Shattered Kingdoms

Is the intent that priests should be front row fighters? Because that seems suicidal in any kind of PK situation (though I could be wrong).

I was looking for a pole-mace, but if the type is intended to be elite, I guess there's no point. But it seems a little counterproductive to make a TYPE of weapon very rare, rather than having rare and elite instances of that type. I can say from experience levelling a priest is very slow (perhaps because I'm not very knowledgeable) and if I wanted to travel anywhere, I had to choose between walking behind my pet and having "The epic battle of the wild zakami beast, in three parts, with intermission" or walking beside it and getting killed by cougars or whatever in two hits.

Perhaps levelling is supposed to be painfully hard for priests. But it's very discouraging, to say the least.

Joking aside there seems to be a lot of cougar activity along the roads..

Priest are horrible to level solo (same with bards but at least they can do damage earlier), thats why you should always try to find someone to level with. You gain so much from healing/curing thats its better to sit in the back row until you hit vet.

Once priest are mentors, you make more friends then you can possibly handle. In fact you get upset sometimes because all it seems your doing is being a rez monkey or a prancing enchanter.

There is nearly an unlimited supply of pole-maces if you know which NPCs have them.

Not until you can kill said NPCs or request the items, which happens oh...about jman/vet at which point you don't NEED the polemaces anymore.

Right, and at lower levels you can't ask someone to summon/kill those NPCs for you.

Oh...wait.

Also, it doesn't even sound like we are thinking of the same NPCs, the ones I have in mind you cannot request from.

Maybe it's not a serious problem for people who have a lot of experience on the mud. It just seems strange to me that the people who need polemaces most in order to advance can't get them until they don't really need them anymore.

I would feel awkward asking people to summon/kill other people (NPCs) for me, for their equipment. Is that something normally done? I can see doing it for yourself. I can't figure out how you'd work up to asking someone to do that for you in some IC way.

What about throwing daggers from behind a pet? Sling stones? These methods are too much work? Not enough result? You can use a one hand weapon and throw daggers too. Really. A priest also has curative spells, armor, bless. If you can find appropriate NPCs, which is totally possible, you can be in front and guess what?

NPCs don't throw things if you're not out of reach.

You may actually take less damage by being in the front. Now that bash is less dangerous, I really encourage people to attempt a variety of solutions to their problems instead of demanding for something that really doesn't make sense for caster classes to be able to utilize. Did you realize that you can order while bashed now? Stand in front and order your pet to rescue you if things get hairy. There are so many options and solutions that go beyond the polemace that I really don't understand the complaint anymore.

Well, twinked sufficiently, with a set of bronze, an enchanted spiked warhammer or a morningstar and then make it to jman in decent time, if you take in the places you can use cure-light as a damage spell. Then discover areas to hit veteran, and gm with spear of faith.

It's possible, albeit immensely more annoying than any other class in the game.

Then the NPCs that you threw the daggers at wield them and tear you to shreds. Throwing weapons are not much good for levelling.

Oh damn. That's right.