Thu Jul 26 04:00:20 2012

At 3 o'clock AM, Day of the Great Gods, 19th of the Month of Nature
on the Theran calendar Sindrai perished, never to return.

Race:	human
Class:	shapeshifter
Level:	51
Alignment:	Good
Ethos:	Neutral
Cabal:	OUTLANDER, the Outlanders of Thar-Eris
Age:	39
Hours:	173

y'all can take it to the sports board or whatever it is you do.

I almost ungranted you on more than one occasion. If there had been a better option for Sunwarden, I would have. It was all related to alignment-related roleplay; that's it. The rest of the character seemed fine.

Really this and some other recent characters have been tempting me to completely overhaul Outlander, RP-wise, to increase clarity of expectations.

Anyways, good luck with your next!

I poked around for help on how to be a good aligned Outlander and hit a brick wall. There wasn't even anyone within the cabal (low player base) to learn dogma from. I feel like I just got hit with the leader spot and hung out to dry - big time. Between that and the tattoo I really wish I wouldn't have bothered to "step it up" with this character's involvement.

I'm also done with playing goodies. The way they've evolved over the years is to be too feminine and floofi for my liking. Shokai, Vynmylak and Aarn ran a different ship - that's for sure. If I played Warborf, Jaegrudai, Dargmart or Heas in today's CF they would be uninducted instead of being highly praised leaders. Is that wrong? Am I complaining? It's not wrong - you guys are in charge now and you can do whatever you want. I can also whine about it. :)

From now on it's evil - I'm coming for your breadz, people.

xdfbsb

I've played a number of CG Outlanders over the years (decades?) including several Sunwardens and I've never found it all that hard though I could've missed a few things in recent years.

The attitude I take is: don't hunt good chars unless the Tree is threatened, don't hunt neutral chars unless they're hunting you and focus on whacking all the evil out there. And don't be buddy-buddy with the evils in the tree and when possible, preach the Sun (not obnoxiously) to the neutrals. If you screw up, fix it. Avoid evil gear.

Admittedly, most of my CG's where when the Tribunal was overwhelmingly neutral - evil and the Empire was mostly strong as all get out.

I've also always taken the approach the the Fortress isn't really your friend though there may be a few limited times when your goals are similar so no Fort-lander.

I thought you were doing okay early on but then you sort of disappeared and I deleted so I don't know what happened for you to get knocked on.

But best luck with whatever's next.

>I poked around for help on how to be a good aligned Outlander
>and hit a brick wall. There wasn't even anyone within the
>cabal (low player base) to learn dogma from. I feel like I
>just got hit with the leader spot and hung out to dry - big
>time. Between that and the tattoo I really wish I wouldn't
>have bothered to "step it up" with this character's
>involvement.

You're going to have a lot of disagreements within Outlander
that run along alignment lines.* Maybe goodies choose not to
fight other goodies at all and find some other way to serve
their cabal. Maybe they don't help the reavers. Maybe they
don't raid Tribs when there are goodie Tribs online. Maybe
they foster more of an old time Sylvan perspective on life.

I think you could go about it any number of ways that doesn't
involve partnering up with reavers *at all*.

Also,if you just didn't feel up to leadership this go around,
most IMMs understand that. This is supposed to be a fun game
for everyone, and for a lot of people that doesn't include
interviewing and inducting. Maybe that's a huge inconvenience
for them, but not everyone wants that sort of burden either.
Declining or stepping down is always an option.

*Note: this doesn't just apply to Outlander, but to any cabal
that accepts all alignments. If you're good and you really don't
see a problem bridging to rank/raid with that fire giant, you
probably should've rolled neutral from the start.

>*Note: this doesn't just apply to Outlander, but to any cabal
>
>that accepts all alignments. If you're good and you really
>don't
>see a problem bridging to rank/raid with that fire giant, you
>
>probably should've rolled neutral from the start.

I've said this for years when it comes to the village. I don't know if things are significantly different now, though I doubt it, but people would not only ignore align, but they would get angry and upset and vindictive to good villagers who wouldn't group with evil, who would actually roleplay being good. They think once you're a villager you can do anything you want with another villager because hey, you know, you're villagers. These are the players thinking that. It was sad and disappointing.

Assuming things are the same as they were, I think you and whomever else pays attention should be doing a lot more to make sure people don't check alignment at the door.

nt

I get all kinds of pissy when I see good Battle/Trib/Outtie not acting their alignment. But, I don't run any of those cabals. I do, however, take action when said goodies are also trying to follow Baer, which is why Sindrai got his alignment dropped and a "shape up or ship out of Baer's religion" talk.

And this has been a problem with the mud for a very long time. This exactly. There aren't enough imms and those that are around don't do the job. You all have to stop caring whose cabal someone is in when you see someone do something wrong (or right for that matter, reward as well as punishment). Did they screw up cabal stuff? Ok, you don't run the cabal so you don't do anything directly but you tell those that do right away

But did they screw up something not directly cabal related? Like alignment? You absolutely should take action. It's roleplay, they're ####ing it up on purpose, and yuou (or any imm who sees it) should do something, right then and there. It's the only way people will change. All imms are supposed to be qualified at the roleplay thing, and all imms should be able to step in and take action when someone does what we're talking about.

nt

Not necessarily the hard and fast rules.

That they happened to be on my PK stats as assists is a function of my being able to track down the people who escaped Reavers from the air and/or my general announcement of who escaped from me and where. Not my deliberate coordination with them.

I feel like if I had been playing one of Sindrai's enemies (which, technically, I briefly was but we didn't have much overlap so I'm more going on what I'd seen immside) I wouldn't have been able to tell whether you were grouped up with the various evil Outlanders or not.

Just to try to give you a different perspective on it.

It's not my enemies making that assertion - it's immortals who can see the difference.

I was almost always in the air looking for enemies. So was Xasivus. Balete was on the ground looking for enemies. We all found them, we fought them... and not always when we were aware of the others involvement. It would have been different, statistically, if the cabal were populated by 90+% goodies/neutrals. However, Outlander was mostly evil so naturally the number of kills involving an evil cabal mate will be higher. This is not indicative an effort to coordinate with them, only indicative of my not having any will to avoid the appearance of coordinating with them. Now you can say that doesn't make me a "beacon of the Light" but it certainly doesn't make me not-good. And, I guess no one is arguing that. I wasn't turned neutral or anything. Just "downgraded"... whatever that means.

Apparently the other things that made the character less than perfectly goodly were:

1) he was "mean" to goody paladins and conjurers.
2) he was aggressive against Nexus. (Nexus was our main enemy - we were the biggest/strongest cabal at the time)

While I'd accept I could have been tougher about the Reavers sooner (I was a lot harder on them assisting in my kills post-Baer-chat) I tend to think of #1 as good role-play and number 2 as, at worst, acceptable role-play.

Again, I think times have changed. This character would have been received differently by Shokai/Aarn/Arvam run goodness. This is, of course, just my opinion. Well... sorta... I did talk to Aarn about it last night over a (two or three) bottle(s) of wine in my living room. . Regardless, Aarn/Shokai/Arvam don't run goodness anymore - Baer and Padwei do, and they are free to run it as they see fit. I'm also free to piss and moan about it.

In the end I'll agree to disagree, stay away from playing goodies, and be grateful that Unners and Raybaer are hard at work trying to make the mud a fun place for all.

...wouldn't an Aarn style goodie just ####ing kill Grafacut anytime he wasn't actively defending/raiding/fighting EMPIRE/TRIBUNAL/SCION?

It pissed me off that more Outlanders don't attack their cabal-mates when they totally can. Usually it's just evils killing evils (or Rogue killing anyone).

I did enough of that to make me almost never rest inside the Tree.

I thought being aggressive against nexuns was ALWAYS not a good thing to do as a goodie....that always came off to me as a neutral thing to do. If I am wrong someone please correct me but I always thought goodies were all about forgiveness and doing what is best. As I see it goodies do what is best for every person while neutrals do what is for the greater good of the situation.

If you know you are tipping and going to get attacked and want to strike first, fine. You can be fairly aggressive to them, but since I apparently stepped over the line in so many other places I, personally, should have been more careful dealing with them.

Respectfully, I think you specifically (through no fault of your own) have a really, really skewed view of what Aarn would let fly in general because Aarn always had an enormous soft spot for you.

Understand I'm not bashing on Aarn; I think he was pretty fair in general and everyone has players that just hit their sweet spot of roleplay and PK and what not.

I can't really speak for him either - but I think it's safe to say both Aarn and I like a well RP'd non-convential good.

Probably the character that most reinforces my belief that good can take a real hard line is Warborf. Warborf being a sphere Fire Thror follower believed in hammering (pun deliberate) on other goodies... even to the point of attacking his fellow Fort members.

Warborf had many a positive interaction with Shokai despite that. When I look back on all my characters I consider Warborf my best received work, with a second given to Dargmart. Dargmart was equally rough on goodies with a tad bit of narcism added in due to his following Kastellyn. Neither of these two characters were played while Aarn was an active immortal.

P.S I'm glad this discussion has come up.

>Probably the character that most reinforces my belief that
>good can take a real hard line is Warborf. Warborf being a
>sphere Fire Thror follower believed in hammering (pun
>deliberate) on other goodies... even to the point of attacking
>his fellow Fort members.

Dude. Maran have one rule. One rule! That breaks it. :P

I love Shokai, but he's kind of a creampuff about cracking on people.

That rule is being interpreted literally. The rule is not to "HARM" any of the Light.

What is harm?

If we define it simply as typing "murder goodie" than in such a case we can't spar. I can't strike to wake you. We know that's not how we do it. There are circumstances under which it's okay to type "murder goodie".

Warborf would tell you that his hammering made that goodie stronger. That's not doing him any harm, in fact it's a great boon to him. Of course, said attacks were always accompanied by conversations that he would not have had with an evil person. That's the difference... if you are evil I just hammer and try to break you. If you're good I hammer and try to mold you. That behavior wouldn't be praised or tolerated now because, I think, we take the "don't harm" rule more literally than we did in the past.

You know that you arent going to permanently cripple your cabal mate if you boneshatter him.

Maybe that cranial on your buddy gives him brain damage? What if his shattered arm never heals? You haven't made him any stronger, and inflicted permanent harm.

As well, combat in Thera is to kill. You simply flee before that could happen. If you suddenly got bashed before you tried to flee, you'd kill your buddy.

Assuming he will recover from cranial/boneshatter/etc. is not OOC knowledge. That is what happens in Thera.

And the same fire giant in Arkham has had thornheart for a billion years

There's so much grey area and wiggle room in what you're talking about that you could use it to justify pretty much everything, including every "oops."

Baer is sphere purity. She hates wiggle room. She's all about black and white. If you want to be a Maran or a Squire, you don't attack goods. Period. Ditto on being a goodie in her religion.

>Baer is sphere purity. She hates wiggle room. She's all about
>black and white.

If that's true, why aren't you leading the charge against Nexus? Everything I've read tells me they haven't changed in the last few years and they are killing goods all the time, and of course as I've said before, have declared themselves, sworn, pledged, oathed, whatever you want to say, to the preservation and enactment of evil. If there's no wiggle room as you say, and you're black and white, they are evil murderers of your own people, let alone all the others.

The answer of course is you've made an ooc decision to have cognitive dissonance on this matter because for some reason you (the staff) have decided you just don't want people to behave how they would, but rather enforce something artificial in the name of "game balance". We can argue about the latter, whether it is balanced and a good idea. But there's no argument to be had on the fact of making people not behave according to your own stated "black and white" position. They're your enemies. You just don't want the game to reflect that. That's a shame.

Oh Jesus not this again.

At some point you're just going to have to accept that almost no one else agrees with your view of what Nexus is, even if you think we're all wrong.

Which doesn't answer the point. Nobody is arguing what you want Nexus to be, or what it is. The point is, and always has been, how would someone actually living there see and feel and react? They aren't you, looking from the outside in a game saying "they want balance, we want balance, we want a cabal for that" blah blah blah.

They are people who are constantly attacked and murdered by by these people. They are people who watch these people come and murder their cabal guardians, inner and outer, cabal mates, family, etc. They are people who have been told that these other people not only do this now, but intend to do this forever, and that they will forever support the exact opposite of your cause, and make sure you never, ever, ever succeed in what you've dedicated your life to.

Nobody in that position says to themselves oh, ok, they have a rationale for what they're doing, so I'll just say "hi!' and do nothing. Come on. You're smarter than that.

You're totally ignoring that those people also kill your enemies and help you.

Not at all. Do you think someone would care if yesterday you killed my mother and father and brother but today came by and said hey, let's go kill that dragon together dude! I mean come on. It's insane. Literally. It's schizophrenia. And who cares if they may also kill people you would kill? That doesn't erase or make it alright for them to be killing you and your cabalmates and standing for evil, eternally, as they do.

Like I said, you want to talk about it from the 10000 foot level, and outside. And you can because it's your game, you can make it do whatever you want. But it's an artificially enforced situation that runs counter to all logic and behavior. Let someone come kill your kids and your wife, then a week later come by and say they want to help you get promoted at work and tell me how you feel about this guy.

I'm not sure how you think that's substantially different from any of the alignmentless cabals like Tribunal or Outlander.

Edit: or Battle, to pick a cabal I know you like.

I'm not sure how you think that's substantially the same as any of those cabals.

When was the last time Tribunal raided fortress and killed both guardians? And even took the item? Outlander? Battle? Maybe things are different but Nexus used to raid the fort all the time, kill the guardians and sometimes keep the item. None of the other cabals ever did that.

None of those other cabals have pledged themselves to the exact opposite of what the fortress and goodies have pledged themselves.

You are trying to conflate individual behavior with cabal behavior. Sure battle people will target fortress mages. But the battle cabal doesn't target or war with or even want to war with the fortress as a whole. The battle cabal doesn't say they want evil, now and forever. Same with the other cabals.

Only nexus does and believes these things. They're different from every other cabal in this regard, and they should be treated that way, or changed.

I still feel like you're arguing against a strawman version of Nexus and I suspect I'll always feel that way.

Actually I think it's you who are arguing for a straw man version. You aren't arguing based on reality, you're arguing based on how you, as an imm, want things to be, and have envisioned it in your head.

But put boots on the ground, stand there and watch and live as a fortress person and see and feel what they would (roleplay, hello) and then tell me which one of us is arguing straw men and which one of us is arguing reality.

Like I said, the exercise is roleplay someone killing your wife and your kids, then coming the next day and asking to help you with something because today, unlike yesterday, they want to help you out. Let me know how that works out for you.

NT

I can totally see someone in Nexus believing he's not doing evil,
while butchering innocents in the name of balance and neutrality
but from the POV of *any* objective observer that's evil in itself.

In RP terms, Nexus strikes me as a cabal of delusional control freaks,
who are fighting for something that only exists inside their own minds.
Would be interesting to see that spin in game, although I know it'll probably never happen =)

>I can totally see someone in Nexus believing he's not doing
>evil,
>while butchering innocents in the name of balance and
>neutrality
>but from the POV of *any* objective observer that's evil in
>itself.

But that basically doesn't happen, unless you're trying to argue that Maran are innocent somehow. Going out and killing orphans doesn't do #### for the balance, and Nexus knows it.

The point isn't that Fort should like Nexus. My Fort usually don't.

They also don't like Outlanders/Battle/etc. that attack them.

But neither do they try to cook up some dubious logic by which they're equivalent to evil or somehow more evil than actual evils.

More than once as a Fortguy who was a natural enemy of either Battle or Outlander I've been told by the mortal leadership that I needed to go out and fight the neutral Battle/Outlanders that came up to the cabal, so that nobody else would get attacked to draw me out, but that I wasn't allowed to kill them and needed to run away if I started looking like I might win. I assure you no one's ever been stuck with a situation that bad with respect to Nexus.

Incidentally, the cabal that's raided for the Orb and downed it the most in the last year (excepting the two evil cabals) is, by a wide margin, Battle.

I really think how Nexus is viewed is goverened largely by mortal leadership. Allysia's view differed from pretty much every mortal leader since in that I had no problem taking any cabal's item, and then relinquishing it if necessary later on. I had no problem taking three nexus people to slaughter a cabal, or throwing my weight behind an underdog and making them the dominant side. Caveat being, I didn't give the orb to scions if light was in power, I took it and held it and relinquished it when necessary.

Akedeh had a war with fort which prompted them to begin taking the orb which is why battle passed nexus. To me, Nexus should always be taking every cabal's items the most, next to direct cabal enemies of course. Returning items via killing inners and leaving the item, eh, nexus has relinquish for a reason as I see it.

I like that mortal leaders decisions allow for such things, it makes being in a cabal different each time you play a char in it. But really, nexus I feel is only complained about when they have number swells to the point that they are dominant. And really, they've had pretty consistent big numbers for a good long while now.

Nobody was bitching in my early time, when I was pretty much fighting Battle by myself or with 1 or 2 imperials every log in. Second I had the numbers to impact things though, complaints became far more frequent.

Because by that logic, Fjodir (and any evil that kills evil) would be viewed the same way. Which, to me, is Anathema to what being a MARAN is.

It's an interesting discussion, though, the NEXUS issue re: Fortress.

Well, no: because Fjodir was, actually, evil and Nexus isn't. The Orb color codes people's souls for your convienience.

But that being said, I can remember a lot of Fort backing off of him in his I-don't-kill-goods phases.

...should have kept hunting him until, as you put "The Orb color codes people's souls for your convienience", he no longer had a red aura.

Basically, you can't have it both ways. You can't punish MARAN for attacking NEXUS and then NOT punish MARAN for NOT attacking a Fjodir, because your argument against one completely invalidates your argument about the other.

PS I think this is a great discussion by the way, to the point that maybe we should move it to Gameplay. I know my MARANs always looked at Nexus as a necessary evil (kind of like Dalamar in the Dragonlance books) against the true evil of SCION/EMPIRE. At the same time though, I'd never travel with NEXUS characters unless I was trying to retrieve/raid.

Sidenote: My Nexus characters always get mad at Fortress for not accepting my aid :) My Nexus characters see the relationship exactly how you and Rayihn see it. My Maran though...

The point I'm making is that I had a character who was highly praised for doing what you think is crap.

In fact, in the story about Warborf on this website he is attacking a goody!

I'll say that I actually like the hardass black and white mentality of Fort. While I do think there is room for less conventional goodies, Fort should be the purest of the pure, so to speak. My Fort leaders have basically told every inductee: You don't get a second chance, you harm a goodie, I'm uninducting.


*This is coming from someone who Baer deleadered and slapped on the wrist fairly hard for venturing into that gray area.

>If we define it simply as typing "murder goodie" than in such
>a case we can't spar.

Maran have been uninducted for sparring with each other in the pre-Baer era, just so you're aware. More than once. I'm about 70% sure at least one of these was Aarn, incidentally.

I mean, I assume you were kind of being facetious, but that's actually happened.

I can't strike to wake you. We know
>that's not how we do it. There are circumstances under which
>it's okay to type "murder goodie".

I think there's a pretty simple argument for "it's okay when they want you to", even though the sparring case is still outside it.

Wow - Maran got kicked out just for sparring? Not for like, sparring when they should be counter raiding?

You mention that happening pre-Baer era. It's possible I'm using Baer as my timeline event where things started to change, and that she isn't necessarily the bringer of the changes. None the less, things did change regardless of who kick started the evolution.

As further proof Iramath (Captain) and Heas (my Marshall) fought MANY duels, some resulting in my death. Neither of us were scolded. Both of us were highly praised, granted and, in fact, Heas heroimmed ever so briefly as I'm sure you recall.

Again - if you evolve things in a different direction that's fine. I'm not asking for anything to change. I'm just kind of hoping someone will acknowledge that there has been an evolution to a more stringent and literal following of rules.

For what its worth as a gruff dwarf dawnie leader I'd cranial cabalmates all the time if they were giving me grief. No nothing close to killing them, but eh, just quit trying to break the mold. There are 2 people in charge of Fort policy and it isn't changing.

I'm not trying to get it to change. Just looking for someone to acknowledge it has. Which you just did.

*smoooooch*

On a paladin?

I'd have kept it and given it to a good aligned beggar.

That's not really how I remember the events in question, but whatever.

Was waiting for duel but elf never came backs. Is knew elf not
can back up words.

Still, not so useless as most wardens.

I love playing roles that are going to experience a lot of conflict. I like a ton of PK enemies and some "enemies" that you don't fight via PK. In my opinion it makes your few friends, usually one of them your god, all the sweeter. This is what I set out to experience and I certainly got it - in the end it was also my downfall.

On the build:

I have been playing this game since '96 but since real life stuck in '02 I've played a single character about once a year, sometimes longer. I got the urge to play right around Memorial Day and had a hunch double xp would get thrown down. I got myself to the mid 30s, double xp hit and I heroed. It took me about 25 hours to hero and find my ABS. That much was easy.

I got ram which certainly didn't disappoint, and eagle which was KILLER good. My lower forms were more or less worthless once I got to hero - save for my owl's ability to detect hidden. Insect swarm on an air form is really, really good - but my skillz are so rusty it didn't matter.

For the record - I never, ever, ever have a problem finding my ABS once I get detect artifact.

On Outlander:

Overall my Outlander experience was good, but my experience as my first Sunwalking Outlander was lousy. I've had a harbinger and I've had several Fort leaders so you'd think it would be obvious how to RP but it was not. I waited about 100 hours to get inducted (*fistshake Riethen*) and then due to the fact I was the only goodie in outlander got made Sunwarden. I never had an opportunity to role-play with other goodie outlanders and get a feel for how they thought and felt. That was a real disappointment.

On Baer:

This is my 3rd tattooed Baer follower. The first was right when you first immorted the second was two years ago (my last character in fact) and then of course Sindrai. Through these characters I have really seen your roleplaying skill improve tremendously. Each time you were better than the last. I can honestly and unapologetically say I thought you were terrible on the first go round, adequate on the second and stellar on the third. I think that's commendable.

You were almost always available to me as a follower and that was great. I certainly didn't feel like I got over-rewarded - no divine xp, no edges, no quest forms, no extra spells. Just my title and a ton of interaction, for which I'm appreciative.

I did feel like you treated me like I was a great follower and then suddenly WHAMMED me with a big hammer of you-suck. It was actually embarrassing and overall I was disappointed in how it all went down. I tried to roll with it, but ultimately I knew I'd lose Sindrai and give up on where I wanted to take him. I guess I set an unachievable goal and the fault for that is all mine. (I wanted Fort to think Sindrai was harsh and mean.)

On CF:

I am very, very sad to see so few people playing the game these days. It takes away from the appeal tremendously, at least for me. I'm also sad to see a lot of the old immortals I enjoyed gone from the game. I think these two things add up to create a different CF than days of old. I keep expecting to find that old flavor - and am always disappointed when I don't.

Playerz:

MUCH MUCH better experience with this character than my last - my last was so bad I almost gave up CF for good. Everyone's support and (appropriate by role) encouragement to Sindrai was amazing. I don't know if I've ever experienced so many great players with a character before. It's to you guys I'm sorry for deleting - and interacting with all of you is about the only thing I'll miss on this CF hiatus.

I'm sure I'll forget some people, but here are goodbyes. Please post a reply, I really enjoy talking to you all.

Cardinal Elf Old Man Whose Name I Cannot Recall: You were a blast from the get go and just oozed good RP. Some of my fondest memories of Sindrai will be hanging around with you.

Tanion: I did feel bad being mean to you, as a player - but Sindrai was pretty die-hard Thar-Eris. I think you and I see eye to eye on the way our thing went down, but the imms seemed to disagree. 'Nuff said on that.

Our interactions had me cracking up - and our run-in with Truck was hysterical. I would like to know who animated him? :)

Clahier, Nenvell, Dracovious: Thanks for our interactions and for putting up with Sindrai being grumpy - and for being so absolutely forgiving there at the end. You guys rock.

Xasivus: Man, you made me wish I were neutral. :) For a long time in the beginning it seemed like it was just you and me on Team Outlander.

Oryntohr: Another guy who oozes great RP. Great interactions. Thanks.

Cgadi: Less oozing, but a constant presence that I was relieved to have around. Good luck!

Narrisorrin: Great fights and interactions. Can't believe I never managed to get you. :( You are the kind of elite player that is so awesome to fight against. Hats off to you - not enough good things to say.

What were you thinking inducting Wess??? Gah!

Nabigah - I got killed by Daevryn like I was a wet monkey with a car battery. You were very kind after in a creepy evil kind of way and I hoped to see more of you.

Kycalbrum: Sad we never made amends - I fully intended to.

Empress: Keep on truckin'! If I had it in me to play another character right now I'd be inbound to help you out.

I'm sure I'm forgetting tons of people... but I'm starving!

Why delete a ram/eagle sunwarden? Well, in the end it couldn't go where I wanted it to go the way I wanted it to get there. I'm on hiatus again, and will most likely be back with another in a year or so as long as there are still people around to play with. Then again, you never know which of my hiatuses will become permanent. :/

-Stunna

We had one really fun heart pounding fight and a few nice talks and moments and I enjoyed those. A mage brought a Battlerager flowers, oddly enough, it happens more than one would think, but I think there was a little potential for more fun talks/interactions that we won't have now.

Oh, and so you know.Balator just annoyed me to no end that I died there to you. I could have sworn you would get frozen entering the spirit knight's room, and well, we both know how that went for me. Good times though, and I think it was a fine starting point/introduction for the two characters:)


Hope you do come back around some time sooner rather than later!

There are some tricks to the spirit knight, you know! I've been fighting in Balator for a lot of years against the best of the best. I knew what was going on. ;)

Enjoyed my interactions with Salyeris. Keep on a'trucking. I love me some Battle!

But A-P, dude!

You give me the "how to play an evil conjurer for fun or profit" run down and I'll roll one up. I've got a great role for one.

;)

Okay:

- Be aggressive. Understand that evil servitors get bored if nothing is happening. Bored servitors will eat your sad con.

- Being able to have a big mana pool when you need it is a good thing, but being able to get back mana quickly when you need it might be even more important. Sometimes I even used the lowly heal mana.

- Milk your familiar, whatever it is, for all it's worth. At an absolute minimum it can be eyes and ears for you someplace you aren't. Try like hell, harder than me anyway, to not get it killed. It's a fast, fast way to burn CON.

- Milk your information-gathering spells for all they're worth. A well-played conjurer has very few lucky breaks in setting up fights but will appear to have a lot of them.

- I can't usually be bothered to practice spells possibly excepting Word as a conjurer, but if you're going to put in the time for whatever reason, Dismissal is a really good choice.

- Understand that you can make use of any of the servitors; it's just a matter of how long and for doing what. Just because you can't go get XP on elves for 50 ticks with an angel bound does not mean you should skip putting two pracs into conjure angel.

- You largely can't control what a servitor will do, but you can control who it's going to do it to. In big group fights this can be key.

- Cultivate some kind of lagging tactic, but realize that no option gives you even something as situational as trip lag with even a 50% success rate. There's a time and place for it but it's easy to overdeploy it. Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is just not lag yourself much.

- Keep in mind that what you conjure (elementals, especially, with a few situational exceptions) you're going to be stuck with for a while. That water elemental may not look so hot when you have to fight that storm paladin. That doesn't mean never use it, only be thoughtful about what you're locking into or not. Along similar lines a demon will usually outperform a devil for mauling one person, but fall relatively short vs. groups. Think about what you have to deal with or might have to deal with and plan accordingly.

- A truly paranoid conjurer will have lots of extra circles around, possibly including at their recall. There are tradeoffs here as well. Don't forget that these telegraph your preferred conjuration spots long after you've moved on. Very nearly anyone should be able to kill you if they catch you at the right time. Not letting them is something of an art (this is an area in which I was at least as lucky as good in my last run -- people who did catch me with my pants down tended to do something stupid and let me live when they really had me dead to rights.)

Darn you. Darn you.

But since I did...

What keeps certain tiers of demon/devils happy? I know some like magic, some like corpses, some like weapons etc?

nt

I took the liberty of adding it to Diku-Wiki.

nt

..that I added Daevryn's guide to the Diku-Wiki. Just before I made that post. No criticism towards your person there, just kudos to Daev for the good guide.

If a demon loots something or attacks something of its own volition, that's probably something that makes it happy. Demons don't like it when you #### around.

Devils like doing stuff. Not doing stuff makes devils sad. You running away makes devils sad, even with magic.

It may seem like I'm being flippant but this is genuinely all you really need to know.

- Unless you use only demons you are going to have scenarios where you get lower tiered servitors then you wanted when you conjured. Learn to develop sets of tactics to use these guys effectively. This will cut out a lot of 'dead time' for you.

- On a similar note its not always best to try for the highest tier servitor (especiall with devils or when you are cross align conjuring). The lower tier servitors are... less moody and easier to control.

- Clair spells are not limited to targets in your pk range.

- USE EVERYTHING, actively try and use your fringe spells like sighttheft and elem commands. Make it your goal to use every one towards a PK. I am amazed by how little incinerate is used as a finisher (it can cause immolation), blasting away boats to make no flee situations with capsize, using hurricane to bounce victims into traps, etc

- Dismiss isn't your only option when dealing with servitors that have turned on you. Got a pissed off devil? Call an angel and let them duke it out. This might give you enough breathing room to drop a fresh circle or get some mana regened.


- Don't assume an archon is the best servitor for mob killing/exploring. It might be the safest/easiest but other servitors can be great options too (even if you need to tank). This is especially true of a lot of the really high end mobs that have swing and can nuke an elemental easily.


- Its ok to chill without servitors if you don't have anything to do with them at the moment. Remember they are always getting mad by default unless you are actively doing things to make them happy.

To expand on neps post about keeping servitors happy for devil/archon you want to engineer situations where you have long duration fights with little fleeing (for the devil you want them to also not involve you getting hurt much and for the archon you do want to get hurt). For demon and angel its more about getting a larger volume of corpses at their feet then the quality of them.

I was cursing myself for like an eternity after I botched the snare on you @ Xvart lair, would have made a sweet finish to a good hunt.

sd

I was hoping that I would see you again and we could spend time talking about it. Sometimes things just never happen. GLWYN

Bad, you get Imm-inducted together, and you don't even make it into a person's goodbye post.

I liked Sindrai, and definitely tried to encourage the "Outlander DOES actually have good align also". Was a little disappointed not to be around for most of the Prosimy stuff, and exceedingly disappointed when you just vanished off the face of the map. I've honestly had certain involved parties asking if I'd seen you, every login, for two weeks straight.

On the bright side, I did help get Zameida killed. That felt good :)

Anyways, good luck w/ your endeavours.

It was always nice having you log on because I knew you would RP. We started to get a couple power gamers in Outlander there and that's definitely not fun. Good luck with your centaur - can't wait to hear your thoughts about them when you're done.

Good luck with your next.

I always enjoyed talking to you when I had the time. You seem to do great in dialogue. Sindrai probably would have formed a relationship with you but I was faster to because I felt bad for deleting on you as Elenellius.

Good luck!

I was very happy at the way our interactions went. I enjoyed the vibe I got from you, and the fights were always fun. I repeat, great char and I hope to see the next one that comes into the fields.

Yea - we did have some knock-down drag out fights. Good job doing something different and being successful with it. Believe it or not your build is one I've talked about playing.

We can actually perma if you want. Since funnyone or Krilcov will accuse us of it anyway ;)

I had some run ins with the aforementioned on this one too.

I absolutely loved and hated when you would log in, really both as a character and a player. You were spot on my antithesis, same build, just as dangerous, and on the exact opposite side of the spectrum with such an idealistic attitude. I couldn't get enough of the interaction both in fighting and in our debates. It was just simply fun having that 'good mirror' type character running around. I should have logged the close calls with you as well as the multitude of excellent interactions, but alas I logged neither. Great character, roll another! (Scion this time)

Yea man, I totally thought of you as my arch enemy. You and Nagibah made Scion look so damn dominant it was awesome. Fighting you always got my heart pumping - but scion powers > outlander powers in our duels and I always thought it an uphill battle to fight you. If eagle were not better than falcon in the air I'd never have had a shot.

I think you'd agree our mutual frustration came in the air - if we were on together neither of us could utilize it like we might ordinarily. I think that makes for fun times, personally. I'd be sitting there on the ground thinking, "Okay, should I zap up before I fly? Maybe I'll just use aura... well I'm definitely not going to go up slowed, that's for sure... uh... screw it... ABS!"

And you've already totally inspired me to go Scion. If I roll something up I'll be one of the "Greetings, Chancellor. Can I be of service today?" flies buzzing around your head. :)

Ahh, bummer man! You def ended up with a tough row to hoe, but I thought you were gonna pull through it that last time we talked.

FWIW, I thought you were a really good sunwarden. You had to walk a really fine line, though, and didn't seem to get a lot of leeway. I tried to play a Baer pally a few years ago that was sorta hard and not so friendly to other goodies and didn't really get any traction with it, either.

Your presence was very good for the Tree, and you made my playtime more fun, so you were all good in my book. GLWYN

I think Sindrai was a great success as an Outlander, but just a complete and utter failure as a good-aligned character.

Maybe it's not fair that I've seen at least half a dozen people make a run at Baer-religion Outlander before and you paled (in this respect) in comparison, I don't know.

But, you know, not every character can hit on all cylinders. You did a good job by your cabal and you seemed pretty successful in PK.

And I am sorry for that. At the same time, I'm sad you didn't rise up to the RP challenge presented to you.

Either way, good luck on your next and I hope you aren't totally soured on interacting with me. I thought this was a great character - just not exactly a great Baer follower.

..