Banning players
It is strange how stupid some players are. A lot of players are getting bans for swearing. I hear excuses like, I was killed and it slipped out.
Excuse me? I was in a battle the other day with two Bandies. A Drudge joined in. I was draining the Bandies and firing fireballs at the Drudge. I'm taking a lot of damage so I keep switching to a Bandie to drain health and back to the Drudge. First blast does 98 points of damage. Second is resisted.
I drain again and switch. I hit my 3 (fireball) and frieze. I watch the chain go yellow. I come out and the fireball goes off. I'm at about 25 hit points. Again the Drudge resists. (315 skill) I get one drain off but it is not enough to save me.
Now I'm pounding on my desk and glad my wife is not home to hear my language. The air turns blue with the power of my words. At no time did I think to reflect those thoughts to my keyboard. There is no way cursing will just slip out.
These kids will have to learn you cannot run wild on the servers. This is not Lord of the Flys it is Asheron's Call. There is a COD. For a long time people have gotten away with whatever they wanted to. With limited resources MS has a hard time enforcing the COD.
When someone gets a ban it is not Nazi tactics. Try and do a little growing up. Cursing is not tolerated here. If they catch you, you will get a ban. Don't be surprised. Don't blame anybody but yourself.
Thor Azaroth
Congratulation to Thor for being the second person to make 126. This accomplishment is all the more remarkable because he is a mage.
The other 126 is a melee. After a time a melee can get to the point where a non spell-casting monster cannot touch him. He can kill faster than a mage and has little down time. All this leads to easy leveling if you want to spend the boring time in BSD.
A mage on the other hand will reach a point where improvement to skills has little gain overall. Other than mana conversion I bet my 66lv mage is as powerful as Thor for all but the hardest monsters. (Unless de-buffed.) Of course his skill level (mental and physical) will make him better than me but you get the idea. If we don't fight skill de-buffing monsters we would be very close.
A mage is also a lot of work compared to a fighter. I could take Fist de Yuma to BSD and make millions of xp in a few hours. Target, kill, target, kill, there is little thought. After my melee defense got to the point where they stop hitting me there is almost no danger. Hell I could macro him there.
A mage on the other hand cannot even auto target. After manually selecting his target he has to de-buff and blast. With a large number of targets selecting a monster is not that easy.
Of course there are advantages in places for a mage. Thor Azaroth made maximum use of these. Coral Golems give twice the xp of a Tusker. Using a level VI de-buff and a level VII spell a mage can take down a Coral Golem very fast.
Thor Azaroth was strong enough to get to the other side of the bay on the island. This meant he had a large number of Coral's and little competition. It is still work and time consuming, not to mention boring.
Thor Azaroth had this goal for some time now. I have read many times where he has stated such. I can only hope now that he had done it he can find a new goal. The problem with such a high goal is there is little to do after it is met.
I have tried to stay away from the leveling goal. My goal is to have fun. Of course leveling can be fun at times and being stronger makes having fun easier. If I have a goal you can put on paper it is to fight the plasma golem in the island Castle.
Quests
This weekend was a quest filled weekend. Started out with Jeff wanting the focus stone. I felt he needed to do all the quests, not be led to the stone and infusing it.
This meant we needed to do three towers first. I logged Mage in the hall and opened the quest to family members. I wanted to take the party to the subway using Cliff Bowman and them go to Mayoi. From Mayoi we would take the South Direland portal and run the rest of the way.
I told everyone the quest would go off in 10 minutes. I counted down every minute so everyone would know. Cliff Bowman made the portal and I logged Fist de Mage. For once the lag was not so bad that I could not log and grab the portal before it faded.
I got two tells immediately. Jeff and others had missed the portal. I told them to run to Mayoi. The only one to take the portal and be at the meeting spot was Mystykal Mage.
Jim Bob Dave (48), Mystykal Mage (24) and Jeff Sailor Bane (38), a friends of Jeff's (37) were the party members. I had not seen when we started that Mystykal Mage was a 24lv. The run was a bit nasty for a young mage.
We buffed up at the top of the hill before the South Direland portal. Good thing as we were jumped by Shadows as we left the portal.
It has been a while since I was amazed by the things Turbine as done with this game. I guess I have become a bit jaded. Mystykal brought this out as he constantly exclaimed how wonderful it all was.
The run was nasty and was not helped with the fighters natural desire to fight everything they see. We mages are smarter. If there are a lot of them we run. We lost Jeff's friend who ported out and Mystykal came close to dieing a few times.
After the run Three Towers was easy. Jim Bob Dave had done this before so I let him run to the switches. Only problem was when Jeff got involved in a battle and missed the portal in the first part. We waited for the undead to re-spawn. He killed it and joined us.
We finally got to the end and everyone got a skull and key. I don't think anyone got a keepable item. The main thing was we now had the skull.
The next morning I was setting up the Focus Stone quest. My plan was to log Fist de Yuma and Cliff Bowman there. Fist would do the lock pick side and then log Cliff Bowman. Cliff Bowman is the only one of my three who does not have the Focus Stone.
I was lucky enough to see William the Bat in the hall. William is our Focus stone expert. I asked him if he would like to lead the quest again. He was glad to.
William is not only a great leader be really knows how to make the quest easy. He ran to get a portal tie to the Mine of Despair while I got the group together. Other than Jim Bob Dave and Jeff Sailor Bane I did not get the names down. We had 10 family members in all.
After buffing we got everyone to the first door. William then left to hit the switches. The doors opened very quickly and we dispatched the undead with little trouble. The boss monster fell fast and now we were in camping mode.
William joined us and the camping got very safe. I could not fire a single arrow before it died so I just took off my mana burning stuff and waited out the spawns.
There were several people there not in our alliance. We waited for them to get the stone before moving on. After rebuffing we started out on the second part. Our being nice to the non-alliance members did not pay off.
We were buffing and helping the younger members with protections. The non-alliance members ran off without a thought.
With strong fighters in front there was little danger. I again did not have time to get an arrow shot off before they died. This part can be quite nasty but a strong party can escort a mule through it.
Jeff was happy with his stone but I pointed out that without the V Amulet or creature magic it is not that useful.
Fire Stone
That afternoon I we had the family meeting. Elder could not make it but the meeting ran well anyway. The Fire stone quest was set to go after the meeting.
Highlord Ariakas was the firestone leader. My Mages vassal Silvara was there. Fist's vassal Bleu Sky had broken his Fire Stone and was going to get a new one. I asked Silvia if she wanted to go. She is from England and we don't get to adventure that often together.
Silvara had a Crater tie so we got ahead of the group. I'm not sure how, guessing they ran in a different direction but the group got there ahead of the two of us.
Silvara really knows what she is doing. I mess up a jump when I landed on a spot that looks like there is wood but isn't. I then lagged on the first jump and missed that one. I caught up with her at the long jump but over jumped it. By the time I got to the ramp she had lured the Infernal into the pit.
After that it was just a matter of killing the Zeffers. One group came in and got their stones. A large group of new players is not easy to get over the jumps so it took a while. Bleu was giving us updates on their progress as he was helping protect the group. They finally got there and were surprised we had cleared it. A few minutes later they all had the stone and we ported out. In all it was a fun little adventure.
Strange Event
I have been hunting my Archer in and around the Lugie fortress. Hollow rocks are still a big danger but using shoot and slide I can fight well. Only one death so far, got careless and a rock blasted me good. I have taken over 100 point hits from those rocks.
The experience is nice and fighting something so dangerous is a rush. To begin with I was hunting outside. The fact that all the big stuff was using hollow rocks got a little old. It takes a lot of arrows to take one of the big ones down. Having to slide between shots made for long battles.
Inside only a few of the big ones have hollow rocks so I decided to fight there. I'm still hit a lot but I have protects that absorb a lot of the damage.
Last time I was there I saw someone in a robe. He asked me if I could help him get his body. The name was something's mule. After a bit we recovered his body and were teaming up on the Lugies.
Then something about his name caught my eye, Badnames Mule. I know Badnames, he is an old friend. Told him I was Fist de Yuma and he said I should have said it in the first place. Then he remembered that I had a mule called Cliff's Mule. So we both should have known.
So we fought to the end. A friend of Badnames was there, an 81lv Swordsman. While the swordsman was fighting the Lugies on the side passage the Commander and a lot of the bad ass rock tossers spawned right next to me. Now my training in shoot and slide paid off.
I ran up the hall where the portal to the Fortress is. There I would shoot at the Commander while dogging rocks. Several times I would slide to the corner, heal and slide back for a shot. I knew that the Fighter would get the Commander if I did not take a few chances. I would hang in until the damage was just over the healing point.
That paid off. I had the Commander just about dead when the fighter ran over and killed the other in a few seconds.
It is strange, I have been there several times with Fist and never saw the Commander. Now my weakest player not only sees it but also kills it. It even had the armor on it. At al 160 it is not bad armor. A bit heavy. Guess I'll give it to a vassal.
Fire stone part II
Next day I got a call from Jeff. He had got enough motes together to make three Atlans. Now he needed some stones. He already had an Acid from our little adventure last week. I suggested we take a shot at the Fire Stone.
Jeff's friend came with us. He had 14% vit so we had to let him kill at the beginning to help clear some. Jeff's friend made a portal with some buffing help from Mage.
As is normal now the Crater was full of fire monsters. I had to run several times clearing the Infernals and golems. Seemed every time I attacked I was surrounded by Infernals and Golems from just out of sight. Even the best are in trouble against several chain draining monsters. After my first run I lost track of Jeff and his friend. They were attacking what they could.
I finally cleared the ones close to the portal, which was my goal. I ran over to the crater exit and gave the coordinates to the fellow.
Only problem with the run was I was far to fast for them. I had to keep stopping to let the catch up.
I have done the Fire Stone quest with just one other person twice. Both times there were other groups clearing a lot out before we got to them. Not this time. The three of use were the only ones in the vault.
Jeffs friends was a skilled jumper and helped me explain how to jump to Jeff. Jeff caught on fast and only missed one jump.
Only time I was worried was in the first Infernal room. While clearing out the first fire monsters from the ramp Jeff ran passed to attack the Infernal. Of course he was getting hit from the back by Zeffers he did not see.
I was able to clear the trash and get to him. He ran once to heal but by then I had cleared the Zeffer's and the Infernal was mad at me and left Jeff alone.
In the last room we drew out the Zeffers before rushing in to kill the Infernal. Hell of a quest for two under 40lv players.
Island fun
I had Mage in the hall to buff my Mules. I'm using Sygate to duel log my accounts now. After doing that I logged Fist to just chat with people.
Several fighter were taking about wanting to do something. I said they should go with Mage to the Island. They thought it was a great idea.
Of course this being William the Bat and several other Elder fighters they did not want to just fight bandies. They were after Vapors.
One made a portal to Solfear and we headed off. Shadows I felt sorry for when we cut through them. At the LS we made a fellow and I got to take a look at the members.
We had 3 fighters that varied from 62 to 66 in level. This was going to be fun. Once on the island we ran to the castle where we buffed up. I could see a mage taking down the first Vapor so I knew the picking would be poor by the time we got there.
Sure enough the first few Vapors were dead. One spawned right next to the fighters and that mage decided to attack it anyway. We were willing to let him have his space but he had to leach from half way across the screen.
So rather than get pissed at a lame magic user we headed over to the beach. By attacking large mobs of monsters we made it very exciting. A mage trying to support three fighters is kept busy. I tossed a lot of imperils.
I set into a routine. I would first imperil all the monsters using the ; key. I would then use the , key to take a look at each fighter. If he was low on hit points I would toss a heal. I don't like using the fellow screen for two reasons. I find it is slow to update. I waste time finding and selecting the person who is in trouble. By using the , key I can see their health and toss a heal instantly.
The mage left and we cleared out all the Vapors. It was almost easy the way we did it. With one monster I could toss cold vuln as well as imperil. It took about 10 seconds to kill the Vapor after that.
By general agreement we changed our goal and decided to attack the Castle. I had never landed a spell on the Plasma golems but I was much better than when I last tried. Cursed Bones were a problem until I got my imperil on it.
After finally dispatching the Bones we headed up the hill towards the Castle. More Bones emerged along with Diamond golems. I never knew there were Diamond Golem in there. I also found there were not one but two Plasma golems.
Several times we were in trouble. I was at 40 hp and on the run from a Diamond Golem while a fighter was calling for aid. Somehow we were able to survive and carry the fight.
I was surprised to see I could land an imperial with few resists on about everything. After clearing the Diamond and one of the Plasma's we had to climb some stairs to get to the last one. You cannot imagine the joy we felt at taking that last one down. Four players in their mid sixties taking down a large number of 350+ monsters. We are thinking of taking on the quest now.
I was out of buffs and felt a withdrawal was best. They thought it was safe to buff on the wall. I had imperil and a lot of other de-buffs on me. If the weakest of the monsters spawned before I rebuffed I would be open to a one shot kill.
I was buffing on the beach when I saw the others running down the hill with a Diamond Golem on their heals. I had buffed my life skill by then and was able to imperil it for them. I even got a few other spells off to help them out.
One fighter died and we had to fight back to the Castle to recover his body. After that we just basked in glory for a while and talked. We really felt great. I feel the four of us will be doing a lot more in the future.
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