Fist de Yuma - February 5, 2002

I just read an eye-opening essay by one of the Turbine developers. He had a lot of good points. The biggest one was that people have no idea how much work they are doing. The housing bug has put them way behind on many things that would have made Melees and Archers very happy for one. As a programmer I understand one point he made very well. I would be working on a important project. It would be halfway done and have a good idea as to the next steps. The BOSS steps in and says, "Drop what your doing, this is more important." After a year I had dozens of halfway done projects sitting around. Most of them I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. I doubt very much if Turbine is that bad off but you get the idea. The writer also had another point. He hated reading the boards. He felt that many of the posters were bitter angry people who might be better off quitting. I can see where he might get that idea but he could not have been more wrong. It is very easy to get into an "Us" vs. "Them". This is counterproductive for both sides. Most of the posts can provide productive feedback to the developer. If taken with a grain of salt they can see a side of the problem they never would has seen otherwise. Yes there are people out there that love conflict. They will make posts to stir up trouble. Even those posts can have things that can help the developers. A lot of the fix to the conflict would he better communications. This post did a lot to show the whys of some of our problems. It showed a lot of the frustration they experience trying to do their jobs. My question is why didn't they tell us this before? Why is it being said in a obscure developers post and not as a headline at the Turbine site? Keeping the players informed is as valuable as the players keeping the developers informed, maybe more so. In the Marines it was well known that the best way to keep rumors from running wild was to keep everyone informed as to what is going on. Ok, a housing bug meant that the melee/archer balancing was put on hold. Tell us that! I'm sure what a lot of what people are screaming about on the boards is in similar limbo. Keeping people informed on the progress makes everyone happy. The people who complain after that can be safely kill filed. Overconfidence and pure luck I saw on our board that Dillo spines were the harassment item needed for a house. Several people including a vassal of mine were looking for one. I decided to head out to the beach and see if I could find a spine. Fist de Yuma has high everything as far as the beach is concerned. Without buffs on him he can run there without danger. My melee D is far above what they can hit. My magic D is above their spell abilities. With no buffs on my weapon there was nothing I could not kill in one or two blows. I started in Tou-Tou. I was not sure if the Dillos spawned there or not. I decided to run to Mayoi and then possibility to Qbar. There was nothing worth killing along the way except Broken Fragments. I did get a shard off one. In very little time I had gone from Tou-Tou to Mayoi without seeing a single Dillo. I think had seen them between Mayoi and the Land bridge but it had been a long while since I had traveled that route. Still with no buffs or armor I kept going. I should have known things were different when I saw the Duel Fragment. I killed it with little trouble along with three Grivvers. I hope to get some acid for a robe I have. At that point I really should have put on my armor but I was thinking I could outrun anything really nasty. A short time later I ran into three Taitus Lugina. Now I have missile but it has been sorely neglected point-wise. There is so little out there that has any missile I need to worry about that I never invested any points into it. So I knew that if I did not dodge I would take a goodly amount of damage from a rock. Still I felt I could run passed and with a little weaving not get hit. I got within a few steps and was dropped to the desktop. Holly mother of... I franticly push buttons to get back into the game. I know that the sooner I try to log back the faster I log off. I got back and logged Fist. I fully expected to see my 83 death on the screen. As I logged back I saw no vit. That was a relief. I had finger hovering over the 'Q' key and waited for him to get out of portal. I hit the beach right between three of them with 80 hit points. I really should have died at this point. I was only one rock away from death and a Taitus can hit my melee defense when un-buffed. I really had no chance. This is when pure luck came in. I logged in just as someone else was running through the Lugian's. They were tossing rocks at him and I was allowed to escape. In the entire time I had been running I had not seen a single sole. Somehow I logged in at the exact time this guy was there. Pure luck. I was running too fast with dodging and weaving to id my savior. If you were running the beach west of Mayoi and saw a guy with no armor log into the middle of three Taitus as you ran by thanks, you saved my ass. Sometimes I hate Turbine When I made my main tradesman mule cooking was not such a big deal. This was before Dyeing and other things that are making this 4-credit skill more valuable than many 8-credit skills. Because of this I trained cooking instead of spec'ing it. Big mistake. Two vassals have made players to level the mule over the years. One got to level 50 before disappearing. He has come back before so I have hopes to see him again. Meanwhile the mule is 35lv and, with buffs, has a 325 skill. Currently I'm leveling him with the use of hearts and yellow jewelry. It is slow as 15k a turn in means a lot of them to add a single point of cooking skill. With the last turn ins we got him to his current level. We wanted it high because I was dyeing a guys total armor. So far I have had about 1 in 10 where I lower the armor 20 points or so. I had added 7 point to the skill since the last dye job so I had high hopes of getting it without a failure. I met Brood at Tommy town where I have the mule parked. After turning in the stuff and getting the skill to 325 Brood gave me the dye and armor. Gloves ok. Jacket ok. Boots ok. Leggings are a total failure. We end up with pink worthless junk out of a nice set of leggings. Sometimes I hate Turbine. Leading the Quest Got a call from a guy, non-Elder, who wanted to do the new ring quest. I figured if I could get a few Elders to go it would be worth my while. I talked to Balash and he had not done it yet. A good fighter like Balash would make it easy. I hit the hall and got a few more who wanted to go. I got the feeling later that they did not totally know what they were in for. It started out a bit chaotic. We got everyone at the desert town. Mike was in the dungeon, one guy was at the villa and the rest were with me. I met the non-Elder, who got me going on this, as we ran to the Villa and he was coming back. I got him into the fellow. I had a little trouble making people understand exactly what they needed do to. Next time I will sit everyone down and explain the quest in full before we start. We had a good size group so the first note and human husk took a while. After that people started dropping out and the group got smaller. After the Reformed Bandit I stopped everyone and said we would stay as a group from then on. We turned in the note and got the instructions to go to the temple. I lucked out and did not make any wrong turns. We got to the end without a bit of backtracking. There we found a few people who where behind us earlier. While we were taking our time they had passed us. They got the orb and we started in on ours. I showed them where the Hollow with the key spawned so they could find the key better. Before we were done three guys showed up. There was a low 50, low 40s and a mid 20s level player. They were a bit worried about lasting after we left. I thought the 50 and 40 would have little trouble and put a good set of melee buffs on the mid 20s before we left. I made a portal using a gem. As soon as I did there was a spawn. I started firing spells and shouted to go into the portal before it faded. There was only a handful left so I took the portal. We turned in the Orbs and headed to the next town. Balash said he had to go back and help the group we left. Seems soon after we left all three were killed. Not sure what happened, guess I'll never know. I told Balash that I would set our group on the next step and go help them but he was off before I could explain that to him. Now there were four of us left. We got the instructions and headed to the farm. Other than one guy getting trapped behind the fireplace in the basement and not knowing about the candle we did ok. Then disaster stuck. Maskman opened the chest and got the note and uniform. The next person tried to get it and got a, "under someone else's control" error message. He closed the chest and a few seconds later reopened it and got the items. Then Maskman noted that the uniform was missing. When he tried to get another one he got a "you have done this" message. He was screwed out of the quest. He said he would go with us anyway as the last two left were mid 30's. The last part is a bit intense without a mob or power. I soloed it but I killed, looted and ran at the end. We got back and it hit me. Mask could not go with us, he could not get into the portal. I later figured out I was wrong. He could have gone to Cregstone and got to the fort from there. I forget about that and Maskman left. Balash meanwhile was done saving the three and was hunting. I told him what happened to Maskman and he said he would finish his quest and give Maskman the ring. We also met the non-elder who started this. He had left us a bit before. He only had to do the farm. So him and Balash did the farm, I guided them with tells. That got us enough power where it was not a worry. Another guy I had seen a few times trying to do the quest that day asked if he could join us. I got the feeling he had missed a few steps but figured he would be dropped at the portal if so. As we headed to the desert town I got a request from a guy. He had a player at the end but could not survive there. He logged out and was hoping a group would send him a tell when we had it safe. I said I would do that. We got everything turned in to Dame and hit the portal. Sure enough the guy we picked up could not go in. I put a lot of melee defense buffs on everyone. With hollows protections are useless so not getting hit is the best option. With full VII buff I hit 133 melee defense so I was going to have to depend on my armor and the melees killing fast. We raced to the end. The bones were weak and not worth killing. At the portal I told them about the ambush. Balash jumped in to take them on. We waited for him to download and then followed him. I ported into a raging battle but with a strong melee we had it cleared in no time. Someone used his key to get the door open and we headed down. I really don't know how I soloed this before. The one single one on one battle I was in I took over half my hit points. I was lucky with crits that day. We heading north cleared and got to the end. I sent a message to the guy who had a player logged there. He logged in and we helped him get the note. It was a lot of battles but we had the power to fight it. Everyone got a note and no one was in any danger. We got back to get the final reward. Strangely everyone got a Strength ring except Balash who got the top reward of Focus. I'm sure Maskman will he ecstatic over that. I like this quest more than ever now. While it is not a hard ball buster like some of the quests but it is hard enough that the non-thinking kids were hopelessly lost. The battles, especially at the end, need a good group, a strong melee or a very strong mage with good armor. The spawns of the key monsters could be hurried up a bit to cut the waiting but that is all I would change. Staff There is this staff. Not a bad one. It is a quest item that is dropped by a guy with four Readsharks. The first time I saw him I did not know you needed a high staff skill to make the thing. I ended up breaking it. I really did not care until I found it added a nice amount to your leadership skill. A long while later I found him again. This time I added a lot to my staff skill and buffed up. I had 285 skill I believe. It broke. I was hoping to get another shot at it but for a long time I never saw the guy. A few days ago, while hunting, I saw and killed him. I could not pick up the pieces as it was still too soon. Still the items the Reedsharks dropped were worth the killing. It was funny because a few minutes later a guy asked if I had seen him. Now knowing that it drops good loot why would I see it and not kill it? Still he was upset when he found out I had killed it already. Then yesterday while hunting north ML I found again. Killed but still too soon to pick up the staff pieces. About five minutes later, while fighting some Vrinidi, the darn thing spawned right next to me. Fortunately I had the last Virindi in my crosshairs when that happened. I killed it again and got the loot. Of course I still could not get the staff. Today I was heading out to my hunting grounds. Just a short way from where I portal in and there was the staff guy again. Killed it and just for grins tried to pick up the staff. LOL got it. Now I was afraid to try and combine the pieces. I had a few points saved up and started adding to staff. Over the hunt I added four points. I was thinking as I did that the difference in point totals from that hunt, to the xp island hunt I did the day before. I was picking up over 300k while buffing when in the fellow, around 100k a minute without hunting at all. While solo hunting I would only get around 500 to 700k in a twenty-seven minute buff. I was there for xp but more for loot. I need hearts and gems to level my mule. I also hope to pick up a major or minor war item somewhere. At 27 million, yes that is million points per point of War I'm really hurting in my attempts to get it much higher. That would be ok except I'm still getting resisted. I buff out, with a bunch of buffs, to 373. I'm still having four shots in a row being resisted with Virindi. One thing I'm finding is I'm not running into a lot of people in north ML any more. Amazing that the change in Virindi spawns has stopped the overcrowding. Anyway after I was done hunting I had got my Staff to a buffed 299. I also had four sing keys, a nice set of leggings, three Yellow Jewels and two golem hearts. I also had enough stuff to get an M note and buy comps. Of course that is not counting plats and I know I burnt a few of those. Still the pyreal peas retuned with the YJ's and hearts will replace them. With a lot of tight nerves I tried to assemble the staff. Success! Unfortunately the +30 damage spell on it does not stack with Blood Drinker but it is still a nice weapon. With ten points to my leadership it should pay for the points I added to staff over time. I might even grab a shield for the next time I go fight hollows.