Fist de Yuma - December 30, 2003

This and That Now I'm not totally done but I have been exposed enough to Broadband to know I'll never go back. It is not just fast, it is instance. The cable guy showed up on Thursday morning and was done in less than an hour. Other than me going cheap on shipping my router, all is good. I went with the free shipping on the router and in hindsight it would have been worth the 10 bucks to have it here now. I checked the delivery date and it is not due until the 2 of January. The modem plugs into my network card directly to the computer. I was hoping it could be plugged into my 3com box and have all the computer see it but no such luck. I guess that is why you need a Router. What that means is I have to disconnect that computer from the network in order to use the cable modem. To get back on the network I have to physically disconnect the plug and connect the other cable in. That will work until the router arrives. The other computer is connected to the dialup so I can still use two computers with AC. Slow Mo is only used to buff others or transfer items anyway. I'm going to have to create a name for my fast computer. It is water-cooled so its network name is "Watercooled". Not very imaginative I know but I don't need imagination there. I do need a good name to refer to the computer when writing. I guess "Wet and Wild" is out. Slow Mo is a great name so I need a good one for the other as well. If you have a subjection sent it to me. As a side note my e-mail address is changing. I decided not to try and keep my other because of security and spam. The new address is CSD2@adelphia.net We had a lot more people over for Christmas than I though we would. One family, a big one, is still staying with us. Jeff has been over a few times as well. We played Tiger Woods Golf for most of the day yesterday. Jeff put on a tough four round tournament. Of course I demonstrated my superiority with winning by 11 strokes. Jeff finished somewhere around 70th. (grin) He was pissed. He finally beat Super Tiger and has his stats to 105. He is holding even with me now. I have to work at it to beat him. Today our septic system got blocked. There is a bend in the pipe that lets paper get caught. When there is only the two or three of us there is never a problem. When we have a house full of kids who love to stuff paper into a toilet it gets clogged. Of course it always happens on a weekend so we have to spend over a hundred bucks with weekend rates. I guess it is time to go shopping for a good snake. They use a motor driven snake. I have a great fear of getting a normal snake caught somewhere in the septic tank and paying thousands of dollars to get it out. I'm looking at getting some maintenance done on it but worry about the expense. When on a tight budget you have to spend carefully. Owanda The family decided to go to Mexico, which left me with some AC time. (We live close to the border so it is not a long trip.) I loaded up Owanda and started loading Mage to buff him. Before I could get that done I had a load of people asking for tinker work. That comes first so I spend the next hour loading the different mules and doing work. Then things died down and I could get back to Owanda. I have just got a new mace. It was fairly good but after using some stored granite and iron it is great. It is 29 to 37 +11 + 13. While not god like it is one of the best I have seen. I found it really made a different when fighting Muts. This is mostly because of the attack bonus on the new weapon. Where I was hitting about 1 in 3 before I'm now hitting 3 in 4 or better now. Strangely at 89lv I was still the lowest person on the fellow, by 20 levels! I'm guessing the elimination of level caps on some dungeons have caused this but I'm just guessing. At one time I was the lowest player by 31 levels. Looking at some of the stats on players many were closer to 170+ than 126. For once I did not have a hard time getting into the fellow. It was quickly filled and stayed that way for the three hours I hunted. I made 90lv and I'm close to 91. While the xp is not as good as VoD it is about seven times better than the best we got a few years ago. That means we had to hunt 21 hours then to match what you can do in 3 hours now. Modems I've been online for a long time. I started with my first modem in 1981. That modem was a 300 bod attached to my Apple II. I'm not saying it was really slow but I could out type it. The letters would show up on the screen as they were sent. I could quickly be several words ahead of what was showing. A year or so later I upgraded to a 1200. Now that was fast, or at least I thought so at the time. A while later they came up with a way to link two 1200's together for 2400. We are talking 1.2k and 2.4k respectfully. I upgraded to a PC a short while after that. While the Internet was in existence access was very restricted. You had to get a connection through a college to get in. It was also a lot different then than now, very mainframe Unix oriented. Most people were not on the Internet and used bulletin boards. There were a lot of boards in Alameda. When I moved to Yuma bulletin boards were non-existence. Each board had their own phone. You had to dial up each one to connect, one at a time. I had a lot of big phone bills back then. Yuma started to get a few boards, one of which I ran out of my barracks room. They were simple things. You could exchange messages and in a few cases download files. After a while the main thing people did was download files. I laugh when I hear people complaining about slow downloads. I once had a guy send me a 12meg file. It took over 15 hours to complete the transfer. I can do a 12meg file in less than minute today. In the early 90's I got on the Internet. The nice tools and browsers we have today did not exist. Most of the tools we used were old Mainframe clones that required you to be a computer expert to use. I spent a lot of time teaching people how to use the stuff. I finally upgraded to something really fast, a 28k modem vs. my 14k. After a few years the 28k was replaced with a 56k. I have two phone lines so as to not tie up the main line. I'll admit that my real reason was to keep Rosa from disconnecting me by picking up the extension. I noted one day that my speed was lower. I complained to the phone company and got zero help. This went on for two years. I was stuck at 18k at maximum. What they had done was save money by duelplexing my two phone lines to one line. The tech's darn "We only guarantee 12k" was pure crap but I could never get them to move off of it. I finally got a tech over who used the Internet and he fixed my lines. That brought me up to around 32k, which is where I stayed until the cable was installed a few days ago. Thoughts on Lore Most of the time Fist de Yuma is sitting at the mansion. He is not the greatest fighter, being a UA. His magic is ok. He can buff well and his Life magic is getting strong but the bigger stuff would laugh at him. Owanda has a 20th of his xp but hits Olthoi just as hard if not harder. (Owanda's base stats with his mace are higher than Fist's buffed weapon stats.) Fist de Yuma Jr has more power against non-Olthoi, being Sword. Mage can stand up to about anything and Fist's Armorer is getting about as strong. Where Fist excels is survivability. Very high defensive skills are his key attributes. It does not hurt that he has far more overall xp than the rest. In fact you would almost have to combine the xp of the rest to match his. Still most battles take a lot longer to finish with Fist so I tend to use him in support mode more often than not. He is also very good at solo work where keeping alive is a priority over killing stuff. The reason I'm bringing this up is I have just read the lore notes. One of the things the Queen said is she wants to go out and meet the people. Monarchs were mentioned in particular. There is also something said in passing that deserved more information. This was about reorganizing Monarchies. I'm very interested in what she has to say. This means that I'll be playing Fist de Yuma exclusively this month. While we are nowhere near the top of allegiances in rank and numbers we on the same page. If you take active players over just numbers we are very strong. I have hopes they have included me in the monarchs she will talk to. I plan to be working the 80+ Olthoi Armor dungeon, VoD and any place where the action is. If I do get contacted I'll write about it here. I have hopes that I'll be allowed to write about it immediately but if they tell me to wait, I'll wait. In any case there will be a time when I can write about it so, if it happens, you'll read about it. Rumor Control There is a rumor being bandied about. I have no way to confirm or deny this rumor. Given that there is no word from Turbine I would tend to discount it. Still Turbine has hinted at it and did write about a solution to this problem in the past. The rumor is that Turbine will be killing off chains by limiting passup xp. The word I got from one person is xp will be limited to the patron only. In support of the rumor is the lore saying the Queen is going to reorganize Monarchies. The second support was that Turbine had a chain fix in the works that MS told them not to put in. That was years ago so I'm not sure if it means anything. As it is a rumor all I can do is write about the possible effects it would have it true. I'm not sure if I want to see this happen but can see the benefits of it. Of course the number one effect this would have is to kill off chains. Just what that would do to some of the top chain allegiances I cannot say. There will be a beneficial effect to non-chain allegiances but possibility no immediate effect to either. The benefit to the non-chains will be no loss of membership to chains. While this is not a big problem now it was a very big problem a short while ago. We lost RD when the new owner decided he wanted to be in a chain. Casa de Yuma has lost a handful of players to chains but for the most part we have been stable or growing. Many allegiances have thrived without a chain. William the Bat, Mar Hill, Heid and many others are strictly no chain and are very strong. Those allegiances would likely pick up membership from some chains. I don't see a mass exudes from the chain allegiances. Most of them are great without the chain. In fact chain management is the main problem/headache their monarchs face. They will lose some members but it will be more from new monarchies forming than people leaving to other allegiances. For the players who depend on the chains and macros to drive them I would fell no pity. If they leave the game it will not be a big loss. Where the pain will really show is in the creation of mules. I'm sure Turbine wanted the top tinkers were to be real players. I don't think they ever envisioned 200lv mules. I have been using passup to make three mules. I have not made a chain because their driver is me. There are a lot of people who use this method to create tinker mules and killing passup after the patron will slow this process. I say slower because there is still a way to do it. For one it will not affect my first link. Fist's Armorer is sworn to Cliff's Carrier Cook. CCC does Cooking, Alchemy, Item Tinkering, Magic Item Tinkering and Lockpick. Where I lose is Fist's Mule Two and Cliff Bowman. F2 is my weapon mule and CB is my Armorer mule. While it is not an ideal solution I do have a way to fix to this, if the rumor is true. I have Death Mute at 65lv and Owanda at 90lv. As both mules are over 95lv I can give them a vassal who can push them up. This of course will be a lot slower but I'm in no hurry. All three mules have over 530 buffed skills so I'm not hurting. Rather than each of my driver players pushing the mules I'll have to do it one at a time. Of course the chained mules will not go away. I think that is the flaw in Turbines solution, if it is true. While I hate the damage the chains/macros have done to the game that damage is to far along. If this rumor is true you will have a lot of have/have-nots as far as tinker mules are concerned. I limit this to mules because lets face it, you can create a 126 player in two or three months of work if you want to work at it. I'll end this as I started it. This essay could all be for nothing. It is a rumor, based on nothing but a feeling some have. Turbine has not said they will do this! All I did was jot a few lines of thought about what the possible affect might be. Being a Monarch Being a monarch is very rewarding. It can also be a lot of work and take away from your play. Overall I feel the rewards far exceed any problems. There are times when you have to play the diplomat. This is not something I'm really good at. The reason for that is I hate to make anyone angry. I want to please everyone and that is seldom possible. I logged FA on Slow Mo while the fast computer was doing a de-frag. I had just installed Norton Utilities on the fast computer (To be named later.) and wanted to run all the tests to get it in top shape. There was no one at the mansion when I logged in. A short while later Cher'okee logged in. She was extremely angry. There seemed to be a debate over a house her husband was getting. She asked me to go there and see what I could do. I'll make a long story short and leave out the anger and mistakes. A guy decided he did not need his house anymore. He released it. He then thought that Dreven might want the house. He contacted Dreven who rushed to get the items together. Between the delay in getting informed about the house and a slow running mule with the house items others got there before they had the items collected. Cher'okee told them the house was taken but of course they had the right to buy it anyway. That created some anger. A, so called, friend of theirs preceded to make matters far worse by making rude comments. That was when Cher came and got me. By the time I got there things had gotten civil. A few morons were sending insulting tells but the main person doing the talking stopped that. The main person had worked hard getting the house for a female friend who was not there at that point. I saw that it was a misunderstanding and neither party was at fault. So my job was to find a solution that helped everyone. Death Mute had a house in the desert that I felt guilty about owning. With a mansion and the house in the north did I really need to own a third? I was just using it for storage and not really using it for that very much. I offered to exchange my house for the one Dreven wanted. You might ask why I did not just give the house to Dreven. Well this is one of those rare housing complex's with no portal to it. I knew that Cher'okee would want to visit her husband's house from time to time and would need a portal. If I could not work out the trade I would have given the desert house to Dreven. It took about an hour for us to get everything done. I can stop feeling guilty about owning the house. The lady is very happy with the house layout and the few items I left inside of it. Cher'okee and Dreven were happy to have their house. I made two new friends. You cannot get a better solution than that. Guest Writer: Aelryinth of Leafcull I read your article again on Wednesday, and have some advice. There are actually TWO ways across the waters of the Tusker Islands. The first is Ye Olde familiar one, with banners waving, at 0 n/s, run west until you hit that and head across to the high level areas. The second one was discovered by accident mostly (on the first day I was there) and later became popularized as a quick road to the two highest-level tusker dungeons. To reach it is simple...from the Tusker drop, head due south. This is a long, but boring run, and quite safe...all low level stuff. Somewhere in the 7 south area you head out into the water...keep going south until you hit the boundary at 9.2s and can't go south anymore. Now, turn west and run along the boundary. After about 4 clicks you will run into another wall...you are now at a corner. This corner 'meets' a corner from the high level area, and with a bit of 'wiggling' you can pop thru it. You are now less then three clicks, and a straight shot, from the Devastator tusk dungeon. You don't need to go running any beaches and get stuck on the landscape. You might get stuck on all the orange dots on the way, but that's another problem! This point is at 9.2s/92.4e, to be precise. When running tusks, I generally do as you do, run the 80, then 70, then down, etc. Note that while the 300 and 500k tusks may not seem like much but it takes less then ten minutes to do each one in most cases. 300k and some slaughtering xp in ten minutes isn't that bad. The Recall gems make great panic buttons (and gifts to people who don't have the bobo recall scroll yet). Note: The Devastator dungeon is usually camped...until the halfway point. From where you drop in, you go straight ahead, down what turns out to be a central pillar. Then run all the way around the pillar and head back underneath it. At this point over a dozen devastators can gather and what you get is Macros standing here. Mages vulning or imping while behind them archers pick them off. It can be VERY hard to get thru the press...and sitting out in the open with a dozen frustrated Devastators can be lethal. The entry drop is also hot. Unless someone is camping the top area you will probably have to kill 3-5 Devastators to advance. I'd recommend bringing someone along who can chew you a path thru the swarm if need be...I've had too many people who just hit level 100 die in this location because they couldn't make it thru the press before a couple devs turned on them and used them for monkeyshines. For some reason the macroers don't like it when you start jumping on 'their' tuskers either...strange, that. I must be interfering with the 20-40 million an hour xp ratio... This dungeon is also where you pick up the title of Paragon of Death. The tusk is approx 12.5% of your current level's XP to the next level (that's TOTAL xp to next level...not REMAINING xp). ==Aelryinth of Leafcull