Fist de Yuma - September 2, 2003

This and That First up I have my new computer. While not exactly what I thought it was it is a great system. It is fast and runs cool. I'll go more into it later. A special thanks to the handful of people who sent me donations. They are mostly repeats, which I look at from two sides. As they have paid already there is nothing I can reward them with. That makes me fell somewhat bad. On the other hand it is gratifying that they feel my column is worth that much. While waiting for the new computer to arrive I played with the slow computer as much as I could. While I did a few adventures, one of which I'll outline here, it too slow to do much more than log for tinkering. Tinkering was a pain. I have the different Tinkering skills on different accounts. That works great when I can log two players at a time. It is a pure pain in the end when you have to log off and log a different passport account to swap. On the good side is having time to do other things, like play on my xbox. I wiped the course with Tiger Woods in the last challenge. With AC not working well on the slow computer I have played my Xbox a lot. It took me a few hours a lot of luck but I beat Super Tiger 5/4. That allowed me to spend the millions I had saved on stats again. The game caps at 100 until you beat Super Tiger, then you can go to 105. Now I routinely drive 350 yards and have a 399 on record. Current goal is to get first in all the tournaments. I'm also getting fairly good with one player in Mortal Kombat. Given my twitch factor has never been all that great getting some of the harder combo off is an accomplishment. Decal I was able to get a few decal programs to work on the slower computer. I wanted to use as few as possible so programs like Exception and Einstein were out. Bandit Sight/2 is likely too much of a drain on my system but unless I wanted to spend more time looting than hunting, necessary. The other two decal programs were chat helper and Nerfus Buffes. NB was something I could pass on but buffing 50 to 80 spells is such a pain that the work to get NB working is well worth the effort. Chat helper is really needed. I got tells from many people, inside and outside of the allegiance. Not answering those tells is not an option for me. The problem is getting several tells at once. I can answer most tells with the /r command but when I get two or more I need something to keep track of the names for me. Nothing will upset me more than seeing a name on chat helper that was not there before. That meant they sent me a message that I did not see. I would hate to be ignored by someone I send a tell to. By not answering them I feel I insulted them. The plugins help prevent that. Where I really have problems is when playing Fist and getting monarch tells. Without Chat Helper I have to type (or cut and paste) the names in order to reply. When I'm hanging at the mansion this is a small problem, in combat it is a major problem. Another good plug in for helping me is Say Again. I'll be installing that on the new computer soon. It allows me to see part of the message and, when I click on a line, the entire message sent to me. When in combat it is easy to miss a tell and have it scroll off. With Say Again I can see who sent me tells and what they asked. Fighting With Slow Mo and Decal use I'm going to have to dub my old Del computer Slow Mo. The computer is really behind the times and playing AC with it in this age did not work well. I was able to play for years with it but today there are more monsters with greater graphic detail. When we first started a horde of Olthoi did not affect the system much. Today the computer started to go flaky after an hour or so. I decided right off that high spell places like The Slot would not be very smart. Whereas Olthoi, especially M's are ripping me up, the return (xp and loot) and lack of spells make them ideal for me. Of course I might have been a lot better off using Jr than Fist's Armorer but FA is my favorite player right now. It also helps that whatever he makes gets passed to my mules. Getting the mules skills as high as possible is important right now. Currently most are in the 510+ range and some are over 520. That is without brilliance. I headed off to Baishi and started to buff. The landing was already cleared. When you enter you have three choices, left, right or center. I assumed that the left was the same as the right but learned different later. Today I decided to check my timer for the carp. The center section was almost empty of hunters. This allowed me to have some very nice battles as I made my way to the Matron. It has been a while since I could use the old tactics we worked out in OHN years ago. With power comes distain for tactics. When you can stand in the middle of a hall and wipe out anything that comes at you why worry about tactics? In this age we have monsters that can rip up Tinked armor and anyone with less might as well type /die if they don't use tactics. Corners and cubbyholes are important again. Of course players who never had the opportunity to learn those old tactics will have to adept or never be as effective as the old timers. The layout of the Matron dungeon is ideal for many tactics. In the last room I used hit and retreat to draw a few at a time. I killed the Matron but was disappointed to find I still had two days left before I could pick up the carp. From there I ported back to the start and moved to the right side. This splits into two halls with a moderate amount of Olthoi in each. With careful play you can kill and loot in safety. As my buff timer ran down the system got slower and slower. After an hour of play I could see that heavy fighting with Slow Mo is not an option. New Computer arrives There were some small delays but I was delighted to have the computer Thursday afternoon. The computer was really packed with protection. Being that the case is clear plastic I could see why they did that. The looks were spoiled by a gray mass in the center of the computer. I assumed it was part of the water-cooling, water reserve maybe. I put it on my shelf and hooked up just enough things to get it to boot. It booted fine so I shut it down and added more things. I did not label all my wires so it took a few reboots before everything was set up properly. One PS/2 plug looks like another. Then the computer gave me an error and froze. I called tech support and found I had done a lot wrong. It was not my fault as there was no instructions or even a hint on how to do this right. To begin with the gray mass was packing and should have been removed. I removed the four screws. I had a lot of trouble getting the pane off. It had to be pulled back off some prongs and I had no way to grip it. After I got it off I discovered a finger hole I could have used but it was not easy to see. As I got the gray packing out I noted a power cord coiled in the bottom of the computer. The tech said that was the water pump cord. Hells bells, no wonder the system crashed, the cooling was off. If they had even stuck a small part of the cord out the back of the computer I would have known to plug it in. Combine with it being covered with the packing I had no idea the cooling needed its own power source. Fortunately the system did not burn up but I worry about the damage I might have done. I never really stressed the system so it is likely minimum. In any case I had to format the hard drive and reinstall everything. That was a blessing in disguise as it let me set the system up the way I wanted it, not the way someone else might want it. It took me all afternoon but it was time well spent. I had started the download for the AC changes that morning. Slow Mo was still churning away at that while I was loading the new system. With a dialup system downloading 89m is an all day affair. By the time I had installed all the drivers and got the network up the file was downloaded and AC was ready to install. With that done it only took half an hour or so to get past the download. A little more time to get decal and the plugins installed and I was ready to have some fun. Windows seemed to have a few style changes in the last year and a half. It looks odd to me but fortunately lets me get my old style back. I was pleased that the network almost installed itself. I had to make very few changes. Rosa got home so I had to spend time with the family. I started Windows on doing updates and left for a few hours. I know Windows had a lot of patches but several hours later it was still working on them. The system looks great. It is clear plastic with two florescent lights running along the top and bottom. The fans are lit with LED lights which hides the fact they are fans. My only disappointment is the system is not sealed. There are a lot of openings. Given that I live in a high dust environment I'll have to keep a close watch on buildup. I can see that adding components will require some special spacers. I'll have to call them and see if I can get a few for future use. Luckily this will only be needed for 3 1/2 inch items as 5 1/4 stuff will slide right in. Matron Dungeon with New System The first thing I wanted to do was head over to the Matron dungeon and see how well the new computer worked. Of course with a new AC install I'm downloading everywhere I go. I decided to head straight and get the carp and then go hunt. When I got to the entrance there were a lot of people hunting. A big group of players was hanging at the entrance. I moved away from them and started clearing the first acid pit. I had the pit mostly cleared when an archer ran by me heading to the Matron. (sigh) It is always an archer. While looting my kills the big group ran past me heading to the Matron. I decided waiting for an hour was not going to be fun so I ported back to the start. I figured I would hunt for an hour or so. Today I took the left turn. To my surprise the left side is much more extensive than the right. There are two major passages that I need to explore. This trip I took the next right and worked my way down. I could see a fighter a ways off in back of me. As I was clearing he caught up. It was a quite battle with both of us just doing our thing, as if the other was not there. Other than a few Olthoi that wanted to keep swapping between us that worked. I moved towards an acid pit I saw and he moved left up a passage. While clearing next to the pit I noted he had retreated back to the T and was fighting. I heard him scream a few times and Exception showed his health was low. I quickly clicked on him and tossed a few heals his way. He must have been way down as I hit him for over 200 in heals. Strangely he never responded to that. Maybe in the excitement he was not keeping track of his health and missed my healing him. While fighting near the pit I noted a portal. It leads outside! I was under the impression that there was no way out of the dungeon. With a little checking I found that the acid pit is in two sections. One is an oblong box with a drop off to a square acid pit. That acid pit had Olthoi in it and I chickened out. In hindsight I think there is a tunnel under the first pit and that is where the portal is. With a fast portal on my hot key I need to jump down there and check it out someday. Matron Tactics The Matron dungeon is one nastily place. Good armor is a must, especially if you're a mage or archer. Those of us who grew up in OHN take tactics as second nature. We had bad armor, bad buffs and low levels back then. If you did not play smart you died. Tactics work well in the Matron but you have to be ready for when things go bad. That means an escape plan. Back spawns and bad luck can get you so be ready to escape. My melees carry the monkey island recall gem and my mages keep a fast portal spell handy. Corners are key. Standing in the center of the hall should only be used if you're blocking. When you're soloing then you need to cut down on the numbers. Draw out a few at a time. If you use a corner right you can get them to line up for one on one battles. Take out the M's first! They are the ones that will kill you. Target them as soon as they show and get rid of them before they get rid of you. Heal often. Don't let your health fall very far at all. This is advice for mages and melee. If attacked by two M's a mage can lose 100 points of health before you can toss a heal spell. It would be very easy for them to get a melee below the healing point. Keep health and stam elixirs handy! If you find yourself in a trap with them on all sides back up. This will cause them to narrow the attack and get them in front again. Get that wall to your back. I like the cubbyholes because you can get a wall at your back and side. Those tactics will really cut down on the numbers that can reach you. This is the next best thing to a corner where they line up. After a while the old OHN tactics will be second nature and you will be soloing the Matron with ease. Weeping Weapon recon I'm way behind on getting my VN column out and need to get on the stick. I figured the Weeping Weapon quest would be a good one. Given that I had no idea what was in there I needed to recon it before getting a group for a full-scale assault. Winter Raven had already showed me how to get the pre-stuff out of the way. If you have the right links you can do all that in an hour or so. The only change I had to make for this was to drop missile on Fist so he could have Lock Pick. Whereas I did need Missile for this quest you cannot get by parts without lock pick. With the xp I had from Missile I was able to get LP to a buffed 400. I'll get a minor item to raise it five when I get time. I ran from Holtburg looking for the portal. I was taking pictures for the VN column at this time but really need a group. I need to have time to take pictures in safety. It is hard to think about hitting the picture button when fighting for your life. I also tend to get very focused when soloing something like this and totally forget the need to hit that button. I had a list of instructions I got off a web site but wanted to keep from looking at it. The instructions were there in case I got lost. So far all I had used it for was to get the information on needing lock pick to do the quest. I got into a large room with a gate in front of me. Exploring this showed the gate was the only way to go. I picked the lock on the gate and took my first level VII vuln and blast. Because I was rushing I took both almost simultaneously. To my delight I resisted both! I was counting on my high magic resistance to get through this solo but had no idea if that was going to work or not. After hearing tales of instance death from these traps I was worried. I met my first group of humans a short time later. I was using a Fire RR weapon. I figured that my best weapon was what I needed. Being humans they are equally vulnerable to all attacks. I saw right off there was going to be a problem. Whereas anything without a shield dropped quick those with a shield were taking a while to defeat. The shield less ones I was hitting for 30+. Given the speed of my attack that is an amazing amount of damage. The ones with a shield I was hitting for 7 or less. Still good damage but they took a while to take down. Meanwhile I'm eating a lot of de-buffs. I might be resisting the traps but the humans were landing well. Their war spells were not landing, thank God, but I greatly feared Yield. Because of all the above I began all my attack by taking out the mages. There were times when I was running across the room with a pack of melee on my tail to attack a chain casting mage. Between the time it took to take them down and the spawn rate I had little time to explore. I was greatly afraid I was not on the right track for much time there. After clearing a very big room I found a passage down flanked by two chests. Later on I figured the chests were SIK's but I wasted time trying to open them before figuring that out. At this time I decided I better glance at the walkthrough. DOH! There is a key by the first gate I missed. I had to fight my way back to the start and pick that up. Then I had to turn around and fight my way back to the chests. Of course the key did not work on the chests. I headed down the ramp and went right. I fought my way to where it went straight and left. There were humans on the left so I went that way. After clearing them I found a group of really powerful looking humans in a big room before a gate. One was in upgraded mage armor and all had some nastily looking equipment on. After having half my health taken down in the first few seconds I retreated. This drew one of them, which I battled. That one took a while to kill because he had a shield. It did not help that the back spawn ran up and I had to let them swing at me as well. This guy had a big fire sword and he could hit me! With 468 melee defense plus a bonus I had not encountered anything that could hit me before I faced him. It was a bit of a shock. After taking him down I drew out the one in mage armor. This guy drained and healed while adding in de-buffs and wars. The wars were not landing so he could not hurt me. His armor was absorbing a tremendous amount of damage. In the end he was harder to defeat than the guy with the sword. Every time I got him below half health he would drain and heal to three fourths or better. I lucked out and hit him with a few crits and that ended the battle. I advanced on the other two. The mage with a crown was not as hard as I thought he would be. Of them all he had the most powerful looks. From that point I was totally lost. I found the shirt. If I had pre-read the walkthrough I would have known I was doing this exactly right but I didn't read it. I thought I was lost so I backtracked again. I had about 20 on buffs but was getting tried of the battles. This really is a lot better with a combined arms group. One person just has too much work to do. I can do it but it would not be fun. It would be a great sense of accomplishment to solo this but knowing I can is enough for me. I'll be getting a nice group together for this later. Meanwhile I hope to go with Winter Raven for one more recon before leading a group into this Hell on Dearth. Just like Old Times Bleu Sky and I use to spend a lot of time crushing Olthoi. In fact I met him on a body recovery in BDC and he swore to me right after that. Sky has been my longest continuous vassal. There have been some that have been with me longer, such as Maddie, but they have left and come back from time to time. Because of our responsibilities we have not had much time to adventure together. We talk and such but getting dirty and bloody together has not happened in a while. I saw Sky at the mansion today and asked if he had Asheron's Robe yet. Aaa, he hadn't. I told him to meet me in Baishi so we could go get it. He had to run while I had a short cut. I got there and started buffing. When done I had a wonder if the old bug in the Baishi building was still there. You use to be able to run into a nowhere zone in the building. PK's used it to ambush people. I ran into the building wall looking for the hole but it never showed. I moved away from the building towards the road but things started moving slow. I was snapped back next to the building. This happened a few times so I decided to log. I knew there was something wrong when Sky ran by me but could not see me. When I logged I was at the LS. I quickly checked for vit and item loss but all seemed in order. Just one of those things. I took the portal to Baishi and Sky and I headed in to the Matron dungeon. Sky was using a CB slashing sword. Not the most effective weapon for Olthoi. We will have to find him a good piercing sword. The M's were giving him fits. I'm a few skill points above him and I miss the M's. They also hit my extreme melee d. I started targeting them. With my RR weapon they fell fast. After several epic battles we got to the Matron. After drawing out/killing half the Olthoi we charged in. I told Sky to take the Matron and I would take the rest. After I cleared everything out I saw the Matron was still at mostly full heath. My first attempt to kill the Matron had this problem. With Sky having an ineffective weapon it was even worse. I tossed a level VII imperil on her but Sky was still having trouble. I joined in and she was quickly dead. We waited for the re-spawn so I could get a carp. Another UA by the name of Demon Blade showed up. He stepped out and let us fight her. We quickly knocked her down but I still had five more hours on the timer. I told Blade to loot while I logged a little bit down the hallway. I'll go back this evening and get it. I commented to Sky that it was just like old times. Sky is a great player and we need to do more adventures together. As we do our thing in AC we can lose track of each other. I don't want that to happen to us. Disappointments There are times in the game when things will just not go right. Sometimes what goes wrong is just pure bad luck. Other times it is game flaws combined with bad luck. Lastly it is stupidity of the players. Today I had a combo of all three to make for three failures out of three quests. I was out looking for the bow and UA amulet with FA. I had found monsters that drop the amulets between Lin and Nanto so I was running around there looking. There was a speaker announcement about the 80+ G-man quest going. (We have a setup where the buff bot is the speaker and can relay messages from several members.) I contacted Zakniefen Do'Urden who was running it. He is in a different allegiance but has a player in mine. He said that they would need an archer to help get the door down. As I'm just looking for swords so I can get Jr to 126 rapidly so whom I took did not matter much. I transferred my good armor to Deadeye Fist and logged Mage to buff him. We took a house portal near Arwic that seems to be faster than the Qbar route I normally take. A short run got us to the portal. We took a few seconds to clear some monsters. That took time it turned out we did not have to waste. When we got to the bottom the portal was already there! It seems a group was just a few seconds on front of us and they had killed the golem. I clicked the portal but nothing happened. I'm guessing lag but all I know is the portal disappeared before I could use it. Jagwire had made it and we encouraged him to join that group and not worry about us. He refused to go without us. I headed back to the mansion when they asked if I know the Matron quest. (grin) I just might know that one. They had no idea about it. It turned out they did not even know the reward. I had mage rebuff Deadeye again and headed to Baishi. I met them in town and we hit the portal. The landing was clear for a change. The ramp was packed and we got a back spawn that did not help. With two archers and a mage it did not take us long to clear it. We rapidly advanced with the Olthoi not standing much of a chance. Jagwire had a few tight moments but overall we got to the Matron without any problems. I still had Fist logged there so I loaded him on Slow Mo. I set him in the hall as a blocker. After the two got their carp I tried to get the third one. Well I have a few days to go but Fist's timer was up. I swapped computers and had him grab it. All this time Jagwire kept saying he wanted to do Bobo. Given how hard that quest is and my limited buff time I was not sure. In time they convinced me. I really would like to get the recall spell so I was willing to see if we could do it in an hour. Other than getting trapped in the hut for a few seconds I had no trouble getting to the dungeon. As I got in I noted that there were others waiting at the entrance. I convinced them to delay until the other two arrived. The party was overloaded with archers so the Tuskers died fast. The group was smart and knew what they were doing. We made it in record time. The other group was Tahoe, Grafix, Lutch and AKA Mage. We joined them until the very end but Jagwire wanted to take on the big tusker with just the three of us. I just wanted the scroll but felt staying with the original three was what I should do. We entered just as the other group was going into the exit portal. We set ourselves to take on the Monkey. We waited, and waited, and waited. No Tusker. Jagwire had to leave and that left just the two archers. We send a lot of help calls but, as normal, there was no response. So we are both logged out in the test dungeon. I have hopes this is fixed soon. My only hope is that a group hits it and tells me when they enter. I have a post on the VN board. I'm sure I cannot solo it. To make matters worse I have no banes. I need to log as a group goes in and then exit with them. That will flag me and let me get the scroll. Victory Every little bit I would load Deadeye Fist with the hopes of catching a group doing the Bobo test. Each log eat up a little of his very limited buff time. Finally I lucked out. I logged in with only 4 minutes of buffs left. To my delight six or seven people were there waiting on the monkey. They said they had been there for five minutes. I was worried that my waiting was in vain and the quest was totally broken. They were talking of porting out. One kind mage gave me some Life protects but, other than some level IV item spells I could toss, I had no buffs. Then as I was about to send another useless admit call for help it spawned. Just to be sure I took a shot or two. With no buffs at all there was little chance of me getting the kill, which was not my intent anyway. So Deadeye Fist has his recall spell. Next up will be the ladies island recall and who knows, maybe Caul. Praise It is not often that someone impresses me. Fire-Lady, The Saint, Balash, Winter Raven, Maddie and a handful of others have showed me a special awareness and bravery that demands respect. Today with so many powerful players it is rare that someone has a chance to stand out. I met one today. Roland Delgado is a special player. I met him while doing the Harbinger quest this evening. While far from being the most powerful player in the group he was always in the forefront of battle. You'll see his name often when this quest hits the VN board, hopefully this week. He was always at my side or even ahead of me. Given that he has a fraction of my skill numbers this is nothing short of amazing. Him and Balash will match up well. In the end he died and did not get the reward. It brought a cry of pain from my lips to see him fall latterly seconds before the Harbinger did. Mars Hill is to be proud to have this player in his allegiance.