Dark Legacy MUD Forum

How to design and plan out an effective tri-avatar

This is a work in progress, and I will be updating it periodically whenever new information on the race patch comes, or whatever. Things change, and I will do my best to make sure this guide changes along with them.

This guide is geared towards newbie’s, and casual players who don’t have the time to figure out the technical nuances of what makes a character powerful, or simply anybody who can manage to learn something new from it.

With that crap out of the way, let us begin! The first thing you need to think about is what you want your character to do. Beat the daylights out of people with giant hammers? Cast arrow a bazillion times and decimate people? Think about what you know of DL, and what you want to do. Do NOT choose your class combination because you think it will be the most powerful. Choose whatever you think will be the most fun. Just because you don’t have the most technically powerful combination doesn’t mean you can’t beat down a ton of people. Whether you want to kill people or mobiles is also an important consideration. Some people might have the goal of being a powerful melee oriented fighter, and choose Warrior, Rogue, and Ranger as their classes. While that might seem like a great idea to somebody new to Dark-Legacy, in reality it is not the best way to layout such a character, as I will show you in detail below.

And now, classes. Yes, choose your classes before you choose your race. Your race compliments your classes; your classes don’t compliment your race. To properly choose, you need to be educated about the capabilities of each class, so I will educate you (or refresh you, or merely bore you, depending on your level of knowledge.)

In no particular order, we have:

Warrior
The Warrior is a very strong class for both melee physical combat and ranged physical combat. He gets Spin, a powerful combat ability that allows him to attack many different opponents at once, at the cost of a lot of balance. To supplement his balance he gets Equilibrium, a skill that increases the speed at which his balance regenerates. For weapons, he gets swords, maces/hammers, and axes to 99%. Talonous, spears, and staves he gets to 85%. And EVERYTHING ELSE he gets to 80%. A high skill in weapons is vital if you want to do damage, most notably in your speed. The faster you can attack, the faster you can dish out damage. Also keep in mind that you get a bonus to damage at a skill level beyond 60%. At 99% your bonus damage is 50% of your weapons base damage, which can be pretty nice depending on what you are using. His armor skills are the best out of any class, with Light, Medium, and Heavy all at 99%. This means he can wear armors out of the strongest possible materials and take penalties lower than all other classes, saving you precious mobility. And before I forget to mention, he also gets Stun/Headbutt, a superb supplementary skill that can disable enemies, and Bash, which can help to draw out fights long enough to win, and save your life. One of the four classes that gets the Dual Wield skill, allowing you to (obviously) wield two weapons at once, which is stupidly good if you rely on melee weapons to kill things.

Psionicist
This guy has some good tricks up his sleeves. He is a magic user, as I’m sure you know, and gets quite a bit of complexity in the ‘Mind’ field, and a moderate amount in other useful ones. His unique spells are quite underrated by most of the players of DL, his only famous one being Time Flux, a very useful speed spell (more speed, more spells, more attacks, more everything. Speed is your friend.) An interesting addition to Psions is that they get the Spell Mastery skill up to 95%, which has the effect of giving them numerous extra complexity points across the board. This is not as strong as it once was, because you can now get complexity points by getting epic levels, but it is still nothing to scoff at. Speaking of which, the complexities on your character that raise as you level is based on your classes. Obviously, your primary complexity/complexities will rise, but your middle of the road ones often do as well. In this case, the Psion’s Physical complexity rises, which isn’t bad at all. Overall a powerful class, and a good choice for somebody looking for a long run payoff to couple up with a fighter type, for the speed and handy complexities.

Cleric
Now this girl is a strong one. The cleric has a monster Body complexity, as well as Defensive. Both are used for some of the best spells in the game, like Haste. Haste is the best speed spell by far. Good duration and huge bonus. Vroooooommm. Or how about HEAL? Being able to heal yourself (or your friends)is always nice, and coupled with soul soothing and the high body, their heal is the best. Regeneration too, of course, and lets not forget Ward, reducing an enemies resistance or raising your own. Antimagic Shell, even though it has a very short duration, can still be used effectively in the right circumstances. And how about Resurrect? There is no combination of classes that doesn’t benefit from a Cleric, their usefulness is hard to express.

Rogue
The Rogue and the Warrior are the only two primary physical damage users. Like the Warrior, the Rogue gets many weapons to choose from. Daggers, exotics, and talonous all go to 99%. Staves, blowguns, and whips to 85%, and everything else to 80%. His armor skills aren’t as good as the warriors, only Light and Medium get to 99%, with Heavy at a meager 50%. He also lacks spin, but in its place is Multistrike. Multistrike allows you to attack a single target 4 times all at once, arguably the best physical damage skill against a single target. They also have no balance regaining skills like the warrior, but in its place they get Lockpick and Disarm. These two skills allow them to gather loot from the chests and pots and what have you from the epic dungeons, which is no small thing, nor will it ever be. Rogue, like Warrior, also gets the Stun/Headbutt and Bash skills, as well as Dual Wield.

Mage
This class is exactly what you would expect. Offensive spells to the max, Arrow and Breath being most notable. Magic is a very powerful force in the realms, most creatures have a very low magical defense, allowing you to pummel the crap out of them with little trouble. Keep in mind though, in epics the creatures raise in magic resistance with their level, so it will never be easy to kill THOSE particular guys. The mage has a reputation that suits it.

Ranger
This is currently (in my opinion) the most useless class. Their weapons skills are nothing special (getting nothing to 99%), and their magic is ho-hum at best. It is hybrid type class, which tries to be two things at once and fails miserably at both. For the purposes of this guide, I am going to assume that you don’t pick Ranger at all.

Druid
This is an interesting class, with the most notable ability of being able to summon an elemental. Elementals are quirky; they can be very strong or very weak depending on what you are trying to use them for. I also consider them to be unstable, as I highly suspect that they are on Celeborn’s ‘to fix’ list. They could get stronger, weaker, disappear, who knows. Not something I would rely on. The only other major thing they get is access to the Sat (slash damage) rune, through their Sylvan Bond skill, which can be disturbingly powerful in the hands of creative players.

Paladin
The alternative to Cleric. Body, although not a primary complexity for the Paladin (that being Divine), is one of those ones that (for Paladins anyway), rises as he levels in epics. This gives him a good Heal, Haste, Regenerate, etc etc. None are as good as the clerics would be, but they are easily good enough to get by (and then some, depending on your level.) His decent weapon skills are certainly not a bad thing if this is your only class with access to such, nor is his access to the Air rune. Another good benefit he has, is that he is the only class that can land critical hits on undead creatures. His Divine complexity gives him the powerful Bless spell that boosts his chances to hit, and the Inner Peace spell, which reduces the balance cost of his attacks, therefore allowing him to attack more often and faster. He even gets Dual Wield.

Bard
I’ll be honest with you about the Bard. This guy can be fun to play, if you really like helping people, or something, but it’s not such a great class if you want to kick a lot of arse. The songs he gets are welcome benefits to any party, in particular Psalm of Learning, which increases the amount of experience gained by the party by a percentage. Other than helping people out with various songs though (some of which are very buggy), he doesn’t have much that he can do. I do not recommend that beginners choose this class.

Now that you have read that, you should have a decent understanding of the classes. If you still have questions, feel free to ask them in this forum, in game, or wherever. There are plenty of helpful people out there.

Anyway, you have 3 classes to pick, and we are going to rule out Bard and Ranger. That leaves you with 7 classes to choose from, which is a good selection. First off, one of your classes you should always put aside to be is either Paladin or Cleric. You need to have some way to consistently and easily heal and regenerate yourself, and access to some rudimentary speed spells. They are it. Based on what you want to do, pick one of them (or both, whatever.) If you plan on being a fighter type (weapons rawr!), pick either Rogue or Warrior, depending on whether you want to find lots of treasure in epics, or kill lots of things. Either will give you a good base to work with, and that leaves you with a 3rd class to choose whatever you wish, based on your preferences. If you would rather primarily be a caster, you want one of your classes to be Mage. Mage will be your damage dealer, to dish out your offensive spells. Druid, Cleric, Paladin, Psionicst, and Mage are all good choices for caster types, and again, I cannot stress enough that you should have Cleric or Paladin as one of your classes. And don’t let this article mislead you into thinking that which ORDER you choose your classes in actually matters. It doesn’t. Level your classes in whatever order you want to, you come out the same in the end. Well, there are some aspects that your order matters in. Levelling ease, for one. Some classes are far easier to level than others. For example, Paladin and Mage, are two very easy to level classes. Mage, because very few monsters (if any) have the abilities to resist their spells. And the Paladin because he has decent heals as well as good fighting ability. Another thing, is that certain items are only wearable by people who picked certain classes. This isn't THAT big of an issue, as I expect such items will change in the future. However, I would still avoid choosing Rogue as a first class, as they get exceptionally screwed over by such things.

And now, on to races! Instead of copy/pasting a bunch of information from the racial thread here, I will merely link to it.
http://forums.dark-legacy.com/viewtopic.php?t=511
That is the wave of the future, and as such all characters should be designed with it in mind. No more pixie/gnome/elf characters only, you can now choose whichever race you like. At this point you should already have a pretty good idea of what kinds of bonuses you would want in your character, so I’m not going to hold your hand too much. Starsigns are still subject to change, and you don’t have to pick one until they come out, so I wouldn’t worry about those for now.

And that’s all I have for you. In the future, after other patches are released, I will release other guides for things like equipping, crafting, etc. For now, this is all I have for you. I hope at least one person learned something.

Just a few points I would like to make:

1.) The paladin has no true primary complexities as of my last study. His divine complexity is equivalent to a secondary complexity such as the basic complexity of a mage. His body complexity is, I believe, equivalent to a high tertiary complexity. I would verify this but currently have no MUD client installed. This may not seem to be a major hindrance, but depending on your racial bonuses it may mean the difference between a top-of-the-line heal and one that is barely worth casting.

2.) Although not a major strength, the druid spell sunbeam can significantly aid in a fight. It is rather strong compared to certain common-use spells. This does not necessarily make them as strong a caster as a mage, but it is a nice bonus.

3.) Bards are not a very deeply studied class. From what I have seen and what I have heard from others, bards are a very strong class even for the soloer. Although it would be against my personality to come straight out and say it, certain songs can be equally useful as many classes are in a fight. Although from what I have seen, they are generally stronger in supplement to a meleer, I am sure that if a resourceful player used them in conjunction with caster classes, they could find many useful songs...although come to think of it, a couple songs do stand out...the main problem with bards is that you must rely on triggers or, for one who truly fights, micromanage songs a small bit.

4.) For rogue, you forgot to mention that they, also, have the headbutt skill. This is a very useful skill.

5.) You may also wish to mention that only warrior, rogue, paladin, and ranger recieve the dual-wield skill.

6.) Ranger also recieves a number of good combat skills, although are not adept at them. While these do not let rangers stand up against a rogue or warrior in a straight melee duel, this fact, coupled with their slight complexities, may allow them to be used in a viable build. I, however, have not yet made myself a ranger and am yet to really study this class. Furthermore, I am not a major proponent of this class and would not suggest it for those unresourceful players who are primarily concerned with power.

7.) You have also failed to mention the bash skill. This is a major advantage when used properly. This is a good skill to use when in need of balance, a few seconds of peace, or a getaway move.

I am also considering posting a few of my considered builds. I could likely write a large amount on each of my ideas. I will not do this, however, unless I decide to quit for good...which may not be far off.

A use for Ranger

I tend to agree with the above posts, but I have thought of a use for ranger. It is not a heavy power based tri-avatar, but a useful one, and mainly a spell-caster. Mage and Psionicist build the core spells. Ranger brings some much needed fighting skills to these classes and rounds out complexities. If you pick an elf for the race with the star-sign C it gives a boost to the rangers’ nature magic, almost as good as a druids. They can get the best familiar in the game, and a familiar made right can be better than many pets. The poison rune is also a handy rune in spells. This combo was conceived mainly for solo RP and to fight mobs, I do not think it would be good PK combo. Rangers have been changed in the past, and most likely will be again before all is said and done. So this combo is a gamble.

A limited use, but one none the less , and happens to be what I am building now to see how it works out.

Arureal

High-Lord of Lowbies

A few things:
I have a paladin/cleric..his divine is the same level as his defensive, so that would be 2ndary i believe. My primaries exceed them by 7. The point about paladin heals having the potential to suck majorly is true tho. Go ask a troll paladin.

Bards with caster classes -> idiotic why? Because you stop singing in order to cast (so thats before), so the complexity raising song will not help you for example if youve just put in an extra fec, cuz youll be stuck with: You need a skill of .. to cast this spell. Other songs just wont have enough time to be effective if youre casting breath every 2-3 seconds or whatever. The only acceptable casting is for buff spells that last awhile because otherwise youll be restarting songs too much to be of use.

Rangers get dualwield at lev. 10 and max at 90%. Im not sure what the % is for other classes. If it is higher it means their dualwielded attacks are quicker. Their weapon skills are exactly the same as a paladins so its rather hypocritical to pass off the paladin weapons as "decent" and say that the ranger's "are nothing special" (You could argue theyre saying the same but decent def. has a more positive connotation). And if you wanted an archer type combo you could def. pick the ranger if you werent going for warrior because the bow skill would be exactly the same. With ranger you have limited access to sunbeam, shapeshift, summoning, elementals. And with a little tweaking from Celeborn, shapeshifting and summons might become useful.

2nd to last thing: It actually *is* important to choose which class you will do first and you actually know this Ocardus so im not sure why you forgot to mention it. Theres lots of eq out there that have class restrictions, and theres a few classes that def. stand out as being bad for eq. Rogue for example. Warriors who dont need a warp cloak cant wear hide/robes. And theres lots more to be sure. Another thing is that the choice of class can make levelling a whole lot easier...lets say youve got a war/cle/bard... Please dont tell me that levelling a bard->cleric-> warrior is the same as levelling a warrior->cleric->bard or cleric->warrior->bard. Youd have bad weapon skills, no defensive spells, and have to relearn how to sing and tune every single time...

Last thing: You set this up and tell people to choose stuff because its fun...if they like to shapeshift..your manual didnt tell them that because it "sucks" and in the rest of the "tutorial" all youre talking about is power...sort of hypocritical imo. You should be listing the pro's and con's of every class and show how each single class can enhance the other two.
When i pick classes/race for a new alt i base everything on three things: RP, Power, and it has to be something i dont already have (as in full melee type, caster type etc). I choose my race first because its most closely related to RP and something i dont already have. If i know im going for melee or caster i can already choose what types of race i want:
Caster: gnome, pixie, ogre, elf. Melee: all classes pract.
Then i write down all the combinations that appeal to my RP interests for that character (possibly with all race combos if i couldnt decide). Then i eliminate them on the basis of power vs something i dont already have.

Hope this helps, if you wish some of this to be edited because its directed at you then ill take it out as long as you understand my point.

Clarifications:

Divine is regarded as the paladin's primary complexity because it is the highest one they get. I was using 'primary' as a literal term, not as a technical term.

I regard the rangers weapon skills to be nothing special because of the specific weapons they get, not because of the percents. Bow, crossbow, and swords to 80%, daggers and blowguns to 70%. A poor selection of damage types.

And I wasn't being hypocritical, whether you play for fun or not, some classes are clearly better suited to things than others. The purpose of this guide is to lay out an EFFECTIVE tri-avatar.

As for your and quintos's other points, I DID leave some things out. By accident and forgetfullness, I'll try to add them in later when I get some time. Thanks.

Good post weems, enjoyed reading it. *goes on a ranger tinker tour*

Wheee!
Celly

*Is tempted to go make one of his ranger builds now*

And Weems, I am aware of what you meant, I simply pointed this out because it's an important thing to realize if you plan to make a paladin alt. Also, although a small advantage, a 'holy avenger'ed weapon does attack slightly faster and with a decent amount of extra damage depending on the strength of the spell.

Celeborn: Might make paladins a bit overpowered, but have you considered making newly 'holy avenger'ed weapons slightly faster or have the strength of the spell determine the added speed? As it stands, the speed bonus is rather negligible. Perhaps make it the equivalent of a moo rune or two? Or to even it out a bit, make the speed and damage so that it can compete with that of 'enchant weapon' but make it follow the same rules of 'enchant weapon' so that it can only be used as the first enchantment of an item?

Updated Introduction
Updated Warrior (bash, dual wield.)
Updated Rogue (bash, stun, dual wield.)
Updated Paladin (dual wield.)
Updated Final Choosing (information on class order.)

I think i know what i'm talking about (sorta) so let me add my 5 cents worth too.

I started with an Elf mage, not too bad for the magic but i learned now that i could have done better, still, good complex for all attack spells. My tri av is a Mage, Paladin, Ranger. The ranger part contributes least to this, but i like the nature complextities and a few of the skills. The ranger weapon classes supplement my paladin's combat strength, and the nature complex adds to my mages spellbook thickness alot. I personally rely heavily on my spells during combat, but the multistrike and dual wield ability have saved me more times than i can count, especially recently in the epic dungeons where spells seem to not be of a great help sometimes, more often a hinderance than a help, especially when i run out of mana. I chose the paladin for the body and divine complexities, as well as the weapons skills. I have found that the paladin is something like a warrior and a cleric smacked together, good weapons skills and good healing ability with the right amount of intel and wisdom you can add about 5 complex to the healing spells. As for the mage, self explanatory, though what angers me is that spell mastery stops at 25%. WHY? ITS A MAGE FOR GOD'S SAKE! If anyone should have 95% spell mastery its the mage. *steams for a while*

Oh, and a side note about druids, they get the spell shapeshift, which is more than just fun to play with sometimes. We all know how if you have lots of constitution and intell. your mana and hp will go up by more each lev right? well, have i got news for some people, the shapeshift spell turns you into about 7 different creatures and each one is speciallised in some catagory. For instance, before i raise to the next level, like before the last kill i need, i'll shapeshift into a tree-ent and get about 50 constitution, then i'll level and get about 50 more hp for the level. if i want mana, i'll turn into an owl and get like 40 wisdom. see the pattern here? it only takes 4 fecs in shapeshift to get all the creatures, and after that you can shove as many durs in it to keep the effect as long as 20 min!

Just saying that the ranger has its use as a supplement to your every day tri av diet and that shapeshift is quite handy if you havent got good equipment.

Mages do not get spell mastery to 95% because it would make them overpowered. They are plenty strong enough.

Yeah right, if you even poke a mage in the right place they die. I'm an epic and i only have 1400 hp with mine. They deserve the best in all magics to balance this, and besides, the only thing i would change on a mage is the % for spell mastery. i would gladly trade it in for brew or something like that.

Your lack of hitpoints is a problem with your equipment, not the mage class. Mages get very very nice complexities, they don't need more. Spell mastery is fine the way it is, right on psionicists.

As I see it, mages are far too orthodox to truly master all of their spells. Read the helpfile from spell mastery:

A mage craves knowledge of his spells, not new and unorthodox methods of casting, but a psionicist craves the knowledge of all. Also, this is...was...one of the big advantages of having psionicist as a class. Although it was nerfed by the limitless complexities, it is still one of the things that defines the psionicist class.
Also, mages definately do not need additional skills to make themselves more powerful. The only real problem is that of magic itself. Magic goes from extremely overpowered to near useless over the course of a few hundred epic levels, less if you are not a pixie. The system needs an overhaul to make magic usable at all levels or be equipment dependant like melee combat so it can be strengthened similarly.

Please help an inept player then Vogar. I've been playing for about 2 years now and i finaly epiced my first char. Yeah i know thats pathetic, but mostly i blame the fact that i didnt have a mud client with triggeres so for the first year i was crafting everything by manual typing. but i also didn't spend time to learn the nuances like dam. reduction and attack roll and such, so please bear with my incompetence and please help me rather than burn me for my stupididty.

1) I dont know much about all this resistance stuff, so someone is gonna have to teach me the ins and outs. For example, the sanctuary spell and the other defence uppers, if you want them to help you fend off a specific element, you'll need about 10 different spells all with different elemental runes right? (or can i jam all these elemental runes into one and it'll do it for all?) Which spells are the most effective in saveing your butt in do or die situations?

2)Isn't all damage delt to you a percentage based upon the enemys attack strength? Like, it has to do with the damage roll and attack roll right? (i don't know one from the other so please explain those two points please.) And also you're saying that a person with 500000 hp will bleed out faster than a person with 1000? thats odd.....

3) ok i learned a little late that the more constituiton you have the more hp you'll gain per level. Same goes for mana with intelligence and wisdom. Thats why i now have about 1400 hp and 1600 mana. I could never find someone to make me equipment with al that good stuff on it, so i had to resort to putting all those things onto 2 quartersaves. One has 25 constitution and 3 wisdom, the other has 25 intelligance and 3 wisdom. Good thing i can dual wield. This still only brings those things up to the 40 range. I suppose what would be better is if i had a pair of weapons that are completely full of attack and damage roll right? Same goes for my armor. My cuirass is just full of dex and strength, i guess it hould be full of damage resistances and other damage reductions.

4)I'm not even a Cleric and i have a heal spell that does around 300 to 500 per heal. My trick is that i have a man rune in it and tons of fecs. I think putting in a race rune first aids the spell more than just lots of fecs, though it hinders my ability to help a variety of races at once. Still, i try to go into each fight with full hp or close to it, so all my healing is done between fights, so it doesnt matter to me how long it takes to heal up as long as i know i'm going into a fight well prepared.

So what do you think? i'm a far far cry from perfect but i'm still a noob at heart. I understand all the important stuff, and i know enough to be successful, but i can obviolsy do alot better. ( So far life's been an exercise in working with what i got ) I'd appreciate it if anyone can help me with a few of the details so i can do better than i'm doing now.

OK, sorry, I'm a mage\paladin\ (sigh) ranger

What am i suposed to be holding?

I like to use my breath spell. 10 feet or closer.....But yes i do have a big arrow spell. 5 fecs, a moo, an electric rune and and rgy. problem is i cant do any damage to the epic spiders with it at all, so i use the breath.

i have an idea for u Vogar, why dont u make a list of prime eq u can find throughout alora. Dont tell where to find them tho. Everything on the list cannot be of a crafted orgin. I got some ideas of good stuff.

With the thing about paladins doing crits to undead, is that with or without a holy avenger? And to use a holy avenger, do you have to be first class paladin, or can you be second or third class paladin?
(I feel like such a newbie, not knowing the answer to these questions . Oh wait, I am a newbie )

ok i missed out alot of posts and i dont have time to read them all.
After my 4 years of DL experience, the most important advice that i want to give to new players is that:

MAKE A CHARACTER THAT YOU ABSOLUTELY LOVE. DO NOT MAKE THAT CHARACTER BECAUSE THAT CHARACTER IS STRONG.

i'll elaborate why when i have more time. those that have played DL long enough know exactly what i mean, unless you're one of those people that doesnt mind making a new character every couple of months...