Fist de Yuma - January 21, 2003

This and that This is one of my shorter columns. With so much time between patches this is an extreme case of "Between Patch Blues". Like I have said on other columns, I'm still having fun. I've done a lot of older quests and hunting. I got Fist's Armorer to 39. I'm debating on selling back Lore and getting Creature or just waiting until I get to 55. Until he has the skill to toss level VII spells I'll have Mage buffing him anyway. The only real advantage to getting Creature now will be quests. So far there is nothing FA needs to do that would take over the one hour buff time. I did a few hours in the 70+ Tusker Tusk dungeon and made over 40 million points with Jr. He is still parked there so I might do more leveling with him. The 70+ was a touch strange. I got there and found the fellow contained a renowned thief. I told them I was sorry and would not be able to join as long as she was there. I started a new fellow for those who did not want to fellow with a thief. The leader of the fellow said the thief seemed trustworthy and nice. I warned him that her methodology was to gain someone trust in order to steal. She tried to claim that she last did it eight months ago but I read a report of a theft by her just a few weeks ago. This was someone who not only stole but laughed in the face of those she stole from. She would taunt them for days afterwards. She really enjoyed her work. A short time later that fellow broke up and I became the default fellow leader. That was not my intent but I accepted the role. A fellow leader has a lot of running around and other responsibilities. It is still fun but not as relaxing. I had been lagging all morning and knew it was only a matter of time before I locked up. I knew I needed to reboot when I first started playing but had only intended to play for a short time. I set up who would replace me so the fellow would not suffer when it happened. In the fourth hour I did lock up. After rebooting I saw my planning succeeded. They had a new fellow going in just a few minutes. I gave my slot to the first player in line and gave the new fellow leader the list of players waiting for the fellow. I have about 40 minutes left on that buff so I might log there after the column is done and have a little fun. I'm almost done with the armor I have. The upper has 10 tinks to al 405. The lower is 380 and I'm waiting until I get the points from skill transfer to risk the last tink. I did three bags on the gaunts and will be happy when they are done. The sollets I'm glad I did not start on. I found a set that are al 265 wms 3. To bad they don't have a minor on them. I really like this armor. The color is right for me and it is easy to buff. The only draw back is having to transfer it between three players. Fist has his own armor because, with his melee defense, nothing much hits him anyway. I hope to get that way with Jr soon. Then I'll only have to transfer the armor between FA and Mage. Farewell quest Kempeck is leaving the game after years of play. I met him last year when he asked me to help the Red Rage alliance on the Queen Quest. In passing he said his only regret was not killing the Queen. If course we could not let that stand. I told him not to give up all his weapons and armor because we were going to get him the kill. The rest of his alliance picked up on it and a day was set. Jan 15 2003 would be Kempeck's day to kill the Queen. We met up at the river edge. At first all I saw was Coke Addict. While I very much disapprove of his name I found him to be personable. After a short while Kempeck and the rest of the group showed up. The word was out that a group had failed the quest. This mostly means the second Queen killed them and she is loose. So a one-pass kill was out. This also meant we had to move fast after we reached the hive. The reason we would have to kill her fast is lag. There is a bug with the quest. For some reason the quest gets slower and slower during the battle. I'm talking about cannot move mouse slow. There has been several theory's advanced as to why this is. For some reason Turbine has never addressed this problem. It is likely because killing the Queen in this manner is not approved by Turbine. I cannot think of any reason for them to not fix the problem otherwise. Fortunately most groups can do a one-pass kill and don't need to worry about the lag problem. I read somewhere that Turbine wants to improve the Queen's AI so a one-pass does not work. I hope this does not happen as the one-pass is the best way to do it. Feeling out the group I found that Kempeck was the only person who had done the quest with me. Coke Addict had done the quest before but it was a while back. Coke had about quit the game and even had to borrow a bow to do this quest. After doing a Dam buff (Olthoi up to EVs and Vapor/Diamond golems) I headed to the Dam. They were buffing and would follow me. After killing a handful of Golems I quickly worked my way to the switches and killed the Lightning Elementals guarding them. I asked Kempeck if they were ready to start moving into the Dam. They had not left yet. I admit I'm someone who hates waiting for others. It is very hard for me to be with a slow group. Kempeck got them moving and after that it was very fast. I got the door open for them and headed out. Kempeck had the gate open and everything dead between me and the door. It was a fast run. I crossed the acid so I could get an angle on the ones there. Sometimes they get stuck in the cubbyholes so having people on the other side makes things go faster. Coke Addict came with me. It seemed like a bad choice. All sprays were on the other side, including our two. We killed a bunch but for some reason never got sprayed. We moved to Mount E and, other than having to wait for someone to buff, got off ok. Kempeck and a few others got turned around moving to the Royal hive but that only cost us a few minutes. I gave everyone instructions on how we were doing this. I explained how we had to do the second of a two-pass kill. (Because of the reported failure with the previous group.) Just in case I also told them what would happen of the first Queen was still alive. (In the below description I'm counting 4 doors. The pickable door on top is 1 and the three at the bottom are 2, 3 and 4) Kempeck was the only one who knows the switches and had been with me on other runs. There are several ways to get to the main hive. Each has a different set of doors. If the group holding the doors takes a different route than the group doing the switches it can be a disaster. Everything went well. I set Mages and Coke (Archer) at the doors. It is dangerous to put a melee at a door as they can get dragged away and stop the quest. Kempeck started down and got past the first two doors. Then they got turned around somehow and did not find the third door. They were lost. What was bad is they took the second door holder with them. If they made a bad turn they would be locked out. Of course that was exactly what they did. When they got back to the jump room I know we were in trouble. Kempeck wanted to port out and run back. I was afraid that by the time Kempeck got back his spray would have expired. He was one of the first three to get sprayed and it was getting close. I had an idea. First I directed the third door holder to come to me and hold my door. Then I move over to where I knew a switch is to open the third door. I held that door and directed them to the second door. I ran down to trigger the third door and then ran to the second door's trigger. Then I made a fast run back to the third to be sure it did not close on me. That worked and everyone made it to the end. Of course by now we had to rebuff. It was getting late and I know Coke had school the next day. I was hoping nothing would go wrong as we just did not have the time to do the process over again. Everything was working find and I was full of confidence. I de-buffed the Queen to kitten status and Kempeck jumped down. The first thing we noted was the Queen did not move. This meant the first Queen was not killed! I instructed everyone to jump down. We killed off the Guards and I told Kempeck to set himself opposite of us and get ready to battle the Queen. He did not move. His wife was playing another player and she said to hold for a second. A second later Kempeck logged off, he had been kicked to the desktop. As everyone well knows the anti-grief player code goes into effect at that point. When you log back you are at your LS, not in the hive. Coke has been keeping track and said we had gone over the 90 minute point and were no longer sprayed. There was no way to get Kempeck back. Well hells bells, that sucks. In the general confusion I thought I saw someone say, "This is Kempeck, let someone else get the kill." The only thing we could do at that point was have Coke Addict shoot up the Queen. As he too was leaving the game it seemed like the right thing to do. While the second queen was being killed I got a message from Kempeck that made me think what I saw was not true. He was still trying to get back. By that time it was too late to do anything. We had started to battle the second Queen and she was about dead. I'm not sure if I misread something or if someone played me for a fool. In any case Kempeck got screwed and I'm the one to blame. I should have confirmed what I saw with Kempeck. That was Kempeck last shot at getting the Queen and he is understandability upset, especially at me. To tell you the truth so am I. If I had it to do over it would be different. What could have been a great going away present became a bitter memory and I blame myself. I should have asked Kempeck what he wanted directly and not counted on a fleeting bit of text I did not see long enough to be sure of. Update While waiting for the Gaerlan quest to start on Sunday I saw the following.; In the darkest depths of Marescent Plateau on far Marae Lassel, the party of the bold Kempeck has slain the young queen of the island's Olthoi brood! As one, the Olthoi swarms recoil from her final burst of terror, and slowly begin to withdraw back into their hives. That was a big burden off my shoulders. Kempeck forgave me and all is right with the world. My only wish was that I could have been there. Moby Dick was there to help so Elder was represented. Head in the sand thinking There are people who never learn to think outside of their little box. Once they get a fix on something, that is that, and no amount of facts will change their mind. I saw examples of this when someone posted about the lack of PK's on MT. Without fail the people who had never been PK said they did not go because of looting. The ones who had gone PK and left said it was; to expensive, full of grief players, they were ganged and it is dominated by 126+ chain members. The other reason people gave for not going PK was culture. The PK trash taking was not their idea of fun. The PK people would respond with; Go no drop, There is not many grief players, Duels are common, Mid-level players can defeat the high levels. They have no idea how arrogant this sounds. The PK's could well be 100% right about all of it and still be wrong. It is a classic example of not listening. There is also the problem that they are not even close to 100% correct. People will not go PK if they are afraid of losing their items. They will not go PK if the culture is at odds with their values. Calling them names and laughing at this will not change their minds, it only confirms their perception. If you want more people going PK then looting has to stop. If you don't care about the low number of PK's then fine. Don't expect to put down someone for their fear and not expect anything but distain in return. PK's rapidly get use to conduct normal player don't see or expect from others. A new PK that gets killed, looted and trashed talked sees "griefer". Given that this is normal PK action the PK's don't see it that way. So you have one side saying there are too many griefers and the other scratching their heads. Inability to communicate is a common problem. Given that it is up to the PK's to try to get others to try PK it is their responsibility to understand the other side. The NPK's have no responsibility to understand the PK's. NPK's are not trying to change anyone's mind about something. From what I have seen the likelihood of PK's changing anything is little and none so it will be up to Turbine. Saying to go no drop is talking Greek to a NPK. They have items that drop and that is how they fight. When you say go no drop they imagine going into battle in store brought armor and weapons. Given that no one in their right mind will want to do that they dismiss PK and move on. Insulting them with, "They are too lazy to find death items" will not change anyone's mind. They know they are not lazy. All it does is make them mad at the PK's. Bottom line. NPK's will not go PK in mass until looting is stopped. There is no amount of logic twisting that will change that. If you want more PK's then you have to find a way to fix looting. If you don't then care about more PK's the point is moot. If you do then understand you will never change anyone's mind about looting. Fix looting or stay with the current PK statuesque. Board response I posted the above on two ACVault boards, General and MT. While I got a lot of support from players who don't PK I got little from those that do. More than 50% of the posts from PK's were flames. Generally what I got from them is PK if fine and they don't want or need any new people messing it up. I cannot be sure if this is the truth or not as board posters tend to be at the extreme end of issues. From what I see on MT PK is boring and repetitive. Melee vs. Melee is like watching grass grow. Mage vs. Mage, the majority of battles, takes forever and is generally decided on who lags first or worse. I see a lot of potential in PK. It could be so much more than it is. In fact it was a lot better years ago than it is today. I know I'll get a lot of flames over that but that is how I see it. At one time we had wars. We had alliances vs. alliances. We had honor, heroes and villains. Now we have a bunch of people asking who will duel them followed by 15 minutes of people juggling around and spells going into space. 100+ Tusk There was a message on our board about RD's alliance doing a run for the 100+ Tusk. I felt this would be a great test for Jr and signed up. We met on Tusker Island. It is nice that I don't have to fight my way there any more. That spell is nice but darn hard to get. I followed Chain Effect on the run. This is where I found that I had been neglecting my run skills. A day later I added to it. When we got close we stopped, cleared the chasers and waited for the rest. I found Jr could hold his own against the big guys but only just. When hit I was hit bad. I evaded a lot but even a few hits were too many. Headshots were worst as I have a minor melee d helm that is not really high armor. RD give me an al 300 helm but the lower damage on head hits was not worth the increased hits with lower melee. Even with an AR 10-40 fire weapon I was not hitting really great. If I ever get a granite bag together I'll be using it on this weapon. Being wms 6 it will be the last tink and not totally safe. Time to start looking for a new one. My low hits were 9 with most in the 20's. I had crits of 58. Remember I hit at fast speed so the low numbers still add to significant damage over time. Given their regeneration and amount of hit points fighting one that was not imperil/vuln was very long indeed. The only time I had problems was with three or more and one at my back. Jr's melee is around 423 and his UA is over 440. Strength is a big factor with damage so I'm adding to that now. Jr's strength is equal with Fist's at around 250 but at a far lower cost. Of course the new stat balancing will change that. The Tusk was worth around 9 million points so it was well worth it. Hell the adventure with friends was well worth it. I figure to add 10 points in both melee and UA by the next trip. Goal is to solo it someday.