Your advice and your help

[Tenko]

Hello,

I'm not sure how to start this. I want to know if there is anyone else who feels as I do. And what advice you might have.

I hate PK. I like mudding. I like TFC folks in my following. But I hate being Pk'd. I beginning to think there is no point staying around TFC.

I can't xp, not solo anyways. Wasn't there an idea floating around to make PK optional? Was that idea declined?

Anybody else out there who hates PK, too? If you do, then what makes you stay with TFC?

Just want to hear your opinions. Thanks

Tenko

[Kylor]

A big part of the PK thing Tenko is the challenge in learning how to avoid being PKed. So there is an element of risk added to all the things about the game that you enjoy. I can teach you everything you need to know wo avoid being killed. Once you know and practice these things then the only time you should die is when you are willingly taking big risks. Find my in game and I'll begin your lessons.

[Rhysling]

Hey Tenko, you look to be a Ranger-Mage (17/20 from the newspage). The best things I can tell you, especially when fighting a cleric that has just summoned you, are:
1. Keep your defensive spells up. You've got Stone Skin and Shield, which will buy you an extra moment to run.
2. If you're not ready for it, teleport out. Yeah, it can put you in a bad room, but what're the odds you'll end up in a worse situation (unless you're as unlucky as me)? Either cast it yourself or use a potion.
3. If you've got one, use a high-level teleport wand on them. If it didn't work on them, zap yourself with it.
4. Darkness and Jump are your friends (as soon as Rhysling gets high enough, I'll probably have him learn Darkness, but I've got 30+ charges of it right now).
5. Keep Pass Door up whenever you're in an area that has doors. If you get summoned into a room with one exit and it's got a door, you're SOL without it. Edit: I'm pretty sure fleeing with pass door up in a closed room will work, haven't tried it in a while so I don't remember.
6. Make an alias for getting away when you're attacked. Mine is RHL (Run Like Hell): flee; c dark; quaff 2.vial/recall. (Just don't get it mixed up with a non-mage character, my shaman has "flee;c cloak; quaff 2.vial/recall")

Why quaff 2.vial or 2.recall? If someone hands you a scroll of recall or a different vial, you're in for a world of hurt if they can catch up to you. And if you've got teleport potions, you can use "quaff 2.red". Just in case you get handed a red cap or red robe or a blood red potion.

But to avoid fights entirely, keep an eye on "whozone" or "whoz" and know what your range is. Since you happen to be a mage, I won't mention keeping detect invis up, but that doesn't really help with hidden players.
Use Alarm! But not on the major roads. For example, if you're in Delving, don't Alarm Thalos Pass. Alarm the rooms starting a couple rooms in from it. All Alarming the major roads does is let people know someone is there.
Sac your corpses. If there's a cleric or mage using locate object, they'll be able to find you through it if they're persistent and lucky. Yes, info might catch you eventually, but it might buy some more time.
Learn new areas that aren't frequented by others.

As Algenara frequently says: If you get attacked, run away. It's likely your opponent is better prepared than you.

[Tenko]

Sounds good. I'll look for you when I'm on.

[Tenko]

Great advice and good tips to know! My flee trigger just wasn't working for some dumb reason. But with this new information I'll re-do my triggers asap. Thanks bunches, Rhysling.

[Rhysling]

You may want to vary the numbers on what you quaff. Just in case.

[Eathor]

PK is something that has been a major part of TFC since it's beginning, but more and more, I think there are people, who like Tenko, hope that the "optional" PK thing is installed in V5....

[Anduin]

Tyn said it ain't gonna happen.

And Tenko here's some advice: DON'T use triggers. 1. they can screw you over. 2. you rely on them means you don't improve your skills.

[Avarice]

Optional PK would be a horrible horrible idea in my opinion. The game is hard, pk'ing can be downright disheartening but that is part of what makes the realm so awesome. Tenko - alot of the advice you got was pretty godawful btw. The best advice I can give you is that you're a mage and you have alarm - use it often and you will very very rarely be surprised.

[Tenko]

Thank you all for your input. You have given me alot to chew on for awhile. Not sure where I'll start yet... Stay tuned!!

[Pein]

Keep up the good fight, Tenko! Pk HAS been a part of the game for a long, long time and I think we'd lose more players by making it optional than we would by keeping it the way it is. Eq nowadays isn't hard to come by - you can put together a sufficient levelling set (you won't be swinging super hard or anything, but that's no biggie) with fairly little effort. Just don't get discouraged - learn from each death you go through and eventually you'll be able to escape just about anyone.

Besides, I feel like with the pbase where it is, it's rare that a pk'er will leave you empty-handed. Did your killer return anything to you?

[Aoide]

Anduin already mentioned that triggers can get you in more trouble if the situation doesn't go as planned. I use (like Rhysling) aliases so that my response can vary with the situation. Sure, I left my weapon behind once because I don't have a retrieve trigger and didn't catch the disarm in the excitement, but at least I got out alive whereas a trigger may have slowed me down. It's also helpful to be aware of which abilities will lag you. For example, blynd and disarm lock you up for 2 rounds. If someone is on that you think might chase you down, don't use them. Otherwise, you might be locked up when they attack. Another good option is to spend some time mobmastering or doing location quests. It's not as much experience as grinding a zone, but moving around will keep you on your toes and make your potential PK'ers work harder to find you. If the worst happens, I'm pretty sure you don't lose exp when you get PK'ed, so although it's disheartening, with as full as the pit is, you should be able to get back out there with out your leveling suffering too much. Good luck!

P.S. I also hate PK. I hate doing it and I despise feeling hunted. I learned a while ago, though, that I had more fun out of safe than waiting for someone to log off. My solutions are: a) refuse to stay in guild...sometimes they don't even come after me but after someone else instead, and b) make a low-level that's fun to play when a particular range seems to perilous. Just wanted you to know you're not the only person who hates PK. :) I keep coming back to TFC because of the people.

[Gwyrdain]

Even if you don't trust triggers to act, Tenko, you should probably use them to highlight important messages so that you're less likely to miss them in the fray...

For example, you might setup in your cmud, the following trigger:

Pattern: "* DISARMS you!"
Script Text: "#CW white,blue,blink"

This only turns the disarm message to blinking, white lettering with blue background, so even if someone is messing with your trigger the consequence is tolerable.

The same script text or similar with varying colors might also be used with the following patterns:

Pattern for confusion: "Huh?!?."
Pattern for blindness: "{You are blinded!|A bolt of lightning hits you square in the face...and now you are blind!}"
Pattern for summon: "* has summoned you!"

etc...

The above patterns are not very "smart" in that, for example, they don't include a carrot (^) to indicate they must be at the start of a line. In my experience, the mud or my client misses linefeeds from time to time and you might miss the above message if it only matched the start of a line. On the other hand you really don't want the confuse message to auto-quaff a magenta with the above message or your enemy could just spam you with "say Huh?!?." until you're out of magentas.

[Avarice]

Triggers can be a pit-fall if you don't truly think through every possible way to abuse them, before you implement them. I'd stick with highlights and aliases until you have a really good grasp on things and then work in triggers SLOWLY and extremely carefully!

[Corri]

Tenko - I would second what Avarice and Gwyrdain have said - highlights and aliases. If you are on cmud, let me know and I can help get you started with a list of my favorites.

My version of tips about pking live here:
http://groups.google.com/group/thefinalchallenge/web/player-killing---tips?hl=en&hl=en
I'm no pker, but that at least gives a 101 set of basics of things to consider.

[Corri]

"The fastest way to find someone xping is to check living lands, wintermeet, delving and plantation. But the SECOND fastest is to cast locate object on the corpses" Pkers - is that an accurate statement?

[Rincewind]

yeah I check the high traffic areas first then locate a series of stuff and then info, if they got an obscurity ammy then I just keep checking zones.

[soloban]

"The fastest way to find someone xping is to check living lands, wintermeet, delving and plantation. But the SECOND fastest is to cast locate object on the corpses" Pkers - is that an accurate statement?

So to counter this...

1. Make liberal use of alarms. Figure out where the choke points going into popular xp areas are and ALARM THEM. (Check the maps... *hint hint*)
2. Set your client up to check whoz every 15 sec or so.
3. Sac or butcher corpses
4. XP in groups. PK'ers are less likely to mess with a group of two or three.

All that said...everything has a counter.

[Aoide]

It's already been said, either in this thread or elsewhere, but butcher is only a better choice than leaving corpses if you eat the steaks right away. Locating steaks is no harder than locating corpses.

P.S. Love your maps.

[Avarice]

Locate is pretty useless nowadays, since corpses last so long. Info'ing and checking zones and learning where a particular target likes to xp, gold, etc is usually the way to go nowadays.