I want to come back after a long hiatus, but I find myself blocked by the expectation that ranking is going to be non-viable for me. I never could stand solo-ranking and I'm having trouble picturing how it's possible to find a group with only 10-20 players online. Have there been any changes in the past 7ish years to make it more palatable? I hate being part of the problem and I really would like to roll up a character, but I'm kinda stuck on this issue. So disabuse me of this.

First attempt at coming back failed. Tried a priest, couldn't find my immortal. Had three mob deaths at 21. Annoying to deal with lowbie con loss as a low int/wis char. Made a bunch of dumb mistakes with practices. I may try again, but I get too bored soloing and mob die as a result of taking risks. As long as there's exp plus con loss pre-hero the risk/reward ratio is too much on the side of playing it safe and I just don't really enjoy that. It's why I always race to hero.

I'll try again, maybe hope to snag a mino spot. That's what I actually wanted to play.

wizlist hours aside, which immortals are active and can be reliably found?

Pretty much everyone who is not me is found quite consistently and very engaging. I would suggest that you drop them an in game note if you have missed them after a few days just so they can know to keep a better eye for you as well.

>Pretty much everyone who is not me is found quite
>consistently and very engaging. I would suggest that you drop
>them an in game note if you have missed them after a few days
>just so they can know to keep a better eye for you as well.

Yeah, I did that, but probably didn't allow enough time after. Just bad luck, probably. It's no big deal and just one factor among several. There's just a dumb spot in my brain where early mob-deaths are concerned. I feel gimped if I lose con before hero and losing exp just sucks the joy out of a character for me. The combo has always been tough for me to deal with. No empowerment/paths on top of that just adds to the feeling of a bleh character. The flaw is mine, though.

I get where you're coming from and have deleted many a lowbie after a bad death or series of deaths, but one thing to think about is that training con a few times to get yourself back to full is not really a big deal - the opportunity cost is 10 max hp which rarely, if ever, decides a fight.

Overall I think you're basically right and it wouldn't make me delete by itself, annoying as it is. I mostly agree if you're a gnome or something, but I was a fire giant and already couldn't practice a bunch of stuff or max out my basic stats and was counting on that next train four levels away. Not crippling, just really annoying on top of everything else. I do somewhat disagree that the cost is insignificant, though, since a "few" trains is 30hp, which is around 5% of your base hp.

Pretty sure it was me you were looking for.

I was looking for you, too. I straight up spent a couple of days with my MUD client running in the corner while I worked doing a "whois (yourcharname)" periodically, but you never logged in those days.

Not trying to blame you. Just letting you know I tried, if it makes any difference. You were also a contender in the current RC, if you were who I think you were. But I guess not anymore?

Hope to see you back.

No hard feelings, like I said it was multiple things. Had some bad timing with work getting nuts, which is why I was out for that gap. I appreciate the effort and am sorry to waste your time with the role in the contest.

The merc-as groupmate change is solid. Probably enough to get me in. One of the things I could never get past with solo-ranking is that you're combining slower kills with less exp per kill and higher risk of dying. I don't enjoy the mob-death exp penalty, it's just not the kind of punishment that adds fun for me. I would invariably get too bored of solo ranking, stop paying attention or start taking risks and end up mob-dying, wasting all that time. I never minded PK while ranking. It adds a fun type of risk.

What classes have had interesting changes (in the past 7 years)?

Saagkri: 40 hours is a reassuring number. I generally aimed for 50.

Thaeden: I never did skill spam. Pretty much all soloing that wasn't exploring felt like a chore to me. I tend towards mages, which in my experience are really painful to solo, but I'm not an exclusive mage player and like every class. Part of it though is I like support classes, which tend not to work well solo.

Quixotic:
"We now have group bonuses for mob exp" What does that mean? There was always a bonus for 2 and 3 players, do you just mean that or is it something else?

EXP Bonuses: Every now and then, there will be bonuses to the exp from killing a mob. So, for some period of time (usually 3-6 hours?), everyone gets a bonus to exp while ranking (up to double exp). Also, you always get a bonus to EXP when there are fewer people online (to 40% I think). The 'bonus' command will tell you if there's a scheduled bonus coming up.

Merc as groupmate: Only city bought mercs give the bonus. When you 'gr' they will have an * by their name to verify the exp bonus.

Of course, if you want minimal ranking time, you can roll a neutral bard or a defense/offense or defense/utility shifter.

Hints for ranking... Some mercs can rescue. Some have resist physical. Some are both (looking at you Galadon Giant (hint 2: he can tank Darslyon guild guards if you can poor the damage.on)).

Also, mercs heal insanely quickly and can can be told to sleep right after a fight.

There are some more pk centric mercs as well that are worth exploring...

My last four chars all made level 51 in somewhere around 40 hours mostly with groups. Just don't play an evil conjurer. Of course, it help to be neutral, also.

Were you ever the kind of person to spam up skills? I look at solo ranking as killing two birds with one stone. I rise in rank, albeit slowly, but I also side-step having to dedicate time to practicing certain things. Obviously it's more viable for some classes than others.

One change: Want to say the ranking bonus for a group of 2 is larger than what it used to be. Still not as good as 3, but better than it once was.

Also, I want to say mercs/pets count as a group mate now. Or maybe half as good as a real PC. Something like that.

Another mitigating factor: the fewer players there are, the more likely your preferred ranking area is to be unoccupied.

If you hate ranking, one option is to limit yourself to combos that have an easier time of it than most. This assumes there's some overlap between "the set of combos I'm interested in playing" and "the set of combos that are easy to rank".

1. First, there are almost always people in your range that could rank. You might not get a group a group of three, and it might not always be optimal, but you should be able to find someone.

2. We now have group bonuses for mob exp, and if you type BONUS, you can see when there are scheduled bumps to exp and learning bonuses.

3. Mercs count now as groupmates for exp bonuses.


Unless you want to powerrank your shifter to see your final forms, ranking does not have to be a grind.