Fist de Yuma - July 6, 2004

Something is wrong Tusk day is a touch boring, but profitable. I sort of hope they will make it so a 126+ can profit from a Tusk, and some day's I'm glad they don't. I take a lot of time doing the quests, and adding three more players seems overwhelming. This day came as a little surprise. I logged Sunday morning, about 1am, to check something. I got a hit on my quest tracker saying I needed to do the Tusks. I figured I would wait until after a touch of sleep before getting them. Winter Raven was there, and I mentioned needing to get a Tusk. He also needed them with a few players. Even though it was very late, I decided to go. It is not often I can quest with Winter Raven, and he did does not know the route through the 80+. We started with Fist's Armorer and Winter Raven. Winter Raven is a 97lv archer. This was an easy one. With the power of an archer and a mage together, not much can stand long enough to harm them. My next set was with Deadeye Fist. He went with Winter Raven's UA. Other than a mix up after the 60+, everything went smooth. I pointed out all the traps and tried to teach him the twists and turns of the 80+. Next up was Owanda. Winter Raven took his mage, Sho Bizz. Sho Bizz is a mid 60's mage, so he would miss two of the Tusks with me. I said goodbye to him at the 60+ and headed to the 80+. With just me, I decided to run through. Owanda hits hard and has good melee defense. He could fight his way through, but I was not thrilled with the idea. Remember it was very late, and I just wanted to get it over with. I noted halfway through the run that I was taking a lot of damage. Still, I had enough health that I was not in mortal danger. I figured that I could get to the end before healing. I got to the last room, before the Tusk room, with around 110 hit points. It had been laggy all day, but it did not seem too bad as I started the run. Either lag, or just me messing up, caused me to run up the side of the tunnel entrance instead of running into the tunnel. I decided to just fight there. Unfortunately some Tuskers came out of the tunnel and got around my shield. Not sure what kind of crit it was, as one of my plug ins was filtering out damage, but I was dead before I could even think of healing. I laughed it off. After all, that was only his third death in 106 levels. The first two were from the acid pit in the matrons. The only problem was my armor. This is a set I created out of high value stuff. It had great AL, but the high value makes it hard to hold on to. One is 32k and the other 27k. Now that they have lower value armor out, I'll make him a new set. I quickly ported to the mansion and loaded FA. I gave Owanda his armor and had FA buff him. FA used manual buffing instead of NBII this time. I poped a gem and ran back to the 80+. Right off I determined there was something wrong. In the very first hall I got a hit for 71, and this was behind the shield! I checked banes, but they were all in place. I figured it was a fluke and started the run. I got trapped after the first ramp. I was low on health. I sucked an elixir, as a prelude to healing. That was as far as I got. I died in mid-drink. FA's armor is pre-value so it held, despite being down to second level DI's. I just needed to go to the mansion and get life and creature buffs reapplied. I did not take any chances this time. I swapped to Jr and let him do the buffing. FA was created as a solo hunter and only recently was set up to buff others. I did not understand what the problem was, but it was clear to me that something was wrong. I figured I would track it down later. Getting the second body was not too hard. Owanda hits very hard, and his new fire mace has him at his full potential. I was gun shy, so I made sure nothing got in back of me. This is not easy with the way the dungeon is laid out. There are also a whole lot of Tuskers to fight. I finally cleared it, and got my DI's off the second body. After one more big battle on the ramp, I decided to make a run. This time I dispelled all the vulns as they landed. That is not normally necessary, but, like I said, I was a little gun shy. I must have burnt 5 gems on the run. I only got trapped once, at the entrance of the hallway before my body. This was a bad spot, because it is hard to keep them off your back. I had to do a lot of dancing before I cleared them out. From there it was easy. I blocked up the final passage and cleared them out. Then I recovered my body and got the reward. At that point I was too tired to finish off the run with Death Mute. I'll get it later. The next morning I did Death Mute. After the debacle the night before, I expected some trouble. DM started with 10 quick, so his melee defense is 30 below normal for his level. Of course that is balanced with 100 endurance, so I have a little more health to play with. With a proper buffing, it was almost easy. I took a few minor hits at the end but never felt threatened. After that was done, I started checking for what went wrong the night before. After Action After it was all over, I logged FA and tried to figure out what went wrong. The first death I thought was just bad luck. I did that buff with NB2, using the Olthoi profile and adding in the left over Life spells. Later, I did a buff on a mule with that profile. After getting the besozales beaten out of me by a gang of olthoi, I found it did not have banned armor. It seems that I got around NB2 not being updated by using Fist de Mage as the named target for banning. Of course, Fist's Armorer is not Fist de Mage, so NB2 ignored the command. That meant Owanda had no banes on his armor the night before. When I checked banes, I checked the shield and not the armor. As that is a separate buff, it fooled me into thinking my armor was buffed. The second buff I did manually, so I was sure NB2 was not the problem. I was sure there was something wrong there as well, but did not have time to check what it was. After both bodies were recovered, I checked the line of Life spells on Fist's Armorer's spell bar. I saw that Bludgeoning was missing! I'm not sure if the mouse caught a spell and removed it sometime, or if I messed up and never put it there. In any case, I both deaths were separate issues and not some big common error. Both deaths were from my mistakes, totally outside of combat. Now I need to work on Stoic's buffing function, so I can phase out NB2. Stoic buffing The buffing function of Stoic looks good, but I don't think I'll use it. I use NBII as a buffer because it allows me to have an exact setup. I could be missing something, but Stoic has Self and Other buffing. I have not found a way to mix them. I'm sure that the developer will contact me to show where I messed, up if I did. (g) I use Other buffing for Creature and Life spells, and to Item buff my shield and Weapon. Then I'll use the swap to Self-buffing to get my armor done. As I said above, I tricked NBII into buffing my armor by using the player as a named target. The only time this does not work is if I have an item the mage cannot wear, such as Mace Sunstone Gants. So, for now, NBII is still the best program for two account buffing. The second buffing program I use is Sapphire. Sapphire's main benefit is ease of use and flexibility with changes. It only takes a few seconds to customize a buff for a situation. Stoic is good, but not as easy to make changes with. You almost have to make a new profile for each situation. As I do many different things, and change from hour to hour, Sapphire is still the best buffing program for me. So my decal bar is still filled with buffing programs. Fortunately, Stoic lets you remove the buffing program with a check box. Salvage Mules I finally made the move from Salvage Mule Two to Salvage Mule One. I started using SM2 first because Fist de Mage is a better buffer. I made the mules in age order of my accounts. SM1 is on the Fist account, SM2 on Jr and SM3 on the Owanda account. Each was sworn in line, SM2 to SM1 and SM1 to SM3. When SM2 hit 87th level, I judged that SM1 was ready to start fighting. I did not want to go through the lower end fighting problems that SM2 had to suffer. I waited until SM1 had enough Mace skill not to miss, and had enough Tinker skills that I would not lose any salvage. My judgment was spot on. Salvage Mule One started off as a fun toon to fight with. I'm guessing that many players have moved to the new server, or have advanced to the 80+, because overcrowding is at and end in the 60+. We vary from one to five hunters during the day. I cannot say at night because that is family time. Late night is about the same as during the day. We do have times when 90+ players join us. If an archer I can totally understand. I have also seen Mages using staff and a shield. That I can understand, most mages don't have enough racial skill to hit a Mut. Muts eat up Archers and Mages. Both can fight in the 80+, to great profit, but it is a lot of work. As this is a relaxed hunt for me, hard work is not what I want to see. If I hunt Deadeye on the Matron, it will be the 60+. So I can see very high Archers and Mages in the 60+. What I don't understand is 90+ UA and Swordsmen there. With proper armor and buffs, Muts don't hit melee for very much. Of course, it takes a little smart play to keep them off your back, but they are easy to learn tricks. Most of the time you just need to back up. I don't say anything, as their style of play is their business, but I do wonder. They could more than double their xp in the 80+. Their increased power does make for more xp for us, if they do not exceed the level of the Olthoi. I have worked up Salvage Mule One to 78 and will be making a push to 80 this week. The immediate reason is so he can get on the Pincer bandwagon. Pincer Day Pincer day is grueling. I have a lot of players who can get the Pincers. The main criteria are they are 80+, and have the ability to fight Muts. Fighting Muts with Mages and Archers is not easy, but not as hard as fighting Swarm Muts. Even when attacked by five or six, I can survive. If they were swarms, it would be a portal out situation. Still, I made an attempt to make it easy for my Mages. I can clear the swarm room, but it is a lot of work. With a gaggle of players to run through the dungeons, and four Pincers to get, taking a short cut helps with the exhaustion. My plan was to use Fist de Yuma as the first player through. He would then double back and go into the Muts Tunnels. When I got my Mages to the flood room, I would log on Fist and have him clear it for them. The second player to get the Pincers was Fist de Mage. I was shocked to discover that even with 450 War, I would be resisted a lot against Muts. I had to wonder how Fist's Armorer's 424 would do. I did have a small stumble. I had been using Fist de Mage as a buffer for a while. I cleared the start, something that is second only to the flood room in difficulty, and was moving up the hall. I had one Mut and hit the attack key. Nothing happened. I have had decal problems in the past. I figured that Stoic had stopped working. I quickly use a hot key to attack, with the same negative results. My nephew pointed out the out "of comps message." It seemed that I had burnt through 2000 tapers when being used as a buffer. Fortunately, I was only fighting one Mut. I ran back to the start and logged off. I logged back Fist and did a drop mule with a 1000 tapers. Of course that meant I had to re-fight the start, but at least I was saved the run back. As it turned out, I did not need to load Fist de Yuma in the flood room. There was someone hunting in it. All I needed to do was quickly loot a Pincer and move to the next one. The third player to go was Fist's Armorer. The Warrior dungeon was no trouble at all. The Muts resisted a lot, but he was never in any great danger. I had a lot of heals between kills. Where the trouble came was in the flood room. FA is on a different account than Fist. I had Fist on Slow Mo and ready to go. I logged Fist on to clear out the room. I logged on to a blank screen. FA could see him and all appeared normal. Fist could not move, or go into combat mode. Trying to do anything gave me a "cannot do that in mid air" message. It seemed that Fist needed to do a download, as I had never been in the Muts Tunnels with Slow Mo. The DL failed and Fist was stuck in limbo. After a no response to a call for help, I logged him off and let FA fight it. This turned out to make a hard battle even harder. The time I wasted trying to get Fist on allowed the Muts in back of me to spawn. I drew a few Muts from the flood room, and got four more on my back. It took all my skill and a touch of luck to survive. I was down to 30 hit points at one point. One ill-timed crit would have done me in. Somehow, I got it cleared and finished off drawing the flood room. Next up was Deadeye Fist. The players after this were all melee, so I just needed to get him out of the way. Deadeye had no trouble at the start. In hindsight, it would have been better if he had more trouble than he did. It let me get overconfident, a sure way to die. I got to the flood room and did not bother to draw. I just advanced up the hall, confident in my ability to heal any damage before I was in danger. I took a few crits and got low on health. I tried to heal and it failed. Healing is one of those things that mostly work, but getting to half health can be riskily. When you heal, you lose melee defense. This is normally not a problem because healing takes the health at the start of the heal, and discounts damage during the process. Of course, if you fail to heal, you are in trouble. This is why smart players keep health elixirs on their hot key. I hit the hot key with 78 hit points. Sadly, drinking will also lower your Melee Defense. Before the heal hit, I died. Well, that sucked. I loaded up Mage to reapply the Life and Creature buffs and ran back. There was a melee clearing out the flood room when I got there, so recovery was easy. He had sent me a message with an offer to help, but I had missed it. I scrolled up later and saw it. That was the last adventure for the afternoon. The others were positively boring. I even started nodding off and ran past passages. Even Death Mute, who is the lowest level, had no trouble clearing and getting the Pincers. A good shield can make up for a lot. The only problem was getting Fist out of the Mut dungeon. I likely should have swapped to H2O for this. When I logged in, I was still trapped. I had a dark screen, should not go into combat mode or swap to a wand. I was thinking of calling a +envoy, but I was being attacked. Whereas their damage was less than my healing rate, I had no idea how long my buffs were going last. If the +envoy did not respond quickly, I was likely to die. Fortunately, mansion recall worked. Reward It was not until the evening that I had time to turn in the Pincers. First I had Mage make a Red Spire portal. I then loaded up the Armor and Weapon mule, and had them move to Red Spire. They were followed by everyone who had a pincer. Cliff Bowman added a point of Armor skill and leveled. Fist Mule two got a point of strength. When it takes 45 million and 60 million respectfully, to add points to Tinker skills, I thank god that Turbine is allowing fellow xp sharing with this turn in. New Armor setup I've been slowly collecting Majors for a new set of armor. This may be an ego thing, as it is going on Fist, who seldom hunts. The main reason for picking Fist is everything on him costs from 150 to 200+ million points to improve. He also has the melee defense to use armor that would get my Mages killed. The first item I came across was Major Strength Pals, this was followed by Major Coordination Bracers. Now you cannot get a better match than that! The final piece of the puzzle was a Major UA BP I picked up. This combo has my UA buffing out at 513! The pieces were not easy to get set up. They had rank and racial requirements that had to be changed. Fortunately, this is now possible. The biggest drawback was high wms on them. One was wms 9 and the other 8, that was added to losing a tink to repair the restrictions. I was still able to get their AL to over 200. A few days ago I acquired a Major Quick shield. At first I thought I would not be able to use it. It had a 152 missile requirement. It already had 10 tinks on it so there was no way to remove the restriction. Just to make a test, I buffed my missile. It buffed out to around 160! This was a bit of a surprise. I can even use the Nurf shield to add 15 if I need to. So I have all the melee stats covered with majors. I still need a Major Life Item, as he will need to land Life de-buffs. I have some Major Item gaunts stuck on a mule. If I ever get his Item skill high enough to de-buff shields, I'll move them to him. For now, anything with a shield, I'll leave to the mages. I'm slowly raising my Life skills. The final goal is 315, so I can use the moderate Life helm. If I cannot find a major Life item, that will have to due. Life is currently at 304, with a 210 million cost. Self and Focus are 138 and 150 million respectfully. According to AC Planner, I need 5 billion xp to get Life to 315. That might take a year or so, unless he starts living in Caul, which is not likely. Caul Fellows One thing that has mystified me for a long time are people who run to a group place, without a group, and demand to be added to one that is there. We saw this in VoD all the time. I cannot think of a single time I have gone to VoD without a group, or without intending to fight solo. This habit has followed the power groups to Caul. The problem is, as demonstrated by my last column, that there are people who cannot fight in Caul. That does not seem to matter to many; they demand to be added to the group, because they need to level. This is not friends or allegiance members, but total strangers. They are not even nice about it. They DEMAND they get into the groups! If they are turned down, they go to the boards and trash the fellow leader for not helping them level. I try to get people into our VoD fellows because we are focused on fun and not leveling. The Caul fellow is a horse of a different color. In Caul, an anchor player is not just a drag on the xp, they get people killed. Here is a little help for those intending to go to Caul in the future. Guest Writer: Archmage Lara I read an interesting thread earlier about Caul fellows, and I'd like to add this one. I have no problems with people that can come out despite level and make a meaningful contribution to the fellow. You can't kill anything directly? Then heal those that can. I've even had 126s that found themselves dying a lot that day for whatever reason and bowed out graciously because they were spending all their time running to the fellow and/or buffing. It happens to us all from time to time. To play Caulcano you have to KNOW how to play your toon well. If it's not working for you that day take a break. Most fellows will not write you a "welfare xp cheque" though. That's the biggest turnoff for those working hard in a fellow is a person standing around looting corpses and/or running back from the LS and looting their own. It's not about demanding to get elite xp because others are making it, it's about making a name for yourself as a great person to have in a fellow. Does that mean you have to be an ubah killing machine? No not at all. There's SO much room for every aspect of fellowship play. Dispellers and healers that are non-combat oriented are sorely needed in almost every good fellow. If a person, who is level 50 and prepared, and takes care of their own health, can buff and doesn't spam for help, then they are valued members of any caul fellow. Bring a heart or an awakener and join the fun! I'll never turn someone away for level reasons only. Also fellowships in Caulcano are routinely packed and the waiting list is often an hour or more. That's the way it is. Many times people have made meaningfully contributions by healing members of the main fellow while waiting in line and this goes a long way! Here's a short list of ways to make yourself useful if you're not 126 and you want in a Caulcano Fellow: 1. Be a productive healer/dispeller. Perhaps do that in line, make your request known and then follow thru and help the fellow. If people are leery about your level they'll put aside doubts if they see your actual abilities to contribute. 2. Be able to get there yourself and buff yourself. Level 200s will be fighting for their lives and often die themselves. Making people take time to lead you back or have the whole fellow wait while your bot buffs you won't cut it. 3. If you don't get accepted, move on. It might not be right, esp if you've done the above things, but whining and complaining about people only gets you blacklisted making your situation worse. 4. Don't stand around picking up loot from corpses and make sure your fellowship looting option is checked on. People start dying when members of the fellow, ESP the healer starts looting all the dead monsters. Hopefully this might help you make a more meaningful contribution to level 126 fellowships on Caulcano. Its one place the 126s can play so make yourself a "wanted" guest there. GL! Lara