Current Training: DeathLord (Evus).

Circle test this week: Killed two Midnight Wendeckas, but just run out of health too fast. Defense, defense!

Donations: Cham Murr, who is building the long-delayed Fighter Pub.

Exploration: Tried some new challenges, but finding enough Giant Crawlers is hard!

Merdi, day 19 of Winter, 548.

The Feast of T'srrin was in full swing today, with costumes and multitudes of walking dead. Here is a sketch of me enjoying the Orga Hemlock outfit. It did not come complete with a firebomb or lightning throwing kit though.

The undead have made hunting a bit more hazardous. When members of my party fell while trying to kill a sunwyrm, we ended up spending much time trying to get them restored to life again, and called for quite a bit of chaining.

I wore through two chains today (and lost 2 precious metals!), including a favorite chain that had served me for well for over 40 uses. So I spent a good part of the rest of the day hunting for saleable furs to raise the coins to reforge a chain.

To while away the time, I was doing some thinking about kill rates. A fighter's kill rate is an easy thing to define: how many of certain critters can you kill in a short, defined period of time. Deciding how to maximize this is quite another thing. Clearly, Darkus training plays a key role in this, since killing a critter in a single blow really speeds things up. Of course, the rapidity of one's swings is also a major factor. However, since the Atkus requirement will vary depending on the critter in question, and that greatly impacts the amount of Balthus and Regia one needs to keep on swinging, it is really very hard to define a simple ratio or guide to efficiently increasing one's kill rate.

Since I have been training with Evus (or K'Pyn or DeathLord) relentlessly for a long time now, I'm starting to notice that the increased Atkus and Darkus, while desired, is whittling away at the number of swings I have from full balance. I think it may be about time to go back to a Swengus/Regia rotation to correct this before it gets too bad and I actually lose a swing.

When hunting certain types of critters, especially for furs, my kill rate can be quite impressive, however. Since I kill nearly all Greater Vermine or Island Panthers in a single blow, I can march through a crowd of these with an ease that seems amazing compared to how I fought (or rather, ran from) crowds of them when I was just a young fighter. In fact, I have been noticing that my kill rate now exceeds the rate at which I can skin all the critters I can kill, which leads to my interesting observation that I can now skin dead animals in groups rather than singly.

Batchwise skinning, if you like.

That is, if I kill one creature and skin it for say 5c, and then wheel around and kill two or three more while I am still tossing the first fur into my pack, say for another 3c and 7c, what I see is that I have skinned the second set in a batch for 10c. I have left a very small visionstone demonstrating this here.

I love seeing the coins add up like that!

Merdi, day 5 of Winter, 548.

Another year, another Angry Mother Sasquatch. And the Feast of T'srrin approaches!

Merdi, day 88 of Autumn, 547.

A small group takes out an Angry Mother Sasquatch at Melabrion's beach.

Sombdi, day 83 of Autumn, 547.

Some stellar chaining by Cyberbeing in today's recent massacre at the KI cove.

Gradi, day 79 of Autumn, 547.

For once, the Fighter test chamber doorman Cerberal decided to tell me the plain truth about my chances of passing the Sixth Circle test anytime soon.

Falling, falling ...

Click here for my report on the previous storm.

Click here for my report on the next storm.

Click here to go back to the main scroll.