Island 101
Zakir asked me to take him to the island. Even as Maddie he had not go there. I figured I would make a tour of it. I posted on our board asking anyone who wanted to go to be ready in the hall. We set the time at 11am Tuesday. Of course I completely forget that that was column day. After a late night of writing I got the column done and posted in time.
We had four people total, Me (80), Jim-Bob-Bird (62), Gammer the Mad (48) and Zakir (50). Zakir is using the "Fist" template and is really good for teaming. With spec'd life he is tossing level VI protects. Hi is not ready for de-buffing monsters but he did land an imperil on a Bandie the one time he tried. Jim is an Og mage and Mad a Swordsman.
Started out with a running to Awric and taking the Al-Jalima portal, then a run to Sylsfear. Only need light buffs for that run. Inside Sylsfear we buffed for battle. Shadows give us little trouble some as others were fighting them as well. I had them LS at the D note place and got the portal.
I had them head to the water to buff up. First thing to see was Coral golems. I did not expect to fight one as they mostly die a few seconds after spawning. Surprisingly two were alive near the start. I imperiled one so the two melee's could kill it. The other became bugged.
Ever so often a Coal golem will get caught in some kind of programming loop. It is unaffected by war spells and melee attacks. It stands there and does nothing for a long while. It can be killed with drain and harm if you want to spend the time. Even dead it still stands there.
Bandies died fast to the melee's when imperiled. I would imperil and Jim would lighting Vuln. With a double de-buff they died in a few swings. After showing them around we headed to the Castle.
There they saw their first Vapor golems. I set one up for them. Zakir could hit it but Mad was evaded. As it dropped we saw Jim's death message, then she logged off. I figured she lagged out. We killed a few more Vapors and rebuffed.
Jim got back and we started searching for her body. Good thing we had the new Corpse command or we would never have found it. It was way up the hill across from the Castle. It was surrounded by hordes of Bandies, Drudges, Shuths and sundry other nastiness.
Our first attempt was from the north. Mad had to leave so I made him a portal to the hall. The three of us cleared the beach and ran up the hillside. It was full of orange dots but I found a dead zone. From there we started pulling monsters and killing them.
I heard Jim-Bob-Bird screaming and tossed a few heals her way. She ran off and Zakir was hurting. I attempted to toss him a heal, a second to late as he died next to me. I cleared it and Jim re-joined me. I wanted to try a run through and see if I could get everything to chase me and let her recover.
It was hilarities to see it on the screen. I'm running up and down the hill with a blanket of dots swirling around me. Dodging up and down, inside of that, was Jim's green dot. After a minute of that we gave it up. It was far too much for us.
Zakir was running back and I checked my friends list. Cat is a bit pissed at me for good reasons but I hopped she would answer the call. She did and said after selling she and her sister would be there. Meanwhile we killed a few Golems and Bandies.
After Zakir got there we saw there was a slot between spawns. If we advanced from the west, straight up the hill towards the body, we might get close. There were still around 15 to 20 monsters around the body but if we could get within range we could clear it.
We killed two spawns and they did not come back. A lot of times you have to kill a spawn several times before it stops spawning. After about 5 minutes we got in range of the body. With Jim and I blasting and me imperiling anything that charged for Zakir, we whittled it down.
Finally we got it clear enough for Jim to make an attempt. I targeted her for heals but they were not needed. She got the body and we retreated to the water. Cat and her sister had just got to the island. I called and told here we had got the body.
I know when I spend a lot of time rushing to a body recovery, only to have it recovered before I get there, I'm a little ticked. As Cat was already mad at me I'm probably in more trouble. I really did not think we would be able to recovery it without help, sorry Cat.
That was end of the Island Lesson. I plan to set this up for an evening run so others can get a taste of the island.
Cannot win
With the last patch my skills all dropped 1 point. The spell economy will jump up and down from patch to patch. It cost me over 7 million to raise war and over 5 million to raise Self or Focus. I decided to go the stat route in raising it all back up.
With a few days work I raised my Self three points and Focus one. That brought everything back to normal. Shortly after that the servers were brought down for maintenance. When they came back up all my skills were one less again. The rest of the month I have poured points into Self and Focus. I'm up to 241 Focus and 242 Self and back to normal for magic skills.
If your counting up the stat points you should remember I'm talking about a buffed skill so the divide by four will not be exact.
Gets really frustrating that I needed a month of points to get my skills the same as I started with.
Scammer
I just read a chat log of a scammer a work. Dub Brown of Leafcull is persisted if not original. First he set up a trade, smalls for armor. When the trades goes down the mule is to heavy to take the armor. He logs another mule and asks for the armor, saying he would log the mule back to give the smalls.
At this point the victim should have smelt a rat. Why not give the smalls when he had the mule up. He demands trust but does not show it. The victim gives Dub Brown the bottom half but demands half payment before giving up the top.
Now the classic pressure starts. I have to see a vassal, my wife is calling, my kid is calling, hurry up and give me the top, I'll give you the smalls. He does not have time to log the mule with the smalls but can argue for 5 minutes.
So they guy only lost the bottom half of his Shadow armor. This Dub Brown of Leafcull sounds like he has done this a few times. Don't trust him, he is a thief.
Teamwork or die
Elder contacted me and said Mars-hill was on the island quest and might need a touch of help. I asked him and Mars said they could use two more people. I loaded mage and buffed up.
I was to meet them before the second part. The trip was uneventful, hell run but I'm use to it. As I came out of the Lava Fields I saw a group. It was the questers.
We started running and I was asking myself, where are they going? Looked like they were headed to the Crater. I figured they had finished the second part. I was wrong, they were just lost. Full of de-buffs we stopped at a ridge. People started jumping off.
I'm not all that good a jumper and had Bludgeoning VI on me. In fact, as I started to dispel the de-buffs, I found I had five or six Bludgeoning VI's on me. By this time everyone had jumped off and the last two Bludgeoning VI's still needed to be dispelled. I took care of that and jumped.
LOL this was a long fall. Took over 200 points of damage when I hit. At least we were close to the next part.
The group headed to the second part and here I like to stop and kill the Diamonds Golems. The reason for this is with lag it is hard to hit the steps right. Many times I end up running to the left or right of the steps. Also a single Diamond Golem can block your way on the steps.
The group just ran by the Golems and I had to follow. I stopped and moved slowly to be sure I hit the steps. A golem was at the bottom of the steps but did not try to block my way. One other person was holding its attention or I might have been trapped.
We had a few people, including Quren, have download problems. Gandalf the Wise was booted while we waited, good timing. Quren had to port out to clear his download problem. We buffed up and headed out.
It was somewhat confusing as to what we were doing. I decided to follow Mars-Hill and play pure support. I just imperiled monsters and healed him. This was working ok.
We got to the golem and Mars-Hill tried to turn in the bar. Seems he did it too soon so he gave it to someone else. That worked and everything seemed ok. The guy who turned in the bar suddenly died, no reason. He said he was at full health. There was nothing close to us. Very strange.
Now we are down to three people but this part is done. We jump into the portal and found a dead spot.
Normally at this part we move to the beach, use that to get close to the crater and them run overland. Instead they ran overland the entire way. We took a lot of damage and were full of de-buffs by the time we got there. We met a bunch that had either been at the switches or had died at some point.
Everyone was buffing and I had cleared my de-buffs. I moved to see of the big B had spawned. The next flat section had two Firestorms and a Plasma golem on it. That was a hell of a battle. Someone fed me some heals as I dispatched them.
I cleared the new set of de-buffs and saw the big B was there. A long time ago a Battlemage defeated this bad boy. The comments were, "No Og mage is ever going to do that." I always wanted to show whoever said that he was wrong.
Yield VII, a Frost Vulnerability and several level VII frost blasts later it was dead at my feet. Someone said, "Fist got it" "He made it look easy." Take that Battlemages.
After that I went back into support mode. We cleared the Firestorms and headed to Relic town.
The next part was were our lack of teamwork was showing. This was a new group for me. I'm thinking they had not worked together before.
I told them that I could not move up the hill without lagging into almost stop. At first this seemed to keep them close to the beach with the mages drawing. Then the fighters started moving up the hill. I move up a little bit. I was hanging back, still in support mode.
A group of six or seven Bones charged at me. The rest of the group was still moving up the hill. I was blocked off and surrounded and no fighter support. I managed to kill one and run over his body to the beach. They all chased me along the beach a bit. Finally all by one turned back. I killed the one and returned to the foot of the town.
I was killing a few stray bones and could see a green dot jump in and out of my radar screen. Finally it moved where I could target it. It was Gandalf the Wise, and he was about dead.
He was lucky I was there. A whole lot of bones chased him to the beach. I tossed several heals at him and the two of us defeated the bones.
Mars-hill came down the hill with one bone after him. He said he thought this was the Watchman and said not to kill it. Spaceghost had died and was running back. We noted that what was pounding on Mars was a Cursed and the Watchman is a Relic. We killed it off and waited for Spaceghost.
He got back and they charged up the hill again. I knew that I could not go up there without lagging out. I also knew that is was better to keep drawing the bones to the beach until the watchman was dead. This prevented the houses from empting out, causing even more lag.
The Watchman was killed by Mars-hill. Unfortunately the houses did empty out and there was a mess around the portal. I had to run around it a bit until I found an opening between monsters to the portal.
We got in and got the message about Spaceghost dieing again. He had lagged out right in front of the portal. We had not recovered the first body and this one was right next to hundreds of bones. Recovery was going to be a problem. One other person, the one who was to get the loot, could not fight his way passed the bones before the portal closed.
We were down to five people, four of whom had the spell. Quren did not have the spell but had the key from then the chest was broken.
We decided to try with the five and get the key for someone. After buffing up we moved out. Diamonds and Reverends fell fast and the lock picker got the gate open. I was careful not to jump too hard. If you jump too hard you hit the roof and that is the same as the floor as far as the magic trap in concerned.
I think it was Gandalf the Wise that hit the trap. He worked fast to rebuff. We had forgot to close the first gate behind us. Might say that is my fault, as I was the last one through it. The back spawn caught up with us. I was in the first room for a long while, killing bones, Reverends and Diamond golems.
I saw someone run down the ramp. I wanted to wait for the others but was being overwhelmed by Bones. I followed Quren down the ramp. At this point, in hindsight, we had three groups, two people in back of first room, two on the ramp and one by the door switch. Not the best way to do this.
At the tee I found myself behind the gate with one fighter. Quren and I were fighting a losing battle. We did well, killing two Diamond golems and several bones. I was at 40 hit points, 75 stamina and 60 mana. We had several bones and Diamond on us. I did not hesitative. No way I was going to live if I did not get out fast. Closed gate on our right, bones in back, Diamond golem and bones in front, not enough mana or ways to recover it. Only way out was portal while I still had the mana to do it.
I keep the island recall on my fighting bar as it is faster than your normal portal. As I punched it I type, "No choice have to portal or die." Shortly after that Quren died. Someone else ported out and only Mars-Hill and Gandalf the Wise was left. As Quren and I proved two are not enough to take the hallway and that was the only way to recover Quren's body. I'm hoping that Quren had good DI's and not lose anything.
Lessons learned. Need teamwork and commutations. We did not talk, only acted. We were all powerful fighters in our own right. Not enough in a place like that. My warning several times to slow down were unheeded. I made a lot of errors on my own but because of our lack of teamwork, normal error became big problems. I think next time they will remember you must hang together or surely hang separately.
Elder hits 126!
Over this week there has been a friendly race between two of the strongest players in the game. Elder and Baalzevuv. Elder had the lead and vassals to feed him points. Still Baalzevuv can level like a madman if he wants. He closed but a lot of people in the alliance were not going to let him win.
I sent about 50 million point to Elder from my branch. Fist made 91 doing it. Unfortunately I was on the quest when he leveled. I saw the picture and it looked different than a normal level but that might be my imagination. Congrats to Elder and I'm sure Baalzevuv as well. Two new people making the impossible goal.
This gives MT three people at 126. They all are long time players who played and did not camp BSD 24/7. I'm not sure of the first one who made it but Elder and Baalzevuv are both 1st generation templates made in November 1999.
While all three are Monarchs, and a great part of their xp came from that, none were part of xp chains. All three worked hard for 126 and never took short cuts.
DM or the F5 quest
Microsoft had never been known for its customer service. Today they proved that you can be big powerful while seeming to care nothing about your customer. The key here is "seeming" as I'm sure they are as upset about the events as we are.
An upgrade to a popular program comes out. First thing that happens is you get a message that their register program is broken. On the day of release they work on it for six or seven hours?
If finally comes up. And we get;
We are currently experiencing unusually high load, please try your request again soon. Thank you, Zone.com
That finally clears and I start the log in process. Error. Then; We are currently experiencing unusually high load, please try your request again soon. Thank you, Zone.com. I have been trying to get in now for 12 hours. A new person would be returning it to the store.
I'm sure I'll be happy when I finally get in. I also know I will have a touch of bitterness I'll remember. No keeping us informed, appearances of no planning and appearances of having no respect for the customer is what they are leaving behind. None of the is likely to be true but appearances are more important than truth.
Many people have set hours they can play. Instead of good will and revitalized players we get frustration and anger. Not fun. I wonder how many people decided to play one of the other games today after this. We lost, MS lost, Turbine lost. If I was Bill Gates heads would have rolled.
Meanwhile frustrated player hit the boards, here is one of the more noteworthy.
Archer Mage Lara
How about a New Quest idea; Goal is to Subscribe to DM
Like normal AC quests, it already been solved and the best items are taken, but rest of us if we keep trying and maybe buy a hit book, might be able to solve this "quest" and actually have MS take our Money.
Elders strike
Finally got into the game had headed to island. (Just in time as it was down for maintenance again soon after.) As soon as I hit it I got a call from Elder. They knew how to trigger the Olthoi spawn. They needed more bodies for it as the same person could not do it. They give me the coodi to go to.
After a bit of running and taking a portal I was at a spot with a lot of the new Tumeroks. I killed a few and got an item for future use. I also killed some Mercenaries.
There were some pillars with a big Tumerok beating a drum. Cypris came up and gave me a bell. I gave the bell to the Tumerok and he was delighted, until use used it. It destroyed the pillars he was guarding. After cursing me out he ported to warn his tribe. This also means I'm not welcome in that town any more.
We did a short run and met Elder at another set of pillars. Fenrus, another Elder showed up and after a 30 minutes wait we did it again, using Fenrus this time.
We expected a worldwide broadcast and some invasion. We got nothing. Figuring we had missed a set of pillars, we had done five this way, we went off searching for more. Each of us went in a different direction.
After a bit I ran into a 121lv lighting monster called a Synnast. I attacked but as I did an Armored Tusker and other stuff spawned next to me. I did my famous beat feet move and got the Tusker away from the rest. I dispatched him after digging into my pack for the Fire Atlan.
I headed back to try that Lighting thing and found a Virindi E next to it. Later I found there were not one but three of them.
I swung around them and found Fenrus. We moved in as a team, he is a mage and could fight a Virindi E. Instead of one we got three and an Olthoi Soldier. I killed the Soldier and turned to add a handful of points on the Vinindi. I swing fast but at only one point a hit, I did not do much damage.
Suddenly we were jumped by three more Olthoi. I switched to them but I was to late to save the Fenrus.
I looted his body and started looking for the portal off that rock. Going cross-country I ran into a something that looked like a giant termite mound. I got a glimpse of a whole lot of Olthoi, including a Legionary. At that point I was attacked by three Synnast.
I moved away from the horde of Olthoi Soldiers that appeared to the west. I was doing ok against the three, healing when I needed to. I had one down to a third when all three started chain casting on me. That with drains had me down to 16 hit points and running for my life.
The open plains I had traveled with no monsters a few minutes before was now filled with Olthoi Soldiers. At least they don't have spells. I got to a spot where only three were chasing me, hit my heal elixirs and healing kits.
I had messaged the fellow about the mound just before I was run off. Fenrus met me close to there. We found a dam filled with the new Tumeroks. We cleared it a few times and there was some good level V loot on them. I need to get to know Fenrus better, we fought well as a team. When a fighter finds a mage he can fight with, treat them like royalty.
We got a call from Elder who was in a big battle. At this point we were sure that the invasion had started.
We ran over there and joined in. It was about 5 clicks away. We were fighting a horde of Olthoi Eviscerator's and some multi colored Tumerok's. I was to busy fighting to id them. We were also getting very laggy, almost unplayable.
I got a key that is part of one of a quest. Have to see about that later. Elder got the kill on a boss monster and it got better. A lot of the Tumerok's ran off. Still there were enough of them and the Eviscerators are nasty and fast. Still the main worry was lag.
I was fighting on a spot, I was running down the hill, I was running up the hill, I was in the center of five. Hell I had no idea where I was or what I was doing for a few minutes. I decided to stand still for a while until it cleared up.
When it did I saw a few Olthoi attacking the Fenrus. I attacked them and found three more attacking my back. I was glad my melee D is good against them. The Tumeroks and Mercenaries were hitting me. I was beginning to think my 380 melee D was not going to be good on the new island.
After we got it clear Elder saw there were bow parts for the new quest on the ground. He called an Archer he had seen a while back. Unfortunately there were no Elder Archers on the island at that time. We were not sure if the parts were givable so we did not pick them up.
With our mage buffing him he strung it. A very nice bow but we are not sure if it is that much better than a composite. It is also droppable but only usable to the guy who strung it.
We were about to test the bow out when I went into lag. I was typing to Elder that it was to laggy for me when I was kicked. Rather than go back in I decided to write this up while it was fresh.
Hate it when they camp bodies
We got an alliance wide tell from Elder. Liquid Assassin had a body on the island and it was being camped by Virindi Executor's. Melee's, even 126lv melee's, are useless against VE's. I sent a quick tell to LA that I was on my way and what were the coodi.
He gave me the coori and was glad for the help. Said he counted 27 of them!
I found him on the north plains near a buff. I targeted one and fired off a yield. I got about 10 spells in return. I was having a big problem. There were so many that I could not concentrated fire on one long enough and stay alive. The one I was trying to kill kept returning to his spawn.
LA was running around trying to stay alive. I finally picked off a few and another mage showed up, a low 50's Og by the name of Devils Angel. He was a lifesaver. Rather than try and be the hero he started shooting heals at me. This let me stand up to three or four Virindi at a time. Fortunately they were not all Executor's, half were Observers.
After that it went quick. Before I knew it we had the body clear. I found out later that is you kill a leader VE all associated with it die. I looked around and no LA. I sent him a tell but he had logged. We waited almost an hour but he never got back.
I logged to eat and shower, getting back about an hour later. AL's body was still there and no answer to the message on the board. Near his was another body. I cleared that and helped the guy recover.
Body camping part II
Liquid Assassin IP finally got working. He logged and found that his body had rotted and his stuff was gone. He fixed that problem by leaving a new body where the first one was.
This time he contacted me directly. I ran over there and cleared it. I won't go into the battle but it was like the first one. This time there was another mage clearing as well so it was quicker. Got his body but he had lost some good armor on the one that rotted.
We hit the hall and I logged my Tradesman. A quick dye job later he was back up and running in blue armor. As soon as we got that done Smoke II asked us to help him recover his body.
I'm now LS'ed in Nanto so I can take that portal to the Island. I would like to see some Lifestones on the island somewhere. Instead of porting there we followed Smoke II. If I knew where he was going I would have showed him a faster route. It was the same place I have been hunting at.
We had Pur Evil, Ladon, Liquid Assassin and Smoke II with us. Coodi was Northwest from the portal to the ridge.
Run was not too bad. Not a lot of Olthoi like there had been. Not sure if that meant the Queen had been killed or not. I know Elder and an outside group was going after her. I gave Elder a big hint I wanted in but got no reply. It was not Elder's call so I guess they did not want me.
Some were faster than others and, after running into a pile of monster, we broke up. Ladon was still with me. We got to the Dam but had to run over it to get to the body. As soon as we got over we saw Liquid Assassin's death message.
Ladon and I cleared the stuff around Smoke's body before he got there. Then we started searching for LA's body. LOL it was only yards away from Smoke II's body. I looted it, his armor again, and ported to Lin. There I got him his stuff and recommended he start looking for death items.
Humm, level 100, should be easy.
Started a little hunt up on the ridgeline with Mage. I headed North hoping to find the big termite hill I saw yesterday.
I found a portal to Olthoi Lair. It was 30 in and up. Sort of an OHN I guess. I did not go far into it. I only saw Soldiers. I had talked to Ladon who found one that was full of Nobles. That was the one I needed to find. Ladon is 69 and pushing to 70 so he can to go the 70 to 90 one.
I'm a bit pissed at that restriction. Fist just hit 91. Why not just 70+. Why restrict a 91lv player?
So I left that had headed north again. My Six Sense hit on Nobles. I have it set to look for them. There were five of them and they were called Brood Nobles. I saw they were level 100. As Nobles are well above that I thought it would be easy.
Started off with a Bludgeoning VII and some VII shockwaves. I hit the first one hit for 500+ damage and the second for over 400. It was still alive! Now I'm being beat on by all five of them. Resist, resist, resist. Time to run.
It took a bit to outrun them. Glad I have put points into quick and run. I also buff both as part of my cycle.
Second try I lead with yield. After several resists I finally got that to land. Even with yield VII my 351 war was being resisted. It took a bit of time but I got all five of them to drop. Loot was ok and the xp was over 40k.
I know now that level will mean nothing. It may be well below the level of a Noble but a Brood Noble is nothing to laugh at.
Lag hell
It started out as a normal explore new island and set up for taking vassals hunting. I had ACExplorer running in the background so I could track it. Michael X and Ladon were going Olthoi hunting with me later. Mike is around 50 so I needed to check out one that had no level restrictions.
Strange how Turbine labeled 50 as high level and just about said it was equal after that, then run around and create restrictions such as 70 to 90lv places. I say this because they made 50 and above share equally in xp with fellowships.
After visiting a new Tunerok town and saying "hi" to Macro I headed north. I started getting pings over 1000 and it got very slow. Tossing a spell took 5 seconds with the monster moving back and forth between me and the spawn. I was taking hits and waiting a long time to see the results of spells cast.
I logged once and did some stuff. When I got back it has seemed to clear. A little ways away it started back up again. I was lucky not to be fighting anything really hard. A Vapor Golem would have killed me for sure.
I said the hell with this and ported out. As soon as I got off the island the lag cleared up. I parked Mage in the hall and loaded Fist to socialize for a while.
Balash sent me a tell. He had a lag death on the island and was pissed. A short while later a very weak monster got a big hit on him and he was dead again. He was more than pissed that he took a 150 point hit from an under 30lv Tunerok. What made it especially bad was his Diamond Shield was on one of the bodies.
Balash has a thing he does when upset. He will to go the hall and start Lifestoneing. He said both bodies were unrecoverable and he had lost his diamond shield. We told him his bodies were recoverable. He felt otherwise but I told him there was no quit in this dog. I got a bunch of people together to head to the island.
He had no idea where the bodies were. After Lifestoneing he thought the /corpse command would not work. Someone pointed out that it only tracked outside deaths so it would work. That got us the coodi to one body. We figured to use that as a point to search for the other.
We ran to Nanto. I used Fist as with lag melee D is more important than power. I made an error in thinking we could power up and buff after going into the portal. The lag was so bad it took me 5 minutes to do my 2 minute power-up and buff. The mages were really having it hard.
It took up to 20 seconds to toss one spell. I would see the writing on the wall and told all mages or anyone with under 300 melee d to leave. They did not want to but agreed they would just be leaving bodies the way it was.
That left three of us. Some had been buffed before they got there and were out looking for the bodies. I had us moving towards a portal that would take us close to the coodi of the body. We would slowly move a few feet and stop. It took minutes to move through town.
Balash sent a message that he had recovered body two. We only got a little out of town when we got a message that Pur Evil had found the first one. Balash gave him permission to loot it. It took us almost a full minute to grab our wands and get out of that lag pit.
After out it again was lag free. I got back to the hall and gave a well done to Pur Evil for the recovery. Nothing to do after that but log for the night.
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