Being old school I had a hard time with this. Maybe if I were younger I would have thought nothing of it. Of course if I were new school I would not have been there to begin with.
I was in the hall and a guy came in and said, "I need help". I waited for him to explain. After a bit he said he had a body and need help as it was to well guarded for him.
I said I would help him. He said the body was west of GW. We ran to the subway and took the GW portal. We started running west after I put a few buffs on him.
I asked for the coodi of the body. He gave me a set that was a full 40 clicks away, a very long run. Strangely he pointed out this alliance's Mansion as we ran by it. I asked myself, why isn't his alliance helping him?
After finally getting there I began to battle the Shadow LT that was guarding the body. A Shadow LT is little more than a harassment monster for me these days so it was over in seconds.
I looked around and did not see the guy. I went to the coodi where the body should be and no one was there. I sent me a message, "I lost you and don't see the body anywhere." He sent back, "I got it."
He recovered the body while I was fighting and ported out without a word. I ran 40 clicks, buffed him and fought his battle. He was not in our alliance and I never saw him before. No thanks, no goodbye, no nothing, grab the body and portal away.
Singularity Upgrade Quest
My vassal Alala asked me if I could help with the Singularity upgrade quest. I tend to avoid any place with the word "Hollow" in it but if asked, I was ready.
This was a day where I was wrong to many times to count. It was also a day of very close calls. Started out I did not think their route was very good. They had a portal to Zaikhal, then a run to the Danby outpost portal. From there we took a portal to the north of DMI.
I wanted to take another route that likely would have had several people killed before we got there. I'm glad Alala was running the show instead of me. Of course the fact that I had never been to Danby and the portal in not in ACE had something to do with that.
As we got close to Martinate's Holding we ran into a Chaos Wisp. Things turned bad and I had to heal. As I healed it hit me with a spell, heal, spell, heal, spell. Finally I got far enough ahead of the game to blast it. Very close call. Be so stupid to die without even getting inside.
We got inside and buffed up. Alala had simple rules. The people getting the Singularity weapons were not to fight. If they die the two days of work goes away. They were to heal the escort people. Escort people were, Pur Evil, William the Bat, Alala, Moby Dick and me. It may seem like a lot of power but not overwhelming for this place.
Started out simple, normal Tuskers, guard and slaves. Then it changed to Silvers and a few Hollows. Hollows were doing some damage to me but we cleared them. At one point we ran into a horde of Hollows and Silvers Tuskers, more than I ever seen before.
Getting close to the end we start running into Armored Tuskers, Virindi E's and Hollows. I was quick to jump on the Virindi E's as only mages can take them down. Armored Tuskers are a big danger as you cannot drain them. If in trouble I have to depend on slow heals from spells.
After a big room we headed to the last spot. This is where I got into trouble. I knew it was not going to be easy when I saw two bodies of Heartfailure at the bottom of the ramp. Heartfailure is a very good player.
We started up the ramp and the first thing I spotted was the Virindi E. What I did not count on was the reaction of a load of Hollows and Armored Tuskers when I killed it. All and I mean all of everything attacked me!
I was at 50 hit points when I hit heal. I dropped into the 20's before it went off. I healed again and this time was in the teens before it went off. Heal again and I'm at 4 hit points as it goes off. A level VII heal heals over 100 damage so I'm being hit hard and fast. I'm pounding on the heal hot key for the entire fight.
I was lucky for several reasons. I had added a lot of hit points in the last week. I also added a lot of Mana Conversion. I was at almost full mana when the battle started. This as the difference between the Queen battle the week before, my mana conversion was keeping me in mana far longer.
I found out later that Moby Dick had hit the magic trap and was rebuffing far in back of me. My killing the Vinindi let the fighters slowly clear the rest. As they drew down the numbers attacking me I got ahead of the damage to the point I could retreat.
Close, far to close, but we all lived. They upgraded their weapons, took a screen shot and ported back to the hall.
Player focus
One thing I have found is that players must focus on what they do best. When in a group Fist de Mage will focus on Yield and Vulns, letting the other mages and melee's get the kill. The reason for this is his two highest skills are Life and Creature.
Against the Queen getting my Yield to land is critical for the four school mages and BM's. After that is done I'm free to do what I feel is best for the team.
Fist de Yuma has had a problem with this. It is harder for a melee to fit into a group because he would rather do more than block for the mages. Overall that is the melee's job. This may mean not even swinging, as in the case of the Vrinidi Amulet.
As far as attack goes the most powerful of Melee cannot touch a mage. It takes me a while to knock down an EV Olthoi and I would not even bother to try a Brood. My mage takes two spells for EV's and has little trouble with Broods. Melee's advantage is Melee Defense and the Shield.
What brought this to mind is the Queen quest. The key to success today is a melee capable of standing up to the Queen long enough for a mage to kill the her.
Lately I have been focusing on magic. I just got Creature at 95 and running around getting scrolls. I saved up 103 million points, which got me into the 240's. While looking at RainPea I had an idea as to what Fist should be focusing on.
There are two things old schools templates have that are missing from third generation templates; Hit points and quickness. My Quick started at 70 and Coordi at 90. I'm only 10 points short of max melee defense with beginning stats. I spec'd melee defense and it is currently at a base 330. With buffs I'm close to 400.
I'm still going to keep pushing magic for a while, mainly to speed up buffs. The main focus after that will be Melee D. The goal is 350 base. That will cost over 300 million points but well worth it.
For the Queen quest I'm going to concentrate on being the Blocking Dummy. I may not do much damage on the Queen but I'll be a key part of a successful quest.
Good idea, wrong application
Turbine had a great idea. Make the xp in fellow's much higher. This would encourage people to team up as they can get close to the same xp as when fighting solo.
I love to team with people but realized that I was losing xp when doing so. My main problem when hunting is not killing but finding stuff to kill. When with a team I can kill faster but there is still dead time while we hunt for more. Meanwhile I was getting less xp for the kill.
That changes with this patch and it is great. Unfortunately it is not being used as intended. The EV Lair is a good example. I'm not condemning this, to do so would be hypocritical, I readily join in on it. People are quickly forming fellows to maximize their xp while hunting.
This has several advantages. The FFA environment the EVL is becoming is no biggie as everyone in the fellow gains, no matter who gets the kill. This is very good as many of the old bow using grief players are filling up EVL. I was there on day when I could not vuln an EV Olthoi without this braggart moron bow user firing arrows into it. He was so bad his group kicked him.
The second advantage is people can spread out hunting the passages. The best xp is in the main room but a few people can kill everything there. The rest can add kills to the total without losing the big gains in the main room.
While this is somewhat bad there is a lot of good to it as well. Where things have gotten really bad is the xp quests. If Turbine had a 3-month wait between them this would be a moot point. 12 million points apiece for the Queen quest is not out of line so I'm not talking about that.
Turning in the EVL pincer gains an eight man group 8.4 million xp. As this is a relativity easy quest the reward is way out of line. This is way higher than intended. Again I'm not condemning this, I do it myself. To not do it is foolish. A 5.4 million gain over going solo is unreal.
While all this gains people xp at a much higher rate than intended there is another that might be a game breaker. Several players are forming up groups to kill the Coral Golems. I believe the current gains are ten million points an hour. Eight people doing that for a few weeks will break anything Turbine has set up.
What I'm trying to get at is something that was put in to make teamwork better is being used by individual hunters to increase xp yield. Teamwork is people working together, not several fighters in a fellow doing their own thing.
What I'm hoping is Turbine does not change the fellow xp while putting a stop to the exploits. Possible fix for EVL pincer is force fellow breaks. That still will not stop the Coral groups. What the answer to that is I don't know.
XP chains are already hurting the game a lot. High levels were something to be proud of just a few months ago. Today I see players with 10% my time in game easily passing me by. I play more, I hunt more but the chains gain xp twice as fast as I do. With the new fellow xp this will have people moving up even faster.
Most the 80+ players I see today I never saw or heard of before. Not long ago an 80+ player was well known by everyone. No way I anyone could gain that much xp without getting well known. Most were know for quests, leadership, or in a few cases camping BSD 24/7. Now a few months in a chain and their an instance high level. Little skill, little leadership, poor attitude and selfish is all to often the result.
Of course they get bored and sell rather quickly. The big losers may be the E-bay farmers.
Night of the Living dead
We had been planning the Queen quest for a while. I was logged about when it was to start. Trying to contact the people running it did not find anyone on.
I decided to run to Mount E and wait for them. As I crossed the river I spotted an Entropy Wisp. I have never seen one before but it was level 200. Wisps of much lower level are hell to fight.
It took a few tries to get my yield on. There was a little ridge I could run down and a tree to avoid spells. This let me get the Yield and Piercing Vuln on without damage. (I found out Bludgeoning would have been better.)
Of course the tree and ridgeline did not stop drain and I was drained a lot. I healed up and stepped around the tree to fire some war blasts at it. Resist, Resist, Fizzle, Fizzle. Love that non-random number generator.
I ate some war blasts that had me under 100 and decided to run down the ridge and heal. Harm VI, dead. A ridgeline will not stop harm. Well that sucked.
I'm LS'ed in Nanto so it was a quick run to the Bluespire portal and back to the plateau. I knew I would not get there in time to still have the de-buffs on the Wisp. Landed Yield and then Piercing. I only had one resist before the Spike hit and killed it. Humm, most of the vit was gone in one battle. 56k was not bad xp. I could fight them all day. One at a time of course.
From there I ran to Mount E to wait. I killed a few Aun Elder Shamans on the run up there and did not bother to loot. Six Sense rang up with a key on the ground. I ran back looking for the key. There were a few Aun chasing me but I just wanted the key.
The next was very strange. I know my buffs were on. I checked banes and they were all in place. I had not forgot to put my gants on like I do a lot. I quickly took two 20-point hits that had me at 180. Then bam I was one hit dead. This was not even the strongest Aun I see. Very strange.
So I ran back and quickly cleared everything. No strange named Aun that might have done the deed around. All I can think of is the skill guy and his hollow harpoon. I did not get any green text so I don't think so. It will always be a mystery.
After a short wait Mars-hill and a few others showed up. A group was getting sprayed on another dungeon so we were going in to help them.
We got in to Mount E and our first job was to recover Mars-hills body. I did not check but it looked like the Wisps got him. We quickly got to the bottom and into the Hive.
From there we cleared the top and went into a portal. After clearing a few EV's we were searching for the other group. Mars-Hill ran down a passage and I followed him. He stopped in front of a door. I clicked on the door only to find it was one that needed a switch to open.
Mars-Hill ran back up the passage and I noted I was taking a lot of damage, 40hp chunks. It was acid damage. It seems the passage we ran into was full of acid. I ran up the passage but was too late.
Dam three deaths and have not even started into the hive. Mars-hill recovered my body while I ran back to Mount E. The Wisp followed me into the deeps again but this time it lost interest and I did not have to fight it. I got into the hive after killing a few Olthoi that got in my way.
The people fighting in my fellow cleared my vit before I got back. I was grateful of that. As we waited several others died. Whoever thought to use that place to get sprayed should be whipped.
We finally got the group together. Plan was simple. We would buff and then run to that last drop. People would stand in the doors so the switch puller could run down. When the switch puller got there we would jump in, kill Queen one and take the portal back to the start. From there we would do it again except we would rebuff at the last drop.
All went as planned with one minor glich. Elder had used his lock pick up and could not open the first door. Two guys jumped down into the Queens den and ran to the portal. That got them back up to Elder and gave him a pick.
We were now ready to start. We jumped down and I was cut off by a Guards and Brood. I killed a Guard and ran to the portal. There was a fighter there and a few others. I tried to keep aware of the Queen being released but with all the messages it scrolled off before I saw it.
I started a war spell on a Guard when the Queen attacked me. I took a big hit and turned to the portal, directly in back of me. I hit the forward key but instead of running into the portal the computer tried to toss the spell. I turned back to the Guard.
I tried again to turn and run to the portal but the computer insisted that I toss the spell first. If I was a faster thinker I would have just let the spell go off before running. That would have saved me. The time it took to twice turn to the portal than then turn back to the guard was all the Queen needed to take out.
So I'm back in Nanto. I'm sure glad I picked a good spot for a fast return. The group was nice enough to wait for me and even killed a few things to clear my vit.
I got back and we ran to the last drop. We did a full buff with Moby Dick cross-buffing with me. That put my Creature up to 376 and Life over 370. I would not be using War on the Queen but would need it for the Broods.
We cleared the EV's and Broods from the top of the den. Elder buffed up as much as possible. There is a bug were if you buff too much it cycles back to 0. We had to be careful not to do that.
Elder jumped down and I was firing heals at him. After two bars of mana we were attacked by Broods. Elder seemed to be doing ok. With 340+ melee Defense I was hoping he was evading the Queen and I could stop healing to kill the Broods. I was taking to much damage to do otherwise.
I killed the Brood and quickly switched back to Elder. I was hitting him for 90 point heals and I was only one of many sending him heals. I noted that we were getting messages about one of our mages killing the Guards.
Suddenly it got quite. You could hear a pin drop. After all the noise of spells going off and people shouting it was unreal. I noted that Elder was no longer selected on my screen. "What happened?" I said. "Elder died" said Mars-Hill. "Darn, Next" I said.
Mars-hill buffed up and jumped down. I was firing heals at him for a while when he asked for stamina. I was sent him replenish to him for several shots of over 100. He was really eating up the stamina. I was figuring that was what got Elder. It was a long battle. The person trying to kill the Queen was being hit with Brilliance by another player but still being resisted.
At last the Queen was under half health and the free mages could start attacking. It fell quick after that. I was still hitting Mars-Hill with heal until the Queen was dead.
I ran over and looted my body while the room was clear. I grabbed a little loot from the ground and we all ported to the Aun town.
I learned from Elder what had happened. At the start of the battle the guards and Broods were blocking the Queen from getting from Elder. This was why he lived while I battled the Broods. When one of our mages started killing the Broods and Guards he cleared a path to Elder for the Queen. Elder also went into peace mode to better heal. What lowered his melee D a lot. Two fast 100 point hits in a row got him killed between our heals. Mars-hill being in war mode evaded a few blows but because of that he needed stamina as well as heals.
It worked out but four deaths on one quest was a bit much. Of course three of them had nothing to do with the quest and the other one was my error. Elder and I were the only ones to die in the actual quest but we had a lot of deaths in the spraying. Still worth it with over 12 million points. I was able to add a point of War. It is 288 base now and cost over 13 million a point.
Michael X and the skill quest.
While heading to Mount E and the Queen quest I ran into the Skill guy. I quickly checked my vassal list to see who was on. Alala needs to get this quest out of the way but he was leading the Focus Stone and could not leave.
I tried /c and found Michael X was on. He was supporting the Focus stone quest but with the number of people he could break away.
I waited for Mike and needed to toss a buff to support Mike. My mouse did a lag jump and tossed Yield on the Aun instead. I had to run as he does hollow damage and I had to let Mike kill him. As I returned I saw a white dot attack him.
I was hoping it was Mike, which it was. Mike was low in hit points so I tossed a heal VII for 90 points. He ran and got away with 2 hit points. Because of my running it was not as clean a kill as it could have been. Done right I would have tossed Imp and piercing Vuln and Mike would have killed it with a handful of arrows.
Still, while a close call, Mike got the kill. I just need to get my other vassals this quest.
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