Tue Mar 18 13:03:51 2008

At 10 o'clock PM, Day of the Great Gods, 12th of the Month of the Great Evil
on the Theran calendar Clissa perished, never to return.

First and foremost Clissa would have been done at 28ish if it wasn't for the player of Jennil. It was a desolate time in Empire, Keshuk had demoted/deleted, and I was just severely disheartened. But Jennil made it a point to level with me for some reason despite having killed her sometime before. So thanks.

Second, IMM's I really enjoyed playing Clissa even though I might have appeared a bit boring. I learned a lot about the class and game(which was my goal), and shamefully honestly I was pretty giddy during the incubatation stage. Really had me at the edge of my seat. Also big thanks to whoever fed me role experience through Clissa's life---really kept me into it.

I regret rushing into incubation, feel like I had just developed a grasp on the class, not to mention having gotten Dread Lady---but alas don't do the crime if you can't pay the time or whatever .

Finally, but just as importantly, thanks to all the players, I'm going to make notes for my next character so this part isn't always so half-ass.

WarEagle

I think you were one of the first people to kill my cloud warrior experiment. It sort of annoyed me, because I wasn't really anti-mage, anti-evil or anti-empire. Not that it would have been against your role to kill me necessarily, I just wouldn't have put myself in that position if I'd expected the attack. Totally my mistake.

On the whole scale, I really liked Clissa. You seemed to me to be new (Either as a character, or as a player) I couldn't decide.

First point...

Don't rush into defensive situations with a necromancer. Assess the situation before you go running into certain death. You have no idea how many times I was thinking to myself (what the hell is she doing?) the end result, resulting in your death. As time went on, you seemed to progress in similar situations.

Second point...

Don't rush into Lich/Mummy quests. If you are enjoying the character, get the quest ASAP, learn your items, and gather them around old age so you get the max out of the character.

Third point...

Keep doing what you're doing. You seemed to be on the right path with Clissa and I can see you being one of the CF greats, unlike myself. LOL

Really enjoyed Clissa. Interactions, situations, awkwardness.

Keep on trucking.

I've forsaken becoming a CF great, I'll leave that to Mekantos/Balrahd/Daurwyn and voyeur through their characters .

AND of course Nepenthia.

And you had spiffy earrings...

You stuck around fairly often when it was you, a bunch of lower Imperials, and a bunch of your enemies (some who could hide from you and attack when you were least expecting it).

Good luck with the next.

I swear there should be a lot more mummies than we have now. Are people just getting their items wrong, or is it Gygax's ghost stolen our 20s?

I think I remember a comment on my first mummy attempt saying that my success rate got upped from 75% to 85%. Then it failed anyway. As did my second attempt.

I would wager there have been about 10 failed mummies in a row. Statistically speaking if there were even a 50% chance it's quite unlikely.

Of the last 16 attempts

6 gave the wrong item (0% chance)

10 gave the correct item with an average success of 48.8%
4 of the 10 were successful
6 of the 10 were not

In a small statistical model, this is fairly accurate.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

That's a lot lower than I thought. Did some people have their rates lowered? Or is 48.8% the default?

Or did some have theirs raised and 48.8% is actually higher than the default?

Or is there some formula that calculates a default for each character?

Thanks for any answers. Just starting to realise why I was unlucky twice.

Any chance of it being raised? Those are still pretty bad odds in my opinion.

>That's a lot lower than I thought. Did some people have
>their rates lowered? Or is 48.8% the default?

Without looking directly at the code, I'm pretty sure 50% is the default and there is a formula in the code to allow it to go over 100% or down to 20% I think.

>Or is there some formula that calculates a default for each
>character?

The formula is the same for every character (as is the default), but there are things specific to a character that will play into the formula.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Wow. I can't help but wonder what's needed to make it go over 100%. (No, I don't expect an answer.)

I'm guessing wrong items.

Thanks for the info anyway, that's a lot lower than I would have like. At least my observations make sense now. Note to self: Just Lich. It's more likely to succeed.

Note to self: Just Lich. It's more likely to succeed.

It's really not. Way more people go for lich than mummy, and there have been less of them across the same period.

Almost everyone I've seen for mummy that didn't come back with the wrong items had a pretty good chance.

Based on your stats, the average chance for those with the right items was 48.8%.

That, to me, is not a pretty good chance.

Not trying to have a go. It's just that less than 50/50 feels poor to me. And yes, I do appreciate that it is possible for the majority to have a "pretty good chance" and for a seriously ####ed minority to have slim/no chance resulting in an overall figure of "a pretty good chance for the majority".

Generally though, that feels bad.

Honestly, without knowing liching stats, it suddenly feels to me as if you are better (in terms of hours played per transformation) to attempt to lich. For example, does a well roleplayed mummy-wannabe get much of a boost at 350 hrs relative to a lich wannabe at 350 hours? To me, I suspect the two odds are much the same for these kind of characters.

There's a number of things to consider here:

1) I don't have the stats handy to back this up, but I recall seeing several mummy candidates with excellent chances give a wrong item, so that's dragging the average down a bit. Whether there's a correlation between 'the kind of player that can get a good chance to succeed' and 'the kind of player likely to give a wrong item' in a more general sense, I couldn't say.

2) I've seen at least a couple people power a necromancer to 47 and take a crack at mummy. These are characters that didn't have very good mummy success chances, but they're also characters that would have a roughly 0% chance to even get a lichquest. That also drags the average down.

3) You might be surprised to see the success chances for some of the surviving liches. I don't think I've ever seen a higher than 75% liching chance, and probably a number of liches you'd remember were closer to 50% or lower but beat the odds. I suspect nearly all of those characters would have had equal or higher mummy chances.

4) Mummying does have the advantage of being deterministic, in the sense that once you know how to do it, you can be guaranteed a quest. Depending on immortal availability, liching can be more hit or miss.

5) Finally, mummies have seen a number of small improvements over the last few years that, together, round them out pretty nicely. I no longer see them as strictly the poor man's lich; depending on your play style they may actually be stronger than a lich. A mummy is pretty much always stronger straight out of the gate or recently after a death. Liches only really shine relative to mummies for players capable of going a long, long time without dying to anything, regardless of whether or not they're looted. If you die enough to lose more than a point of con getting to mummy/lich, probably you should go for mummy. (I'm tempted to say any con.)

Basically, if you would be willing to play A-P if any death to any cause (PK, death trap, hell trip mishap, wanted flag suicide, whatever) auto-destroyed your unholy weapon and you think you could do well with that, I can recommend lich for you. Otherwise you're probably going to be a much tougher mummy.

So there's that to consider as well.

Although having failed twice, once with lots of hours on the clock (I think Baendra was over 300), I can see why people try to power to it. I wouldn't want to clock up those kind of hours only to fail yet again.

>3) You might be surprised to see the success chances for some
>of the surviving liches. I don't think I've ever seen a
>higher than 75% liching chance, and probably a number of
>liches you'd remember were closer to 50% or lower but beat the
>odds. I suspect nearly all of those characters would have had
>equal or higher mummy chances.

Just a couple random data points...

Mummy
Base chance: 85, Roll: 95, Result: Death!
Base chance: 45, Roll: 44, Result: Success!

Lich
Base chance: 60, Roll: 97, Result: Liched
Base chance: 50, Roll: 28, Result: Death

You'll notice Mummy needs the roll to be lower than base chance, and lich is the opposite (I have no idea why that is, just the way it was coded)

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Was fun Levelling with you, you were fun to talk to, though I didnt find you to be Overly Evil. I'm guessing this was a failed mummy?

Yeah failed mummy, alas hope you're enjoying the new waterness. You and Jennil must have the Ruins on lockdown .

Dude. You're a dead bolt.