Fist de Yuma - May 11, 2004

This and That I have not mentioned this before because of security reasons, but Jeff is off to war again. He left in the advance party this weekend and arrived in Iraq soon after. When I get his e-mail and address I'll post it here. Care packages are more than welcome over there, and Jeff is known for sharing with his fellow Marines. I have his account information and will be logging him from time to time. This is mostly to pay his rent but I would also like to level him some. It would be a nice surprise for Jeff when he gets home. Things are returning to normal here now. Well as normal as this family gets. (g) The column should be back to its standard length next week. I have a lot of things I want to do but have had to put them off. I could level this week, but any adventure that locked me into play I had to avoid. Leadership We had a good example of the importance of leadership Wednesday. We had our normal VoD night going. Nene was leading. We had a good mix of player levels but were a touch heavy on the mage side. Everything was going well. Monsters were falling fast, and we worked as a team. There was no greed. Indeed, many monsters went un-looted as no one wanted to even appear greedy. We were having a great time. We hit a glade near the very center of VoD. We had it about clear. Near the back end we ran across some Jello's. This time, we had been mostly avoiding the Jello's. Sometimes we take them down for their loot, but they are too dangerous to kill all the time. The Jello's did something strange. They all started their bouncing run towards the west. It turned out that someone had died, and they were chasing towards her lifestone. I got to a position where I could shoot spells at them. I was not worried about their attacks. They normally never fire off spells after they start moving. Their melee attack is nothing to worry about, and they had a long way to bounce before that was a problem. To my surprise, when they stopped their bounce west and turned on me, they all used spells to attack. I almost died and had to run behind a tree to stay alive. We finally defeated them and it was time to clean up the damage. Somehow during the fight Nene had died. I did not see when it happened. I only knew she had died when I found the body. I joked about it and then got permission to loot. We were waiting for Nene to return. A short while later we got Nene's death message. She had run into something nasty during the run. I did not feel like picking up the leadership duties. My bike ride for the day had not gone well. It was a lot hotter than I figured it would be, and I over did the ride. I was feeling sick and was only playing because of VoD night. (Lets face it, having the mind of a 21 year old and the body of a 54 year old, sucks.) Before I know it, the group had attacked another group of Jello's. I ran up to provide support to the attack. I noted that we already had bodies. Again, the Jello's were in melee mode so I was not worried. I should have been because, like the last battle, they had gone back to a magic attack as soon as I got near them. With point blank range I was unable to slide away from the attack. I was in total heal mode and just hoping to get enough health to run. With four or five attacking me, I was unable to break off the attack before I died. I'm sure an experienced PK would have survived that, but I seldom get into trouble that way. That is one advantage to those who play the PK game, they know how to avoid spells at point blank range. I saw that all but three of Nene DI's had dropped when I died. I joked that Nene had much better DI's than I did. I quickly buffed up and started the run back. I met Nene at the LS and gave her the three DI of hers I had left. Halfway through the forest I saw some Olthoi chasing Nene. Before I got far, I had two or three of them on me. I got to the glade but had failed to shake the Olthoi. To make matters worse, I had picked up a few Undead and some of the colored Grasshoppers as well. (Grasshoppers are Gromnie. There at four types at VoD. All chase for a long time and are bad news to most mages.) I ran up a hill, close to our group, and started trying to clear my chasers. It was a close thing on the run so the first job was to heal up. I got that done and the Olthoi and Undead left. I took care of the grasshoppers and was ready to support the group with their battle. Some Grasshoppers were chasing someone. I hit them with a heal and de-buffed a Grasshopper. That got whoever was being chased free. I was in battle with the Grasshopper when I took a spell attack from the side and died. For some reason, part of our group decided to attack the same Jello's that killed me before. This was not smart because we still had bodies to collect. The spot was not easy to get to. The back spawns were not clear, making it even harder for those who had died to safely return. With most of the leaders dead and returning to the battle, things were breaking down. Needless to say I was ticked. There was nothing I could do about it. I set Safire to rebuff and got another glass of water. I must have been recovering health wise by then, as my brother in law's ribs were smelling good rather then turning my stomach. When I feel sick, food is not something I enjoy. I started the run back. This time I tried to follow the far left path through the forest. My hope was to avoid the Olthoi who were making the forest run such a mess. What I did not know was there were two spawns of Olthoi, and there was no way to avoid attracting at least one of them. So I hit the glade with Olthoi, Undead and Grasshoppers on my tail again. I cleared the chasers that stayed, and looted my body. It took me a bit to sort out my DI's from Nene's. Most of them were hers, and she has labeled them. It makes things a lot easer when everyone labels their DI's. I returned Nene's DI's, and we waited for people to recover their bodies. Ken' and I started clearing the spawns guarding the two bodies that were near us. Everyone else either ported to re-buff or were in support of the body recoveries farther back. Ken' is relatively new to the allegiance, and this was one of the few times I had a chance to work with him. It is great to work with a mage as skillful as he is. Despite our fighting without the group we were every effective. The people returning for their bodies had less of a gauntlet to run through when we were done. We had one body I was glad to discover. Electric Skin had lagged out and died early in the evening. Ken' and I had spent some time clearing around the body. Electric Skin had rejoined the group but had not made it to the body. He said later that he did not know he had died. I think he already had vit and was trying to LS recall when he lagged out. Only our clearing the body and telling him to get it prevented item loss. After all the bodies were recovered in our immediate area, we tried to hunt a bit, while the rest of the group got gathered. They were having troubles. I was thinking I would be better off in bed than in front of the computer, so I had to call it a night. Ken' had left by this time so Electric Skin ran off to find the group. It was clear to me that our group went downhill fast after Nene died. I was not feeling up to assuming a leadership roll and Soul Riper had left a bit earlier. I had learned a long time ago that groups run by such people as Mars-Hill and Moby Dick did much better than any other group. Seeing our group without our leaders brought home to me the importances of good leadership in VoD. Amazing Song If you have not heard the song, I need a Patron, yet, go to this link. It is amazingly funny. http://www.soundclick.com/bands/6/mckoobmusic.htm Example of change There is no doubt that, if you have the right help, AC has gotten amazingly easy to level in. Even in the last year things have changed enough that someone can get to the magic 50 in half the time. The last player I leveled from the start was Death Mute. He did the Tusker route. I had great Armor and Weapons for him to use from the very start. There were always good fellows and I had little problems growing him. Nevertheless, it took me 24 hours of play to work him to 50. That is quite fast if you compare the old days. I remember bragging about making three levels in three days while working Old Mine. That was when Fist was in the low 20's, so we are not talking about much xp. Today I can make two levels in a single hour, and that is when in the mid 40's! Of course, we were lucky to have level II buffs back then. Level VII did not even exist. Also, no one was high enough to toss VII's if it did exist. Anyway, I was leveling Salvage Mule Two this week. From his start to the magic level 50, it only took him 12 hours. So even from a year ago, we can level twice as fast. I have also leveled Salvage Mule Two to 44 and he has not spent a single second hunting. Even the third mule, Salvage Mule One, is 15th level from passup. I remember when GSA was taken out because it was unbalancing. In other words, armor that would be low end average today, was overpowering in the first two years of the game. The king melee at the start was UA. Most people were using 1-4 weapons and 2-6 weapons were highly valued. Even with 6 to 16 weapons that can be tinked to 13 to 21, UA is below the more costly melee skills when figuring damage over time. So we take far less damage, inflict far more damage, and get many times the XP return. My only complaint is trying to keep up. (g) Every time I work up a weapon set, they bump up the weapons and I have to start over. Allegiance I get a lot of requests for information about our allegiance. Our web site is Casadeyuma.com.