It did not start out to be but today's column is about luck. Good and bad.
I hate to gamble.
I have never been one to toss coins in a slot machine or play any game there the odds of winning were less than losing. Turbine is determined to make luck the major part of the game.
Lets take the new level VII spells. This is written before Thursdays patch so I don't know if the creature spells are in it or not. So far we have two schools with the spells. To get these spells involves no skill or thinking, it is all pure luck.
To start with you have to kill a bunch of key dropping monsters. Many times people are killing this type of monster even though it is far below their skill. If you're "lucky" after a time you get a key.
Next you take the keys to a steel chest, which at least required some fighting ability. After that you're back to "luck". Put in a key and get zero to three scrolls. Now "luck" again, the scrolls vary from valuable to useless. As there are far more useless spells than valuable ones the "luck" factor is even bigger.
So far we had plugged in about 60 keys and got two useful spells. Those keys were the result of two months of hunting. Of course when Life and Creature are put in a lot of the scrolls will go up in value. Still I know I'll be gambling with keys for a long time before I have all the spells. No skill, just pure stupid blind luck.
Some have taken their lucky pulls to the trading table. While I get none, some "lucky" people get full sets right off, even several copies. To show how far from skill this has gone, some of the scrolls are trading for outrages amounts.
I saw one scroll go for 40 keys. Now an average player, hunting Olthoi every day, might pick up that many in two or more months, depending on "Luck". So a single scroll is worth two months of "luck".
And talk about greedy, one person put up a scroll for sale with a 5 smalls buyout. This about two-thirds of a GSA! Greed is the one really bad thing about this game.
I wish there was a better way to do this. To tell you the truth I don't have any idea on how to do it better. I would like to see some way to add a skill or work factor into this. People who work hard should be rewarded more than people who are "Lucky".
Lucking out
Speaking of luck, I did have some today. I was looting a Bandie and one spawned next to me. About the same time an Island Rat ran over and attacked me. A fire monster jumped in to complete the battle. I had a problem picking out the monsters. The rat kept jumping and I could not select it. I also had not buffed for acid. The fire monster was off to the right, I decided to get the rat before going after the fire monster, I was using the Bandie as my health battery.
I was switching to the Bandy to get back health but wasting a lot of time trying to select the rat. I got a good hit on the rat after de-buffing it, one down. The fire monster and Bandie decided to start chain cast on me. With fire vuln V from a Vapor golem I took a lot of damage. I decided that I would be better off retreating at this point. I had 16 hit points so any spell was going to do it.
I was ziz-zaging along but could not shake the Bandie. Sometimes a Bandie will follow you forever. Away from the fire monster I decided to try a quick drain on the Bandie and kill it. That worked and I was back to 80+ hit points. A few drains and a lighting bolt took care of the Bandie. Now if it had not chased me I would likely have moved on. My buffs were dropping and I was there to hunt Vapors not Bandies.
Looting the body I found a UA Nic. 2-6 +10% melee +6% UA, Defender IV, BD IV, HS IV, Coodi VI. Diff 103 UA 286. Now that is a nice weapon. Pure dumb luck.
Fun but at times...
I get a lot of tells in the game. I spend a lot of down time just talking so this is not a great problem. This week I wanted to do some hard leveling with my mage. I have a good reason for this that I may go into later.
With the coming of a buy sell nerf I'm trying to get as much high value junk as I can. I figure if I can get a pack of "M" notes before tomorrow it will last me a while.
The problem with a mage is the limited hunting time and the mouse, keyboard intensive combat. With Fist I target and can start typing to people who send me tells. No way I can do that with Mage. There are times I get so many tells I have to stop combat. It is not all that costly with Fist but with Mage it is very costly.
A big help has been a plug in called Chat helper. Used to be I would have to scroll up and do cut and past to reply to messages. This is because I get several at a time and have a hard time keeping track. With Chat helper you can give people a short reply and finish the buffing cycle. I then use chat helper to contact everyone and find out what they need.
Another great thing about chat helper is it saves the names. This means I can log another player and still have a list of who has sent me tells. With a lot of strange spellings of names I really need that. The best player to help someone is not always the one I'm playing at the time.
Dam, I wanted that.
I was hunting the beach on the Island with Mage. When I logged there were two people hunting the Vapors so I decided to hunt Bandies. Right off the bat I found a group of three on a hill.
Bandies can be stubborn. No matter what you do you cannot get them off the spawn. I ended up killing two of them at the spawn site. I then cleared out four Shreths so I could loot the bodies. As I start looting the bodies a Bandie spawned and a Drudge ran off the hill to join in.
Now I have said before how a Bandie and Drudge working together can really mess you up. I killed the Drudge and turned on the Bandie. As I did three Drudges from a far spawn joined in.
I knew better than to fight that and took off running. After a time only the Bandie was chasing so I killed it. I ran back to try and again get the loot. As I did a Drudge spawned on the hill and started shooting lighting bolts at me.
I vuln it and shot off a fireball to kill it. As I did the same three Drudges jumped in. I took off running again. This time I turned and engaged one of the Drudges. They were all running back so I was able to take it one on one.
I ran back to try and get the loot and a single Drudge again spawned. Same thing, the three Drudges joined in and I had to run.
By this time Sixth Sense told me there was a pyreal pea on the beach. I can cash this for 66k so I really wanted to get it.
Using hit and run I killed all the Drudges and a few Bandies that spawned. The beach was clear but my buffs were dropping.
I had one tell from someone asking if I would to on the island quest Sunday. Had to pass on answering until later.
I was doing the "[" thing trying to find the pyreal pea in the pile of junk from everything I had killed. I'm watching buff after buff drop and know I was taking a big risk. Sure enough four Sheths spawn right next to me.
I took off running but with all the junk I had picked up and, no strength buff, I was not moving very fast. I was far enough to stop and kill the one who stuck with me. Without a war buff I was fizzling my VI spells like crazy. It is 262 raw, high but nowhere near combat high. Finally after about five fizzles I had killed it. I was down to 70 hp and zero buffs.
My plan was to rebuff and get that pea. I really wanted it.
I got a tell from Arek ibn Blade. He had several bodies in the Direlands and was too weak to recover them. Dam I really wanted that pea.
Body recovery
I decided to help Blade with Fist. I still wanted to hunt the island later with Mage and did not want to fight my way back to the island. Fist is good at going about anywhere he wants to. The problem is keeping others alive who go with him. Mage can protect others and has much better attack skills.
I logged Fist and started to buff. I got a vassal tell from Gil just to say Hi. I sent a vassal reply and got a vassal tell from Bleu Sky saying Hi. I ask Sky where he was as his help would be nice. I also like to hunt with vassals when I can.
Sky was close and just needed to sell off really fast. I buffed and made a portal to Sylsfear when Sky got there. We ran thought Sylsfear and came out in the south Dires. This put us about 15 clicks from Blade. Had a typical Dires run with a flood of orange dots following us as we ran. The most annoying spell is drain. We stopped when we could to do a quick heal.
We found Arek ibn Blade and cleared out a lot of trash so he could get his bodies. We even had a little luck. Sky found some sword III gants for a vassal. I got two Drudge guts for my archer and a key. Blade got his bodies and we ported out.
As soon as I got to the LS I had a tell from Virindi Al-Derenmdt. He had a body he needed help with. This was a lot easier. He is a new alliance member and only 8th level. We got to the body after I cleared a few small problems. Then I stood in front of an Ice Golem while he shot holes in it. That cleared a lot of his vit. Wished him luck and logged.
Words of warning
When you signed up to play AC you agreed to the COC. In that there is a little bit about not giving the account to anyone.
This part has been ignored for the most part by players. Kids and people who should know better have bought, sold and given away accounts without regard to the COC.
For the most part MS had taken no action. Lately this has changed. Several accounts have been deleted with a single e-mail saying; "This account was permanently banned because it was transferred to
another person, in direct violation of our Terms of Use."
So words of warning, if you trade accounts with someone you risk both accounts being deleted. No reason is needed other than it was transferred.
My problem with Darktide
I have had my wars with Darktide, mostly over the insulting name carebear. While there are a lot of great people playing on that server there are an overwhelming number immature of players. Typically they have little respect for others and think their style of play is the best.
Their posts on the boards and newsgroup are trollish and insulting. If I get a letter from one it is filled with doodisem and many times cursing.
Here is a response from a DT player on PK lite. Now remember the change would have done nothing at all to Darktide.
___
My God you are pathetic! Thank God COD went away along with your idiotic stories. If you want to go PK get some balls. Come to DT where dying has some consequences. When was the last time your heart raced and your mouse got sweaty? It wasnt from the amazing AI of tuskers and shadows LOL.
To get that rush....you have to fight other people, with consequences: even though you may lost your 10k wand. Give it a try buddy!
____
This kid is too stupid to even know the column was not posted on COD. Because I don't play like he does I'm pathetic. Because I don't play on DT I have no balls. If I don't play in DT there is no excitement in the game for me. Because I'm not fighting other kids all day I'm not playing right.
Is there any wonder I have so little respect for that server? I know I'm falling into the trap of judging everyone for the actions of a few. The problem is I have contacted three respectful players from Darktide and twenty times that number of grief playing kiddies. I remember a quote someone once said. "The best thing about Darktide is attracts the stupid grief players away from the other servers."
I don't know first hand but I'm getting a lot of information from people who know. People I respect as players and PK's say the Darktie players have very poor PK skills compared to the other servers. I do know that as far as quests DT is always the last to do them, if at all. I always thought it was a lack of interest, not ability.
Why this is true, if it is, I have some guesses about. I know that a lot of them have bigger mouths than brains. PK takes a smart player and I have met very few smart people from DT. I have not played there but I hear most of them run in gangs. On the OPK servers it is mostly one on one or two on one.
OPK servers do get a break in that you can go white to level. This also lets them earn the money to support full time buffing. OPK players have good no drop gear and fight other players with good no drop gear. If your fighting on OPK your fighting the best of the best. This leads to good skills or being run white.
The DT people only fight DT people so they have no idea how well the OPK players fight. They assume that they are better because someone told them they were. After all, the other servers are "carebear".
To provide a bit of balance, PK's on our server such as Dark Pagan say this is not true. He has a player on DT and MT so he is in position to know. Until I decide to go to that server and see for myself I can only guess.
I don't understand these people
A lost day of AC is not the end of the world. I agree that they should have tested better. After spending two more days testing they should not have had this problem. As a former programmer I understand that when it goes live the unexpected will bite you.
So they messed up and we have a lost day while they fix it. I cannot be sure but I would be very surprised if it was not the gear fix that caused it. (Later Turbine statements proved I was right.)
What I don't understand is how people reacted to this. To check a rumor of the servers not being up until tomorrow afternoon I logged into the help room. It was about 10pm PST. Every question was to berate the help staff and Turbine.
In other words people were spending hours waiting in line so the can say the same thing that last hundred people said. Did this fix anything? Did this make the servers come up any faster? Did this break lose any more information? Of course not. All it did was waste time.
I got the information I needed. There was no need to be spending the rest of the night clicking on the servers hoping they would be up. There was no need to log on after my bike ride tomorrow. I'll take a shower and go back to bed. I'm guessing the one hundred and twenty-two people waiting in line will say, "Why didn't you do more testing, I'm quitting the game", like everyone else did. Or, "Who do I see about a refund for my lost day." (33 cents?)
Rather than curse out the volunteers on the board blame the people who created it all. The cheating gear users who caused all this mess. I would bet that the majority of the morons going to the board used gear.
Another gamble
Well we did get creature spells with this patch. This really helped my mules out. (They were packed with scrolls.) It is a good thing I help others a lot because most of my scrolls are other spells.
I waited for a while before running over to the creature spot. Well, I'll be honest, my wife went to town and I had to pick her up. When I got there it was a mess. Hordes of people were turning in scrolls. I turned in two and on the second one I got nothing back. I figured that lag and all the people turning in scrolls caused it to break.
I logged for a while hoping it would clear up. When I got back there was a line. This reduced the problem of scrolls being eaten but not all the way. We are back go gambling, this time that turning in the hard won scroll will get a spell in return. I was losing one in 10 that I turned in.
Really lame, hunt keys, gamble in getting right scroll, gambling that the scrolls return a spell. Piss poor way to get the spells you need.
Grief players come out of the woodwork.
The new quest is tailor made for the grief players. A lot of people want the Orb and it is not the fastest spawn. I have not tried this quest yet. Deadeye Fist should do well on it so I will be giving it as shot when the crowds die down.
While the crowds are there people got smart and formed lines. The grief plays would not have much shot at ever getting the item, as most of them are poor players, if not for the lines. The lines keep the more powerful players from completing with them. All they have to beat is the next person in line.
If enough of the kiddies who cannot wait arrive it becomes a free-for-all. This means the more powerful players will get it and the weaker player may never get it. Powerful players will be porting in to replace the ones who leave.
The only way to be fair to everyone is to have a line. There is no way to stop the line jumpers but I sure wish there was.
A second problem is line jumping at the place you get the level VII spells. As most of the players are high level so getting them to line up was not a problem. The reason you need a line is two people turning a scroll in at the same time will cause one or both to be eaten.
I only saw one line jumper while I was there. We got into it hot and heavy for a while but after a bit of stress we worked it out. He had a good reason for doing it. He was PK and being hunted. He had to get in and out fast. A lady did lose some scrolls from this but he give her some stuff to make up for it.
Grief player strikes it big.
Jumping the line and being a total ass is irritating but the damage was a few scrolls and a lot of pissed off people. The problem is the success in one way leads to them thinking they can get away with about anything.
I really like one games idea. Grief players are warned and after a few problems booted. This serves the public two ways, it gets rid of the people who are only there to spoil others fun and keep potential grief players from learning their trade.
An example of the damage a grief player can do was seen this week on the island. The hardest quest in the game has two great rewards, a robe and a scroll. For me the scroll is everything. I will be doing a lot of work within my alliance to earn the right to that scroll. As it is a group quest there is a general agreement on to who is getting the reward. Otherwise it would be a free for all at the end.
Each person earns their right to the chest by helping in the quest, sometimes as many at 10 times. Groups are many times willing to take a new player on the quest to help him earn the right. Today that stopped because of a grief player.
Lieutenant Mage joined Indys group. They did not need him but was willing to help a new quest player along. He asked a lot of questions, which they were happy to answer.
The quest was to get Seano the key. Hot Ice got the kill and was holding it open for Seano. As he released it Lieutenant Mage jumped in and stole the key and robe.
Because of the grief player, a well know one at that, these players will not be allowing anyone to come on their quest. I'm guessing most groups will follow their example.
Many players are doing their best to harass this guy out of the game. They have already forced him to squelch all tells. I'm hoping they keep it up so he can never get tells again. We will try to kill any trade he tries to make and never let him join a group.
We will jump any fight he has and do our best to make him pay for his crime. It is about time that the grief players learn there is punishment for what they do.
His alliance monarch is a mule but someone knows who owns it. He will be kicked from that alliance soon. Like all the grief players in MT's history this one will suffer.
Update; Lieutenant Mage has returned the robe and staff. There is nothing we can do about the scroll. He made the typical claim "It was my brother." He was unable to make any trades. He asked people for help at times and was refused. Several players started following him and taking his kills. In any group he was spamed as a thief. After a few days he decided to beg forgiveness. There is something we can do about grief players but it takes organizing.
Hunting hollows
My reason for hunting Hollows is the key they drop. I have lock pick and have heard the loot these keys get is outstanding.
The dungeon entrance is never safe but today it was a hot LZ. A horde of orange dots massed around the portal. Rather than fight I ran straight to the entrance.
After hitting the dungeon was asked where it was so Randy could go there. I headed outside to get the coodi. I got locked in the portal and I guess was stuck just short of getting out. I got several messages "You are an invalid target for Umbris Shadow." I had to log out to clear it.
After I logged back I was attacked by an LT. I ran a short distance to get away from the other stuff before fighting it.
LT was made short work of as I had my full protection setup on. I can take a bunch of spells and heal the damage they do with little trouble. As far as melee attack my 360 defense beats their skill.
Then I took on the Umbris. Umbris toss higher spells and hit harder. Other than I was missing a few swings because of a partially buffed fire weapon I was having little trouble. It seems that attacking me while I was locked in portal ran it out of mana. A Shadow, even a Umbris, is dead meat without mana.
I headed down the dungeon and found a Hollow right off. Had nothing on it and a second one spawned. I killed it and a master spawns. I kill it and see a gut on the ground. Now my archer has his bow strung but I can always give it to a family member. Checking the Hollow I found a singularity key.
Fought my way deeper killing two more. My target is a hallway with three rooms. Two rooms spawn a Hollow and the center room spawns two. In between the rooms is a maze with a load of Drudges.
In the first buffing cycle I got a key off a drudge and two singularity keys off the Hollows. At that point my lucked ended. Spent several buffs and got nothing.
Two people arrived so we shared the spawns. I took one room and Dragon Dancer took the other. After we killed those we ran to the center room and shared the two there.
With Dragon Dancer was a mage Egg' Shan who turned out to be her husband. He kept the Drudges clear while we took on the Hollows. I got one last key and Egg buffed my lock pick. Bad luck as I missed carved one. That still leaves me with three to use. Next stop, hunt for treasure troves in the Direlands.
More luck
I was running Fist to the place to get Item VII spells. I had BD, Defender and SK to turn in. I was close and logged a bit to look up the exact coodi. I decided to run cross-country rather than follow the road.
After a few clicks I noted I was moving away from where I wanted to go. I had gone in the wrong direction. O'well, did a one-eighty and started back. Just before hitting the road I saw a flash of white off to my left. Soon a Mattie was on my tail. Matties are not even worth killing right now. I got Deadeye Fist his bow so I do not even need the horns off a Greater.
Then I noted this was a Dire Mattie. I had no armor on at all. Figured my melee defense would take care of that so I stopped to take it out. Did not do much damage bare handed but it could not touch me. Checking the body I found a claw.
If I had not gone in the wrong direction I would have missed it.
Hunting the singularity chest
A quick check of the boards showed that singularity chests were best found along the beaches. I took the south dire portal at Mayoi and killed off the welcoming committee. A short jog south put me on the beach. I just started following along the beach checking all the spawns.
I found several types of chest or troves, master, director about every type but singularity. Finally I got a hit. It was on a cliff that had no apparent way up. I backtracked a bit until I found a way up the mountainside. I was well away from the Singularity chest by this time so I was hoping the block did not reset.
I headed back south following the ridgeline. I came to a plateau with a festival stone at the end. The plateau edges fell off to a step and then the beach. I knew the chest was to the east so I followed the east edge until I found it. There was no way down so I followed the ledge a ways to see if there was a path.
There might have been one if I wanted to follow the mountains again but decided to just jump down. The jump only did about 30 points of damage, thank god for great jumping skills.
I was met by the golem greeting committee. Two granites attacked as soon as I landed. I had a fire weapon out and my blunt was un-buffed. I ended up fighting them with just my plate gants. Sometimes the spawns re-charge fast. This was one of those. I did not take more than a few steps before I the two granites were back.
After dispatching them I headed up to find the chest. The Singularity chest was lightly guarded by a Shadow, Pan, LT, two Umbris and three Grievver's. It took me about 10 minutes of hit and run to clear it all.
I expected to have to find three chests but was wrong. Each chest is like an iron chest and will reset after a short time. Most of what I got was high value junk but I did get four good items. A nice sword, Strength other VI scroll (which Mage needs.), a 22k death item and a piercing VI ring. With the junk on the Umbris's adding to the loot I had enough for two M notes.
Bad luck
After my success with the singularity keys I decided to get some more. Early Monday morning I figured there would be few people where I hunt Hollows. In the main section is a spot for non-stop fighting.
After a room with two ledges, stocked with Drudges and two Tusker Guards, is the first room with Hollows. It has a Master and two Hollows. After a section with a load of Ravenor Drudges is down ramp leading to another Master and two Hollows. On each side is a ramp up leading to a room with a Vinney Slave and two Hollows. So in all there are two Masters, two Slaves and eight Hollows in the route. I never counted the Drudges but there are enough that stamina is a problem.
The only real bad spot in this hunt is when I go to the first section. There I start with the Master and two Hollows but soon two Tusker guards and a Vinnie Slave will join the fight. Problem is the Tuskers need a different weapon. I'm using my cold weapon as that worked best on the Hollows. Not the best weapon for Vinnie but it works. I had brought down a Tusker with a cold weapon but it was slow.
After about an hour of killing each section in turn I had zero keys for my trouble. HS had just ran out so I knew I would have to re-buff soon. HS is the only VII spell I'm missing with Fist. Working hard to get it but people are demanding way too much for that one.
I engaged the Master and it tossed Bludgeoning VI Vulnerability on me, as expected. The Slave floated up the ramp with the two Tuskers and tossed Vulnerability IV in me, as expected. My melee is high enough that even with Vulnerability on me I'm not hit much. Spells I can heal from.
I killed the Master and quickly switched weapons to my fire Atlan. Problem with that weapon is lack of defensive buffs. In hindsight I should have stayed with my good cold weapon with better buffs. I'm still doing ok, just had to heal a little more. Any hit from a Tusker was a hard hit so I had to be fast to heal.
Then my Bludgeoning VI shirt ran out of mana, that was unexpected. Things are getting a little dicey as I'm healing a lot and barley keeping ahead of the damage.
Then the last bit of bad luck fell into place. My coodi V gants ran out of mana. Now my melee drops into the range that the Tuskers and Hollows can hit. With four hard hitters and the Slave tossing war, I was finished in a few seconds.
Found my new piercing VI ring will be one of 10 dropped items. I was worried about the high value on that. At least I'm not dropping armor. It was a race to get my body before the buffs dropped on my weapons. With vit there was no way I was tossing level VII spells.
It was a hard battle and was I under 50 hit points twice. Got my body and had the vit cleared before the buffs ran out. Love the length of level VII spells.
More bad luck, then good.
I logged back in and started hunting the same spot. Two melees had the first room but that left a lot of Hollows for me. After taking out the Master I was waiting for a Hollow to spawn. Just before he did a horde of Drudges came up one ramp and another group down a ramp.
The little chain-casting bastards had me trapped in the cubby and the Hollows were starting to be effective with their punches. I'm guessing I had a lot of melee de-buffs because a Hollow normally does not hit me much. Scrolling up after I died I saw several hits in a row. The Drudges might have ran me out of stamina, it is always a problem there.
I ran back cleared the first room. Got a master key there. The two melees showed up and one's brother is a vassal of mine. Mostly to be friendly I asked them to help with my body. Turns out I needed the help. Vit was clear so that was not the problem. I did not try to find out why this was so hard in the excitement. All I knew is I almost left another body next to the first one.
I ran in and killed the Master. I was getting hit bad with melee and spells. With 16 hit points I did a fast retreat. I was chased by the two hollows into the next room. The two there had re-spawned and the first Hollows handed the chase over to them.
I was all the way to the slot room before I broke contact. I hit a heal elixir and healed up the damage to full. The two melees ran past me just as I charged back. I never saw them again so I guess they had enough.
I cleared the room and got my body. I had enough of fighting with that many de-buffs. I headed over to the rooms in the upper deck where I can fight the Hollows without so much other stuff.
After a day of hunting without a key I had found a master, a director and a singularity in that short time. With just one buffing cycle, admittedly long with level VII spells, I found three more singularity keys. A very successful hunt. Not sure if it was the points I put into my lock pick skill but I carved them all without a fail. Next stop, southern dire beaches. I hope the loot is worth my 75 and 76 death.
Please ban these lamers
I got this off the newgroup this morning. I had a message from someone about reporting them while on the island. With the Admin's being so busy they seem to keep missing these guys. Here is the message.
Last night while on Morningthaw, I had the displeasure of reporting the following players via the Abuse system to the +admins:
Thaelin
Xsinster-Jx
Xarion
Otoko-Satsu
I have screen caps of each of these idiots casting summon portal at the bottom of the Arwic Subway while corpses pile up around them. If you know any of these players either in-game or in real life, please let them know whether or not you think they are cool. They apparently haven't gotten enough feedback concerning this practice.
There is an "undocumented feature" in AC that causes a player to take double or triple falling damage when landing on a portal. To create portals for the purpose of killing players is harassment and against the CoC. There is a rumor that +admin jet is just perma-banning accounts belonging to players that do this. I for one hope its true.
I told each of these players that I personally reported them. Otoko-Satsu, who was alone at the time, stopped immediately. The other three idiots were together and kept casting away even after I told them Id reported them.
Thaelin, Xsinister-Jx, and Xarion actually brought mana potions with them so they could keep casting portals over and over.
Watching players crash to the Subway floor like lemmings jumping from a cliff is a sickening sight. If Thaelin, Xsinister-Jx, and Xarion get their accounts yanked, Dereth will be a better place.
_________________
Ben-Li Sung, Blade Master
Xero Prime Monarchy
Morningthaw
Supplying the monsters of Dereth with nutrients since 12/16/99!
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