Alrightie....

So this is I think my third hero that went full arcane path. My experience is always the same... kind of like Lewis Black's rant on candy corn - like an Alzheimer's patient I apparently think it'll be different and it's just not. It has so much potential...*sigh*. So let's go over the specifics...

1. Lack of edges blow. The scroll saving edge is a must but...really, that's it. I even perfected lore and pen to make it better but eh, I still failed somewhat.

1a. Not letting thieves read scrolls when tanking is absolutely stupid. I had to always flee and return or have someone else infront to use any offensive scrolls. Seriously, people can use staves/wands/etc whenever why not scrolls - especially fighters who use it as a staple in their arsenal? FIX THIS PLEASE!

2. Glimpse, cute but no real point. Maybe great for a newbie but most stuff you know what's inside, and if you don't, you can usually open it by either stealing a key or killing a mob or using picklock or infiltrate. I'd say this is one of the more useless thief skills.

3. Veil of secrecy has it's uses, especially in thief wars - now if the duration would be longer I'd be happy but right now it's annoying how short it is. I'd prefer it to be a natural skill but that'd be probably asking too much.

4. Lore of the ages - the only reason I'd ever go up this path ever again. It helps with tanking by a significant amount and even though I never saw the goodies of dodging AP procs or anything (mostly since no one can play an AP like how I do, ZING!), I'd say it's worth it to this point just for this skill.

5. Veil of Souls is another letdown, I rarely used it since I didn't have many druids or conjurers chasing me around. Asking an Immortal, they said it didn't work on sight of the damned or seemingly on Imperial spies, so pretty pointless for the points.

6. Infiltrate....ok, so Zulg explained that it goes LP->INF->INF+ADV->LP+ADV. So why would anyone take this again if lockpicks work better with advanced lockpick? You can't do it in combat, it's not faster than lockpicking (actually think it's slower), takes mana...beyond the "cool" factor it's pretty pointless. Maybe combine this with glimpse at that lower rank and sure but now, no way.

7. Hypnotize - ah....how I wish you didn't suck. I did extensive testing this time around (even went borderline OOC with more than one person trying to figure it out) because surely I must be wrong that this huge point investment isn't a complete waste. BZZZ, wrong. Here's some fun effects you can do with hypnotize...

-Double movement cost
-Cause them to miss ONE attack
-Cause a random hit sometime after to cause the person to flee
-Trying to remember this one, but it was something around eating...either they couldn't eat, or got hungry or something.
-Could never figure out the others or their affect was so minimal it wasn't noticeable.
-Oh and seems quite a few mobs are immune to it

It's all pretty vague stuff and a whole lot like "burden", "hamper", "minor malison", etc. I had this cool idea of using it on someone without a blindfold being trussed...nope, combat (bleh). Oh there's probably some silly trick to it. If I got it to 100% and used it on an orc with -10 int it may do something badass like mind control but that's up to Nepenthe to abuse someday I may not have code access but I remember saying trappers were ass back in the day and they were before they got effects and the remake so take it for what it's worth. For right now I found no decent reason to do hypnosis beyond parlor tricks or screwing with someone when I could easily just do something else more useful like actually hurt them or trip them or read a scroll or call phoenix brand or....you know...*anything*.

8. Arcane vision - ya, it's detect magic and invis. I can carry less preps! Is that worth 2 points? You tell me...

Binders in general were ok - dragging was very hit or miss. Even enlarged I could barely move someone like an orc chieftain and other people like Sivyh I could drag without any lag whatsoever (I had master kidnapper). Strength has probably a component to it and weight, but enlarging did obviously help. The only real reason it worked well for me is that I had a TON of super sexy scrolls (crimson scourge, plague, poison, etc), I prepped out like crazy defensively and had super progging gear (double prayer beards, heartseeker, sword of tcar, blademaster gloves, two lightning rings, etc).

My biggest gripe about binders? If you fail bind legs or bind hands, you can't do anything else. This is not to mention all the ways you can screw with binders like...

-Out of range lowbies cutting faster than you can bind
-Vanish works while fully trussed
-Shapeshift works while fully trussed
-Invoker fire shields destroy all bindings
-You can still "invoke" or "call" while trussed (it seemed at least, may be situational)
-Even fully trussed, if your gag fails a bard can sing out of it (I understand the idea of that but it sucks still)
-A whole ton of ways they can come out of hiding from shadow drag while trussed
-Dragging someone hidden pulls them out of hiding (so shadowdrag is pretty pointless unless you're griefing them by hiding them until help arrives or you want the master kidnapper edge)

(Not to mention my last grep of the all of Zakuun's life in logs showed I did bind legs over 500 times and hit 86% I think when I had 99% bind hands which I got later...with 24 int btw. Filled a bug on that awhile ago, nothing but crickets)


Either way, it wasn't a great experience. If I did it again, I'd probably do either full binder and focus purely on playing a prog-happy necromancer-lite and work on getting parting block/etc. I'd only take arcane up to Lore of the Ages and only for someone who really needed to tank (so maybe a thug or someone who wanted to survive and took shield block). I'd probably not play a thief though, it's just not my style. The survivability is great and I was absolutely effective but it's just....meh when playing it.

Any questions, feel free to ask....

-Torak/Zakuun

Once I've got fully bound/gagged/trussed and died. I had no time to figure out how to unbind myself.

Couldn't cast/flee/do anything.

What should I do? How should I unbind myself?

Sorry if it's offtopic, but you know it for 100%

You just have to wait it out until your hands are free. Then you can untie, ungag, etc

Specifically against the mummies?

Beyond some small spam on two Fortress members, in which it really didn't improve much, it was still low in % and the one or two times I tried it against a group the other people would just follow me in. I did it I think once against Cotzibue, and he just fled back into his army.

I'd never take this again without parting block

Assuming the edge causes them confusion so "east" becomes "north" or whatever

Unless you had parting and thug skills and maybe a villager.