Last updated: 12-July-2002 (overhauled to reflect changes)
Got a question? Onote it to ... Reuiel, Tssu and Kheserthorpe (this week)
Feel free to ask me questions, my main alts include: Kheserthorpe (aka Nyarlathorpe), Reuiel, a couple dragons, a couple remorts; I alt a good deal ....
I hope to include faq's, general advice, and specific information for Myrkulic disciples everywhere.
I have no plans to pretty it up any time soon. If you want a pretty site, go look somewhere else.
There is one, glorious map
For now, the unofficial Off-the-top of Kheserthorpe's Head faq. I try to hit things other people missed. Or got wrong ;-)
For inexperienced players, I have the Kheserthorpe's Neube FAQ, where you can learn all sorts of exciting things that anyone who's played DM for a while should allready know. Obviously there is some overlap, but if you are a new player of the MUD, you probably want to start there.
On with the Off-the-top of Kheserthorpe's Head faq:
My equipment sucks! What should I do?
Once you reach high level, you'll likely go nuts trying to get good equipment. There are two and a half sources of equipment: 'Stock' (which here refers to non-unique equipment that a builder has put in this MUD, as opposed to 'stock rom code'), 'Forged' (Unique, created equipment via the MUD's item creation code. I use forge in the general sense a good deal - I'm referring to stuff made by a blacksmith, tailor, jeweller or woodworker) and items gained via the automatic quest system (check help quest) - that would be the 'half'.
I need help levelling! Where should I go?
Evil aligned: arena, elemental canyon, chapel, hampshire, zoo (monkeys, chimps, most of west road, deer - in that order), paladin keep (pages squires, then maybe paladins), perspective/mount doom (slaves, then blackguards (which group!) priests, destiers.
Neutral's can take their pick, the slimy bastads.
I just started here and I made this dragon and ...
Most people here recreate their first character. They realize they made bad choices in creation. It takes time, and deep understanding, to build strong characters here. You will make mistakes. You will not realize you made mistakes. 500 hours from now you will realize you need to remake your dragon, or be permanent-whipping lizzard. With a non-dragon, the feedback is faster, you can realize in more like 40 hours you did a bad job, and restart. Given dragon's reduced equipment, it is even harder for you to overcome creation errors.
As a note, I often hear people saying not to make dragons because 'it takes too long' or 'you don't know the mud so you won't do well at quests'. Those are both garbage. If you fall in love with the mud, and have patience, you can make it. You can learn the mud as you quest (it's probably the only way most people ever will). But there's no real way around the creation issues. Make a non dragon. Get to 51. Get a feel for how pk works here, and what the dragon skills do. Talk to dragons. Invest at least 30 hours (though i waited almost 2 years before really making one). If you're not willing to invest 30 hours as a non dragon to get a feel for the MUD, you won't make dragon. If you are serious, great, but make another 51 and get a very good feel for how dragons here fight first.
Take ambidexterity, fast, robust, genius and your choice of ONE of the following: gifted, ironskin, combatsense. If you must have rich, take it.
But I've allready made draconian
Paladin. Try Sephilim, _titan_ or a giant. They get saves from bless, cast cure critical, have good defensive skills and massive pd. Put another way: they are really hard to kill. This makes them forgiving. If you have very little pk background, a decent choice since you can normally do nothing for a couple rounds, then realize you need to flee. As an extra exciting bonus, paladins can do well with nothing but scrounged stock equipment. Put your bulk through the roof, picking dr/hr where possible, and bless everything. Holy forge your weapon, and plink away. Paladins also get summon mount, which summons a high hp mount that hits pretty well, and carries you around. Its always big enough for you: this means titans can actually get reeeely big mounts. You hit harder mounted. You also can't dual wield, but you don't get dual wiels as a paladin, so who cares? You also can't bash - but you can shield bash. Looks fun, but don't expect to always fight mounted, bad things can happen. Sanc your mount. 2k hp can go whoosh pretty fast. (Teirhai generally kills unsanced paladin mounts in a single triple-backstab.
Druid. Similar reasons. Bless +pd +healing = tank. Less pd, more healing, more charmies. More dangerous on attack then a paladin, but less solid defensively.
And finally options not for beginners, the official as-of-this-writing list of power classes, likely out of date soon:
Cheap people keep killing me with like 40 charmies.
As an aside, I've heard flee has been changed to make it more difficult. This might tilt things a bit towards charmie users, though the gain will likely be offset somewhat by the fact that they will have a harder time fleeing if they get hit fast and hard.
Problems/Questions:
My equipment sucks! What should I do?
I need help levelling! Where should I go?
I just started here and I made this dragon and ...
But I've allready made draconian.
Which class is best?
Cheap people keep killing me with like 40 charmies
All those name generators I see suck. How do you come up with those cool names that somehow never make it onto Flat's lists of cool names?
You say you're covering gaps in other FAQ's. What the hell are you talking about, I pushed FAQ on www.daedalmacabre.org and it took me here.
The first question is: should you do anything? If you're under level 51, and heading towards 51, your equipment needs to be good enough to level. Once you level, any equipment you get now will suck anyway, so as long as you can level, you're doing fine. Get by with whatever you can grab. This of course assumes you have a twinkish heart and are hurtling to level 51. But you are looking at my faq, right? For non-evil people, the pickings are wider imho: check out the stuff on the golems in thalos that are around level 25. At a similar level, for low bulk classes, the stuff for sale in hampshire is ok. At low levels, I'd suggest buying the stuff from the armoury. It has bulk. Bulk = pd. Pd = not taking as much damage. Pd helps levelling more then any other stat, unless you have a wall of charmies, in which case i'll assume you're levelling easily via study (or the charmie wall). Pd helps a lot in pk too, but you can level with _nothing_ but pd and an acceptable weapon.
Lets start with the last category - quest equipment. It's good stuff, for the most part. We're talking about 4 items here: the shimmering cloak, the Ring of Wizardry, the Diamond Ring, and the 'Mystical Treasure Box'. The first three, for the appropriate classes, are all excellent. The ring of wizardry i recommend for any casting class, and non-shadow dragons. The Diamond Ring I recommend for melee classes, the shimmering cloak is useful to have for anyone (or a pair of them - containers with excellent saves. The mystical treasure box I have reservations about, though changes may have made it more appealing ... more on that later.
Forged equipment is in a continued state of flux. (not Flux). It used to hands down reign supreme - at least aside from weapons - and it may reign supreme again. But right now, I'm not sure that it does. If you don't know how to forge equipment, check the neube faq. Issues that have cropped up:
Changes to identify mean that it is harder to tell what you are getting. This makes it harder to get ahead using custom creation. Stock equipment is often 'known' to have certain properties, or has 'mixed' properties which are obviously useful. (Compare a hr a little dr a little stock piece vs a dr a little forged one. The stock is at least decent in both, the forged may or may not have killer dr ... so why risk it)
The material tables have been massively expanded, and the affects of old materials have changed. Imho, these changes will all be for the better in the long run, but most of the MUD, (your humble faq writer included) are still a little lost with the new materials. Materials that used to produce great results now don't. My gut is the change may hurt 'single stat hunters' or at least push them to stock - for example, fighters tend to want MAX bulk, with as much dr as possible. On the other hand, new materials may have mixed properties (a little bulk, a little ms, a little hr) that will make excellent equipment for mid-bulk classes. Mages are currently lost completely, having been severed from their old easy source of full ms/ed equipment. That may change as we learn more about materials or when:
Merchants are coming. Evidently, mob manufacturers no longer produce top quality stuff, because pc's will be able to do better then the mobs (and rightly so!). So ... we can't really say what the new materials will produce in the hands of pc merchants with craftsmanship and top quality tools, and sharpen, and jewel embedding ...
As you can see, forged eqiupment is in transition, and may kick ass ... soon. For now, its an exciting, but unreliable area. One big boost apparent allready though - some materials appear to produce saves reliably. This was always a major hole in forged equipment.
Stock armour serves fighters reasonably well, but casters poorly. High ms/ed stock equipment is almost unheard of, so casters are not going to use much of it. Fighters on the other hand, can get excellent bulk with moderate hr/dr out of stock equipment, and probably will do so at least until pc forgers come in.
Forged weapons have good hr/dr, and can be top notch, but enchanted up stock weapons are, for now, usually better. Get a bunch, and get a mage to enchant them up, but first get a necro/paladin/Miryoku (aka yuki-rom) type to put some flags on them. Unenchanted stock weaponry is expendable, which means you can get the flags you want plus hr dr with some effort. Combined with the opportunity for unusual damage types with stock weapons, they are very useful.
A general note: as far as your fabricated equipment goes, there are a few things to keep your eye on. Learn help bulk inside out. Bulk adds directly to pd. Imho, everyone should wear close to max bulk if possible. Beyond that, some ed is good for everyone, and since it tends to go with ms, a must for casters.
Good aligned: from low to high level: arena, obsid keep (rotting, peasants/merchants, then guards, then greater guards - these are all imm_pierce, so don't work well with a dagger), zoo (brats and tourists are weakest, then try zebras, most of center aisle, some others - bisons are the top level ones), nobles in obsidian keep (they're invis - use true sights if necessary) ... then .. tougher. I've had good luck in the low 40's (or mid 30's with low hour characters :/ ) with abstemious mobs - they tend to use hide, a true sight might help here too. They do death field, but that doesn't tend to finish you off, so just eat the death field and keep going. Beyond that, I've also had good luck with the seafloor mobs 'Under the Boreal sea' Easy, ok xp. Finally try the (neutral) sea elves you get to by going under the boreal sea, then cutting west, then going through a cave. Note that good chars now get -xp for killing good mobs, so you can't just plow through perspective. Still, I believe they got a +modifier to xp to compensate, so the sea elves should work for you. There's a big cavern full of them. The old approach was ... the fire swamp. It's a pain. On the up side, you'll get rich while you're trying to do it. Ask me for fire swamp advice if you need it.
Everyone tells you it's a bad move. It is. Here's why.
The gain trade command has big ramifications for newbie dragons. Many major creation errors can now be addressed. That said, I still think you're better off knowing what you're doing first. Trading in skills and adding new ones burns up practices. Expert dragon players typically find they have a few cp to burn. You probably won't.
There is also no way to undo the perks/disadvantages you took in creation. Well, as much as this sickens me, since there are already too many dragons, I'm gonna tell you what I'd suggest, perkwise. Everything else can be addressed with a practice hit using trade:
Be stingy with practices: one per spell, two per skill. Exceptions: berserk, dragon breath, maybe sanctuary.
You'll turn out ok.
Cut your losses. I deleted at draconian, and I pretty much knew what I was doing. I've seen people delete dragons. I've heard great wyrms say they _should_ have deleted at dragon. Cut your losses.
Which class is best?
The more you play, the more you'll likely think they are balanced. Some are easier then others to equip, some are easier then others too be an acceptable pker with. A few options for beginners:
Did I mention you have to be lawful good? Paladins are solid, the align restriction is why you don't see too many.
Wizard with chain-immunity. Think incubus, black abashi, wraith, goblin, pengwyn?, illithid and of course, nephilim.
Ranger: fighter type power with ambush for enhanced dmg. Everyone knows fighters do well vs everything but wizards, and everyone knows assassins can hurt wizards bad. Well, you're a near-fighter with some assassin type ability to counter-attack wizards. Nice.
Wyrms. Yeah, not dragons, wyrms and higher. Dragons are good, well played, wyrms get really nasty. Not many things will beat a wyrm spamming breaths. I know you only get three. So try not to be a total twink, and only fight when you need to. Wretched things. Oxi's own the power - Ethereal has big breath and frost flags, Rainbow with the sick resist, crystals have, imho, best vuln setup of a dragon, shadows with the infamous lifedrain. Shadows should benefit more from maturity past dragon then other types. Ask me for in-depth 'analysis of pd as an hp modifier, and impact of healing with pd' if its not immediately apparent to you. Its the same idea as how max pd priests used to kick ass. But you allready understood that, right?
Assassin. Sort of. Not really a power class, can get kicked around a lot, but can kill anything that makes a mistake. Its always nice to have hope. My tips for assassins: You need to land two sets, plan accordingly. Think about maybe going saves to prevent faerie fog/fire/blind/slumber, which are your real downfall. Think about being a shifter base titan, or a small shifter that shifts up to fight.
That's cause you suck. ;-) Going through a lot of charmies is difficult. The traditional approach is to flee out, run back in the room and lay into the caster, who probably has like 650 hp and a pd of 3, the sprite twink. Blinding the charmies (dirt kick?) means they can't be ordered to attack you successfully. If nothing works, get bulbassaur to backstab them, they should die in like one hit. I'll also mention that a lot of summoned charmies suck utterly vs. chars with good ac. Whatever you do, don't whine that they are being sucks using charmies. They don't whine when you use 3rd attack or dual wield. If you think they're so much stronger then you, go make a necro and shut up.
All those name generators I see suck. How do you come up with those cool names that somehow never make it onto Flat's lists of cool names?
I tend to tinker with them by hand. Although the random keyboard smash as a source of inspiration has its devotees, let me suggest the following link to Chris Pound's page. He has some perl scripts you can run, and output from them. Basically the scripts take real wordlists and produce lists of fake words that sound similar to the original ones. For the samples, he's run the scripts to make words that sound like Cthuloid, or Sindarin, or Russian, or Ancient Egyptian etc. etc. Often a starting point for me when I want, say an Assyrian type name. He also refers to some rpg's that sound fun, like Feng Shui, and Pokethulu, and has recently produced lists of dumb spell names, and things for Jordi LaForge to say. There are no graphics, obviously, I think it's a fine site.
When I started writing this, I wasn't linked to the D.M. site, some others were. The main ones I was thinking of were Grak's FAQ and perk breakdown, to which I'd primarily like to add that the consensus view is that the gifted perk boosts mana gains. His stuff is a little old (i.e. he says there are no remorts, we now have three) but are still of value. Since I seem to be becoming the official FAQ, I'll be adding more neube info to what started out as being more aimed at intermediate players.
