Fist de Yuma - June 17, 2003

Disaster Last week my e-mail address list got trashed. I spent a large part of this week working on restoring it. While I did a lot of work there were holes I could not repair. There will be some people not getting the column. I hope they e-mail me so I can repair it. Most likely there will be people getting the column that had dropped it sometime in the past. If things get lucky for us they will decide to keep it. One place I know I have lost is my advertising list. A few web sites asked me to put them on the list in the last few months and those I lost. Please re-send the request so I can repair that as well. The smart thing for me to do is to use an off site list. That would require hours of work but it would safeguard the list. Making a goal This week has been a balance between excitement and boringly working towards a goal. This was followed by an exciting reward for the goal attained. The excitement came from doing the Caul quest, the beginning of which is outlined in my VN column. The goal was to get Fist's Armorer's War to 405. This number is the point I consider minimum for joining the House fellow in VoD. Most of last Monday was spent writing the column and hunting in the Rampager Dungeon. While the tuskers in the Plated 70+ are worth more than Rampagers the Rampagers are easy to kill and there are a lot more of them. A well spread fellow of active hunters (verse leaches who I find all too often) a group can pull down 12+ million an hour. While I've done that a time or two the average is more on line with 9 to 10 million. The reasons for this are varied. A second fellow or lot of whites can lower the XP. Leaches are a major problem. I have watched players show no drop in stamina for an hour or more. One claimed that he has high strength and endurance and does not drop endurance. A glance at his stats showed otherwise. Even if he did have high endurance he was using an xbow. That eats up stamina like no tomorrow. So just what he was doing I don't know, he sure was not hunting Tuskers. Another problem is a lot of players exceeding 95lv. The Tuskers were lowered to 95lv to remove the high levels from the Tusker dungeons. The XP is far lower as you exceed the level of the monsters. The 12 million plus I was in was made up of mainly 80 and below players. Even with a few people dieing we had better xp flow than the other fellows. Finally after doing several hours on Saturday I attained my goal. The next day I joined up with Moby for a VoD hunt. Reward for months of work I created Fist's Armorer in December of last year. While by today's standards making 95 in six months may not be all that great those of us who don't cheat know it is an accomplishment. To make my goal of 405 War I had to neglect my other skills. That neglect will continue as I need to get War much higher to be effective in VoD. We started at the Lifestone at the North Dires portal exit. There was two or three groups forming and buffing at the LS with us. We had a small group because it was morning. A Fictional God was pushing to get to 125 so he could turn in 20 swords and hit 126. We were joined by Zara and Moby Dick. So we were a small group with two power players and two "two digits players". Zara is and archer and 99lv (made 100 that evening) so I was the only one who was going to have trouble. With low Life and no other skills worthwhile at VoD I had to adapt. My main job was blasting and keeping a watch on everyone's health. With a plug in I have watching health is not that hard. It shows a red line below everyone's name. When their health starts dropping I can see it immediately. As is normal Moby picks the targets and starts the de-buffing process. He will generally start this from behind a tree. When a group is attacked they will many times do a full war attack. With a lot of monsters this can result in instance death, especially if there is a touch of lag. By putting a tree in front of him Moby prevents being one shot by the mob. This would also encourage them to charge, which is the whole idea. I would generally post myself off his left or right shoulder. I would watch for which one he vulns and target it. If it stays at the spawn point I start tossing spells. Mostly one will charge which puts FG and Zara into action. Some monsters are best left to the fighters. The Gummies are a good example. When we found a group of them FG would charge. When they were fixated on him Moby would start the de-buffing and we attacked. This took advantage of the fact that the Gummies tend to stick to a target. Of course our main target was Virindi. The return on these is outstanding and they have far less hit points than most of the monsters in VoD. Of course they have nasty attack and de-buffs but as long as they don't kill us the positives are far more than the negatives. The main problem with Virindi is they do tend to kill us. A chain cast by two of them will kill even high hit point players. We learned this the hard way that morning. Zara had left and it was just A Fictional God, Moby and I. (I could be wrong here and have it backwards. Zara might have joined us later.) We had taken down a few members of a Virindi pod and were working on the last one. Without warning Moby died. The message returned was he had missed a heal. I was firing away but not landing much. The high magic defense of the Virindi was a major problem for me. I stopped once to heal FG and figured it would die soon. We would recover Moby's body and meet up with him at the start. Without warning A Fictional God died! He had been at full health just a second before. So the 124 Swordsman and the 160 mage were down and all that was left was my puny 95lv but, who was not landing at all. In hindsight I should have just ran at this point. I could have broken contact and recovered the two bodies. My 287 hit points, high for my level, made me want to stay in it. I missed three war spells and took enough damage to force a heal. The forth shot landing and low and behold it was enough to kill it. Between Moby and FG they had done enough damage that I only needed to nick it to finish it off. I recovered both bodies and met them at the LS. Recovery After we started back hunting we got a tell that Goddess of Fire wanted to join with us. She was running to try and find us when she died. We started searching for her body. While running over one spot I saw a body with Red armor. Knowing that Goddess of Fire was also Fire Lady I was sure that was her. Fire is proud of her bright red armor. This was one nasty spot. It was filled with several spawns of Bandies and other groups. Using the "[" key to try and mark her location I noted three or four other bodies. In fact it seemed as if one of the groups we met at the LS before had met their end here. I saw several of the names from that group. Moby sent me a tell saying he had found Fire's body. I finally got close enough to the red armored body to see it was not Fire after all. I sent a message to the owner who said they would recover it later. The Moby fellow As I said at the start of the column joining Moby's fellow had been a goal for some time. The reason for this is two fold. One it is a darn exciting hunt. Moby keeps things moving and we never slow down. It can be exhausting at times but you don't notice it until you stop. The second reason is the xp produced. I was shocked at getting 18 million from a fellow one day at VoD. I had heard it can be even better. This day proved it. Even counting the buffing and run to VoD we were at 22 million in the first hour. If we had not had deaths and restarts we would have exceeded that in the next hour. With only a few hours hunting I pulled down 50 million points. That leveled me to 96 and let me add another point of war. That War point seemed to have a big effect, as I seemed to be resisted a lot less. Observer error of course as one point should not make that much difference. Sunday evening we had a big group of players. I would not say it was an overwhelming group. Over half the players were two digits. Nevertheless with Moby's leadership we were pulling it in hand over fist. I was kind of proud of the fellow the House had put together. Even with Moby A Fictional God and Xan I would say our average level was below many of the Tusker fellows. Of course there is no risk or work for a 126 in a Tusker dungeon. Many just turn on ElTank and watch TV. I know I'll never go back, other than to pick up a tusk. To get and idea just how much xp we were pulling in I reset my xp timer just after we started hunting. This cut out the buffing and run to VoD, which lowered the per hour number. For the first half an hour we were pulling in over 50 million an hour! Of course we waited for people and had deaths along with buffing so the total dropped. In the end we averaged 23 million an hour. I earned 60 million that evening and made 97. With passup hitting around 20% to my mules I'll be meeting some other goals a lot faster than I thought. My weapon tinkering mule is at 515, only two below what Fist had before dropping the skill. My Lock pick mule has a buffed 395. With brilliance he is well beyond the 400 sweet spot for carving some of the harder keys. Alchemy is at 421 and cooking's at 426. Not one of the best but well beyond the danger of failure when dyeing and making ingots. I don't know Moby schedule for fellowing but I know he runs one a lot for the House. I plan to join up with him as much as possible. When I get my Magic skills to the point where I can be effective I can start working on the Tinkering skills. Thoughts on Fist's Armorer I have a lot of mental debates on what path to take with FA. He is not made to be a support toon. If I need one I have Mage, which is one of the best. That means spec'ing Creature would not do him a lot of good. Where he would really shine is if I could find a way to spec magic defense with him. The problem there is points. There is just not enough points to have two key skills a mage/tradesman needs. As an Armor Tinker I of course need Armor Tinkering. To use minor and, if I ever find them, Major items, I need Lore. I have four points and need eight more. When I hit 125 I'll have ten total and will be two short of spec'ing Magic Defense. This means I have to drop one of those two skills. My first thought is to change my old Archer, Cliff Bowman, to an Armor Tinker. He started with 60 endurance and 25 focus. That would mean twelve trips to the change temples over 24 weeks. So if I go that route it is about a six-month project. Given that it will take longer than six months to hit 115, unless I really hit VoD a lot, this might be an option. It would be possible to live without lore but not easy. I am thinking of starting the changes with Cliff Bowman tomorrow. It would require me unloading a lot of items to my other archer so he would be under burden but that can be done fairly fast. It would not hurt to do and it gives me options I did not have now. Of course Fist's Armorer's name will be a touch confusing but it is something I can live with. Guest Writer; Moriah Moriah sent me story on the pincer quest. You may remember Moriah as the guest writer on using the Life Bolt as a main weapon. Here is a write-up of the latest pincer run with my gimped axer Whack. It is written for a wider audience than just AC gamers, but notes in the text will make it clear what Whack's setup really is. "It's just a pincer, right?" The words reverberated through Whack's head. "Yeah." It was all he could muster at this point in time. Once again he had no problems with the Soldier Pincer or the Legionaries Pincer. And now it was time for an Eviscerator Pincer. Using a new-style hammer he did all right. It's nothing flash compared to the people with magically imbued weapons but its the best Whack could get his hands on. It has not always been this way. Coming from a nomadic tribe, he'd always believed to live life in harmony with Mother Nature. Growing up strong with a lot of vigor and very practiced at heavy axes and hammers he resisted the "unnatural" vortexes of the mana storms here on Dereth (AC*: Innate Strength, Endurance & Coordination = 100, specialized in Axe, Melee Defense & Magic Defense). In fact, many would consider him a perfect example of the ultimate Barbarian fighter. The stranger told Whack that he was only interested in the treasure the Olthoi were hoarding. Whack only wanted a pincer. But Guy Jean said he'd help Whack. So they formed an alliance of convenience. As the first bug came charging round the corner, Guy Jean had no problem landing his spells on the hapless bug. The most deadly spells to the Olthoi here on Dereth invited a short sharp pain before the permanent peace of oblivion. Guy told Whack that the spells were for him and he could use his hammer to his heart's content. But all that Whack could do was stand there and bandage the few scratches that Guy sustained from the eviscerator. You see, it wasn't long ago that Whack stood in the middle of the last room of the same dungeon, where a large party of Isparians were slaying the bugs left right and center. Whack got onto one that was half finished. But with an old-style hammer Whack got more and more frustrated as the bug regained all its health in but a few minutes. Whack was in no danger of dieing himself, but he just could not finish it off. When the others realized what was really happening here, well, they fell over from laughter. Whack wished he could have been swallowed up by the ground. The others finally took pity on the hapless barbarian and put the olthoi to rest. From then on Whack had only healed the members of any party he went with, until Whack got a new-style hammer that is. Now Whack could take on an Eviscerator, just a single Eviscerator, mind you, he certainly could not take on two without fighting smart. Three was pure suicide. Guy shoved Whack into the general direction of the darkness ahead. "The pincer is that way." Now Whack was using his hammer. And the bugs were falling fast. Guy really knew his stuff! The upper parts were easy enough. An old settlement or fortress with Empyrean halls kept the olthoi spaced out. Then came the underground tunnels and the olthoi multiplied at each corridor junction. Whack needed to keep the bugs in front of his shield, which required a bit of maneuvering, but got there in the end. So they got to the last room. The final battle proved disastrous. Some olthoi got past Whack's shield and left his back open to be shredded to pieces by the olthoi's pincers pounding down mercilessly. "Heal plz" Guy startled. He didn't expect Whack to be this weak and unprepared. When Guy took a closer look at Whack's armor, he saw that they were just natural hides, tanned leathers taken from the Derethian wildlife. None of them were baned with the extra protection of the powers of the mana vortexes. When Whack was within an inch of his life Guy managed to use the magic of Life to heal Whack and quickly had him back to full vitae again. Now the pincer harvest was only a formality. "If I'd pulled my head out of my arse I could have buffed you up proper", Guy said. "Whack is always ready to fight, that's why Whack is here the way Whack is", was the reply (It must be noted that Whack does not buff in AC*). They happily pillaged through the pile of the corpses at their feet. "I've moved 20 plats to the mansion chest, so I'm -40 atm", said Guy absently. He was engaged in long-distance communication but Whack heard him. So Whack looked at his own stash of the most expensive spell component in the known world, parted 20 platinum scarabs and gave them to Guy Jean. "Are you sure you want me to have them, I don't need them really." "Whack is ok, can't cast with plats anyway." "I will give them back, it was no trouble at all." "No need, Whack has plenty of full stacks back home." By this time Whack had recalled himself long distance to his Lifestone, ready to cash in the pincers for great rewards. "I will call you a friend." Guy had to resort to long distance communication again. And he continued with "If you need anything, give me a shout and I'll get it done." "You have helped Whack when you did not need to do anything. Whack thanks you and Whack is indebted to you for that too." And thus the story comes full circle. "It's just a pincer, right?" WRONG! It is so much more than material gain. It is giving of one's own time, energies and resources to help others in need. It is what makes a society grow stronger. It is why people are here on this earth.