Fist de Yuma - February 6, 2001

Fists, what, where, who.
I get a lot of questions on the different Fists. I have one on every server but some are there just to hold name. The ones I'm going to play I make for different reasons. Some are to train myself on different thing. Some are going far, others will be deleted and remade.

Over time I have a few Fists that are set in stone. These Fists have one thing in common, they have patrons and with one exception have gotten passed 10lv. I have decided to put the general stats on these Fists here.

Picking a patron is key for me. I have only left one patron and we are still good friends. If I join with an alliance it is for keeps. With that in mind the alliances and patrons posted here have passed a lot of scrutiny and are the best of the best.

Number one on the list is of course Morningthaw and Elder. He is a great patron and an even better monarch. How he does it is beyond me. There are times when I get overwhelmed with tells. Many times I spend the first 10 to 20 minutes replying to six or seven different people. Not complaining mind you, I love it.

Elder has over 2500 people who only need a /m to send him a message. He has said he get more tells from outside the alliance asking for stuff than inside. He has built different PPLs to mid level to help the family. He also has a full time job that is very demanding. My hat is off to him.

There are two players on MT. Fist de Yuma and Fist de Mage. Fist is a 72lv with spec'd Lore, Melee, Run and Unarmed. He is trained in Healing, Item, Leadership, Lockpicking and Missile.

Fist de Mage's patron is Balash. He is known as crazy and pushed Fist down to bold from crazy. He sure pushed the bar for craziness to a new level. Fist de Mage is of course an Og mage and stats are; Level 57, Spec'd Creature, Life. Trained Item, Mana Conversion, War, Lore.

Second on my list is Thistledown and Astrangeone in Orginal alliance. I logged on TH to test a few templates a long time ago. As soon as I did I got a message from Astrangeone. "Welcome to the worst server." Of course he was kidding.

After a while of playing I decided to swear to him and it turned out great. I like to call him my long-suffering patron as I ended up making other templates there that are unplayable today. Two were mages that drained a lot of pyreal from him. Their in the mid 20's now but with no magic school spec'd not really worth playing today. It was still worth the effort as Fist de Mage's growth is based on what I learned playing them.

The Fist I thought would be unplayable as well. I was wrong and plan to keep up with him. His stats are;
Level 24, Spec'd Lore, Ua. Trained Creature, Crossbow, Fletching, Healing, Item, Mana Conversion and Melee.

Solclaim is a little different. The newsgroup started an alliance when Solclaim started. Morgan the Red volunteered to be the monarch. It is a loose group of player, only 6 when I last checked. Fist stats are; level 15, Spec'd Lore, Melee, Unarmed. Trained Bow, Fletching, Healing and Item.

Frostfell was my first test of the extreme template. Solclaim was close with a 30 endurance so I knew a 10 endurance was going to be very hard. Getting a good patron for a few items and support was key for him. Still I could not do it fast as I wanted a good patron. I got that in Victor X in the Devil alliance.

I try not to be a big drain on my patrons as I know I'm not going to be there often enough to be really effective as a member. What I liked about Victor X was his willingness to help me before he knew who I was. He had never heard of Fist de Yuma before I swore to him. When I can I will play this one a lot. It will be very powerful at high level. Victor never has criticized me for not playing much. Instead he always offers to spend time helping me. I mostly turn down the help but I'm glad to know it is there.

The stats are; Level 11, Spec'd Life, UA, Melee. Trained Lore, Item.

Lastly was something I had not planed. I made a Fist on Leafcull to hold the name and play with my in-laws. My brother in law has a player called Jeff Sailor Bane. He plays on Saturday. Before he went over seas for 8 months he had a patron. That same patron has stayed with him.

I watched the interaction between them and saw that Daimyo Samurai in the Nightwolf alliance was a great patron. I was equally surprised when Nightwolf said "Hi" to him. Jeff was "Who is Nightwolf?" I had to point out to him who his monarch was. With almost 1500 members you don't see a monarch doing that often.

After a time we told him who I was and he knew me. I would have to take over Jeff's player at times to help him out. I decided to log the LC Fist and swear to Daimyo Samurai. That Fist will get a little work when Jeff takes a break on Saturdays. His stats are; Level 3, Spec'd Lore, Melee, Unarmed. Trained Bow, Fletching and Healing. Not an overpowering template but worth playing.

Idol Gem
My vassal Menelaus sent me tell asking how to get to the new islands. He has a friend (and now vassal) that wanted a bandit hilt for his dagger. I give him instructions on how to get to the portal near Bandit castle.

A bit later he said RL was calling and did I have time to help Baracuda. I have never done that quest before. I love doing new stuff as I know I will be called to do it again.

All I really knew about the quest was you get a gem from an Idol. I had only seen some brown fat boys with my archer. They were hard to hit and toss fire spells. I mostly avoid them.

I ran to the portal and got to the island. There I met Baracuda. I showed him what an Idol looked like and we started searching. I felt we would be better if we split up.

A bit later he sent me a message. He had found one that was big and black, well guarded and bad as they come. It was called a Dread Idol. That rang a bell on what we should be looking for. I ran to the coord and attacked as soon as I got there. I was not sure what was the best weapon but knew my archer did best with Frog against the brown ones. I was using my slashing weapon.

Bunch of the new Mosswarts, Fanatic, Zealots and Soul Trappers were guarding it. They were not hurting me but my stamina was dropping fast. Baracuda bravely was shooting arrows into the Idol. I told him to shoot the Mosswarts. I had to change tactics and kill the Mosswarts first.

After the kill there was no gem. We were waiting and Baracuda was jumped by some Mosswarts and got killed. I was on my own until he ran back. A vassal told me that Fire worked best on the Idols and that made it, if not easy, easier.

I killed a few more Idols before Baracuda and Menelaus arrived. We got him a gem on about the fifth Idol. Was thinking of camping it to get some gems for the family but got called away.

Staff of Nomads
A few of my vassals were trying to find the Staff of the Nomads. I knew it was on the new islands before and that was all they had heard. Using Sanctuary recall they were searching around a very bad spot. Of course they died.

I logged Fist and put on my protection setup. I ported in to Sanctuary and started buffing my weapons. I took off my acid V necklace and put on my Virindi armlet. After buffing my weapons I headed out. You will note a left out step. Yes, I did not have acid protection on.

Of course the first thing I ran into was a Bone Lore with a shield. I still almost got him, if he had not drained me I would have killed him before he got off the last acid blast.

I met up with Pantine a bit later and with him healing me I killed the Lord and two Greaters. That cleared a bit of the vit. I'm going to have to write down Maddie's archer's name as I keep forgetting it. Maddie's archer and Ty-po met us and we started exploring.

We were along the beach when Pantine was killed and things did not look good. We had no idea where the Staff of Nomads was and lag was really getting to Pantine. He sent us a message saying the lag was too bad for him to recover. Everyone ported out but I decided to log there. I was hoping to log in at 7am the next morning and get Pantine's stuff. In hindsight I know that would not have worked.

I was playing Mage when Pantine said he found different instructions on the Staff quest. It was in the Direlands now. I told him that I was camping his body. He said lag was clear enough that he could recover. I logged Fist and we got his body back.

Then it was off to Mayoi to the South Dirlands portal. From there we ran to the Slaughterhouse portal. After a lot of running we got nowhere. A portal was missing or we had the wrong instructions. After wondering around a bit we all ported back. I logged for a little sleep.

I give this to my vassals, they will stick with it. When I logged on the a few hours later they had done the quest and had a Staff of the Nomads for my Mage.

PK on MT
I try not to write to much about PK as I'm not red and have no plans to go anytime soon. I'm a member of the Elder PK team as a scout but as I don't fight so I cannot brag. Something has been going on for a number of months that I feel is really hurting our PK scene.

We had a PK war a while back. I reported on it. The only down side was a small group called Demono who kept attacking and looting people in the war. They were not on either side, they were just taking advantage.

Over the months this group has gathered the thugs of the server under their wing. There are a lot of good people in their alliance, my former vassal The Saint is one. The thugs specialize in making any group who wants to try PK think twice. I will go into my reasons on why looting in PK is bad.

The number one reason looting is bad is because of the difference between fighters and mages. Mages can self buff and use no drop items. This will not weaken them at all. A fighter must drop many of their protections and buffs or risk losing these items to looters.

If a fighter is set for no drop he is much weaker than he should be. Any mage can kill a fighter without life protects in seconds. So if you don't have high Life magic you cannot be PK unless there is no looting.

Most of the players have a style that works well with items. They don't want to spend one third of their day buffing. They don't want to fill their packs with spell components. The only draw back to this is they cannot go PK.

I think Turbine made a big mistake allowing looting on OPK servers. (Optional Player Killer) If we wanted to be in a Quake type of world I would go Darktide and play with the kiddies. If the Demono's of the world are not stopped they will be the only PKs on MT.

I think they would love that. They are mostly kids who would think they are doing something great to spoil PK for everyone else. They already think they are the best, just ask them.

Reading the boards I see the Demono's want things just one way. Every Demono I have seen win a fight has looted. Yet I hear complaints from Demono's who get looted.

They also love to change rules in the middle of the game. There was a PK war between Demono and another alliance. The rules were no looting. In the middle of the war Demono's started looting. Their excuse was some of the other alliance was using teams. They called this gang banging.

I have news for PK's. A fighter cannot fight a mage in PK without out help. Mages are mostly even after a point and levels make little difference after that. To win you have to out think the other team and get numbers. I'm a retired Marine and know how to win a war. You get more firepower than the other guy. To act like that is cheating is just looking for an excuse to loot.

I saw how is should work today. It started out with three Demono's killing and looting one of their own. (That is one of the reasons they don't care about being the only PK's. They want to turn the MT PK into there own private park.) A red dot appears on the edge of town. It is Baalzevuv a 108lv mage.

A little history. A long time back Baalzevuv and Shiner created a "join us or die" alliance. It was called Requiem. I left my patron Jann because of this alliance when Wartorn was forced into it. The same thing happen to them as is happening to Demono, the thugs took over. After a time Killean and others stood up to them and forced a truce. Baalzevuv stepped in and got rid of the thugs and thieves.

Baalzevuv admits today that is was a mistake. He is trying to create a no loot truce on MT. I don't think it will work as Demono had agreed to such and then backstabbed people at the first opportunity many times.

Anyway the Demono PK's see Baalzevuv and run to a portal as fast as they can. Baalzevuv then sweeps the land looking for a fight. A fighter takes him on. (Not a Demono) Baalzevuv has him nicely de-buffed and stops. The fighter attacks Baalzevuv with his sword and Baalzevuv stands there doing nothing.

Baalzevuv then does a Yawn e-mote. Might have been an error on his part because I see a few indicators that Baalzevuv is being hit. He quickly uses a healing kit, takes out a dagger and kills the fighter with two or three quick stabs.

After the fight I talked with Baalzevuv. He had praise for the fighter. (I'm sure a Demono child would have trash talked.) He said the fighter had him down to 60 hit points but with healing he had it right back. He also said he was not going to loot Demono's but was there to keep them from looting. He felt that if he gave them enough vit they would not be able to loot.

Professor X's group and Elders has a great battle. Most have said that if it was like that they would stay PK. It was done right, for fun. The same post said he had several friends go pk so he could fight at their side. They were killed and looted soon after going PK. They went white and will stay white. They have a bad taste for PK now and will have nothing to do with it. All because of some lame idiot who thinks looting is fun.

Lets face it, items that take months to acquire are not something they take lightly. There loss has an emotional impact. If you think your going to lose a hard or impossible to replace item by going PK, your not going to do it. If you want to see a handful of Mage PKs killing each other all day, let them loot. If you want a PK environment where people have fun, make looting such an offence that no one in their right mind would do it.

Lately I have heard of two things the disturb me. One is alliances that are powerful enough to stop Demono. Demono arranged a no looting truce with them. This let them continue their looting. I can understand this alliances not wanting to have a war over this. It is short sighted, when Demono gets strong enough to take on that alliance, their looting will start. The only way to stop a thug is to stomp him.

The second is some alliances that are helping Demono but thinking they are not tinted because they don't loot. Let tell you straight. If you help in the fight and the body is looted, you are a looter. Just not picking up the items does not absolve you of the crime. You know he will be looted and you helped. When the payback comes, don't scream, I never looted.

A lot of mages laugh at fighters. Well face one with all level VI protection and buffs and an unselfish mage backing him and your going to lose. We are not Darktide and the mages here don't have melee D. If we can hit you, your going to die quick.

You many not care right now but wait until they play war my way. They will camp your ls. They will camp your portal. We keep you dying until your afraid to log on. They will camp the altar and not even let you go white. They will camp the shops not let you buy anything. They will camp the dungeons and not lot you work vit. I may not be in charge but people listen to me. Someday a looter will have two choices, stay white or re-role.

Island hunting
I love the loot that Bandies and Drudges drop but the xp is slow at times. Even with a lot of battles getting over 150k a buffing cycle is not easy. After a buffing cycle I'm full of heavy loot and have to go sell off. This is making leveling and making my goals hard.

I have three ways I can fix this. I can hunt Corals again. This is easy xp and some good loot. The problem is every other mage on the island is thinking the same thing. As one person put it, lamers go where there is little danger and good xp. Lamers live to make others feel bad and I'm here to have fun.

The other is to hit a BSD. That is worse than hunting Corals.

Lastly I can to the castle and hunt Vapor golems. The loot is less and the danger more. There is also the danger of getting to close to the Plasma golem and getting a life or war VI ineptitude tossed on me. I found I can fight with either but rather not.

Lot of battles are easy. Vapors many times stand back and toss easily avoided spells at you. After my Yield VI and Cold Vuln VI I can kill with a level VII and VI blast. If they charge I have to toss three or four level VI to kill it. The fizzle rate of my VII's is to high to use in close combat.

Other battles are hair-raising affairs. After a fire de-buff their spells will do 100 points of damage or more. Even with double buffing I take 20 points a swipe from them. My only option is to kill them before they kill me. A few fizzles and resists and I'm in big trouble. Several battles I was at 20 hit points trying to get my level VI frost blast off before they can hit me again. I was lucky and won all but one. One battle I was at 20 hp and somehow was able to get two frost blasts off without getting killed. Instead of killing me it decided to add to my de-buffing.

One of my goals is level VII spells. To toss level VII's without to many fizzles I need a lot more war. My war is at 304 depending on spell economy and I fizzle too much. I figure I need 340 to be assured of few fizzles. That is not realistic at this time.

Getting to 320 is more attainable and that should be enough to start with. It will cost me about 43 million points. I have not worked out what advancing my focus and self will do to that number. With work I can do 2 million a day. Maybe a month or so and I will have that goal.

A trip to Teth.
I was in the Lin hall and Mikka Ishi came up to me. He was a new member under Balash and had been wanting to meet me. He is a 27lv fighter. I though he was joking when he asked if I could get him a port to Teth.

Turned out he really did want to go to Teth. I said there are two ways. He could get a portal there from someone or run there. I really recommend running to a place before getting going the easy way. To many new players miss out on adventures because a high level will give them the wrong help.

I logged mage and said I would meet him by the Mayoi South Direlands portal. I buffed up there and put level VI protects on him. I told Mikka Ishi to wait and let me check the exit. A lot of times there is a bad ambush on the other side.

I hit the portal and was attacked by the one thing I hate to fight, Venomous Grievver. I give it the old college try, hitting with blade for 100+ points of damage twice. Then it tossed a de-buff on me and resisted ever spell thereafter. I thought to run but found it had weakness on me and could barely walk. With 40hp I ported out before I died.

I told Mikka Ishi to wait there and logged Fist in. Fist is tied to the Subway for scouting so getting to Mayoi was quick. I buffed up and was ready to go Grievver hunting. Other side had replace the Grievver with a Drudge. That was ok because I saw later that the Dires are now full of Grievvers. I guess Turbine really hates Og mages.

Now a run though the Direlands is not a big deal for me. For a 27lv whose level VI buffs had run out it was a very different story. I would lead and hoped everything attacked me. We did ok until we ran into a pack of Shadows.

I was fighting two Golems to clear a path when two Umbris' and an LT showed up. One hit Mikka Ishi for over 100 points of damage with a spell. I hit the Umbris to keep him off Mikka Ishi and then ran. After clearing the Golems I started working on the Umbris.

It was a grand battle. Mikka Ishi stepped up in back of me and used his healing kit. I was lucky that my charged weapon was Slashing, the second vulnerability a Umbris has. Mikka Ishi said he had been shaking in his boots. After that battle I felt we would be better going around the other shadows.

Somehow in doing that we ended up on the wrong side of the valley. After a short while I knew we should have come to the Slaughterhouse portal. Backtracking I saw it on the other side.

We ran over there and I was clearing the Tumuroks. My plan was to clear them and then jump into the portal ahead of Mikka Ishi. He must have taken some hits because he ran into the portal ahead of me.

I quick followed and saw his dot running toward the hills while in portal. By the time I had cleared and ran away from the monsters I had lost him. Took a bit but we finally joined up.

I had only gone to Teth this way once and it was a long time ago. It was with Sidhartha when we were both young. Sid and I met our first Tusker. I had fought their weaker cousins and had no idea what I was facing. Sid had tried a drain while I was fighting it. Tusker ran over, one hit Sid and ran back to me.

I took one hit for all but 6 of my hit points. I ran fast and far. It was pre-sticky so as long as I kept running I was going to live. I ran up and down the valley screaming for someone to kill this thing. Finally a passing mage shot the Tusker off my back.

I did not want Mikka Ishi to suffer that and this is not pre-sticky so he would die of we found a Tusker. After wondering around lost for a bit Mikka Ishi checked his notes and got the coord. I saw a fort and Mikka Ishi asked me if that was it. I said yes, then got closer and saw a bunch of Tumuroks in it. I quickly type "NO".

Headed over a few valleys and hills before we found it. Mikka Ishi thanked me and said he had a ball. Balash should be very proud to have this guy. Going to be another great one.

Island hunting part 2
I was buffing up on the island and talking to Quren at the same time. He had moved to WE but did not like it. I had seen messages on who was moving there and knew it was going to be a mess. So Quren is back and I'm glad of it.

Then I got a message from Liquid-Smack asking if I would like a hunting partner. I love hunting with a fighter. Only need life skills and monsters fall much faster.

I was working off vit from a highly resistance Vapor Golem when I got the tell. I met Liquid-Smack on the other side of the Castle and made a fellowship. He is still below 50 so the xp split was not even. About then I got Life ineptitude VI tossed on me by the plasma golem.

This really pissed me off as I was well way from the castle, over two screens worth. With that spell on me I was going to have to put Yield on before I could use my life spells. I was also going to fizzle a lot.

After putting a few spells on Liquid-Smack we started to hunt. Took down a few Bandies and Drudges. It was a good spot as there were packs of both up a little hill. Some Malus packs were there as well.

All was going well and the ineptitude had run out. Very close to the bottom of the hill I was fighting a Bandie and Liquid was chased off by three Drudges that had run down the hill. I had the Bandie about dead when I saw another one coming up on my left. No big deal, one more Lighting blast and I would start in on that one.

I hit Lighting bolt VI and froze. Spent about 10 seconds watching and praying that it was a server wide lag and not just me. The chain started blinking red and flashed green. Lighting bolt fired, Bandie died and I saw I had about 40 hit points. Then a fireball hit me and I die.

I hate lag deaths and I knew this was a problem. I was very close to three packs and a lot of other stuff that would run down off the hills every time we stared fighting.

I ran to the castle and buffed up. Ran the gantlet passed the Diamond golem hoping it or the plasma would not toss an ineptitude on me. Ran passed three Vapor golems and got three bandies on me. I stopped to kill them as even with vit bandies were easy.

I met up with Liquid-Smack and saw the body was even worse than I thought. Right at the edge of the beach between two packs of Bandies and two packs of Drudges. There was also a scattering of Malus' and two standing right next to the body.

The problem was going to be killing before everything spawned back. Clearing the Malus' was easy, even with 4 more running down the hill. The Bandies were a little harder but we did not care about looting them. That meant I could kill them at the spawn spot.

The Drudges were a harder still because I need to land a Yield on them and vit was letting them resist a bit. After about 10 minutes of this we had cleared it enough to give it a try. Liquid-Smack took out his life wand and I ran to the body.

I got it open and clicked first item, and froze. Dam lag hit me again. I watch the chain turn yellow and after about 5 seconds I grabbed the item. I was being hit with lighting blasts from a Drudge on the hill and a Malus was hitting me on my right. Liquid-Smack was feeding me heals so I grabbed my items. Then Liquid ran out of mana.

I was down to 30 hit points and hit LS recall. I was in swirls when a lighting bolt killed me. I was sure I had got out enough to have the body with me but no such luck. We were back where we started.

Got back to Island, ran gantlet, killed spawns and tried again. This time I killed the Malus that I was sure attacked me last time. There was no lag and we got the body with little problem. Free of vit Liquid-Smack and I called it. Will play later when the afternoon lag clears.