Do I suck? No, not really. In fact, by most peoples standards I'm pretty good at this old game. I've been around as long as anybody now, I know the lay of the land. I've played at least a couple dozen cabal leaders, probably had a minimum of 30 tattooed characters over the years. My battlefield threads tend to blow up like a federal building. My characters tend to average 50-100 PKs in a hundred hours, and hero in about 80. I won a role contest.

But I've come to realize that I'll never be REALLY good at this game.

See, I've been stagnated right where I'm at for about the last 9 years. I've never been into a character longer than 350 hours or so, and I've never quiiiite broken that 200pk threshold. Now, if I had picked this game up a year ago I'd be thrilled with where I'm at. Honestly though, after 14ish years, I oughta be way better.

So in no particular order, here are the XXXXXXX things I just can't get right:

1)I can't chase effectively. Now I can chase OK, and people have said, "well no one runs people down under those circumstances," but to me I just see a whole lot of "Alas you can't go that way." Coupled with just wrong guesses at crossroads. So it's like, check south/where, check north/where, check east/where... there he is way ahead of me.

Now. Keep in mind, I'm no noob, by any stretch. I land more PKs than most people who have offered their chasing advice. I just can't see a way to bridge the gap between me and the greats who rack up 200+ PKs.

2) I don't like to explore. I know a lot of areas by virtue of spoon feeding. There, I admit it. I just don't have the patience to go through an area that I don't really -need- to. If I want to read that much, I'll open a book. I play CF to interact with other people. If I wanted to play by myself, I'd play Civ.

3) I don't have the "conservative" binary coded into any of my characters. If I'm on the 40 side of a 60/40 chance of killing someone, I'm going to go for it. Sheeite, if I'm on the 20 side of an 80/20 I'm going to go for it.

While it's great to always be called "ballsy" and have my characters titled for "courage," or things like "Battered Brawler" Just once I'd like to be the 200PK "Unyielding Tower of Unholy Doom." And have people use the words "impossible to kill" on my BF threads.

I just can't help myself, I always have to go balls to the wall.

EXTRA TIDBIT: I feel like I should say, while I'm not ever one of the 200+ PK monsters, I always seem to be one of the 5 or 6 people who does kill them.

4) This is probably the BIG ONE. I guess it goes hand in hand with numero 3. I don't have any PATIENCE. So if I have a character that can take out a guild guard, and I'm sitting in Galadon looking at one of the seemingly endless supply of pu$$ies guild sitting - I'm going to smash in despite the Tribunal in town.

So I end up wanted, usually dead at the stupid Hamsah gates to the idiot guild sitter and a swarm of Tribunal. Then everyone rejoices, talks some smack, and tells me how stupid I am.

Or, I'm too impatient to flee and rest on a mob that I'm trying to solo. I think, if I can just land ONE MORE spell/kick/spec skill whatever, it's dead. I miss, the mob kills me, and I turn the 600tnl I'm trying to solo out into 20,000tnl.

I know, you are going to recommend "stop it therapy" but, like I said, 9 years of this - I've tried! I can't! I can't play the conservative guy like the 200+ PK beasts always do. Or, they at least judge a lot better than I do when it's time to high tail it out.

5) And if you combine all these things, no exploring, no conservativeness, no patience - and you put me in a position where the odds are against me - I'm going to charge my enemies out of SHEER BOREDOM and probably die, losing my sweet set.

So, if you think you can help, fine. But I'm not seeing how I'm going to ever bridge this gap after all this time. BTW, if you ARE NOT a 200+ PK super char player, please don't offer up your advice. :( Just console, empathize, align, and cry into your beer with me.

*signed*
Stunna, Warborf, Heas, Jaegrudai, Dungard, Dargmart, Sensel, Len, Waeldyn, Wuntarro and maaaany more!

Using Gabe's PBF search tool, there have been 17 characters in recent history to get 200+ kills, which you've established as some sort of measure of greatness. It hasn't been updated in a while, so it lacks Kostyan and Igbah.

If you look at the PKs per hour played of those 17 characters, Cabdru is first at 1.24 followed by Bundeltorf at 1.04. Then there is a pretty steep dropoff, with the next highest being Ravon at 0.80 followed by Nuloh at 0.60 and Vens at 0.57.

It's worth noting that three of those were anti-paladins. Basically, one way to get a ton of kills it to amass a huge unholy weapon and exploit it as long as you can before losing it. That requires some luck. I'm sure Nepenthe has played anti-paladins before that did not turn out like Cabdru, and it's not like he was "more skilled" when he played Cabdru than he was when he played those other anti-paladins.

So if you set 0.60 PK/hr as a reasonable goal, then to get 200+ you're committing to playing a character for 333 hours at a bare minimum. If you can't be bothered to play a character for that many hours then 200+ kills may be a fairly unreasonable goal.

It's also worth nothing that several of the characters on your "list of great characters" failed to amass 200 kills. Namely Mizfara, Cathoria and Nabburak. Mizfara and Nabburak only had 110. So, there are other intangibles besides "PK wins" that contribute to your perception of which characters are "great".

Of the 200+ guys in Gabe's database, at least three were played by staff members (Cabdru, Kharghurln, Hunsobo).

Four were Emperors (Blitzenturt, Kharghurln, Hunsobo, Grunlath), one was a Shadow Lord (Dulmisa), two were Vindicators (Pissudin, Nuloh), four were Chancellors (Ravon, Kanaev, Cabdru, Vens), one was Advisor (Llorenz), one was Nightreaver (Nreisshe), one was Harbinger (Aeria) and one was Commander (Jinroh).

The only two 200+ characters who were NOT cabal leaders are Palmer, who wasn't in a cabal, and Bundeltorf, who deleted at only 205 hours. Kostyan and Igbah, who aren't in the database, were also both cabal leaders.

So unless you're trigger happy or are a lich who plays for 680+ hours, you're pretty much looking at being a cabal leader if you want to amass 200+ kills. And odds are you'll have to be evil, unless you plan on being a Vindicator or Harbinger.

Some of those characters that did not have 200+ PKs I thought did.

Very interesting stuff. I knew evil was an easier way to go as well.

Thanks for this.

In that list of recent characters that were 200+ where on the scale a guy who had 130 PKs at 250 hours would be? Not in total number of PKs, but as in PKs per hour.


Thanks!

130/250=.52

:P

If you could maintain that kill rate over 600 hours you'd have 312 PKs.

My suspicion is that for most characters their kill rate decreases once they hit hero. Some exceptions would be anti-paladins who eventually develop massive unholy weapons, characters who are given additional cabal powers that make them more deathly (e.g. Emperor) and necromancers who lich.

On the other hand, hero characters don't have to spend any time ranking, so they can devote the whole of their play time to PK activities (gathering preps, hunting people, etc.) On the other hand, since most of these characters are in cabal leadership, that probably leeches some time that could otherwise be spent PKing.

If I really wanted to, I could go back through that list of characters and look at their PK-per-hour rate for the level ranges 20-to-30, 30-to-40, 40-to-50, and 51, and see how they compare. But...I'm going to leave that as an exercise for the reader. Heh.

I'm asking where that ranks on the scale of characters where Cabdru was #1, would that character who works out to be .5/hour or so rank on that list of 17 people?

With a kill rate of 0.52/hour, you would be below 5 of them and above 12 of them.

Bear in mind there are many characters who managed a higher kill rate than some of these seventeen, but didn't stick around long enough to amass 200+ total kills. For example: Chanya, Eyzy, Gahlerikath, Mcgrok, Cathoria, etc.

Of "long lived" characters (hours > 500) Vens had the highest kill rate at 0.57.

nt

~

Not sure who Gahlerikath was. Marcus, maybe?

I have a vague notion it was that Indian serial-AP player... but I could be wrong.

>I'm sure Nepenthe has played
>anti-paladins before that did not turn out like Cabdru, and
>it's not like he was "more skilled" when he played Cabdru than
>he was when he played those other anti-paladins.

And how. I play A-P like Stunna apparently plays everything.

"3 battle berserkers! Wow, those guys are probably worth a lot of charges!" (bash bash bash loot sac)

I did get a little better with time and (most importantly) developed a better sense of what fights I just could not win, but overall it was mostly luck.

asdf

gr

gr

nt

I am going to go with:

Ambiguous: I had a sylvan Lieu, and I want to say I had a Marshall Knight. No guarantees, we won't count them.

For sure, for leaders:
Heas
Dungard
Jaegrudai
I'm thinking one other... but drawing a blank.

High Priests:
Waeldyn, Wuntarro

I think I had one Blade leader too, but... bleh, we won't count that either.

Wow, so yea, I'm way off, this is all I can think of for cabal leaders. Huh, I thought I had more...

But, I find it really interesting that the subject of my post was how much I suck, and I feel like I'm getting called out on the points where I say I'm good. Damn guys, that's just cold. :(

Try to read your post from an unbiased perspective.

It sounds like you're basically putting on a front about you sucking, when in actuality you spend the entire post bragging about how great you are, how much success you've had, etc.

It's like someone retiring from baseball saying "You know, I never hit 800 home runs. I mean, sure I won 6 World Series, 2 MVPs, I hit 50 homeruns a year 7 years in a row. I batted .340 for my career. Averaged 150 RBIs per season. 9 consecutive goldgloves. I was the best player on every team I ever played on. But man, if I actually applied myself a little more, I could have hit 800 home runs. I suck."

Not saying you were doing it intentionally or not, but that's definately how it read.

Whilst I have no doubt I could break 200 pks in a character (not every character, but one of a specific selection of classes), I've never broken 100 yet, as far as I know. (Victoria stopped at 99.)

Hardly ever get a tatt. Had Pico's, Cador's, Eryndorial, think that might be it.

Apparently I was close to getting Daevryn's but didn't because I didn't log on for the week after losing my large unholy. And on for Kasty's if I hit hero with Sossaphrin.

In none of these cases did I know anything about what the tatt did other than some +stats. So to all intents and purposes, it was decorative on me.

I've had a few cabal leaders.

I consider myself a pretty good player. If someone comes along and posts a bunch of claims that blow my own record out of the water, and then go on about how they can't manage to compete with the 200 pk people (whilst implying that 100 pk's + in 200 hours is normal for them), their 24 cabal leaders and the 30+ tatted characters), to me that has the whiff of boasting.

Why? Because it is clearly exceptional, and I don't believe for a second that any poster would fail to realise this.

Yeah. He beats my record. I'm looking at a grand total of two characters with more than 100 PKs, and each of them had to age die to get that many. Three cabal leaders. Tattoo'd by Bria twice, then Vynmylak, Daevryn and Marcatis.

If anybody should be complaining about how they suck at PK after having devoted so much time to CF, it's me. :)

I think anyone who applies themselves can get a tattoo in about 100 hours. It's just a matter of carefully selecting the right level of activity from an imm, (in other words not going after a dormant god)and then really thinking about the religion and RPing that out.

What I'm saying is that when my characters die, they never have the response that, actually, Isuldur's get. I'm thinking of like:

Mizfara
Zorszaul
Istendil
Cabdru
Hunsobo
Igbah
Kostyan
Ravon
Hejduk
Llorenz
Jinroh
Amora (Buggy herbs not withstanding)
Pissudin
Cathoria (dash triggers not withstanding)
Nabburak

and on and on. There is some seeming magic that separates these guys from me. A magic that I don't think I'll ever manage because of the afformentioned reasons.

My post was not meant to brag, rather to say, ugh, I'm good - but I don't think I'll ever be great.

Sorry if it smacked the wrong way.

Here's the recipe:

1. Have a role and role-play it. Optionally be religious. If you are religious, have a role, and role-play it, you will get a tat, assuming you actually understand the religion and/or are willing to have your understanding corrected by the deity.

2. Be in a cabal, and take that cabal's "goals" seriously. Don't be a wuss when it comes to raiding and retrieving.

3. Kill a moderate amount of people while managing not to die all the time. Given #1 and #2 above, this will most likely get you a leader position in your cabal, depending on the cabal. Scion is probably more difficult than most, just due to the caliber of cabal mate you'll be competing against.

4. Don't be an ass to other people in game. This includes full looting and "excessive" ganging, but also includes stuff like not mouthing off to people, not whining when you die, not being gear-obsessed, not taking cheap kills, etc.

5. Participate in immortal run events, when able.

6. Play consistently. Nobody knows who you are if you're never around.

7. Stick around until you age die.

#7 is where I have my break down.

Also, just looked ad Mizfara's PBF, for some reason I thought you had way more kills than you did. *boggle* But anywho, the character was VERY well received. Imm comments are remarkable and all that. I liked your stance on the Fort as a former Fort leader myself.

In fact, I'm a fan of most of your posts too.

nt

Shokai's tat:
Heas
Dryaven
my shokai paladin whoes name was ????

Aarn's tat:
???? some dwarf warrior - maybe dargmart?
Maybe even another paladin, I want to say I had it on a Fort character of mine. It randomly did haste, as I recall.

Velkurah's tat
Jaegrudai

Lyria's tat
Valmascus

Andaraen's tat
Ansellius
Nahum

Grumorum's tat
Dutaelmian

Khasotholas' tat
Waeldyn
Wuntarro
*I might be wrong on these two, they were both High Priest and empowered by Khaso, THINK they were tatted. I know I had at least one Khaso tat one one of my chars.

Intronan's tat
Melthamor (I think that's the name, my only human paladin)

Thror's tat (my favorite :) )
Warborf
Naeltu
Maemar
Ooucee (svirf invoker in the first nexan, might have spelling rong here.)
And some dwarf warrior that was my first villager... axe/mace spec. When Gre was commander.

Holtzendorff's tat
??? no clue, long time ago. But I know I had it.

Bria's tat:
Irchunma (my first one ever)
Seems like I might have had one more Bria follower, maybe a shaman? I don't know.

Sebeok:
Sewlindon - my sylvan shaman back when sylvan shaman's weren't allowed

Vynmylak's tat:
Faotaebul
Maybe another here too, I dunno.

Oh! Uller's tat:
Mmmm one of my many druids, don't know which.

Cyradia's tat:
Len

Then you've got Dungard who WOULD have had Kastellyn's if only times had meshed. :(

My memory isn't 100% here, so if I'm wrong I'm wrong, but I'm forgetting some too. Now that I look at the list, wouldn't surprise me if it was closer to 30.

I had Grurk's tat on a storm giant villager that got turned neutral for killing a level 17 elf mage. I thought it was BS, Grurk agreed, don't remember characters name. If Grurk is around, maybe he does.

I had Velkurah's tat on a tribunal dwarf named Barfargrin.

sd

I caught some flak as Hunsobo for not being ballsy enough, but I also received some immxp for charging poor odds and recovering. If your char becomes known as always being balls to the wall, enemies start using all preps when they see you coming. If, on the other hand, you *sometimes* go all out, and other times you retreat at 50%, they may use preps, or may not, which might get you that little edge you need.

One example I can give (again, Hunsobo) is the fact that he could quaff in combat due to the Enigma legacy. That was very helpful in escaping, except if I was cursed and somehow unable to flee. So, when I'd login each night and see Niheriva, Niela, and Soayel all standing at the Fortress guarding the Codex, I wouldn't charge in, because I knew for a fact there'd be quicksand, fully shielded/sanced folks who were ready to dispel, and a healer ready to curse.

I'd bide my time for a little bit and either one of them would logoff, or they'd get bored and leave the Fortress, or an ally (usually Waserax) would login.

Too conservative? Maybe. But other times, where the types of enemies were less scary (but more numerous), I'd charge in and get the Codex alone. And usually take one or two of the defenders out with me.

Another thing that might help you is to play a character whose role dictates, for instance, not attacking folks in town. It'll be more frustrating in the short run (guildsitters suck), but in the long run you'll avoid that annoying WANTED flag.

BTW I don't consider myself a "PK super char player" so much as a guy who made very good use of a very powerful combination and built up a good set.

But then most any "PK super char player" that I would point to could be labeled the same, I suppose. I honestly think Kharghurln is one of the most impressive chars I've seen, simply because dude would get completely looted down to pretty much nothing (compared to what he DID have), and within a week realtime he'd be a force to be reckoned with again. Kostyan can say the same, but his build wasn't as eq-reliant, IMO, as Kharg's was.

>I'd bide my time for a little bit and either one of them would
>logoff, or they'd get bored and leave the Fortress, or an ally
>(usually Waserax) would login.

This is one of my biggest break downs. You say "bide my time" but... often there is nothing else to do for the non-exploring type. I mean, gather my preps, return notes, add on to role, wait it out... you can only do so much of that. :)

Aside from that, I really appreciate your post. Can you talk a little more about what you said about fleeing at 50%, and the edge that can sometimes give you? What you said about "prep when they see you coming" definitely resonates with me! Do you have some more ideas about how to use that type of PLAYER vs. PLAYER strategy (not character vs. character strategy)that might be of help to me?

Thanks!

>This is one of my biggest break downs. You say "bide my time"
>but... often there is nothing else to do for the non-exploring
>type.

There's almost always someone you can kill who isn't sitting in a gang or in their guild. Go look for that person. If there is no such person, and you've gathered all your preps, there's no gear you can check for, and you're stocked on coin, then just quit and go do something else.

>
>>I'd bide my time for a little bit and either one of them
>would
>>logoff, or they'd get bored and leave the Fortress, or an
>ally
>>(usually Waserax) would login.
>
>This is one of my biggest break downs. You say "bide my time"
>but... often there is nothing else to do for the non-exploring
>type. I mean, gather my preps, return notes, add on to role,
>wait it out... you can only do so much of that. :)

I've honestly almost never had trouble finding something to do in these situations. I'm almost always moving. And (usually) so are your enemies. Very few want to gank you down 3 or more on 1 - the more skilled folks are generally like "ok, well, since he's not raiding, I'm going to go hunt him."

Hell, I even managed to pull of a raid once or twice (again, as Hunsobo) by challenging a paladin to a duel. Once I'd killed him, there were only like 4 enemies, so I'd rush to the cabal right after the duel and put some quick hurtin' on.

Other things to do:
1. Gather preps. I know it's boring but it helps you go up against that group of 3 or 4 (you know you want to). Got all your preps? Gather more. Leave them near the area of engagement (if you're worried about weight/inventory slots) and after you duck out, heal quick, reprep, and hit again. Odds are the other side used its preps too, but they might not have more, like you.
2. Gather gold. See 1.
3. Improve your eq. There's almost always something better you can get. At least go see if that nifty item you want is in.
4. Try to find "neutral allies" - for Hunsobo this was often neutral/evil Tribbies. Sometimes they'd raid with me, sometimes they'd just give me healing/preps (love you Kholav). Sometimes they'd help me get eq that I couldn't get alone (Humansunder) (Love you Kholav).
4. Add role entries. Do this only if you've got something worthwhile to share, of course. Invent stuff that happens to your character (Hunsobo was forced to kill his father after he became Emperor, because the old coot was so out of it that he thought Hunsobo was laying and mocking him, so he attacked).
5. Pray to your God(dess). I had no intention of following Iunna(lady) when I rolled Hunsobo. I chose the sphere based on the fact that Hunsobo was going to be a total yes-man to the Imperial leadership. But one night I figured what the hell, went to her shrine, and had some really great interactions with her.
6. Go somewhere "remote" and work on skills, if you need to.
7. Go somewhere "remote" and RP via tell with your enemies (assuming you've no allies to RP with).
8. Explore. I know you have said you hate to do it (I share your desire to be spoonfed quest details to be honest, though I do feel really great when I do figure one out on my own), but I'm not saying you've gotta go to the 5th circle of Hell or anything. Go check out Organia, for instance. Your enemies may figure out you are there, but if you spend a short time in there, you can get out and retrieve while they are searching inside, sometimes, due to it's "special properties".
9. Recruit for your cabal.
10. Help potential cabalmates (applies more if you are good/neutral, but you can grab a full suit of midnight dragon for that level 17 duergar warrior if he pays you 10 gold if you've nothing else to do, and then maybe tomorrow night he'll be a bloodoath that weakens the enemy guardian for you).


Fleeing at 50%. What I mean by that is vary your balls-to-the-walls-ing. If I know that your character ALWAYS stays until one of us dies, I'll either avoid the hell out of you (if I'm conservative/not likely to win) or prep to the gills. And I'll usually end up killing you, because you went balls to the wall. But if you flee sometimes when hurt, and other times push it? Well, do I want to use up that prep that takes me 15 minutes to regather? Hmm. It gives you a better chance.

Put yourself in the other guy's shoes. If you see this guy coming down eastern road and the last 5 times you fought, you prepped pretty well, and he ended up running...well hell, you might not bother prepping this time, since it's a pain in your ass.

THAT's the time that that guy busts out entwine/insects (or whatever) on you and you're like OMGWTF?!?!?dead.

Gathering the preps and gold, I do. Problem is I immediately go try to use them. :)

I'm really getting a lot out of the balls to the wall discussion.

>Aside from that, I really appreciate your post. Can you talk a
>little more about what you said about fleeing at 50%, and the
>edge that can sometimes give you? What you said about "prep
>when they see you coming" definitely resonates with me! Do you
>have some more ideas about how to use that type of PLAYER vs.
>PLAYER strategy (not character vs. character strategy)that
>might be of help to me?

A great recent example of this is in Macha's Battlefield thread, wherein someone basically says: I knew if I prepped up and stepped into the Weald, you'd attack me before my preps wore off.

(Not that it seemed to hurt Macha overall all that much.)

Generally, you're easier to beat and easier to not die to if you're fairly predictable.

Speaking on this topic more generally... it's really rare for me to know where all the enemies in my range are. When I don't know, I usually start searching the world until I find them. You want to be able to do this -- you don't necessarily need to be an explorer in the sense that you know all the cool little things in every area, but you should at least be able to find just about every area. There's a handful of areas I can't find, but the rest I know at least well enough to poke my head in and check for enemies.

You mention a lot of the time you need to bust a guild or raid to fight someone.

Let's say I log on in my Galadon guild. You're my enemy and I see you, non-wanted, poke your head in. A Tribunal is in town.

I know in about a minute you're going to bust the guild to try to get me, because you did this the last three times I was resting in there.

Assuming my priorities are to kill you and not die myself...

Do you think I'm going to come out on Eastern and fight you?

Or do you think I'm going to prep up and let you get yourself flagged, since I know you will?

It really becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Similar thing with the cabal raiding -- if I feel a little disadvantaged in our match-up at the moment (I still only have half a set of gear from dying an hour before, whatever) and I know you'll come fight me at the inner, I'm probably going to let you give yourself that handicap.

Obviously, some people will turtle up no matter what, but a lot also won't.

Wow, that's a real life principle I'm ALWAYS talking about or teaching. Kinda cracks me up, but yea, you are right. Wow. I'm glad I wrote this post.

Couldn't you afford orbs of travel? That was my main use for them.

donating to the cause of the glorious Empire - not *gambling* (gasp!).

Just wasn't in H's role to gamble much. And I didn't have any connections that could/would sell them to me on a regular basis.