Fist de Yuma - October 12, 2004

Case for spec's Creature melee While hunting in VoD with Fist de Yuma Jr, I discovered that spec'd Life is not the end all to hunting at high level. The problem was anything with a shield was impossible to defeat. I have Life spec'd (Tank, Life, Sword) so he can land, with some difficulty. The only way to defeat a VoD monster with a shield is to de-buff the shield. Even a high level melee player will likely have less that 350 buffed Item. So I'm thinking that it might be better to spec Creature instead of Life. A melee player will take spec Life for the ability to toss one or two spells, Imperil and possibility a vuln. Given that a vuln only give you a little advantage over just using a Rend weapon, most are just using Imperil. (Yes, a CB/CS will add greatly to that advantage, but carrying another full set of weapons is hard to justify.) Turbine is talking about a fix to this problem. They too feel it is unfair to have to spend 8 credits, and massive xp input, just to toss one spell. Spec'ing Creature will give me more flexibility, but at a cost of having to lead with Yield, and still having a lot of retries to land the Life and/or Item spells. If Turbine does fix the Imperil problem, then Creature will be the way to go. Of course, you can also make the case of spec'ing Item, if the Imperil problem is repaired. Still, I think Creature might be a better choice. Because there are many more creatures without a shield than with, I'm not going to be changing Jr any time soon. I'll take a wait and see attitude. I have hopes that if the Imperil problem is addressed, that the shield problem will get the same attention. I, for one, am glad this is a problem. In the past, the melee disadvantage to pulling a MCI (Magic Casting Item) was such that you could not use one in combat to often. After close combat was engaged, you were kind of stuck with what you had. With the new MCI melee defense bonus, pulling one might even increase your melee defense! I have a plus 21% MCI tinkered up myself. We have met the enemy, and it is us Excuse the Pogo nostalgia, but there are times when we are our own worst enemy. Well, this does not entirely fit the story, but it sounds good. (g) Hot-Shot and I had just helped Jeff get his pincers. Jeff's player, Mage Sailor Bane, is a mage, and will therefore be in a touch of danger doing the Muts Pincer. Not that a mage cannot solo the dungeon, it just requires a little study. The first time someone takes a mage or archer there, they have a good chance of leaving a body. Then there is knowing the best route to the four pincers worth getting. It took me a little bit to discover the best way to do them, and it is better to learn from someone else mistakes than to make your own. A little word on Jeff's name. When Jeff started playing, he asked me to make him a name. I rolled him up a Sword toon and called him Jeff Sailor Bane. Jeff is a Marine, and Marines are the Bane of sailors. It is mostly a friendly rivalry, but it can get heated at times. Jeff got his own account a bit after that, and restarted on Morningthaw. After seeing my success with Fist de Mage, he decided to make one as well, and called him Mage Sailor Bane. Some moron convinced Jeff to add Bow to Jeff Sailor Bane. This was before we could change skills. He ended up deleting that player and using Mage Sailor Bane exclusivity. He has started a new melee called, Kepi, but that is another story. The bottom line is; call him Jeff, or call him Mage, or call him Marine, but please, do not call him Sailor! So, we were finished with the pincer, and I suggested we do the Virindi Amulet quest. Jeff's new melee, Kepi, will need that item. Most melee's who want to be self-buffing will need this Amulet. It sort of makes me wonder why this quest is not done more often. After recalling to the mansion, we sent out a /a asking for people to come along. Hot-Shot and I have soloed this before, so it was mainly to help anyone who needed it. Of course, they had to be able to survive the trip, not a given. Now my normal mode is to take a screen shot of the fellow after we start, so I can get the names when I do the column. The problem here was, I was not thinking column when we started. Problems made it into column material, but I did not know that would happen. We had four or five us on this trip. Hot-Shot, Mage Sailor Bane, Xanex and possible someone else or two. Trying to think of whom we had after the fact is a pain, and I'm horrible at remembering names. We started out at the VoD Life Stone. This is a good spot to start, and there are a lot of Bots with this or the Bore as a tie. The run is simple, if you don't get lost. You start with a run to The Slot. You head to the first Hub and take a passage a short way back and then climb up to the Plains. The dungeon is a short run from there. The problem is finding the right passage. I was sure I had this down from my last run there. We ran into the Hub, and took the passage, only to find high walls and no way up. This was wrong, and I was confused. We backtracked and found a way up, but I knew I was not doing it right. After a few big battles, we decided to backtrack to the Hub, and try again. This time I found the right passage right off, but was still confused as to why I had a problem the first time. I noted that the hill up to the Plains is brown. This was key, because I thought I was on a known hill, but that hill is black. So I was still not sure how to make this run. It was very frustrating. We got inside, and had to do a re-buff. Our run had taken a lot of time. A few people needed help buffing. In hindsight, I should have had them recall to the mansion and get buffed, as you can recall back to the dungeon. I think you can even tie, but not summon. Rather than fight, I decided to do a run. This is the fastest and easiest, but a big danger to mages. The Hollows can do massive damage to a mage. A few lucky shots, or the mage getting trapped, can kill them off very fast. We started the run, but it did not go well. Jeff and I made it to a section, but the others were still in back of us. They had gotten trapped. I went back to help them, and we got together. In the next section, I saw we had lost Jeff. Jeff was waiting for me to get the others free, and the Hollows were doing a job on him. We had run by him, and he did not have a chance to disengage and follow us. I had to run back a long way before I found him. From there we had no trouble, but I was worried I had missed the ramp. I have missed that ramp before, and ended up back where we started. Fortunately, I did not miss it, and we were set for the second part. We were doing this slightly different than before. I was going to solo the upper, and Hot-Shot would lead them in the lower. When Hot-Shot and I did this, he did the upper, and me the lower. We had little trouble finding the switches, and getting to the doors. I was just running, and only fighting at the door itself. The Virindi are a pain and a half. Despite my 513 buffed UA skill, and very high strength, I was only doing 15 points a hit on them. I'll admit that I was on fastest speed, as it seemed to do more damage over time that way, but 15 damage is lame. There were times when I was fighting six of these at once, and having to heal a bit. I thanked god for my 363 Magic Defense, as I would have surely died if I did not resist most of their spells. There was one different type of switch. All I had found until this one were wall buttons. After they opened my door, there was a floor switch I had to toss. Waiting in the room was not fun, as there were lots of Virindi on a fast spawn there. From that switch I ran to the next door. They too ran to their next door. Humm, it was their turn to hit a button/switch. They searched high and low, but they could not find it. I ran back to the last jump, hitting the "[" key, and could not find a switch. Hot-Shot felt they had missed a switch before the last pit, and we were at an unfixable block. I felt we had to be missing something, but it was 2am, and we were all tired. Now those who know this dungeon understand where our error is, but don't give it away. (g) The next afternoon Jeff called and said he wanted to do that dungeon again. I was hoping Hot-Shot would be on, as he is a major factor in survivability. Unfortunately, he was not on, but we had three people, and Jeff is a strong mage. We ran to the slot and then to the Hub. This time I told them to wait while I scouted. I wanted to be absolutely sure of the route this time. I quickly found the problem. The Hub has four exits, or so I thought. In fact, there is a hill that hides a fifth exit. That is the one we needed to take. The reason we could find it after backtracking, is you can see the passage if coming from a different direction. The hill hides it when coming from where we had. With that discovery, the trip is easy. So we made it to the dungeon very fast this time. We ran to the upper/lower portal room and were ready to try it again. Everything was smooth, and we were careful not to pass any switches. It was all for naught. Somehow, we had missed the same switch as before. We were stuck, and had no idea where we had gone wrong. Not understanding what was going on with their side did not help. We decided to recall to the mansion and give it another try. As we could recall back, this was not a great hardship. Someone said we should invite William the Bat to help us. That was a great idea. I sent him a tell. He was running the 100+ tusker dungeon, but could help us after that. As we were waiting, I had a thought. There was no way the lower group could have missed a switch twice in a row. While I had opened their last door, perhaps Turbine had made it so I had to open two doors in a row. This time I was going to be very careful to check for switches, before jumping into that pit. I know there were no switches after the jump, as I had ran back twice, using the "[" key, so it has to before the pit. We waited for a bit while William finished, and got players together. Jeff made the mistake of going into a portal, so he ended up running back with William's group. This time I had a little help. My old friend Cat (Cataclyst), and Death Stalker joined me on the upper side. With a great mage to take out the Virindi, and a strong sword to help with the Hollows and Tuskers, it was outright easy. This time I got a screen shot, so the members were; Xanex (75), Mage Sailor Bane (96), Death Stalker (126), Dibbuk (86), William the Bat (126), Cataclyst (117) and Fist de Yuma (126). As we approached the pit, I checked for switches. No go. As there was only a short hall between the switch and the jump, there was nothing to miss. I was still confused as to what caused our failures with the other two trips. As we ran to the last door, William said that there was a switch between two crystals. Floor switches do not show up with the "[" key. Aaaa! I had seen the two crystals just in front of the last door. Dolt, our two failures were solvable by a switch, literality feet away from me. All I had to do was run between those crystals, and we were done. In the end it all worked out. Our group got the Virindi Amulet and we got to adventure with William's group again. It was great to adventure with Cat, as it had been an age since I saw her. - Fist de Yuma