I got dealt with by a necromancer not long ago. Each and every tick he cast a spell on me, over and above the maledictions he had already piled on.

I was waiting for the sleep to wear off, but lo and behold, right when it does, I'm slept again before I can even wake.

I have encountered another necromancer in the past who used the exact same methods. I wouldn't even be surprised if this was the same guy.

Also why is sleep so damn hard to save against? I know imms have said it's like any other spell, but my experience does not show this.

I'm curious...why do you think that behavior was a trigger? It sounds to me like you had a command "duel" between wake/run and c 'sleep'. If I were trying this necro's tactic, I wouldn't even want a trigger...I'd just want to type c 'sleep' thatguy in my mud client and have an itchy finger on the enter key. Nothing against the rules there.

If you want to feel like sleep never lands, play the necro. :P That said, general rules apply...consider swapping out some of your gear for saves and running the hell away if the necro has some levels on you. My experience has been that sleep is a wrecking ball at low ranks when people aren't gearing for saves and (human, especially) necro has a ton of levels on people. It's a pain-in-the-ass to land towards hero when the tables turn.

That said, if you see the necro comming and can spam bash...

I would assume my sleep lasts longer then some base number (2-3 hours) and if my goal was to resleep I would hit scourge/poison up front then after the first couple of ticks just do a c sleep victim on every tick.

If your sleep spell is still in effect then you get an echo saying so and there is no harm other then the mana cost. If your sleep spell has warn off even if they haven't woken up you can renew the sleep.

Just got to keep an eye on them because you know after they hit 50% health any poison/scourge damage they take will let them wake up.

I've run into the same necro, and even spamming WAKE WAKE WAKE, he still nailed me before I can wake every single tick.

Basically, when a necro can keep a vet with divine saves slept until they run out of health because of scourge, there's something dodgy going on.

Incidentally, the necro in question ,for me, was Palmer. I liked the character, but there was something very dodgy about that aspect.

>I've run into the same necro, and even spamming WAKE WAKE
>WAKE, he still nailed me before I can wake every single tick.

There's always a little delay before the tick. If you're spamming enter, wait for a pause then hit your sleep macro you'll pretty much get it right after the tick. If you were spamming wake and waiting for the echo, you could definitely find yourself put to sleep again. Though it's strange if it happened say, 5 times in a row that you didn't even wake up before being put back to sleep.

And my point was, my spam of "Wake" never even got through before he managed to resleep me.

It wasn't that I "woke" and then failed to move north, say. It was that he basically could beat my spam with the ONE spell he was casting each tick.

fwiw, it does not work perfectly as often as it appears from the victim's side, iirc from those many years ago. You can get a "rest; quaff transportation" in before I can get a sleep in sometimes, however, the longer I played, the better my timing got. Also, I think when Palmer was around, there was still the cues for when a tick was about to hit which I would have exploited to know when to spam the sleep. On the flip side, there were no edges to avoid catching your own scourge then either. Thus, if you hang out there waiting for the tick, you might pick up some disease. Furthermore, I can't count the number of times someone else in range would wander in, generally a rbwerk who would try to bash me to death while I was trying to finish off the slept victim. Finally it only comes into play for a small set of levels, roughly late twenties. Scourge is too expensive mana-wise to use the first level or two you get it and once you hit the low thirties, people have cabalmates to come get them out of it and also have enough hp to get through the damage of scourge/poison for their duration (requiring me to attack and actually fight rather than win with disease and allowing a flee/teleport).

In general, I think the designers looked at it (sleeping someone and spelling them up) as a high risk/high reward type of spell. When a necro fails a sleep at low levels it opens him up to bash/trip quite fast.

I agree with Cyradia above that you should play a necro to learn all the problems with this.

I don't know that this needs changing. For every person who can successfully play a lowbie necro, there are a ton who cannot.

Assuming you can avoid getting tripped to death when you dont have fly up by an enemy you cant see, its fairly easy to get reduce/flight as a lowbie to the point where if you fail your sleep there is literally 0 chance for your enemy to get you.

I personally would like to see the re-sleep move removed from CF. Sleep is already such a death sentence when you get slept by a necro, that you have little chance of surviving. With the heavy damage scourge/poison does at the low ranks, that extra tic or two of sleep tends to be enough to kill the enemy.

So in summary I disagree on a few points and mainly because when you get slept by a lowbie necro you may never get a single command off and I mean really who likes dying that way whether it is assassinate/pwk/or bash-lock.

BATTLE1: Necro has me slept on eastern.
BATTLE2: Duh, I was 2 rooms away.

battle2 proceeds to wake up battle1, because thats totally not interfering with the fight.


Even in a less tongue-in-cheek context, if you take even minor steps to prevent sleep-death, a necro's chances to even hurt you can be reduced to zero, and even if they're flying and reduced/enlarged, they can still be lolcranialed. You are vastly overstating the power of lowbie necro.

Set aside the fact that I've both been the necro killing lowbie RBW's and been the lowbie warrior dying to them, we just disagree.

I have burned through 1k mana before just trying to land a single spell on someone I had slept. At low levels, unless your opponent is way under your rank or has no saves whatsoever, they generally fare ok. As always, staying alert is the best counter to necro sleep.

Even then, sleep in it self isn't a death sentance, sleep + summon though can be certainly be.

It is rare that I don't get away after being slept by a necro. Sure, I die sometimes after teleporting etc, but most of time I can figure out where I landed and walk off to a healer.

How can you teleport and determine where you are and walk to a healer after an encounter with a Necromancer?

1) Blind = No see.

2) Scourged = No move.

You're full of it.

Edit: Assuming you aren't a class that can dispell those effects. In which case, your input isn't relevant to the gripe...unless you run out of mana due to sleep triggers. =)

there's other things that can help you in this situation, but potions of cure blind (have a few in your inventory if you're fighting a dangerous necro) are a great boon.

Also, blind doesn't last forever. Often not long enough to make you dead (assuming the necro doesn't find you before blind runs out).

Once the blind wears off, pop some potions/pills of refresh and move out to a healer.

One final note: You should really think very, very hard about your tone, especially toward much more experienced/PK-savvy players (like Amberion). The tone you're taking in your arguments suggests that you think yourself experienced and/or very PK-knowledgeable, but when you make statements like the one above you end up sounding relatively silly.

What he's talking about is not something I have ever seen anyone ever prepared for. Sure, if you are going after a necro, you might have some specific cards to counter his hand, but I don't think it's normal for people to do.

What's more, a 30th level necro casting against a 25th level whatever has HUGE levels over any prep I would know how to get at this level.

I just think what he describes, isn't possible/realistic for joe snuffy wandering around doing his own thing.

Edit: The You're full of it sounds a lot better in my head than it reads in text. It was meant more as a "What ever" I suppose you could say. Sorry for comming across that way.

>What he's talking about is not something I have ever seen
>anyone ever prepared for. Sure, if you are going after a
>necro, you might have some specific cards to counter his hand,
>but I don't think it's normal for people to do.

You have to understand what he's saying in a little bit of context, some of which I think you have seized on and some of which I think you haven't, so I'll try to run through all of it:

1) Classes which can heal themselves pretty well (paladins, shamans, druid, healers, bards, some rangers, even assassins with bind wounds is probably good enough) aren't probably dying to poison/scourge damage if they can teleport away. Classes with cure blind or cancellation on their spell list can probably get the blindness off and make it to a healer with their remaining move, teleporting again if necessary to do so. A smartly-timed Forget (for 35+ necromancers) will delay either by a few ticks, possibly long enough but often not.

So already we're down to talking about, what, warrior, thief, berserker, anti-paladin, and maybe ranger? It's a subset of classes, although if I remember correctly these are some of your favorite classes to play. Arguably, hide and camo should mean that the thief and ranger shouldn't have to fight a necromancer except on terms of their own choosing.

2) The most frequently successful counter to a successful sleep, probably, is other people. If there's someone in your group or cabal that has either you or the necromancer in range, they aren't going to have the leisure to land their full set of spells on you unless your saves are truly abysmal.

This, incidentally, is a big part of why Sleep gets remarkably less valuable close to hero -- almost everyone's caballed.

So now we're narrowed down to talking about characters of about 3 classes that are also loners.

3) An awful lot of characters are trying to plow through the midlevels as fast as they possibly can. They're not really interested in fighting a random necromancer. If one rolls up towards their group they might just word or teleport on the spot without ever allowing the necromancer to get in the same room. Certainly they're doing it if summoned.

Note that I'm not advocating for this style of play, but it's a solid chunk of people who don't need or don't think they need a cure blindness potion sitting in their inventory.

Even the characters that are hanging around the midlevels a bit sometimes will take the "run the hell away immediately" approach to a necromancer if they aren't ready to survive being slept, especially one like a Palmer in his era who has a reputation for being aggressive.

So now we're down to talking about loner non-Battle warriors/orcs/a-ps that aren't trying to power-level and aren't too cowardly. And, yeah, I do think a lot of that admittedly small subset of characters do tend to have an anti-sleep plan ready, be it the aforementioned cure blindness or cancellation potions or even just a couple potions of heal in the inventory to buy enough HP to ride out the scourge and poison or whatever.

In my case, most of my plan in that situation is just loading a lot more -spell gear than people usually do in those levels to cut my chances of being slept and successfully spelled up in time way down.

For much of my difficulty.

And FYI. I am the sort of player who will not fight necromancers at all if given a chance.

Thanks for the response.

A lot of this is my boilerplate advice, but I'll throw the following things at you just in case:

1) Always always carry a teleport potion by 11 if you're not a Battle app. If you have to use it and you're only carrying the one, make replacing it the first thing you do. There is no sinking feeling worse than putting it off and then getting slept.

2) Next time you're caballed, ask around about lowbie-gettable -spell gear and cure blindness potions. There's one really good cure blindness potion (with a drawback) that comes to mind that isn't bad to get, and even say -20 spell is a huge help.

We talked above about why a lot of people don't do these things, but if you're specifically having problems in this area you have some options.

3) Pay attention to where locked summonable rooms are and be extra extra careful with necromancers and A-Ps with summon in those areas. If you don't feel like asking around or searching for them, just start keeping a list whenever you end up dying in one.

4) Although I'm sure it would drive you crazy, take a serious run at playing a midlevel PKing necromancer. You'll find a couple holes in it that are hard for you to now see and you'll be better able to fend it off in general in the future.

Blind- There are several cure blindness potions out there, the only people who can't use them are villagers and they have spellbane/true sight. In addition to cure blindness preps there are also cancellation preps that can be used. You can also just wait it out and some classes can navigate while blind anyway (like conjurer using familiar eyes or cavern ranger underground, etc)

Scourge- You are overestimating how fast/completly scourge nerfs moves. Sure if you get slept with 20% moves its going to be a problem (to which I would say don't engage a necro when you have 20% moves). By the way there are cure diesease preps as well as refresh preps and heal preps that negate this.


Long story short I think most necros who attempt to PK in the low ranks tend to epic fail fast, especially against melee types.

A 30 somthing Necromancer is going to have his way with 90 percent of the game once he get's sleep off.

There may be cure blindness preps out there that can reliably help you against this, but I don't know how a 25th level character gets a hold of them.

As far as cancellation preps, I only know of a 20th level insanly expensive one.

I've never come across anyone I've PK'd who carried an "anti-necro" kit nd while I'm not great, i've PK'd a lot of people over the years so something tells me what you speak of isn't something people commonly do.

cure blindness
teleport potions
refresh pills (you can buy these around the area of Fortress)
green and brown packets for poison and disease cure (from a major city)

That alone should keep you alive to get to a healer. Keep in mind you can keep teleporting with potions until you get somehwere manageable.

Other options. A major city sells an item that has a good chance of waking you up if you're knocked out or slept. Get a mob angry at you that will chase and wake you up if you get slept. I like to be clever at that point and quaff an invis potion (300 copper) to make sure it doesn't attack me before being slept. If slept, vis, flee, quaff.

Galadon sells healing potions. They're expensive. Not sure the level you can buy them at but keep a few in your sack if 5 gold a piece is worth not dying to you.

Cancellation preps are a waste, all you need is healing.

I've died to a lowbie necro once in the past 5 years and that was because he caught me without detect invis after I'd run myself to less than 25% moves and he had a crushing hand wand that landed the lag on me. You don't win them all.

Play something that can easily acquire lots of gold and then visit every city and buy every prep available. Also look for shoppies outside cities. In fact, buy EVERYTHING and identify it, look at it, and otherwise ask yourself, "What use could this thing possibly have?" Be creative.

If you're not a big prep / gadget person, you WILL be amazed at some of the stuff you find.

Just because most of your victim's corpses don't contain this stuff doesn't mean your inventory shouldn't. Often times, it's the reason they are a corpse and you are not.

EDIT: Fixed spelling.
EDIT #2: I guess by "OP" I actually mean Alston.

Leveling, role writing, skill spamming and now gathering enough gold to learn how to carry a dozen different preps to counter a dozen different situations and then constantly replenishing the gold and preps each time you use them - *deep breath* It's a wonder this game is any fun!

I'm just kidding around. It's a good suggestion. Personally, I've tried doing stuff like this but then get quickly bored of it because I want to go do other things. But, even the time I put in I learned some things, at least until I forgot half of it from lack of use! The knowledge is quite helpful but it sure comes at a price.

I would tend to think that at the low-mid ranks where you are most likely to get slept by a necro, while it's possible to do, a lot of people just simply are not going to be carrying all those preps around. I certainly am not likely to.

Honestly, you can make a pretty good run at what you need with just, say, the potion shops in Galadon and Hamsah.

If you don't remember what a shop potion does, browse will often, but not always, tell you all you really need to know.

nt

There is an item that should insure no person ever gets stuck with the infamous blackjack/steal boat on water cheese that has killed countless people :)

Or even the capsize elemental command.

It's an item in a well-traveled city that you can even use in combat :)

Edited: Well, except for Battle. Those poor bastards :)

Edited to also add: Assuming once you are blackjacked it lasts long enough to have flight fall if you quaffed a potion or used the spell.

I'll be the first to admit I have no idea what that is.

eat seaweed

Yay water breathing and no boat theft!

Boo running into the whirlpool!

You'd think after the first 15 times...

the item you can USE that spawns a boat?

in that case it can still be stolen.

And I think you invoke it, but yeah.

Couldn't you just stick a second boat in there?

"Is that a canoe in your girdle, or are you just happy to see me?"

seriously, just any equippable water breathing or water walking item is fine for this purpose.

>Get a
>mob angry at you that will chase and wake you up if you get
>slept.

I can honestly say I've saved my life (and killed the necromancer) this way as a pre-detect-invis Battle applicant.

Back in my day, we didn't have spoiled Battle apps with truesight! We had to infer when invis people were chasing us via secondary clues! /grognard.

in those days you didn't actually need to kill a mage to get inducted either. Oh the easy days of being a battle bard/elf/drow

True, although I've always killed mages before seeking induction. I have too much pride to do it any other way.

Its not like yuo haven't dont it a bunch in the past and will continue to do it again in the future.

But I do agree with your general point.

Being slept does not have to be a death sentence, and a number of players avoid dying to it.

nt

As well as Baendra (pbf'd, I believed) I have played numerous other necros, my most successful of which just disappeared. (Zakatholef or something, he was called -- comfortable 100% pk record at spectre, nice set of gear, then poof, gone one day.)

My last necro found lowbie midbie ranks easy. I deleted only because my 2k exp role entry (basically about a necro whose dead mother was trying to possess him) disappeared (I think because I was adding a role entry during a crash) and I knew if I tried I wouldn't be able to write it as well again. Since necro magic got boosted to be able to do significant damage, they are very strong at lowbie and midbie ranks.

It's liking getting kicked in the ####.

Glad it's only happened to me once.

ok so your very first save attempt against it is.

After that if they try to do more attempts in a short time (I believe 1 tick) each attempt has a higher chance of landing the sleep but the duration of the sleep will be lower.

I strongly recomend bash

that is, if you fail the first one its harder to land the 2nd. And most necros know how long their sleep is gonna last so they can be ready to use sleep again on the tick. I've done it before. Helps a lot when you can never land #### on a sleeping target.