Fist de Yuma - December 31, 2002

Most of the time I have the column written by Thursday and spend the rest of the week smoothing it out. Here it is Monday at 9:30 AM and I haven't gotten a single word on paper. (Ok misnomer, computer screen then.) Of course I have good excuses. We had around 30 people over for Christmas. My wife is on vacation. People are coming over to our house nightly. I've been to busy playing to write. Many times when I have problems getting a column going it is because of a lack of material. I do a lot of stuff but it is stuff I have written about all to often and it would not make a good column. This week is just the opposite, I have done too much. For a list of what I have done this week; Gaerlan three times. Present quest three times. Bobo island recall Quest, several Hollow runs, Trophies rest, Brood hunting, four Pincer runs, focus stone and leveling up Fist's Armorer to 31. All this does not include my normal hunts with Mage and some leveling with Jr on Tusker Islands. So you can see it's been a busy week. Gaerlan It started out as a total disaster. During the very start of the Gaerlan quest I got blasted by three golems at once. With only level VI bludgeoning protects and with a level V vuln I had no chance. I was my fault as I know I was low on health but the main golem was at a sliver. Even at half health I have over 100 hit point but three blasts will eat that up kind of fast. I should have broke and healed. I could not get to Eastham fast enough to get the portal so that was shot. Moby Dick told me later that someone talked in the temple and Xan had died. When you have no buffs and, for some of us, no armor, having a sudden spawn of Pyreal/Platinum golems is troublesome. I was willing to go with Moby to recover her body but Xan said she was going to replace the armor she dropped with some new stuff anyway. The next day Moby asked me if I would go with him to try and get her body. I decided that Mage would be a good choice for this. Most of the time I take Fist on this quest. I did not want to do anything that would break the one week cycle so a different player was better. Jr was camping the 70+ Tuskers and I did not want to take him away from there. There were a few people at the essence and enough archers that the door would not be a problem. I like doing this with small groups. Generally there are fewer deaths because we can organize it better. There is nothing like watching Gaerlan wading his way through a pack of mages and archers to put the fear of God into you. Shield walls are a must. With seven people there is no room for fooling around. When you are more worried about staying alive than getting the kill things work better. I have a lot of pictures on this one and the third one I was on. I'll go into more detail on this quest and the ones that followed in the Vault column. That will take a while so please be patent. It will take me a week to write it and who knows how long for the vault to publish it. I think it will be worth the wait. The short story on this was Xan's body was not there and Ironwolfe got the kill. If you remember he was the one with Fist when Fist got the kill. I was happy to see him get it. One of the important things that I'll be pointing out in the vault column is the job of a mage on quests like this. I'll go into more detail in the vault column but it is too important a trick to not pass on now. I have used this before but never thought to publish it. I also found out that a number of people don't know this trick. The main job of a mage, after they have done the de-buffing work, is to keep people alive. Believe me if the fighters start dieing the mage are not far behind. The problem is when you have 5 people fighting you don't know who needs a heal. Open up the fellow panel and you can see the current status of everyone's health, mana and stamina. Because of lag this will not be totally right so you cannot be slow. Have heal hot keyed so you can hit it fast. When the panel shows someone dropping in health click this name on the panel, which will select him/her, and hit the hot key for heal. Don't wait for them to drop to half health or something. I was healing people who had 90% health. There are two reasons for this, morale and lag. Lag is obvious. If the panel is not updating fast because of lag that 90% could well be far lower in real time. Morale in battle is important. If you think you have to run or die, running is smart. By running you could well drag stuff right up to the mages. Running can disrupt the shield wall and get the monster into the mages/archers. Lastly the other fighters get dragged around and the support monsters start getting back shots. If you know there is a mage tossing heals you can stand in longer. I have seen players stand to the point of death because they knew a mage was going to keep them alive. Without that support they run when things get bad. There is a lot of factors in battle. Knowing that you have back up and support will make a world of difference. The next Gaerlan was the complete opposite of the tight nit group I last did it with. Because of this quest and the last one we are picking a new day and time for the Elder runs on Gaerlan. Far too many people are joining us for our normal time and it was becoming a mess. We had it set for midnight because of a run before us. This was a two-hour delay from our set time. Despite the late hour there was a horde of people arriving at the essence as we killed the Elementals. Someone asked how long between quests we had to wait. I said four hours. A PK contradicted me and said three hours. I let this pass but several people decided to believe him over me. One big difference on this run was I was taking Jr rather than Fist. Jr's Melee Defense will never he as good as Fists but his UA skills are rapidly catching up. Fist makes a great amount of xp from vassals and my own hunts but his UA is costing 80 million+ and his stats are in the 60 million range. Jr has a 30 point stat advantage over Fist and with the sliding scale needs far less points for the same UA skill. So Jr is only around 25 points below Fist in UA and could well pass him in the next few months. I was worried about my defense but figured heavy banes would keep me alive. I did luck out in one way. Someone made a portal to Eastham and just to be sure I tied to it. I had just gotten the Tusker island recall spell and did not need the 40+ Tusker any more. We got the starter portal just as my buffs were dropping. Good timing. While buffing the PK who gave wrong information on the quest timer decided to go kill the golem. This almost cost those buffing the quest. The portal to the next part does not last that long. I'm not sure how long but less than it takes me to run from Rwirc to Eastham. If not warned that he had jumped the gun several might have lost out. In the next part the same PK run ahead with another guy. This created a lot of stress among the group who was suspicious of their actions. I was able to talk to him and finally got him to join the team. I'm guessing the guy is young because after getting rained in he behaved well and was an asset to the group. Wouldn't you know I misjudged a rock and got flattened. With the ability to get back fast there was no delay. That was not something we could say about the others. We had a good half hour wait to get everyone who died back to us. No one talked in the temple but I made sure I was buffed and kept my armor on, just in case. Buffing was hell with vit. I'm borderline for VII's as is. Trying to get a full set of VII banes with 301 Item is more than painful. I had some help with the pre-buffs from MS so at least I could pass on that fizzle fest. To my surprise I was one of the first in the room after the library. Despite my hard buffing there were others taking twice my time. I decided to go over and clear my vit. Carefully drawing out a Pyreal Golem got one point clear. I was in fellow so it took a few battles before I was at full power again. As I was killing my way forward I saw trash on the ground. This was bad news. I was thinking someone was jumping the battle, which would really hurt the group. I made my way to Gaerlan. He was standing at the end of his room, full of arrogance as always. I carefully back out and waited for the group. The group ran forward ready for battle. I stopped them and asked them to wait for the mages to finish their de-buffing before the battle started. Of course greed got the better of a few of them and the battle started before we were ready. This is the advantage of small groups. They know they have to work together. Big groups tend to break up into individuals with their own addenda. There was nothing I could do but join it. Not being stupid I did not charge directly into the room. Rather I stopped at the door. Being that the mages were tossing spells at him and people that took damage rushed to the door Gaerlan was sure to come to me. I was hopping at last one other fighter would join me in blocking the passable but it did not happen. I was doing good damage on him. I was surprised at that because I was hitting wrong. I was supposed to hit high, which would so slashing damage. I had forgot this in the excitement and was hitting low. Low hits are far faster than high and I was doing almost as much damage. So I stayed with it. I did called for someone to vuln him for piercing, something that is not normally done. When he lit up with Piercing Vuln I was very happy. I think MS and Moby look for my tells. Of course with all the chaos we had a lot of deaths. The ones who rushed in were the first to die. I had half a mind to finish off Gaerlan before they got back but decided against it. We backed off and William the Bat and I blocked the passage. This pinned Gaerlan until he gave up and headed back to the room. At this point I was thinking I could well get the kill. Almost everyone else hitting him had run early or died. Gaerlan was gaining some respect so people were not going to be rushing him any more. Gaerlan was having trouble hitting me so my worry about melee defense was unwarranted. I think I was hit twice on one triple strike and evaded all his other attempts. I could not say the same about William the Bat. He was taking a lot of damage when we blocked the hall. (I could tell by his screams.) Of course if William the Bat wanted the kill it was his for the taking. No way my UA would going to out kill his Sword. Good balance there. I have better defense, he has better offence. William already had a kill over Gaerlan so he was not swinging. I was not swinging when we pinned him but my damage total was building. Finally everyone got back and we were told to restart the battle. Gaerlan was almost back to full health by this time. I think this also played to my advantage in getting the kill. I took a lot of damage from golems and Gaerlan did a bunch with a ring spell. A timely mage healing kept me in the battle. Because of my effective attack he did not move much after that. A fast striking UA will often pin a monster in place. This is a trick often used with the Queen quest. We hammered at each other but with the arrows and spells flying he did not last long. Finally he fell and I had the kill. As I was one of the lowest leveled ones there at 97lv it was a little surprise. Not to me as I could see the way things were going. I have a feeling that William the Bat saw what was happening as he was at my side through most of it. I'm not sure if it was MS or Moby but one or both of our mages was a big reason I got the kill. Piercing vuln let me hit fast and do nice damage. The timely heal kept me in battle where I would have had to retreat. The reward was well worth it to me. I got the Life wand. This gives me minor Focus and Self and well as 10 points on my Life magic. This means a little more Life than the drum and as much as the Focus stone without the mana drop. It also will let me dump my Minor Life gants and put on some real armor there. Elders will still be doing this quest weekly but not on Saturday night. One or two added people is ok but when you have more add on people than Elders it gets out of control. Present Quest After one of the Gaerlan runs Moby asked me if I would like to do the Present quest. As I was not sure if this one would be around after the next patch I agreed to go. I had heard that the reward was not all that good but having a chance to adventure with Moby and Xan was reward enough. We started in Qbar. From there we headed to Hebian-To and took a portal that got us close to Darby. After talking to an NPC we entered a dungeon of pure fog. This was a feel your way around place for sure. I was told to follow the right hand wall. This had me going into a lot of dead ends but in time I made it to the chest. The next time I was there I used the "[" key to id the chest and took a few short cuts. I was also able to by-pass a few of the dead ends on the next trips. Using portal recall we got back to the start and the exit portal. Without that trick we would have to wonder around the fog more to get out. From there we gathered in Holtburg. I heard there was jumping in this so I sharpened my skills jumping on the buildings. Nothing is better than moving between a great jumper like Fist to a poor jumper like Mage to make you miss jumps. The run to the portal was not bad and that put us on a platform very high in the sky. Having not done this before I let Moby and Xan tell me the best ways to jump. Strangely I made all the jumps while Xan did not. Practice makes perfect. When we got into the extreme dungeon we found a horde of others waiting to head in. This was perfect as I would rather go in a large group on my first run of a place. There was little danger from start to finish with so many people. The line at the end was a pain but the spawns died fast. Right after that we decided to do a lower Present quest. I loaded up Deadeye Fist and we headed out. This time on the jumps my goal was not to just hit but hit dead center. Practice makes perfect. With two mid level archers plus a mage and the hardest golems being rather weak we walked over it. Of course we all had level VII buffs, which not all mid level players can have. A week later I was asked to go on this quest once more. This time I took Fist. Illumini and I were all that was left after the late hour took its toll. We met up with and Xbow man who wanted to get to the end for just hunting. Malavira is someone I have never met but watch this name. He is a good player and balls of steel. Just three players fighting hordes of Vapor/Pyreal/Platinum golems is not for the faint of heart. We made it with a lot of scares. Illumini was at 1 hit point and with no Melee D should have died. We came to his aid just in time and his attacker turned on us instead of finishing Illumini off. After getting the item from the chest me and Illumini were ready to beat feet. Malavira stayed to fight and get loot. Like I said, balls of steel. Rewards were not much for the three runs. I got one set of lights that really look good on my house. MS give me her coal and I got the crystal that also looks great at my house. Fluff stuff but sometimes fluff is fun. Like I said, this was more for adventure than reward. Pincer and Broods The 27th was pincer day. With all I had going on this was hard to do. It seemed like every time I got started someone needed me somewhere else. There are a lot of people off for the holidays. What I do with Pincers for Fist and Mage is fellow with Deadeye. This gives him a little boost. He needs it as I don't have the time to hunt him like I should. Deadeye and Jr are saving up their pincers for when Cliff's Carrier Cook gets to 50. He is 49 with about 2.5 million to go. After he makes 50 I'll let Fist's Armorer do the gambling and use pincers to level CCC. When Jr was running to EVL I noted that there were Broods about. The questions were, can Jr's 353 Life de-buff a Brood and can he fight them, with or without de-buffs. The answer to all the above is yes. De-buffing was not easy and a few resists put me in danger of dieing but I did land. A VI Imperil and Bludgeoning Vuln made short work of a Brood. If I did not land it took a long long time to bring one down but I could do it. I teamed up with Kempick for a while. As Broods tend to attack in hordes and generally bring a bunch of Nobles with them, having someone get your back is helpful. Generally I would draw with an Imperil and then move back enough that most of the horde would retreat in time. Broods did not hit me as long as I had a weapon in hand. Without the bonus, and with whatever the negative bonus for having a magic item in hand, they never missed. So it was de-buff fast or forget it. With them not hitting me I didn't need a shield. My main problem was stamina. It took almost all I had to take an un-de-buffed one down one. I could generally grab my wand and do a revit before the damage built up if there was only one. If more than one it was suck elixirs time. Kempick was surprised I did not use my shield. That is another big advantage to high melee defense. He was sucking far more elixirs than I was. Of course the key to sucking elixirs is to put your shield back on first. You'll take a lot of hits when you take a swig, especially if fighting several Broods. The shield will absorb a lot of that damage. I never saw the global message but the Broods tailed off to nothing after forty-five minutes or so. So it was a quick rebuff and over to EVL. Bugs that have long term effects Ever so often there is a small bug that will have a major effect on the game. There is one this month. The loot system is dropping low value items. The great armor that is dropping is deliberate but the value put on them is not. This seemed like to small a change to be a problem so they are waiting until the next patch to fix it. The end result is armor that can be tinkered to al 400+ that has a value of 3k or less. This means it can be covered with cheap mana stones and other low value DI's. For most of us that is nice but does not have a big effect. For PK it is another matter entirely. I have done a lot of hunting this month for armor. I now have a set of wms two and three stuff I can tinker up 10 times. With a little luck I'll have a full set of al 400+ armor that is virtually no drop. This is one month only but in this month a whole lot of good armor will be found. With such low value there is little chance it will be dropped and lost. It will be with us for a long time. Mages will benefit from this most as melee with deadly hollows were catching up with them. Right now my only problem is getting the 40 or 50 bags of steel I need to tinker up all the good stuff I have. Who would have thought, here it is 12:30 and I have 3k words done. Looks like this will be a long columns after all. Skills Selling/Spec'ing After a lot of thinking and looking for advice I decided on spec'ing Mana Conversion. The options were Healing and moving to BM. BM would be nice but Fist's Armorer will be my pure power mage in time. Everyone loves Healing but I don't see it being that great. To use Healing you really need to drop out of combat mode. This is not as bad as a melee as a mage has no defense to melee attacks anyway. Still the time and keystrokes makes it seem to me that a heal VII spell might be just as good. I find that the point where Heal fails is hit rather quickly. My VII heal never fails. Mage had almost 300 health so he can fall below the healing point very fast. With a 10 coodi start it would take a lot of points to get his heal where it would be halfway useful. BM on the other had would be a major change and a good one. Only draw back is the change from great to mediocre support mage. Being that my War is just about good enough I decided to go the Og+ route. In my first hunt I was really disappointed. I did not seem that my buffing was that much faster. I seemed to need to recover mana at about the same rate. Overall I was not seeing a great difference. Then I got into a battle that changed my mind. I was fighting some Fetal's when a pack of Savages joined in. With Imperil and Slashing Vuln on me from some Virindi I was taking massive damage. A few resists from the Savages had me in big trouble. Admittedly if I had gone the BM route I would not have been resisted and this would not have happened. I'm not sure if healing would have helped much as I was below 100 hit points very fast. With 50 mana left I was on the verge of dieing. Heal, Heal, Blast killed a Savage. From there I was able to recover mana and get back into it. Being able to get in two level VII heals, a VII war and a stamina to mana VII with only 50 mana was unreal. So in normal use the high level of mana conversion is not having a visible effect but when you're low on mana it is a lifesaver. The second change was to Fist. I finally got the points to add Life. With around 300 million points saved up I got it to a base 265. I'll not be de-buffing monsters but the other advantages are there. Better protects will help. Dropping my protection items will make some room. Of course I lost a pack so every little bit helps. The last ability is one I use a lot with Jr. This is getting back stamina after a battle. I was able to use it in the hollow cave to good advantage. Going NPK There were a lot of low-level PK's at the mansion this week. The only big Elders who were PK was William the Bat and Illumini. We go through this from time to time. I think the catalyst was The Arwic Mafia making a raid. Even with low levels we gave better than we got. Of course we used tactics that were not approved of. If you don't want people using a mansion, don't raid near one. When I logged Sunday there was a 30lv that needed to go NPK. I asked if he had Sanctuary, which he did not. We are going to have to make a few Elder runs for that spell soon. I decided to show him Trophies Rest. Getting there from years old memory was not so good. For one I was going east from town and Trophies Rest is west. After checking ACE I had us going in the right direction. At first I was just going to show it to him but then decided to help him through it. It was a good thing as it turns out you need lock pick to get by one point. I'm not sure of there is a key on some body somewhere but lock pick took care of the problem. I got him NPK and safe. I told him to wait another 30 to 40 levels before trying PK again. It would be nice if there was some limit to who can attack whom but until then a world of 80+ average PK's means a 30's level has little chance of survival. Focus stone Some Elders decided to help me out and do a Focus stone run for my new BM/Armorer. We had a few others join in as well. They ran it well with players parked at the switches. This quest is becoming almost easy now. With good leaders and preparation a group of under 30 players can safely make it with little danger. Given the value of the focus stone for Tradespersons and anyone who uses magic, good runs like this are really needed. I was surprised to find that at 30 my player was the highest level there, other than those running it. It was smooth and fast. The only hold up of course was the slow spawn of the undead with the unfinished stone. With me logging to preserve buffs I ended up with a grand total of 20 minutes game time for the quest. It really helped that I could land Imperil on the undead. Value of Melee defense More and more it is becoming obvious that melee defense is the key skill. This was not such a sure thing a short while ago. With buffs and banes even no melee defense players were hanging with the big boys. That is no longer the case. Gaerlan's triple strike is taking out mages and archers left and right. Anyone below an effective 500 melee defense (skill plus weapon bonus) needs to be very careful. Where Jr was having little trouble pinning Gaerlan William the Bat had heal several times. Against the big Tuskers hard hits are all too common. Add in the major de-buffs we get while on the quests and melee defense is looking better and better. Right now my biggest regret with Jr is his 50 quick start. Bobo Our board had a post about the Bobo quest going on Saturday. The time was around 1PM my time. It was being run by another alliance that is allied to ours. Their monarch was running things. I decided that Jr was the only one that needed the quest. Fist and Mage don't go there often because it is more of an xp place. Both of them are 126 so leveling is not their goal. Deadeye could sure use it but he is nowhere near the 80+ requirement. I made it through the 40+ and found a group of Elders by the portal. They added me to the fellow. William the Bat pointed out that I was three levels too low to go. It seemed I was wrong and I needed to be 100lv not 80+. I quickly loaded up Fist and had Jr give him the fire Katar. I then ran the 40+ back to the island and got into the fellow. Someone pointed out to me that I was in the 100+ Tusker group and not the Bobo Quest. Dolt! I let someone I knew hold the fire Katar and switched accounts again. This is not a quick process as I have to log off one account and then back on with the other information. Fortunately I had some island portal gems on me so I did not have to run through the 40+. So we were on our way. I normally run the beach to get to the next island. I find it a lot safer that way. This is one of the quests I'll be putting on the Vault and I have some nice screen shots of why it is better to run the beach. They ran cross-country. Not being stupid I made sure someone was ahead of me. It is a lot better to run in back of the guy taking all the damage than take it yourself. Even then I took some hits from the big tuskers. We had a very big group and I was glad of it. This is one SOB place. I'm very doubtful if can be soloed. Even a small powerful group could find itself overwhelmed. The humans and traps had us de-buffed the entire time. It is bad enough how hard the Tuskers hit without Imperil VII and Bludgeoning Vuln VII on you. My melee defense was working but not well. Several of the Tuskers could hit me and hard. Fortunately with such a big group I was never in trouble. This is also very long. There are several dungeons you have to traverse and they are all mazes. I marvel at those who discovered the route for us. Of course they were some of the most powerful players in the game. Ones that make Fist look weak. I made sure I kept myself at full health at all times. This meant I was healing with as little as 10 damage for you never know when you need every point to stay alive. One thing about Jr is his 10 endurance start and healing. His lower health keeps him from outrunning his healing ability. I can be somewhat sure of success with under 100 health, something Fist can never he sure of. I'll keep this short as the column is running long and I'll be doing more with the Vault column. We got to the end with no deaths! Giving what we were fighting and the length we traveled no deaths was amazing. With me having to down load I did not get much damage on the main monster so I only got a one finger paw. All I really wanted was the recall spell but it would be nice to get some of the other stuff. Maybe next time.