Hcbat guide
Contents
Introduction
HC Bat is a hardcore version of Batmud. Its relationship to the original BatMud is similar to HC Diablo to Diablo - death is permanent, and it is unforgiven.
Wikipedia has great article about the meaning and impact of permadeath that we really encourage the players to read and understand, as that again is the whole purpose of the HC Bat compared to normal BatMUD:
Permanent Death - WikiPedia article
It is paramount to understand that in HC Bat there is no room for second guessing or error. Death is permanent and it often happens fast. Best way to survive is to team up with your fellow HC Batters. Even then, death is inevitable.
If you are new to BatMUD, we recommend you start by trying the normal, "flower" BatMUD first. The Hardcore BatMUD (HC Bat) is an extreme version of this highly social game. The history of BatMUD started in the early 1990's and it has carried forward a legendarium of players, players that started at the age of ASCII. HC Bat was simply a step up from that in the sense of difficulty and attitude.
In HC Bat the ideal thing to do is get to know your fellow players, as mistakes are not excused, they are instead severely punished. While rewards in general (equipment bonuses, skillbooks, boons etc) are made VERY lucrative and great for the players, the death is a constantly looming enemy that provides no room for error. You die, you start from the beginning. It is fun, but it is also very tough!
In HC Bat all traditional equipment bonuses are doubled and the Wizards of HC Bat have tried to remove most of the instant death occurrences from the game - you have enough ways to die without special instant deaths anyway. Some instant deaths are an important part of an area or a mob, so all will never be removed.
It is to be recognized that the great teams of HC Bat have killed most of the TOP monsters of the BatMud - in HC bat, with no restores and NO room for error.
A brief history of HCBat achievements.
A Comprehensive HC weapon compare (There are many differences in weaponry)
Combat
The combat in HC is pretty much what it used to be in flower around the year 2000. Melee has been tuned many times in recent years, so just some notes. Ask players for the most up to date information, as melee has changed so much.
After trying many different approaches, negate offhand penalty was reset to its original function in 2012. Many other melee tunes made over the years remain in place. For example using high parry values lowers damage and a successful riposte results in an extra melee hit (very powerful while 2h wielding). Experiment with parry values to find a suitable one. Weapons wielded in 2 hands hit extremely hard, even though they hit only once.
HC does 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 the help files. We lack the new ambush tune from flower, so you can run past aggro mobs.
STUN is the one word you do not want to see in HC. You see, we have the old stun system. If you get stunned, you are often fucked. No stages of stun, nothing. You will be completely unable to act for the duration of the stun and you will often take double damage from melee hits (which you are unable to dodge), so you should 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. Naked, you take about 10% more damage than usual. 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.
The market in hcbat is very weird and old. Basic eq is cheap if it's available and anything top-end is very expensive but you must keep in mind how easy and fast cash is to make in hc. For example, you can get some pretty good zoo pieces for <200k, while wish scrolls and really high end stuff goes for 25m+. The occasional wizard sales fetch up to 200m.
It is possible to buy an entire set of good eq with gold as more monsters are tuned for hc and old ones killed over again. People have tons of good eq stored in their dest sets so cash can get you far and is, again, extremely easy to make (use Kuroth for selling).
Basic game mechanics
In hc, we have the good old exp tune. Meaning it's not personal. Every time you kill a mob it's exp value on next repop will be diminished for everyone. Mobs will slowly climb back up in their expvalue until they are back at 'a lot'
With each level until lvl75 you will receive extra stats. Also hcbat end levels are a lot cheaper than flower. Lvl100 costs roughly 200m, of which levels 90-100 are roughly half the total cost. Skill/spell training cost caps at 229,000 per point. You can't train or study over your skill/spellmax.
Summon only works in parties. Certain mobs can still summon you.
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. Players with 100% stunned maneuvers are also immune to melee stuns as of 2012.
Temporary boons in HC can be bought with cash, price depends on your level. You also clear your temp boon for double that price.
Skillbooks give +20, +19 and so on until +11 with a 1 hour cooldown which resets at reinc. This means you can always read a skillbook after reinc, so if you are trying to hit a certain skill, you can try again as many times as you have books.
The guilds
Mage - Synced, No Mage Staves. Mage check doesn't work if all leader slots are not filled, perhaps some other small functions as well. Essence saves over death.
Nuns - Almost everything works. The hardest restores are not available and some tasks have been slightly altered.
LoC - Dead / rebirthed people stay on plaque until rejoining. Good blades hit REALLY hard. Even harder than Vorpal Blades.
Barbarians - Lacking some events, blood bowl and critter hunt.
Tiger - Dark nerves doesn't work. Or rather our undeads just can't be stunned. Still tiger claw can do damage with dark nerves
Druid - Leads don't work properly (they juggle around randomly). It would seem there are no stat caps on spells.
Evil Priests - Some problems keeping alignment but quite a working guild otherwise.
Bard - No Melody of the Misadventurer, Sweet Lullaby or Arches Favour. Bmight and KBH status can be recovered after death by joining and casting a bard spell before the next boot.
Reavers - Now playable, thanks to Juggelo. Spite count stays over death.
Civfighter
Mercenary - Bookable, and gets all dirty fighting skills to 100%. With HC stats the average damage for DF is amazing and stuns a lot. With 100% skills stun hits once/per 5 skills on avarage.
Channellers - Leads don't always work but guild works very well.
Ranger
Monk (motion is back, supporting spells and skills but with some new penalties)
Crimson
Civmage
Templar
Psionicist - Works great. Drafting changed to fit HC playerbase. KoMD does not save over death.
Merchant (very outdated from flower counterpart)
Conjurer
Alchemists - Crafting rings works great, 100% alloying dosn't give loseless alloy. Using drugs have drastic side effects (can get like 1k damage when you expect it the least.
Navigators (old explore requirements, 10%/20%/30% etc)
Sabres (Style points and battle cadence don't work). Bookable.
Runemages are now open, late 2017. Not sure anyone has (or will) test, considering no guild combo restrictions. All the same, they are here.
Archers are open, late 2017. Several people have tested, apparently working.
Folklorists are open, late 2017. Several people have tested, possibly not enough races for all folk quest(s)? Otherwise appear functional.
The non-functional guilds in hc:
New locs (we have old locs) (HA HA)
Spiders - Whole guild seems to work well. Double stats from demons same as from equipment. Demons don't kill you on failed banish, and you can just quit if you fail to banish your demon. You return to game with 0sp, 0ep and you lose 500hp. Some high end items in HC have insanely high sac values so the mightiest demons are truly amazing.
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.
As you may have guessed, we have no BG restrictions. Other requirements still apply when making cross-background 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. Rememeber you can keep your barb, psi, reaver reputations in any reinc with 1 free level because of this.
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.
Tunes
(Thank you to the wizards who keep working on HC! The whole MUD appreciates your efforts.)
- Int gives +damage to many but not all offensive spells, perhaps wis as well.
- Swapping eq takes ep.
- Feb 25 18:18 2012, 100% stunned maneuvers means you are stunproof against physical stuns (not psi stuns)
- Apr 15 22:57 2012 "Big and rare creatures" drop bonus cash/tp potions. Also most turbos drop tp potions.
- Feb 24 10:14 2012 Gullervo was added, offers unstun, unpain, and few other useful spells (sw of south crossing)
- Osku has a weak tolerance for alcohol (lies!)
- Nov 11 11:55 2012 Negate offhand penalty sync'ed to work like flower counterpart
- Party stats added (Zin)
- More than 3 tanks in front row no longer possible (Moght)
- Hiking works again (Moght?)
- Size matters in melee (Moght)
- Shadow sabres (Cadence doesn't work, style points don't work)
- Some instakills will now do <maxhp> damage instead of sending your ass to hell(). This can sometimes prevent you from dying to those death traps that have not yet been removed. No guarantees though. (Juggelo)
- Offline tells (Zin)
- Nun leader relic no longer resets back to guild every 15 minutes (Zin)
- Riposte is now an extra main hand melee hit (Moght)
- High level monsters and turbos have a chance of dropping task points (Moght)
- Rarely killed mobs give more experience than usual (Moght)
- Mar 10 10:27 2012 Two new emotes 'facepalm' and 'wohoo'
- Mar 10 10:33 2012 Corpse can be shared by multiple Lord of Chaos blades
- Mar 12 10:49 2014 Valar is no more invite only race
- Jan 11 2014 Taskpoint transfers from normal BatMUD is allowed thanks to Gore
- Jun 25 11:42 2014 Feather weight is quicker to cast and cheaper
- Oct 25 00:14 2014 Book of Knowledge cooldown has been reduced (to 1h)
- Apr 22 2015 Old 'parry' command ie: parry 51 was replaced with 'defense'. Higher defense affects quick chant and damage criticals in combat.
- Apr 22 2015 Analysis of magic lore has been tuned, at least in mages. It is far less precise.
- Apr 22 2015 Psionicists are natural born experts on analyzing how psionic damage affects the victim.
- Apr 24 2015 Look at no longer reveals if monster has empty inventory or not.
- Apr 24 2015 'Your dedication pays off.' message now appears sometimes, like a built-in quick lips boon for skills & spells. Depends on defense setting.
- Apr 24 2015 Monsters can now sometimes drop a potion of heroism leadership (hp/sp/ep refresment)
- Apr 24 2015 Tarmalen heals have been upgraded
- Apr 24 2015 Tarmalen heals can now 'critical heal' on rare occasion, ie: Major heal instead of doing 300-400 might do 1200.
- Apr 25 2015 Analysis of magic lore has been adjusted to have less random.
- Apr 25 2015 Hardware store now carries bags/boxes, that offer some additional carry weight capacity.
- Nov 22 2017 Some interface improvements synced from flower, including the very useful 'train/study all to: x' command.
- Nov 22 2017 Channellers update: Absorption aura, Cleanse weapon spells added, Spontaenous combustion and Grounding point spells fixed and replenish ally ratio updated to same as in flower.
- Nov 23 2017 The School of Folklorists guild merged and open for testing. At least everything compiles .. might work?. Guild at Batcity.
- Nov 24 2017 The Flight of Archers guild merged and open for testing. The guild fort is somewhere se from BC. Everything compiles..sort of and yes, the trainers are there but not shown on minimap due to new mapping engine held together by extreme glue. Editors note: located bit south of Mirkhold
- Nov 25 2017 The Faculte of Runemagi guild merged and open for testing. All three exits added to map (W,E and S). As usual everything compiles, however this is very clutch guild so nothing has been tested. Google runemagery batmud to get started.
- Nov 26 2017 Bows added to Tom Bombadil, Sister Alysia and Wainamoinen
- Late 2017 Experience gains were doubled game wide for monsters killed. Monster levels/toughness remain unmodified, so exp gain is much faster.
- Late 2017 Skill/spell costs were modified (the 229k cap removed) to be more aligned with flower costs. Skill/spell cost jumps approximately 3x now when training past your racial max. In short, training 90-100 can get very expensive very quickly.
- Date unknown Featherweights were modified and no longer appear to expire (bug or feature, who knows?)
Tuned monsters
As of 2012, mobs that are killed rarely give extra experience. Big mobs give even more experience than usual. All high level mobs and turbos have a chance of dropping a potion containing task points, and occasionally some extra cash.
- Burglefloogah is slightly easier than his flower counterpart. (Note: Burgle is not available in flowerbat at the moment, and rumors say that it will never be again.)
- Inra has received several tunes. It was killed once in the early days of HC and for a second time in 2013 or so.
- Thanatos is now very much worth killing. (Juggelo)
- Lesser demon is tuned to hc and so is his eq (Juggelo)
- Kitiara has become fat and now carries a Kerbholz (Moght)
- Kizarwexius is killable, Paingiver is a hard hitting 37kg great axe (Juggelo)
- Moratar Cain has been tweaked for HC and has been succesfully slain twice as of 1/2015 (Juggelo)
- Asmodeus has arrived in HC and the gods are offering a reward for hurting him (Moght)
- Baal-Naygash is some strange version with 20x the normal HP. Currently awaiting a fix.
- The final part of Ndoki forest was opened, and Zyll killed soon afterwards.
Random magical equipment
( Random magical system was severely downtuned, these rules no longer apply. The only good randoms you can get now are type resists. Leaving the section here since there has been talk of bringing it back in some form. )
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. Sometimes they are enchanted, sometimes not. They always glow, but so do certain materials. Sometimes Damogran will announce the spawning of a magical item with a shout, with a slight delay for obvious reasons.
The gear produced by this can have: 2-10 any stat. up to 20+ any resist except phys. Not exactly sure how much, but 3-4 good items will get you max type resist, which is around 70%. 3-15 hp/sp regen. 2-10 +dam/+hit/+avoid
Any of these can be found on any type or armour or weapon anywhere so the possibilities are endless. The rarest combinations have been known to sell for several megs, for example +divine spr or +max stat in the right slot. Many players also buy good type resist items for decent prices. Also all this stuff drops from monsters with no creator data, so you can claim it and use it if it's that good.
Player city shop values for random magics (identify is not reliable for determining power level of random magics)
4000+ 3spr/hpr/2dam/4stat
8000+ 6spr/hpr/4dam/8stat
12000+ 9spr/hpr/6dam
18000+ 8dam
29000+ 10dam
The 'hardcore' command
Have a look at hardcore combat_ld and HARDCORE mode. They are helpful survival features. You can also see a person's recorded deaths or the top killers of players with this command.
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.
- Surprising numbers of damage. FYI, Armageddon hits really hard.
So. First of all, to survive make sure you are well dressed (fill your slots). Then, if you are a living creature, get 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. People have managed to drown in moats around cities. 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 important 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 (basically, don't ever leave your room).
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. Make many of them and do not hesitate to use them. Dying sucks a lot more than spending a ring which is cheap and easy to make. 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.
Make sure you size up mobs in new rooms before engaging in combat and watch out for mobs that banish. Nothing will ruin your day quicker than getting banished into the ocean far far away. The sanctuary ring mentioned above will save your day.
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 try to 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, KoMD, bardic might and every one of your settings are LOST. Your playerfile is removed completely. Task points are lost.
Not all of your accomplishments will necessarily be lost.
- Any points you have scored on passive plaques/highscore lists don't disappear.
- Mage essences are saved.
- 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)
- Your EQ drops in the room where you die, so bear that in mind when going to places where nobody can follow.
- You can restore bardic might and KBH'd spells by joining bards and casting any bard spell during the boot in which you died. Check 'bscore' for confirmation after casting, doesn't always work.
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 (help hardcore) 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.
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 instakill you, kobolds might drown, your path might run you through the ocean until you drown or -ep kills you, assholes may pkill you, you may forget frenzy on while running to Belan etc... There are just too many features for the wizards to be able to 'fix' them all. And remember, "There are no restores on hardcore 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 and the reason we have relatively fast game play anyway.
I hope you find this guide useful and HCBat enjoyable.
Originally written by Gon (Gonzo@bat) in 2006, moved to Batwiki in 12/2010. Edited wildly by several players since then.
