Fri Jul 29 13:05:11 2011

At 10 o'clock PM, Day of the Moon, 35th of the Month of the Winter Wolf
on the Theran calendar Silatar perished, never to return.

I thought you did very well for being new to CF. You stayed in character, you took your deaths well and you seemed to understand the mechanics of the game.

I fully appreciate other folks' comments about trying a ranger or an assassin. IMHO, the best way to learn CF is with a transmuter or a bard. The problem is that you picked a wood-elf bard in Outlander - a very difficult combo for a new player. Try human bard Herald (take swashbuckler edge) or any race transmuter in Herald or Tribunal.

Appreciate everyone's help, especially Zosi, Nhilrak, and Dumoti.

As a new player, I don't think I really did anything to kill a single person. I mostly just died, over and over. Especially once I got in range of people at Hero, I spent most of my time dying while trying to regear from my last death. Being Outlander, with all the restrictions and enemies, but without any of the actual abilities certainly didn't help either.

I don't want to sound too whiny, because I enjoy the hardcore pvp aspect of games, but WOW this is not a newbie friendly game. I'm not even sure how you're supposed to improve at fighting, since in every fight where I tried to fight back, I was slaughtered in about 5 rounds of fighting. The only practice I ever got was in running away.

Non-hero fights are much more fun. Even the guys that end you in 5 rounds can be taken down during the lowbie levels.

The skills needed to be a good PK'er at lower levels aren't necessarily the same needed to compete at hero.

I will say this, you get a lot more solo-fights at lowbie levels. And you can choose your battles a bit easier.

This also means to be an effective hero pk'er you need to learn to work well in groups and at disadvantaged odds. Whereas at lowbie you really only need to find one or two tactics that work, use them over and over again, and know when to GTFO.

...but running away is the most important PK skill you can have.

Glad to see you're a new player, I'd suggest joining Battle or Nexus, fighting everyone you possibly can, going on Dio's and the Gameplay forum here and attempt to wade through the #### and learn some tactics and re-gearing strategies.

Before you know it, you'll be a grizzled vet bemoaning the lack of INSERT PROBLEM HERE and decrying the end of CF

Good luck.

Running away is certainly useful, but at some point you need to actually kill people...and I never came close.

I also failed 100% of my lullabies on players. Using the death reed harp as Tragic, 99% lullaby skill, always drinking (someone kindly gave me a chest of inebriation when I was like level 10)...not always tuned, but I tried. That seemed my only chance to get someone down and actually use all of the bard songs without them smashing me to bits. But every single one was resisted, while A-P's and thieves always knocked me out. Or fled->returned and then did it.

Maybe this isn't the place for it, but how many people are using triggers to initiate combat? Also, are people using auto-running tools to get places? Because most people are incredibly quick.

Most clients support speedwalk, where you enter "10n" and it moves you north ten times. But that may not be what you're talking about.

Most PK folks use some sort of targetting system to remove the need to type in their targets' names and the full names of skills and spells. But that's just an alias, like a shortcut, and not a trigger.

Thing with a bard: if people saw you coming then they may have used some sort of resist mental item. My experience is that resist mental reduces the success rate on lullaby to about 25% (roughly speaking). You can dispel it though.

Don't worry, we all have went through this. My first hero was assassin of the first age, trying to become maran with PK record like 3 wins vs 30 deaths.

Obviously, I failed maranation, but learned a lot. And most important skill was RUNNING AWAY!

So, if you are good at it, you are 50% vet. I don't think "join battle" is a good suggestion, because my second char was battle (I've got in, yay!), but he had nearly same PK record. It was quite frustrating, because you can't word/teleport if things go too bad (and not always you can run away; there were no defenders at that time though).

Anyways, good luck with your next!

P.S. btw, bards are difficult even for some vets, so don't worry too much about it.

And wood elf bard in outlander, yeah, that can be a tough road with the iron vuln and everyone bashing you, even for vets. But the real trick is just to learn from this char and build with it on the next. Next thing you know newbies are all running from you.

There are lots of good tips out there about pk, but really the best thing you can do is mix it up, not worry about deaths, and just learn as you go.

I think my first pk successful char (having a winning record) was a bard, but that was like my 5th hero, and I never got the pbf to even confirm I actually did have one. So yeah. Don't worry, it comes. If you like the class, I'd say try a human or halfie, go neutral and try nexus or maybe fort. Not empire, scion, or battle. Trib and outlander are not bad, just a little dull in my eyes and outlander restrictions are not entirely newbie friendly.

Get back out there and mix it up some more

Did you take full advantage of outlander powers? If not, then you were fighting an uphill battle against folks whose cabal powers were more useful to them than what you had at your disposal.

My recommendation: fort paladin. Probably a storm giant. Less easily killed than a warrior, less reliant on gear, preps and skill percentages. Enlarge and fly yourself, then just be ready to "co word" when you hit 30% hp.

Plus you get immteraction. Just pick an active imm.

>Did you take full advantage of outlander powers? If
>not, then you were fighting an uphill battle against folks
>whose cabal powers were more useful to them than what you had
>at your disposal.

I was never admitted to Outlander. I saw the Harbinger in game only once, he told me to get to level 42 first. As I said, it made it even more difficult to have the enemies/restrictions of Outlander and none of the abilities.

Haven't read the rest of the posts, but I'd say you picked quite possibly one of the hardest combos in the game for a newbie to play.

Come back, play Ranger if you want outie, assassin if you want anything else. Pick a cabal like Fort(Everyone else stop groaning) You'll find a bunch or people willing to help there.

Also, If you want to learn a new class, best advice i was ever given is role one you really don't care about and CON die it. Fight everything that moves. You'll learn what works and what doesn't. Then come back and do the real character.

there's a lot more advice, but lots of people can help.

As you already have come to realize, the learning curve for CF is monstrously steep. However, like a lot of things that are challenging to get a handle on, the rewards are pretty impressive.

The good news is that the first step for you is over. That's not to say that the first step is the hardest, but certain things will be easier from now on. Also, because you picked such a fragile choice for this character, most likely your next character will seem like it's wearing a force-field.

My advice to you is to roll up a Villager. Your powers are built-in so you don't need to prep ever. Your powers will make you formidible in the midranks, even if you're a new player. Because the entire game becomes no-recall/no-teleport, there is an imperative to learn areas and learn them well. It's certainly a sink-or-swim scenario, but seeing as how you just heroed a woodie bard you're likely more than capable of it.

Go pincersvirf for inherent stoneskin, die a lot, kill a bunch, have fun.

It's a great game if you stick with it.

That's a credit to you, sir. You tried, and ate a lot of crap along the way, and your perseverance was inspiring, even for a personality like Zosi. Thanks.

Wanted to say, before you deleted, to try an assassin or ranger(explorer) as your next character, so you can hide from danger and find stuff. But I had no idea how to convey that in arrpeee. It's a tough one.

Anyway, try melee, or a healer and you'll make a lot of friends and die a lot less, and maybe try a guild where you can use coins and buy stuff and use pay healers, etc.

Good luck. See you (hopefully) in the fields.

That's lesson number one. If you can run, you can survive, if you survive you can return when things are in your favor and win. So that's the first milestone taken. Oh, and welcome!

PS: Not all of us play PK intensive characters.

We fought several times, and the last time we fought on Eastern Road you almost had me. Keep it up.