Fist de Yuma - March 25, 2003

This and that I'm sure I have solved the lock up problem. This is thanks to a reader who suggested I change my AGP setting from X4 to X2. Whatever defect my video card has this seems to have fixed it. I haven't seen a noticeable difference in video speed yet. Of course all I have used it on is AC. I did several things that have locked up the computer in the past. Leaving the AC screen in the background overnight was sure to have me locked up in the morning. I left it as a test and was rock solid. Several days of play have not caused a lockup. I guess the final test is to take Mage hunting on the Ladies Island. That was a sure lockup/death in the past. Someone is sending me a low-end computer. That will give me a computer for my wife. For now I'll use the cable stretched out from my den to the dinning room. In time I'll get the wireless setup done. It seems easy to do, just have to raise the cash for the equipment. I figure around $200 bucks. When you figure that is about what I made for the column last year it is a lot for me. The only thing I need to do is get some old monitors repaired. Not sure if we have anyone in our town that can repair them or if I can afford their price but I'll see. Great introduction I got a PM on the Vault from a guy who was moving to MT. He had been playing on SC but all his friends had left. Being a fan of the column he asked if he could join Elder. He has a female mid level archer he had created sometime in the past. I met her in the marketplace and Winter Raven swore to Fist's Armorer. What was unusual was Maddie has come back to MT a few hours before. Maddie had been playing in DT for a while and wanted to get back to MT. He created a female Mage and worked her up to 33. She got a hold of me and swore her to FA. Winter Raven and I ported to the mansion for introductions. While we were doing that Asheru came by and asked if we could help with some body recoveries. I asked where it was and did not get good news. One was in the middle of the plains and the other was outside on a run across Tusker Island. I loaded up Fist de Yuma Jr and buffed up quickly. I skipped banes as I did not expect to face anything that could hit me and wanted to be fast. Lucien-Voodoo Lord made a portal to get us there. We got the coords and started running. It is really nasty on the plains now but I expect it to be even worse after the next patch, more on that later. Winter Raven and Illuminator with Lucien-voodoo Lord had it mostly clear by the time I made it there. We were trying to get Asheru to give us permission but he seemed to be lagging out and did not answer. A few Ascendant Drudges spawned. I know for experience that these are darn hard to hit. I'm not sure of they were modified or if I have better skills than I thought but I was hitting well. Unfortunately it was hitting better. My lack of banes and using the spell shield was proving to be a big error. With imperil and vulnerability on me each hit was inflicting massive damage. If not for the rest of the group drawing the Drudge as I ran away, with 8 hit points, I would have left a body next to Asheru's. After that I made sure I moved to get back shots on them before engaging. The rest of the stuff that spawned was no trouble. Finally Asheru got me permission to loot his body. We ported back to the mansion to regroup. I loaded FA to get a ride to the 40+. A few of us had the portal spell so we jumped ahead of them. They all made it though but Asheru died again. We decided to get that one later. This body was in an unknown location. He had no idea where it was. We spread out in a line and ran. We used the "[" key as we ran to search for his body. I told everyone that when they found the body to give us a shout. "Don't be a hero" I said. I got a few clicks when Illuminator said he found the body. I got there with A Fictional God, Winter Raven, Illuminator and Lucien-Voodoo Lord. We quickly cleared it while Illuminator looted the body. We ported back to the mansion. I had FA make one more portal and quickly loaded up Jr to join in. The body was at the start so we had little trouble clearing and recovering it. I can only say Winter Raven's introduction to Elder was big time fun. I cannot guarantee that kind of adventure every day but it was a great way for him to get to know us. Recovery In the last few months I have lost a lot of vassals. Many have moved with friends during breakups. Two major groups have gone out on their own this year. Others have sold off and the new people moved to a different alliance. All that have left are still good friends that I help when I can. The Crippler just got a mansion with my help. I could not use the offer so I matched them up. Others I keep in contact with and there are never hard feelings about them leaving. I enjoy the memories of when they were vassals instead. There could be still more losses because of real life stuff though I hope that can be avoided. I'm ready for whatever comes down the pipe. For a while I was maxed out with all my vassal slots. The people who came to me I directed to others. I still do that for players I feel need a more hands on patron. With all I do it is hard to help just one person for any length of time. Normally when I lose a vassal I get a new one the next day or so. This happened so often that I would look forward to meeting someone new when a vassal leaves. This time was different. As months past and people left without replacement I was thinking my golden touch with vassals was at an end. Then in a week it was all repaired. The finally key came today when two people contacted me about being a vassal. Both were fans of the column and moving from different severs. The new vassals are Yu-Hung and Narknon. Yu-Hung is around 55lv and was outfitted well. Narknon is 6lv and I'll need to outfit him. Narknon logged soon after he swore to me. Yu-Hung and I had a good talk and I think we will have a lot of fun. That put my vassal count back up and restores my faith in the golden vassal touch. (grin) This may seem strange but I have had such good luck with vassals that I expect great people to come to me. I shouldn't but I do. Policing the fellow Well it was a new week and back to the Tusker grind. Of course the great thing about it these days is the active and fun fellows. Teaming with a good melee and just killing and talking takes the sting out of it all. This day did not start out great. Fist's Armorer was waiting at the start of the 70+ for an opening in the fellow. There was no reason not to go hunting a Tusker or two but I was respecting the fellow. This respect is more common these days. Only a few times did we have anyone outside of the fellow hunting. It should be noted that despite their hunting no one thought of bumping them out of line. A lot of people were porting in. We talked as we waited for our turn to get into the fellow. You can figure about 20 minutes for each person ahead of you. A guy ported in and I sent him a "hello" as I do with everyone that comes in. He answered with "Quiet n00b". I was in good humor so I decided to play with this immature person. I said, "It is amazing how the new players think they are gods". He responded with, "I've been playing for 3 years now." My reply was, "That makes you a n00b to me." At that point it deteriorated to the point where I stopped replying. When I got into the fellow I found the immature person was in it. He apparently was in the fellow and had left the dungeon for some reason. The immature person was cursing up a storm. I quickly hit the "abuse" button. Several players started chastising him and he cleaned up his act. Not being able to play the fool he soon got bored and left. After that we had a chance to discuss his conduct. We decided that if any of us were a fellow key he would not be allowed in the fellow. The immature players must understand that this is a multi-player game. If you act to disrupt our game there will be consequences. Bye Bye An hour into the fellow I noted that one of the players was not talking. Ever so often someone would ask for everyone to respond so we could check for macros. I asked the guy a simple question related to what we were doing. With no response I repeated it. That got the attention of the fellow key, which was my intent. We know now there is a command to log off a player if they are running ElTank unattended. That was a great idea. Only the fellow key can make the command, which I believe is "Please log". I have not seen this in action, as we did not find the command until later. The fellow key asked him several questions and got no response. After a minute of warnings he was dropped from the fellow. After recovering from all the dungeons being locked up with macros we are not taking any chances. We hope MS finds them but meanwhile we will dump from the fellow any macro we discover. (note; I will now use "macro" to mean "unattended combat macros". All other macros will not fall under this name when I use it.) Almost There I was raking in the xp for hours on end. The levels started to click off, 77, 78, 79 and only one more to go to get Armored Tinkering. With high goals in that skill I figure I'll have to keep leveling for a while. I'll do it more slowly as I want to get back to having fun. His skill is in the 300's buffed while not even trained. I figure getting him to 450 would be little trouble. First goal is 400 base. I really wanted to make 80 before I left that night. It was going to take one more buff. I figured I would level to 80 and then play out the buff. The fellow key was leaving so we met at the top. I noted I had around 7 minutes on the buff left. I figured I could get into the new fellow and then buff. I got to the top and a new fellow was made. There was a short delay while we got organized. Then I headed down to where I was stationed. I got there and found a Crossbow-person fighting. I figured they had started back and ran into the spawn. The Archer I had teamed with and I helped him/her clear it and they left. My teammate said he had to leave. His buffs were about out. There was a big spawn just has he started to port out. I messaged the fellow leader that I needed a melee in the east U. I could hold it but it was far better with a melee to team with. With me battling around six Tuskers my timer started beeping. O'llll, I had forgot to re-buff. I was seconds away from zero buffs and hit my portal button. Just as I did I noted the Crossbow-person was back. If I had started buffing the second the timer started to beep I might have made it. If I had known the xbow was there I would have attempted it. I apologized to the fellow for bugging out early and without warning and explained what happened. So I'm around four million from 80. Unless I get to hunt on Friday I'll miss the Saturday Bobo quest. I really want to get that scroll so I can stop playing bumper car in the 40+. Weekend I missed hitting 80 on Friday with doctor appointments and stuff out in town. I spent the weekend hunting with Mage in VoD and had a blast. I got a nice adventure that will make a great story for the Vault column. You should see that sometime this week. I'm about seven days from picking up one more sell back gem. That will mean three weeks until I can be a tri-spec'd mage. At 124 million a point for War it takes literally a week of hunting to move it. With me being close to having War spec'd I'm going to start pushing Life and Creature. Life and Creature are not cheap. At 60 million plus a point getting a point of each is as hard as moving War. There is also the problem if getting my Magic Defense up there. Right now if I debuff a VoD monsters Self, Focus and magic skill I resist about 50% of the time. I would like to get that up to 75% and have a shot at resisting without the de-buffs. If course without spec'ing magic defense it will never be where I'm safe in VoD. The other problem is mana conversion. To spec War I need to drop MC to trained. I'm finding with a MC bonus orb I can stand into a VoD battle with one or no mana recover. That's right, a full two to three minute battle with no need to recover mana. When I drop it to trained I'll put a whole lot of xp into it but it will still be a good 20 points below what it was. Mule Status Fist's Armorer hit 80 this weekend. Vassal xp put him over the top. That got him Armor Tinkering. With max stats I was able to get it to 430 Armored Tinkering in a few hours. FA is 82lv after five hours of hunting Tuskers this morning. My goal is a buffed 530 with brilliance. I might go beyond that and there is always vassal xp coming in. Cliff's Carrier Cook has his Alchemy and Cooking over 400. His Magic Item is 490 but he still breaks more than his share of weapons. Fist's Mule Two has weapon Tinkering to 450 but it is starting to get slow. Even with up to 16 million when FA goes hunting I can only move it a few points. Goal there is the same as FA's but it will be a lot slower. He depends on vassal xp only and that is a lot slower than hunting. A vassal writes A long time ago I met a guy names Damien Daring. He was helping a friend stay in AC by offering to buy his account. My friend and second ever vassal was leaving for school and needed the cash. That never went through but I met a friend who has been my strongest support for years. Today he send a little essay about his players. I thought I'd write a bit about my characters from the beginning of time of Dereth. Only because most of us on this group are old time role-players who actually put some thought into their characters instead of just reading numbers off a piece of paper. My first character was an Aluvian bladesman named Dirk Daring. Now the funny thing about Dirk was that without realizing it I named him after a video game character from the game "Space Ace". Being honest that wasn't my game to play back in the day. My love was a game called Robotron 2084. Now Dirk followed the cookie cutter template from Turbine, hell at the time we were 3 weeks into retail when I bought the game so what did I know. When I started up I stationed in Rithwic. This was a great time because you could have complete strangers do something for you just for the joy of the game. I remember I had a crappy sword and a stranger came up to me when I was level 3 and gave me a gold ken. I was like WOW 5-9 damage oh boy those banderlings will fall to me now. I had a whole history written up on Dirk, what he was all about so I understood who he was. I had him as a cross between a knight and Dudley Do-Right of the Canadian Mounties. Magic was nothing to him, he preferred the blade to settle his problems. When I hunted with Dirk I stayed in Rithwic a lot, going into the dungeon where you could go PK, not that I did that of course. That was where I met my first patron a gharu axeman named Shava Elfrin. Shava was part of a monarchy called the Keepers of the Lost Light, just a small group really but we had fun chatting. I was hunting with him and he was impressed that I stayed and attracted a monster that was killing him. He was standing there being the target so that I could get the kill. But the lich had other ideas and started whacking him pretty good, so he had to run. Without him there I was in trouble but I got myself to block the lich and kept hitting it. It finally decided to start whipping my butt but it finally fell to me. That was how I joined my first monarchy. Shava used to call me "The wanderer", because back then we didn't have portal bots to every city and if you wanted to get someplace that wasn't in the portal loop you had to run. Daily I was running from Holtburg to Glendon Wood to Crag, these were the best places to buy armor/weapons at the time. And you could run into some really high level characters, I mean I was seeing 45th level characters. In the end I found that Dirk didn't work that well for me so I retired him to mule status. The next creation was Damien Daring, a 3 school SHO. Damien's history was that he was Dirk's son by a SHO woman and his first name came because he kicked the heck out of his mothers womb so Dirk said that he must have a bit of the devil in him. I had a blast playing Damien. Learning spells was the hardest thing I'd done in the game, even with the help of split pea it could still be difficult. I was able to explore a lot more of Dereth with Damien, meeting a lot more people including Fist and Balash who were in this strange monarchy called Elder. Elder???? why would I want to be part of a group that named itself after being old (grin). One day I found out why I would want to be. Being SHO and having my magic skills I did what I should and did a lot of hunting at OHN. I would see Fist and sometimes follow him down into the depths relying on my skill, my savy and the fact I would run like a chicken if I needed to get out of trouble. It was fun because people would ask me about why I made Damien and I would tell them about his upbringing, training ect. They would be like, you mean you didn't want a flavor of the month ect. I'd say nope. Anyway, enough rambling, Happy Monday to you all....ughhhh I need sleep. Coming changes We can expect some big changes this patch. The final changes will be next month but from what I hear it is most on the loot side. So this patch will see the monster balancing we have been hearing about. Change one is the level of monsters will more reflect their difficulty. No more getting your rear kicked by a under 100lv monster and then working off vit on a 300lv one. The monsters will be a learning process. Some will be easy for a class but a nightmare for another. The level will reflect the difficulty for the easy class so there will still be stuff to avoid. The experience for each kill will go up. Just how much we don't now but it is said to be considerable. Turbine is trying to move us away from camping Tuskers all day, amen to that. There a major tech change that will fix a big problem we have had. To get monster to toss spells without fizzling Turbine had to make their magic abilities far beyond the normal person Magic Defense. This is the reason for 450 magic skilled monsters. Turbine has figured out how to eliminate fizzling without having outlandish magic skills. What this means for you and me is Magic defense will start working. Turbine has stated that if you put a significance amount of xp into Magic Defense it will be effective. They have also promised to change the AI a touch. Right now the de-buffs tossed by some monsters make them a sticky leave alone monster. You might kill them but you will have to gem, dispel or fight with de-buffs after facing them. The word is far less de-buffing now. I think the quote was, "they don't need de-buffs, they have numbers." Beware that all this does not effect VoD. There is no changes planned there. Our biggest fear I have is something people have called for but have no understanding of what they want. The call was for Missile defense to be more useful. For years Missile defense was mainly treated as another Lore. There was two reason for this. The first was the monster has few missile weapons and they were easily avoided. The damage they did was not worth the cost of the skill. The second reason was even if you did train it the skills were set so high that you were still hit. My fear is they will fix the first without fixing the second. Even if they do both that will mean the Melee and Archer class will need this skill. While some Melee can get missile it will be at the cost of a side skill, such as lock pick. Other melee, such as sword will be in even greater trouble trying to get the points. I'm guessing a requirement for Missile will really hurt the hybrid class. For Archers this will be a nightmare. Getting all the skills they need cost a lot of points. Adding six more in will not be easy. In fact a spec bow, melee with trained Alchemy, Fletching, Lore, Item, Creature and Life does not have the points. What is worse is there if really nothing to drop here. The only thing is Alchemy and that is not enough points. So if missile moves to required Archers are in big trouble. It is one of those, "Be careful what you ask for." things.