On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Miriana wrote:

>
> But getting items is not as glorious and fun as you make it out to
> be, at least, not very often. The message boards are filled with rants of
> "I went to so and so dungeon, and right before I killed this monster, some
> level 40 invisible magician ran by us and stole my kill". Do you really
> want your second character, or your friends, to go through the same system
> of camping hours on end and dealing with kill stealers that you did?

It really depends on the particular item. Rubicite, the PGT,
and to a lesser extent the SBH are infamous for being bad in
this regard. My guess is because they're in relatively safe
areas which are frequently camped so as to pose little risk to
the solo kill stealer. If you get to some of the more
dangerous/obscure locales, it becomes less of a problem.

We finally got a fourth Ghoulbane last night for the fourth
paladin in our guild. All told we spent probably 40 hours
camping the lord spot over the last two months (for those who
don't know where this is, it's deep in a dungeon and requires
a high 20s to low 30s group to get to and hold). We got four
lords with swords, and I'd estimate 15 lords with bracers
(yes, we have silver plated bracers coming out our ears). In
all that time, we only had one problem with a kill stealer,
and he was already known server-wide as a kill stealer (and
oddly enough has disappeared ever since school started).
Whenever we found the spot camped, we were friendly with the
campers and ask them to give us a tell when they were done.
They did so in all cases, and a couple of them that didn't
have paladins in their groups let us take over right then and
there. When people came upon us while camping, they left us
alone, and we told them when we were done (and one guy got
Ghoulbane 30 seconds after we left).

Although I still feel kill stealing is a huge problem in the
game, it definitely does not extend to all items and all
locales.

--
John H. Kim
kim@...