Ok so I read a lot (battlefield posts, dioxide's etc) that orcs are very hard to play, and meant only for vets, etc.

The question is...what exactly makes them difficult? They seem to have a lot of interesting abilities, so that could perhaps be it...people say they need good gear...or is it just that people hate them and hunt them?

Basically, as I was trying to do with Faistir, I want a character that is very very hard to play, but hard for reasons such as deciding what to do, people hunt you down, require lots of patience, etc. Not because you are gimpy as hell without knowing where wands are, or needing area/item knowledge to have even the slightest chance.

The best way to learn to swim is with a rock on your back and shark at your heels...for me at least. Is orc logical? Or can anyone else recommend a char that would be hunted, require a lot of patience, and not require a lot of item knowledge to be successful? However, not a gimped char by virtue of choices (felar axe etc).

I play a lot of mortal Orcs. I know, go figure. I can't tell you how many times I've been hunted and ganged by my own followers. But I digress.

Orcs are total offense, very little defense. Now if your like me.. and not very good at PK. What this means for you is that you have the snuff to really pull out a crazy win if you pick the right fight. What it also means is your 'Oh Crap I gotta flee' trigger needs to be very itchy. You have to get out at the first possible sign of failure, preferrably run off, drink a lot of elf blood and reengage.

The draw for me to orcs is just exactly what you describe. Its a bit more of a strategy game, you have to be in 'position' to play. If you get jumped and your not initiating you have to be able to run off and hide. Prepare, and hopefully catch them with their guard down. Of course that can be said for almost any combo, but obviously some have the cojones to get jumped and the time to be able to decide whether or not they should stick around or not. Orcs don't have a lot of 'thinking' time. If your not busting ass from the word go in a PK, then your best option is to flee, drink blood and re-engage hoping you get the drop on them this time. As a Hero Orc almost any warrior was VERY tough for me to kill if I didnt catch them mid-raid, mid-fight, or mid-sleep. Some mages you could get just because of sheer damage output.

A very, very knowledgable Orc (Thrak) told me once that you are either the Orc with 50 damroll, or your the Orc with the hps to last more than a few rounds and drop the really cool utility skills they have. The drawback to these utility skills is almost every one of them gives the ORC some damage too.

But I will say this. If you want a fly by the seat of your pants thrill ride from login to logout. Get an Orc Chief, or just be a really high level orc. Paint the target on your back and have fun. When theres a strong Fort, Strong Refuge, and even the Empire (who in my opinion should also hate Orcs due to their uncivilized nature) then you will have no shortage of roving gangs looking for your hide.

Essentially, in my opinion: orcs are a high-offense, low-defense character.

Typically, characters of that kind are very hard for less experienced players. Playing an orc, I'm pretty much never going to get into a fight I'm not looking for, and the fights I pick will be ones where my weaknesses either aren't an issue or are something I think I can manage.

Well the reason Orcs are hard is that most people are your enemies. All goods, Empire, Outlander, and Battle will hate you because you'll use magic, so there is very little that is on your side. To make up for this, Orcs have great physical stats with the size of a human, and get a lot of Utility skills that allow them to do all kinds of things to buff themselves up for fighting.

The name berserker is very fitting. Early on in Orc life, fighting in groups of orcs is good for the experience, but their ability to tank starts to take a back seat to their ability to bash. While at the midranks, you can cause a lot of harm with an orc, it's a constant balls to the wall challenge, since a lot of your fights will depend on you being very well prepared. If you didn't start the fight as an orc, you probably won't be able to finish it. It's a very ambushy, charge, berserker class.

I would suggest, if you want a similar experience to try a human necromancer. D-elf necros have the lowest hp of all the classes, but human necros do okay in that respect. Also, the lower level range will allow you to cast sleep on lots of lower level opponents, and you'll have the saves to do lots of that kind of killing.

Necros seem to suffer from the same kind of "everyone hates me" problem you talked about in the original topic, but it does help to have wand knowledge with them.

I would love to play a necro, its actually my goal to be able to play a successful necro. However I see everywhere, and in interactions with mages, not knowing wands makes you nigh useless. I WANT to be hunted, and have every login be stressful and difficult, but I also want to have a chance despite my ignorance.

Also, with humans vs halfies, is the difference of the 1 con really significant? It would seem 1 higher int and wisdom and dex at the cost of 1 con and str would be far superior for a necro...am I missing something?

I would love to play a necro, its actually my goal to be able to play a successful necro. However I see everywhere, and in interactions with mages, not knowing wands makes you nigh useless. I WANT to be hunted, and have every login be stressful and difficult, but I also want to have a chance despite my ignorance.


***So put forth the effort into learning wands, there are helpful characters out there. Its not impossible***

Also, with humans vs halfies, is the difference of the 1 con really significant? It would seem 1 higher int and wisdom and dex at the cost of 1 con and str would be far superior for a necro...am I missing something?

Just a break down heres what you get/giveup
Humans: No penality, No vuln, one stat at 23 the rest at 20, for most cases you can't chose what stat you get at 23. This means you have a nice pk range for most of your life, IE lower level foes. Which is especially nice for someone like a necro.

Halfies: Not much of a penality, equal to orcs, I'd think its fair to say that 100 xp pen really never influences your pk range over-much.
A half iron/mithril vuln so you take an extra like 1/4 damage? I think
Quiet movement, though I think its terrain influenced now quiet movement can give you a chance to escape, or to reinate first.
In some cases halfies get 24 as a max stat. Though thats not always the case. As well as they usually have 21 wis, so compared to humans I'd say thats a big draw if your say a mage.
Or half-drow warriors/assassins have a big pull with that 24 dex.

You can play a successful necro without wand knowledge. I never collected or used wands, or undead for that matter. That was a very pick your battles type char. In addition necros are very lethal, I killed numbers of people and died little as a result of picking my battles. Later with other chars I found out that I actually suck at pk, and it was more the confines that I played in which allowed me to kill.

>To make up for this, Orcs have great physical
>stats with the size of a human

Orcs are giant sized after a certain level/age, I thought.

But I'm not quite sure there is a sure-fire becoming of a giant. I don't know and would need to experiment to be sure, but it may only be mamlauks, it may be only with the lug edge, or other things.

One thing for certain is that they "grow". Early on in life, there are certain entrances and exits to the clan village that you cannot take later on in life because you can't fit through, so there is a "growing" thing there. Whether or not you officially giant size, I don't know. I would like to think that you can still bash reduced gnomes.

holy crap I know something others don't.

You become giant sized upon reaching level two.

Level one I had to take the west exit in the size room, and could not do the stomp emote.

Level two I had to take the north exit in the size room, and could do the stomp emote.

Anyway...How exactly does finding sleek locations work? If you cant see that the mob has XX character's sleek, then how do you know it drops them?

Unrelated but...I see people talking about training skills extremely high before even level ten. How exactly does this work, especially with dumb races...is the skill improvement reduction less significant than I believed for practicing on weaker foes?

I was able to take the human exit in the academy all the way to five. I was able to fit through most small spaces. Unless there was a change, I was considered human size.

Maybe it's different per orc?

But in the end, you were giant-sized or somewhere between giant and human.

I'm pretty sure they're giant-sized from birth. Well, from creation, anyway.

<100%hp 100%m 54%mv 1600tnl (50.00%)>
e
Along the Eastern Road


<100%hp 100%m 53%mv 1600tnl (50.00%)>
s
An Open Clearing in the Slaughtering Grounds


If your giant sized, its a squeeze to get in this room, and this is as a lvl 1 orc. There is no squeeze
If your 1 size over giant sized, you can't fit into this entrance at all.

***Edit***
Checked in newb academy too
l n
A black door sits at the top of a huge staircase against the north wall.
It seems to be twenty feet tall, clearly made for giants and other larger-
sized creatures. A canopy covers the staircase.
A huge black door is open.

<100%hp 100%m 94%mv 1600tnl (50.00%)>
n
The stairs leading to the giant black door are far too massive for you to climb.

I'm 100% positive orcs don't grow with time.

>I'm pretty sure they're giant-sized from birth.

Oh the poor orc winches......

Now try to do the stomp emote. After a few levels, you can.

Skill practicing:

There are many factors that go into skill learning rates. These are outlined in the helpfile "Skill Improvement".

As far as actually practicing skills it depends more on the particular skill then anything else as to how you will go about doing it. Besides invokers, I think most people put effort generally only into specific skills such as parry, dodge, hide, camoflauged, creep, etc, all dependent on class. Each of these skills can be practiced in many ways. The following is how I tend to do them when I feel the need.

Defensive skills like parry, dodge, and shield block:

These skill get checked when you are taking hits from mobs or players. Thus to improve these skills you need to be tanking something. To perfect them at a low level (level 15 of above) the best way, in my opinion, is to maximize the number of attacks per round that you are tanking. To do this effectively you need to fight low enough level mobs so that you can sustain many rounds without needing to flee to rest. This way you are getting a large number of defensive skill checks per round providing many chance for the skills to improve. Generally the mobs are below "A perfect match" to make this work effectively.

Hints: For parry use a weapon good at parrying such as swords or staves. For dodge if possible go hand to hand. For shield block go hand to hand.

Weapon skills:

To specifically practice weapon skills use practice weapons, not because of any bonus but because they are low average damage. Find the most difficult mob that you can tank for many rounds that you will not kill. Attack the mob and do not use any offensive skills. It is ok to feint or dirt kick to lower the damage you are taking just do not kick for example. Do not kill the mob, flee and rest and repeat. Since the number of attacks you get per round has a low maximum range you want to increase the difficulty of the mob to increase the rate you are learning.

Hint: I wouldn't spam practice weapon skills in general. If you are going to practice skills as a melee class focus on defensive skills, your weapons will generally improve enough along the way.

Non-combat skills/spells:

Some skills and spells you can just spam practice without being in combat. Such as create water, earthquake, hide, sneak, or creep. Just find a quiet out of the way place and spam them as needed.

As for your question about low int races. Everything works the same as for characters with high ints, only it takes longer obviously. Personally the tedium of specifically trying to perfect skills at a low level with low int races tends to keep me from trying to do it. But, I get bored easily.