I've never played an outlander and find myself up against a huge number of them lately. A few of them seem to be able to call insect swarms, which as far as I can tell is one of the more powerful powers that I've come across (at least in the right hands/situation)-- like a combination of curse, immolation, and thornheart or some such thing...?

Is that a power that is given to a select few by the imms or are there certain members of the cabal who get it? Not just the leaders, right...So having to chase down or raid against enemies you can't see or detect into a maze, then getting trapped, ambushed, and unable to recall as an added surprise is a bit much. Then add to that you don't know which of them can get you with insects making fleeing effectively impossible and...yuck.

Is there some way to deal with insects that I'm not getting? You can't recall or teleport, right? Just nasty to give cursing powers to melee builds that can surprise you and lag you and out-damage you already, and tend to fight in a pack. Trying to retrieve against that, while also a pile of younger ones around chomping to loot whatever nice things you have is just a nasty situation.

Hoping only a select few have this power that earn it (and that there's a way to tell who they are before finding out at a bad time that now this warrior suddenly is calling insects on me that never did before or whatever)-- and that there's some way around it that I haven't figured out yet.

Thoughts on dealing with insects and who gets them?

It's a power that Outlander leaders get, so you're looking for a Sunwarden/Harbinger/Nightreaver title.

You need to have a lot of RP skills to become one of the three Outlander ledaers.

You also need to use your client to play CF well.

You also need to have the very specific things like: quicksand + earthbind; entwine; outcry of steel legacy; or you need to play very specific ranger build with pounce who is only limited to sitting in the wilderness 90% of their time; polearm + driving legacy; maybe something else what i'm not thinking about right now. Maybe shapeshifters are a bit off-topic here, but usually it's very hard to get the form with pounce because of the way shapeshifters work.


To actually make those Insect swarm shine.


And overall it takes a lot of skills in exploration to even try to play an Outlander warrior (for example).


Is it really fair that anybody can go to Inn, spend some money and win an item to totally ignore everything of the above?


I mean i would understand it if the super-orb of travel was somewhere in the darkest corner of Thera, but an Inn? :(

1. Is it possible to make the Dire wolf form only for the people who have chaotic align and the Tiger form only for the people who have orderly align?
I'm not sure here .... but maybe it's also worth it to weaken the Dire wolf form to the strength of 3rd tier form and then give wilderness familiarity to it.


It could balance both these forms with pounce in a very interesting way.


2. Is it possible to replace Double Whirl edge for an edge what will increase the effectivness of the whirl skill by -3 str / - 3 dex?


3. What do you think about balancing the different paths of the hurl skill? So all locations do the same affect, like:

Skill: 'hurl' modifies strength by -6 (ARM)

Skill: 'hurl' modifies dexterity by -6 (LEG)

Skill: 'hurl' modifies strength by -3 (TORSO)
Skill: 'hurl' modifies dexterity by -3 (TORSO)


And the same bleeding for all those 3 skills.


Skill: 'no commune' for 0 hours. (THROAT)
Skill: 'silence' for 0 hours. (THROAT)

Why? Get a hero c locate orb

Notice that you will see 1 or 2 at most unless there is a herald thief with gobs of gold.

For such an OP "easy to get" unlimited item you'd think everyone would be carrying 5 of them.

Why do i need to locate it? I was _always_ using it when i was playing the characters who needed to use it because it's almost for free, and all better players do the same.


But since all my suggestions are being ignored anyway - alright, no more suggestions then :)

That an orb of travel costs on average?

Assuming that you optimize for winning at low cost (i.e. minimum bet size, maximize luck stat).

x

I once got 500 gold by level 20 or so to show off in Empire, but generally gathering gold is a tedium that isn't worth it. Especially when I'm less likely to use the orb than I am to die and have it looted.

On race and/or class, I think.

In my experience a woodie bard has better luck than a Drow ap, on average. Perhaps imms could confirm?

Others might get it through other means as a reward, but I don't believe any of the branches just get them by default. Some rangers have mosquitos and wasps, which are different in that neither of them cause the no-recall, no-teleport affect.

Playing a rager can help with learning how to deal with insects. Then you never have recall/teleport, so you learn to deal with things like moving to escape and avoiding pursuit. Xasivus was a nightmare for some people because he was air/offense and had insects. But lots of ragers had no problem with him because instead of worrying about how to escape, you concern yourself with learning how to make the other guy flee instead. Make him have to run off to recover for a bit, and then go somewhere to recover yourself or just use that time to escape by foot. Not all builds can do this, but sometimes it is an option. It's usually panic more than insects themselves that will get people killed.

That said, insects gets people PKs to be sure, but usually it's not just insects that seals it.

Just a point here: playing rager when you don't know how to respond to a situation doesn't magically teach you. Usually, you just fumble the situation and burn through con.

n/t

When you are born, God decides how much knowledge you will have throughout your lifetime and when. He grants you that knowledge as you age. A little bit at a time. Later in life sometimes he takes that knowledge away. That's why we can't figure out alzheimers!

n/t

The first rager I ever played was created specifically for learning how to deal with situations similar to this. Ragers are forced to ALWAYS deal with certain obstacles that other characters only have to deal with occasionally. Those other characters tend to get raped by those obstacles because they don't know how to deal with them, since they only face them once in a while. A rager, on the other hand, will have to deal with that obstacle every moment of every login. As a result, they learn faster how to compensate for it because they're exposed to it unceasingly. Sure, you might burn through some con to start with, but eventually, you'll figure it out. If you think you lost too much con in the process, just delete and roll up another of the same build, and do it again, with the lessons previously learned to guide you. Now you can build on what you previously learned, and refine your approach until you've mastered it (or as close as anyone can get in this game).

This concept is proven by the fact that this is how languages are best learned. Someone who tries to learn a language by taking a class on it, and the teacher speaks mostly in English (or whatever your primary language is), will take considerably longer to learn the language in question (and will never become as proficient with it) as someone who travels to a foreign country without knowing the first word of that language, and spends a year living in that country, and never using the language of their country of origin. At the end of that year, compare the person who immersed himself in the language and culture with the student who took the beginning level foreign language class. The student will be still bumbling through the language, taking 5 minutes to construct simple sentences, improperly conjugating, verbs, and only have, AT BEST, 1,000 words of vocabulary. This is to say nothing about actually understanding what is being spoken to him in that language. Meanwhile, the person who went to the foreign country will be carrying on full conversations, and be capable of not only expressing his own thoughts in the new language, but also understanding the majority of what is spoken to him. What made the difference, is that the one who lived there was exposed to it during every waking moment. Additionally, because of the extreme exposure while awake, his brain was also processing everything he heard during the day while he was sleeping. He probably even dreamed the language while he slept (I know this from personal experience). If he DIDN'T learn the language quickly, he couldn't eat, find a toilet, or establish deep connections with other people which our psyches crave (at least mentally healthy people do). The classroom student experienced none of these motivating factors. Ironically, this principle applies to a fantasy game as well.

Getting back to the game now, not every technique to overcome a certain obstacle is going to work the same for a non-rager as it would for a rager, but the underlying principles are the same. Try not to focus on the specific technique that a given build uses, but rather pay attention to the principle that made that technique work. For example, if someone was getting raped constantly by a polearm spec with a cursed polearm, an assassin might counter the threat by using kotegaeshi until they get the crunchy broken wrist, forcing the pole spec to drop their two-handed weapon. A warrior mace/dagger warrior might boneshatter, hurl arm, artery, to make the pole spec too weak to wield the polearm. A necro or AP will sleep followed by weaken, poison, stacked crimson or sleep, poison, stacked plague. In this example each class has a different technique to remove the cursed weapon, but the underlying principle is the same. Get the problematic weapon out of their hands.

Start utilizing these principles outlined here every time you encounter a particularly challenging obstacle, and you'll find that your CF skills will improve dramatically faster than they ever did before.