Fist de Yuma - December 9,2003

This and That I was really stroked about this year's football season. I felt it would be exciting and was looking forward to seeing a lot of good games. What I did not count on was hick TV. Whereas Yuma has a diverse population from many places and backgrounds the TV stations seem to think we are all fixated on the local towns. If you can call two towns around 200 miles away local. Now that would not be all that bad if we were not between San Diego and Phoenix, two of the worst teams in the NFL. Every week they would skip the best games to show these two pathetic losers. It is enough to make a football fan cry. I finished up with the second installment of Sea Stories last night. It is going through an editing process and will be sent out this week. How to get Sea Stories is printed at the bottom of the column. I put Rosa on a plane this morning. She has a business meeting back east. I'll be batching it until Thursday. I guess that means I'll be on more often but I might use the added time to play Morrowind. I just installed Morrowind on my new computer. I was playing it on the computer that died and looking forward to playing it again. I have to say that getting graphics like that in AC would rock. Seeing raindrops on the river is amazing. I've been an Elder Scrolls fan from the first game, long before AC came into view. I'm trying something new with the column this week. I'm writing up my adventure as soon as I finish it. There are a lot of quests where I fail on the first try. Sometimes I make assumptions that are totally wrong. A second or at times third try gives me more information. If I write my story days later I tend to leave out the errors. What I'm doing is writing up the adventure, bad assumptions and all. I will not going back to edit it to make me look better. This will give the reader an idea on my thought process as I go through the quests. I may not be anywhere close to where I think I am but I'm leaving my assumption in there. I think it will make for a good read and a lot of fun. Of course there is the risk of looking like a fool but that is a risk I can take. We all look like a fool at one time or another. Return to North ML I was talking to Cher'okee at the mansion Tuesday morning. She had been hunting around North ML and having some fun. That put a thought into me to head to North ML when I had a chance. I was getting Fist's Armorer a lock pick sell back gem that afternoon. It only takes a few minutes to do that so I had a lot of time left on my buff. I decided to head out to NML and see what if anything had changed. I would not say that NML had changed much but I had changed a lot. Tinkered armor and infused wands make a big difference. The first thing I ran into was a large pack of Savages. Now in time past more than three Savages were big trouble, might even have had to run. Today I could face six of them with little trouble. Two hitting with a Bludgeoning wand rather than three spells (vuln blast, blast) helped a lot. About the only drawback to hunting today is having to swap wands. That is mostly a non-issue but some battles make that a real pain. I got so I would fall back to the old way for battles with different types of monsters. The last battle was a good example. I had just finished off a few Vapor Golems and Virindi and was looting. I had my fire wand out, as the Virindi were the last I had killed. While looting my kills three spawns became active at the same time. I was in the center of them. First I was attacked by Vapor golems. I swapped to my cold wand for that. Two of the spawns were golems but I did see there was a second spawn of Vapor golems. Vapor golems are hard to see. It is easy to be fighting far more golems than you think you are. I killed two golems and swapped to my fire wand to finish off the Virindi. The second I swapped I discovered I was still being attacked by Vapors. I quickly swapped back to my cold wand. Vapors can land on me while Virindi have a much harder time doing so. I was also being attacked my one of the Big Turkeys. Fortunately I could use my cold wand on that as well. It got tight and I was under 100 hit points twice but I finally finished off the three spawns. While there were no keepers the salvage from the battles filled my pack. I headed back to the mansion and let the tinker mule do its thing. The goal at NML is Shards and Sings. The drop on either is not really great and the xp is far lower than other places. Nevertheless it is a good change of pace from OP and the salvage is good. I even found some granite on the Turkey. Template generations I had an essay on the viability of going back to second-generation templates. The reason for this was the increment value when spec'ing skills over training them. You can increment a trained skill 208 points and 226 for a spec'd skill for a rather small 18 point difference. What killed the essay was a change Turbine made a while back. They added 10 points to a spec'd skill. The increment difference of 18 is added to that making a total of 28. Whereas 18 is too small 28 is about what we expect. So the essay was based on a false premise and I had to delete most of it. What I kept in was a part that long time readers have read before. I'll keep it in because there are many readers who never read my history of templates. So if this part seems to start abruptly and end the same, it is because it was part of something that got deleted. For those who have not been around for template arguments I'll go over the process. When we started playing we had no idea what effect spec'ing and training skills would have. We took Turbine at its word and spec'd as many skills as possible. It quickly became apparent that spec'ing skills was a total waste of points. At the time there was only a ten-point difference between a spec'ed skill and a trained skill. This was when second generation templates came to be. Second generation templates had few if any spec'd skills. We also started to go with max stats. The first generation templates had spread out the points more. The most one might go was 90. The reason for this was ignorance and misinformation. Turbine said it was important to have high endurance with a melee and not as important for a mage. In fact it is just the opposite. Mages had the problem of needing high strength to carry the comps. So you saw many templates with less than optimal stats. Melee started to lower the endurance during the second generation. Typical was 30 endurance while 50 or even 70 was more the norm in first generation templates. While hard to start with no bots, no buffs and weak armor, it was worth it after you got over the hump. Turbine quickly moved to fix the specializing problem. First they moved the curve to make a spec'd skill worth 20+ more points. A while later they moved all spec'd skills up another 10 points. It took around a year but soon everyone had moved to third generation templates. Ogs and BMs came into vogue, melees moved to 10 endurance and everyone was maxing their main stats and spec'ing skills as much as possible. About the only problem I see in templates today is a sameness to them, especially among mages. That is why I added an essay about a different mage template someone is trying. Dark Essence Part I I had read that the Dark Essence bracelet had the level restriction removed. The item is a must get so I was excited to be healthy enough to give it a try. It was just too hard to get up the energy while I was sick. I figured Fist would be the best to go for it. He is the only one with a Caul recall spell. I expected a lot of Melee and War attacks and he has the best defense for both. I go into combat with 357 magic defense, 471 melee defense and 316 health. My only worry would be a mage only monster but I did not figure to find one of those. This was my first recall using the spell. I found I was not at the normal entrance. It was on the center mountain. It is a much better spot. From where I landed I could take a short cut to almost any place. I headed southwest and jumped down to where I thought I was closest. A short run later I was at Aerabx's Holding. If you know the route it only takes a minute or so to get there if you have the recall spell. The first few rooms had Virindi, Shadows and Tuskers in them. I cleared all but one Virindi. That Virindi was being troublesome. Fire was hitting for 5 points a swing. I swapped to every element I had without graining any better damage. I pulled my wand and imperiled and vuln it for fire. It did not help much. (I have added a lot to my Life skills this month and have it up to 290 base.) Finally I had to abandon the battle as its healing rate and drains made him almost un-killable for me. I finally did kill one but I had to use Life Bold to do it. I'm starting to find that spell useful so I might put a few hundred million points into health. I finally decided running was my best choice. The dungeon changed from the Virindi red to a grayest purple. I found a ramp down and then up. I got into a room with a lot of Virindi and Shadows in it. The body on the floor did not help my moral any. I could not find an exit from the room. I was having a lot of trouble staying alive. I felt I was one missed heal from dieing. In hindsight I should have just stood in peace mode and healed until they ran out of mana. I could have cleared a path at that point and continued. There were two of the really hard Virindi and some high level Shadows in the mob attacking me. That, added to the other Virindi, made me feel I needed to regroup. I did a quick heal and hit a recall gem. It was likely that I was at the end and only needed to grab the item from somewhere in the room. I never had the time to look for it. I think I need to take one more person with me. It will spread out the war spells if nothing else. I'm going to take one more shot at it solo but if that fails I'll be looking for help. (Of course I was wrong about being at the end but I'm keeping it in to give you and idea of my thought process.) Dark Essence Part II My intent on the second try was to just go there and log. When I got to the dungeon I decided to give another shot. The reason for this was I noted I had Yield VI on me when I hit the part I got trapped in. If I could avoid that spell or gem it when it landed things would not be so bad. With seven players doing Pincers I have a lot of gems. This time I did not fight anything at all. It was a pure run. One Tusker blocked my way and forced me to kill him but that was it. Between lag and the maze I did not know where I was most of the time. I finally found the color change part again. There was some fog in there. Between that, lag and so many monsters I got turned around many times. I would find myself heading back into the red section and have to reverse direction. I made it to where I was trapped before and discovered a passage I had missed. There was a body in the center of the hall. That body was fortuitous as it gave me a marker to turn around at. I would run around, get lost and find myself running past the body. That told me to turn around. I finally came to an exit portal. I figured the reward had to be close to the portal. A little searching got me to a room with an alter in it. Clicking on the alter got me the bracelet. I ran back to the portal to exit. I was out of tusker island recall gems so that was the safest way to escape. Fist's Armorer gets set I figured my next to push for the bracelet would be Fist's Armorer. He did not have a Caul tie so I had to run there. I found out later that our buff bot has a Caul tie. I spent a buff and a fraction hunting my way to the center of the Plains. When I got inside I killed off the Tuskers and Virindi for a clear shot at the Caul portal. Oops, FA is not flagged for it. I had forgotten about that. Now I needed to backtrack and kill the Guardian. I had forgot that there was Hollows there. When I was there last it was camped so you seldom saw a Hollow. These days there is no one there so you face two Hollows just before the pit. Fortunately I have heavily tinkered armor. Still it was a hard battle. I was quite surprised to find a sing on each body. I jumped into the pit and wandered my way around the maze. Other than the Hollows there was nothing that could hurt FA there so it was easy if frustrating. I finally found the Guardian and got flagged. I spent some time trying to find my way out but kept ending up back at the Guardian. I finally had to do a portal recall to get back to the start. I got to the Caul island and logged. FA might be able to solo this but I think I'll wait for some family members to do it with. Rapid-fire quests One big change with my health is the ability to start playing at the pace I use to play. It was getting so anything over an hour had me nodding off. Now that I get a good deep sleep I'm alert and filled with energy. I got back on my bike after a few months layoff and can ride longer with less effort. Life is good. I started out Saturday with the idea of catching up on a few quests. I needed to do the Tusk quests with Deadeye for one. I'm saving up the big Tusks for when I hit 105. I get Creature then and want to jump to self-buffing. That will take a lot of points. By saving tusks until later I'll get more xp for them and have it when I need it. Well best laid plains and all that. Dreadful Kingii was at the mansion and was asking where he could get Red Garnet. I'm also looking for Red Garnet as my fire weapon on Fist is below the standard I have set for weapons. It has just been bad luck as I have found good fire weapons but they all failed the Imbruing. I have had good luck finding Red Garnet in the Grotto. I told Kingii that and he asked where the Grotto was. I told him it was were you got the 500k Pincer. That did not ring a bell so I told him it was east of EVL and the 3meg pincer. As it turns out he had never done pincers and had no idea what I was talking about. I decided to show him the Grotto and also get him his pincers. I logged Owanda. Owanda is my hardest hitting Olthoi hunter. Even with Fists very high stats the weak UA weapons lowers his damage enough that Owanda hits Olthoi harder. Fist de Yuma Jr is sword and has great weapons but the lack of a bludgeoning sword negates that advantage. Until Turbine changes its mind about a bludgeoning Sword or gives UA better weapons Owanda will be my king Olthoi killer. Despite his 10/10 Focus/Self start I plan to make him self-buffing in time. Sean was also there. I had just tinkered a few weapons for him. He asked if he could go. He is working at a RL job that takes him away from home for a long time. Sean had just got back and was looking forward to adventure and getting his pincers. On the way to EVL we ran across the Tommy with the bow parts. While that quest is no longer something people do they are worth killing if only for the Awakener and keys. Owanda was smacking them around like they were 98lb weaklings. Even with the wrong weapon it was no contest. I grabbed a key and will see if they have improved the Tommy chest since I last looted it. We sweep through EVL like a husband through Mervyns, as fast as possible with no sightseeing. Owanda was one hitting the EV every so often but most attacks took two hits. They got their pincers and we headed off to the Grotto. I had noted that Kingii was lagging a little bit. This started to become more pronounced as were leaving EVL. We were having trouble not losing him during the run to the Grotto. We quickly got to the last ramp before the Pincer room. I thought Sean had run by me as I was killing a Leg. When I killed it I saw Sean fighting another one. We could not see Kingii. We started to back track when we got Dreadful Kingii's death message, then his logging off message. I was mystified as there was not anything around to kill him even if he did lag out, we had killed it all. I started running back to the start looking for Kingii's body while Sean ran to the Pincer room. Sean sent me a message saying he found the body in a corner of the Pincer room. It seems when I saw Sean run by me it was really Kingii. I told Sean to go turn in his pincers while I waited for Kingii. After 20 minutes my buffs were dropping and had to leave. Kingii showed up a few hours later. He told me he did not have any trouble recovering and would hunt the Grotto for Red Garnet for a while. I was thinking of taking a break for a while when Yodha logged on. He had just made 66 and wanted to do the Caul flag quest. I had just done it the night before so I had it down. I loaded Mage to buff Owanda. I figured he would get flagged as well. Dreadful Kingii had just returned from his hunt and asked if he could go. We all finished buffing and I asked the buff bot for a ride. Yodha did not show when we mineralized in Caul. Dreadful Kingii and I cleared the Tuskers and Virindi while waiting. Yodha got back saying he had kicked the power cord on his computer. Lol. We got together and headed off to the pit. The Hollows give me a little trouble. I have an average Fire mace but no Cold mace. I guess I was lucky to have the Fire mace. So it took a few hits before the Hollow fell. Sadly no sings. With me knowing the route from the night before we got to the Guardian quickly. I got the first kill. I asked Kingii to let Yodha have the second kill as he as starting to lag out. The spawn rate is kind of slow so it took 10 to 15 minutes for us to get it done. I'm not sure how much Caul hunting Owanda will be doing but he needs the Dark Ess ring. It was worth getting flagged for that if nothing else. Later that night I logged on around 11pm that night just to check a few things out. Cher and some others were headed out to North ML to hunt sings. I was about to log and go to bed when Cher asked me if I had time to take Mirax Terrick to get her mage armor infused. I knew that it would be hours before I was tired enough to sleep anyway so I agreed. One thing about sleeping so well, I do not need as much sleep as before. Before my sleep disorder was fixed I could sleep all the time. If course it was not a very good sleep so I was always tired. Now I have the opposite problem. It is hard for me to go to sleep. Mirax started from Teth while I stared my run from the North Dires portal. My path was a little faster so I got there first. I decided to go in and clear while waiting for Mirax. As I exited the portal I was being attacked by a golem. This is where playing two types of players can get you in trouble. I have a program that lets me assign spells to monsters. If I want to use bludgeoning on a monster I assign bludgeoning to it. This allows me to use one hot key for my spells. I use the V key for a normal war spells. I use the F key to vuln and the C key to toss an Arch. There are others such as I for Imperil and S for ring spells. This makes for a lot less mouse work and faster more efficient fighting. Of course we all use the Delete key when fighting as a melee. This is a Turbine hot key for hitting low. Unfortunately it is also a mage hot key for last spell used. I had been using Owanda all day so instead of hitting V I hit the delete key. Bang I'm back on the Ladies Island. The recall spell was the last spell I had used. I told Mirax what happened. She had a good laugh and I started to run back. Fortunately it only takes about five minutes to make the run. The dungeon itself was easy for me. Using a hot key to swap wands I could two spell everything I fought. We cleared the upper section and then the ramp. I knew from experience that you have to clear that ramp if you want to get to the switched door in time. We got it all clear and I jumped to the switches and hit them. I'm not sure which switch opens what door so I always hit them both. We ran to the door. The only trouble was Mirax was lagging a touch. After clearing out the Shadows and Bandies I had Mirax go down the stairs. She hit the switch to open the door for me. I ran back to the start and opened her door. I had hopes of running back and joining her but the Golems had re-spawned and slowed me down too much. This is where I found that Mirax Terrick knows the dungeon better than I do. She found a switch to open the door from her side. I did not even know there was a door switch on that side of the door. It took us a little while to get her armor done. That second stone fails a lot which means you have to wait for two more stone to spawn before trying again. We finally got the harder infusion by me hitting her with brilliance. Another problem was the Shadows tossing debuff on her. I moved out of their range so they would settle down. From there we fought our way to a room and got an orb. It is the one that shows a map of AC. I did not even know this dungeon was where you got the orb. Amazing what you can miss. Testing a template Prozak is testing a template that has promise. The template is 10, 10, 100, 10, 100, 100 with Spec'd War, Melee Defense. A short time ago this would have been worthless because of the need for high Life skills. With Rend Weapons the need for Life is somewhat less critical. Being one that hates swapping wands I like to keep my Life as high as possible. I'm not totally sure if it will work three reasons. The low endurance will make mana recovery a lot harder. With melee defense working you also have a big stamina drain to worry about. A 10/10 Strength/Endurance will make this problem harder to reduce. Lastly there is some worry about melee defense being effective without a weapon bonus. Prozak said he is evading up to Olthoi Swarms. As no one is evading Mut's it looks like melee defense with a wand is more effective than I thought. I still would like to see the ability to toss defender on a wand. Time will tell on that how effective it will be at super high levels. He did not say how bad his stamina problem is but I hope to question him about that in the future. (Answered below with Prozak's writeup.) I see this template as a great dungeon crawler if the stamina problem is not too big a barrier. I'm not so sure about fieldwork as melee attacks are less of a problem outside. I for one will be tracking his progress to see how this works. To see how he is doing go to this link. http://beta.treestats.com/index.php?Name=prozak&Server=5&Type=Char Guest Writer: Darck Last night I was bored. I decided to go look at some places around dereth. I used Oracle of Dereths "nearby" feature and set it to point of interest and radius within 100 clicks. It came up with TONS of places. I visited a few, and I must say, turbine has done an awesome job on the scenery and places of dereth. Sadly though, these places rarely ever get visited. I visited a few places such as The Deep Pit, Sleepless Sentinals, Statue of BZ, Ring of Crystals, and The Cauldrons of Green Flame. Those are just a few I visited and they were awesome. (Those might not be the "official names" but that's what oracle said) Not to mention, on my travels while hunting or whatever, I've seen several cool looking places here and there, and what turbine adds in every month such as places or items or whatever it may be. Turbine did a great job on things like this. People should take the time to visit them. To sum this up, turbine did a good job on the places of dereth. Guest Writer: NeoNator Ahh the good ole days of AC. We've all read 100 poem-like posts extolling the past and how superior it was to today. AC of the 1999-2000 era was vastly different and possessed an element today's novices will never understand. That's true. Questing was different, and characters truly were interdependent on one another in those "pre-chain" days. Yep, AC then had its charm, but do you remember the "other" parts of the game? :P 1. No @corpse. If you died, especially from disconnections, good luck finding your corpse. Oh sure, you'd have an idea, but you were always shocked to see how far your damn toon had run while you were rebooting. Hours and hours of searching for a corpse you knew in the back of your mind you'd never find = not a lot of fun. 2. Components. If you were a mage or a magic heavy melee, you knew the pain of components, their weight and the pack space they consumed. Peas came much later and removed some weight by taking the remainder of your pack space, but way back, you were 115% BU with 10 comfrey and 300 red tapers right? :P I remember bragging that I had my burden down under 110%. Quest interruptions frequently occurred allowing mages to "recomp" those hard burn items. Another annoyance. 3. Attribute spells. Before Turbine "fixed" these spells, level VI creature attribute self spells, if you knew them, lasted about 10 minutes shorter than the Masteries with no timer to let you know when they were gonna drop. The masteries were far longer and meant you had to stagger buffs. Most mages could be observed refreshing their attrib self's on longer quests, any chance they could get. Total spell durations for level VI's were 20 minutes at best if I remember correctly. 4. Loot. While people today moan about too much loot in the system now, remember the days when "Loot-lords" controlled and cornered markets. Most toons back then didn't have life magic and a lot didn't have creature. Level V items were hotly traded after umbris shadows were attainable, turning level mad people into small empires. Level VI items if I remember correctly were only found on the Overlord and Nobles, which were camped. This lead to a strict caste system of hardcore gamers that controlled and camped loot locations. The rest of us were forced to spend all our days hunting shards which we didn't see the value in (prepatch days) and then handing them over for something today we wouldn't spit on. ;P 5. Robes. Mage in a robe = GOD in the pre hollow days. Once people began discovering the usefulness of banes, faran robes were all ANYONE pk-ed in. The exception was the old "well-endowed" pk who'd risk a hoary robe. GSA helped later on, but way back, robes rules Dereth. Easy for mages but not a lot of fun for the melee who did 1 point of damage to a 50 cent robe that took 45 seconds to buff to perfection. 6. Carefully guarded cheat portals. Those of you who remember Aerlinthe Island's release also probably remember the bug that was discovered allowing people who had never used a certain type of portal to summon to a location they logged off in. Quickly people discovered it was possible to tie to these illegal portals. Carefully guarded by the level and loot God's, eventually these became powerplay items for monarchies. I remember losing a couple to large guilds that offered these to lure vassals. The advantage of being able to recall right inside Aerfalle Keep for loot or questing, or right to the far west side corals can't be fathomed now in these days of majors and VOD. Good for you if you had it but it sucked being 75% of the server not in on THAT cheat. 7. Leveling. Level 55 was considered the outer most limit of character development after Baalzevuv posted his findings noting that for a level 55 to advance on tusker guards it was the same as a level 20 leveling on brown rabbits. Not the most compelling thing to contemplate, especially if your toon was gimped (like 60% of the server) and needed extra credits from the higher levels to train things. If you were into leveling or wanted to do it to improve your toon's performance, the task was bleak. Miss the good old days of AC, believe it or not, I do at times, but I like the game AC has become today more so. What its lost in some aspects of quaintness is made up for in playability. Neo ------------------------------ This is Prozak's write up on the template I described above. Guest Writer: Prozak Stamina issue: Hasn't been ANY issue actually since a mage does not USE stamina other than (stamina to mana). Here is where rending wands really help. With mana C bonus my casting mana is pretty low. Meaning that I cast stamina to mana once and I don't have to revitalize until mana is needed again. Example: Buffed health: 245 Stamina: 323 Mana: 433 I let stamina go down to 130's before casting revitalize. I usually just cast it once then S2M and then I'm set. The difference for melees is that they USE stamina each swing (or pull). So high stamina becomes a factor. Also I use Bracelet of Darkness: Major/Stamina and Health Gain. I can see my stamina sometimes not move or I even gain points. Pro: I can tank most tuskers and some Olthoi. I don't die anymore. Taper use has gone down! Kill rate has increased. Con: having to swipe wands (if so) but with 350 buffed life, I can cut thru most monsters on OP. (not VOD ..req 375 min.) Wand swapping- well usually I will hunt the same type of monster. When I hunt OP I just use Critical Strike wand. Hunting: Well you are kinda restricted to dungeon hunting with this template until your life reaches 350+. Until then you will depend on Rend. On the OP Plains I suffer a bit due to Life but usually your attacked by the same crowd so you can use the same wand. Most critters are Vuln to Fire or Bludg so switching isn't a hassle. Maturity level: I would say 140 (maxing at least melee d by this time.) How I did it: I started as bow really. It is easier to kill at low level. At level 80 I started the switch. I didn't un-train anything until I had the proper gems. (It keeps from being a gimp) How I would change: my current temp is 20-10-100-10-90-100. I would have done: 10-10-10-100-100-100 (I'm working on it.) This would give speed to most slow mage's. Options at level 125 + raleria. War/Melee D spec'd: Three school magic's. Choice of taking Healing/LP/Missile Defense. How to choose: 1.take healing- great for questing and all around. 2.LP another quest thing or for sings/chests 3.Missile d- Sign up here for PK godlyness PK: Imagine a Maxed char War/Melee D with Maxed magic D and Missile D. !! You would be every players nightmare. You would have 460 or so melee D buffed 320 missile D and magic D. Not only PvM tank but PK tank. Comments: I have played all types of chars except pure melee. Archery: It has always stood out for great power. Its con would be having to shuffle thru arrows and the burden of arrows/bow's. I also hated trying to find the right arrow to shoot. The burden is terrible, 2,500 BU per 250 arrows. Add 5 elements and that's a lot of BU. I constantly Ammo Dump when going places. (Note) Archery is the cheapest form of hunting. I can survive on 3 plats for a week Magery: Always been most powerful and truly the most versatile. Having all elements at fingers makes magery a winner. Con: would be no defense except magically. Money: Plats are insanely high if you burn them. I resort to trading fine ware's to support my components. Melee(ism): Great defense here .. got a shield ? Then you're ok! Pro: Great defense, once you have the right weapons you're set. Con: Not having the right weapon and finding the most perfect weapon damage and mods are horrifying. I haven't made a true melee due to having to find 5 diff types of weapons. Finding that perfect weapon and imbuing is sickening. Archers need that 1 imbue and they are set. (That being Pierce Rend or AR) Overall: All 3 types of attacks are great in their own respects. All types work well to gather and to achieve great goals. If you are the solo type I believe Magery or Archery would be the best pick. War/Melee D temp isn't for everyone. It takes a true vet to master any skill. I've done corpse recovery under fire in middle of sing Caul at lvl 100. It's all on how you play. I recommend this temple to anyone who plays dungeons a lot and has access to Rend salvage and some form of cash flow. I believe this will be an exiting template around lvl 130. At lvl 100 now it's great at evading some monsters. Component use has gone down as well as death rate. I believe this should be a great PK temp. Maxed Magic D spec'd is helpful but you could survive without it. The melee D would make your PK life expand and, once you reach 125 for missile, Archers would just quit since zero accuracy is necessary right now.