Eternal Night - Beginner's Tips

Claim all your Eternity equipment. (Newbie equipment is in a backpack, check inventory)

Practice these spells/skills to adept:
heal, clot, mend, regen, repair, gas breath, spellproof, resistance, portal, locate, mana, refresh, dispel magic, stone skin, darkblessing, enlarge, giant, armor, shield, bless, berserk, scan, hunt, hide

Wear all your eq, include the staff of eternity, as it increases your fighting abilities and acts as a light source.

Follow the Mud School's Instructions carefully. You will spawn at the beginning.

While exping, remember to stance, and keep an eye on 'stat' if you get a stance/weapon/spell to 100%, change to a different one.

Keep this up until you have attained GM (100%) in an stances, and 2 weapon types, and then practice your spells by sitting in an out of the way room and casting spells over and over, to get them to "adept", which is about 50.0%.

The best spells for this, we have found are:
Purple: c 'remove curse' self
Red: c curse self
Blue c 'cure light' self
Green: c stone self
Yellow: c 'create water' <item>

Once you have this all done, you can avatar.... Be warned, once you become an avatar, you can and probably will be pkilled!

With each piece of eq, make sure you quest it's protection to 15. (quest 'eq' protection #)

With weapons, make sure the min damage is quested to 10 (quest 'weap' min #) and max to 20 (quest 'weap' max #)

With weapons, whatever spell affect you quest to them (or they come with), make sure you quest them to supreme spell weapons (quest 'weap' power #)

Quest the following spells to various pieces of eq, unless you already have them. (Note: do not quest the same spell affect to 2 different pieces of eq)

ShockShield	PassDoor
FireShield	Fly
IceShield	Infravision
AcidShield	Protection
ChaosShield	Sneak
Sanctuary	Invis

When questing the expensive part of weapons (hit/dam/ac), It is best to best to quest the hit and dam to 10 (20 on created) first, then quest the ac on last, as much as you can afford, rather than compromising hit/dam for more ac.

Acquire either a Dragon Scroll, or a Black Man's Tome for each weapon, as this will enchant them to a bonus 20hit/20dam, over and above their raw stats and any questing.

Once you get all these pieces of eq, then you can look to getting created eq. Created EQ can be quested to twice the amount that normal EQ can be.

As early as possible, get mastery. This will allow you to cast a cloak of mastery (costs 10,000 mana to cast), which, while unable to have any questing affects on it, gives you 100hit/100dam/-100ac, which makes it the best item possible to get. Also, once you have mastery, you find will find that Questing is easier and that you fight more effectively.

Learn the stancetable. In PK, having the correct counterstance can give you up to a 50% advantage over an opponent.

Align good. The protection spell reducaggressivemage from evil sources by about 1/4.

If you are going to a location often, then consider casting a mount to portal to to make it quicker in the future.

1) Pick your target!
Use "finger 'target'" to check your oponents hours, and mobkills. If they have significantly more of either than you, you may need help.

2) Pick your place!
Always make sure you have the "terrain advantage". In particular, fight where there are mobs that are agrressive and will hit your target additionally to your attacks.

3) Pick your time!
Hit them while they are down. If your target is fighting a large mob, they are vulnerable. Try to use mobs as tanks. (Remember: Vampires fight better at Night)

4) Pick your weapons!
Crystal Sabres, Ivory Hilted Daggers & Kings Swords. Crystal Sabres have less hitroll than Kings Swords but more damroll. Kings Swords have more hitroll than other weapons but no bonus damroll (unless quested or dragon scroll/black man's tome is added). Ivory Hilted Daggers have less hitroll & damroll than either Crystal Sabres or Kings Swords but are the only weapon with the Curse spell.

Daggers give the normal offensive advantage of holding (sometimes) a target in place, but the defensive advantage is often overlooked. If you are morted, and escape, a cursed target will take an extra few seconds to remove curse before he can recall and decap. These seconds are often enough to be healed, and run.

5) Pick your stance!
The Stance Table is below, you really should know this for pkill!
There are 5 advanced stances, make sure you have them all GM'd. Swallow and Mantis are defensive, Tiger and Dragon offensive and Monkey nullifies all stance bonuses. WereWolves in particular rely on their ability to do massive physical damage, so the offensive stances are the best to use. The table below shows what I think is the best for wolves: If the target is in:
Swallow, use Mantis
Mantis, use Tiger
Dragon, use Swallow
Tiger, use Dragon
Monkey, Dragon (also trial different stances)

1) The gangbang is a powerful thing. By fighting in pairs, or a group, you can take a target that is much more powerful than any of the individual gangmembers. Bear in mind that some players frown upon this style of PK and seek vengeance.

2) Heal morted team-members. If a fellow is morted in a group fight, healed team members can then join in the fight again, with someone else tanking, or he can sit in shadowplane and heal you when you are morted, or even just regen.

3) Know when to fight, and when to run. Know everyone online who might consider you as status, and be aware of whether you can beat them or not. If you are attacked by someone you can't beat, or even are not sure about, either RUN or get REINFORCEMENTS.

4) Know who's around you. Use the command "where" to see who's in the same zone as you. Don't always trust your eyes, vampires have the ability to "mask" as someone else. "where" will give you a true list of who is nearby.

5) Wolves - Punch! Punch vampires that come to join a fight. Punch kindred to give yourself a few seconds to look around. Punch vamps that come to heal escapees. Punch big vampires that are holding a wolf for feeding. Sometimes vampires keep their hp slightly off max, so they can't be punched. You can always heal them first, then punch them. When a player is stunned, you will also never miss a web or fail a curse on it.

6) Healing escaping friends safely. Be quick about it or reinforce Mortal Recall.

7) Escaping in relative safety. Wolves - If you think that you are going to have to escape, howl, and have someone there to heal you. Vamps, make sure your blood is up, in case you need to mist, and get on the vamptalk! Make sure you know if you are cursed or not when you escape. If you are cursed as a wolf, don't even try to recall once healed, just spam south. Your moves will regen faster than you can cast remove curse. If you are a Vamp, change mist, get as far away as you can. Change back and remove curse.

8) When fighting in a group, have at least one member following, but not grouped. If you are grouped, the whole group will automatically attack the same thing (mob/player). If there is more than one opponent fighting you, and you mort one, the whole group will attack the second, so there will be no opportunity to decap, or tie, the first one.

9) Learn from your mistakes. These hints should help you become a more effective PKer, but even with the best advice, things will go wrong. You WILL die, if you participate in PK. Scroll back, and analyse the fight. Find out what went wrong, and develop a strategy to defeat it.

STANCES	Mant	Tiger	Drag	Monk	Swal
None	-9	-9	-10	0	-10
Mantis	0	-3	0	0	+3
Tiger	+3	0	-2	0	+1
Dragon	0	+2	0	0	-2
Monkey	0	0	0	0	0
Swallow	-3	-1	+2	0	0
Against Tiger, use Dragon	Against Dragon, use Swallow
Against Swallow, use Mantis	Against Mantis, use Tiger
And if you suck to much to counterstance, then use Monkey

Mob: Mob means "movable object." These are the monsters and critters that inhabit the MUD; some are cute bunnies with floppy ears, others are winged dragons that could obliterate you in a single fireball.

PK: PK stands for playerkill, this is when one player kills another. Eternal Night is a heavy PK mud, once you train avatar, expect to get pkilled.

Avatar: An avatar can not be killed in the regular way and must be decapitated by another player to be completely killed. By training avatar you will enter the player killing spree! Do not train avatar unless you believe you are tough enough.

GM/Grand Master: Weapon types and stances need to be mastered, this is done by constant use of the stance/weapon type. Once the stance/weapon type has been GM'ed, you willuse it to its maximum proficiency.

GS/Grand Sorcerer Grand Sorcerer is the same as Grand Master, but for spell colours. When you achieve Grand Sorcerer in all colours (red, purple, yellow, green), you will be able to cast spells much easier. Also, once you are a GS at all spells and a GM at all stances and weapon types, you can then cast mastery

Mastery: Casting Mastery produces a personalized piece of eq that cannot be gifted or worn by another. The spell also requires 10k mana. This item is well worth getting.

Decap/Cap: When one player decaps (decapitates) another, he does just that - knocks their head off to add to their status to yours. Do this to another avatar when they are mortally wounded, and you will suck out some of their life force (represented by their status), making them mortal again.

Mort: When you're morted, you're at -10 health, unable to move, speak, stand, cast heal on yourself, etc. You just have to wait for it to work it's way back up to 1. NOTE: You can only decapitate someone if they're mortally wounded.

Stake: Classed avatars can me staked when they are mortally wounded. If you intend to decap, stake them first.
Vampires can be staked if they have not darkhearted this will cause them to return to the status of a normal avatar.
Werewolves can be staked if their silver tolerance is not at 100. The stake must be quested with the extra silver (help extras) This will return them to the status of a normal avatar.
NOTE: You cannot change class by being staked.

Discipline: There are 11 disciplines, each with different Vampiric powers. (help discipline)

Totems: Every werewolf is able to learn special totem powers from various spirits. There are 8 totems, each with different powers.

Home: Your home room is where you recall to, you can set it to somewhere elsewhere then Midgaard by entering the room you want it in and typing: home here.

Experience: Your character advances in power and strength by using experience. You gain experience by being part of a group that kills someone or something. You lose experience by dying as a human or being decapitated. Experience (XP) can be used to train a number of things, hp, mana, move & primal energy.

Status: A player's status is his playerkill to playerdeath ratio. The more players you kill without being killed, the higher your status will go.

BloodPlane: The Bloodplane is a place of pure, unbridled PK frenzy. There are no safe rooms there, and no bully. Anyone can cap anyone, with status and exp bonuses if the victim is in your PK range, or just for the bloodthirsty pleasure of it if they are below your PK range.
This is not a place for the weakhearted! There is a small exp bonus for being in bloodplane. If you are in bloodplane, expect to be capped, and don't complain about it (Except on the bitchchannel). It will cost you 500 primal to leave the Bloodplane, else you will not leave until someone decapitates you.