User talk:Tihocan

Annoying anonymous user
I don't know if he'll cause further bother, but incase he does, could you watch this user? Thanks ^^/ I hate these people who are trying to purport their own sites - why can't we just have the WIKI, then they can go get users to visit their site by having a useful community or something? Gah I can't *belive* people would be... in-courteous enough to create their own information site. They aren't offering anything to the community; just trying to personally gain from their visitors - whether it is some sort of messed-up false 'internet status', or ad money, or what I don't know - I frankly think they are crazy. Elliott Cable -  ?+¿  -  ‹·›  18:39, June 15, 2006 (EDT)


 * I think (and I also think you'd agree now, given how the discussion there has evolved) that this user meant no harm, he just wanted to share a link to a website that was more accurate than the Wiki. Can't really blame him, he didn't know this could be a problem. Tihocan 22:47, June 15, 2006 (EDT)


 * Yeah I forgot to come back here and let you know - sorry )-: lol Elliott Cable  -  ?+¿  -  ‹·›  12:12, June 16, 2006 (EDT)

Advice
Hey Tihoccan, I have a question you, actually I wanted your opinion on something. I am a 9th level Rogue and a friend of mine said that I should take 1st level fighter for my 10th level to pickup better weapons and extra feats (you get an extra feat at 1st level fighter). Do you agree with this?? I value your guys opinion (you and Sonil are great). Sorry if this is the incorrect forum or method of asking you a question like this. Thanks -Solomir


 * Well the best place to ask would be the reference desk. Though I have to admit I'm lagging a bit on the last updates, I'm trying to catch up, but Robin doesn't slow on the edits ;) It really depends on what you want. In DDO, with the current L10 cap, the main drawback will probably be the loss of your best action boost enhancement. Since the level cap is going to be raised, this will not be a problem, however you will lose on some unknown enhancements. Since as a rogue you rely on your sneak attack for damage, "better" weapons are not weapons dealing more damage, but rather having a larger choice of weapons to choose from (either from your own loot, or at brokers, or when trading). This can be good especially if you don't want to waste time looking for a specific weapon effect for a weapon you are proficient in. The extra armor proficiencies you will gain probably won't help much since you should have a high dex, and heavier armor will make you lose your dex bonus to AC. Since I think you're TWFighiting, extra shields are not really a must either. The extra feat is always nice. A note about weapons though: with high dex, you're probably using weapon finesse, which means you're necessarily constrained when choosing weapons. The fighter level will not unlock much more weapons to choose from. Now it's up to you. Personally I think I'd stick to full rogue, but taking a level of fighter can certainly be motivated. Tihocan 16:28, June 28, 2006 (EDT)


 * Thanks for the advice. I used the same weapon finesse with my friend.  Maybe I'll add another class when the cap's increased (ranger maybe). - Solomir

Hey Tihoccan. You always seem to have good advice (thanks for all that you've given me so far). I currently have a level 4 Drow wizard that's getting ready level up. My nephew suggested that I take one level of fighter because I could get to wear light armor (without using one of my wiz feats) and use shield. Also, I get a feat plus bonus fighter feat (Dodge +1 armor class). What you think?? Any downsides??. Thanks - Solomir


 * Yes, a lot of downsides. A fighter/wizard is a very touch multiclass to build correctly. The main problem you'll be facing is, besides lacking behind in wizard power, that you will suffer Arcane spell failure by wearing a light armor and a shield.The +1 AC from the Dodge feat is not really going to help you as a wizard, as your AC will still be too low to be really meaningful (unless you max out Dex, which is not really a good thing to do on a Wizard, since Int is more important). Tihocan 12:06, October 30, 2006 (EST)


 * Is it your opinion that a wizard should not wear armor? I just found some elven chain +2 and I see that there is an enhancement to lower the Arcane spell failure.  I just keep dying in battle and I think its because my AC so low.  I have Black Widow bracers and cast sheild, but it doesn't seem to be enough.  What about taking Light Armor Proficiency as  feat, keeping to Wizard only?  Are there other magical items to improve my AC that stack with Black Widow bracers that I should be looking for?  Thanks - Solomir


 * If you plan it ahead of time, then I think it is possible to make a wizard with decent AC. You need to use one enhancement slot for Elven/Drow arcane fluidity, and/or find some good armor (if it can be elven/mithral/darkwood(?), even better). However you don't even need to worry about being proficient with it, since all the non-proficiency does is give you an attack/skills penalty depending on the armor ACP, that you want as low as you can (hopefully 0). This applies to shields too. For instance, imagine a wizard with 22 Dex (16 base, +2 tome, +4 item), with +5 leather armor and a +5 mithral buckler. With the arcane fluidity enhancement, you should be at 0 ASF, no penlaty for non-proficiency in armor/shield, but an AC of 10 + 6 + 11 + 6 = 33, to which you can add some deflection bonus (+3 or +4 from existing static items). This is a pretty good AC for a wizard. But it requires a high Dex to start with, probably spending an enhancement slot, and finding some good armor sets. This is still much less of a constraint that wasting a level on fighter. Tihocan 14:09, October 30, 2006 (EST)


 * Wow....Thanks! Since I have the Elven Chain +2, I'll have to wear it and check out the AC difference (and take the Arcane fluidity enhancement).  I'll have to find a nice light shield or buckler to compliment.  As long as I don't have to swing a staff or sword, I should be fine :) - Solomir

Distractions
I am working on another huge web project right now. I'm a bit distracted right now, so I just thought I'd let you know I am semi-AFP for a while. Possibly indefinately. I will still get edits to my user_talk page really quick, but I will likely no longer be watching the RC page. Just letting you know, you've been doing a pretty good job till now, and I'm sure you'll continue to do so. If you need to, you can promote robin or one of the other editors to full admin also, so they can help out. (-: Elliott Cable  -  ?+¿  -  ‹·›  23:30, July 2, 2006 (EDT)


 * Ok, well I'm on vacation this week, so not watching the Wiki at all. I'll do my best to catch up asap when I come back ;) Tihocan 10:36, July 4, 2006 (EDT)


 * Haha nice timing *wink* - I'm gone now again - two weeks to montana this time. Elliott Cable  -  ?+¿  -  ‹·›  13:49, July 7, 2006 (EDT)

Advertising users
I jsut dropped by for a sec, saw this edit. I'd prefer if you could police these - I don't like our wiki full of links to outside sources. Either post on the forums requesting somebody to add the info to the wiki, or just delete the page - but better that the info not be linked at all if it isn't directly available to the users here. Thanks. Elliott Cable -  ?+¿  -  ‹·›  17:32, August 9, 2006 (EDT)


 * Ok, page seems deleted now, but I guess it was a recent one, I haven't been able to do anything on the Wiki yesterday (and maybe the day before too, don't remember) due to heavy load at work. Tihocan 09:00, August 10, 2006 (EDT)

Numbers Project - Traps and Locks
As you know, I've been trying to add a lot of information to the traps and locks page. It's obvious that people are aware what the toughest traps and locks in the game are, but there's little information for what your Disable Device skill should be, say, while at level 4.

As such, I've been trying to keep the quests sorted by level (as you've probably noticed). I have a little more sorting to do, but most are in order. My real conundrum comes with the story arc quests (such as Shan-To-Kor or Tangleroot). The story arcs contain multiple quests, many of which are at varying levels. Nonetheless, folks don't run the first quest of Tangleroot when they're at level 3, then come back for the next quest when they're at level 4, and so on.

So, I'd like to keep quests together by level, but I also want to keep the story arc quests together. Yet these two goals just don't lend themselves together very well. I have the four quests from the Grey Moon Waning story arc in there - I believe I have them all listed as level 6 quests, yet the latter two quests are actually level 7 quests. So, in this regard, it's a bit misleading. One of the possible solutions I've been considering would be to keep most quests categorized strictly by level and then keep the story arcs in a different section. Yet this might be misleading, as well. What I'd really love to have (eventually), is some information that says that, "If you want to be able to flawlessly disable all traps for even level quests and below, you must have +## to DD." And that's just difficult to do.

Also, I realize that the quest headers should be links to wiki pages with information regarding the quests, themselves, and I don't know that the format I'm using: [Story Arc], Part # - [Quest Name] is really very good for this. Or then again, maybe it is. I'm not really very familiar with the inner workings of wikis so I'm really just winging things.

Anyway, I think I really just wanted to bounce some ideas off someone else to see if maybe you could come up with something else.

Thanks.

Mcglonec 16:46, August 29, 2006 (EDT)


 * I also think it's great to have DCs for lower levels. I also think categorizing the quests by level is the best thing to do. I wouldn't worry too much about splitting the story arcs, I don't see this as a big issue: I think the quest level is more interesting in itself. About the Wiki links to quests: take a look at the places/quests pages. There's not really anyone maitaining those so the presentation may not be uniform, but you'll have an idea about what kind of links already exist (I must tell I don't know myself what the answer is, otherwise I'd tell you ;) Tihocan 09:34, August 30, 2006 (EDT)


 * Thanks for the advice. I've already started moving some things around to make sure that quests are in their proper "level categories." For many of them, I need to consult the in-game documentation to see what levels these quests really are. I'll work through that, though. Also, I've cleaned up most of the links (thanks for the suggestion on that). For most of the quests, I found existing stubs, so it worked great. Mcglonec 12:47, August 30, 2006 (EDT)


 * Thanks a lot -- Tihocan 13:08, August 30, 2006 (EDT)


 * Now one of my biggest problems is the "Contents" window. It's getting huge. In IE, it forces all the tables to start well down the page, causing unnecessary scrolling. In Firefox, things wrap well but, if you hide the contents and then show it again, it comes back at a much narrower width, making it virtually useless. Any ideas of what we might be able to do about that? Mcglonec 12:47, August 30, 2006 (EDT)


 * I just removed TOCRight, which I think is not needed since a Wiki update a while back. Tell me if it gets better. Tihocan 13:08, August 30, 2006 (EDT)


 * Yes, that looks better. Thanks. Mcglonec 13:18, August 30, 2006 (EDT)


 * And one more question, while I'm at it. Some of the tables that are used to show rolls and such are getting rather large, especially for quests with a lot of traps recorded at varying difficulties (Redfang the Unruled, for example). Any chance those tables can be modified slightly to have interior borders? I think that might make the data somewhat easier to read. Thanks. Mcglonec 12:47, August 30, 2006 (EDT)


 * I'm not really sure. You'll have to edit the tables by yourself for that, I'm very bad at tables design ;) You can ask Peer if you need advice on where to find help. Tihocan 13:08, August 30, 2006 (EDT)


 * Okay, I'll bother Peerless about that. Thanks again. Mcglonec 13:18, August 30, 2006 (EDT)


 * Peerless officially bothered - and responding on the talk page for the traps and locks page. Elliott Cable  -  ?+¿  -  ‹·›  16:57, August 30, 2006 (EDT)

Speed Improvements
Well, I finally got around to it - how you like this? Elliott Cable -  ?+¿  -  ‹·›  18:03, September 12, 2006 (EDT)


 * To tell the truth, the whole display is f**** up again with Firefox under Linux. But, contrary to the other times it happened to me, I can't fix it by just clearing the cache. And it seems to do the same under Windows (basically, all the nice layout is gone, everything is text-only and very ugly). Tihocan 09:50, September 13, 2006 (EDT)


 * Working fine again now :) And yes, speed is much better, great work! Tihocan 09:59, September 27, 2006 (EDT)

Cleaning up Quests
I've been trying to clean up quests on the wiki. I've been adding some information, where I can, and I'm trying to make them easier to find, in a number of ways. Mostly, I've been creating new categories and trying to place appropriate quests into those categories. Right now, the only quest list I could find was this one, which lists quests by where you receive them. It's fine, but it does have some downfalls. For one, you can't find a list of quests by level, or by patron, etc. So, what I've done is created a few new categories:

Category:Quests by patron - A listing of all the patron systems out there and the quests that go with them
Also, I've created a category for "story arcs", such as Cult of the Six.

Category:Story arcs
Obviously, the information is incomplete, but I've been trying to hit the quest pages, as I have time, and add categories to them so that they appear in the appropriate lists. Anyway, I really just wanted to get your feedback on this. Do you think this is a good way to arrange quests? Are there other options that might work better? One other thing I was thinking about is that it might be a good idea to have a link to a quest list from the sidebar. Right now, you have to go into "Places", first, and that was never intuitive, to me.

Mcglonec 11:25, September 27, 2006 (EDT)


 * That sounds like a very good thing to do (though a tedious one too ;). For the sidebar, do not hesitate to edit it, and if it happens to be locked, ask Peerless about it. The more intuitive it is, the better! Tihocan 12:38, September 27, 2006 (EDT)


 * Well, I've already made some adjustments. The categories have remained the same, but, in order to keep all the quest pages looking the same (or as close to it as we can), I've been playing with some of the templates. I've updated the templates Template:Quest and Template:MissionInfoBox. Basically, the Quest template now sets a predefined layout for all quests (which I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with, yet, but it's not bad. In addition, it contains all the category links that are needed for the quest, so that the user doesn't have to add that in. If the editor provides the level, zone, and patron for the quest, the categories will be automatically taken care of. And one more thing I did was to include the MissionInfoBox template into the Quest template. The floating box is a nice way to keep basic facts about the quest in a uniform position and allows the main part of the page to focus on other bits about the quest, which would be more "free form", such as a quest overview and other details. I embedded the tamplate because I was using the MissionInfoBox template in the story arc formats, such as The Waterworks. It provides a nice snapshot of all the quests in the story arc and it's nice to be able to use that template, on its own. Mcglonec 14:29, September 27, 2006 (EDT)


 * It looks pretty good, well done! Tihocan 14:32, September 27, 2006 (EDT)

X?
I don't know. Something about dedicating the letter X to a guild is offending my sensibilities; I'd planned to perhaps create an alphabetical listing of EVERYTHING, combining quests and items and mobs and NPCs and etc, and using the letter pages for that. But that's beside the point, I really think one, two, and three letter names should be reserved for disambiguational, organizational, and navigational purposes. However, as always, I'll leave it up to you. He understands your decision is final, so do what you like. I'm out for the day again. Nighty night night, [e]  ·  t  &  c  19:36, October 25, 2006 (EDT)


 * Ok, I'm sorry, I'm afraid we don't have the same sensibilities ;) I understand it would look weird on a complete listing but, on another hand, a complete listing would seem useless to me without some kind of categorization that would make it obviously appear as a guild. I don't find X to be a problematic name, until we need this letter for something else and it needs to be disambiguated and moved to X (guild). So if that's ok with you, I'll leave it for the moment. Tihocan 09:59, October 26, 2006 (EDT)


 * K sounds good to me (-: [e]  ·  t  &  c  14:37, November 14, 2006 (EST)

3k!
3000 edits. Not bad! lol (-: [e]  ·  t  &  c  14:38, November 14, 2006 (EST)


 * lol... I really need to find some time to catch up, work's too busy atm :( Tihocan 15:07, November 14, 2006 (EST)

Hey
Check this real quick, please: Village_pump thanks! [e] ·  t  &  c  14:02, December 4, 2006 (EST)