Fist de Yuma - March 12, 2002

Singularity Upgrade I have been a touch sick this week and was in bed early. I woke up in pain at 2am and had to take a pill. After that I was awake so I decided to play. I saw that The Crippler was on. I had not talked to him in a week or so. He told me he was in the Holding trying to level. I told him I needed to get Jr's Singularity UA weapon upgraded. He said he had got a 50's level Archer's bow upgraded that morning and would be happy to help me. I was ecstatic but also very worried. The one time I had been there was with a mob of high levels. I still almost died. I quickly logged Jr and set off on a very dangerous run. I know there is a way to get to the holding that is somewhat safer, if longer, than this route. We used that route when we had a group of Elders upgrade a few months ago. I did not know that route and ACE did not show the portal. That left me with a long run from North East ML to the Holding. Let me tell you, that is one scary run for a melee. The main problem is Zeffers and Chaos Wisps. I can fight a Zeiffer but rather not. Chaos Wisps I cannot fight. My goal was to just run away. It might have been scary but I only took a little damage from a persistent Zeffer. Everything else I outran or dodged. I'm a good dodger when I need to be. I got to the holding and buffed up. Having Life Spec'd makes buffing a lot easer than with Jr. Fist recovers mana with health to mana 1. With Jr I can do stamina to mana V or health to mana V, depending on what the danger is. After I hit 70 I'll be putting everything into self and focus for five levels. Then I'll have Creature and for another five levels I'll be poring into magic skills until I can start tossing VII's. The Crippler showed up and we were off. I was lagging a little bit so every so often I had to find him. The Holding is a red misty place that is hard to see with my low-resolution underpowered system. I hope to be reporting that I have a new computer on order later in the column. I was doing ok until we hit a room with a horde of Hollows. Silver Tuskers and Armored Tuskers did not help much either. I found I could hit a Hollow ok but with the low damage a UA does it took a while to knock one down. They did not hit me too much or for that much. I was surprised because most of my armor depends on magic, useless against a Hollow. I was generally down about 50 points after killing each one. I would heal and start in on the next. It helped that the Holding is so crowded. There was always at least one other person besides The Crippler and me. The Crippler is a swordsman and is simply assume. Double strike swords can really rack up the damage. I sure will he happy when they have something like that for UA. Of course UA big advantage is defense. The Crippler knew where the magic traps were and had me hugging the walls to avoid them. That knowledge is key to survival there. After clearing out the Hollows we started a rush to the end. I never saw the one thing I was afraid of, Virindi E's. At one time a big group of Tuskers were attacking a guy. I was hugging the wall trying to run around the battle. The Crippler had already got past them and was waiting for me. I could not get around and did not want to start fighting with so many Armored Tuskers around me. I thought I was free a few times but lagged back into them. The Crippler was able to kill a few and cleared a path for me. In the last passage it got intense. A bunch of Hollows attacked us. The Crippler was in a cubby with several Hollows trapping him. I attacked one but The Crippler told me to keep running to the end. I obeyed and got to within sight of the Virindi that would upgrade the weapon. Unfortunately three Hollows followed me. Again I could do enough damage to kill them over time and not be hit enough that I was under the healing point. Still I knew this was going to take time and was afraid a Virindi or more Hollows would show up before the battle was over. I lucked out and another swordsman ran over and attacked one of the Hollows as I killed the one I was fighting. The passage was clear and I got my weapon upgraded. I sent The Crippler a message telling him success. He was quite happy for me but unfortunately was headed back to recover his body. He said after they backed him up he started being hit hard. I'm guessing he ran out of stamina, we had a bunch of fights before we got there. The Sing weapon is really nice. 3-9 is the best damage base of any UA weapon. The combat plus are not as good as some weapons but at least it has some. The other quest UA weapon doesn't have any plus's at all. It will also be easer to buff as it already has BD VI on it. It will be a good weapon to pull in an emergency. The Crippler has a few words on this adventure. Well it was pretty intense and I'm used to that place, been hunting there since its inception. We came to the last hall before the upgrade room and I saw a wall of hollows, spread out 3 or 4 wide.. I had 70 or so HP missing so the only thing I could think of was to side step so they broke up..that way one of us (the one who needs to) gets through, I'm just glad you made it heh. Great people There are constant examples of the great people in this game. Still with all the griefers and slime balls out there they many times get overlooked. It is much better to praise the good people and ignore the bad. The below is an example of one of the good ones that Asha'man ran into. I was scheduled to go on the Aerfalle Quest on Friday at 4:20 EST. When I was just finishing gathering my team together, I discovered that it had been jumped! Imagine how angry I was. Drizzd was the fellow leading the group. He discovered, on the way to the keep, that his group had misread the schedule and thought they were in a free spot. He @telled me and apologized (about 50 times) for jumping the quest. I was frustrated and mentioned that I only wanted the scroll. You wanna know what he did? He brought me the key! No questions; asking nothing in return. He brought me the Ashen Key so that whenever I can arrange to go again, I am guaranteed that Ill get the scroll, provided I make it to the end. Heres to you, Drizzd! Youre a tremendously honorable player. I doubt there are many players who would have brought the key back, like you did. -Ashaman Lighting Prism I had done the Acid Prism with Mage a few days before. What I found was the base route if not the switches. I also saw that the bracelet reward might be something Fist could use but was totally useless for a mage. William the Bat asked me if I wanted to go in the Lighting Prism. I logged Fist for it. The run is easy and I know the route well. That was a good thing as I did have to return. The start is easy for him, another good thing as I did end up soloing it for a bit. After a short run we buffed up and headed in. EV's and Nobles are simple stuff for Fist. His 427 UA and 421 melee means I don't miss and I'm seldom hit. This led to an overconfidence I was to pay for later. We quickly cleared everything and got our group to the two portals. After a short download I headed over to the gate to clear the Golems. From the Acid Prism one I knew there would be a bunch behind the gate that could be fought before the gate was opened. This allowed us to retreat and safely heal. What I did not count on was chain draining. If there is one thing that is frustrating to a fighter it is high armor class monsters with drain abilities. If there was a real person behind the golem it would be impossible to defeat one without imperil and a gang of fighters. Even with that it would be a deadly fight. Fortunately the AL is not the best so I ended up getting drains of my mana, even though I only had one mana after all the drains. Still when they did start on health it was a real pain to take one out. I had heard that the Pyreal Golems were nasty for both melee and mages. I did not know they had Life magic. I started in doing 2 to 5 damage. I was told to switch to acid and that made for 3 to 6 damage. As I would rather not be switching weapons I stayed with the bludgeoning weapon. After the gate was open it was a dance to keep up with the spawn while we hit the switches. I have not done the lower section so I have no idea what they were going through. I'm doing the lower one tonight. At last, after several battles and some close calls, the door opened and we headed to the maze. I knew the route to the next gate and others knew where the switches were. I followed a bit to help with spawns but was not needed. At the last gate we battled a horde of Diamond and Pyreal Golems. They were defeated and I started to rebuff. I got about half my spells done when they spawned back. I was in the center of the hall so I felt only drains were a danger and kept buffing. I took a look at my health and was surprised to see I was at 50 hit points. I drank a health elixir and healed. That put me close to full health and bam, I was in the portal headed to the lifestone. It seemed that a Pyreal golem had stuck his hand through the wall and killed me. With a wand in hand my melee defense drops and things that could not touch me before could hit me with ease. Break for a thought. There are mages out here with melee defense. My melee defense is well above anything a mage could match. Anything worth fighting can hit me without missing if I have a wand in hand. I have not done much testing but lately if I pull a wand anything I'm fighting will hit me one hundred percent of the time. Other than pulling a racial weapon I cannot see any value in melee defense for a mage. Back to story. To say the least I was pissed. I gave Xandran permission to loot my body. I felt I would just give her the ladies robe as I did not really need it anyway. I recalled to the mansion and took the portal bod to the subway. Then took the Qbar exit and started running back. As I got there I was surprised to see Xandran run up. She had died as well. She gave me half my DI's and the rest were on her body. I was buffed so I headed in. I was surprised to find that there was no one hunting the Olthoi after the acid jump. Whereas they could not hit me they could eat my stamina up really fast. I had to keep track of that. I had about half them killed when Xandran join me. We killed Olthoi while waiting for the main group to catch up with us. They were reforming at the mansion. I found that the upper party had all been killed or recalled before hitting the lower's switches. This meant we were starting over and recovering bodies as well. First part was a repeat of the last trip. We were a little faster and I did not have to re-buff at the last gate. We had a lot of hard battles getting to the switches but got them and recovered the bodies. In the middle of this I did have to rebuff and that was an adventure in it self. We had one last battle to a few switches and the reward. The battle on the ramp was hard with me running three times to heal. As we had the passage clogged it was better to retreat and heal. We lost one person before finally clearing it. Now the way was clear. The group stayed by the switches while I went forward to the last room. I know to not jump into the room as it is a trap. I was worried when my first jump had me hitting the ceiling. I have been bounced into trouble by hitting a ceiling more than once. A high jump is not always an advantage. I hit the switch there and only one small jump to the reward. Because of hitting the ceiling before I might have been a little too afraid to do a full jump. With the excitement I did not do enough of a jump and fell short. Dam so close. It looked a long way up but my jump is nothing to sneeze at. I had nothing to lose by trying. I buffed my jump and give it a try. Really close. I had a few million points and used them for three more points. That put me to a 448 jump. I was still was missing but it was so close. I had had jumps before where I would miss a lot and finally make it. I decided to keep trying. I was surprised that I did finally make the jump after several lag, "Never Mind" seemingly successes. The rest of the group arrived at this point and no one told them not to jump into the room. About half had jumped in before my warning stopped the rest. I knew that there was no way for them to jump out if my 448 had so much trouble. I found out later that you can jump on top of the switch and make it with much lower jump abilities. After picking up the reward I jumped back into the room. I ran down a passage and found that it lead back to the room after the last gate. Of course by then it was packed with golems. I felt the party was not ready to battle their way past the golems again. They agreed and after a Pyreal Golem spawned in the room we all ported out. At the Mansion Xandran did a @lifestone to give me back the robe even though I said she could keep it. We are going to do it again tonight and I'll get my chance to do the lower passage. I have heard that it is no less a battle then the upper. I'm taking Mage and hoping that my magic skills are good enough to land on a Pyreal Golem. Rush to gather loot. I had a dinner party soon and was just checking the boards before leaving. I saw someone was selling a Minor War helm. This one was one of the best I had seen, a good al and some banes that made it a great item. I placed a bid of 50 and sent him a message about a buyout. He was in a hurry and, with people arriving any second for the party, I was also in a hurry. One person was bidding against me but the fact he would only accept plats and M notes made it problematic on getting the bid together. He agreed to a buyout of 80 points which I instantly bid. I had a load of SIK's and Sing's but not many plats or notes. I hit the family board in within 15 minutes I had enough notes that, with mine, I could pay for it. Let me tell you, being in Elder is so great. Not only did I have people rushing to give me 20+ M notes I had people all night asking me if I needed any more. I met Leach in Qbar and made the trade. I also had finally raised 27 million points so I could add a point of war. I logged off just as people started to arrive for the party. Wife was pissed but that passed. With a lot of buffs I'm now hitting 380 in all three combat skills. (303 base War, 310 Creature and 311 Life.) Of course Life and Creature are a lot less expensive. It cost me 30 million a point for war and only 6 million for Life or Creature. I'm going to try and keep raising them even for now. I'm not sure but I'm hoping that 380 is enough to land on a Pyreal golem. I'll find out tonight. If not then I'll be adding to creature for a few months. With a yield 380 better be enough. I figure I can get Creature to 400 with a little work. It would cost 350 million but I have more into War than that. We lost another old friend Not a death this time thank god. Randy AKA Randolph deleted his players last night. He has been sick for years and near death several times. His play time has been less and less as his health is too bad to let him play much. Randy has been a friend for over two years. He is always been more of a social player than a fighter. He has touched many people with is advice and friendship. Many players in Elder and elsewhere are greatly saddened at him leaving the game for good. His goodbye letter had me close to tears. One person he did talk to told me the reason he was leaving. I have known he has had problems and this time he does not think he will recover. There have been people who keep going despite what should kill them. I'm selfish, I want Randy around for a long time to come. I'll still be in touch with him and he is in the prayers of many Elders. Good luck Randy and most of all good health. Death, Death, Death As planned we got everyone together to do the Lighting Prism again. We started an hour late as some key people were not on right away. Finally we got it together. Most of us wanted to do the low side as we had the bracelet and wanted the other reward. We got that fixed up and were off. I was using Mage this time. I figured he would be stronger and Fist will be doing the high sides as the bracelets are useless for Mage. We got everyone there fast because of a housing complex tie that is close. I buffed up for the Olthoi and Golems. The Olthoi are no problem if I buff and bane well. We cleared them and I got the axe. Then we quickly cleared the Olthoi at the bottom. After a short wait everyone got there. We all headed in. I expected it to be like the high side, a safe landing with the action starting a little ways in. Wrong. I came out of portal without a download. I had explored the Fire one with a guy one day so I guess that counted as my download. I came out of portal with a Pyreal Golem in front of me. I quickly moved to a corner. A Diamond Golem and another Pyreal joined in the battle. In back of them I could see people in bubble doing the download. I figured all I needed to do was stay alive until the cavalry arrived. I expected I could not drain the Pyreal Golem. I knew I could drain the Diamond Golem. The tactic I picked was to drain the Diamond golem while waiting for the rest of the group to download and get the golems off me. The problem with that tactic was the tactic used by the golems. While the Diamond Golem started chain casting shockwaves the two Pyreal Golems started draining my mana. After a few drains I did a stamina to mana and the Golems eat that right up. Before anyone came out of the download I was standing there with zero mana and four hit points. With no place to run and seconds to live I was resolved to my fate. It is a strange and a surprisingly long wait for that fraction of a second between knowing you are going to die and the actual death. Ug and off to the lifestone. I gave Tavvaz permission to loot my body and started to run back. It took a while using the subway, Qbar, run route. I told them when I arrived at the portal and we all started to rebuff. After jumping into the portal I ran by the Olthoi. I had no time to waste killing them. After the acid pit I had to help two guys who were fighting, they had the passage clogged. I got around them and ran full belt to the lower portal. Some were still buffing and we used that time to let Tavvaz give me my DI's. The reason the people were having a hard time buffing was the Pyreal Golems had de-buffed their Creature skills. I gave them each a dispel gem to fix that. We started off and hit a door. It quickly got opened and it was just a room with a switch. We pulled that switch and started to the other side. All along this we are fighting Golems. A short way down the next passage we ran into a horde of Diamond and Pyreal Golems. I did not count but there was at least four of each. We got a few of the Diamond Golems first. I was de-buffing the Golems and poping dispel gem. I killed one Pyreal with an acid de-buff and acid blasts. Still it took three shots even with a level VII acid vuln. The group was retreating down the hall. Concentrating on my target I missed that and found myself trapped. A Diamond fell leaving a small gap I was able to squeeze into and rejoined the group. We retreated around the corner with three Pyreal and two Diamonds pounding on us. I hit another gem and recovered mana. I saw Tavvaz fighting two Pyreal golem behind me. I imperiled one Golem and put acid vuln on the other one. Tavvaz dropped. Next to me Bright Mage dropped. Lurking Presence was supporting Spaceghost and I saw Spaceghost drop. Everyone else had ported. I was sure that recovery was going to be a real bear if we did not win this battle. There were still three Pyreal Golems and a Diamond left but I was determined to hang in and at least try to win this. I figured if things got really bad I could port out. I just had to insure I kept my mana up and used dispel gems. It was a knock down drag out battle to say the least. Without a doubt it was the most intense battle of my life. I think having LP at my side was the difference. I was able to land a yield on them after several tries. After that LP could land a spell ever so often. I plan to be pushing Creature this week. Five to ten more points might make the difference. I was careful to keep geming so I would not be one hit and never let mana drop much. Their drain mana trick is nasty and pure death to a mage. The one I had vulned before Tavvaz died fell first. LP killed the Diamond and was holding his own again a Pyreal. That let me finish off another Pyreal before helping LP get the last one. We messaged the three people to give us permission and not to dattle. We would not survive another spawn of these. Bright Mage said he had two "no give" robes on the body and to leave them. I figured I could lifestone and give them back after we were done. I recovered Bright Mage and Tavvaz while LP got Spaceghost. Rather than port I felt we could just run to the portal. With a little damage and some de-buffs we made the portal and waited for the group to get back. We got everyone together and felt we did not have the will or power to try it again. We are going next Saturday and this time we will go a touch slower and draw a few out of that room. AC2 I just read and excellant essay by The Last Blademaster. His points are well thought out and to the point. His point is that MS is willing to chance AC's membership in the hopes of doubling or more the subscription base with AC2. There was one thing missing that will hinder this hope. Many game stores and websites are run by people who, rightly or wrongly, hate Microsoft. Microsoft has only itself to blame for this. Their predatory business practices rub people wrong. What is sad is they really did not have to do this as many, such as myself, changed to Microsoft products because how good they were and despite our distaste for Microsoft itself. Most people who have a choice will veer away from a company who intend to capture the user base rather than service it. The new registration policy of Windows and Office are more than proof to many that Microsoft cannot be trusted to run a monopoly. When a gamer hears about the new wonderful worlds of on line games they have to decide which is the best one for them. They ask salespersons and they read websites. Salespeople have been known to condemn AC with ignorance and outright hostility. I would not label their statements as lies as most if not all have never played AC and don't know they're wrong. Most just repeat statements they read on the boards. In the battle for shelf space AC will never be anything but a back row product if this is not changed. How such a change could be made I have no idea. Websites are a little better. While there will be people on both sides providing information there will also be those who provide thoughtful comparisons to let the reader decide what is best for them. That was how I came to decide on AC. The solo ability of AC was the key for me. I enjoy working with people and socializing but I want the option of hunting on my own. I have been an individual within the group for as long as I can remember, going with the crowd if the crowd is going where I'm going. I have never been afraid to take my own path if need be. So AC was the natural choice for me. Most don't take the time to analyze their needs in the matter and go with what friends are playing or what the salesperson recommends. For this reason I don't see AC2 growing into the subscription base of EQ any time soon. Most of the subscription base of AC2 will come from AC. There will be a nature bump from the press because of the superior graphic and other gains. The log on direct to the game will also be a big help that is sorely needed in AC as well. There will be a few people moving from other games but it will not be the mass exodus that some would hope for. AC2 will be a success but not an overwhelming one. I'm still in the debating stage of abandoning my players for AC2. Knowing my history I'm sure I'll be in AC2 but right now my feelings are towards staying where I am. Time will tell. Of course I agree totally with The Last Blademaster. Columnists need preferential treatment with beta invites. Computer and birthday goal status. It is funny how mentioning a goal like getting to 100 can reverberate. All week I have been getting messages on how close to 100 I am. At last check, Sunday night, I was 10 million points away. In other words three hours in an Island fellow would do it. I expect I'll make 100 Wednesday or Thursday, well ahead of the 15th. After reading some notes on melee love I'm looking forward to hunting with Jr. Getting him to 100 will be months of fun. After long talks with the wife she agreed to add family funds and let me get the new computer. I ordered it from United Micro six days ago. I expect to see it next week as I saved money with slow shipping. Thanks to the people who sent me web address to answer my tech questions. After a lot of reading I decided to go with an AMD Altlon Xp 1900 system. This saved around 150 dollars over an Intel. The motherboard is an ASU VIA K333. I added 512k of memory and a WD 120GB 7200 HD (highly recommended in an article I read.) The video card is a Gainward 64mg Geforce3 Ti 500. A DVD drive and Sound Blaster Live Platinum 5.1 sound card finished up the system. I saved money on not getting a RW CD drive, which I can get later. I'm enough of a tech that adding it will not be a problem. Lastly I got Window XP Professional. I could have saved money by getting the home version but wanted the office package. Thanks to all the great people who have sent me money in the last year. I would never have got this without you. I could not even be thinking of getting this without you. It is going to be so nice not to reboot several times a day or disable Decal after loading up a few Windows because AC crashes with low memory. My current computer will become the server. I'm hoping that just running my second account, Microsoft Phone, printer and modem will be stable. If not I'll make changes but that is the current plan. The current server will become the wife's computer and the wife's computer (486 50mg system) will go to my wife's family. Nothing is wasted around here. I still have a Radio Shack model 100 sitting on a shelf. Feedback A reader pointed out two things that I missed with my answers to the questions I posed. The first I forget and the second I did not know. The first really big help to mages was not the lighter components it was the spell bar fix. At one time there was a single bar for all the spells. How a mage was able to find a spell with one bar is beyond me. That fix was sorely needed. The second was a trick with finding spells. Any spell that did not target self could use this turn trick. If you hit the right combo you would turn towards the target. If we ever lose the ability to use third party utilities for spells or you find a purest vassal, this trick will save a lot of time. March 19, 2002 Patch First thing is what I like. The new way to do mana charging is more than outstanding. This will save time, money and pack space. This is one of the very best things Turbine has ever done. The new Oil is deadly. It has really brought life back to my Archer. I was about to start working Jr and now I'm shooting everything with Deadeye Fist. I'm even tempted to brush off Cliff Bowman. The two skill credits for missile are great but a little late for me. I would have loved having Life with Fist but I'll only have 8 credits at 125. Turbine has stated they want to do something for the old time people. Maybe they will go insane and give everyone created in December 99 a load of credits. . Not likely but I can hope. Meanwhile the plan is to get Bow at 125 instead of Xbow. The other credit returns got my mules a few point so play with. I got Creature for the one I cannot buff with mage. He still needs mana conversion to be self-buffing but that is not beyond hope. Putting a lot of drops on a quest was a great idea. No more stupid lines. Several Troves also prevented lines. This was a good idea that solved many of our problems and frustration most new quests have. The quest for this month I'm not all that happy with. My idea of melee love is not mage hate. Duplicating the frustration that melees have with mages is mage hate, not melee love. More comments below. Strange people It is human nature that if insulted they get mad, and if mad, get even or ahead. So if you want someone to do something insulting them is a sure way to not get it. Acting like an ass is a sure way to make others treat you like one. With the new Oil my archer is back in the game. Really amazing when you can one shot a Reverant. He is 39lv and I expect to be pushing him to 50 this month. It will depend of me finding him a good hunting spot. I thought I had one but it is far too crowded and has your anti-social element. I had been hunting the right side of Metro's for a little bit. There was a crowd of people there, mostly upper 30's chain members. I had gone down below the acid pit a while but there were two others there and really not enough Reverants for one person. I had never hunted the left side and was hoping there was another set of passages like the right side. I jumped over the pit and headed down. I found a big room full of Iron and Granite golems. There was a guy fighting three Irons. I carefully picked one he was not fighting and put a few shafts into it. "Go away" was the message I got from the guy fighting. Seconds later he ran away from the battle. I had no intention of staying there as I was after bigger game. If I wanted golems I would go after the Obsidians on the other side. The guys attitude made me want to stick around a little bit more. I messaged him that I would have left if not for his comment. The rest of his tells was full of sexual insults and other innuendos that insured his place on my squelch list. When I left the room he was in battle of insults with another player. Why the kids think swearing and calling someone a fag makes them look like anything but immature morons is beyond me. After that I jumped down under the acid pit and found it empty. I spent about 10 minutes killing the Reverants there. At 10k a pop and the chance of a 45k triangle they are worth it for an under 40lv player. After a while two more people showed up. I could have acted like the above fool and it would have gained me exactly nothing. Sometimes the only thing you can do is surged your shoulders and find a better spot to hunt. Melee love? Ok they have tossed in a monster a mage cannot affect with war. That is not what I call melee love. It is not love to hate another class. Lowering the AL of the Diamond lord is a start but that is a small part of the problem. The biggest problem a melee has is he cannot fight a high hit point monster that had Life skills without a mage or high Life skills. Some can be fought but take more time then they are worth. This problem had created the three-school melee class. Add in high AL and we cannot fight it at all if not for the stupid AI. So what are the new monsters? High AL Life-wielding monsters to start. Just so Turbine can say they hate mages equally they added a Hollow Olthoi with Life skills. Oh sure we are defeating them. The problem is we would rather not. They are not worth the two minutes it takes to wear one down. Any mid-level we take with us is sure to die if we decided to fight. Turbine, get a clue. Of course making all our weapons obsolete was a nice touch. Now we can all do the boring hunt/trade thing to get the better weapons, fun, fun. Better would have been to upgrade what we had. Even with the better weapons I don't see much change in my damage. If I'm hitting for 2 to 6 with a 2-7 weapon will 3-10 be that much better? I have over 280 strength and 430 UA. I have BD VII on the weapon and I'm doing 2 to 6 damage! How lame can it get. I can only imagine what damage others are doing. A typical fight with these things has me hitting for 30 seconds before seeing much effect on the health. It will then drain me and be back to full. I hit for another 30 seconds and it heals to almost full. Another 30 seconds and it heals again. I'm glad it does not get into being drain mad as I cannot defeat one that does. Finally is decides to stop healing and I kill it. Generally takes one and a half to two minutes for kill one. If there are two I mostly end up running. I understand that these quests are not made to be soloed but give me a break. Most parties are just running down to the end, grabbing the keys and leaving. Turbine it not us vs. you. It is you providing fun for us and we providing money to you. This quest was not fun. It was something to get out of the way and grab the loot. Of course the loot was not upgraded with the other changes so it is really not worth all that much anyway. Word of warning. The Quibbly chests don't open after you insert the key. There are people standing around that wait for the click and then open the chest and steal your loot. We figured Turbine learned their lesson about chests and thieves at the casino but I guess not. If there is anyone standing near you move to another Trove. Quibbly Quest I logged Fist with the intent to do the Quibbly quest and get an ingot. I saw that the loot was not really worth it as the new weapons will out do any Quibbly. Still I felt it would be a fun quest. Also I don't have the new weapons yet so this will be nice meanwhile. I ran from the Mansion to the drunks portal. I buffed up and jumped over the wall. It was nice to have a player with enough jump skill to do what easy. Some who did not know the corner bug was fixed asked me how I got over. I explained my 448 jump skill and that the bug had been fixed. It was a long run but with my melee defense and magic defense I took little damage. I got there and found a big group getting ready to go in. I buffed up and headed in with them. I had to do a download and the group was gone before I got out of the portal. I ran into one of the guys in the yellow robes. This one had a different name, mage or something. Sure enough not only was I doing little damage it was draining me and healing. Took forever to defeat this one weak monster. After that Miss Uiz showed up. It was a lot better when teamed with a mage. She vuln'd them and I pounded them into the ground. We finally caught up with the group at the bottom. I saw a mass of Olthoi and charged in. O'joy, Olthoi with drain, just what I needed. I knew about the Hollow damage but they don't hit me much. There is no defense to drain. So I would stop had heal after each drain. I killed a few who forget to drain me and got the key. The party had recovered some bodies and was rushing to the exit. I was called crazy for fighting as long as I did but even with Life they are just Olthoi. So I now needed to go to the next part. The party I was with did not have the tie. They wanted to go to the Sub and beg a ride. I just don't do that if I can help it and just ran there. On the way I found and defeated my first Crystal Golem. Not hard to defeat. Lame to make it immune to War but at least a mage can use his racial weapon to defeat it. The silly board people are calling for the melee defense to be raised to a point where a mage cannot fight it. Why do that? Most mages don't raise that skill much and this gives them a reason to do it. Is the mage envy so bad that you have to totally nerf them? Grow up. I finally got to the next part. I decided to tie to this one just in case. As I was buffing a guy ported in. He wanted to join me. Jumped down and headed in. The first monsters we hit were green thing with the armor class of a VE and used drain and heal. God I hate monsters with Life skills. We retreated up the hall and finally killed them. Another person joined us and we started forward again. We got to a room with a few of the green things and some lighting monsters. I decided not to waste time and ran through it. We got over that easy as the lighting stayed in the room. We moved down and ran into some golems that looked like the green things but were white. I kept changing weapons to see if something effected these things. Nothing did more than 2 to 6 damage and some did less. In the first battle we faced three or four of them and the other two could not stand. Both died. While I was not taking much damage, I was not doing much either. Running seemed like the only option. Unlike most monsters these things chase forever and are every bit as fast as I am. All I did was pick up more of them as I ran around. I was able to grab my wand and port out. It looks like you need a mage to imperil these things to have any chance. At least they are not doing Hollow damage so I can take a Mage here. Lighting Prism again. We met on Saturday as planned and headed out on the Lighting Prism. This time we had the opposite problem we normally have. Everyone wanted to go on the high part and only a few the lower. We ended up with five people for low. It was the normal battle at the start. I had trouble landing on them even with my 383 skill. It seems like their magic defense was raised with the patch. I'm hoping was just bad luck as this is hard enough. We hit the upper's switch and defeated the two Diamonds and Pyreal golems there. Then back tracked to the door the upper had to open. They opened it and we hit the switch. We hit the switches in the maze and defeated the mass of golems in the last room. We waited there for the upper group to hit our switch and let us move forward. So far we had not gotten anywhere we could not go without the upper group. The only door they opened for us was a room with a switch that lets them move. We waited and waited. We had a big spawn and a few were hit hard. They ran to the hallway and I was engaged with two Pyreal golems. I felt the best thing I could do was fight rather than try and join the group with my two Pyreal Golem friends. I spent most of the battle trying to land a yield while keeping my mana and health up. That was hard to do as they were both draining me. I burnt several gems in this battle. Finally I got a yield and then an acid vuln. I healed up and recovered mana again. I landed one blast for 250 or so. Then the melee's returned to the room and attacked. I got Imperil on the golems and they fell fast. We lost LP in that battle but we recovered his body ok. We fought off two more spawns and waited some more. Finally we got the message the upper group had been defeated. We ported back to the mansion. At the mansion we found that the upper group had left bodies behind. Now we needed to do it again if nothing else than to recover the bodies. We recruited Balash, Tavvaz and Xandran to go into the lower with me while everyone else was upper. We did not have numbers but had power. If I could just land an imperil the golems would not last long. The problem was I was landing about one in five spells. I was popping gems and tossing dispels so I would stay at full power but still could not land. Sometimes I would land the spell as the golem was dying. It was really frustrating. My skills cost 7 million a point right now and I've stopped powerleveling him. It looks like I need to push those skills if I want to support on quests. We got all the upper switches done and were at the same room as before. We waited and waited and waited. We lost one fighter, not sure who it was now this left us with three people. The hall is too wide to block with one person, as we found out in the next spawn. Buffs were dropping and we did not have any place to safely buff. If we had better numbers we might have formed some blocks and buffed in turns but we did not have that option. I called for us to port out while we still could. The upper had recovered the bodies and everyone got the bracelet. I was glad of that. We really need four more people to do our side if the upper cannot get to the switches in a hurry. There is another trick I should have thought of. That is to buff early, battle the spawns, and go back to buffing. It was too late to do that trick. As you will see below Rizean was smarter than me and did buff early. Another view The below is my vassals Rizean view of his side. I used vassal tells to coordinate the two parties. Once we arrived on the high side of the lighting prism we waited for the first door to swing open. I knew before the door even opened that we had to stay together or we would fail. Just by being close would help by giving the monsters more than one or two targets to concentrate on and secondly it allowed us to concentrate our firepower. So we prepared, I buffed myself then I buffed every melees weapons and shield. I knew I was mainly here for everything but the pyreals golems as they are nearly impossible to effect with any sort of debuff on at all. I memorized the names of the gathered in case one fell as I felt I had the best chance of survival as with two spells I can take my self from 1 to 226 health in a matter of seconds. Its a one shot deal till I recharge my stamina, but its been a lifesaver many a times. The door swung open and the five of us moved forward, Nappa, Spaceghost, Castigar, Discorridan and myself. I believe there was a sixth but now the name escapes me. (Editor note; Nabata)We already had killed most of the first room and I had many of the other nearby golems pre-imperiled and this was a boon as before we even dropped the last of them the first room started to respawn. Lucky for us the diamonds came first and two imperials later they were both dead. Then followed the pyreals, three of them I believe. I managed to land an imperil on one and it dropped quickly a second dropped just from the shear beating the melees gave it. We abandoned the third I do believe. We hit the switch for the low side and found a nice quiet spot to wait our next door. Spaceghost and myself had identified what we thought was the next door he seemed more confident than myself, even though I had hunted this place with William the Bat. I check my buffs and saw 12 minutes remaining. So I rebuffed myself and the groups shields and weapons. Shortly thereafter the next door swung open. I stood behind the wall and imperiled all of the diamond golems and then popped a dispel gem and went to work on the pyreals. Got the first one after three tries and then the second on the first try which was a good thing as not even before the spell finished I had debuff after debuff landing on me. This room we were literal chased from it as the respawn would not seem to stop. I managed to have a moments breath to recover the first body I came to but not long as a member of ours came up behind me with two diamonds in trail. One I imperiled and the second was blasted into oblivion with a drain/drain/vuln/shock wave combo. We moved up the spiral stair way past two more pyreals and once again I cleared my debuffs with the third dispel gem of the four this trip would cost me and went to work on the two pyreals below us. I gave the word shortly and the melees drop them quickly along with a diamond that reared its ugly head. At this point I had the group wait at quiet spot, as I knew this part of the place well. William and I had hunted it for nearly an hour before we got run out. I checked the rest of the area for any remaining bodies and happily found none left and reported back that we could now leave hell but they seemed to have other plans in mind. We moved ahead toward the prize and came to the one ugly spot that stood in our way. Another dispel gem down and a few imperials latter we cleared and moved to the end to claim the prize or at least they would as it has no value at all to a mage, sadly. All in all things went very smoothly, only once did one of our members ever come close to dying. It still amazes me what a drain followed by a quick war can do to ones health. Life pros seven help mages, not much a pure melee can do but try to collect the highest level protect they can find. Would like to thank the melees not only for the three of the four dispel gem given me but also we could not have done it with out them. I laugh at any mage who say melee are not valuable or needed. Someday you will eat those words. Mage, Melee, Archer, we all have our place. Rizean SSgt Michael L. Hobbs Quibbly part two. I still had the tie and was ready to try part two again. I hoped to find a party there I could join. It was empty but I was willing to try it solo. I moved down the passage I used before. One of the green things I lured out of a room and defeated. I did that again. The lighting stuff did not come out of the room. Even doing 2 to 6 damage I hit fast enough to kill if I can single one out. When I had buffed I did not buff magic defense as I figured it would be of no use. Fortunately it was still on from another fight I was in the last time I logged. I resisted a few of the drains which made a big difference. I had saved up 60 million points with the intent of saving up to 260 million for 8 point of strength. Magic defense seemed a better option now. I ran through that room again and two of the green things chased me out of it. I defeated them, again because I resisted most of their drain attempts. With 260+ magic defense I was resisting well against them. Unfortunately most players will not have anything close to that skill. When I met that White golems it got to be a mess again. There were too many of them and I was doing even less damage. This time I had sixth Sense on. The last time I did not have it running. I got a pop on some keys. Using that as I guide I ran away from the monsters and got to the bottom. There was a large group fighting. I fought for a bit but did not see a goal. There were keys all over and I was just there for one. I grabbed a key and ported out. I checked my map for the last place. It seemed like a simple run. I grabbed Rizeans portal bod to the sub and ran to Mayoi. A quick jog to the south dires portal, a buff up and I jumped in. The run from there was simple and I lucked out and found the way up quickly. I had been here once before and had a hell of a time finding a way up. I got there and saw one person buffing. LOL it was Elder! I started to buff and a large group ported in. I was done buffing as was Elder so we jumped in. Both of us were unsure as to which way to go so we picked a passage at random. With two of the most powerful UA's in the game pounding on a monster they did not last long. Even with drain, which we resisted a lot, they could not stand. We caught up with another guy who offered to guide us to the end. We followed him for a bit, battling when we had to. In one room it was a big mess. I saw a message about the other guy dieing but had no idea where he was. Elder and I ran down a passage until we could get a few at a time. We cleared that and found the end. Lot of monsters there but we ran them into the other side of the wall. I got my ingot and Elder hit the switch so we could see the 2000 level Hollow. It is big I'll say that. There is a door on the other side that I id'ed as 9999 difficulty. So running around the Hollow to the door is not an option. I had heard this is impossible to fight. No one had done any damage on it at all. Even if you risked battling you did zero damage. The other group caught up and two of them tried to play with it. One hit it with a cold sword for zero damage and the other was killed with one shot. Ok, nice to look at and part of a future quest. I ported home. Guess I'll use the ingot for a Fist. The bow does not seem that hot and my mage can buff far better than the Orb. I cannot say I think much of the last three quests. The best I can say about this one was you did not need two parties and switches. So it is at least doable solo if you run, kill the one with the part and run again. Risky but doable. Turbine is doing everything it can to force melee and mages together. I would advise they stop. The other games have forced that and we are here because we don't want to do it that way. Build on the strength of solo play instead of trying to be EQ with different rules. Rescue in Quibbly I was running my Archer in OHN. I was a little fearful his melee defense was not up to OHN but with buffs he did ok. To help out I put a Hollow set of armor on him. With Mage buffing him I did not need the creature armor. After one run I ported back to the mansion and logged Mage to buff him again. Bleu Sky sent me a message saying I was needed. My job as a patron is to give my vassals help when needed. They are a very self contained bunch who would rather help others than be helped. Nevertheless there are times when they get into situations where they need me. Sky's vassal died three times in the last Quibbly dungeon. They had a lot of strong melee but no mage that could land on the stuff there. We met in Lin and I arrived with everyone buffing. I buffed up, which takes three minutes. After I was done several of them were still buffing. My clock clicked down to 22 minutes (from 30) and they were still buffing. I pointed out that anything over 5 minutes was to long. To my surprise it was a 118 lv chain member who was taking so long. Extreme templates with no melee defense require far too much buffing for my book. They provided a portal and we started down. My job was simple. I imperiled anything that came in range. With several strong melee that was all it took. Drain is not much good when the melee's are hitting for over 200 points a swing. I was told by Elder that War was not having much effect on the monsters but never had a chance to try. In little time we got to the bottom. All bodies were recovered and those who needed to used the Trove. Like I have said I hate forcing mage and melee to work together but I admit it worked well when we did. The problem was they did have a mage with them but his skill was around 320 and could not land a spell on anything. As the reward is useless to a high level mage this was poorly thought out. A mid-level mage might want the Orb but a mid-level mage cannot land a spell. If you're going to make a quest that requires high-level fighters teaming with high-level mages, provide a reward both can use. The only reason Elder and I did well was we seldom fought. Running and drawing them out of position was our best bet. Not everyone has our melee and magic defense. At least they did not put Pyreal golems in there. With 384 Life I was never resisted. I'll need over 400 Life and Creature to battle Pyreal golems. Computer update I called United Micro today to get the status of the computer. Repeated e-mail and voice mail messages had zero returns. The first thing I was told was they were shipping it today. Then he said, wait, the motherboard is back ordered. I was a bit ticked. If they had told me that weeks ago I could have changed my order and had it on the way. I had been reading some stuff about a problem that AC2 might run into with the current motherboard chipset. I was thinking strongly that going with an Intel system would be worth the added 150 bucks. I also had a reader tell me that Office does not come with the Professional version of Windows XP. I cannot remember who told me that but they were mistaken. I should have checked. This mess up was just what I needed drop it all and reorder a different system. I canceled the order on the spot. After that I was on the internet looking for a different company. I like the way United Micro's website is set up and my vassal had a good system from them. After their apparent indifference to me I felt it was worth looking for a better place. It was only a few minutes later that I got a call from United Micro. It was the head sales honcho. He said they would give me the next higher motherboard at no added cost and ship it today if I reinstated my order. It seems they had everything together and ready to go. Of course I was wondering how they were going to fit in the 72-hour burn in. Getting it this week rather than several weeks from now was a convincer. The upgraded motherboard gives me nothing I need but my second computer is getting flaker and flaker. While buffing my Archer it locked up several times. This required a reboot and starting the buffing cycle over again. So getting the computer sooner will help lower my frustration level. There is also the problem of not having 150 more bucks for the Intel system. I'm sure I could fool the wife on the price but I would rather not do that. With luck I'll have it by Wednesday, Friday on the outside. It is going to be a lot of work when it gets here. I have to set up the network, which is always a pain. Changing the SCSI card and setting up the scanner, Tape and Jazz drive will not be fun. Redirecting the printer to the new server should not be too hard. I might take this opportunity to get the color printer back on line. I never use it but Rosa had demanded I put it back for her. Next column will have a report on how well it is working. Human nature The one thing business and government fails to understand is that most laws and restrictions hurt honest people while doing little or nothing to cheats and criminals. Microsoft has put draconian protection and safeguards on their software that frustrates and in some cases scares the honest users. Meanwhile the thieves quickly crack the protection and move on as if nothing happened. Governments seem to have the same problem. Despite proof that many laws do more to protect criminals and make honest people vulnerable their answer to crime is even more of the same type of laws. Students of history and those not locked into leftist mindsets get extremely frustrated with the ignorance we see on TV and other media. A good example was what Microsoft put one of our members thorough this week. He could not log on to his account. He called Microsoft and got a runaround. He was told someone else had his account and there was nothing they could do. Finally they were convinced to return his account to him. He got it because of some numbers on the CD. Being a smart person he asked the guy what would happen if someone just copied down those numbers? They had no answer. I was reminded of they guy who was at a store buying something with his credit card. The salesperson pointed out he had not signed his card. He proceeded to sign the card and then the credit slip. She then compared the two signatures as if they might possibility be different.