Fist de Yuma - February 3, 2004

This and that Every so often I will leave out something. If I do you; can be sure I'll be getting an e-mail about it. (grin) Last week I forgot to recommend a CS or CB weapons when fighting in VoD. I'm sure I have said that in the past but missed it in last week's column. They are far better than Rend weapons as you really need a level VII de-buff and Rend only adds a level VI. Editing help I had a little editing help this week. Briciu sent me an offer to edit the column last week. I have gotten a lot of offers to do this but I normally change and edit things right up to post time. I had a lot done on Sunday so I sent it to him. He caught a lot of errors I'm sure I would have missed. I also had a little help from a DT poster. While the editing was intended as an insult I took advantage of it to clean up what I wrote. Thank Briciu!! I'm not sure how much I can use you but I'll take advantage of your offer whenever I can. I have also found that English is an imperfect language for writing. Many things I write are grammatically incorrect in a strict sense. Nevertheless it is how I speak and think. Changing it will make the story dry and stale. So while English is imperfect it is still a great language to write in. You just have to ignore the English majors. Given that I was generally at war with English teachers, even in college, I have no problem doing that. Tactics While I know a trick or two there are people who can run rings around me in the tactics department. One of them dominated MT for years but never got much credit for it. Many of the people he teamed with did get credit but without his help they could not have succeeded. His name is Heideggar. Heideggar is a monarch now. I hope he is happy with the responsibilities. Being a monarch is a lot of work and will really cut into your play time. His allegiance has one of the best looking web pages I have seen in a while. When looking at it I saw he had posted some of his knowledge for others to read. While most of this deals with being a mage, there are also gems that will help all players. You can read Heideggar's tactics at; http://www.steelheartforge.com/eternalbonds/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=291&sid=38113737921600e06a046314613cb3e3 Something Turbine should think about Turbine made a big change with this patch. It was a massive alteration that is requiring hours of work to make Decal functional. I applaud these hard working programmers for their dedication. The one thing I have noted, at least on MorningThaw and my allegiance, is a huge slow down in the number of players and the amount of time they play. While much of this can be contributed to a lack of buff bots, the self buffers are also not playing as much. There are a lot of useful plug-ins but none so useful that I would stop playing without it. The one thing that is limiting my play is the lack of a buffing program. The time it takes to buff these days is more than arduous. In fact it is downright boring. The new letter to the players has something about an improvement in buffing. That is encouraging but I'll take a wait and see attitude. Turbine has been doing an outstanding job since taking over the franchise so I expect it will be a dazzling change. If Decal went away I would still play. In fact I still self buff a lot of the time. Still, Turbine needs to take a look at what happened this week. It is an indicator that they might need to add some of the Decal functions to the game itself. If not, they should at least work with the Decal developers to help with a smooth transition when they have major changes to the underlining code. MyDoom virus When people first started saying there was trouble after this week's patch, Turbine assumed it was an Internet problem. The Internet is being hit hard with a new virus. This interfered with tracking down the real problem. While that delay was likely insignificant it give me an excuse to add the below into the column. (grin) Those with a good anti-virus program have seen a lot of infection attempts this week. This new one is called MyDoom. I say good anti-virus because if you have not updated this year you're not protected. This is clogging up the Internet with its sends and bounces. A bounce will come from an invalid address or an obsolete network that bounces a report saying the sender is infected. Given that the address is spoofed the bounce just adds to the problem. This new virus not only sends everyone in your address book a message but it also tries to guess at some addresses. If it finds a system that is a hub for e-mails it tries to guess the possible names. So if it finds warcry.com in your e-mail address book it will try a set of possible names, such as Fred@warcry.com. Not only does this increase the mailings, it increases the bounces. This is spreading as a worm but has virus like properties. It will use your computer in a Denial of Service attack. It is set to flood the SCO web site starting on a date in February. The virus creator is angry with SCO for trying to steal Linux. SCO claims there a bit of code they own in Linux, and therefore everyone who uses Linux owes them money. I'll leave the dispute on owning code to the debate list. It is estimated that this virus causes 1 in 12 e-mails. It is easy to be safe but there are a lot of computer ignorant people using the Internet. Law and Order had a good show last night where a computer expert stole a million dollar home from a guy with information he got from a fake form. (You have won a million dollars; just fill out this form to claim your reward!) Of course it can work both ways. The victim used the Internet to find him. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but make sure you practice safe computing. Speaking of bad computing One of the faults with computers today is so many depend on the computer being right when it is not uncommon for it to be wrong. It is easy for a coding error or bad data to spit out erroneous information. One of the biggest culprits can be a spreadsheet. It is easy for someone to make an error that can cost a company millions in profits and or fines. They do nothing wrong other than depend on a spreadsheet or another program to give them correct information. If the programmer makes an error or bad data is entered others will pay for it. This is why the new voting systems with no paper trail is so scary. As the companies that makes these machines also make things like ATM's, which have paper trails, it makes you wonder if this error is deliberate or not. Just what reason they would have I don't know, but it is suspicious. If you would like to read more about how people are getting in trouble by relying on bad computer information, go to this link. http://www.eusprig.org/stories.htm Question I have There is a new lower limit for distance with fellows in place now. The idea is to have fellows fight as group instead of a bunch of individuals using fellowship as an xp exploit. Still people will work around this as best they can and still fight as individuals. So the question is; how does this work? The distance is 2.5 klicks. Is that distance 2.5 klicks from any member or 2.5 klicks from the farthest member? Will people within 2.5 klicks all get the same xp and only those farther out get less? If there is a group spread out over 5 klicks, and someone in the center gets a kill, does everyone get full xp because they are within 2.5 klicks of that person? If, in the same group, someone at one edge of the circle gets a kill, does everyone within 2.5 klicks of him get full xp with diminishing returns for everyone outside of that circle? If it is just within the range of one member, then the real range can be very large. It would be easy to spread out 17 klicks or more and have everyone within 2.5 klicks of someone. If Turbine made it so someone 3 klicks from the kill gets less while everyone within the 2.5 klicks gets full xp I'll be surprised. That would be some slick coding. A big thanks A big thanks to Axegimp for helping me with my computer problems. While I still have a disabled mike, the Windows Media problem is fixed. We had PM's going back and forth for days before he nailed it down as some file in my temp directory. Manually deleting all the temp files fixed the problem. It might work Many of the players on DT are going to try something different. I'm not sure if it will work, but it can work. What they want to do is create players on the new server and push full time PK. In other words make it a PK server and ignore the non-PK players as much as possible. While it is very possible that it could work it will take dedicated players who are willing to forgo any cheating. Such dedication is not common and it will be easy and tempting to cheat. There will be equipment on the new server that will not be common on DT. It will be human nature to work with the non-pk players to acquire it. Chains will not work but a few good power leveling vassals, who are not PK, will be a big advantage. It will be very tempting to go white for a few days of power leveling and questing. For that matter, unlike DT, there will be fewer PK's to stop someone from being in a xp fellow that contains non-pk players. There will also be the problem of players who are not in on the game. They can level up to 126+ and start attacking the full time PK players. Unlike the full time PK's they can go white for a rest, level, quests and acquiring better equipment. Some on DT show distain for anyone who does not play on DT. They think part time PK players will be a loot farm. While I agree PK on the OPK servers is different, more duels than ganging, don't discount their abilities. Many have been doing this for a lot longer than the DT people and have comparable skills. With better equipment and support, they will not be a push over. Some on DT think they can run the whites off the server. They think they can steal kills and be dominate enough to force the others back to the older servers. I, for one, think they are dreaming. I have seen the PK templates. While great against PKs, they are less than optimal for monsters, unless of course they want to stay exclusively as mages. A standard PK template will have 100 endurance. While this is optimal for a mage it is not so for a melee. As melee and mages fight in different spots these days I don't see how kill stealing will be a problem. There is a lot of space outside, the domain of mages, so the PKs will he hard pressed to make much of a dent in the OPKs hunts. Melee PKs will find that OPKs will get more kills. There are no PK skills that will change that. OPKs have more experience with monsters so their training might even be a disadvantage. Spec'd run and healing might be a big help in PK but against monsters the idea is to not be hit. 10 Quick will lower their melee defense enough that they will be healing while the OPK player is getting the kills. Some pointed out that they would have higher magic de-buffing skills. Again that shows the ignorance DT players have when facing a monster. It is far more effective for a melee to just start swinging than to pull out a wand and de-buff first. Of course, if it is a kill stealing situation, the OPK will be getting the kill before the PK can even grab their weapon. The OPK might even thank them for the imperil. (grin) I have a feeling that it was just noise. The people moving to the new server likely don't think in those terms. The VN DT posters can take a post off subject better than anyone. The last problem is scouts. One of the tactics of PKs on optional player killer servers has been to use a non-pk player to gain information on the other groups. While a fair tactic on the OPK servers it would not be fair with this group. Nevertheless they have to be aware of it, as the OPK players will use it against them. That is the negatives, but I also see a lot of positives if they can pull it off. For one, everyone will start on a level field. I expect to see it get a little lumpy, but it will be a great start. The foul mouth kids who have been allowed to play "Lord of the Flies" on DT will quickly find themselves with a vacation. They will go back to DT where the admins don't punish cursing, racist remarks and other childish acts. This will leave the field open for the more mature PK players. It might even get a lot of people joining them as full time PK. The same will go for the boards. The Mods will not be tolerant of the wide open trash talking that goes on with the DT board. This again will attract the more mature PK players. I, for one, will love to see it. It could even force the next server to be full time PK. If I were Turbine, I would push for a new PK server but with special rules. Trash talking and cursing will be against the rules. I would keep close track of the number of times a player gets a ban for such and be ready with a sharp knife. Be a problem player, and we will cut you out. PK can be fun. While not for me I can see the fun that many enjoy. Can the DT players do it, yes. Do I think they will succeed? Frankly no, but that is just my opinion and I hope they prove me wrong. I feel there are too many disadvantages to overcome. I wish them luck. At the same time even partial success might bring them a victory. If enough of them are playing at one time Turbine might take notice. If DT stays strong at the same time then a new PK server is assured. Disaster and help I had just made my first trip to the new Caul. I had really expected it to be much harder. The run through the Bore was a bit scary. The bodies every 10 feet did not help my morale any. I succeeded in not getting trapped and hit the portal. What I expected at the start of Caul was a sea of dots with VoD properties and health. Instead I found a handful of Dolls that give me little trouble. Of course my view of Caul is skewed as I was using Fist de Mage. With maxed out War and Magic defense he was more than ready. I have a feeling my view of the Caul monsters will change when I bring Fist's Armorer there. My goal was one of the new shields. The rumor is that the monster who drops it has a 100% drop rate. This is a bug, but one I wish was deliberate. I'm not lucky, and a drop rate is my worst enemy. As proof, I have spent years looking for Dark Inferno scrolls and only found one. I headed down a hill and found a Mite. I expected it to be harder. I had to jump into a canyon to fight it but it gave me little trouble. To my right was a large block of Zefirs. I had been warned concerning them and was wary. After killing the Mite I went in the opposite direction. I came across a few Rats who were trying to climb the canyon wall. I got a few hits on them but their bouncing while trying to climb the wall made them too hard to hit. I moved on. Next up was another block of Zefirs. I had no choice but to fight them. I vuln one with slashing, no idea if that was best but it worked on other Zefirs. Several charged me and I ran. I got one away from the group and it fell with a few blasts. It was using VII spells but I resisted most of the attacks. After that I was ready for them and did not need to run. I ended up fighting three at a time with little trouble. The next group was a larger pack of Zefirs. Three might be ok but I was not going to fight more than that if I could avoid it. I hit and retreated until I had cleared them out. I moved down the canyon and ran across a pack of Glissnal Nefane. I did not know if these dropped the shell or not but it did not matter, they were in my way. Unfortunately they did not drop the shell. About this time I was hearing chat between Dreven and Annunaki the sad. I had told Ann I was on Caul, and she wanted to go. Dreven was telling her she had to be flagged. It seems Ann had not been to Caul before. About this time I found a new Nefane called a Listris Nefane. This dropped easy, and it had a shell! While I was happy with that I was not so happy with the six Ziffers that spawned on top of me as I was looting it. While three I could handle six were kicking my end. A short run got the numbers to four. While a hard dance, four were manageable. They had me at 50 hit points twice but I healed before taking more damage. After clearing out the last two I ported back to the mansion to give Ann a hand. I knew little about the Bore at that time. I was figuring that it would be the same as before but with upgraded monsters. I knew the guards had been replaced with Assailers and the Hollows were upgraded and doubled up. The Drudges and Virindi had also been upgraded. This was hard but nothing a good mage and melee could not handle. In fact I was sure that after the four Hollows were taken care of a good mage could solo it without a sweat. Man was I wrong. Ignorance kills. After I convinced Ann that it would be an easy trip and out of the way in a hurry, we buffed up. I was using Fist de Yuma of course. I figured his main job would be over after the four Hollows were taken out. We got a ride from Arkhana, Dreven's sword lady. It was around 4am at this point, but I was not tired. I'm guessing Ann was, but I never took that into account. We advanced down the passage and started clearing. While a Grief UA is a great defensive player the attack is nothing to write home about. I was doing around 30 damage a swing. With a fast swing it adds up but it seemed to take a while to kill anything. One benefit to UA is rapid weapon switching. Since I needed to swap between my cold and fire weapons that ability was a big help. We cleared what I felt was the hardest part and jumped into the pit. Here is where I got a clue that my assumptions were a bit off. In the first passage we were met with what I expected, a hand full of Drudges and Virindi. I did not expect the Hollows or the numbers we had to fight. I had hoped the Hollows were behind us. As we advanced, we ran into a mass of higher level Drudges, Virindi and more Hollows. The battle for that passage almost left me dead on the floor. As it turned out, it would have been better if I had died there. I was getting low on health so I healed. I must have taken a blast or Hollow blow during the heal because it failed and I had dropped over 50 points. I sucked a heal potion and healed again, again it failed and I had even lower heath. I sucked several potions in a row and healed to full. It was a scary fight. We finally cleared them and were ready to move on. At this point one of my main fears when dungeon crawling occurred. Before we could move monsters started spawning. This meant we were not killing ahead of the spawn rate. In that case you might as well port out. Instead of recognizing that we were in a hopeless situation I started to rush us along. I figured to out run the spawn if we could not outfight it. This will work if what is in front of you is not able to block and you know the passage really well. I knew the way but did not anticipate what was coming. As we hit the next cavern I was met with a horde of Drudges. It was clearly more than I could handle. Our only options were to run to the next hallway or port out. I dogged left and ran around a pillar. That was a mistake because now I was disoriented. I knew I needed to find a spot where we could cut the numbers and make a stand. My first turn ran me into a dead end. I tried to reverse my field and ran in to another wall of Drudges. I out flanked this wall by running around a pillar. I crossed a hall and ran around another pillar. I caught Ann out of the corner of my eye trying to escape. (I had used corner in error but my editor pointed out that it makes sense given what was going on.) I wanted to type "Port" but was in no shape to stop running. I finally found the right passage just as her green triangle disappeared off my view screen. I dearly hoped she had ported out. I scrolled up and saw, "Your fellow member Annunaki the sad has died". I used a Monkey recall gem to escape and met Ann back at the mansion. Now we were in trouble. Ann said she dropped most of her Rend wands. I saw she was also lacking a helm. The highest level help we had was Arkhana, a 80lv sword. I replaced Ann's helm and started looking for help. I made a post in the VN board. I got one high level mage to answer and it appeared that was about it. Note to self; don't die at 5am. I said we needed more melees for this and he/she swapped his mage to his/her macer Ms Smash. You might think replacing a 126+ mage with a 75lv macer would lose us a bit but with hollows a melee is far better to have. As we were buffing, I got a tell from Braddox, a 107 crossbow. He had died in the same place the day before and understood our predicament. Now we had a good group. With me, Ms Smash and Arkhana to clog up the passage, Ann would be safe enough to blast effectively instead of healing. With Braddox giving us covering fire we should be able to keep well ahead of the spawn rate. Of course the best laid plans and all that. I found that holding a wall in the Bore is easy to say but darn hard to do. Too many monsters from different directions, lag and getting dragged, made the fight chaotic at best. With four strong melees and a skillful mage we were able to clear before anyone got into too much danger. We jumped into the pit and had another long fight before we could move on. We cleared the first passage ahead of the spawn rate so the main cavern was far less packed when we advanced. I was surprised that Ann's body was right at the passage exit. I was afraid we would have to search a bit under less than optimal conditions. My fear was unfounded and Ann recovered with no trouble. Next we advanced to get flagged. Clearing out the next passage was about as bad as clearing out the main cavern. To my surprise there were two Guardians! I shouted for Ann to kill one. She did not hear and was keeping to her support work. Finally, she got the idea and started blasting. It turns out that Braddox also needed to be flagged so he started killing the other one. A few minutes later we had successfully completed our goals for the night. A big thanks to Ms Smash, Arkhana and Braddox. Without your help Ann's body would still be there. How long to do that? I went to Treestats.com to see how much xp it takes to get to 200lv. To my surprise I had to go very deep in the pages to get to 200. Things have gotten so bad that 200lv was 443 on the list. Given that only a fraction of the players use Treestats, there are a whole lot of +200 players out there. The reason for looking that up was to see how long it would take for a hard core leveler to make 200lv on his or her own. Just for grins I figure I'll also push that out to what it would take to max a player completely. Different templates will have different caps. With less spec'ed skills you will have more skills to cap. This means a fully capped player will need somewhere between 85 billion and 120 billion. I'll pick 110 billion but most will need less than that. First lets assume that a player wants to play as a hard core leveler. While you can do better than this number I figure it is about what a normal person could do without burning out. That number is 50 million a day. There will be a little dead time where he or she is leveling it up, but a few 100 million days would quickly make up for that. The xp to 200 is around 40 billion points. This means our hard core leveler can reach it in 80 days. If smart he or she would also be pushing a tradesman along with them. Figuring 70% passup, I have no idea if that is optimal or not, the tradesman would have 28 billion. That is higher than Fist who has played for over 4 years and has always had a lot of great vassals. To reach the max our hard core leveler would need 220 days. The tradesman would be at 77 billion. This should also cap our tradesman, as they have no need to max the unused skills/stats. Just what the point is for doing something like this is I'll never know. After you are max'ed what point is there to hunting? If course the game would not be much fun for our fictional hard core player. This is why the cheaters are so prevalent. They want the rewards without the work. Errors I have an excuse for the errors in my last column. It was a 7k column and just too large to properly edit in the time I had. Of course three errors in one paragraph is really bad. The problem with most of my errors is no spell checker can find them as they are spelt correctly. I agree these are spelling errors but not ones a spell checker can find. That is why I grit my teeth when some moron tells me to get a spell checker. Perhaps word processors will advance to the point where they will find such errors in the future. Meanwhile I'm going to search for a better thesaurus. Many times the reason a bad word gets into the column is because the word I'm using did not get a hit on the thesaurus. Monitory instead of Monetary is one such. I thought it was wrong but my thesaurus let me down. If anyone knows of a better thesaurus, one that will patch into Microsoft Word, I would appreciate it if you dropped me a recommendation. For that matter a superior grammar checker would be a big help as well. Guest Writer; R E Drouin "What cannot be tracked, unless they are incredibility stupid, is a virus or worm creators. I can see no monitory gain from such. Unless you subscribe to the myth of virus's being created by the anti-virus companies in order to sell the solution there is neither rime nor reason for their creation." When people refer to misspelling by you, they are referring to you using the wrong word...which technically IS misspelling. Those of us who have read you for awhile know you are dyslexic and have a problem with the proper wording. The correct words above are monetary, incredibly, creator, viruses, and rhyme. :) But we forgive you! Drudge mystic seraphs are part of the new VOD dungeon, and made it into the VOD a patch ago with the new VOD undead and Olthoi Sentinels. A note of advice...Drudge mystics are highly persistent and some of the fastest chain casters in the game. In case you hadn't noticed, they exclusively Vuln acid 7 and fire off Acid War spells. So if you have a Major Acid Ward, highly useful. (Me find a Major? You have got to be kidding.) Drudge Seraphs, in contrast, vuln Lightning and use Lightning. If a melee or an archer wants to kill Drudge Seraphs, and a mage is along to vuln and Imperil, they should use a Crit Strike weapon. It will do roughly 40% more dmg then Fire...they must be low armor and heavy on the Vuln defense. Most groups use Piercing, because AP's are good...slashing would work just as well if the archer has Frogs. I will do some tests to find out if CS elementals work fine...I carry a CS frost sword to deal with the hollow Lugians in the VOD. You can, of course, default to fire if you don't want to use a CS weapon. Druge Mystics, weirdly enough, seem most vulnerable to Armor Rending Acid weapons. Yet more toys for melees to have to carry. Archers take note...more arrow types to have on hand with your AR bow! Another point with large VOD groups is competition for spawns...hence why large numbers of stuff can be drawn at once. Melees are used to occupy the different spawns, and then the remainder of the fellowship concentrates on taking out the monsters one at a time. Also note that Knaths have changed...now they vuln you as well as chain war. Far more dangerous. If you like killing the olthoi out there, note that a Gaerlan Olthoi slaying wand stacks with both vulns and war magic out there (i.e. Vuln+Slayer stacks). Primordial olthoi are fodder for mages with that kind of stacking going on. However, Olthoi Sentinels are Hollow and will rip you up...they are also ungodly fast and will chase you a long, long ways. Once Vulned and Imped, AR can chew them up in short order if quick strikes keep them occupied...(Armor Rending is more effective then Gaerlan olthoi slayer weapons) However, it's proven that having a melee in a fellow does wonders for keeping stuff occupied. Mage only fellows don't prove nearly as successful....unless its a bunch of paired mages hunting separately. heh! ==Aelryinth