Fist de Yuma - May 6, 2003

This and that Looking like a very short column this week, only around three thousand words. There are some good reasons for this. This month the content was really small. Not much at all new to do. So I have hunted but it is in the same old places. It was a lot of fun but nothing worth writing about. In fact what I did write about I've written about far too often before. One thing I'm thinking of doing is trying out old quests. Overlord has been redone and it might be fun to try and solo it with Fist. There are other quests out there that might be fun to do again. I'm trying to do a lot of hunting with Fist's Armorer. With his passing up to the other mules it is far better for my support functions if I keep leveling him. The problem with that is boredom. FA is repeating a lot of what Fist de Mage did when he was leveling and repeating is never as much fun as the first time. The reduction of Tuskers fellows was better for the game but hurt mule leveling. Of course I would rather have the games health looked after. What really irks me is my bad luck. I see people picking up Majors left and right. I put in a lot of hunting time and have only picked up one Major item, ever. That one item is really useful but I would rather Major Strength or Coordination than Major Quick. The way things go I'll likely have a week when I find five or six majors. My luck seems to be streaky like that. Speaking of luck my infusing mule is having great luck for others and really bad luck for me. I did four out of five swords for a guy while going one for fourteen on my weapons. On the good side of luck I found an AL 230 wms 4 set of legging the other day. I was thinking stuff like that did not exist any more. Choices I've been working on Rosa about an Xbox for months now. I know that our budget did not have any leeway so it was more a hope than anything else. We just finished refinancing our house so Rosa was about ready to say yes. We went to the base Friday so she could get some blood work. I made my typical push to go to the PX and pick up an Xbox. I had done this so often it was more habit than anything else. She surprised me by saying; "You can either go on the trip to North East Pennsylvania with me or get the Xbox." This is a trip I've wanted to make for many years. I had never met the Italian side of her family. Rosa, if you have not read before, is half Mexican, half Italian and all temper. (grin) The bad side was six days on a train, three days each way and no computer for three weeks. Ok, we all know I took the Xbox so we can get past that right now. It turned out that I made the right choice. There was a limited number if tickets and I would not have been able to go anyway. At the time they were not sure who would be able to get off work. Direct family has priority of course. I have two games on order, Mech Assault and Mortal Kombat. I expect they will take some time away from AC but not much. I also ordered an adaptor to let me connect the Xbox to my monitor. That wiped out my cash reserve. New route to Vod After totally wasting Tuesday on real life stuff I was ready to do some hunting. I started out with a trip to The Slot. I had cleared up to the major hub and was buffing when I got a tell from Moby Dick. He was waiting for two others for a trip to VoD and just wanted to talk. I asked if I could join him. Moby was going to a different spot that required I get flagged for a quest. This is the stand and map quest. He had a portal to a housing complex that got me close to the hut. After being flagged I could use the portal that headed to a spot near the north of VoD. We ended up in a platform far above a valley. With good bludgeoning protection and a buffed jump I only took 25 points of damage. Given that you can barely tell the trees are trees from that height it is an impressive feat. We ran west a bit and up the right hand hill. Then we made another big jump into VoD. Of course this means you are not getting out the way we got in. The four of us started our killing run. I was surprised to find Moby being selective with monsters. Bandies were ignored as much as possible. We avoided Luges completely. When we had a break I asked why. I could understand the Lugies, they are a pain in the ass but why Bandies? I was told that the difficulty to XP made them not worth hunting. That was a new one to me but I could not fault the results. I saw far better xp per hour than I had ever seen with a group this size. The spot Moby showed us was outstanding for a small group. Moby said he would use the south route with bigger groups. The group was powerful enough that we did not need a healer. I would try to keep an eye out on the two melee's and fire them a heal from time to time. Moby is powerful enough not to really need a Yield but my 424 War was being resisted even with the yield. That meant even someone as powerful as Moby could benefit from a yield, just not as much as me. I was also making good use of the Awakener. The melee and archer would have me hit them with it whenever the de-buffs got to deep. So I generally would lead with a yield while Moby would lead with a Vuln. I was trying to stay a few steps back and to one side of Moby. This would let me see which monster he started on so I could attack the same thing he did. This did not always work because many monsters would charge and you could not always see the spell animation. It is easy to lose track of what the main target is. Both the Archer and Melee did not seem to have much trouble hitting. If they did I would have to add some melee de-buffs to my cycle. As was after Yield and Imperil I was generally free to start blasting. The big monkey was easy to defeat because it could be trapped between trees so easily. The melee still had to get into range but he could back off and heal if hit hard. We ran across the King golem but decided to pass on it. Where the big xp comes from is the Virindi. Fortunately they are not like the Exec so a melee can be effective against them. It can be quite hectic when they start retreating and charging. It was especially bad for the melee who gets dragged when one retreated. We had one strange event. The melee took off running for no apparent reason. I gave chase and we ran all over the place, dragging a lot of stuff with us. It turned out his keyboard was acting up. I was glad I saw him take off. I was able to keep him alive and then help him clear when he got control. Quest The next day I decided to see what the quest Moby had started me on was about. I was on a round platform suspended above a valley. There was a narrow path leading to another platform. This was inhabited by a few undead that were easily dispatched. Each platform led to another until I came to a tower. I kept going up until I found a guy in a room just before the top. He gave me part of the map and told me that someone in a town will help me with it. I continued up to the very top. Here I found a pillar with a name similar to what the guy in the hut gave me. I used the item on the pillar and it changed. What I do now I'm not sure, might have to return it to the guy in the hut when I get a chance. Solo North VoD I decided not to keep pushing the quest for now. The map and pedestal are nice but nothing I really have to have. They will likely sit on a mule anyway. I decided to go hunt. The new place Moby showed me seemed ideal. The last time here I followed Moby so I had to try and get the route from memory. I guess I lucked out because I had no trouble finding right path. After jumping down and breaking contact with the monsters I jumped on I was ready to hunt. I decided to learn from Moby and only take on Liches, Drudges, Biles, Tommies and of course Virindi. The rest I would avoid. My main goal was to find Virindi because they return a lot more than anything else. After a bit of hunting I found a large group of Virindi. There were five in a narrow passage. It seemed about 20 to 30 feet wide. This was an ideal setup. There was a lot of terrain to hide behind and clear running if things got iffy. The first two Virindi were no trouble at all. Once charged and fought me, the other stood at the spawn site and fired war spells at the hill in front of me. A strange thing happened when I took on the third one, all three of those left charged. Normally if you are at the edge of the radar range Virindi will return to the spawn site if you don't attack them. Not this time. All three stayed and attacked with a vengeance. It started bad and got worse. In hindsight I should have run seconds into the battle. By the time I was worried it was too late. One hit me with a vuln and the other two blasted me. That put me into a hurt locker right off the bat. I have 309 hit points so most of the time I can weather a storm. I hit heal and was blasted by all three at once. With a vuln and the damage from the first two attacks there was no way anyone could live through it. As I hit the lifestone I sent a message to Moby, "Note to self, don't fight three Virindi at once." Of course he laughed at me. Moby is far more powerful than I am and would never be that stupid. I quickly buffed up and headed back. A few Virindi Execs and Observers later my vit was clear. I was almost to my body by the time I broke contact with my chasers. It was a good thing I broke contact as the narrow passage was packed with three spawns. I would have been hard on me if I had to run through that bottleneck. This was now xp heaven. Five Virindi, six Drudges and four Tommies, all in a narrow passage with the terrain all in my advantage. As long as I did not do something stupid, such as trying and fight three Virindi at once, I would make out like a bandit. This time the Virindi really did me a favor. Not only did they not charge in packs but the one I was killing did not charge me at all. Its spells bounced harmlessly off of the hill in front of me while I arched Fire into it. After clearing the Virindi it was time for the Drudges. I was picking them off nicely one at a time when I made a mistake. I knew better because I have dealt with Drudges and this has happened before. When in the heat of battle this is very hard to avoid because Drudge are the only ones to react this way. As I started my de-buffing on the Drudge it charged. A short time later one more charged. The one I had attack retreated to the spawn point and off the radar screen, so I switched to the other one. Even though the first Drudge had retreated off my radar screen this was a mistake. Drudges will return all the way to their spawn site and then get pissed enough to return to the attack. By attacking the second one before I was sure the first was not coming back I insured me a battle of two on one. I knew this would be hard but I had a weapon that would turn the battle in my favor. First I hit a dispel gem as the Virindi still had a few spells on me that would make this a lot more dangerous. That done I de-buffed both the Drudges war, self and focus. This took a little time but it gave me a big shot of resisting the War spells. The biggest danger when fighting two is taking several Wars in the face after a vuln. It has happened before so I had to resist or die if it happened again. It was a good thing I had taken the precaution because simultaneous attack with War became their main battle tactic. Sometimes I resisted one, sometimes I resisted both, at no time were both able to hit me at once. A few drains and I was back in business. It took me about thirty seconds to take down one Drudge and from there on it was easy street. With Virindi being worth 1 million plus and the Drudges being worth over half a million I was really hitting the xp per hour numbers. When solo anywhere else six million and hour is very good, here I was closer to twenty million. When the Virindi and Drudges were cleared out I started in on the Tommies. By the time I had them cleared the Virindi and Drudges started to come back. The Virindi were really broken as they seldom left the spawn site. The Virindi were content to keep wasting war spells while dying in place. At least by now I had it clear enough that I could loot some bodies. No good loot or keys but enough value to pay for the Tapers. While battling one of the rare Virindi that charged me things stopped. I hit buttons but nothing happened. It took me a second to register a message at the top of the screen. I was out of tapers! I lucked out and was able to run away with around 50 hit points. Because of my lack of tapers I could not even port out. I had to do a mansion recall and then bum some tapers from an alliance member. I had started the day before with over 2000 tapers. I really hope they get taper peas into the game someday soon. Return to North ML I was tired of hunting Tuskers with Fist's Armorer but still need to work him. His armor skills are at 492. That is respectable but nowhere near what I want. His magic skills are still lacking with around 390 in war and life. Where I really hurt is magic defense. I knew that the de-buffing battle in The Slot made it uncomfortable for FA. I felt I would be far better off going to North ML and hunting Vapor Golem and Virindi. Both have the additional benefit of hearts and jewels. I told Winter Raven what my plan was and she wanted to go with me. I sold off and restocked tapers while she muled. We met at the mansion and headed to North ML. There is no stronger combination than a Mage and Archer. If the Archer can hit there is only one thing that can survive a Vuln and arrow attack. Of course that one thing is a Virindi Exec, which is plentiful at North ML. Fortunately they fall fast to a mage attack. I was a touch worried that Raven would have a little trouble hitting Vapors. I remember Deadeye Fist having fits trying to hit one, and that was before the archer nerf. I did not need to worry. Raven, with one exception, had no trouble hitting Vapors. There seems to be a variance in abilities from time to time. There was this one Vapor Golem that Raven had a hard time hitting. He must have spent ten arrows on it. We spent two hours sweeping back and forth across the flood plains. The only real danger was Savages. Those little black pigs hit hard, very hard. If you had an Imperil on you were in big trouble. That was the only time I needed to keep Raven healed. Both of us had great luck in the past with pig loot so we never passed on a battle with them. I'm not sure what our xp rate was because I was getting passup from Raven. I ended up with over 10 million for the two hours we hunted there. We did not find any great loot but we had a blast hunting. Solo North ML I decided to hit North ML on Monday morning. I was in the mid 90's for burden so I decided to only grab light loot or to render anything heavy I might pick up for material. As I burnt off tapers I would start grabbing the high level heavy loot. Main target is Vapor golems. With a 50k return a pack of three was well worth killing. Virindi are also a good target. I would pick off Ferals when I saw them. Only 11k in xp per kill but good loot. Savages are not so easy but return 48k. If I did not have imperil on they were not much danger. With a two-hour hunt I ended up with around 35 material items and 7.5 million xp. I was surprised to find a lot of Black/Red Opal but not much Opal. Normally I find a lot more Opal than anything else. One thing I decided to collect this trip was Scarab Peas. Iron and Copper scarabs were common with a few Pyreal and Silver showing up. Salvages and Vapors almost always had one or two on them. Because of the Scarab Peas I ended up with 500k in cash. I had two options at that point, sell them for 11 plats or go gambling. Mostly I'll just buy Plats but I decided to run to the Casino and try my luck. The token stacking made for easy buying but using was another matter. Having to split off one token each time I gambled was a pain. I would rather have done it the old way. They should change it so if you hand them a bunch of tokens they will use one and return the rest. My luck was sort of even. I made 11 Plats and 3 triangles. So the cost to run there gained me three triangles overall. Of course 225k was not worth the time spent but next time it might be 11 triangles and 3 plats. Overall goal is to raise magic defense to the point I can hit The Slot. Right now I lose the de-buffing wars there. Another ten to twenty points and I'll be ready.