Fist de Yuma - October 22, 2002

I'm back to a long column this week. I was getting worried when I started having 3k columns rather than my average of over 5k. Each week I start with wondering if I'll have anything to write about. Somehow something always comes up. Patch day start Ok, just as I praise the developers for taking their time and getting us stable patches we have this one. People have to understand that with so many things effecting development this is bound to happen from time to time. My praise to the current developers is this unstable patch day and bugs are becoming abnormal rather than the norm. If you have not read the interview with Srand AKA Sandra Powers go do so. Add up her hours and you will find she works from 11 to 14 hours a day to give you the best game possible. With this in mind keep the trashing of developers to a minimum. They read the boards and have human feelings. It is hard to go to work in the morning when you think you are working for a bunch of ingrates. PK, the start Igor the Ignorant posted on the board about us having a PK event. The idea was to have a mass of Elders go PK. We would attack in gigantic groups of 50 or more. Fist had been averse to going PK for some time. The number of people who spew hatred, wither winning or losing, made it something I wanted to avoid. I liked the idea of teamwork and getting that many people together for pure fun. So I took a chance and sighed up. I had a few misconceptions to begin with. The number one was that a 434 UA skill could hit something without a bonus. With all the extreme templates and ungodly high levels, any player who did not do the same is at a big disadvantage. The second was that a dial up account would have a chance in hell of surviving more than 10 second in a fight with a broadband mage. Going red was easy. After removing everything of value I ported to AB, ran to the drunk and took the portals to the dungeon. I had been through the place a few times getting others red so I was never lost. From there I went to back to the mansion. Dark Onslaught had been joking that he was waiting at the mansion to kill me when I went red. I decided to surprise him with an attack. My only weapon was a phantom Katar. I had heard it was a good PK weapon. My intent was to only take a few swings and stop. What I did not count on was the lag. I'm not sure if Mondays lag was my IP or something at MS. In any case I had been going alternate yellow all day. As I started to hit things got slow. Then it all caught up. Messages of "Stop" quickly scrolled up the screen and DO was dead at my feet. Not a great beginning. From there I decided to go looking for a fight. At this point I had no idea how weak and inexperienced I was. I made my way to Arwic and was moving towards the subway. A group of PK's were floating around and I was just trying to be wary. A PK was in bubble running toward me so I decided to attack. It was over fast but it was another error on my part. Not only was he not attacking me he was an Elder! While in bubble I could not id him. After apologizing I moved on. That was my last kill of the night. At the sub I met a renowned PK by the name of Fathers Hand. His reaction was "OMG" to see me as PK. Still ignorant of my poor chances I attacked. He vuln me and I did not want to take any chances. I gemed. He pulled a bow. With a lot of points into missile defense I was able to not get hit with every shot. Without a vuln he did not do much damage. The problem was I was not hitting for much at all. This kept going for a while until another PK moved to help FH by tossing a vuln on me. At that point I decided two on one was suicide and took off running. I was hoping one of them would give up the chase and I could fight one on one. No luck with that as every time I stopped to fight one the other quickly showed up. I was right to keep geming as one hit with an arrow took a third of my health when I did not gem. Finally I kept running until they gave up. During this part my lag was not bad. I went back to the mansion and several of our PK's decided to do a raid on the subway. That was a strange event to say the least. I got into one battle where we killed a member of the Arwic Mafia. There were others attacking and I was not doing much damage. Another guy I attacked was outraged that I attacked him. He called for peace, which I gave him. I guess there are rules that I'm not understanding but I was under the impression that any PK was attackable. After being balled out by the PK for daring to attack him I left in a confused state. I had one big hint of trouble to come. I met an archer in battle. I could not land a single blow on him. The only monster that I have been unable to hit is an Accented Drudge. I know there are 100 coodi, 100 Quick, spec melee templates out there but did not expect them to be so strong. From there I moved towards Awric. There was a battle with Sigma Darkfist and an Elder. After Darkfist easily dispatched him we decided to duel. I'm not sure of the problem. As it happened three times with mage battles it was not a off and on thing. I was vuln and blasted before I could even see him wind up. Almost dead I ran behind a tree to heal. I was safe and in peace mode to heal when my position sifted several feet to the left. Of course Darkfist just saw me standing next to the tree and finished me off. Lag had been bad but I had never had that happen to me before. I trusted Darkfist to not loot me. I had a load of mana stones on the body. I wanted to recover them before I died again as I had a few cheap but needed items I would rather not have to replace. My gants and sollets were something I did not care of I lost other than the pain of digging up more of the mules. Before I could recover the body I needed to clear vit, take Jr red and get a new Hollow weapon. Jr went red for one reason, to buff Fist. I figured that with vit, and I was sure to get vit, buffing with Fist was not going to be easy. Also I was not going to chance losing my hard to acquire protection items. With Jr doing the Life protects I not only could drop the items but replaced VI spells with VII's. Getting Jr red was easy. The run to Fist's house was uneventful. I decided to park Jr in the basement of Fist's house rather than the mansion. This let Fist work off vit quickly after getting buffed. After getting buffed and working off vit I had to go get the hollow weapon. Tracye wanted to go with me. It was just for fun because as a mage there was not much for him to do and he did not need a hollow weapon. I welcomed the company. He did a little research and found a fast way to the lower hollow Lugies. This was a portal in Qbar. I followed his advice about staying close to the edge of the wall and avoided the dispel traps. Of course something always happens in a place like this. Three Luges were tossing rocks in the center of an intersection. I was staying close to the right wall but had to move out to engage the Lugie. Of course he was standing on a dispel trap and I lost some of the buffs. Fist had dropped all his magic enhancement items so rebuffing meant going back to my house. I decided to count on my natural resistance and speed to make the run to the beach fort. We ran back to Qbar and the house portals. The walk though did not say how to get to the beach fortress from Qbar. I knew there was a way close but the walk through had a portal in Mayoi. I had already run through the Subway to get to Qbar and was not willing to try that again, especially with some buffs missing. I checked each portal until I found the one farthest north and west. We took that one and it got us about 10 clicks north of the Beach Fort. Other than Tracye lagging out once we made the run with no damage. Monsters I can avoid with ease, unlike PK mages. Someone said there was a portal bot in Bashi that had the Crater. That meant a fast run through AB with missing buffs. Also Bashi is not the safest spot for a PK. Tracye went to the mansion and I /lifestoned to AB. I lucked out and there were no PK's in either place. That got me to the Crater and my hollow. A family member got me some deadly oil to upgrade it. Now I was ready to go get my Body. After a quick buffing by Jr I ported to Lin to run to Arwic. I was in a fellow by this time. We had a defense force at the mansion because of attacks by the Arwic Mafia. It seemed that our raid on the sub disrupted their battle with some Staff members. They were angry at us. Of course we had no idea about that. I was warned that we had a no loot agreement with AM and not to loot. (They are on our KOS/L list.) As I ported into Lin I found myself surrounded with AM members. I thought there were eight of them but they claim five. Not that it mattered but I'll take their word for it. After a few futile swings I decided I should try and outrun them. I had hoped I could break it down to me and two of them. I led them on a chase around Lin. I told the fellow what was happening with the hope they would set up an ambush at the Lin portal. My only fear at that point was they would stop chasing me and spoil the ambush. I was rather surprised that I had a hard time breaking their stickly. I have a 420 run. I know they are fast but not that fast. It seems the lag would not let me run away from them. I'll have to put it down to trying to play with a dial up against DSL and Cable. For one reason or another the ambush never materialized. This left me hanging a bit. I finally outran them. All the while the five people chased me they spewed insults. For some reason they felt I should stand there and let them kill me. Strangely I did not see any two of the offer to fight me by themselves. I was a bit funny that they were being lead to my ambush and were so happy about it. Would have been better if the ambush was there. I finally broke contact with them. I headed back to Lin and saw one of them by the edge of the road. I started swinging of course. He did not respond. With a sliver of health left I stopped and asked of he was ok. There was no response. I sent a message to one of their players to come protect the one who was apparently frozen. Shortly he came alive and said he had a RL problem and had to go AFK. I said that is ok. There was no honor on killing someone that is helpless. I ran into the gang again. This time I tried to stand in and see if I could take out at least one of them. That was no go and someone got a crit on me. I decided that without support there was nothing I could do. I think I could have stood there and fought them all night. The damage I did take I could heal easy but I could do even less damage to them. There is nothing more boring than a melee vs. melee fight. As I started to run the lag kept me from breaking contact again. Slowly but surly I was whittled down and died. This was where I got a surprise. Somehow my best Katar had not been muled. I kind of expected that since I had helped them and was only doing this for fun that they would have some honor and return my Katar. Also we were supposed to have no loot agreement. I found out that AM decided that no loot was for one fight and after that they were free to loot. There were a lot of insults being tossed around but at least they did not curse. I was disappointed with their attitude but that changed the next day. For that time all I got was "Nice Katar", which really made me angry. Strangely they also thought I was foolish to not kill and loot their AFK player. What skill or honor is there in killing a helpless player? For that matter what skill and honor is there in ganging someone five (Eight?) on one? So I worked off the vit and tried to head to Arwic again. In Lin I met the AM mage. I was hoping that I could do a little damage with my Hollow weapon but it was not much. I was vuln's and blasted to under 100 hit points before I knew it. I hit the Tou-Tou portal and healed. That failed. A few more swings and I tried to run in back of him. I got a few steps and lagged out. Death three. Of course I got the kiddy insults about my ability. I never said I was any good at PK. In fact I was only going PK for our Red Tide event. Why he had to insult me I'll never know. I told him that his insults were rather childish and that got a spew more hate. So I worked off most of the vit and returned to the mansion, sans my sollets. Other than my missing the Katar all I had was junk on me anyway. There was another attack. The AM is bragging that they attacked us at our home and they are partly right. A few would run close and then run away. If we wanted to fight them it had to be well away from the Mansion. Of course I was looking for their mage. I got a few swings in on the AM mage. The first was a 66 point hit so if I had a little luck I would have got him. He was also lucky I did not know that I needed to do to defeat him. I found out more about my abilities against mages during the week. I had him but did not know it. He got a vuln and blast in again without me even seeing a wind up. This was where my inexperience got me. I hid behind a rock and plotted my next move. Of course I totally forget about Arc spells. I got one hit just as I was going to jump over the rock to attack him. I took a second one in mid air and there was nothing I could do. It was an error on my part and pure luck on his. I had two other chances to take down that mage. We had them split up and running in Tou-tou. The mage was being hit by several members and I joined in. He ported out but had the wrong button. He ported to Tou-tou. (grin) I got a few more hits on him before he was able to port again. I was surprised I had not got him. I was sure I should be doing more damage than I was. Somehow I had grabbed my Phantom Katar and not the Deadly Hollow. If I had the right weapon I would have gotten one of the kills back. Live and learn, it was my error. Nevertheless that mage can be thankful for my two errors. The last one we had the mage on the run again but he just ported out. That left the rest of his gang at our mercy. Without their mage they had no chance with even odds. I chased one all the way to Lin, into Tou-Tou, back to Lin and into the desert town that begins with a K. I was sure he was leading me into a trap. When I saw someone port in I took off. They claimed that they were going to give me a two on one battle but I was not believing them at this point. For the rest of the night the AM just ran. I asked them why they were not bragging any more. It seemed that when five were chasing one they had a lot of brags and insults. When it was even odds all they did was run. So I figured they would hit the boards with brags of their exploits. I honestly believed them when I use to see their posts. Now I know better. They can only fight with overwhelming odds. Anything even close to even and they will run. On the boards I got a message that they would return my Katar but it would have an inscription I was sure not to like. Alcoholic Barfighter saw the post. AB is the greatest melee PK on MT from what I hear. Someday I'll be able to watch him work but meanwhile I just read about his exploits. He sent me a message about a Katar he had. This one is far better than the one I lost with the same infusing. He gave it to me to replace my old one. Strangely after the patch I got a message from someone saying they had my Katar. It was a mule of Awric Mafia himself. He apologized for some of the actions of his members the day before and returned my Katar, with no inscription. I was grateful for that and gained a little of the respect I had for AM back. There is a secret to the AM's success. They have templates that cannot buff themselves. Pure melee. They have a mage buffer set up somewhere that does all their buffing for them. Without the need to put points into anything but their sword, melee defense and health they are far stronger than anyone at a similar level. Jr is fifteen levels above them but I'm sure my melee defense and UA skills are far below theirs. Of course I can self-buff with VII's in all three schools and fight independent. Lets Break from AC for a while. Before AC, before computers, before AD&D there were War games. In fact I still have a rather extensive collection in my Den. Several stand out as great games but bar none the best multi-player game ever invented was Third Reich. It went into a bunch of revisions and the rules we hard enough that very few players played it right. As you can imagine my group was one that did play by the rules. We could quote them backwards and forwards. One game stands out in my mind. This was one that has results that far exceeded anyone's idea of what could really happen. The game, as the name indicates, is the fighting of WWII. It starts out with the Germans and Russians attacking Poland. France generally falls fast. How well the Allies do depends a lot on how long France can hold on. There were four of us playing. I was playing Italy and Rich was playing Germany. In a surprise move the guy playing England decided to totally abandon France and go all out in the Middle East. With the lack of English forces France was helpless. Rich quickly massed his tanks and charged to Paris. The idea in the game is to get two to one odds. You may take losses but you have a 35 in 36 chance of winning the battle. Given that there are a lot of cumulative defensive bonuses two to one odds are not easy to attain. There is that 1 chance in 36 that you can lose. If you lose you lose your entire attack force. It has been a while but I believe you had to roll a four, followed by a six to have it happen. It could have been other numbers but for argument sake lets use those. As Italy I'm hard pressed to hold Tripoli. A little help from my German allies kept him at bay. Nevertheless I'm totally defensive. Rich gets his entire army to attack Paris. Four, Six, attacker eliminated. Shocking, France holds! Ok it is only a setback. Slowly but surely Germany starts rebuilding his army. The proud core of tanks, left in ruins at the door of Paris, is forgotten. Meanwhile England is pushing me back and he feels he can soon control the Mediterranean. To insure victory he sends his entire army south, leaving England virtually unguarded. And why not, Germany is to engaged with France and cannot spent the cost to fight another battle. Germany masses his tanks on the border and prepares to push the French aide. Deep penetration into France puts his tank core at the gates of Paris. Four, six, Attacker Eliminated. Ok, this is not funny. There is a 1 in 1296 of rolling those exact numbers in that order. The English push me out of the Middle East and France is invading Germany! Aaaa then I note something. With only a token guard on the south border I see that Paris is unguarded. We are playing no talk to each other so what happens next was unplanned. Brushing aside the guards in the south of France my pitifully tanks, easily 1/10 as powerful as the weakest of Rich's tanks, rush to Paris and France falls! Meanwhile Rich saw that he has a shot at taking England. Abandoning his defense of western Germany he sends his parachute core to England. A short sharp battle and England falls! One way to win is to take two major counties. From complete disaster, Germany about to fall, Italy pushed out of the Middle East and Russia ready to attack, we win. Lame insults I have lamented in the past how lame many people are with insults. I'm seeing it a lot more as a PK. The insults are short, stupid and not even close to fitting what happened. Common one I get is Noob. As a player that started at retail, plays four hours a day and plays all types of players Noob seemed a rather ignorant thing to say. I'm not even a Noob to PK as I have likely watched more PK battles than they have fought. With the wrong type of player to be a good PK and a bad connection I would not say I'm a good PK. I'm sure not a Noob. I met an Elder PK around the Sub the other day. He was naked and running from two other PK's. I had seen naked PK players before so this was not that strange. After he was killed he ran back to recover. He then said, "You guys are gimps." I asked how why he said that, after all they had just killed him. He said he had lost all his armor when he was killed and looted by other PK players. He had asked for peace and they attacked him instead. Ok. I can see being angry about that but "gimp" was not the best insult. I thought for a second and say this would have been better. "If you think that was a good kill Rabbits must fear you greatly." He said he would use that one someday. I had him go to the mansion for armor and buffs. I hope he goes white soon as he did not seem prepared to be a PK at that point. If I can come up with that in seconds I'm sure people can come up with better things than, "You are old", "Noob" and "You gimp." The insult is pathetic and most times doesn't fit the situation. If you have to trash talk do it with some flair. Lets see some original work that fits the moment rather than canned responses that don't. Template thoughts With Jr and Deadeye there is not much thought. Jr and Deadeye are both good templates and the ability to change stats will not effect them much. With Mage I'm in a predicament. There are a lot of monsters coming out that seem to require Yield to land, no matter what your skill. I'm tracking this but it seems strange that Monsters are resisting my 410 Life with ease until after Yield. Then my 391 War is landing. This could be observer error but I am having second thoughts about dropping Creature to trained so I can spec War. Still the thought of 350 base War is more than tempting. Strangely I found that by moving War to Spec'ed the cost of the next point will be higher than it is now. While that is on my mind Fist is where I'm really confused. He has two base problems. He lacks Life skill and a range weapon. Life I can get, a range weapon I can get. Getting both will involve sacrifices I'm not sure I want to make. Moving Run to trained, dropping Leadership, Weapon and Magic Item tinkering gives me 16 points. After that I have the option of dropping Lockpick and Missile. Both of them I would like to keep but I think one must go. So lets give me 22 points with a maximum of 28. I have to have Life. The lack of protections VII and the pain of using level 1 Life spells for mana recovery plain sucks. I don't expect to be vuln'ing anything but nothing is impossible. By dropping all but one of my off skills I could even Spec it. So lets put that down for 12 points. Now I have 10 to play with. Xbow is at the point where it is a good weapon. It is not as good as a bow but with a point problem I will not worry about that. That is 6 points. Spec'ing it would make it a lot better. New armor rendering is based on skill so min skills in a range weapon is not as good now. I know it is possible to use bow/xbow without fletching but I don't like it. There is already a big problem with weight after adding a heavy xbow to the inventory. There is also the problem of running out of arrows. I can easily burn a 1000 arrows with Deadeye on a hunt. No way I could carry that many. The only way you can make bow/xbow work is with Fletching. So the combo of Xbow and Fletching is 10 and add 6 more if I want to spec xbow. So I have a min of 22 points needed to spend and a max of 28. You see my quandary. The only way I make Fist into a really great fighter is to give up many of the things that makes Fist who he is. The thought of Fist without Lock pick or Missile is hard. To take both away is more than hard. Nevertheless this is very possibility what I'll do. Otherwise I might as well retire him. I cannot draw a monster or kill them in place. When he is outside he is next to useless. It takes to long to bring down anything hard. Monsters in a pack are almost impossible to fight. The second option is to spec Life. This seems like a solution until you look at the numbers. To be useful I will have to be able to land on stuff that are not easy to overcome. This means 380+ skill, at the least. With half a billion points into the Life skill after Spec'ing it I would have a base Life of 305. Add in 40 for a VII buff, 24 for the skill buffs and 5 for a minor we have 374. While that is respectful it is not enough. I would have to double the xp total into it to get to 380 and that is the min. There will still be a lot of stuff that will laugh at a 380 skill. The advantage of spec'ing Life over getting trained Life/spec'd xbow is I can keep Lockpick. Nevertheless this does not seem to solve the base problem of a range weapon. Too much stuff would resist my skills, even if I was willing to try Life bolt as a weapon. With months before the sell back goes into effect and even more time as I sell back skills, I have time to think about it. What is nice is no matter that I can change it back if it does not work. I think I'm going to like this change. What I leaned from being PK. I cannot say I learned a lot by being PK. I knew most of this before but now I got to experience it. I'll start with what I learned about fighting and then go to my opinion of the entire thing. Melee vs. Melee is impossible. Even if one has vastly better skill they don't do enough damage to each other that one cannot heal and suck elixirs. Without a mage or two on one it is a waste of time. Mages are by far the most predominate class of PK. They have range and power. Most PK duels I watch are Mage vs. Mage or Mage vs. Archer. A Melee can beat a Mage but it is costly. Any lag at all works to the Mages advantage. I see a lot of running around and stuff but for the most part if a Melee runs it is over. They may restart but both will likely be at full power, if the melee lasts long enough to break and heal. The tactic I use is simple. Unfortunately it is lag dependent and with a dialup I lag more often than not. With a deadly hollow you attack. The mage will counter with a vuln as simple blasting will have him dead before you are. You must gem the second he tosses the vuln. I keep 5 gems on my quick bar. If there is any lag at all he will blast you before you gem so gem as soon as you can. If you can time it so you gem before he gets the blast off you will likely defeat him. The crits will add up and he will die. Sadly I find that I have been vuln'ed and blasted with no chance to gem at sometime in a battle. Like I said, it is lag dependent. Archers are easy or hard, at least for me. Someone without missile defense will have a total different story. Where they are hard is when they put a lot into melee defense. I faced one archer that I could not land a blow on. If you cannot hit him it is a touch hard to defeat him. Most Archers depends on fast fire to bring people down. I have over 300 missile so that does not work. If I could hit an Archer they generally ran. Lastly don't expect anything but trash when you fight. At least one third of the PK's are not worth the trouble to spit on them. If you don't loot, help them recover bodies, never trash talk and give peace when they want it, expect them to back stab you and loot at the first opportunity. Many don't fall in to this category but if you expect this you will not be disappointed. Time and time again I did not loot, stopped fighting when I saw they were lagging and gave them respect. This was always rewarded with being killed and looted whenever I locked up. Of course they might no know you are locked up. After all there are a lot of Melees that will stand there and let you kill them without returning a blow. The reason stated that people go PK is the challenge. They state that no AL is good as human and it is the ultimate victory. Nevertheless their actions don't say that. I tend to believe actions more than words. Many PK's are there to prove how much better than they are than others. Rather than try to expand the amount of people who go PK they try and limit it. Looting, cheating, trash talking, backstabbing are all inductive of trying to drive people from the field, not accepting a challenge. This is one thing that AC II will have an advantage with. The no drop will let anyone go PK without getting robbed while doing so. Something to know A friend of mine was stuck in a bad data block one time. He did not have anyone who could log his player to move it. Of course the +admits were busy taking care of the Dweebs so he had been a while trying to get in. Every time he tried to log in he would be in portal space and then crash to the desktop. He came up with an idea and told me what he did. He put "/house recall" in his text buffer. You can do this with Notepad. While in portal space he hit return and ctrl+C to paste that into the box, followed by return. The next time he tried to log in he was at the mansion. "/lifestone" should work as well of you don't belong to an alliance with a mansion.