Sun Dec 9 07:30:53 2012

At 5 o'clock AM, Day of Freedom, 11th of the Month of Futility
on the Theran calendar Eldrinoth perished, never to return.

We didn't interact except that one day but it looks like you have thrown a few con across several chars at me so here is sone advice that I hope helps your next run if you choose to play a sub optimal pk range.

To pull this off the most important quality you need as a player is courage. You know going in that what you have to work with is not top of the line and you will be competing against people who are. You are going to die and experience everything that comes with it. Don't look at it as a failure but rather as an opportunity to learn your limits. You seem to have this part down so on to the next things.

1.) use everything: being sub optimal you need to get leverage every little bit of advantage from underused skills you can. Try unirthodox tactics, figure out what works and work it in, things that help you one in twenty times are way more valuable to someone without great options then someone with a lot. Example: as a muter use accelerate on an enemy to run then out of mvs, as a warrior use offhand disarm on a sword spec so they one hand flurry, etc

2.) control scope: a lot of the time a sub optimal build us still great at niche encounters despite being weak in general (example: thief can't kill a lion but they might perma lag an unshifted gnome). Identify where your niche is and aggressively pursue opportunities in it. This ties heavily into the "be the aggressor" advice other people have given. Most fights go to the person who controls the circumstances (you can do this as the prey but it tends to be tougher)

3.) chaos is king: have you ever played pool with people who suck? Every now and then the balls congregate into a cluster#### that screws up everyone's shot. Now and then someo e just has to blast the hell out if them to mix it up and do a reset. Cf pk is similar in the sense that people like to be in control of situations and have conditioned themselves to react. If you want to snag kills against conservative and highly prepped opponents your best bet is to create chaos. Chaos leads to mistakes and mistakes are opportunities. For instance if you see battle raising the island, tell empire, scion, and fort and then sit by and watch as all the opposing forces trickle in and turn a simple raid into a three way moving battle.

Hope this helps. For the record at the spire I had no wands and was trying to engineer a scenario where I could pull off 6 spells over the course of ten rounds. You landing a manacle pushes that up to needing 10 cast attempts and 16 rounds, which a Mage using only class spells was not happening against you and 4 guards. If you had chased out of the spire I would have fought you with manacles and no preps but def not with manacles at your inner with an out of range paladin that might heal you there.

That characters like this, that are OBVIOUSLY not deathful, and are trucking it to con death, deserve massive imm rewards and quest spells/skills. If he got executioner's grace he would have deserved it.

bumbler's grace or something

Grace of the Executed.

207 hours, no PKs. Is that a record? What can I say I'm a sucker for the flavour of a build over its mechanical feasibility.

Things didn't start well. I had two mob deaths by level two, and that was how things kept on. But I was determined to stick it out. I soloed a lot up until around level 25, getting those 100% skills/spells. Around level 30 soloing with this build becomes impossible. I did literally every quest I found other than simon's delivery quest. I log on to low numbers quite often and getting the induct into Tribunal took a lot of patience. I had planned to get the induct earlier so idling in my guild wouldn't feel quite so pointless, since that is what tribunals do. But I didn't, and I got bored and went out there and got triplocked to death by mobs who considered as little finger (seriously), and died to outlanders with 9 levels on me helping tribunal retrieve. I finally got the induct at level 40 with 10 con left when I was about to delete, and from there I decided to go all the way. Level 42 was particularly painful, I think I ate upwards of six deaths, mostly PKs. Almost every level from there I got a mob death halfway through and had to start again from a deficit, my con dropped to 5 at least four times before 51. The day after I heroed I walked into two deathtraps, ate two mob deaths, three PKs and and an AFKill. Just incredible.

Bitching about goodies, particularly paladins was part of my role. Those he couldn't beat in combat he would try to undermine with language. But on an OOC note it would be nice to see players actually call people out for fights and face them head on a bit more often. My next character is probably going to have never taking a fair fight in his role.

Despite all that though, I had a lot of fun interactions. I can't remember most of it in the lower levels since I took a break from this character to try something more deathful (and failed just as hard) before coming back to it. But from Eldrinoth's later years:

Fort guys: As mentioned above, not all the tells you got post-kill were thinly veiled ooc whining, it was in my role. Appreciated those of you who took the time to RP it a bit.

Empire: Being orderly evil you were my natural allies, wouldn't have made it past 30 without you. Empire needs more soldiers, my next will probably be one of yours. The amount of guys I levelled with who deleted halfway through hero PK is a testament to the brutality of trying to hero evil characters. Said my goodbyes to some of you IC. Keep on trucking, don't let the forties win.

Tribunals: I tried to strike a balance in my RP between feigning goodness to earn peoples trust and there being tension within the cabal over alignment differences. I just wish I had been a bit more deathful so that my goodness was actually a feint.

Outlanders: Ouch, my con

Scions et al: Some of you just spelled even more death for me, but the ones I spoke to had some of the better RP I've seen. Wish I had survived a bit longer to see where it could lead.

Battleragers: I felt like you guys used less cheap tactics than other cabals in devouring my con, and that is what battle powers are for.

Nexus: You guys were usually good for some much needed tanking service (god bless gnome shifters), since the scales were typically against me. Appreciate the service, fight the power.

Herald: Wouldn't have heroed at all without the help I got from one of you. I would have spent more time hanging out at the in but it didn't jive well with my RP to sit round watching the antics for hours.

Mysterious dark presence: I can only imagine how you're facepalming. If I had had any luck in PK, things could have been different.

In conclusion: A-Ps suck, dark elf A-Ps really suck, but even if you suck, you can hero them. Darkness will rise again, don't let the fortress win.

Big props for sticking with this.

Hopefully you learned a lot along the way.

Wish more people would show this type of heart. I think CF would be better for it.

Great job!

It was obvious to me that you were new at the game and drow AP is def not a newbie class. You will be at a tremendous disadvantage vs everyone and you'll need _a lot of_ game knowledge to overcome this.


You can gain some of that knowledge by playing other classes that are a lot more fun for a new player (and will even allow you to get PKs!)

Since you have the basics down, I would suggest you start playing BATTLE warriors as you will learn a lot in a fairly short period of time.

I don't know your character. Never interacted with him. But it's this kind of riding it out that makes people have nothing but respect towards you as a player. I know of NO vet, myself included, that would not have delete deleted after a 2nd mob death at lvl 2. To keep trucking and hero this character is a true success and its this kind of dedication that I think a lot of us have really let slip over the years. I would LOVE to see immortals reward characters like this as well as the successful ones. Just a little love to show that people are watching what your doing.

I got a positive custom title and a con quest which was basically to get a PK (and more PKs = more con as I understood it). I think that's reasonable, if I'm going to play an evil character I should at least kill someone one time. If I had been able to do that I'm sure something more would have come of it, but instead I went and suffered another five needless deaths. Heroing was an accomplishment, and the immortals noticed, but the way I generally play lends itself to a lot of mistakes and the con death was the logical conclusion to all that.

Well you know you'd have my vote. I vividly recall our interactions and really had some good times. My favorite
is still when you were feeling that straw that was just about to break the camel's back and then... relief/puzzlement...
you reached what you had been striving for for so long and you didn't know what to do. I know, knew, that I kept
telling you that you shouldn't take the easy way out and should push forward with the Hardship and in this instance
I'm glad I was right. I would have felt bad if I was wrong.

The most important part is that you had a successful character and a good time doing it. For the most part.

As I was telling you, wish I could have met you as a younger character, would easily have been able to help you more. Its a true testament that you found your black rod while being new at the game.

A bit of learning and you'd have been a true threat with that knowledge and ability.

I do hope you come back, it is nice to see such determination in a player, and you did better at the roleplay department then many of the vets will show.

Good luck on the next!

Hilamar

Good job. That said, I'm a little surprised you didn't get at least one "sleep and full maledict" type PK win.

You might want to avoid having "bitching" as a part of your role. Whether you're roleplaying or not, it doesn't come off at that when you start whining and bitching immediately after getting killed. From an outside observer, it looks like you broke role.. and it's hard to expect people to think anything else.

I saw that from you pretty early on in the char, and it made me really not want to interact with you from then on.

Way to be.

NT

I kill a guy who is my mortal enemy IC. Whether or not someone is new doesn't mean that they get a free pass. It was a PK. This is a PK mud. It happens.

He specifically mentions in his death thread that his bitching was IC. It didn't seem that way when I heard it in-game. That's why I tried to give him some constructive criticism. Calling someone a slut, even if you think it's IC, is probably a bad idea. Similarly, whining incessantly to someone after they kill you, even if you think it's IC, looks bad.

How you pulled me griefing a new player from that.. I don't know. But you're not very smart, so I guess I'll let it go.

I guess there are not many ways to interact with someone who's just killed you without them immediately thinking it's OOC whining. I usually just stfu and g all corpse but if you were a pally you were going to get an earful ("paladins killed my father!"). The idea was to try and make the paladin question the way he follows his ideals but in the end the paladin has detect evil to avoid the messy business of wondering if he did the right thing.

I really did like having you around, the commitment you had far exceeded many others in the spire. You were respectful where it was due, (from what I noticed, never stepping out of line). Was quite a bother for me too to have to sit back and having it take so long to get you a position, hoping that changes or loosens up a little bit in the near future for those of your presence/commitment. But yes, as much as I wanted to help you on the side, was a line I could not cross to excuse outside the scope of our duties. There was a couple times I feel you could have called me for help while you were out patrolling, but did not do so.. Figured perhaps it might have been an evil pride thing but still bothered me that I was unable to assist and found out after the fact you had died in a protected city. I appreciate the time and effort you put in and hope to see more from you in the future, few have that drive and ambition to carry through with a char to the end after having a few things not work the way they want or intended it. GLWYN.

Xupreth.

Liked you and was rooting for you OOC. IC, of course, I had to be standoff-ish. Thanks for sticking it out, sorry I didn't congratulate you for heroing, and sorry I didn't help you collect your black rod.

Hang in there, you have already heroed one of the hardest race/class combos, all gravy from here on!

Well I was rooting for you to make something happen. I figured even if you got some charges you'd probably loose the first weapon pretty quickly, so I'd trade it up for some con to let you keep trucking (albeit on three wheels and two of them wobbly).

Anyway I hope you learned something about drow APs and the class in general, I'd be interested to see what you can do with something once you really get your groove on.

I would say that you are best off keeping on the move.

I know you got to the stage where leaving town meant someone pounced on you. Being the one doing the pouncing is key to success.

Admittedly you probably had to deal with the least friendly pk range ever.

I liked your willingness to take the rough with the smooth though. Hope you'll be back with something less fragile!

I'll be taking a break from CF for a little while, but unless I magically get a job or a girlfriend or something I'll be back in the new year and MAKE THIS BUILD WORK.

Different edges, different tactics, lessons learned. More evilness.

I played Akilodain to 40th just to test out how a darkelf a-p would be. He ended up being pretty successful, and i am a little sad I let him auto delete. Here is a brief summary of what I learned.

Darkelf a-p is frail, so you have to play like a mage at first.

1. Always wear a shield
2. Wield a weapon that will parry well, like sword
3. Always prep up as much as you can
4. Don't be brave.
5. Try to either sleep people or catch them off guard.
6. Iceball is your friend, but use it wisely.

Try to build up a good set of EQ, get a reliable source of aura, barrier, and shield, and then you can start being bold.

Having played a number of these and each with a different pk style I'd say that they can pk in almost any fashion if they are not being lagged.

Done sword plus shield plus iceball, which works ok. Sleep and spear ok, whip and offhand ok. However, part of the reason it can work is the chaos when a group is surprised.

As a Drow though I always gear like a Mage to start with.

Also change your weapons to suit the situation. Eg vs person you can't kill even if you sleep them, try cleave etc.

This is going to sound strange but I honestly don't think I'm the worst PKer, I'm just below the minimum threshold for making this combo work. I got a couple of assists when I was a super lowbie that were basically all me (landed myself a pretty pimp suit of red-gold dragon gear at level 15) and have PKed solo with the class on different characters. I'm not so clueless that I don't know that sword/shield gives the best defense, but at higher level I ran into the following problems:

800 exp penalty leads to a pretty harsh range, and when people are gearing for saves on top of that (which they do at higher levels) you're not going to land anything. There were fights I could go six rounds or more without my maledicts sticking once, and maledicts were all I had. Going the iceball route I drove people off a few times, but if they're losing they just type flee and if they aren't then, well I lose.

The biggest thing, as you both said, is getting the jump. When this happened to me (a lot) I was often dead before I had the chance to enter a command. But my RP prohibited me from attacking or even fighting in cities most of my life and I guess I don't know where goodies go to rank. There was a lot of "Everyone I see the red PK next to seems 5-9 levels higher, if I just hero maybe I'll have a chance" but it took so much con to get there that I only managed to have two fights that I was prepped going into, and I guess they were both bad matchups, but at hero basically everything is a bad matchup.

Focus less on gaining levels and more on learning layout of areas. That's key to pk. It significantly increases the odds of surprising someone and assessing the true risk (eg whether that Necro will be able to summon you into closed room).

Also good for chasing and knowing which parts of area are more exposed to ambush yourself. Also choose ground well, so that you can give yourself more time to land sleep after they enter the room etc.

Good for hiding to heal and good for walking to healer. Good for sealing kills via summon. Good for finding other people lying low. Drow ap actually stacks up quite well at hero, but it's not always suited for a toe to toe.