Fist de Yuma - November 26, 2002

Archer and Tuskers The new islands are ideal for my Archer. There are a lot of new Archers in the game and this is without a doubt the best place for them to hunt. This is a back track from years ago when I was a young mage. I never thought an Archer would evade a Tusker that well. After playing my Archer to a much higher level I have found an Archer can evade all but the biggest ones. So for a little while I'll be hunting with Deadeye Fist on the new islands. Mage is very close to maxing out and the xp Deadeye makes will move directly to him anyway. I have him set as a direct vassal to Mage. If my first big hunt is any example it will not be long before he can get many of his goals. I hunted for two hours and made more xp than any time I had ever hunted with any of my players for that time period. Even Mage in fellow on the island could only come close to the numbers. I did not have the exact numbers because I did not have Decal running. With no loot worth looking for and Mage doing the buffing there is no reason to have decal on, other than tracking xp. Of course people looking for flaws will be asking the question, "Aren't you against power-leveling? You called them bean counters last week." Well the answer is yes and no. Like most things it is a matter of degree. If someone declares 200 dollars is chartable donations on their taxes and only donated 100 they are a tax cheat. Nevertheless I would not put them in the category of the DNC chairman who pocketed 16 million on a 100 thousand investment in Global Crossing. (Normal inventers got taken to the cleaners but somehow that is the Republicans fault.) Most players power-level at one point or another. The question is do you do it all the time or just sometimes? If you power-level 80%+ of the time you're a "Bean Counter". If you power-level sometimes to meet goals so you can play better then you're not. If the "Bean Counters" want to call social players, "Sitter" they are well within their right. I disapprove of players who are only after levels and numbers. I feel their play is shortsighted and doom them a boring time in the game. They are free to disapprove of me not pushing levels all day. The real damage they do is bring new players into their style of play and keeping them from leaning what a great game this is. They are also one of the reasons we have 440 magic defense/Attack skill/Melee defense monsters. Deadeye's adventure I moved through the 40+ Tusker place with little trouble. I'm going to have to get the name of that dungeon. There were not as many players hunting as the other day but enough that I only had to fight my way for five minutes or so. I headed to the beach and ran across a 40+ dungeon portal. I was hoping it was one of those with a reward. If there is it is on a Tusker body and I was not looting. I have a feeling that was it. I ported in and saw another Archer in peace mode healing. There was an Armored Tusker pounding on him. I did not want to jump into his battle so I asked of he needed any help. The answer was "Yes" so I killed it with a few arrows. He started a fellow and I was off pushing to 64. I needed around six million points so I did not figure I would make it. The two million or so I figured I'd make would be a big help. The first room had two exits. There was a continuous stream of Tuskers coming into the room. I wanted to explore a bit but any passage I took had more monsters that I could kill. Another player came in. It was a mage named Life Support. We added him into the fellow and him and I moved off to the left passage with him. Life Support was having a hard time landing but when he did the monster died fast. Overall he showed his worth but mages are no longer the kings of fellows they were. We ended up jumping to a lower level when we could not find a passage down. Tusker after Tusker fell. The Worshipers were de-buffing me to hell and back but the narrow hallways kept me from getting into trouble. We had one spot where it opened up into a room. A horde charged us. As the battle began a side passage started flooding monsters into our rear. I marveled of the great ambush Turbine had set up. Life Support and I lived but only because we were far more powerful than them. With my well-buffed 63lv and a 78lv we were well above the 40lv that is the lower limit for the dungeon. We met a 71lv Swordsman who asked to get into our fellow. We did not have the key person with us as he was at the start fighting. A few seconds later we got a message that the Key was going to have to log to clear lag. Life Support made another Fellow and added in the Swordsman and me. Now we had the ideal "Fist" team, Mage, Melee, Archer. P U N I S H E R would move up the hall keep most of the Tuskers bottled up. I would quickly pick off the Worshipers and then start on the Tuskers. Life Support would de-buff whatever he could land on. This was a great team! I was about out of buffs I said I was going to have to leave. Life Support gave me a full set of buffs so I could stay. I did not have the banes Mage would give me but with P U N I S H E R blocking I was not getting pounded on as bad. In a short time we had a full fellow and a monster in the place had a short lifetime. Still it was not a safe place by any means. I had one battle where a few good hits by a Tusker, debuffs by a Worshiper and some war spells had me to 16 hit points. There was a portal near and I decided to run to it. A Tusker blocked my way and I did a little tap dancing to get around it. I was sure there was no way I was going to live through it. When the way cleared I was able to get to the portal with 2 hit points. That was close. A short time into the second hour I leveled. That meant we were above four million and hour xp. How much over I don't know as this is only a guess but I would not be surprised it we were near five million. I know there are places that do better but that was the best I have ever seen. Soloing the beach After the great time fighting inside I decided to take Deadeye outside for a while. Fighting outside has always been more fun for me when playing an Archer. Inside, especially when playing in a team, is more of a power game. Little thinking other than just kill and kill. The idea on this trip was to avoid the de-buffs. I was going to be in some big battles and Imperil/Bludgeoning would make that pure death. Something strange happened while running through the 40+ Tusker route. It was not camped which meant fighting my way down. I did not mind that as it part of the fun. At the very end I decided to run next to the temple and make a stand. I figured if things got tight I could always click the temple for a fast escape. The distance between the wall and the temple is not very big so the Tusker trick of swinging around to my backside would not work. All and all I thought it was a good plan. Now I get a surprise. I hit my spot, turn around and fire off and arrow. Bam I'm dead. I take a look at the battle text and saw I was hit for around 10 points by a Tusker. That left me with around 160 points as I had forget to put on my Endurance ring. The kill was a worshiper's acid spell. I know I had Acid Vulnerability VI on but I also had a level VII protect. All I can say was that was one hell of a crit. I had lost my Hauberk. That is not uncommon with its high value. I quickly had Mage buff his pre-gsa and give to Deadeye. A fast set of protects and creature buffs had me back at it. On the way back I changed tactics. This time I killed everything I saw, preferably at range. At the final ramp I was able to pull most of the monsters out of the temple room a little at a time. When I went for the body there was only a single Tusker and Worshiper there. I got my armor back and headed to the island. I decided to put on his normal armor, as with the buffs it is better than GSA. The only reason I use shadow armor these days is the no drop. My other armor is better than GSA when buffed. The only advantage before with GSA, other than no drop, was the protects. With the 2.0 cap on banes any armor with higher AL is better after buffing. After I got to the island I dispelled the de-buffs and headed out. Again, the idea was to avoid fighting Worshipers and getting loaded up with de-buffs. I headed west and cleared a few pockets of Guards and Slaves. As I got near the beach this changed to Silver and Armored. Armored Tuskers take a little more time. I do about 120+ damage to Silvers and around 95 on Armored. With 600+ hit points on an Armored it means 7 to 8 arrows. I would generally start out with six or more attackers so taking that long to kill a single monster meant long battles. If any Worshipers joined in I would immediately target them. One or two arrows were all it took. I was lucky in that the outside Worshipers tend to go melee rather then starting with spells. Of course it could be the fact that I only faced a handful at a time. The mobs I faced in the dungeons had time to go mage on me. I moved out to the sea chasing spawns. As I got a little further west I hit a spawn with some Assailers. This was the first test of the tank concept. I had no idea if I could fight one of these or not. My tactic was straightforward. I would shoot at an Assailer and wait until the mob got halfway. I would then take off running to string them out a bit. The one I hit will generally be more persistence than the rest so with a little smart play I could be one on one with it. With around 360 bow skill and using full accuracy I would mostly hit but not every arrow. So they have very high missile defense. Other than that they were not much harder than an Armored Tusker. They sort of combined the toughness of an Armored Tusker with the missile defense of a Silver. After taking down five or six this way I noted that the spawn contained a few Devastator's. I heard they were hard hitters and had very high attack skills. This would be a hell of a test. My first arrow missed but at range that is not uncommon. Their attention spawn is not as sharp as other Tuskers so I had some trouble drawing them. I tried standing in a while and putting a few arrows into one as they charged. I turned to run as it got close and took a 100+ hit in the head. Admittedly that is not a great test as my melee defense is far less while running away. That hit and the zero hits with my bow convinced me to leave the Devastators to Fist when he got there. Fist has a melee defense of 449 buffed and a fire weapon with a 32% bonus. (592 effective.) If a Devastator can hit that it will be a "run away" monster for all my players. The xp was not as great as in a fellow but I had more fun. What I need to do is find a group of smart players and a goal of some kind. Right now the only goal I can see on the new island is xp. It is nice to be building up my Archer faster but leveling is never my single goal. It might be a step towards a goal but never the goal. So I might be playing Deadeye there once or twice a week but anymore than that is unlikely at this time. PK Fun No, I did not go insane and try PK again. Until there a no loot PK or the MT PK's stop looting I'll pass. There is too much temptation to cheat when there is loot on the line. What I did was watch and in one case help a group. First something I have wanted to talk about but did not have time to write about last week. Before the roll back there was a dead time. This was a time when you could play but it would not count. When the roll back was announced for later in the day people took advantage of this dead time to go experience PK. If I had thought about it I would have joined in. As it was I did a little writing and reading. This meant I missed one of the biggest PK events ever seen. This should be a wake up call for Turbine. At this time PK really sucks. With the imbalance in play and having to dump important items few people bother with it. Many have contributed the lack of PK play for a lack of interest. This event proved that the interest is there, it is the looting that keeps them out. So if PK is ever to be played as much as Turbine envisioned it something will have to change. Up the vit or something to balance it but lose the looting. Until that goes away PK will only be an insignificant part of AC. So I was not going PK but I heard that the Awric Mafia was going to be in full force for eight or more hours. I figured I would find a group going after them and be a scout. I headed to the subway with Mage. There I found a group with a name that said they were hunting the Awric Mafia. I talked to one of then that I think was named Indomitable. If I have the name wrong I'm sorry. This was an Og II group. They are looters and Elder has a rule against helping looters. At this point every PK group on MT is looting so it does not give me much of an option. Fortunately this does not apply when the opponent is on our KOS/L list, which the Awric Mafia is. I just had to make sure they understood that I was neutral for all but the Awric Mafia and I should be within the rules. What I did for the next hour or so was scout a circle around the Sub looking for the AM fighters. When found I would relay the coordinates to the fellow. Now I have seen better organized groups. Much of the time they were too separated to support each other and there was more single vs. group than there should have been. I think the group would have been a disappointment except for Indomitable. It also showed there is a big problem with balance that has been exaggerated by chains. Indomitable is a 126 Archer with Life skills. The Life skills don't come into play much against the AM as they are well supplied with Gems. I'm sure he has Melee Defense specialized and has put a lot into it. His tactic was simple brute force augmented by his defense. He would charge in and attack one of the AM members. Of course the other four to six would attack him. I would watch his health and for the most part it never moved off full. I cannot say the same for his target. Despite the overwhelming odds in favor of AM Indomitable would be in little danger as he killed and looted his target. The only down side to the time I spent doing this was the attitude of the Awric Mafia. Awric Mafia himself is a gentleman about this but he has some in his alliance that have a bad attitude. There are two types of "White" players that can help PK's. I label them "Spys" and "Scouts." A "Spy" is a non-PK players that helps a group without letting on that they are doing so. They may pretend to be just watching or even befriend the people they are spying on. A "Scout" on the other hand will announce his intention. This is mostly done by being in the fellow that is attacking them. Sometimes they will just say it because there was no room on the fellow for the scout. I was being a "Scout". I was in the fellow that was attacking them and made no attempt to hid the fact. For some reason this angered several members of the Awric Mafia. One said I was screwing them after they returned the Katar they stole. Excuse me? (I was looted when there was a no loot agreement on.) What was sad was I saw several Awric Mafia "Spys" running around. I was checking everyone that was around the sub and saw the white AM members watching. So an open "Scout" was screwing them but their "Spy" was ok. Whatever. Melee vs. Archer problem in PK The Tank Archers who have moved to high levels, disregarding how they get there, can have between 400 and 450 buffed Melee Defense. (More actually but I'll go with this for now.) Most Archers at that level have a 10% to 12% mod to add to that. Then add Defender VII to it and you have and effective melee defense from a low of 508 to a high of 580. With few players having missile defense an Archer can fire with a machine gun speed. Each arrow does as much damage as a full pull. I'm not sure of the damage over time but it must be up there. Of course the best PK's can affect this with de-buffs on the bow. I'm not sure if a Gem would fix that but I'm doubtful it does. Someone might want to send me a letter if I'm wrong. I know there is an Item dispel that would dispel the de-buff but I'm sure Gems would not. The point is moot as the Awric Mafia does not play that way. The most effective weapon a melee can use these days is a Deadly Hollow. The problem with the very weapon that has made Melee PK more effective is it has a major weakness. It cannot be buffed. There is a good reason for this as adding BD VII to it would make it overpowering against mages. The problem is they did not add any bonus for attack or defense to the weapon. That in itself would be bad but then add the fact that you cannot add your own and you have a far lower attack and defense than a normal weapon would provide. This is not a problem against a mage. Mages generally have zero to low Melee Defense. Even those with melee skill find the average melee can hit them every time. When you take a Deadly Hollow against someone with a good melee skill and defender you can quickly reach a point where it is close to impossible to hit someone. Fist de Yuma has 450 UA skill. Against an Archer with 450 melee defense I should be able to hit them 50% of the time. A +27% on his bow would be balanced with the same bonus on my weapon. Put a Deadly Hollow in my hand and I cannot hit him at all. For that matter I would be hard pressed to hit the Archer with 50 points less melee defense. (450 vs. 508 effective.) This means a player like Indomitable can kill and loot while ignoring five or more melee's attacking him! Turbine needs to add an attack bonus to the Deadly Hollow or there will be another reason that PK is in the tank. This is also a problem with melee vs. melee but it is generally a wash. Neither can damage the other. They can stand there and swing until one or the other runs out of stamina. If I understood that when I was PK or did not bore so easy with the battle I would not have had the first death against the Awric Mafia. (Or if run and sticky worked as it should have.) I'm not sure if the fast attack bow is as much of a problem. With high armor, a shield and spells a melee should be taking little damage. Nevertheless Indomitable had little trouble killing Awric Mafia members so I must be off there. I don't know. I hope Turbine reads this or already knows about this problem. It is said that most of Turbine plays Archers. I cannot say for sure if this is true or not but they need to take a look at this issue. Or course complaining about something without a solution is rather lame. What would I do? 1) Drop the 2.0 limit on armor. 2) Make Deadly Hollows buffable. 3) Make PK no looting. You still drop and need recovery but no looting. The added armor would help balance the greater power given Deadly Hollow. Also mages and others would be able to use the higher armor available and drop the GSA. You might even put a negative damage on Deadlys to cut the damage slightly. With an attack bonus people's attack would be on par with the melee defense for equal levels of ability. It is even possible that the no looting would negate the need to make Deadlys buffable. Melee would be able to use their Armor Rendering weapons. I'm not sure if that is as good as a Deadly but it is worth looking into. Anything is better they what they have. The very least they need to do is put an attack and defense bonus on the Deadly Hollows. Ooops I got an E-mail from Tracye. She had been a bit fast either selling or something and had lost her Focus stone. They are not hard to get so I quickly logged Fist. I had a key on Jr so we could head right off. Tracye already had a key but there was another problem. Tracye was a traded for player and the person running her had never done the quest. With me needing to hit the switches we needed at least one person who knew the route. Char'okee was at the mansion and she was with us when we did the quest last. I asked her if she could help us out. She agreed to lead the quest. Others who overheard asked of they could go. Before we knew it we had a large party going after the stone. They got organized while I ran to the Mine of Despair to get a tie. I'm sure there are faster routes but I took a way I knew. I'll check ACE and other sources later to get a better route. I ran to the beach fort east of Awric and took the portal there. I then ran west to the Mine. After getting the tie I ported back to the mansion and summoned for them. I waited for a mule who was getting the stone to arrive. My job was easy from that point. I just had to run down and hit the switches. They had the power to get even the weak mules through without danger. I had a sub vassal go with me. Hate leaving out his name but our tree sever is down and rather leave the name then misspell it. We headed down to the maze. We quickly got to the switches. I have the route to them down pat. Getting out is another matter. There is a part where we jump down and there is no way to jump back for most people. Someday I'll see if my 420 jump can do it but I had someone with me. We were heading out of the maze when I locked up. I had to reboot the computer to get back. That was my first lock up in days. I was so hoping I had tracked it down but no go. When I got back I headed out of the maze. I could have ported back to the start or just gone to the mansion but I'm trying to learn the route out. I had it down one time but this is a very confusing maze. Halfway out I met up with my sub vassal. He too had been trying to find his way out of the maze. I finally found a spot where I knew the way and we got out. After that we ported back to the mansion. I had lost the fellow when I locked up but I had two vassals in this, Tracey and Daniel Boone. . (Daniel Boone was the mule we were waiting for. He swore to me so he could port to the mansion.) They told me everyone got the stone and no deaths. Special treat As I said last week I'm also writing for AC Vault. It is not a weekly column but I have two adventures that fit into a single theme ready. I should have them to written up soon. So keep checking AC Vault for it this week. Of course those that have donated to me will get it in the mail as they normally do. If you have limited space in your mailbox you might want to clear it out. The new column will be including pictures. Sahan's Adventures One of the perks of having a column is you get vassals who write. Two of the columnist on AC Vault have joined me in Elder. Not in my branch but in my alliance. Who knows, someday Sahan will have a column of his own. Here is his latest works. Well I've had my first adventure over on the new island yesterday. I started it by hunting Caul and a friend of mine telling me about the great exp they are getting and that there are a couple openings in the fellowship. They were hunting in the Armory which is filled with Armored Tuskers. So I go to the mansion and ask for a portal from Wu to AB. He accidentally portaled himself there instead so we had a good laugh about that. I get there and decide to move my lifestone tie as well. Anyway I get directions to this place and have a run through mid level hell. Being honest I think the real reason for the new corpse decay put in this patch is because of that island and the spawns. It must take up a huge amount of resources to have all those spawns going. So it stands to reason that they put the new no loot items dropping to help the system. I go into this place and buff up, also buffing my friend with some 7's as well and go off hunting. As it stood I was one of the higher characters in the fellow but that was ok. I played the support mage. Don't get me wrong they were killing pretty quickly, I just helped them do it a bit faster (grin). I was moving around a lot, anytime I saw a green dot with oranges I could stand at the distance and just imperil like mad. It worked out that I didn't imperil the same monster more than once for most of the time I was there. We were at a high of 7.3 down to 6.5 for a bit, I finished off with 6.8 for the hour I was there. Not too shabby but it is like hunting BSD, great experience if not a bit on the boring side. I also picked up a tusk and turned it in later on to Brighteyes the tailor, I have to give them credit for playing the name well for him (grin). I took a break and came back later on. My fearless patron was hunting the beach and I had done some research and decided to go to the rampager cave. The run is a very dangerous one and don't do it if not buffed and have full banes going. I ran into bunches of things that would curl your toes. I don't mind taking one Assailer at a time, or even two, but six, not for this battlemage. The human mages couldn't get a spell on me and I made it into the cave pretty much intact. I start just to look around and hit the traps, too bad I buff with 7's, but I still had tuskers gift cast on me. Since I was tired I didn't try to get into a fellow, I just wanted to get to the place to give it a shot tonight. One thing I will say about it and it isn't a good thing, there were a bunch of stone heads that could be used for macros which sucks. I made 86th on Saturday and because of hunting last night I'm 1/3 of the way to 87th. That is going to be something Turbine is going to have to watch with this new island. It is forcing us to group, which in of itself isn't that bad but over a months time with people doing that instead of their normal hunting you will see a lot more high level characters than there were previously. Well I did the rampager tusk quest last night. Of the dungeons I've been in so far on the new island this one is the most mage friendly. Granted there are many dispel traps that while not really effecting me they still throw tuskers gift which is a pain in the butt. I wasn't able to get into a fellow as I got there late last night, so I just did some solo hunting. Even with the gangbanging on monsters I was still making good exp, but if I can't get into a fellow I'd be better off on Caul just for the loot factor. The reason that the place is good for mages, especially those who aren't in chains or below 100th level, is that the rampagers don't have that insane magic d, and are drainable. If you haven't gone in there yet here is some advice. Now we all know how to use corners in the Nest/Lair/BSD, the same applies in this cave with a twist. They have these huge stone heads on the ground. If you wedge yourself in there you can get it to where you are only being hit by one at a time. This is great for anyone who got hit with tuskers gift or is low on stam since you're only getting hit by one at a time. When I was standing on one of these heads....yes you can jump up and stand on them, Little Fal (Faldorin) came in and said hi to me. He was surrounded so I fire vul'd everything around him. He was a bit surprised and asked me why so I replied, why not. R. Scott White