you are now level 50!

at the request of opti, my monarch, i have leveled one character to 50th. the original plan was for me to naihanchi, my lifemage, up to 50th so i could quest and stuff with the big dogs. in a twist i can only describe as bizarre, one of my newest characters, moy fa kuen, became the focus of this project.

opti wanted a melee for me to take on quests, so i took my highest one, moy, who has raced past the rest of the fam thanks to having two very active vassals, ki' lin and n'eko. now that he is 50th, i suppose i could hunt with higher level characters now, so XP will be easier to get.

i still want to level nai, and the rest of my crew so i have the right character for any given situation (melees, mages, lockpickers, archers, etc.) and of sufficient level to be useful.

moy was a good first choice, becuse he is both a life mage and an axer, so it's like having both a support mage, and a melee at 50th level. i have decided to expand the project a bit, and level him up to the point that he can cast level 7's, so he can be of use to others in the clan, as well as to my crew.

i hate other players

it's no secret that anyone who is not a member of my monarchy sucks absolutley. see, other players (those who are not my friends) are complete jerks. except for the people who are wankers.

sunday, i was playing my warmage, kablammus. blammus is 18th level, which is a rough time for a young mage. he is casting level 3 buffs, and just became 4 schooled. so he isn't exactly a powerhouse.

at this stage of his life, there are only a handful of monsters that he can fight which are powerful enough to yield decent XP, but no so powerful that he cannot solo them. those creatures are low level olthoi.

so rather than hunt the first floors of the arcade, i took him to do the first two pincer runs. he got the harvester pincer with only a few deaths, and so he was going to hit the dark lair for the gardener pincer. i am not fond of this place because it is the first stop for many powerlevellers. i am just getting started when i run into two guys, one on his way in, an 11th level guy, and one on his way out, some 20 something archer. the 11th level guy asks someone to help him get his pincer. i agree and we make our way down, i imperil stuff and he kills it. he's buffed with 7's so it's not like my level 2 imperils are going to help a whole lot, but maybe i can revit him or heal or something.

so the 20something follows us back down and says "back off i was here first!"

and i was like, "no worries, it's not like there is a shortage of bugs"

and we set about killing stuff. meanwhile some level 70 guy shows up and blows everything away with some ring spell. the 70's guy says he found the pincer.

so i offer the 20 something archer to grab it if he wants it, and he says "don't need it i already got one"

and i think to myself "then why are you here? you can get more and bigger bugs in the arcade, which is like 3 clicks from here, and far less camped. but whatever."

so i offer the 11th level guy to take it. he is appearantly not listening or something and 20something has taken offense at my suggestion that we share, and says:

"do you want to settle this? go PKL and i will blow your brians out."

he says some other crap and then goes PKL.

i figure this has to be a joke, so i say "you forgot to call me a newb and an ebayer"

and he says "well, it's not like it isn't true."

and then i realize that this guy is totally serious. he actually wants to fight over bugs that spawn every 3 minutes.

that is why i think PKL should be a bannable offense. only jerks and wankers PKL and if you do it's practically admitting that you are one, and need to be banned.

When stupidity attacks

nom and i were hunting last nite on the banidt road between neydisa castle and bandit castle.

this is a really long run full of critters that are 60th to 90th level. in typical fashion for he and i, we used no buffs but those we provided our selves (no buff bot action for us thankyouverymuch) and proceeded to pwn everything around us, right up until we died.

i was running naihanchi, my lifemage, while nom was running ki' lin, his swordie. nai pretty much imperiled and vulned stuff while ki cut it into little pieces.

the first death came courtesy of a pack of L85 magma golems. there were 3 of them, with one of them on a fast spawn. i tossed some imps around with some difficulty, and all 3 of them set about the rather laborious task of bashing ki into tiny bits. for some stupid reason, i started friing frost bolts at these guys (presumably to kill one off so ki only had to deal with 2 instead of 3) and i negelected to heal or revitalize ki. he got a lethal dose of flamin hot golem love and a one way ticket back to the lifestone.

so now nai is alone with the two remaining golems, draining like mad to keep his fluids up, when a 4th golem spawns, probably the rather quick respawn of the one ki killed. it was tough but nai managed to clear all the golems alone (thanks to his leet draining skills) and i had enough time to top off, grab ki's stuff, and fight some undead while ki made the rather long run back to where he died. i even fought another spawn of magmas (4 in all) before ki returned.

when ki finally gets back, everything has spawned again and we are actively fighting the undead, more golems, and i think even a crystal golem. we make it thru probably one whole spawn, and are looping around to another when suddenly nai has gotten low on health, stamina, and mana. he is also out of stamina potions, and is failing to land heals with his last treated healing kit. he tried to run for safety and was dead a few seconds later.

so now ki is clearing badguys from nai's bod as i make the run back. and since we were stupid and didn't move from the center of the rather large spawn that killed ki in the first place, he is alone while i make my way there.

so now we are reunited, and we kill more stuff, and decide to continue on to neydisa castle. now we are making our way west, seriously far from the bandit castle drop that takes us so long to run from.

this time we get both get killed by something, i don't really remember what it was, and decide this time to head from neydissa to our bods instead of from the bandit castle drop.

as we make out way to the bods, we pick a fight with a crystal before i am buffed, which is pretty stupid, but is compunded my the fact that i decided to start buffing, instead of supporting ki. and surprise surprise, ki is dead.

fortunately we are like 20 paces from the manor portal drop, so he is back with me before i finish buffing. we kill the crystal (whom i could not land a single imp, vuln, or drain on) get ki's corpse and head east to the bods.

i should probably mention here that is is going on 5am now, so the sudden increase in stupidity could very well be attributed to exhaustion. i am litterally dozing off at the keyboard and wandered really far off course, leaving ki to get killed where he stopped to pick up a dye plant. the deathtoll is really getting out of hand.

so i tell ki to get his most recent corpse, and i will head to the ones we were trying to get to. i make it there by the skin of my teeth to find that a runed chest has spawned right were our corpses are. you the runed chest? yeah, guarded by 3 level 105 lugians and some big ass manouga. i ask ki if he lost anything important and he says yes, my sword of frozen fury.

at this point i have no idea what to do. my buffs are up, and it's a 20 minute run back here from the manor drop.

so i buff again, baned everything including my genitalia, plus a light weight buckler and a high meleeD nekode that i use to recover corpses. i don't really fight with the nekode so much as take advantage of the meleeD bonus and the shield while i loot my bod.

so i make one run for ki's bod. these are luggies, with hollow rocks. so i run right for the center and circle around them to make them switch from rock mode to melee mode. this works, and i have only swallowed a couple of their hollow boulders.

so i open ki's corpse, looting like a mad man. i get his gear and run like hell, out running the last guy with only 14 health remaining. i double check the gear and see no sword of frozen fury. i send ki a tell about it but he mist be busy cuz he doesn't answer.

now there is my bod left. i heal up and top off my fuilds and make my run. i grab all my DIs and run for safety, just to catch a rock to the skull from 100 yards out.

now i am back at the lifestone, with about half of my death items and half of ki's sitting on a fresh corpse. i am bleary eyed at this point, and i could care less about mine DIs. ki responds to the tell that the SoFF was on the bod he lost whle picking dye plants, so my motivation to retrieve DIs is now at an all time low.

so i permit ki, who is almost to the corpse site. he makes the run for my last bod and somehow manages to grab everything. we meet back at the rithwic lifestone and i give him some of his items and call it a night.

despite the needless death, it was still a productive night. nai made 46th level and was able to dump 2 milion XP into magic defense, and as always a good time was had by all.

template woes

i have long had issues with archer templates.

i can never seem to find one that is both playable and fun.

tonishiki has gone thru several iterations, starting witht he stock bowhunter template from turbine, 6 rerolls of different 3 school mage or tank templates, and finally coming full circle to finish with the stock bow hunter template from turbine.

i like bow and crossbow characters. being able to do real damage at range is a real bonus, especially when teamed with a tank who can keep monsters at bay and save me from getting womped on. i have only done this a few times, but the results were *awesome*.

i also would like a mage template that uses a bow or crossbow. those are among the hardest templates to play, in my opinion, since you end up with all of the liabilities fo being botha tank and a mage, without the shield or the cool spells.

anyway, nom has taken on another account, so i can fold some of his dudes in to my tree and some of mine in to his, and take to opportunity to reroll vampira, my xbow/dagger/life thing for the kerbillionth time.

this time around, i am going to make an item only xbow tank with lockpick, essentially, tonishiki with an xbow, or a one school version of ratspike. his template has served me well, and thanks to the 4 extra credits i will get for taking xbow, i will be able to spec magicD at 40th, which was my original plan for tonishiki, but he is going to go in another direction.

i am going to redo tonishiki as a life archer, only this time, i am not going to reroll him. instead, i am going to get him to 40th and then use the skill spec/buyback quests to move him to the life archer template.

the tank template is the only one i have had any real success with on an archer, and i am hoping to sidestep some of the problems i have had with starting bowcaster templates by "starting" at 40th, and essentially template complete. i need to untrain/unspec a bunch of skills, and move a bunch of attribute points, but with a little patience i should be able to finally have my coveted bowcaster. my plan is to move bow and meleeD to trianed, dump lockpick, lore, and fletching, then train creature, life, and manaC then to specialize life magic. on the attribute front, i want to pull the creation points from strength and quickness and put them in to focus and self. i don't know how well this is going to work, but it is worth trying since shiki is now part of the survivor's rank tree cannot simply be rerolled.

he will need to be 3 schooled now, since i will be taking all his gear to give to vampira's reroll once i him/her rolled.