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| Character Creation - Being a Warrior - Art of Magic - Dereth Portal Maps |
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Greetings Seekers! Having discovered at an early age the joys of wielding axes, it seems fitting that I reveal to you the secrets behind my success as a warrior. The path of a warrior is both one of the easiest available to you and one of the hardest - as with all paths to battle in Dereth. In becoming an excellent warrior you will naturally sacrifice your skills in other areas and find you must rely on others for some things. This is normal, expected, and in no way reflects on your worth. I will assume you have already examined the guide on character creation. Philosophy of a Warrior A warrior is one who wields a weapon, sometimes even a gloved hand, in direct battle with the enemy. An excellent warrior relies on weapon skills, defense skills, and armor. Typically a warrior is at best trained in a little magic and does not defend well against an enemy's magic. The path of a warrior is suited to one who enjoys seeing the enemy's eyes while besting them in a test of strength, speed and coordination. A Warrior's Battle Plan As a warrior you will begin battle by donning your armor, locating your weapons, and casting or accepting spells from your allies. The best spells are those that improve your armor, weapons, skills, defenses, and abilities. Then select the weapon best suited for the enemy you plan to engage and determine the best height and direction for attack. In some cases, the next appropriate action is to simply charge. However, when the enemy is large in number or when it would be to your advantage to separate them, a slower approach is advised. A well timed spell, arrow, or thrown weapon may cause a single enemy to come to you - where it will be easily destroyed. Your friendly allied mage can prove quite valuable in decreasing the enemy's abilities, increasing your abilities, healing and revitalizing you, or killing some of the enemies before they reach you. When actually engaged in battle, a warrior usually engages the most dangerous enemy first. This may be the one most likely to destroy you quickly - like those that cast magic. It may be the one that will attack quickly and deplete your stamina - like a reedshark. It may also be the one that is unarmed or armed with a bow or other missile weapon. [Note: Unarmed enemies are dangerous due to their bonuses being based on unarmed skill instead of strength. Missile attacks are dangerous because your missile defense is usually significantly lower than your melee defense.] Destroy this enemy and then move on to the next most dangerous. Walls, trees, and other terrain objects with physics are also a warrior's friend. Use these objects as an extra shield to keep the enemy from hitting you in the back. Your back is your most vulnerable side as it lacks a shield and enemies get bonuses for hitting you there. This also works in reverse - enemies are most vulnerable to attacks from behind. A Warrior and Magic Magic in Dereth can be exceedingly useful and a warrior's friend. Some armor, weapons, jewelry and other items have been enchanted with various magic that can aid you. Spells cast on you by your allied mage friends can also aid you. You may also choose to learn magic schools yourself. There are four magic schools to choose from. War magic is a mage's offensive attack school and practically useless to a warrior - that is why you have a weapon! Life magic can be used to attack enemies directly, reduce enemy protections, increase your protections, and to transfer your mana, stamina and health depending on what you need more of at the time. Creature magic can be used to decrease your enemy's abilities and skills, and increase your abilities and skills. Item magic is used to improve your weapons and armor, and to decrease the power of your enemy's weapons and armor. Item magic allows you to affect locks and increase or decrease the difficulty of identifying an item. Item magic also allows you to recall to your lifestone, go through the last portal you went through again, tie to a portal, and summon portals - which all make travel around Dereth much easier. Choosing a Weapon Skill Becoming an excellent warrior starts with character creation where many choices must be made that will affect your life in Dereth forever. First you should decide what melee weapon you like best and plan to use as your primary method of attack. There are several options: axe, sword, spear, staff, mace, dagger, and unarmed.
The nature of these weapons are fairly evident, but for review: Axe - a slashing or bludgeon weapon - silifi, battle axe, warhammer Sword - a slashing or piercing weapon - simi, tachi, scimitar, broad sword Spear - a piercing weapon, also slash - yari, budiaq, trident Staff - a bludgeon weapon, also slash - jo, nabut, quarterstaff Mace - a bludgeon weapon, also pierce - club, tofun, morningstar Dagger - a slashing or piercing weapon - knife, dagger, khanjar Unarmed - a slashing or piercing weapon - katar, cestus, nekode All of these weapons are also available with electric, fire, frost, and acid damage. Choosing your Race Race only matters to a warrior if you choose one of the race-based free weapon skills as your primary weapon - in which case choosing the appropriate race will allow you to select more skills during character creation. Choosing a template Choosing a template changes which skills are automatically chosen for you - all of which you can then change. Hence, I'll assume a custom template in all that follows. Setting your Attributes As attributes are the basis of all your skills, it is vital that they be set carefully at the time of character creation. During creation you are given 270 points to spend on your six attributes. All attributes must be at least 10 and none can exceed 100 during creation. Strength Strength is critical to most warriors and is generally set as high as possible during character creation (max = 100). All melee weapon skills, except dagger, involve strength in their formulas - typically (Strength+Coordination)/3. Strength determines how much you can carry. Strength of more than 100 also impacts the damage bonuses you get for using all weapons - except dagger (bonus based on coordination) and unarmed (bonus based on unarmed skill). If you're a dagger master set strength between 20 and 40, and concentrate on quickness and coordination. Coordination This is also one of a warrior's most important attributes and should be set as high as possible during character creation (max = 100). Coordination impacts all weapon skills. Coordination is also vital to melee and missile defense skills. Endurance Your starting health and stamina are based on endurance - health = endurance/2, stamina = endurance. Health is the measure of how much damage you can take before you die and are returned to your lifestone (minus a few items, some pyreals, and with a vitae penalty that reduces your skills until you earn enough experience to eliminate it). Stamina is the measure of how long you can continue to attack and defend yourself before you are too tired to move. Running out of stamina usually results in death. Thoughts on the necessity of endurance are split. Some argue that it is unnecessary and set endurance at 10 initially. Others enjoy having lots of health and stamina and set endurance at a higher level initially. Quickness Quickness factors into your melee and missile defense, directly into your run skill, and affects how fast you can swing your weapon. Hence, quickness is important to a warrior so that you will be able to dodge attacks, run away, and attack quickly. Again thoughts on quickness are split. Those who set endurance at 10 initially typically set quickness to 100 on the theory that they won't get hit due to high defensive skills. Those who enjoy having high endurance typically make a trade off for lower quickness. If you're a dagger master, quickness is more important than strength. Focus and Self Both of these attributes do not factor into a warrior's attack and defense and are hence considered irrelevant to your primary skills during character creation. However, some warriors choose to add some points to these attributes, especially Focus. Focus impacts healing, lockpick, appraisal skills, trade skills (alchemy, fletching, and cooking) and magical skills. Self impacts magical skills, available mana for spell casting, leadership and loyalty. Specializing and Training Skills Your success in Dereth will be directly tied to your skills and your ability (as a player) to use them. You will get several skills automatically trained, including loyalty, magic defense, run, jump, and any free ones for your chosen race. All of these skills should generally be left trained, except for a race based weapon if it is your chosen weapon. As a warrior you should specialize the one weapon of your choice. It is best to concentrate on becoming excellent with one weapon type, rather than becoming only skilled with many. As you will be most frequently engaged in hand-to-hand melee combat, specializing melee defense is also advised, but not as necessary. However, you should at least train melee defense. You should also train missile defense so that you gain experience in and can improve all of your defenses. (Many choose not to train missile defense, preferring to get a second magic skill. They gain the magic but miss out on a lot of good equipment that has high missile defense requirements, not to mention decreased damage from missile attacks.) Beyond these basics, the rest of your skills are your choice. Some good choices include: Healing - allows you to use healing kits to heal yourself Lockpick - allows you to pick locks on doors and chests (usually in dungeons) Arcane Lore - determines whether or not you can use the magic cast by various items If you have a few odd skill credits still available during creation, spend them on anything you can or want - you'll lose them otherwise. Specializing a skill or training a new skill are both good options. Advancing your Attributes and Skills while in Dereth As you adventure in Dereth, you will gain experience and skill credits to use to improve yourself. You can and should improve yourself at any time you have experience available in the needed quantities (no need to wait for your next level). Using Experience As a warrior much of your earned experience will either go directly into your weapon and defense skills, or be available to you as spendable points. A good strategy is to increase those attributes that impact your primary skills and occasionally raise your skills directly. Using Skill Credits Between level 1 and level 26 you will earn 16 skill credits that you can then use to train new skills. Some typical choices for warriors include item magic (8 credits), healing (6 credits), lockpick (6 credits), arcane lore (4 credits), mana conversion (6 credits - only useful if you have a magic skill), appraisal skills, additional weapons, and leadership. What did Arianda do? As one example of how a warrior can be created and progress, I will summarize my attributes, skills and plan. For reference, I am an Aluvian axe master and hence have dagger and assess person trained for free, in addition to the standard magic defense, run, jump, and loyalty. At Creation: I specialized axe and melee defense. I trained missile defense, arcane lore and lockpick. My initial attributes were 100 strength, 100 coordination, 60 endurance, 50 quickness, 10 focus and 10 self. I made several tradeoffs with this design. I prefer to have health and stamina to survive a battle instead of relying on melee defense (more endurance than quickness). I did not take any healing method (healing skill nor life magic). As a result, I heal myself via food, potions, lying around, my mage friend Avazel's spells, and the life wand I found around level 15. I am also terrible at identifying items and must rely on others. My progression: I used my available skill credits to get item magic at level 9 and mana conversion at level 20. I chose item magic for the ability to improve my weapons and armor, decrease the difficulty of locks, decrease the difficulty of identifying items, cast lifestone and portal recall, summon portals, tie to portals. I chose mana conversion to reduce the amount of mana it takes me to cast spells, especially useful since I have little mana due to starting self at 10. I have spent roughly 85% of my spendable experience on my attributes by raising each attribute (strength, endurance, coordination, quickness, focus, self, health, stamina, and mana) one point each. I then look at my primary skills and see if any need raised quickly, are cheap to raise, or costs less than my next point of strength. After raising at most three or four skill points, I then return to attributes and buy another round. The Results: [final update September 4, 2002] The following table highlights my progress with relation to attributes and important skills.
When I left Dereth, I was just beyond the start of level 62. I had been concentrating on my skills, especially axe, defenses, arcane lore, and item magic. I've found items with melee defense and strength spells are my most useful items. I also use items with armor, all seven magical protections (like blade protection), quickness, coordination, endurance, and magic defense. I routinely cast level 5 spells, with some fizzles, though I could begin learning level 6 spells. As most people have found, creatures with magical offensive spells are my worst enemy. Such is the life a warrior in Dereth... For those who have wondered - I selected cooking mastery at level 32 (spent most of my experience during level 31 on it) for several reasons. First, I wanted to have the ability to dye items (though I still need an alchemist) and make my own healing foods. Secondly, it allows me to make use of the variety of food items creatures seem to leave on their corpses - fish stew while hunting is much more useful than just eating the fish. Finally, it adds a special flavor to the uniqueness that is me. However, in hindsight, my skill points may have been better spent on healing at 32 - which I did finally get during level 53 after changes were made to the costs of missile defense and I got 2 skill credits free. This is my third life as an axe master. I am significantly more pleased with my results this time as I finally maximized my strength and coordination at creation and specialized only my two most important skills. Those changes made a huge difference! Good luck and welcome to the joys of being a warrior in Dereth! |