Fist de Yuma - November 23, 2004

This and That With Rosa gone for a week, I got to do some things I don't ordinary get to do. I smoked a few cigars, drank a little beer and stayed up later than normal. While that was fun, my big project was to get my den cleaned. It is not totally done, but the major work is out of the way. As a side benefit, I got a workbench put in. That got me motivated to fix my old computer. My old computer stopped working one day, about two years ago. The fans would start, and then it shut down. I brought a new motherboard from Frys. Without a workbench, and with a new computer set up, I did not feel a rush to start working on it. After two years, I decided it was time to get on the stick. First I turned it on to see if there was something odd that fixed itself. It did turn on for a few seconds. Then a chip exploded, so there was no need to explore that route any more. To my great surprise, installing the new motherboard was almost easy. The hardest part was fitting the fan over the CPU, and that was not that hard. Because of the way the things are laid out, I had to put the fan on after installing the motherboard. There was no room to put the motherboard in while the fan was installed. I plugged in the cables and wires, and it fired up on the first try. Unfortunately, my good luck ended there. It would take a while to find the IDE devices, and then go to a blank screen with the curser blinking in the upper left corner. I figured I would have to reinstall Windows XP Pro. I was hoping that I could get it to boot enough so I could get the product ID first. As it was, I could not even get it to boot the CD. After hours of work, and some advice from an Internet tech support group, I was getting nowhere. I decided to take apart my old Dell and use that hard drive. It worked! So when the motherboard fried, it took the hard drive with it. That hard drive has a two-gig storage capacity, not even close to what you need today. Heck, I had to spend time deleting stuff, just to get Windows XP Pro to try an install. It wants a gig free just to start. So I'm going to pick up a new hard drive from BestBuy tomorrow. I figure I'll grab a network card and a new KVT while I'm at it. That will about break my budget for the next six months, but it will get the computer working. Having two full speed computers and one slow computer online, will make things smoother. What I don't want to do is pay for another copy of Windows. I have paid for four copies and feel it is unfair to force me to get another. For some reason, the product ID I have will not work. There must be three more ID numbers floating around my Den, but I have not had any luck finding them. I'm hoping it was some glitch with the old hard drive that prevented it from working. If not, I expect to be arguing with the Microsoft tech support for hours in end, again. Fighting frame rates It has been a while since I fought in a crowded spot, where lots of spells are flying. The last time I had a big drop in frame rate was in EQII. It was a big battle, near a lot of graphics eating items. I was thinking how glad I was not to be seeing that in AC. Stupid me. While getting ready for a quest with William the Bat's group, he got a message about a disaster. It seemed that a group of players went into the Orphanage and died. Several attempts to recover the bodies were met with more disaster. So the quest was delayed while we went off to help. We ran through the Bore and headed to the coordinates. There was a group standing outside, which looked relieved to see us. One said, "Here comes the Calvary." I was using Fist de Yuma Jr for this. Jr is a hybrid Life/Sword. This means that, for his level, he is weak in both Life and Sword skills. His health, while not low, is lower that most his level. He is better solo, as much of his XP is put into a skill he will not use in a group. With time, and lots of XP, he will be great, but for now he is behind the curve. As we landed inside the dungeon, we were attacked from all sides. The monsters were all Caul types. This means, big level VII de-buffs and War spells, combined with hard-hitting melee power and substantial hit points. None of these things scare me in themselves. If you combine that with a steady lowering of the frame rate, it becomes a nightmare. Strobe lights might be before most of my readers' times, but that is the only real life example I can think of. What made things worse, was my mouse was hard to position. I would take damage, from who knows what, and would be almost dead in seconds. I discovered that blue healing kits are a godsend. I was amazed when I would land heals when far down the damage tree. I've been using treated kits for many years, but I'm now going to be using the blue kits on all my melees. It is good timing, because I have five or six un-caved sings sitting on Fist's Armorer. You can trade them for blue kits in Tommy town. This is the same guy you turn in Olthoi claws and Vapor hearts to. While standing in the center, I had no clue about the combat actions around me. I was swinging at stuff, and healing when I needed to. I used a hot key to pick a target, as I could barely see them, let alone have the ability to pick one with the mouse. The flicking mess made it impossible to do anything else. I decided to try and hit a side passage. I had hoped that I would get a better idea as to what I was fighting that way. I ran around a passage, and found that three things were chasing me. I would not want to fight two of the, let alone three. Even with one, I want preparation time, if not with mage support. Jr is more an outside fighter, where he has time to imperil and vuln. After seeing how futile this battle was, I tried to run around a bit, with the hopes of breaking contact. I ended up doing that, and found a spot next to someone. The frame rate was still bad, so I was keeping a close watch on my health. I would heal any damage, no matter how low. It did not help. I saw my health drop to 120, and I was dead before I could even hit the hot keys. I ran back, but was hesitant to jump back in. So far I was only down DI's. Unless things changed, I would likely die before I could recover the first body. I said the heck with it, and jumped back in. Fortunately, William and company had whittled the monsters down enough that my computer could handle it. I recovered, but I don't think I'll be going back. The next time I had this problem also involved the William allegiance. I was about to start writing the column on Sunday, but decided to check the board first. There was a message about a lot of bodies in Caul. I logged in Fist's Armorer to give them a hand. I'm figuring that FA will be my best VoD/Caul player. He is a grief BM with a 100-endurance start. My hope is that his high health and magic defense will overcome the danger of such hunting. I cannot say if it will work later, but it is not working now. FA just hit 126, so there is a lot of room for growth. His magic defense is around 365 and health around 305. Endurance is cheap and Magic Defense is around 80 million a point. I had no trouble finding them. I joined in trying to clear the land around the bodies. Within seconds of starting the fight, my frame rate started its steady drop. This is even more frustrating with FA, because he cannot heal with a hot key. With the mouse being a problem, there was no way I could heal quickly. I ended up having the mouse curser hover over the heal spell, while I used hot keys to fight. There were several times when my health dropped, but I had to wait for a war spell to fire before I could click heal. I lucked out and did not take any more war spells before I could heal, but it was a close thing. Then someone died, and things started getting hard. I backed up to the ridge, with the thought that I could recover there a lot better than in the center. It was a good plan, because I got taken out by three of them, shortly after. Three wars at the same time, will take out most players. For some reason I had trouble getting back. I was running directly north, when I needed to run northeast. Thankfully, MS ported back to the start and showed me what I was doing wrong. I recovered my body and re-joined the fray. I was told that most of the bodies were recovered. I think William had one there, but that was it. With the bad frame rate, I was just hanging on to life. It was at about this point when I got some attacks that brought me close to death. I escaped with a tusker island gem. I was told that William would not have any trouble recovering from that location, so I logged off for dinner. I'm hoping there is a solution to this problem. Will a faster graphic card help? Do I need a more powerful computer? My current card is a Geforce FX 5900 and 128 memory. If you have an answer, drop me a note. (Note, I saw that the water in my water-cooled system was getting low. I filled it today. It could be that it was getting overheated, and the system slowed. I'll test it soon and report back.) Playing while tired One thing many of us will do is play when we should be sleeping. Circumstances keep us going, when common sense tells us it is time to rest. Add in a real life event, like a 16-mile mountain bike ride, and you add physical exhaustion to the mental. I had been playing hard that day. I had a few quests under my belt and was getting tired. I got a call from William the Bat about the noble weapon quest. I was game, so I met them in Tou-Tou with Fist de Yuma Jr. I figured a noble sword would be useful. The above body recovery interrupted that for a while. We got everyone back together after that, but now I was really tired. There is nothing more exhausting that a stressful body recovery. William the Bat really had this quest well prepared. He had people ready with portals. He had the pre stuff out of the way. All we had to do was follow instructions and fight. About the only criticism I could give was not explaining things to the group. This led to some misunderstandings, and a major mistake on my part. First we got a portal to the Lugie fortress. William gave us a note to give to the NPC. Then another player created a portal. That took us to a housing complex, close to the dungeon. We ran to a big fort. After clearing the outside guards, we started pounding on a door. At first I thought they were fighting monsters on the other side of the door, but it was the door itself they were fighting. After that fell, we cleared the courtyard. We had a lot of power, so there was not a lot of danger. We followed William up a passage, and got into the dungeon. Here I got my first surprise. The floor gave out a lot of damage. There was no warning about this, so I stopped in the wrong spot. I did not come close to dieing or anything, but it was a surprise. After we cleared, William told us to check the bodies for something that will improve the noble weapons. What he did not say, was that we could do this later, and this was the worse place to search for it. What it did was create the impression that we needed to get this item before we left the dungeon. William came back to get those of us who were waiting for another spawn. We moved on, but still thought we had to get this item, there, today. So we were moving slow, checking all the bodies, and getting irked that we were not finding it. I could see that William was getting irritated with us. It took a while before he understood what our problem was, and explained that we could get the items at other, safer, spots. We finally got to a ramp with a large bunch of monsters. The floor was doing a lot of damage, so we had to draw them up the ramp. Trying to fight on that floor is not smart, and we are not dumb. Finally one with a strange name came up the ramp. I started beating on it, without much effect. At last, we beat it down, and Xan got the kill. From that body we all got an item. They made another portal to the Lugie fortress and were done with the combat parts. We give the items to the NPC and got a key and a gem. Popping the gem put us in a dungeon. I saw a chest, two in fact. People were lined up at one chest, so I went to the other. Remember, I'm very tired at this point. I've been playing for a long time, and had that bike ride. All I wanted to do was get this over with, and take a rest. As I grabbed the key, something in the back of my mind said, "don't do this, don't do this." My main mind said, get this over with and log off, I'm tired. So I opened the chest. The first thing I saw was a noble staff. Then I looked above the chest, and saw a staff picture above the chest. Looking around, I saw that there was a weapon above the other chests. What I should have done was find the sword chest. That was likely what the line was about. Well, no use kicking myself. I messed up. I had high hopes that I would have a bunch of adventures during the week, and I could forget about ever writing about this mess up. That did not happen. Heck, I would have likely written it anyway, but I would like to have an option. (g) If you enjoyed the column, and would like to add to my emergency fund, here is a link.