Fist de Yuma - February 19, 2002

Sing weapon part 1 I read that there may be a new UA singularity weapon in the February patch. I figured mosswart shroud would be camped when that happened so I better go get it. First step was to get to Waijhou. Rather than search for a portal I decided to just run there. Checking my map I saw that the south dires portal set down not to far from there. I ran to the subway and took the Mayoi portal. A quick run from there had me at the south dires portal This is not a run for the faint of heart. There is a lot of nasty stuff that could easily take down a melee of any level. As this was not an xp or loot run my fighting was at a minimum. I headed east along the road until I was directly south of Waijhou. From there I started north. The badlands were a lot harder to traverse that I thought. There are a lot of dead ends and hills. At times I had to make some major jumps to keep going where I wanted to go. After a little back tracking and big jumps I made it to Waijhou. I headed south first. I killed one witch close to the house but no shroud. After going far south I backtracked and tried north. That came up zero so I decided to log for the night. The next day I logged there and found a group of Witches close to the house. One had the shroud so part one was out of the way. The day of the patch I heard that indeed there is a sing weapon for UA. I'll wait a bit before going. The crowds will make it very un-fun and not much of an adventure. There is also a bug on item turn in. I'll have to study that if I don't wait until next month. Scrolls I cashed over 100 keys a month or so back. I was going to wait until Fist de Yuma Jr got to 75 and had creature before cashing the scrolls in. My mules were packed and I needed the room. I figured with Creature a usable skill I could learn the spells before it was trained. In any case I would use a "who cares" scroll first. Getting to the Creature Essence is easy now. Just east of Awric is a group of housing portals. One of them leads to a complex a short jog from Essence. The housing portals are a big help. There is a portal close to my LS that leads to a group of housing portals. My house is one of them. This means I can get my second account players to my house with little trouble. I used this to advantage with the scrolls. After getting the scrolls together on a list I started handing them to Jr. I quickly filled his pack. I had to make a second trip to get all my scrolls. I'm still missing a few such as Focus Self, Item mastery and Life Mastery but I have saved up a bunch of keys. I might get lucky and get what I need. If not I'll use what I have for trades. After that what I have left will be given to the family. After getting that done I figured I would get the Life scrolls I had saved up turned in. I now have all the Life self spells. I'm missing a few Vulns and others but I'll get them in time. Getting to the Life Essence is not easy or safe. At 66 Jr is doing quite well. His melee and UA are all over 300 with just creature armor for buffs. He is tossing VI's in Life with ease and I figure he is very close to using VII's. I did a quick run to Bashi and picked up some saka. I did not need it as after a quick jog south I found someone opening up the portal. Getting over the wall was a problem. I did not want to use the corner bug as Turbine has said they are getting rid of it. With the V buffs I had and no Jump buff I could not get over. I was very close. Finally I ate my pride and asked for a jump buff. A nice mage put a V jump buff on me and I sailed over the wall with ease. I'm really looking forward to getting him to 75 and creature. I plan to put all points from 70 to 75 into self, focus and mana conversion. With level VI life buffs and better melee defense I was sure I would not have the problems I had last time. To make it a worthwhile adventure I would stop and fight anything in my way. For a melee he if very strong in magic. I was able to land an Imperil VI on a bandy first shot. Using Imperil and switching to Melee made short work of them. With hard hits I was able to kill it before it got drain happy. The biggest pain for a melee is to get a monster way down and have it drain him to full health. After clearing some Virindi and tusker around the Essence I got my scrolls in. As I was finishing up a Diamond golem spawned a short bit away. I figured I would give my magic a try and fight the bad boy. I remember when the Diamond golems first came out. Not many could fight them. The mages had a hard time landing a spell and the melee were being had for lunch with the strong melee attack, de-buffs and spells. Fist Sr. first encounter was a very lucky one. It tossed de-buffs and never attacked with war. As I only had V and IV protection back then I was very lucky. I landed the Imperil right off. I switched to my centus and wamped him good. That got me feeling invincible. I noted another Diamond Golem a short way off and figured I would beat up on that one as well. This time I did not do so well. I was resisted or fizzled a load as it charged up on me. I ended up tossing a Bludgeoning IV in desperation before drawing my weapon. That was good enough. I took a load of damage from the wars and drains, had to run and heal once, but in the end it was mine. I figure when he gets to Fist Sr. level he will have close to a buffed 350 Life. That will mean I can land without getting resisted so much. He may not be as strong as Mage but he is a lot of fun to play. Patch day one The download was smooth. I was lucky as a lot of people had trouble logging on. A waited for my other computers to download before I started playing. The other computers are slow and only good for muling but that is a useful purpose. I try to get all of the drudgework out of the way before I start playing. Alliance recall is really good. I have been looking forward to that. It is nice that Awakner is fixed. To bad it is PK only. I'm not sure if that is a bug or not. A really useful item becomes almost useless if it is PK only. After getting everything in order and talking to people I loaded up Mage to go hunt. I ported to my house and started running Southeast. After about 5 minutes I was dropped to the desktop. I relogged and went back on my way. With full buffs there is not much that can hurt me out there, even if I lose control. Still it is not a great feeling. I hunted a short distance and was again dropped to the desktop. This happened three more times. Finally I lagged into a portal, making me log in disgust. I rebooted and cleared out all the minor programs I run. I reload the game and ported back to the house. Same thing. After 5 minutes I would be booted. I de-fragged my hard drive and ran Norton to clean up everything. Logged back and was booted after 5 minutes again. Finally I removed Decal and tested it. It fixed it but now I'm out Decal. Running around without Sixth Sense makes me feel blind. I hate having to sit and press the buttons for buffing but I can live with that. Later I found that disabling Nerfus Buffus let me use the other plug ins. I really like Nerfus but it is only really felt when buffing in a crowd. The noise and fizzles from other players make it hard to keep track of what I'm doing. When use to hearing fizzles it is hard to start depending on sight. New Quest, Fire I remembered in the notes that there was something about the Essence's having a danger. I was close to the War one. I ran there and found a portal with Fire something. I said what the heck and jumped in. I found another Elder buffing there. Chain Effect I did not know but I welcomed having someone to watch my back. I saw dead Olthoi on the ground so I quickly added acid and piercing to my banes. We fellowed up and started out. This might make a nice mid level leveling spot, endless hordes of Olthoi. We found a pit with acid at the bottom. We could see some Olthoi at the bottom so we figured there was a way out. Not wanted to test that we backtracked to see if there was anything else. The answer was no, the jump into the acid was it. We fought our way back to the acid pit. I was surprised at the fast spawn rate. I rebuffed while Chain Effect killed Olthoi. Chain Effect targeted me and I jumped into the pit. The way out was easy, just had to fight 10 Olthoi or so. It is a good thing they are drainable as I really needed health back. Chain Effect keep feeding me heals so I was never in any big danger. Chain Effect joined in the battle and we quickly cleared it. We headed down a passage and two sets of spiral stairs. Another big Olthoi battle and we ended up in a big room with two portals. One was upper and other lower. I was pissed. Another lame split group lever quest. I really hate that. Let our brainless selves get killed if we get over our heads. Don't force teaming and then force the teams to split. We explored the lower a bit. Not hard with only a handful of Golems. The magic trap sucked. I was looking forward to taking a look at the upper. Unfortunately the portal put us at the start. We were not willing to battle down passed the Olthoi knowing we could not advance to the end. Later on the boards I saw the reward for completing all the parts to this quest. It is a useless helm. I call it useless because it subtracts 100 mana from you. Already the mana stone with a 50 point loss is hard to take. So, other than support, I don't think I'll be doing this quest. Not just a game I have a good friend who I have known for a long time. His name is Randy. I have never met him in person but we have had long talks about many things. At this time he is in the hospital. This is not the first time he had gotten sick. In fact he cannot play much at all because he has been so ill. He is my age and a close friend. Like I said we have never met but I feel very close to him. Another alliance member has cancer and after chemotherapy developed an illness. At this time she is in ICU holding on for dear life. We lost a few people in the 9/11 and it had a great effect on the alliance. We truly feel for these people. The tragedies of every day life may seem apart from the game but it is not. There are real people behind each player. I have said it before and will say it again. The actions of players in AC are more of a reflection on the true person than real life. In real life there is consequences to actions. In AC a person can do what they want without fear of punishment. One thing to remember is most people in AC are good caring people. This is why Randy and others being sick affects us so much. It is why so many do so much for people without thought of reward. The reward is the self-satisfaction of their act. Yes, it is a game, but it is not or ever will be "Just a game". Sing weapon part II After the patch I found I did not need the item I got. It was a bug that will be fixed but that is next month. Meanwhile I'll be able to get it with Jr without a side trip to the dires. So I head to the V islands and the Mosswart place. I had been there before when a vassal died and had to go to work. I used his password to log on after I cleared it and recovered his bodies for him. I also died in there when I was trapped by a load of Shadows and Mosswarts. Because of that I was not going to take it lightly. Fist is a lot stronger since then and has been pushing his magic defense a lot. His magic defense is nowhere near as high as Mage's but I'm at the point where I'm resisting Drudges and Bandies. I was sure the Mosswarts would not do much damage. I ported in and it was the same trap I remembered, a horde of Mosswarts. With my melee d (418 and effective 540) they were not going to hit me. With a magic defense of 250+ they could not land spells. About my only worry was stamina. I carry around 90 stamina elixirs because of that. With a good fire weapon I was knocking them down rapidly. From there it took me a little bit to find the right passage down. The spawn rate made it so I had to have many battles before I found the right ramp. The shadows were little problem. They could not land their spells so the dreaded drain was not a factor. I had to switch weapons for the Grivver. The passage from there was straight so I had little problem getting to the end. I found two archers keeping it clear. Only one of them was waiting for the chest so I got the potion with little waiting. From there it was off to the next part. The last part is in the northern desert town, Zeakeal or something. I wish I would do the spelling of towns and other things in the game as well as other columnists. It is my major weakness I feel, that and stupid errors when I don't have days to clear them out. This is being written at 12:30 Tuesday morning and will be posted in a few hours. I'm sure I'll have a load of errors. I ask for forgiveness in advance. Anyway I found the place I was looking for very close to town. There were two people there but they did not know the way. They were just leveling. I lucked out and found the right passage on my first try. With little trouble I killed everything and got the item I needed. I put the potion on it and was ready to get my weapon. I ported into a place with a load of Virindi and some hollows in the back. They were NPC and not monsters, much to my relief. One said turn in the item and get the proper reward. Well I was a bit stupid. After all that work I should have looked around a bit more. The Virindi gave me five diamond scarabs. I needed to give it to a Hollow along the wall. Well that sucked. I headed back to the Island, ran to the Mosswart part. Cleared and this time ran past the Shadows directly to the chest. I cleared out the hollow and few monsters guarding and unlocked the chest with a SIK. "You have done this do soon". Good thing I did not have anything sharp handy. Three towers and Focus stone Seems daily an Elder will ask me how to get a Focus stone. Jeff's BM just hit 45 and he did not have one. I figured I might as well have some fun with it and start with three towers. I posted on the boards that we would be doing Three Towers and after that the Focus stone. At the Mansion only Goddess of Fire wanted to go. We took the portal bod to the subway and then Mayoi. Just before the South Dires portal I had us stop and buff. The run was your typical scary dires run. Not to bad for me but Jeff and Fire are only around 50. With me leading and drawing fire they did not take much damage. We got to the Three Towers and they were buffing. I buff a bit less now with Nerfus Buffus not working. I was done and figured I would go to the first two towers while they buffed. At the first tower, the last one for the quest, I was attacked by an undead. Without a thought I fired off a fireball to move it out of my way. Opps it was the quest undead and the portal was made. I'm not sure if someone died trying to do the quest and had it partly set or what. I did not see anyone on the screen and there were no monster in the tower. We were lucky that both Fire and Jeff were close. I messaged them to stop buffing and run to the portal. It's fortitudes that the landing is safe as Jeff only had a few buffs on. I figured three mages were a little one sided. I decided to pull out my Crop and go melee. This turned out to be a good idea as the Crop was faster than spells. It was a lot of fun playing melee with my mage. Jeff is known as the one who wants to play his BM like a melee. The passage through three towers was fast and fun. I was a little unsure of where the switches were. It had been a long time. I only missed a few steps and we did not have to backtrack much. I even lucked out and got a keepable UA weapon out of the chest. Both Jeff and Fire enjoyed doing it. Fire had to leave at that point. I told Jeff to go restock and meet me at the mansion. At the mansion I found a lot of people who were waiting for us. The word got out on the Focus stone and they were ready to go. I saw Maskman there who had announcement capabilities. He sent out and Elder wide message and more people started porting in. So after doing three towers with three people we had around 15 for the Focus stone. A few were like me, just going to help. I had Arch-Bishop lead the group while I did the buttons. Arch-Bishop ran to the Mine and got a tie while I formed up the party. I told them not to buff as Jeff and I still had to turn in the skulls. Bishop got back and we got everyone crammed into the start. Jeff, me and one other Elder ran over and turned in the skulls. I made the same mistake as the last time I did the buttons. You cannot make and error in the maze if you want to do it fast. I found I had to go left at one turn and I had been going right. I'll know better the next time. That one wrong turn keep getting me lost and I would repeat that error when trying to get out. Arch-Bishop had people at the doors so I could rejoin them after doing the buttons. I wanted them to do the first door as well but Bishop figured I had two more uses on my key so he did not set one. I used the key a second time to get pass the door and ran down. Darn the first door was not set. There was one Elder there fighting on the wrong side of the door. I found out later that the Elder I saw had lagged out. Moby Dick's UA had been holding the door but a Lich started kicking his ass. He was hoping the lagging Elder could hold the door but he was in lag lock and could not do it. It was funny because Bishop really took it bad. Not his fault at all but like all good leaders he felt if something went wrong it was his fault. I had the lagging Elder stand at the switch as I only had one use left on my key. As I knew now the mistake I had been making at the maze I quickly go the doors open and was back out. This time Bishop had several people at each door so one person would not get into trouble. I ran through the held door and that group would follow. We had a nice mob at the end. I took out my Crop again to see how well it worked on the Boss undead. After getting the kill a few times they started calling it Mages Crop of Death. This is a great weapon for a mage and the +10 to Leadership is not bad. With only two other people above 50 I was not sure how safe we were going to be at the last part. I did not need to worry, they were Elders, they stayed together and supported each other. We had one person lag out. I noted him leaving the fellow and had the group stop. He logged back in and was surprised to find me waiting for him. After that we had little trouble. I have done this a few times and this was as smooth as I have seen it. We sweep the monsters aside before they could do any damage to the lower levels. No one ran off and everyone stayed as a group, not a mob. Pure fun. They quickly turned in the unfinished stone and started porting out. The three strongest players stayed back until everyone was done. Lucky as the player that lagged out before had done it again. We made sure he had his stone done and he ported out. This mansion recall is becoming a big thing. We used the command to get parties together for quests and getting people without Item back safely. Item will still be needed but players will no longer be totally lost without it.