Realms of Despair:Tips that go a LONG way

Ideas that would change the Realms of Despair

2012-02-11T04:23:00.000-08:00

1. A shop system that actually works FOR players.
I've talked about it many times in the past. IMO it would still be THE best change to realms since... well forever.
It would a) cut down on bots spamming traffic b) give players a steady and constant supply (particularly important for allowing NEW players to progress) c) allow players to RUN and not worry about selling stuff (cause most runs are IP checked and thus you cant run with your sellbot still online) d) allow all players to be equally competitive in the market (casual players tend a) not to script their own bots which leads to b) them being unable to sell anything because they maybe log 2-3 hours a week leading to c) them being unable to sell anything consistently d) forcing them to spend their time golding e) boredom f) quitting.
I) It needs to be unified replacing the sellbot system by being easy to use, setup, and partially replacing the auction system.
II) Accessible anywhere in Darkhaven, auction rooms, barb hometown, etc.
III) Each character starts with 1 slots every 5 levels so a level 50 character would have 10 slots. With additional slots costing 1 million gold cumulative. 1st slot costing 1m, 2nd 2m (total 3m) etc.
IV) Each item you sell takes a slot. Containers must be empty of wearable equipment so you can sell pills/potions/scrolls/staves/wands
V) 2 Sell modes: Auction/Sale. Auction <itemname> <starting bid> <minimum increment> <duration *up to 5 days*>. Sell <itemname> <price> <decrement amount> <min price>
With decrement amount being how much the price is reduced by per day until it reaches the min price. Though by default decrement is 0 and min price = price.
VI) While on sale, the item is locked in the seller's inventory (without taking up inventory space but still taking up the weight) cannot be dropped, worn, given, or taken.

2. Quest splits.
The game should be clear if and when you reach a dead end because of your race/align/class.
a. Looking at the mob with the wrong align you should see fear/horror (stronger) disdain (equal) disgust (weaker)
b. If it is class/race based you should see hatred(race)/distrust (class).
c. Most preferable would be if they shouted or mumbled at you about <name> being a mob with the "other" side of the mini quest.
Example: if a thief walks to the start of the cleric eq set quest.
look Drevelen: Father Drevlen looks upon you with disdain and distrust.

3. Mob resistances/Immunities - The learn/memory skills
Each time you are hit by a class/race/align based prog from a mob there is a % chance you will "learn" the prog based on int. Each time you step into the adjacent rooms you will trigger the memory based on wis.
E.g. a thief steps into the Sands Of Time maze and Rez, Lord of the fate banshees is in the next room.
Memories stream back as you recall Rez's howl as you circled him.
e.g. A mage steps next to Bahamut's room
The wisdom of past experiences reminds you that your magics will be useless against Bahamut.
Gives player characters some history and reactions with mobs. Similarly could be implemented for items that have been searched/dug up or items given to mobs. For example remembering that the last time you visit roovin you gave him a piece of ore. Especially useful for more casual players to "remember" things they knew at one point.

4. Locate/Identify/Item lore.
Similarly, players should be able to better interact with items. Identifying an item could do anything from bring back memories of the mob you looted it from, or if it wasn't yours at any point, the area/geo depending on the item. Like divination's most recent change to show as a % when it "feels" like the item is from the area. Wiser and more intelligent characters should be able to remember where they saw the item from down to the mob if they saw it in the corpse or the area it is from. For items unknown a general indicator of where it could be from as a "guess" I feel would inspire players to spend more time exploring. It also wouldn't hurt for there to be "Lore" about legendary items. This could be in the form of songs, books, clues from npcs like bards, gossips, thieves, mercenaries similar to how the race/genre sets work now but for individual items. For example the warriors in moria could speak of the tarrasque and its legendary hide. The blacksmith in camelot about Excalibur.

5. IP check, ghosting.
I hate IP checks, I hate it even more when it ghosts. There should be a command players can use to check how many connections the server THINKS they have. It should also kill all ghosts. Worst part is if you are in the middle of running around IP8 in a dangerous area, you get dced and ghost. The game still thinks you are IP8 for the next 5 minutes while you are completely unable to log on at all leaving your whole team vulnerable and helpless.

6. Improved areas and deities commands.
The area levels suggestions and requirements are.. dated. Not to mention all the 0-60 areas typically have nothing in them. The best represented areas are areas that have the tightest level ranges. Instead of basing it off the mob levels, level ranges for areas should be based on wearable equipment (aka not food/drink/container/treasures) from that area and would give a MUCH better representation of the area's actual intended range.

Similarly, deities could use a little change hi-lighting deities that have a favorable reaction to you in blue/green while deities that hate your race/align and would not even consider accepting you as a follower in red. It would give players a better idea at a glance of what deities they should consider before doing research specifically.

7. Buyable maps similar to help map.
For inhabited and "friendly" areas like darkhaven it sure wouldnt hurt for there to exist maps which are buyable that people could look at in game while they are walking around that would indicate where they are. Additionally also would be interesting to allow player markings on those maps to mark spots of interest.

8. Buildable equipment.
Instead of static equipment that can be forged, like breastplate of the ravager, buildable equipment made of pieces from various different mobs. X pieces of a main material gives the item its base stats" Armor/hp/mana values. Then rarer and harder to find pieces could let a player slowly add and customize it for the character. Any major piece of armor can be created but once created, only that armor slot can be created. For example If I chose about, I could bring back the piece and continue to have it customized, but I could no longer generate a piece for any other wear location. However if scrapped/dted/lost, it can be restarted. If you feel like you made a huge mistake in which wear location you chose, then you can scrap it for a significant amount of money but it also requires you to turn in your existing item (if you lost/scrapped it you will need to make a new one to turn in). Also to start building the item it will require one or more items for that wear location of various amounts of difficulty to begin. It also has to be a major wear location (not light, finger, wrist, ears,eyes,back, face, ankle). Turning in better equipment will raise the maximum quality of the item. Steps would be as follows
a) Complete "task" to help the smithy resupply.
b) Specify which wear location you want armor crafted for.
c) Bring basic item of that wear location to armorer.
d) Unlock basic material types as random drops off mobs. (From this point on mobs will drop pieces of basic materials randomly.)
e) Bring money and other items along with materials to armorer.
f) Basic item is forged.
g) More advanced (existing) item requested
h) Unlock advanced materials which also can now drop off mobs.
i) Bring more money and materials.
j) Further upgrades unlocked. Armorer will continue to ask you for how you want to improve your item. After each choice steps g+i are repeated.

This would be a fun, dynamic way of generating demand for existing items, while increasing value of mobs by adding random materials as pops. It also introduces materials as a new source of currency for players to trade in and reduces demand on gold. It would also help fix equipment slots that are weak for certain classes by introducing an item to fill the slot and be dynamically generated such that it fills the character's need for stats. It would also act as an item/money drain for existing items and cash to help balance supply and demand.

The (CHEAP) Neut Augurer

2012-01-24T23:47:00.000-08:00

As with all other neut characters, there are things you need to remember to avoid.
a) Stuff that spawns. Guardian vampires in particular will make you dev very fast.
b) group. Dont group if you don't need to. Being grouped will change your align for every single kb that anyone in the group makes. Especially since you have spiral, you typically will never need to group even if the tank is rescuing you.
c) watch your align. particularly before you start battle and just before the mob dies. If you can't realign and zapping is inevitable, empty out your container of heals/manas to make sure your equipment does not get left on the ground where a mob might take it or a reboot/crash wipes it. Of course, dont forget to save.

Devout-> Neut
Sigil (20/20/1 stat of choice)-> Sigil (no change)
Ring of the universe (30/10/0) X2 -> Set's ring of power +20 hp X2 = +40hp
String of dragon's teeth (75/100/0) X2 -> No change
Adamantium Plate Armor (120/0/0) -> No change
Shade Helm (100/0/0) -> No change
Eltor hide leggings (30/0/1str 2dex) -> No change
Snug winter boots (20/0/2dex) -> Boots of Delphium (2dex->2str)
The Golden Gauntlet (25/0/0) (Templar gauntlets for +3 ogre) -> gauntlet of red dragonhide (+5hp +dex +con)
Immortal light (55/55/2 wis) -> Mark of the beast (-5hp/mana -2wis)
Mindflayer's robe (100/0/1 int) -> Tattered robes of intolerance (+0hp +1wis -int)
Skin of the gods (45/0/0)-> cream colored sash (-10hp)
Lion crested bracers (0/0/2 str) X2 (cause you need the str probably)
Doomgivers (100/50/0) X2 (just any old cheap 100hp weapon. you cant dual anything with maul of stone unless its reweighted though the alternative would be to wield maul, and have hold/shield be over 50hp total to reach the same amount)-> Elfbane/Shieldbreaker X2 or + Oak shield + Matrix (Same dual, -hp 15hp to maul150/millenium45/valk shield30)
Maddening voices (25/0/-1wis) -> earring of Glasswalker bone (+5hp)
Shades (0/0/0) (for the detects)-> no change

Overall changes: 35hp if dual wield. 20 if wield/hold/shield. Of course it gets vastly better when you put money into it but definitely more expensive in just the matrix.

Top 10 things I would change about Realms.

2011-12-11T19:58:00.000-08:00

1. Rolling new characters. Its beneficial for no one, and generally causes newbies grief to no end when they auth a character then find out after they av that their new avatar is weak and pathetic and cant wear the best equipment because they didnt know the right stats to make. Older players hate it because it means needing to run triggers for days or weeks or months on end to get the stats you want. Why do the imms care so much to keep this even after its proven to be nothing but annoying to players?

2. Supply and demand. There is no market for equipment (or other stuff). If the only person with that item logs off the whole game's supply is gone. More and more you see sellbots on traffic. Why? Because it means they can supply a reasonable amount of stuff and make profit while they are offline. There is no downside to running a sellbot other than the fact you can't do it while killing something with an IP check. You gain customers by being able to sell to people while you would normally be offline, and because you are the supplier, you dictate prices and can demand a little more.

3. The difficulty curve. Most of the leveling process isn't remotely difficult unless playing a class not designed for fighting (18 dex classes primarily) as long as you are aware which mobs in the area can kill you (then you die quickly) Fights until you av are generally either a pushover or a suicide mission. Then once you av, everything you want is on mobs you cant kill, cant kill on this class, or cant kill because you dont have enough damage or cant kill because you dont have enough hp.

4. Risk vs reward. All things lead back to this. Some mobs are too easy, some mobs are too hard, and frankly alot of the "newer" equipment is plain straight out crap for the effort involved. Not to mention pop rates and puzzles. This is in my opinion one of the WORST things about the game. How much is a 4 dr 50hp ring worth? 7-10mil if you are evil or neut and 70-90 if you are a devout fighter/druid. 300 if you are a cleric. oh and here's a dr discount for you too.

5. Mud wide IP checks. I can see the reasoning behind a 8 ip limit. I can see the reasoning in IP checking a mob. What I can't understand is why a mob should be harder (or outright impossible) if I have a character that isn't even in the same room or even area. I forgot to log off my storage character in DH so I got slain along with the rest of my team and ruined the rest of the run? Seems a bit harsh when that character has absolutely no bearing on the outcome of the fight. I really wish they would turn IP checks to area only so I can leave stuff running in the background *cough* STAT ROLLER *cough* when I'm running. Or at the VERY least not count stuff inside DH or preauth? IP checks are totally unfun when someone (though often times .. me) manages to ruin a kill (or at least seriously set it back) because they happened to have a second or third character online.

6. Auction! going once, going twice, new bid received! Up the min bids after a certain point please. Or heck.. up the minimum bid. Period. Waiting till after going twice then bidding 10k isn't bidding. It's annoying and juvenile.

7. Class restricted runs. IMO you should be able to go into a fight with whatever you want. Just have limited effectiveness. Slay on circle? Immune magic? ugh. Can we use proper counter-progs? Heals? Damage? In significant amounts where it would dissuade players not to use that class but NOT force them? It really sucks for new players exploring. Sure some of us older players have armies enough that we have at least one of every class and for some classes several aligns to cherry pick which is best to do the job but telling new players you can't kill this mob because you don't have the right av is just plain lame. Give them incentive to make thier own lives easier but don't force them.

8. Equipment. Quality, Slots and Jumps. The game simply lacks variety. Particularly for the newer classes (though there have been improvements slowly coming in). For example Dev thieves get two substantial nonmagic short blades. Lord Kahl's "Thievesblade" and Ret dagger. Huge price and quality jump. Between the class restrictions on mobs and things like this, it becomes pretty much impossible to play JUST one character and be able to go everywhere, see everything.
Anyhow back to the point, some classes with specific level and wear locations are just simply lacking or empty or just are a humongous jump and some wearlocs it isn't even a class/align issue. For example the about slot has 45 items with DR on it. The problem is it goes 1-4, then jumps to 7-10. And really you start at 2dr (rug of wraatha), nothing significant till you hit the first 3dr cloak in the mid 30s. then 4dr in the 40s.
Probably just as bad? Arms. 2dr from bands of power since level 9. 3dr from haven arms at 35, 4dr in the mid 40s if you are evil/neut and dont manage to die fighting your way to the top of the tower in cursed lands (HIGHLY unlikely as the difficulty is closer to av level mobs than it is to leveling) Then once you hit av you get 6-8dr on just about every single usable piece and for practically all classes there's only one or two decent pieces per class. You either have it or you don't for a 3+ dr difference.
In short leveling eq could use alot of gaps being filled and so could the Av stuff. I'd even like choices if that's so hard to imagine. Like neckwear has a decent variety. Generally everyone (other than barbs) have access to 4dr neck (with less hp) or 2dr neck with 50hp (scalesof a&o) obsid cloaks for 3dr +hp median for dev/neuts and evils get df talismans. But really... necks are the only slot with that kind of serious flexibility.

9. Account management. Due to 7/8. Everyone needs more than one character. At least if they want to seriously play realms (instead of just RPing or sitting in avchat and treating the game as a glorified chatroom) It really wouldn't hurt to help players by building in some character management tools. For instance being able to give and take stuff from characters that aren't logged in. Sure. logging 7 storages at a time then c locate "whatever you are looking for" works. but isn't exactly the most efficient. And since the game isn't requiring us to brew our own heals anymore AND there is "standardized" pricing for heals could we not just get a healing potion "tab" like at a bar? It would be nice if it were ip wide but I wouldn't mind a character potion tab where I can just say or indicate how many heals I want and get them deducted from my tab. Or here's an idea... make the bank our tab instead of making us walk with our pockets full of money from 4e s w all the way to 2s 2w n with thieves lining the road? Can't we pretend we gave zelah an IOU from the bank for however much we owe her? Not that thieves stealing your money is the real issue. I'm just sure there are more efficient ways to do things. Maybe a refill function? Instead of buying up to 50 potions at a time, I tell zelah how many potions I want to have in my pouch/basket/case/empty head and she sells me exactly how many I need? And preferably let me do it so I can refill offline characters I own at the same time :p

10. Unified item market aka trading post.
Most people probably don't even know this exists. Because no one talks about it. As of time of writing, there are 5 posts (one of which just says lol) It could replace the auction system AND all the sellbots at once if done right. Instead we have a noteboard of people posting things they want without any real indication of what they are offering for it. Done right it would even fix the issue of trust in trading. As is we have a "give and hope they are telling the truth" system. It generally does work but some less ethical players have stolen expensive stuff in the past. Here's how I would have it done.
a) Sales. Put up item for sale, acts like auction house. You lose the item, you get an item "Certificate of ownership of item # - Itemname" Once it's listed you get it back by taking the certificate in. If it gets bought before you do so, money gets put into the bank. You can also pay extra for an "auction it" deal where it stays on sale for X hours after which the highest bidder takes it. Everyone else can just check itemnumber blah to see the stats or to buy it.
b) Buys - offers. Person buying puts up price and the name of the base item. Players can then offer up the item in question like a sale. Once the buyer checks the item, they can buy it, or reject it. Multiple people can offer the same item but all of them are returned once one of them has been bought though one item should also be offered to multiple buyers at the same time. A nice tidbit of code that could be added for this function would be to have base items shown to the buyer so when offers come in from sellers, it would compare to the base item and highlight irregularities (etch, neph/druid/cleric enchant, glory) and of course.. player tagged item's aren't allowed.
c) Trading Lots. Good old barter system without the possible complications of someone running off with your stuff without paying or giving you what was agreed on. Open trade <player> screen shows items and gold in the lot. Both players can add and remove from their side. Both players have to confirm before the trade goes through. If an item is removed, the other player is "unconfirmed" to prevent people doing sneaky things.

Bridging the Gap.

2011-11-30T18:45:00.000-08:00

For a long time I've had this idea. Mainly due to alot of my old mains being totally unusable and worthless. It would be nice if that first character you ever authed, and aved without knowing you should max con, has crappy base stats and would be deemed worthless other than for 500 weight of storage (or 999).

The idea is this:
A lonnnnnng quest chain. Containing everything from search and retrieve to mkill (mob kill). That would boost your base stats and hp up to "below average" levels (meaning it wouldn't do as much for "perfectly" stated chars as it does for the newbie. It would give PERMANENT stat and hp bonuses to help the "trash" character be at least usable.
Limitations: If there were no limitations it would be abused and imm's would never let it enter in the first place.
a) it ONLY helps the character's PRIMARY stat AND only up to 16.
The example I talked with Versetch about yesterday was an H-Orc thief. you could auth it with 18str, 18 lck, 18con, and 9 dex. With the quests you would be able to add a few extra points of dex to it. (In my opinion... up to 3 max which would still penalize a player pretty heavily for a bad choice, but still help make the character useful to them). In this case you would have a base of 12 dex instead. Of course the "most" logical way to abuse this would be to auth it at 13, then let the quest boost it to 16 for 3 free stat points. However it still leaves the character slightly below average in terms of stats meaning even with the 3 extra permanent stats, it would still never be gamebreaking.
b) It will help the character gain max hp up to -20 ish 30 hp off average.
Taking the thief as the example again, whats considered average for a thief is 730hp. So the quest would allow a permanent hp gain of up to a total of 700 base hp. Again great for first chars, still wont help the perfectionist looking for an 18/18/18 750hp thief.
c) the quest chain will be balanced also to help characters learn to use some of the basic skills offered to the class and once the hp/stat bonus gains are over, all the prizes are converted to items/gold. That way the quests will still "exist" for every single player but will have the most impact on helping newer players acclimate to the huge difficulty curve of the post leveling game... assuming they get there.
d) the quests are Av only and non repeatable. Done in the fashion of miniquests like Haven of Everlasting Light or Temple of the Moon with each segment completed rewarding a prize (perm stat gain/hp gain/item/gold) and all this would help fill out class deficiencies, and hopefully open up more eq options for some classes with still fairly bad wear loc combinations.

A cheap augurer (dev)

2011-11-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

Ever since coming back I've been trying to figure out.. what would be the best setup? Dev/Neut? (forget evil. protect makes evils not even worth using and the only way to figure out if the mob has it is put on detect magic, then spam dispel magic on them enough times till you either see protect, or are satisfied it isn't there)

Back when I started, Dev was for cheapskate new players cause all the great easy to get items were Dev. Evil and Neut were for people who had money or knew how to run seth but with so much new eq, things have changed a lot.

Anyhow, here are my choices for T0/T1 setups. if you have no idea what I mean by T0/T1.. read this
http://realmsofdespairtips.blogspot.com/2011/10/state-of-rod-economy.html
Since all augs care about really are stats and HP. The former to do stuff, latter to spiral. DR is ignored. YES. IGNORED.

Devout
Sigil (20/20/1 stat of choice)
Ring of the universe (30/10/0) X2
Cloak of Solitude (50/0/0) X2
Adamantium Plate Armor (120/0/0)
Shade Helm (100/0/0)
Eltor hide leggings (30/0/1str 2dex)
Snug winter boots (20/0/2dex)
The Golden Gauntlet (25/0/0) (Templar gauntlets for +3 ogre)
Immortal light (55/55/2 wis)
Mindflayer's robe (100/0/1 int)
Skin of the gods (45/0/0)
Lion crested bracers (0/0/2 str) X2 (cause you need the str probably)
Doomgivers (100/50/0) X2 (just any old cheap 100hp weapon. you cant dual anything with maul of stone unless its reweighted though the alternative would be to wield maul, and have hold/shield be over 50hp total to reach the same amount)
Maddening voices (25/0/-1wis)
Shades (0/0/0) (for the detects)
This setup will give you crap for stats as you can see.. but you will still have half respectable spirals.
900hp from eq, 5 str + 3 from ogre, 4 dex (switch to mocassins if you need 1 more point to max dex but you need max dex), only 2 points of int and 1 wis (which is fairly unimportant as far as I can tell) but its 4int 3 wis if you bother to get dragon wit/sagacity. Still gives dev auggies a decent sized wrecking ball to spiral with. If your priorities are int/wis... get ring of wizardry.

I'll cover the neut variant in another post later.

Pally setups.

2011-10-27T17:22:00.001-07:00

End game

<used as light> (Flaming White) (Magical) Crusade
<worn on finger> (Flaming White) the ring of the ancient gods
<worn on finger> (Flaming White) the ring of the ancient gods
<worn around neck> (Smouldering Grey-White) (Magical) the Medal of Clan Freedom
<worn around neck> (Flaming White) (Magical) (Glowing) (Humming) scales of alpha & omega
<worn on body> blood soaked bandages
<worn on body> a black dragonscale hauberk
<worn on body> studded leather keshka hide
<worn on body> White Gryphon Keep Tabard
<worn on body> (Magical) the runecape
<worn on body> (Flaming White) (Glowing) the Lily Covered Tabard of the Knight Protector
<worn on head> (Flaming White) Crown of the Ravenells
<worn on legs> (Red Aura) (Smouldering Red-White) godskull shinguards
<worn on feet> (Flaming White) (Magical) moccasins
<worn on hands> (Flaming White) (Magical) (Glowing) Blessed gauntlets of the Templar
<worn on arms> (Flaming White) (Magical) (Glowing) the Sun, Moon and Stars
<worn as shield> (Flaming White) (Glowing) the ivory colored tower shield of the Lily
<worn about body> (Magical) (Humming) the cloak of Death
<worn about body> (Flaming White) the essence of kundalini
<worn about waist> (Glowing) the Ice Girth
<worn around wrist> (Smouldering Grey-White) (Magical) an obsidian bracer
<worn around wrist> (Smouldering Grey-White) (Magical) an obsidian bracer
<wielded> (Flaming White) (Glowing) (Humming) Justice
<held> (Magical) a mahogany staff named 'Divine Solemnity'
<worn on ears> (Flaming White) the Relic of the Infinite
<worn on eyes> Eye of the Raven

Newbietar

<used as light> (Flaming White) (Magical) Crusade
<worn on finger> Ring Of Kings
<worn on finger> Ring Of Kings
<worn around neck> Obsidian cloak
<worn around neck> Obsidian cloak
<worn on body> blood soaked bandages
<worn on body> a black dragonscale hauberk
<worn on body> studded leather keshka hide
<worn on body> White Gryphon Keep Tabard
<worn on body> the runecape
<worn on body> the Lily Covered Tabard of the Knight Protector
<worn on head> Crown of the Ravenells
<worn on legs> godskull shinguards
<worn on feet> moccasins
<worn on hands> Blessed gauntlets of the Templar
<worn on arms> dragonscale armguards
<worn as shield> a dragonscale shield
<worn about body> cloak of light
<worn about waist> the Ice Girth
<worn around wrist> an obsidian bracer
<worn around wrist> an obsidian bracer
<wielded> A black hilted sword named 'Doomgiver'
<held> Storm
<worn on ears> Maddening voices
<worn on eyes> the Crystal Lens

As a newbietar set, most of the items are T0/T1 and are under 2m each other than the hauberk, tabards (the tabards are fully optional you can always grab a few tabard of roses which would leave you 1dr/hr short. Lily tabards don't run over 10m and gives you access to a reusable +7hr bless. Crusade is a must for any paladin but if you are really that poor a sigil works nearly as well. The biggest hp drop is no doubt the danny rings while most other pieces give a minor drop in hp. A T0/T1 set you should be able to easily get up to 1500hp (I should think). The highest priced pieces in T0/T1 set are Storm, Crusade, Hauberk, Gryphon tabard, crown, Lily tabard, godskulls (in that order) everything else you should be able to obtain yourself or get for a few mil.

A new team.

2011-10-19T04:01:00.000-07:00

In my absence, two classes have gotten alot better especially for new players to start on. Barbs and Pallies. The reasons you can see in the posts below. Though pally is definitely the best new starting place for a player. They are very self sufficient (minus the lack of any door opening skills and scan/scry) Both are fairly easy to level with barbs possibly being a little harder due to equipment restrictions. Also basic avatar eq is cheaper for the pally. With shieldbash now available to tanking pallies, it should definitely be THE tank of your new team. Unless you are spending more time quaffing than shieldbashing then which point you might want a warrior or thief anyways. In this less than active state of realms, with most guilds and orders being fairly inactive, it is very hard for new players to get assistance to run basic mobs for basic eq though not impossible (kudos to those who helped bronie with justice the other day). I would definitely put pally a little ahead of barbs in terms of number of mobs they can solo.

Dev thieves aren't dead as hitters, just less useful (but still definitely have their uses where rend is less effective)

My New order
Pally ->Barb -> Mage/Cleric -> Fathomer/Thief.
Depending on how you play/what you want to do it would be more barbs/thieves/fathomers. Perhaps an auggie as well as you get more gold. Then once you have enough hitters, a second mage (or two or even three dont hurt). Definitely priortizing balance > defense > countermagic > destruction>elder though your preferences may vary.

The state of the RoD economy.

2011-10-08T02:20:00.000-07:00

As I see it, the RoD economy is stagnant. Housing has drained off most of the biggest gold reserves while equipment continues to stack up on storages, in organization vaults. I will attempt to illustrate why the economy is in such a bad situation, what is wrong with it, and how it should be fixed.

a) Basic avatar eq. I use this as the basis. All "leveling" eq, is obsolete once a player reaches avatar. The first set of available avatar eq is what I call Tier 0. Everything here can be easily killed, soloed and or multied. Some even by nonavatars. But this "tier" of eq is where the problem begins. My examples for this tier of eq would be shade eq (helms, shades, rings), moccasins, icingdeath arms/ears, thoth rings, dpass eq (crystal bracers, silver arms, gold greaves, dcol), aegis, . Everything here is easily gotten, farmed, and dirt cheap. Which is good for a newbie avatar who can go down to coral depths, sit for an hour or two killing eels and crabs and afford to buy this stuff off the plentiful bots and off traffic. If they do decide to go get it themselves, fail or succeed, it will rarely ever lead to a corpse rotting. In most cases, an entirely new player will fail to get the item themselves but be more than capable of paying for the item. (1-5mil usually)

b) Good eq. Tier 1. A good chunk of stock is here. EQ here is expensive enough because of it's rarity but not because of it's difficulty or vice versa. Good examples of these would be devout scales, hellfire leggings, crusades, morphs, ft shields. The eq here is good, in some cases top of the line for alot of classes in general cases. Mobs are either too hard to sit and farm indefinitely (due to things like eq damage, heavy use of potions) or simply pops. This also makes up the majority of traffic and auction exchanges as the items while plentiful, are hard enough to obtain that it would take alot of time or effort to obtain by yourself (or in some cases impossible) but due to years of running, there is a bountiful supply of these items to the point where prices are fairly stable and rarely change. (6-40mil)

c) High end eq. Tier 2. This is where the problem begins. This is where top tier eq usually comes to rest. Runs sufficiently spammed will drop the item from tier 2 to tier 1. Or more usually the case, top tier new items (tier 3) having being sufficiently explored by most major organisations have accumulated enough stock to drop prices to a fairly constant level. Good examples of this are Justices, danny rings/essence, cato armor, nasr. The prices are also significantly higher than tier 1, usually starting around twice as much. (80m+)

d) Top tier eq. Tier 3. As usual, the prices are about twice that of the previous tier. Either the items are rare pops off hard mobs, but also include seth (where the danger of losing eq is very real and a single failed run can mean hundreds of millions lost.) All these runs require runners to be dressed in eq worth at the very least, what the character alone is worth but usually several times over. Generally these runs are not known (and or doable) by the general avatar populace due to various reasons. Difficulty, puzzles, lack of saftey, dedication of time (getting in takes a good while, have to spend a few uninterrupted hours there, requires specific classes to run etc.)

e) God tier eq. Tier 4. This usually gets downgraded to tier 3 as soon as 3 or more organisations start running it consistently and bring in enough supply. Usually by this point prices drop rapidly as more and more people test their abilities and try it out. This is the tier where all the brand spanking new, top of the line avatar gear comes in at. The puzzles are harder, longer, there are more mobs to kill on the way (alot of which are tier 0-3 mobs in themselves). These are generally "area" bosses with multiple items that are all better than existing items. This is where explorers flock, order secrets are hush hush and secretive and where a smart relatively poorer player can suddenly make bank selling new eq they managed to get to first. This is what the imms put in to keep older players playing (or they will get bored of the existing stuff because they have done it a hundred times). Usually between the time an item is tier 4 and the time it drops to tier 3, Imms will make changes to the item, the area, and the difficulty of the mob(s) up to and even including changing descriptions. The other side of this coin is the old items. So old they no longer exist. What was once common (unholy symbol of the dammed) suddenly goes OOG (out of game) and suddenly rises. Either way, the price is very directly related to the rarity.

So whats the problem? There are two main problems. Tier squishing, and power creep (eq being obsolete).

Tier squishing: Tier squishing because there is over supply because the best players in the game figured out something or, abused a loophole and basically devalue items to the point they are pushed into the tier below. One of the best examples would be Sindroad/Olsen eq. aka the half orc set and some other evil pieces. In the process of trying to obtain a tier 3 or 4 items (in this case darkfire blaster), the rest of the eq on the mob gets devalued. Darkfire blasters pop roughly 1/20 kills meaning for every darkfire blaster, there are 20ish S/O sets lying around in some storage somewhere. So what happens? The prices drop like a rock. Darkfire blasters? 6-7 seth sets (by my last estimate) each of which are worth 600-800m depending on the day. 3.6 billion - 5.6 billion... gold. Comparatively speaking, you can get a S/O set for pretty much under 20mil for all the pieces which are individually usually sold for 1-5mil on auction depending on the day. Of course, when people first killed S/O the pieces werent sold for 1-5mil. They were worth alot more. Tier 4 eq got squished into tier 3, then tier 2, then dare I say.. tier 1. Its now so common that the average player that is incapable of running S/O can still own several sets of the eq. As a byproduct of a "failed" kill (failed not because the mob didn't die, but rather the rarest item didn't pop), chaff eq devaluates itself and drags the prices down for items below it. After all, if you can pay 1m for a olsen plate for your thief, why would you pay 1m for spoils (which has 1 less dr)? As a result of the chaff eq, orc thieves have become the standard basis because they are cheap but better than all other thieves using spoils. The fact that there are no other 6dr ears even remotely close to that price range (the closest you get are whispers... for about 100X the price). Olsen ears are practically godly and very much comparable to seth (-15 hp, -50 mana, -6hr) but worth a very tiny fraction. This is the result of the stagnant economy and is clear simple to see proof there is something fundamentally wrong with how the economy works.

The other thing that comes from tier squishing is eq becoming obsolete. While new items come in, old items become obsolete. For example Danny rings (ring of the ancient gods) obsoleted long time existing rings primarily for warriors. Before your choices were scorched band of glass 3dr 25hp, Diamond ring (3dr 0hp), Draupnir (3dr 0 hp but with some saves), Ring of Kings (3dr 1 str), Ring of dragons (3dr 30hp), Signet of Lauriness (3dr 20hp, elf only). You can see.. there was plenty of selection. Plenty of choices but they were all pretty similar. 3dr, and some hp or other stats/saves. Suddenly Ring of the ancient gods gets put in, Most of those rings never get trafficed for again. There is simply no point in compromising for 3dr +some hp when you can have 4dr and 50hp, 2dex. As an obsolete bunch, they rarely see any action other than on rare occasion. The mob is now much too difficult for the reward (as it's obsolete). Even if they were tier 1 or 2, they immediately drop at least 1 tier, to the point where only newbietars are the only ones interested in purchasing.
The mobs are now obsolete (and thus never get run anymore. Ask an older player whens the last time they did an odin run.. or a dracolith run. they probably won't remember.)

When power creep happens, it is a pivotal time for the realms even if it is a small change. In terms of devout warrior rings, theres a clear mark before danny rings, and after danny rings. The top if the tier (danny rings) are 80mil (and for a brief time a while back... 90m) while odin rings, draco rings, leodegrance rings? 5mil? the problem is no one even really knows the price for them anymore because no one sells them anymore. No one sells them anymore because no one runs the mob anymore. Why bother with a outdated mob with an item that isn't the best? Is Danny 16 times harder than leodegrance or draco or odin? probably not but even with a linear increase in difficulty, there is an exponential increase in price.

Though Immortals are working hard (yes! I do actually appreciate the efforts) to breathe new life into old mobs and areas by updating them with new eq (lovely new skullbreaker/crushers!) The problem still remains. Way too much supply especially at the tier 0, 1 levels (though by definition, they are that tier because of the supply) But you still get items in tier 1 (olsen eq) when the difficulty is easily tier 2 or 3 because of a lacking out flow.

Prices are based on supply and demand (obviously.. but I had to say it) as mobs get run more, supply increases, while demand slowly decreases. Olsen eq is worthless because of the sharp increase in supply without a remotely close change in demand. S/O repop every 10 minutes or so and people can sit around there for 10-15 kills at a time in a single day, while it takes a few days to av a orc thief and it has to be specifically an orc thief for the reason that there is no increased demand for olsen plates/ears if it isn't an orc. If it can't wear it, the player won't buy it (unless they intend to buy or level one in the near future).

So what is so magical about seth? Every order has at some point run seth. It's been in the game for YEARS, and still typically new eq is worth less than it. What makes it so unique? It's also the solution to fixing the economy. An outlet. Players kill seth for blivs/gens/DIs/VoDWs really. Not for the seth sets but seth sets are still worth alot and would take days possibly weeks of golding for a new player to afford it. The key lies in the fact that seth sets have an outlet. Ravenhill takes seth sets, a set at a time, and randomly gives the player back nothing, a raven eye, guard of raven black or the much coveted crown of talons. Seth has an outlet, sufficient difficulty and has thus retained its value (and thus most organisations that know how to run seth refuse to share HOW). Blivs, gens (and their sac pops) should have turned seth into another S/O. but with an outlet, the chaff is worth something. Without an outlet, its worthless because players will constantly generate a supply much larger than demand. And due to the fact there is an outlet, seth setS (emphasis on the fact its the set as a whole) is the basis of the RoD economy. My opinion is, supply could be stabilized and the economy put back on track if a few select items had an outlet. The outlet would turn their supply and existence into a currency instead of trash sitting on yet another storage. As it is, only the best players keep playing because they continue to be the ones generating supply. Newer players are stuck playing catch up, and at some point they either learn to run seth, or don't. They are able to continue to explore newer areas, or stuck trying to get obsolete eq because they can't afford better. Then the choices for them are a) attempt newer content designed for people with better eq than them b) gold for days, weeks or months to afford eq to attempt newer content or c) give up on new content and possibly the game. After all. A game is meant to be fun. And its no fun when new stuff comes in and you can't explore and kill stuff because you haven't gotten the best possible eq that already exists (or at least a decent standard of eq).

The number of bots in the game directly speaks to how much the game is suffering. Bots increase when players are more interested in buying items from other people than they are willing to attempt to kill the mob for it and speaks volumes to how the game is slowly dying at least in the mob kill/exploring point of view. Gone are the days of public runs, chat started runs where just about anybody who was around would come. To play, to kill with random strangers they never met before but for some reason want to come for the loot, or to help out, or teach. Guilds and orders keep secrets simply because items devaluate the moment more people know then suddenly the item isn't worth much at all. If a good fraction of items had an output, gold would regain value, and items would also regain value as every day items now have a value for being equipment, but also as currency. The fact that seth sets have slowly lost demand (as in very few people are on traffic ltb seth set/pieces) tells us that something is very very wrong with the game's economy. The fact that items that used to be currency and have intrinsic value has been reduced primarily to currency indicates the lack of demand. My most educated guess (and occam's razor) would suggest that the most simple explanation for this is lack of new players. After all: an old player avs a new character (thats evil or neut), they load up a storage, and put seth on it. A new player avs, they have no seth. They gold, farm, sell other items to attempt to buy it. The lack of buying says either all the new players are running seth (which is highly unlikely) or that new players are giving up before they need seth. Or worse, giving up because they don't want to spend the time to get seth. Either way, new avs have no other possible currency, and it's removing their incentive to play the game as it was meant to be played (or at least how I think it should be played. As a persistent world where you can constantly explore and kill new things). Sure you could argue there's exploring and killing to be done before aving (and I agree), but the majority of new content comes in. The thing im most sure of is the fact that endless medieval enjoyment does not come from sitting in mithrill hall or coral depths killing mobs for gold to buy a shiny new piece of equipment that just came out. The fun is in playing the game, getting it for yourself. Not doing what bots do, sitting, golding to buy a piece of equipment you will never really need or use.

tl;dr? (too long didnt read)
- Realms economy is dead. Immortal attempts to revive it by draining excess gold in the form of housing just causes inflation. Key to balancing economy is putting demand on items. Not demand on gold.
- We need more standardized equipment as currency. Seth vs olsen shows the huge gap between what works and what doesn't.
- New players will only tolerate gold farming for so long and from my estimates, its not long enough to get to seth. We really need a currency in between.
- Old mobs with old items get obsolete with new items because they have no intrinsic value. Activity and thus player base will continue to decline without better standards for currency.

My favorite places to adept skills.

2011-10-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

When you love exploring as much as I do, you need your generally "useless in other situation" skills adept. Heres the rundown of the places I do mine:

The big 3:
Search: Down North of the gnome receptionist. The crack respawns every time you walk in the room. Walk out, back in, search.
Dig: The graveyard. The entrance to the tomb where gartock hangs out disappears on entry. Dig down, go down, dig up, repeat.
Detrap: What? yeah. Detrap is the third. Why? because its so rare. If you used it every chance you got on every trap you found by the time you av'd, most people would still have it at 19%. My personal detrapping spot (that DOESNT hurt very much) is Bartok's grove. Unfortunately you will need to wait for repops for it to come back.

The rest:
Styles, weapon skills, attacks, : Kylara in front of dragon cult.
Pick lock: Receptionist in shattered refuge. steal her key then pick/lock d.
Climb: The warehouse has a tree all the way to the west side. make sure you dont have fly on and have float on instead. Spam u, d.
Doorbash: pick a door. any door. Just dont do it at the darkhaven gates. That just annoys people (same goes for spam pick locking them)

A few things I've noticed.

2011-10-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

In the 4 years I was gone, things have changed, for better, for worse. These are just a few of them that have made an impression on me.

Attempts at making the 18 dex classes more capable of fighting (augurers/clerics)
I'd like to say they tried but honestly they still fail so hard fundamentally. The storm clerics while having power are practically useless on most runs (still) simply adding a countable 3 mobs you can use storm of vengeance for and not want to switch class. The anti undead clerics have absolutely NO added value, and the healer clerics have some... half decent spells but again with VERY little actual use.

Storm clerics: I prefer cawyn for the anklet since you now have prayer for favor. Storm of vengance is NICE... but entirely too limited. There are only a handfull of mobs that are outdoor flagged (it can only be cast where you see the sky!) and the even shorter list on which you could use magic, and a cleric at that. The only reason why it makes clerics viable in those rare situations is entirely based on the fact storm of vengance will keep casting while you spend most of your time quaffing heals and manas to deal with damage/dropping potions.
Healing clerics: the best spell they get is ameliorate. Second best is probably ward of the divine.. for stuff you can multi yourself and can keep a cleric in the room safely (20% res mag/nonmagic is nice!) however the applications of which are limited (chances are if you can multi... the 20% wont show. The mob would have died ip8 before the spell existed and probably dies just about the same now) Seriously. Cadcading heal? requires you to be standing in the room (decent if you are soloing something you can multi) but also has a LOONNG timer on it making it practically useless. It casts ONE heal a round for 5 or 6 rounds which is a good bit of healing... but its way too slow, and way too limited. Complete heal is awesome... except for the mana cost and the fact it also takes ages to run down the timer. Ethereal elixir ... has its uses I guess. if you are planning to go somewhere where you need the extra healing power. The problem is if you need to quit at all.. you lose them making em a pain to carry to a run. On the other hand, if you can bring the cleric to the prep spot, sit there all day making elixirs before the run starts... Then yes.. it might be useful.
Anti undead clerics: Worthless. Please switch your deity. In terms of lore and background sure.. the skills fit. But in terms of gameplay adds absolutely nothing to the class it didn't have.

The other good from the cleric changes have been mostly resurrect: lets you CR after a fight and save the long walk back. But beware.. you lose all the spells on you when reincarnated.
Prayer: awfully convenient for clerics now to favor.. sit there for 20 minutes and "prayer" your corpse back. Alot easier than manually favoring like before.
Remove hex: I hate this. it used to be remove curse for the spell curse AND cursed items.. now its split into two.. just to add an extra spell. Annoying is what it is.

Next.. Augurers: They added coil of flame (similar to storm of vengance) except... weaker, requires ONE WHOLE CRYSTAL TO CAST. Its nice to add a bit of damage, but again, doesn't really add much to expand the places where you can use an augurer. The fact that spiral is hp based + 18 dex making for crap quaffing means you still wont want to go near most things that do a consistent gas, or lots of random breaths.
Spirit chains: worthless. entirely, totally, utterly WORTHLESS. Good in theory, crap in usage. It absorbs damage from the character you cast spirit chains on taking some of the damage for yourself as well as draining mana. The problem is this spell really needs to work in reverse. It hurts the augurer (which in turn hurts the spiral) and drains BOTH mana AND hp at the same time (again hurting spiral and even coil). Then you spend even MORE time quaffing heals and manas because of the chains (instead of your 22/25 dex tank quaffing them much more efficiently and your aug.. being the HITTER.. actually doing its job and HITTING). This spell would be great if you could cast it on ENEMIES instead and offload the damage and drain their mana. Or at least if it worked in reverse reducing damage to you and offloading the damage to your tank... so you know.. he can TANK. If the run needs multiple tanks.. get multiple tanks. augurer with spirit chains = one person doing nothing. You might as well be sitting in an entirely different room quaffing heals and manas for no reason while the rest of your group is fighting.
Last but not the most worthless (that prize DEFINITELY goes to spirit chains): third eye. Generates a 100hp eye (that dies at the slightest glance in its direction) and do the equivalent of posessing it. Basically instead of the nephandi possess spell where you can actually choose a possibly useful mob, you get stuck with an entirely useless mob that cant fight and can only be used for scouting. The most laughable thing about it.. its level 33. 19 levels above charm (for evil mages), 19 levels above dominate (vampires), 15 levels above seduction. The only spell its lower level than thats comparable... possess though I should hope the reasons are obvious. It seems still the Imms hate augurers and are determined to keep them entirely worthless on their own. Coil has put them on a .. slightly more even playing field (but unlike everyone else's damage.. requires one crystal per cast.. which is a huge pain in the ass to make crystals all the time, and carry them and the extra potions you need to bring to a run (cause you will DROP alot of them)

Now the good. Barbs are the new thief. Rend had it's crappy 65% max upped to 95% and chokehold actually is comparable to backstab. Armblock isn't great but better than nothing for sure. For a long time rend was the barb staple along with charge. The problem was charge required a horse (which gets killed by areas blasts), lagged as much as circle (but dealt less). Rend was better.. because it only had 3 bars of lag (meaning you could actually quaff before that second round of damage came in (and yes that half a round is a huge difference) Now that its 95% max... charge is practically worthless. Especially with the new ancestral strike skill allowing them to use ACTUAL WEAPONS.. Lets face it.. barbarians riding horses, wearing a lance, having a weapon and a shield? Really didn't get it not to mention having 3 different modes of attack depending on the run was annoying (barehanded for rend, horseback lance, shield, wield for charge, and dual wield/two handed which left them with just plain ole melee... which as we all know works GREAT on some mobs and not at all on others.. especially if they are magic weapons only...) Now.. barehanded is clearly the best choice, and ancestral strike lets dual wielding much better.

The other class which has seriously benefited from the changes made: paladins. Before they were the more defensive warrior type, warriors were of course the better hitter and because of the dex..... tank. Now paladins have shieldblock AND shieldbash, they can tank AND hit at the same time now. Especially with the nice new high hp holds, gives paladins much better hp than their warrior counterparts. Also not hurting is the fact they have shieldbash which is better than smash making them also better hitters... but only when they are tanking. So warrior? still the better rescue tank and still has better melee. But paladins finally have a use as a hitter/tank hybrid (one per group) while warriors still very much excel in the melee department with stun and the much easier to level part going for them. Personally I would like to see changes to augurers more in line with the skill level of what paladins and make them a more unique and specialist mage class instead of being entirely outclassed until level 50, then finally able to be used in very specific circumstances if you dump loads and loads of money into it and prep a bunch of crystals for it. Unlike most other classes, Augurers are still fairly worthless until you sink about 500m worth in eq onto them. Past the rings/neck/body/wield, every single piece will be 50m+

Gold and you.

2011-10-06T04:22:00.000-07:00

Gold is the universal medium. The trading standard. You can buy everything with gold (practically) and you will never get enough (ever). Some things to think about before your next purchase.

1) If I don't want it.. will I be able to sell it? some stuff is very easy to find someone to sell it to you (sellbots!) but not so easy selling it back. If it's easy to sell you its less of an issue. But if its hard to sell chances you are stuck with it (and your money is tied up in it until it does) this goes especially for older items like old clan but also inbetween items. For example you have a devout warrior and eventually want to get danny rings (ring of the ancient gods). A good inbetween item would be signet of ravenells (roddy ring) because they are popular and sell easily. On the other hand... a scorched band of glass or Ring of Kings is nearly as nice as the signet (but a fraction if the price) but even if you find someone to sell you one... chances are you won't be able to sell it back.

2) How long will I be wearing it for. Whats your upgrade path? For a new player. shelling out 80mil (each!) for danny rings will be probably the most expensive items for a dev warrior (short of the Justice/Rav plate) If you save a little by little because you can't play all the time your upgrade path might go from ring of dragons to roddy ring to danny rings. But when will you switch? when SHOULD you switch? Consider the next point.

3) How much does it benefit me? are there items that would benefit me in the short term?
Going from a ring of dragons to a roddy ring is probably a 30ish mil cost. but then the roddy to danny ring is another 80. (or 110 total). The question is really when is that upgrade worth it in comparison to everything else? For example you are using sword of the king's crest from lodd. cheap, easy replacable nonmagic slashers. your next upgrade would probably be Justices. Or if you dont have it yet.. a nasr. The crest swords give you 150hp dual wielded. The nasr will probably help farming gold and give 40hp and is also your end goal gear meaning you wont ever have to replace it (though you will still need the justices for the nonmagic only mobs as well as the saves). Depending on how much income you get you might decide its better to skip the roddy ring (and save the effort of reselling it) or if you see one go cheap snag it and turn it for a profit once you get your danny ring. But the alternative upgrade (nasr) is a good investment and the damage output and hp makes it better than upgrading a single ring so that should be the priority.

a) like with real money. think about your purchase. The more it costs the more you should think.
b) if its a good upgrade in the interim and will open you up to being able to run more/better stuff (and get money faster) its a good idea to upgrade bits here and there
c) your money is best spent upgrading your weakest pieces first. Those blackened spurs of the nazgul lord might look great. but the usual pricetag of 50m+ should make it the last thing you buy. not the first. the 1 extra point in second attack will be barely noticable.

A new beginning.

2011-10-06T03:49:00.000-07:00

Its been about 4 years since I last wrote here because about 4 years ago I quit. Tired of two faced friends and all the people that insulted me publicly and behind my back. I left to get away from them but I came back to find my friends. Realms has always been more than just a game to me. Its been a place of rest, comfort and enjoyment and I guess this post means I'm officially back! (though to be fair I've been back for a few months now).

How item prices are determined

2007-04-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

Different things have different prices. Obviously. This is just a basic guide as to how and why different items are priced.

Lets first start off with some REALLY obvious catergories.
(Difficulty of the) Mob: Of course.. the harder it is to kill.. the more its worth
Restrictions on the Mob: If it can only be killed by a certian class.. say mages... its probably worth more than an item from a mob that can be killed by any class.
Stats: of course.. if its good its worth more. but in reality.. this doesnt play much of a role in pricing.
People required: the more people that have to share the loot.. the less you are getting out of each kill.. of course, this means its worth more since you have to do more kills to get one thing.
Pops: This is the one I hate. Randomness will screw you over or rain gold on you.. depending on your luck... the lower the pop rate the more its worth of course.
Repop times: How long it takes the mob to repop is proportional to the amount of kills you can make on the mob.
Knowledge required: what do you need to know to get to the mob and kill it... obviously for mobs like.. say seth... which require knowledge of the chaos maze.... costs more. Than say.. the cost of a mob that doesnt require specific knowledge say... shade the dark.
Time taken: the longer it takes the more its worth... duh?
Now some less obvious catergories.
Potential threats: DT's, random deaths on the way in, large aggro mobs that guard the mob you are wanting to kill, even down to things like.. etching your eq which will seriously devalue it. The more threats on the way or possibly in the way, the more it costs.
Large Randomness: the other random things. For example... low pop rates can often lead to 0 yield runs. Like danbala sights... most regular runners will never pop one. Also equipment from randomly opened areas like tummult and midway are also pricier.
Unusual size: Simply takes a large amount of people. This mainly applies to quest prizes where it takes possibly 20+ people to kill the mob but only one person gets the prize.
Equipment required: with mobs constantly being upped, mobs tend to take equipment worth MORE than what they have to kill them. In short, you need to be rich enough to afford it before you can run it. Stupid? yes. But its true. Seth runs require seth'd thieves with more than the eq is worth to keep the run consistent. (you need a buncha throwaways, or renamed banes, then you need morphs to go with the seth set.) Whats more, its required of most if not all the runners. (Given you cannot supp corpse in the fortress.. the potential threats part is pretty high too as imms like to eat seth once you pass the chaos maze.)
Volume on the market: How much is already in game HEAVILY affects prices.
So basically think of each catergory as something each item fufills. For example... lets take the signet of the darkhaven guard.

Difficulty: about level 15 warrior can kill them.
Restrictions: none.
Stats: crap.
People required: Half a brain or more really does the job.
Pops: 100% of the time
Repop times: Dh is what.. 15 minutes? and there are 2 guards per gate so thats 8 + a bunch that wander around randomly.
Knowledge required: how to attack.
Time taken: up to a minute if you really suck at level 20.
Threats: street peddlers pwning your ass while you attack the guard. BEWARE!
Unusual size/randomness: no
Equipment required: really basic stuff.
Volume: 0 on the market cause no one in thier right mind keeps this trash But thats ok. it just means the item isnt wanted. not that its so hard no one can get it.

So we can work out the price for the signet. umm.... worthless.
What are then the conclusions we can draw from this?
a) its worthless
b) it should not be kept
c) its not worth its weight to store/keep in a container/bid/auction for.

I hope this post was valuable to help those who auction random items in hopes of getting 10k bids. Just dont. Stop wasting your time and everyone else's. Auction something thats worth SOMETHING if you want a bid. All that means is you have to auction something that fufills any or all of the above catergories.

a different rant. what is really wrong with the realms.

2007-02-28T22:03:00.000-08:00

Realms is dying. there are fewer people playing than before. You can basically feel it if you have been here for years. People you know have left, quit for good. Most newbies tend to be sheep. As in they whine, moan on chat for people to do this and that for them, ask where to level, where to get gold etc etc etc.

RoD should really be following the route most other companies are taking. Just raise the new stuff to a new level. Instead, new things have been rather mediocre frankly. The difficulty of the game since I started playing has ramped up probably easily 20 times harder. Back in the day you pleveled characters in a day. Newbies took a year to level. but it was all good. the economy worked, things sold at a constant price, there were alot more people actively playing. Now RoD is like an overglorified chat room with RPG elements. Most people who play dont actively DO anything.. they just sit around and chat. Why? 2 main reasons.

Reason 1. Realms has gotten harder but the rewards are still so-so. What is still the most profitable run in the game? Seth. How long has seth fort been in the game? long enough for the imms to have totally revamped gameplay, added in a dozen plus areas. But the economy still revolves around seth's fortress. Why? Class balance. or rather the lackof. its been getting better but neut thieves still can run 99% of the generic stuff you want to kill. and every so often you hit the 1% and you need something else to kill with. But if you are really smart... you stick with the standard neut thief, decked out in (gasp) seth. and run... (bigger gasp) seth. to make profit off (even bigger gasp) seth. The game has revolved around seth too long. Why? because seth is unrestricted mainly. neut/evils ALL wear it. Along with all the other goodies that are in seth's fortress. golden plate (cato plate is 15hp more.. great. and how much more expensive? right.) jade strand. (nothing beats jade strand.. STILL) and of course.. darko's stuff. Collar of abyssal servitude aka morphs.. why? cause nothing fits better on a thief than 2luck 4dr 35hp neckwear.
But seth is still standard equip for 99% of all neuts/evils. some will wear other things because some SLIGHTLY better eq has come out lately. but otherwise... seth eq is still the thing in highest demand. So why have people been leaving if nothing has been changing that much? oh. boredom. you can only run seth that many times till you get bored of it and the formerly less important things things in your life become more important than running seth.. then you leave cause everyone else is doing it. after all.. you are still playing the same old characters (with a few new ones) Theres no real new challenges (even with the new areas for avs. nevermore, daichaal, fixes of barren peaks, otherlands, the totally new areas i havent even visited yet. the slime pits, the mausoleum, and d'morian's lands) yes. there is new stuff (woot) and there is eq that is better than existing eq!...... but no one REALLY cares about it. it doesnt impact the economy at all.. it sells for measly millions (maybe even 20 i saw one item) but.. thats it. want cash? go seth. what they REALLY need to do is GLOBALLY revamp eq. along with hr (which is broken according to some imm's post on the game.org forums which are the official forums. broken not as in it doesnt work but broken as in it hasnt scaled properly thus its too easy to cap out). then they need to take out old clan (cause its even more overpowered than seth. and people who have it practically only really do quests and run gorog's dog for more "income" since anything else is a drop in the sea) along with all the eq which was glory traded (loads of chars all put glory on the same piece of eq resulting in pieces of eq which have stats that basically puts seth to shame). In the end.. realms hasnt changed much. fastest way to riches is still seth because its STILL unrestricted, neut thieves are STILL the choice for 99% of regularly done runs and seth still has that regular value.

Solution? put in ALOT of new stuff make it HARDER than the current stuff but also make the rewards BETTER than seth... yes. BETTER THAN SETH. cause no one is going to give a shit if it isnt better.

Reason 2. classes to this day are still broken. The balance in power between classes is alot better than it was. but still wayyyyyy too far to be considered even remotely balanced. both 18 dex classes are horrible to level, and even worse at av when every potion you drop matters. Augurers still get about as many spells as warriors get physical attacks. which is a decent amount, but real quick comparison.

Augurer.

----------------------------------[Spells]----------------------------------
balm of time 95% bind oracle 90% burning hands 95%
caustic touch 90% charm person 90% crystalize 90%
detect hidden 95% dispel magic 75% divination 90%
enchant weapon 23% fireshield 95% float 95%
fly 95% forecasting 95% foreshadow 95%
helical flow 85% herald death 75% inner warmth 90%
invis 95% midas touch 95% nostrum 95%
prescient sight 85% prophetic aura 95% psychic surge 95%
remove invis 85% ritual blessing 95% scorching surge 95%
second sight 85% seek passage 95% shield 90%
shocking grasp 90% sleep 85% spiral blast 95%
weaken 80% word of recall 95%
----------------------------------[Skills]----------------------------------
aggressive style 60% aid 19% berserk style 40%
climb 19% cook 19% cuff 90%
defensive style 85% dig 82% dual wield 80%
enhanced damage 75% evasive style 90% fourth attack 40%
hide 75% kick 90% meditate 95%
mount 25% parry 95% rescue 50%
scan 85% search 80% second attack 60%
sneak 75% spurn 80% standard style 70%
strike 90% swap 65% third attack 66%
two handed 19%
----------------------------------[Weapons]---------------------------------
bludgeons 19% flexible arms 95% long blades 19%
pugilism 60% short blades 85% talonous arms 19%

Mage

----------------------------------[Spells]----------------------------------
acetum primus 85% acumen 95% adamant 95%
adroitness 95% antimagic shell 95% aqua breath 95%
astral walk 95% black fist 95% black hand 95%
black lightning 95% blazebane 95% blazeward 95%
blindness 95% brawn 95% caustic fount 95%
chill touch 95% colour spray 95% confidence 95%
continual light 95% cosmos shift 95% create fire 95%
create spring 95% demonskin 95% dispel magic 95%
dragon wit 95% dragonskin 95% dream 95%
eldritch sphere 95% elemental supremacy 95% elven beauty 95%
enchant weapon 95% ethereal fist 95% ethereal funnel 95%
ethereal shield 95% ethereal web 95% extradimensional por 95%
faerie fire 95% faerie fog 95% farsight 95%
fireshield 95% float 95% fly 95%
galvanic whip 95% iceshield 95% identify 95%
infravision 95% inner warmth 95% invis 95%
knock 95% locate object 95% magic missile 95%
magnetic thrust 95% midas touch 95% mystical vision 95%
ogre might 95% pass door 95% portal 95%
prismatic shield 95% quantum spike 95% rapture 95%
razorbait 95% recharge 80% refresh 75%
remove invis 95% remove trap 80% sagacity 95%
sapience 95% scry 95% shadowform 95%
shield 95% shockshield 75% sleep 95%
slink 95% sonic resonance 95% spectral furor 95%
sulfurous spray 95% summon 95% swordbait 95%
teleport 95% transport 95% trollish vigor 95%
true sight 35% valiance 95% ventriloquate 95%
weaken 95% winter mist 95% word of recall 95%
----------------------------------[Skills]----------------------------------
aggressive style 40% berserk style 20% brew 95%
climb 25% cook 95% cuff 60%
defensive style 75% dig 70% evasive style 80%
mount 80% scribe 95% search 85%
second attack 45% standard style 50% strike 70%
swat 80% third attack 30% trance 95%
----------------------------------[Weapons]---------------------------------
bludgeons 50% flexible arms 60% long blades 50%
pugilism 30% short blades 95% talonous arms 60%

see a difference? its pretty obvious mages get about 1.5X more spells than augurers get. That is to say.. alot more. nephandi have more spells than augurers. but still less than a mage.. classes are simply not balanced. there are X times more mages in the game than any other "sorcerer" genre classes. why? brew, scribe, have all 3 shields, get paths. augurers and nephs are stuck in their little niche. given what the imms have done in the years ive played, nothing has really changed. other than adding fathomers and barbarians in, neither class are all that popular. fathomers are awesome and have alot of people playing them now. but compared to ... thieves? still outnumbered easily at a glance. why? balance. rather.. the lack of. the base classes are just too powerful (or all the other classes are just too weak) cleric, mage, thief, warrior. they have so much of an advantage over any of their counterparts that their counterparts in practice never really get played.

if there are any imms reading this. Good job for doing all this for free. but if you want to keep the mud alive you really need to do better.

A brieft pause...

2007-01-22T17:03:00.000-08:00

lots of work to hand in last and this week. Posting will probably resume thursday when i finally get some free time.. maybe.

Afking, chatting, standing around doing nothing.

2007-01-17T17:21:00.000-08:00

It's a game. Play it. You can gold and chat at the same time. Depending which mob you choose to gold on you can gold as fast and as slow as you prefer which gives you time to chat or whatever you want in between. Efficiency is doing work, giving your brain a break by golding for 5 minutes every say.. 25 minutes, then getting back to work. You are less stressed about getting work done (dont do this with last minute work though) or it makes it less boring at least plus you get gold/items out of it. Good examples... guen/leodegrance. 45 minute repop in kotr. 1mil on the mob (both of em) and a fairly decent item that can sell for a bit (depending on who wants it). 15 minutes every hour to kill, 45 to work. Its a solution that works especially when you get bored with the work. Bring along your friends to chat (or chat with them with tells if you dont want to share). Point is.. you can be more productive even when you are mostly afkish.

Investing, golding, auction.

2007-01-17T17:05:00.000-08:00

Auction is a good way to invest in items. Gold doesn't really gain value and for each moment that passes, gold is worth less (people are golding more) On the other hand, items tend to retain a value (especially if it is a good item) or when they go OOG (then the prices for them go up) you can get a substantial amount investing in items just by selling later when someone wants it. For example take Set's ring of power. Auction it tends to go for about 5mil. People are sometimes willing to pay 7m (thats 2/5ths of the price which is .. . 40% if you think about it.) Or even better.. when someone auctions it at 0 value and no one bids you can get it for say.. 3mil. (then you gained 4mil which is 133%) in profits. Thus auction is a good way to invest your money (buy low, sell high). It doesn't really hurt you once you have a financial base thats high enough to support it as well as storages to facilitate the trades. It's the art of investment. Not the art of ripping people off. Ripping people off is telling a newbie the ring is worth 7 when its worth 5. Investing smart is buying the ring for 3, then selling the ring to a buyer who needs it in a hurry and is willing to pay 7 for the immediacy.

Basics of the team.

2007-01-15T10:06:00.000-08:00

Thief: All round character. Tends to be the swiss army knife for everything except mobs that dont like thieves or circle. Everything else tends to go to one of the below classes. You should get a full complement just because. Even then, 8 can turn out not to be enough if you need backups and whatnot.
Warrior/Paladin/Ranger: If it isnt a thief run, chances are you use a nasr warrior. Also prefered by alot of people to tank on these as all you do is quaff.. nasr does the damage. You just watch the screen scroll and hit quaff every so often so you dont die. You want at least 2 Dev. maybe 3 depending on what your goal is to run. But 3 is all you should ever need.
Fathomer: The new thief basically. Vindur gives them an offensive advantage (though its rather costly as a) you need to start quaffing manas too which means you spend more time quaffing b) manas cost money. c) they have less hp than a thief (probably) which means you need to quaff more often for lesser amounts d) you need to learn how to get a GOOD ratio so you use heals and manas at a proper ratio which depends entirely on the mob. but running out of either isn't fun, and you STILL only have 500 weight to pack it all in.
On the other hand, the fathomer packs 2 attack skills which compare with circle, both are decent in their own right but both have their limits so it is probably harder to run on a fathomer than a thief. 1 is a good start for running. 2 for when you need backups brings the total to 3... when you get there.
Barbarian: All star hitter really. rend got upped % wise so its now a very decent skill... other than the fact you lose parry altogether, the melee as well as the saves and hp/whatever else that counts on weapons. But it definitely makes for an interesting runner especially when you just aved and dont have gold for weapons... Sweetest thing is you dont NEED weapons for this guy most of the time. Charge is nice too. but anything that involves a tunnel and its worthless. Rend outperforms charge anyways. Now just give me a pacifist mount so stupid mobs can stop killing my mount. 1 to hit, then aim for a second once the rest of the team is done.

Support classes: These tend to be the less important classes. They really can't do the killing unless there are special circumstances.
Mage: Balance, defense, quill. Thats the order you should get em. Its common sense really. Everything else is basically worthless btw. Counter is very limited (and basically to only ONE mob. though its good if you kill that one mob alot) Paradox is outshined by vindur and rend. forget the destruction mages people. They sound good, are crap. You need to take into account the fact mages only have 350 weight and running out of potions is a less than satisfying way to die. Quill mages = awesome scribers/brewers. shadowform takes 400 or so mana to brew. these guys can churn em out. 2,2,2 is what I go by. I'm actually working on a 3rd balance so I have a second backup.
Cleric: You should know why this guy is important. Slightly less so than it used to be because bought heals are cheap enough to not warrant brewing of heals. BUT you still need to brew sancs, cast holy/minor/bene/indig. One tends to be enough till you really have more than a team's worth of characters.. then you need 2-3. Anymore is overkill.
Nephandi: Alot of unique spelldowns and makes gremlins for realigning. Keep just one around as it won't see an awful lot of use with qlip being more costly than vindur (deals less, more lag and eats pentagrams too)
Druid: Kinda an all round character but not excellent for anything. High rescue is nice and has decent elemental defenses. 1 should be all you ever need.

Basic army building 3

2007-01-14T16:48:00.000-08:00

Route 2. There are of course.. other ways to get an army up and running. The other way is via fathomer. Level one.. you will find it fairly easy to level. Spells give decent exp and it hits fairly ok while not taking alot of hits. Then you want the mage and cleric (yes .. you really need em or else you will be spending wayyyy too much on shield staves etc) Gold till you eq your fathomer properly. (its boring and slow.. and you dont gain half as much experience about RoD this way btw.. but it works.) Go neutral, its fairly cheap to eq.

the sigil of Keltas
(Humming) Set's ring of Power
(Humming) Set's ring of Power
Scales of Alpha and Omega (neut)
Scales of Alpha and Omega (neut)
(Humming) adamantium plate armor
the shade helm
eltor-hide leggings
a pair of tabi boots
red dragonhide gauntlets
a set of batwings
a huge shield of oak
(Humming) the cloak of Death
(Glowing) the Ice Girth
a spiked leather wristguard
a spiked leather wristguard
the black hilted sword "Shieldbreaker"
the Matrix of Desolution
earring of glasswalker bone
the shades

Most expensive would probably be set rings or matrix. (5X2 or 10X1.) Everything else should be 2 mil max. Then put the mage at the room E of the plunge room in coral depths. the cleric should be placed at the docks of edo. Fathomer should run to mage, get shield, valiance from mage, mage opens portal to cleric, fathomer enters, gets sanc, armor, bless etc from cleric. Both spellcasters log off, fathomer heads into the village broaching through doors. Head to second level of the tower then north to the gradmaster's room. he will summon a guard. feign it to death. go west, spring, disarm, then c vindur him to death while quaffing. about 3mil profit a kill. Rinse and repeat. then follow the steps to build up your army using route 1 paying for things as needed to speed up the process.

Basic army building 2

2007-01-14T15:52:00.000-08:00

Assuming your augurer is done and aved(assuming you are part of GoA.. since thats basically everyone I told) It is time to start your REAL army. Having a core team makes running with other people easier, it makes golding easier, it also makes you SELF SUFFICIENT which means the rest of us can stop supporting you (and you can be useful to the rest of us). Kinda like common courtesy (I've taught you how to fish. So fish already!).

Developmental plans:

Route 1. (Now the less popular route due to spellbots)
Start a trio of chars. A mage, cleric and warrior. Using your auggie to eq them, they should quickly level. The mage and cleric should level up enough to get the important spells. Sanc, shields, leveling spells that give +2 instead of +1. The warrior should then be aved (with the support of the mage and cleric) which allows you a little more firepower as well as storage room. Start on a thief and av it while you work on both mage and cleric.

At this point you have a mage, cleric, warrior, thief and augurer which is a fairly decent team for gathering basics. Get the warrior and thief the basics starting at ocean keep. (navy rings, shark necks, sailor's earring, bloody eyepatch) if you dont already have em, The easy way is to portal deckhand to get onto the merida, kill deckhands till you get the first two. then sit there summoning crewmen and killing them one at a time till you get the eyepatch/earring. Then work on killing shade and Lodd. use the augurer to poison both with caustic, flee and let the poison sit 20ish 30 mins then kill with the group. unravel+ razor+ sword+ burden+lethargy should make both fairly easy to kill. Gather a few shade sets (you need 2 rings for the thief, shades for mage/cleric/thief and shield will work on both mage and cleric while the helm works for mage/cleric/thief again) Lodd will give you lodd swords which are for your warrior. 2 is good enough to up his damage. Enchant them devout of course. Adhere mage to balance revisit ToL to get the filthy loincloth for the mage, then head to icingdeath to get ice tooths for the thief and ice girths for EVERYONE. Ice arms go on everyone as well (other than the auggie).
Go to the forest of of tears and track artemis. kill her (you just need sanc and bless really). Circle with thief, smash with warrior. Spell down with mage and cleric. Spiral if you want with your auggie but you will realize how... useful it is. Moccassins for everyone cept the mage. After this point.. apply shields as needed. match shields on all characters.

At this point you should visit blasted lands by portaling to carpet dealer and paying him 100k per person to get carpets. fly is your friend. keep it on and have triggers to keep it on. Use immoblize on horus and multi him for 2 bracers. kill honor and head up to ra after killing the ramen. Ra is going to be REALLY rough on your team. attack him with the warrior before bringing in the mage then immoblize him till he dies too. You want a cloak for the cleric/warrior. Save your healing potions though and leave your balance mage north of isis (she will kick you down) while others heal. Once you are done, shield up again and tackle the 4 horsemen. you shouldnt need to stun the first two but stun/immoblize the last two. Kill thoth twice (immob doesnt work and you should keep the mage out) to get thoth rings and staves for the mage and cleric. use the cleric to fortify while the others quaff.. its a short but pretty brutal fight for your team so far. After you are done, tell thoth a man after he repops then get out to dh.
The next step is in nevermore. Slightly harder but quite rewarding. Take the first west exit then head north till you get to the diagonal rooms. NW side and open doors as you go. Head north and find the west exit to the western spire. This part after the first western spire room is no recall. Follow the path to the end (DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR.) go south, knock sw, open sw, sw, nw, n to a guard. kill him with the warrior, immoblize and your crew shoudl be able to kill him without much problem as long as you quaff on the warrior. loot the wrist and give it to the thief. go ip2 and keep the warrior and mage on. walk the warrior e, u, w,s,e into the second guard, then the mage in and spring, immob, quaff on the warrior until he dies. Regroup the rest of the team east of where the guard was (the guard is no flee btw. you either die or kill him). Loot the second wristguard for the thief. Here you can kill the mob a few times for nice gloves as well as your cleric's body wear for a while. Back track the way you came to the first western spire room (preferably before repop or you need to kill guards again). Recall!

At this point your group should be fairly eqed though missing a good few slots. Guess what the problem is? You need more characters.. simple as that. 2 more warriors, 4 more thieves and you should be ready. While you level, kill the following mobs. Kraken (crystaline teadrop ALL), cernunos (golden torque warrior), stone golem (maul of stone warrior), mistress of magic (sash of the magi).
Also watch out for the following items on auction Cloak of royalty (thief), Obsidian leggings (warrior/thief), crown of ages (warrior), aegis (all except mage), golden plate (mage) , dragonscale armguards (warrior), millenium (mage).

Once all the new characters as well as old are eqed mostly, pay a visit to the gold dragon on top of the tower in ofcol. you want about 20 orbs. Yes. 20. Finally... mandor. You want a maul wielding warrior to tank, and 5 thieves to hit. Split the job of casting shockshield on all of them between the mage and cleric. (4 mage 2 cleric) then holy and sanc up for probably your hardest challenge yet. Warrior tanks. thieves circle. mage brandishes orbs, cleric casts divinity on warrior while the warrior quaffs. After you kill him take your shieldbreaker (invis) and steel gauntlets. The sleeves are also useful if your warrior hasnt got dragonscale sleeves yet. same goes with girth. Pass the shieldbreaker to a thief (do not use it.) repeat the kill some more. you want 2 sbs per thief. (ugh.. i know). Now the less hard part... of the advanced cycle of mobs. Rez. easy to multi 3 yourself. get a warrior and 2 thieves. tank with the warrior, style down when you get gouged, style up a thief and tank on that while circling on the other. quaff loads. Once you finally kill rez, you have a fate key as well as cobras and a rez light. cobras goes to the mage while the key is the only one you need (it wont dissapear.. phew)...

Now take out 4 thieves. preferablly the best based ones. the cleric and the mage. Map the scourge of time maze and get to the sceptre, push/pull it, unlock the door with your shiny key and bring everyone in. At this point, kahl is west of you, north is a closet with probably some of the worst mobs you will encounter in your time on RoD. Kahl is an ip4 run 4 thieves with thievesblades. do NOT circle with your tank while the others circle SLOWLY watching for gas breaths. Every so often he throws you out so use that time to recoup. Run back in and kill him repeat till hes dead. 2 thievesblade PER thief. wear the spoils as you get em. awesome eq really.
Use the jade cameo for ice while using mage for fire, cleric for shock shields. (cleric has better shockshield than mage. mage needs to pull his/her share of shields). Kahl is rather easy really with 4. Once you get enough thievesblades for the team, its time to face down lord olsen and sindroad.... not. bring in the other thieves for 6 thief, mage, cleric. KEEP FLY ON. from the centre room (where you prep for kahl), open n, n into the closet. get the leader to type hatch to trans down. There is a hellknight here. hes probably a nice break from all the hard stuff you have been doing lately. (or at least alot harder than him anyways). Circle, razorbait, faerie fire, unravel. OOPS! the corpse falls :( type hatch to bring your group to safety. get one thief, rem weapons, sanced and shielded and go to the bottom, get all corpse, supplicate recall/(corpse) as sin and olsen are likely to kill you. Repeat for more godskulls. (which make an awesome income btw.. easily sold for 5m a pair, at 5 minutes a repop... )Anyhow, after a while, you will notice the hellknight doesnt spawn below the hatch and is instead nw of sin/olsen. you need to flee a thief into the room to get them moving, then get him back up and wait for the hellknights to come to you to kill some more.

Anyhow, by this time your army should be substantial enough to gold off mobs properly... go back to lodd and shade and give em a taste of your circles. include feina for cure blind pens and faragut for shock sticks (portal crewmen to get to the valkarie). you should also be able to kill the crewmen with little problem now even when they team up. stun faragut and either get the stick or an avenger (MOOLAH!) After this point.. you really dont need more help on learning how to build your army. Just add more to it as you go according to what you feel you need.

Basic character rolling and building your own army

2007-01-12T16:22:00.000-08:00

First the classes and races to choose. You will see alot of similarities and repetition.

Augurer:Dwarf is THE best augurer race. Because of eq mainly.
Barbarian: Evil barbarians dont really have much ontop of a devout so make it devout.. and an Ogre or Orc.
Cleric: Clerics tend to be evil or devout. 99% are devout cause they can cast heal and divinity. Evils are used for scribing poison, casting cloud of darkness. (and they still have cure critical which is still a fairly decent healing spell for the hp/mana cost while still retaining useful spells like holy sanctity which is mass sanctuary as well as minor/major. They do lose benediction though.) Plenty of races for clerics are good. There really arent any "wrong" races for a cleric other than drow (loads of align based spam if you do choose devout), pixie (low str really hurts how well you can eq a character), gnome (suc fire is kinda lame. res energy isnt that useful and no really great eq). Personal preferences are dwarf, sea-elf.
Druid: Pretty similar to clerics really. cept they are somewhat of a tanking class that also doubles as hitters. Preferences are also dwarf, sea-elf.
Fathomer: They are like magical thieves. I exclusively prefer to use sea elves.
Mage: Spellcasters that tend to share the burden of the "spellbot" name with clerics. Again, sea-elf is my prefered race.
Nephandi: Weaker, evil only mage basically with a slew of spelldowns that are unique to nephs. Also prefer drow.
Paladin: Devout only warriors.. well you can go evil but you lose 90% of your spells. Elf.
Ranger: something between a warrior and a druid. They have a fair amount of skills but nothing really awesome. Gash requires a claw and costs 50 mana. Im still trying to decide if they damage is good or not. Halfling, elf are the best choices. Particularly evil halfling.
Thief: The most typical hitting class in the game. They excel at most parts of the game and are probably the most commonly used class for.. everything. 95% dodge 95% tumble (both of which are probably dex and luck based) along with 25 dex, close to warrior standard hp, and circle which is probably one of the most damaging skills in the game (and also can be magic/nonmagic depending on your weapons) Basically makes them THE run class, as well as the standard for learning to run with. Orc or ogre. Do NOT try to roll a bunch of ogres for the devout part of your army. It will take too long and you really want the DR bonuses from orc eq. I do NOT understand why people use trolls. Ogres> trolls. Thats it. OK well halflings can be used too...
Warrior: Orc or ogre. Storage, used for killing mobs that can be stunned and the typical nasr warrior. Again, go with orc unless there is a really big reason not to.
Vampire: Blood sucking... things. Orcs are nice for tanking, halflings are also pretty good, and anything else is probably a waste of time.

The stats:
Augurer: 25 wis, 22 luck. 18 dex >_<. Devouts tend to fare as well as evils as evils tend to lack stats and sacrifice better eq for stats. Aim for 15-18 str , 17-18 wis, 16 int, 11-15 dex, 15 luck.
(These values depending on what you plan to use at av but give you a rough idea of what you should be aiming for when rolling.) If you havent noticed, rolling a good augurer is pretty hard. Make sure you get 9 con and cha or it is very hard to get the stats you really want. particularly dex. Real fast note. Auggie sandals are 0 dex. if you can afford a shroud/essence you have 3 dex to work with but really thats it. So unless you use aegis/golden plate and or eltor hide leggings, you need 15 dex. 13 with aegis/plate, 11 with leggings. Increase each of those values previous by 1 if you can only afford magi robe.
Barbarian: 25 str, 22 con, 18 int. aim for 18 str, 14+ con, 10 cha 14+ dex is nice to eq for. Evils dont really get enough dex. Note barbarian neck has 1 str, shades of light 1 con, layer plate 4 con.
Cleric: 25 wis, 22 int, 18 dex. 12str, 18wis, 16int
Females get 2 str per wrist with guen bracers and typically all clerics wear aegis, templars, memories. Dev eq tends to cover the rest of the stats nicely Males/Neutral require +4 str
Druid: 25 wis, 22con, 18 cha. 17 wis (using trinket to cast +3 sagacity), wis sigil, triffid tendrils. 14 dex, 16 con, 15 int. Steel gaunts, dragonscale arms, cloak of light, are all the str you get. so 15 str... unless you use guens. Cloak of light is kinda crappy though so if you can manage a zhurrkdin cloak... you wouldnt be reading this. <_<
Fathomer: 25 dex, 22 int, 18 con. 14+ dex tends to be enough as no chains no strand tend to give them a big boost. You tend to need 17 str though. 16 int, and get at least 15+ luck.
Mage: 25 int, 22 wis, 18 str. You tend to need 14 str, less with guens (see why gender is important?), 18 int, 16 wis, 15 dex and luck if you plan on using it to fight...
Nephandi: 25 int, 22 dex, 18 luck. basically a mage just evil. stats tend to be the same. but the 17 dex is needed. You can go down to 14 wis though.
Paladin: 25 str, 22 wis, 18 int. 18 str, 18 wis, dex tends to be find with the amount of dex eq on devs. (2 per ring of ancient gods, 3 on moccassins, 3 on cloak of death, optional 1 on teardrop, 2 on aegis, 2 on obsidian leggings). Get plenty of luck with the remaining points.
Ranger: 25 str, 22 wis, 22 dex, 18 cha. Like the paladin, really nothin to it.
Thief: 25 dex, 22 cha, 18 wis. Devouts should be 15 str, 15 dex, 16 luck. Neutral/Evils should be 18/18/18 if at all possible... 17 str is workable but prevents you from using raven guards. 17 luck is workable too.. circle just doesnt hit as well. So try your best to get the stats. Dev and neutral setups tend to be 99% set in stone.
Warrior: 25 str, 22 dex, 18 int. Devs refer to paladin notes. Just you dont need the wis.. so aim for luck instead. Evils and neuts need 18 str, 18 dex.

Efficient leveling

2007-01-11T08:25:00.000-08:00

Let's face it. Leveling is BOOORING but it needs to get done.

Have your leveling eq READY, in ONE place.
Have TWO sets of leveling eq. One set for hp/hr/dr and maxes wis, one set to max basically all your stats to change into before you level.
Aim for enemies about 5 levels higher than your character.
Rotate. Do NOT sit in one spot wasting time waiting for repops. Go kill something else. You should never be idle. Rotating between mobs also prevents your buffer from filling up.
Keep a good stock of potions on you and refill. Use purples for healing (or any other type of healing you like) and kaern potions for mana (you will need to find kaern for this) but having these handy will save you alot compared to violets and blues.
Know what level mobs are. Hitting mobs too early just puts them in your buffer and nets you less exp. You get best exp from mobs roughly 5 levels ahead. It goes down on both sides of that level.
MAX YOUR WISDOM. It determines max exp gain. 18 for thieves, 20 for most other classes, 22 for paladins, rangers, mages 25 for augurers, clerics and druids.
Keep your buffer empty.. rotate. Then rotate some more.

Leave a request

2007-01-11T08:19:00.000-08:00

Tell me what you want to see! leave a comment on any post

keeping up with the weight.

2007-01-10T18:36:00.000-08:00

Everyone plays and eventually.. you run out of room, the more you play, the faster it seems to happen. Some ways to save space...

a) throw out the trash. should be pretty obvious. sub par eq, anything you dont need should go.
b) sort your leveling eq. that is to say.. get a set of it.. and sell/throw away the rest of it... its not like you can level on 2 screens at once. serious leveling should be attack, move, attack, move, then repeat till av. of course, if the spare eq is any good... sell it. only if it scraps easy or expires.. or something like that, keep a few spares. enchantable weapons... keep 4. one druid, one neph, one evil, one devout enchanted. update as needed if you get better av dams (or if the weapons is just totally awesome and is likely to become OOG like corkscrews... no.. there arent any right now)
c) move your excess weight. level a BUNCH of low level warriors. make em all level 6 first, then as you have higher level stuff, level one up a bit more. toys, treasures and most keepsakes are relatively low level. so keep your toys and stuff on a storage at home. if you want... a nice way to get even MORE storage space out of this...
d) mages and extradimensional portals... ok so there is a catch. mage portals reduces weight of items a little bit. so for every 5 weight you put in, it only weighs 4 while its IN the portal. so you basically get a 20% cut of weight (correct me if im wrong. it might be a little more but for every 5 weight you lose at LEAST 1. ) so what do you do? make a level 13 mage, make extradimensional portals. fill em up on the mage, give em to your warriors = free containers as well. the catch is.. you need to give back the portal to the mage to get your stuff OUT.. this means you need to be HIGHLY organized or do alot of portal searching.

The basics of running.

2007-01-09T08:04:00.000-08:00

Running is a rather complicated process on RoD. Let's face it, there is this huuuuuge jump between when you finally finish leveling, and get out there and try to run something. Suddenly mobs have insane amounts of hp and damage and it isn't so easy to stay alive anymore and before you know it you are enlisting the help of your friends to bring down some big mob out there. How do you figure out who should get what, who should lead, who should get loot first etc? Here are some basic principles that groups normally use.

Everyone but the leader:
-config -autoloot/sac unless otherwise instructed. The leader does the looting, not who ever feels like it.
-follow the instructions of the leader. To make it simple, its like a game of simon says. Leader should outline what happens when, people are expected to follow instructions. If it is a new mob, or a hard mob, there are also some do nots. Like do not flee, or do not disarm. Make sure you follow instructions carefully or the run will fall apart.
-PAY ATTENTION. I dont know how else to put it. After the run starts, put life on hold for a few till you are done. Nothing is more annoying than someone who afks on a run which spoils it for everyone else. LEEERRROOOOOOOYYY JEEENNKINSSS.Nuff said really, I am aware it is a parody, but it's less funny when that happens to you. People who constantly pull stunts like leroy don't get invited on runs anymore. Simple, common sense.
-bring spare potions and tankpots. Hi. carry your own sancs and heals please. Just because a mob only takes 100 heals on average doesn't mean you should bring 100. Bring extras in case there are problems on the way in or the mob is particularly nasty that day.
- Remember the rule. no dead mob = no loot. Getting a mob to DYING doesnt get you anything. Killing it does. Reserve the celebration till AFTER the mob is dead.

Leader:
- Know the mob and area better than just tokai.ws lists it. Don't tell people you know how to lead it because you read the notes. Reading and leading are two different things. When exploring, make sure everyone knows what to expect when X or Y happens. Nothing is worse than a leader who suddenly stops leading when there is a problem in the run and he dies or gets transed elsewhere. Make sure people know what is going on.
- Make sure everyone understands where you are going and what you are doing.
- Make sure people are prepared for the mob and what lies between DH and the mob.
- Give a breakdown of the run, how things are supposed to go.
- Have enough weight and inv space to hold loot till the run is over.

The value of a good prompt.

2007-01-08T22:45:00.000-08:00

A prompt holds everything a player is interested in. The tokens for a prompt are as follows (copied from help token)

%h - current hitpoints %m - current mana (0 for vamp)
%H - maximum hitpoints %M - maximum mana (0 for vamp)
%b - current blood (0 for non-vamp) %v - current movement
%B - maximum blood (0 for non-vamp) %V - maximum movement
%g - gold held %x - current experience
%a - your alignment %X - experience needed to next level
%A - invisible/hide/sneak/fade state %S - your current combat style
%T - time of day (RoD time) %u - total number of users
%f - flying affect %U - maximum users online
%o - object currently on auction %w - current weight
%L - command/attack waitstate %W - maximum weight
%n - name of opponent* %G - current geo location
%c - current health of an opponent* %l - new/blank line
%e - numerical timer to show duration of adrenaline**
%s - Shows status of autosac
%i - Shows if you are invisible

The important ones...

%h - current hitpoints %m - current mana (0 for vamp)
%H - maximum hitpoints %M - maximum mana (0 for vamp)
%b - current blood (0 for non-vamp) %v - current movement
%i - Shows if you are invisible %s - Shows status of autosac
%g - gold held %f - flying affect
%a - your alignment %X - experience needed to next level
%A - invisible/hide/sneak/fade state %S - your current combat style
%T - time of day (RoD time) %w - current weight
%L - command/attack waitstate %G - current geo location
%c - current health of an opponent*

Yes. that results in a long prompt. But the results it gives you far outweigh the costs. Hp, mana, blood are self explanatory. (Note how I only keep current blood and movement. max values for both dont really matter. you just need to know you arent out.) The others are slightly less so...
Remember you have TWO prompts. one for while you fight, the other for when you arent fighting.

Alignment: especially at avatar with neutral chars.. you need to be able to tell if there is going to be a possibility you zap after you kill a mob. you dont want to zap of course. knowing this lets you flee or ungroup to prevent that happening.

Flying/invis/hide/sneak indicators: flying should be obvious... mobs trip you, no fly dts will take everything. invis and hide prevent you from being attacked by some aggros. Keep them on at all times if possible

Combat style: You should know where you are. When running, most mobs attack the person in the highest style (to deal the most damage). also above aggressive you cannot flee.. obviously useful to know

Gold held, autosac: thief mobs. lets you know they are there even if you cant see them. also shows up in logs easier if you know where mobs are likely to be. Autosac should be pretty obvious... you dont want to fight to waste all your effort. rule of thumb.. turn autosac off. everyone hates it. The only little use is when you are favoring and need to sac hundreds of corpses. Naturally if you always have autosac off, you dont need the prompt token.

Waitstate: aka lag. each command has different number of bars. 2 bars represent one melee round. if a command is only 1 bar of lag, it means you can perform it twice a round. it also means you can quaff or whatever before the next round starts. obviously good to know when you get bashed or lag proged. spamming commands is the surest way to die in a run. having this in your prompt will prevent it happening as easily as you can watch the bars go down.

Weight: gives you a rough estimate of how many potions you quaffed. Make a mental note before the fight starts, then watch it during the fight. you dont want to run out of potions and not notice till you are dead.

Geo: easy way to tell you moved out of an area and geo. most useful for finding places and mobs to portal/helical/astral to.

Anyhow, these are the prompts I personally use.
prompt
Name:&w(&Y%h/%HHp &C%m/%Mm &G%vMv&w) &Y|&B%a&Y| %T &Y(%G) &R%f%A &g%wkg &p\%L/ %l
fprompt
Name:&w(&Y%h/%HHp &C%m/%Mm &G%vMv&w) &Y|&G%s&Y| %T &R%f &p<&Y%n %c&p> &g%wkg &W%S &p\%L/ %l

learning from your mistakes..

2007-01-08T00:05:00.000-08:00

Let's face it... there's alot of text scrolling as you play the game. It gets a little hard to read it all even from the moment you start. There are plenty of channels that people use, and fights create large amounts of spam. Some things to reduce the spam and make it more bearable.

config +gag
Gag's misses and parries and whatnot in fights. So you can see what really matters.

config -shields
shows shields as [Fire][Ice] etc instead of putting another line on your screen. Every line counts.

config +compass
shows locked and hidden doors that may not show in the exits part of the room description. Also lets you see what exits there are at a glance. Blue letters in the compass denote "windows" which you can scry through to see another room. Red letters are locked doors and Darker green letters denote closed doors.

Now the really important part. For when you are fighting, exploring etc. and not just chatting, turn on logging. clients like zmud and mushclient have logging features. Each client is different, but make sure you have a client that supports logging as it makes alot of things easier.

Things you can do with logs:
- keep track of where things went... who you passed an item to, where you left your container, when you got money stolen from you (if you had it in your prompt... it will show up)
- read room descriptions carefully. lets face it... if you read every room description you saw, you would never get anything done. good for finding out keywords, secret exits, hidden items etc.
- learning from your mistakes on kills. what happened. why did you die. what killed you. with what. how much damage did it deal you. what kinds of special attacks did it use. did it scrap your container. did it take your weapon. etc. This is probably the biggest reason for logging. To learn from your mistakes.

handy link

2007-01-07T13:49:00.000-08:00

http://xenapan.googlepages.com/

links to just about everything important site about RoD

heals and healing.

2007-01-07T01:04:00.000-08:00

Everyone needs heals. unless you just plan to stay in darkhaven forever, sooner or later you will need to quaff a heal or two but purples just dont heal enough after a while and violets are over 10X more expensive but only 2-3 times more effective.

There are alternatives... but you need to work a little for them, but they can help save alot of money on potions when you can get them without a scratch.

Vial of undead spirits: easy to get... if you drop by tull manor every so often you can also get..
a bar of soap: healing and a little bit more
potion of life healing: when you get to the point you can kill the hobgoblin king, this is useful and the mob carries variable amounts of gold.
newt egg: doesnt heal as much as a heal potion does, but plentiful with the fire newts.
fiery orange potion: while gathering newt eggs, this is another item in the area.. a heal potion.. a little weighty but worth keeping since you are going in there already.

flask of gutbuster: probably the most useful heal you will find. cures poison, curse and heals too. have plenty of these for emergencies.
murky green potion: it sure didnt help the green trolls of old marsh but these can really help you. double cure critical at roughly level 43-44 heals nearly 100 hp. basically same as a heal but you can get roughly 7 a repop.
a bottle of 'mirke': not so easy to get to, but casts heal and protect. also not alot of people visit the village in cursed lands. after all.. it isnt a very pleasant place

apple of life: in revelation city there are two places to get these from the floor, and another you can fight for. careful tho.. staking area repops for these ends in unpleasant results. on the other hand you can fight joseph for them but hes a little harder than walking in and picking them up./but each one is worth the effort cause they are double heals
ambrosia: of the gods of olympus. dont take your money along but alot of the gods have this double heal.
elixir of health: annoying to get to... carried by the forth horseman of the apocalypse... death. but triple heals like this one can bring you from the verge of death back to life! if you are evil or neutral you will need to answer thoth's riddle to get out though. devouts on the other hand can heal up, get sanc and recall at isis.

naturally this is just a short list and by no means an exhaustive one. good luck finding more ways to subsidize your healing.

magic vs nonmagic items.

2007-01-06T17:45:00.000-08:00

Most people are concerned about this because of weapons that can/can't hit certian mobs due to magic/nonmagic only restrictions... but there is a little more than just that.

Magic items are add 0 weight when worn. What does this mean? More space/room. Carry more potions/spare eq, etc etc. Also, when storing, you might want the storage to wear the item if possible. Magic items are also a double edge'd sword. especially weapons. If you drop them, make sure you have enough weight spare to pick them up and wear them. This is especially true of heavy magical weapons.

On the other hand, using magical items can increase the character's versatility especially if they lack in weight capacity. The two classes most affected by this are thieves and mages.

A good example is a neut thief wrist. Spiked leather wristguards are awesome. 2 dr, 1str/dex, 10hp. On the other hand, obsidian bracers are 2dr, 1str, 15hp. It looks like a pretty decision between 5hp and 1 dex. but there is also a weight difference of 10. considering you wear two bracers, thats 20 extra weight for more heals, or tankpots. Both will get their use of course, but the wristguard is not that much "better" strictly speaking when you take into account the fact that 20/500 is a pretty significant chunk. especially if you keep making similar choices for other locations.

Heavy Magical Items of note (the useful stuff):
Lights:mark of the king
Rings: Stone of Bal'anthi
Neck: Obsidian cloak, captian's cloak
Body: Adamantium plate, aegis
Head: Crown of ages, obsidian helm
Legs: obsidian leggings
Feet: demonscale boots, chains of imprisonment
Arms: steel sleeves
About: Balrog's cape
Waist: Steel girth
Wrist: Obsidian bracer
Wield: maul of stone, Dragon Claw of Legend, War Mattock of the Harbringer,

IMPORTANT: sparking golden bedsheet is NO LONGER MAGICAL renders it into trash. use silk omanehs instead since you can only absorb 2 hits with 10 weight but omanehs take 10 hits for 10 weight. choice is pretty clear. not to mention the bedsheet is also an area repop.

Charisma and repairs...

2007-01-05T13:50:00.000-08:00

The best way to make money is to save money. Most people rem all, repair all and don't realize they are paying too much for repairs. Why? because no one rolls 18 cha for characters unless they plan on using them to only buy stuff. 18 cha is a waste of much needed stats but when repairing.. having high cha will save millions (literally) after a long day of running. All you need is a few pieces of cha eq to wear while you pay for repairs.

Best items for cha:
Colorful scarf (level 5 neck) 3 cha (way cheap and buyable too!)
Black lace brassiere (avish level body) 4 cha (people tend to throw em away after dobra kills. KEEP THEM)
Ruby encrusted necklace (level 10 neck) 4 cha (but there is a very short and slightly costly puzzle to make them)
Bright ruby (level 2 head+/ hold) 2 cha (off the carbuncle in green forest)

Note: I haven't really listed that much... cause 2 necks + body takes care of most chars... with a ruby or two.. you can max any character with 9 cha which will reduce prices for your repair. (3+3+4 = 10 easiest combo and very cheap and easy to get too. 4+4+4 =12 is overkill but helps max if you have trollish on)

Anyhow.. a quick comparison to make my point.

9 cha: (note very little eq damage)
Bugelii the blacksmith tells you, 'It will cost 15600 pieces of gold to repair Collar of Abyssal Servitude'
Bugelii the blacksmith tells you, 'It will cost 80361 pieces of gold to repair darkness'
Bugelii the blacksmith tells you, 'It will cost 78000 pieces of gold to repair a strand of polished jade'

21 cha: (thief, same eq as above just higher cha appraise)
Bugelii the blacksmith tells you, 'It will cost 10800 pieces of gold to repair Collar of Abyssal Servitude'
Bugelii the blacksmith tells you, 'It will cost 55635 pieces of gold to repair darkness'
Bugelii the blacksmith tells you, 'It will cost 54000 pieces of gold to repair a strand of polished jade'

Savings are basically.. 1/3rd of the 9 cha price. so 3 repairs later, you basically saved yourself a whole repair's worth of money! Just get an alias to repair!

Here's one for zmud:
#AL repairme {#2 finditem scarf;finditem brassiere;rem all;#2 wear scarf;wear brassiere;repair all;#2 rem scarf;rem brassiere;wear all}

Drinkcons and leveling

2007-01-04T17:06:00.000-08:00

Always thirsty? hungry? STARVING? drinkcon's are your friend. Why?
a) They satisfy BOTH thirst and hunger (thirst more than hunger of course) every time you drink
b) Its free.. you don't need to buy food and keep all that extra weight either.. ONE drinkcon can fix all that.
c) renewable.. fill you can keep going.