Combat training for Newbies

[Ylaine]

Hi all

I have been playing for about two months now and I am speaking as a Newbie and know it, so don't "noob" me, please.

First of all: I love this game. I write this in the complaint department because I don't know where else to put this post. The dev's are doing a great job and I'm not gonna start to moan.

Only thing is: I find it nearly impossible to create a "hunter only" char. When training, say, armour, one weapon type and two magic ways you just don't get the trias and Progression Points you need on rats and clackers. I tried questing as a remedy, but found I spent far more time questing than actually hunting. And what if a character isn't the adventuring type? Can't you at least let low-level-mobs give more PP's to newbies? That would help a lot! Planeshift is a great game, but it should allow a character to do what he/she/kra actually wants to do.

In order to not only complain: I find PS is bringing me back to being creative, writing like I haven't in years (just the occasional poem for myself, nothing to be published). And I encourage all newbies to try to find their way into RPing - trust me, it's great and most people are kind and helpful to those who are new to Yliakum.

So, thank you to the developers and GM's!

(And forgive my grammar and orthography mistakes, english isn't my main language.)

[Rigwyn]

As it is with real life, the more you do something, the easier it gets. If you are not gaining much from fighting low level mobs, then it may be time to seen greater challenges. There are also techniques that you can learn from fellow players to train more efficiently.

[Haraun]

This complaint is very true and even worse (and in contrast to what Rigwyn posted while I was writing), in some cases it continues to be impossible to play a trustworthy hunter role. While I even stopped completely to try to progress or make tria in an IC way, I believe it's essential that newbies can progress in a motivating way.

I think I can claim to have that experience in playing a hunter char.
Btw, I just missed my 7th PS-birthday! 

[Choppa]

I learned to defeat higher level monsters by timing my attacks and running from theirs. That is player technique. If you have a good internal clock, then this will work for you. There are also cheap ways, such as standing on a rock or exploiting faulty pathfinding. I choose not to do this for the benefit of a challenge.

[Rigwyn]

Asking other players in-game is encouraged as it encourages people to work/play together as opposed to everyone just treating the game like its a single player game in a shared environment.

I may a bit out of touch with training a straight up hunter as Haraun suggested. In theory, you *should* be receiving enough progression points and tria to advance by just training the skill in question. If not, ( ie. if you need to slaughter and loot things to pay for cooking or smelting skills ) then more details might be helpful.

[Jilata]

I have a "hunter-only"-char. I only did enough quests to get a mount and don't have any training in mining or anything the like. So I can say it definitely is possible to do.

I used to pretty much know which animals you needed to hunt to get enough tria. (PP usually were no problem for me). But they changed the amount of tria you get for animal parts. So I am not really up to date anymore.

And I think magic might be more expensive than axes and light armor. I don't have any experience with that though.

But as the other said. Just ask around.

[Ylaine]

I'd like to specify that I am not only speaking on behalf of myself, but also other newbies I've met ingame. All my chars got a job and do crafting of some sort (though some still have to find a way of actually making trias with their crafting). If I need animal parts of beasties I cannot hunt myself for a quest I ask some hunters for them in exchange of trias or a favour (like mining ores for them). I find this works pretty well and encourages RP.

Also I believe much has been updated and some oldies told me it's gotten harder to be a hunter only than it used to be. Also yes, magic training is very expensive.

But I will ask around ingame for mobs with good drops. Thank you all for your replies.

@Haraun Happy 7th PS-Birthday 

[tman]

Yeah with the new AI and ranged attacks hunting has gotten more dangerous for sure.

For PPs I don't know what to tell you other than try to find some higher level mobs that your char can take down.  But trias shouldn't be a problem for a hunter.  Why? Because with leatherworking and alchemy there is a much bigger player market for hides and animal parts.  My recommendation is to never sell hides to NPCs.  Always sell them to players.  I am not sure what a "fair" price is nowadays but when I made a new char I got most of my money selling rat hides to crafters for a circle each.

As for animal parts, I can tell you that the most valuable things for alchemists are any kind of consumer blood, egg sack, or animal hearts.  Unfortunately these are all pretty high level and won't help noobs much.  Some things that newer characters would be able to get that alchemists would find useful would include arangma teeth/eggs, diseased rat blood, and coamti tongues.  But in reality pretty much every animal part is useable somehow so you should be able to sell mostly anything.

[Rucan]

I agree the the PP for rats is too low. The thing that I learned is to do the short repeatable quests for the guards at the North gate and Harnquist to get more PP. As others have said, sell the rat hides to leather workers for 1 circle each. That will keep you going long enough until you can kill other monsters.

[Roled]

Before offering my suggestion, lemme ask
Is it true you get pp for group kills of mobs?

Once someone who knows that answers, then my suggestion follows Rigwyn's- for a while,hunt with others, share the loot, earn the pps, learn the ig techniques from the accomplished, and keep practicing.  Hunt the harder ones with stronger players, and the midrange ones with midrange stat players, and you'll progress and have rp!

Once RR recovers, he will hunt with you! He's no good at fighting techniques but he's got magick that kills malberlords and the occassional onyx...

[Jilata]

As far as I remember, you do get pp for group kills. But it is according of how much damage you did while attacking compared to the damage another in your group did.

In the past I used to help a few low level chars with PP. I'd almost kill an ulbernaut and all the other had to do was fully kill it after I stopped attacking. We weren't in the same group, so the other got the whole amount of PP for it.

[Ylaine]

Heya guys

Selling the animal parts and hides to players was a really good suggestion. I didn't even know diseased rat blood was used in potions. Thank you for that! 

I still think low-lvl-mobs should give more PP's though... But making hunting parties would be really nice. Hm, I'll try to RP someone into it...

[LigH]

The experience given is in relation to the risk taken.

But if you barely survived and still get only the minimum of 100 EXP = 1/2 PP, then you should report it more clearly with a log of your physical stats, related skills, and outfit quality values. Especially worn-out armor can have negative side effects.

[Taya]

This is actually an issue I started testing a while back.

On a completely new character with no real extremes in stats (so not really specialised toward either combat or magic), I was getting 1pp every two rats I killed and also 1pp every two tloke drones. I don't find it an issue with one-eyed rats so much, but feel that once you move onto something else, anything else at all, you should get a minimum 1pp a kill. I then tried to move onto a clacker to see if that would give me anything higher and got slaughtered horribly. 

It doesn't take many kills at all to level an offensive skill at the beginning, so there is absolutely no way 1pp every second kill is going to cut it. Quests can help, but I also don't think it's right to make doing them a must in order to progress. Some players might not want to invest in taking in all the information from them until they've experienced gameplay a bit.

[Ylaine]

Ok, I tried to make the test and here's what I got.

My fenki got Ag 103, Cha 51 (iirc), End 42, Int 37, Str 71, Will 73; Knives and Daggers 3, LA 2, Sword 5 - these are the skills she's using - coming out of the tutorial.

I tried to kill several beasties, the toughest for her were Coamtis, which gave 1 PP each. Diseased Rats - for some unknown reason - gave 3-4 PP's each, she can kill those though they take away half of her HP's. Trias are still an issue since she couldn't find any buyer for her hides - yet (I hope it's yet). And the PP's she gets won't get her through LA, Sword and Knives and Daggers training, let alone any magic training.

I went for training stats first (with the little money I got selling animal parts to Allelia) and will then lvl one skill after the other since it seems impossible to train several combat skills at once that way.