Fist de Yuma - May 4, 2004

This week's events have also cut down on my bike riding. I only had one 8-mile ride last week and a 6 miler this evening. It was up over 100 today so the ride was not fun. Hopefully the more I ride the less I'll be affected by the heat. I expect it will get cooler, as 100+ is not the norm for this time of year. I'm going to try and start saving for a music player. My rides are somewhat boring and music would help. Riding the dirt means my old CD player is out so I need to get one of the memory ones. I saw some nice ones in Phoenix last week they were all beyond my current budget. Heck, I'm having trouble convincing Rosa to let me buy a FPT program for 85 bucks. The evaluation has run out so I cannot change the picture I put at the end of the column. I figure she will let me buy it in a few weeks but for now she does not see a need. "It will just help your game thing, you don't really need it." Speaking of that, I intend to start putting my sea stories there. This will allow more people to read then and one less list to run. I'll have the first of them up after Rosa lets me buy the program. Sixth player When I finally got time to play a little AC, it was down. The good news was when AC came up I had a free player slot. Now I had to decide what I wanted to make. With seven players, even one more would be too much. At least that was my thinking. So, of course, I ended up with three playable players. While waiting for the servers to come up, I mapped out my current problems. Number one was salvage space. When I go hunting, especially when in a fellow, I need a spot to quickly unload loot. I've been using a mule, Fist and Mage mostly. That account is generally loaded on Slow Mo when hunting the Jr or Owanda account. When using the Fist account I unload directly to the salvage mule and have it render, using UST, while I head back to the hunt. Even with two players and a mule I tend to run out of space to unload the salvage. After that I'll either have to stop looting or stop hunting. So even one free player, that is mostly empty, would be a big help there. The second problem is storing stuff I need to have available. This includes weapons and armor that is being worked on. Currently I've been sticking them on a mule. The problem there is I lose track of them. Another problem is acquiring salvage. I've been using my normal players for this, and I would rather not. Looting slows things down. I would rather just check for majors or high level weapons and armor, and not worry about salvage. So I decided to create some salvage mules. They needed to be able to hunt. This will allow them to acquire my needed salvage. They need to be able to rend the salvage on the fly so I don't have to waste time dumping. I decided to make them all the same and chain them together. The Long term the plan is to get them to 50 and then use pincers and tusk for xp. Their stats are 100, 10, 100, 10, 100, 10. While their melee defense will suffer a touch I don't plan on ever hunting them in the 80+ Matron anyway. I spec'd Leadership, Loyalty, Mace and Melee. I trained Item and left two points free. The path is Healing, Lore, Item, Mana Conversion, Life and Creature. Yes, I want them to be self-buffing someday. Of course their race is Gharu'dim, for the free tinkering. These are long-term projects, as they don't finish until 105. The bottom mule will finish sooner if he does not pick up a vassal. I'll un-train Leadership and grab 6 points. The hard one to start was the bottom mule. The next mule in the chain will be leveled to a usable level before he starts hunting. I expect him to be 50, from passup, before he starts hunting. After that I'll hunt the second one until the top mule is in the 50's or so. First I needed to get the bottom mule to 20. I had a few options. In the old days I would use Old Mine to level a player. The last time I leveled from 1st level was with Owanda. He started in the lowest level pincer dungeon and then moved to Arcade. I decided to start in Arcade and then move to the 20+ Matron. I might have been better off using Old Mine as Arcade was a touch crowded. I had forgotten that everyone and his brother was leveling a new player that day. For a while I had a hard time finding anything to kill. When I did have a battle my main problem was stamina. I had neglected to grab some rations from the mansion so I had to make due with what I had. Any hard battle quickly had me low on stamina. I cannot be sure what happened, but I had one of those moments. All at once there were no hunters in the dungeon. The Olthoi all seemed to spawn at once. At first I was happy. I was racking up the xp. As more and more Olthoi started running to my battle I found myself with too many to handle and zero stamina. Fortunately, I had on some good armor. I gave him the set I was working up for Fist's Armorer. (When I start gaining salvage I'll tink up a set for them.) I dropped out of combat and gained a few stamina points. I took a bit of damage and tried to heal but nothing happened. I tried again but again, zip. Rather than wonder what was going on I took off running. Ever so often I would stop and kill a few, only running again when my stamina got close to zero. I would quickly get overrun and have to do my beat feet move. I ran up a ramp and still could not shake my pursuers. I ended up at a dead end. I turned to fight. I lucked out and only had a few Olthoi to fight. The rest returned to their spawn site. I tried to heal again, but it did not work. I check the screen and made a "Dolt!". I had not trained healing yet. In my defense that was the first time I needed the healing skill. I rested and started to retrace my steps. By the time I got back to where I was the dungeon started to fill up with people again. I got into a fellow with two others and made 20 in the second hour. Matron 20+ I quickly ported back to the mansion for buffs and a portal to Lin. From there I ran to Nanto and made an LS tie. Then I hit the 20+ Matron. For the first hour I had it to myself. My two buddies from Arcade showed up and we fellowed. I quit for the day just as I hit 30. Not bad for one afternoon. The next day was spent with RL stuff and getting ready for the funeral. I had a few moments to log and say hi but not much else. Wednesday, I had the day free. Rosa was making final arrangements and shopping for clothes, flowers and food. It let me log and try for a push to 300 Mace. Every Mace that I had worth a darn is 300 to 325. So I guess that will be my key to when to hunt the mules up the chain. It will take a bit but for the other two but I'm in no hurry. I got to the 20+ Matron about 8am and hunted for a few hours. It was a boring hunt but it is a price I'm willing to pay. I hit 39lv and am 300k short of the last point I need for 300 Mace. I should have it later this evening. It will depend on how tired I am and when Rosa gets home from her sisters. They are working on the food for tomorrow. I know that tomorrow I'll be lucky to log for even a minute. I'm really looking forward to seeing what a Rend Mace will do in the 20+ matron. When I was here with Owanda he was in the 40+ before hitting 300 Mace. This time I've pushed Mace and nothing else. I'll need to start balancing things out after I make that goal. Fighting the Matron One person in the fellow wanted to go kill the Matron. I was game and the two of us headed down to her cave. We quickly cleared out her guards and stared in on her. We got a front to back setup. He was a sword, one or two levels below me. I was using an old Mace that had no wield. I had a 250 wield mace in my pack waiting for me to get high enough to use it. I quickly discovered that we might have made a mistake. After a few minutes of battle we had her down to 95%. I was thinking this would be a really long battle. Then she healed twice and was at 100%. Well so much for this idea. Now the problem was breaking contact. We knew from experience that she would chase forever. I was the highest level and had better armor. I figured I would let her attach to me and I would try to break her. I had forgotten I started with 10 quick and had not put anything into run. (g) I ran across the first acid pit with her on my tail. I tried to brush her off in the passage to the second acid pit, but that was a no go. I ran up the ramp and took the right passage. I hoped to run her into a wall or one of the side cubbies. That did not work and she was still on my tail. Turbine must have worked hard on her pathing, as it seems better than a normal Olthoi. Then I got a break. There was a mob of Olthoi in the hall. I battled my way through them until I got to the other side. The Matron was trapped behind the mob. I broke contact with the mob and left the Matron behind. A short while later, I hit 250 Mace and we decided to give it another try. When we got there we found one of our fellow members battling her. He was an xbow and not being much of a threat to her. She was at 100% heath. I guess he had been battling her a while as there was a full re-spawn. We cleared out the guards and started back on her. With my better Mace I was hitting harder but not enough to be a big threat. Between the three of use we slowly started to bring her down. Finally she died. It must have taken us five minutes or more. I hope to kill her when I have my Rend Mace, just to see how much better they are. In the end I had the kill. In the past I could never beat an Archer to a kill, but the higher stats on swords and Maces have changed that. Granite hunt I got a dungeon from a reader that he said contained Granite. It had been some time since I had been there so I was not sure how much danger there was. I did a full buff/bane with Death Mute and ran there from my mansion. I quickly saw that I had no real need to buff. Despite spots where there were a few monsters and it gets crowded they, did little damage. When they started chain casting, I had to heal, but low level spells are not a danger. I was thinking it was a bust Granite wise. It turned out to be just a bit of bad luck because I slowly started collecting Granite. I have not added it up, but I think I was getting around 30 units an hour. Whereas that is not great, it is better than anywhere else I have been hunting. Granite seems to be a lot harder to get than before. That is bad news, as Granite is needed more than any other salvage. That is likely more of a perception that a truth as all salvage is harder to get these days. There is more need for Granite so I notice the lack more than I would Jet or Black Garnet. That perception seems to have carried over to prices in the Marketplace. I was searching for Granite the other day. I had hopes of using a few sings I had to attain a few bags. I only found one Vender who was selling Granite and he wanted 8 sings for a 5.0 bag! I felt that was far too much, so I did not buy any. Guest Writer: R. Scott White I hope that you all had great weekends. Mine was ok except my youngest cat named "Trouble" was taken to the vet to get de-nutted which he wasn't happy about. But because of that I had to take two extra days off which is ok. I got my lawn mowed, played golf, watched a few movies and oh yeah, played my tank archer Toro. Toro is bow/melee spec'd with item/healing/lore/fletching trained. I am having a blast with him in the matron hives. My goals were to get him to be able to use my 270 base skill bludgeon rending bow as well as the deadly arrows. It took some hard hunting but I was able to do it. When that happened I switched to that bow and went on a tear. I discovered how powerful a bowman with a rending bow really is. I know Nabby will hate me, ok not hate but be unhappy with me but I was xp hunting. I found that I can push 9-10 million per hr if I'm just killing not looting. In hunting like this I've gotten Toro to 54th already. I know it will get more difficult but since I have a fire rending bow already I'll be able to mix it up between the tuskers and bugs. 80th level and relief for Fist is about 1-2 months away I think. The power in hunting this style was a bit scary. I had the 40-60 hive to myself and once I got to the bottom level I had it completely under control. I mean I had to move back up a level while waiting for the respawn. This is an area that Gonder, my macer with a shield could not have done the same thing. On average it is taking two shots per kill and they don't evade that often. Toro will be a lot of fun on quests, but beyond the 80th level goal I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with him yet. When I hit 55 I will have 15 skill credits and I'm not sure where to spend them. I've been focusing so much on bow and melee d and to a lesser degree fletching and item tinkering that I don't know what role he will have later on at the higher levels. I do know that I will push item magic so I can cast 7's down the road but that is in the future. Allegiance I get a lot of requests for information about our allegiance. Our web site is Casadeyuma.com.