Hcbat guide

Death

Dying in hcbat is PERMANENT. When you die, you:

- drop everything you were carrying, including money. - are transported to hell.

In Hell() you can share your last words with the mud but be nice.

Players can get butthurt if you whine too much or get angry and take it out on ghost channel. Instead, take it like a man (or woman) and accept your death as a lesson learned. After you have conducted your business in hell, you have 2 options.

1: Just go ld. This way your dead character will be saved until you use 'quit' in hell. This is widely frowned upon, since your character will still be alive in many ways, hogging places on plaques for example. But none of that will be useful to you, so it's better to just get it over with and ..>

2: Quit. When you quit your dead character in hell, it is removed completely from the game. Also, your LoC blade, barbarian reputation, bardic might and every one of your settings are LOST. Your playerfile is removed completely.

Not all of your accomplishments will necessarily be lost. - Any points you have scored on passive plaques/highscorelists don't disappear. - Mage essences are saved. KoMD is not. - Any EQ you might have made still has your name and you still have safe passage to your room and chests. (provided you had those to begin with) - You can restore bardic might by joining bards and casting any bard spell during the boot in which you died.

Linkdeath

In flower, the only things that will cause you to go ld is activating it yourself, or actually losing your link. And you can never go ld in combat. Some features to address the obvious problems in this are present in hc. In hc, if you are idle longer than your combat_ld (see 2.1.2) is set for, you will be kicked ld when combat starts. This feature is there to help with deaths from losing links.

The proper way to use it is to set combat_ld somewhat low, depending on how long you want to remain in the game for if you lose your link. Then, create an unidle trigger that makes you unidle just before the combat_ld would kick in. Use this setup in parties. Now, when you do lose link, your client will not be able to send the unidle anymore, and as soon as your combat_ld time is reached, you will go ld no matter what the situation was. Of course if you play from a shell and have your client running on a screen, you are probably dead.

There are a couple of problems with ld too. For one, if you are poisoned, the poison will continue to tick while you are ld, in some cases killing you. Another feature worth mentioning is that if you happen to be unconscious, going ld will kill you instantly. Seek help in other ways.

Also, the rules state that using linkdeath as a part of your battle tactics is against the rules.

Combat

The combat in hc is pretty much what it used to be in flower around the year 2000. Edit: the melee has been tuned many times in recent years, so just some notes. - wielding weapons in several limbs no longer gives huge extra damage - the offhand penalty is minimal, meaning barsoomians are a ton of fun

The main difference to flower is that we do not have weapon speeds. All wielded weapons hit once / round, no matter their size or weight.

Our monsters do not have the controlled motion skill. Some spell durations are different to flower, read helps. We lack the new ambush tune from flower, so you can run past aggro mobs.

STUN is the one word you don't wanna see in hc. You see, we have the old stun system. If you get stunned, you are often screwed. No stages of stun, nothing. You will be completely unable to act for the duration of the stun. So get an unstun every chance you get.

Equipment

In hc, having empty slots makes you more vulnerable to damage, apparently in the form of -phys res. So fill your slots, even vendor crap is better than nothing. And most of all, fill your HEAD slot first thing. Without headgear any damage directed at you has the chance to cause a lot of extra damage and stun you. You should focus on filling your slots as soon as you plan to go fight something.

Stats in hcbat are as follows: All regens multiplied by 3 All stats multiplied by 2 +dam, +hit, +avoid, +resists, +skillbonuses, etc. are multiplied by 2

Negative effects are also multiplied, -4 stat will become -8.

Keep in mind that with these kind of stat multipliers, a lot of the items that are normally just made for cash in flower turn to decent newbie eq.

Exp, levels, boons, guilds, bg stuff, etc

EXPA. There is never enough. In hc, we have the good old exp tune. Meaning, it's not personal. A good rape party can end up leaving an entire area in very little exp tune for the whole game. Mobs will slowly climb back up in their expvalue until they are back at 'a lot'

- Edit: Exp tune is up to levels of suffeli never observed before. Mobs are huge. Thanks Moght.

Levels, hrm. With each level until lvl75 you will receive extra stats. Also hcbat end levels are a lot cheaper than flower. Lvl100 costs roughly 200 megs, of which levels 90-100 are roughly half the total cost.

The guilds

Mage - Synced, No Mage Staves. Nuns - Everything works. LoC - Dead / rebirthed people stay on plaque until rejoining. Barbarians - Lacking some events, blood bowl and critter hunt. Tiger - Dark nerves doesn't work. Or rather our undeads just can't be stunned. Druid - Leads don't work properly (they juggle around randomly) Evil Priests - Some problems keeping alignment but quite a working guild otherwise. Bard - No Melody of the Misadventurer, Sweet Lullaby or Arches Favour. Reavers - Now playable, thanks to Juggelo. --- The rest work ok---

Civfighter Mercenary Channellers Ranger Monk (motion was finally tuned to not work on spells in hc too, boo!) Crimson Civmage Templar Psionicist Merchant Conjurer Alchemists Navigators (old explore requirements, 10%/20%/30% etc)

The non-functional guilds in hc:

Sabres (will not be opened, ever.) Runemages (hasn't been opened in hc) New locs (we have old locs) (HA HA) Spiders (was being looked at, but Arch in charge vanished) The rest of the post-2000 guilds like cavaliers etc. have not been opened here.

Hcbat received a skill/spell sync sometime in 2005, but our guilds never got synced so don't expect to find all your new nice skills in our counterpart guilds.

BG restrictions. Now, this is the part that really separates hc from flower. As you may have guessed, we have no BG restrictions. Other requirements still apply when making cross-bg guild combos. Monks still can't join Nuns. Undeads still can't join Nuns. Navigators still need one full guild that gives access to nav to be completed.

Other than that, you can mix up your guilds as you please, and what better way to find an interesting playing style you've never tried.

In soviet Russia boon buys you, but in hc you can buy yourself a FULL boon for 24-36 hours, for a measly 75000 gold.

Other stuff

Summon only works in parties.

Undeads in hc are 100% stunproof since we have the old stun system. Vampires and zombies are vulnerable to poison and drowning but the other undead races are not.

Tunes

There have been many small and large tunes to hc, I will list what I remember but please add them as you see fit.

- Burglefloogah is easier than his flower counterpart

- Inra has received many tunes since the first and only kill

- Thanatos is now 'worth killing'

- Lesser demon is tuned to hc and so is his eq

- Melee has been tuned many times, easiest to ask players about it's current situation

- Swapping eq takes ep

- Moving while casting or using takes sp and ep respectively

Random magical eq

Since there are less eq parties in hc due to the small playerbase and the obvious risk of permanent death in killing big mobs (even though many mobs have been tuned to suit hc), there's a nice system in place that gives everyone a chance to find something good.

It works like this: Any GENERIC armour or weapon wielded/worn by a mob may spawn as a magical eq. These can be identified from the (glowing) tag attached to them. (requires see magic) Sometimes Damogran will shout to the whole mud the name of the mob who has it, sometimes not.

The gear produced by this can have: 2-10 any stat. ?? any resist except phys. over 20% from good items. 3-15 hp/sp regen. 2-10 +dam/+hit/+avoid

And any of these can be found on any type or armour/weapon anywhere. So the possibilities are endless. The most rare combinations have been known to sell for several megs, for example +divine spr or +max stat in the right slot. Also all this stuff drops off monsters with no creator data, so you can claim it to as many people as you want and add it to your set if it's that good. Top The 'hardcore' command Have a look at hardcore combat_ld and hc mode. They are helpful survival features.

Known bug^H^H^Hfeatures

I'll add stuff here at some point :P

Survival

The most common causes of death in hcbat in no particular order: - Stun. - Drowning. (kobold syndrome) - Poison. - Stun. - Being a retard (player mistakes) - Botting and getting zapped for it. - Stun. - Exploring previously unknown areas forehead first.

So..First of all, to survive make sure you are well dressed. And by this I mean FILL THOSE SLOTS. Then, if you are a living creature, seek out an unstun as soon as possible, as having a wild rhino ramming his horn up your stunned and helpless anus for 6 rounds can be a traumatizing, not to mention lethal experience.

When you decide to move your now bloody and tender ass to an exp area, don't fail to get a ww for the kobold if there is water on the way. Kobolds have a racial ability to swallow large amounts of water accidentally, most times resulting in termination of said kobold. This has actually been a very common cause of death in hcbat history. Kill monsters that are in your range. Bigger mobs are obviously riskier, so wait until you have decent eq before trying heroic 500k solokill attempts.

Don't explore areas nobody in your party knows. Many instakills and damage traps have been removed from hc, but not all of them. Some even are an impohttp://batwiki.wx.fi/w/skins/common/images/button_headline.pngrtant part of the area they're in.

Don't rely on flower knowledge when it comes to areas in hcbat. In flower, many of our areas have received changes, had quests added, etc. Even some of the synced areas are not the same completely. Think batmud in 2001 and you will be close.

When making the decision to flee from a fight, leave room for such things as last minute crits, anything the mob might cast and how you will exit. Basically, leave the fight when your opponents can POTENTIALLY do enough damage next round to kill someone or cause a nasty unc-session. One round in advance is even better. Don't underestimate your opponent's dice luck and you'll be fine (HAHAHAHA).

When you start to grow in exp, ALWAYS carry a sanctuary ring. It can instantly throw you to startloc, even from nosummon areas and it is the single most useful eq in hc and top lifesaver by far. When you are uncon in hc, you can bleed a lot further than in flower before actually dying. So you might have a lot of time to get help.

P.S. No matter how careful you are, death sometimes is inevitable. Monsters might bug, wands might explode and get mobs aggro, burglehabos might fly, dcrits might hurt, armageddon might hit you for 2.5k, kobolds might drown, your path might run you through the ocean until -hp, assholes may pkill you, etc... Guess there are just too many features for the wizzes to be able to 'fix' them all. And remember, "There are no restores on hard core batmud. Never ever. Ever.". Alright, sometimes there have been restores but every last one of them caused immense butthurt within the community and the odds of non-bug related restores happening are non-existent. (Scratch that, it's just plain random if you get one or not) Just pick yourself up and try again, that's the hc spirit anyway.

I hope you find this guide useful and HCBat enjoyable.