980219 - Every day I have to start out, taking care of business. My vendors need a lot of looking after but it's nice seeing things sold out every morning. The end result is so nice to watch, six figures on your bank-account is intimidating to most other players, asking a banker for balance usually causes a minor riot nowadays. I recalled around marking some runes and buying arrows, until I had both Dulcie and Trianon fully stocked again. I managed to put out another copy of my do-it-yourself transport kits today, those kits take quite a while to manufacture, it really helps that some of my suppliers are writing recall scrolls for me. I even had some time to practice my seamstress talents today, my friend Kirth needed a nicer looking city outfit, now I do not normally do male clothing, but I'm quite happy with what I made for him, he looks very nice in his new blue city clothes. I hadn't met his friend Pax before, but he was also a nice acquaintance to make, not every dishonorable person is a thief or a moron thankfully. After quite a long session of city business, I changed my clothes to my outdoor dress, deposited my key safely and bought some reagents ready to prowl the countryside and practice archery.

I hadn't taken more than ten steps outside the city limit when suddenly my bow went off by itself. I hid immediately. Then nothing at all happened. Finally I started to look around a bit. It seemed that a sewer rat had attacked me and gotten itself killed by my auto-defense before I even knew what was going on. Oh well. Next I saw Mary's little lamb, well lamb chops are always nice, so I killed that little sweet animal too, I admit it's not very heroic killing small farmyard animals, I'll just have to blame it on having a bad hair-day. After that I found nothing at all for a long, long period of time. I spoke to another friendly traveler if he had seen anything around, but he hadn't unfortunately. Then I decided to go and find out if those elementals were still there. The air elemental was gone, but when I got to the spot the water elemental had been, I saw a warrior, Balata, casting protection spells on himself before re-engaging the elemental. The water elemental was almost dead when I arrived; I just stood by healing Balata a bit as he finished the otherworldly monster off. Now that's one tough warrior I thought, taking on an elemental single-handedly. He turned out to be a very nice fellow, he even gave me some gold for healing him, even if he didn't have to, now that's very nice. I congratulated him to his victory, and took off again. I hadn't taken more than twenty steps into the forest when I ran straight into an ettin. Now ettins are large and can withstand a lot of damage, and since I walk about completely unarmored, the monster will rip my head off if he gets close to me. I ran back to Balata, telling him about the ettin, dropping the bow into my backpack and readied my spells. Balata immediately started to chase the ettin. The stupid monster ignored the warrior altogether at first, hell-bent on eating me, so I had to run around for quite a while avoiding it as a cast my Lightning spells (and failing Flamestrike twice in a row), and Balata had a tough time following the ettin to strike at it. Finally we managed to maneuver so that Balata engaged the monster while I could stand back to cast spells. From there on it was a piece of cake to destroy the ettin of course. A warrior and a witch that co-operates are not twice but 3 or 4 times as efficient as if they worked by themselves. Soon the ettin lay dead on the ground. Unfortunately it wasn't carrying anything interesting at all; we split what little gold it carried. I thanked Balata for rescuing me. Not that I needed to be rescued, but it's always nice to getting a nice strong handsome looking man's attention in some manner, in this case I happily play the damsel-in-distress part :) Also getting a warrior's assistance saves you a whole lot of reagents and time! Then I Recalled home to Vesper to rest for a while before reverting to my business schedule. Today's little screenshot is from just after we killed the ettin, of course. Note, Balata is *not* wearing full plate, and yet he takes on elementals and ettins, now that's one tough and brave guy! May I add that he's also good-looking...:)

980218 - I always have to start out rejuvenating my houses and restocking my vendors, this day was not unlike any other day. Sister Cess told me that she had been harassed by Dread Lord members from KOB (Knights of Britannia), I had already heard that story from Browyn. I also patched up Bigcat recalling in to my Vesper shop in a sorry shape. He seemed to have run into these guys as well, hmm, maybe it's time to do something about them after all, but as long as they stay at the orc camp they are none of my business really. However, I cannot allow my customers and friends to get killed, if they loose too much money they will not be able to buy from me. But on the other hand if they loose their equipment they *will* come and buy from me, what a problem. I talked to several other good citizens of Vesper today, but none had anything interesting to report. Finally I had restocked my vendors sufficiently to take some time off from my otherwise so busy schedule.

Today was very different hunting from yesterday. Oh the two elementals were still in the same spots where I saw them yesterday, but since elementals rarely are actively aggressive, they are easily avoided. I stood looking at the water elemental for a while, pondering whether or not I should try to take it on, but decided against it. There was really no need to fight it, the terrain was swarming with other things. First I found a small herd of hinds, I practiced archery against them for quite a while. Then a troll showed its ugly face. A troll can withstand too many of my arrows for it to be any fun, so I switched to magery and killed it easily. When I deposited my loot in town I also spoke a bit to Thrax, he had had less luck hunting in Occlo. I went out again only to find a corpser. I've never seen a corpser in this area before, but I weeded it out. Isn't that what you do with a corpser, you don't kill it, you weed it? Then a giant spider decided to eat me, I voted against that and kicked its hairy arachnoid behind thoroughly. I hadn't more than finished killing it until a second spider popped up. While I was busy flame-broiling the new spider, a harpy decided to join in the fray. Just at this moment I ran out of reagents, and a spider plus a harpy is way too tough for me to take on with archery alone! Yes I know what I've written about airheads and not keeping track of reagents, well, at least I'm not platinum blonde! I felt quite smug about having those extra recall scrolls in my bag at all times, and returned magically to Vesper intending to rest, and change to decent clothing. I can't wear a plain shirt in town, they are too low cut, and my bra is visible. I look very cheap wearing it, not fashionable at all. I enclose a small picture (to avoid showing my awful clothing it's taken from behind) with me and a corpser's corpse, sounds funny, corpser's corpse :)

I went to shop in Minoc as well today. I found a lot of arrows there, these are tricky to get hold on in numbers in Vesper sometimes. I also polymorphed a lot into troll or ettin shape. That's quite popular in Minoc, many people are very amused by the polymorph and you can stand around for the entire time your polymorph runs, just talking to people admiring you. You can also scare the living daylights out of other good citizens of Minoc and that's pretty fun too, at least from where I was sitting. I also met a couple of *really* skilled mages there (I've met them before), and had the opportunity to tag along as defensive backup, when they killed some unskilled and stupid PK:ers. This is a recipe how to kill PK:ers if you're proficient enough as a mage, and work as a team...

• Summon pet daemons
• Have pet daemons attack PK:ers
• Retreat a small distance and hide
• Take out bowl of popcorn and watch the show
• Loot

Works incredibly well indeed. If PK:er tries to run around to find out who summons daemons on them, insert "Cast Energy Bolt when PK:er is more than a screen away from other PK:ers and hide again". That was a fun excursion even though I didn't do much myself. But I'll have some really nice weapons to sell in my shop shortly by some coincidence... I must try to scribe a couple of those Summon Daemon scrolls just for my own amusement.

980217 - The day started out in a pretty predictable manner, I had to replenish some of my items with my vendors. I still have a bad conscience about not having set up my own vendor down at the Crossroads, but I assume that BlackTouch is taking care of business there. I went out on a long archery practice tour today. My normal hunting ground was devoid of anything useful, the only things around was an air elemental and a water elemental. I'm not so foolhardy that I take on an elemental without warrior support, especially when I don't wear any armor at all. On my hunting trips I only wear a plain shirt, a plain skirt and a pair of sandals, a good archer does not need armor more than a witch does. It's a matter of not letting the enemy get into your face really. I also scouted the nice hunting grounds east of Minoc, generally there's a lot of game there but today the only things present were the disturbing remains of many eviscerated victims and a Dread Lord sitting in his house. I avoided the area altogether. However, south of Minoc where my other vendor is, I finally found animals worthwhile to hunt. Both a timber wolf and a cougar fell victims to my arrows until I decided I had enough training and walked back, well recalled back anyway, to Vesper. The towncrier in Vesper was mumbling something about of a repelled orc invasion. What orc invasion? I must have missed that completely. Very weird, my many contacts usually reports any news of any importance... The rest of the day the server couldn't stay up for more than half an hour at the time making game-play impossible. What IS the matter with the Catskills server???

980216 - Selling Recall scrolls in Big Packs (buy 12 pay for 10), was a great hit, all packs sold out overnight, and they take some to time to replenish unfortunately. I was sold out on my Island hopping kits too and had to spend an hour and a half manufacturing some new. But it drives me crazy when something is blocking my Recalls when I'm on those trips, I waste both time and reagents on nothing. Some people just don't get it, standing around like a lamer for hours in a mage shop casting petty spell is stupid! Go in, make your purchase and leave. Go to Covetous and get PK:ed for all care. Enough of moaning for today? No it's not. Skill atrophy is hitting me quite hard, both my item identification and my arms lore skills are nearly ruined, and the promise that OSI was to fix magical items so they did not wreck your normal attributes was obviously a false one. Two of my suppliers have reported that magical weapons have negatively affected their permanent tactics skill after the patch. This is not good, not good at all. Soon I will have to start relying on wands and other devices to conduct business, I am not a happy woman today! Another problematic thing is getting off my jewelry when I want to go out to hunt, the necklace and the bracelet comes off pretty easily, but removing the ear rings, and above all my finger ring, is difficult sometimes. It's quite tricky to hit the right spot with your cursor, and the lag does not help one single bit. And I thought it was difficult to remove my ring in real life - sheesh - OSI better get some soap in the game if this is to continue...

The hunting was a bit boring today, though the archery skill gets a big boost by practicing on things like great harts or lizard men. Against one lizard man I ran out of arrows, and had to resort to good old Vas Flam. Same technique, different kind of shot. I also practiced a Flamestrike on a rat today; its corpse disappeared altogether! A case of severe overcooking I suppose. Other than that I saw absolutely nothing out in the countryside, except of course for some suspected PK:ers, hiding within their houses. I avoid these; being inside a house gives you a tremendous advantage if you want to kill somebody passing by. I've heard reports of several trolls once again prowling the area in Vesper, but I didn't see any of these myself, it's a pity, trolls are fun to harass. The monsters make very weird noises when they die nowadays, by the way, just kill one and listen for yourself if you like. At to save the most weird thing for the last, I stole 3 more exploding boxes from lamers today, don't these fellows understand that this trick is so old by now, everybody knows of it, oh dear me. But at least it's turning my Main Office to a gun powder storage house, not a bad thing really... However, not everything is bad about the game. I'd like to take the opportunity to say "Hello, and thank you", to the many, many nice persons I've met on Catskills over the last 2 months, you've really made the game worth playing for me :)

980215 - Business is still very good. I'd like to say a special "thank you" to Certyl for being such a good supplier of scrolls. As you know, Certyl, I pay you quite well, and extra bonuses, like marking Empath Abbey in Yew for free, is part of the salary, emoluments if you like. Not to mention BloodMoon who delivered 72 mark and recall scrolls to me, I could not carry that much at the same time. But that's a nice problem to have, it's a matter of logistics really. And I can put out some Do-it-yourself Transport kits again - yes! When I went out on my daily hunting trip today, the countryside was very empty of anything worthwhile. The biggest things I saw (and killed) was a cougar and a lizard man. It's not very fun going out to train archery when there's nothing there to kill at all - give me more orc mages or gazers. With those guys you can at least improve your resist spells in a more fun way than standing around in your own Fire Field from dawn to dusk. Speaking of skills, every skill point I improve in *anything* seems to come out of my item id - soon I will not be able to perform identification at all if this continues. This is really not amusing at all, why can't my stupid cooking skill drop instead? I have 40 something in cooking, and I've never ever cooked as much as a rib in my entire career. Or what about my taste identification skill? My lips have never touched a potion in my entire life, and it's almost 30. I just don't get it! Do you?

Now I know one person who for certain does not want more orc mages up in the area where we live, am I not correct Leafbeach? I do understand that it's not fun at all getting creamed by one of those orc mages when you are lagging badly, yes they are really bad news for a mid-ranged warrior who knows little magic and whose resist is low. And of course it's even worse when someone loots all your belongings afterwards. However, the things and the money I gave you should give you a fresh restart, just remember, it's better to loose all your equipment than to insta resurrect yourself. That takes too large a chunk out of your skills and stats for it to be any fun at all. Why couldn't I have met up with that orc mage instead, I like dueling them, I really do. Kind of strange woman I am, am I not? Other than this, nothing besides the normal business happened today, but there was one thing I forgot to tell you about yesterday. I met a seer in the town-square in Vesper, you know those guys all in green that hand out quests. Unfortunately he didn't have any quest for me, he only wanted some food, which I gave him. I hope to get a nice quest next time, not too dangerous please, being killed is not good business at all, nor is it a smart career-move.

980214 - Today I did like yesterday, started out by taking care of business so to speak, and then I changed clothes and went out for some archery practice. I have to be careful with what I train, my item identification has been dropping like a rock for a couple of days, for no apparent reason what so ever. Anyway, I went out to hunt whatever there is to hunt in the countryside in a nice spot that's rarely frequented by PK:ers. There's usually a lot of mongbats there, and this was the case today too. But just as I was firing away at the stupid little monsters, an orc mage found me and started to chase me around. I had forgotten, stupidly, to get my offensive spells up as icons so I had to run away for a while to arrange these. As I ran, I passed another player and shouted "Watch out! Orc mage!" He went "Duh" and attacked the orc. When I came back prepared to fight 15 seconds later, the player was already VERY dead indeed, well, well, those orc mages are pretty tough on newbie fighters, aren't they? I told his ghost to go and resurrect and come back to claim his goods, as I started to duel the orc, all the time avoiding a stupid mongbat who wanted to get in my face and disrupt my spells. Thanks to the presence of the mongbat, the duel took quite a while, but ended in a predictable manner of course. Oh yes, the other player did manage to come back and claim his worldly belongings thank god, so nothing was really hurt, except for the other players pride of course. This orc mage actually carried several nice magical things, some of which didn't fit into my shops' line of items, but these goods I gave away to other player-friends, among these a silver axe, I haven't seen any silver items before, what do they do? Kill undead? I enclose a small screenshot just as I simultaneously loot the orc mage and kill off the last of the mongbats, enjoy.

980213 - I had a few orders to care of today, and so I did. I also scribed my daily quota of scrolls. But then I thought "Ah, it's Friday - let's go with Cyndee Lauper - Girl's just wanna have fun...". So I started out in the woods north of Vesper intending to train archery. At first very little happened, I killed a couple of rabbits and a llama, but the terrain was pretty barren. Then I saw something fun. Two people were standing discussing something, they weren't hiding but they had taken cover behind a tree. I hid myself and listened in for a while. It was two persons, who obviously did not know each other so well discussing how to practice weapon training by going after one another with practice weapons. One of them said, "It's OK, I'm a Dark Lord so I can attack you first and then we can stand around all day and fight..." After a while the other person agreed to this scheme. I do not know what kind of powerful weapon the Dark Lord used, or if that other chap was a complete newbie, but it took only one hit from the Lord and the other person was dead on the ground. Needless to say, the Lord looted for a while, but then I made my presence know by casting a spell (I was recasting Magic Reflection on myself) and he fled as fast as he could. Now, that was a neat little con trick really, I haven't seen that one before.

After quite a long fieldtrip, I had to go in to Minoc to buy some more arrows. I couldn't resist polymorphing into a troll first. Now if you *may* scare a couple newbies in Vesper by assuming non-human shape, you are *certain* to cause a riot in Minoc by doing so. The poor inhabitants there are not accustomed to high magic at all. The funniest response was from to pretty tough fighters hanging out at the bank. One of them said to the other, seeing me, "What the %#! is a troll doing in here". I responded "Banking". Now I cannot begin to tell you how unexpected my reply must have been to him. For quite a while he thought I was some kind of Game Master NPC, but in the end I managed to explain to him how it all works, and then I gave him a first-hand demonstration by polymorphing again to something else in front of him. I only tell you this, if you turn into a demon in Minoc, and run through town at top speed shouting "AAARRRGGGH!" people flee before you like leaves in a winter-storm... :)

980212 - You remember that I was wondering how many of 150 scrolls would remain after one night. I got the answer this morning, the answer was zero (!), not a single scrap of paper remained with my vendor, even the low-levels were completely gone. I had to make three round trips to the bank just to deposit all the gold. Not only that, most of my rune kits, single runes and many of the magical weapons were sold as well, business is booming right now. My vendor in Minoc isn't doing that well at all, it only shows how important location is when placing a shop. I will make preparations to set up a vendor down at the Crossroads later today, I think Crossroads will be a big success, I will start by selling female armor and magical weapons and see where to go from there.

I manufactured some scrolls but then I got bored and decided to go out and practice my archery. I switched clothes to look as a peasant woman newbie, grabbed one of my magical bows and started to roam around looking at all the houses in the countryside. Up at the spawning ground in Minoc I found a small herd of mid-sized animals. I killed a brown bear and two panthers but then I ran out of arrows and had to enter Minoc to re-supply. While visiting the provisioner there, I was asked by a man if I was a mage (I had removed my bow into my backpack), I first said no, but then I got curious and admitted that I indeed was a master mage. He wanted me to resurrect a friend of his to be able to access his bank account. Now every veteran player knows what this means: "Whaaa, my Dread Lord has been killed and his bank box was holding all the keys, d00d, and I'm too lazy to let his ghost go to Lord Blackthorn's shrine". Now that is a very bad career-move for a Dread Lord, I claimed to be unable to cast 8th circle and walked away, telling him to go to Vesper instead. I do not help Dread Lords or their mules, especially not when they are that clumsy. How can I be so certain? Come on, the terrain was virtually swarming with wandering healers, big and small...

I picked up three dozen more arrows and headed back out. Now most of the animals had been killed already by some eager warriors, I decided to let them have their fun in peace and wandered back towards Vesper along the northern shores. I did not find another animal, but several monsters popped up. First there was a mongbat, it died, then another mongbat, which met the same fate. When a third mongbat showed it's ugly face I started to get bored with this too. But just at that moment a little orc mage wandered into my screen. I immediately killed the mongbat and started to trade spells with the orc mage. I exchanged each of his fireballs with an energy bolt of my own and had plenty of time to heal myself in between. It was over very quickly, the orc died of course. Now orc mages are almost profitable to kill, but only almost. This one carried a nice magical sword, which unfortunately turned out to be worn out, and a lot of gold. He also carried a bottle of beer, which I drank after having returned to Vesper. We all need to party a bit sometimes. It would have been more of a fashion statement if he had carried wine or champagne, but I'm not so stuck-up that I can't enjoy a bottle of ale from time to time.

However, much, much, much later I was suddenly attacked by a severe case of drunkenness when I logged on. I continued *hic*-ing for about 20 minutes, and then I called a GM, who responded very quickly and sobered me up instantly. It was quite a shocking experience, what if a customer would have seen me like that - not stylish at all. I wonder if that had anything to do with the new server-patch. Barak reported the same phenomena happening to him earlier. By the way, Barak, our com-crystals seem to be working very nicely. I seem to get a variety of special orders nowadays, I must organize my suppliers to be able to put them to work in areas where they are most needed at the moment. This will take some work to sort out on my part as well. All the hassle made it impossible to get up the vendor at Crossroads today after all. I will get to that little item a little later, right now being able to deliver the correct items to the correct customer on the right time is the most important issue.

980211 - My workload got a bit lessened today, Certyl wrote over 60 low-level scrolls for me. Two of my friends, Zeus and Arcan, also sold me a plethora of magical weapons and interesting items. Many of the weapons were unfortunately in poor condition. I must ask one of my blacksmith friends to have a look at those and touch them up, before I can offer them for sale. I really should have put up my vendor down at the Crossroads today, but business forced me to put that project off until tomorrow. As always I pace myself and do only what's reasonable doable, I absolutely refuse to be rushed and do a poor job in the process. Most rush jobs are of terribly low quality. My shop in Vesper has the highest reputation amongst many players, I intend to keep my shops that way if it is within my powers. My vendor was holding over 150 scrolls when I logged off for the night. I wonder how many of those will be left tomorrow morning?

I also recalled all over creation today marking some 40 runes. This includes the ten runes I've manufactured as give-away free items for our grand opening of the Crossroads shop. I'm very, very curious about the market for magical items down there, I've been stocking up on such items at the limit of my bank box now. The only thing left to do is to manufacture a few more pieces of female armor and I'm all set to go. I heard BlackTouch already got his vendor up down there - good - some introductionary sales always bait the market. Crossroads is a pretty convenient spot to go to wherever you are heading, if you are planning for a trip in the countryside that is. I did not feel very safe standing around mass-marking in unprotected area, but I always reserved mana for a bail-out recall, better safe than sorry - that's my motto. And that's why I'm so rich, I do not take unnecessary risks with my worldly belongings. Speaking of mark, I start to realize how many people that have gotten a rune for my shop in Vesper, sometimes when I stand around there scribing I get the feeling not being in Vesper at all, but rather in the Star Trek transporter room. Now that's good for business indeed.

I'll be back with more news at the situation warrants. Until next time - stay safe from PK:ers

Even a tailor can walk around semi-nude in UO

/Sincerely