looking for two things, balance and fun. What is hurting that balance is looting. What is preventing the majority of players from participating in the fun is looting. Many pointed out that they use Armor Rendering weapons and not the Deadly Hollow. Well that is fine for those who have them. I have broken 19 weapons in a row trying to make one. I have had success but it is always with someone else's weapon. Even if I had an AR weapon I could not use it. Melee's have to cut the droppable items or risk losing something that takes months of work to acquire. Some are given stuff and never learn the value. They are the first to point fingers and laugh at those who don't have what they have. The real answer of course is to change death. If I were in charge, which is unlikely, I would do away with bodies completely. I would do that with reluctance as some of my best adventures were started with body recoveries. I would then increase Vit, double sounds nice. I would double the amount of xp needed to clear vit. Add that to removing the cap on vit and you have deaths that are costly to repair but remove the possible permanent nature. At the start of the game vit clearing was a nightmare. We did not have overpowering items or buffs. I remember spending an hour with a mage who had vitead himself up. We fellowed so I could kill and clear his vit. Like I said it took an hour to clear it to the point where he could function. So the cost of death was right on years ago. The problem today is items and buffing along with high xp value monsters has outstripped the cost of death. This leads people into thinking that death would be made even less significant with item dropping gone. There is another advantage to removing drops. It would allow Turbine to make some nasty and outright unfair dungeons. At this time a place like that could be mostly empty. Who would want to risk it? With only vit, costly but repairable, many would take the chance, if the reward was worth it. From what I have read AC2 makes death costly without dropping items. I hope that the AC1 developers are seeing that and make the same type of changes here. That would fix PK at the same time. I'm not rich. I don't run a money macro 24/7 to build up cash. What I have I earn. When I died as a PK I was dropping 150k in items. I could not afford to do that very often. Yes, it was fun, but not enough fun for the cost. I cannot count the numbers of players who said they had a great time with PK during the dead time. Some said it was the best time they have ever had in AC. Nevertheless after the dead time they did not try to repeat that fun. They understood that the current PK scene is frustrating and anger filled. They would not be repeating the fun, they would be distracting from the fun they currently enjoy. Until Turbine understands that, these players will only have a memory of that day. They will dream of a time when they can go have fun again, if only. Power leveling day After many tries I shocked myself and got some Sunstone to work with a Fire UA I have. It is a good weapon but if I had it to do over I would not have infused this one. It has a workmanship of 6. That will make it very hard to improve. Now I wanted to go test it. My other infused fire weapon is a CS I made last month. I had used it while fighting on the beach a week ago. I wanted to see how much better the AR was. The CS weapon is tinkered up a bit so this might not be a good comparison. Also it was a week ago and my memory is not so good that I could compare from memory. Unfortunately I did not think of that as I buffed up and headed out with Fist de Yuma Jr. I should have taken both weapons with me so I could test them. Next time I go I'll do that but it will be a bit. It was insane xp but I'll want to go out and have fun before I do it again. I started out by checking Maggies site for a dungeon that had a Tusk drop. When I go again I'll pick a different one. I found one to the southwest that was reported to have Silver and Plated Tuskers in it. Getting through the 40+ Tusker dungeon was easy but took a little time. I learn my lesson the other day with Deadeye. I clear before moving. That did not stop others from dragging down a horde of Tuskers and Worshippers on me from my rear every time I stopped. From the town I headed west to the waters edge. I then followed the beach. I ran across to the next island. I found the portal near where Mage had died twice. There were a lot of players there. I was able to get to the end and pick up a Tusk quickly. I saw some Elder and asked if I could get into their fellow. There was a line and I had to wait. I was bit a short time later with overconfidence. I had been depending on my melee defense to keep from being hit. Against Plated Tuskers I was finding my damage very low. I was hitting from a low of 7 to a crit of 49. On top of that I was missing a lot. The answer to this problem is to toss Imperil before attacking. I had just ran into a trap. It only dispels up to level VI spells and I had VII's on. It did add a Bludgeoning Vuln. I'm not sure of the level of spell but I suspect VII as a second trap did not dispel it. As three Plated Tuskers came up to me I pulled out my Orb and tried to imperil. With a Life skill of 448 I did not expect that much trouble. Well Plated are not your fathers tusker. I had several resists. On top of that the orb lowered my melee enough that they were hitting. Add in the vuln and the fact that I did not bane my GSA and it was over in seconds. Dieing is a pain with Jr. Of course that was only his 10th death. At 90 that is saying something. I figured buffing with VII's was out of the question so I set up a bar to buff with VI's. I figured I would rebuff after clearing vit. The run through the 40+T was easy, everything was dead. A few kills on the way to the beach cleared the vit I had. At the beach I rebuff with VII's and headed back. This time I was fully banned. I asked the fellow Key what my number was. It had been an hour so I thought I might get right into the fellow. I was number five on the list! This was a really hard fellow to get into. Even alone I was racking up the xp. I got into a room and fought Tusker after Tusker non-stop. I could not keep it clear by myself. I was glad I had 90 Stamina Elixirs with me. I decided to conserve the elixirs by pulling my wand and using my life skills to get my stamina back. Now that I had banned my armor and underwear I was not taking big hits. I also kept out of the traps. This worked well for a while. I still had to be fast because, while I had lower damage, the damage would add up fast. I pulled my wand and clicked the spell. For some reason the bar shifted as I was moving to magic mode. Sometimes when moving to magic mode the scroll bar will not set exactly. When that happens it will wait a moment and then fix itself. So instead of tossing that spell I tossed the one next to it, Portal Recall. Well at least I was at the 40+T and fully buffed. I ran back. As I got there I found I was the next person up for the fellow. A short time later I was in. I quickly moved my portal spells to the end of my spell bar to keep that from happening again. While fighting Tuskers for hours on end is boring at least we had an intelligent group. We were talking, laughing and having a good time while we killed Tuskers as an afterthought. I ended up in the last room with two ladies. One was an archer and the other a swordswoman. It was fun keeping it clear. The only hard part was buffing. Even with an hour on our buffs it seemed like we were always trying to work in a buff for one of us. With only two players it was hard to keep everything clear. This was especially true when the Archer was buffing. The Archer was a good tank template, perfect for this type of play. The swordswoman was a hybrid template. Spec Sword, Creature and something else. She did not have melee defense. Fighting beside her was strange. Every Tusker rang a bell when they hit her and ever so often she would give out a good grunt. I did not have decal running so I could not get the exact numbers. I do know it was the best I had ever done at an xp-per-hour rate. One person said we were hitting between 11 and 12 million and hour. I can believe that. I was 10 million short of 91 when I hit this place. I leveled in the first hour of being in the fellow. I needed 48 million to level to 92. I did not expect to level again but I was gaining a few points to skills so I stayed. The first thing I started adding to was my UA skills. Three points put me to 424 and cut down on my missed swings. I started working on my magic. I got my Life up to 352 but that was still not enough to land on Plated Tuskers with any consistency. Before I knew it I was only 14 million from leveling again. I figured one and part of another buff and I would do it. I was tired, it was 2am, but I figured I could hold on and get the level. By this time I'm using the keyboard more than the mouse. My hand was a little tied and it is easy to just use the keyboard. The other two were in battle so I decided to pull my Orb and imperil the Tuskers. Sometimes I lucked out and landed but it was about a 1 in 3 thing. Imperil V is at the very start of my bar. I had it selected already so I just needed to hit "End" to fire off the spell. Being tried I missed the key and hit "Delete". Realizing my error I move my finger and hit "End". Well what "Delete" does is move to the previous spells. As I was already at the start of the bar it move all the way around to the last spell on my bar. Remember a few paragraphs back where I moved my Lifestone recall spell? You got it in one. Off I went. Being tired and only having 2 minutes left on the buff I called it a night. It was fun because of the great people I met. I'll be doing this again but in a different Tusker dungeon. Maybe next week. Postscript I took Mage to get the Tusk at the same place that Jr was at this morning. Imagine my surprise when I found that 411 Life did not land much better than Jr's 352. Every battle was a nightmare of biblical proportions. No drain ability only made it that much worse. It did not help that when I didn't resist the first trap. I did not kill to many of them but I got the Tusk. Now I have a good reason to get Deadeye to 70. That place would be more than ideal for him, but sure sucks as a mage. Tusks and lot of fun I had gone out and got a Tusk with Deadeye. It was a blast taking down Silver tuskers for a few hours. Deadeye is still tied to Mage for buffs. That is more than painful as I'm use to spending hours on end when hunting. It will be fixed in 10 levels when I get Life but for now he is very limited. I was lucky to meet Fist's vassal Illumini there. He gave me a set of buffs to keep me going. Of course I ran out of shafts. Someone there gave me some arrows so I could run out the buff. Later a guy who died returned with some shafts for me. I had three dungeons on my list to get Tusks from; Tusker Pits, Tusker Armory and Tusker Holdings. After restocking I headed out to Tusker Armory. This one was far different from Tusker Pits. More a natural carving whereas Tusker Pits was more a square man made structure. I got lucky and found the Tusk right off. I got into a fellow for about half an hour and had a good time. It was crowded but they were good people. Later that night I logged on to get the last Tusk on my list. I saw Kared Tung-Po. He is a long time friend. We met in the first year of AC. He does not play a lot so I'm always catching him up on new stuff. I told him I was going to the new island and asked of he wanted to go. He did a few buffs and I added some VII Creature and Life spells with mage. The fight through 40+T was easy. After hitting island we headed to the beach and followed it. I had never been to this particular dungeon so I was playing it by ear. It was not easy to do while evading hordes of monsters and making sure I did not lose Po. We stopped near where it had to be and cleared out the stuff chasing us. I then circled a bit until I found it. I had lost Po while circling but he must have had me selected. Seconds after I stopped he ran through the trees. We ran into the portal with a hundred Tuskers on our tail. This was another change. Turbine sure did a lot of work with this. I bet they worked on this for six months or more. This had large walls and wide hallways. In the center of a square hall was a carved rock passage. The only Tuskers we saw were Rampagers. When I say Tusker that is the type I mean. We asked how to get to the Tusk and were told to go southwest and find a pit. Moving through the carved rock formation we hit another square hall. We found a pit but it was filled with lava. I had a feeling that the lava was fake as it had a glassy look. I was not so sure of my convictions that I would jump in. Another player came along and said the lava was indeed fake and we could safely jump down. What he did not say was to be careful to hit the center as there was a drop off on both sides. We ended up below a bridge with no apparent way out. I tested my jump but it was nowhere near enough. I decided the only way out was to do a Tusker jump. Jumping on top of a Tusker is not easy. The problem is any shift jump good enough to get above them also shot you past them. Backing up was not going to work as the Tusker would advance as you did. I finally got the right amount of jump to get on top of the Tusker. Five of them were blocking my way to the bridge so I had to shoot them down before I had a path to jump to. Meanwhile Po found a hidden passage and beat me up. The guy we met said to move south. That got us to another lava pit and a lot of Tuskers. Most of the battles we had were against 10 or more. The wide halls gave them a lot of room so you have to fight a bunch of them at a time. Where we felt the Tusk was we found a Macro. He was on one of the heads shooting at anything that came in range. We ignored it. We checked all the bodies and no tusk. We moved around a bit and found a guy who said he thought the Tusk was by the lava pit but was not sure. We went back and had another battle. During the battle three Tuskers fell into the fake lava pit. I killed two of them and left the last for the macro. Of course the macro could not hit it but he kept trying. We battled the rest while the macro kept tossing spells at the floor. It did not help us any as there was no Tusk. We were both out of buffs and could just barely stay live with them. We left without a Tusk but it was a great adventure nevertheless. It was one of the few times I got to adventure with Kared Tung-Po this year. I hope that he can find time to play more now. With luck Sid will also return. Po is Sidhartha real life friend. Elder Tusk party I logged this afternoon while writing the column. I needed to get the proper spelling of Kared Tung-Po name. My vassals love to make names I cannot spell. I have few Tracye's and a lot of Illumini's. (grin) MS was there along with a few others. They were headed off to get some Tusks. They said Elder was coming. That made it so I had to go. I had Jr's account loaded and I never power level Fist. Mage gets his head handed to him there so I picked Jr to go with them. I thought we were headed to the 70+ one. I was behind them as they had started buffing before I did. I told them I would meet them there. I hit the 70+ and no Elders were there. I had to run to the bottom to get out. The 90+ was not far from the 70+. I got there in about 45 seconds. This one is nasty. It was full of Assailer. The problem with Assailer's is they can hit me. They are harder to take down than a Plated but not that much. With the Tusker traps keeping Bludgeoning VII on me getting hit hurt. We were never in trouble. Tazza was shooting them up. Elder was using his crossbow instead of UA. It took a bit for MS to land on one but when she did they died fast. There were others there and not that many Tuskers. After we got the Tusk I subjected we go to the 70+. Some needed the Tusk from there and there are a lot more Tuskers to kill. The problem there was a large amount of people. After our buffs ran out most of the Elders left. In the end there was only MS and me. We joined one of the fellows and had a good time killing Tuskers. I still needed to get back to the column so I left after a few buffs. Jr is logged there so I can get back to working him soon. After getting hit that hard I think it is time to work on Melee defense for a while. I need to find the 80+ now and see what it is like. Of course instead of getting the information I needed for the column I got a bunch more to write about. With my limit of 3000 words I'm at close to 6000. Names One guy I met in the 70+ was someone I had reported for a bad name a while back. After talking with him a bit I said, "You seem like a nice guy, why did you take a chance with that name?" His name is Mr Jack Alot. I figured the name was ok with MS as he was still there. He said he did have a talk with MS over the name. His real life name is very close to that, a few added letters on the Alot. That was why he got saved from being deleted. He was surprised when I told him how people had been deleted because of bad names. One of the first UA's to make 80 was deleted when the first round of cleaning up started. That was over a year ago, about when the Ladies Island opened up. I'm glad he was not deleted as I found him to be a great guy. His name is an error but and honest one. I'm guessing that the MS official felt the same way. Nevertheless the next official may not think so and he is still at risk. I wish MS/Turbine could just rename the people who have bad names rather than delete them.