I don't know what is going on but the grief players are out in force this month. One guy made a portal to the subway where the Virindi would put the portal for the 55+ quest. Several people including Elder took the portal thinking it was the quest. We were lucky that Elder got back just as the real one was made.
A thief convinced an Elder member he was honest and would help him mule his GSA. Shadow Storms is quite proud of his thieving abilities. All we can hope for is that Shurkauns allegiance and his patron Rogbal drop him. If not that will tell us something as well. To make matters worst Shadow Storms aka Soul of Enlightenment sent his victim an E-mail thanking him for the GSA.
After paying $250 for an account the guy gave a bad password and never gave the account. One of our members is having a bad week trying to figure this one out. How Foldren Dark Moon can sell and an account without delivering it I don't understand.
When Zark' kanar stole a Kings helm he was told it would be posted on the VN board. His response? Zark kanar tells you, "this isnt the first time LOLOLOL". In the other thief he stole a pack during transfer. They had to pay 15 M notes to get it back. He was dropped for his monarchy and they replaced the notes. His excuse? "It is a game I can do what I want."
Draston of Fortis was kind enough to jump a battle and steal a Diamond Shield. After hours of hunting and a hard battle by Que'zart with a few melee friends this ass gets the reward with no danger. As he is a mage he has no use for it. Que'zart and I have done a lot of hunting trying for a shield. Why bother, just follow others and steal it. Of course that will only work if you have no honor.
Miss Og caused so much grief that her alliance had to apology to people and drop her. It is hard on honorable alliances when people like this spring up.
Then there are the two PK's who camp the Mage shop. After giving peace and saying my friend Lock would not be bothered while shopping, they harm him to death through the wall. As Lock is a melee he had no chance.
I have heard over and over again how PK is the true test. A human intelligent makes a far better battle. What battle, hiding behind a wall and using drain and harm, some test.
Then there is the new PK alliance that started. They have stated their total purpose is to ruin PK on Morningthaw. Now there is a great goal.
Of course it did not end in game grief play. Storm, (aka Zok , Zokk, Zok the Mule too, Zok II and vnboard stormz) advertised on E-bay selling a Pre-GSA set. A guy paid $425 in real money. After getting the money he gave he victim Pre leggings and Post top. This is the same person who was trading stuff that does not exist on the board last month.
Of course if the victim had done a bit of research he would have found that Stromz is a know thief. He is very smooth with a web site and everything. After he gets the money something always goes wrong and it is the victims fault things did not work out. His leveling service has gotten $200 to level someone and he accused the person of stealing and did not do the job. To bad such slime are allowed to stay free.
I never understood how people can get a kick out of hurting others. The profit motive of Strom' I can understand, I also understand the jail time he is risking. I hope he ends up in a Texas prison someday.
This last is not on MT but so appalling that I had to put it in. Animal on LC was a 125 Battle Mage. He had been sold a few times, the last one for $10,000. One of the former owners recalled the account and deleted Animal. Then to rub it in the guy face he made a gimp player in it's place. Not sure if anything can be done but I'm sure if a guy can pay $10,000 for an account he can hire lawyers to get the slime who did this.
Turbines repeated error
Turbine will never learn about quests. The one this week is a good example. Here is a quest that requires several quests by different people. Their work gets a totally different team to the last one. One member of that team gets the reward. Forever after a lesser reward is given.
As there is nothing to stop quest jumpers, the guy getting the reward might not even by part of the team that does all the work, very stupid.
The Nexis was the first time they pulled this. They were so stupid that even the guy who got the kill might not have got the loot, they had it drop on the ground. On MT someone hanging in the back rushed over and stole the gem. He gave the armor to the guy who got the kill later after getting a lot of grief.
The same thing happened with the Island quest. A group studies, works hard and figures out the quest. One person from that group gets his name in lights. Getting the most damage on a monster in the last battle is nothing. The true work was figuring out the quest.
Lastly when the Demon was killed it was again a team effort. At least this time there were more than one reward. Still only the guy who got the most damage got his name in, not the team.
At least for MT the current quest winner might have deserved it. He did jump the portal but his alliance had the parts for him. His team was buffing and about to hand the gem over. Still the hatred on the board was something to behold. If Turbine had made the simple change of letting the questers make the portal in the spot of their choosing all this could have been avoided.
Turbine was so stupid to have an NPC make the portal in a fixed spot. This let all the quest jumpers stand around and wait for someone else to do all the work.
Of course the reward is not all that good. The rewards after the first one is even less so.
Zero Ryoko is a great player and his alliance did the work. He was lucky to be buffed as the portal was made and survived the run to get the kill. He was also lucky that enough people were just in back of him that he could loot and portal before getting killed. Without them to distract a lot of the monsters it might have ended different. It is not Zero Ryoko's fault Turbine made such a lame quest.
Our team is a good example. We had Elder members work hard to get the first two parts. We did not have a team to do the 46 to 55 one. One guy did had it but refused to join us, we did not offer him enough. Later we got people together and got the last part.
William the Bat was waiting for Elder and our team. So many people were there waiting to jump it that there were portal storms. When William had the Virindi make the portal an army jumped in. It was a mad house of Lag and Elder said to just log and we would do it tomorrow.
So several members of Elder are logged at the start. We will do the quest for the fun of it. William the Bat did get there and I'm going to post his story below.
William the Bat's story
Ok, so this thing was complete chaos, with 50 or so people all running through this really nasty dungeon.
I was a ways behind the pack, so Im not sure how tough it was overall, but I can tell you about the end room.
It was insane!
Several executers, several terebrous minions, several tumendion minions, several rampagers, and one New Singularity Director. All spawning as fast as they could be killed.
People in robes were cut down bad. People not in robes would find a spot of lag and find themselves at the lifestone.
My system was just dying, so I went to the exit portal room to reboot and relog.
When I got back on, I found the crowd had been reduced to maybe 20. People were getting killed right and left, and others were recalling.
By the time the recalling stopped, there were four of us. Smirking Revenge had decided to lure as much as he could up the ramp and into the lava pits leading up to the end room. That reduced enough pressure that the other three of us could take the few remaining minions, rampagers, and executers, so that all of us die-hards got the shroud. The lava pit was -full- of monsters. Truly a sea of orange on the radar. I was very impressed.
Re-spawn is maybe 3 minutes, maybe 2. Its absurdly fast. The sheer number of minions, executers, and rampagers is just crazy. This will take a strong, focused, and well-prepared team to take. A 50-person mob could do it, but I think more died than got the shroud.
Oh, the shroud: Its gotta be the ugliest quest item in existence. The protects on it stink, as well. A mage with arcane might like it as self-buffing robe for protection against little stuff, but its by no means a real must-have.
The exit portal takes you to the opposite end of the maze on the far SW island from the bore portal. Its also tieable, summonable, and lacks any level restrictions. This means people can now summon the Virindi island for anyones mule. Why anyone under level 55 would -want- to go to that island is beyond me, as the critters there are far more trouble than they are worth until higher level than that.
What the...
Every so often something funny happens. I have heard and seen pictures of this but this is the first time I have seen it myself.
I was in the North Dires, doing my typical fruitless Diamond Lord hunting, in battle with 3 Tusker Guards. The normal battle flow is a fire vuln and single blast to kill one. I will generally switch to the next one right after hitting the key of a fireball.
Every so often I hit on the low end of the damage and the Tusker lives. I already had hit the vuln key for the second tusker so I could not switch back and finish it off. The second one was hit with a fireball and it too lived, love that non-random number generator.
Before I could fire a second blast at either of the mostly dead Tuskers, both screamed and fell dead. The Virindi Master had fired a spread spell, two of which killed his own guards! After laughing I fired a blade spell to kill the Master and finished off the last guard.
Things to wonder about
In PK legitimate stuff like, using wands, draining and using dispel gems are despised. If a PK does this they will be cursed and said to have no skill.
However if you use an exploit such as run casting and jump healing, you are said to have skill and are admired as a PK. There is something wrong where cheating makes them skillful and not cheating means you suck.
Almost makes you want to turn PK
I got a tell from my vassal Michael X. He had gone PK and was dueling another new PK. He invited me to watch the battle.
As I got there another PK by the name of Zajiak was observing the two get ready for their duel. I ID him and he had a name that rang a bell. Not sure but I remembered it from somewhere. He is in a grief player alliance. I was hoping he would not interfere with the duel but had a feeling he would.
As the battle started he ran over to Michael X and stated swinging. He then stopped and said he was just joking around. I'm guessing he missed on every swing and was afraid he would lose against two people.
The duel started and the two were doing a lot of running around. Mike was hurting a few times but jumped on a building and healed. He had a fire Vuln on his opponent and was switching to melee.
As he did Zajiak fired off a level VII fireball and killed Mikes opponent from the back. He then looted him. It is typical of this alliance, the same one that killed Lock after giving peace and saying he could shop.
I asked around and found that Zajiak is a backstabbing coward. He will never fight if there is any chance he would be killed. He would camp Sanctuary when the bug was in effect. If he got the kill he looted, if not he ran.
I saw him later doing a run through of our hall looking for un-buffed PK's. To many PK on our sever are going for the easy kill. I was told that PK was great because you got to battle the best monster in the game. A thinking human is much better than a computer run monster. What I'm seeing is people who are looking for kills without danger. Hell they might as well be killing rabbits.
Today I read about Zajiak and four others in his alliance camping Sanctuary. Their plan is to drain and harm any PK porting in. If the guy lives they port out. Where is the risk or skill? PK on MT is falling apart as we become more like DT every day.
I was tempted to turn PK and get his piece of dirt but knew it would be a waste of time. He would run or portal the second he saw me.
Alala give you Diamond Shield
I was in the hall and asked by a guy to help him mule. I agreed, even though they guy had been removed from Elder for grief play. I can always hope to change people by example.
He had a lot of stuff to mule, including about 20 M-notes. As he logged he said the mule was not in the hall and he would be running it there. Such a pain, now I would have to wait for him. He should have ran the mule there before asking for help.
As he logged off my vassal Alala sent me a tell. He was in the plains crater with a Diamond Lord camping his body. He was also short on playing time. I explained that I was stuck but would be there as soon as possible.
I was able to meet the mule halfway to Lin and unload the stuff. Suddenly I got a tell from Alala, "Yes, Yes, Yes." He then said he needed to kill one more Diamond golem to get his body. He then said he would meet me in the hall.
I got to the hall just before he did. He ran up and handed me a Diamond Shield!
At last I have the final piece for Fist de Yuma. With this I can replace my Blade VI bracelet with a Quick item. I have a Quick IV now but hope to get a VI someday. I can replace the piercing VI shirt with an Acid VI as the shield has piercing V build in as well as Blade VI. I'm losing invulnerability VI but with the quick item I'm close and with a VI back even in melee defense. Add a base 180 al and even the Hollows damage will go down.
Alala, thanks so much! After over 20 hours of hunting I have yet to see a Diamond Lord. Now I can go back to playing Jr.
Different players of AC
Most people play AC for fun. The grief player type of fun is fortunately rare. They get their fun from hurting others and spoiling the fun for others. They are very immature people with poor self-esteem. The below essay leaves them out as they really don't count.
One of the nice things about AC is the different styles of play you can have. While you are split between three styles of combat, Melee, Magic, Archer, you also have people who more socialize than fight.
The pure fighters tend to burn out unfortunately. This type of player tends to play a lot for six months or so, in constant battle and leveling very fast. There is a lot of fun in fighting and leveling but after a time it gets boring.
Social players level much slower but last longer. They are playing for the fun of meeting other people and the pure joy of teaming. I find that this type of player makes a great patron. They may not have the pure power to help their vassals but more than make up for it with friendship. The representational player of this type is Fire-Lady. I tend to direct a lot of players who are looking for patrons her way.
Social players are not poor fighters. While they might tend to hang in the hall more than they hunt they are likely to be more skillful than many of the pure fighters.
The pure fighters can be good patrons because of the amount of items they acquire and the ability to help in battle. The best vassal for this type of player is an independent self-starter. Pure fighters have little time for talking or fooling around but love to go out on a hard-fought body recover.
Most long-term players fall in the middle. They are hard fighters a lot of the time but have no problem hanging in the hall talking to people. They also tend to not have a big Ego as if you think you're better than others you will not make a good patron. This type of player get all sorts of vassals and plays for the pure fun of the game.
Elder, William the Bat and many others are this type. They are leaders, fighters, friends and father/mother figures. They find after a while that most of their xp comes from vassals. This is the reason for the alliance system. Without that xp they would have to hunt far too much to do their job.
Everyone falls between the pure fighter and pure social player. The big B on MT was not a great social player but by pure respect of his play could gain all the followers he wanted. A 120lv player can pick up other power levelers by reputation rather than play.
Some great social players don't have many vassals but more because they are not well known or don't feel the need for them. Social players are also handicapped by their lack of level. After a time the social player will pick up people based on personality alone and take off from there.
I find it hard to rate myself. I care for others and help whenever possible. I'm a strong proponent of team play. Never the less I'm a loner much of the time. I hunt alone much more than I team with people. When hanging in the hall I'm a social player but when hunting you are more likely to get one or two word answers to questions. I also tend to change from social player to pure hunter from day to day. I'm guessing a lot of players are like this so don't try to fit someone in a box, they might surprise you.
What did he think we were doing?
I was in AB right after the patch. I was going all over looking for changes. One thing I found was a new building in AB. This was one of those buildings for renting houses.
When I see a new building the first thing I want to do is jump on top of it. I have put a lot of points into jump because it is one of the play skills I use. There are some things that are impossible to jump to the top of but I'm always trying.
I noted when I got to the top that one place I could never get to was within range. There is a tree in AB I have tried to jump to but it was to far away from the nearest building. The new building made this jump successful.
My vassal Ladon, the former Rajah' Shen, was in AB as well. He was trying to jump to the tree but kept falling short.
A guy came up to us and said "Elders suck". We ignored him as we were playing and not into conflict with a stupid ass. He then said, "Elders play to seriously and not for fun." This was a bit funny as we were just having fun jumping on the building and he was the one being serious.
Finally I had to shut him up. "We are playing, go away." Not sure what his problem was but I'm guessing he was causing grief and some Elder tried to get him to stop. I keep hearing the "I pay my 10 dollars and can do what I want", argument. They need to grow up and understand that because you can does not mean you should.
More play and rep building.
I was standing next to the building with Ladon when someone ran by with an Olthoi Soldier on his tail. I quickly put on my gants and charged into battle. I know I have great melee defense, enough that a soldier would have be lucky to hit me. I also have my purmabuffed armor VI pants on.
These are bugged pants that I got a while back. As long as I don't take them off they stay charged with mana. If I take them off they drop to 0 mana. I had several items that got this bug but the pants are all I have left. I use to spend a stone every time I put them on but now I just leave then on all the time. They are very nice when you go into a surprise battle like this.
So while this looked like an no weapon, no armor attack on an Olthoi Soldier it was not all that much. With the armor VI I was not going to be taking the 100+ damage you can take. It was going to have a hard time hitting me, let alone critting me. I was just having fun killing an Olthoi Soldier. The plate gants would give me enough damage to kill it before the odds fell against me.
What I did not count on was what other people would see. They saw just what it looked like. No armor, no weapon against a hard-hitting monster. By such actions my crazy reputation has been built. I was in no real danger and knew it. But perception is more important than truth. To tell you the truth I was glad Ladon tossed me a few heals as I was taking more damage than I thought I would.
Same thing happened on a quest the other day. It use to be that you could tie to the stone tool quest. It was also a safe landing. I was asked to go on the quest to help out a band of low levels trying for the tool. Of course you cannot tie there now and the exit is in the middle of the north dires.
When the portal was made I was without armor or weapon, expecting the safe landing. We jumped in and found a Malus camping the exit. Of course a Malus is not a big danger to me. I turned and started punching on it. With several people it fell fast. I quickly put on my armor and buffed up a good weapon. Of course the under 45lv people were impressed. I was feeling lucky that there was not something really strong on the other side. Rather stupid of me to jump in without my armor on. A Bone Lord would had me for breakfast.
We had to stop to guard a body when one of us was surprised a by an Overlord. We had a surprise spawn of four Bandies. One player died and we were down to me and my vassal Dagger Stom.
The Enforcer started chaining casting cold spells on me. I resisted two and my cold VI protected me from great damage, despite them being level VI spells. I was down to under 100 points when the bandie I was fighting dropped and I could heal up.
What Dagger saw was me taking spell after spell without blinking. He did not know about the two resists or how effective a cold VI protection can be. I also have a whole lot of hit points. So again, no real danger but a good show.
I'm smart enough to realize that a reputation is important. I'm also smart enough to not let it go to my head. Luck and preparation builds reputations. Without both you have a lot of deaths.
Vassals
I have a lot of vassals and have to say their some of the best people around. Alala getting me the shield is only one, others such as The Crippler, Toromada, Jess Youh, Rizean, Mortok, Maddie and Ibn Saint are just a handful of the great players under me.
I'll give you an example. We did the Virindi Amulet quest Saturday. I was in the hall and they only had two people for the upper, far to low. I saw that Almedes was on and asked if he wanted to help. Several others arrived so we ended up with more than enough to do the upper.
Almedes decided to guard me from harm. It is a good thing as I had the Woo flag on this quest again. I was de-buffed to hell and back. Especially troublesome was a lore VI de-buff. With that plus de-buffs on my self and focus tossing my spells was out of the question. Where I was in trouble was putting my items back on.
To get my magic buffs on I needed to take off my cold and bludgeoning protection. After finding I could not buff I decided to use my atlans. I could not put on my cold and bludgeoning on with the lore that low. This was a big problem with Imperil VI and Bludgeoning VI on me. Almedes tossed some buffs that let me back into the ball game.
Just before the last jump, after receiving a fresh supply of de-buffs, my modem clicked off. As I was in the back and they were ready to jump down, I imagined I would be logging back into a mess and all alone. When I got back I found Almedes guarding the spot.
At the finally battle I was the major target to about everything in the room. I was receiving a constant supply of heals from Almedes. At one point I got a shockwave in the back that put me down to 39 hp. I was running around the room with a Hollow on my back trying to find time to stop and heal. Almedes tossed a heal to fix that problem.
There are a lot of mages that would have been thinking of nothing but themselves. It was a dangerous place and we were not sharing xp. (One was below 50.) Putting yourself on the back burner and playing support mage is not something everyone can do.
Like I said, I have some of the best players in the game for vassals.
Shendolain Quest
It was a busy Saturday. I already had done the Virinidi Amulet quest and a lot of other hunting. Was a bit tired. I was sent a tell by Balash who wanted to know if I could go in the Shendolain Quest. I said I would go with Mage. With the Diamond shield and the new Quest shield I did not need the Shendolain shield. I could provide support on the quest for the other Elders.
The quest was starting slow. A lot of people were coming in to join late. Some had to drop out because of RL issues. One who joined was a guy I had wanted to quest with for a while. Duri Gallant is William the Bat patron. I had not fought beside before him but if William respected him, he must be great.
The quest had a lot of problems. We did not have a close tie to it for one. That was solved when Balash ran and got the tie. The second problem was no one had any idea how to do the quest. One person was trying to download the walkthrough but his printer broke. Duri Gallant printed off the instructions so we had some idea what to do.
After killing a few bones and Diamond Golems we found ourselves at two doors. We knew there was a switch room somewhere and a small group would have to man the switches. After a bit of backtracking we figured out what we would do.
Duri Gallant, Balash and I would man the switches. The rest would follow Duri Gallant's instructions using fellow chat. I picked a guy who had been on the Virindi Amulet quest to be that party leader.
The battle in the switch room was not too bad but we needed to be on our toes. The spawn was not to hard but the undead got smart, they tried to take out the mage before the fighters. Fortunately I'm not easy to take out.
One battle went really well. I felt the spawn was due and was ready. I hit pick monster and tapped the imperil key, then switch monster and another tap. In a handful of seconds the battle was over.
The next did not go well. I fell into Turbines non-random number pit. Also Duri Gallant got a nickname out of the battle.
As the undead spawned I did as before. This time it was Fizzle, Fizzle, Fizzle, Resist, Resist. This happened with 363 life skill! To make matters worse Duri Gallant was not fighting. I ended up being too busy keeping alive to start imperiling again. After a bit Balash killed a few and Duri Gallant got back in the game.
After the battle Duri Gallant apologized saying he was reading. He needed to keep reading the instructions to lead the group. After this I started calling him DG the Bookworm.
The group was not doing too well. They were mostly mid 50's to 60's fighters and mages. When they ran into the Plasma golems they found most could not land a blow and the mages could not land a spell. Plasma's are very hard. They got through but only after several deaths.
After they were done we ported back to the beginning. Several went to restock. I had Duri Gallant pick up a few stones for my three mana eating items. I'm guessing I do carry to many comps because I was not close to running out.
We left everyone who had got a gem at the switch room and started down ourselves. The Plasmas were not as big a problem for us. Duri Gallant and Balash could hit it and it only took me three spells to kill one. Yield, Cold Vuln, Frost blast and dead. Duri Gallant said later that Plasma's were no trouble at all, "I just stood there and let Fist kill it."
At the end it was a battle royal, Bones, Plasmas and Vapors. How the other group got through this battle is beyond me.
We got the gem but had not found the bodies. I started backtracking thinking we had missed the bodies in battle. What I did not know was there is more than one route down. Duri Gallant got us turned back and we had to re-fight to get into the main room. That was my fault.
Taking the other route we up we recovered the bodies and were ready for part two.
I had a small problem. I was broke. My plat burn has been bad this week and it was going to cost me a lot to restock up. I explained this to the group and they passed me enough notes to restock. Took me over 150k.
Second part was a lot better than the first. To begin with everyone was ready to follow the leader now. No one rushed ahead. Monte Cristo died trying to take on a Plasma golem. He did not want the shield but was disappointed to miss seeing the end.
Balash stayed in the switch room and we quickly found our way to the bottom. Someone else died but Balash recovered his body.
About the only thing I hate about quests is waiting for spawns. Fortunately only a few people wanted shields so it was about half an hour of waiting.
Everyone was pleased with Duri Gallant leadership. I was glad I met him. I see why William picked him as a patron, a great leader. I hope he does not mind the nickname.
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