Fist de Yuma - October 7, 2003

This and that I'm going to have a few essays on people this week. AC is a people game. We have heroes, villains, scammers and helpers. All of them do something to change the game, for better or worse. Two of the people I'm going to outline had a great effect on the MT server. Both went in a different direction game play wise. One had a great opportunity to take me in that same direction and only a chance battle prevented it. If you have stories about people who have changed the game for you please send them to me. It is time to honor the founders of our servers. Quiddity Weapon After posting the column Monday I logged to play a bit. Winter Raven was there. I quickly logged Cliff's Carrier Cook, released Owanda and swore him to Winter Raven. Raven had read the column and had an idea for a mace. He said we should do the Quiddity quest and get an ingot. The Quiddity mace is a no weld with fair damage. The Quiddity quest is kind of nasty for any but high levels and requires trips to three nasty dungeons, one of which is the hollow cave. Kind of overwhelming for a 29lv, even with high level help. Fortunately there was no need for that. I had done the quest when it first came out but never turned in the ingot. It had been wasting room on a mule for over a year. I quickly retrieved it. Winter escorted me to a portal in Qbar and overland to the Virindi. With only around 70 hit points I was avoiding everything. Ever so often Raven would sling a few arrows at a monster to clear it out of our way. The mace is great and saw a lot of use until I hit 250 mace skill. Weapons The first mace I started using was my trainer mace. While not the best it was better than anything I found that was no weld. That was replaced with the Quiddity I described above. The best 250 weld mace I found was something like 15 to 27. I added four iron to that. I have a lot of iron bags so wasting the four lowest ones had little effect on my stock. Winter had a very nice 300 weld mace. Somehow he lucked out and landed bludgeoning rend on it. This was the first of a great week for tinkering. Lastly I found a fairly good mace with 325 weld. I think it is 22 to 32 but I'll have to check to be sure. I luck out again and landed Bludgeoning Rend in it. With those I'm set for life. I might try to get a Fire Mace done just to go get Tusks but I'll have to think about that. He was created for getting salvage and sings so there is no need for fast leveling. Lucky week With all the stories of people going zero for fifty and other such ridicules numbers a lot of people are getting pessimistic about Tinkering. I have been close to 33% with strings of good and bad. This week has been an example of a good string of luck. It started with me getting a piercing wand done. Then Winter Raven and I both land on a mace. I destroy an item and then infuse two bracelets. After that I sort of lost track but I was doing about two success for every failure for most of the week. For a while I was hitting around 70% of my attempts. It was really nice. I have all my wands done, a really nice staff infused, some bracelets infused including a minor self I have really wanted. I expect I'll have a week where I got zero for twenty something but I'm enjoying the luck for now. Salvage Salvage this week has been great to say the least. I would return from an hour hunt with over a full pack of salvage. This is the main pack and many times a side pack would be full as well. I was getting so much salvage that I had trouble transferring it to Fist's Mule Two. F2 does the salvaging and hold most of the bags. F2 is my weapon mule so he uses most of the salvage. The Magic Item stuff gets past to Cliff's Carrier cook. He also holds the steel for Fist's Armorer. Generally I would log Cliff's Carrier cook to collect the salvage. Most of the time I had more than he could carry. The rest I would pass to Fist de Mage. I would log off the Owanda account and load up F2. Sometimes this took several passes of logging on and off. I expect that I'll keep getting lots of salvage as I hunt Olthoi with Owanda. The draw back to his leveling will be less granite. I filled three bags this week. Normally one bad every other month is my norm. Higher level Olthoi don't drop as much but the do drop it. I expect he will go over 50 this week and be hitting the Hollow Caves in November. While I'll be using him in the Hollow Caves some I don't expect him to be there full time. It is to frustrating a place for me to camp more than an hour a day. The Olthoi Armor dungeons are really nice so I expect he will be on those most of the time. Great find There have been complaints on the boards about the inability for us to log off the zone and log a different account. I wrote about this in an essay called MicroSlop last week. Later I found a way around the problem. When we first started it was possible to open two windows and log each to a different zone account. To change accounts you only needed to log out of AC, swap windows and reload AC. A long while back that stopped working. In frustration I decided to see if this trick would work now. It did! By breaking the zone log in they forced me to discover a better way. Well more a rediscover but in any case swapping accounts is a lot better now. I posted this on the boards and hope everyone who is using two accounts on one computer sees it. Leveling help Owanda was doing ok in the 20-50 Matron. The xp was moving him up at a fair rate and the salvage was outstanding. As I hit the dungeon one day I got an alert that an allegiance member was close. This was Deamon Mace. He told me that Turbine might have given us a break in the Matron dungeons. People fellowing in them did not see a reduction in xp for a kill. Normally two people get 75% of a kill each. So a kill each would return 150% of the xp one person killing one monster would. With no reduction the rate is 200%! I watched the xp flow as I made kills and he was right. Kills were returning as much in fellow as out. We seemed to be hunting at about the same time so it was ideal teaming. Deamon Mace was hunting a little more than I was so he slowly past me up in levels. I started out 6 levels over him and at last check I was 3 behind him. He also was not looting so he generated more xp than I did for the fellow. I'm not sure of it is people reading my column or us getting a simultaneous idea but there are a lot of Mace players hitting the Olthoi dungeons these days. Long Chase At around 32lv I decided to take on the Matron. I figured if I could not fight I could always run away. I cleared her guards and started the fight. Damage as around 20 a swing using a full damage hit. After a long time and a lot of rations wasted I saw it was hopeless. I ran down the hall, across the acid, up the ramp, across the second acid pit, through two more ramps, all the way to the start and she was still with me. I made a mistake of getting trapped in the hall you port in at. I was hitting her but my only hope she would get bored with the battle and return to her den. At that moment Deamon Mace ported in. The two of use were pounding on her so I anticipated defeating her. No such luck. Even with two people hitting her we could not keep ahead of her healing rate. Finally I said we should log and let her return to the den. I counted down from 3 and we logged. I waited about 30 seconds before logging back in. She was gone. Long Chase part II The next day Deamon Mace said he had upgraded to a AR mace and wanted to try the Matron again. We were fighting in one of the sections about then. I still had not got my Item magic to where it would be of any use so I was going to run to the Matron Den. Deamon Mace used portal recall to get back to the start. Those that know the starts of these dungeons know that it can be a bit crowded at times. Monsters can feed from three passages. The action is hot and heavy. I had cleared out the Matron guards and was waiting for Deamon Mace to show. He said he was trapped at the entrance. I decided to surprise him. I took a few swipes at the Matron and took off running. As before she chased me and never came close to abandoning the attack. This time there were a few Olthoi on the last ramp and they got in the Matrons way. I got to the entrance just as Deamon Mace had killed the last Olthoi. He was surprised to find the Matron below the first ramp. He said, "Nice delivery." I replied, "We aim to please". With a AR mace it was not fast but it was a sure kill. He let me have the tail. We moved down to the Den and got another one for him. Solo After a lot of hours I finally hit 300 mace skill and could use the RR mace Winter Raven gave me. Now this was hitting hard. Olthoi that took three to five swings were dieing in one to three. I decided test it out against the Matron. The battle took a long time but there was no doubt as to the outcome. Normal hits were about even with her healing rate but ever so often I would crit for 125. Those crits are what took her down. Outgrowing the Matron Despite loads of great salvage, including two full bags of granite, I was feeling that I had outgrown the Matron dungeon. I got a Pincer from the Grotto but even being the very minimum level for it I felt overpowered. I knew that the 80+ is in Uizz and of course the 20-50 is in Nanto but I have no idea where the middle one is. Unfortunately that information is not easy to find. Maggie had the coordi of the dungeon on Asheron's Island but not the town portal location. ACExplore had the Olthoi Armor dungeons but did not say anything about the Matrons. I might take a tour of the towns and find the portal but in the meanwhile I wanted to get to a place with a challenge. The 40+ Olthoi Armor dungeon seemed ideal. The first thing I needed to do was get my item skills up there a bit and buy the portal scrolls. One last trip to the 20-50 Matron got my Item skill to 170 buffed and a fast run to town got me the spells. I hit ACE and got a route to the dungeon. I got a sub ride from Illuminum and hit Hebin-to. I then took the Cregstone portal and ran to the housing portals. I stopped there to get a tie to the Halana portal. Halana is just north of the 40+ Olthoi Dungeon. A fast run south got me to the dungeon. The start was safe. While I was ready it was nice to see a start that was not and epic battle. The first thing I faced was a hand full of Solders. I hit a large cave that had a lot of Solders and a few Nobles. After clearing them I moved to a ramp with six or seven Nobles. This hit me a bit. When I started this game a 40lv fighter had a hard time defeating one Noble. It was generally a hard fought battle requiring a lot of stamina recharges and healing. This was back when most people started with 50 endurance or more so you can imagine how long it took. I was one of the first to face two Nobles at once. It was in BDC and a total fluke. At the time there were only five Nobles in the entire world. One was in LOD, one at another dungeon and three in BDC. Of the three in BDC two were close together. One was halfway up a long ramp and the other at the bottom of the ramp around two turns. Every Noble was camped 24/7 so one staying alive for very long was rare. Even late at night there would be two or three people waiting for them to spawn. I'm guessing someone got in trouble late one night and ran up the ramp with the bottom Noble chasing them. It is the only way I can think of that could created this situation. I had just finished off the single Noble. I was late at night and not many people were on. I headed over to the pit. The ramp back to the top starts in a cave that is in the side of the pit. The noble was not there so I started up the ramp. I found the Noble along with two Soldiers. It was not long into the battle when I discovered it was not two Soldiers and a Noble, it was two Nobles and a Soldier! The reason I brought this up was because, at the time, that was a very hard battle and something to be proud of. So here I was, a few levels below what Fist was back then, fighting six or seven Nobles and doing it without a thought of fear. I likely finished off this mob in less time that it took Fist to defeat those three. Later on I was facing six EVs. I'm sure that the old higher level Fist could not have defeated one, let alone six. From there I advanced through battles to a hall where things got iffy. I know how to get past this part but at the time I did not see the danger. There is a large room filled with Nobles and Soldiers. It took a while to clear it. Before the last one fell I started to get Nobles and Soldiers in back of me. The spawn I had cleared in the last room had come back. Before I finished off that spawn the big room started to re-spawn. I quickly became trapped between two groups and was behind their spawn rate. To make matter worse I was running out of Rations. I ate my last ration and did a mansion recall. With my armor they were only hitting for 0 to 2 so I could get away with that. Equipment What the adventure above gave me was a sense of how advance our equipment is today over what it was. While Mace is different from UA I got a good idea how much better off we are. For one thing most armor had zero protection to acid. This meant that we had total reliance on melee defense and our limited life protects. Shields helped but even those had little acid protection. Good AL for armor at the start of the game was 150. Today very few would be hunting in armor that weak. Many of us have better than double that as base armor. I remember going from 96 hit points to dead off an attack from a Worker. Yes a Worker, who does not even have an acid attack. Magic was rare. Most of us were using level IV clothing for life protection and few had creature spells available. Even those that had Life and Creature, very few back then, suffered with an extremely low timer. We did not understand the effectiveness of baneing back then. Even if we did the short buff time would have made it hard to use. Imagine using one of the long melee buffs we use today and then getting four to five minutes of fighting before doing it again. There were no level VII spells and no one with the skill to use them if they did exist. The spells would last a maximum of 15 minutes. Stats spells lasted half the time of other spells. This meant that a mage was buffing every seven minutes. I would use magic items to cover stat spells in order to extend the buff out. Every spell required a bunch of material. Even a melee had a pack or three set aside for spell materials. When peas were introduced we had to use another pack for those. The burn rate was high so you needed a lot of comps. The weight of comps was much more than it is today so even a high strength melee had trouble carrying them. So our defense from armor and spells is much better today but the real big difference is attack power. A really good UA weapon might have a damage mod of 2-6 years ago. Spells were not so great but most of us had item. Elder had a weapon that was famous as one of the best ever found. Today a new player would snub it as a poor weapon. We slowly got our item good enough to land VI spells though it was a painful fizzle fest when we did our buffs. We mostly relied on IV creature items so there was not much of a buff to the skills. Of course with only the four spells it did not take long to buff but it seemed long at the time. As Fist got stronger I started timing how long it would take to defeat the harder monsters. The one I remember was 45 seconds to take a Noble. At the time that was great. Today a player with half his XP is taking down Nobles in less than 5 seconds and taking far less damage while doing it. There is also the matter of XP. Until the OHN's were put in there really was no power leveling spots. LOD, BCD, and Old Mine were the three big leveling spots. The XP per kill was a lot less then it is now. If Fist had leveled as fast as Owanda is today he would have been a legend. While some lament these changes I for one think they are great. I'm having a lot of fun leveling up Owanda and the reward in salvage is helping all my players. For one I have completed my wands. I have enough iron and opal to cover all my future needs and gaining a bit on my granite needs. If there is one thing that is harder it is templates. The pure melee is very hard to play today. Getting to self-buffing status can take a long time and required for questing. Fortunately mistakes can be corrected and directions changed, something that was only a dream before. Owanda will likely never be self-buffing but he was made that way. With me having other melees who are more rounded Owanda can focus on just Olthoi and let Mage supply his buffs. Fate There was a time when I came to a crossroad. Baalzevuv had returned to the game and was starting a new allegiance. At the time anyone but Baalzevuv would have been thought crazy to just declare himself a monarch and expect it to work. He had no vassals at all. Because of his vacation from the game he was no longer one of the top level players. It was even a surprise he could return as he had sold Baalzevuv. It would have been crazy for anyone but Baalzevuv. There is no doubt that Baalzevuv and Pyreal Rat were the top players at the beginning of the game. His teaming with Pyreal Rat created adventures of epic proportions. Pyreal Rat was one of the first to document his adventures so him and Baalzevuv were well known. I was playing Fist de Mage at the time and Baalzevuv invited me to join him in creating his new allegiance. Of all the people who have wanted me to swear to them this was my only temptation. This was not the first time I had come close to being with Baalzevuv. Strangely it was Baalzevuv being in a hurry that prevented that from happening. I was 18lv a month into the game. I had read some posts by Pyreal Rat and decided he would make a great patron for me. I contacted him about it. He wanted to meet me before he would accept me as a vassal. It took me a while to get to Hill Top where he was waiting. It was my fault for the delay as I killed some Bandies on the way rather than run past. I was there for only a few seconds when Baalzevuv arrived. At the time Baalzevuv was in the low 40's. This was a time when 25lv was considered high level. He was the top player in MT by a wide margin and likely of all the servers. Baalzevuv wanted Pyreal Rat for some adventure and in the excitement Pyreal Rat totally forgot about me. Someone created a portal and I was left standing. Pyreal Rat apologized and said we could meet later. Before that could happen I met Sidarther, swore to Jann and the rest is history. Strangely Wartorn did move into an allegiance later that got as bad a reputation as there can be. One of the leaders of that allegiance was Baalzevuv. I had to leave it because of the dishonorable actions of the other members, something that greatly sadden me. Jann and Wartorn were two of the very best. That was my first and, other than becoming a monarch, last move. Baalzevuv said his main regret with that allegiance was allowing it to get out of control. He later cleared out most of the troublemakers and restricted membership. By that time I was solidly under Elder in the Killean allegiance. Getting back to this new Allegiance Baalzevuv created. It ended up being called Meginjarder. It got a few new leaders over years. Starting with Baalzevuv each leader added to their reputation as the greatest allegiance on MT. I sometimes think of what would have happened of things had been different. If I had sworn to Pyreal Rat that day my loyalty to Elder may not have developed. I would likely have joined Baalevuv and been on the ground floor of Meginjarder's creation. It is even possible that I would have been in line to be its monarch one day. Not a sure thing as I do rub many wrong. Still it would have been possible. Nevertheless it is amazing what a change a few minutes can make. If I had not stopped to kill a hand full of Bandies on that run I would have likely have sworn to Pyreal Rat and then likely have joined Baalevuv later. I have never regretted joining Elder and could not be happier with my current place in MT. Nevertheless I have to wonder how different things would be now but for that one fight. The reason I have been thinking of this was the below guest writer. Thor was one of the leaders that made Meginjarder so great. Guest Writer; YewWanSum Thor. I have a story about him I'd like to share. A long time ago, when the queens quest was relatively new, Thor was kind enough to come along and help us out. I had gone several times before, and now it was my turn to get the kill. I had never been on a quest with Thor. He knew it was my turn to get the kill. He went anyways just cause he wasn't busy at the moment and figured we may need a hand. The queen had just been upgraded, and we knew she was harder but wasn't sure how much. I was in mage armor. We went through the prep work, assigned positions, and even formed up in practice to make sure things would go right. Insomniak was leading, as he had the last several times. We went to the hive after the last drop. Back then you didn't need to get sprayed if you had been already, so we were all ready. In we go and, like clockwork, we travel through the place. We rebuff right before the last jump to get to the queens area. Double buffs, full 'others' (economy was still in then), everything and everyone lathered with the best spells we could throw. Down we go, and we lay waste. It still took some effort but we cleared the area. Things are starting to lag as they did back then because of offscreen spells. It wasn't a big deal though cause we should only had to contend with a few more minutes. We all form up (we were using a 1-pass approach) and spike the first queen. Not long after she is dead and the second one spawns. We were ready. We had a wall. I was behind it. We had a UA to jam her against the wall and one of the dungeon walls so she couldn't move. Thor began to debuff her. I started laying waste. ...or at least I tried. It wasn't until full debuffs were on that I could land and even then it was about 50/50. Nevertheless, progress was being made. We got her down to about 66% when some nasty lag hit. I'm not sure what happened but everything 'fast forwarded'. I was standing 90 degrees from the direction I was previously facing. I was also staring at the queen's kneecap. She was loose! This was not fun. Fortunately, I was pretty adept at staying alive. My template was no powerhouse I was level 80 without spec'd anything. It can be hard to trash everything. I did have healing, and I knew full well how to use stam2heath/heal combos of various sorts. She was still kicking my butt. 70 damage here, 40 there. I was being chewed up. I called for everyone to jump in. Group survival at this point was more of a concern than some trophy or title. Thor rejected the idea on the spot. He began healing, reviting, and even infusing me with mana (he had super mana c iirc). He *knew* the best way to help a mage was to give them stam. If my health dropped too low he was there with heal. If my mana got too low to s2m he had an infuse, all without me saying a word. He was on it. He even saw I was having trouble hitting her so he switched and used brill on me for the extra few points needed to bring my success rate up. I stood there, in mage armor, toe to toe with the new and improved queen for at least 5 minutes. It seemed more like 5 hours. Eventually we had her down to 30%. I tried to call for jump in as soon as we hit 49%, but Thor wanted none of it. Finally at 30% he was satisfied I would get the kill and called for massive attack. Within a few more minutes I got my first and only ML queen broadcast. I would have to say that this kind of personal dedication and determination is what makes me choose him as the best. He wasn't just high level. He was a very honorable person, and one heck of a player to boot. Since I have never done so on these boards, I would like to publicly say: Thank you, Thor, wherever you are. I still hold the Queenslayer title that you helped me attain.