Fist de Yuma - October 26, 2004

Tinker goals I've been working on getting my Tradesman (Cliff Bowman) where I want him. The short-term project has been getting his Weapon skill equal to his Armor skill. I'm still about 300 million XP short of that goal, but he is getting there. The long-term goal is to land the 10th tink on my weapons and armor. Of course, different salvage needs a different amount of skill. To make it simple, I've decided to just use two types of salvage for my goals. This will mean using steel on the armor and granite on weapons, for the purpose of calculations. Using ACPlanner to work out my skills, I'll need a base 470 for armor, given wms 9 steel and wms 4 armor. I would like to get enough skill to do wms 5 items someday, but that is far, far in the future, if even possible. I cannot state for sure, but ACPlanner only gave me a maximum of 75%, with all majors and maxed stats. This assumes, maxed stats, all majors, wms 5 item, wms 10 steel and brilliance. So I guess it is only realistic to push for wms 4. I'm a little better off with the weapons, but hindered by a lack of high wms granite. Whereas, I'm getting wms 9 steel on a regular bases, and sometimes wms 10 stuff, I seldom find anything above wms 8 with Granite. That could be where I'm hunting, but I have to go with what I have. Even with the lower wms, I find I can get into the 80% range for the wms 5 10th tink. Landing the 9th will not be very hard. Given that we are only talking about 20 al for armor, and a small amount of damage added to weapons, I can live with using the 9th tink as a goal with wms 5 items. Of course, we are talking years of work here. The shorter columns of late are a direct result of me pushing this tradesman instead of wandering around looking for adventure. One down, nine to go I started on my quest to make Fist's Mule two into a melee mage. I should have started weeks ago, but I've been putting it off. The reason is I needed to unload a lot of stuff from him, and that is a pain to do. I just got Imp Inventory working again, so it seemed like a good idea to keep working with the mules and get him started on his quest. Current stats for him are; 100, 20, 90, 10, 100, 10. The goal is 10, 10, 100, 10, 100, 100. A nice help was the gems we got this month. Without them, I had an even longer time to get the skills fixed. The stat goals are; Spec Melee Defense, War. Trained Item, Creature, Life, Mana Conversion, Lore. I'll have two skill credits left over, and maybe more after the expansion. Still, it will be a long time before I have the six to eight credits to spec another skill. Fist's Mule two is currently 107. He will need to get to 115 to have the skill credits necessary for all this. That should not be too much of a problem, as this is another of those very long-term projects. Depressing discovery I have been using a sword for hunting Olthoi that is a lot worse in stats than the one I want to use. The main reason is, that despite the far better hitting power of my good sword, it only has a +7% attack bonus. The lesser sword has a +14% attack bonus. I feel it is better to have a weaker hit that hits, than as stronger one that misses. While working with ACPlanner, I wanted to see just how much more sword skill Death Mute needed to use the better sword. Death Mute's base sword is 372. I took that skill and multiplied by 1.07, to see what skill I would need to have the equivalent of using the higher bonus sword. That skill came to 398. Punching that number into ACPlanner, and having it calculate how much xp I would need, came to 1.6 billion xp. As he has not even made a billion total yet, that is a long way off. Given that his current project is to become self-buffing, it is looking like Death Mute will take a lot of work before he is ready. The self-buffing project is not really great news. It will take close to a billion points to get that. I'll have it done at 105, according to ACPlanner. It is fun to have a lot of players, but sometimes I get overwhelmed with despair of ever getting them where I want them. VoD Adventures Casa de Yuma is filled with people who have taken the long road when leveling. That means we don't have a lot of overwhelmingly powerful members. While there is one power leveler whom may pass me, my two mains, and Hot-Shot, who was purchased, are the highest level players in the allegiance. (150 and above) (The owner of Hot-Shot has worked hard and long leveling his or her own players, so, even if Hot-Shot was not leveled by him or her, he or she has earned the right to play it. I would dare say that he or she has played Hot-Shot more that the person who took the short cuts in making him.) So, when we have a quick call for big time help, those that show up cannot use power to solve the problem. Playing smart is the name of the game. I was doing a lot of inventory work when I saw the call for help. One of the pains of playing a lot of players, over three accounts, is getting salvage to the salvage mule, and sorting the really good items from the "save for someone" items. I generally have to take a full day of play, once every few weeks or so with this. The call for help was from Mezra. He had run into a Tremendous Monouga. As a 105 mage, he knew that taking it on solo was not in the cards. He asked for help. I quickly loaded up Fist de Yuma Jr. Fist de Yuma Jr is a 141 Life/Sword. This gives him great flexibility, but has also lowered his pure sword and melee defense capabilities. For this reason, I'm pushing Death Mute (90) as my pure sword player. Because of that, Fist de Yuma Jr does not always have a full selection of swords on him. While I do have two sets of Rend swords, my CS/CB/AR sets are somewhat lacking. That will change over time, but for now I have to be aware of this problem. I asked them what element he planned to use on the Big Boy. He said Slashing and Cold. As I tend to hunt wide and far, I'm not always up on what is the best element to use on a particular monster. I had a CS Slashing sword, so I was set. After a quick buff, I use a set of portals to get to the VoD Lifestone and started the run. Fortunately, this fight was not in one of the deep, hard to get to parts of VoD. Other than a scattering of de-buffs, I did not eat an abundance of spells on the way. Mezra had maneuvered the Big Boy behind two trees. Given his size, you can use two widely separated trees for this. The first time he tried that, the Big Boy was able to port back to his spawn site. I'm not sure if Mezra used two different trees, or if the addiction of melee attackers fixed that problem. When I arrived, Tinquar was hacking away. He looked to be using a staff. At 94 level, and a weak weapon, I was not sure how effective he could be, but he was bravely hacking on him. I joined in the attack. We had him in a three-way triangle attack. Tinquar and me had him pinned to the trees, and Mezra had the tip of the triangle. He was smartly using wall spells on him. I had read that, because of his size, wall spells are every effective on Big Boy. I was hitting for 150 with 450 critical hits. Given the weapon, I was hitting critical's more often than not. We had Big Boy to about 50% when Brusen XV showed up. He is a 74 level mage. He added his attack in while standing next to Mezra. I was really surprised that this small group was doing so well. I had seen far more powerful groups fail to take him down. I'm sure that it was Mezra's wall spells that did the trick. In any case, the body had his name on it. From there we decided to hunt out the buff. We did very well, taking down lots of the VoD standards. While killing some Virindi, we had a little bad luck. Either Brusen XV or Tinquar got one shotted, and the other died as a result. Mezra and I finished off the battle, recovered their bodies, and ported back to the mansion. It was a fun little adventure. It proves that, with care, you don't need an overwhelming bunch of 126+ players to hunt VoD. Olthoi Armor Jeff is starting to have more time to play. The Marines can take a lot of time from you. The day after they returned from Iraq, he was putting in 18-hour days. While he has had some leave time, their getting set up for flight hours and other settling in things, took up a lot of time. To tell you how hard it was on him, I did not even see Jeff for over a month after he returned. What time he did have, was spent with his wife, understandable. So it has taken months before he has had time to play AC again. We had a few short adventures, such as pincers and such, but nothing that took over an hour. So when he said he wanted to get a set of Olthoi armor out of the 60+ dungeon, I was more than ready to help. As is the norm for our allegiance, we did not go with overwhelming power, but what we had was more that adequate. I took Fist de Yuma. Jeff was using Kepi (70). For support we had Chagrin' (76), Dibbuk (88) and Lifedraynor (73). Someone made a portal to a housing complex close to the dungeon, and we did a short run to the dungeon. I cannot be sure, but the Olthoi north seems to be a bit more busy than I remembered. Lifedraynor was the leader. The Olthoi armor dungeons are a maze that I don't have a handle on yet. I cannot be sure, as it has been some time since I was there, but the 60 seemed a lot different from the 80. The difference might be superficial, but the point is moot, as I am lost in both. Lifedraynor must have the dungeon down pat, as we made nary made a wrong turn. Everyone but me was getting a set of the armor, so we had a lot of waiting for spawns. There was a group waiting for spawns in one spot, so we moved on. Unfortunately, there are a few long jumps that make backtracking impossible. I was hoping that all the armor parts would drop in the lower as well as upper spawns, but that did not happen. After a few hours, they all had eight parts, and needed to get one more. They were ready to recall, but I figured there had to be a way back to the start. In the back of the second matron spawn, I found a surface portal. Unfortunately, two of our members were quick on the trigger, and had last portal recalled before getting my message. We killed a handful of Olthoi while waiting for them to run back. Again, Lifedraynor led us directly to the spawn. We had to do about another half an hour of killing before they all got the last part. It was a fun three hours. Jeff likes the armor, but quickly found it inadequate for the 60+ matron, for now anyway. While it is really good armor, it will not hold a candle to a well tinked set of armor. Fists Armor I finally have my armor one color anyway. I'm not sure I will stay with this color yet, but it is not butt ugly. I have it dyed a purple color. The mismatched armor types give me a limited ability to make it look good. Using a darker color covers a bit for the mismatched lines and trim. I have noted a big difference when I take a surprise hit from the side or back. The armor is ok, being around al 250, but the difference between it and al 400 really shows when something gets around my shield. Of course, with a base 397 Melee Defense, I'm not hit enough to make it a big problem. Sort of, "Ooooo, took a 70 point hit there." I'm sure that the AL will get me killed someday, but I'm equally sure that the majors will save me a time or two, so it will balance out. Meanwhile, I get a little more fun the rest of the time. Of course, this would be unthinkable before Turbine made the buffing changes, so a big thanks to them. For a rundown of my ugly armor; Silver Baigha - Major Mana Conversion Silver Koujia Breastplate - Major Unarmed Studded Leather Pauldrons - Major Strength Silver Chainmail Bracers - Major Coordination Gromnie Hide Leather Gauntlets - Major Item Magic Copper Celdron Girth - Major Focus (clearly the most ugly piece) Greater Olthoi Tassets - No spells (I'll be looking to fill this with Creature, Life or Melee Defense. If you have something like this, I'll give it a good home.) Copper Covenant Greaves - Major Willpower Armoredillo Hide Leather Boots - Major Magic Defense Silver Round Shield - Major Quick. So, while the AL is not something I would face the Olthoi Queen with, it works, and I have a set of majors we could only dream of years ago. Non-AC stuff I've had my new bike for a little over a week. I've got 104 miles and 7.6 hours on it. I've made three 30 plus mile rides with the Foothills bike club, and my legs are killing me. What is really funny, is I thought I was in shape for my age. Sure, I'm a little overweight, at 218, but I have a resting heartbeat of 60. I've been doing hour rides on my mountain bike and use to riding the young kids into the dirt on a regular bases. So when I first saw this club, I was brimming with confidence. They were even older than me. Their bikes were older, and clearly inferior to my bright new bike. Many of them are darn right fat. So imagine my surprise when the dropped me on the first hill. I can mostly stay with them on the flats. That is mainly because I'm drafting them. There is nothing more humiliating than getting dropped by someone older, fatter and a woman to boot. During last Thursdays ride, the subject of resting heartbeats came up. It seems that theirs are mostly in the mid 40's. So much for the pride of having mine at 60. As you can tell, riding with them is a humbling experience. We have a 30-mile ride planned for tomorrow. I'm hoping to start catching up with them, but I think it will take more than three rides a week.