Fist de Yuma - July 30, 2002

Intro Most of the time I plan Monday as a column day. I may do an hour or so hunt but most of the day is spent reading and re-reading the column to weed out the errors. I break at 5 for dinner and a little TV. Then one last read before sending out the column. Today I had a lot of things to do. I was up to 2am Monday morning doing Pincers and other quests with friends. In the evening we had a special event planned and I lost even the ability to make up some time. So I'll be doing a lot of editing of this but there will be more errors than normal. I don't have any proofreaders. I am dyslexic. This means if the word looks close and the spell checker does not find it spelled wrong, the error is very hard for me to locate and correct. This is also why I'll take short cuts with names like Tommies and Lugies. To get them right I would have to pull out a utility and get the proper spelling. It was easer and a little fun to come up with something that sounds right. As long as I butcher it the same way it seems to work. This does not mean I'll just let it go, I'll do as much as I can in the time allowed. So if this column is a little sloppier than others please forgive me. Land of the dead While North ML holds a lot of advantages hunting too much in the same place can get stale. With new spawns on the plains I felt it might be a good idea to check it out. I know most would beg a ride to the Plain BSD but I wanted to do it a little different. I recalled to the Island and took the North Dires Portal. I then took the Ob Rim portal. That got me a few clicks north of the plains. There is a major valley that passes through the upper plains and empties out in the center. Even when the spawns were weaker this was a hard spot. The valley can be found by going south from the Ob Rim portal exit and then moving west along the river. What you are looking for are giant mushrooms at the entrance of the valley. The other valleys are dead ends so look for the line mushrooms along a fairly even slope. I had little trouble killing stuff while traveling to the entrance. A short ways in I found a few Tuskers, Virindi, Shadows and Tommies. Normally this is nothing to comment about. What made it different was the spawn rate. No sooner did I finish the spawns than more would show up. It took me some time to get past that spot. A little ways later I found some Virindi, Bandies, Shadows and Magma golems. I had it about half clear when a group of people ran by me. I thought I had this to myself but it seems I was wrong. Having others is not a problem if they work together. It gets bad if they don't. One stopped to fight some Observers. I tend to fight the edges of a spawn and not get caught up with big battles in bad spots. I mean Turbine gave mages range, use it. This guy stopped right in the middle of the spawn. He lasted several seconds before dieing. I sent him a message after I cleared the spawn. The spawns were coming fast and I felt he might need some help. He said he was ok so I moved on. The valley joins with another two about halfway in. The three valleys join into one and move toward the center plains. In the center of the joint was a large spawn. I worked this for a while until it was clear. The nice thing about these spawns is the different types don't support each other. You can draw one type and not the others. Of course the bad thing is if you kill something you would like to loot without drawing it, it is hard work getting in there. Several times I found myself running into the center of the mob to grab a valuable item. I got a crystal sword and a small shard that way. If pushed I'll do it but rather not. After I cleared it all my Sixth Sense went crazy over Virindi. I was pinging Observers, Exec, Slaves, Puppets and an Inquisitor. I moved toward the spawn and it disappeared. That was strange. As I got close I saw there was someone already fighting them. He has dawn them within range of my Sixth Sense and, after he killed one, they retreated back to the spawn site. I moved over a hill as he drew them again. He had quite a pack on him but I did not want to jump in before I know if he was in trouble or not. I hit the < key to see how he was doing on health. Opps to late, he was dead. I sent him a tell and he said the Virindi had drained his mana. He said it would be a while until he got there so I decided to try my luck. First I wanted to see if I could just take down the Inquisitor. With 392 Creature skill I was resisted 4 times on the yield. That drew a horde of Virindi and a handful of Tuskers on me. A short retreat had most of them moving back and I killed the rest. I repeated that a few times until the spawn started to break down. I moved back and got the Yield to land on the next try. After that it was easy. I cleared a few Virindi who had ignored the battle and moved in to loot. Only a SIK for loot darn it, I wanted a mask. I used on the SIK on chest there. I have a few spells missing on Jr I need to fill. I'll be using keys for a while. I was surprised to find another body in the center of that spawn. I sent that guy a tell. He was coming up the second valley. I watched his back while he recovered. That little intersection was filled with bodies. About every hill had one or two. All four passages leading into it had bodies strung out in them. The center of the joint itself did not have any but all around it did. It seems that a lot of people are excited about the new spawns. The players who are not strong enough to solo are grouping and heading out. That is good but better when they learn how to team, rather than be a group of players going to the same place. As is whole parties are being wiped out and their bodies scattered as they ran. This was a great change Turbine. With all that I never did make it to the center plains. If it is half as exciting as the trip there I'll be doing that instead of North ML. It is a little harder to get to but well worth the trip. Sword of Fist With a little hunting I was able to get Sword to 15. I was not sure if I was ready for the Citadel. With no buffs I was not sure I could even hit a Lugie, let along kill one. Mage could provide the protections and item spells so he was not going in weak. Nevertheless I was unsure if I was pushing it or not. Remember Fist was over 50 when the Citadel came out so I was not sure what it took to hit one. I remember clearly having Cliff Bowman one shot with a bolder years ago. It was outside near the Tired mage shop. I avoided most of the rocks and had 96 hit points. Bam, one rock killed me. Fist's first confrontation with a Lugie was outside as well. On the beach between Hebian-to and Tou-Tou me and two others ran into two Lugies. I died very quickly to two hits. So I was worried that a low level might not do well without the massive buffs everyone else will use. I should not have worried. The newer armor and a good shield added to level IV protects were enough to keep the damage very low. Even with comparably low hit points I was in no trouble. I could hit well and my Crystal Sword did good damage. With a large supply of Stamina Elixirs I could fight all day. I remember being so proud of gaining three levels in three days when we started the game. I gained five levels in a single evening. Of course it helped that I was mostly alone there. I may not have been able to hold the small jump room but I could draw from corner to corner and move up fast. Most of all it was a lot of fun. We Fist de Mage Wednesday is the day I set aside for playing on WE. Normally I start playing with my Sword player and when tired of that change to Mage. This time I decided to start with Mage in the hopes of gaining level V spells. I'm using Mage to provide protects and items spells for Sword of Fist. By adding V's Sword will be better off when he hits the Citadel. Fist de Mage was 28lv and hitting the BM wall. From here on it will be slow and painful. Other mages are tossing level VI spells and I'm still searching for enough skill for V's. This will keep me in the Citadel far longer than I would like. Still I'm having a great time when I can team up with melee's. The melee's love it of course as Imperil IV makes them kill far faster. My normal attack is to just keep switching from Lugie to Lugie with the ";" key and hitting the "End" key. With Imperil IV selected this is the fastest way to de-buff a mob. After that it is just sit back and watch the fun. The melee's learn not to waste their stamina on non-imperiled ones. They wait until the spell goes off and start swinging. Two players without massive buff would have a hard time holding the small jump room without teamwork. With teamwork it was easy. I'm surprised at the reaction of melee's toward me as a mage. That changed when I saw how badly mages play there. The melee's acted like they had never worked with a mage who supported melee's before. Even when I teamed with other mages and melee the mages did not learn by my example. By using the melee's to kill you save on mana and are seldom in danger. The Lugies will take a few pot shots at you after the Imperil but will mostly leave you alone after you stop tossing spells. Even if not the melee slice and dice them up so fast that it is over quickly. Nevertheless every other mage is out there tossing lightning spells. Even after seeing how effective Imperil was they refused to do anything but War. Now I'm starting to understand why the current crop of mages scream about the drain nerf so much. With no ability to team the loss of drain will hit hard. Of course at 28lv the xp from Lugies is not all that much. In a short while I'll hit 33 and have to move. No matter what I will not fight monsters I out-level. Hard enough I'm only getting a few thousand each without getting even less. The problem with moving is I barely have the skills to land on what I'm hunting now. I'm being resisted 1 in 5 with strings of resists all to common. The drain nerf really hit Mage at this level. With mana conversion hard to raise moving up my drain spell level hurt. Unlike the Vapor golems I hunt on MT Lugies don't have all much hit points or stamina. Drain health was not a key spell for me anyway but drain stamina was. By moving to level III drain I got more stamina but lost more mana. I'm still not at the point where I can do stam2mana/revit very well so many battles resolve around mana management. Against three and with luck four I have no trouble. Against more than that I needed to maneuver. Fortunately it is easy to get Lugies to line up for you against a corner. About the only real problem I had was back spawns. I had a lot of corners mapped out. If I started to get overwhelmed at one I would retreat to the next. If that one had back spawns I would retreat again. Using this I only had to portal out of battle a few times. I know there are people here who think I'm a fool for not moving to the Tuskers. I got Tuskered out years ago and the thought of going to BSD turns my stomach. When my skills get better I'll find a good spot but the path from 30 to 45 will be long and dull. Patch Quests I generally wait a week before I try to figure out the new quests. Trying to slowly figure out what is going on with a horde of people running around is not fun. Mostly people end up following someone and never really learning much. Long lines and exposure to d00ds suck and I play for fun. Normally everything gets cleaned up after a week or so. After that I can go in and do the solo quests or gather people for the group quests. I was not all that sure about what this quest was about. Rumors had something going on near Rithwic. I portaled to Nanto, took the portal to ML, ran to the Holtburg portal and then to the Rithwic portal. Easy if you no the way. Walking around I found a portal in the center of town called Martines retreat. Humm, strange place for it. I buffed up and headed in. I guess I could have skipped the buffing. Nothing there was attacking. I explored a bit and found Martine's study. There I found a letter from Martine to his wife. In another room I found a Tusker Hunk. I did not know what they were for so I left them. I found a portal that put me in a room with Martine himself. I understood his pain so I did not resent him for my 85th death. I'm not sure if I could retain my sanity if separated from Rosa. I moved outside the room and talked to two guys standing guard. I learned from them that I needed to give Martine the letter or husk. With my style of play there was no choice. I moved back to the study and got the letter. I gave the letter to Martine and have hopes that he moves back to sanity. I found some kid who gave me a book. The book listed several items he was looking for. One item on the list was a Sing key. I had one and took a chance. The guy gave a key in exchange for the Sing. I explored some more and found a room with a nasty drop into what looked like and energy field. I was not sure I wanted to jump into that. Across the room was a wall but it looked like it was false wall I could jump through. I took a chance. I buffed up my jump and launched toward the false door. Of course I missed. Mage cannot jump like Fist can. LOL there is a clear floor covering the energy field so there is no danger. Nice trick. There I found a Sing chest. The key I got from the kid opened it and it had a bunch of prism rocks. It only let me take one. Being a mage and really not needing the new Atlan wand I'm not sure what I'll do it with it. Fist is different but the rock is no give. Wasted a Sing I think. This group of developers loves to have nasty surprises. I may be totally wrong but heed my warning. After a patch buff up before going in there. Don't count on that invisible floor being there at all times. Night of Elementals. I was showing Wuyung and his new vassal Martine's retreat. It has a mage vender that guarantees my continued visiting. The prices are on par with the Tired mage. As I can get there easy and save 22k in portal gems for each trip. I showed them the quest in total. Wuyung's vassal logged for the night. Wuyung and I were talking and an announcement hit about attacks. I noted a few towns but what hit me was Lin. I mean nothing ever bothers Lin! So Wuyung and I buffed up and headed to Lin. There we found Lightning monsters everywhere. I was not up on the Tempest thing. I only knew that it was a boss monster and the chains had hogged most of the kills. One chain member on MT has killed it three times that I know of. I was hoping the late hour and off night would let normal non-cheating players have a shot at it. Wuyung and I kept killing the monsters for hours. Wuyung had moved to Tou-tou and saw a group of monsters there. I had not seen Tou-Tou's name in the announcement but with me focusing on Lin it was very possible. When Wuyung hit a big group I went to help him. I saw a horde of Chain members standing around the center of Tou-tou. I was not sure of the boss monster was a single one or one for each town. I moved back to Lin and kept fighting. The monsters got to the very edge of Lin when a general announcement was made about a chain member killing the Tempest. It seemed that it did only spawn in one place and the chains knew where. I had defended Lin for two and a half hours and did not even get to see the Tempest. Really lame event Turbine. I saw an announcement of another chain member twice in the days that followed. It seems that one or two kills have been made by non-chain members but most are hogged by them. With Turbine making the spawn predictable the chains just mass in wait. Only fools like me and Wuyung spent time defending the town. Leadership Some people have the wrong idea about leadership. They think demanding people to follow them makes them leaders. There is a lot more to it. A good leader will spend more time suggesting and persuading then demanding and ordering. After a while a good leader will gain a rep and people will follow them. They will follow because they respect what he/she had done, not what he/she said they will do. When a leader sees trash in the hallway they will pick it up or organize a party to clean it up. The pretend leader will step over it or order others to clean it up. When a leader sees a problem they will react. They don't wait for others to do it for them. A good leader will mostly see themselves as ordinary and nothing special. "There for the grace of God" is something they understand. If they think they are somehow better than others they will never be a good leader. They may be a tyrant but they must rule by force and not by leadership. What they have found is leadership can be learned. By careful study of what works people can develop into leaders. As a reward in AC this brings vassals. When I hear people complain about not having vassals I advise them to become leaders. Developing leadership skills is not easy or fast. It takes time and work. It can also be lost if you try to sit on your past accomplishments. Chains may have made leadership outmoded in AC but it will be a key personal skill in AC2. Recovery At the mansion I overheard two people say they had bodies in the Queen den. One was not to upset as he only lost DI's but Monte Cristo had lost a good sword. I told them we would organize a party to recover the bodies. Monte's was on the ledge and the other in the Den itself. Several others were also on the ledge. I found out later that they had recovered with another group. It did not take long to get a good group together. We saw Mar-hill run by and recruited him. I found out that the Queen quest had failed do to lag. This meant that we needed to have a little more power. When we first set this up it was with the understanding that the Queen was dead. If worse came to worse we would recover the bodies on the ledge and not the one in the Den itself. We hit the Dam as the wasteland is to slow. This was fortuitous as you will see. I vuln'd the Vapors and jumped down to kill them. I really hate fighting in that waterfall. I take a lot of damage and have a hard time seeing what I'm fighting. Mars-hill was at the switches so I lead the rest to the door. Mars-hill got there and we were ready to get sprayed. We found another group already there. They agreed to let Monte and our other member tag along to recover their bodies. Problem solved. The rest of up ported out to do our thing. Something new When you have done something a lot we all tend to want to try different things. Natata is a long time Elder and good friend. She just made 70 and like many wanted to see the Queen. Lurking Presence also just made 70. He had been working hard and deserved a reward. Lurking's goal is to get the kill. After tonight I'm sure we can do that. I was not sure if he had the numbers to land on the Queen but during clean up he hit her twice. So what did we do this time to make it new, other than a bunch of new players? The killer was Balash and he used, now get this, Atlatl darts. Yes, the ubber skill Throw Weapon killed the Queen. It started slow so I had my doubts. I even started looking over the current players for someone who had not got the kill. Balash found the range and started to take her down so I just concentrated on doing my job. Congrats to all the new high-level players who did their first Queen quest and a special congrats to Balash, who had proven that Throw Weapon is not totally useless. Starting mage with new changes. With the changes to drain many of the places new mages leveled are not useable. The Lugie fort in Qbar must be empty now. There is also a worry that Og mages were impossible to level without teaming. I got the below letter this week. He has worked a new mage using the current tools. He did use something that current players cannot use. He counted on the skill refund to help with his lack of credits. In that he is making a very hard template with War way at the end it is still a good guide for a budding Og. ------------------------- Hi I was the guy from Solclaim who inquired about your impressions of the new Life Bolts. I have also sent you a PM through the VN Vault posting system about the subject. I have completed a write-up about the low-end impressions with my own re-roll toon and would like to submit this to you for comments or possible inclusion in your column (that is, if you have space for it and it matches your goals for the week etc etc). If you dont include it in your column (and I will find out soon enough by reading it, hehe), I will post the write-up on various fansites as a general post. However, on the off-chance that it is interesting enough, I am willing to pen a few follow-up reports in the coming weeks and try to evaluate progress in that way. Yours, :*) Moriah, aka Arnold van Wakeren BSc(Auckland, NZ) Starting attributes were as follow:- Strength 10 Endurance 100 Coordination 10 Focus 100 Self 100 Specialized skills were:- Appraise Item Creature Enchantment Life Magic Magic Defense Trained skills are all to be earned, but will include:- Armor Tinkering Item Enchantment Lockpick Mana Conversion War Magic With the refund of the Appraise Item skill from spec to Item Tinkering as trained and the extra skill credit from Aun Ralirea, this should work out to lvl 125. Early stages. The n00bi3 levels 1-10 were mainly spend on doing the starter town quests. Even though the Distilled Ambrosia from Lytelthorpe and Al-Arqas clash, as do the Perfectly Aged Cidar from Yaraq and Shoushi, the starter town quests all add up to 5k xp per town, thus giving close to 40k xp per day with no fear of dieing. Most of the xp was spent on Strength, Quickness and Run. Most of the drudges, shreths, banderlings and mites died easily from Harm spells, but mosswarts seem very resilient to spells. The Teen levels. After the starter quests became too tedious, it was time to head to Al-Jalima and the Forbidden Crypts. This is where the real testing of the Martyrs Hecatomb spells began. Still in no real danger of dieing, most of the Undead needed 2 Hecatomb spells and then a Harm or so. Adding to Endurance and Health directly, this quickly turned into a 2 Martyrs Hecatomb II spell process, ie they died quickly. After I got MH3, this was reduced to 1 MH3 spell and a Harm 2 to preserve more Health for the next Undead. Zombies still needed a Magic Yield spell to land on consistently, usually MY3, but I got it down to 2 MH3 spells and a pair of Harm 2 spells. The worst part of the teen levels was the lack of Mana management. Id get to kill 1 or 2 Undead and had to wait for Stamina to come back up in order to get Mana from a Stamina to Mana spell. This would have to be repeated on a round through the dungeon, so the rounds became quite small as compared to what my Opal Mage and another Battlemage could do at the same levels with Fire Vuln & Fire Bolt (the Forbidden Crypts layout allows the monsters to be fought in a series of separate rooms with a circular pattern). The Mana management became too untenable to continue without Mana Conversion, so I decided to take Mana Conversion and Item Enchantment when I made level 16 (with the 2 skill credit refund added in) and thus push War Magic down the line a bit. I will also take Lockpick soon and then Armor Tinkering, since that was the reason for the re-roll in the first place. If the Life Bolts work out at the high end of the game, then taking Healing and Melee Defense is also an option, especially favored for Player Killing. But even with Mana Conversion, managing the available Mana was still hard and I was glad to leave the Forbidden Crypts for the Hollow Lair in Lytelthorpe at level 20. The one good thing about the toon was that I lagged out in front of an Undead in the Forbidden Crypts while down to 20-odd Health and still didnt die! Hollow Lair. I went here as soon as I hit level 20. There are 6 Drudge Lurkers near the start and a working Mana Pool near 2 of them in separate rooms, meaning I can fight them one at a time and work on my buffs in-between spawns (5-6 minute spawns). Drudge Lurkers have recently been given an xp-injection and are now worth 3.5k xp, up from 2.9k. My current Health stands around 130 base, add an Endurance buff on that and I recently added a Barons Amulet to buff almost to 160 HP. Early on while testing MH3 on the Lurkers (lure with MY3), Id cast MH3 MH3 Stam-to-Health MH3 Stam-to-Health MH3 and finish with a Harm or another MH3. That is at least 7 spells, of which 5 were MH. Upgrading of the Drain spells to Drain 3, it now goes like MH3 Drain MH3 Stam-to-Health MH3 MH3. This is down to 6 spells now and only 4 MH spells. My goal will be to upgrade to MH4 and Drain 4 soon (when Creature & Life buff to 200+, currently 183) and to reduce the spells needed to 3 MH spells and a Drain, possibly adding a Drain Stamina for easier Mana management. Currently my toon is at level 21 and rising fast (comparatively speaking) and the scariest moment has been getting chased by a Drudge Lurker with only 8/137 Health to the exit portal (they were gang-banging me and I only had the Mana for one Lurker). Hoping this will help some peeps out there, :*) Moriah.