Mon Sep 7 23:07:33 2009

At 11 o'clock AM, Day of the Moon, 21st of the Month of the Shadows
on the Theran calendar Inverek perished, never to return.

Hadn't played a caballed character in a lonnng time, and in a lot of ways its more fun, but burns you out quicker too. getting wrathed by any of 8 paladins logged will do that too.

what really did it tho, was all the f'ing walking. Looking for stupid sorryass limited scrolls, grabbing trap ingredients, looking for enemies, gathering gold. i also realized pk'ing is more about competiveness and a high tolerance for walking all over creation than anything. anyway, went out of town for a week for work, came back and had no urge to login. i feel free.

i don't know how you can put this many hours into a character and come away with virtually no friends, but i pretty much accomplished that. so... only farewells are to tarleton, the best bard since amberlea, and dupmasione, whom i had fun revealing my incompetence to.

if anyone is interested in trappers, i'll respond.

Aww. You were bound for great things. I wish you didn't stop showing up. Thanks for the compliment, and I hope your next character requires less walking.

I really enjoyed fighting against you in the mid ranges up to hero. You made me wish we had more asasssins/thieves in the Isle, that's for sure. Good luck with the next.

I've heard from Mek that the neo-trapper skills and trappers in general suck. Thoughts?

A mixed bag. With new paths, traps would work great as a supplement to another path if you give up cheap shot.

Biggest thing, knock out trap was changed to trigger the physical sleep protection timer whether it hits or misses. I was expecting to jack after a missed ko trap, and couldn't and was so confused until i figured this out. So, KO trap went from a nice maybe to a "i'll screw myself over if I even try to use it".

Damage traps, you need to get the damage trap % up to get those maledicts to hit reliably. Not stated in help, you just have to spam traps all over and get your % into 90's. Even glowing trap will have some effects when up high. Mughol didn't get his %'s up very high.

The traps last a long time, and your own timer for setting them gets lower the higher you rank. at 48 i had a 1 hrs timer (2 hrs) and could stack a buttload of traps up. with preparation and craftiness you can find a good spot to waylay and backstab someone, they flee into the traps and boom. i never was able to pull this off, no patience to find a hunting spot, or too many groups, etc. One trap will usually dismember or mangle, which seems to suck, but when stack them up you're looking at a flurry with no risk to you, and then add maledicts and it gets fun.

The other skills had their uses. Stench cloud is faerie fog and bad for bards. very handy in woods. blister agent seemed like a softer immolate, was very nice. abrasive powder, i never figured out what it did, except they couldn't sleep. i thought they'd incur damage or lose moves if they walked, but didn't seem to be the case. smoke cloud prevents scanning, which is very handy, and with grease weapon is great too. lag is way too long on it though. smoke lasts 1 tick, fails alot until perfected. didn't seem to make it harder to flee at all. and bag of tricks... i was never able to perfect it. you can get bleeding (which gets stronger as either the % or your rank goes up, not sure), faerie fire, or blinding, or just a MUTILATE with no effects. imo it needs to have the three things land much more often to be useful. i didn't get pepper dust.

burst trap will hit anyone in the room when triggered. doesn't hit whole group when it walks in. victim yells. direction trap, they don't yell, and are only ones hit.

ingredients are a hell of a lot easier to find than scrolls and preps. ones you buy are often just as good as what you might find. timer of affects can vary. i'm never taking scrolls again without arcane lore.

and for fun, maledicts i found are poison, blind, impale, hamper/bleeding, immolate, boneshatter, entangle, and mist of illusions. never found no forget ingredients.

traps are lots of fun, but you get so caught up in finding things and testing that you never get in any fights. In many ways Empire is an ideal cabal for a trapper theif, but being orderly I couldn't just sit on eastern road and F up anyone who passed through. Maybe I could of, but not Inverek.

btw, I highly suggest someone go binder up to tie, then go to direction trap. You might be able to kill someone without laying a finger on them.

also, if you fight lotsa marans and outlanders, you better take weapontrip.