Fist de yuma - February 24, 2004

This and That My editor seems to have got called out of town. I waited until the last second hoping the edited copy would arrive. I hope I get rid of the worst errors but I have less time this week. There is something I have seen lately that is disturbing. I have seen it in politics for some time but it is creeping into other places, such as AC. This is when two people disagree and instead of understanding that it is a disagreement one or both decide the other is lying. I had a letter from one person who disagreed with me on something. He did not understand that there are different ways of doing things. He felt he was correcting my error when in fact he was just expressing and alternate technique. This was a technique I knew but did not like. He arrogantly assumed I did not know the "right" way to do it. This was not just point out a different way; it was calling me stupid for not doing it his way. People are different. They will do things in a different way, just because they prefer to do it that way. Getting angry or demanding they do it your way is foolish. In the below essay there are those who will say, "That stupid Fist, everyone knows that." Well if you never came across something you will not know it. Rather than cover for my ignorance I will print it as I saw it. Ignorance is not a crime. Until you do something there is no way to know. Queen Quest It had been pointed out that the allegiance had not done the Queen quest in sometime. We have a lot of members who had never even seen the Queen. I hit the web site and scheduled a time so we could do it. I was worried about a few things. I had heard they had improved the Queen's attack ability. Given that few groups could stand up to her I did not think that was a great idea. The other rumor was that the AI of the Queen had been changed. Just what that meant was not clear. I did a bit of pre-work so things would go smooth. I took Fist to the dam and fought his way to the switch room. After grabbing 5 bell parts I logged. This would allow me to open the door without having to split the group. A half an hour before we were set to go I had the breaker people start turning in the bells. There is a 15-minute wait between each turn in and this let us get ahead of the curve. I was hoping for a large crowd but ended up with only seven. They were Fist de Mage (de-buffer), Richard II Al-Deremont (Sword and designated killer), Badamon, Horror Sparrow, Hot-Shot, Nene Romamova and Cher'okee. A word on Hot-Shot. Annunaki the sad purchased this account a few days before. At level 210 it is the most powerful Crossbow player I have ever seen. It shows some of the things I have to look forward to, maybe 10 years down the road. With this small of a group I decided to use Jr as the switch puller in the Hive. I would have used Fist but I knew you cannot log in the Hive and he is on the same account as Mage. I quickly buffed up Jr and rushed him to the Dam. I logged him right in front of the waterfall. The seven of us ran to the Dam with no trouble. We jumped down and cleared the Vapers. Then got we in front of the gate. It took me a bit to pick the lock. For some reason the pick was having a hard time selecting the gate. I had to back up a bit down the ramp before I could get it to work. I logged Jr to jump down and get through the gate. Before he was out of portal I logged off Mage to log on Fist for the switch work. Well if you know the story here you can see what is going to happen. It seems that it is not only the Hive that disallows logging. Just why you cannot log on in the Dam I don't know but in any case all three of my players are at the LS in AB. Ok, a small setback. I quickly ported Mage back to my Nanto LS and ran to the plateau. While running I explained the route to the spray door. When I got to the Dam jumped in and rushed around the monsters to the switch room. After throwing the switch I asked if the door was open. They said it was and I jumped out of the room and rushed to the second passage. To my surprise everyone was still at the first gate. I hate misunderstandings. I led them to the spray door and backtracked to the switch room. This time I got trapped by the lightning monsters and had to fight my way clear. I opened the door and rushed back. Hot-Shot and Cher'okee had held the gate for me so that was no trouble. Nene had the next door held so it was quick from there. Much to my surprise the spraying was very fast. About every other EV was spraying. Our only worry was Cher'okee. She was lagging out. Cher'okee has horrible phone lines. Any place with a lot of monsters will put her into freeze mode. Sadly she never recovered and had to log. We waited for Cher as long as we could. My plan was to lead everyone to the hidden exit and run to Mount E. With buffs being short they had to port out while I protected Cher. So I was the only one to make it through the hidden door. I got to Mount E with about 30 seconds on my buffs. I told everyone to rebuff and meet me there. I sent them the location while buffing. A short time later Horror Sparrow logged off and never came back. This was my second hint that Turbine was having a server problem. My third hint came when Badamon lagged out. Cher said he was running against the cliff wall near the plateau portal. A short time later he logged and did not return. I had a feeling that we would all be red-linked if we did not hurry. Now we were down to four people. It was going to be very tight but if nothing else would go wrong we could do it. I'm sure the rest of the group was getting a bit apprehensive. I asked Nene to do the switches. She has lock pick so it was doable. Without LP we would be one person short for holding the doors. I set Hot-Shot to hold the first door and Richard to hold the second. I held the third. Rene had the door switches down well and we only took a few minutes getting the entire group into the Queen den. I wanted us to have spray time in case something went wrong. Without delay I had us jumping in and clearing the ledge. From there we jumped into the Den and cleared the guards. I posted Richard on the far side of the Queen and put the three of us outside the radar range of the Queen. The Queen should then only see/attack Richard and we could play support for him. Again if you know the Queen quest well you can predict what is going to happen here. The rest of you I hope are as surprised as we were. As the first Queen died everything went as planned. The Queen turned on Richard and I started to the de-buffing process. Nene and Hot-Shot were set to heal Richard. The second I landed the vuln the Queen turned and charged across the room like a runaway freight train! This was not to happen! She should stay where she was! Of course Turbine had changed the AI of the Queen to prevent this exploit and we were going to have to live with it, or die with it as the case may be. It was a disaster but not an unrecoverable one. For one there had been a re-spawn of the guards. They were getting in the way of the Queen so the three of us were not taking the full blunt of the Queen's attack. The guards were a problem for the two mages. Even without the Queen's attack they did a lot of damage. Of course with us fighting for our lives Richard had no healer and nothing to block the Queen's attack. He was the first to die. With Richard gone the Queen turned her attention to me. With all the chaos I was not sure if I was alone or not. I thought I had heard a porting tingle but it was hard to tell. We had a little distance between each other and the guards were filling in the gaps. With five hit points I hit Tusker Island recall to escape. As I did I heard Hot-Shots bow string tang so I know I was not totally alone. A few seconds later I got Nene's death message. I guess I was mistaken about the portal sound. I yelled for Hot-Shot to port out. We still had enough spray time to re-buff and head back for a two-pass kill. I did not get an answer. With two bodies there already I did not want to see a third. I guess I did not need to worry. A short time later we got the global message that Hot-Shot had killed the Queen! Nene and Richard gave him permission to loot their bodies and I told him what to grab off the Queen. We all met at the tent for the reward. The reward, years ago, was one of the best in the game. With full fellow turn in we got 12.5 million xp each. Turbine thought that was unfair and removed the fellowship bonus from the turn in. That reduced the reward to 5 million each. That was still enough to make the Queen quest one of the most popular in the game. With the xp changes and Chaining gaining almost universal acceptance the Queen quest fell out of favor. I think right now you can almost do the quest at any time. There is still a schedule board we use but it is mostly clear of slots. I logged Death Mute to get the reward. At 66lv 5 million is a lot more meaningful to him. I think it is time for Turbine to rethink the Queen quest reward. At 40 million it is great but when divided among the fellow members it is only worth doing for the adventure. While I would hate to see the mess it was before I would like to see more groups doing this quest. We learned a lot about the changes to this quest. A shield wall is a must if we don't do a two-pass kill. A two-pass kill is likely to be the norm now, as the faster spray rate gives us time. I want to do this quest more but was disappointed with our turnout. In hindsight it was to late in the evening for most of the East coast players and in prime TV time for the West coast. I figure with a different time and less people lagging out we will have more success. Frustrated and gun shy I have had three big time tinker disasters in a row and I'm getting frustrated and a bit gun shy. The first I outlined in a past column. With a 92% chance I blew up a very nice set of leggings. On top of that I lost 10 bags of steel with it. The next disaster was with a Major Life helm. It had a low AL and wms 9. Nevertheless my skills should have allowed me to tink it up a few times and be around al 300. With a 99% chance it blew up. Lastly was last night. I figured out that getting the last tink on this outstanding UA fire weapon would be 92%. After my first two disasters I decided to pass on the 10th tink and only add nine. With a 98% chance it blew up. I not only lost the best Fire UA weapon I had ever seen but I also lost 5 bags of Granite. I'm not sure if I'm having a tremendous streak of bad luck, if there is a problem with Turbines Tinker code, or if the decal tinker calculator is way off. Whatever the reason I'm getting very afraid to tinker my better items. Boring Quest There are quests in the game that become very important but Turbine has made them boring and more of a drudgery than fun. The scroll of Dark Rain counts as the number one in my book. I'm sure that Turbine made this quest with the intent that people would find the scroll over their lifetime of hunting and cash it in years later. That is what happened with Mage. Then there are players like Fist who has played for over four years and never even saw a Dark Inferno. All I could do was go out and run around the plains for hours on end, hoping to find a Dark Inferno. That in itself would be a pain but then Turbine made it so there is a 1 in 4 drop rate. I guess it could have been worse but that did not help with the boredom. I have been going on streaks of hunts for this scroll. Some weeks I would go out for four or five hours of searching. Other weeks I would not search at all. This week I got determined to find it. What got me going was a friend who found the scroll and a bunch more Dark Infernos to boot. He found them in the same general area. All were found around the 62, 70 land block. I started out on Wednesday. I would buff up and use the south dires portal. I would then run to the plains and start crisscrossing it. On the first day I did find one Dark Inferno. This was just after the eastern cut in the center bowl of the plains. I had run into the bowl from the west and was headed east. I climbed out the eastern pass and keep going. While going over one of the cuts I found the Dark Inferno. I'll say this, they don't fall easy. It took a long while to kill it. Of course there was no scroll. Thursday had me out there for two more hours. I found one Dark Inferno in the southeast section and it did not have a scroll. One thing I was noticing. All of the Dark Infernos I found were in one of the cuts. In fact every Dark Inferno any of my players have found was in one of the cuts. I was sure this was a coincidence but it was happening to often to ignore. I decided to limit my search to the cuts. On the third day, Friday, I started early. I hit the game at around 7am. I buffed up Fist and started the run. For two hours I came up empty. With about 11 minutes on my buff I found one. The Dark Inferno was up on a ledge overlooking the valley I was in. This was in the center of the south end of he Plains. I was in a three-way hub with high walls on all sides. I started looking for a way up. The walls were very steep and high. I started going southeast looking for a path. All the while I'm getting pounded on by melee monsters and eating de-buffs. I was moving a lot so the Wars were not hitting except when a slope delayed me. I had a time or two where I was very low on health. To make matters worse I only had three uses left on my last healing kit. I got to cash in a Pincer soon. After traveling southeast and not finding a route up I backtracked and took the south passage. Again I could not find a route up. I went back to the Southeast passage and followed it all the way to the river. No way up. I backtracked again and followed the South passage all the way to the river. Again, no way up. Now there has to be a something I had missed. I backtracked towards the hub, taking each slope and trying to get up. About halfway back my buff timer went off. I quickly fought my way clear and rebuffed. My plan was to just hunt two hours but now I was stuck for a third. I used the view to get an overhead of the land block. It indeed seem that there was no way up. The only real slope I saw was where the Dark Inferno was and that stopped about 20 feet short of the top. If there is a way up it is somewhere along the river. That was the only place I had not scouted. If I could not get to the Dark Inferno maybe I could get it to come to me. I got as far up the slope as I could and started de-buffing it. I got a lot of things to jump down but not the Dark Inferno. Finally it rushed out and jumped off the cliff. With my de-buffs on it the battle was not as long as normal. That was good because I had six or seven other things pounding on me at the same time. I looted but no scroll. I killed one Shadow to make a hole and started more running around. To show how much I was traveling that day I passed the windmill three times. I also found a temple with a portal in it, I forget to where. I passed it twice. At one time I started running across monster bodies. I was wondering who was out hunting with me. I finally stopped to check whom the killer was. Humm, it was me. I guess it never rotted from the day before. I ended up back where I had started, at the entrance to the Slot. I ran past that and took another route up to the plains. That intersected with the Slot. I ran past two hubs and into the Plains Bowl. I decided to try where I had found a Dark Inferno the day before. I followed the Bowl rim around until I could climb out the pass and head east. While going over a depression I found a Dark Inferno. I had to fight off three of four Shadows but I finally had the Dark Inferno alone. Without de-buffing I only hit for around 15 points a swing. I hit fast but it has enough hit points that the battle takes a long time. It healing and draining my health did not help any. Someday I might lower my quick to raise endurance. That will help with the drains. I opened it up expecting disappointment. To my surprise my bad luck was at and end. The scroll was there. A quick run to Hebian-to had me seeing the bright lights of a max'ed out skill. It is a ways off but my next goal is to cap Life. I'm getting fair luck with de-buffing but with a 30/10 magic stats start and Life being trained, I have a lot to overcome. Guest Writer; Aelryinth of Leafcull Hey again Fist. Some points for you to remember for hunting in the VOD. 1) Don't use lightning on the VoD Lugians (unless you are a mage). Use a Crit Strike or Crippling Blow Frost sword. They have no armor for that armor value. A single imperil 7 increases damage by x6, a Cold Vuln7 adds roughly twice that. On fast strike piercing with a CS weapon I can chain 670 pt crits...with full swings it's over 1800. Critcritcritcrit. This is only in a fellow of course...but once that imperil goes off, Lugians get dead quick when I'm around:). You can do the same with Drudge Seraphs too, using Pierce...but it's usually easier for everyone just to use Fire. On the Lugians, it's worth it to have cold buffed JUST for how fast you deal with them. 2) Obliterators now drop an amount of loot roughly equal to a Crystal Lord, and are worth 6 million xp. --------- On the Sing Caul, your best weapons to have buffed are slashing and cold. If you have bludgeon, that's also equal to cold in most instances. If you are hunting Biaka, they are like little moving sing chests. They are most vuln to bludgeon damage from melees, with slash/cold being next best. Mages variously report bludgeon or slash to be best on them...whatever works best for the fellow. Bludgeon is definitely best for melee...an Axer friend using an AR axe that does 12 pts less damage than my AR sword was out-critting me. The Hellions are most vulnerable to cold, with blud/slash as backups. For ease of usage, you can actually just slash vuln it all and you will do just fine. On the Caul for melees and archers-- Use Physicals (s,p,b) on the Mites. Use Cold on the Dolls. Use Cold on the Carenzis. Use Slash on the Rats. Use Cold on the Zefrits. Use Slash on the Nefane. Use Slash or Pierce on the rifts...but they usually protect themselves up first thing and its a no win situation. You can use Slash or Cold on all Marguls I've fought...my Slashing usually tends to be better. I use Renders when hunting alone, or Armor Renders when in fellows (yes, I have a lot of weapons imbued!). Haven't run into anything with No Armor yet that I'm aware of (i.e. like Crystal Golems, Lugian Justicars or the like, where AR actually does LESS damage then a normal sword). If you are a mage, your mileage may vary with these, but it's a good starting place. I expect variances will simply be because the creatures have different armor elementals then they do elemental vulnerabilities. Last thing --- DO NOT LURE MARGULS WITH SPELLS OR ARROWS. Marguls are stupid, and they are slow. If you toss a spell at one of them, you bring a swarm. If you creep up on them, you can get the attention of one or two, slowly pull them away from the main pack, and stragglers might even give up and head back to the main pack. Simply back up and pull them into your waiting party before casting spells on them or shooting, and you can wipe an entire spawn out one at a time. Just don't fight them so close their cries for help drag in their friends. Once you have a Margul or two in front of you, CONCENTRATE ALL FIREPOWER ON THE SUPER STAR DESTROY.....er, ONE of the bastard things at a time. The others will bounce around, waste time changing targets, spread out damage...and then you will kill one really fast, removing it's damage from the pool. If everyone picks a Margul to fight, they take forever to hack down, and things just do not go as well. One at a time, concentrate the firepower and take them down. If you don't hit one, it will prove fickle and go bother someone else. If you lure one by one, a set of three spawns will keep an entire fellow occupied killing them over and over, and generate a lot of loot while doing so...and a decent amount of XP (biaka are 750k a pop or so.) In the VOD, I buff a Slash/Pierce AR sword, a Fire AR, and a Cold Crit Strike weapon. Virindi : The mages always do Fire, so I do too. Slashing is fine for melees too, however. Banderlings: The caster ones, Fire is good on. The melee ones...sit there while the mages war it down with Lightning. Pierce is generally best for Melee/Archers, but it all pretty much sucks. Undead; Fire, of course. Olthoi: Sword guys use Pierce, of course...everyone else uses Bludgeoning if they have it. Mages should get out their Olthoi slaying wand from Gaerlan and go to town. Since pulling one Olthoi pulls a spawn, what happens is everyone should tank one except the mages. Then the mages should gang up, butcher one, and move on one by one and wipe out them all while the Melees or a brave Archers keeps them occupied. Tumeroks: Any damage type will do...Fire usually ends up default. If a Mage has it, the Tumerok killing orb from the Banner quest works wonders. Dillos: Pierce is the best, with Blud/Slash as backups, or Frost. Jello: Actually, pretty much anything works on Jello. So it ends up defaulting to Fire or Slash usually. Grommies: Use Pierce. Some, Like the Rust, are hellaciously vuln to Cold or another element, but just stick with Pierce and they all die quick. Plat MOuntain King: Use Bludgeoning if you have it, Cold if you do not. Do Not Vuln or Imperil or even YIELD this guy! Mages should stand back with a bludgeoning render wand and use WALL spells to pound the bastard down..this tactic also means the King does not vuln and imperil YOU! Melees should be striking it as fast as possible to keep it's attention off the Mages. Archers chip in as needed and wipe out any attendants as they spawn with Blunt. It's much, much safer to kill him when he doesn't debuff you back! Skeletal Undead; Use Bludgeoning if you have it, Slash if you don't, and whimper at having to deal with the shield. WOlfpacks work fine...one front, one back to avoid the shield. Drudge Seraphs and Mystics: Generically, use Fire. You can really max things out by using CS Pierce on the seraphs and AR Acid on the Mystics...but that's more weapons to buff. Not a bad strategy in the VOD dungeon, however. Shadows: Most people default Fire, but Slash is just as good! The Swarthy Mattekar: Use Pierce or Slash. Like Dreads, Fire is not that good an element to use on them! Ursuin: Fire is fine on this guy...so is Slash or Pierce. Fire usually ends up default. Grievvers: Slash is best, as norm. Mages sometimes use Bludgeoning or Fire if the Grievver might counter-buff and trust to a render wand. And the Lugians: CS Frost sword critting again and again is hard to beat once that imperil goes off. I love Lugians out there with a mage around! I believe a Crippling Blow sword could easily go off for 4k damage out there. They are now among my favorite spawns. Thus with my default array of weapons, I'm prepped for all but the PMK, and the Tremendous Monuga, the latter of which we avoid. The PMK I'll throw spells on my Cold Render and be ready to play if need be.