I have made the error of labeling kids as grief players at times. This is because most of the grief players are kids. The problem with that label is most kids are not grief players. In fact most of the time the victims of grief players and thieves are kids.
Kids can be trusting and fooled by the con artists out there. Several of the best thieves try to steal from me. None have succeeded. I have given away odd items to new players who never play and delete soon after but that is different. I give it away with no expectation of a return. I feel it is their loss and no big deal.
Someone on the other hand can fool kids very easily. A few hours' work and trust is earned. It happened this week on MT. An 11-year-old kid found a new friend. They hunted together and became close. The kid needed to mule his GSA. His new friend volunteered to help him. I don't know the details but I bet it was the "Friend" helped him decide to mule the GSA.
Of course when Corik got the GSA he became the new owner. The poor kid is in tears. Corik patron, Leivantae, thought his vassal did a smart move. He believed that fooling a kid to get a GSA was smart play.
His patron's patron, Maynyrd, felt different. He tried to get Corik to return the GSA. The monarch Hsiao felt there was nothing he could do so, "O'well". Agaron the Archer toned in with, "Corik is my friend and if the kid is that stupid he deserves to lose the GSA."
I'm sure that Leviantae and Corik will be on their own soon. (I was right, Maynyrd cut them.) No alliances should take them. If they do you can be sure that the alliance supports thieves and should be avoided. If you are thinking of trading with the three slimes, Corik, Leviantae or Agaron the Archer forget it. What they are trading might be stolen goods. Give these three your opinion of their actions.
Update. Leviantae was rather upset at being dropped from his alliance. Agaron the Archer's tone did a 180 and trying to get the GSA returned. Both found that support of grief play and thieves is not worth it, even if it is a friend. Leviantae is begging people to leave him alone.
MT responded with shards and help to get a new GSA. Thorwigg offered a set of GSA he no longer uses. Seems Thorwigg had his bars stolen a while back when he tried to get his first Atlan. This may not be necessary as they were only one shard short of replacing the GSA from donations. (Last report; a new GSA has been made for him.)
At one point Corik was said he was going to return the GSA. He said he got upset that people were giving the kid shards and was keeping it. Not sure what difference that made, other than he was looking for an excuse to keep the armor. At I saw him in the subway and everyone started spaming that he was a thief. I have a feeling he will not be enjoying AC for a while.
I saw another well-known grief player in the Sub trying to make a very simple trade. MBTG had no offers or replies. In fact people acted like he was not there. I don't know about other servers but on MT if you act like people don't matter, you won't matter to people.
Other Scammers
Seems there is a small alliance that specializes in scamming people. Shaneparker is a member of Brandonlee alliance. Shaneparker set up a trade for a Mattie robe. Now I have a little less sympathy for this one. Adults or late teens should know better.
The victim handed over his GSA with the expectation that the Mattie would be delivered to him. There was other items involved but stealing the GSA was what Shaneparker was after. His monarch seems to fully support his actions.
To quote the Monarch; Brandonlee tells you, "he said i always wanted shadow armor so no i am not giving it back" A lot of people want shadow armor, they work for it, not steal.
Next report had Brandonlee himself trying a scam. This one was backed up with a chat log and a picture. While this can be faked it fits what we know of them. He tried to make a trade for two sets of shadow armor for a Mattie robe. Same trade that Shaneparker tried. He placed a Hoory robe in the trade window. This is the fake one that was in the game for month, a joke by Turbine.
The next report had him again trying to trade for Shadow Armor for a Mattie robe. When the guy was to make the trade Brandonlee did not have the robe. Said for the guy to hand over the armor and Shaneparker would deliver the robe.
So Brandonlee is a pure thief and any member of this alliance cannot be trusted. In fact you can be sure they will be trying a scam you in any trade you make with them.
Big alliances, small alliances
There was some debate on the boards on alliance size. The common thought is that a small alliance is better than a big one. If you think about it this cannot be true.
If an alliance is good they attract good people. There are many more good people in this game than bad. Good people in turn will attract even more good people. The bottom line is a good alliance will not stay small for long.
When Elder took over from Killean we had less than 500 people, big but a 10th the current size.
Of course a big alliance has several advantages over a small one. If you need help a big alliance will have more people to give it. Our alliance has a large list of name to call if you need help. I get several calls over a week's time for such.
Large alliances can do quests without having to get outside help. We have several large-scale quests a week. Most of them are safe do to our overwhelming numbers. We just did a quest that is quite hard. We had people stationed at points to provide portals.
The quest involved going to three places and getting a paper. We just grabbed a portal and got instructions on where to run. After we got that another member made a portal to the next spot. At the last one a portal was made to a town for conversion. From there a portal was made to the last spot.
Other people asked to join us there. We smoothly ran the dungeon and got to the end. No deaths or even close calls. The people who joined us said it was the best-run quest they have ever been on. This is my forth quest with the family this month. All have been the same way.
There is no way a small alliance can do this. Several people pointed out that a big alliance can fill up with thieves and scammers. This is true. They also said that many monarchs are never on. This is also true. This type of alliance comes and goes, mostly they go.
A good alliance has an active Monarch, not a mule. They keep good track of what is going on and make sure to weed out the undesirables. Elder has to spend a lot of time policing the alliance. We don't play games. If you bring dishonor to the alliance you are gone.
Of course we try to work with people who make honest errors or lose their temper. I have a short fuse at times and have to work on holding it back. My vassal Bleu Sky has the same problem. Funny, we are both in our 50's. Elder has asked me to tone it down and I have had to ask Bleu Sky the same. We both got the message and problem solved.
Without Elder to work out the problem we would not be the alliance we are. At over 5000 members this is sure not easy. Alliance's with over 500+ members have active monarchs like this. Those that don't will break up quickly.
If an alliance is small but has a good core of members it will not stay small. That is the key point I want to make. Small is not better. An active monarch and a good core of members is what makes an alliance great, not size.
For those that want to pick at points, yes there are great alliances that restrict membership. I disagree with the concept but they are out there. Spending 2 to 3 weeks reviewing a possible member seems rather strange to me. It would be better to let them join and if they cause trouble, drop them. Of course that would be work for the monarch.
Over confidence
I got a call from Balash today. He has a vassal who just hit 45 and wanted to go to the Island. I knew that Jeff was on so I asked him if he wanted to go. Jeff is getting close to 50. We plan on being a melee/mage team when he hits 50. No time like the present to start training for it.
After a run we got to the d-note spot and ported in. I did a full buff and tossed a few spells on them. The plan was to attack the castle. Not an easy project for us. Jeff is 46lv, Balash's vassal is 45 and Balash is 71. I felt between Balash and me we could clear it ok.
Jeff did his job, which is to stay by my side at all times. The mages draws with de-buffs and the melee kills. This is so strong that there are few monsters that can stand up to it.
Balash and his vassal were distracted fighting some Bandies. The Vapors had been killed. I decided to head up the hill with Jeff and clear a few things.
Cursed bones drop to Jeff's sword with imperil VI and one hit. Someone else was also attacking, from different side, so there was not much to fight. We moved forward.
I got a plasma in my sights and toss imperil VI on it. I was praying Jeff could hit it as I drained it. Of course it de-buffed me to hell and back. It has a sliver of health and was resisting all my now much lower skills. I had 9hp when Jeff got the killing blow in.
I first tried to recover mana. I heard a swinging sound but could not see anything attack us. I tried to run to the beach and regroup but was running in place. Humm, I'm running into a Vapor golem! The dam thing had spawned in back of us. They are hard to see at times. Jeff was swinging at it as I reversed my direction to run. Blam, headed to the LS.
I quickly typed RUN in a vassal tell. Without being de-buff there was no way Jeff can fight a Vapor. I got a load of other vassals sending me "Run Mage Run" messages. We are a fun group. At least Jeff got out ok.
I took a few minutes to work off the vit at the BSD. A word here on that. There are a lot of servers with melees that do nothing but level in BSD. They swing and kill any Tusker that gets close, engaged or not. They know they disrupt everyone else game and don't care. One has a message on his shield that says, "I'm here to 110 so deal with it." Another one moves between BSD's to he can "Share the grief".
What this does is make the BSD's a free for all. (FFA) FFA dungeons are the pits. No one is happy and disrespect abounds. Without these stupid players, who have no clue, it is very different. The last few times I have gone to BSD to work off vit I have found a nice place. This was no different. While I did not to do much talking I was in several fights where melee and mages ran past without jumping in.
I watched this happen a lot. If there is a free one ok but if not, they move on. Amazing how much better it is with a little respect. I don't know who it is but someone is doing a lot of work there. I use to spend a lot of time making people show some respect. After I left it would go back to FFA. Whoever this is or if this is a permanent change I don't know. All I know is I like it.
Getting back to the island was easy after that. Someone had killed the three Diamond golems that have to be removed. Paid my C-note for a ride and only had to dodge one war spell.
Back at the Castle I knew recovery was going to be hard. While buffing two high level member of Elder asked if we need any help. I told Cat we did.
After buffing we started towards the pathway up the Castle. I got a message from someone about my body. Seem another group had the same idea as we did. They had cleared the Castle. Body recovery was a walk up and loot affair. Cat joked about how hard this was. Well it should have been.
Gentlemen
I have been doing a lot of Hollow hunting this week. Got a few keys which I will use for trade bait, well hope to anyway. If not the loot is more than worth the time.
I have met Long Dong there once before and he seemed like a nice guy. When I arrived at my hunting spot one day I found it empty of hollows. Long Dong was finishing up the last Hollow. I headed to one of the rooms figuring we would split the spawns. Hate to do that because four every five minutes it not much, let alone 2 every five minutes.
Long Dong ran into the room and said "hi". He said he had been there a while so he would let me have it. He then ported out. Real gentleman.
Boring trade work
I was using this week to set up for trading and getting my scrolls. I have extended my hunting time a bit because I can do all my creature buffing before starting my timer. It takes one to two minutes to do my item buffing. If I had all VII there I would gain that time to hunt.
I started by trading three sing keys for Imp. The guy had a three small offer and sing keys are going for about that or more now. Sing keys are the luck of the draw but shards can only get you GSA. With the armor change GSA is mostly Mage armor now. The value of shards has gone down because of this. So three Sing keys may have been overpayment but well worth it to me.
That left Bludgeoning, Lighting, and Blade. I had a spare Piercing scroll and about 40 war/creature/life scrolls. I was able to trade one of the creature scrolls for a few keys and a life scroll I needed. Found an old friend from the island named R A D I A N C E. I'm sure I have the spelling wrong so forgive me in advance. He was able to help me get a few of my missing life spell. I hope they get here next month and I have a full 30-minute hunting cycle.
Finally I got someone who traded me for a lighting scroll for 15m notes. I was hoping not to have to worry about money for a while. I posted to the boards and got a hit. Traded the Piercing for Blade.
It was late. I was up at 5am for a bike ride and was tired as hell. (8 miles over hard desert terrain and it was dam hot.) A boring day of trading was not helping matters.
My vassal Toro had a bunch of scrolls and shards. He gave them to me to help with the trades. One shard was traded. It seemed like no one was going to trade me the Bludgeoning. I know it is an important one as people love hunting Corals and other hard blunt hitting monsters.
Finally I hit the boards again and saw my vassal Fu' Leng was trading one. I sent him a message. He was on the mage armor quest. He loaded a mule for me and I got the scroll. He was missing three war spells. I would have given him those for free anyway if I knew he was missing them. I tossed in a Directors key for helping me so quickly.
Now I have to make a run to get the spells. I also picked up a few other creature spells I will have to get converted. It was boring but I'm filling out my spell bar.
Over confidence II
After taking the trip to get the level VII Item spells I headed to the island. After painfully hard buffing with VII's I headed out to the C-note fortress. I saw a group of Bandies and decided to take the out.
I tossed my first de-buff and got a whole lot of Bandies to rush me. No problem! I was a tank and a half with full level VII buffing. I was de-buffing and blasting, not even bothering to drain. After killing two I noted I was under a 100 hit points.
I switched to a Bandie for a drain but got hit by two cold blasts, the first was for 62 points, the second sent me to the LS. To say the least I was shocked. Taking a look at the hits I found skipping the banes my helm was not very smart. Most of the hits were in the head. A bit of lag hiding the fact that I was being War'ed a lot did not help.
Lesson learned. I quickly rebuff my creature spells and ported to BSD to clear the vit. It was late at night on Sunday so I expected to have it worked off quickly. I headed down the right side and found a full spawn.
This is a test, what have I left out in the above buffing. Yes, you got it in one, I did not rebuff my life spells. I have not said it but you can assume that if I was not putting heavy buffs on my helm I was also passing on my gloves. The fizzle rate on my item spells made me take a few short cuts that I was paying for.
As in started killing Guards I saw I was taking a lot more damage than I should. A little luck and I could live through that. Luck was not with me. Fizzle, Fizzle, hell, switch to a Tusker for a drain, did not make it.
Ok, lets try this again. Rebuff Creature, rebuff Life, put VI banes on my GSA, gloves, boots and helm. Just because I have VII does not mean I have to use them. Going down the right side again I hit the same spawn. This time I was not taking so much damage. Two other people showed up to share the spawn with me. One was toe to toe with me, the other hid behind a wall and skimmed. Well, what can you do?
That one battle cleared all but a sliver of vit. A quick trip to the left side cleared that. I even earned enough XP to add a point of item.
Good people
After a days trading I thought I was done. A week of boring hunting for trade items and a full day of spaming in the subway was mind numbing. I got to the island this morning and start buffing up. My Item skill is 305. I figured a few fizzles will be on order but nothing I could not live with, I was wrong.
I was fizzling at least two times for every success. As I toss up to twenty-one items buffs this was more than painful. I put Imp, Fire, Cold, Bludgeoning and Lighting on my GSA, that is ten spells. Then all but Imp on my gloves for four more. I have a bludgeoning bane on my boots so I only need three spells there. Four more on my helm and I'm done.
It is not costly to add a few points at 500k but I figure I need around 320. That was going to be very costly. At that point I decided I need item mastery VII. I logged Fist in the hall and filled him up with trade items. Ran to the subway and put out my message, "Fist de Yuma is trading well for a Item Mastery self scroll." Other than someone who thought a level II scroll would work I got no takers.
It was early in the morning so I logged and did a buff on the island with Mage. Then logged back Fist and tried again. One guy thought someone had it but the guy was not on. Back to the island for another hunt.
The hunts are going well and I'm getting a full 16 minutes of hunting in. I don't start my timer until I start the life spells. Only takes a minute to toss those eight spells. The fizzles in Item really extends the buffing time but at least it is not coming out of the hunting cycle.
I logged again and got no hits. I was about to log off and get a bite to eat when Muscat sent me a message. Checking a mule for a while Muscat came up with the Item VI mastery. Now get this, gave it to me for free! I had a ton of stuff I was willing to give up for it. Really shocked me. There are a lot of fine non-greedy people out there. I hope I can return the favor someday.
Balance
For a long time I had an unfair advantage over a lot of people. I choose UA not because it was the most powerful but because I felt it most matched what I wanted as a player. If I had gone to EQ, which I was thinking about, I would have been a Monk. My preferred class in AD&D was Assassin and Thief. This may sound strange to those that know me but you can play those classes against monsters without being a stupid grief player.
As it turned out UA was a very strong fighter class. With speed and proper buffs only Archers would match it. After Archers started falling behind at 40 UA was even stronger. The only real disadvantage to the class was finding good weapons. That was a big problem as my trading 24 keys and a Mattie robe for a good Centus will demonstrate.
The joke class of AC was sword. At 16 points to spec it was unable to match one that cost 6. Admittedly there were some really great swords out there but we were all tossing as good or better by level 60.
Finally Turbine fixed this with Bandit swords. Sword is now the strongest class, as it should be. So one class was fixed but there is still work to do.
Two classes have been left behind, Mace and Axe. Both these cost 12 points to spec, not that far behind sword. There are few Mace users to this is not a big problem but Axe really needs improvement. Not sure what can be done as a Bandit Axe might be unbalancing. As slow as Axe is it might not be.
Whatever path Turbine takes I hope it comes soon. If not we may see the Axe class go downhill. A long time ago we saw as many Axe users as Sword, maybe more. Now a day I don't see to many Axe users. I'm looking forward to the day where I see Axe, Mace, Sword and UA standing toe to toe with monsters on an equal footing.
The Quest
I was ready to try the quest again. Last time I tried the island quest I was frozen most of the time, eventually dieing to a wisp. All I could do was watch it happen.
To get the scroll our alliance has a point system. Going on the quest gets you points towards getting the scroll. I really need that scroll. With the new poor prices I'm having trouble making enough for my comps again. Being able to do a few buffs and then sell off would fix that. As is I have to stay a while to make up for how hard it is to get there.
The board did not have the current quest up but an old one said it started at 6pm PST. I made a quick dinner and asked the wife not to bother me for a few hours.
I was already on the island and had a lot of junk I'd picked up while hunting. This was going to make me a little slower than I wanted. I logged at 5:30. Quest was already going as they had started at 5. I decided to meet them at the Crator. I was running there and told Balash where I was. He said I needed to go around the pillars in the bay. Later I found I was going in the right direction., just a different route.
So I reversed my direction and headed to the bay. The last two times I tried to make that run I had to port out. This time I was ready with heal VI in my bar and full level VII buffing on my armor.
Run was nasty. The wasps were all around me, seemed like dozens. I did a ziz-zag run and most of the frost bolts missed me. Stopped twice to toss heal VI on myself. Next part had plasma golems to run around, then Augmented Drudges. At last I seemed to be in the clear but was not getting close to where Balash said they would be.
I passed two guys and got to a spot that had Sliver Tuskers. These were hard and chased forever. I was not shaking them so I stopped to fight. My timer was going off so I knew my life protects would be dropping any second.
A few drains, fire vuln and a level VII fire blasts dropped one Tusker. The second one resisted and resisted and resisted. My Life protects were dropping so I took off running. There was one guy back on the beach. I found out later he was unbuffed and I was scaring the hell out of him.
I could not run any farther without running back to the even harder monsters. The guy was tossing heals on me while I tried to land a spell on the Tusker. You would think that with 348 life skill and 350 Creature skill I could get something to land. No dice. All I did was run myself out of mana.
I was back to running back and forth along the beach hoping this thing would get bored and leave. The fighter got a few buffs in and rushed to my aid. He was Drakier Dominaeus, an elder member who was waiting of the quest to catch up.
At 54lv he was not getting to many hits in but had enough melee that the Tusker was also missing. This let me get some mana back. Rather that waste my spells on the Tusker from hell I tossed buffs on Drakier. After that I tried to land a yield on the dam thing. No dice.
It took forever but Drakier finally killed it. Let me tell you, I was scarred to death. Only thing that kept me alive was the heavy armor protection, the level VII's came through.
Let me tell you how armored I am with VII. Imp adds 220 to my 190 armor for 410. With a banes that is doubled to 820! The key for me was that the VII's lasted after the VI's in Life dropped.
We waited for the group to catch up with us. I lagged out and when I got back was stuck and unable to move. I logged again and that fixed it. Still went yellow link once more before the group arrived.
We had a large crowd for this one. That made it safer but also even more laggy. Old town fell fast. Almost missed the portal. I clicked on it and got an hour-glass.
We buffed up inside and headed out. It was the same thing as last time. I was lagged to the point of uselessness. I did land a few imperils but most of the time I could only watch. I was lucky not to fall to far behind the group. I was able to keep up but that was about it.
The Lady was killed and I did not even get to see her. Not sure how many points I get for doing that quest. Going to keep doing it, dieing if I have to. In time I'll get the scroll but sure wish I could do something. I really hate this quest. If it were not for that scroll I would not come close to it.
Special thanks do Drakier Dominaeus for saving my ass.
I found this late but had to add it. Greyscout is an old friend and alliance mate in TH. This is what makes a great alliance.
Greetings,
Yup, they are out there. Every once in a while you encounter someone so pure, so innocent, so...NEW, that it makes your heart cry out.
I met such a person this weekend. Utterly clueless. Template from hell with 100 Endurance at start. The conversation I had is paraphrased since I dont remember the exact words.
I was in Cragstone, selling loot. Got an @tell from someone standing right next to me:
"Excuse me. Do you have a little time to spare, please? I think I need some advice and I sure could use some armor."
I turn around, level 2 chap, bare buck naked, no armor, no weapon, not even a pair of pants. Very gimped template. He was pledged into a monarchy I had never heard of. My initial reaction when meeting such characters is: Oh man....yet another freeloading scammer, why me?
But he wasnt spamming. He used private chat and full sentences. He said "please". Unless I am in a truly foul mood, thats enough to get my attention.
I rummaged around my loot pack, found a pair of pants and a shirt.
"Please put these on. Naked people make me nervous."
"Thank you. I have no stuff at all."
"You know, your patron should try to get you some armor and a weapon at least to get you started."
"My patron took everything I had, saying hell give me something better. Then he told me my template stunk and logged out. I havnt seen him since. I think he ripped me off."
My thoughts at this point where somewhat conflicted. Either this guy was scamming, and doing a real good job of it or I really did have a total n00b in front of me, one that had the misfortune of first encountering what must be a lifeform even lower then your standard GEAR using, combat macroing grief player. Who would take the pathetic junk a starter character could possess?
I decided I would risk being scammed a little and talk to the fellow for awhile, perhaps having the rare opportunity to guide a brand new player in the game, one with manners no less.
We settled down and I explained some of the basics. Soon I was certain I had the genuine article here, not a scammer. Once he realized I was prepared to spend considerable time with him, rather then just hand him stuff and send him on his way, his thirst for knowledge spilled out. He wanted my advice on how to start a new character, wanted to be a swordsman, didnt know much about magic, asked me how I built myself. Very inquisitive. I guess we talked for about 2 hours.
I had noted down the names of his "patron" and monarch, intending at first to follow up on his story, then determining to get even for him. Thats another story, btw.
In the end I suggested he create another character utilizing my suggestions, letting me know what town he starts in. I offered to equip him with some basic starter gear and show him around. I told him I like to help folks, especially when asked nicely like he did. I did not suggest being his patron. Though one of the topics I had covered earlier with him was the allegiance system, using my own as an example. I had given him the link to our website. Turns out I was the first person he encountered that appeared civil. Some had handed him basic stuff, told him to not bother them, most ignored him completely. Then he got taken by a vassal pimp. So his expectations and opinions of the population of Dereth were pretty low prior to my encounter with him. He had been considering just quitting and taking the box back to the store.
A day later he had met a fair number of my fellow allegiance mates, including my own patron and asked to be part of our clan. He asked if I would agree to be his new patron. I now have a vassal I will be glad to have even if I never receive a single xp from him. I think I will though.
Greyscout, Thistledown Archer
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