Auberean Irregular (issue 12)

Luna rested against the wall, her heart beating heavy under her Tumerok Breast plate. She needed to recover before pressing on, yet it seemed impossible to escape this place without death. It had been a simple matter to take this bauble to the misty cavern and return it to the shrine. But the Grutts had a different idea. She still wasn't sure why they had not charged her. Maybe the three dead pigs at her feet gave them pause of heading into a trap. It was well that the beasts had a cowardly soul, Luna concluded. Feeling her self somewhat restored, she re-initiated the spells of protection and recovery yet again. Peeking around the stone wall, she surmised the situation. She could not head back, and returning without the restored gem would be a defeat unto itself. No, there must be a way. She sat back on her tail and went over her options. She had barely survived the last battle with three of them. The spirits of luck had seen her through, yet they were fickle spirits, lending aid to many on a whim and could not be counted upon.

An inspirational thought blossomed in her mind. With a deep breath, she calmly stepped into view and attacked the furthest one back with an Invoker spell. The creatures turned as one and raced towards her. With a wry grin Luna charged them, her tonk head low and her strong legs propelling her with magical bolstered speed. As she got within arm's reach of the Grutt, she moved obliquely to the right, skirted the stone wall and jumped past the band. They squealed in surprise and stumbled and bumped into each other trying to keep up with her sudden feint. Ahead lay the salvation, a precipice that lead down to the font. With the glee of victory she leapt over the edge and landed hard on the stone ramp way beyond. A red burst of magic circled around her, healing the wounds inflicted by her mad dash. The sounds of gurgling, splashing water welcomed her. It seems the spirits of luck were not so fickle today.

Is it patch day yet?
With hitting level 43, most of my defender's days are spent running errands and helping out my guild. Running the Totem, Shades of Heroes, various incursions, Dillo eggs, Golden age, Lodrogs, Icefire and the Mage Academy. With this I'm slowly creeping upwards to level 44, which means another vault will be available to me. More and more of my monarchy are working on secondary characters, some on their thirds. Pretty soon it will be a matter of choosing just the right set of characters for a quest, rather than going with their highest level capable of doing it. "Hmmm, we need another tank, could you go get your jugg instead of that hive keeper?" A group of specialists all set for group balance rather than going for brute strength. It could make for an interesting time, trying to get the smallest balanced party to take on the MA.

Zoning in KvK.
If you are on Leafcull and are not neutral, know this; if you enter a KvK area you will more than likely be attacked. Thanks to a bunch of the more honorable people, you probably won't be attacked as you exit the portal. When it becomes known that people are portal ganking (ganking = camping the portal and killing whomever's form coalesces from the other side), there is a group of KvK specialists that head towards that area immediately and deal with the coward in no uncertain terms. Watching Tact's walls get knocked away by a group of Defenders, followed by invokers and sorcerers burning and tearing him limb from yellow limb has a certain justice to it all.

I'd just like to post some of my personal feelings of how one should behave when deciding to go PK. First off, you're going to be killed, either by a single player or a whole hit squad. Your going to die. Everyone who does PK dies. Die, die, die, etc. What you do after you die is key to whether you belong PK'ing or not. If you get pissed off and cuss out the parties in @tell, or you log off and contemplate deleting all your characters once and for all, you probably shouldn't be PK'ing. If you laugh it off, call your buddies (assuming you were done in by a gang) and head out to hunt the jolly band because "they want to play," you're going to be fine PK'ing. If you're slain by a single player and you congratulate him and arrange for a two out of three, you're going to be fine. If you track down the people who did it, find out their actual real life address and head over there with a shotgun, you should either consider a career in either the Marine Infantry or just get out of the postal industry.

If you have no interest in Pking at all, then stay neutral and use a mount when riding through KvK zones. Hopefully, you won't run into any idiots. I, myself, am a very poor PK'er. I don't get upset and yell or anything. I just can't seem to get the hang of fighting something without AI. In other words, I can make a good sacrificial distraction up until my vitae tops out, then I'll be killing dank vermin for a good time. The bottom line is this, if you make your choice to participate in PK, have a good attitude about it, take your lumps and come back for more. As for me, I'll be hunting some Danks...

Euro Tonk
It has been awhile since I played my FI on the Eu server. I logged onto an empty world, with only 27 other souls, which makes for a very unlaggy server. I decided to do the one quest I have never done. The Broth of something or another, near the Mad Crone Vault. As I ran across the countryside, I started to think that maybe I should go get myself a mount. Not wanting to take the time to do that at the moment, I went the old fashioned way. I got the quest and the list of creatures to take down. The Fierce dillo's are near Cragstone, I know that from my vast experience, so I recall and run to Cragstone (mounts make this so much faster). From there I see a bunch of green wasps. I happen to have a wasp slayer potion so I take on that quest. Let's just say that after level 12, there isn't much reason to do the green wasp slayer quest. I golded the rest of my wasp slayer potions, it was worth more to me that way. Now, if you recall, this character is an experiment, I have only worked on the mastery skills, not one xp point has gone outside of it. This was mostly to see how much that skill aided in defense. So far its paying some pretty good dividends. The bane of my younger days for my defender were Grutts. These human/pig mutant breeds would knock me down faster then anything. I recall doing the Mist Opal quest and spending most of the time running from pigs. My little FI is taking these guys down with authority.

The official boards:
I like forum discussions. I like a good rant. I don't like flame wars, but an occasional flame can provide much entertainment. Nothing makes me more tired then trying to read all the postings on the AC forums. You do get the occasional well-thought-out posting and the question that you wish you had asked. I also see a lot of people screaming for balance with no idea what 'balance' means. Their definition seems to be that any class and race can do everything that every other class and race can do. That is NOT balance, that is making everything average and the same. AC1 is a prime example of this. It started with a wide diverse set of characters who had unique skills, many of which complimented other groups. Then as time went on, a lot of people drifted to the same thing, three-mage school melee or Og's and Battle mages.

It's because everyone wanted the Superman character. The character that was the alpha omega of Dereth that would prevail over all and being a strange visitor from another planet would fight for truth, justice and freedom! Do a Google search on Cheat Codes and look at what comes up. Sure, I have played Doom in god mode. Yeah it was fun, but zero challenge. I'm not quite sure the uber-tubers (new word I just made up) have any concept that working for something or prevailing against the odds has a reward far beyond the game. I had a nasty battle with my Tonk spear thrower the other day. It ended with me at zero vigor and 45 health when the dillo snuffed it. It had come down to the final hit and could have gone either way. It was thrilling and quite a victory, seeing as how the dillo was 5 levels my senior. It would have been a complete victory if the mucor that decided to investigate the racket hadn't sneaked up on me with such stealth. If you want a game where you are the God character, don't expect to be playing it after a month. So Uber-tubers, figure out that balance means there are things you can do that others can't and vice-versa.

My personal favorites are the knife twisters. They are the ones who claim to be closing down multiple accounts and having a legion of friends who are doing likewise. These are unverifiable clowns who want to go out in some bizarre blaze of glory! I imagine these are people who go to a movie and part way through they stand up and start yelling at the screen, then insulting the people who aren't going to storm out of the theater as they are; rude, boorish and childish tantrums. If you want to make a statement, shutting down the account makes a big one to Turbine/MS, then go elsewhere and leave those of us who are enjoying the game out of your tantrum. We don't care if you go.

Off one soap box, onto another:
The main part of AC2 that bothers me is the lack of numbers on the servers. I would like to know what MS/Turbine feels a good server population will be. I have only seen Frostfell above 1000 players with any consistency. My server, Leafcull, seems to have about 500 people at its peak. The EU servers have about 30 people on them. If you look around in various magazines you will see EQ's advertisements. Some gamer magazines will have the AC2 page ad, but that's about it. The EQ blue fairy cheesecake character is on every box and every ad. I see next to nothing being advertised for AC2. Maybe I don't understand the industry or how you go about marketing a product. I just figure that product placement should be paramount to getting a larger piece of the pie. I'd love to see TV advertisements, pre-movie commercials (yeah, I'm not thrilled about ads in the movie theater but at least it would be something). One of those MSN banners would be great as well. Near as I can figure, AC is marketing to game reviewers. MS get the registration list for Sims online and sends them all a free copy of AC2. Do the same with EQ! Everyone from DaoC already seems to know about AC2, so you can probably skip them. Since I got involved with AC1 and now AC2 I have cancelled my cable and bought an antenna for Television. So that's your target. People fed up with the limited drivel that the networks stuff down our throat.

Uber Tonk of the Slaughter fields:
I discovered the slaughter fields late in my Defender's career. With my Tonk approaching 30, I decided to see how well he could do. After having a human melee, red dot monsters give me a little apprehension. As I stepped out of the portal I headed north and saw some Boglurk Dillo's. These rolling brutes have been known to drop some fair loot for the level 35 crowds. I was hoping to not take a trip to the lifestone and to size up my abilities. So I got the dot on the next to the last radar ring, or 'Huck' distance as I call it. Then I started to buff up carefully so as to not miss a spell. I slammed a HoT potion and began my attack. It was dead before it ever reached me. A nearby Archer lamented the fact that they can solo the dillos at level 35, and that until recently it would give them no end of trouble. So I do see the need for some characters to achieve balance.

My guild had a great fellow going on the Slaughterfields. Two higher ups were in the fellow and doing incursion's while us lowbies were killing around the mound. I think everyone in the group leveled at least once (not counting the higher ups). I teamed up with Brother Fish for most of the hunt and together we were doing quite well.

Babsi and Pocak:
My Guild on Leafcull, Empath's, has reached a lofty 319 members. We are a friendly, helpful bunch and we seem to get along pretty well. I recently saw in the @a chat that two new members, Babsi and Pocak had joined and were saying their hello's. As I entered Kieldur I was surprised to see the familiar light green names floating near the lifestone. I came up and introduced myself and found that they were heading off at level 30 to taste the local fauna. I know from first hand experience that being level 30 on Linvak can be thrilling and quite a challenge, in a lot of cases way too high a challenge. I followed behind them a bit and threw a couple of heals out until one of the two made comment to that effect. I felt a bit sheepish. Here I had the best intentions but it hadn't occurred to me that my interventions should have been explained upfront, giving them the opportunity to let me know their desires. One should always err on the side of communication. I apologized and started off to the portals and was about to formulate another goal when I received a @tell. What I assumed was a rebuff was, in fact, a playful jest on their part. This was followed by an invitation to join in their hunt. We delved into a few Dillo's, Shreths, Eli and Banders, when an idea occurred to me. The Dillo quest was nearby and should be more than successful with the three of us. We headed to the Eli and they both received the quest. I opted out wishing to focus on the group than myself.

Pocak is a lugian melee who is torn between Tact and Sage. Babsi is a Tumerok Invoker who is wi flagged. Added to my defender, we had a good diverse set of talents. Babsi would fair poorly in Melee combat but could dish out prime damage when Pocak and I would tank. We headed to a Bander spawn I know of, only to find it camped by a tactician. We could attract a few of the outskirts but all in all, he was controlling the spawn. We headed along the Whitebay portals until we found the corridor to the Omishan portal. This is an excellent place for level 30's to fight. The spawns can be lured and most of the creatures are low enough for two 30's to take down. We were doing okay, the spawns were not cooperating as much as they could when, lo and behold there was the camping tact riding by on a mount. This meant the area was clear for us. We recalled and sprinted back to the location and proceeded to eliminate the required number of Banders. I have a bow that I use for luring. I use one shot to lure, then change back to my sword and shield in time to hit the bander with Bash for the stunning effect, then I would focus on heals until the creature died. This method worked well except for one small thing. The lag was horrid. I was getting 60% packet loss. Even with this detriment we were actually doing okay, just getting by. Then Pocak crashed, and Babsi died fighting a thrasher. I finished off the banderling and she got the quest completed, then she crashed as well. I tried re-logging and even another character with zero luck. Time to call it a night.

I received an e-mail from Babsi explaining they crashed, it was nice to actually get a missive explaining what I assumed happened. I only regret I wasn't able to see their first Linvak quest through to the end.

EUing
As I mulled over what to do and where to go in AC2, I decided to re-visit the EU servers and see how my Tonk experiment was doing. This server is desolate. Always had around 40 people on it. As I get to that screen I did a second glance, there was 400 on it! I was astounded. One note, everyone there is a Lugian, very few Tonks and fewer humans. Despite my survival German (my in-laws speak German) I was able to get into a fellowship and do a number of quests. Including the Drudge Potion quest. This was where the language barrier broke down. The Drudge citadel area is quite dangerous for level 20 characters to travel through. If you're with a group and you want to kill everything along the way you can do okay, just make sure not to drag too many additions to your fight. The best method of traversing this forsaken land is to get a Mount and ride past them. You will take one or two hits but for the most part you'll survive intact. My Lugain host insisted that it was much more dangerous to be mounted. Despite my making saddles all the way around and trying to get them to mount up, we ended up running and gunning the whole way. I deferred to the party leader, figuring he was well acquainted with the quest. As time progressed I realized that this was not the case. After our party suffered a number of deaths and waiting to rejoin, I started running in front, leading as it were. Using a few terrain tricks and keeping close together, we made it to the Drudge fort and added another. With all my xp going into mastery and grandmastery I found myself evading a lot and hitting more than my companions who were up to five levels above me. I never once had to retreat due to damage. This is due to a number of factors, not the least of which is without attack skills, I don't hit hard enough to keep the drudge's attention. My DoT is fairly high and my defense is allowing me to stay at a creature for the duration.

-EE