Message 997 : What I expect from a warrior (Vainamoinen)
Written on Wed Jun  2 13:52:36 1999

WHAT I EXPECT FROM A WARRIOR
 
This is just a quick note on what kind of warrior is most useful for grouping
and I think by following these guidelines only your experience will limit
your abilities on MUME. This has been written especially for high level
(20+) warriors, but might offer valuable information for low levels too.
 
Warrior can have three purposes in a group, a buffer, a basher, or just
a plain hitter.
 
 
BUFFER
 
As a buffer your primary purpose is to keep the enemies engaged to yourself.
Best thing to achieve this is to be leading the group or practise rescue
high. As leading is something that requires experience and area knowledge,
it is often not an option. If you have rescue, you can rescue people that
get hit, but it causes thw rescued person to lag for a couple of seconds which
is not always desirable since he can get attacked again while lagged.
 
There is other way to use rescue though. The 'protect' command will let you
set a group of players that you are guarding from attacks automatically.
Thus if a person set on this list is getting attacked, you will try to
intercept the blow. The success depends on how high you have practised rescue
and on how many people you are trying to protect at the same time. It is
usually best to only protect the leader of the group if he agrees on that,
and use manual rescue on others that want it if necessary.
 
A successfull buffer is expected to have plenty of hitpoints and either
extremely high defense(db+pb) or good set of metal equipment and high
absobtion. I always prefer the hitpoints+metal combination because then it
does not matter so much how many opponents you are buffing at the same time.
 
 
BASHER
 
Basher won't necessarily have to buffer anything, just keep the opponents
bashed. To become a good basher you need to have a decent offensive bonus so
your bashes won't fail, and a fast enough link since you have to bash again
every time the opponent regains from the bash. In group fights it is also
essential to pay attention to which of the opponents should be bashed most.
This is usually the toughest opponent.
 
It is also vital to learn to use 'bash disengage' (bash dis or bd for short).
This command will disengage the target from fight. The duration of bash dis
is only half of normal bash, but it is especiallY effective when used together
with blind. You would just stand and pay attention for opponents that get
blinded, and then bash dis them. Sometimes it is hard to tell the opponents
from each other though, so it is possible to jsut keep bash disengaging every
opponent(1.troll, then 2.troll, 3.troll, again 1.troll, etc) while blinders
do their job.
 
As you are not necessarily buffing or getting hit when bashing, you can do
well without metal equipment or defense.
 
 
HITTER
 
This is the most straightforward way to play a warrior. In group this usually
means to just cause as much damage as you can and reduce the victim's parry.
 
 
COMBINATION
 
The most useful group member is of course one which is good at all three
categories mentioned above. This means having a good amount of hitpoints,
a good set of metal equipment, a good shield and parry weapon, and optionally
a spare set of leather equipment and another weapon to deal maximum damage
when needed. A telnet client can be helpful when switching from one set
of equipment to other, though MUME aliases can get you far too.
 
 
ALIASES
 
I would also like to give some examples of useful alias combinations for
different purposes(these are all MUME aliases).
 
>alias qbash alias q bash
>alias qbd alias q bash dis
 
About to fight an orc group while having blinders, you enter
>qbd &.orc
And in the fight you do (repeatedly if needed)
>q 1
>q 2
>q 3
>q 4
 
If group members want rescues when needed, it makes things faster to set
aliases to rescue them before getting into fight. There are many ways to
set aliases for multiple persons, I use 're' followed by one or more of the
first characters from the person's name for rescue, and 'as' followed by
same characters for assist:
>alias rev rescue vainamoinen
>alias asv assist vainamoinen
 
Good luck!