Fist de Yuma - September 23, 2003

This and That There is a message board on this site. It was not working for some time but they have it up now. I check it daily so if you want to make a point about a column or life in general that is a good place to put it. I make my e-mail address freely known. Of course that has created a major problem. Not one you might think. No one has abused my e-mail that I know of. The problem stems from being in so many address books. New worms/virus are hitting the net almost daily. Many are quite imaginative in how they get someone to run them. They expand by sending out copies to everyone in the victims address book and try to trick them into running it. To keep the fact that they have infected a computer they spoof the return address. The program takes a random name from the address book and pretends that is the one sending it. So not only do I get literally hundreds of infection attempts a day but get fifty or so returns saying an address is invalid or accusing me of trying to infect them with the worm/virus. This keeps me busy deleting messages but also has possible side effect that is troubling. I'm starting to get returns from people I send my column to. The message is from their IP saying I'm not on the authorized list. This could be an over protective IP or the result of an infection attempt by someone spoofing my address. So if you are not getting your column in the last few weeks send me a letter. I'll use an alternate address to send it to you while we work it out with your IP. On a sad note I had no idea a small penis was such a problem with people. I must get a thousand advertisements on how to make them bigger each week. Do people really buy that crap? I'm also working on a few interesting short stories that those on my list might enjoy. If I get off my lazy end I have one that might work well. I have worked out a bunch of side stories using people I have met in my lifetime. I think using real people might bring life to the stories. The shortness of this week's column gives me a chance to catch up on some old stuff I have been meaning to add to the column. Some of it dates back over a year but is still on point. The leadoff is a funny bit on a mule being arrested. I think you will enjoy them. I hope the players who wrote some of this stuff are still playing. Weeping Weapon If you read my VN column you got a picture story of my Weeping Weapon recon. That run was described in this column a month or so back. I knew that Winter Raven had the dungeon down. Being an Archer she would help me a lot. There are a lot to fight and UA does not do much damage on them, especially if they have a shield. We decided to go on Friday after the patch. The reasons for the delay was I wanted to let the servers stabilize and give the decal people a shot at getting the memlocs down. As Winter Raven waited for me to finish off a Pincer/Tusk run with Death Mute he recruited several members to go with us. Soul Riper and Yusuke Urameshi are the two I remember so I'm missing someone, sorry. After buffing up we all met south of the bridge. We went in and I picked the doors. Everyone got by the first traps ok. The battles were a lot better than last time. With melee/archer help and mages things went very smooth. With faster killing we did not have to worry about back spawns. Being barely ahead of the spawn rate was my biggest problem with the recon. The only dangerous part was the place I ran into trouble before. A group of hard hitting, trash taking players that put up one hell of a fight. Whoever did this part has a good sense of humor and knows PK's well. The accusation of gear use had us rolling. Sadly, most of it rolled off my screen before I could read it. One got a good hit on me during the battle. That brought me to 130 hit points. I start to worry when I reach a point when one war spell can kill me. I did a quick heal which of course failed. Heal never works when it is most needed. Second attempt also failed. With 340 healing you would think one of them would land. Fortunately I resisted the war spells that were fired at me and there is only one melee there that could hit me. I ran to a corner and sucked an elixir before trying again. This time the heal landed and I was at full health. Yusuke Urameshi ran to the corner with me. I'm thinking he was there to protect me, as he was not trying to heal. I reengaged and Yusuke Urameshi joined me. Side by side we battled one of the harder mages. Yusuke Urameshi is a direct vassal to one of my players so I was very upset when the mage did a vuln and blast to take him out. His high AL mage armor kept him alive long enough to kill Yusuke. That was our only death but it was one I would rather not have seen. I recovered his items and we moved on. I'm amazed how close I was to finishing the quest on my recon. There were only two more battles and nether was close to the one bad fight. I would likely have had a hard time finding the hidden door but might have lucked out. I got the heart and just need an improved Atlan to put it in. Improved Atlan The next step was to get the improved Atlan made so I could put the heart into it. I searched my mules but could only find two good quality ingots. I was sure I have a perfect but it is likely on my third account. If not it is in a house chest. When I made improved Atlans before a good quality ingot almost always made a perfect weapon. With high skill you could overcome the lower quality ingot. I kept one on Jr for future use and had Fist take the other to the Crater. I ran to the sub and hit Mayoi. The Songbird portal got me close to the Crater Pathway. The Flies there give me no trouble, one swing if I felt the need, so it was a fast trip to the Crater. I bought the stamp and applied it. This was where it would turn into a perfect before. Humm, a good. I turned it in and got a good weapon. Well one for the vender. I ported back to the mansion and grabbed the other ingot off of Jr. I used portal recall to get back to the Crater. Good, Good, darn it. I either had very bad luck or they changed the way this works. I headed back to the mansion to search for the tool. I knew I had one somewhere. I found the tool, removed a stone from one of my other Atlans and added the heart. I now have a Weeping Weapon. Time to test it out. PKL I headed over to the William the Bat's mansion. There were only two mid to low levels there. One changed to PKL as soon as he saw me. We talked for a bit and he decided to fight. I let him take a few swings to check my melee defense. He could not hit me. I started swinging and killed him in a few seconds. So far so good. I did note that I was only doing 20 to 30 damage on relativity low al armor. Still if I could do the same damage on high-level mages I would be happy. I headed over to the subway to find a fight. I knew better than to charge in and get ganged. I stayed outside the perimeter and watched. A high level mage worked his way around in back of me. I let him toss a vuln before charging in. I avoided his first war and started swinging, 3, 3, 3 I'm blasted for 150. Ok, weeping weapons suck. I took off running and healed. Just to be sure I charged and attacked again, 3, 3, 3. Ok, now I know why I have not seen Weeping Weapons used much. I figured it was because they were hard to get. I should have known better. So a mage in tinkered armor is still almost impossible to beat with a pure melee. Next time I'll have to try an RR weapon but I have a feeling Mages will dominant PKL as they did PK. Fist's Armorer has perfect stats for PK (100 endurance start and will spec Magic D at 115.) so he will likely be my main person for PKL in time. Meanwhile I'll be leading our allegiance with Fist de Mage when and if we join any wars. Tribute Every patch breaks decal. Sometimes the break is fixed with simple changes in memory locations. Others require massive changes in how entire sections works. Lately there have been more massive changes that require a lot of work before decal is up and running. There seems to be one group that works hard each patch to discover the majority of the changes. They find a way to make decal work. I have no idea who they are but these unsung heroes need to be recognized. They spend countless hours with de-compilers and other tools to so we can have more fun when we play the game. Next time you're complaining at how long it takes to get the memlocs up for decal remember, these people get no reward other that personal satisfaction of a job well done. The other people who keep us going are the plugin developers. Many no longer play the game but are still working hard to support their programs. Nerf Golem is one such. His plugin is Nurfus Buffus and likely the most used plugin in decal with the possible exception of ElTank. Certainly NB is the most useful for me. When Turbine makes massive changes many of these programs have to be rewritten before they work. I currently have three plugins disabled while I wait on developer action. The developers at least gets their names known. There are also paypal links so there is some reward. Given the history of such links they likely make less than a dollar an hour. With my link I'm around 10 cents an hour. (grin) Luckily, like me, they do it for the love of it and not the reward. We need to applaud these great people. They spend their time and in many cases money so we can have a better game. We need a lot more people like this in the world. Mistypes I make errors all the time. Most are simple things that get overlooked in editing. Every so often one slips through that seems make sense but has a changed meaning. It is generally funny. It is funny to everyone but me. I hate making errors. Well I'm not the only one who can make an error that can change meaning. IBN-Turbine is a guy who keeps us informed about things on the VN board. While writing about how people work he mistyped, "Working on content" and typed "Working on continent". Most figured out right away what he had done but decided to have fun with it. Soon there were posts, "IBN confirms new continent in AC!" Bitter people For a long time PK was for the elite people on a server or so they thought themselves. PK was bad when looting was rare but got far worse when looting became the norm. PK soon became the domain of a select few. Many felt they were better that the DT people. I admit I brought into that propaganda for a while. Why they did not go and play on DT I'll never understand. It could be they knew better. Without their chains and support structure they may not have lasted long. There were a handful of people who tried to bring some honor to PK but it was a hopeless cause. Only through power could any control be brought to bear and power is fleeting in AC. Some think that fear means respect. They think PKL is bad because no one respects/fears them any more. I might fear a gun-toting terrorist but I'll never respect them. Few of the immature PK's understood this concept. Most were bullies who felt good about running someone out of PK. "I looted the newbe white" was something they would brag about. So Turbine finally wakes up and repairs a stalemated PK on the non-pk servers. The whining from the bullies is deafening. What is most to the point is one of their statements. "This affects me as 90% of the PK people went PKL and there is no one left to fight." Well that should be telling them something! Still they are calling for the removal of PKL. Some say to keep it a month so people can learn to go PK and then take it out. Others demand a hot patch to remove it now. Many are blaming the lag and log on trouble on the bodies being left around. I have no idea if they are right or wrong but neither do they. I agree that people should start cleaning up their bodies. The winner is not going to remove it as the body is their trophy. Despite the fact that the MT server has crashed constantly over the last few weeks one crash after the patch had the PK's blaming it on PKL. They remind me of environmentalists. If it is something wrong happens it supports their cause, no matter how unrelated. To cold, to hot, to mild, Global Warming! PKL has revitalized the game. Whether that is a temporary thing I don't know. I do think there will be a lot of allegiance events and wars that were not possible before. As a monarch I'm thrilled with this. Now if I can only find a weapon that will do enough damage on a tinked armored mage that I would have a chance against them. (grin) There is an answer for those who want to be a PK player and loot. I say, if you want to be a PK player, go to the PK server. If enough of them do maybe they would get a new PK server. Then they all could start chaining with a level start. (grin) Plains hunting Our allegiance has a spot on the plains where we do allegiance hunts. The main mage killers there are Olthoi. I would say that nine out of ten mages killed there are killed by Olthoi. So you might ask, why are we overjoyed with the current, "all Olthoi" that the are running the Plains. The answer is simple. Without the de-buffs Olthoi are dead meat! The reason we had such a hard time as mages against Olthoi on the plains is we generally face them with Imperil and vulnerabilities, not to mention magic skill de-buffs. Three "Ms" are hard but with de-buffs they are almost impossible. It is darn hard to land on the upper Olthoi with 411 War. Toss in a few de-buffs, making us 30+ lower, and resists are more common than lands. Combine less damage by us with far more damage by the Olthoi and you can see the problem. Even very high magic defense seems useless against this problem. While War seems to have been balanced so magic defense is effective Life and Creature have not. We had our group hunt the plains this morning while it is "All Olthoi" and it was great. I did not loot but it was there if I wanted it. We charged across the Plains sweeping the Olthoi before us. We had a blast. I know it will change back to the way it was soon. I'm doubtful if we get the entire patch with it. Meanwhile we will be enjoying the xp, loot and pure fun. Guest Writer; John L Case Dateline - Leafcull The community was stunned today by the arrest of Leftus Swiftly for animal cruelty. At the time of arrest he was in the possession of a number of artifacts of his abuse including the guts of drudges formed into strings, sinew of lugians, teeth of gromnies and unknown parts of golems. Leftus even had a gruesome weapon crafted from nothing more than animal parts. At the time of his arrest he was carrying amounts that made it hard for him to move and he surrendered without resistance. According to well placed sources inside the investigation he is attempting to claim that the parts are not his but he is really just holding the parts as he is nothing more than a mule now. He claims that he freely gives these items to members of his allegiance. Upon further investigation this allegiance is just another name for a paramilitary style cult with rules and a pecking order. A cult that uses animal parts in certain rituals almost always involving weapons. They all live in the same guarded mansion that is impossible to enter without swearing an oath into the allegiance. His friends and neighbors were not all that surprised. Epsilon the Believer, who is an old friend going back to the birth freely gave an interview. He was not shocked that Leftus had acquired such an inventory of items. Epsilon said, "Even for a gimp he was quite active. I would have re-rolled years ago but he was ..." At that point glossed over and started rambling about templates in a very excited state. He was taken away by the police for evaluation. Leftus publicly admits to having the body parts but defends his actions by claiming that his "creator" made him do it. He also states that he tends to black out for extended periods of time only to wake up, grab stuff, and black out again. His lawyers say the real culprits is a mage by the name Officer Obie and Mauler, both of whom Leftus has never met. Leftus is to be arraigned later this week. Guest Writer; Robert Redwine Thank you for your column, as always. It is one of the few things I still check for AC now. Gives me a link to the past. If possible I'd like a word or two on the next one, if you don't mind. "You can take it with you, sort of" "You have hit level 126 and reached the games' maximum level!" I smiled as I watched the sparkles fly from Dave the Bowman after turning in the devastator tusk. Thus, my final goal in Asheron's Call was finished. The first Linvak Ranger to hit 126. I started this game in January of '01 with a Gharu archer with no melee defense. Back when we thought attack mods mattered on bows and I was assured by my patron, Xnu, "you won't need melee defense, you'll kill all the monsters before they get to you." I picked up melee defense at 85 and specialized it as soon as I could. I have moved to Star Wars Galaxies with about 80% of the Rangers. Elowan now heads the remainder that stayed behind. Why did I go? Well, AC was starting to get old for me. It seemed that every patch was the same thing. A new super-weapon here, another awesome armor ability there, another super-monster that you need the first two to deal with. Only way to describe it is "Monty Haul." The game seems to be more about what you wear than your own skill, though there are exceptions. Exploit early and exploit often seemed to be the name of the game, along with greif, flame and whine. I admit, I joined in the whining on occasion. When I terminated the account, the only thing I had given away was my villa, which went to a fellow Ranger. Everything else is still on the characters, on the very slim chance that I would reactivate the account. I've seen too many "I'm coming back but I don't have anything" posts not to consider that possibility. So, what sort of things went with Dave? +166%/+10% rending row, +130%/+20% rending row, major coordination breastplate, major focus greaves, minor endurance tassets with endurance 5, quick 6 steel toed boots, bow 6 gauntlets, pauldrons with minor bow, and a full set of dual-6 jewelry. All of it tinkered at least six times. Oh yes, and a whole bunch of items inscribed by people and given to me as presents. My other characters are (or were), Kievos the mage, Gruuk the axer, Xi Xi the swords-man (and long-time trader), Lysandra the tinker. I've also played Cook Myule and Dave the Bowman Jr. The list of people whom I have met and could give thanks to is far too long to do justice to them. I'd forget far too many, so rather, I'll just say, "Thank you, you know who you are". I spent over 2-1/2 years in AC. I hope I made Morningthaw a better place by my presence. My goal is to do that with SWG, Valcyn server. Robert Redwine a.k.a. Dave The Bowman Guest Writer; R. Scott White Well it was a whacky weekend. Had dinner out with a bunch of friends for a surprise 30th birthday party for my best friends wife. The restaurant is part of a chain called Buca Di Beppo. Southern Italian family style food, and a great atmosphere. Check their website they are worth a visit! Anyway I wasn't on very much after getting booted off on Saturday early afternoon. I couldn't get back in game and couldn't figure out why. I kept trying and retrying, rebooting my machine etc. I finally realized that when I downloaded the new version of Bandit Sight that I forgot to remove the older version, which was what was screwing me up. I lost 7 robes and a bunch of gems to my own stupidity, oh well no big deal, easily replaced. I worked off my vitae and headed back to VoD just on the off chance my body was there. Nope my corpse had rotted away. Sort of like my stomach after eating Nabs cooking. I go off to the side and what is before me, a Virindi Quiddox, just one standing alone like a woman of the evening working her corner. So I approach and see if it will offer me its services. It did immediately vul'ing me to blades, so of course I counter offered trying to yield, vul and flame its ass. The battle was going my way till I heard the wonderful sound of a lightning spell going off right next to me. Just my luck, not a spell but a pod of Virindi P(unsure of the spelling). With them treating me like the old whack-a-mole game you find at most carnivals. I ran off like a baby, blood and tears streaming down my face, yelling back at them, I'll get you!!!!! Then running more when they took my stopping to yell as a challenge. I gemmed, healed and slowly picked apart the P's, it was a constant battle, I love them cause they are so dangerous but hated them for the same reason. They were slicing and dicing me up. I thought they were filming an infomercial on Ginsu knives with the way whey were cutting me up. Finally one of them decides that the 115 points he just cut out of my intestines was enough and he went back to his spawn point. That left me with one P to deal with. The battle was hard, going back and forth. At times it was a drain war. I'd drain, it would drain, I'd war, it would drain, I'd drain before it could finish me with a war, it would war, I'd drain ect...see a pattern here? I kept going, working my way through that spawn when I go to finish off the Quiddox that was alone. But my luck kept holding for the evening because the single Quiddox decided to throw a tea party and invited a couple friends over. Now being foolish I neglected to see the last spell thrown upon me by the dying P, it was a blade vuln. I launch a devastating attack on the one Quiddox and the two visiting friends both hit me with blade 7 wars. I ran again, well actually stumbled bleeding heavily away with 4 whole hit points left to spare. That was when I checked my bad spells and cursed my own stupidity. So I healed up and gemmed again. Going into battle against a stronger foe, I draw one off and see the strangest message I've ever seen come across my screen. "You have resisted the spell cast by the Virindi Quiddox", I was stunned, forgetting to hit my keys briefly. But I jumped back into the fray, casting, being hit by blades and spells, finally killing it then doing the same to its friends. For 29min 34 seconds 8,534,000 (approx) exp. Not too shabby, now if I'd only had an archer with me...hehe. Part II I was doing a bit of hunting in VoD, working my way to my 126 goal. I did pretty well, died a few times but the exp was worth it. I was running a bit low on funds, ok not so low, I've got tons of plats but no one accepts them right now. I decided to do a bit of treasure hunting outside of AB. I pulled four of those new keys and from previous experience I knew that those chests weren't great but had good stuff to sell. So I find one that is surrounded by some nasty lugians and drudges. I mowed them all down pretty easily and started pulling. Like I said nothing great but good stuff to sell until..............Copper Celedon Girth AL 246 Diff 251 Imp V, Minor Acid Bane and oh yeah one more....MAJOR LIFE MAGIC APTITUDE. No race, melee, missile req, just a straight magic item. Needless to say I had to get a paper bag to prevent hyperventilating. I was so excited and no one was around to share it with I was going ape. Two things immediately popped into my mind, the first being how much can I get for it. What did you expect from me I'm an accountant . The second thing was how to make it work for me in my current armor set up. As you know I use the upgraded mage armor. Then I remembered I have a decent AL amuli coat that is low enough that Fist can tink it a few times to bring it to about 300 AL. It was then I also realized I could do one of three things about my helm. Leave it as it is now, or go back and get the +30 hp helm, or just get a really high AL helm and say the heck with it. I'm not sure what to do yet. I did the sunstone gaunt quest after talking to Fist about it. It wasn't hard and I was never in any danger. The pain became getting the correct broken amulet. The one I needed was only found on Mosswart Idolators. I had to trek to the island and make my way to their hideout. I go in and start blasting away. Have you ever been in a situation where what you're hunting zero chance of killing you? That was what it was like to hunt through 1 1/2 full buff cycles trying to pull that damn amulet. After 142 idolators...yes I counted, I finally pulled one and finished the gaunts. That is why I can switch the coats I'm wearing, the gaunts are better than the mage armor in protections. With the gaunts I'm not losing my moderate war skill. It will increase my buff cycle but only by a minute or so, big deal right. R. Scott White CAAARS Dept. Group Leader