Fist de Yuma - March 30, 2004

Good news I have sent many a letter to Turbine encouraging them to use common sense rather than coding to solve problems. One such problem has been Mister Macro, as I have dubbed him, and his selling Villas on Ebay. There are just too many ways to get around code. There are times when you just have to go after the person who is abusing the system. Code takes time and money. Fixing the problem by removing the abuser is far faster, and a lot fairer to the players. After months of trying for a coding answer, Turbine has taken my advice. Mister Macro had two accounts removed. The Villas he owned were open to the players. Mister Macro can now go find a different way to earn a living instead of leeching off the AC players. Frustrated part III Now this is getting really old. I was tinking up this nice lightning sword and being very careful with it. All tinks were 100% until the very last. With two failures in a row, at 98% or better, I was gun-shy, but it had to just be bad luck. I broke out my 8.0 granite for the last tink. Making test run it said 98%. Because of my previous failures I almost said no. With only a 2% chance of failure the chances of three in a row were remote. I hit yes, and it blew up. Needless to say, I have not played AC for the rest of the day. While all sorts of math geniuses are trying to downplay this on the boards, I smell a rat. I think Turbine needs to take a close look at the code because there are far to many high level failures. Adventure Well, it was VoD night. I had just finished the bike ride from hell and was tired and sweaty. I set the VCR to record some programs and loaded AC for some fun and adventure. As I loaded up I asked if the VoD was running. Nene said yes. I ran to the vendor to stock up on tapers and then buffed up. It was a fast run and I found the group right off. The early group is a lot stronger than our late one. Nene and Soul Riper add a lot of firepower. We also have archers, which complement mages well. Melees are outstanding, but many monsters don't charge so it helps to have ranged weapons. When the battle gets close, it is better to have melee with you. So of course the best is to have a mix off all classes. With this kind of power, nothing much can stand against us for long. Our hardest chore was finding enough things to kill. Even the Olthoi did not stand a chance against us. So when we found the Big Boy, there was only a slight hesitation before we decided to attack it. The Tremendous Monouga is about as intimidating a monster as you can find. Towering high about the treetops, with feet as big as building, it will inspire fear to all who near it. I started us off with a yield followed by as many de-buffs as I could think of. While lowering its strength might not subtract very much damage per hit, it could not hurt. It was clear that this battle was not going to be a repeat of our many failures against the Big Boy. Then for no reason I took a 100+ hit. After blows of 10 or less this came as quite a shock. I healed and started blasting again. Then I noted where the problem was. Somehow a bunch of Lugian's had jumped into the battle. Their hollow axes were causing havoc. Rather than worry about the Lugians we kept at BB. He was at half health when the Lugian's jumped us, and we did not want to start over. The healers did their job so no one was at risk. The Lugian's tend to swap targets a lot, so the damage they did was spread out. The Big Boy finally fell. We cheered our victory and quick cut up the Lugians into Lugian steaks. If you see Nabata running that food stand in Arwic, take a pass for a while. I've never seen such tough meat. From there we continued to wage havoc over VoD. Nothing could stand against us. A passing Obliterator was dead before he knew he was in trouble. What was truly amazing about this adventure was only found out after an hour of hunting. I had somehow left my Sunstone Gauntlets on Fist's Armorer and had been fighting with unprotected hands. I was darn lucky not be to one shot by a hollow axe. Other than one 100 point hit I had not taken that much damage. The reason for our success was not just power. Nene and Soul had a great system worked out. The group followed instructions and worked as a team. Like I said before, as our group gets power and experience, we will own VoD. Disturbing Trend There are a lot of things the players and Turbine wants to do that cannot be done because of PK balance. For one there is a big need for higher level spells. Level VIII for high skilled mages is something that has been needed for some time now. Higher stats on weapons are being restricted as well. There were several hits of 1500 to 2000 by melee's and Archers in VoD last night. The max for my mage on every hit was 900. All improvements are being blocked because they would unbalance PK. I understand that Turbine really wants a good PK system. Nevertheless the frustration of the majority of players is reaching a high level. So much time and effort has been made on Turbines part for a minor offshoot of the game. I enjoy doing and watching PK. I just wish there was a way to do it without restricting changes for everyone else. Power Night I felt it would be good to set aside a time for people to power level. Now you and I might have a different idea about what power leveling is. For me it is when a group goes out to kill and get as much xp as possible. No looting, no standing around and talking, just pure kill and run to the next fight. To set it up I needed to find a place where we would not be disturbing others. This meant that the Matrons were out. While the Matrons are the best for xp there is usually people hunting there. Our allegiance is for fun and helping others. Taking over a popular dungeon would not fit that. The second requirement is the ability to tie to the dungeon. We have a lot of people who still depend on a Bot or dual logging for buffs. That took away all of ML and the Olthoi Armor dungeons. We might revisit the Olthoi Armor dungeon as there are ties that are close. With luck Turbine will open up the Olthoi dungeons on ML for us someday. Last week I wrote about a trip to BDC. (Black Death Catacombs) This was really a scouting trip for the PL day. I decided that it fit and would be a great spot. It had the added benefit of having only a 20+ restriction. While there are not many 20+ who could live there, anyone who could survive was not locked out. We ended up starting early. I had it set for 6pm EST, but the players wanted to go sooner than that. Our bot has BDC as a tie so there was no trouble getting them there. For the first hour I used Fist. I figured he could rack up the xp faster than most. I quickly saw that his high level was costing because he is well over the Olthoi level in BDC. So after one hour I brought in Death Mute. Our tactics were very straightforward. We ganged everything. Our group started at the top and cleared each step. We would finally jump to the bottom and clear that. Then circle around to the bottom pit and climb the ramp back up to do it again. Total xp wise I was somewhat disappointed. We hovered around 8 million an hour and I was hoping for 10 or better. That was made up for with pure fun. It was new, fast and furious. The problem I see is it will get old and stop being fun after a few trips. I think the upper section will be a great place for under 60 fellows. We had a few under 50 who wanted to go but there wasn't anyone they could team with. It would be nice if Turbine extended the fellow spread to 10 instead of 5. It is hard for under 50 groups to form under the current system. I'll be looking for new places to use on our PL day. There are not many places that meet my requirements, but if we stay on one spot to long it will get boring. Acid Vault Some of the most fearsome battles ever fought, in the old days, took place in the Acid vault. Remember, we were very ignorant in those days. Spells had less effectiveness and lasted a very short time. We had no idea that we needed to bane and many of us were running around with cloth gauntlets and shoes. If not for shields, some of us would have never leveled. When the Acid Vault first came out, you could tie to it. In fact all the vaults were that way. Two of the Vaults were almost unusable because of lag and the third was not a great place to hunt. The lag problems were Frost and Fire. The spells from the undead in the Frost lagged us so much that we died almost before we knew we were attacked. Very few groups made it to the end. Until they discovered a trick to get around most of the fighting this stone was hardly ever attained. The Fire Vault was not as hard. Lag was a very big problem but if you got past one section you were home free. The problem was that section required careful jumping and that is hard to do when the frame rate drops. In any case both these were used to get the stone and not hunting. The Acid Vault was different. Here we had a dungeon with no spells and a lot less lag. While it was easy to get overwhelmed, there were usually enough people there to let us recover. The Acid Vault was most packed 24/7. This all come to and end one patch day. The Dires became far harder. The outside was camped with high-level magic tossing monsters. As we would often use the exit as an escape route, monsters outside were important. Many of us had ties to the vault and used it for hunting. With the outside becoming so bad I decided to make a different tie and level a bit before going back to the Vault. Big mistake. Later that day we found that all vaults were non-tie after the patch. Those that had the tie kept them, but no new ties could be made. Remember we only had one possible tie back then. The run to the vault was a nightmare. The new improved Dires was a pure killer. That, and the servers had a harder time handling spells back then. The lag was very bad during the run. So on one day the Acid Vault went from being mobbed 24/7, to being used by only a handful of people. Many of us were relegated to hunting BDC until the OHN and Tusker dungeons came into the game. The reason I am bringing this up is I had a chance to revisit the Acid Vault. The player I used was a 126 Grief BM. I have not told the story of this player before because I was asked not to. He has good armor and a full set of Rend wands. From the Swamp Temple I had no trouble moving to the vault. This is despite the fact that any one monster of today would likely kill every player in the old game, solo, and all at once. Today's players are so much more powerful than the old players that it is hard to think of them as in the same game. No level VII then. 15 minutes max for buffs. Armor that was less than AL 250, after buffs! About the only advantage those players had was an over 2.0 banning ability. Likely not much of an advantage given that most of our armor had zero protection to acid. (Remember, there was a VI limit to banes and only a mage would have the skill to toss it.) A mage, back then, needed many spells to take down one Olthoi because of resists. It was so bad that you seldom saw a mage in the Acid Vault. Those that did stayed up top and drained or played support for a group. Melees were not much better off. Remember, an outstanding UA weapon was a 2-6 + 5 +7. Hard to believe that UA was considered the king of melees in the old game. After walking over the monsters on the way to the vault I expecting to see some upgrading to the Olthoi inside of the vault. All the other Olthoi dungeons have had upgrades. I was a little disappointed that it still contained Soldiers and nothing else. We must also remember that even Olthoi Soldiers have been upgraded a touch since the old days. My battles went something like this. One, One, two, zero, dead Olthoi. Three, two, three, death Olthoi. I would keep and eye on my health and do a simple level one drain when I had 60 points of damage accumulated. Every blast was a dead Olthoi. I did not have ring spells or it would have been even easer. I quickly worked my way to the bridges. At the start of the game this spot was where Archers ruled. Only a handful of Olthoi could get to that spot and it had a clear view of a lot of space. In fact Archers had such and advantage that they started macroing there. For a while you could walk through the Acid vault and not even see an Olthoi. Anything that spawned was quickly shot at by 10 or so Macros. Slowly but surely, Turbine got rid of the perches and it returned to normal, but for a while it was an Archers campground. The last part of the Acid Vault is a big room packed with Olthoi. We had people shaking in their boots when they saw the blot of dots on the screen. We would draw out a few at a time and slowly work it to manageable numbers. Today I just walked in and started blasting. One or two drains were all I needed in the way of healing. AC is a maturing game. We have power and items that were undreamed up years ago. To counter this, our enemies are more powerful, fast and come on large numbers. One Mut of today could have killed the entire old server and never take damage. So we need the power we have. It is only when we enter an unmodified dungeon, like the Acid Vault, where we start to understand how much more power we really have. Guest Writer: Aelryinth of Leafcull Me again, getting caught up reading your back articles. Reading over Han's posts on healing and having fun in the VOD. First of all, if your group is having problems taking down lugians, you really, really, REALLY need to make sure everyone has COLD CRIT STRIKE weapons. Not AR, Not Render. Crit Strike. I have a Cold Critical Strike sword that is base 45 dmg. I crit for 2045 pts on Lugians...and with Crit Strike I can crit, and crit, and crit....The mages need To first Imperil...dmg goes up by x7 with an Imperil...and THEN vuln, if possible (for 21x normal dmg). For the druges out there, use ACID AR. Really. The Mystics are most vuln to Acid...my -44 sword crits for about 1k once they are debuffed. The normal Seraphs seem as vuln to Acid as they are to fire, that same sword crits them for about 1700. While Seraphs are highly vuln to Pierce Crit Strike, with a fellow Acid AR works plenty fine and fast. Now, if you are in the VOD dungeon, you might want to swap out, since there are only two kinds of enemies, but out in the VOD, just use Acid. That Crit Strike Cold sword also comes in very useful on the Grommies (The crit on a debuffed Ado Ash Gromnie is about 3k) except for the Azure. The Rust, Ivory and Ash all go down really fast once debuffed to Cold. If you run into a Tremendous Monuga, having the Cold Sword is useful, too. The Obliterator (the big tusker Han couldn't remember) is worth a gross 6 mil now. The Tremendous Monuga is worth 10 million gross and can be taken down in 5 minutes or so with 4 people who have cold weapons. I believe all the Banderlings out there except for the Heirophant are most vulnerable to Fire...The Heirophant is most vuln to Pierce (this is for weapons, mind you, not magic). IN short, to hunt out in the VOD, you need to have the following: Archers: Crit Strike Bow and Armor Rend bow. Ammo - Acid, Cold, Fire, AP, Slash, and possibly blunt for olthoi (I'd just use AP). Melees: AR Slash/Pierce. If you don't have Pierce, use Blud, but make sure the mages know. CS Cold, AR Acid, and AR Fire. Mages: An Olthoi Slaying Wand is a good investment (from Gaerlan) for finishing off Olthoi fast. A Tumerok Slaying wand from the Banner quest could be useful too. Otherwise, a good CS wand with high Manacon works fine for all elements, since everything should be vulned and a Render orb would be useless. For Han and the other devoted Healers: Take a ring of SIK and go get a bunch of scrolls and give them away. Take the mana charges and get a hold of a Healer's Heart. Instead of worrying about fizzles, use the HH for your nonstop healing fun, and use up all them mana charges as you go. Remember to buff your manacon. Etiquette: If you are in a fellow with a single mage who is basically debuffing for you, and/or a healer, I strongly recommend marking all peas found in the loot for them to cover comps and mana charge costs...those things are expensive! However, note that most Healers are low level 'sponges' and plenty happy to be out there healing away for the great xp and money might not even be an issue. It's fairly cheap to cast 6's vs using the HH. However, steadily debuffing creates plat burn even for the best mages. ===Aelryinth of Leafcull Guest Writer: Han Yu-Ning Well, I wasn't able to make it to VoD night until rather late, as I had family come by and ended up spending most of the night with them. (Lousy inconsiderate family...why can't they log in-game to see me and my family? By the time I logged in the fellowship had already been filled up and it was probably for the best, as I needed to clean the house But, for your reading enjoyment, here are some musings by Han Yu-Ning. Buffbots: First it was Buffbot-free in 2003! Now I say Buffbots no-more for 2004! Campaign slogans if I've ever heard them, but I really think buffbots have ruined the game. Have I ever used them? Of course I have! Will I use them in the future? Maybe from time to time. So why are you complaining about buffbots then? Case in point. A small group of us are getting ready to go out to Teth to fight. One buffbot at the mansion, 5 people waiting. First person gets all buffs finished, logs to save buffs. This goes on for 20 minutes. In this day where xp is measured in the tens of millions per hour, I should be crying about 10 million xp just down the tubes waiting for everyone to buff. That just isn't fun. Jump to three days later. My axer, Felicity Dawnsong, currently level 58 met up with someone in the tusker Pits on AL. She joined the fellowship, and proceeded to start killing monkeys like the rest. 10 minutes into fighting, someone has to leave to go "get buffed" Now we're on AL. This means the only way to get back is burn a Gem, or run through the Tusker Temple, (unless you have a static tusker shrine spawn right outside your mansion). about 15 minutes later he arrives back with the group. Meanwhile, two others have left to go rebuff. The cycle continued on like this for the next 3 hours. I never left the place because I self buff. Every 30 minutes I pull out my wand and cast SK V on my hammer, bludgeon bane on my shield, and I'm good to go for another 30 minutes. Granted, I'm not killing as fast as those with VII's on them, but this brings me to my last gripe about buffbots. Content versus Players. Felicity Dawnsong, my axer in above example, was powerleveled through her first 50 levels. Why? When I restarted playing AC a few months ago, I had my old axer, then level 29 called Quirky Han. She was originally made in homage to Quirky Mo from my old monarchy of Ba'aar, who was a very nice man. I learned a lot about melee's from him and chose axe as my melee of choice (Quirky was sworn to his wife, Quirky Kit). Well, warp to now, Quirky Han, with speced healing, axe, melee def, run, and loyalty, just had too much to fix on her, that coupled with the fact that she was on the wrong account meant it was time to reroll. I justified getting my hourly buffbot fix because I didn't want to trudge through those agonizing first few levels. It was supposed to last only to level 29... With level VII buffs, I was able to get Felicity up to level 40 in 2 days time, including time to play my other characters. First buff session after getting out of the training hall gets her to 22, hit ML, do both newbie pincer quests. That will get you to 10 or 11 when you turn those in, plus now you have plenty of Treated kits. Arcade next, where you can solo swarms of drones and soldiers till you hit 20. Then it's off to 20+ matron with your remaining 10 minutes of buffs. Easy cheesy. After that stay in Matron 20+ for another 10 hours to get to level 40. Now here I am, level 40, and I've missed all the content recommended for my level. I really didn't like the buffbut, but by then I was addicted to the fast xp and I wanted it to stay up there. My next goal was 50, which I made over course of a week or two here and there with VII's. I finally made 50, got my evis pincer and made 51. I looked back at her brief life in Dereth and thought how sad it was that I missed so much. Turbine had started talking more to the players about loot dropping levels and I thought to myself why shouldn't I put some more trust in Turbine and actually try to do stuff more requisite to my own level? At level 50 I was taking on stuff I really shouldn't be able to handle till I was level 65 or more, so I decided to make a change. It first started with acknowledging I had a buffbot problem. I also had to have a long conversation with my buffbot and help him get over the fact that I wouldn't be coming by for my hourly hit anymore. He was speechless. I left him standing all alone outside our monarchy. Poor guy. I hope he learns to stop leaving things all bottled up inside. Sometimes you can't get him to shut up, other times it's like you are talking but no one is there... Anyway... I outfitted Felicity with some gear that I had picked up. Mostly VI jewelry and some V's to fill in the gaps. I have spent the past 8 levels running all over dereth exploring the countryside. I've killed tuskers, olthoi, niffis, and the occasional mattakar. She's hit Aerlinthe (all alone, btw) and ran from Neydissa to Bandit castle. I'd died a lot more (Fel's only two deaths in 50 levels were 1. from jumping into the sub as a newbie and being hit by a war spell just as I was in the air, and 2. taking a portal with nothing but a robe at level 45 that someone told me was Subway...it wasn't.) But it FEELS right to be dying more. South dires critters (which according to Turbines map should be 60-80 are just too tough for me. Those lousy direlands rat and some type of banderlings just spit me out. Chalk up 4 bodies in 2 hours there! So now you can find Felicity roaming the countryside looking for fragments up north killing stuff that she SHOULD be killing at her level. I don't come home for days as I can find all the healing kits, mana stones, and things to destroy them as I need. I even find enough stamin potions to get by as long as I manage my stamina rations properly. I know so many people are obsessed with killing stuff as high above their level as possible, but look at what you are missing! I love to log in and play. I don't stress out about not making my quota of 6 mil an hour. I don't get frustrated when there is a line at the monarchy buffbot and head to MP looking for one. I just play the game. I have zero downtime now. I don't HAVE to buff my weapon or my shield, but I choose to. When they run out and I'm killing stuff, I just keep on swinging. I've rambled on enough about this, and probably irritated enough god-mode quake players, but that's okay. Everyone has their play style and this game makes amends for both. I personally hope Turbine finds a way to get rid of the buffbots. I yearn for the days when people would actually engineer characters that could help themselves rather than just be an xp machine. Thanks for listening to me on my soapbox;-) Bike ride from hell It was a cool evening by Yuma standards. While 85 degrees might seem hot to most people, it is cool to us. I figured to take my normal ride and maybe extend it a touch. I hoped to find a path to the Hub. This is a spot where the road joins four paths. One heads up a big hill and then swings into a fast scary downhill. That downhill ride is a narrow path with drop-offs on both sides. It twists and turns over the ridgeline for about a mile. I'm a long way from doing that ride. The climb to the top would have almost killed me when I was young and in shape. There is a small rock up there dubbed Cliff's rock, as I would sit on it and suck air a lot. Hauling myself and the 30 added pounds up there would have had Jeff looking for a body. There is one path that leads far back into a canyon and another that climbs the back hills and is an ATC only ride. The next two I generally use to get to the hub and back. One comes in from the west and the other from the north. The north covers a washed out flood plains and requires a lot of skill to ride. The west is the road I was using to get there. It is rocky, part sand and hard pack. I crossed over the Devils Highway and found a road going east. It did not seem like the right road but it was. Time had changed it or my memory was off. While I did not feel great I knew it was going to get a lot hotter this week, and this was my only chance to get a hard ride in. When I hit the Hub I was tired. I rested a bit and sucked a lot of water out of my camelback. I debated turning around and riding back the way I came. This would be in the face of a light wind, making it cooler, and down hill. The other option was a shorter but far harder ride over the rocks and sand of the floodplain. I decided to take the shorter harder ride. Big mistake. I think by my old standards of fitness this would have been a fun ride. There was not a lot of deep sand and what was there was not rutted. The jeeps had mostly pounded the rocks down so it was more bumpy than wheel stopping. For my current level of fitness it was hell on earth. The thing about a ride like this is you cannot stop. If you do stop, getting back up on the bike is a nightmare. The rocks and sand make it very hard to get your feet back in the clips. I have seen more people fall trying to get on a bike than riding one. So I was determined to keep going, no matter how exhausted I got. I was sucking air like a bellows, my legs burnt, my arms were weak and my back was killing me. I felt the front shock depress almost to the stops several times. I was having trouble keeping my weight back. Hitting the rocks caused my body to push forward and almost over the bars. Despite the pain I had to keep spinning, or I would have crashed for sure. I was on the edge of disaster for most of the ride. I finally hit the end and climbed out on to a flat sandy plateau. There I dropped on my back. My first reaction was to scream in pain as my back locked up. I was too exhausted to turn over. All I could do was lie there and suck air, while trying to relax my back. I felt my legs locking up and knew I had to get going. If I let my legs cool down I was going to have a hard time getting restarted. I struggled to my feet and tried to get on the bike. Being in a very low gear and on sand, getting started was not going to be easy. A short ways away is another rocky wash. I decided to just walk to and over the wash. I figured I would have loosened up enough by then to get back on the bike. From there on it was not so bad. It was slightly downhill and only spots of gravel. My only worry at this point was Rosa. This was to be a half hour bike ride and I was going on an hour and a half. It was also starting to get dark. I figured she was worried sick and calling Jeff to being his truck to find me. So I pushed hard to get back. I finally hit my driveway and was ready to die in my chair. Wouldn't you know it, Rosa had stayed late at work and was not even home yet.