I've learned my way around Thera pretty well, although still learning a lot about strategies to fight various classes and what they're capable of (and their respective weakenesses). I've played a warrior, assassin, and shapeshifter thus far (in that order). Now looking to get serious with my RP and also to try a go at something a bit more complex.

Thinking about trying a drow conjurer or a duergar AP, but I am open to suggestions if you think these will be too tough for a newbie+. I haven't had much luck with PK so far so I'm looking for something that will be a strong PKer at the mid to high ranks (I'm fine with running/dying while young, which will be likely as a drow I realize). Leaning toward a mage of some sort. Although keep in mind I rarely have more than 1-2 hours at a time to play...

What do you think is the most fun without being incredibly challenging for a player that's still learning?

Assuming I go with a conjurer, any tips on what to do and not do, and general strategy, would be greatly appreciated. I have limited experience with cabals and their particular skillsets, so if there are advantages that are critical for a race/class combo I'd also love to hear any thoughts on that.

>
>I've learned my way around Thera pretty well, although still
>learning a lot about strategies to fight various classes and
>what they're capable of (and their respective weakenesses).
>I've played a warrior, assassin, and shapeshifter thus far (in
>that order). Now looking to get serious with my RP and also to
>try a go at something a bit more complex.
>

OK. Good start with the early classes you've played. Definitely the way to go.

>Thinking about trying a drow conjurer or a duergar AP, but I
>am open to suggestions if you think these will be too tough
>for a newbie+.

Well, human evil conjie will be a LOT easier than drow conjie, and good conjie will be a LOT easier than evil conjie.

If you're a human conjie, you should do well in pk at the ranks you're talking about, but much moreso if you know of a few protective wands. Not talking about sleek locations. Just a few limited aura or shields. Then you can use angels and demons which are pretty good at landing pk's because of all the levels they have on your enemies.


I haven't had much luck with PK so far so I'm
>looking for something that will be a strong PKer at the mid to
>high ranks (I'm fine with running/dying while young, which
>will be likely as a drow I realize). Leaning toward a mage of
>some sort. Although keep in mind I rarely have more than 1-2
>hours at a time to play...
>

I would consider a transmuter. Why?

a) If you want to play a drow, drow muter works well. If you wield a staff your defensive spin will be REALLY good. Your spells will rock most people (you can mental jolt most enemies to fleeing or death at low ranks, and at higher ranks go for the slow, soften, disrupt flesh, or better yet, slow, decalcify, maybe soften, and disrupt bone for crazy damage).
b) Even though you're only around for a short time, and even though you are EVIL, you will still be a desirable groupmate because you can haste your groupmates and slow most mobs. You can also do nice healing stuff later on with your repair flesh/bone/organ. Things that few other classes can do (e.g. repair eyes from an eyejab, cut the duration of plagues, rot etc.).
c) You have duo, which is good for exploring some of the high end areas that you probably haven't explored yet. Sure, you'll die when you consider a mob out of habit, and it pops you out of duo, but not often.
d) You also have the option of stacking damage redux via your own spells, instead of malleability.
e) You will tear most giants apart at pretty much any rank (mental jolt).

Just remember, if you go drow muter, use a staff. Other weapons don't even come close to the kind of tanking you'll be doing with a staff.


>What do you think is the most fun without being incredibly
>challenging for a player that's still learning?
>

I'd go dexy muter (elf or drow) or good aligned conjie if I was you.

>Assuming I go with a conjurer, any tips on what to do and not
>do, and general strategy, would be greatly appreciated. I have
>limited experience with cabals and their particular skillsets,
>so if there are advantages that are critical for a race/class
>combo I'd also love to hear any thoughts on that.

If you play conjie, you'll probably find your first one is a learning experience of what not to do. There are so many things not to do that I can't list them all here. Some will depend on your familiar (e.g. some are fragile, others tough). Some will depend on your servitors (especially if you are evil, as they tend to attack you if they aren't happy with what you're doing). Some tips I had are: Get sources of slow, especially if you're evil. You want to have lots of mana in the bank if a servitor turns on you. If you have a lot of mana, I would attempt the strongest dismissal that you're able to, rather than a series of weak ones. Also, spam dismissal on something. Doesn't have to be a servitor, iirc. Getting the dismissal edge is a huge plus if you're evil. With my last one, I was able to dismiss with near 100% reliability if I had a lot of mana (which normally I did). If your servitor is tough (e.g. imp) you can use it to tank the angry servitor while you make a circle.

Servitors heal fast, you you can wear many things down with them.

If you don't mind people getting clues as to where your recall is, you can leave a strong circle at your recall. Then if a servitor turns on you, you can recall and be reasonably safe.

Warp dimension is much underused. It can reduce damroll and hitroll iirc (by around 5 for a coule of ticks). It can feint one or even two attacks (which at low levels, is a lot) from everyone in the room (which is both a plus and a minus, depending on what else is in the room). It can even cause a weak short duration feint effect on your enemy.

If you are new and playing an ap, I'd probably recommend arial.

Defensive spin will help you defend better, especially once you get spine of the akragaka (which I think arials can -- drow certainly can).

Sleep + spell people up + vault will kill most people if help doesn't arrive. Worth mastering sleep to minimise the chance of people hitting you with counterstrikes because you lost concentation. Also know who the rager berserkers are and be VERY wary about casting sleep on them. Otherwise you might be dead before the round is over.

I've intentionally played ap's in a number of ways, and they all kind of work.

They were:
a) focus on sleep + vault (you can pick risk-free targets)
b) focus on pouring out damage with iceball and fireball (not many people can outdamage you, and you'll probably kill more than kill you)
c) focus on maladictions. Generally requires more finesse. For example, you might want to deafen a shifter while he's still in form, as they often don't appreciate the significance of that until they revert to word... and find they can't. Whereas if you deafen any other kind of mage, they will almost certainly appreciate the danger and flee immediately.

I'd recommend human for a first try at either of those classes, honestly. Either would be enough of a challenge without a high XP penalty.

Human for both also allows you a balanced approach to your class abilities, which I think is a good starting point for figuring them out. A d-elf conjurer, for example, will always struggle with elementals (relative to the human conjurer) even if they do everything right, and your first time out it may be hard to spot the difference between "This is working badly because of what I am" vs. "I'm making some serious mistake."

Both (assuming evil conjurer) are high-offense low-defense characters; by the time a fight that you don't want is initiated, it may be too late to save your life.

Of the two, I think an A-P is probably a bit new player friendlier; at least you probably won't lose con to your own class abilities.

With either of these classes (and some people disagree with me on this point), if you have an interest in PK, I think it's easier to try at let's say level 15 and try to figure out how to make it work, then level a bit and do so again with a few new abilities and repeat vs. power to hero and try to figure out how to PK with dozens of abilities that you've never used and probably don't understand very well. A level 15 A-P already has a lot of different options in combat and it takes some experience to figure out when bash is a good idea vs. trip vs. disarming vs. direct damage spells vs. maledictions etc.

So I've tried out an elf transmuter and have ranked to about level 15. Seems that I get killed pretty much every time I start a fight (thus far mostly against orcs, warriors, necromancers, etc). Barely even have a chance to flee...so I'm wondering- am i doing something wrong? Is there a particular spell (or sequence) that I need to be focusing on at the early to mid ranks to have a chance at not dying in a couple of quick rounds...or am I best to just run away fast until I get more powerful spells? I know elves are fragile...but are they THAT fragile?

So far it doesn't seem like I am well suited to PK at all, but I'm also not entirely clear on what all my spells actually do to their targets (like what happens when mental jolt echoes). Any tips would be helpful:

Is it best to start a fight with metabolic slowing? biolumenescence? mental jolt? Or something else?

Any race/class to target or avoid entirely at the early to mid ranks?

Thanks for any tips on strategy for a learning noob.

Probably you're going to have a really hard time in PK pre-parry. I can make it work, but I've also been trying a lot, lot longer.

An elf is going to feel extremely fragile at those levels, even compared to a human transmuter. You're down a fair amount of HP, iron weapons aren't all that rare even at very low levels, and you've got a 500 XP penalty making your range look a lot different.

Note that I'm not saying elf is a bad choice in the grander scheme of things, but as a lowbie mage it's not a small handicap. Your one saving grace is that when you wimpy away from someone beating your face in they'll have to either scan for which way you went or guess and hope, which often gives you the edge in escaping.

Getting some damage reduction out will help, but I don't know if it will help you enough. Stoneskin isn't a huge improvement over toughened skin, but if you're trying something dangerous enough it IS an improvement. Protection is pretty doable if you're attacking someone evil.

A mercenary of some kind is probably a help. Quicken it. Quicken yourself if you're going to be in a fight, for that matter. There are some cases in which you won't want to be but don't worry about that for now.

You should think twice about fighting anyone who can lag you until you get more comfortable with the class and what it can and can't do at those levels. Here's one place you see the XP penalty: a human or even half-elf transmuter at 15 will have few if any people in range with the Bash skill. As an elf transmuter at 15 I'm betting you have a lot of them.

As for what to lead with, it depends; I think meta slow is a pretty good opener when you're worried about melee damage, but if you're fighting, say, an invoker one on one it's probably a waste of rounds. I wouldn't even consider using bioluminescence except against the classes with hide or camouflage, and maybe not even then, depending on the terrain, conditions, and how confident you feel in your ability to be winning the fight.

Mental jolt is pretty solid at low-mid levels even just considering its damage; cloud and fire giants are vulnerable to it and will take additional damage, but most of them will also have Bash. (see above)

That's a pretty random set of responses. Hope it's helpful.

Thanks. This is all very helpful...it's always extremely useful to hear the general perspective on strategy from someone that knows the game well. These things aren't so easy to figure out IC.

The general idea would be look at your advantages & disadvantages compared to your enemy's.

Much of combat can really be whittled down to active abilities vs. passive abilities. Warriors, rangers, shapeshifters, even conjurers in a way tend to be better on the "passive" combat. Consider this how well you'd fare if you got up and walked away from your computer.

Things like invokers, transmuters, druids, shamans tend to fight using "active" abilities. Things you have to put in commands during combat to really accomplish much.

As a transmuter, this means you're going to want to avoid getting struck by "lagging" attacks. Most commonly bash/trip, though there's a plethora of others. Cranial, pincer, headbutt, neurological disruption, telluric surge, throw, crushing blow, etc etc. Otherwise, for defense consider many of the "buffs" transmuters get. Metabolic quickening, accelerate, stone skin, fly, pass door/control translucence, arcane absorption all provide means to help protect you that once cast, are active until the spell wears out. Many of which can help your parry abilities as well.

On the offensive side, you have both direct damage (mental jolt, disrupt XXX), "lag" attacks (neurological disruption, and so SOME degree things like disrupt organ), and debuffs (corporeal softening, metabolic slowing, etc). Reading the helpfiles should give you a general idea of each's primary use, though a lot of them also have secondary uses as well. This is where you have to look at who you're fighting.

If you're fighting a heavy-offense melee character, you'll probably want to make use of metabolic slowing early on to lessen the number of their attacks. Against an invoker, necromancer, shaman, or such, you're probably more concerned about their spells causing direct damage or debuff/maledictions. Here, you might want to consider lag attacks, or since many of those classes are just as frail as you are, maybe you can just trading off damage spells and hope you win. Here's where something like corporeal softening also improves your spell abilities.

As a transmuter, you have a LOT of options of buffs, debuffs, & damage options. Also, the fact that many of these have both positive & negatives, or secondary effects means there's a lot of details you can learn, but that should give you a pretty basic overall picture.

>So I've tried out an elf transmuter and have ranked to about
>level 15. Seems that I get killed pretty much every time I
>start a fight (thus far mostly against orcs, warriors,
>necromancers, etc). Barely even have a chance to flee...so I'm
>wondering- am i doing something wrong? Is there a particular
>spell (or sequence) that I need to be focusing on at the early
>to mid ranks to have a chance at not dying in a couple of
>quick rounds...or am I best to just run away fast until I get
>more powerful spells? I know elves are fragile...but are they
>THAT fragile?
>
>So far it doesn't seem like I am well suited to PK at all, but
>I'm also not entirely clear on what all my spells actually do
>to their targets (like what happens when mental jolt echoes).
>Any tips would be helpful:
>
>Is it best to start a fight with metabolic slowing?
>biolumenescence? mental jolt? Or something else?
>

Starting with bioluminescence on someone who is awake will result in you taking several hits from them if they are not already in combat. In this situation, at low levels, you are better to start with a damage spell, in general. Slow will enable them to get the free hits but at least they might be slow, which will help you cope.

Wielding a staff is really important. Defensive spin will help you until you get parry (and then it will still help).

>Any race/class to target or avoid entirely at the early to mid
>ranks?
>

Not really. Although I focus on building up my hp with gear so that thieves and rangers can't one-shot me.

>Thanks for any tips on strategy for a learning noob.