Fri Jan 4 10:47:04 2019

At 6 o'clock PM, Day of the Sun, 27th of the Month of the Ancient Darkness
on the Theran calendar Urukhan perished, never to return.

Race:	minotaur
Class:	warrior
Level:	51
Alignment:	Evil
Ethos:	Orderly
Cabal:	EMPIRE, the Empire
Age:	44
Hours:	166

Sorry for the rage-delete: it shows up as one but it really wasn't. CF + my RL were just not really working out very well unfortunately.

I had a couple deaths at times when people IRL were talking to me (and clearly expecting replies, since they wouldn't "get" why I would have to 100% focus on some text on a screen).

Then I had a death due to bad internet cutting me off, and the feeling of trying your hardest to log on for 10 minutes knowing you're a ghost and your corpse is lying on Eastern was awful and made me not want to experience it again.


Immortals:

Ishuli: I think your religion is really made for me. The totally-focused "nerd" aspect appeals to me personally. And I've always been pretty happy to write stuff, especially stuff that teaches other players. Wish we managed to line up times this time, but unfortunately it was not to be! I promise I will try to make another follower of yours.

Whildur: thank you for rating my role so highly. I am a fan of the simple single-idea role and I hope it came across as a neat and unique background for why some minotaur hero is running around Thera. I'm a bit sorry not to have seen what the rolecontest reward would have been, but then that is totally my fault isn't it :-)

Emnon: I think it might've been obvious that I haven't been playing for ages when I just greeted you in game as "Lord Emnon". Ziryn gave me a big scolding for that and then you (mercifully) only plagued me. Everyone in Empire is clearly terrified of you, as it should be in Empire.

IMPs: In case you haven't yet got down to the bug I reported that crashed the game twice within minutes. That bug should be labelled as "critical". I think it's likely a segfault to do with a mob trying to pick up its weapon but dying to Space triggering before any pick up happens. I did not reproduce it with other mobs with non-limited weapons however, so maybe it's specific to limited ones.


Mortals:

Ecreli: you are a very skilled and really generous player. I remember I saw Ihjezhed fight you in Galadon when you were level 35, and figured maybe you could be interested in Empire. I offered the bloodoath and somehow you just said yes! The rest is history. I learned so much from you, and it accelerated my picking up of CF skills again after all this time. Your way of leading group fights also indirectly taught me a lot about how to gang properly, and I remember really well those couple of times you'd lead a group of 3, but just teach the other 2 members how to gang the single enemy, rather than yourself participating. I hold you as the example of a really unstoppable player and great mentor.

Laehn: you were also a super great assassin player. You + Ecreli striking from the shadows must be a constant nightmare for enemies of Empire. I know what it's like to run around unable to see assassins who can easily slaughter you. I think this "persistent unknown threat" really led to a lot of Imperial dominance during your logins.

Saam: thanks for bloodoathing me. It's interesting to play with a slow-moving but unstoppable juggernought on my side, and that's what Mummy Lord Saam was. Once you had your full army you'd just simply roll through all opposition and wreck faces, taking items.

Ziryn: thanks for the promotions. I wish I'd got more chances to group with you at hero, but I think our playtimes didn't match that well. It was Christmas / New Year anyway so that was to be expected!

Elithranduil: your build is totally brutal, and you're pretty aggressive with it. That time when you rushed me + Ecreli, both of us were decked and would probably have slaughtered nearly any other character in the game, but you just blasted through us. Keep up the good Fortress work and make more fights for evils!

Tebor: it was a great moment for me to get you with Ecreli, having seen your logs and how you're obviously good at PK. Hope you keep going with the good druid-ing, it always brings a lot of fear to the enemies to face a strong and aggressive druid.

Rynranu, Goghom, Aehwic: I can't help but think the spate of invokers was due to that big invoker guide I wrote on the other site some months back, so I take credit for my having a hard time against you guys :-) Empire minotaur warrior is a sitting duck for a well-played invoker and I think each of you were skilled in your own way, so I never got to kill any of you and I think I had two deaths retrieving at Fort where the credit is mostly yours.


Build:

Not a powerhouse warrior build like elf STSF or giant/duergar sword, but very versatile and surprisingly strong in certain situations. It is definitely great at ganging down people 2v1 (which is the best gang arrangement). I would recommend warrior players to play this build at some point. I think you'd be pleased with its performance, keeping in mind that it's not a classically-strong build.

Polearm: incredibly tanky, and with imperial offense, it was also quite damaging. Polearms are very hard to parry, and are very unlikely to cause riposte/concealed.

Charge set was extremely reliable, even moreso against players than against mobs.

Slice bleeding is I think even better than artery bleeding, since artery often does not bleed but slice almost always does and seldom ever misses.

Distance makes polearm the best defensive weapon for any low-dex warrior. A polearm user with lots of hp can feel quite "safe" in a way most warriors don't: at least against melee enemies.

Cutoff is not super reliable unless there's only 1 exit in the room, but the threat of it firing multiple times in a fight is enough to seal a couple of kills.

Hand: the only reason I picked this was because there were invokers and a druid to fight, and there are no no-remove or no-disarm polearms that I know of. Hand is pretty lousy in straight-up melee, and I'd get eaten up by riposte/concealed easily too.

Stun: also, don't stun warriors: berserk resists sleep. I found stun unreliable and a poor asset in the actual many-vs-many clashes, but had its place for calling a friend to help gang down some guy you were fighting alone at first.

Pummel: don't know why people like this. Unreliable 1 round lag vs 3 round self-lag just doesn't seem worth it for me. I guess maybe low-strength users don't have a good crushing blow?

Crushing blow: very good lag ability, balanced by the fact that you can't initiate with it.

Space is amazing. Some part of me wants to play a gnome just to see what 25 wis Space is like. Cry is good as usual, I think everyone already knows why.


Player goals with this character:

I think I annoyed someone with the stated goal of this character being "learning to gank better", but it was not to the exclusion of picking up solo-kills if I could get them!

The build also just also not that good solo. Polearm: cutoff, legsweep. Hand: stun. These are skills that are good in gangs and not so great solo. Good solo skills are like dagger: concealed, sword: riposte, sword: flurry. I'm not sure I'd have got more approval for playing a powerhouse solo invoker, conjurer, transmuter, STSF warrior, assassin: they're also a bit "cheap" and easy in their own ways.

Anyway, I don't agree that we should avoid ganging altogether. If that were the case then anti-gang code should kick in from 2 players onwards, not 3 onwards.

You were one of my favorite enemies to see online, because I knew one way or another something was going to go down.

We had quite a few good fights, where I think we each were able to get the other one a couple of times. And more Mexican standoffs where neither of us wanted to make a move and give the other side an advantage than I can remember.

After you died on Eastern, I was in the middle of typing a pseudo-IC message to you, trying to convince you not to delete but I was too late.

As far as the ganging thing.. yeah, you mostly fought 2 or 3 vs 1 that I saw. But I don't see that as an issue. CF can be a rock-paper-scissors game, and if your scissors run into a rock, there's nothing wrong with bringing in your buddy paper to balance it out. Even when dying to your "gang", I got most of my stuff back so I could keep trucking on without much downtime. To me, that means a lot more than trying to force every PVP to be an unnatural 1vs1. You were able to do it without being a ####, which is certainly appreciated.

Hope you roll something else up soon so I can see you in the fields, as another enemy or ally or something in between.

We had great fights indeed! You + Rynranu was usually more than enough to handle any Imperial gang. I think I only got you once, and you got me once in quicksand? That one time Urukhan got Elithranduil was with shaman dispel, which I think is almost the only weakness you had.

I enjoyed seeing you online, assuming I had a strong partner with me. 1v1 unfortunately would be one-sided in Elithranduil's favour :-)

Yeah, I'm kind of a lone wolf player mostly, so Urukhan was a refreshing change from this. It felt a bit dirty to call in the gang
as much as Urukhan did, but like you say it's a rock-paper-scissors game: many foes at hero would easily dominate me 1v1 even when I had the super-set (close to 1500 hp, 65 damroll with berserk, divine saves, +15 str).

I'm not going to speak for Nep but as someone who was on Humbert's team, I think what he was probably trying to get across was that you don't communicate effectively within a team atmosphere. You run out and do your own solo thing and don't really tell/talk to the other people what you're doing. I saw this from you back in those days, and I think that's pretty accurate. And that's not bad, but a "leader" might do a better job at communicating to the cabal and not just running off smoking baddies (or goodies, whatever).

I don't think the opposite of solo pk guy automatically = gotta go gank. Might just mean you need to do a better job of using cb (which sure can lead to some ganking but still).

I'm no good with coordinating with others. Running around with competent leaders like Ecreli taught me a lot, so hopefully I am some way towards resolving this issue.

Announcing on cb did generally mean people would come though. e.g. I could fight some solo guy, and if I announced it I know allies will be converging on our position.

Then, the correct thing to do would be to keep the guy bleeding, above 50% hp, and stun. Then when an ally arrives, stagger lagging moves to nail them.

Of course, that will discourage people from fighting. And people will norm about enemies fleeing when not even 50 percent hurt.

Personally I'd rather try to land the kill alone and have them survive if I fail.

Groups that allow no chance of survival beyond avoiding the fights in the first place aren't good for the game. If you introduce them into what appears to be solo pk then solo pk will suffer too.

Yes, you're right. Conservative gank-happy PK is a tragedy of the commons :-( But maybe it evolves the game so that they will have their friends close by too. Turning CF into more of a group vs group game.

I happen to think permalag should not exist at all: max 4 rounds lag then you always have a chance to get out.

It's no different if the solo-killer is using bash to achieve the same thing. No fun for the victim.

You're letting yourself be second guessed by people who don't actually play. :P

Pretty funny I ended up striking you instead of Urukubuku in Morton when all of you were there tanking. Also pretty lucky you didn’t cut me off from fleeing. I was kicking myself for that one.

It was an unfortunate coincidence with our names! I invented the name totally independently of any other Uruk-X characters in the game, but bad luck I guess.

You were fun to travel with and seemed to fight well. To bad you had to delete but life does get in the way. GLWYN when you get the time.

Thanks for the kind words: keep up the War Mastering and I'm sure Empire will continue to dominate!

Sorry for deleting on you, but RL sort of got in the way. I had some deaths due to being distracted by people in real life, and the final internet disconnection death made me realize I don't have a good setup for playing CF properly now.

I meant to grab you after the secret-santa deal (when my times picked up around the 1st or so), but we got somewhat unlucky in terms of trying to match up appropriately.

If I knew I had a quick deadline, I woulda done a sneak-login to catch you!

Also, when I saw the Wu-Lin stuff, all I could think about was the somewhat recent 'For Honor' update, since my brother enjoys it and had been talking to me about it.

-Ish

Yes, sorry about the delete :-( It was mostly RL factors that led to it.

I have heard very good things spoken of y your religion and wanted to try it. When I have time for a next character I will try to make it another Ishuli follower!

Role: I figured a minotaur had to be from the Seantryn Empire, which is hinted to be bigger than just Seantryn Modan alone. It made sense that Empires that allow minotaurs would find their fearlessness an important trait and thus exploit it, hence the role of "Urukhan was bred in a faraway land ruled by the Seantryn Empire to become a soldier". And then political intrigue got him sent to Thera as a spy / secret-agent of sorts.