Fist de Yuma - October 1, 2002

Defense of Mayoi We were just hanging and talking at the mansion, Harry Pooter, Wuyung and I. Ishtaya had been there a bit before. I got a tell from Ishtaya. He had been attacked by a golem in Mayoi and needed help. I told Harry and Wu to buff up and started my cycle. We were buffed just in time for Ishtaya to get back. He had vit and would need buffs to summon for us. It was only the subway but it would save us a little run. I was done buffing Fist so I loaded up Mage to buff Ishtaya. We got to Mayoi from the subway and ran to town. At the west end of town we found a Diamond Golem Suzerain. We attacked and brought it down but it took a while. I was surprised that Fist resisted its spells a lot. Seems to have about the same magic ability as a Diamond Golem. After killing it twice, along with a few Diamond Golems and some Elementals, I decided we needed a mage. Harry was going good damage and getting the kills. Wuyung and I were holding it in place so Harry was not killed. Ishtaya was trying to put a few arrows into it but anything that attacked him had him running or dead. The only thing missing were Imperils and Vulns. Without them it took forever to kill the Suzerain. I logged off Fist and logged Mage. Ishtaya was at the mansion, after being killed again. I buffed his Item and got a ride to the Sub. As I hit Mayoi I saw Harry and Wu fighting the Suzerain. I hit it with Imperil and Bludgeoning Vuln before I started blasting. Even with hitting for 300 to 600 a blast Harry got the kills. He was hitting for 800 and arrow and not on slow speed. I was right about Archers becoming the power of the game. Too bad that several of the griffers have chained up a few and are giving Archers such a bad name. The Suzerain was not dropping any loot and we were in a fellow so it did not matter who got the kill. Nevertheless Harry would lighten up a few times so others would get some glory. Wu was never in danger because of his shield. Harry has high melee defense but two lucky bows by the Suzerain was enough to put him away. It only happened once but points out again what I said last week. Archers have the attack but the lack of shield is a weakness. Shortly after we started the battle Thor's Fist joined in. We added him to the fellow. He is in the mid 50's so he died a few times. With my buffs we had him back into the battle in no time. When we had breaks I started adding buffs to everyone. The breaks were not long as the Suzerain seemed to spawn very fast, the same with the Diamond golems and Elementals. So we were constantly battling for close to and hour. It ended with a golem message about G being defeated. There is a rumor that the switches in the puzzle room starts the attacks. I guess we will find out if that is true later. Meanwhile I got to have a good adventure with friends. Oops As a funny note. At the end Thor's Fist had some vit. He wanted to get a ride to somewhere he could work it off. I had a second tie but could not remember where it was. I summoned it to see if I could figure out where it was going by reading label on it. The portal had a 30lv restriction. Aaaa, I thought, this must be OHN. I had a OHN tie for some time when leveling Deadeye. I figured that even with vit Thor's Fist's 58th level would do well there. I told Thor to take the portal. I got a message from him about the dungeon. I was trying to help him walk through it but we were not matching. Then he mentioned a monster I knew was not in OHN. Just where the hell did I send him? He said he was taking the exit portal. I ported there and instantly saw where I was. It was my Plains tie! I had got this tie a while back when adventuring with someone. /retell PORT! Was my reaction. Fortunately someone had cleared the outside. Thor was able to take a quick glance around and see sundry monsters that could wipe the floor with him. He ran back into the dungeon. We had a good laugh and I got him a portal to Lin. I gave him instructions to the Mountain short cut where he should have had little trouble working off his vit. Archer For some time there was a movement toward training bow rather than spec'ing it. Turbines first reaction was to make a bow that required specializing to use. This was the same thing they did with mage armor and War. It was all they could do at the time but was not a perfect or even fair solution. It took away from the game and punished people for making what at the time was a good choice. For role-playing it really hurt. The new tools Turbine can use makes for a better solution, have an upper skill that must be made to equip the item. This makes the better weapons possible, if hard. They made an error when the first weapons came out by setting the limits to low. That changed with the next patch and the pre-patch weapons are highly valued. Infusing has gotten rid of many of them but they will be around for a while. I ran the numbers on RainPea to see what the xp needs are when comparing Trained and Spec bow. A spec'd bow needs around 67 million to get to 290 bow. This might be lower as I just looked at what I had spent and it may not be optimized. I created a template using a Trained bow to see that the optimized xp for 290 would be. It came to a total of 303 million points. Most of that was into bow, around 170 million, the rest into coordination. What this means is a Spec'd bow archer will be able to use the new bows in the upper 50s'. Using the minimum xp to other skills a Trained bow Archer will not reach this until the mid 70's. I think a realistic number would be 80 plus. That is quite a difference. I think this is a great solution. The Og archers will be able to use the best bows in time. Those unwilling to make an archer that cannot be played without outside support have the option of training bow. I strongly feel that an archer needs to spec melee defense. If I had it to do over again with Deadeye I would reduce strength 20 and max quick. Training bow allows a player to spec Melee defense and still get the three magic schools, Alchemy and Fletching. The only way to do this with spec'ing bow is to train Melee defense. It would still be a long hall to a finished template. It would not get Creature until 105. Nevertheless it would be possible, unlike requiring specialization would do. This is not something I would do. I feel that Alchemy can be done with Mules as the weight of the oils not to bad. I have seen some that don't have Fletching. That is something I would never do. Arrows are far too heavy. Archer is a great ppl that can be a lot of fun. Unfortunately you will have to put up with a bad reputation until you prove otherwise. There are a lot of stupid grief players that have chosen Archer as their skill. For some time even the sound of a bow put my teeth on edge. The new power makes it even worse. There was one griffer what was putting two arrows into each EV in the bottom of EVL. He wanted all the loot and two arrows was enough insure he got the kill. Of course the rest there were not too happy and Archers get another mark against them. Unexpected side trip. I was back hunting The Slot this week. I found a nice place after the last big junction that lets you up to the plains proper. It is a spot I have never seen another person in. This is unlike most of the spots. Of course I have shown this to several people so I expect it to get a touch crowded now. One of the strange things that spawn on the plains is portals. Mostly they lead to mundane places such of Hebian-to and such. I have learned to ignore them. Once one spawned while I was going after some loot and I ran right into it. This time was different. I knew there was a portal there. I was carefully avoiding it as I looted my kills. Of course there is no preventing lag and the next thing I knew I was in portal space. My destination was a surprise. Instead of coming out in some town I was on Singularity Caul island. I still had 30 minutes on the buff so I decided to chance dieing in a hard to return spot. It had been a while since I had faced Rampages with Mage. With far higher skills they fell easy. Conquered Drudges were no trouble. I was able to clear the ramp leading down with ease. As I got to the bottom I was surprised to find and Inquisitor Virindi there. It was surrounded by sundry monsters but not your normal Inquisitor guards. I picked off a few Tuskers and was slowly whittling down the spawn before taking on the IV. I did not expect to be attacked by Riff but was not about to back down from a fight. Now this was a long drawn out battle. I did not check the xp or see any loot but it was darn hard to take the thing down. I think if it was not in the way of attacking the Inquisitor I would have left it alone. Finally I had a clear shot at the Inquisitor. It was not moving, which was why I had to clear. I fired a yield, fire Vuln and two blasts to kill it. As I moved forward to loot I saw a huge spawn just in back of it. This spawn was close enough that I was not going to be able to loot without clearing the spawn. To make matters worse a lot of the spawn was Tumideon Hollows. I started to clear when a group of four or five people came racing off the hill. Without a word they pulled bows and started ripping into my spawn. It was an example of two things, Archers and Germans building a bad rep. Archers I have gone over but there are quite a few German players who try to copy the Ugly American path, rude and uncaring. Happily both are rare but they leave such a bad taste it infects attitudes against the rest. After they cleared the spawn they ran off talking to themselves. In the entire battle they acted like I was not even there. No "Hi" or "excuse me". They might not have known English, unlikely, so I let it go. I only had a few minutes left on my buff so I ported to Lin. I think I might try and get a tie with one of my players to Caul. It is a different hunt. The castle across the mote looked interesting. I would like to check that out as well. Haringer There was a general announcement about the Haringer being lose. I have a lifestone tie right next to the Yanshi portal so I got there quick. I found a mass of people but no portal. High Queen Elysa Strathelar was there. It seems her guards were wiped out and did not go to the lifestone. At least that was my take on what she said. I was there about 30 seconds before I was portal stormed away. It was that crowded. I buffed up with my best protects and ran back to town. I waited for a portal or something to open up. Nothing appeared and it was getting old. The Deebs were making a bunch of sexual remarks towards Queen Elysa Strathelar that were not funny and totally lacking in taste. I'm sure they thought there was mass's of players who were laughing at them but most seemed disgusted. Rather than stand around listening to the moron stand up show I decided to just go hunt. I ported to the edge of the plains. I had loot I needed to dump but felt I'd be better off hunting than wasting the buffs. Chance meeting I was halfway loaded up with loot from EVL. I had around 30 minutes of buffs left and was moving up The Slot. I was fighting three Umbris and a handful of other Shadows when Duri Gallant came up and started healing me. He asked me to join him with others. I of course agreed and followed him up the slot. In the last junction we came across William the Bat. He added us to a fellow and the three of us started to play havoc with the spawns. William the Bat is one of the best swordsman around. Duri Gallant is an archer and we know the power there. I was imperiling everything I could see. We cleared in five minutes what would take me a full hour buff to clear if on my own. From there we moved up to the plains and started wreaking the spawns there. I cannot say it was totally safe and easy. All three of use were running at one time or another. In the end we had about cleared that plains section of monsters. I was out of buffs and truly packed with loot. I said my goodbyes and ported to Lin. I really hope to catch up with them when I'm not so packed. We had a blast. Meet the Fist's It has been a while since I updated the status of my players. Some have advanced nicely while others are going more slowly. It mostly depends on the time I have to play them. Mage of course is played daily. Jr has been played less because of the increased power of Fist. That will change in time but for now Fist's overwhelming power is needed more than Jr's increased magic abilities. The future of my UA's is Jr because his greater potential. I'll start this week off with Fist de Mage and Fist de Yuma. Fist de Mage Fist de Mage is an Og mage in the classic mode. Someone posted an old column of mine on the General VN board. This let me realize that Mage just went over two years this month. The idea of making mage was as a support player. What I did not realize at the time was the pure power of a mage. If I knew I'm sure I would have gone with a BM instead. Nevertheless Mage is powerful and unsurpassed as a support mage. Created 8/25/00. In game, 2 months 23 days. Deaths 210. Level 119 Starting Stats S 60 E 50 C 10 Q 10 F 100 S 100 Current (cost in millions) 196 (4.5) 200 (13.6) 126 (.9) 116 (.4) 263 (38.6) 262 (35.6) Health 244 (5.6) Stamina 345 (6) Mana 405 (5.1) Spec'ed skills Creature 326 (20.4) Life 328 (25.5) Trained magic Item 275 (2.6) War 319 (72.7) Magic defense 251 (29.2) Mana Conversion 243 (5.9) Trained Other Jump 247 (.3) Loyalty 180 (.3) Run 230 (.3) Staff 238 (.9) Support Skills Armor Tinkering 363 (.9) Lock Pick 261 (1) Item Tinkering 200 (0) Leadership 191 (.6) Strengths; Pure power. From what I'm reading he is close to the cap with the eco damage. He can land on almost anything and can yield those that he has trouble with. Weakness; Melee attacks and helpless without buffs. Heavy hitters have a better shot at taking him down than magic users. As his magic defense gets higher magic users will have an even harder time. I plan to tinker up a set of armor to help this weakness and hold the GSA in reserve. A dispel trap will require him to rebuff. Fighting without buffs is not an option. As you can see the only thing missing with Mage is healing. I sacrificed healing for Armor Tinkering. I'll have four more points left over at 126 and have not decided what to do with them as of yet. I hope they add a four points skill somewhere. Current goals is to increase Magic defense to 260. That will cost around 300 million points. After that is done I'll start thinking of other things to raise. Health, stamina and mana are the most likely what I'll raise to start. The way current content is going I may have to go back to raising my magic skills. Fist de Yuma Fist has been played a lot more than I thought he would at this point. The newer weapons and other changes have made him a force to be reckoned with. Fist will be over three years old soon. He is pure old school with a lot of odd stats by today's standards. For the time he was state of the art. Created 12/01/99. In game 3 Months 1 day. Deaths 86. Level 126 Starting stats S 80 E 50 C 90 Q 70 F 30 S 10 Current (cost on millions) 245 (45.3) 211 (33.9) 256 (49.1) 233 (17.4) 193 (38.6) 168 (25.9) Health 250 (5.6) Stamina 356 (6) Mana 305 (3.4) Spec'ed skills Lore 235 (2.1) Melee defense 359 (34.9) Unarmed Combat 367 (38.2) Run 336 (.07) Magic Skills Creature 267 (31.6) Item 257 (14.8) Magic defense 230 (36.7) Mana Conversion 231 (20) Trained other Jump 393 (2.2) Loyalty 146 (126k) Support skills Healing 301 (4.4) Lock pick 267 (336k) Magic Item Tinkering 340 (3.2) Leadership 179 (1.5) Weapon Tinkering 363 (2.5) Missile Defense 262 (12.7) Current goal is raising magic skills a bit. I fizzle far too much when buffing and vit is a nightmare. After that I will keep raising combat skills. Magic is for buffing only. I'll raise it just enough to keep from fizzling. Other than Magic Defense the combat skills are what will keep me alive. Strengths; Speed, melee defense and the ability fight in dispel situations. There is not much that can touch him melee wise. About all I know that can hit him well is the Olthoi Queen. If I had a shot at her one on one I think she would have a hard time hitting me. That remains to be seen as the only time I was within range of her she had back and side shots. Even if Fist's Creature buffs are dispelled with a trap he is strong enough to keep fighting. Weakness; Magic, no range attack and low hitting power. I'm working on magic defense but a billion points will not keep me up with a mage. I'll get so the lower and mid stuff I might resist but the big stuff will always hit me. With no life I'm limited to VI Life protects. This means a VI de-buff has me at zero protects. He will carry a lot of gems when he quests. Hitting power is getting better but all battles are still long drawn out affairs. In time I'll have all my weapon infused so things will get better but I'll still be far behind a swordsman or archer. Both of the above players are strong. Depending on the quest one might be stronger than the other. Of course Mage is far better off most of the time. Nevertheless there are times when Fist is the best player to use by far. I'm not sure how to take one thing I spotted. I have around 6 months in game time between these two players. I have played a lot with other players on this and other servers so it is not even the full count. That is a touch scary. I'm still two months from the three-year mark of my being in the game. I knew I have played a lot but had no idea it was that much. What his means in another term is I have spent over 4 hours a day, every day for almost 3 years playing this game. Next week I'll post Jr and Deadeye Fist. After that I'll see if I have time for the WE players.