Fist de Yuma - March 10, 2003

This and that The voting is still going well on the AC Stratics board. I have a good lead, which makes me proud that so many think my column is the best. I encourage everyone to go over to http://ac.stratics.com/ and vote for your favorite AC columnist. For those wondering Jeff is ok. He went with a gun-ho attitude and the intent to stay as long as possible. Now he is dead beat tired and welcomes the end so he can go home. Rosa is sending him a lot of care packages to cheer him up. His wife was over here today. She is lonely as hell so it was good to visit with her. Body recovery I logged in and saw Zena Warrior Princes. I was talking to her when she said she was waiting for her husband to get home to recover some bodies. She had died twice and dropped armor and her bow. Her husband is Almedes and I knew he would not be home for a few hours. I asked her where the bodies were. She said it was a dungeon west of Tusker outpost. I asked if it was a hallway leading to a room with two exits on the opposite wall. No, not that one. I then described another one I had visited; one having a lot of twists and turns. That was it. I loaded up a mule to give her some armor and a spare bow. I then loaded up mage to buff her. Lastly I loaded up Fist de Yuma Jr to help her out. Tille logged on and I asked her if she wanted to go. She started buffing as well. We all met up at the outpost and headed out. The dungeon is close to the outpost so it was not too hard to get to. The outside tuskers made it a little hard to stay together. At one time it looked like an army of tuskers between me and them. We made it in and started down. With two archers and a high level UA the Tuskers did not stand a chance. Still Zena had a few close calls but we kept her alive. The first body was not hard to find but the second one was hidden. After a little back tracking we found it. I had and idea. Jr had not gotten a tusk in a while so we could keep going as long as we had buffs. I lead the way out. We had found the exit while looking for the body and I have a good sense of direction. First stop was the Silver Tusker 45+. We got a touch separated but finally met at the bottom. We all got a tusk and it was time to head to the 50+ Armored Tuskers. That one is not camped by macros, the only I think, so we had to do a little fighting. We also picked up another Elder there. We hit the exit and headed west. I was asked if we were going to the 60+ Rampagers. I felt it would be better to take on the Plated 70+ first. The 60+ is in a hard spot and was best saved for last. The plated is very safe for getting a tusk because of the macros. We quickly got to the bottom. Our buffs were falling so we passed on the 60+ until later. So we recovered two bodies and got a bunch of tusks in the bargain. All and all a good hour spent. Deadeye adventure I had taken Deadeye out to the far northwest for an hour the other day. That was fun. Outside an archer has little to worry about. Anything not easy to kill is avoided with little trouble. His main problem is not having the strength to carry all the arrows and loot. He started with 100 strength and I'm glad he did. I expect to lower it and add focus in time but for now I need all the strength I can get. I found one spot with a never-ending spawn of Rampagers. That got me the xp for the trip but I did not stay there long. New was Gold Golems. They die easy and I found a heart on one. I don't know what is makes because Mage miss carved it with 330 skill. Next time I'll have Fist try it. This type of hunt is fun. The only reason I don't do it more is the leveling race. As content is pushed up I find I need to spend at least once a week doing Tuskers. As Fist's Armorer is below Deadeye he is getting most of his xp from him. With new changes I know I'll need to be pushing Deadeye's bow skill much higher than it is. Trip to Olthoi North I had heard about lots of minors and a few major being found in Olthoi North. I figured it would be a great place for Deadeye and Jr to hunt. The only question is which route is best. There are two ways to get there that I know of. One is the run to Bandit Castle and the other is a housing complex. The housing complex has a portal near Arwic. The first thing I tried was the Bandit Castle route. This will be shorter when I decide the best route because I'll get a portal tie. The hills were a small problem but I quickly got onto the plains and did a good hunt. Even with the travel time I was too full to keep fighting with 19 minutes left on the buff. At that time I decided to up Sixth's Sense loot value from 6000 to 9000. I might even up it more if I still get full to fast. The next day I did the Arwic-housing complex route. I think this is a better way to go so I'll be getting a tie to there soon. Strange that Deadeye had this tie for a long time. He was going to a dungeon near there at one time and never bothered to lose the tie. About a week ago I got a new tie. All that time I had it I never used it. Now that I changed the tie I need it back. Go figure. About the only downside to this tie is a lot of people use it. I have to do a little running before I get elbowroom. Using Bludgeoning VI to draw I was not having any trouble. The Olthoi can hit me from time to time but not enough to have me worry much. I generally can only de-buff one to three Olthoi before having to pull my weapon. They hit far too hard to be holding anything but my weapon when they get to me. I have stopped using a shield for the most part. This lets me fight a lot of them and not run out of stamina. It is generally a balance on what I kill first. OW's hit hard so if there are too many I'm in danger of dieing. EV's cannot hit me but they eat up the stamina fast. So which I kill first will depend on my current stamina/hit points. OW's are extremely hard to hit. My buffed UA is 450 and I have a fair bonus on the weapon. Having five misses in a row is not uncommon. Jr's UA is not as advanced as Fists but getting closer. Where Fist excels is melee defense. Fist getting a ding is a surprise. I'm getting about 1.5 million an hour so the loot and adventure is the key. With needing 30 million to move the main skills it would take far too long to do anything if all the xp I got was hunting here. Unfamiliar spell bar Thursday was pincer day. I really need to get a note pad for all the quests I need to do. With skill changes, stat changes, Tusks, Pincers and others timed quests it is easy to lose track if you try to keep it in your head. I use to do that with ease but it is either the increase in this type of quest or old age but I need to take notes now. Also having a few players on a different cycle than the rest does not help. What was different about today is I was also going to log Jeff's player and get him the pincers. I expect I'll level him a few times this way before Jeff gets back. I checked out Jeff's armor and it was good for EVL. A base 300 is good but not state of the art. I did not expect to have any trouble with him. Being a mage I was able to use Fist de Mages Nurfus Buffus template for EVL. Other than a few more fizzles and a resist or two it was about the same. I got the pincer and was headed out to do the Leg one. There is a bend in EVL between to big spawns. Most of the time both are camped. I had to clear them both on my way down and the first one I faced re-spawned just as I got to the bend. I should have thought about this and done it different. Running to a cubby hole rather than fight in the hall would have been far smarter. I never had a trouble with EV's before but this was not mage. So I was fighting the first spawn on the opposite side I fought it before. This meant when the second spawn came they would be at my back. I killed one or two EV's before the second spawn started coming. I got two at my back and was getting hit hard. I was staying ahead of the damage with heals but my standby, drain one was not there. Jeff has a different bar setup than I do. So far it had not been a problem because I was using my decal plug in to toss spells. Drain one and drain stamina five are on Mages one and two hot key. Jeff does not even have those spells on the first bar at all. So I was healing and trying to keep mana/stamina up. With mana conversion far lower than I'm use to I would get deep into my mana before I knew it. A few resists did not help the situation. After each kill one more would spawn. I saw that this was becoming a lost cause. I was too exposed to hits and not able to keep up with both health and mana. It was time to leave. A quick glance at Jeff's bar showed there was no portal spells visible. I scrolled to the end and did not find one. I keep one of the fast portal spells within sight on all my bars. If I need to leave a battle it is generally needed to be done fast. Switching to his second bar showed no portal spells. Third no portal spells. By this time my health is down under 50. I hit heal and that drains the last of my mana. Now it is run time. I have no idea how I escaped. There was really no way through the EV's. I had four on front and even more on my back. I'm guessing one of the EV's retreated and let me into a hole. In any case I was off running with 4 hit points left. With a squealing mob at my back, calling for my blood no doubt, I did not expect to get far. I knew if the ramp and hallway was Olthoi free I had a chance. I hit the ramp and sure enough there was one there. I kept going only to discover that the entire hallway was at full spawn. This must happen maybe once or twice a week with all the camping. I made it all the way to the small room that does a 90-degree turn and has two EV's in it. In retrospect I got a lot farther than I should have. Buffing was a pain with vit but I still had banes on my armor so it was not as long as a normal buff. I got the body back with very little fighting. Most EV's were dead, as is normal. Most of the death drop was loot I had picked up but for some reason he had a ton of cash I had to grab as well. The run to the Grotto was uneventful and I got the pincer without trouble. He leveled when I turned it in. I learned a touch there. Never ever play a mage without looking at the spell bar and making sure your escape spell is there. If key spells are missing on the spell bar, spend some time to add them. Adjustment of expectations For a long time we had it good. We found low value, low workmanship armor, 5-14 low workmanship UA weapons and 22-40 swords all over the place. For a long time we did not pick up a WMS 6 weapon no matter what stats it had. WMS 5 armor was for beginners and any weapon three below max was left to rot. Today that has all changed. I came to the realization that by not picking up the 4-12 UA, WMS 6 weapons I was leaving the best we can expect on the ground. We have to lower our expectations about what good armor and weapons are. I'm lucky that I have full mules with fair to good items. Those items were not of great value when I got them. As the good stuff we have saved up gets farmed out stuff we considered trash will be the new top of the line. Of course most of the weapons have been broken now. I also unwisely gave away most of the good swords I got. Now that I'm going to change Jr to sword I don't have any. That will be very costly. Is this good or bad? I don't know. I just understand that I have to adjust my expectations when hunting now. My biggest regret now is not grabbing the good xbows I saw when I had the chance. Being heavy I only picked up a few of the very best. Of course with me being zero for nineteen with infusing bows for myself you know where they all went. Shield for Jr I was sure that Jr could solo the Shield quest but figured I would take along as many people as I could. I posted on our quest board that I was going in an hour. Wuyung and Devian joined up with me. I was slightly worried about Devian as he is only in the upper 40's. It worked out well as I could log mage to make the Martine portal and Wu had the subway. This meant only a few short runs and one long one. From our mansion we took the portal to Martine and then Wu made a portal to sub. We took the Mayoi portal and then buffed at the housing complex portals. The Lugie portal got us near the upper dungeon. The run had a few nasty things chasing us. Normally this is not a problem but we had no buffs on at all. Knowing we would get everything dispelled anyway we did not bother to buff. Wu got lost but that was only a short delay. The run through the dungeon was just that, a run. We did not stop to fight until we hit the very bottom. We had thought to buff there but clearing it was so easy we did not bother. With hollow weapons protects were useless and we were hitting ok. I had buffed my lightning weapon before so that was ready. The last part was a touch nasty. I took a bunch of hollow rocks that seemed to focus on my weakest armor. In seconds I had lost over 100 hit points and had to run around to find a spot to heal. We drew them out from there. They were not a problem in melee mode but Jr does not have missile trained. The three of us got the ore and were off to the fort. Wu made another portal to subway and we ran to Mayoi again. Then took the Lady portal to the far north. It was a nasty run but we were well buffed at that point. We ported to the mansion from there and got Mage to give us a ride to Martine's place. Devian ported back to the mansion to hit the buff bot before the last Dire run. We were about to hit some nasty stuff and Jr does not have many other spells yet. Devian got buffed fast and met us at Qbar. That led to the long run along the land bridge to the Abandoned Armory. One of them joked that there was a good reason it was abandoned. The commute is a pain. I cleared the top so we could buff. I had 16 minutes on buffs and was not sure that was enough. I skipped banes as I was doubtful the undead could hit me in melee mode. After buffing we moved to the first room. Devian kept charging into danger. I kind of hoped he would hang back. I was too busy keeping alive to watch him. He did great and was always in the thick of things. How he lived I'll never know. I was taking a lot of damage. Other than somehow opening the wrong door and hitting a room I was not familiar with we did ok. I had to find another floor switch to get a door open but it led to where we were going. We hung back at the last room while I charged in, killed a Wisp, ran back, healed and did it again. When the Wisps were dead we all charged in to kill the last of the undead. I got another white shield as most of my armor is that color. Wu and Devian got their shields and we ported back to the mansion. It took a little over and hour and a half to do the entire quest. What the hell is that! I was doing a Sunday night run to VoD. It is a good time for solo work. Mage gets more loot and keys solo than when a group. He gets more XP when in a group. I was having some trouble taking down the Bandies. They are worth more than most stuff out there but are not easy to defeat. After Yield VII and 80 points off their combined Self and Focus my 395 War could just land. It was not uncommon to have long strings of resists. I'll be happy when I can finally spec War. Hit and draw was the name of the game. It was a balance act. To close to the spawn and they all would start tossing clubs and spells at me, a good way to die. If to far the Bandie would run back to the spawn. Several Bandies had a bad habit of charging halfway and then getting into a spell-tossing contest. I would win those but by staying out of range of drain it made it harder for me. Still worse is when one would charge while another did the halfway thing. By de-buffing their magic their War is far less effective. I resisted a lot and watched them fizzle several spells. After I max out War (someday far into the future) I'm going to start in on maxing Magic defense. I had one time when it was a race to see what happened first, I would kill it, or run out of buffs. The timer was clicking down to 10 seconds and the pre-buffs were gone when it finally fell. A big group of people showed up as I buffed for the second hour. It was a group of Og II players. Most were 126 but there was also an 80 and 53. What the 53 was doing there I'll never know. He was always in the thick of things doing his best. Later I got in the habit of tossing Vulnerability to help him hit. Gutsy guy. They moved out of sight and I started in on the last three Bandies. I killed two but the Og group had found the last one. They were not poaching as they could not see me from their angle. The Og group had cleared most of the valley so I moved into the forest. I was hoping to find a small group of Drudges. They are not as good as Bandies XP wise but are easer to fight. I saw one yellow dot and clicked on it. What the hell is an Obliterator? There was a small hill between us so I moved closer to take a look. It was a big brown Tusker. Well at least I know what to attack it with. Yield, resist. Humm, that happens but with 421 skill it is rare. Yield, resist. Now it is in my face and the first hit is for 55 points, ouch. I finally get the Yield to land and added in a self/focus de-buff for good measure. Then I de-buffed its healing rate and endurance. Lastly I lowered its strength in the hopes of decreasing the big hits. All this was not quick as I had to heal about every other spell. Even with 416 Life depending on drain with this thing was useless. Between resists and hits the 60 points from a drain was barely keeping me even. If not for 309 hit points I surely would have died several times. As was I came close. Finally the de-buffs were set so I tossed the Vuln and started blasting. I was concentrating on keeping my health up while tossing War spells when I could. After several minutes I noted the Tuskers health had not move off of full. I did an ID and it was at 97%, what the hell? That was when I noticed the 100,000 hit points. Ok this is not your fathers tusker. I was bound and determined to take this sucker down. I had it to 96% when the de-buffs expired. By the time I had them reapplied it was back to 98%. After 10 minutes it was clear I was going to need help to take this one down. Given time I could have done it. The problem was that amount of time was over a buff cycle. I was lucky I had just buffed as was. I think two strong mages can do it but that would be iffy. After 20 minutes of battle it was at 80%. I was watching my radar hoping that someone, such as the Og mob, would show up. I was more than willing to share this big boy with them. With 15 minutes left on the buff and it at 70% I decided to go find help. Charging off the hill into the clearing I was surprised to find the Obliterator was still with me. I saw the Og mob in the center of the clearing. I stopped a few clicks away and typed, "Help" and went back to the battle. To make matters worse a bunch of Drudges jumped in. This bad mofo monkey was enough trouble without them getting into it. The Og group was outstanding. Two ran over and started healing me. I'm guessing they thought I was in danger and were going to keep my health up while I fought it. I quickly typed, "Kill it" so they would know it was ok to jump in. (grin) Jump in they did but this thing was darn hard to kill. Two of the Og's bit the dust and several more were in danger at one point or another. It finally fell with eight minutes on my buff. I got a key and around a million points. I'm guessing they are worth 4 or 5 million overall. From there I joined with the Og group and hunted with them for another hour or so. It was a lot of fun but the highlight was the Obliterator. When they left I was thanked for letting them get a piece of it. Hell I was darn glad they were there. Getting 30% of the kill was a lot better than wasting an hour and getting nothing. I grabbed this information after I logged for the night. Tusker, Obliterator Spawn Type: Direlands Statistics: ----------- Level: 900 Strength: 480 Endurance: 600 Coordination: 400 Quickness: 340 Focus: 120 Self: 180 Health: 100000 Stamina: 6000 Mana: 180 March 18, 2003 This and that I was surprised and pleased at the response to last week's column. It has been a while since I was able to do an all adventure column. I have a feeling that the VoD adventure was the key to that as the others were average at best. I was also surprised that a few people said I should not back down on non-AC/chains/ and especially macro stuff. While tempting I have taken far too much heat and stress over that stuff to want to go back to it. My goal for now is to succeed Elder when he moves to flight school and make HoE the best alliance I can. This is not automatic as there are some fine people who would make great monarchs in HoE. There is also a lot of resistance to me because of a few unpopular stands I have taken in the past. I think this is a lot like the show survivor. You may have unpopular views but as long as no one knows you have them you don't get voted off. Those who take a stand for their beliefs are never liked by everyone. Sometime it is the person with unknown views who can succeed in that case. Idea for fun A strange thing happened a while back. There was a bug that let several people max out their player. This led to an announcement that a fix was being worked on and the servers would be rolled back to before the patch. The fix would take several hours but they let everyone play in the meanwhile, just for fun. Well this led to one of the most outlandish events in AC history. I sadly missed it as I did not see the potential and had logged for the day. Some on WE would like to see this happen again. I got this PM from Giorio on Friday. Once a year, after a well-advertised period, I think there should be a "Wacky Day" (perhaps First of April). At the end of the day everything gets rolled back as if it never happened. Everybody would get a chance to experiment a bit with their characters, maybe going PK , trying some of the hardest quests or just exploring. Maybe Turbine could even make a super easy quest that would max all your attributes for that day only. When they announced a while back that there was going to be a major roll back everybody had a great time on that "free period". I think this should become a scheduled event once a year. For the players that would complain that they would rather gain real XP, it could be implemented that if you participated in the "Event" you would gain 10-25% XP needed for your next level. I don't see hit happening but it sure would be fun. Strange message I was logged off of AC and watching TV. During a commercial I came to the computer to check the boards. There was a zone message on the screen. The name had a +admin in it but that is all I remember. The message was asking if I was the Fist de Yuma who had the column. I did a reply but he had message set to do not disturb. When I sent the message his message cleared so there was no way to retrieve the name. To that person, yes you had the right account. Sorry I was not at the computer when you sent the message. You can contact me at CSD2@mindspring.com. Driving me nuts While using my computer I kept hearing a beep. I could not get a rhyme or reason for it. It was coming from the top of my desk. On that top is the main computer, a UPS, clock and speakers. The beeps seemed to be random. The clock has an alarm but I had that set off. There was no hourly chime on it so that was not it. The UPS will give me beeps when power goes low and someone turns on the microwave. The microwave is on the same circuit. The beep did not sound like the UPS low voltage signal. Finally I figured it out. It seemed to be beeping when I changed screens while browsing. Not always, just sometimes. When on the VN board I got the beep. Going back and forth between screens repeated the beep. Then I saw a small flash on top of the screen. Aaaa my popup blocker! I had updated my popup blocker the other day. My popup blocker's default setting was to beep the computer speaker when it blocks a popup. So unless there was a popup when I moved to a screen it did not beep. I changed the settings and I'm back to just the jet plane my computer sounds like. Little Surprise A lot of people sent me PM's asking about how to get to Olthoi North last week. I gave them directions and I'm sure a lot of people are having a good time. After posting last week's column I loaded Fist's Armorer and headed out to Tusker Island for some leveling. I had not had a chance to work FA last week. I grabbed a tusk in the 45+ on the way to the 50. There were only a few people in the 50+ tusker dungeon but I found I was far too tired to keep hunting. After a few hours sleep I logged back and found a lot of people hunting in the dungeon. I had to wait a short time to get into the fellow. Soon there were people outside of the fellow running around and it was time to go do something else. I was able to make 70 before I logged. I left FA parked there after buffing. I might go get the 70+ Tusk later on this evening. FA pushing the mules is really helping. I have Fist's mule four at 450 weapon. I have a ways to go but he is getting there. My Magic Item mule, Cliff's Carrier Cook, is at 483. With the need to add Opal to wands I'll have to get him to 500. His Alchemy and Cooking will be at 400 soon. After logging FA and taking a short nap I was ready to take Jr to Olthoi North. Still have not picked up any minors, let alone a major but the material is building up on my mules. I got enough material that I was able to lighten up CCC by breaking two more swords. Looks like swords are going to be like bows for me. When I got to Olthoi North I headed south until I hit the mountains. I followed the mountains west and around until I was headed north again. I found several large groups of OW's and EV's. I only picked up really expensive stuff and wms 5+ material. Even with limited looting and high strength I left at over 117 burden after only an hour. As I was moving north I spotted a large group of Olthoi tightly bunched. I was about to toss a Bludgeoning Vuln when I noted a white dot in the center of it. I thought to toss the Vuln's anyway but felt it might have them attacking me and upset what he had. Instead I hit the "<" key to check his health. It was a good think I did as he was under half health. I know from experience that healing will fail at that point a lot and hits from monsters will be greater as you try to heal. I hit him with a few heals to kept him in the action. To my surprise it was one of the people who had asked me where Olthoi North was. He said he was having trouble because he did not bane. LOL Jr is not hit much but I still pour on the banes. I helped him out with a few Vulns after the numbers were down and then continued my hunt. Stupid death I logged on the Armored Tusker dungeon with FA. There was a long line for the fellow so I decided to run to the 70+ plated and grab a tusk. The run through the 50+ was simple and it left me on the west tip of the island. A short run to the water and then another short run over the sea to the next island was my goal. Of course as soon as I hit the exit I was attacked. Tuskers were little problem but the rest were something else again. I had forgotten to add my other protects! When in a place like the Armored Dungeon I only put on Armor and Bludgeoning. Why add Acid protect when it would never be needed? Well I needed Acid and Cold badly, not to mention piercing and slashing. The Sharks wore me down but it was the Wasps that were doing the big damage. With under 50 hit points and almost to the next island I stopped to heal. I did not see that a Wasp had followed me all they way across the water. A cold V spell finished me off. New Hunting for FA After recovering my body I headed back intending to get the Tusk. I could see the Plated dungeon when the fellow leader said I was up. I had to make a U turn and head back to the Armored. Later that day the Armored started to fill up again. I decided to run and get the Tusk. When I got to the Plated I asked how long the fellow line was. It was several people long but since I was there I decided to wait it out. After about 45 minutes I was in. I was told to go to one section with a fighter and hold it. The fighter I was paired with was an old friend, Fei Qwan. The spot we had was small with a lot of plated tuskers. It was between two traps but we had a lot of room so the traps never came into play. The plated, as expected, was around three to five million an hour better than the Armored. With the macros afraid to play the live players were having a great, and very profitable, time. (See below on macro's.) With 376 Life I'm just over the Tuskers magic defense. That is reputed to be 370. There would be long strings of resists but also long strings of success. The Fire Vuln'ed Tuskers did not last long as Fei Qwan's triple tipped spear would fire them up. Buffing was a bit of a pain for the two of us. Without him to finish off the tuskers I would have to land two war spells. It is a lot faster to land one Life than one Life and two Wars. It was the same for him. When I was buffing it took him a long time to wear down a Tusker. With both if us at full steam we could keep it clear and have time to talk with others. That was one of the things that made it fun. Everyone was live and talking. One thing I liked about the fellow leader was his policing of the fellow. Every so often he would call for everyone to sound off. No unattended macros allowed! With a rumor that anyone in fellow with an unattended macro was at risk we were not taking any chances. Good deed for the day I had noted a body where we were hunting plated tuskers. I never did an ID on it as I figured it was someone who would recover soon. About an hour into being there my sixth sense popped up with a bunch of Death Items. This included a set of armor that most of us use as a DI. That was funny to suddenly see pop up. Fei and I started to collect the stuff up, which also included a considerable amount of cash. Fei said the body was Harry Pooter's. I told Fei that I would he happy to return it to him. Fei gave me what he had picked up. I was not looting and most of my weight was tapers. With a lot of them burnt off I had the ability to carry the ID's without being burdened. I logged FA later that night. I started to take a look at the DI's. LOL Harry carries some out standing stuff! There was an Orb worth 89k and a necklace worth 111k. Many of the items were tinkered up to amounts I had never seen before. Harry was on and was shocked to hear I had his stuff. His net connection had died the day before and he figured it was all gone. We met at the marketplace, an outstanding meeting point now, and I returned his DI and cash. If my wife reads this I'm dead If my column is not printed next week, call the cops. (grin) My wife Rosa is a wonderful person but sometimes tech stuff will confuse her. I have set up my old laptop computer so she can do e-mail and browse the net. I have it set in the dinning room at the far end of the dinner table. (It is a big table.) Rosa likes to watch TV. She will read, sleep, clean or whatever she needs to do with the TV on. I will turn off the TV as soon as I'm done with whatever program I'm watching. Rosa asked me if she could move the computer into the TV room while she searched for something Jeff needs. I told her as long as the network cable was attached she would still be able to use the Net. A short while later she came in and said she had opened to many windows and it had crashed. It was now in Safe Mode. I told her to log off and then turn it back on. She came back and told me it would not turn on. I went into the TV room and saw the problem. She had not plugged in the power supply and the battery had run out. I said, "It is not plugged in." She said, "Sure it is", pointing to the network cable. Needless to say she was a touch embarrassed when I explained it to her. To make matters worse the computer died completely a few days later. It does not even start to boot. I hear the HD spin up and that is it. Being old it is not worth replacing. The bad part is a bunch of programs I was writing years ago that are only on the portable. I also have a bunch of chess trainers and a program to run a chess tournament. With no money to replace or repair the portable I'm SOL. Now I have to figure out a way to let Rosa get her e-mail without having her on my main computer. Computer question for younger nerds I'm and old computer nerd who has turned to writing instead of playing with computers. This means I can wire up a network and fiddle with the settings with the best of them. It also means that new stuff I have idea about. My question is about wireless networking. I have a network setup with wires. I need to install two old computers I cannot run wires to. The answer of course is wireless. What I would like to do is connect something to my hub that will transmit to the two computers. I know I can get cheap wireless network cards installed in them. Is there a device to just click into my hub or do I have to install something in the main server? Right now I'm using the built in network that comes with Windows 98/XP. The server is running Win 98. I find it was simple to setup and reliable. So far the only problem was AcExpress not tracking. It did work but XP automatically made some changes that broke it. I never bothered to de-install/reinstall the network to fix it. Lastly what equipment do you recommend? Send answer to CSD2@mindspring.com Video I'm very sure that my lock up problem is a faulty video card. I have a Galvain Geforce 3 Ti 500. It looks great and is fast. Running a utility to change the clock on it will give me instance lockup. I have it set to a lower clock speed but still have problems. Other than AC locking up I will also get it falling into VGA 256k mode. Rebooting will fix it. Before I replace it I'm going to reset the card in the slot but I don't expect that to fix it. I'm not sure if there is any BIOS settings that will repair it. So my second question is what should I replace it with should the time come? I'm open as to brand but sensitive to price. I need it to work well with AC and other games. Thanks for the answers in advance. Words from an old friend When I started this game I stayed free of ties for a while. When I hit 18lv I met Sidhartha, a mage that was the first I met who know what he was doing. After having circumstances prevent me from swearing to Pyreal Rat I traveled to Arwic to meet the Cobra La alliance. There I met my first patron, Jann, and Cobra La. Jann's partner and patron was Wartorn. Wartorn broke from Cobra La over differences and joined under Requiem. Requiem had a bad reputation that kept getting worse. With great reluctance I had to leave Jann. I had known Elder from the boards and met him a few times in game. I sent him a tell and swore to him outside the SHO Mage shop. That brought me into Killean. Because of different problems Killean decided to step down and Elder became the monarch. After a time Killean left Elder. We were still friends though we don't always agree on things. One of the things Killean did was start The Arwic Mafia alliance. With changes in PK their tactics became less powerful but I expect them to be back. In any case he had proven that it is possible for someone to shake things up if they really want to. This was posted by The Arwic Mafia/Killean on the VN board and it really hit home. I've walked the land of Dereth in many guises.. and for nearly 4 years now. I've seen things change, seen thing improve and seen things grow worse. Looking at all the changes I can't help but come to one simple conclusion. The reason that AC has gone downhill is not Microsoft or Turbine.. but rather the players, all of us. We're slowly killing the best game out there. Game play has improved dramatically, there is more to do than ever.. a few bugs haunt us but overall the content is rich and everything is well. People refer to the "golden age" of Dereth.. but few here now seem to truly remember it.. The Glory of the shadow wars.. the temptation of Bael'zharon. The allegiance wars pitting Requiem.. with Baalzevuv, Shiner, Iconoclast, Mzane and Rasa against the forces of.. well.. good .. led by Killean and Lrd Hades.. basing out of the little town of Kara. The largest allegiance on all servers was once found in Morningthaw.. in those days.. a heady 1600 souls, very few mules.. and the plague of cross-server trading and xpchains had yet to manifest itself. What happened? Simply put.. people stopped needing to trust each other and work together so much. The vault contributed.. people here seem to delight in causing misery.. and secure trade hurt a lot as well. No longer was a good reputation as important as it once was. The introduction of higher xp monsters.. and aerlinthe island.. the first true high level playground started a long downward spiral. The OHN's, The BSD's.. all of these made the game easier, but introduced more competition and acrimony. The destruction of Arwic was also a symbolic act.. destroying the tenuous bonds of real community. The server wide events fell by the wayside.. allegiances became more insular and poisonous. They acted to bring each other down.. and the great leaders fell by the wayside. New ones arose.. but they no longer fought for the entire world.. just their own small part. I feel that perhaps the original crop of true leaders failed us all.. they've sunk into obscurity.. most of them don't even play or have sold their accounts. Xpchains aren't really that bad.. but the behavior around them is horrid. No longer is a person's honor as important as the xp they produce. The rallying cry.. "it's just a game" has become an excuse to do nothing and let this world sink into further decay. There aren't any major monarchs left who choose to act.. to try and impose their will for the good of all or who are even secure enough in their power to act without approval from their own petty councils. Jealousy and greed have inflicted great wounds upon this world. These wounds are not mortal however. They can be healed. The game is from a technical standpoint better than ever. We're playing in a truly wonderful world that improves every month. We spend too much time complaining about what MS or Turbine doesn't do.. and not enough complaining about what we Don't do. The time has come for change. I for one will speak out about what I believe.. stand fast.. and NEVER allow my allegiance to be corrupted. I will be seeking like minded individuals.. and offering those who would accept it advice on improving things. Once my own house is in order and settled, I will begin trying to revive some of the community spirit through activities open to all, pk and npk alike. Perhaps in time, we can grow together again.. as people and as a community. Healing the divisions which have sprung up so fruitfully of late. Only then can we atone for our mistakes. Only then can I truly make up for my greatest failure. Steps are being taken A few weeks ago I tried to outline the state of the macro problem. I will not claim credit, as there have been quite a few more voices than mine out there. It looks like they are going to be taking steps. This was posted on the Turbine board this week by Ken Karl, the main man at Microsoft. Ken has taken a lot of blame for problems. From reading he is admitting he made some errors and is taking steps to correct them. First - Yes, I have been very active in reading some of the feedback about UCM and I realize how the appearance of not updating the HoS can appear as though nothing is happening. Rather then sit here and debate it, I decided to just step up and be more visible about what we are doing. So what does that mean? 1. We will continue (believe it or not, we always have), to do UCM (Unattended Combat Macro) enforcement. 2. We will start doing random sweeps of most commonly used UCM places. No advance notice will be given. This will help in trying to get more of the UCM out of the game and interfering in over populated places that are heavily visited by people that do no use UCM. This will supplement calls that you guys make. 3. Being able to just use your calls, and being active about getting their timely, has not been as successful as I had wished. Thus the addition of sweeps. 4. Yes, some people should have been up on the HoS, but we simply failed to update it. I should be flamed for that and accept it. 5. One big problem has been programs for detecting cloaked admins. No longer - Continual logouts the second an admin appears (visible or invisible) can and will at time be used in determining UCM. No, one time will not get you. It is just piece of the larger picture. 6. We will be sending in NON-Admins to locations during the sweeps to observe. Thus bypassing those whom feel they can work around detecting cloaked admins. They will look and appear as a normal player (because they are). Will we rid AC1 of UCM? No! I will be very frank about that. I do not feel it is possible. Will we run them off to unused locations and use other means to get their XP that does not interfere with the top 30+locations (picked that number of the top of my head)? Yes! That is basically our high level goal. Players should start expecting no warnings for UCM in these highly trafficked areas (No, we will not list them, if you use UCM, you best make sure no one visits where you are...ever!). This is simply a change to be more realistic about what we can do and how effective it will be. No, we will not be able to respond to all the incoming calls for UCM. Which is why we are implementing random sweeps. So to summarize -- No more will logging save you. And no, we are not going to try to rid the world of UCM completely (though I sure am hopeful it would happen), rather, just be realistic about our resources and use them in the most effective way possible to ensure that 80% of the players should not witness an UCM regularly in the most commonly trafficked dungeons/locations. Ken I replied to his post with this. Ken the big mistake was allowing attended combat macros. It let programs like ElTank run all over you. I'm sure that your definition of attended macroing did not mean within earshot of the computer. With admin detect they will be watching TV in the next room and ready to respond when the alarm sounds. Also they are using one person to monitor several macros. Again not what you meant by attended combat macroing. I'm sure that the attended part was a compromise. I recommend you tell the other side that it did not work. A good experiment but it turned into a total failure. The words attended needs to be removed. That said I'm sure you have a different solution so I'll take a wait and see attitude. At this point live players cannot hunt in the high xp dungeons. Don't take my word for it, make a player and go see. I hate to say this but if you drive them out of every quest dungeon I'll be happy. Fist de Yuma I was pleasantly surprised to have a reply that same night. His reply shows that they are thinking of the people who really play AC. I myself would like to see more new players in the game but realistically most low/mid levels these days are re-rolls. GRRRR -- St00pid Computer! Lost my reply to you Fist!... lets see if I Can make a cliff notes version -- -- I am not sure I agree that allowing attended was the biggest failure. I still do not intend to change that. But as you pointed out, it sort of comes down to my definitions. Attended - Doing repeated actions for XP through a program and can INSTANTLY (I mean, within 1 minute or less) respond to an admin. We are pretty tight on the time. We do not stick around and wait. And I have done some of these tests myself and I can tell you, very few that I have tested before, pasted it. I think our failure, our better my failure, is not only executing on this about 9 months too late (I considered this at ACDM Launch, but passed), but then executed at the same time I went on to AC2 and much like the life magic thread, it did not get my full attention on execution. So did we ban? Heck yes! Did we publicize it? Heck NO! BIG FAILURE! Do I seem to indicate that I still think some level of UCM is ok? Kinda - There are two type of people who do CM - Those who do it just to grief and be annoying - They like to make people pissy. They like to take kills. They like to suck up bandwidth. They like to suck up XP. Those folks, I am VERY happy when we remove them from the game. I have no need for them. But then, in a 4 year old game, and in what I know of the player base where a good % of the players have played for over 18 months, a good portion of the CM people are those who are rolling up their 3rd, 4th, 10th, 30th character and lets face it, they do not want to do 1-50 again. They just want to get up to level X, with their friends. And to be really frank, I would too and I can not say I blame them. I really feel that its acceptable, so long as its not in a publicly used place/location, for them to macro to get that character up. They want to have fun. Better yet, and its something Tim and myself are talking about, we just solve the issue they are having and give them an easier way to get what they want. It has some other impact, but what if you could roll up an alternate character automatically at a high level, or a fraction of an established character. Or go to some dungeon and hit a button and get a one time XP buff. I throw this out, just to get feedback. Not sure if we will or will not do it. But I do know some people CM for this reason. So bottom line - We are identifying the top 30 or so dungeons... we will be VERY actively combing them and removing people who are using unattended macros. And the line between unattended and attended is AT MOST... 1minute... at times, even less then that... and do not expect just an admin character to do the initial evaluation.. we will go in with non admin.. evaluate (thus, not setting off any alarms on ElTank... sorry to all the l33t d00dz ;-)... ) and once we think we have a combat macro, send in the admin and quickly administer the test. At times, the questions may be asked from afar, thus not setting off alarms again... Will this be perfect or fool proof? No Will it be better? Yes will it be 24 hours a day? Honestly, no... I want to be very frank. This is and will be a secondary effort. You honestly should not expect to see admins running all over the place or 50 names on the hall of shame a day. Hopefully we can get a few, send a message, and also complement it with a way to allow the CM who just want re-rolled XP to get it. Ken Given that I know of several people with permanent bans just this week we may be seeing this macro plague end soon. One last warning, it is Turbines/MS's option to give a 24 hour ban when first caught macroing. The two 126 players permanently banned on MT had never been caught before! VN Column I sent in a column to the VN board. The last one was in November. I has a small conflict with management so I stopped sending in columns. I felt they had gone back on their word and was rather insulted. They have new management there so I'm back. You can see that column at; http://acvault.ign.com/features/columns/fistdeyuma/armorages.shtml Debates I said a few weeks ago I was going to start a list for those interested in honest debate on non-ac issues. This will be monitored heavily. Any flames or put downs will not see the light of day. If you believe in something have your ducks in line. I will not monitor belief. If you are far Left you will have your say, if you are nice. Same with the Right, keep it nice or no one sees it. With the war starting any hour now and people hotly debating both sides having an open and flame free place might be welcome. While I'll monitor flames I'll not monitor thought. If you are far left or far right you will your say, if you are nice! Name calling never won a debate. Each side has good points and working toward a common point can be instructive. At worst you can agree to disagree and leave with an understanding of the other views points. I'll work toward keeping this low traffic. That might be hard but it is my goal. For my own reasons I ask that you at least start with e-mail. If you want to change to a digest mode later that is ok but please start with e-mail. I'll be changing the settings to e-mail if you have it clicked to something else. Fist_debate-subscribe@yahoogroups.com