Fist de Yuma - May 13, 2003

This and that I put Rosa on a plane this morning. She will be gone for a week on a business trip. I'm not sure if that will let me play more but it will mean I'll be able to play in the evening. Thanks to those who have asked about her health. She is doing great. The doctor said she was in the top 5% of diabetics. Her only frustration is not losing weight. I don't worry about that because she is losing inches. Lowering fat while adding muscle has to be better than just losing weight. With a very low amount of content added with the last patches many of us have had a bad case of between patch blues. I was told that some alliances are showing a big drop in chain flow because people are not motivated. I'm doing a lot of stuff but little of it has the type of flare that makes a good story. Getting pincers and Tusks can be fun but unless there is something different it is not worth writing about. Fortunately there were two things that happened this week with Tusks that will give me some material. Now that the monster balancing is done I hope we will start to see a load of content. I would like to see something that we really have to work at and not solved by someone before most are off of work. Very disappointed It could have been the spot but I was very disappointed with my first test of Fist de Yuma now that he is set up skill wise. I waited a long time to spec magic defense and expected to do a lot better than I did. Skill wise I hit AB with 477 UA, 465 melee defense, 344 magic defense and 381 healing. These are buffed numbers of course. With a 273 base strength I was hoping to start inflicting good damage now and I expected to brush off the spells and melee attacks. I knew that UA is inherently weak for attack but Fist's forte is defense. It would not matter if my damage was low as long as I could keep ahead of their healing rate. With no range hitting or drawing power it is imperative that I take little or no damage when I charge a mob. My test before was a hunt around AB. This has to be one of the most nasty spots outside of VoD. Even the Plains does not give me as much trouble. To insure that the test was safe I did a full bane of all my armor and buffed my shield. I buffed every weapon type. This meant a long buff time but it was a full power test. First thing I faced was an Acid Coral Golem. That fell with little trouble and I resisted the spells it tossed at me. A Bandie came out to play and I took him out. A bit east of that fight I ran into a large spawn of different types. I saw Grivvers, Olthoi, Bandies, Drudges and other sundry monsters. I decided to pick the edge until they were all dead. I started with some Drudge Bloodletters. To my surprise they landed on me about half the time. I must have drifted to close the pack because at this point it got rocky. (Darn sticky.) A Wisp charged in and started chain casting. I resisted most of the spells. I finally dispatched the Drudges and was able to pull my piercing weapon to take out the Wisp. While doing that another Drudge joined in and several Olthoi attacked. The Drudge started chain casting on me. I resisted most of the spells but enough got through that I was at about 120 hit points. Now I just had to face the Olthoi, three OWs and an OM. I would have been better to just kill them and not worry about health. I guess I lost my nerve because I was being hit. I was also afraid of another spell caster joining the battle before I defeated the Olthoi. I hit heal and if failed. That lowered my melee enough to let them hit me and I'm at 79 hit points. Heal fail, 39 hit points. I decided to break contact until I healed and made all of two steps before I died. Darn Olthoi M's are nasty. Well so much for maximum defense. I could not survive my first big battle. My attacks were missing at around 40% or more and the Olthoi were hitting me far more often than I thought possible. War spells were landing and I seldom resisted Life and Creature spells. All and all it was a very disappointing start for such an advanced melee. At this point I don't think I'll change Fist. I have Jr coming up to take Sword at 125. He will be my power melee player. Fist will be mainly for big quests where they need a strong melee in front. I'll be adding to health a lot so I have a shot at lasting when things get hot. For hunting loot and material FA and Mage will be my main players. Despite a lot of changes it is still a mage game. Firestorm We had a hunt in VoD today with several Elder and Moby leading. This one was a touch different because we had mostly mages. We only had one archer and no melee. What this created was something to see. Most of the time it seemed we were fighting monsters that were vulnerable to fire. We all tended to use arc spells when attacking at a distance. This was for either speed or terrain. With this many mages it created quite a view. With fireballs arching overhead it looked like a rain of fire. Some were very close to each other as to make a line of fire. I have to admit that the graphic of AC will still surprise me. It might not be top of the line any more but it is nothing to laugh at. I think Moby read my last column because we decided to take down the Mountain King. The golem guards were quickly dispatched and were no threat. The King himself hit me with a few drains that I had to heal from. Now we were ready for the main battle. For some reason most of the people were right up next to it. I decided to stay well out of range of drains and arc spells into it. While it took a touch longer than most VoD monsters the return was outstanding. This is one monster I'll not be passing on if in a group. Not so sure solo as I learned my lesson with the Monkey. It was not all roses as we lost the archer in the battle. I'm not sure if she had melee defense spec'd or not but I thought it strange that the mages lived and she died. We backtracked from there to pick her back up. If with the right group there is nothing like VoD for excitement and xp. Painting with a broad brush Ever so often someone will come up with and idea to help the high level players. I had one the other day I presented on CoD. This was to have higher weld weapons. My suggestion is to create 350/375/400 weld weapons. One reaction you always see for things like this is; "The high leveled macro'ed chain player are powerful enough!" That may well be but there are a whole lot of player out there that never cheated, macroed or chained. Fist de Yuma is over three years old. He has utilized the new changes to improve his stats to the maximum possible. Using ACStats I find his level is the equivalent to a 152lv player. I still have major problems hitting let alone damaging monsters. Places my Mage (140 equivalent) can go with little problem I find Fist has to avoid if not teamed with a mage. Even my 91lv BM can do better most places. As long as a mage can land a level VII spell they can do as well a 10000lv mage and better than a 200lv melee. This is not a complaint it is an observation. I love playing melee and there are times when there is no better player. I feel there is still a lot of work to do before balance is achieved between classes. Melee is still far behind archers and mages and could use a lot of help. Bigger weld weapons that do a lot more damage would be a nice start. Yes, the cheat and chain players would gain a lot more than those who play the game and not the numbers. That is no reason to punish all high-level melee players. Don't paint all high-level players as chainers. Slight detour I was on my way to do the Prize Box quest for my VN column. (Look for this column in a few days.) Not knowing that they had changed the location of the quest start I was headed to Qbar. This was where we would start when the quest first came out. My route was through the Sub of course. While porting into the Sub I heard Thomas Morus say "No one is on to help me." I stopped to ask what kind of help he needed. He said he had died twice while going to the Spec Skill Temple and both bodies were on a ledge he could not get to. I assumed this was some inaccessible spot on the mountainside and only a +Admin could help him. Thomas was desperate and asked me if I could take a look. It seemed a very valued set of leggings were on one body. I agreed and we took off to the ledge above the temple. After buffing I found my jump was up to 501. I figured that would serve but I did not take any chances, I also put on bludgeoning protection. His jump off spot was a little off the beaten path. He headed right and followed the ledge for a while. He said he had jumped there. I checked for his body with the "[" key but did not find one. I figured this was a lost cause but it would not hurt me to do a shift jump from there and see what happened. It was a darn good thing I had buffed my jump up and added protects. I was bouncing down the mountainside taking a nice chunk of hit points with each hit. When I stopped I had taken just slightly less than 200 points of damage. To my surprise I was in a slight slope with his two bodies in sight. Both could be gotten from that spot so I told him to give me permission. The first body had a very nice set of leggings and some DI's. The second one had some DI's and a lot of house items. I recovered them all and met Thomas back in the Sub. It was not the most memorable quest I have ever been on but it was fun. It seemed Thomas had worked hard to get those leggings and losing them would have depressed him to no end. I have a new friend out of it and something to write about. (grin) My good deed for the day done I headed off on my quest. Tusks and success As you may have read in my past column the 80+ tusk has been a thorn on my side. I have made two shots at it with Jr and failed both times. I succeed on this quest a while back but it was when it was camped or with a group so I don't really count them. After getting all the tusks but the 80+ I jumped on a statue and buffed up. I know this one would take some time. I hit the exit portal out of the Rampager Tusk with the intent to run to the 80+ in a direct route. As I hit the exit I saw the water so I headed straight there with the intent to follow the beach to the 80+. For those that know this dungeon you can see I'm making a mistake. The water you can see from there is on the opposite side of the island. I soon realized I was going south and I should be going north. Finding my way over the island was a pain, especially with impassable mountains and every monkey in the world on my tail. I finally hit the dungeon. I healed up the damage and was ready to start my advance. I did not have any de-buffs at this point so I saved a gem. There were a few people hunting there but not enough to make it safe. I was smart enough this time to have the good set of armor on. I also had buffed my underwear. This let me fight while de-buffed if I could keep them in front of my shield. If they got around in back of me I had to gem. With my study of the map last week I was not totally lost. It still was a pain to navigate but I had a general idea of where to go. There were key parts that told me if I was on the right track or not. The "not" happened a few times but it let me reverse my path and get back on track. Early on I joined the fellow that was there. I figured it would be nice to talk to some people as I made my way. I met a two person team in the hall leading to the Tusk room. I helped them clear the hallway before moving on. In the Tusk room I dispelled the de-buffs and settled down for a fight. It took a while but I cleared the room and had time to get the Tusk. Yaaaa, at last. A short time later one of the fellow members had died. It seemed they had lost track of time and had dropped buffs in battle. I offered to try to recover for them. They were in the hallway a short ways back when I last saw them. I say them because it was a fighting team even though only one had died. I think the other was able to port out. I fought my way to the end of the hall but no body. After clearing I used the "[" key to try and find it. Still no go. I fought to the next ramp and got into a big battle. After that was over I started hitting the "[" key again. This time I got a hit. It was behind the wall were I was fighting. Fortunately I had cleared that entire section during the battle so I could recover the body and port out without danger. I met the player at Monkey town and retuned the stuff. Whereas I have a lot of reasons I would like to see drop on death removed from the game I admit that adventures like this really help the game. I wish there was a way to have adventures in body recovery without forcing us to carry pack full of junk to cover deaths. Tusks part two Abin was at the mansion and I was telling him about my Tusk adventure. He had not got a Tusk in a while. I also had to head out there with Deadeye so we decided to team up. After transferring the good armor to him and fletching up some fire arrows we were set to go. I loaded up Mage to buff him as he is not self buffing yet. It will be a long while until Deadeye is self-buffing. I have some stuff set aside that will let him use the skills he has but I have neglected to get it over to him. Abin had not done this quest very much so I was leading. We had little trouble clearing the first two and were ready for the 70+. Here we had a little trouble, especially in the tusk room. For some reason I was missing a lot. The first two dungeons were very camped so we did not have to fight much. The 70+ was empty of fighters so we had to clear every room. We did great when I could hit but I was missing a lot more than hitting. We make a good team but with me missing so much it was getting hard to advance. I was cursing Turbine under my breath for much of the battle. (grin) We finally got to the Tusk room but we were stuck. The spawn rate was higher than our kill rate. We decided to just get the tusk and run to the exit. That took us a little while but worked. From there we headed to the Rampager and quickly got that tusk. Other than Abin falling into the pit we had a direct path. This was camped as well so there was little danger. Abin was thinking of getting the 80+. I felt we might be able to but my buffs were going. I recommended he not go without a melee wall. We decided to pass on that one. From there I was headed out to get a pincer so Abin decided to help me buff him. Abin noted the only spell that did not replace a spell was Bow Mastery. I checked the points and sure enough, I had 40 more points of bow. I had missed casting Bow Mastery when I had buffed him before. No wonder I was missing so much.