Fist de Yuma - October 14, 2003

Strange People Now that Admins are starting to enforce the rules against cheaters many cheaters are trying to get rulings that say their style of cheating is ok. There is a thread on the VN board that IBN_Turbine is doing his best to answer the questions on. The trouble is the cheaters will not take no for an answer. They keep coming up with situations that break all rules of logic and common sense to show how their breaking the rules is not really breaking the rules. Many were answered as a direct no. They would rephrase the question slightly and demand that that one be approved. It was fairly ridicules. Some tried to focus on the term, "Ready to respond". The CoC states that a player running a macro must be ready to respond to an admin at all times. For that matter all players must be ready to respond to an admin, especially when around combat. The cheaters tried to say that an Admin alarm constitutes "ready to respond". For those that don't cheat an admin alarm is a program that will sound an alarm when an admin is detected or if an admin sends a tell to the macro. The alarm allows the cheater to wake up, stop watching TV or what every they are doing while they cheat, rush to the computer and pretend they were there the entire time. The main use for an alarm today is for one person to run many macros and use the alarm to swap to the macro when they need to respond to an Admin. Turbine has stated that one person running more than one account at a time is against the CoC and is considered unattended macroing. If they support the battle, even if they get no xp or any reward whatsoever, it is unattended macroing. IBN Turbine stated that they were not ready to respond until the alarm sounded and therefore in violation of the CoC. That was not good enough for the cheaters. They demanded more detail and presented more situations for him to answer. To show how bad they got. One cheater tried to back IBN into a corner by saying a player who is not using their glasses could be said to be in violation of the CoC. He said their ruling was discrimination against the blind! IBN surprised them and agreed. If you cannot see the screen you are not ready to respond. One person was told four times the answer to his question but kept insisting his question was not answered. I got the feeling the only answer he would accept was the one he wanted to hear. I'll reprint one post IBN made to show the level of debate the cheaters insist on. I removed the name because that is my policy. xxxxxx, this is going to be my last reply on the topic of admin alarms. I've answered your question, but I will try to explain this once again. Admin alarm vs. glasses. Glasses: If you are playing the game but not wearing your glasses, and this causes you to not be able to read in-game text, you are not ready to respond to an admin on demand. This would be the same as me, say, blindfolding myself. At the moment you put your glasses back on, you are now ready to respond. The requirement that you be able to read the text is not new, by the way. Even before the UCM clause was put into the CoC, the following was prohibited: "Arguing with or neglecting to follow instructions of Asheron's Call Administrators." If you can't read the instructions, you certainly can't follow them. Admin alarm: Up until the moment the alarm goes off, you are not ready to respond. Once the alarm goes off and you come back to the game, you are ready to respond. So if you are not ready to respond and require an admin alarm to return your attention to the game, it is equivalent to playing the game with your glasses off. You are not ready to respond to an administrator on demand. "So playing the game without wearing glasses is against the CoC?!! OMG Ibn says blind people can't play AC and will get banned!" No. Playing the game in a way that you are not ready to respond to an administrator on demand is against the CoC. The last point they made shows the mindset of the cheaters. You cannot catch us so we can keep cheating. This post pretty much summed up their attitude. I will straight up say, I don't care what the rules are or are not. If someone is allowed to come to me on a daily, every other day bases that is not an admin and report me because I will not talk to them, well....I will do what I want as well. Ban my account just because you want, but don't ban it for UCM until I am caught for UCM. So far an admin has not determined me to be UCM except one time.(another edit: Even then I was being attacked my monsters, but only healing and buffing myself. Noone else, nor attacking any monsters.) We used to have multiple people watch our macros (attended 100% of the time), true it was one person watching over several pc's all running AC, usually one client was in the background on one of them. If noone was going to be awake or up(edited again, to mean around to watch them, yes at least being at one pc.) they got shut down. Now, we don't care. Leave them running when we want if we want. Don't expect me to care about the rules or the game itself when I am getting harassed by another player in game and nothing is being done. All I do is pretty much macro now, If I am attended or not is up to an admin to determine, not anyone else. IBN Turbine is doing a great job but people like these must give him a big headache. Matron XP revisited I got an e-mail from IBN Turbine saying the XP for fellows in the Matron has not been changed. The person who told me about it said I misunderstood him. He was saying there was no distance reduction. I guess I let what I thought he said influence my own observation. I was sure that the XP posted for a monster killed in the fellow was the same as one outside of the fellow. Then I thought back and saw my error. When I made the test I was not in a fellow! Deamon Mace has logged out or something. In any case at one point I found that I was not in a fellow. I had not noticed when the fellowship was dropped. It was shortly after I had made my XP per kill test that I saw this. I had noted the results of the test and only later saw I was not in a fellow. Sorry for the confusion. Owanda With Asheron's island shutting down I decided to check the portal in Khayyaban. When I was looking for the middle Matron dungeon I checked Khayyaban but it sent you to the island itself. While good to know it was not want I wanted. Because of that I was hunting the 40+ Olthoi Armor dungeon instead. Everyone kept saying that Khayyaban had the portal so I figured after the Island shut down it became a dungeon portal. I was right. While the 40+ Olthoi Armor dungeon is nice it has some drawbacks. For one I cannot portal directly to it. You cannot tie to the 40-70 Matron but you can recall to it. After the first hunt in the 40 to 70 Matron I decided to spend to at least 60 there. The salvage is better thou upper items can be found at the Olthoi Armor dungeon. I'll hunt the Matron until I can use my better mace (27 to 36 weld 325) and them return to the 40+ OA. Matron Dungeon 40+ For pure leveling the Matron 40 to 70 is better than the 40+ Olthoi Armor dungeon. The xp per kill is as good as the OA with far less risk. In fact with my armor setup my damage is 0 to 1 with crits of 3. It was seldom when I even had to think about damage. Not that it is zero risk but you have to mess up badly to die there. I did come close but it was a bunch of errors compounding that did it. I was pushing my buff times rather badly. I started the fight with two minutes left on the buff. My Life spells go first, then creature and lastly banes. The spells take five minutes to put on so there is a small leeway between my alarm going off and being un-buffed. I finished off most of the Olthoi and had about 20 seconds left. I'm not sure if I went forward a little to far or what but suddenly Olthoi started streaming out of two side passages. With no time to fight them I retreated to the passage you come in at. That failed to shake any of them and in fact more joined from the other passages. With no Life protects I was taking damage. Not much damage for each blow but with dozens hitting you they add up quick. I sucked an elixir to get my health to full and grabbed a wand. I hit lifestone recall. It went through the motions but nothing happened. I figured it was one of those "never mind" spell things and hit the button again. That failed as well. It hit me that I never tied to an LS. You need to tie to an LS to recall to it. Now I have a big problem. Owanda only uses Item to recall with. Because of that I never got him Mana Converson. Up until now that had never been a problem. With the two failed spells I was out of mana and could not do a primary recall. Any second now I was going to start dropping banes and die a gory death. I only had one option and it was not a good one. I sucked elixirs to full health and typed /house mansion_recall. I watched my health tick down as I corked screwed my way into the air. With only a handful of points left I disappear into the portal. Matron I decided to go get the 40 to 70 Matron Robe. I figured if I could take the 20 to 50 like I did the 40 to 70 would not be much harder. I had also added to my mace skills, which would make the RR work better. Between that and added strength I was confident with a solo attempt on the 40 to 70 Matron. Getting down was no trouble and clearing the guards only a little trouble. I was ready to take on the Matron. There was one thing that worried me about this dungeon. Despite having close to 400 mace skill I was missing a lot. Even a Worker could give me fits. I had one that I missed six times in a row on! I figured the Matron would not be that hard to hit so it was only a small worry. We engaged and I started out with a crit. I check her health after a few seconds and it was at 97%. A few seconds more into the battle and it was at 95 and then 90. I ate a ration and her health went to 93. I had a few misses and her health went back to 97%. I hit every swing for a while but no crits and checked her health, 100%. Well this will not work. I knew from experience that shaking her is darn hard. I ran over the two acid pits and logged off. I waited a few seconds and logged back. She was gone. Old Friend Very long time readers with good memories might remember the name Badnames. Him and his brother had me on some adventures recovering their bodies in the first months of retail. Imagine my surprise when I logged to buff Owanda and got a tell from Badnames. After talking a while I told him what I was about to do. He said he would run to Khayyaban and meet me. After I finished buffing Owanda I ported Mage to Lin and ran to the Khayyaban portal. There I met up with Badnames and started buffing him. Having been out of the game a while he was hurting equipment wise. Unfortunately I had just gaven away my last set of vassal armor and had not had a chance to hunt up more. It seems I need three or four sets ready for people moving to MT. The only good item Badnames is a 130 bow. Unfortunately it is not infused and he does not have any spares. I'm still working on getting a full set for Deadeye so I cannot help him there. After buffing him I told him to wait for 30 seconds before hitting the dungeon. The entrance is very hot and I wanted to get Owanda in there fighting before he hit it. He is 15 levels above me but I have tinkered armor and a good shield. I had not hit 50 yet so we could not fellow. With him not having a RR bow I was out damaging him. I told him not to worry about what he was shooting at. We were doing about equal damage so just fire/swing at what comes close and not worry if it is engaged already or not. I figured with the two of use we might be able to take on the Matron. Having already failed once I was not positive of success but it was worth a shot. On the second attempt to draw out guards the Matron came out. We retreated until sure we would not draw any more into the battle. We cleared out the guards and attacked the Matron. I tend to try and get a back to front attack. I will always loop to a monster's back when in this type of battle. This will cause one of us to get a back shot and slow her attacks as she has to do a 180-degree turn to swap attacks. I only took a few seconds before I was sure we would win. Her heath was dropping fast and I was landing crits. I'll admit my skills had improved a touch but without Badnames I would not have won this battle. To show the power of an RR weapon I got both kills on the Matron over a bow. In years past there was no way a melee could out kill an Archer. Of course when he gets an RR or even an AR he will leave me in the dust. We both wanted a Coordinate robe but I ended up with a Strength. That is useful but I had the ring already. I gave my 20+ robe to Johnney English at the mansion and logged to start dinner. Old Friend part II Badnames's said allegiance was falling on bad times. I can understand that. Running an allegiance is hard work. I'm lucky as most everyone in Casa de Yuma is mature. I have never had to talk to anyone about a problem. There is little conflict and everyone is respectful of others. Nene is running the boards and Cher is keeping everything in line at the mansion. All I need to do is help members when needed and my tinker work. I want to start getting more active with leading quests. Being a lone hunter for so long had given me bad habits. Letting Dread Lord and Soul Riper do all the quest leading is not fair so I need to take up the load a bit. Anyway Badnames was talking to his patron about moving to our allegiance. He ended up with a compromise. His brother was a bit up the allegiance tree. He swore to FA which got Badnames and about 20 others into our allegiance. Badnames's brother main player, the one I know from the first few months of the game, I think went to a chain. I'm not sure but he asked if we had a chain and did not join us. This is another reason I need to push Owanda up there. I need him to start hunting Olthoi that will drop good bows. With both Badnames and Deadeye to outfit I'm going to need a lot of bows. Running Men I got a call from Illumini the other day. I found out a few things that had been going on with him. Illumini had been my vassal for some time. When RD broke from Elder Illumini felt obligated to go with Chain Effect. This is a real life friend. When I assumed the leadership of HoRD it did not sit well with Chain Effect. He wanted the allegiance. The results had Chain Effect breaking from Casa de Yuma and going with William the Bat. I had assumed he was still there. Illumini said Chain Effect was a monarch now. I was happy to hear that. It was obvious that he wanted to be a monarch. I was kind of surprised when he went to William the Bat. I hope getting his wish will allow him to repair some of the damage he did when he left Casa de Yuma. He had some good friends there that he treated badly. Illumini told me where their mansion was. I did a fast few portals and a little run to get there. I noted that the Chain Effect mansion was very close to the Exception mansion. I told Illumini that the Exception mansion was in one of the best locations I had ever seen a mansion in. The Exception mansion is located in a thick forest. They have a wide paved frontage. While there are some mansions with great views none of them combine that with a paved frontage like the Exception mansion does. Illumini wanted to see for himself. I was not totally sure how to get to the Exception mansion. I knew it was close to where we were but hidden in the forest. I checked ACE and found a mansion that looked in the right spot. We started running there. I was in a simple robe and only had my run buffed. Nevertheless with my base melee and magic defense I had little risk. There was something I forgot but I'll get into that later. Running to this mansion location was a bit eventful. Illumini's computer crashed. I knew there was something wrong when he started running into the mountains. He finally got stuck on a ledge, ran in place for a few minutes and logged off. He finally got back and we finished off the run. The mansion we found was not Exception. I checked ACE again and saw one west of our location. That again was not Exception. We finally ran out of ACE mansion locations without finding Exception. By this time we were way southwest of where I thought the mansion was. We decided to run northeast and see if we could find it. As we got close to the road we encountered a forest. Illumini went north and I ran east. About the same time we both found something. Illumini found the Exception mansion but I found something very strange. There was a flat spot with three statues surrounding a statue or alter. It looked very much like the one PK's use to go red. As I traveled around the edges I saw sparkles that looked like traps going off. I never saw a message of damage, damage attempts or heard any noise. Off to one side I saw several low level bones. I told Illumini what I found and he ran to meet me there. When he arrived we discovered that the hill next to this covered with bones. On top of the hill was a bunch of other stuff I did not recognize. I was in some slight danger while doing this. The Bones were firing off arrows. With high melee and magic defense I had not had any risk from monsters up to that point. With no Missile defense and an unbuffed robe I started to take a bunch of damage! Fortunately there were not a lot of bow using bones and many would run out of arrows and charge in with a weapon. I was at the top of the hill when I heard a "Click" from my modem. Oh oh. I calmly waited for the modem to redial while praying Illumini had protected me. I logged back with no damage so the monsters had either ignore me or Illumini had kept me healed. From there we went to the Exception mansion. He said hi to a few friends while admiring their location. None of them had ever seen the strange place we had found. Illumini decided to duel one of the Exception members. I was invited to try but with no armor I had to decline. Illumini did not last long in the battle. From there I showed a few of the Exception members what we had found. None of them had seen the like before but one said there was something like in AC2. I later got a PM saying it had been around since the Shadow Wars. We are still looking for information about it. There is said to be some lore but we have not found it yet. Push to 60 I decided that while the salvage was great it was taking me far to long to get where I wanted to be with Owanda. Now that I was in a bigger dungeon the Granite take was smaller so my main reason for wanting the salvage was gone. I decided that I would go for max xp until I could hit the 60 to 90 dungeon and then go back to looting. Taking the looting time delay, the delay between hunts while I deposed of the salvage, my xp per hour would almost double when I did not loot. It was the right thing to do as I started to level up fast. I went from under 48 to 59 and only 7.5 million from 60 in just a few days. I should hit 60 shortly after this column is posted and will move on to the 60 to 90. Weeping Weapon Several members have said they want to do the Weeping Weapon quest. I hesitate to lead this one as it one of the more dangerous quests in the game. There are a lot of hard time-consuming quests in the game. Most are not dangerous. A good group that takes its time can slide though most of them with little or no deaths. This quest I have never seen done without a death and close calls. We put out a lot of word on the quest. I wanted as many people on it as possible. While there is some safety in numbers if things go against you there are few who could survive. Nevertheless a lot of people let that danger window be as small as possible. I started out the day doing the pre-work for the quest. Normally this involves a little running but no problems. That is, normally. The PKL body problem started hitting the server really bad. I had noted a carpet of bodes around the AB LS when I started the quest work. All I could think of was what morons these people are. I mean it takes, what, 30 seconds to go clear the body? They know this is a problem but don't seem to care. MS putting out a general saying not clearing bodies will get you a three hour ban was kind of lame. If you want to get results put some teeth into the punishment. The lag really hit me while running to the tailor. I was running in place for ten minutes or more. Every so often I would advance a few feet. I ended up having to log off for an hour or so. When I got back I had 5 digit pings but could move. Others had even more trouble. I was asked to wait for Purrfect Lady. She was in lag hell trying to get to the tree. Che'okee's husband was trying to help her and died to low level monsters while locked in lag. We ended up with five people. Fist de Mage, Kirney Slane, Purrfect Lady, Winter Raven and Jess Youh. Winter Raven was leading the quest. I know most of it but there are parts I'm vague on. That ended up costing us some xp but not the quest. I had an excellent lock pick. I would have used a peerless but only saw I lacked a pick as I ran through Holtburg. I had to buy one from a vender really quick. I figured with 350 skill that would be ok. It ended up taking me a lot of attempts to get each gate opened. I'll need to get a better pick set, add to my LP skills and get weaken lock on my spell bar. We started out ok. My tactics were to use my bludgeoning staff and only use War. I've worked hard to max War out and went into battle with a 448 skill. Life is lagging behind but still at a strong 420. I figured by the time I tossed an imperil and vuln I could have killed the human monster with spells. I used bludgeoning because all my other RR staffs were on Fist's Armorer. Stupid I know but it was to late to do anything about it. I was mostly right about using an RR wand. I was hitting from 120 to 160. I was killing all but the hardest ones with two blasts. I would one hit about as often as three hit so it averaged two hits overall. Given that I could target beyond radar range this was an effective attack. Seeing a body about every twenty feet did not give us great confidence as we advanced. Still he had a good group of experienced players. I think it was lag that got to Purrfect Lady. Somehow a few HMs got by us and attacked her. Before we knew she was in danger she was dead. Kirney Slane recovered her stuff. Now we were down to four people. We had little trouble going through the next set of passages. Kirney Slane was our healer and that kept most of us safe. We got to the section with five named monsters. This was where people died before. I targeted one and fired off a spell. Two came running but instead of attacking me they attacked Winter. I'm thinking Winter fired a few arrows at the same time I fired off a spell. In any case it was a disastrous few seconds. I was hit by several spells that got me to 30 hit points. Given that I started with 309 hit points this was something. Winter smartly slid around to behind the wall but the two Named charged at him anyway. They must have got several good crits on him because he was dead in seconds. I had slid behind the wall as well and was lucky enough to get a heal in before they attacked me. Jess Youh was fronting them with shield and sword. That allowed me to blast them before anyone else was hurt. From there on it was not hard. The rest of the named decided to engage me in a war of long distance spells. Given that I would slide and they did not I was winning the damage battle, despite being outnumbered three to one. They did not heal so it was over fast. I had no need to even get into radar range. I recovered Winters stuff and we moved on. I knew the route to the body but not to the chest. Getting through the gate with only two effective fighters was not easy. Kirney pulled his Xbow and joined the fight. I think we would have been better off with his sticking to healing. I was worried about Jess Youh. She was always in the thick of battle. If a few of them started tossing spells she would have died fast. Given that my 345 magic defense was doing diddly to protect me I knew she would was in a clear danger. If she died I was in big trouble and we would likely have failed to complete the quest. I lost count of the HMs that we had to clear out but it was a whole lot of them. We got the heart but failed to find the chest. The respawns were causing us trouble so I took the better part of valor and called for us to leave. We mainly wanted the heart but I would have liked them to get the xp rewards as well. Next time I lead this quest I intend to try out the Weeping Wand. If it takes a vuln and blast I'll rate it as useless for this type of battle. I can kill with two war spells so having to vuln would make it less effective for me. Of course it is likely a great mage PK weapon but I will not find out for sure until I test it myself.