Fist de Yuma - November 30, 2004

Bobo There are a lot of quests out there that are, "Just to do" quests. Some have good rewards, but Turbine has been notoriously poor at quest rewards. They are getting better, but quests are still mostly a, "something to do" thing. There are a few that fall into the, "must do at least once", category. Bobo is one of those. We can get away with gems, or running through the dungeon, but having the Tusker island recall spell is so much better. So when Bunsen volunteered to lead the quest, many were overjoyed. Dread Lord used to run this quest every week, but he has some real life issues, and has not been on for a while. This is one quest where you really should have someone who knows the route well. Having a lot of power is also nice. We set up the quest for Saturday. I was there with Owanda, my 113lv macer. He finally got self-buffing with VIIs, which is a must for this quest. Well, there are exceptions to that rule. More and more people are going with straight item buffs, and not taking any magic skills, but Item. I can see that working, because at one time we had no choice, but it has been years since I lived without level VII buffs. The time rolled around, and no Bunsen. Hours later, no Bunsen. Everyone went and did something else. Several hours after the quest time, Bunsen logged on, with a red face apology. He had fallen asleep. I have a good memory, and have known a lot of different people. So I understand when someone makes a goof like that. I have a gift of being able to wake up at the exact time I should, but I have never known anyone else who can. (A very valuable skill in the Marines.) So Bobo was a bust, but there was always Sunday. We set up to go then. Unfortunately, we could not get the word out to everyone, and many could not make it for that day. When we got ready for the quest, we only had four people. We had good melee power, with Owanda, and Hot Shot, but Bunsen XV is only 83. That is a good level, but will have a hard time landing on most of the stuff we would meet. We rounded that out with Horror Sparrow, a 108 melee. We were light on numbers and de-buff power. For those not familiar with this quest, it is to get a recall spell to Tusker island. It starts with talking to a guy in a hut. This hut is surrounded with some heavy hitting Tuskers, and sundry other monsters. Many of them can hit through the walls, and it is a small house, so it is a nightmare for a mage or any low melee defense player. From there you run to a waterfall, that has a dungeon portal in it. The run to both places have hundreds of Tuskers and other Tusker island demons nipping at your heels. Stopping, even for a second, is not an option. Dieing out there is the beginning of many a horror story. From there, you go into a dungeon with heavy hitting Tuskers, de-buffing mages and dispel traps, that also add in a nice VII bludgeoning vulnerability. Fortunately, the traps only dispel VI and below, or not many people would be doing this quest. Level VII or item buffs, along with dispel gems, are a must. This dungeon will lead to a portal to the next dungeon. This one is more of the same, with narrow hallways. So, for the most part, the second dungeon is not quite as bad as the first. The exception is at the very end. At the very end is a wide ramp with lots of tuskers tucked away in side passages. They will spill out as you descend the ramp. At the bottom is a maze. It is also filled with lots of nastiness. That will lead to the portal to the next dungeon. The next dungeon is totally different. This one has the green barking stuff you see on the island, along with the scorpion things. People who cheated on buffs, and only did bludgeoning banes and protects, die here. This is also a good place to get lost. This dungeon ends with more Tuskers in a wide series of rooms. If you made it this far, it is likely you'll make to the end with ease. That last dungeon just has Tuskers and no traps. You can still stumble if you get stupid, but the only real trouble is the knowing the route. At last you get to meet Bobo. This is one really big Tusker, with granite blocks for hands. Don't worry, you don't have to fight him, but you do get the next best thing. You talk to Bobo, and he portals you to a small room. This has a portal, and is used to gather your group before the final assault. The final battle is with a heavy hitting, armored Tusker. Just to make things harder, they have missile-tossing tuskers around the top of the pit, cheering their hero on. Every so often you'll see other tuskers join the battle, but that is just lag, and they will disappear quickly. I have heard of people soloing this bad boy, but you will need one powerful person to do that. Paraduck type power. They also need the ability to de-buff, as no amount of pure melee can get ahead of his heal rate. When he is defeated, a portal back to Bobo is created. You talk to Bobe one last time, and he rewards you with a paw. The paw will have one or three fingers. Each finger is a reward. If you got the kill, you get three rewards instead of one. You take one last portal to the reward room. There are a lot of different statues, each with a different reward. The main one is the scroll, of course. There is also a small chance to get a nice, one of a kind mage spell, and an Axe item. I'm not sure if there is anything for anyone else, but there might be. In any case, the odds of getting anything good are very low. And back to our adventure. We did not start out great. We got a little separated while running to the hut. Different running speeds, and the inability to stop, always make that run a nightmare. I got there first, and was off to the waterfall before the others showed. Hot Shot was showing off, and tried to make the run without buffs. That worked ok, after all he is over 200 level, but when he got to the hut, things were different. He had to port out or die. We all laughed at him as he buffed and made the run. We all rebuffed at the dungeon start. Hot Shot and Bunsen helped with Horror Sparrows buffs. It was a strange start, but we got it together after that. We moved well though the dungeon. We would go slow when we needed to, and rushed when we had to. Bunsen did a good job with directions. He was not totally sure he could remember all the turns, and felt he was going to die before we got to the end. Smart play and good leadership made it a breeze. The only really scary part came at the bottom of the ramp, in the second dungeon. This part is really dangerous. I have seen 126+ players leave bodies there. We did not have the power to get ahead of the spawn rate, so we decided to make a run for it. We started by clearing the top section, so we could get a clean run to the maze. When that was done, we girded our loins, and rushed down. I'll admit I will tend to cheat a little with things like this. There are two ways to go here, lead or follow. Sometimes it is far better to lead, others times it is far better to follow. I find that a good rule is, if inside, lead, if outside, follow. So I took advantage of my high run, and shot ahead. I do not know the maze really well, but I have a trick. I had Bandit Sight open and portal detection on. When it detected the portal, I could use that as a guide. It was a good idea, but not perfect. I started in, and quickly came to a dead end. I was quick, and weaving, so I did not get trapped. I was tying to make my way though, without ever slowing down. One misstep, and you are in big trouble. The key is not to stop, and not to panic. Just go. So when I came out the maze, close to where I came in, I just reversed my direction and re-entered the maze. I was not the only one, as I ran past Hot Shot about then. (g) Even with all that, I was the first to the portal. I even had to wait a while before everyone else could make it in. We rebuffed there and headed in. Bunsen really shined here. I have seen many parties get lost in this part, if only for a time. Bunsen had it down pat. We did not make a single wrong turn. In the last dungeon, we did make a few wrong turns, but we quickly recovered. After a few fights, we were ready to fight the last battle. I did not expect to have that much of a problem. We had Hot Shot, who might well be one of those capable of soloing this bad boy. Owanda is no slouch, even with a less than optimal fire mace. Add on a 108 melee and Bensen's spells, and I did not expect us to have any trouble at all. Before we went in, I got everyone to head to a single corner. Nothing is worse than having everyone scatter to a different spot. Well, maybe Hot Shot would be ok, but the rest of us would not want to face him alone. Now, I'm not sure what happened. I'll just give you my view of the battle. First I ran to the southwest corner, and set up for the fight. I could see others next to me, but I was slightly forward, so I could not see what they were doing. I hunkered behind my shield and swung away. Despite Owanda's very high melee defense, he had no trouble hitting me. Of course, without any missile defense, the Tuskers above us were also doing damage. Because a good shield, and high armor, I only had to heal once during the battle. Where things were not going good was our return damage. I saw his heath percentage go down to 97, stay there for a bit, and then go back to 100. I'm not sure if Turbine has beefed him up any, but I was sure I should be doing better than that, even without Hot Shot and the gang. Bunsen was having a hell of a time landing a spell. We were a minute in before he finally got the yield, and a bit more before the imperil hit. I saw him ask Hot Shot for help, and it could be that Hot Shot got the yield. When the spells finally hit, things got a lot better. I think it was around a minute from there that he died. The portal was created, and I jumped in. I hit Bobo, and much to my surprise, I got my first three-fingered paw, ever. How I got the kill over Hot Shot, I'll never know. HS said he was delayed getting into the battle, and might have had to stop to help with the spells. Still, I was not exactly doing much damage before the spells landed. With the three wishes, I got the recall spell, and a million reward, followed by a 500k reward. As you can see, anything after the first wish sucks. Worlds of Warcraft After playing both EverQuest and Worlds of Warcraft in beta, I choose WoW as my side game. AC is still my game, and there is nothing in either game that will change that. Still, I need something else to play from time to time. I should not have done this, but I ordered it from EBgames, and had it mailed overnight. That cost me an added ten bucks. Given that I still had to play sales tax, as EBgames has a store in town, I should have just gone to WalMart and got it. Of course, if I did go that route, Rosa would have wanted to know where I was going at midnight (g). As it was, I failed to sneak the game in, so she knows about it. I stayed up to around 5am playing AC. I figured WoW would arrive around noon, and I did not want to sit and fidget while waiting for it. I hate to wait, for anything, so I figure it would be better to just sleep. An hour after I got up, no WoW. We have the front door blocked, and use the side door. The delivery people know this, but every so often we get a noob who puts deliveries at the front door. To be sure, I walked around to see. No package. I check the web site at 4pm. It said it had been delivered! Now, to say Yuma has poor service is an understatement. Well, to be fair, that is just the mail. Others are very good, but anything sent Federal is at risk. I figured they had messed up again. I checked outside one more time, no package. I checked the mailbox. Nada. I checked across the street, as they have delivered there from time to time, nothing. It took me a while, but I found the phone number for Federal Express. For some reason, it was not in the phone book. I had to get it off the web site. To be honest, they were really nice. I was steamed, but in control. It was a good thing I did not yell at her, but I was really pissed. She read off what the driver wrote. Packaged delivered and placed behind the screen at 1pm. Aaaa, behind the screen? At this point I'm really glad I was not being as ass, as I had not checked behind the screen. I'm talking really nice, as I carried the phone outside and around to the front door. Sure enough, there it was. I thanked her for the help, and hung up, red faced. Role Playing I'm playing on the east coast role-playing server, for those who play WoW, and want to hook up. You'll be very welcome, as most players there are very bad, and I need to team with some players who know which end of a sword to use. The most common thing we see, are players who take advantage of others as a matter of course. They sit and hide, waiting for others to engage guards, and then run in and grab the reward. Some players did nothing but that. It was tempting to just stop fighting, die, and let the monsters kill off the leaches. To our amazement, the role-playing server is one of the most popular servers. There are even times when you have to wait to get on! I'm glad they are limiting the number of players on a server, but waiting for over 200 players to log off, so I can log on, was a sight to behold. So you would think that role-playing is what they want. You would be wrong. While a lot of us are playing roles, most players are not. I'm not sure which is worse, the kids chatting on the general chat, or the role players who argue with them about it. I'm hoping that they will crack down on this soon. With the number of problems they are having, and the slow response for service, I don't expect them to address this for some time The big thing I got, was most of them had no idea what role-playing is. One person said they did not want to talk in old English. Just how they got the idea that, that was role-playing, I'll never know. Role-playing is playing a role. You pick a personality, and play it. When I started playing Fist, I played him as a punch-drunk boxer. Of course, I did not know that UA was not boxing, so it did not work out all that well. Then there was the fact that few ever played a role when AC started. My next attempt to play a role, and one I may go back to, is Death Mute. He was created to PK with a group. I was even given a copy of AC from them. (Not an account, an in the box copy.) The idea was to be an undiscovered tribe. The story was that we came to Dereath, and were enslaved by mages. We had newly broken from them in a revolt, leaving a bloody mess in our wake. We would be full time PK, this was before PKL, and would mostly target mages. They wanted us to use spears, but I had to draw the line there, and made Death Mute sword. To get away from the trash talking that haunts PK, he was going to be a mute. So, for his first few months of play, he never talked. E-motes and other things were all he could do. Like I said, I might go back with that later. His current story is that Asheron cured him, but I might make that a temporary cure. In WoW, I have two very different roles. I'll have to be careful to keep aware, as it would he easy to respond with one, as the other would respond. My main player is Fistdeyuma. Sadly, there is no spaces in the names allowed. That is just one of the problems I have with WoW. He is a stoic Paladin. Always helpful, and forceful with his fight against evil. He is a bit nave; and everything is black and white, good vs. evil. I'll not say the name of this next player, but anyone who has seen him will know him. He is cynical to the max. There is no good, no bad, only fools. The biggest fool of all, is himself. So instead of using general chat to say, "Where is the Den Mother", he will say, "Can someone tell this fool elf where the Den Mother is." (The Den Mother is a monster that you must kill as part of a quest.) So role-playing is easy. Just play your player, and talk and act as he would. Avoid real life comments. When asking a question, form it as your player would form it. I recommend that you not play something too off from your real self, at least to begin with. Whatever you do, have fun with it. If you think you need the freedom to drop in and out of role, talk about the Jets, or complain about your spouse, then don't play on a role-playing server. You'll not like it, and they will not like you. Real Life meeting There have been many times when AC players have had the opportunity to meet each other in real life. Unfortunately, for us West coast players, these have all been held on the East Coast. For those of us without the time or money, I fall into the later, getting there would be almost impossible. Even holding such in LA would be hard for me, with hotel bills, but possible. So I have missed out meeting people in real life, that I know so well in AC. I'm betting I know people in the game better than their friends know them. I have always felt that the freedom of these games let a person's true aspect show through. There are some that I have almost met. There are a lot of players in Phoenix, and I assume a few in San Diego. The one I had the best shot of meeting was Pantine. Pantine lives in Las Vegas. Rosa had a business meeting there this year. My plan was to surprise him with a visit. That fell through when Rosa was set to go to Germany, and could not do both. Then the Germany thing fell through, so we did nether. So I was extremely happy when Pantine sent me a letter, saying he would be in Yuma over Thanksgiving! After a few e-mails, we agreed to meet at the Red Lobster on Friday. I was not surprised that I knew who it was the second I saw him. He said I looked exactly like he thought I did. (g) We had a good meal, and talked a lot. We ended up with a lot of take home, as our "Server", as she wanted to be called, was an old friend of my wife. We ordered the all you can eat shrimp, and she brought us enough to feed six people, and then containers to take it home. (g) She knew she was feeding Rosa, and, as it turned out, Rubin, with enough left overs for me Sunday night when Rosa went to church. Pantine and I hit it off so well, that I invited him home. We spend several more hours talking and laughing. After six hours of that, he had to say goodbye, and prepare for his trip home. I hope to meet a lot more people in real life someday. Lets hope that Turbine will have an LA convention, now that they have moved there. Future of the column So far, I have not missed a column in almost five years. This week is my five-year anniversary of AC, and the column's is in December. This column started as just me posting on one of the boards. That got some attention, and I was shortly invited to write for the Olthoi Lair. The rest is history, as they say. In this five years, I have not missed a week. In fact, I had an added column one week, so I'm even ahead. (g) Lately, I have noted some stress with the column. The demand to have something, anything, just to not break the streak, can really work on me. So, sometime in January, I'm going to deliberately miss a column, just to break the streak. Then, I'll not push to make it a weekly. I'm going to write when I feel like writing. When I have enough for a column, there will be one posted. So it might be weekly, it might be every other week. There might even be times when I miss a month, or even have three in one week. I cannot say for sure. I'll post when I have something interesting to post. When there is a column out, I expect it to be a gem. I want to raise the bar for the column, and make it a showcase for AC. Many in WoW have asked me if I would write a column for that game. It is not likely, but you never know. If I do, it will not be a weekly. WoW is a part time game for me. Well, that is the plan. So far I have spent most of this week there, but it is starting to show cracks. A few hours a week might be the norm. In any case, I have a six month subscription, so I'll be playing that much at least. I'll see you in game, be it AC or Wow. Remember, the key to these games is to have fun. Park your EGO at the door and be ready for adventure! E-Mails ===Aelryinth of Leafcull Noted you did Noble Weapons. I strongly advise not getting a melee weapon unless 1) You want it for your collection and 2) You want the damage type. The Axe down there does piercing damage (a pick) and the morningstar for mace does slashing. The rapier is nice, but, um, burun aren't vuln to pierce, they are vuln to cold. With a Cold Armor-render, you do more damage to burun once fully debuffed then this toy does. Now, the bow is okay, because you can use cold bolts for the extra damage edge (xbow, thrown weapons too). The Wand is also nice (scepter), equal to a virindi slaying wand, perhaps better. It's a nice extra damage stack that comes in very handy if you can vuln the burun or gurog ahead of time. We had a mage using one today against Morgluuk on a Noble weapons quest, and his normal damage doubled, and his crits about quadrupled over his crit strike wand. Against normal burun/guruk, he just used a cold render wand. Two spells landing was all he needed. Much simpler. Thus, if you are doing Noble Weapons, I strongly advise picking up a wand for your mage, or a missile weapon for your other characters. The melee weapons are nice and cool, but not of much use against the burun. A cold render will outperform them solo, and a CS/AR Cold will outperform them in groups with double buffs. The Noble weapons are givable, and it isn't until you run the New Soul stone quest on the new island that you can get Burun Slayer on them and do the extra damage, anyways. Not to mention, level 153 Titans can hit 710 Melee when you are swinging at them, and a I like my +13 to hit Frostie better then a +9 to hit rapier... I have never done the Orphanage, hearing far too many bad stories about it...and I'm not really interested in the rewards at the end. Leaving bods in bad dungeons is something I shy away from. If you enjoyed the column, and would like to add to my emergency fund, here is a link.