Shattered Kingdoms

Is there a way to identify things without the use of identify spell/lore?

I'm playing a scout and bought a pet to stand in front so I can shoot arrows and train up my bow. Is this trashing my xp gain? It seems like it, but just before I bought him I gained three levels at once. I'm sure it's a combination, but not sure what is affecting it more.

Is there a "where" command of any sort? Something that tells you there are near by players?

How prevalent is PK? So far seems like not very, but maybe just because I'm new haven't gone anywhere yet.

I'm an explore heavy player, is SK a good place to find lots of secret/hidden goodies which may include game lore?

1) The best you can do being a scout is to use the look command to see the item's material, basic level i.e. superb, god like etc, and how much it would get in a store (which is not exactly accurate from what I've seen)

There are scrolls that have identify and there is a NPC in the deep elf city that I want to say will identify things for you, but you've gotta get to him and I don't know if it still works.

Aside from those, if you take off all your equipment and wear the one piece you are curious about, you might be able to tell if it has enchantments on it already to help with certain attribute, str, dex etc. Those are the easiest to see, but you might be able to notice changes in others.

2) Your pet is probably sucking some of your xps. If you are lower level, I would suggest training your bow skills up later and just hacking away at stuff. But it's been a while since I played a scout and there are far better scout players than me who could speak to this one better.

3) There is not a "where" command for the whole game. There is the "mentor" command which will let all mentors in your starting kingdom know you are seeking help. But check the Inns in the major cities, I've noticed Sith-a-niel and Nerina having fairly active Inns lately.
And if someone's title seems interesting to you, or just helpful, then contact them. Titles are considered in character, sort of like rumors spread about that person or just their title i.e. knights and what not.

4) PK goes in waves sort of. You will see it in the major cities and there are some very strong factions right now. If you have been mostly leveling at this point you might not have noticed it. Also with the recent bonanza, a lot of players were focusing on that or leveling a new character so not as much PK. I'd expect to see a rise in the next week or so.

5) I am also big on exploring and SK is great for that, but it does take some ingenuity sometimes and there are places where you will get owned by NPCs, even on the roads. I suggest for exploring, start out with the area you started in, explore the city and some of the surrounding wilderness. You can always put in your title something along the lines of "young adventurer seeks seasoned explorer" and hope a more experienced player will contact you and give you a few pointers in character about exploring and places to go that are good for scouts. There are a lot of people who are very helpful among the pbase, but we aren't always around all the time, so be patient and feel free to ask lots of questions here or in game.

Alignment restrictions can hamper a better fit player from helping you in character (IC) but generally we try to make it work enough to help.

Hope that answered some of your questions

Welcome to SK!

Once you get involved in PK, it's pretty heavy. If you're an elf or a griffon, you could be killed on the spot by a darkie. If you're a deep-elf, a lightie might kill you on the spot. Joining a faction is the number one cause of getting involved in PK. Check out Ciadel's afterlife thread for more on that.


Dear good holy mother of all things heavenly batman, yes.

The identify spell and/or bardic lore is the only way to determine the magical qualities of an item, and lore is even limited in that regard as well in that it only tells you the types of "starting" enchantments any given item bears, whereas identify tells you what an item bears for certain, and also tells you the strength of those enchantments whereas lore does not. Sorcerers, priests, necromancers, paladins, hellions and shaman can all cast identify, and in addition there are scrolls which can be bought to allow rogues and bards to have access to identify too, although in a more limited way, naturally. Other classes have to rely on others to do their identifying for them.

In SK, you can gain experience in a variety of ways, the most common is by doing damage to enemies which is completely unrelated to whether you land the killing blow. The damage that your pets or controls do give an extremely small amount of XP compared to you doing the damage yourself, and the difference between the two is incomparable. As a result, if your bow does less damage than whatever you were using before, and you're also allowing a pet or companion to deal damage, you may notice a drop in XP per NPC that you kill due to you sharing the damage necessary to kill the NPC. Additionally, the higher in level you go, the more experience you require overall, and you may just be running into that issue.

The only constant feature that allows you to see if other players are nearby is if another player walks in or out of a room directly adjacent to yours. You will receive a "You hear footsteps nearby" message in that case, but if the PC in question is sneaking (rogues, hellions, halflings, deep-elves and elves can sneak) or flying you will not be made aware of their presence. Barbarians also have a class feature called alertness that allows them to sense hidden PCs or NPCs when they walk into the room with the barbarian, though they cannot tell -who-. There are a couple specific areas in the game that allow PCs to determine if any other PCs are in the area, and some unique and special items as well, but otherwise you have no way of knowing if other PCs are near you unless you see them by looking in a direction or as they walk in and out of your room.

PK is not uncommon at higher levels, though most players do not prefer to get involved in PK or PK anyone lower than expert/mentor level: And most players prefer to avoid PK altogether until they are at least champion status, lest they incite higher-levels PCs to attack and kill them while they are training. There is an unofficial log site where players often post PK logs.

SK has an overflowing abundance of areas, I rolled my first character around seven years ago now and there are still things I do not know about the game. If you are looking to explore and find hidden areas, including IC lore, you will most certainly be able to spent quite a bit of time doing that, though you may end up dead more often than not whenever you enter a new area. Also, depending on how useful the "goodies" in any particular area are, you may not end up finding them whenever you explore an area for the first time as most of the powerful artifacts and items in SK are limited in number and more often than not the most powerful have already been discovered and claimed by other players.

Thanks everyone. The combined posts pretty much answered everything I got for now.