Hi I'm easing into DR again and was reading a discussion of how to hunt flex mobs in the Discussions folder. Two of the answers were from those who played necro or WM and I am curious how would a ranger fight flex mobs.

Frankly, I am discovering I have poorly trained myself and I would like to train myself a bit better. Since I am about 120 circle, learning is slow and so I figure I have plenty of time to remake myself.

When I was playing regularly, I kept out of invasions because I was upset at how poorly I could help during invasions.

So I'm trying to set up some goals to work for that doesn't involve crafting which totatlly stresses me out. :/

I really look up to rangers like Phanston, Asterid , Jalika, and Hanryu (as examples) and would love to know how they and anyone else likes to train.


Zinaca and her young wolf, Lucky

Welcome back!

I currently am using flex-mobs to train shield for my plat-side trader, and she usually holds her own. You might want to do a quick appraisal on the critter you're facing to see how well it would teach. While that isn't fool-proof, it will give you some idea what your odds are against the critter in question.

Player of...

Sometimes the key to happiness is not assuming it is locked in the first place- Ziggy

A journey of a thousand SMILES begins with a single step- Ziggy

Hey glad to be back, and heyo Blue and Hanryu and thanks for your posts.

I really was kinda looking for general ideas and curious how folks deal with invasions. I wasn't wanting specific training ideas for me personally. (Besides I hate to follow directions : D)

Hanryu, thanks for your post--interesting all the spells you use! And I do guess it is easier using a combat script. Scythe? Didn't know there was one in game...which kind of weapon is that?

Anyway, please continue to post how you fight during invasions and flex mobs. I know everyone has different styles and helps and it would be good to see what they are (kinda like the polls you used to do, Hanryu?)

Zinaca and her young wolf, Lucky (btw anyone if companion aging mechs are on?)

I'm interested in understanding why debil is part of this calculation, this is what's really screwing me up here. Is there a debil based spell that kills? if not, i'm not sure i understand why flex mechs would take that into account beyond the simple fact that you can't learn debil outside of combat.

Damian, a voice from the distant and long-forgotten past.
AIM:DamianDR

I agree about debil. It's additionally compounded by the fact that most of debil's power comes from your stats, and not your skill in debil.

Especially once you can cap the debil spell. At that point additional debil ranks are making the flex mobs harder, but they aren't actually helping you at all.

> Debilitation, and debuffs provided by tactics, are powerful offensive tools. That’s why Debilitation is taken into account when calculating a character’s offensive power.

How much does debilitation skill weigh into that powerful offensive tool (vs stats), and doesn't this mean that the best way to play is to intentionally tank your debilitation skill? Since flex mobs are really only used in times and places you need to quickly kill them, spending twice the time to reduce them to a level you can kill seems counter-intuitive.

>Debilitation, and debuffs provided by tactics, are powerful offensive tools. That’s why Debilitation is taken into account when calculating a character’s offensive power.

Right, but debilitation doesn't actually rely on the skill - it's a stat contest. AFAIK, the only thing the debilitation skill provides is the ability to add more mana to the spell. But it only takes a couple hundred ranks to cap the spells. Beyond that, we're just talking about casting faster. The debilitation skill is a terrible measure of offensive prowess - it's more akin to the primary magic or attunement skills.

It is true that when my trader is hunting at level, she relies heavily on a spell that shows the critter's defensive flaws- in other words, it is a debilitating spell. I also buff heavily in such a way that my shield skills get enhanced since that is my girl's best defense. I am trying to train shield up on my rangers. Haromi used to train shield a lot. I bet he would have a lot to say!

Sometimes the key to happiness is not assuming it is locked in the first place- Ziggy

A journey of a thousand SMILES begins with a single step- Ziggy

>>We're probably in the wrong forum for this now, but there are many guilds out there that will have higher debilitation than other skills.

Cleric, WM, Necro and possibly MM (If they've trained combat regularly) for sure. More than likely Empath (see MM) and Bards.

I find this argument hard to agree to, when I can hit mechanical mice on one character with 56% of the skill in my highest combat (which is Debilitation, actually). Weapon Mastery pulls it up a little bit, but it’s still a significant amount of skill to make up for.

There’s a difference, I think, between hunting and slaughtering. In MT events, you need to kill them quickly (slaughter). In hunting, you want to learn a diverse set of skills and time to kill isn’t as important. I think the solution is to tweak the MT flex mobs so they die a little easier, rather than remove Debilitation from the calculation.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.

It’s not a question of ease. MT events need to be addressed anyway, since people would rather forfeit the kill tasks and do nothing for 5 minutes.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.

>It’s not a question of ease. MT events need to be addressed anyway, since people would rather forfeit the kill tasks and do nothing for 5 minutes.

I'm glad it's being considered. For what it's worth, I did the kill tasks because I could usually complete them in about 5 minutes. But the thing that drove me crazy was waiting for them to initially spawn on a timed task.

Of course, creature spawn is kind of a larger issue as well. Maybe it's just me but running to a hunting area and then just waiting a minute for a mob to spawn always breaks the immersion and makes the world feel kind of dead. It's always been a pet peeve of mine, and I can only hope that it can somehow be addressed. (One idea is to have the HUNT command potentially spawn a creature in an adjacent room if there are none found in the search area. Since there's an 8 second RT on the action, I feel like that wouldn't be too resource intensive.)

>adding that as a feature to the HUNT very, while handy, might be something that can and likely would get used (abused) by people looking to perform nefarious acts

I'm curious, how would this be abused? The suggestion was to generate a mob in a hunting area only when there are none nearby in the hunting area. But people are quite clever in abuse so what didn't I think of?