Fist de Yuma - June 25, 2002

Queen Quest, why? Someone pointed out that I do the Queen quest a lot. This is true, despite the fact it is not my favorite quest. So why do I do it? The answer is simple; I'm needed. There are a lot of people out there who have not done this quest. They look forward to seeing the Queen and being part of the group that defeats her. Many have played for years and are just reaching 70. They did not bypass the lower levels like many of my distracters. There are also those who have a dream of defeating the Queen and getting the Queen Slayer title. To abandon them because the XP, loot and adventure is not worth it to me would be self-center and greedy. In other words everything I'm not. I'm sure there are those out there who cannot understand the concept of helping others. These are the same people who complain they cannot get any good vassals. They join a chain and do nothing but level and say normal alliances are the same as them because they both get vassal xp. Enjoying the game for the pure fun of helping others does not fit their image of AC. If it were not for three things the last quest would not have made the column. There were no quests of interest with this patch. Getting a house item is not on the top of my to-do-list. We solved the spray problem when doing a two pass and I wanted to get that information out. Lastly is the lag problem. I needed to report that this is a constant problem and feel Turbine needs to look at. The next time you see the Queen quest in the column will be because I learn how to do the single pass kill or there was something unique to it. There are tricks I need to learn. When I learn them I will write about them here. There are special people I meet or someone who does something extraordinary. That is likely to happen on something like the Queen quest. If you would rather not read about a Queen quest, skip that section. Elementals I have noted a lot of Elementals where there were none before. Nabata defeated a group that was close to our mansion the other day. While doing the Gorget quest I ran into a group of Fire and Lightning Elementals. Normally the run I was on has a few very weak monsters and not much else. I'm not sure what is going on. I hope there is some quest in this patch we have not found yet. I would rather not spend another month just leveling. Of course with the ECO loss I need to gain some points. Leveling is boring and I would rather be having more fun figuring out a quest. Gorget Now that Fist de Yuma Jr has Creature he has a free neck slot for the Gorget. Adding 15 points to his magic defense will not do him much good at this time, it is below 100. In the future I plan to raise it a lot. Meanwhile I might as well get the Gorget. Jr is tied to Lin so getting to the quest start was easy. With 45 minutes on my buffs I knew I could do this without any stops. My only worry was how hard the monsters would be. I knew where a Gorget spawns and how to avoid the major monster points. The only real danger would be the jump. Fortunately this setup works for smart players with good magic skills. Most of the monsters jump into the pit before you have to jump. There are a lot of corners and rooms that let you trap the monsters. This lets me imperil most of the monsters before I have to fight them. After buffing I moved forward with my drum in hand. First Sclavus I had no trouble landing an Imperil VI on. It died quick. A handful of them rushed me and fell into the pit. I imperiled each one and jumped down. Only a few swings were needed to kill one. There was one that was not imperiled but it fell without to much trouble. Even with VI protects on I was getting hit hard with spells. Killing fast meant fewer opportunities for them to fire spells. I moved up the passageway to where I knew a Gorget was. The four Sclavus in my way were behind a wall. I had little trouble imperiling them. I think I was only resisted once. I got the Gorget and ported to Lin. Having a high Life skill with a melee is far more powerful than I ever imagined. My goal is 350 buffed. That skill will not land on everything but there will not be much I'll have to worry about. So far I'm really pleased with Jr's performance. After a boring run I had the Gorget ready to go. I just need to find a Creature Elixir. I found a bunch of life ones but for some reason did not find any Creature. I figure someone in the family will have one I can have. After that I decided to take Jr to EVL and do a little hunting. I wanted to set up a Nerfus Buffes EVL template. I have over 300 base melee defense but EV Olthoi have little trouble hitting me if I have a wand in hand. The plan is to get 360+ base someday. After around 85lv I'll be pouring into Melee defense for a long time. Being hit a lot when trying to imperil means I need a lot of banes. Getting NBII set up was important. The problem with using NBII is if there is an error in the template you may die a lot before you find it. When setting up the template I got a bit lazy mentally. I clicked down the line of buffs without thinking. This meant I was buffing with Bludgeoning bane instead of Acid. The first EV I faced showed me the error in my ways. I was unlucky in that I was resisted twice while trying to imperil. By the time I noted my very low health it was to late to do anything but die. I checked the log and saw I was taking a big hit when the EV used acid. Checking my template showed the error so at least I was not repeating it on the next buff. The second problem with the template I saw was when in put on my Diamond Shield a day later. It has some V Life protects. As I use level VI and did not really need them. I expected the VI spells to negate the V's and I did not see that message. I checked the template and sure enough I never put on the Life spells. The template I made has a lot of banes and Creature spells. I was so worried about getting all of them I had skipped Life entirely. No wonder I was hit so hard. Using a imperil-fight makes for a short battle when you can do it. Even with massive buffs I would find myself grabbing my weapon with as low as 20 points left. (This was before I found the missing Life protection.) Believe it or not I can fight three EV Olthoi with 20 hit points. My melee defense works well when I have my weapon in hand and the shield cuts down the few hits that do make it in. Also if I got some imperils to land they died fast. Of course I cannot depend entirely on Imperil. Going after and Elder Aun I was hitting for 2 to 5. Those dam drums really protect them. I wish the drum worked for me that way. Even with imperil VI I was only hitting for around 10. For now I'll leave them for Mage. Of course the few I did kill quickly removed my vit. To cut down on letters I know I can de-buff the drum/shield. New magic Well the word is out on the changes. I applaud Turbine for getting the information to us so fast. Notifying us a change is coming and within a week giving us the change is outstanding. Both things I predicted happened. The range shortened up and you only can heal with it. What I did not expect was a lowering of what a level one will do and a raising of what the higher spells will do. It makes sense so I should have expected it. I really believe the raising what other spells will do is a problem. Monsters can now drain 40% (level VI drain) of your health instead of 25%. I agree that only damaged monsters will be able to do this so it might not effects us as much as I think. One on one with a Shadow or other chain drainers will not be fun. With the changes both melee and mage are hurt but mage most of all. Overall this will mean a change of habits and awareness. Many mages drain from habit, wither they need to heal or not. A lot of mages use drain to soften up a monster before blasting. It was a lot cheaper to Vuln, drain and blast than Vuln, blast, blast. What all this will mean for PK I cannot be sure. It might not mean much because drain is not approved of as a weapon. The ability to drain 50% of a melee's health and get it all will be nice for some mages. I'm not sure if the slowness of a level VII drain will make it effective or not. We will have to watch and see. For me it will not be a big change. I might have a higher-level drain on my bar. I'll find out when I start using it. I only drain when hurt so it will not be a lot of changing on my part. Fighting un-drainable monsters such as Armored Tuskers was good training. To get an idea I ran some numbers. A 200 hit point monster hit with drain one returns 37.5 points. (200 * .25 / .75). The new drain will return 20 points (200 * .1). To gain as much health as before you have to use a level three spell. That will return 40 points off a 200 hit point monster. Heal will be a much more effective spell I believe. Only when I put it in into practice will I know for sure. Against the 600 hit point monsters there may not be much change, other than distance. A level one drain will return 60 points, only 15 below the cap. There will even be an advantage in that multiple drains will return more off a high hit point monster. Of course that only goes with healing but most of us only use drain for healing anyway. Again this will not affect me as much as some. Against a horde of Vapors I'll feel it. In other battles I tend to use heal anyway. Lower and mid level mages will feel this change a lot. They will have to adapt to a new way of fighting. At very least they will have to change to a level three drain. So the big question is will this stop macros? Not a bit. It might increase their burn a bit and cause them to modify the scrip but in a week they will all be back. So who is most affected by this? Og mages are going to be darn hard to make. If you ever thought of making one I would do it now and level to 26 before the patch. Without tweeking and using harm exclusively I have no idea if making an Og is worth the effort. Fellowing with a melee and imperiling will work but many have a hard time doing that. Maybe it is not so bad after all as fellowing with a melee is the best way to learn. I'm sorry to see Og being hurt. Og is the best support mage there is. BMs are more powerful and a natural for the powerleveling D00Ds. You are more likely to see an Og belonging to a social player. I'm sure this is unintended but it will hurt nevertheless. Of course the Life bolt might make a difference in the Og problem. The Life bold will take a percentage of damage from yourself and project that damage to the monster. Using a Life bold on one monster while you drain another might be the tactic. Until I see how it works I will not know. I know for sure it will take a lot of flying fingers to make it work. A lot of this will depend on the percentage of damage and range. A high level might use life bold/drain to soften up a monster but vuln and blast will still be the best way to do it. This will further change the templates. With the new packs less strength is needed. At one time the recommended template was 70 strength 40 endurance. I felt with the new change a 55/55 was better. With this change 40/70 might be better. I'm sure that some will take it to the extreme and 10/100 templates will be common. It is not something I would recommend myself. Teaching to communicate One of the current problems with Elder and many other alliances is a large influx of younger players. This in it self is not bad but brings up problems of communication. Younger players tend to be blunt and insulting without knowing they are. There can be two types of reactions to this problem. Unfortunately the worse one is the most common. Taking insult to posts and starting flame wars servers no purpose and is far worst then the original problem. Sadly older people who should know better do this more often than not. I have pointed out several times that cursing shows immaturity. Strangely it is the young who are striving for mature acceptance that curse. Again cursing back or getting mad serves no purpose and does not solve the problem. I feel it is far better to talk to people who have a communication problem. This is not easy and takes patience and a sense of humor. A good example was on our board the other day. A player announced his upcoming marriage. He used a handle that many of us were not familiar with. Another player made this post. "Grats, whoever you are!" I sent him a message to help him understand how to communicate his message without sounding insulting. I wrote; [There is more than one way to say things. Some are better than others. "Grats, whoever you are!" is one way. "Grats, what is your in game name?" is another. Which do you think sounds better?] His reply took a sense of humor. "I'll consider it." To the point but makes the writer sound very snotty. Ok one step at a time. The best way to show the error is to let them read their own words back at them. In time they will start to understand that to communicate they must inspire the target to listen. If they sound insulting the target will not read the message, they read the insult. Ambush Fire Lady asked me if I could help her get the EV pincer. Of course I was happy to. Not a bad quest and I might luck out and find something worthwhile on an EVL body. Killing EV's in fellow is well worth the time and if we hit it right the battles are fun. Fire is an upper 50's mage. Most mages of her level can take down an EV if they don't have a lot of bad luck. Of course templates will come onto play here. A BM will do much better than a 4-school. I'm not sure of Fire's template. The key to a mage fighting in EVL is banes and armor. GSA is a good way to go. Fire has some nice red armor that looks like GSA but I think it is a lower AL. AL 200+ shoes, helm and gants will help a lot. On top of that having full coverage underclothes will cut down on damage. EV's are not as hard as Broods but they pack a wallop and hit fast. The more you can layer protection the better. The new spell time length helps immensely. Before the change someone with a VI buff would spend almost half their time buffing and have to rebuff in a bad spot. Now even a V buffer can have time to hunt after a full set of banes. After a short run we got to EVL and buffed up. Taking the passage down was not too much trouble. I would toss Yield on the EV's to help Fire take them down. I find that around 310 skill will land on them more often than not but you can get a lot of resists in a row at times. We got to the bottom and there was a short line. People honored the line so the stress was low and we had a good time. Fire got her pincer. I said we should go grab the other one while we were at it. So we started back out of EVL. In the second room from the pincer we ran into an EV. We attacked it and the hallway started to empty into the room. We started with three and ended up with six or seven. With my protections and the fact they seldom resist me I was not in trouble. I worked it so most of them were on me but I was still worried about Fire. I killed one and found them all on me. I did not see Fire anywhere. I hoped she had run but know Fire is not the running type. As she did not return to help me I was sure her red armored body was hidden in the pile of Olthoi corpses. I finished off the last one and had time to look for her body. Sure enough she was at the bottom of the pile. Fire gave me permission and I recovered her stuff. Fire has been playing on WE a lot but might be back on MT now. Hate to have her killed when it was my job to protect her. That spot is a great ambush. Three Olthoi spawn there. The hallway has a horde of them in it. As the battle starts all the Olthoi in the hallway rush to the room. Most of the time people have cleared the hallway. When it is full, watch out. How to Kill a Mage Right around my 190's death I started to really slow down on being killed. When I hit 199 it took over a week to hit 200. When a mage get to a high enough level and learns some base skills they are darn hard to kill. Mostly I only get killed when something unexpected happens. I'll give you and example. I was doing my normal hunt in North ML. I came across three Vapor Golems. I killed one and was lit up twice with Fire Vuln. This meant I had to avoid being hit with several Fireballs in a row. I dispatched one and the other two started chain-casting Fireballs at me. I slide away from then while I cold vuln the remaining two and killed them with Frost. Before I could loot a Ziffer spawns. It flew at me and fired a blade spell. I blade vuln it and fired off a War, which it resisted. I'm getting picked at while I try to get the bade to land. While I was doing this two more Vapor golems spawn near me and start shooting Fireballs. Most of the time a Golem will charge and try to melee. A chain-casting vapor is rare. Having two of them spawn right after I defeated two chain-casters had me wondering about Turbine's random number again. I was still trying to get the Ziffer and it kept resisting. I might have had Bafflement and Bewilder VI on me from fighting the Virindi. As I died I was not able to check. The Vapors did not resist and I was not fizzling so I don't think I had both, maybe one. Before I was able to defeat the Ziffer or even think I needed to heal I was blasted by the Vapors. Combine with Fire Vuln VI and the damage the Ziffer had done it was over quick. Jr as support My vassal Dirk wanted to get his EV pincer. He knew he could fight there ok but did not know the route. He asked me if I was doing anything. He was in luck. I had just finished my buff on North ML and was stocking. Jr was logged in EVL so I was free to give him a hand and in the right spot to do it. I logged Jr and started to buff. This was where I found out my NBII template had no Life spells in it. (/em bangs head his on ground.) By the time I had was done buffing Dirk arrived. I went into full support as a Life mage. With 313 buffed Life I was still resisted a bit but most of the time I could land an imperil. With that it only took Dirk a few swings to finish them off. We quickly got to the end and lucked out, there was a pincer on the ground near the tunnel exit. About then I ran out of a comp needed for the imperil spell. I am still balancing my comps out. I had never done a lot of imperiling before so I only had 25 of the plant. I will now keep a 75 stock. I'm very tempted to get Fici and not worry about stocking but I cannot afford the loss in pack space. If I decide that restocking is too much of a pain I might have to drop some of my death items. From there I grabbed my weapon and helped him that way. Not as quick as imperil but the two of us had little trouble. We moved back to the top and over to get the second pincer. Overall it would have been a good day except for one thing, Dirk forget to close the fellowship before turning in the pincers. As I was in Mayoi stocking at the time so I did not get very much of the xp he lost. He laughed it off as a lesson. New Melee When I started playing years ago I had a player in mind. I had looked hard at the Monk player on EQ and had always played a Thief, Monk or Assassin well in AD&D. I thought the Unarmed skill was the same as what I had in mind. When I started I changed that a bit. UA is not like a Monk/Thief/Assassin so I decided he was a punch-drunk boxer. I had some fun doing that but in time I moved away from roll playing. It is hard to roll play when no one else is doing it. I also found that using an unarmed weapon was a lot better that plain fists. For a while it looked like I had lucked out with my pick. I had made a lot of errors but nothing deadly. Missile and Leadership are two skills I might have passed on if I knew about them more. At one time I thought I wasted six credits on Lockpick but that skill has improved a lot. Gradually other skills were improved and the content raised. Now at 121 I find I'm not that effective as a fighter. Jr will have the same problem but can overcome it with versatility. I'm looking forward to the new weapons and hope things improve for Fist. Meanwhile I just have to enjoy the fact that there are only a handful of monsters in the game that melee him. Overall I feel Sword will be the best melee skill to have. Slowly Turbine has improved this skill and it will be king when they are done. As I had never played a Sword ppl and I decided it was time to start. WE is my second server now. I still have some good players on the other servers but no time to play them much. One of the mules on WE was un-sworn so I could deleted him and make a Sword ppl. I made a Sword template a while back for Jeff. I did a little study and could not find any flaws to it. More endurance might be important today but I will pick up Life at 60 so I stayed with 10 endurance. The template looks like this. 100, 10, 100, 70, 40, 10. Spec Sword, Melee, Lore; Train Item. Path is Healing, Mana Conversion, Life, Creature. I started him in Holtburg on Sunday afternoon. After going the starter quests I had a nice short sword and the starter Armor. AL 30 is a touch low but it will be a while until I can afford anything better. The only draw back to not swearing him to Fist de Mage right off the bat was the recruiters. Seemed there is always someone in town that has to ask if I need a patron. It was not like this when I started years ago. Until my melee got a touch higher I had some trouble defeating anything but very weak monsters. Hard to believe I'm praying to get a big hit in on a weak Mosswart because his next hit will kill me. I explored two dungeons I had never been in. One was a 1-5 and the other 1-10. I only met one person there. In the 1-10 there was someone fighting in a hall. He never answered my tell or moved much. Later I figured it was a macro. Why someone would set up a macro to fight weak Drudges I'll never know. I'll not put the name of this player here but most will recognized him when they see him. Of course an 11lv running around with green starter armor and a starter short sword might be a good hint. Game Balance The last Blademaster made the following post the other day. It explains my feeling on the subject of what is going on with the game much better than I have been able to. Far to many people have forgot that the idea is to have fun! Dugfromthearth made a simple and profound statement a week or two ago. To paraphrase, the problem with uber templates is that they exploit imbalances in the game design. When the game is rebalanced, then they suffer the most from the changes. Chasing after ultimate power with your character skills is self-deceiving. The game was designed so that no one character can be all-powerful. Turbine has been working to emphasize this point and to stimulate group play. I cant imagine what went through the heads of the AC Live team members when everyone was posting screen caps of doing the Aerfalle and Olthoi Queen quests in their underwear. I cant think of a better case for a major retooling to AC after 2 1/2 years of retail. Nobody can argue with a straight face that AC has been balanced. Running naked through the hardest content in the game is simply begging for a nerfing. Im actively playing my Battle Mage (now almost 30th) and Ive enjoyed the killing power. I find it ironic that my mage can solo more Lithos Lugians than any melee fighter of his level. With Drain Health and Drain Stamina I, he can stand in place and slaughter five or six Lithos Lugians while their attacks barely scratch him. When the last one dies, my Battle Mage is at almost full health, stamina, and mana. This is stupid. Before the spell economy was removed, my Battle Mage was out at Ft. Teth and ripping up Bone Knights and Bone Lords at 26th level. Should mages be easily soloing spawns when fighters who are 20 levels higher than them are still getting the crap kicked out of them by those same spawns? On paper, the changes being made to the drain and conversion spells seem very sensible to me. My main character relies on my patron (Quip, a 4-school non-spec archmage) and his magical abilities during quests. I dont want to see my Battle Mage or patron hurt by these changes. I honestly dont think they will be hurt. Mages will have to add Drain and Conversion III and IV spells to their spell bars to maintain their functionality, but their capabilities will remain the same. A little extra mana consumption and a little slower animation speed wont hurt anything unless youre out hunting on the extreme ragged edge of your capabilities. Like hunting Bone Lords at 26th level. If mages are demoted from Godhood to Demigod status and hybrids are lowered from Demigods to supermen, I think AC will get along just fine. The changes restore sanity to a major aspect of spell casting. They will be a minor inconvenience to regular players until they relearn a few standard tactics. Who will be hurt the most? Hopefully drain and combat macroers, who rely on casting the same few spells over and over and over. If theres a really good argument for why its unfair that Turbine should force you to play the game, Id love to read it. There are a lot of folks who swear that macroers will be fine with these changes and regular players will be totally screwed over. They have strong opinions about changes that havent been made and new dynamics that theyve never experienced. These hysterics are reminiscent of previous whines and bitches. Anyone remember when weightless pyreals would destroy AC? How about when the vendor buyback rate changes would make mages too expensive to play and render Ayan Baqur a ghost town? Ive learned to take a "wait and see" attitude toward changes to the game dynamics, theyre never as big of a deal as everyone makes them out to be before the fact. Create the character that you want to play and then play them. There will be more nerfs and love for all of the various skills and classes you can count on it. Take encouragement that Turbine cares enough to keep ironing out the inequities in the game design. If more players were playing their characters instead of re-rolling uber toons thered be a whole lot less bitching about life in general on Dereth. Im a blademaster with sword specialized and dagger trained. Will the bandit nerf hurt me? Maybe, but Ill find a way around it. I honestly feel bad for the dagger fighters. Sword has the new high damage weapons and they kick ass. Few people remember how bad Dagger truly sucked before Bandit Hilts came along. I hope the AC Live team can figure out a happy medium somewhere between triple strike and no Bandit hilts. Ben-Li Sung is the character that I wanted to play when I unwrapped my AC box back on 12/16/99. Ive played around with a lot of other characters and I enjoy my other secondaries that I explore with when I need a break from Ben-Li. They can take away Bandit hilts, they can nerf shields, and they can make armor-hollow weapons to nerf my Greater Shadow armor. As long as Im having fun playing Asherons Call, Ill still stick around to explore things and make fun of Gunthar the Punisher. Part of the fun of AC for me is figuring out how to overcome the challenges and obstacles that keep getting put before us. If I ever get to the point where Im not taking an ass-kicking and being challenged by the content, thats when Ill eventually have to think about hanging up my sword. Fortunately, that day will probably never come. I cant imagine The Last Blademaster ever soloing the Aerfalle quest in his underpants!