Fist de Yuma - October 21, 2003

Clarification While most people understand what I say when talking about macros a few hard heads try to give me a "Gotya" on them. It is not against the rules to mule with two accounts. While one account is unattended that is not against the rules because it is not in combat. It is against the rules to be unattended in combat but nowhere else! Of course if you're muling in the middle of a dungeon you are risking a ban. You can park your player at the mansion and go eat if you want. If you do it in a dungeon you risk a ban. If you use two PPL's with one fighting and one sitting in the corner of the dungeon you risk a ban. Close proximity to a battle is enough for an Admin. They don't have the time to sort out who is doing what. If you are there you had better be attended. I'm not sure if this is a product of stupidity, ignorance or just an attempt to discredit me. Mostly likely it is the latter. You can twist my words all you want, it will not make your cheating legal or honorable. It will just make you look too stupid to understand simple concepts. Updated information A lot of people have written me about the strange place I found last week. Many wanted the coordination's which are; 41.3s 52.6e. The word I have on this is second hand but sounds right. So take it for what it is worth. The teaser before the Shadow Wars talked about a battle between the Shadows and Undead. It was an overwhelming Shadow victory. This is said to be the sight of that battle. Now this is really old stuff, first few months of the game. I guess the remote location of the battle and other factors kept this from being well known. I encourage everyone who has the time to go run there and take a look at it. Board information There is a lot of useful information on the boards. Much if this information is being posted by Turbine itself. This is clearing up long time misunderstandings and gaining us more control over events. A long time problem with melee players is stamina loss. There has been a lot of debate over the years but most of us agreed that a heavy shield will add to stamina loss. Some thought it was not the weight of the shield but the type of shield. That was cleared up this week. From Srand The Wumpus got curious and forced me to check the code on this one. The stamina you burn when you attack with a melee weapon is modified by the burden of the weapon and shield you are wielding. It is not modified by the 'type' of weapon or shield. The surprise to me is weight of weapon. We have never through about that before. We now have one more thing to worry about. (grin) Had to happen sometime I had gone 63 levels without a death. Of course massive buffs and tinkered armor had a lot to do with that. While I have been fighting the hardest monsters available I've seldom been in any danger whatsoever. I figure it will take until I hit the 80+ Olthoi Matron dungeon that I'll be fighting anything that might threaten me. Nevertheless there are a few things that can take out even the most protected player, lag being the number one. Much to my surprise the Casa de Yuma allegiance seemed to have taken over the 60-90 Matron dungeon on MT. Deamon Mace has been paralleling me in our rise to levels but we have also been joined by Badnames and others in my allegiance. I was in a fellow that was about to break up. We had been going for three hours and it was time for a rest. I also had filled up every storage spot on my other account and had no place to dump the salvage and loot Owanda had acquired this trip. I had about 20 minutes left on my buff and theirs were much shorter. I figured I would finish off the buff and then go sort out the loot. While most of the loot I'm getting is simple salvage I have started to collect a few valued items. The first thing I got was a Major Endurance shield. This was my first major item in over a year. I have not checked the stats on it yet. I just dumped it on a mule for later. If it can be tinked to a useful al/weight then I might use it. If not I'll give it away to someone. I have picked up some nice leggings and some fair armor pieces. I have players who are moving to MT and others I need to outfit. Keeping several sets of armor available is important to me these days. I had four sets but they were eaten up early this month. So while everyone was leaving I was running around looking for something to kill and loot. There are a few Olthoi in acid pits. There are ones in the lower left hand section. Some of these are very small and the Olthoi in them have no trouble coming out to die. At the very bottom is a pit with two walls that trap the majority of the Olthoi inside the pit. What we end up doing is advancing into the pit until they come out from behind the walls and them rush to the hallway. With 33 points a shot from acid damage it is important to get out fast. I did this trick and was in the hallway. Then I was snapped back to the inside front of the pit with a wall of Olthoi in front of me. Oh oh. I ran around a bit and got out, and was snapped back. Now I was down to a handful of points. I tried to suck an elixir but was hit by an acid blast that finished me off. I had my first death. It had to happen sometime and I guess and it is typical of the game that it was caused by lag. My only losses were my helm, some mana stones and a few loot items. Given that they don't hit the head that was not a problem. I still had 14 minutes on the buff so I just had Mage hit me with Creature buffs and Life protects. Banning is the majority of spells for a buff so it did not take long. I ported to the dungeon. Of course the entrance to the dungeon is hot. I had to swap to my mace and shield as fast as possible. Err where is my mace? Oh shoot, I don't have my mace! I had not noticed it had dropped along with my helm. It was fortunate that I had my old backup in a pack. Of course it was not buffed. That combined with it not being all that good to begin with made clearing the entrance problematic. I was able to defeat one EV but others started to spawn and I was soon backed against the wall. In the end I had to port out. My banes and protects let me grab a wand without taking too much damage. I just had to be sure to toss a spell that would work. I had made sure to tie to my lifestone so that spell worked this time. I ported back to the mansion and buffed the mace. Now it was a race against time. I had to recover before my banes ran out. Of course with everyone gone the dungeon had filled up with Olthoi again. Fortunately one person was still there and was hunting along my route. This left me with a clear path until I outran him. I got to the pit and battled a lot of Olthoi. Using my old mace gave me a good appreciation of my new one. I was hitting for far less. My big worry was that the body would be deep in the pit. It was even possible that lag had tossed me behind one of the side walls. If that had happened recovery was going to be a big problem. It was with a sigh of relief when I saw the body right on the edge of the pit. It still took a few trips back and forth to get everything off of the body. I finished clearing it with about two minutes on the banes. I need to start Owanda looking at some DI's now. Attended Every day someone hits the boards with a story about how they were unfairly given a ban. Most of them go something along these lines. I was sitting at the computer. I had all chats and everything I could think of squelched. While busy fighting I missed some Admin tell and got a ban. This XXXX has to end. I was at my keyboard and just missed the question. As you read along you find out a few things. 1) They admit they were running a macro. If you are running a macro then being in a big fight will have little effect on your ability to respond to a question. In fact you have a much greater ability to respond as you are only watching, not playing. If they are really attending the macro then there is no excuse for missing a tell. I just count that as lie number one. 2) The second type of thing you find is they were running two accounts in the dungeon at the same time. Sometimes one account is vuln'ing and others it is just gaining xp or looting while the second does the killing. As stated last week; Each account must have a person attending it. One person running two or more accounts makes them unattended. 3) The information they post disagrees with the Admin's story. Gee, we already have caught them in a lie, should we not say their story has less credibility than the Admin? Given that there are logs and the Admin is checked I'll trust the Admin. The bottom line is the word ATTENDED. Attended is not sitting at the keyboard while watching TV. If you must have the computer play for you then you have to pay attention. I agree that such is boring as hell but that is your choice. If the game is too boring for you to play then move on. (I'm tempted to say reading a book but in my experience such people don't read. Possibility an audio book would be their style. Someone might make money inventing a reading macro for them.) I for one think the punishment is too weak and not a determent. My proof is the amounts of unattended macros in the game. There are few places I can go to without running into a macro. They have chased me out of several dungeons. If the punishment were enough (or too much as some claim) then there would be few macros. Given the abundance of macros the punishment is not a deterrent. As one posted put it, "It is not punishment, it is a vacation." Successful Weeping We had a few more people who wanted the Weeping Weapon. Winter Raven and I decided that 5:30 EST on Sunday would be a good time for it. I posted it in several places and had Fist de Mage ready to go. This time I remembered to grab my fire wand off Fist's Armorer. We had a powerful group for this attempt. Only two were under 126, in other words every player who had a 126 in the allegiance was there. (I have three but could only bring one.) Dread Lord Boba Fett, Nene Romanova, Soul Riper, Winter Raven and me were in the fellow waiting for Big Kahuna to arrive. I looked at the fellow screen and asked Winter Raven if she felt out of place. Fellow was 126, 126, 126, 126, 89. Big Kahuna made Winter feel a little better. He is only in the low 60's. We were really worried about getting BK through it. He had hit points low enough to be one shot, easy. I asked him to hold back and just use his Healer's Heart. I'm happy to say he is very smart and even when surrounded by monsters he did not try to attack. He healed himself and us. I want to make more of a point of this. At the every end Big Kahuna was surrounded on all sides. They were almost touching him. While a few were attacking him most were attacking others. One big cluster with him in the middle. I have seen it over and over again. Someone will get cut off like this and start attacking in a panic. If Big Kahuna had gone offensive several more would have turned on him and it would have been over in a snap. Instead he calmly healed himself and used his Healer's Heart on others, totally ignoring his situation and the monsters. It was an amazing sight and tells me that Big Kahuna has a shot at being one of the great players in AC. With that much power I did not feel I needed to attack. I grabbed my Awakener and started burning up Mana Stones. I would only pull my wand when things got really crowded. For the most part I was support and lock pick. Even at the hard part with the named Humans we had little trouble. Most of my attacks were at were wasted as they were dead before my spell reached them. After we cleared we got all the items here. I found a pile of bodies over in a corner. I said it looked like a last stand. In fact we had been stumbling over bodies the entire trip. This is a popular dungeon but not everyone goes prepared for it. I think we swept through it in less than half an hour. We got all the items and even got to the chest this time. I know where it is now. From there we were off to AB for the xp reward. I found out that you can fellow share the reward. Not sure if there is an advantage to do so or not. Not enough to worry about it anyway, maybe a good way to level a mule. I loaded up Cliff's Carrier Cook to make the ingots. Illuminator dumped 90 decanters on me before he left so I had lots of them. We all got out ingots done and were off to Crater. Big Kahuna was a touch worried. When he stamped his ingot it turned into a lesser quality. He lucked out anyway and got a perfect bow. I should be so lucky. (grin) All in all it was a very successful quest. If you have the power and don't rush it this quest can be safe. By the trail of bodies we found it is pure death if you don't. That helpless feeling There are times when you want to help someone but there is nothing you can do. I was getting ready to buff Owanda for an Olthoi run when I got a tell from Kepi. Kepi is Jeff's new Mace player. He has linked a few of my and his mules and is using Kepi to drive their tinker skills up. He had just got to the 20-50 dungeon and having a blast. He ported in and said he had died in an acid pit. He was deep in the pit and was not sure if he could recover. I would have loved to help him but I no longer had anyone low enough to go inside the dungeon. Jeff got rebuffed and headed back. I was meanwhile trying to find people to help him. Dreven, who is Cher's husband, was on. He had a melee player that fit in the level range. I was not sure if a melee could help much. The big need was a mage, preferably two or three of them. I buffed him and give him a portal to Lin. He ran to Nanto from there. Jeff meanwhile could not find the acid pit. I asked him to describe what happened. He said he saw a bunch of Olthoi on the other side of the pit and was running across. Only they were not on the other side, they were inside a very big acid pit. When he realized his error it was to late to run back and he died. That sounded to me like the first pit on the left side. It uses to have a portal to Asheron's island inside of it. I told them; from start, go left, right, left, right and follow the passage to the acid pit. I have a good memory for directions after being someplace for a while. A short while later they both got back to the mansion. The recovery was done. Draven's player had a few more hit points than Kepi so he recovered the stuff. I hate feeling helpless like that. How to level mules I have been questioned about my mules. I have several mules at 90+ and are at over 500 in skills. I'm asked how I did that at least once a day. I'm sure that some will criticize me saying this is a chain. In reality is not as; there are no rules, one person is doing all the work and one person receives the benefit. If you disagree with me on this so be it, we can agree to disagree. It takes two accounts to do this. If you're lucky you can get two people who want to level mules and can share the work. Other than Cooking and Alchemy the skills cannot be spec'd so we have a lot of points to play with. The key is having links with maxed out Loyalty and Leadership. I did this for Jeff with the Owanda account. Then you create specialized mules. One mule will be for general skills; Lock Pick, Cooking, Alchemy, Item and Magic Item tinkering. The next two will be more focused. One will be focused on Armor and the other Weapon tinkering. You can go with 100 self on these mules or go with 100 strength. You'll need to put a lot more xp into loyalty and leadership if you go with strength but I think that is the best way to go. At the very bottom is the driver. This is a player you will play. It helps if it also collects salvage but that is not necessary. In this age I like using a Mace player and hunting Olthoi. Last year I felt a Mage was a better way to go. Go with the player you feel best leveling. Remember this is not a fast short-term project. In order to be productive you have to get the mules to at least 80. That means the pusher will have to get to 110 or higher. You also cannot use short cuts for the most part. It takes a lot of effort and your reward is a demand on your time for skill work. One last word, do this right the first time as the only way fix it is to start over.