Deadeye Fist
I started a new player on MT this week. I had a lot of thought over it. My Archer Cliff Bowman just is not going to hack it. He only had one real skill I liked. He spec'd healing. This lets me heal from a lot of damage.
Cliff Bowman started with 90 coordination. As damage for an Archer is based on his coordination I was always going to be behind the curve. He has no magic other than item and trained melee. Now if he had life or had spec'd melee it would still have been ok. Without one or the other he was never going to be what I wanted.
So the debate was what type of Archer did I want? There are a lot of powerful templates out there. My vassal has one that just hit 50. He is a between Archer and Mage with a bow. It is very powerful. There is also templates that spec Creature and Life while training bow. This is sometimes called the OG Archer.
The Mage with a bow is much more powerful than a pure Archer as long as it is buffed. The between templates gets melee defense but quick is so low it will never be effective at high level. While looking at this I mentally said I would never get melee and be a pure Mage with a bow.
The other template is a tank Archer. This template has very little magic and depends on high melee defense and the fast killing power of the bow to live. Of course it will tap out in damage as it hits high levels. The advantage to this template is little or no buffing. With a composite bow a tank Archer can last as long as they have arrows.
After reading about my Vassal tanking 8 Tuskers I had decided on the Mage with bow route. Then someone made a comment that changed everything. "Why make that, you have a mage?" This is very true. War will kill as fast as arrows if not faster. A Mage with a bow would just be a weaker version of my mage.
So I headed back to the tank Archer. I might have gone overboard with the tank as I'm finding I need more focus but it is only an afterthought, not a true flaw.
Stats are Sho 100, 10, 100, 80, 30, 10. Spec'd Bow, Melee, Lore. Trained Item. Healing at 7. Fletching at 12. Mana conversion at 26 or Life at 50. (Still not sure which.) Life or MC at 80.
Now a lot of people asked me why I have such a high strength. Simple, Cliff Bowman started with 70 strength and was always at burden. I want to use heavy armor and carry lots of arrows. This is a tank so I intend to outfit him as a tank.
Second why Sho? Mostly because Cliff Bowman is Sho and has a lot of good Sho items. There is another reason as well. Fist de Yuma started with 90 coordination and 80 strength. This is 30 points lost to his UA stats or 10 points of skill. A spec'd skill vs a trained skill has a difference of 30 I believe, it might be lower. This means if I want to push UA for Deadeye I will only be 20 points lower than Fist.
Now damage with UA is based on UA skill and strength. I'm told it is 1 point of damage per 10 points each over 100. With a 80 strength Fist lost 2 points. With Deadeye being 20 points below Fist in UA he will lose 2 points. So as a UA at high levels they are equal for damage! So Sho made a lot of sense overall. Aluvian was tempting because a hilted dagger is very strong.
I have my two computers working nicely over a single modem now. With one push of a button I can switch to the other account. By killing a mule I have the Archer on one account and use Fist de Mage to buff him from the other.
I started out in Nanto. Mage buffed him after getting a cheap bow at the store. That let him kill a few things on his way to Lin. In Lin I give him some good armor and a nice mod 113 +8% bow.
I ran both to Awric and took the Awric Mines to the Old Mine portal. I was not sure how well he would do. I could buff but not imperil. With level VI buffs and greater lighting arrows I did well indeed. Leveled several times in the first buffing cycle.
It took me little time to get to 15lv. An item buff let me learn recall. Had to run from Nanto again as I forget to tie in Lin. Got more arrows and ran to the Lin Citadel. Then I ran Mage there.
My first thought was to hit the weak rooms and pick up some melee skills before going harder. My success in Old Mine made me decided to hit the high-dive room right off the bat.
I had no trouble other than rocks. Got so I target rock tossers over anything else. I hit 16lv in one buffing cycle. After rebuffing I ran back to the High-dive room. Several people were there. Jokingly I said, "Can a 16lv fight here?" General consensus was no way. Let me tell you, level VI buffs will let a level one fight there.
At level 20 I checked my age. Four and a half hours. He is 25 now and close to 26 with just over 9 hours of play. Only problem is keep him supplied in arrows. His skills in fletching are not enough to make greater arrows so Cliff Bowman as to do it. On my last trip to the Citadel I burnt over 1100 arrows. A vassal made me enough bundles for 13000 arrows. That should last me even though I lose about half the arrows when splitting them. Cliff Bowman Fletching skill buffs to 239 and I guess it needs to be a lot better.
Next goal is to get my melee high enough to hit the Nest. Lugies are ok but when I hit 30 the xp will drop a lot. I figure I'll need my buffed melee at 300+ to hit the Nest.
While I have come very close at times I have not died yet. Right now the only thing that can hurt me is rocks.
I hope to be as strong as the two people I admire a lot someday, Wartorn and Pyreal Rat.
Wartorn
My good friend Wartorn has not played AC in a long while. He and Jann are playing on EQ and seem to like it. Wartorn decided to give the account away. I hope he does not regret this but if he ever comes back to AC I'll help him level.
He wanted to find someone who really wanted Wartorn and could use him to his full capabilities. So he made a contest with it. This involved several rounds of hard puzzles and getting hard to find items. Each round eliminated the people who were not willing to work for it.
I missed the last round but would have loved to seen it. They held a game show called the Weakest Gimp. I'm not sure of all the rules but I'm guessing it was like the show "The Weakest Link". I stopped watching the show when every week the strongest players were voted off and the stupid people would win. I would change the rules so the strongest player could not be voted off.
I know there was a lot of heated debate on this. It took over 5 hours but in the end a deserving winner got the account. Wartorn is still on my friends list and I will expect be seeing him a lot more now.
Killean
We got a surprise message on the family board the other day. Killean had broken from the alliance. This was a major break. He was good about it, dropping any vassals who wanted to stay in Elder. I'm thinking more of them returned. I was lucky enough to pick up a major branch of over 100 people. This was exciting because some really great players are in this branch. I also gained a rank.
So I gained but was still very sad to lose Killean. I asked him to explain his problems to me. I got a list and after a bit of research got the answers. Basically it was a long series of misunderstandings.
Lack of communication will create resentment at times. As branch leaders a lot of responsibility falls our way. I understood when Elder became monarch his ability to help my vassals and me was going to be curtailed. Still there are times when I have resented having to wait for days to get his attention.
Overall it is more than worth that to have what we have. The honor of this alliance has created a strong bond that others respect. The general feeling in MT is, "aaaa we can get some help, there is a group of Elders!"
I hope the bitterness and name-calling goes away. For the most part it is one sided and the Elders are using the ignore it approach. After things die down I expect to work with Killean as I have in the past.
Wedding
We got a message posted on your board a few weeks ago. Nabnta, a vassal of Balash and Tai Kuophen were getting married. Tai is in another alliance.
This was truly unique. They held it in the Lugie Fortress. As the day arrived groups formed to help the weaker members get to the fortress. I parked Mage at the start to buff anyone under 40. This worked well and there were no deaths.
People were having a good look-see of one of Turbines masterpieces. If you have not been to this fortress I recommend you make the trip.
Someone saw you could buy boulders at a vender and got the bright idea of tossing rocks at the Lugies outside of the fortress. This was ok for the high level players who could eat a hollow rocks that came back. I think Elder said he took a 120 point hit. At least one member was not quite ready for this and was killed.
As the wedding got started a problem arose. We started getting portal storm warnings. A few people were ported out, including one of the wedding party. Most got back ok but this is where we had a few deaths.
People visiting the fortress saw the problem and politely logged or left so we hold the wedding. You don't see that much, I was pleasantly surprised.
Elder wedded the two and Balash give the bride away. After it was over Elder, Mage and a few others recovered the bodies.
Computer
I left you hanging about my computer problems. To reinstate I was having lock ups and could not get Sygate to work.
First problem was solved unintentional. I had an older version of Windows 98 in my CD drive when updating drives. This corrupted window and forced a reinstall. After reinstalling AC my lockups stopped. I cannot be sure if it was reinstalling Windows or AC that fixed the problem but the point is moot.
Sygate was fixed by killing Lanstatic and reading the instructions for Sygate. There is a step that you have to manually do. Without reading the instructions you will not get this installed unless very lucky.
It is so nice to mule without help now. Using to computers also lets me use my Mage to buff the mules and of course my new archer. I have a system that lets two computers share a single monitor and keyboard. I hit a switch and I'm on the other account.
With a 56k modem the straw for data is a bit narrow so I only do this for muling and buffing. Cannot use this to play both accounts at once. Also the second system is below the minimums for AC and the graphic card is a low end 4k card. Looks bad but for muling and buffing who cares.
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