Fist de Yuma - July 27, 2004

This and That One thing I have learned over the years is to take responsibility for my actions. If you're wrong, admit it. Far too often people think admitting they are wrong is a sign of weakness. I see it as a sign of strength. Unfortunately, people who see someone admit they were wrong on something; automatically discount all they have said. That is not fair or reasonable, but it is human nature. I'm more inclined to discount things people say, when they will not admit they are wrong, and when it is clear they are wrong. If they will not step off a known error, they what other lies do they support? This column is about my adventures, and about my life in general at times. It would be easy to write about what great things I do, and ignore anything I make and error with. It would be safe and will give the flamers less of a target. I have never been one to take the safe route. For that reason, I'll even write about where I was totally wrong. Included in this column is an essay where I was absolutely wrong, immature and a borderline griefer. I get red-faced even thinking about it. Nevertheless, I cannot, not write about it. It happened, so I have to tell the story. Big disappointment I finally made my goal of getting Salvage Mule One to a base 250 magic in all the schools. I still had a little bit to go with mana conversion, but it was close. I figured I could start self-buffing and add to mana conversion in the next buff. I knew I would need some pre-buff spells. Looking at the bar I found I was missing several spells for level VI. I had all the VII's from hunting in the Matrons. A transfer of a few notes, and a quick portal to AB, solved the pre-buffing spells problem. I decided to give the buffing a try, just to make sure everything was working right. I was sure I had all the spells needed, but I have gotten killed in the past by making assumptions. I set Sapphire up and hit start. Instead of tossing VII's, it started tossing VI's. When it did try a VII, it fizzled several times before landing. I let it go for a while and then stopped it in disgust. It is clear that a base 250 is not enough, especially if I want to use a normal wand for buffing. I am buffing out to 312 at this point. I figure I'll need 320. That is a base 258, but I really hate odd numbers like that. So my goal is now 260. Since I need a higher number for the Salvage mules, I'll need a bigger number for Owanda, Death Mute and Deadeye Fist. Two of them started with a 10/10 focus/self. Running the numbers into ACPlanner shows I need from 800 million for one, and over a billion for another. I did not run the numbers for Death Mute, as he is only 84 anyway. That is all a big disappointment. Two down, one to go I found out something about Sapphire today. If your magic skills are not at enough base to toss level VII spells, it will automatically do a pre-buff with VI's, even if you are already buffed with VII's. That meant I was mistaken about the amount of skill I needed to push Salvage Mule One to self-buffing. I found this out when I hit a buffed 316 skill. I decided to make another test, because something just did not seem right about the first one. While there were a few fizzles, buffing with that amount of skill was tolerable. I did have to push mana conversion a touch, because of the big drain with multiple Item spells. I was finished with SM1 at 94lv. I'll still have to go back with SM2 for a bit, so he can get to self-buffing, but that will not take but a week or so. I was ready to start working on SM3. Salvage Mule Three is at 74th level, just from SM1's passup. That meant I could start collecting the spells. I have all the magic skills. I'll still need to pick up Mana Conversion but I'll not need that for a while. I did note that I was missing something important with SM3. He did not have Lore! I had somehow missed that. He had two credits, so I just needed to move Leadership to trained to have the points for Lore. At 85, I'll un-train Leadership and get Mana Conversion. I will not need Mana Conversion until he hits 94 anyway. The Steps The first step towards getting Salvage Mule ready to hunt was to transfer the armor and weapons, along with the salvage bags. I also needed minor things, like healing kits and Rations. The next step was to get his two Lifestones ties set. He was still Lifestoned in Holtburg. After a recall to hometown, (Tou-Tou) I took the Lin portal, sold off a few items for cash, and ran to Nanto. The plan was to spell tie in Nanto, but I did not have the spells yet. I did a touch tie. I took the Bluespire portal and ran to the Holtburg portal. I then ran to Rthwic to get portal spells from the vender. I LS recalled back and did the Lifestone tie. Now I needed to get to AB, but first I had to get to the skill temple. I have a lot of items with 210+ lore requirement. To use them, I had to get Lore. That meant a run to the un-train temple, to move Leadership to trained. I recalled back to the Mansion, and had Fist's Armorer buff him up. Then I recalled back to Nanto. From Nanto I took the Yanshi portal, and ran to the Northshore housing portal. From there it was a short run to the skill temple. I got Leadership un-trained, and applied the 20 million I got back, to Lore and other needed skills. Long Run I needed to get to AB to complete the nights project. I know there is a mule in Hebian-to that has an AB portal. I did another hometown recall, and ran to the subway. The mule that had the AB portal was not on line. There was a mule with a VoD portal there. That was not great. I still had 25 minutes on the buffs, so it would be possible to run there. When I did the buff I passed on banes. That was ok for the short run to the temple, but might be a touch more iffy for a long run through the Dires. Still, I wanted to get this out of the way. I took the VoD portal. Now what is the best route? I decided to take the Plains river until close to AB, and then run West. I know the route to the river well. I decided this way, because I had made the run cross-country a few times, and I felt the river route would be better. There are no hills or other obstacles, and zero chance of taking a wrong turn. There was a time when all this was not available. The standard way to get to AB, a long time ago, was to run from the South Dires portal. You got the portal in Mayoi. You ran south until you hit the water, and then followed the shoreline. This was a long run. To make matters worse, you needed to stop several times to buff. At that time, we only had 10 to 12 minute buffs. You would have to buff at least three times during the run, and that was if you did not stop to fight. We would laugh at the monsters there today, but at the time they were nasty. It is only recently that Turbine fixed Magic Defense. Back then, a monster always landed. A resist was a very rare thing. We also did not have the level VII's protects. I'm sure I was mostly using V's then, and glad to have them. Today, the monsters are much more nasty, but the equipment and buffs make it safer than it was back when the game started. Of course, you have to have those items. Us old-time players do have some advantages over the new players. At first, the run was easy. There were only a few monsters on the river, and they did not bother to chase me. Nothing came into melee range, or hit me with a war. Things got a little tighter as the river curved south. There are some narrow spots and a few more monsters to get around. I was also not seeing a way out, to start the run west. I knew a path would show itself soon. While I had never made the run from the river to AB, I had made the run from AB to the river several times. This was the route we took to the get the Lightning Stone. Like the Acid vault, the Amperehelion Vault is very weak. An average player could solo it with little trouble. When it was first put in, it needed a large group, and there were a few wipeouts. This is another example at how much more powerful we are today. A short time after I ran past the Windmill, I spotted a path up. There were a few nasty things, as I ran though the hills, but I outran them with ease. It was a good thing I put a lot into Quick. With a 10 start, it takes a lot of xp to get Quick to a decent number. As I started to get close to AB, the monsters levels and density started increasing. I found myself making wide detours around tightly packed groups. It was getting harder and harder to find a path around them. I finally had to just run into the less dense spots and hope for the best. I was really regretting my choice to not bane at this point. For the most part, I did not need to worry. I did not take a single war and most monsters were satisfied to toss a few de-buffs on me as I ran past. The exceptions were worrisome. One of the flying Olthoi was a real pain. One must have followed me for two clicks, hitting me for 5 to 11 points at a time. No sooner did I shake that one, than another one attached itself to my back. I was at less than 100 points before I finally shook the pursuit. I found a spot on a hill that was free of monsters, and stopped there to heal. I found that I'd need to put some points into healing when I hit the Matron. It took me three heals to get to full health. Fortunately, a 100 coodi and focus makes healing easy to raise. A quick check of my map showed I was just a touch south of AB. From there I had no trouble getting into town. A few Shadows chased me up the hill to the LS, but they retreated quickly. With all those PK's around, I would have run too. It took a little under two hours to get Salvage Mule Three ready. Tomorrow, after my bike ride, I'll start the push to 80, and the next Matron. Declare project completed After thinking about it, I can declare my long-term Salvage mule project complete. All mules can fight well in the 60+ or 80+ matron. One is self-buffing, and one is well on its way there. Self-buffing can be completed as I use them. The main goal of this project was to have a mule, on each account, which can hunt for salvage, and pass up their xp to a Tradesman. With the move of Salvage Mule One to Fist's Mule two, that is done. From here on I'll hunt them a few times a week. The column will have more adventure and less about this long-term project. When you stop to think about it, this is remarkable. It took me almost a year to get Fist's Armorer 100. Now it is possible to get three players to a high level in only three months. Of course, one mule leveling another with passup was key, but it is remarkable nevertheless. Turbine has solved the old macro'ed players dominance by making it easy to get to high level. Players who are restarting can level quickly, and mostly without affecting the new players, who can experience leveling in the old way. Cher'okee A while back, Cher'okee said she was going to be off line for a while. One of her children was going into the hospital for something, and she would be with her for that. Then we heard that she might be having new phone lines installed. Cher had been left out of a lot of adventures because of her phone lines. She is out in the sticks, and had very bad lines. Any crowding whatsoever lags her out. We hoped she would be on quickly, with a much-improved connection. Since then, we have not heard from Cher. Needless to say, we are all worried. It has been months now and we have no idea when or if she will be back. Cher is the heart and soul of Casa de Yuma. She refers to herself as the housemother. To tell you the truth, the allegiance has not been the same without her. Because of her lag problems, she spends much of her online time at the mansion. As she is such a joy to be around, it makes the mansion something other than a stop over. She has trouble sleeping, so she was on late at night a lot. I counted on her to keep me informed as to problems and needs. I have no idea if Cher'okee can read the column or not, but we miss you a lot Cher! Believe me, there will be great joy in CDY when she returns. Conflict There are a few people in the game that I wish would leave. They create conflicts that go far beyond their immediate sphere of influence. They create stress by their actions. People react to that stress by changing their play style. That change creates stress later and can lead to a lot of misunderstandings. I wrote last week about anal people. One of them berated a player for looting and dropped him from the fellow for it. This led to a problem later. The guy who was berated decided not to join the fellows, and who can blame him. As someone pointed out on the General board, no one should be forced to join a fellow. Nevertheless, it is hard to understand, if you are not privy to the persons reason for not joining. A "White" player hurts everyone, both him and the fellow members. While hunting in the matron, I suddenly noted the fellow was gone. There was no announcement as to why, just gone. We spent some time running around getting the fellow recreated and started back hunting. I saw one player, a 126+, who was not in the fellow. The fellow was full, so I apologized to him, and said he would be the next on the list. He did not say anything in return, just went on his way. Later, the fellow trimmed a bit, and I came across this player. I tried to add him, but he had fellow accept off. I figured it was a mistake, and asked him to turn it on. He said, "I already dissolved your fellow once for not leaving me along." Here I fell victim to my anger. It is one thing to refuse to join a fellow, it is another to join it, just to get leadership and dissolve it. There was little to hunt, as the Matron was packed with hunters, so I decided to follow this griefer around and steal his kills. I'll admit it was an immature thing to do. We all make mistakes; due to anger, a bad day or whatever lame reason we can think of. I was wrong, and quite ashamed for doing it. He did his best to get away from me, including porting to the start. I know the dungeon well, and he had armor that made him easy to track. We had a little argument going at the same time. Finally, he ported out, but we kept our argument going. He finally admitted that he did not dissolve our fellow on purpose. He was added without his knowledge, and tried to remove himself. He did not realize he was the fellow leader, and ended up dissolving the fellow instead. This is easy to do, and I have seen it happened more than once. He also explained why he was not joining the fellow. He was also very tired of people asking him to join the fellow. That was why he pretended to have dissolved the fellow on purpose. I apologized for acting like a jerk. My anger had cooled by this time and I was thinking clearly. He said he understood my points. He returned to the Matron and joined me hunting. By this time there was only a few hunters. It seems to go up and down rather rapidly. You can go from a full fellow plus, to one or two hunters, in a very short time. Marginal hunters beware, if you need a crowd to hunt in the matrons, you should not be there. He and I hunted, with just a few others coming and going, for another hour or so. In the end, we became friends. I added him to my friends list so we can talk later. So it all worked out in the end, but I blame the anal moron who caused my friend to do what he did. I have no excuse for my actions. Guest Writer: Aelryinth of Leafcull I did some testing, using the generous services of a pod of Quiddoxes and a helpful mage standing by to heal me and dispel them irritating Weakness7's that could throw off the damage numbers. I won't run thru how to do the quest, this is just some boring math you might want to know. For general background, I have the maximum possible sword skill and strength, so if any effects are skill dependent, I should have them well topped out. Weakness spells were removed to keep the numbers pure. I used a normal sword (my pierce vulner, used to slash), a Slash Render sword (slash, fire and pierce are all equal for a non-mage to most virindi), An AR sword and the new singularity sword. I first fought them without debuffs. I tracked the criticals on all of them (the main important numbers), at exactly mid-bar. I recorded all of these numbers, then adjusted them by ratio so they all worked off the base of 71 instead of 65 or 67...in essence, using the max damage of the singularity sword. Point 1) By comparing the normal max damage of the Sing sword to the normal sword, I found the value of the Slayer effect. It is exactly +75%...equal to a vuln4. Since an AR is generally double damage (+100%) at my level, this shows why Slayer weapons aren't used by high level characters. Point2) By comparing Max Normal Damage of the Sing to its crit, I found the Value of Crippling Blow. I am not sure if this is perfect, but it looks like it tops out at x 2.63 (a normal Crit is x2). It MIGHT be 2.5. I'm inclined towards the +163% number, because it dovetails nicely with a 3/10 Biting Strike Crit Frequency to equal ~+500% damage from Crits/10 swings...exactly the same damage as a Crushing Blow or Critical Strike Imbue. Point3) I don't have the data points to see if Biting strike is 2/10 crits, or 3/10 crits. So I did average numbers based on both. Point4) After adjusting to 71 base damage, I did normal Damage calculations based on a .40 variance for all weapons. This might not be exact, but we are comparing effects. My -45 AR weapon has a 25% variance, for instance - lower crits, better normal damage. Thus a normal weapon would be Crit x 1, + 9x (Max Normal Damage *.8). For a normal weapon, maximum damage is 1/2 the crit number. Point5) AR seems to be pretty steady about doing just about double damage over a normal weapon. However, this was actually reduced compared to the other weapons when in the Imperil/Vuln situation, since the AR reduces the effect of the Imperil on final numbers. Point5) A Maximum Render effect is equivalent to a VUln6 spell, NOT a Vuln5. This impressed me mightily...but all I had to do is compare the Slash Render numbers to the crit of the normal weapon. Voila! An almost perfect +150%... DOT numbers (per 10 swings) approx: Solo (no spells) Slash Render: 792 Sing (3/10): 772 Sing (2/10): 664 Group (Slash and IMperil7) Armor Render: 3000 (x 4.333 damage from spells) Crit Strike (5/10): 2352 (ugh) Sing (3/10): 3726.6 (x 4.75 damage from spells) Sing (2/10): 3220 So, for solo play, if you've a good Render weapon, you don't need and probably shouldn't use the Singularity Weapon. In a VOD fellow, if you don't mind pulling it out and lugging it around, it could easily do +25% more dmg then that beloved AR weapon you like to use, on Virindi only. It MIGHT be equal to an imbued CS or CB weapon. With the Virindi Slayer on top of it, it is good for groups. But it just can't compete with a Render effect that duplicates a level 6 Vuln, since the Render works on anything, not just virindi. For mages, Well.... Figure, +75% damage. Nice all by itself. But, you have to compare to a CS wand, or a CB. Well, if the above math worked out, then the wand is equal to a CS or a CB for DOT. In short, for every ten blasts, you are getting 5 'crits' worth of damage. On top of this, you add +75% for the Slayer effect. In essence, you lose nothing to a CS wand and Gain +75% damage to virindi. This means that if your damage was 500 on average before, it is now going to go up to ~875 for normal war spells, and your crit should be in the +163% range, or roughly 2300 damage. I wonder how it's going to work with harms and drains:) Tour de France Congratulations to Lance Armstrong for a dominating win of the Tour de France. It was not even close. In fact, it was almost easy. There was only one person even close to Armstrong going into the last week. He fell back during the Time Trials, and ended up third. Thomas Voeckler, the leader for the first part of the Tour, took 18th, 31 minutes behind Armstrong! Ullrich, who was felt to be the main threat to Lance at the start of the Tour, took forth, over eight minutes behind. His teammate, Andreas Kloden, took second; over six minutes back from Armstrong. The only question now is Armstrong's future. There is rumor that Armstrong will not complete in next years Tour. It is clear that despite his age, 33, he is the dominant cycle rider of the time. He can try and establish records, such as the World Hour, and/or win other cycle events. One of the thoughts about Armstrong not doing another Tour is bar setting. If a bar is set too high, there is no incentive to even try and pass it. By winning seven tours, it may be thought to be unbeatable, so no one will even try. I for one, think that is pure bunk. Of course what I think is irrelevant. I'll be watching the next year with great interest. Meanwhile, I have entered the contest for a bike like Armstrong's. I really need a street bike, as the majority of riders around me are street riders, but there is no way I can afford one. The odds of me winning are low, but low is better than nonexistence. With Rosa shopping in the discount stores for dresses, bring up a high priced bicycle is out of the question. Rosa, bless her heart, said that we will think about it after we pay some bills. I cannot imagine her agreeing to such an expense. Let me tell you, I have a winner! Adventures with Cats We have two cats. One is a huge monster. The other is a dainty little thing. Well, Winny seems dainty when compared to Sam. In point of fact, at over 7 pounds, she is a little bigger than average. We needed to take both cats to the vets, one for shots, and the other for a teeth cleaning. The last time we took both cats, we had two carriers. Rosa had given away the smaller one. Rosa is a very kind hearted person. She tends to give away things, if someone needs it. So we had to take both cats in one carrier. We started out smart. Both cats were blocked off. We closed all the doors into places they could hide. There was still a place they could go that would be a problem, in back of the china hutch, but it was in the opposite direction they would normally run. I started with Sam. He is big but knows not to fight me. Winny will fight, but does not have front claws. Sam went in easy. We grabbed Winny and tried to shove her into the carrier. I found some thing new. A cat can make a 180 degree turn in about an inch of space. As I pushed her rear in, she snaked around and was pushing her head out. The other cat took advantage of this, and followed her out, no doubt pushing her to help with the escape. Winny broke for the bedroom but I was able to grab Sam. Size can be a disadvantage at times. Winny was most upset at find the bedroom door closed. It was too late for a run to her other hiding spot. After a little dance, Rosa had her. Our second try at getting her into the carrier met with no more success than the first. This time I slammed the door on Sam's face. Rosa tracked down Winny again, all the while saying it was impossible to do, and that she was going to call the vets and take Winny some other time. I was not going to let the cats call the shots. It might take a while, but they were going into that carrier. It took a lot of effort to get that half snake, half cat, into the carrier, but I did it. I only left a little blood. Not having front claws did not prevent her from using the hind ones. They were well behaved at the vets. We lucked out in that Sam needed to stay with them for a few hours. I cannot imagine trying to get both of those cats into the carrier, in a room full of dogs. Disaster My wife went on a business trip last month. I noted that the portable computer was missing, so I assumed she took it with her. When she returned, she said she could not use it because she was missing a cable. This was a simple network cable, which she could have gotten from anyone. Rosa is sharp, and, because of what I have taught her, is in demand to help others with computers at work. Nevertheless, she is not very good when confronted with something she never saw before. I have the computer set up with wireless at home. All she needs to do it turn it on. I never taught her why it works, or how to use it when outside of our wireless network range. I looked around and found a short cable. I stuffed that in the computer case for future use. Our nephew was over and wanted to play AC. I had him go get the computer, still in the bag from Rosa's trip. He said it would not turn on. I had him bring it to me and, sure enough, it was dead. Later, Rosa remembered something. It seems she dropped it during the trip! Just what the problem is, I fear to guess. A normal computer is easy to fix, just replace the parts. A portable is a different animal. I'll open it up to see if there is a cable pulled out or something simple, but I'll likely have to send it out for repair. Of course, Rosa informed me that there is not enough money to spare. For a while, the portable will have to sit. To say I'm pissed, is to down play my feelings.