Fist de Yuma - November 25, 2003

This and That Due to a shipping delay I still don't have my sleep equipment. This means that in addiction to being sick I don't sleep well. It also means that some of my drugs could not be used because they intensify my apnea. A particular problem is the pain and anti cough medicine. I was told to wait for my equipment before using it. Of course we expected the equipment to be in by last Wednesday. Here it is Monday and I'm still in pain and coughing a lot. My only hope is the stuff gets here tomorrow but I'm not encouraged. Generally a delay like this means they were out of stock. They don't say so because they want the sale. Misery of others does not matter as long as they get paid. Sorry, let a bit of bitterness show there. (grin) So the results is I have played less than ever in the last two weeks. Best I have done is and hour or two here and there. With Thanksgiving coming up my time to play will be limited this week, sick or not. After that I should be going strong again. So to everyone that celebrates Thanksgiving I hope you have many friends and family over. Remember we are thinking God for the great lives we live. Remember to open your hearts and wallet to those less fortunate. Playing While Sick When really sick playing is not an option. It is bed, sleep and at most reading or reclined in front of the TV vegetating. The drive to play AC comes in when you start to feel better. I started to feel somewhat better on Tuesday morning. In hindsight I should have stayed in bed because it is Wednesday now and I feel worse that I did Tuesday. I'm dropping some of my drugs as I think they make me feel sick and are not helping me get well. I logged on with Fist to take another run at the OP River. I got a lot of letters last week saying to keep at it. The Dark Infernos do spawn there and I'll get the scroll in time. Given that the scroll is worth around 900 million to me it is worth many hours of hunting. I got to the river using the south dires portal. I ran clock wise and ignored most of the bigger groups. I would pick off single monsters, mostly shadows, and small groups with reps for big drops. I hit on one big group of Drudges. I decided to try and draw out the Cabs using my pathetic Life skills. I'm pushing Life but, being trained with a 40/10 start, getting to even a base 300 will be costly. I got two Cabs to rush me while most of the rest just tossed spells. I resisted most of them. I think I was in melee with two Cabs and a Blood when something strange happened. There was a spawn sound and a portal opened up directly in front of me. I had just dropped a Drudge, not sure what type, when it happened. At first I thought I had killed some special Drudge that opened up something. I had not heard of something new like that but anything was possible. It was then that I noted I had six Tuskers pounding on me. There were four Rampagers and two Assailer. I cannot say what did it but I was suddenly at half health. It was time to extract myself from this trap. I killed one Rampages to open a hole and ran a few dozens yards up the river. This did not shake any of the melee attackers but got me out of range of the big Drudge pack. I stopped, healed, failed, healed, failed, healed, failed. Ok, 401 healing and 149 health out of 306 means I cannot heal. Of course I could not drop out of melee mode for better odds as I would have been dead if the first heal did not land. I'm getting to feel that Healing really needs a fix. At least take out the melee penalty. I ask you, does a mage need to get out of war mode to heal? So I sucked a few elixirs and got to 200 health, then healed. I targeted a Rampager and hit delete. As I started to swing I coughed. There was no way to suppress the cough and I quickly fell into a coughing fit. This is one of the worse coughs I have ever had. Even my bout with pneumonia 15 years ago did not seem as bad. The coughing lasts a long time and gets to the point where I cannot take a breath. As it gets really bad I come close to tossing my cookies. This was the first cough that ever forced me to get out of bed to breath. Or course my fight to breath is interfering somewhat with Fist's fight for life. The Rampager was dead but even reaching over to hit delete was a chore. Thank god for auto targeting. Bring up yellow gunk that I had to spit into a Kleenex did not help. By the time my coughing fit was over I was back at 140 health. I had killed two Rampagers and one Assailer. Two elixirs and a heal got me back into the battle. The portal was to Qbar. I would not have cared about it except two Drudge bodies were very close to it. I had to be careful to not get drawn into the portal while looting. After that I started feeling very sick again. I finished off the buff and collapsed into bed. Never saw a Dark Inferno. Getting there Many months ago I wrote about swapping my old Archer to an Armor tinker. I'm doing this so I can sell Armor Tinker on Fist's Armorer and spec magic defense. In time FA will be a very powerful mage. I have him at 111 now and get spec magic d at 115. It has taken a long time but Cliff Bowman is a month away from completing the stat changes. To review the changes he started with 30 Focus and 60 Endurance. That meant four trips to max endurance and seven to max Focus. I made the ninth trip today so I'm 28 days (23 at post day) from completing the changes. While compared to the big chains he is not much but for most he will be great. The goal will be to have 97% shot at the 10 tink of a WMS 4 item. He will have around 520 skill without any majors to start with. I have a lot of great armor saved up waiting for him to get the changes out of the way. Long time coming I'm sure it was over a year ago that Fist de Mage found a Scroll of Dark Rain. It has been sitting in my pack what seems like forever. Only in the last few months have I decided to push Mages magic defense. The first thing I needed to do was see how much I needed to push him. I turned to Treestat.com to get how many points I had added to my magic defense. At the time it was around 190. I then searched for someone who had maxed magic d while having it trained. I did this by asking for a list of the top magic defense toons. I would then scroll until I found one that was not a Grief player. (Grief is the name for spec'd magic defense. So a Grief UA would be someone with UA and Magic defense spec'd.) I found that a trained skill could be advanced 208 points. That meant I needed to advance Mage a total of 205 points before using the scroll. It took a few months but I finally got the points I needed. A quick check of Maggies showed I needed to go to the Hebian-to translator. I'm LS'ed in Nanto so I recalled there and ran. It might have been faster to run from Lin to Arwric and take the subway but it had been a while since I had made this run. The road between Nanto and Hebian-to has some nostalgic value for me. There is a spot that in the old days spelt doom for many players. There was always a pile of bodies there. ReedSharks were especially dangerous then and several spawns were near the road. I remember one time having died and lost my armor a short way from Nanto. I tended to LS whenever I saw one back then so I ended up back at Nanto. We did not know about DI's back then. Low levels did not have the zero drops we have today. I had little chance recovering the body without some armor. I don't think I even had Item magic at this point. If I did I did not know to bane. The little store had some armor that would work for me. The problem was my complete lack of cash. I noted the dropped apples outside so I collected them up and sold them to the vender. It took a little time of waiting for the apples to drop but I raised enough cash to get the armor. After that I was lucky enough to join up with a group that was running to Hebian-to. They helped me get my items back. I wish I had a screen shot of that spot as there was always a pile of bodies there. At one time some friends and me patrolled that road helping travelers. Not much xp but good role-playing and we made a lot of friends. The road is a lot tamer today. While the monsters are a lot stronger they are generally well off the road. If you stay on the road you should not be in any trouble. In the old days there was an ambush at every tree! So I got Mage to the Hebian-to Translator with little trouble. My only problem with this was it added the points in front of the translator. I had hopes to surprise a group of people by having a 126 level fireworks display. When you max a skill you get the same fireworks as when you hit 126. Good Player The 80+ Tusk is a little harder to get these days. For that matter the 60+ is no walk in the park. I'm not sure if this was just one of those rare days but the 60+ did not have anyone in the bottom section. Before this latest patch, and the increase in hitting power of the two tuskers, the 60+ was packed with players and macros. It was somewhat true for the 80+ but I found it clear a few times. I had never seen the 60+ clear. I was getting Tusks with Fist's Armorer. I will also be getting them with Deadeye Fist but I think I'll pass with Owanda. He is an Olthoi killer and I'll leave him at that. Leveling, especially leveling that does not pass up to the mules, is not what he was made for. I ran straight to the bottom of the 60+, as I wanted the maximum buff time I could with the 80+ I would do next. After the jump to the second level I was blanketed with Rampagers. I was never trapped so I got all the way to the end before I had to fight. It was fortunate that I had my best armor on and a +16 mod on my wand. Even with that advantage I had to work my way to a wall. It took a while to clear them out and find a tusk. After that it was with some trepidation that I ran to the 80+. I figured at worse I would have to port out but at 111lv the Tusk is worth taking risks over. When I ported in I saw Embalmer fighting an Assailer. I offered to team with him on getting the tusk. It is sometimes better to team. Lately I have been running through fast enough that I did not get trapped. If you get trapped you will spend some time fighting your way clear. I was wondering why he was getting a tusk when he was 126. Later he told me he was collecting the portal gems. With a lot of players capable of getting tusks I have the gems coming out of my ears. I'm guessing that is his only player. Instead of running our way through we fought. That is the best way with two people as it is just too hard to run and keep together. It is best to not even try. The XP is not bad either. There are those who are not use to teaming with someone. You can tell the good ones right off the bat. They know how to block. They wait for the mage to imperil the mob before charging in. There is also just a general sense that it is a team and not just two individuals fighting near each other. Embalmer had all this and more. I have heard the name Embalmer but that was my first chance to team with him. While one fast trip through a Tusker dungeon will not tell the entire story I would not hesitate to adventure with Embalmer in the future. Guest Writer; Konflict Fist I just read your latest column. You may remember me you may not. I played AC as Konflict and have not been on for some time now. Just thought I'd write and give you my perspective from the outside after not having been playing AC for some time. I grew tired with AC. Graphically it hasn't changed in the 4 years it has been running. I wanted something new, something exciting. I gave Star Wars Galaxies(tm) a shot and after a short stint was deeply disappointed. They were still implementing pivotal content to the game that they had been talking about during development. The game seemed a 1/4 complete and a definite 3/4 of it missing, but what was it? I couldn't figure it out and I'm not about to go back and use my pocket book to do so. SWG is for true fans of the movies and not much else. I am currently playing Shadowbane but am definitely tiring of it quickly. It is full time PvP, the levels cap at 60, and it only takes a week to get to level 50 if you know what you are doing. Templates for characters are all for PvP heroes and no support. The game itself is buggy, and finally no one is really playing it... it's so much fun to be on at 7:45AM and see only 30 people on a server knowing you don't have to worry about getting PK'd while you search for a rune. What do both of these games have that attracted me to them? More dynamic content than AC. AC has dynamic content in a way, but its very static as well. You cannot build towns, houses, etc on your own. You cannot set up your own vendors or tradesmen. What does AC have that I miss? Choice in PvP, the time it takes to level vs. reward, and the most important of all...quests. AC by far has the best content when it comes to quests. Quests items, lore, and all other elements hinged on these factors. AC players pay less than 12$ a month. The last time I paid for 4 years worth of content and game play that keeps drawing people back. As of writing this I am seriously considering a return. I thought I had quit for good, thinking it was time to move on, but with what I've seen of games coming out (Horizons, the Matrix) and or the companies that will be managing these games; I think AC, rusty 4 year old graphics and all, is still far and away worth every penny. Now we just need play cards like SOE and more payment options other than monthly! :P Regards, Konflict of MorningThaw