Fist de Yuma - September 24, 2002

Isparian Weapon Quest It is amazing how an error made a month ago can affect something today. I did the Isparian Weapon quest a while back and missed the last step. You have return to Xarabydun and talk to the lady who sent you on the quest. She will ask to see one of the filled decanters. This will reset the quest so you can repeat it three weeks later. I did not know that and by this time I did not have any decanters to reset the quest with. Ben-Li Sung asked me to lead the quest this week. He setup the time and place and did all the recruitment. I wrote down the coordinates of the places we had to go but not the order. I was going to depend on the NPC's to tell me where to go next. Of course I found out about my old error at the very start. From there on the quest was more chaos than not. I was not worried because the only real danger is the very end. That was when I was going to slow things down and take charge. Still the helter-skelter start might have lead to problems. It didn't because of the mature attitude of the players we had. Ben-Li Sung had a tie to Eastham and Quip had Arwic. Mrs Uzi ran and got a tie to Fathonless so we were set to go. So the only bad part was running to Xarabydun several times. Xarabydun is not the easiest place to find and the Elementals made it a bit rough on the two lower levels we had. We were lucky in that Ron USMC as Ron's Revenge was running the quest with a vassal of his. At the end we had Mrs Uzi get them caught up with us. As we got to Fathonless I rained in the group and explained what my plan was. I intended for us to have one or two jump down and get their decanters filled while the rest healed them. We had a few with healer hearts and Archers to distract the Elementals. They would then hit the portal and run back down to help support the others. I made the mages know that their best role was support. Land the Imperil if they could but keep the fighters alive as the top priority. Trying to war them is a lesson in futility. We had two people doing a lower section and I did not feel good about them going. I hope our mages gave them a good set of buffs but admit I forgot to make sure. In any case they got owned and did not complete the quest. I was concentrating on the upper part and let that pass. Sorry guys. As we hit the first section I got the call from Ron's Revenge. They were headed to Eastham and then Fathonless. I stopped the group and had Mrs Uzi go get them. This let me evaluate our effectiveness against the Elementals. To my surprise we owned the ones we faced. With only Imperil to toss there was less problem for the mages. With strong melee's we took them down rather quickly. This made me change the plan. With the mages staying on top for support we would all jump down and battle. Then we would break off a few at a time and fill the decanters. In hindsight this might not have been the best plan, mainly because the Elementals at the end were considerably stronger than the ones we faced at the start. It worked because there was a group there doing battle already. With the added power of Ron and his vassal we had little trouble getting to the bottom. I think Quip and Mrs Uzi were the only two mages we had but they were enough. The battle was fast and furious. I was doing great but only because of the constant heals and stamina recharges of the mages. We were having a blast fighting these things. I was only doing from 4 to 9 damage, despite using an Isparian Weapon with the best stone for duels. I'm not sure if another weapon would have worked better but I never had a chance to find out. The Crystal was hopeless to fight. I had buffed my Cestus (5-18 CB) with the intent to see if I could do anything against it. Both my Cestus and Isparian Weapon hit for zero damage on the thing. Slowly we got everyone to the ledge and their decanters filled. The last was Mrs Uzi who had been carrying her decanters around for a month or more. She was afraid that she would not be able to fill hers with the battle going on. I told her to wait for Quip to return from the top and we would insure she got hers filled. Quip had just got his filled and hit the portal. He was running back down to support. With Quip healing her and the fighters distracting the Elementals she had no trouble getting her decanters filled. The battle was so much fun that we decided to do a second buff there. Those who had to leave because of the late hour I instructed not to repeat my mistake. I made sure they went back to Xarabydun and complete the quest. There was one bit if excitement for me. I'm not sure what happened with this. There are a few possibilities. On the second trip to the bottom I started taking a lot of damage. A 77 fire hit to the chest put me to 8 hit points. As I ran to the portal I got another hit that dropped me to 3 hit points. I don't know how but I made the portal and lived. When I buffed at the top I took off my cold and fire rings to put on minor Focus and Endurance. The Endurance gives me a few more hit points for health to mana. While I have 235 base Lore there are items with 250+ I use. I think I forgot to buff lore and when I put my Fire VI ring on and it did not activate. I may have also forget to put my shield on. As I ran to the bottom, after my close call, one of the mages pointed out I was missing my shield. It could have been one or both of those that caused my close call. Not playing Fist enough made me sloppy. I learned not to get cocky. We had two deaths, both archers. One was Harry Pooter. I'm not sure if he filled his decanters before he died. The other was a non-Elder later in the second battle. Given that 430+ melee defense with 28% bonus was being hit Archers had a hard time without shields. I saw his death message but was a touch busy. The Crystal took a disliking to me and followed me the entire buff. All I could do was try and keep it to my front as I could not battle it. It took me a while to take down an Elemental but after my close call I stopped getting hit as bad. In fact unless I had a melee defense de-buff I was never hit. Unfortunately that spell was tossed often. I finally had time to search for the body but could not find it. I asked if anyone had seen the body. The guy who died said the corner. In one of the corners I found it. The armor was a close match to the floor so if you did not know to look there it was hard to find. I guess there is an advantage to mismatched armor or at least bright colors. Dark dull colors are hell to find in a battle. I figured I had the best melee defense so I looted the body. I made sure that I had my shield at the right angle as there were three or four Elementals along with that dam Crystal pounding on me at the time. Did I tell you the Crystal attacked me the entire time I was there that third trip? (grin) The group that was fighting before us left and we were had one less fighter. Mrs Uzi was the only mage left, Quip had to leave because of the late hour. Despite having half and hour left on the buff I felt it was the better part of valor to leave then. I called for Mrs Uzi to jump down and head to the portal. I then stayed fighting as the fighters broke off and hit the portal. Ron and I were the last out. I did not have Mrs Uzi port out because I wanted to keep the group together. Mrs Uzi loaned me a decanter so I could complete the quest. We ran to Xarabydun and got the last part done. We can repeat the quest in three weeks. We had a good talk about politic and other things for a while. Mrs Uzi is out of Elder for now. We have lost some good people over time. Most return at later dates. I'm hoping that this is the case with Mrs Uzi. I'm not really impressed with Isparian Weapons so far. I can hope for an update but doubt that it would be forthcoming. Hitting for 4 damage with 443 UA skill is pathetic. At least they are a lot better than the old Atlan's, despite the de-buffs. Speaking of the de-buffs I did resist the Atlan de-buff one time. Fist has close to 290 magic resistance with buffs. I intend to add to it later but at 29 million a point it is not getting much higher. At least I know that the Isparian Weapon de-buffs can be resisted. With only level VI protects adding a level IV de-buff on top of that is not helping my survivability. Frustration There are things in this game that are more frustrating than fun. Some are rights of passage that the developers demand for items. A bow with Armor Rendering is something a good archer needs. So of course the developers make it very hard to get. Good mod 130 bows are not easy to find. Getting Sunstone is not easy. It cost four precious points and a lot of xp to get Magic Item Tinkering. Of course you can get someone else to pay for the Magic Item but the first two has to be done by the Archer. Just getting so you can use a mod 130 bow is an arduous task. I have put almost 60 million points into Bow and Coordination. I calculate I need another 15 million points to make 290. At my rate of xp this will be around 10 hours of hunting. Then they have added the ridicules 2 in 3 failure rate. This adds a degree of frustration that hurts the fun of the game. At this point I'm zero for ten in infusing bows with Armor Rendering. Only one was for someone else. The other nine were mine. I have burnt all but one of my 250 requirement bows. I'm saving that until I get the last seven points to 290. Trying to get one on the boards is out of the question. They are going for far more than a normal player can afford. I put a bid in of 300 points for one and did not come close. When you have to hunt for the points rather than sleep with a macro running it is hard to keep up. I understand that this was put in because the developers cannot keep up with chains and macros. Great, punish us because of your lack of foresight. It is bad enough when you need one weapon. The other melee's need a lot more. My two UA's use six weapons. Fortunately I have not had as bad of luck with Red/Black Opal as I have had with Sunstone. It is almost as if Sunstone is harder than the other two. If so the developers should be strung up by their toes. Right now I'll chock it up to bad luck. So far I have my Cestus, Katar and a Fire weapon done with CS or CB. I'm setting around a 40% success rate. Not great but a lot better than zero. New Quest I did something I normally don't do. I started on a new quest before I knew it was bug free. It did not start out that way. I had been working on getting Deadeye Fist to 290 base bow. There is a family member who had a 290 base with Armor Rendering he is giving me when we hook up. The leveling got boring so I decided to get Fist over to the new Castle and see what was cooking. Before doing that I decided to cash in some Glittering Gems and get a set of GSC. The stuff is heavy but no heaver that the new armor I'm using. That required a trip to Eastham. I don't know why the developers are putting so much stuff in Eastham these days. There is no fast way to get there. Almost every other town is in a portal system. I guess there will soon be some portal bods to Eastham set up. It would have been better if Turbine added an Eastham portal the portal system. While running through town I noted the new portals. I was under the impression that you needed to see Asheron to enter these portals. I later learned that this was the start and the way I got there was an exploit. After getting the armor I did /house mansion_recall so I could replace the sleeves with a minor Coordination shoulder piece and Rev Bracers. The color almost matches the uncolored GSC. From there I ported to Lin and ran to Arwic. I took the mountain shortcut and then the Bandit Castle portal. Then I took a short run to the mountains. There were a lot of people running around the mountains. I kept expecting a ramp up somewhere but ended up running completely around the range without finding a way up. Then I saw a place with a bunch of bodies. Above it were people jumping, most of them to their deaths. With 470+ jump I was not afraid of from jumping and if the jump could be made, I could do it. With little trouble I made the jump and was on the ridgeline. The first thing I ran across was a tower. Just for the fun of it I did the Spiderman jumps to get to the top. I did not grab the mask and robe as I was sure this was not the way to do the quest. I'm not sure I really need the items. I have space problems as it is. A lot of people have the robe and mask and think it looks great. I think it is ugly as hell. The spells are not that hot so I think I'll pass. (The Red Robes on the other hand are hot.) From there I found a valley overlooking the Fortress. There were a lot of people there and the only way down seemed to be jumping. Overconfidence almost bit me at this point. Rather than look for one of the lower slops I depended on my jumping abilities to make the jump. I took over 255 real damage. Without my Bludgeoning V item on I would have died. I had 20 hit points left when I landed. From there I found Asheron. There was a long line in front of him so I joined that. Of course there were a bunch of Dweebs who were to good to stand in line slowing things up. I got a call from Miss Smurfette that she was coming. I warned her about the jump. She picked a much better spot to jump and took little damage. I filed that away in case I had to come back here. I told her I would wait until she got there before going in. While waiting I saw William the Bat. I invited him to go with us but he was with another group. While waiting for MS I got portal stormed. This put me at the bottom of the mountain. I had to do the jump again to get to the ridgeline. This time I found a much safer place to jump and only took 25 damage. MS was done and we started off. We added an Archer and Mage to the party. A party with two mages, a melee and archer rocks. There was little that did not quickly fall before us. I found out later that most groups ran past stuff at this point. We killed everything we came across. We had little trouble killing things along the way. I did not do much damage to some of the stuff. Bad when you have 335 UA skill, using a weapon buffed with VII's, close to the max base and only do 2 points a hit. The new weapons were about as bad and lacked the 30 point crits I would get with my tinkered weapons. I ended up staying with my Cestus most of the trip. The Archer got most of the kills while I blocked. We got to the end after a lot of maze traveling. The golem gave us permission to enter a portal. We buffed up but that turned out to be a waste as there was nothing to fight. The first part was a riddle. I lucked out and got the easy one (Man). It was a famous riddle I read about over 40 years ago. (Yes, I was a book nerd as a child.) I ported in and was surprised to see piles of bodies. I mean there was a deep pile at my feet and several other piles stretching to the end of the hall. I was frozen there in wonder when someone shouted to move. Marine training took over and I did not stop to ask way. I ran a bit down the hall and then to where some were standing. Seconds later a large rock rolled by. It seems it is instance death to be touched by the rock. There was a large group at the end of the hall. I saw a portal and several chests. I got an item that matched one I got from the Golem. They fit together. I was surprised to see a door appear where I had run in. The people there all started attacking the door. Others kept them informed as to when a rock was coming. Either because of lag or whatnot some did not get out of the way in time and died. I hit the portal to try the next part. I found a floor covered with tiles. I was told there was a route. I'm not sure what happened if you did a misstep. I followed others and got across with no trouble. That got me another piece and a new portal. The next part I got a warning not to fight and to stay in peace mode. There were monsters but it seems if you fought them you were ported. I just ran and got the last piece from a chest. (420 run so I was not attacked.) MS meanwhile had died to a rock. She was headed back but I lost track of her. The exit portal got me to a hill overlooking the fortress. There was a shell over the fortress so when I jumped I was well over it in mid air. I jumped down and headed to Asheron. He gave me a ingot and gem. I used the gem to get ported to the fortress. There was a portal there but noting inside. I found a pillar and gave the ingot to it. That got me into a big room with a bunch of ladders. There were rooms that you needed to get into with bookshelves. Some of the rooms were easy to get into. Others had obstacles that made it hard to jump into them. I got one book but the other shelves were not giving them up. I got the word later that there was a bug and the shelves were not working. It got fixed but not that day. I was there for some time. Of course by this time I was going to have to log soon. My dialup times out or my computer locks up after a few hours. One or the other was going to happen soon. Of course it was a lock up. I reset my computer and had the server redial so I would have some time to figure out what was going on. I logged back. Dab Blabit @#$!@#$!@#$!@#$@ Turbine. I guess they think everyone has unlimited time to adventure and have cable modems. If you log out you get kicked to the LS. A full day of running around for nothing. I was back to square one. Why in the hell did they need to do that? It was not like anyone was going to combat macro monsters there. A broken quest and a lame log off kick. Given that this is all there is for the patch I expected better. The next day I saw the results of doing the quest. The shield is a nice replacement for a Diamond shield. I would love to get that for Fist. I'm not sure on the wands. I have seen one but it would have to add a lot to Jr's Life skill to replace a Focus Stone. The War might be very useful. Just hate to lose the Drum with Mage. Nevertheless I am paying 67 million a point for War and only 25/20 million for Life/Creature. If I got a bunch of points added to War I could easily add to Life and Creature. Deadeye Fist After 10 failures I succeeded with a bow. Unfortunately it was not mine. Soul Riper had won an auction on a very nice well-tinkered bow so he gave me his old one. As he could have made a killing selling it I was very grateful. This meant I needed to push Deadeye's Bow to 290. I had been mindlessly hunting the Grotto all week. I got to know ever corner and spawn spot. It would take me around 10 minutes to kill every Olthoi in the place. That would net me a touch over 400k a cycle and around 1.8 million an hour. If others were there this dropped dramatically. As I started out needing 15 million it was not fast. I did take one break to move over to EVL. Monday morning between 1am and 4am it was not to crowded. The reason I did this was to find a Frost UA weapon. I only have one worth tinkering and will need a good one for combat if I blow it up. (Never found one.) I take a lot of damage fighting EVL's but at least there is loot worth looking at. I did not find anything but was able to cash out to around 250k. That went to my mule for gambling. Even with continuous fighting the XP was lower than the grotto because of how slow the killing was. The damage is the same but EV's have a lot more hit points. At last at around 6am on Monday morning I made 290 base bow. I ported to the mansion and picked up the bow from Fist. He had upgraded it to 146 mod. I had a bunch of bags saved up waiting to get Armor Rendering on a bow. I then decided to spend one more pass in the Grotto to see the difference. This is not the best test because in addition to get having AR the bow had 16 more points of mod. It still should get you some idea. With my normal 130 mod I was hitting for 77 to 100. With the new bow I was hitting from 120 to 150. Crits with the old bow were around 200. The new bow I have no idea of because any crit killed it, even from full health. The key is arrows. With the old bow the best I would do is two arrows a kill. This was rare. Most kills were four arrows with some three and some five. This excluded misses. The new bow could one shot but was as rare as the two shots with the old bow. Most kills were three arrows and never more than that. A lot of the kills were two shots. I'll know more about the power of this bow when I face things that gave me fits before. Elder Shamans are a good example. I was doing 14 damage an arrow against them. I predict that Archery will really come into its own now. I judge the different classes with rate of survivability. A bow is not as powerful as a spell but close. With melee defense an Archer will be better protected than a Mage so that will balance. So an archer can avoid melee damage while putting out close to the damage of a Mage. Advantage in survivability to the Archer. Against a Melee the Archer will take more damage because of the shield lack. But the Archer will be inflicting far more damage over time. Dead monsters don't hurt you. Advantage to the Archer here. Of course it will always depend on what you are fighting. No Archer is going to stand toe to toe with the Olthoi Queen for very long. Any monster with better attack skill than the archer/melee's melee defense will give the shield user the advantage. Against spell casters the mage will be better off because of drains and easier healing. So there is always an advantage to one class or the other depending on the situation. Most of the time I'll give survivability to the Archer. The biggest problem with archer is how hard they are to get self-sustaining. I'm still using Mage to buff him at 59. Against most things I can use items to be effective but if I really want to fight I need Mages buffs. The reason for this is my lack of magic. There is just so much an Archer needs that it is far into the levels before they get it. I feel all effective melees have to be three school. Getting the top two of three schools takes a lot of points. It is hardest of all for an Archer because of the need to take Fletching. Fletching's four points adds 20 levels. Even skimping on something such as not spec'ing lore means 10 levels, if you can find a way to do it. Most fix the problem by training Melee Defense. I feel it is hard enough to get by without a shield and spec'd melee. So Deadeye will be getting Life at 75 and Creature at 115. That is more than a long way off. Being one of my newest players he does not have many vassals. This will be all on my own. Slow but steady. Only advantage I'm taking is pincer turn in. I fellow with Mage and Fist when they turn them in for an additional 3.5 million points every 21 days. Current goal is getting my melee defense to 330 base. This is not as hard as it sounds because I started with 100/80 Coodi/Quick. As I aproch 75lv I'll start adding to Self and Focus. I figure I'll be self-sustaining at that point as I can use items to cover the rest.