Fist de Yuma - September 7, 2004

Great change IBN posted this; "We've decided to go ahead and increase the spawn rate on Aun Ralirea. At the moment I'm not sure whether that change is for September or October, but I'll doublecheck." Best news I've heard in a while. Good Luck for a change I tried to log on this morning, and found the server down. There was an ETA on the board, but that kept getting extended. It soon became apparent that this was not going to be a small problem. Normally I will do a lot of hunting after getting a column out. The relief of having it done and posted you will not believe. It might have been short, but it was finished. I had done a long bike ride Monday morning. It was 1am Tuesday morning, and I was too tired to play. (I get up at 5am and ride from 11 to 16 miles on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.) Instead, I finished off a book I was reading and went to sleep. That turned out to be fortuitous. When the servers did come up, we had a roll back to around midnight. If I had played as normal, all of it would have been lost. There is talk of a reward to compensate for our loss. I hope it is along the lines that some servers will be getting next month. That is a big xp reward. It would mean a lot to some of my players, but not all. I might not even accept the reward for most, but it would really help the tradesmen. Surprise finding I had a surprise finding today. I was checking the mules and found Cliff Bowman has a major strength item installed. That will mean I only need to find a major weapon tinkering item to him, if I want to give him that skill. When I checked the weapon tradesman, I found he is using a helm. As Cliff Bowman has a girth and helm free, installing all needed majors on him is not a problem. There is still the problem of weight and storage. Additionally, I have already spent hundreds of millions on weapon tinkering with Fist Mule Two. In the long run, it will be an xp savings to make Cliff Bowman have both skills, but it will take a while to get him where F2 is now. I'll have to move the last 30 points from Quick and Coordination into Strength to do this. That will mean additional xp into Melee Defense and Missile Defense. My majors all need a lot of both, and lowering the stat points will require me to add to the skills. There is also one driver mule and two pincer turn in players that cannot help Cliff Bowman, but can help Fist Mule two. So I'm still weighting the options. It is nice to know that one obstacle is eliminated. One solution for this is to move the players under Fist Mule two under Deadeye Fist. I don't hunt Deadeye as much as I should, so he needs a leveler. Right now, the only way Deadeye Fist gets xp, is from Tusks and Pincers. At 111 level, the Tusks are worth a bit of change, but moving the drivers from Fist Mule two to Deadeye will be a big help. Really pathetic I was doing Tusks this Wednesday. The last one is the 80+. I can likely do the 100+, but I never bothered to learn that one. It was always packed with macros in the past, though I hear Turbine has cleared it out. I might give it a try with my more powerful melee's next month. When I made my first run through the 80+, I noted a lack of Tuskers near the start. I saw a pile of bodies at the bottom of the first ramp. I figured there was someone ahead of me getting a tusk. Strangely, the rest of the way had the normal amount of tuskers. My next trip had the same thing, pile of tuskers after the first ramp, but no one there. My next player ran down the ramp, just as a player logged in. He started to fight the Tuskers. I figured this had to be a macro. I said "Hi" and he answered "Yo". So I was not sure of this was a macro or not. I said, "You have been here a while, I almost thought you were a macro." He answered, "Yo". Aaa, macro after all. I reported him and finished off getting the tusk. My last player found Mr. "Yo" still macroing in the same spot. He gave me several "Yo"'s but I was not buying it. This time I took a moment to explain exactly how this macro was working with my report. I never got a reply from an +envoy, so I cannot say if he was caught or not. What is pathetic about this guy, other than his naming himself after a bug, is that he is a monarch and close to 200 level. Every stats but mana and stamina is maxed out! The Treestat report I got on him was a year old, so he is likely much higher than that. I myself cannot imagine level hunting this PPL, let alone macroing it. With luck, this is his third strike, and we can get rid of another cheater. IBN makes it official I was hoping this would happen. I'll wait until the last second to use it of course, but my Tradesman will be enjoying this reward. This is going to be in the Rollout Article, but I figured I'd post it here today as well: As we'd previously announced, all characters on Frostfell, Solclaim, Thistledown, and Leafcull will have the opportunity to obtain one free level's worth of experience this month as an apology for a server outage in late July. After yesterday's server outage affecting the other five worlds, we have decided that the free level will be for all characters on all worlds. So each of your characters, on all nine worlds, will have the option of receiving one free level's worth of XP. Adventure week I had a lot of adventures this week. All were places I had never been. My next step is to look up these quests to get more information about them. One was a failure but we still had fun. Blackmire 2 The first adventure started with no warning for me. I was out playing Owanda in the Matron hive. Molcavian messaged me, asking if I wanted to go on a quest. They needed a mage to go with them. The group was, Molcavian (126+ Sword), Fist de Mage (126+ Og Battle Mage), Pethor (122 Sword), Rigyn (108 Archer) and Uil (118 Mage). So while we were powerful, if was not an overwhelming group. I recalled to the mansion and loaded up Fist de Mage. I did a total protection buff, and they made a portal. I'm writing this just short of a week after, so my details will be fuzzy in a few spots. I might also start mixing up the quests I was on, so forgive me if I make errors. We ran around a bit, and the word Dragonsblood was mentioned a time or two. We ended up in a small cave. The members disappeared. It took me a second of searching to find a branch that was selectable. Clicking that put me into a portal. From there we hit a room with a few statues. Someone was waiting for me to catch up. We clicked one statue, and arrived at a long passage filled with something called Ancient Souls. Being in support mode, I did not get a good feel for their attack ability. The few Wars I did used hit for around 300 damage. It took around three hits to kill one. There were a lot of them, so I would not recommend a small party here. There are a bunch of doors blocking the route. Someone pointed out that the doors kept people from just running through the dungeon. I'm not sure if that is a good idea, or if that was Turbines true intent, but it did slow us down a lot. The doors were something I had not seen before. The doors were statues with no visible passage. They would slide aside, and an opening would materialize. It looked cool to my eyes. The doors would not stay open very long, and when they started to dematerialize, you could not get through them. Fortunately, you could get through the second they started to materialize. After a long time of fighting our way past this, we arrived at another statue, which ported us to our next dungeon. We moved to a doorway over a large hall. I was in the back, playing support, so I missed this next part. When I arrived, Pethor was dead. He said he was hit by a lot of spells at once, and had no chance. There were several platforms over the hall, at varied heights. They seemed to go around a corner, but I looked to be sure. I figure this would be a fun little exercise, except for a little twist Turbine put in. There are a bunch of slow moving war spells traveling over the platforms. Even a successful jump left you in an unsafe position. Jumps require careful timing and study. With death charging your way, there was little time for thought, only action. While this might be a great idea for the twitch kids, it did not make this 54-year-old kid very happy. Rigyn recovered Pethor body, and was trying to make the jumps. Uil and I were hitting him with heals. Even then, it was not a sure thing for him. We had hopes that the next part was a party portal thing. If Pethor could get inside the first dungeon, and Rigyn could get to the end, he could portal all of us to our next destination. I'm not sure if that ever worked, but it did not work this time. The others were sure it had worked before. That would be a great idea, if Turbine has not done it already. I'm sure there was one point where we were ported as a group. Letting a group support a single member, and have the group rewarded for his or her success, is a great idea. Getting a member who died back to the group is also a something we would desire. As it was, we lost Pethor at this point. (I would like to see a spell that allows fellow members to be ported back if killed. Make it with permission so it would not be abused. There needs to be a solution when someone dies deep into a quest.) They decided run through at this point. I had no idea what they meant, but was not worried. I had discovered early on that my 360 magic defense was being effective. I was not immune, but resisted more often than not. There was a door directly below us. After we jumped down, one ran off to get the door open. The passage we ran through was centerlined with Tentacles. I had seen these before, and they are nasty. These were very drain happy. There seemed to be four or five in each passage, and a lot of passages to run through. Someone said that the drains were spread out over the fellow, but I did not look to be sure. I was following one member, who overran the statue. We ended up in a dead end, and had to backtrack. That got us to still another dungeon. This dungeon was filled with Burun Ruuk Shamans. There were four passages, but we only had to traverse two before killing the boss monster. That let us hit the last stature, and go to the reward room. I grabbed the bracers, but have no use for them. I'll give them to someone I guess. I also got a Bow, which seemed nice. The mod on the bow is 190, something I had never seen, and the two spells looked nasty. They have nasty names anyway. I was thinking it would make a great VoD bow. I was told later that any AR bow would be better. Why give us a reward that is overshadowed by an average bow today? It is something to hang on the wall I guess. Turbine Reward System or the luck over skill attitude The rewards for the above quest are worthwhile for some, but there was nothing of real use to me. The fellow spells are a good EGO boost, but are no better than level VII spells. Most players I adventure with can toss their own level VII spells, or use a buff bot to get them. I think Turbine needs to make the spells at least slightly stronger than a level VII, if not by more than a handful of points. Give us some reason to really want these spells! Given the long timer between rewards, it would take some time before anyone would be getting a full set anyway. If these spells had even five points better than a VII, the quest would be packed with players, clamoring to get the spells. It would not have a great effect on the game, but would create a must do quest. The weapons are typical of Turbine quest rewards, nice to look at but overshadowed by average tinked loot weapons. Turbine seems to feel luck should be over skill. I agree that a strong party of players could escort a weaker player to the end of this, but a strong player could give a tinked weapon to someone as well. It would a lot easer for me to give a good weapon to someone, than get him or her through a hard quest. Skill should have a preference over luck. (I know that these are givable, but a better weapon could be made no drop.) The worse a hard quest weapon should be is as good as a middle of the road rend or AR/CB/CS. Better might not be so smart, but put it in the middle somewhere. Make a great loot weapon worth searching for, while not making these quest weapons useless. (To answer one comment I got on the Turbine board, by skill I mean doing quests. I feel twitch skills should have no place in a role-playing game. Thinking should be the most prevalent skill needed.) Building ties There are many jobs a monarch must do. I feel that one of the keys is building relationships with other allegiances. Of course, this is generally one of the better parts of the job, because you get to meet and adventure with new people. I had a trade going with someone in Merryjuanita allegiance. He had their monarch take over the details. I ended up having Merryjuanita on my friends list for a while. The trade never went down, for one reason or another, but I never bothered to remove her name from my friends list. I ended up seeing her name a lot when I logged in. So I decided to say "Hi" and get to know this monarch. We talked a while, and I was invited to join them on a quest. The timing did not fit, so I never had a chance to join them that day. A few days later, she contacted me about a quest they were going on. When the time came to go on the quest, they had a little problem. They had a few people with bodies spread out over Caul. Of course, I quickly volunteered to help them out. I don't have a good CB/CS cold weapon yet. It is on my list of things to do. The big reason was an abundance of cold salvage I got for a while. I ate up all my cold weapons. It was before CB/CS were made more useful, and before Caul became such a good hunting spot. So I have lots of salvage but no weapons. This is the exact opposite of my normal problem. Fortunately, Fist has the Caul recall spell. He got it while making a column for the VN board with Paraduck. That column is still up in archives, if you want to check it out. It took a bit of time, but everyone arrived. Caul is not a place where you can just go out and clear/loot when you have a death. Even the most powerful can die quickly there. We slowly cleared it out and advanced to the bodies. There was a lack of mages, so my using a Cold Rend was not such a bad idea. Our group consisted of; Merryjuanita (126 Archer), Falcon Alanson (126), Oxymoron (102), Jasmin' (119), Fist de Yuma (126 UA), and Mykall Mage (91). While I almost always hit, having close to maxed out skills for UA, with lots of majors, I seldom got a kill. When I was there with Fist de Yuma Jr, whom uses sword, I got many kills. Of course the mages were de-buffing for me. Still, while I like UA many times, its attack power leaves something to be desired. From there we were off on the quest. I have heard of a dungeon that was something like the subway. This was the first time I have used it. While being attacked by a handful of Shadows at the start was a pain, a short cut to Stonehold is well worth that. After the adventure, I got a tie to the new subway. From Stonehold we ran a bit. It did not take long before we hit the Renegade Stronghold. The first thing I noticed was this looked like the Citadel. Someone made that point, but they were told it was just the same layout. We headed straight, and followed the path to the end. While it was the same layout as the Citadel, the monsters were very different. It would have been funny to see us fighting in the Citadel with these monsters in it an age ago. In addition to the high level Lugies, we also found Tommies. Fist's magic defense is enough that they did not bother him, but I would not recommend a weak party take this on. The group changed for this. Now we had; Fist de Yuma (126 UA), Merryjuanita (126 Archer), Jasmin' (119), Emma Mist (84), Jinea (59) and Mykall X-Bow (89). After getting a key from a Lugie, we recalled back to the start. Then we took the left path and headed to the old jumping room. It had been years since I was in the Citadel, and never with a player this strong. I decided to jump to the top of the block and check it out. To my surprise, they had a table and furniture up there. I have a feeling I would not find that in the Citadel, but you never know. After jumping down, we took a passageway underneath the block. This was about the only change I noted from the Citadel's layout. From there we hit a big room that needed clearing. Everyone lined up at a chest. The chest would toss a nice war blast when you opened it. Not enough damage to hurt much, but I can see it preventing a low level from opening it. The reward was a shirt called "Coarse Hide Shirt", and 100 mana potions. The shirt is mostly worthless, but I'll find something to do with the mana potions. I was mainly there for support anyway. The adventure was fun and not too long. If you need mana potions that are a little better than the ones we can manufacture (adds 125 mana), then this is a good little quest to go on. Blackmire Adventure This adventure was one of the first attempts by Ivan Slpoheklmnuov to organize and lead. He had set it up for last week, but we had to push it back to this week. We had the power to do this quest with ease, but needed an experienced guide. Ivan had that guide lined up, but he failed to show. Ivan was a little ticked, but I pointed out that real life is more important, and we did not know why he missed logging on. You have to accept that not everyone can play a game all the time, or even on time. I can also understand Ivan's point, as he was really counting on him being there. So we were down to two players who had done the quest but once. How well they could lead the quest would depend on their memory. Some players can lead a complicated quest after only one run, but they are a lot better than me. We started off by running from the mansion. The start is a little ways from there. We had, Fist de Mage (126 Og Battle Mage), Hot Shot (126 Xbow), Pethor (123), Soul Riper (126 Mage), Molcavian (126 Sword), and Rigryn (109). I had a tie that gave me a small lead in getting there. I had no idea what to expect, but the run was over some very weak stuff. I was not in any way prepared for the battle I got involved in. When I arrived, I found myself surrounded by sundry monsters. They were not doing a lot of damage, but were draining my stamina at a rapid rate. I had to heal a few times but needed several big spells to keep stamina up. I was using ring spells, and killing what seemed like hundreds, but they kept coming. It was becoming an embarrassment for me. If I died against these, I would never live it down. While not really close to dying, I was not safe either. Finally the others arrived, and cleared a path for me. That got us to a cave. There was a branch that got ported us into the dungeon. We all ran up a passageway to grab a bloodstone. That would get us into the next part. Only one person needed to grab the stone, but we did not know that. We got to a center passage, and Ivan asked the mages to follow him. He warned us of a massive debuff, which was disconcerting, to say the least. I was at half my normal health. In other words, if you had 300 health before this de-buff, you had 150 after. We also started moving through passages with war spells criss crossing from all directions. When at half health, these were a real threat. One trick to avoid the spells was to sit down and let them pass over you. I found that my hot key mapping had overwritten that command. This was the first time I had ever needed to sit when on a quest. We kept Ivan healed and ran to the center room. He asked for just one mage to follow him, so I joined the rest by the statue. A few second later, Ivan died. We encouraged Ivan to make the run to the first temple. Many were convinced that we could keep going, and teleport Ivan with us, but only if he was in that dungeon. It seems that Ivan has a DI problem. All his armor dropped! I could see the moral of our group was not all that great from the very beginning. The lack of an experienced leader, and Ivan dying, was having a big effect. With Ivan unable to get back at all, and the quest more to help Ivan out than anything else, we decided to call it. (See my Turbine reward system rant.) It was sad that we had a failed quest. I did learn enough about it that I can understand a walk through. I'll try to join a team going through it sometime, so I can learn the quest. This is the second time I have come across this new problem. The criss crossing spells are not hard to avoid, but I really dislike them. I hope we will not be seeing them in all the new quests. I would rather fight some hard monster than slide around spells. Exploit? There is some trick I have seen people use, that was more a showoff move than useful. This is where someone sits or lies down, and does something that allows then to slide around. I have a feeling it is hitting two or thee keys it at the same time. I never asked how they did it, because such does not appeal to me. Suddenly, this trick has a very big use. The new slow moving spells I ran across in two quests, can be avoided of you're sitting down. I'm going to have to unmap that key so I can take advantage of that. While sitting down to avoid the spells sees legitimate, being able to move while seated does not. I did not see anyone doing this, but I recognized how useful this trick can be now. I will also have to ask Turbine if this sliding trick is a feature or an exploit. If a feature, I'll learn how to do it, while cursing Turbine under my breath for making me do it. If it is an exploit, I'll not bother to learn it. I guess my stand on cheating is a bit strange to some, but that is how I feel. It will not bother me if others do it, as it is their business. It is not like macros, where others and the game are hurt by it. SIK Turn in Hot Shot said he had a lot of SIKs, and wanted to turn them in. There is a dungeon that gives out rewards for them. The rewards vary from lame to outstanding. Ivan had done this quest a while back, and died. I should have let that be my warning. Instead, I was very overconfident. I looked up the quest on Maggies, and it did not look hard. In fact, it looked darn right easy. We ported to the island and ran to the coodi of the dungeon. Humm, no dungeon. I found a body there. Oops, I misread the walkthrough. This was part of the Painbringer. I had not intended to do that part. Meanwhile, Rigryn was headed to the dungeon. We got the coodi from him, and started off, in the wrong direction. I had misread the coodi, and was moving east. We were very close to the dungeon at that point, but we did not know it. After a little running, I realized my error. We tried to backtrack, but could not find the crossing. I finally decided it would be best if we just ported back to Tusker town, and run from there. So we finally got to the dungeon, well behind Rigryn. The map I got from AC Maps made this look like a short run. We started down a ramp, with a handful of the human monsters in our way. With my Magic Defense (359) I was sure I need only walk up and kill them. Big surprise! Not only could they land on me, but I never resisted, even once! I was blasted to hell and back before I knew it. I ran back up the ramp with 21 out of 309 hit points. A few attacked me from the other side of the ramp, but I had sucked an elixir and healed by then. I quickly buffed up an Acid and Slashing weapon (I had only buffed up a Fire) so I could properly fight. We advanced along a long set of passages. I'm glad we had Rigryn with us, as my map was useless. I knew there was something wrong when Rigryn had us going in the opposite direction my map showed, at the first passage. I was never in danger after the almost disaster, but it was some hard fighting. The Tuskers could hit me. That was not so good, as my armor is mostly for Majors, and not all that thick. I would target the Humans first, as they were the ones who really hurt. Rigryn had us loot one type of Tuskers, looking for a key. That was worth 3 million XP. We finally came to a big room, with a large gray Monkey called the Painbringer in it. It was well named, because my buffed 500 Melee Defense, plus weapon bonus, was not enough to keep it from hitting me. As long as I had my shield set, it did not do too much damage. An invisible wall led to another big room. This had hard hitting Tuskers and a handful of the Humans. A smaller room had the NPC who took the Keys. Rigryn had a handful of keys and I had around 30. Hot Shot had over 100, so we had a few spawns to fight. While Hot Shot turned in keys, I would Imperil and Rigryn shot them full of holes. I made sure to target the Humans first. The trip was worth it overall. I got two sings, four pyreal peas, six robes, and three recall gems. I quickly called Ivan to pick up the robes and gems. He was sorely in need of DI's. I'll start collecting SIK's again. With enough of them, it is worth a trip. Of course it goes without saying, you need to bring a lot of power if you go. Guest Writer: Molcavian The problems with "Power leveling" and how to avoid them. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Molcavian. I joined MT server and CDY several months ago as a server transfer from SC. I have written a few guest articles. The other week I hit lvl 126. Ok, so why am I telling you this? Well back in Fists column dated June 22, 2004 he posted the following statement : "Molcavian joined us a few months ago. Since then he had gone from mid 30's to 107. I have seen some fast levelers before, but he is the best I have ever seen. I just hope he does not burn out with it. I have always been an advocate of slow and steady. I would rather have fun than level. Still, Molcavian seems to be having fun while he levels, so burn out might not be a problem." It was a very astute statement. It got me thinking, yes he is very right, I do power level considerably. Fist is not the first person in my online gaming life to have passed comment on it, yet at the same time I have not burnt out yet. So I figured I would write what little insight I have into the way I play this (and indeed many other MMOPG's) and how I personally avoid the problems often associated with power leveling. Well firstly, sorry to upset anyone here, but I don't have any magic formula for you like 4 hr of hunting + 2 hr of questing + 1 hr of trading = happy playing. Everyone's style is different, my patron and good real life friend Pethor, recently told me I played too much. We had a little conversation, and he mentioned that most of the time when he plays, he just messes about chatting to people. He is hanging around the mansion and performing trades etc, and that dungeon crawling really bores him. This is fine, if that is how you enjoy the game. Personally, if that were all I did during a session, I would feel I had wasted it. Don't get me wrong, I love the social aspect of AC, questing, leading quests, chatting to people is what keeps me coming back month after month, but what drives me is setting lofty goals, and then plowing at them like a jet plane. The very simple thing for me is I get a kick out of power leveling. Many non-power levelers don't get that. They assume that if someone is spending 4 hours plus straight in, say the Matron Hive, just killing bugs buff cycle after buff cycle, that it must be boring. Really for me it isn't! Again, I'm not saying many power levelers are the same. It is quite possible that many are board to death by power leveling, and simply do it for other goals. I fear these are the people that burn out. In my opinion, if you want to power level a bit, that's great. If you want to do it a lot, you must really enjoy it. If you don't, you will find yourself losing perspective. Although in the short term it might feel great, you will hit a wall, and smash right down. I've seen people plough at leveling like a madmen for weeks on end, you chat to them and they sound exhilarated, they couldn't be happier. They will tell you how much xp they have got that day, and what their new base skills are at. They aren't really boasting, most of the time they are just really happy and proud of how quick they are advancing. Then boom, you log in one day and don't see them. They have hit the wall and have stopped playing. I have a few key rules I try to go by when playing AC, which helps me keep me AC power levering play style in check, and prevents me from burning out. 1) Set lofty goals : I ALWAYS have goals, both skill wise and general. Those of you who read my article on my Empyrean Weapon Set a while back will remember my self-made up concept of mini-epic quests. I won't go into that again here, but I currently have 2 mini-epic quests running, as well as a newly calculated set of skill and stat goals. These things keep me focused. I'm also make new goals, new targets, as soon as I reach one. I don't stop, I re-evaluate and set more. This keeps me active, keeps me plowing away and above all it really keeps me happy. 2) Quests : I try to do as many quests as I can, both self run and clan run. To me, this is a really good way to break up the sameness of power leveling. If you're a serious power leveler, like me, quests are only a short distraction at most from your long-term goals, or epic-quest targets. Even the biggest quests take just a few hours to complete. Many power levelers turn down going on quests because they feel it will get in the way of their xp / hour ratio. I won't do that, a quest is a small break, and for me, always lots of fun. 3) Group hunts : I only tend to power level when my close friends don't want to go for a group hunt. If Uil sends me a tell asking if I would like to take a trip to VoD for an hour or so, I go. With the amount of time I play, it's only a small time. Besides, a nice friendly focused group is not only fun and a great chance to socialize with friends, but is also very good xp! There it is really. Now I wouldn't be truthful here if I said I had stuck to these rules 100% of the time. I can recall occasions where I have broken all 3 rules. Someone on /a asking if anyone wants to go do Bobo quest, and I quietly sit there in my dungeon just hunting away. It's not that I'm being rude, I just don't always feel like jumping on every spur of the moment quest or hunt offer that comes along. That said those are the exceptions rather than the rule. On the whole, I power lever like mad when I'm on my own, and go questing and hunting with friends when the opportunity and time arises. By keeping myself focused on what is fun for me, and not losing sight of my friends, or the needs and feelings of other and the community I play in, I do just fine. To date, I have not really suffered from the classic burnout period associated with many hard-core power levelers. To quote Fist from above one more time "I would rather have fun than level. Still, Molcavian seems to be having fun while he levels...", and really at the end of the day that is what is most important. All I would say in closing is try to think big, look ahead, see the warning signs, and don't sacrifice long-term fun for short term goals! Get this column sent directly to you each week. Any donation will do. https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=csd2@adelphia.net - Fist de Yuma