November 23, 2004 This and That With Rosa gone for a week, I got to do some things I don’t ordinary get to do. I smoked a few cigars, drank a little beer and stayed up later than normal. While that was fun, my big project was to get my den cleaned. It is not totally done, but the major work is out of the way. As a side benefit, I got a workbench put in. That got me motivated to fix my old computer. My old computer stopped working one day, about two years ago. The fans would start, and then it shut down. I brought a new motherboard from Frys. Without a workbench, and with a new computer set up, I did not feel a rush to start working on it. After two years, I decided it was time to get on the stick. First I turned it on to see if there was something odd that fixed itself. It did turn on for a few seconds. Then a chip exploded, so there was no need to explore that route any more. To my great surprise, installing the new motherboard was almost easy. The hardest part was fitting the fan over the CPU, and that was not that hard. Because of the way the things are laid out, I had to put the fan on after installing the motherboard. There was no room to put the motherboard in while the fan was installed. I plugged in the cables and wires, and it fired up on the first try. Unfortunately, my good luck ended there. It would take a while to find the IDE devices, and then go to a blank screen with the curser blinking in the upper left corner. I figured I would have to reinstall Windows XP Pro. I was hoping that I could get it to boot enough so I could get the product ID first. As it was, I could not even get it to boot the CD. After hours of work, and some advice from an Internet tech support group, I was getting nowhere. I decided to take apart my old Dell and use that hard drive. It worked! So when the motherboard fried, it took the hard drive with it. That hard drive has a two-gig storage capacity, not even close to what you need today. Heck, I had to spend time deleting stuff, just to get Windows XP Pro to try an install. It wants a gig free just to start. So I’m going to pick up a new hard drive from BestBuy tomorrow. I figure I’ll grab a network card and a new KVT while I’m at it. That will about break my budget for the next six months, but it will get the computer working. Having two full speed computers and one slow computer online, will make things smoother. What I don’t want to do is pay for another copy of Windows. I have paid for four copies and feel it is unfair to force me to get another. For some reason, the product ID I have will not work. There must be three more ID numbers floating around my Den, but I have not had any luck finding them. I’m hoping it was some glitch with the old hard drive that prevented it from working. If not, I expect to be arguing with the Microsoft tech support for hours in end, again. Fighting frame rates It has been a while since I fought in a crowded spot, where lots of spells are flying. The last time I had a big drop in frame rate was in EQII. It was a big battle, near a lot of graphics eating items. I was thinking how glad I was not to be seeing that in AC. Stupid me. While getting ready for a quest with William the Bat’s group, he got a message about a disaster. It seemed that a group of players went into the Orphanage and died. Several attempts to recover the bodies were met with more disaster. So the quest was delayed while we went off to help. We ran through the Bore and headed to the coordinates. There was a group standing outside, which looked relieved to see us. One said, “Here comes the Calvary.” I was using Fist de Yuma Jr for this. Jr is a hybrid Life/Sword. This means that, for his level, he is weak in both Life and Sword skills. His health, while not low, is lower that most his level. He is better solo, as much of his XP is put into a skill he will not use in a group. With time, and lots of XP, he will be great, but for now he is behind the curve. As we landed inside the dungeon, we were attacked from all sides. The monsters were all Caul types. This means, big level VII de-buffs and War spells, combined with hard-hitting melee power and substantial hit points. None of these things scare me in themselves. If you combine that with a steady lowering of the frame rate, it becomes a nightmare. Strobe lights might be before most of my readers’ times, but that is the only real life example I can think of. What made things worse, was my mouse was hard to position. I would take damage, from who knows what, and would be almost dead in seconds. I discovered that blue healing kits are a godsend. I was amazed when I would land heals when far down the damage tree. I’ve been using treated kits for many years, but I’m now going to be using the blue kits on all my melees. It is good timing, because I have five or six un-caved sings sitting on Fist’s Armorer. You can trade them for blue kits in Tommy town. This is the same guy you turn in Olthoi claws and Vapor hearts to. While standing in the center, I had no clue about the combat actions around me. I was swinging at stuff, and healing when I needed to. I used a hot key to pick a target, as I could barely see them, let alone have the ability to pick one with the mouse. The flicking mess made it impossible to do anything else. I decided to try and hit a side passage. I had hoped that I would get a better idea as to what I was fighting that way. I ran around a passage, and found that three things were chasing me. I would not want to fight two of the, let alone three. Even with one, I want preparation time, if not with mage support. Jr is more an outside fighter, where he has time to imperil and vuln. After seeing how futile this battle was, I tried to run around a bit, with the hopes of breaking contact. I ended up doing that, and found a spot next to someone. The frame rate was still bad, so I was keeping a close watch on my health. I would heal any damage, no matter how low. It did not help. I saw my health drop to 120, and I was dead before I could even hit the hot keys. I ran back, but was hesitant to jump back in. So far I was only down DI’s. Unless things changed, I would likely die before I could recover the first body. I said the heck with it, and jumped back in. Fortunately, William and company had whittled the monsters down enough that my computer could handle it. I recovered, but I don’t think I’ll be going back. The next time I had this problem also involved the William allegiance. I was about to start writing the column on Sunday, but decided to check the board first. There was a message about a lot of bodies in Caul. I logged in Fist’s Armorer to give them a hand. I’m figuring that FA will be my best VoD/Caul player. He is a grief BM with a 100-endurance start. My hope is that his high health and magic defense will overcome the danger of such hunting. I cannot say if it will work later, but it is not working now. FA just hit 126, so there is a lot of room for growth. His magic defense is around 365 and health around 305. Endurance is cheap and Magic Defense is around 80 million a point. I had no trouble finding them. I joined in trying to clear the land around the bodies. Within seconds of starting the fight, my frame rate started its steady drop. This is even more frustrating with FA, because he cannot heal with a hot key. With the mouse being a problem, there was no way I could heal quickly. I ended up having the mouse curser hover over the heal spell, while I used hot keys to fight. There were several times when my health dropped, but I had to wait for a war spell to fire before I could click heal. I lucked out and did not take any more war spells before I could heal, but it was a close thing. Then someone died, and things started getting hard. I backed up to the ridge, with the thought that I could recover there a lot better than in the center. It was a good plan, because I got taken out by three of them, shortly after. Three wars at the same time, will take out most players. For some reason I had trouble getting back. I was running directly north, when I needed to run northeast. Thankfully, MS ported back to the start and showed me what I was doing wrong. I recovered my body and re-joined the fray. I was told that most of the bodies were recovered. I think William had one there, but that was it. With the bad frame rate, I was just hanging on to life. It was at about this point when I got some attacks that brought me close to death. I escaped with a tusker island gem. I was told that William would not have any trouble recovering from that location, so I logged off for dinner. I’m hoping there is a solution to this problem. Will a faster graphic card help? Do I need a more powerful computer? My current card is a Geforce FX 5900 and 128 memory. If you have an answer, drop me a note. (Note, I saw that the water in my water-cooled system was getting low. I filled it today. It could be that it was getting overheated, and the system slowed. I’ll test it soon and report back.) Playing while tired One thing many of us will do is play when we should be sleeping. Circumstances keep us going, when common sense tells us it is time to rest. Add in a real life event, like a 16-mile mountain bike ride, and you add physical exhaustion to the mental. I had been playing hard that day. I had a few quests under my belt and was getting tired. I got a call from William the Bat about the noble weapon quest. I was game, so I met them in Tou-Tou with Fist de Yuma Jr. I figured a noble sword would be useful. The above body recovery interrupted that for a while. We got everyone back together after that, but now I was really tired. There is nothing more exhausting that a stressful body recovery. William the Bat really had this quest well prepared. He had people ready with portals. He had the pre stuff out of the way. All we had to do was follow instructions and fight. About the only criticism I could give was not explaining things to the group. This led to some misunderstandings, and a major mistake on my part. First we got a portal to the Lugie fortress. William gave us a note to give to the NPC. Then another player created a portal. That took us to a housing complex, close to the dungeon. We ran to a big fort. After clearing the outside guards, we started pounding on a door. At first I thought they were fighting monsters on the other side of the door, but it was the door itself they were fighting. After that fell, we cleared the courtyard. We had a lot of power, so there was not a lot of danger. We followed William up a passage, and got into the dungeon. Here I got my first surprise. The floor gave out a lot of damage. There was no warning about this, so I stopped in the wrong spot. I did not come close to dieing or anything, but it was a surprise. After we cleared, William told us to check the bodies for something that will improve the noble weapons. What he did not say, was that we could do this later, and this was the worse place to search for it. What it did was create the impression that we needed to get this item before we left the dungeon. William came back to get those of us who were waiting for another spawn. We moved on, but still thought we had to get this item, there, today. So we were moving slow, checking all the bodies, and getting irked that we were not finding it. I could see that William was getting irritated with us. It took a while before he understood what our problem was, and explained that we could get the items at other, safer, spots. We finally got to a ramp with a large bunch of monsters. The floor was doing a lot of damage, so we had to draw them up the ramp. Trying to fight on that floor is not smart, and we are not dumb. Finally one with a strange name came up the ramp. I started beating on it, without much effect. At last, we beat it down, and Xan got the kill. From that body we all got an item. They made another portal to the Lugie fortress and were done with the combat parts. We give the items to the NPC and got a key and a gem. Popping the gem put us in a dungeon. I saw a chest, two in fact. People were lined up at one chest, so I went to the other. Remember, I’m very tired at this point. I’ve been playing for a long time, and had that bike ride. All I wanted to do was get this over with, and take a rest. As I grabbed the key, something in the back of my mind said, “don’t do this, don’t do this.” My main mind said, get this over with and log off, I’m tired. So I opened the chest. The first thing I saw was a noble staff. Then I looked above the chest, and saw a staff picture above the chest. Looking around, I saw that there was a weapon above the other chests. What I should have done was find the sword chest. That was likely what the line was about. Well, no use kicking myself. I messed up. I had high hopes that I would have a bunch of adventures during the week, and I could forget about ever writing about this mess up. That did not happen. Heck, I would have likely written it anyway, but I would like to have an option. (g) If you enjoyed the column, and would like to add to my emergency fund, here is a link.   - Fist de Yuma

November 16, 2004 Coming soon It has long been a problem in AC that the major leveling spots were best served by mages. A melee could go along, but for the most part, they were not needed. There have even been mage only fellows. I have seen this many times. Then Turbine made something that is more for melees than mages. This is the Olthoi dungeons. I don’t know about other places, like the Olthoi armor dungeons, but the Matron would be better off with no mages at all. I say this because of a few plug in’s information. You can issue a command in the fellow that gives you information on how people are doing. One bit of data is the numbers of kills. The mages claim to be effective killers, loudly and with indignation I might add. My experience shows that a mage is very ineffective. My mages can barely stay alive, let alone kill as much as a good melee or archer. They claim that I’m just a noob who does not know how to fight. And yet, when I issue a report command, the mages will have from one half to one third the kills of anyone else. In fact, were it not for the melee’s keeping the dungeon nearly of Olthoi clear, that number would be far less, as they would be in constant body recovery. Still, we have to tolerate their presences, just like they tolerated the melees’ presences in Caul. Of course, you can have many full fellows in Caul, and it only takes six players to max out the Matron. That is my biggest complaint. We have melees waiting in line, while and ineffective mages take up the slots. Everyone suffers. What we really need is a much bigger Matron, or a lot more of them. (I suggested tripling the spawn rate. That would be fun.) If there were more room in the dungeons, this conflict would be moot. If the melees did not want to help the mages level, they could go to another place. At this time, I spend much of my time in the Matron looking for something to kill. It is more than boring, and lowers the loot, xp, and fun. It is no wonder that tempers get short and EGO’s clash. I think that Turbine is aware of this. The feedback I’m getting is they are going to increase the number of melee leveling places. They are also working on a fix for our lack of imperil ability. This is great news. I hope this gets in before the expansion, as it is really needed now. I don’t like conflict, but I’m a magnet for it. Being hot tempered and ready to speak my mind, is not always conducive to a peaceful fellow. For that reason, I find myself not talking at all many times, which is also not very fun. I understand that Turbine want so go slow, and get it right. I’ll be patient, but, if your listening Turbine, the sooner the better! Expansion I pointed out last week that cheaters seem to be the target of the expansion. They will get the rewards much easier than the players. This left a bad impression in some, that I need to fix. The expansion is for everyone! While the focus has been on the high-level players, for discussion, there is a lot of stuff for everyone. Remember, this is going to be Turbines big push to put AC back in the main stream. Think about it for a second. Why would Turbine want to focus the expansion on players who already play AC? These players are not going anywhere. Turbine is putting this high level stuff in, because it is needed, but it is not the real focus. The real focus will be on things the new players will want to see. We will be getting a lot of new players after the expansion. Those players will want places to go. If they find a full matron, with waiting lines for the fellow, and nothing to kill, we will not be keeping them. Turbine knows this as well as we do. There are a lot of changes coming. These changes will help us all, especially lower and mid-level players. So, while we have had major debates on the high level stuff, it is not the end all with the expansion. It is likely not even the major focus. The high-levels are here, and not going anywhere. If they got nothing but a graphic upgrade in this expansion, they would be happy. No, Turbine has to focus on the lower and middle player, as that affects the new players; the ones Turbine need to attract and hold on to. New Players and the success of AC That brings me to my second point. We need to prepare for these new players. This does not mean recruiting them into your allegiance or giving them stuff. It means befriending them. It means teaching them. It means helping with information and advice. What will hurt AC more than anything is bad mouthing Turbine because of little disagreements. Be positive! Be helpful. Be ready to call a +envoy when some moron starts griefing a new player. Be ready to step in when you see some scammer ready to steal a new players items. Be ready to spend the time to improve AC as a whole. Try not to put them on a power leveling track. AC has a lot to offer. If all they see is leveling, their fun level will suffer, and we will lose them. Sure, your new vassal will feed you a lot of xp, in the short run, but you will be better off looking long term. Turbine will do their job. It will not be perfect. It will not please everyone. There will be flaws and disagreements. Understand that up front. Our job will be to work around the bad, while praising the good. It will be our job to welcome the new players, and make their gaming experience as fun as possible. People in the game are key. I have seen this first hand. EQII had hard-core players. WoW, had less experienced players. While I felt that WoW had a better system, I felt that EQII had better people. The people in the game can make the game feel better, and be more fun. While I like WoW, I liked it despite the people. While we will not have the graphics of either, we have the best combat and skill system. The key to making AC successful will be the current AC players. If we do it right, AC will be among the best. If we don’t, AC will slide into a small niche. World of Warcraft I saw that they opened up WoW for beta testing this week. I tried to get on to download it, but the download source was having big problems. It seems they underestimate their ability to handle the load. I should have been able to get on a waiting list, but that was not working. It was about twelve hours later that I was able to get in line for a download. That was the beginning of my ordeal. I got the download started and went on a bike ride. It was over after twenty miles, but I felt great, and went another six. When I got back, it was still downloading, but it was close. After another few hours, I had it ready to install. After installing I ran the program. I understood that there would be updates, so I was ready to do a little waiting. Now, I’m not sure if this was my fault, or a bug, but it started to do a very long download. It seemed to be downloading the entire client again! As there were several installs afterwards, I’m thinking this was their intent, but I don’t know if I really needed to do that download or not. The problem was the speed of this download. The software complained about a firewall, but I had turned that off, and every other piece of protection I had, so there would not be any problems. For some reason, they were uploading as much as downloading. Even though it was transferring at a very slow speed, it ate up all my bandwidth. The main computer was running very slow, but even my other computers could barely use the Internet. This download took twenty-nine hours! I hope they fix whatever bug they had, or patches will be a big problem with this game. That gave me time to read about the game. I could not do anything else, as I was not about to be surfing the web without my protections in place. Heck, even turning off my pop up blocker makes the Internet unusable. After a lot of study, I decided the player type that matched me best is a Paladin. It is good at combat, but not as good as a warrior. It can provide support, but not as good as a Priest. The ability to heal in combat made it ideal for my fighting style. The game looks great. The graphics are as good or better than EQII. The towns are alive with NPC’s. The interaction between the NPC’s and players I place between EQII and AC. EQII does a better job because it is very vocal. WoW is more text based, but adds more speech than AC. Watching a lady lead a romping group of children down the street is simply amazing. There are a lot of little touches like this that make the game seem alive, even if there were no players logged on. WoW NPC’s speech takes up half the screen with text. It is a far better view than using the text box, like AC. It also gives you options. An NPC might send you on multiple quests. You need an option for picking which quest you’re talking about with him or her. Like EQII, you do a lot of running in this game. There are short cuts, but takes some time to have them available, and they cost. While the view was nice, I got really bored with the running. Questing is much like EQII, and a lot different that AC. We are used to obscure hints and puzzles to start off a quest. Both WoW and EQII are more direct. Go here and do this is more the norm. There may be more advanced, AC type questing, on both games, but I never heard of any. I only played for a few days, and it is beta, so I expect that the more advanced quests will be there. Stuff is very important in WoW. Weapons and Armor are very important. WoW works much different than AC. For one, armor is restricted by class. No more mages running around in plate armor. You have a lot of different slots to place armor. Unlike AC, you are not covering a body part, but adding to your overall armor. So, a chest armor piece of ten gives you ten al. If you add a some fifteen al bracers, you now have a armor class of twenty-five. So every item is important. Weapons are different as well. You have set skills, based on your class. I started with a Mace skill. To get another one, you pay for it with cash, and I think skill points. I’m not totally sure if there is a limitation to the number of weapons you can use, or if it just the class restrictions. There are trainers scattered about the towns that can sell you the skills. The weapons and armor are limited by class and level. I have mace and sword right now. I can get polearm at a higher level. I think there are other weapons I can get, but I’ll need to find a different trainer. You must also meet requirements to use weapons. The better ones require a higher level. Unlike AC, it is level based, not skill based. In EQII, I had a lot of stuff I could not use. I found less of that in WoW, but almost ever vendor had items that were unusable to me. You can also pay for other skills. These might be combat moves for a fighter, or spells for a mage. I started with something that added to my armor protection, and another one that added a small amount of damage to each hit. That, along with a heal spell, is all I have. I have used my points to add to the amount I heal, and improved my protection. Everything else I used to overcome a problem I have with my fighting style. Your skills have a cap. When you level, that cap will increase by an amount. You will gain points towards that cap as you use the skills. Generally it only took a few fights to reach the cap. This is added automatically. You just see a report that the skill increased. I’ll go more into combat more later. The skill I’m focusing on prevents spell interruption. If you are hit while casting a spell, it will force you to start over, or partly over. My heal spell takes 2.5 seconds to land. If I’m hit, that time is extended. The skill I’m working on will give you a percentage chance of that avoiding the interruption. I’m at 52% now, and will keep focusing on that for as long as the will let me. It will eventually cap at 70%. When I go into combat more, you’ll see why I need this. Your stuff will also wear out, so you must go to a vendor and have it repaired on a regular bases. Fortunately, there is a repair all button, so this was not a pain. It is mostly a money sink. Housing might be a part of WoW, but I never saw it. I’m guessing that there won’t be any, but I have no idea one way or another. Lets face it folks, AC spoiled us with storage. EQII storage was very small. WoW is better but AC has more than both combined. In WoW, you start out with a bag that stores 16 items. It does not take much to fill it up. There are five slots for bags. At first, we had to beg someone to make us a bag. I had a nice lady make me four. Each bag held six items, for an added storage of 24 slots. I needed to supply the parts and some cash to her for the service. I saw bags you could buy the next day, but they were very high priced. An eight slot bag cost 25 silver. That is many hours of hunting. I also found a six bag as loot once. There is also a bank. This has much more room than EQII’s bank did. I’m assuming that all my players can access this bank, but I have not tested this yet. I only have made one player, and will likely not make another. Money does not take up space. You see how much you have at the bottom of the screen. If you gain some cash, it will show you the total. There is no breakdown with coins. If you have enough copper to make a silver, it will make it for you automatically. So you will never have more than 99 of any coin type. Trading is simple. You cannot drop items or give something to someone. You must use the trade window for any transfer. If you are forced to clear pack room, you will have to just destroy whatever you don’t want, unless you can find a vendor to sell it to. When trading cash, you input the number and type of coins you are giving. I saw three coin types, copper, silver and gold. There might be more, but money is so rare that this is likely all they will need. Each coin is worth one hundred of the lower coin. Food and drink seems to only effect after action. It will help recover heath and mana. This is in the middle of AC and EQII. In AC, you can use food in battle. In EQ, you must use food and drink, even when not in battle. In WoW, you cannot use food or drinks in battle, but you are never forced to use them. Travel in WoW starts a lot like EQII. You run everywhere. You are also given an item what will allow you to teleport to a set location. Like EQII, this can only be used once an hour, real time. There are zones in WoW, but you don’t really notice them. You travel seamlessly between them. There is no stop and load. About all you notices is the map changes. You will also explore in WoW a lot. The map is blank at the start, and fills in as you discover things. You are also rewarded with XP for discoveries. Later on you will come across something that adds to the “cool” factor, this is flying. When I moved do a different zone, I was told to go back to the other one to pick up some supplies. I’ll go into questing in more detail later. I was told to see the Griffin master, to get a ride to the city in the next zone. For a fee, you can ride this big bird to a set spot in another zone. You have to discover each Griffin master location before you can fly there. While this definitely added to the, “Cool” factor, that will get old quickly. In the end, it is just a way to travel between zones, and a money sink. It is not all that fast, so I can see this moving from “Cool” to boring, very quickly. Quests were much better than EQII, in my mind. They were better explained, for the most part. I only ran into one quest that left something out. It is beta after all. That was when I was told to find someone in a big town, with no hint as to where he would be. Someone else did a general call for help, and someone else told us what part of town to look in. That was enough for me. (Not the other guy, who wanted his hand held.) Some of the quests are easy to solo. Go gather wood, only required you to be able to fight wolves to clear the path to the woodpiles. Go kill a set number of monsters was balanced between solo friendly and group friendly. Sometimes the monsters were easy to find alone. Others times they grouped and you needed help to clear them. One quest had a guard’s body in the middle of a monster town, and I needed a lot of help before I could get to it. There was very few FedEx type of quests. All the quests seemed to add to the enjoyment of the game. So far, I have not run into any, “Impossible” or “Game stopper” quests. I’m doing a set of quests as part of being a paladin right now, but I don’t know if I am forced to do them or not. In any case they are easy, or fun, so far. I would hate to see a stopper here, like I found in EQII, but I think that is unlikely. (Finished the quests, and got a resurrection spell reward for doing so.) Don’t get me wrong, some are very hard and require a lot of teamwork to accomplish. Some seem to be required, but I don’t know the punishment for not completing them. Most likely the punishment is just not getting the reward. It is likely that I can ignore them, and just play into I’m powerful enough to do them. Rewards for the quests are Items, XP and Cash. The xp can be very good. The cash is always welcome, and the Items can improve you, or be sold for cash. I found that doing the quests helped me advance more than just hunting. Death is every forgiving. It just cost time and money. There is a graveyard in each zone, about in the center. When you die, you are a ghost. You must travel to your body. There is an indicator on the radar that points to your body, and you cannot be attacked while you’re a ghost. I found that you can use this to explore if you want to. When you are close to your body, you get a button asking if you want to recover it. I found I needed to look around for monsters, as it would be easy to die seconds after you recover. You can also have someone resurrect you, if they have the spell. I know a Priest and Paladin can do it, but I’m not sure if anyone else can. I’m not sure how useful it is, as it only saves time. There is also something in the graveyard that can resurrect you, but that cost xp, so I don’t think many will use it. The only other penalty for death is item wear. That, of course, cost money to repair. As you are always cash strapped, it hurts, but overall death is not very painful. As it is very easy to die, that is not bad. The radar is ok, an improvement from EQII, which did not have one at all. It shows terrain, direction and will point toward towns. What it does not show is monsters, NPC’s or other players. It will show your group members. This was a major problem in combat and running. If you see something coming at your back, when you can barely hold your own against what you’re fighting, I want to know it. I want run while there is still a chance of getting away. When searching for an NPC, I want to have them on radar. Having to go into each shop, to physically identify each vendor, is a pain. In a large town, it is darn right frustrating. In both EQII and WoW, I found this lack to be a big issue. I’m guessing those who have never played AC will not know what they are missing. I will not go into races. I only used human and have no idea what advantages and disadvantage they have. Given the overall feel of this game, there are likely advantages, and disadvantages, to each race. There are other “Cool” factors. I’m not sure what class it is, but many players had pets that fought with them. Some were big massive fighters; others were little imps that used spells. This was very well done. I was rolling when we stopped and the imp lovingly wrapped its arms around the leg of the lady mage. The jumping run the Imps did was also fun to watch. I even saw someone with a bird pet. Because of this “cool” factor, and the natural advantage of having help in combat, a lot of people had pets. I choose a role-playing server to start on. I was hoping this would attract mature gamers, and repel the “d00ds”. Of course, it did not help much. People would still spam the general chat with garbage. When asked to stay in role, they would complain about the role-playing police. A game master even had to admonish them to use “OOC” when going out of role. The players I ran into were not very good. I’m used to experienced hot shots in AC. These players made the worse AC groups look like experts. I’m not sure why this is, but that was what I observed. For a game that stresses grouping, I found it hard to find a group. They were either in their own clique, or playing solo. And, like I said, they were not very good in a group. It could just be the limited players I saw, but this was a problem for me. It could be problems in the combat system itself. I think I confused a lot of people. I did my best to stay in the role of a paladin. That was not easy to do. I’ll give you and example. I came out of the inn and this lady started dancing around me. I stopped, and said, “Good day my lady, what can I do to help you?” She replied, “Hay, you want to duel?” I replied, “I’m sorry fair lady, that is not something I can do. “k c y”. Now this is a role-playing server, but no one seemed to have that down very well. My biggest complaint is combat. I’m sure that Warriors have more options, but a Paladin would click fight, move to the target, or wait for the target to move to him or her. There is no high or low hitting, no special moves, nothing but watch him or her fight. I did have the option of healing, which was important, but that was it. When fighting in groups, it was even worse. Not as bad as EQII, but EQII suffered from massive lag during combat. There was no lag problem, but a big style problem. A major problem was when fighting multiple opponents. When you defeat an opponent, you go into peace mode. You will do this, even if you’re still fighting other monsters. You have to swap back into combat mode before rejoining the battle. I would waste several seconds clicking on the monster and then clicking on combat mode. Having spells disrupted in combat is not as bad as it sounds. I could mostly get the spells off. Where it really was a problem was when fighting more than one. The hits came faster, so it would be a lot harder to get a spell off. When fighting one monster, I would try to click heal, just after I was hit. As many weapons are slow, this would give me the full wind up time before it would hit me again. Some weapons take as much time to swing, as it takes my spell to go off. I had a lot of problems at the beginning trying to fight one on one. Far to many almost finished battles ended with me running, because something else would jump me. So far, running has been 50/50. As I have advanced, it is becoming harder to run. Often it depends on the speed of the monster. There does not seem to be a way to improve my speed. I think there is a warrior skill that makes you faster, but I think that is just to attack with. After writing the above, I rolled up a Rogue and Fighter. With these players, the combat options were much improved. Rogues are especially nice. There are combat actions that give you a combat point. There are other actions that will inflict damage; depending on how many combat points you have built up. These are called, finishing moves. Fighters and Rogues inflicted far more damage over time than my Paladin. I’m seeing how groups can be very powerful. Melee and Rogues hit hard, with someone proving buffs and heals, groups be extremely dominant. I’ll be able to tell you more, when I find players who can walk and chew gum at the same time. Group monster looting was like EQII. A good item would be auctioned off with a random number. Cash was split between members. Some items would have several copies, requiring other party members to loot their share. One thing I liked, and disliked, was the semi-lock of combat. This allowed me to do drive by heals and other helps. What I did not like was how many players abused this, especially mages. I would carefully draw a single monster, only to have some mage toss a war spell at it just before it reaches me. That made the fight his, for reward. I would still end up hitting it and helping the leach. I had some mages start following me around. You could also attack a monster that seems all alone, only to find that someone else gets the reward. There is no clear way to see how hard a battle will be, other than level. I found that anything three levels or more ahead of me, was not one I could take. There were exceptions, but that was the norm. I have this quest to deliver a package to a zone, to the far north. When I entered the next zone, I found all the monsters five or more levels ahead of me. I could not even run through. So that quest is on standby for a while. There are a lot of trade skills for the players. Just how you use these, I don’t know. For the most part I ignored them. That might have been a mistake, but I focused on combat and adventure. I’ll use the other skills later, maybe after retail starts. My Paladin’s focus is on armor and healing. My intent is to deal what damage I can, while staying alive, and just out wait the monster. So all my spells are for things to help my armor and healing ability. Just how that will work at high level, remains to be seen, but it has worked at low levels. The key is to deal enough damage, so that I kill it, before I run out of mana. Overall I liked the game. There are a lot of “Cool” factors. I would rate it as simpler and more fun than EQII. While I have not seen these yet, I have heard that I can get a horse. There are also other ways to travel that I have not seen. I would say that the hard-core players would like EQII better, especially players who already play EQ. I enjoyed WoW much better myself. The seamless zones were especially nice. This gives you the wide-open feel of AC, while keeping the technical advantages of zones. To even know I had moved into a new zone, I would have to look at the map. While the graphics are outstanding, and there is a lot of fun to he had in WoW, it is not an AC killer. The combat system for AC is still the best. Lets face it; the combat system is the core of the game. Everything else is fluff. The player options in AC are the best, but WoW is a close second. You can also change your player, but you are limited in the number of times you can do so. I feel that is the best way to do it myself. This is a game I’m going to buy and play during my off AC times. It will be nice to have a game I can play during patches or those rare server crashes. AC is still my game, but this will be fun to play from time to time. If you enjoyed the column, and would like to add to my emergency fund, here is a link.   - Fist de Yuma

November 09, 2004 Questing with a mule It all started out with a comment Punchy Smash made while we were talking. I was hunting in the 80+ Matron with Salvage Mule three at the time. We were talking about the name “Salvage Mule.” I was explaining how he was a driver for my tradesman, while at the same time collecting salvage. The salvage mules are very focused on Olthoi, so there should be no worry that he was one of the “loot but don’t hunt” type of player. Punchy Smash then said it would be a good idea for Cliff Bowman to go do the Font of Jojii quest. It was a great idea! The quest is a bit long, and requires a lot of running. Nevertheless, doing this quest would add 1 point to my armor skill, and 2 to my weapon skill. Given that we are talking about 60 million (1 point Armor) and 100 million (2 points Weapon), even a daylong quest would be worth doing. Of course, the problem is Cliff Bowman’s lack of combat ability. I have long since sold off his bow skill. He does have UA, being Sho, but his coordination is not very high. The thought of wasting xp on building a skill, for a one-time quest, did not make sense. To his advantage, he does have Melee and Missile defense. This is just to activate items, but at least he has them. With a high Focus, he was not that off on Magic defense either. To feel ready for this quest, I had to spend about 10 million points. Those went into Quick, Magic Defense and Heal. The armor was no problem, as I had just finished tinking up a set. It took a bit to unload all the armor he was carrying, to get under burden, but the use of two computers made that easy. The main problem was finding room on the other mules. I was finally ready to try the quest. My idea was to just run through the dungeons, healing when I had a chance. With a moderate amount of Melee, Missile and Magic defense, I was hoping to keep out of trouble. Having max endurance, and having built it up a bit, give me confidence. The running was going to be a pain. Cliff Bowman has no magic skills whatsoever. This means he cannot use ties and recalls. Fortunately, I’m well versed with the portal system, and kept the long runs to a minimum. The first step is to go to Tou-Tou. You talk to a guy and go to a small outside temple. That leads you to Nanto. I took the portal to Lin and ran to Nanto. The next step was to get to Sawato. That was a bit of a run. I took a housing portal in Shoushi to shorten it. After hitting another outdoor temple, I was ready to try the first dungeon. It was also a bit of a run to the dungeon. I noted as I was running that I had forgotten to pick up some portal gems. The gems that get you to Tusker Island make great escape items. As my intent was to run in, grab the item, and use the gem to portal out, not having one was a problem. I figured that this was the easiest of the three dungeons. I could just run back to a portal. I should not have worried, as my defenses held up well. I just ran in, grabbed the note, and touched the object. I then ran back up the ramp and into the portal. Easy, simple and safe. One down. I tried to take the next one on the same buff. A few mistakes prevented that. First, I was in a hurry, and forget to touch the temple in Lin. I was halfway to the dungeon before I realized it. I did another allegiance hometown and started over. By the time I go to the dungeon, I only had seven minutes left. I tried to run to the end, but got lost in the maze. With 30 seconds left, I hit the portal gem. After a rebuff, I ran back. This time I was not as rushed, so I did not get lost. So far so good. I took a little damage but nothing that forced me to heal. The halls are wide enough that I did not get trapped. I had to wait for one monster to go into melee mode, to get around him, but that was it. I knew that the last dungeon was a bit harder, and there was a lot of running left. I rebuffed rather than take a chance of having to do the runs twice. As it turned out, I made it before the older buffs wore off. First I ran from Arwic to the subway, and took the Qbar portal. Then I ran to the housing portals and exited a few clicks from Kara. I ran there and talked to the guy. A short run got me to the last dungeon. I knew the drop was hot. I started running as soon as I was out of bubble. This dungeon I knew well, so getting lost would not be a problem. I ran down a hallway that curves around to a cut back, and into a set of rooms with gated doors. I got close to the rooms, but there was a Lich camped in the center of a narrow hall, right at the cut back. I could not run past him. If he were in melee mode, I might have been able to push him back, using the slow walk that Heideggar taught me. That would not work because it was using throw weapon, and they don’t need room to attack. The trick Heideggar taught me takes advantage of a melee needing room to swing. You might note that at times you cannot swing when in a crowd of monsters. You will also see your player, or the monster, have to back up if you are to close to them at the start of combat. That also works for the monsters. If you walk up to a monster, using shift forward, you will press them. They have to back up to attack. This will allow you to push them back and make an escape route. That does not work with archers or throw weapons. I ran back up the hall, and circled around, and back to the problem spot. Most of the undead followed me, and left the passage clear. When I hit that same spot, that same Lich was blocking the hall. I did this several times, but was unable to get him out of my way. I was stuck. I would need help clearing a path. I logged off and logged on Fist de Mage. After a short buff, he ran to the dungeon. It took Fist de Mage little time to clear a path for Cliff Bowman. I kept logging each in turn, so Cliff Bowman just walked in and got the last part. From there I ran to Mayoi, and got a housing portal to the final part. I talked to the guy and got the water. I built up a Font and gave it to Qu’, one of our buff bots. I still have a mule that can benefit from doing this quest. He is not as important a tradesman as Cliff Bowman, so I can wait for a group to go. He has little endurance, and, at last check, not many hit points. It will be a lot better for him to just hang back while some real fighters do the work. Instance death It is easy to fall into the leveling trap. This means only hunting in high xp places. When hunting for xp, I will generally try to find a place where I can get 15 to 30 million an hour. The problem with that is you stop hunting in places that were fun, because they only return 5 to 8 million an hour. It also restricts you to one type of player. When hunting Olthoi, I will take a melee. When hunting Tuskers, I can take a mage, but it is easer with a melee. This meant that my mages were getting neglected. I decided that I needed to forget about the xp and just hunt for fun. I loaded up Fist’s Armorer and headed to the Plains. This a fun hunt, with average loot. I will generally pick up around 5 to 7 million an hour. Everything was going smooth. I had one string of strange loot finds. I picked up five sing keys in the first twenty minutes of hunting. Normal is one every few hours. Unfortunately, Fist’s Armorer does not have Lock Pick, so I guess I’ll just use them to get some blue healing kits. One of my goals was to pick up some Drudge amulets. I used to be able to find a lot of them on the plains. I am not hurting for them, but figured to stock up a bit anyway. Sadly, in the two hours I was there, I did not find a single one. After traversing the slot, I climbed up to the plains. I cleared several spawns, and I saw a monster I wanted to kill. It was in a large pod of mixed monsters. This is normal on the Plains. You will have to clear one type at a time generally. I saw some Shadows in there, and decided to take them out first. I got back just far enough to open up with a double attack. This is where you toss a normal war, immediately followed by an Arc spell. Except for a handful of monsters, this will let you get two spell attacks at once. Most monsters will die to that. This time my victim survived. What I had missed was a bunch of Grievvers just behind them. If I had seen the Grievvers, I would have attacked them first. Grievvers will defend Shadows, while Shadows will not defend Grievvers. I saw the four Shadows running up on me. The Grievvers were close behind. I noted that I was at low health, and then I was at 60. Before I could even think about healing, I was dead. All this happened in less than a second. As I stated in my last column, I treat death as if it means something. Fist’s Armorer just made 126, and that was only his 23rd death. Scrolling back showed that two of the Shadows hit me with a level VI health drain. I was also hit by a hidden spell. If I had seen the war spells, I would have side stepped and avoided them. There is a small bug in AC. If you stand in front of someone that fires a war spell at a monster, you will not see the effect travel to the monster. This rarely happens with a monster attacking you, but it will happen, especially when working with a large pod of monsters, as I was. I did not see any war spells going my way, but the text showed I was hit by an Acid spell from a Grievver. I did not think two drains followed by a war spell would be enough to take out my over 300 hit points, but I might have had an acid vuln on. In any case, it was my first instance death since Martine took me out at Romside’s wedding. Who is the moron who said this was easy? Jeff sent me an e-mail asking if I wanted to go on the 80+ Olthoi armor quest. He had several people lined up. Key was Lifedraynor, because he knows the route very well. I always get lost there. (g) I told Jeff that it was an easy quest, if a bit long. When the day arrived, we did not have everyone we needed. All we had were Jeff and I. I know I could solo it, with Fist, I was not so sure I could keep Jeff alive. Another problem is that Jeff’s player, Kepi, is not self buffing yet. This quest generally takes a few hours, and that is not counting the getting lost time. While hanging at the mansion, people started volunteering to go with us. Also, some of the people who were slotted to go started to arrive. Jeff decided to use Mage Sailor Bane, as he can self buff, and it is nice to have mage support. As we started out, Lifedraynor logged on. We waited for him at the Bandit Castle. I decided to take Owanda. He is self-buffing, with a lot of fizzles, and Mace is the biggest Olthoi killer there is. So we set off with; Mage Sailor Bane (96lv Mage), Owanda (112lv Macer), D A C (114 lv UA), Dibbuk (93 lv), and Lifedraynor (80lv Mage). Our route was from Tou-Tou (via allegiance hometown), Arwic, Mountain short cut, Bandit Castle and a short run west to the dungeon. Lifedraynor did an outstanding job leading us through the maze. I still don’t have it down, but I might be able to find Queens now. When I tried to find the Queens before, I ran into a lot of different sections. I even found some Brood Nobles. Wherever I was, it is far away from the proper route. I was surprised to find the dungeon very camped. It seemed like there was an attended macro around every corner. Macros are easy to spot, but they did talk to us. When we got to the first Matron, we found two hunters. They were not after the parts, so I just made sure we got the matron kill. One of the hunters commented that we worked well together. I would have taken pride in that comment, if it were not for our later results. I wanted to go hunt the second Matron, in order to speed things up a bit. This is where our teamwork started to fail. Lifedraynor led me to the next part, but everyone but D A C followed us. I saw the call for help from D A C, and quickly backtracked to give him a hand. We finally got organized in both spots, and each of us got the three parts we needed. Now it was on to the Queens. We went a short distance and got to the two Queens. There was a mage macroing in the center between the Queens. This created a small problem, as we had trouble getting back and forth between them. Most of the group was killing off the right side Queen. I headed over to the left one after a bit. I found out that Owanda needs a lot of time to take down a Queen. I did not count, but it seemed like I was only taking off 1% health per swing. Not taking healing into account, that is at least 100 full power swings. We were doing fine, killing and getting parts, when Jeff tried to go over to the right side Queen with D A C. The group around the macroing mage got Jeff trapped, and he died. Dibbuk recovered Jeff’s stuff. I showed Dibbuk where the exit portal was. Lifedraynor recalled to help Jeff mule some stuff. That left me and D A C. My buffs were running out, so I drifted back up the passage and started to buff. D A C got his last part just before I started buffing. I warned D A C not to get into trouble, as I would not be there to help. He said he had it covered. I watched him get mobbed, stop to heal, and die shortly after. He said he failed to heal several times in a row. You can imagine my panic as the horde of Olthoi charged down the hall at me. It was a close thing, as I was under 50 hit points before I could get a weapon and shield on. I only needed one more part by this time, so I kept at it. The third Queen kill netted me my last part. Meanwhile, I could hear Lifedraynor, Jeff and Dibbuk talk as they worked their way back. In one nasty part, they seemed in a panic. I did not see Lifedraynor’s death, I did see Dubbuk’s, and heard Jeff say he had recalled. I decided we needed to have a little more power. After getting D A C’s body, I recalled back to the mansion, give him his stuff, and loaded Fist. I was surprised to find that Fist did as well or better than Owanda on Olthoi. I’ve been disappointed with Fist’s performance of late. Of course there is a big difference between Olthoi and VoD monsters. We found Lifedraynor’s body a few steps away from Dibbuk’s. We did not have any trouble after that. On the way through the Matrons, I had Fist grab two parts. At the Queens, we quickly got the finally parts for everyone, and they ported out. They were surprised that I did not follow them. My intent from there was to get the rest of the parts. While it took a few tries, Fist could land Imperil and a Bludgeoning Vuln on the Queen. I would still have to waste time keeping the guards down, but it only took a minute or two to defeat a Queen. I had to be sure that the Muts stayed off my back. They can hit me, and my armor is made for majors, and only averages around 250 AL. Few things can get past my melee defense, but Mut from the back are one of them. My big problem was trying to Buff. There is no safe spot in that dungeon, that I know of. There were a lot of things that could reach the hall I was buffing in. I would generally get about 10 spells in, before having to go back fighting. My plus 36% melee defense wand kept me from having any exciting points. After getting the six parts from the Queens, I backtracked and killed a few more Matrons, and got the last part. I’ll keep that set of armor for quick quests, where I don’t need my majors, and don’t want to bother buffing the armor. 80+ Tusker dungeon The one place I have left the most bodies is the 80+ Tusker dungeon. Even the Plains cannot match the number of kills that place has caused my players. My last was with Death Mute. I figured I could fight at the start, even with a level VII de-buff. I had picked up the de-buff on the run there. I figured to save a dispel gem by fighting one at a time for a short while. I could not have been more wrong. I was dead with two blows. The first one took me to 60, and I died while reaching towards the healing elixir with the mouse. I’ve been meaning to swap his armor, as it is high value stuff. I made it before the lower value armor was put in, after using up all my pre armor. So I arrived at the LS naket. No excuse really, I have a lot of highly tinked DI’s sitting on mules. I just never bothered to build his DI’s up. So I had to let him use Fist de Mages armor for the recovery. I’ll fix that up before I hunt with him again. The day before, I got a call from Jeff. It seemed Kepi and Lifedraynor tried to go to the 80+ Tusker, and met the typical fate of new 80 level players. I grabbed up Fist’s Armorer to give them a hand. Mages are the best to take there when in a group. Solo I would prefer a sword or high melee Archer. I taught them the route, and helped them recover the bodies. This is a great dungeon. One of the best Turbine has ever made. There are few that can go there, and expect to be safe, while getting the top reward. I’m not sure how well this will stand up when the leveling cap is removed, but I’ll expect to see a few mages die there, especially if they macroed their level. Throne of Destiny There is a lot of information and questions about the expansion. Turbine is doing its best to get the information out, and answer the questions. I have some reservations about some of what I heard. Rather than just listen to rumors, I took the time to see what Turbine has written. This will not be a complete list, but I’ll touch on things that worried me. One of the ideas leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This is the augmentation gem. These are gems that cost you xp, 1 to 4 billion from the information I get. For must of us, a billion xp is a lot of time and effort, months of not years. I feel this will mainly benefit the cheaters. As it is, cheating is still a large part of AC. I know of many allegiances that use IRC programs to macro in complete safety. I cannot go into many dungeons without finding a macro. I run into them daily. When we saw 200+ players on the new server, within two or three months, I understood that Turbine has totally lost its ability to control the cheaters. Unless they are willing to take the steps necessary to stop it, AC will gain few recruits and many will be leaving for the newer games. Many of the things in the expansion are geared towards rewarding the cheaters, while leaving the fair players in the cold. If Turbine does not address this problem, in a big way, the expansion will be a bust. Many of these ideas are not set. They might go with them; they might go in a totally different direction. I can only hope that whomever they get to test these ideas are hard-core AC players, who despise cheaters, and are not EverQuest rejects. Q: If the level cap is removed, how will a level 200 join an allegiance? A: They are likely going to set a cap on swearing. The word I got was 100. After that level, whatever they decide on, anyone can swear to them. Not written in stone yet. Q: Since much of the expansion will cost massive xp to get, are they going to increase the amount of xp you get from hunting, or is this for the cheaters only? A: IBN has stated that we should not expect the xp per hour to be the same. Not a great answer, so we have to wait and see on this. Q: I have an inactive account that will get more than 4 billion of xp passup if I activate them. As they have removed the cap, can I get more than 4 billion? A: No, current storage is in a 32bit variable. They will get copied to a 64bit variable after you log in the first time, after you upgrade. After it is copied to the 64bit file, you can start gaining more xp. Q: We get lower experience for a kill, after passing the level of the monster. Will this lowering get worse after we can level past 126? A: They are still working on this. Their thinking is, make current monsters have a higher listed level. Change the system. Use gems. (Reward cheaters) Q: Will the number of death items go up as you pass 126 level? A: Maybe. They are talking about up to 29 items dropping. Other options are to lower drop rate and increase the death xp penalty or using gems to lower the amount dropped. (Reward cheaters) Q: Will I be able to use the percentage rewards, such as Tusks, after 126, when I get the expansion? A: Yes, but there might be some changes. Very high levels can walk through them without effort. That will be addressed later. Q: Can I sell back an augmentation if I don’t like the results, or want something different later? A: Still being talked about, but likely no. Q: Is the expansion just for the hard working high levels and cheaters? A: There will be a lot added for new players. This will likely be focused on the new race. Where I see things lacking is the middle players. I see a lot about low-level stuff, and a lot about high-level stuff, but almost nothing about mid-level stuff. I’m hoping this is just because the issue has not come up yet. Srand did make a comment about mid-level stuff, so I expect there to be something for everyone. Q: Will we get a new slot so we can try the new race? A: Maybe later, but no plan for that now. I would hate to have to kill off a mule, but I likely will. Q: Will storage increase? A: They are thinking of a gem for this. Current thought is 4 billion xp cost. So all the cheaters will have it, but few non-cheating players will. Q: Will the spec’d cap get raised? (Limit on the total amount of spec’d skills you can have at one time, current is 64) A: No Q: What gems are they thinking of? A: These three were on the Turbine board. 5% increases in infuse ability, from 33% to 38%. Possibility repeatable. (This is one I’ll try to get, with my allegiances help.) Cost, 2 billion xp. Lower death penalties; no loss of buffs, less dropped items etc. Cost, 4 billion. Add carrying ability. Will increase carrying ability of strength by 20% per strength point. Current is 135 BU per strength point. That would change to 162. If repeatable, 194, etc. Hard Ride Well, I got froggy and decided to give the Fortuna mine a try. I had done a few 20 mile street rides, and a hard 30 miller in the last month. Unfortunately, both Thursday’s I had planned to do dirt rides had gotten rained out. It rarely rains in Yuma. Because of flooding and other problems, it is not wise to go riding in the desert when it is wet. Hard rock mountains will drain water very quickly. The results are called flash floods. While I had never seen one in Yuma, I had seen humongous rocks appear in the washes after a good rain. There is nothing like seeing a two-ton rock appearing out of the blue to give you respect for the power of a flash flood. So I had sort of lost the feel of how bad a mountain bike ride can be on the body. A smooth street ride, where you average 15 miles per hour, will not prepare you for a 22 mile dirt ride, over rocks with an average speed of 9 miles per hour. There was a slight wind. Unfortunately it was at my back for the beginning of the ride. Normally a tail wind is good, but in this case it made me hot. It was around 80 degrees. I was moving at about the same speed as the wind, so I was in dead air. My biggest problem was sweat in the eyes. It stung like hell. I was using a plastic sun filter. This holds fast to your face without the need for other support. It is a perfect item for sun protection under eyeglasses. Because of the dead air, the sweat was not drying, and starting to flow into my eyes. I had to remove the sun filter to help the drying. I was really feeling it during the climbs. This was another thing my street rides had not prepared me for. The hill a dreaded the most came near the end, about a half mile from a spot I call the Bowl. This climb is out of a wash. It was rocky and rutted. There were steep cuts in the slope, so you had to thread your way up it. There were spots where you had to shift from rocks, to hard pack, to gravel. I was dreading it as I approached. Much to my surprise, this was the only real change I saw in the road to the mine. Whereas there were only minor changes from years past in the road, this spot was completely different. It was changed to a hard packed gravel road, wide and easy to climb. I think things would have been fine if I had listened to my body. I got to a point where I was near to the mine, but the path was a steep downhill, over rocks. I call this the Bowl, because it curves around while dropping steeply. You are going in the opposite direction for a time, and then it cuts sharply back. I debated turning around then, but I was so darn close to it. Another mile and a half and I would have made my goal, six months early. One of the reasons I was hurting was because of the rain. It had not rained hard, just enough to wash the sand from between the rocks. So a minor rocky road became a major rocky road. Rather than listen to my body, I decided to finish the ride to the mine. If anything, the Bowl was a lot worse than I remembered it. The rocks were so bad that I could barely make headway, even though I was going down hill. At the mine itself, I sat on a concrete slab, sucked Gatorade, and eat a few Fig Newtons. I knew I was hurting, but at least I was starting back. I hoped the rest and food would restore me. Riding out of the Bowl was a nightmare. Low gear crawling over the rocks, when tired and sore, is not my idea of fun. At the top, in a slight dip, I came close to going over the handlebars when I hit a rock. The back wheel was up, but I was able to get my foot down and prevent a crash. I’ve crashed like that before, without injury, but I would rather not chance it. The rest of the ride was hell. I was so sore that it felt better to walk than ride. My hands felt it the worse. I still have marks in my palms from the ride, despite thick gloves. There are places in the desert where they have signal beacons. They are used to save illegal’s when they get into trouble traveling across the desert. I was joking with a friend that if I came across one, I would have been tempted to use it. (g) The ride took over three hours to do. I was a bit sunburned when done. I was sure that I would be in bad shape the next day. To my surprise, I was not sore at all. So my fitness is getting there, I’m just not quite ready to be riding to the mine just yet. =============== I was very happy to see three donations last week. That is a great help gang. Thanks a lot. If you enjoy this column, and would like to give me some emergency money, here is the link.   - Fist de Yuma

November 02, 2004 Everquest II I opened my mail up last week, and found an invite to the EQII beta test. As it was free, I decided to give it a shot. I found a lot of good things, things I would like to see in AC someday. I saw that EQII is copying some things from AC. First impression is very good. The graphics are outstanding. The world has a live feel to it, even when there are only a few people on. The reason is more than just the graphics. The NPC’s move and talk. Out loud they talk. The main thing to making the world feel alive is the NPC’s. There is a smaller land mass that you interact in. Overall it might be larger, but you move around in zones. Sometimes a zone is copied, so there are never too many people in one at the same time. If it gets crowded, they make a copy of it, and place the next people in that. Because of the small size, even when there are only a handful of players in a zone, it feels like a lot more. The last patch added a lot of lag into the game. It is beta, but they are getting close to retail. I’m hoping the lag is caused by de-bugging code, as it gets bad in big battles. There are a lot of quests. Many are hide and seek quests and federal express quests. While these can be boring, it gives a tradesman a shot at leveling without having to fight. What I did not like was forced quests. At certain levels, you have to complete a quest to level again. At first these were not to bad, but at the 9th level, I was not too happy. First there were a few hide and seek quests. This means finding people. The hints are not very clear, and one case, deceiving. In some cases I was given a name, and no information as to where they were. Not a zone, a house or anything. I ended up having to ask for help from other players, to even narrow the search down to a zone. There is no radar, so finding someone in a house is problematic. You have to enter the house and look for people. Many times there is an upstairs, so you have to go up and search there as well. I was asked to find a guy, and it said he is in the harbor. There is a zone with a harbor name, but the person was not in that zone. Another quest wanted me to kill five sprites. The place was a Woods. The Woods was not on the map, so I had to move from zone to zone, until I found an exit to the Woods. When I faced the Sprites, I found that this was a battle you could not win if solo. Given that you cannot level until you finish these quests, you are forced to get help. In AC, we are used to mobs. In EQII, a Mob is deadly. I could kill one Sprite, but would have to run from the other two. With no way to recover mana, and using all my mana to kill just one, there was no way to finish off the other two. I did not get credit or xp for the one I did kill, as you have to kill the entire group to get any reward. Each battle, be it against a solo monster, or a group, locks the battle to you or your group. This is one good idea, as it prevents anyone from jumping your battle. After you start, no one can interfere, unless you ask for help. The drawback, of course, is you must defeat the entire group to get any reward. The second drawback is there is no way to help someone until they request it. Drive by heals are not possible. I was able to find a group that was looking to get a healer, and was willing to fight the sprites. I saw another problem with this quest. A second Priest joined us, also needing to kill the Sprites. When the group finished killing the Sprites for her, she said thanks, and dropped out. Now, this group needed her. She used them to finish her quest, and then kissed them off. I stayed, because I understood I would never have finished off that quest without them. When they were done, I finished off the training quest. This group also taught me a lot about death recovery. From what I hear, EQ drops all your gear on death. EQII does not do that. What it does do is give you something like vit. You need to gain xp in order to clear the vit. Part of that penalty can be repaired by recovering the body, or having a Priest resurrect you. Even with the body recovered, it takes a long, long time to recover the vit. The vit is a percentage of your xp to the next level. I’m thinking 10% per death. It might be more. In any case, you will be working off a death penalty for some time after dieing. I had a lot of deaths in that Woods. Several were from an extremely hard quest. Several more were from Named monsters. The Named monsters will kill you in one or two shots. Many times I was dead before I even knew I was being attacked. I also ran into another death penalty. Each death will degrade your armor and weapons. I had one death where all my items, every last bit of it, broke. I ended up having to find a Mender to repair my stuff before I could do anything. The AI seems very smart. One thing I found is the AI targets Priests. Given that a good Priest will keep the party going far longer than without one, this is smart. It is also extremely frustrating for the Priest. I think they are going to have to pull back in this a bit, as I almost always died in every hard battle. There is a fix for it of course. The fighters need to taunt the monsters, so they do not turn on the Healer. So you depend on the other players knowing what they are doing. Towns are without a doubt the best I have ever seen, in any game. Again, the NPC’s make it seem so alive, crowded even. That is the one big impression I got. I still think AC is a better game, but AC feels dead in comparison. Another nice touch with EQII is waypoints. This is not always available, but I expect them to add more and more as time goes on. You need to find a place, you click on the name, and a red smoke trail forms to show you the route. This also works with bodies, as I found out. Spells are very limited. I ended up using two spells in solo combat with my Priest, attack and heal. Each spell has a recovery time. The more powerful the spell, the longer it takes to cast, and the longer you must wait before casting it again. There is one general recall spell. It is very slow, so using it to escape combat is not an option. I also created a Mage and a Fighter. I need to level them more to get a feel of higher levels. The main thing about these classes is the inability to heal. This is telling in combat. Kill or run is the name of the game. Both of these have something called a heroic action. These do a lot of damage. It is basically a set of steps you must follow. When you reach the end, the damage is inflicted. As an example; I would start my actions with a kick. It would then call for two wild swings, and ends with a taunt. Using this over and over again, would allow me to defeat monsters I had no right fighting. While cool at first, it quickly became just a standard way to fight. I never found the heroic action for my Priest, but I think there is one. I know there is one for my mage, but I never worked it out. I heard some complaints about then nerfing this somewhat, but I have been playing the Priest exclusively for a few days. Most AC players will feel lost without a portal system. You run around a lot. There a sprint, but it eats up mana. As everyone uses mana, even fighters for their special moves, the use of sprint is limited to non-combat times. Also, pity the mage who needs to run because they have no mana, as they cannot sprint. You better hope there is a zone door close by, or the monster is a slow runner. Even the one portal is restricted. You must wait an hour before using it again. This is real time, so try and use it just before lunch. The lack of a radar I found particularly hard to adapt to. This is especially telling when trying to find an NPC. Where I really missed the radar was after getting ambushed by a monster. If they are running at your back, you just cannot see them. If it is a named monster, you are dead before you can do a thing. Even if you escape from an attack, you have no idea if you’re still being chased or not. The only way to find out is to stop, turn around, and get attacked some more. Against a named monster, that is likely the last thing you’ll see. So we often end up running for a long time, without any idea if we have broke contact or not. Much of your EQII time will be spent sitting. You must sit to recover health, if not a priest. Everyone has to sit to recover mana. This waiting time varied. Sometimes I only had to sit for a few seconds to get full. Other times I would be sitting for minutes, and it seemed like hours. And as I said, there is no way to recovery mana in combat, and only a Priest can heal. Right now I’m into a very frustrating part. In order to move from 9th to 10th level, I have to complete part II of the training quest. I was given a very big zone, and the names of three people. I’m told to help them defend something. I have no idea where any of these three are. The zone does not have a map, so there is not even a hint. The monsters are mostly group only, and many are hostile. I mostly end up being chased. I logged in frustration this morning, and don’t really feel like going back right now. There is a lot I’m leaving out, as I never intended this to be a comprehensive review. Lets just say that despite the problems, I had fun with it. If not for this frustrating quest, that I have to do, I might still be playing it. I’m not totally sure of its staying power. Federal express quests, hide and seek quests and forced grouping will get old very quickly. If not for this live feel of the game, I don’t think I would have played it as much as I did. I think EQII is a winner. Those that play anything but AC will love it. AC is the different game on the market, so many AC players will be like me, and get frustrated early. Frustration does not lead to staying power. I have great hopes that the coming upgrade will move AC toward the live feel of EQII. I don’t expect it to be as good a feel, but something better than we have. AC’s lack of zones, a good thing overall, might prevent the kind of resources used by EQII. As I have said many times, the game play in AC is next to none. EQII will not challenge that. Learning from EQII After dieing a lot in EQII, I got the idea that they did this right, for the most part. I don’t like the idea of broken weapons and armor, as that is just harassment, but the rest should be something Turbine studies long and hard. Right now death in AC is a joke. The only time is really has a bad effect is on those rare occasions when the DI’s do not cover an item. Most bodies are quickly recovered, and the vit seldom lasts through buffing, if in a good group. We need to bring back fear of death, while not making it so bad that people fear to adventure. Here is how I see Turbine changing death. For one, vit has to be vastly increased. I like EQII’s making vit as a percentage to your next level. Lets say we keep the same system we have, but increase vit to 5% of your total level requirement. This would mean a 126+ would need to recovery around 25 million points to clear their vit. Next, remove items dropped. Replace that with clearing half their vit after recovering the body. This kills two birds with one stone. We gain back the pack space we so desperately need, and retain the desire to recovery the body. This would be the easy road, but I think I would make a small change. Instead of the current 5 point vit system, I would replace it with a 1 point system. I would make the death penalty 10% of your stats and skills. So one death would put you down 10%. Two deaths would bring you down 20%. I can see a time when someone is sitting with stats and skills of zero. (Before buffing) Of course, it would be easy for a careless person to get into a hole that is almost impossible to dig out of. For that reason, I would add in an automatic clearing of a vit point every 12 hours, real time. Some told me that this should be capped. I can see that but I would cap it at 75% down, rather than the subjected 50%. Another point was brought up. There has to be a cap on health, as zero health would be a big problem. (I’m sort of harsh, 1hp and wait 12 hours if you have 10 deaths in a row without recovery.) To make one thing clear, vit recovery would be the same as now. The xp would not be lost. You would work off the penalty as you level, with no other change. I also think that this should not extend beyond 126, even after the new expansion. The way stats level out, there it not much growth in ability after this point. Think about this. Death would become a real concern. The prospect of working off millions of xp would be daunting at high levels, while not overwhelming at lower and mid levels. Most of us would gain a pack or two of space from clearing out the death items. I can see this as a real boon for PK. PKL might even go away, as there would no longer be a need for it. Think of the revenge factor here. The 200+ PK bully gets vitaed down to almost nothing by a group of his former victims. It will add some respect back into PK. I’m sure that Turbine has looked at something similar a time or two. We know from their reports that they disagree as to what direction to take many times. They also have a lot on their plate at the moment. So I don’t expect to see any changes in death in the immediate future. I just hope that they do think about a system like this, as it would bring a lot of life back to the game. Arggggg I was doing a pincer run with Salvage Mule Three. He is limited, as he is just a driver mule and salvage expert, but for that limit, he is unsurpassed. So, instead of limited, you might say he is focused. That focus is Olthoi, of course. So I don’t take him on a Tusk runs, but Pincers are almost easy. As I have said before, I start with the Warrior, then Muts and finish off with EVL and Leg. Total reward is 15.5 mill, which is split with whatever player I’m pushing that week. I had just finished off the Warrior and was running north, towards the Muts. I got a hit on Bandit about one of the two named Tummies. I was not sure which one it was, it had been so long since I had seen either. I was hoping it was the skill guy, but I would also use the drum. Useful item at times. So I charged in. Being that I’ve put zero xp into magic defense, Olthoi don’t toss spells, I knew there was some danger. I did take a lot of damage, but I was killing them so fast I knew there was no real danger. I was sitting at about 40hp when the battle ended. I decided to heal before looting, as you never know what nasty thing might spawn on top of you out there. So, to my shock, I found myself in a portal tunnel. I was confused. Did Turbine make a change to something? Is there some new adventure awaiting you after killing this guy? As I materialized in Tusker town, I realized what had happened. I have my healing kit hot keyed to 3 and my pack hot keyed to 2. A quick ride over the three and two key give me a heal. On key 4, was my quick escape Tusker recall gem. My clumsy fat fingers had hit the 4 while reaching for the 3. I quickly did a LS recall and hit the portal for the run. While running I moved the recall gem to the 6 hot key. (g) I figured I could get back fast, but could I get back fast enough? Fortunately, I got back just in time, as some of the bodies were rotting as I looted. I got another drum. I’ll likely give it to Jeff, as he was kind of wanting one after a little adventure we had this morning. I’ll have that story next week. Pay Pal It has been a while since I posted a Paypal link. I figured that some of the harsh criticism I get on the boards would go away if I removed it. What I found is, people don’t really need an excuse to attack you. They will attack no matter what, and removing the Paypal link did not change that. I have made about 40 bucks this year, and spent that on a mirror that will attach to my eyeglasses. This will allow me to glance to the rear while riding my bike. I have found that my neck gets stiff after 20 miles or so. I also tend to swing out in the direction I turn my head. That is not a good thing, so a mirror that lets me see to the rear without turning my head is critical. As the vender only takes Pay Pal for payment, it was a good thing I had some money in there. I’ve also learned a few things so this will be a real button, instead of a cut and paste link. If you enjoy this column, and would like to give me some emergency money, here is the link.   - Fist de Yuma

October 26, 2004 Tinker goals I’ve been working on getting my Tradesman (Cliff Bowman) where I want him. The short-term project has been getting his Weapon skill equal to his Armor skill. I’m still about 300 million XP short of that goal, but he is getting there. The long-term goal is to land the 10th tink on my weapons and armor. Of course, different salvage needs a different amount of skill. To make it simple, I’ve decided to just use two types of salvage for my goals. This will mean using steel on the armor and granite on weapons, for the purpose of calculations. Using ACPlanner to work out my skills, I’ll need a base 470 for armor, given wms 9 steel and wms 4 armor. I would like to get enough skill to do wms 5 items someday, but that is far, far in the future, if even possible. I cannot state for sure, but ACPlanner only gave me a maximum of 75%, with all majors and maxed stats. This assumes, maxed stats, all majors, wms 5 item, wms 10 steel and brilliance. So I guess it is only realistic to push for wms 4. I’m a little better off with the weapons, but hindered by a lack of high wms granite. Whereas, I’m getting wms 9 steel on a regular bases, and sometimes wms 10 stuff, I seldom find anything above wms 8 with Granite. That could be where I’m hunting, but I have to go with what I have. Even with the lower wms, I find I can get into the 80% range for the wms 5 10th tink. Landing the 9th will not be very hard. Given that we are only talking about 20 al for armor, and a small amount of damage added to weapons, I can live with using the 9th tink as a goal with wms 5 items. Of course, we are talking years of work here. The shorter columns of late are a direct result of me pushing this tradesman instead of wandering around looking for adventure. One down, nine to go I started on my quest to make Fist’s Mule two into a melee mage. I should have started weeks ago, but I’ve been putting it off. The reason is I needed to unload a lot of stuff from him, and that is a pain to do. I just got Imp Inventory working again, so it seemed like a good idea to keep working with the mules and get him started on his quest. Current stats for him are; 100, 20, 90, 10, 100, 10. The goal is 10, 10, 100, 10, 100, 100. A nice help was the gems we got this month. Without them, I had an even longer time to get the skills fixed. The stat goals are; Spec Melee Defense, War. Trained Item, Creature, Life, Mana Conversion, Lore. I’ll have two skill credits left over, and maybe more after the expansion. Still, it will be a long time before I have the six to eight credits to spec another skill. Fist’s Mule two is currently 107. He will need to get to 115 to have the skill credits necessary for all this. That should not be too much of a problem, as this is another of those very long-term projects. Depressing discovery I have been using a sword for hunting Olthoi that is a lot worse in stats than the one I want to use. The main reason is, that despite the far better hitting power of my good sword, it only has a +7% attack bonus. The lesser sword has a +14% attack bonus. I feel it is better to have a weaker hit that hits, than as stronger one that misses. While working with ACPlanner, I wanted to see just how much more sword skill Death Mute needed to use the better sword. Death Mute’s base sword is 372. I took that skill and multiplied by 1.07, to see what skill I would need to have the equivalent of using the higher bonus sword. That skill came to 398. Punching that number into ACPlanner, and having it calculate how much xp I would need, came to 1.6 billion xp. As he has not even made a billion total yet, that is a long way off. Given that his current project is to become self-buffing, it is looking like Death Mute will take a lot of work before he is ready. The self-buffing project is not really great news. It will take close to a billion points to get that. I’ll have it done at 105, according to ACPlanner. It is fun to have a lot of players, but sometimes I get overwhelmed with despair of ever getting them where I want them. VoD Adventures Casa de Yuma is filled with people who have taken the long road when leveling. That means we don’t have a lot of overwhelmingly powerful members. While there is one power leveler whom may pass me, my two mains, and Hot-Shot, who was purchased, are the highest level players in the allegiance. (150 and above) (The owner of Hot-Shot has worked hard and long leveling his or her own players, so, even if Hot-Shot was not leveled by him or her, he or she has earned the right to play it. I would dare say that he or she has played Hot-Shot more that the person who took the short cuts in making him.) So, when we have a quick call for big time help, those that show up cannot use power to solve the problem. Playing smart is the name of the game. I was doing a lot of inventory work when I saw the call for help. One of the pains of playing a lot of players, over three accounts, is getting salvage to the salvage mule, and sorting the really good items from the “save for someone” items. I generally have to take a full day of play, once every few weeks or so with this. The call for help was from Mezra. He had run into a Tremendous Monouga. As a 105 mage, he knew that taking it on solo was not in the cards. He asked for help. I quickly loaded up Fist de Yuma Jr. Fist de Yuma Jr is a 141 Life/Sword. This gives him great flexibility, but has also lowered his pure sword and melee defense capabilities. For this reason, I’m pushing Death Mute (90) as my pure sword player. Because of that, Fist de Yuma Jr does not always have a full selection of swords on him. While I do have two sets of Rend swords, my CS/CB/AR sets are somewhat lacking. That will change over time, but for now I have to be aware of this problem. I asked them what element he planned to use on the Big Boy. He said Slashing and Cold. As I tend to hunt wide and far, I’m not always up on what is the best element to use on a particular monster. I had a CS Slashing sword, so I was set. After a quick buff, I use a set of portals to get to the VoD Lifestone and started the run. Fortunately, this fight was not in one of the deep, hard to get to parts of VoD. Other than a scattering of de-buffs, I did not eat an abundance of spells on the way. Mezra had maneuvered the Big Boy behind two trees. Given his size, you can use two widely separated trees for this. The first time he tried that, the Big Boy was able to port back to his spawn site. I’m not sure if Mezra used two different trees, or if the addiction of melee attackers fixed that problem. When I arrived, Tinquar was hacking away. He looked to be using a staff. At 94 level, and a weak weapon, I was not sure how effective he could be, but he was bravely hacking on him. I joined in the attack. We had him in a three-way triangle attack. Tinquar and me had him pinned to the trees, and Mezra had the tip of the triangle. He was smartly using wall spells on him. I had read that, because of his size, wall spells are every effective on Big Boy. I was hitting for 150 with 450 critical hits. Given the weapon, I was hitting critical’s more often than not. We had Big Boy to about 50% when Brusen XV showed up. He is a 74 level mage. He added his attack in while standing next to Mezra. I was really surprised that this small group was doing so well. I had seen far more powerful groups fail to take him down. I’m sure that it was Mezra’s wall spells that did the trick. In any case, the body had his name on it. From there we decided to hunt out the buff. We did very well, taking down lots of the VoD standards. While killing some Virindi, we had a little bad luck. Either Brusen XV or Tinquar got one shotted, and the other died as a result. Mezra and I finished off the battle, recovered their bodies, and ported back to the mansion. It was a fun little adventure. It proves that, with care, you don’t need an overwhelming bunch of 126+ players to hunt VoD. Olthoi Armor Jeff is starting to have more time to play. The Marines can take a lot of time from you. The day after they returned from Iraq, he was putting in 18-hour days. While he has had some leave time, their getting set up for flight hours and other settling in things, took up a lot of time. To tell you how hard it was on him, I did not even see Jeff for over a month after he returned. What time he did have, was spent with his wife, understandable. So it has taken months before he has had time to play AC again. We had a few short adventures, such as pincers and such, but nothing that took over an hour. So when he said he wanted to get a set of Olthoi armor out of the 60+ dungeon, I was more than ready to help. As is the norm for our allegiance, we did not go with overwhelming power, but what we had was more that adequate. I took Fist de Yuma. Jeff was using Kepi (70). For support we had Chagrin’ (76), Dibbuk (88) and Lifedraynor (73). Someone made a portal to a housing complex close to the dungeon, and we did a short run to the dungeon. I cannot be sure, but the Olthoi north seems to be a bit more busy than I remembered. Lifedraynor was the leader. The Olthoi armor dungeons are a maze that I don’t have a handle on yet. I cannot be sure, as it has been some time since I was there, but the 60 seemed a lot different from the 80. The difference might be superficial, but the point is moot, as I am lost in both. Lifedraynor must have the dungeon down pat, as we made nary made a wrong turn. Everyone but me was getting a set of the armor, so we had a lot of waiting for spawns. There was a group waiting for spawns in one spot, so we moved on. Unfortunately, there are a few long jumps that make backtracking impossible. I was hoping that all the armor parts would drop in the lower as well as upper spawns, but that did not happen. After a few hours, they all had eight parts, and needed to get one more. They were ready to recall, but I figured there had to be a way back to the start. In the back of the second matron spawn, I found a surface portal. Unfortunately, two of our members were quick on the trigger, and had last portal recalled before getting my message. We killed a handful of Olthoi while waiting for them to run back. Again, Lifedraynor led us directly to the spawn. We had to do about another half an hour of killing before they all got the last part. It was a fun three hours. Jeff likes the armor, but quickly found it inadequate for the 60+ matron, for now anyway. While it is really good armor, it will not hold a candle to a well tinked set of armor. Fists Armor I finally have my armor one color anyway. I’m not sure I will stay with this color yet, but it is not butt ugly. I have it dyed a purple color. The mismatched armor types give me a limited ability to make it look good. Using a darker color covers a bit for the mismatched lines and trim. I have noted a big difference when I take a surprise hit from the side or back. The armor is ok, being around al 250, but the difference between it and al 400 really shows when something gets around my shield. Of course, with a base 397 Melee Defense, I’m not hit enough to make it a big problem. Sort of, “Ooooo, took a 70 point hit there.” I’m sure that the AL will get me killed someday, but I’m equally sure that the majors will save me a time or two, so it will balance out. Meanwhile, I get a little more fun the rest of the time. Of course, this would be unthinkable before Turbine made the buffing changes, so a big thanks to them. For a rundown of my ugly armor; Silver Baigha – Major Mana Conversion Silver Koujia Breastplate – Major Unarmed Studded Leather Pauldrons – Major Strength Silver Chainmail Bracers – Major Coordination Gromnie Hide Leather Gauntlets – Major Item Magic Copper Celdron Girth – Major Focus (clearly the most ugly piece) Greater Olthoi Tassets – No spells (I’ll be looking to fill this with Creature, Life or Melee Defense. If you have something like this, I’ll give it a good home.) Copper Covenant Greaves – Major Willpower Armoredillo Hide Leather Boots – Major Magic Defense Silver Round Shield – Major Quick. So, while the AL is not something I would face the Olthoi Queen with, it works, and I have a set of majors we could only dream of years ago. Non-AC stuff I’ve had my new bike for a little over a week. I’ve got 104 miles and 7.6 hours on it. I’ve made three 30 plus mile rides with the Foothills bike club, and my legs are killing me. What is really funny, is I thought I was in shape for my age. Sure, I’m a little overweight, at 218, but I have a resting heartbeat of 60. I’ve been doing hour rides on my mountain bike and use to riding the young kids into the dirt on a regular bases. So when I first saw this club, I was brimming with confidence. They were even older than me. Their bikes were older, and clearly inferior to my bright new bike. Many of them are darn right fat. So imagine my surprise when the dropped me on the first hill. I can mostly stay with them on the flats. That is mainly because I’m drafting them. There is nothing more humiliating than getting dropped by someone older, fatter and a woman to boot. During last Thursdays ride, the subject of resting heartbeats came up. It seems that theirs are mostly in the mid 40’s. So much for the pride of having mine at 60. As you can tell, riding with them is a humbling experience. We have a 30-mile ride planned for tomorrow. I’m hoping to start catching up with them, but I think it will take more than three rides a week.   - Fist de Yuma

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