Well, Selina has met a rather sad and untimely end. I was down to 4 con, and about to start working up a request for a Vitality Quest. I quit out (at least I'm pretty sure I did), and then somehow, my character got reconnected without me realizing it. So I sat there watching movies while my WHERE timer fired off every 6 seconds, keeping me from voiding until I starved to death. Of the 3 deaths I had left, I know that at least one of them was due to starvation. The first of those three, I can't be sure what killed me because it was beyond the history of my screen buffer. The second death was definitely due to hunger/thirst, and the third death was a rager cranialing me while I sat naked and unresponsive at the pit. Second cranial knocked me out. Soon as that wore off and I was able to wake, the third cranial woke me and I was done before the lag wore off so that I might wimpy, and that was my final death. I only know what happened because it was still in my screen buffer. Once my con-loss ghost time was up, the mud disconnected me and then my client software tried to reconnect, failed and dinged at me as it got disconnected again, then tried to reconnect, and this process repeated rapidly, causing a crazy number of rapid dings on my computer, alerting me to the fact that SOMETHING was going wrong. I minimized my movie window and saw the repeated disconnects. But the time I was able to interrupt the process, half my screen buffer had been filled with connection screens and I lost the rest of what happened.

Pretty frustrated with going out in this fashion, since I was having a lot of fun with Selina. I've been around on CF since the very end of the Second Age, but this is the first Fortress character I've had who actually got promoted since Fortress promotions first went in. I'm not quite sure what made this character stand out more than any previous Fortress characters I've played, since I did all the same Fortressy activities with this one as my last ones, who all reached old age before I either deleted or con-died. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed being a full Acolyte. I've always wanted to use Altruism in conjuction with a regen form, which I got to do during my last (active) login. I also thoroughly enjoyed Curse of Radiance, though I wish I'd had more opportunity to use it and see it reach it's full potential. I only had opportunity to use it on Rodacir and Keilheil. Rodacir only once while I was fighting him and two other Imperials, and Keilheil a few times, but most of those times he just ran away.

Which bring me to my next thought on this character. I'm shocked at how many people just run in fear at the Vulture form. It's really not all that frightening of a form. It dodges the same as the Falcon and Eagle, but hits for 2 MASSACRES or DISMEMBERS each round, instead of 2 MANGLES or ***DEMOS*** like the falcon and eagle can do. The scariest thing about it the pouncing when its prey gets down to writhing. But given the weakened attacks it has compared to all other air forms besides the bat and hummingbird, there is a lot of opportunity to DO SOMETHING to the vulture long before you get down to writhing. Now, I realize that if you stick around long enough, I also had a lobster form I could switch to, which hits a bit harder and can lag you somewhat, but it's always possible to run away during the lag of shapeshifting.

Goodbyes

Enemies:

Grondarg: Out of every enemy I had to deal with, you were without doubt THE MOST annoying. Prior to entering your pk range, I would log in with the orb gone, and literally spend the entire session doing nothing but retrieving it over and over and over. Once I finally entered your pk range, and had sufficient mastery of my forms and access to enough protection, I could at least stop you from successfully raiding if you were alone. But it only ever lasted as long as it took for you to go enslave another giant and come back. So then all my login sessions became consumed with fending you off. There was so much more I wanted to do with this character, but didn't get the chance because I spent around 75% or more of my gametime after induction dealing with you or all the other evils you would call in to deal with me since you couldn't most of the time. I know you were very irritated by me taking things from your corpse that I couldn't use myself, or couldn't put to GOOD use myself, but it was the only thing I had at my disposal to slow you down in your relentless attacks on the Fortress. Most of the time when I logged on, the orb was with Tremblefist, unless someone else in the Fort was already logged in before me. As a player, I generally try not to take many things from a victim, but that kind of relentlessness borders on griefing, especially when you were carrying enough elf blood that you could flee from me gushing blood, or even writhing, and within one to two rounds, come back fully healed. You're clearly a skilled player and pk'er, and I enjoyed the challenge of fighting you. I just wanted to actually do SOMETHING ELSE once in a while also. I also found it rather odd how many other evils came running to your call, who should have been more prone to being an enemy rather than an ally; Imperials and evil Magistrates who should be more concerned with order than helping a chaotic orc.

Worthag:
You were a freaking BEAST dude. I rarely had trouble dealing with Grondarg, but you were a whole other story. I only managed to drive you back a handful of times, but you came so close to killing me many times. I think the only time(s) you ever succeeded was with you and Grondarg together. But if we were fighting one on one, either I would drive you back, or you would drive me back. I really had to bring my A-game to deal with you, and it would only take one slip up to bring me close to death with you.

Empire:
Most of you just ran from me right from the start with the exception of your shamans and Rodacir, unless you could fight me two against one.

Keilheil:
Kudos on finally growing a pair and standing to fight outside Hamsah during our last battle. One of your iceballs drained me for 200 movement in a single hit and left me too exhausted to use pinch or fly away. I was also down to less than 50 mana, so I couldn't recall either. Fortunately, I remembered I had an orb of travel, and got out. Good fight though!

Allies

So many here I'm not going to name them all. For the sake of brevity, I'll just mention a few.

Balgrum:
Loved all of our interactions. Really disappointed I didn't get to make it to the Silent Tower with you. I had plans to make that a reality, but the unfortunate events of last night sorta cut those plans short. Maybe in my next incarnation.

Imryll:
I started boosting you up from very low levels, and then we got to hang out and do stuff together in hero ranges. Loved having you around to provide some extra damage output so I could stay in the more defensive vulture form and leave off the lobster.

Kanlax:
I think you were my favorite character to group with, even though we didn't do a whole lot together. It was great having you around for two reasons. First, of all the characters I grouped with, you seemed the most knowledgeable about the game and areas, so I didn't have to take the lead all the time. Second, your build allowed me to not have to take front all the time, and we could switch off in front for really tough fights. I wish we could have done more together. You did, however, inspire me to roll up a centaur the next time they're available. Seeing your build in action gave me some great ideas for a similar, but not identical build that I think would be awesome.


Thoughts on my forms:
I got pretty lucky with my forms. I only rolled an elf shifter in order to guarantee a regen form. I figured if I didn't get caiman, crag soarer, or sea snake, I could just switch to pseudodragon. Fortunately, I lucked out and got both caiman AND crag soarer. Was disappointed that I didn't learn the snake snake also. Mako shark with bloodfrenzy remained useful for frenzy, but otherwise never got used much. When I got my final air form, I was SUPER glad I didn't have to take pseudodragon. My first attempt at final air form was vampire bat. I've had it before, and I think it is an absolutely terrible form. Can't defend for crap. Can't do offense for crap. It's basically pure utility and can fly also. By not having to take pseudodragon, I had enough edge points to switch out the bat, and I got the vulture. Eagle and vulture were my two top choices for air forms, with horned owl third, simply because I've never had it, but I've had a few characters killed by it before. As I mentioned above, vulture is a nice form, but not as scary as everyone makes it out to be. It doesn't hit as hard as falcon, eagle, or horned owl, so you can typically survive long enough do something to it. As with any air form, break its bones, make it bleed, maladict it any way you can, and it suddenly becomes very easy to run from if you don't think you can outlast it. Area spells won't be dodged well if you're looking for unavoidable damage.

My decision to keep lobster was really a gamble. I have never had it before, and never seen it in action from anyone else. I'd HEARD it was supposed to be a good form, but really had no idea. Overall, I was pretty satisfied with it. Especially as an Acolyte, it fit perfectly (though I never got very much chance to make use of it in the context of Acolyte). Significant damage reduction, carapace to deflect blows (including basic hits), minor dodge, 2 to 4 hits per round for MANGLE or ***DEMOLISH*** (usually just MANGLE and usually just 2 per round, sometimes 3, and rarely 4). Molt to cure/reduce duration of poison and disease. Pinch for trip lag. This was also my biggest complaint about the form, though. Pinch was kinda the suck. When it landed, it was nice for the extra two hits, and near as I could tell, trip lag. The problem was, using it drains movement and self-lags for 3 rounds while the enemy is only lagged for 2. Those things alone wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't for the fact that pinch missed roughly 40% - 50% of the time. When you DO land it, your enemy still recovers before you, and when you DON'T land it, your enemy has 3 rounds to F* you up while you're trying to recover. Or they have three rounds of time to run away while you're still in lobster form, PLUS the extra time it takes to shift into vulture form to pursue. Or they could use those three rounds to flee and return with an opening move. During my last active login, I fought Keilheil, and for once, he finally decided to stay and fight, rather than just run away. Since I was used to him just running and never even trying to fight, I didn't bother to fully prep. Once I got into lobster form, I was doing well until one of his iceballs drained 200 movement from me, leaving me too low on movement to use pinch. Without pinch to slow him down in doing things to me, I started losing ground fast. Fortunately, this time I remembered I had an orb of travel in my floating chest, and had already set up an alias to get it out and hold it quickly, so I did a quick revert/alias(g orb chest;hold orb) to escape before I died. Only other complaint about lobster is that it costs 100 mana per tick to remain in form while on land. I could cut that in half with Spirit of the Thunderhawk, but doing so sacrificed a lot of defense from Deftness of the Falson. So if I was using lobster on land, I couldn't maintain the form for very long. In PK, that was very problematic against foes that could energy drain.

I bearcharged you to death that night and saw you didn't come back to your corpse and felt pretty bad you were afk. But it was the first time I even got a chance to fight you after ~200 hours of looking for you. Didn't multi-kill you and told other people you were AFK so they don't kill you. Sorry it was a con-death but you seemed like a good player and hope to see you again in the next life.

It was Lidrimil who took my last death while I was sitting at the pit in Voralian.


I'm not surprised that you never found me in over 200 hours of searching. I rarely walked anywhere. My main reason was to avoid assassination attempts by Tiiga, but my secondary reason was to avoid conflict with ragers, who Selina saw as misguided, but not evil. The only time I ever allowed ragers to engage with me was when Burwell raided the Fortress for me, even pressing to the Watcher. That ended pretty badly for him, with 2 deaths and a few pieces of lost gear, but was REALLY bad for the midbie orc who tried to take advantage of the chaos inside, and got himself killed at the watcher. Then when Burwell got back after his second death, he full sacced the orc for some reason. I don't know if he thought it was gear belonging to one of us, or what. I felt bad for the orc.

I saw you around on the ground quite often. Occasionally, you walked into an area where I was on the ground, but I usually just took to the skies before you got near.

>It was Lidrimil who took my last death while I was sitting at
>the pit in Voralian.
>
>
>I'm not surprised that you never found me in over 200 hours of
>searching. I rarely walked anywhere. My main reason was to
>avoid assassination attempts by Tiiga, but my secondary reason
>was to avoid conflict with ragers, who Selina saw as
>misguided, but not evil. The only time I ever allowed ragers
>to engage with me was when Burwell raided the Fortress for me,
>even pressing to the Watcher. That ended pretty badly for him,
>with 2 deaths and a few pieces of lost gear, but was REALLY
>bad for the midbie orc who tried to take advantage of the
>chaos inside, and got himself killed at the watcher. Then when
>Burwell got back after his second death, he full sacced the
>orc for some reason. I don't know if he thought it was gear
>belonging to one of us, or what. I felt bad for the orc.
>
>I saw you around on the ground quite often. Occasionally, you
>walked into an area where I was on the ground, but I usually
>just took to the skies before you got near.

Setting aside the rather narrow version of how things are good or bad - I killed two of you as well - no, I didn't full sac him, or anyone else, ever. You lied about it in-game, and maybe that somehow fit your elf rp in some weird way, but lying about it now, as the player, is just bizarre and honestly more than a little disturbing. What happened, as you know perfectly well, was that I emptied his sack and destroyed all the magic. All the potions, pills, herbs, stuff like that. His gear was virtually all non-magic, and I didn't touch it. Which again you knew then and know now. So yeah, really ####ed up to say #### like that.

I was taking the word of others who WERE standing right there. I had flown off to Voralian to heal up, and was waiting for you to leave the Fortress before I came back. I really felt bad about pk'ing you that second time when you had just come back for your things, not realizing that's all you were doing, and didn't want to provoke another confrontation. So while I was waiting on Voralia's tears, I was receiving updates from others who were standing there. Since I was receiving the same information from multiple people, I trusted that it was accurate. I wasn't lying in the game or here. I was simply passing on the information that was relayed to me by multiple sources, which one would assume would be credible. But then, we all know what happens when one ASS U MEs things.

>I emptied his sack and destroyed all the magic. All the potions,
>pills, herbs, stuff like that. His gear was virtually all non-magic,
>and I didn't touch it. Which again you knew then and know now. So
>yeah, really ####ed up to say #### like that.

Wow. What a ####. Die in a fire with Lilyth, Flaaayin and all other prep bag saccers.

..when he complains about a thief stealing stuff from him. What a chucklehead.

NT

I doesn't take a lot to drive some people away these days. Losing a prep bag can do it for someone who is on the fence already.

I do really resent some of the currently active characters for doing that on a regular basis.

nt

Had no idea you died so much. I feel we did not work together as often as we could. I do a who elf often and lately you would be there as a quiet reassurance. I did plan to talk shop and elf, but I suppose it took too long. Glwyn!

Most of my deaths were mob-deaths, and most of them were on my way up to Hero. I also didn't bother saving any training sessions for con, but dumped them all into HP much earlier in the game. I tended to take a lot of risks, both for myself and for the sake of others. If someone in my group did something stupid that might get them killed, I tended to jump in to save them, even though it might cost me a death for myself. I also ate some stupid deaths that never should have happened if I had been thinking, both to PK (like getting energy drained until I had no mana to maintain form and no movement to escape, and then sitting there waiting to die instead of grabbing my orb of travel from my chest)as well as to PvE. Several times, I played while very tired and started falling asleep at my keyboard in some dangerous area. Stupid stuff like that. Most of the stupid deaths happened early on, but there were a few later also. I was always glad to see you on, even though we didn't get as much time to hang around together as I would have liked.

>Well, Selina has met a rather sad and untimely end. I was
>down to 4 con, and about to start working up a request for a
>Vitality Quest. I quit out (at least I'm pretty sure I did),
>and then somehow, my character got reconnected without me
>realizing it. So I sat there watching movies while my WHERE
>timer fired off every 6 seconds, keeping me from voiding until
>I starved to death. Of the 3 deaths I had left, I know that at
>least one of them was due to starvation. The first of those
>three, I can't be sure what killed me because it was beyond
>the history of my screen buffer. The second death was
>definitely due to hunger/thirst, and the third death was a
>rager cranialing me while I sat naked and unresponsive at the
>pit. Second cranial knocked me out. Soon as that wore off and
>I was able to wake, the third cranial woke me and I was done
>before the lag wore off so that I might wimpy, and that was my
>final death. I only know what happened because it was still in
>my screen buffer. Once my con-loss ghost time was up, the mud
>disconnected me and then my client software tried to
>reconnect, failed and dinged at me as it got disconnected
>again, then tried to reconnect, and this process repeated
>rapidly, causing a crazy number of rapid dings on my computer,
>alerting me to the fact that SOMETHING was going wrong. I
>minimized my movie window and saw the repeated disconnects.
>But the time I was able to interrupt the process, half my
>screen buffer had been filled with connection screens and I
>lost the rest of what happened.

I can't begin to say how many people I've seen in my short few years as an Imm that I've seen lose con to something so lazy as where or eat/drink triggers. Unfortunately, I've little sympathy when people die to their own laziness, whatever mishap prompted it. Technically, it's even against the rules (and I have seen people slain over it, though it's often followed by someone disconnecting said person so as not to continue the loop), so I would rather advise either just set up a simple alias or just take the half second to type it by hand. Hell, I still spam it at least once a conversation on AIM or gchat.

And I say "Because some stupid game ruined my brain and I must type it every 15 seconds or my fingers feel weird".

I have the timer set for every 6 seconds, with an alias to turn off the timer, and another alias to turn it on. When pk combat begins, I immediately turn off the timer, and leave it off until all pk related activities are finished so the timer doesn't interfere with other things like being lagged to death (If I only have time to squeeze in one command every couple rounds, I don't want that command to be WHERE).

Jormyr, I used to not use a timer for WHERE, but the problem I always ran into is that my ADHD reverses when I'm playing CF. Instead of being distracted, I become hyper-focused on whatever it is that I'm actively engaged at in the game, until 10 minutes have gone by and I haven't typed WHERE even once. I've certainly been saved by the timer far more than I've been killed by it. It's literally the ONLY thing I have automated. Everything else is run by aliases or "send to output" triggers like highlights and stuff (as opposed to "send to game" triggers).

In spite of having the WHERE timer, I still often type it manually, when I don't want to wait 6 seconds to check for danger. Six seconds can be a very long time, depending on where you are. Six seconds is enough for a rager to spot me at the Auction Block from The Lane and be one step south of me before I even realize he's there. Then by the time I react, I'm already being bashed, cranial'd, or pincered and it's over. Consequently, I too end up typing WHERE in chat conversations, but not so often as 6 to 15 seconds; maybe just once or twice per conversation.

What I SHOULD have done is turn on my auditory alert for starving. If I'd had that on, I would have been notified immediately the first time I was starving. I also need to turn back on my auditory alert for when I'm attacked. Somehow, both of those were turned off, so I never realized my character had been erroneously logged back in.

Problem solved.

Also remove any auto login feature.

nt

Selina was so nice, helpful and knowledgeable too. Will miss having you around, but I'm glad someone noticed and you got to play with Acolyte powers too, if but a little.

Thanks a lot for your thoughts on the forms, too. GLWN!

I'll wait on my goodbye thread to say more. Sad I got forgotten on your goodbyes. But I definitely enjoyed my time with you. You brought it back to a place where the fun was endless. I always love when you encounter that one player who you just mesh well with. I was always excited to see Selina on.

Grondarg is doing us all a great favor by pushing cabal raids. If you're irritated - don't defend and don't retrieve. That kind of behavior is not frowned upon nowadays, and even less for an Acolyte.

So calling him a griefer is well... strange on your behalf.


As for the running from vultures. My characters are definitely on the list. The reason is simple - it's not vulture everyone flees from, it's fight on your conditions. When you unexpectedly flyto and bloodypeck, you either flee or die. So if you can't chase people after putting them into a situation that screams for running away - just deal with it. At the same time, many times when I was prepared for the vulture to come in order to kick his ass indefinitely - somehow you wouldn't come. I blame this on vultures being sissies

He's giving you free edge points for retrieving. You've no idea how much I wanted people to raid when I played tsalantha. But for my first 500 hrs or so no one did. I never got to use Revenants aggressively either.

It's good when people raid solo unless they are just doing it to multikill you.

I understand that retrieving from a cabal brings edge points at certain tiers of retrievals, but what about retrieving from Tremblefist? Retrieving from a cabal, you get cabal xp upon success. But when retrieving from Tremblefist, there IS no cabal xp. Moreover, ANY item held by Tremblefist is returned when he dies, not just your own. So that leaves me wondering if retrieving from Tremblefist counts toward retrieval edge points at all. I asked this once on the newbie channel, but no one seemed to know the answer. Perhaps an Imm would care to weigh in on this?

It seems to me that retrieving from Tremblefist SHOULD give something for the efforts, especially since it can sometimes be harder to retrieve from Tremblefist than it is from another cabal. It just doesn't seem right that a person might have to spend their entire game session retrieving and then get nothing for it other than their powers back. Would love to hear some Imm input/feedback on this.

Tremblefist isn't that hard, and I suppose I'm of the opinion that retrieving from him not being more of a reward than it inherently is helps to balance the fact that if an orc takes your item and down its and then quits, odds are your item is going to go undefended for a very long time.

NT

As I mentioned previously, it isn't a matter of "orc times item then quits." It's a matter of "orc takes item, then hides in orc village for RL hours waiting for someone to come try to retrieve because they THINK he has quit. If retriever is in orc's pk range, then orc has opportunity to try to pk retriever. If retriever is not in orc's pk range, OR if orc is unable to fend of retriever alone, orc calls in assistance from whatever evil character is on who is able to harm retriever, even if said evil SHOULD be diametrically opposed to orc, but they come anyway because they want a chance to pk retriever also. And this continues until either retriever is dead, or item is eventually retrieved. Once retrieved, orc will then go about trying to take said item yet again, and repeat defensive tactics. If retriever has none at all to oppose in retrieval, then orc begins weakening cabal inner while retriever works on tremblefist. Once item is retrieved, orc immediately finishes cabal inner and takes item back again, and repeats process over and over until someone logs on who wants to kill retriever."

This is cabal wars at its height, not at all what you described. I actually had a much easier time retrieving from Empire with Empire defending than I did retrieving from Tremblefist with Grondarg defending. Ultimately, I was successful in retrieval more often than not, but that success often came at the expense of several hours of game play doing nothing but trying to retrieve. I lost count of the number of times I logged in with the orb in orc village, no other Fortress around, and no orc in sight. I land in orc village, hit Tremblefist, and seconds later Grondarg is on me. This means he took the orb when the Fortress was undefended, then sat around hidden in the orc village, just waiting for someone to come retrieve. I would be totally ok with this if, as others have said, it counts toward retrieval totals for accumulating edge points. But based on your post, it sounds like there is no reward whatsoever for retrieving from Tremblefist other than getting your powers back. If that's the case, then I have a choice of either, A.) play without powers for some indeterminate time while I wait for orc thumb to come out of orc butt to be certain that the orc village is undefended, or B.) spend the entire game session doing nothing but retrieve my item until I'm out of time to play, and then log off, having never accomplished a single thing, since the powers served no purpose because it took my entire play time just to get them back. Of course, this situation was compounded of Worthag was on also. The only occurrence that could change this entire process was if someone logged on who was willing to help me retrieve, either another Fort person, or someone non-evil from Outlander usually. Occasionally I'd get someone else like Kanlax or Selionar, but those opportunities for me were usually pretty rare. Mostly, it was solo retrieval every time I was on.

Because you really don't have to, as an acolyte. We're not here to grief or frustrate you, retrieval is your choice.

>A.) play without powers
>for some indeterminate time while I wait for orc thumb to come
>out of orc butt to be certain that the orc village is
>undefended, or B.)......

He's much harder than other outers which only do melee attacks.

I wouldn't put him on a par with other inners but he's tougher than other outers.

Even with no defenders a low-mid level character can't kill him with the same ease that he could any normal outer. The mob frequently plagues, etc.

It is super frustrating to retrieve from GSV, x 3 when anyone in your pk range knows the orcs have your item.

I wish there was a stat you could grep for player frustration to get a real idea about such situations since you can't pull from experience. Other IMMs don't count because most of the ones you go to are still newbs. >=)

Is there any chance you'd consider allowing retrieval from Tremblefist to count as part of the retrieval totals for edge points? It just doesn't seem right that a given build (orc) can take away cabal powers repeatedly and/or hold them away without any reward for retrieving repeatedly. Not to mention the fact that ANYONE can give an item to Tremblefist, knowing that it'll be harder to retrieve from an undefended Tremblefist (sanctuary, dispel, plague, blind, poison, damnation, curse, self-healing while retriever tries to recover) than it would be to retrieve from an undefended outer guardian of any other cabal.

There was a discussion about this topic when Jermet/Kobuk were having their stride.

Please?

You get no edge points. You get no cabal xp. The only thing you get is the xp you would get for killing the mob.

What's not been discussed is how this is near certain death for anyone other than hero ragers. It's crazy that no edge points and no cabal xp is given for retrieval from Tremblefist. Simply being in the orc village gives you plague, even if you don't fight a single thing.

Shouldn't be a discussion. It's a cabal item retrieval harder than any other retrieval. If anything it should give MORE cabal xp and edge points than other retrievals, let alone none at all.

So it balances out that way

Or powers to lose, so the fact that they don't gain edge points for retrieval does not balance things out. In that respect, they are just like any other uncaballed character.

Even though it may be "more acceptable" to not retrieve these days in comparison to 10 years ago, not retrieving also doesn't do anything to show your character is worthy of promotion, whereas retrieving counts toward earning your promotion. So the argument that "you don't HAVE to retrieve" is rather irrelevant. Recognizing this fact brings us to the fact that without an item or powers to lose, orcs also have no NEED to retrieve anything, once again, just like an uncaballed character. So basically, orcs are uncaballed characters who have the ability to directly affect the cabal wars. With other uncaballed characters who want to hinder one cabal, they have to rely on another cabal to accept the item. Orcs don't have to do that. They can just hold the item themselves. But in all other ways, they are just uncaballed characters. This is basically just giving a boon to orcs, allowing them to hold cabal items. Therefore, orcs are not "disadvantaged" in the edge point arena as a result of not being able to retrieve, but rather, they are an uncaballed character who has an extra privilege that other uncaballed characters don't have.

To be worthy of promotion you should be able to retrieve. If you struggle - then you're not worthy, it's pretty simple. Also as a shifter, you are not very gear-dependent, so going for reckless retrievals should be fun as well. Nothing like a feeling of accomplishment after retrieving against three defenders (of course even more so if you manage to stay alive).

You don't show your worth just by attempting and failing. So if your motivation with retrieval is "getting promotion" - then It's better not to retrieve if you struggle and do not like the process. Feeling obliged to retrieve and suffering because of that doesn't help your gaming experience really.

Umiron suggested that no reward was necessary for retrieving from Tremblefist because 1.) he's not *THAT* hard to retrieve from, and 2.) If orc takes item and quits, your item will be undefended for a long time (implying: Therefore, retrieval won't be very hard). But my whole point is that neither of these situations is actually true, and retrieving from Tremblefist is actually the HARDEST retrieval in the game. First, because Tremblefist is a shaman with perma-sanc and uses blind, poison, plague, weaken, dispel (knocking out most of your own protections), damnation, divine anger, energy drain, fatigue, etc... And second because there isn't currently a situation where "orc takes item then quits". It's Orc takes item, then hides in village pretending to have quit, when really he's just waiting for someone to come retrieve so he can pk them while they're fighting Tremblefist with all the shamany goodness raining down on them (like dispel to drop flight and bash protections, as well as energy drain so you can't stay in form very long).

And don't give me this crap about shapeshifters not being very gear dependent. They absolutely are. They may not need +hit/dam for an offensive form, or a weapon and shield to defend themselves, but mages don't get very much HP, and in this situation, even with full a/b/s/stone skin, protection evil, favor of the sun (called before losing the orb), significant damage reduction (from lobster form) minor dodge, deftness of the falcon (to enhance dodge and give evasion), and resist negative (for use against Grondarg and Worthag's negative energy weapons they loved so much), they were still burning through my 1050 hp pretty dang fast. If I had only basic hp mage gear (snow worm gear, rose rings, etc...) I would have only had around 750 hp. and would have died long before making either of them run off, even if they were solo. The only saving grace I had was that orcs defend with their faces, so as long as I could keep my hits aimed at the player instead of his slave or Tremblefist, I was ok (with 1k hp). And that was only true if I only had ONE person defending against me instead of two, AND as long as I fought in lobster form where I was immune to spinebreak. If I tried to fight in vulture form, they'd just repeatedly spinebreak/trample, spinebreak/trample until flight and control translucence were down, then bash/savage feeding me to death.

So was I able to retrieve against defenders? Yes. Was it so easy that it need not be rewarded with retrieval edge points or cabal exp? Absolutely not! I rarely had to retrieve from Scarabs or Empire because orcs ALMOST always had the orb. And on the few occasions where I DID have to retrieve from Scarabs or Empire, it was much easier to do so. I could just use hit and run tactics with lobster for heavy damage, and unless the enemy had a healer around, any damage I did would stick. Unlike with Tremblefist who heals himself while you're away, so you have to start over from the beginning if the defender forces you to fall back repeatedly. And unlike other characters who, when you force THEM to fallback to heal and they need several hours to run to a healer, heal up, and come back, the orc just spams DRINK BLOODY as fast as he can tap the ENTER key to be fully healed within a few rounds and not giving you a chance to do more damage to Tremblefist in the meantime.

>To be worthy of promotion you should be able to retrieve. If
>you struggle - then you're not worthy, it's pretty simple.
>Also as a shifter, you are not very gear-dependent, so going
>for reckless retrievals should be fun as well. Nothing like a
>feeling of accomplishment after retrieving against three
>defenders (of course even more so if you manage to stay
>alive).
>
>You don't show your worth just by attempting and failing. So
>if your motivation with retrieval is "getting promotion" -
>then It's better not to retrieve if you struggle and do not
>like the process. Feeling obliged to retrieve and suffering
>because of that doesn't help your gaming experience really.

None of this takes ragers into account. Virtually impossible to retrieve. No xp. And with the plague, even if you either don't die outright to it or other maledicts, and even if nobody happens to check the area and see you sitting there and kills you with a feather because you're a total sitting duck, it still sucks because you have to sit there for 50+hours waiting off a plague that leaves you with no movement. It can take 2+ real hours to retrieve as a rager, even if you don't die. And even in the 30s and low 40s. Forget the 20s.

It absolutely should be treated like any other retrieval as it's infinitely more difficult than any other retrieval for ragers.

Athioles would've said that orcs should only be allowed to raid village though

Being a rager saves you from many other hassles, but adds some new ones. Balance.

And I'm certain you weren't trying to imply such. Just pointing it out in case anyone didn't understand that themselves.

Encourage them to die more.

Pretty sure that got changed a few years back. FYI.

No other outer could do that to a hero.

My comments about people running from vulture wasn't because I couldn't chase. Though in most instances, the "running" part was usually a teleport spell/potion followed by quickly getting to an area not visible from the sky. I know the vast majority of those areas, but being an Acolyte instead of a Maran, PK wasn't my primary focus, so I didn't want to go to the effort of tracking people down in all the out-of-the-way places.

As for not coming for you when you were prepared for me, without knowing who you were, I really couldn't give the specific reasons. In general, however, my primary focus was on helping out lower level goodies. For the most part, if there were lower level goodies logged on, and evils in pk range, I would ignore the evils and go help the goodies. There were some exceptions to this, but that was my general practice. Also, I seemed to have absolutely atrocious luck with my sleek black locations being in places that I either couldn't get myself, or had no idea where they were for a very long time. As a result, I relied heavily on non-sleek barrier source, which, in time, thoroughly dried up on me except for one which was good only, but usually tough to get to. So, it could be that I was busy helping lowbies, or I had insufficient protections, or it might also have been that I was dealing with orcs the entire time so couldn't divert my attention elsewere (unless you were one of those orcs).