God I hate Drudges
The pesky buggers have some nice loot and if lucky die quick. The problem is not enough hit points for drain to be effective. This means more than two Drudges can chain cast you to death.
Two things will do you in fast, lag and the fact that they defend each other. I have two examples, both close together.
I'm hunting in my favored spot. All the Shreths and Bandies have been cleared and there are two Drudges on the hill. I lead off with Yield of course, then Fire Vuln. The two of them are in my face and I take two blasts of lighting, bring me to 105 hit points. I blast number one but he is still living. Mostly they die with one shot but sometimes it takes two.
I'm worried but number two turns and starts back to the spawn site. I blast number one. Then I go from a clear beach to four Drudges attacking me. A second after this I'm at 20hp and I'm running. Then I'm dead. The four were out of radar range when I attacked. Lag hid them from me until the last second.
I had just finished restocked so I did not even have a C-note. I had to sell some peas to get the note. I also had to buy a new set of boots. My current set is worth 7k and even with high value death items have a shot at dropping.
Had a little adventure getting into the C-note fort. Two Diamond Golems attacked me on the wall. With 89hp I jumped and ran out of the fort. I healed up and killed three Golems to clear they way. That took enough time that I had to rebuff. While I was rebuffing no less than five people ran into the fortress. Where were they when I needed help?
I knew the body was in a bad spot. Lot of stuff spawn there including the Drudges. I saw someone fighting when I got near the body. The new bar for health is great. I saw he was at half health and fired a few heals.
I have seen a lot of stupid players in my day. The melee was in a bind. He had drawn a Bandy but some Drudges had joined in. That was why he was in trouble. The stupid players see their body is free and run to loot it.
Mostly what happens next is the melee dies and the stupid player is overwhelmed. This is why I went into support mode as soon as I saw there were people hunting there.
He thanked me and said the Cat was doing a number on him. I said I knew, by body was right over there from the same thing. I was surprised at what happened next. Several players dropped what they were doing to help me recover it. On the island nice guys finish first!
I logged for a bit and my spot was very empty of other fighters when I got back. After clearing the beaches I headed up into the hills.
I love fighting several Bandies at once. They have so much health that I can grab points to full from close to dead. Their stamina is also a great source of power.
I hunt Shreths as well there. Not much XP but the AI and peas make them a good target. The dropping of a key from time to time is also nice. What I do is stamina to mana then cold vuln. As it gets into range I drain stamina and a single cold blast will finish it off.
The AI is strange. The one you attack will stay with you. They almost never stay at the spawn site. Every Shreth in range will join in but only for one hit or so. After that one hit they run back to their site. So I stand there, take a bit of damage. Loot repeat. They die fast and let me recharge.
After I had a few battles with Bandies and Shreths a single Drudge spawned a few feet away from me. I hit it with yield and fire vuln. Single blast and it was dead. Opps I have 5 Drudges around me. I don't even have a path to run.
What really sucked was it was the second death in two buffing cycles. I hate Drudges. Sell peas, by c-note and boots. Fight to fortress.
This time I got lucky. Body was well guarded but their AI got stupid. I was able to Yield/Fire vuln them and they just stood there. Got four Drudges with only one getting into my face. Two Bandies and five Shreth later I had my stuff.
Upgrade Blues revisited
As you remember from last week I'm sending my memory back to Dell and ordered two 256meg chips. The chips came in and installed easy. This time I got smart and did a Norton memory check first. Hell, one chip was bad. O'well, at least I'm at 265meg. I'll send the other chip back.
Second thing I wanted to do was install Decal. That went a lot better. Program is nice. Word or warning, there is a verbal message when you get close to your body. A kid whispers, "I see dead people." I about jumped out of my seat.
It paid for the time spent already. While Cliff Bowman was on the island he killed several Shallow D's. I don't loot with him as they don't drop anything I would not just sell. I didn't know they drop keys. When the body rotted Sixth Sense popped up with a key message.
Next was to get Sygate home network going. I have Lantatic on my computers right now. Problem is I have lost the paper work to reinstall it. Also Lantatic's internet share does not work with AC. I have heard good things about Sygate so I was looking forward to duel logging.
I also need to get my portable on the net. Trying to install some internet software by a big IP's trashed my portable computer. I had to reinstall Windows, which lost Lantatic.
Trying one set of drivers locked up my main server. Going into safe mode let me delete the drivers. Using a different driver got me up and running. Now I get access to some of the stuff I wrote on the portable computer a while back. One I plan to post next month at the story site.
Sygate was less successful. It installed on the server ok but on my main it could not find the network card. Sygate is getting their first test of support. I was going to get a graphic program but their support failed my test. I hope Sygate passes.
This morning I spilt coffee on my keyboard. It seemed ok but slowly started to crap out. I left the house early to pick up my wife at the airport and get a new keyboard. I got the Microsoft internet pro keyboard. It has a nice feel to it and the function keys are a good touch. Only problem is it does not fit well in my keyboard drawer.
I also picked up a 10/100 hub and some network cards. My current hub is only 10 so my network will be much faster. If Sygate cannot get the program to find my 3com network card I'll replace it.
My major problem is AC locking up. It takes a few hours but in time will lock up. Same problem I had when I installed the second 128meg chip. This is not a memory card mismatch as I only have one chip in there. I activated Crash Guard to see if that will catch whatever is causing the lockup.
The lockup happened in game once. I was lucky to be in a dead zone. A guy I was hunting with had died and I was by his body.
Funny thing is I don't even have to be playing AC to get the lockup. Just being logged into AC in the background will do it. Trying to bring it forward will frieze the computers. I can only hope that Crash Guard will fix it, if not I will have to be in the habit of rebooting every hour or so.
Speaking of the story site I did win story of the month. Thanks for everyone who read it and voted.
Message
I would like to see something done about cheaters and grief players. I kind of like UO new policy. They track complains about a player. If it becomes clear that he/she is a detriment to the game they are removed.
That said I don't like EQ's policy of, we ban if we feel like it. Too much power has gone to there heads at times. This has led to banning for disagreements, sometimes even outside the game disagreements.
I was asked to put this in the column so we can at least tell MS how we feel.
http://www.petitiononline.com/AC01/petition.html
This is in response to a new bug the exploiters found. They can transfer stuff that is not transferable. What this means is the Black stone of fire is being sold. Others are getting Altan stones and giving them to vassals. It is also being used to get some players fully hilted again.
The cheaters will create a new player who gets the parts for hilting a weapon. They transfer the items with the bug. They then delete the new player and do it again.
There was talk of a rollback but this does not seem to be in the works. I would like to see a few accounts go away on this one. The petitioner is right, without punishment of exploiters the will never stop.
By not punishing the last group of cheaters they reward them. Every hilted weapon should have been deleted if they had two, not just the extras. The gear users have created havoc on the servers and caused the coders to work on that instead of the game.
Punish cheaters!
Some say that the cheaters don't affect the game. We have proven time and time again that it does. Here is an example.
I'm hunting on the island. I yield and lighting vuln a Bandie. It stayed at the spawn spot and I'm ready to blast with lighting bolts. Suddenly a gear using Pk comes running along the beach. He is moving twice as fast as he should be able to. The Bandie starts to chase so my lighting bolt missed. The Bandie starts moving as fast as the cheater.
In a flash the Bandie has stopped chasing the cheater and is in my face. Fortunately I was prepared for this. I had started a stamina to mana spell as soon as I saw the cheater had drawn the Bandie. I was at full mana when it appeared in front of me.
I have seen others not so fortunate. Gear users lag others while speeding up monsters. This is pure death many times over.
Newsgroup Tales
New Lugie spots are a challenge for even the best of fighters.
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OK, so as soon I log in, my monarch (a restless fellow, axe maniac, always wanting to be the first on new content) tells me he is gathering up an army for the lugian quest.
For warmup, we first went to get the new Virindi spells. That part was a cakewalk. It gives me a warm fuzzy to slay Virindi with arrogant names :D
The new spells seem to *not* stack with their equivalents just override it.
After that we met in Qualabar, mostly Skelde monarchy members with the notable exception of Kachiko V, a high level unarmed girl and our very own Sajer.
We split into 4 groups. Skelde took his right hand man, Nemesis Enforcer to cast level 7 spells on his axe and camp the main guy who holds the hauberk. Kachiko, being a very sturdy and well equipped girl (Hush now. I meant battle gear) took the first camp, solo. (on a side note : when it spawned, she took out most of them including the commander, except that the latecomers looted her kill during the fight. Well It was in the qualabar area .... filthy den of thieves).
Aiel Warrior and Thelis took the second and Sibella, Sajer and I went to the third.
It started out boooooring. Nothing spawned at the exact coords we were given, but we were repeatedly assured that a Commander will spawn there with his henchmen, as soon as he gets triggered. So we stood there vigilantly, rebuffing as needed.
Nothing.
Well it turns out that the action was about 0.5 klicks away. There was a *huge* spawn of Lugians of all sizes there.
People too. Lots. Dead ones and live ones. So we started to slay lugians randomly. As luck would have it, a Commander spawned and Sibby killed it and picked up some sort of pauldrons. I was fairly busy to stay alive and slaughter lugians, so I hadnt really registered that Sajer died twice then gave up on wanting to come back. (It is a long, boring 13K run from Qbar). So we got to test firsthand the corpse looting permission. Got his gear from the first one then had to log and fire up 6th sense to locate the second one in the rubble thickly covering the area.
As I looted the last item from his body, a bunch of Extas and Tiatus ganged up on me and chopped me in pieces. Not sure what has gotten into me, standing around for more than an hour must have interfered with my combat skills, since I didnt even try to heal. Lost my Str 6 brace, which I never had lost before. That sort of threw me off my guard and sent into minor panic mode.
Started to run back immediately, and as luck would have it, most of the quest campers have moved on, leaving the spawn almost intact. (And it is an insane spawn, very fast, with big lugies and dread
matties all over. Think of the Citadel on steroids). After much circling around I recovered my brace and death items, just to get brained by a rock, right on the spot. 10 vitae. Why, hello Mr Lifestone.
The lugie even had the nerve to send me a private @tell to the extent of "U SUK and dont come back here no more ya hear. G00b!" (Well the wording is not exact but the gist of it is)
This time I dropped gems/robes only, so I said hell with it. It was late and I was tired. Gear was running out of mana left and right, with the vitae I could not re-equip any of it so I asked Sib to buff me up, I cast Vs on my fire axe (best I could handle) and headed to the OP BSD.
Good old, silly, predictable, vulnerable monkies. I love them. 10 percent vit cleared up in about 5 minutes. (Would have been sooner were it not for the fact I had to run around quite a bit to find live monkies).
Then my vassal told me he raised enough shards by gambling to get an MSA, we chatted a bit and I logged. (Mental note : I need to talk with that kid, now he is talking about PK. All his gear is either no-drop or not very valuable at this point and he is a life spec mage with 100 starting endurance).
All in all it was an interesting day. I am out of about 200K in lost items and mana burnt by standing around on guard. I *will* go back for revenge, fairly soon.
Maybe I head to the casinos to recover my loss. :P (I carry around 2 million in gold/pyreal peas that all came from loot. No way I can actually use that much or burn them faster as they keep coming in).
kat/CG
O-
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Leaches are a problem by Janos has a good answer.
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I made it to 36th level, and hanging around in the second and third floors of the OHN. Im a UA base 250 in UA and Melee Def, not bad not phenon.
So anyway, me and my wife just finishing killing off one of the full spawns. (One of those full on fights where more Olthois are still showing up and youve already been fighting in the same spot so long that bodies are turning into loot piles.)
Any we finish the fight, and begin the health, stamina, and loot gaining rituals, before the next spawn. We seen an archer come bolting in our direction and begin picking up our loot. We didnt say anything, most of it was on the ground already, but we were still looting our kills when he started.
Then, when the only items left are trash the archer leaves. The spawn fires up again and me and the wife are looking at 10 or so big red bugs. We stand side by side and keep the lot in front of us and begin killing.
The archer comes bolting back and begins firing at the bugs Im swinging at. (From a safe distance.) "Well maybe the first one was a mistake.", I think. Target another he waits till Im swinging then begins hurling arrows into mine again.
This rubbed me the wrong way so I says to the wife. "Lets break and use the archer for a shield". We both turned and ran 15 feet or so (if there is such a distance) behind the archer. By the time he saw what was happening he was completely surrounded and trapped.
Two seconds later he was dead and we were fighting all the Olthoi again.
Ive played an archer before, even an archer in the OHN. All I ask is the same thing I ask of anyone Melee, Wizard, or archer. If you are going to use me as a shield, thats fine, I got no problem with that (Just make an effort not to kill mine, I am making an effort not to kill yours). If you are going to use me as a shield and kill what Im working on either put me in your fellowship or get ready to run. Cause if I am not making xp I dont swing or stand there and take a beating for anyone.
Ive done this to meleers, archers, and wizards. If they consistently strike what Im swinging at.. I go out of combat mode and go stand behind them until they decide the some other place (usually the LS) is the place to be.
I usually die for doing this (No good place to be when some one does the panic run of death....), but that doesnt bother me. I can handle a death or three.
So am I evil?
Janos 36th level UA Wintersebb
P.S. Ive got no beef with archers in general, this just happened to be a bad one of the lot. Ive had many a archer, warrior, and wizard come to my aid in the time of vit. In general I find that most the people in the game are rather great people.. but Im still trying to figure out to do with "the others."
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Nasier makes some changes and discovers himself a bit.
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This weekend marked two much more tangible milestones that the mad leveling race for Nasier.
A very old friend was recently reborn. He asked if I would ride shotgun for him in the Incunabula Vault. Having slain thousands of Olthoi, how could I refuse? At the time, he was unable to find someone tied to the swamp temple. Barra and I set out to tie to do just that.
Exiting the swamp portal from Dryreach is always exciting. One never knows what manner of monster will be trying to attack you before you fully materialize. A group of bones and a group of Virindi with their
Tusker servants took an unhealthy interest in us. Once we were clear, we waited for their spells to wear off. A smart man does not travel in the swamps of the Direlands with Imperil V and Acid Vulnerability V on them.
We got the tie with minimal fuss. I decided while I was here to scout the vault, so that I could be useful as guide as well as a grim servant of death. We entered and found the vault to be one of the more creepy
places we had been. The atmosphere is heavy with dread. This is not a place to be taken lightly. I checked the map that Miracle Max had made and we went in. We were making very good progress, finding the Olthoi not much thicker than the nest.
At the first large room, we met another group. There was one more powerful than us one less powerful and one clearly over his head. We tore into the room like a force of nature. I was barely winded when we left the room. The bridges provided a sense of amusement. The Olthoi were loathe to surrender their height advantage, even though we could destroy them in detail because of it.
We entered the second big room and my enchantments began to fade. Wandering around in this place without acid bane on my scale hauberk was painful. So, as the battle raged, I refreshed my enchantments. It was then it dawned on me. This place, this room, this eater of men deathtrap and I was enchanting my war gear in the middle of it without fear. That realization of power felt good.
We pressed onward, killed many Olthoi and recovered a major stinging stone for my atlan blade but the feeling of power was worth the trip.
This also drove home that its time to replace the green scale hauberk. For some time I have had better armor but I kept wearing the hauberk because its easily identifiable, its one piece (making baning a snap) and I am attached to it. That hauberk was acquired from Raf shortly after the Shadow War and has served me well ever since. The new gold on brown studded leather cuirass and dark gold chain sleeves are lighter, better armor and have better creature spells but I have very mixed feelings.
A weekend for changes, internal and external.
Nasier
Leafcull
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