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The last thing anyone thought they would ever see....
Tanager's Guide to the Strategy
and Etiquette of Hunting
Introduction.
I am not a famous hunter, and I advance at the pace
of a snail, but I am not an unskilled one. I had not originally intended
to write such a guide because most guides of this sort are fully mechanical
in nature, and the list of people who know more about mechanics than I
do is probably longer than I am tall. Most guides of this sort are
professional in nature, as well, and I do not feel particularly qualified
to give advice to members of any profession when there are far more skilled
hunters ready to offer aid and advice.
But then it came to my attention that there was
a niche for a certain kind of hunting guide, one devoted to time and energy
rather than to AS and DS (though touching on that matter as well), and
so I sat down to compose, and you have located the result.
If I keep getting inspired this way, I'm never
going to manage to finish the guides I originally meant to complete!
Prologue: Training.
If you have come in search of a hunting guide, it
is most likely true that you have already trained, and trained multiple
times. However, I include advice for training anyway.
If you are primarily a picker or healer, the following
advice does not apply; it is intended for those who will use hunting as
their primary means of advancement.
Decide how you are going to kill your prey.
There are 9 methods....
1. Hit it with an
edged weapon.
2. Hit it with a blunt
weapon.
3. Hit it with a polearm.
4. Hit it with a two-handed
weapon (if you train two-handed weapons, it does not matter whether they
are edged or blunt; the same skill goes to both.)
5. Hit it with your
fist or with a brawling weapon, or use Voln's martial arts to kick it to
death.
6. Hit it by throwing
a weapon at it.
7. Shoot it with a
ranged weapon.
8. Hit it with an
elementally based spell (these are the ones, like most wizard bolt spells,
that use an AS check.)
9. Hit it with a spiritually
or mentally based spell (these are the ones, like sorcerer spells, that
use a CS check.)
In order to be able to hunt, you must pick the thing
to train that corresponds to how you will kill your prey and then you must
train it as often you possibly can. For the first seven methods,
that means training a weapon type; if you can only train it once, train
it once, but if you can train it twice, do so, and do so every single time.
For method 8, this means training spell aiming, and training it as often
as you possibly can. For method 9, this means training spells at
least twice each time, and preferably training at least once each time
in whatever sort of spell you are using to attack-- for example, if you
are using Mana Disrupt to attack, you should try to train sorcerer spells
at least once every time. Eventually, this will lead you into "blank
areas" where you cease to receive new spells. It is worthwhile anyway
for the benefits to your attack.
For the first seven methods, you should also train
combat maneuvers a minimum of once each time, as it directly affects how
well you will be able to attack. The effects may seem initially minimal,
but they will certainly add up.
Once you have trained to attack, consider your defense.
If you have not trained in two-handed weapons, in polearms, or in ranged
weapons, then you should train shield at least once each time (twice, if
possible.) After this, it is time to contemplate armor. There
are a number of different views as to how one should go about training
armor; they can all be roughly summed up in "if you wear heavier armor,
you will live through harder hits, but it is also harder to cast spells".
If you are a wizard, sorcerer, or bard, some of your spells will begin
to fail if you wear anything heavier than full leather; if you are a cleric,
empath, or ranger, some of your spells will begin to fail if you wear anything
heavier than double leather. If you are a warrior or rogue, you are
best off training armor at least once if not twice every time, since it
is highly unlikely that you will be casting spells period, and, if you
are, it is unlikely that you will be casting spells in combat.
For more information on the precise effects of armor,
please examine Lady Amerlise's
site; her explanations may be slightly dated, but they are very technical
and informative.
1. Stripping down and
gearing up.
If you use a weapon, get out a weapon of the appropriate
type. This should be in your right hand.
If you use a shield, get out a shield. This
should be in your left hand.
Put on some armor. What armor you wear depends
entirely on how you have trained armor and what sorts of spells you are
going to cast in combat. As a quick and standard guideline, it has
been my experience that wizards and sorcerers mostly wear full leather,
rangers, clerics, and empaths mostly wear double leather, and bards, rogues,
and warriors wear whatever they have trained for. (Bards and armor
is a fairly controversial topic that I simply don't have enough knowledge
to comment on; some swear by full leather, some swear by augmented chain,
and both types sometimes live and sometimes die, just like everyone else.)
Check how burdened you are. (This may be done
by typing "encumberance", for those unfamiliar, or just "enc".) Ideally,
you should discover either that you are not encumbered enough to notice
or that you are slightly encumbered but that it is not affecting your reactions
very much. This should result in only five or six seconds being required
to swing your weapon (your results may vary somewhat with your weapon type;
Juspera's
Facts and Rumors
will give you more information.) If you are
unencumbered or very lightly encumbered, then you will swing weapons or
wave wands as fast as you possibly may or only a second slower than you
possibly may, and that is good.
Anything besides these two results should worry
you. If you are swinging a weapon, it should worry you far more,
and it will be time to start getting rid of stuff.
People take a lot of odd things into combat with
them; I myself am a prime example of this tendency. It's a bad idea.
If you are going to swing a weapon, or if you are going to be among creatures
with some sort of maneuver attack (such as the minotaurs' charge) or maneuver-based
spell (such as arch wights casting Boil Earth) , then your chances of survival
will decrease drastically. People are constantly rescuing my corpse
from Anwyn because I am a pack rat. There is no reason for other
people to be as stubborn (and dead) as I often am.
If you are overburdened: visit your locker.
Look in your locker. Look in your containers. Start putting
objects into your locker that are not necessary in combat. If you
run out of locker room, then it is time either to sell some things or to
ask a relative or someone badly in need of the money to help you out (in
short, start a locker character.)
Here is what you need to take into combat:
1. Your weapon.
2. Your armor.
3. Your shield (if
you use a shield.)
4. A container to
carry home boxes, gems, skins, and other sorts of loot.
Here are some things you may wish to take
into combat, but which are not technically necessary:
1. Combat-related
magical items, such as white crystals, blue crystals, and wands.
2. A herbal kit to
heal bleeding wounds. This would include acantha leaf, aloeas stem,
ephlox moss, and pothinir grass.
3. A gold ring and
a crystal amulet in order to run or call for help in emergencies.
4. A small blade specifically
for skinning.
If you cannot seem to get your encumberance under
control, then start with the "needed" list of items-- if you wear armor
within your skill, not even the most under-muscled halfling should be overburdened
with proper attention paid to possessions.
2. Spells.
If you can cast defensive and offensive spells to
help you in combat, do so. Sit down at a table or another secluded area
where you may regain mana quickly (an earth-node, in short) and cast spells
upon yourself. There is no point in going into combat poorly prepared;
it simply increases the likelihood that you will come home dead.
This grows more important as you train more and more often; until you train
five times, none of your spells will last very long anyway. By the
time you reach ten trainings, however, you should be ready to spell yourself
up (if you are a spell user) prior to going into combat.
Do not waste your mana on unnecessary spells.
If you are fighting creatures without any magic, there is no point to casting
blues on yourself if you could be using the mana for colors or luminescence.
Similarly, there is no point to casting spells repeatedly that do not stack
up (such as the lesser powerful look.) Make sure that you know the
full effects of your spells and the full length of time that each one will
last.
If you are not a spell user, then you should not
need spells (noting, again, that "need" and "want" are two different things).
They are, however, very nice to have.
If you are in Wehnimer's Landing, it is not very
difficult at all to gain three useful spells: colors, blurs, and guards
(sometimes called "brillies", for the brilliant luminescence that will
surround you after the spell is cast.) These are easy to obtain because
the spells come in "mass" versions as well as personal versions, and will
affect every single person in the group of the caster. The formula
for obtaining these spells between roughly the hours of noon and midnight
(EST) is fairly simple: go to the small park and wait, because wizards,
sorcerers, rangers, and bards (varying from spell to spell) routinely come
by to cast these spells for the masses. I am not sufficiently familiar
with other cities to provide information on obtaining mass spells, but
I suspect that it should not be overly difficult to do so in Icemule Trace,
Ta'Vaalor, or Ta'Illistim. River's Rest, Solhaven, and Zul Logoth
may be another matter entirely due to their low populations of adventurers.
Beyond mass spells, it is often possible to convince kind
adventurers to share their skills with you and cast some individual spells
for you. Asking on the amulet for someone to please come and spell
you up is not the way to go about doing this. Your best bet
is to go somewhere where there is a large group of people (such as the
small park, or Town Square Central) and look at individual people (or watch
what they do) until you find a well-trained spellcaster. (Do not
ask people at the Mentors' house for spells, as they are not permitted
to cast spells to help adventurers while on duty.) Ask the well-trained
spellcaster politely in a whisper whether they would be willing to cast
one
or two spells upon you. If I do this, I usually ask if they might
be willing to cast the minor powerful look (rangers, clerics, sorcerers,
and empaths), a dim aura (clerics and empaths), a disk or minor elemental
edge (wizards), or a round of silvers (bards) upon me. (Well, I can
cast the disk and elemental edge myself-- but you get the idea.)
I ask for the low-mana spells because people are
more likely to help you if it does not require a large amount of effort
on their part-- and, after all, you don't need four hours of a spell
to go hunting, you probably only need twenty to thirty minutes. If
you can send the mana for your spells, then people are even more likely
to help you. The less you ask for, and the more polite you are about
asking for it, the more likely you are to receive it. When you do
receive spells, tip the person, and thank them; I recommend offering at
least two hundred silver. Some people will not accept tips for casting
spells. Thank them again instead.
Try to remember the name of anyone who helps you
out this way (pick a specific color for it and highlight them). It
never hurts to remember well-trained people who have been kind to you.
3. Philosophy.
Why do you hunt?
This may seem like a stupid question. "What
do you mean, why do I hunt? I hunt because I hunt, it's what people
do." However, there are many things that people do that are not hunting
at all-- they pick locks, they pick pockets, they heal people, they chat,
they create magical items, they sell things on the amulet, they spell people
up, they gamble, and so on and so forth. I would estimate that, on
the average, I spend less than a fourth of my time hunting, though I know
I'm a bit of an oddball in that respect.
There are 6 primary reasons to hunt:
1. Advancement.
2. Making money.
3. Obtaining specific
objects, not necessarily money as such-- to get boxes, to get gold rings,
to get pelts, or something else in that vein.
4. Earning favor with
Lord Voln by destroying the undead-- this is specific to the Order of Voln.
5. Vendetta-- this
is linked to #4, but is not precisely the same. If there is a specific
type of prey that you are drawn to and particularly wish to destroy for
personal reasons (I know of vendettas held by citizens of the Landing against
orcs, krolvin, the denizens of the Spider Temple, and creatures of Sheru,
for example) then you would fall into this category.
6. The simple enjoyment
of hunting.
Pick one as your primary reason for hunting.
While it is nice to be able to address more than one at once-- the proper
selection of prey and hunting grounds should be closely linked to your
reason for hunting, and trying to cover all grounds at once just reduces
efficiency.
Advancement
If your primary reason for hunting is to advance,
then you should keep in mind that you do not need to hunt at your
level to advance-- and that it increases the risk and decreases the benefit
to overhunt too far. The way hunting experience works for direct
kills is fairly simple: you will gain 100 experience for killing a creature
of your level +/- 10 experience for every level the creature is above or
below you with a maximum of 120 experience per creature. (I am not
certain of the experience tally for assisting with kills; I believe it
is a percentage of the same formula.)
Locate a level-organized guide to creatures.
I personally use Lady Amerlise's creature guides (you may find her site
by
following this link
)
but they were last updated in 1999 and do not reflect some of the current
capabilities of creatures (as well as not including Ta'Vaalor or Ta'Illistim,
for obvious reasons.) Look at every creature in the range from 5
levels below you to 2 levels above you; specifically, examine their attack
and defense (or their defense against spiritual spells, if you are a sorcerer)
and compare them to your own when you have no spells or other benefits
besides those from your own skill. (Remember that both your chosen
weapon and the creature's armor will affect the actual results of your
attack-- every creature has its own special unusual features, and only
experimentation can tell you everything about a creature.) Pick the
creature in this range that you believe you can kill most rapidly that
is least likely to be able to injure you.
Don't be embarrassed about underhunting. If
you pick something five levels under your own level, it is true that you
will need to kill two of them for every single creature you would need
to kill at your own skill in order to advance at the same speed-- but,
particularly during the 0-30 years, it will most likely be far easier
for you to kill a creature under your level. This isn't about peacocking
and ego, after all-- it's about maximum efficiency and maximum experience.
Find out where your chosen creature lives in Elanthia,
and find out what other creatures live nearby. (Lord
Tsoran's maps
can be extremely useful for this.) Make sure that
there is nothing tougher in the area than you can survive, and make sure
that you can safely reach the area. (It would be ridiculous, for
example, to go to Anwyn to hunt greenwing hornets-- the area is simply
too far dangerous to be worthwhile.) When you know the way to and
from your chosen creature's habitat-- gear up and go. If you have
trouble with your chosen creature? Find another. Elanthia is
huge, after all, and you're bound to find something you can kill.
Making Money
Most creatures that carry large amounts of money
and treasure are either quite dangerous or little-known. This is
because of the way in which treasure is distributed through Elanthia.
The matter is linked as well to level, and seems to vary additionally somewhat
from individual creature to individual creature. As a general rule,
something with more treasure than another creature will either be of higher
level
or will be less-hunted than that creature.
Therefore, if you seek to directly obtain treasure,
it is to your advantage to range afar. Start by looking through a
decent creature guide (more details up above in "Advancement") at the creatures
that are 5 to 10 to 20 or so trainings below your level (depending on just
what that level may be.) Look among those creatures for the creatures
that are unusually dangerous for their training-- those with maneuver attacks,
or those with particularly dangerous spells, or those that simply have
an unusually high attack strength or defensive strength-- after all, since
you are so much more skilled than they, you should not experience undue
trouble in defeating them (to a point.) Creatures in particularly
secluded areas are more likely to be wealthy as well, and this is especially
true if the area is magically protected from fogging and people would have
to arrive on foot to rescue any corpses.
Alternately, there are those moneymakers who hunt
creatures with particularly expensive skins and sell the skins for silver.
Since the value of a skin does not correspond to the frequency with which
the creature is hunted, this is a fairly effective way to make a surprising
amount of silver. However, in order to do this sufficiently well,
you must be very well trained in the art of first aid-- I know of
no one who is not a professional ranger or empath who skins as a primary
source of income.
Obtaining Specific Objects
Hunting for a specific object is usually fairly straightforward.
In the case of a skin or pelt-- once you consult
a creature guide to determine which creature has the correct skin (troll
hides are useful for sheaths, for example, but troll toes are not)-- then
you have only to go and kill the creature and skin it. (Successfully
skinning it is a problem all in its own, of course, but this guide covers
hunting rather than the fine points of skinning.)
If you are looking for something specific and odd
carried by a specific creature, such as a mangled shield, a feathered spear,
or a brilliant purple opal, there isn't much hope for it-- you'll have
to track the specific creature down, or hire someone else to track the
specific creature down, and kill it. (In the case of things such
as mangled shields, you may simply be able to hang out in the requisite
area and ask anyone hunting in the area if you can pick one up off a creature
they kill.)
In the case of boxes to unlock or gems for deeds--
if you seek merely quantity of boxes and gems or greatest value of boxes
and gems, the best approach is the same as the one focused on making money.
Do make sure that the creature carries boxes, however; some simply don't
seem to do so.
For specific gems-- make sure that you are hunting in
an area that will have the gem in question; for example, mithril-bloom
may only be found in Icemule, dragonsfire emeralds may only be found on
Teras, silvery conch shells may only be found in Solhaven and River's Rest,
and despanel may only be found across the Dragonspine in Ta'Vaalor and
Ta'Illistim. For less expensive gems-- if you seek, say, to gather
topazes or coral-- you may wish to underhunt, as older creatures will have
gems of less value less often than younger creatures will.
For specific routinely-found items such as wands,
gold rings, blue crystals, and so forth-- follow the money-making suggestion.
Then, if you can't find them on creatures, you can probably buy them from
your fellow adventurers.
Earning Favor
Hunting to earn favor is rather like hunting to gain
experience, but with a few small changes. Firstly, if you do not
hunt the undead, you will earn no favor; members of the Order of Voln may
examine a creature's living or undead status with the Symbol of Recognition.
Secondly, you do not need to hunt undead creatures within your experience
range, though there is more benefit to hunting a creature of higher level--
each creature you kill will get you a certain amount of favor directly
linked to the creature's level. (It used to be linked directly to
your level as well, but, unfortunately, this has changed.) Ideally,
you will find an undead creature that appears in large numbers and that
you can routinely and easily kill. This will earn you slow but steady
favor (there is, unfortunately, no real way to earn quick favor), and,
unless you are completely unable to do this within your level range, it
will also earn you steady experience. Consult a creature guide before
you set out.
Vendetta
Hunting over a vendetta is rather like hunting to
earn favor, save that you are not earning favor: go out. Find whatever-it-is
that you want to destroy. Destroy it. If you're not strong
enough to destroy it yet? Hunt something else for experience until
you are, and then destroy your vendetta-object to your heart's content.
Enjoyment
This is simultaneously the easiest and the hardest
category to fill. What is your idea of "fun" hunting? Make
this a secondary goal, and focus on one of the other five goals.
Having made a list of possible creatures to hunt in accordance with the
other goals, search through the creatures you choose for your other goal
to find something that you personally enjoy hunting.
4. Strategy.
Take stock of yourself.
Write down your swinging AS in offensive stance,
your versus-swinging and versus-bolts DS in offensive and defensive stances,
your TD, and your CS (if applicable). Beyond this, make a list of
everything that you know of that you can do that can potentially be used
in combat, no matter how silly or ineffectual it might seem-- spells, guild
skills, tripping with polearms, multistriking, hiding, so on and so forth--
and don't worry about what other people can do that you can't, because
this is only a list of what you can do. Take a good hard look
at this list. This is everything you can do.
There is one important hunting strategy that everyone
should know no matter what profession they practice. If you are just
first starting out, this is the strategy that you will use. This
strategy is known as "stance dancing", and it is most effective when going
one-on-one with an opponent.
1. Wait for the opponent
to swing.
2. Immediately go
to an offensive stance by typing "posture offensive" or "stance offensive".
(This can be abbreviated.)
3. Immediately attack
the monster.
4. As soon as you
finish swinging, go immediately to a defensive stance by typing "posture
defensive" or "stance defensive".
5. Repeat.
As you grow older, your hunting tactics will doubtlessly
grow more complex. Most sorcerers and wizards find that, as they
grow more skilled, they swing weapons less and less often. Most wizards
shift to stance dancing and casting, while most sorcerers shfit to the
technique of casting airwall (also known as spirit barrier) to protect
them while they stay in a defensive stance and simply destroy everything
in sight with sorcerer spells. If you are casting spells while you
hunt, be careful not to cast spells that will use more mana than you have
left-- it will injure you, and, if overdone, it will leave you unable to
cast further spells.
Once you have fully mastered stance dancing, then
it is time to move beyond the basics. Look at the list of things
you made that you are able to do in combat, and consider what might be
most useful to you.
Do you have difficulty hitting your opponents?
See whether there is anything that you can do that will make them easier
to hit. Some ideas in this vein include knocking your opponent down
by tackling them, tripping them with a polearm, singing them to sleep,
casting a spell of rage that will force them to neglect their defenses,
binding them up in a magical web, and so on.
Do you do little damage to a creature when you strike
at them? Consider a different method or a different means of attack--
a creature may be immune to a bolt of water, but highly vulnerable to a
bolt of fire, or a creature may shrug off the thrust of a rapier while
screaming in agony at the slice of a falchion.
Do you have trouble with your defenses? See
whether there is any way that you can make it harder for your opponent
to hit you. Some ideas in this vein include hiding from your
enemy, casting a magical spell of calm over them, calling a spell of darkness
around the area, and so on.
Do you have trouble with creatures casting spells
upon you? You might well consider hiding from them, casting spells
of silence upon them, casting spells that cause them to forget what they
had intended to do, casting spells that steal their spells away, and so
forth.
If you have no difficulty hitting your opponents,
but your opponents routinely hit you, consider the merits of using a different
stance-- there are people who swear by moving into an advanced stance ("posture
advance" or "stance advance") rather than full offensive stance when they
stance dance. Some people take this even a step further and remain
in a neutral stance. Others go the other way entirely, stay in a
full offensive stance, and simply attempt to kill all creatures before
the creatures can kill them.
Experiment, and ask others about how they hunt.
The method that works for you may not work best for another person.
At the time of this writing, I myself typically hunt by seeking out large
numbers of creatures, casting an elemental wave to knock all creatures
in my vicinity to the ground, and then calling a cone of lightning to strike
at every creature in the area. This is not the method I used six
months ago, and I do not know whether it will be the method that I use
six months from now. Stay alert, stay adaptable, experiment routinely,
avoid working yourself into a rut, and you will go far.
5. Etiquette
You are not the only hunter in Elanthia; moreover,
you are most likely not the only hunter in your area. This is normally
a good thing, as hunting is a highly dangerous activity. However,
in order to avoid conflict with those hunting nearby, there are a few standards
of Elanthian hunting etiquette that everyone should know.
Poaching
If someone else is attempting to kill a creature,
and you walk up and attempt to kill it without permission, this is known
as "poaching". It is not a crime worthy of death, but it will hardly
earn you many friends either (and there are those who will swing
at you over it.) Make sure that you ask permission before swinging
at any creature that is near another person (unless they are stunned, injured,
or dead-- more information on etiquette in that circumstance later.)
If you encounter someone who is fighting more than
one creature, it is perfectly permissible to ask whether you may attack
one of them, but that does not make it "your" creature-- it simply means
that the other person is kind enough to share. Asking to attack the
monster that someone else is attacking is often taken as a request to join
forces; if you should routinely ask to attack another person's creatures
without "sharing" those that you fight, it will be seen as greedy.
You should also be aware that there is a big difference
in hunting etiquette in asking whether you may attack versus whether the
other person needs help destroying the creatures that they are fighting.
If you ask whether another person needs help to kill the creatures, (particularly
if that person is uninjured and seems to be killing creatures at a decent
rate), the other person may take it as an insult.
Should you accidentally poach another person's creature--
for example, if the person is hiding and you are not aware of the person
being there until after you kill it-- the best thing to do is to apologize
quickly and offer to give them any treasure that the monster was carrying.
Chasing Creatures
It will often occur that the creature you are attempting
to kill will run away from you before you can kill it. When this
happens, it is highly possible that it will run into a room where another
person is hunting, and, in all likelihood, you will follow. At this
point, you would probably not prefer to see the person swing at
the creature, and the best way to prevent this is to quickly tell the person
that you are following it. While many people rely on simply saying
"chase", it is more polite to set up a hunting macro that will cause you
to say something like, "I'm following this one, please don't attack it"
with just a single keystroke (easy and fast.)
If a creature arrives in your room limping, it is
probably being chased by another hunter, and it is polite to wait at least
ten seconds before finishing it off-- ten seconds should be more than enough
time for any chaser who isn't horribly overburdened or preoccupied with
another creature to show up and kill it. If someone else shows up
in the room where you are hunting immediately after a creature arrives
and announces that he or she is chasing it, it is considered only polite
to let them finish it off. Should you get overexcited and swing at
a creature that someone else is chasing, it is polite to apologize, and, if you killed the creature, to offer to give them any treasure that the monster was carrying.
Aid for the Stunned, Injured, and Dead
I have never encountered anyone yet who survived long enough to hold vultite without falling dead from a creature's attack at least once. (If you are such a person, you doubtlessly deserve a medal.) It is best to know etiquette around the stunned and dead-- because it will doubtlessly happen someday that you come across a corpse or across someone who will become a corpse very shortly while you are hunting, and that corpse could be the person who finds your next corpse... and corpses have a way of remembering those who stare at them and then ignore them.
If a person is injured but not stunned, and you are not an empath and do not have acantha, the person will probably not need any aid you can offer-- the person is probably either ignoring it or on the way back to town. There are exceptions to this... for example, if you come across a person who is unstunned but has two severed legs, that person may well bleed to death before reaching aid. When in doubt? Ask. Few people will refuse to tell you that your help is needed.
If you encounter someone who has been stunned, there is a list of priorities to follow.
1. If you can unstun them, do. The spell "Unstun" will do this; alternately, having an oak wand at someone will unstun them if you have the skill to use the wand and you trigger it correctly.
2. If you cannot unstun the person, try dragging them out of the room if you are strong enough to drag people. This will not work if the person is not permitting people to join their group.
3. If you do not have the ability to use an oak wand, or you do not have one to hand, the next thing to do is to protect the stunned person until the person recovers from being stunned. If you can knock down or otherwise quickly incapacitate anything that might attack the person-- do it. Warrior's tackle, spiritual binding, sorcerer's stun, and several other spells work quite nicely for this.
4. If you cannot unstun, drag, or knock the person down, then, if you believe you can quickly kill it, attack the creature. If there are too many creatures in the room to kill quickly, a last resort is to try to put defensive spells on the stunned person as quickly as possible if you are a spellcaster. This simply is far less likely to be effective. In the time that you are spelling them up, the person will either live-- which they probably would have done anyway-- or die, which will waste your spells... but there are times when that extra tiny bit of defense will make all the difference. On the up side, should the person live after you spell their stunned self up, the person will probably think that you are the greatest thing since the Dhu Gillywhack.
If you encounter a corpse, there is a second set of procedures to follow.
1. The first thing to do is to pour a white flask in the corpse. This works akin to the clerical spell known as Preservation, and it will protect the corpse from decaying by pausing the timer until the corpse decays. You should always try to have a white flask with you. If you are a member of the Order of Voln and have the Symbol that will protect people from decay, this works just as well.
2. If you can drag the corpse to safety, drag it. There simply are not any reasons save laziness and bad terrain for a giantman warrior not to drag a halfling wizard to safety without help. You will find, unfortunately, that there are some areas from which corpses may not be removed-- the terrain is simply too difficult. When this happens, go to part three....
3. If you do not have a flask or if you cannot drag a corpse to safety, call on the amulet for help. Give your location, give the name of the corpse, say that you do not have a flask or that you cannot drag the person (as appropriate) and ask someone to come to you to help you. In the Wehnimer's area, you may wish to pull on your amulet in order to get the message out to a wider group of people. If you are a member of the Order of Voln, you may well wish to use that telepathic network to call for help instead of the amulet or as well as the amulet. Make sure to tell the corpse that you have called for help; corpses worry easily, and corpses cannot hear the amulet (although they can still hear the thoughts of Voln.)
4. If you cannot drag the corpse and you cannot reach the city telepathically (as will happen in remote areas or magically protected areas) then leave the corpse, go to where the amulet does work, and ask for someone to come to your location to help the corpse. Wait until help arrives, and lead the help back to the corpse.
Should you happen to be a corpse, the best thing to do is to stay put. Some people log off, use a second character to try to get help for their first character, and then log back in. This is considered extraordinarily poor form by most GemStone players-- cheating, essentially-- and it will actively encourage some of them to ignore your corpse. If worst comes to worst, you will lose some experience. This is hardly the end of the world; experience can be restored. In contrast, respect lost in those who might aid you in the future is far more difficult to restore.
If you are a member of Voln and you have the Symbol of Need-- after five minutes (or earlier, if you are particularly worried or in a particularly difficult-to-reach or little-travelled location) go ahead and use it. This will help draw people to your location.
If you know any GemStone players who use AIM, you may wish to ask them for help for your corpse that way. Some people approve of this; some do not. It really depends on just who you have contacted, as this is a personal roleplaying preference. If someone requests you not to use AIM for this purpose in the future-- don't.
When help arrives, thank the person for coming, and be sure to ask your rescuer for lifekeeping (presuming that you do and that the person is not immediately reaching for a flask.) If there are any full boxes and so forth on the ground, offer them to your rescuer; draggers often do not stay around long enough to see the corpses they drag restored to life again, and draggers are every bit as worthy of being tipped as empaths and clerics-- arguably, they are even more worthy, because clerics and empaths gain experience from aiding you and draggers gain none. After this, remain quiet and let the person concentrate on dragging.
When your corpse has been moved into a healing area, be quiet and be patient. So long as you are lifekept, you are not going to decay, and impatience will only annoy those whom you would most wish to aid you rather than being annoyed with you. If you see no clerics or empaths in the area, it is permissible to ask for someone to call for help for you, and always speak up if your lifekeep wears off or if someone asks whether any corpses in the area need aid. Otherwise, stay put; patience will win you the day-- and restore your life.
Working with Others
At some point in your life, you will probably join forces with one or more adventurers and set out to hunt in a group. This is considered more sociable, far safer, and in many cases more effective than hunting alone. It can also be more stressful and pretty far from fun if people do not share an understanding of group etiquette. There are three important sides to group hunting etiquette: experience, travel, and management of the loot.
When you are hunting in a group, try to make sure that every person in the group is getting the chance to strike creatures. Should you have a particularly powerful technique that will reduce others' opportunities to strike things (for example, casting cone of lightning) you should probably refrain from using it; if there are three people in a group and two of them is not getting to kill anything, they are not likely to be very happy. The exception comes if an empath is travelling with you specifically for the purpose of helping with your injuries. If this is the case, the empath is not likely to care whether he or she is striking creatures, because your injuries should be teaching more than enough if you are hunting over your head.
If you are leading a group hunting, it is your responsibility to make sure that the group stays together. Count a minimum of six seconds after the death of each creature before you move again, because it is your job to make sure that everyone is finished swinging. Also, if someone is hunting from hiding and wishes to stalk you rather than joining each time, be sure to ask whether the person is set before you move-- trying to chase down a hunting party isn't much fun, particularly in very large areas. (For your own part, should you be part of a hunting party, leave the amulet unrubbed or do not respond to it-- if you get left behind because you are concentrating upon thinking, it is no one's fault save your own.)
If someone wishes to leave the hunt, but does not know the way back to town, then it is your responsibility as the leader of the group either to give the person directions or to make sure that someone (you, if need be) takes them back to town. Being abandoned in unknown wilderness is even less fun than trying to chase down a vanished hunting party, and the golden rule always applies when working in groups-- if you wouldn't wish it to happen to you, make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else.
There are two ways to deal with treasure from hunting; each one works better under different circumstances.
The first is the "share-as-you-go" approach to treasure. This works well with groups formed on the fly out in hunting areas. In this system, whoever kills the creature is the person who searches the creature. Each time a person finds silver on a creature, the person should share the silver with his or her group (syntax: "share #", where # is the number of coins you just took off the creature.) In this system, gems and boxes go to whoever. If there are wizards or sorcerers in the group, it is considered polite to offer them any wands that you find, as their limited mana resources will cause them difficulties in a long-term group hunt. As people grow tired of hunting, they can simply peel off from the group and head back, since they already have their share of the loot.
The second is the "pack mule" approach. This works well with groups that plan the hunt in town, head out as a group, and plan to return to town all at the same time. In this system, one person who does not hunt through swinging (a sorcerer, a wizard, or possibly an empath) is selected as the pack mule, and this person will carry all silver, gems, and boxes from the hunt. Each person searches their own kill, but they give all silver immediately to the pack mule, and the pack mule picks up the gems and boxes. Wands are given to wizards and sorcerers present; anything else found goes to the person who killed the creature. When any person in the group gets tired or needs to leave (with fifteen minutes' advance warning), all people in the group return to town, where the group looks for someone to pick the boxes at a private table (or picks the boxes themselves, should there be a picker bard in the group). The contents of the boxes all wind up on the pack mule as well. The pack mule then sells all the gems and shares all his or her silver with the group. As you can probably imagine, it is important to have a trustworthy pack mule.
Conclusion
While it is hardly the Wisdom of the Ancients, and while very little of numbers and mechanics has been addressed, you now know as much about the strategy and etiquette of hunting as many Lords, Ladies, and Legends do. Safe journeys and good hunting to you and yours!
--Tanager Skydancing CorFine
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