This is one of those things I've spent 14+ years playing and never quite figured out. I've seen it stop me resting, lower my regen but never have I managed to attribute it to anything solid. Or find any reason to target maledicting it except when I used the 'Depths of Depression' edge as Jichii (Lightning Rod!)

So I'm asking for a spoon - what kind of situations is -morale useful in, and what kind of situations is +morale useful in? What are we looking at in terms of a stat? Is it like Luck?

Thanks, anything is helpful.

The effects of morale on most characters in most situations is pretty minor. It does, for example, modify how much XP you gain a little. The exceptions to those "mosts" that I can think of are:

1) Some abilities key off morale. Orcs and champions probably have more of this stuff than everyone else put together, but for example there's Feast of Sorrows and I think Strike on the Abandoned keys off morale somewhat as well.

2) If your morale gets really low, you have some extra handicaps that other characters don't have. Problems staying asleep and problems trusting others being the big two that come to mind.

...with high morale.

Wishful thinking? Crazy RNG madness? Truth?

I'm about 98% sure it isn't a factor in skill improves.

Read that in Jim Carrey's voice from Dumb and Dumber.

The main reason why I've always thought this was because I once had a Pride sphere Kasty follower. When he tattooed me he said that the tattoo does something different for each sphere he covers and for this particular sphere it would help me be more successful landing skills. I noticed that once I had the tattoo my morale was always a tier above what it normally would be. Putting two and two together I just assumed that the bonus to morale = higher skill success rate and likely the opposite with low morale.

It made me really want to try a pride sphere assassin Kasty follower to have a beefed up assassinate skill.

Definitely doesn't affect most skills.

There's a handful of edges that play with it (and it should be pretty obvious from an edge helpfile if that's the case -- if it's not obvious, then it's not involved) but I'd be willing to bet there aren't even, say, 10 abilities outside of orcs/champions that care.

(Except indirectly, like, okay, word of recall indirectly cares that your groupmate won't trust you because of their very poor morale, but directly word of recall only cares about trust and not why you don't trust.)

Reading this, I'm having a hard time coming up with a situation where it would make any sense for a ranger to remove eq to have warpaint fire.

Sure, warpaint fits the design of the savage ranger class....but why give them a rather high level skill...if it effects almost none of their other skills...and would realistically effect pk against almost noone else in the game?

I don't really see warpaint as one of the selling points of savage ranger -- but it's mainly useful if you think one or more of the extra problems of bad morale will help you out. Often it won't be that relevant, but sometimes it is.

E.g. you're trying to kill a warrior and you're afraid the invoker in his group will word him if he's losing. Warpaint might make it so the trust for that word fails to come through at the crucial moment.

>I don't really see warpaint as one of the selling points of
>savage ranger --


You know, I've always wondered why anyone would ever play a savage the way the description of a savage indicates they should be played (i.e. mostly naked charging in with wild abandon) -- aside from style points that is. I've played more than a few savage rangers and played most of them at least half-naked purely for the style points because the warpaint and the mud smear really don't seem to do squat as far as I could ever tell. I think I've seen exactly once in a pk when low morale from warpaint caused the victim not to trust a cabal mate when they read a scroll of return at them.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of the savage ranger build and have played a bunch to hero but it's more for style than because it's a power build. I just wish the style had more substance.

Specifically it offers a minor amount of bash protection and it's handy against assassins.

The confusing part about it is that the benefits that smear mud gives typically is against classes you already have hefty advantages against. An enlarged giant ranger doesn't have too much to worry about from a Greeting RBW, even if bearcharging him back isn't the best of ideas. And even the best of assassins 9 times out of 10 are going to find they aren't allowed to get in a single command, this is how I would wipe the floor with Graatch's rager pillar assassin even in group battles and would become a higher priority target than even the mages behind me.

What would really improve the usefulness of smear mud is if having smear mud on your legs would allow the entwined flail to slip off you and become disarmed from your opponent. Rangers really could use that surprise boost to force flail specs to look for the 'Muddy' aura. And if it's ever tweaked to do that, it needs to go in the helpfile.

Since morale seems to have become a bigger focus for things in recent times (the past 2 years) is it likely to become a bigger deal in the future? Would you enjoy some ideas that consider morale thrown toward your creative pond for consideration?

Thanks for the spoon, it actually helped put morale in place a lot.

Yhorian