Shattered Kingdoms

I'm new to SK... I created a Minotaur something, found myself in some wastes, cut the arms off of a few slaves (do they grow back?). Look interesting so far.

Coming from CarrionFields I'm trying to figure out a bunch of the logistics of skills/spells/training and a good race/class combo. If anyone can help, especially someone familiar with CF, that would be great! So, here goes...

Stats and Training:
1. You get one train every two levels according to the helpful. How does this fit in with training stats vs. skills?
2. Do most characters have the ability to maximize their racial stats?
3. Does it take more trains for, say, a spellcaster who has a BUNCH of spells to master vs. some warrior with relatively fewer skills?
4. Is there a helpfile somewhere that can tell me what to expect from various races as to their stat maximums?
5. One of the helpfiles seemed to indicate that you use XP for training... how does that work, exactly?

Death:
5. Death seems confusing... but if I understand it correctly, you can always reincarnate at the loss of a level?
6. What happens to your items and corpse when you die?
7. Do characters permadie from age often? How many hours of playtime is typical?
8. Do characters have another way to permadie other than deletion? (for example, in CF you lose 1/3 CON each death. When CON hits 3, you permadie)
9. Are there any permanent side effects of death other than xp loss?

PK:
10. Is PK limited by levels or can high-level characters PK low-level ones?
11. Are there any penalties to being killed by another player other than the normal "death" penalties (and looting I assume)?

Race/Class:
12. My play times are erratic and sometimes I have to log out in a moments notice. I may have two hours in one session but 10 minutes in another. In CF, I tended to play self-sufficient classes or classes with stealth (like rangers or transmuters). Scout seems similar to ranger but from other threads it looks like Sorcerer is recommend for the self-sufficient PvE types. I'm not particularly keen on constant PK, but I don't want to play a goodie-two-shoes that can PK from time to time. With all that said, what race/class combo would fit me? Human Sorcerer?

Thanks all!

Unfortunately viltrax has nuked the ability for me to make a quote pyramid, so I'll answer them this way.

1. Stats, and skills are separate. Skills gain a chance to increase based off of the intelligence stat. Higher intelligence improves the chance that a skill will improve.

2. Most characters have no chance in hell of maxing out their racial maximums on stats. Even very long-lived characters that spam-mentor wouldn't be able to manage it, I imagine.

3. No idea, need more clarification with this one. Improvements at skills and spells are based off of the intelligence stat though. It doesn't matter if it is increased through stat trains or stat mods though.

4. I don't think there's a helpfile for this per se. References to numbers have pretty much been obliterated to make a more RP friendly game. That being said, the maximum is 25 for any given stat. Depending on the race every stat will max out at a different point though. Giants will have 25 strength, or herculean while sprites will have 15 strength, or strong.

5. Training skills and spells just burns xp when done. It's not a great amount though.



5. Uh...sure.
6. When your character dies they leave behind a corpse with the items inside of it. The corpse will have a decay timer set, and will ultimately decay though. If that happens then all of your items will spill on to the ground. You can recollect your items after dying if you are able to get back to your body (or enlist help).
7. Most players don't play until age death. It typically takes over a year for even the short lived characters to die from age. The longer-lived races can take over 3 years. Hours--I clearly have no idea.
8. Break the rules and get deleted, that's pretty much it. Reincarnation used to take a point of con and if you went under 3 con you'd get deleted--I think it was 3 con anyway. It may or may not have been. I do know that it did used to delete characters that ran out of con though, I had one of my earliest throwaway characters suffer that fate.
9. The only affect tagged to a character when dying is spirit disorientation which is a -1 penalty to all stats. It stacks, and it sucks.



10. The only limitation on levels is a feature which will prevent you from killing amateur level characters.
11. No

To clarify #3, the answer is NO, your spell/skill list is solely dependent on class choice at character creation, and every character regardless of INT can master all of their skills (it just may take more time if your char is dumb). Trains are only used for stat points and other attributes like hps/mvs, not for skills.

To your first note, welcome to SK! I think that you'll enjoy it greatly.

To your questions, Ardith already answered pretty much all questions in a fitting manner, though I'll elaborate on some of them myself.

As far as training skills/spells: All skills/spells you have available are determined through your class, your racial skills/spells (if any) and your cabal/tribunal skills/spells if you join one. Training any skill/spell requires nothing but experience and in some cases gold, and depending on the NPC or PC trainer you are learning from, you can be brought to anywhere from a poor or average understanding of the skill/spell to an almost mastered level of the skill/spell. Every skill and spell, as its used, has a chance of improving based on your characters' INT stat. The highest level of mastery for any skill or spell is "Mastered," right below "superb." The amount of XP required to train a skill from a trainer is minimal: Though if you have a low INT score, you will learn less of a skill for a given amount of XP. XP scales heavily as you advance in level also: You will find that at amateur (1), you will need almost a full level to learn a single skill up to superb, but at mentor level, you will spend maybe 1/8 of a level to train a skill from unlearned to superb.

As Ardith mentioned, stats and skills are completely separate. Every 2 levels you get a stat train, which is permanently added to your character unless you lose an even-numbered level (Because then when you gain that level again you get another stat point). You cannot train stats past your racial maximum, nor can you wear jewelry that will increase your racial maximum for any given stat.

When a PC dies, they leave behind a corpse with all their EQ inside of it. If you died to an NPC, your things will just sit there until you or someone else recovers them, or until your corpse decays. PC corpses decay very slowly, they take a matter of hours to decay, and when they do the items themselves spill into the room. Server reboots occur every 3 days, which will destroy all items on the ground in a room except for PC corpses: So if you die 10 minutes before a reboot, your corpse and all its items will be there when you return. The listed options for death are always there: Low level characters (Journeyman and below maybe) might not wish to bother getting resurrected, but as you progress in level it's always worth seeking out a priest on the who list and asking them for life. Spirit disorientation is an affect that remains with your character for about 20-30 minutes after death, it's a -1 to all stats. It also stacks, so if you die 3 times in quick succession your stats will suck for about 1.5 hours.

As for age-Death: It is not permanent except for age-death, and that only happens if you play a character for anywhere from 1-3 years IRL. Character age is determined by RL time: A week IRL is about a year in-character. It isn't common to play a character to age-death.

1. Trains are for stats like strength, wisdom, intelligence, etc. Also for additional stats like HP/ME/MV/ART. Training skills takes experience, based on your level and intelligence. The higher your int and level, the less XP it takes to learn something. More INT means less actual usage of the ‘practice xyz’ command than lower INT. But it just takes XP, so you can do it with lower int, then just get the xp back. (SK does not have the set amount of practice sessions system a lot of MUDs tend to have.) You should refrain from ever learning a skill/spell of a status higher than your own. You can do it, but you will spend a level or more learning an ability that is only /one/ status above you. And that's with high intelligence.

2. You generally have plenty of stat points for the actual stats. The important ones anyways on most classes. When you start factoring in things like HP, Art or ME trains you will have nowhere near enough. Classes like bards who literally need every stat will have a much harder time with their trains.

3. A sorcerer will generally spend more XP practicing things than say a swashbuckler who gets a total of like 5 skills. However, sorcerors generally have higher INT as well, so they spend less xp per practice.

4. There is actually nothing in game that will tell you race stat maxes. Kind of odd, yes, but the Implementor of SK is rather against numbers.

5. (5-1 lol)As explained above, you spend XP to learn skills (so you will learn all your skills, you just need to kill stuff for the XP to do it).

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5. (5-2!)Reincarnating is generally a bad idea. Find someone on the who list who has a “priestly” title and ask them to resurrect you. Or just pick a random name and ask if they know a priest. If you do that, there is literally no penalty to death other than a 20 minute -1 to each stat.

6. Corpses are left where you died, with the items inside the corpse. You can try to “poltergeist” your corpse to a safer room for recovery.

7. Not often no, people tend to delete before they permadie from age. And playtime has nothing to do with it. Your character ages as time goes by. It takes an elf about 3 RL years or longer to age die, for example. Humans and the shorter lived races take over 1 year.

8. To my knowledge, no, you can’t permadie any way except age.

9. There are no permanent side affects to death unless you reincarnate or get raised by a warlock/shaman. Priests are the way to go.


Pk is not limited by level, and no, the only penalty of dying via PK is the same as that of getting killed by a NPC, except the increased likelihood of not getting your stuff back.

Thanks for all of the replies so far; that was very quick!

I think I understand skill learning now (others MUDs I have played all give a certain limited number of practice sessions)

The reason I asked about racial stat maximums was to aid in starting a new character. For example, is dark-elf going to be a better sorcerer (higher int?) than human? And so on.

Any feedback on race/class choice for me?

Also, does your character age when you are not playing? i.e. if I go two weeks without logging in, will I still be two weeks closer to age death?

I'm not sure Dulrik wants us throwing around numbers, but yes, a deep-elf is stat-wise the best sorceror. But they have weaknesses outside of their stats.

And yes, your character ages.

If you create your character today. Regardless of how much you play or don't play, in a week or so, it will be 1 year older.

I can understand not using numbers if that is the wishes of the game staff. Just looking for a baseline. How about... is there a way to see what races CAN be any given class?

Someone made a chart of this once. I wonder if someone could find it.

I always felt this was one of the more unusual, but cooler aspects of our age system. Most games have no unified sense of time progression. People of the same race that create around the same time will grow old together without any seemingly immortal outliers.

I will also add that back in the day (say 10 years ago) age death actually happened a lot more often. But players these days have been raised on games that almost penalize patience, much less foster it. Oh well...