Note 22: [Jan 20 1999] Fighting Tips to Newbies (Ungoliant)

From Ungoliant:

First, I hope no one minds me posting this note on the fighters guild board, While not a member, I have the utmost respect for the members of the guild. I only wish to post this to help newbie fighters who might happen to wander in and read this post.

For the newbie: Take everything you read here with a grain of salt. I am by no means an expert on learning, however you might find the following tips useful.

For the True Newbie: Your first fighting lessons should be with Soreg, out in the dump. He will teach you the basics of combat including parry, control, daring, aim, fighting, offensive, attack speed, brawling, sword, hafted. To the best of my knowledge he does not teach multiple attacks, split defense and shield use. If you have no fighting skills whatsoever, spend a half hour or so with Soreg and get your fighting skills improved. Soreg, however is a pretty poor teacher.

Next Step: Right after you leave Soreg, you should go to your next fighting teacher, Luthien. Luthien lives outside the town, generally west. Find the spot, enter path, trapdoor, then about 3 east and there is Luthien. Luthien is an elf, so for some races (orcs I believe) Luthien may teach only once or not at all, but for most of us, Luthien will teach you every visit. Luthien will teach all the basic combat skills (you could bypass Soreg if you like) and in addition, shield use, multiple attacks and split defense.

After Training with Luthien (and you should spend A LOT of time with Luthien) get those skills to average at least. Return to town. You will find that some NPC's are better suited to learn from (through attacking them) than others. In town (Eristan) the best opponents to learn from are Thad, Ari, and especially Kala.

Start out with Thad. The hard part always is, "can you parry the NPC?" and quite frankly, you don't know until you try. What you should look for is a relatively long battle where you and your opponent, hit each other lightly. Under these circumstances you will best learn your skills. If you kill your opponent too quickly, switch from an axe or sword to a rusty dagger or cudgel. You will find Thad to be the weakest of the 3 in town opponents, followed by Ari (who hits pretty hard with a longsword) and Kala. Kala will be your teacher all the way up to expert, master skills and beyond.

After graduating from Kala, (you find that you kill her too quickly and don't get many plusses) your next step is Tyca. Tyca is a fighter in the city NE of eristan along the coast. She will allow your skills (sword and hafted especially) to graduate to High Master.

Opponents to avoid in town when you are young are Gurne and Sam. They both seem to have a nasty ability to go for the big critical hit to the head and at the same time do not provide a lot of opportunity for skill gain.

Now a few thoughts on learning Split Defense:

Split defense is a difficult skill to learn. I recommend learning it as soon as you visit Luthien. The procedure is to attack a rat, stop fighting, rattle the cage and attack a 2nd rat. It is critical that you do not attack 2 rats at the same time. If you attempt to do so your concentration will drop very quickly and you will pass out! Just fight 2 rats, if you attempt more without the skill, it will make learning the skill harder. Graduate from 2 rats to 3 and then 4 as your skill improves.

Multiple Attacks: One of the things I didn't realize at first about MA skill is that it is also multiple defense skill. At first, you can learn the skill (from Luthien) by attacking with 2 weapons as you might expect. however, you can also learn the skill by defending with multiple weapons. If you are a spyder like myself, when your skill reaches a relatively high point (I'm at superb now) you can defend with 3 weapons, and quickly improve the MA skill. Note, attacking with 3 weapons is very distracting, your concentration will drop relatively quickly. For this reason, I found the defend with 3 weapons method the best to learn multiple attacks.

The oddities of Learning:

I have found some very strange (and possibily coincidental) things that may or may not aid your learning. You will find the battles that you learn from may take 10 minutes an hour or maybe 3 hours. I have found that if you just sit there and fight (doing nothing else) my knowledge gain tends to slow up. I recommend periodically stopping fighting, resetting your aim, leaving the room, etc., seems to boost learning once again.

Learning parry (or any other skill for that matter): You learn best when your abilitiy in the skill is being challanged. If you find your current opponent can not hit you and you learn nothing from them, turn down your parry and control a bit. When you turn it down enough, you will see them "barely hitting you" and you will begin to learn again.

Learning sword, hafted and shield use: While you will definately learn sword and hafted by attacking with these weapons, you will also learn these skills by defending (parrying) with these weapons! Similarly, if you attack with a shield, you can learn shield use.

In general, if you find you are not learning, try changing things up. Attack with a ligher/heavier weapon, change your combat allocations, switch what weapons you use during the battle, etc.

I hope some of this proves helpful. These are my own observations. I would welcome any corrections, additions, etc., that anyone could have. There are many others out there with far greater knowledge than myself.

Ungoliant