I'm going to try out an a-p, which is way out of my comfort zone in CF.

Can someone give me the lowdown on how controls work?

I read up on the a-p guide on the other site, but that only helps so much.

Am I right in understanding that controls are skills that you learn once your weapon is charged up to certain thresholds? Do those skills go away once your weapon is destroyed or do they stick with you? Are they based on total kills or total charges? Does leeching another a-p's weapon add to your progress toward controls?

Anything else important to know about how they work or what to do to get them, keep them? Any tips on how to play a decent a-p (and have fun at it) are welcome. Thanks.

Thanks for any tips.

Controls are the reward for going out there and *collecting* souls.

Admittedly, my APs are never so awesome to reach this point, but my
understanding is thus:

Controls are attained after obtaining certain thresholds of souls
*VIA* killing someone. These counts are cumulative, and do not go
away if you die, lose your weapon, etc.

Leeching someone else's weapon does NOT count towards controls.

As for kills vs. souls, I *believe* souls, but am not certain enough
to guarantee that.

My advice for playing an AP, go out and mix it up. APs are an odd
jack-of-all-trades in that you have *an* answer for generally every
matchup you face, but you're rarely *dominant* over anyone.

I personally feel that at this point, the playerbase generally fully
expects APs to be overly cautious and conservative, so I say make a
name for yourself, mix it up, die horribly and often, but make
yourself interesting to interact with and most importantly, have fun.

Every soul charge from kills you personally get on your character adds permanently to your soul-count for the purpose of controls.

edit: which by the way, especially on your first, I highly recommend you don't worry about holding charges and just shoot for lightning control by around the same time you hero. You'll be much more useful that way (if you're caballed), and have a better time in general.

I've never played an AP, but I've died to plenty of them. Excluding the ones with lots of charges, the two most common ways I die are:

1. I'm a combo without bash protection that doesn't match up well against an AP and get bashed down, or

2. I'm not carrying enough gold/potions/pills to survive getting slept and vaulted, and I get slept and vaulted.

At mid-ranks I personally find it pretty difficult to survive being slept by an AP. You're looking at being cursed, blind, poisoned, plagued, bleeding from the vault, and at about half-health after the vault damage + a few rounds of combat. Even if you manage to flee and teleport, you probably die anyway, which still gives the AP "credit" with respect to charges.

I missed out on 4 to 5 charges when an orc I've killed a couple of times for decent charges before teleported from my vault and died to damage from the waves in the western aryth.

There are at least 3 completely different strategies to avoid dying to vault even after being slept by an ap. None are 100 percent effective but they are all very effective. They are all a little bit of a hassle though so sometimes you just stuck up the death instead.

>There are at least 3 completely different strategies to avoid
>dying to vault even after being slept by an ap.

I can only think of one, but maybe I lack imagination. Assuming you're not summoned into a locked room, immediately flee/teleport when the vault lands, quaff to cure blindness, then start eating pills. Either concentrate on healing, or split between healing/movement and try to make it to a town healer.

One option is to stay just ahead of a tracking mob so if slept you are woken on the tick.

Another is to use an edible that wakes you before the ap is ready.

B/c I'm not sure it wakes you. You just get the damage.

It's been used for years successfully.

Although once I know someone uses it I can take steps to counter their use of it too.