Justifying Slaughter?

Delrona

I've played too many characters that exist only to kill anything that moves. So this time around, I wanted to role play a studious character, who won't kill unless there is a good reason. 10 gold per buckawn is pointless. I can make more by selling a handful of minerals than I can slaughtering an entire village of buckawns. I'm not a forestal, so the buckawns aren't really a threat to my beliefs anyway. Gnolls are fair game, being slavers, but at this point, they don't give much experience. I'm not especially religious, so there is no point in slaughtering everything in Great Rock over and over. But to gain experience, I have to kill something. I don't see anyway around it. I can only play for about 10 hours a week, so I'd like to find something that gives enough experience to make it worth my time. I know quests give experience, but at this point I haven't found any of them that can compare to the experience from a slaughter fest.

Does anyone have suggestions for experience or justifications for cleaning out areas.

Sena

You can hunt animals, that's a lot easier to justify. Especially if you learn gathering so you can butcher them yourself.

Phereklos is a good place to hunt animals once gnolls are too weak for you, it's a huge area with lots of denizens like Manara is, but without a lot of competition, and it's decent experience up to level 80 or so. Some other good places to try: Actar (level 20-30ish), scorpion pit under the Mhojave (20-40ish), Green Lake (20-40ish?), Azdun spiders (30-60ish), the underground lake near Blackrock (level 40-60ish maybe? I don't really remember, it's been a long time), Sealion Cove (60-80ish?), Istar Jungle (60-85ish), the Vents of Hthrak (70-85ish). Ulangi and Mysia are good for gold too. There's no shortage of areas with lots of animals to hunt for xp, at least up to level 80. I think there's a lot of good animals to hunt on Meropis as well, but I haven't really tried bashing there.

If you want to go all the way to dragon though, it gets harder to find enough animals to hunt at high levels. For that, there are undead; "killing" things that are basically already dead should be justifiable for most characters. There's the zombies behind Maim's mansion (level 40-70ish), the graveyard in Azdun (60-80ish), and beyond level 80 there's the higher level parts of Azdun (can't recall what the areas are called), the Underworld, and probably some others I'm forgetting (I haven't bashed much past 80 yet).

Jinsun

Also, your character sounds benevolent ( killing slavers) so look to anything evil or "bad" or aligned with it. That opens up blackrock and enverness (however it's spelled). Or if non aggro animals are too cute and nice go to Meropis. I promise your rage and subsequent slaughtering will feel justified. Post. 80 is more difficult but the aggressive trash in Underworld is great if you can either fight or run from anyone who jumps you. Could do the assassins den or mark tower depending on your leanings

Delrona

Once I kill them, what do I do with all of those corpses? I know I'm being picky here, but Humgii can't need that much food. I suppose I could just ignore the issue, but it seems like there should be some sort of justification.

Or I could get a religious revelation and pick a shrine to dump the carcasses in.

Sena

Butcher them, give them to someone else to butcher, offer them, or some of them can be turned in for gold.

Butchering doesn't get rid of the corpses, but you've at least done something with them, just leaving you to dispose of the less useful parts.

Dortheron

Delrona said:

Humgii can't need that much food

Yes they can! They're even called trash cans in HELP HUMGII, and it's not like they digest what they eat. I can just imagine a patch of space where a bunch of glasses, letters, and other items about to decay floating in space.

And if you don't want the corpses to offer to a shrine, pass them off to someone else. Plenty of people wouldn't mind the free essence, and all it takes is OFFER CORPSES at a shrine for them to be gone

Prythe

Delrona said:

I've played too many characters that exist only to kill anything that moves. So this time around, I wanted to role play a studious character, who won't kill unless there is a good reason. 10 gold per buckawn is pointless. I can make more by selling a handful of minerals than I can slaughtering an entire village of buckawns. I'm not a forestal, so the buckawns aren't really a threat to my beliefs anyway. Gnolls are fair game, being slavers, but at this point, they don't give much experience. I'm not especially religious, so there is no point in slaughtering everything in Great Rock over and over. But to gain experience, I have to kill something. I don't see anyway around it. I can only play for about 10 hours a week, so I'd like to find something that gives enough experience to make it worth my time. I know quests give experience, but at this point I haven't found any of them that can compare to the experience from a slaughter fest.

Does anyone have suggestions for experience or justifications for cleaning out areas.

Sardaug spent the first several hundred years of his existence gaining experience *only* by non-killing questing.

Hellen

There are at least a few places with aggressive denizens. If you're playing a more scholarly character, try exploring there to discover what happened in those areas, and defend yourself. Not all research is book-work.

If you're trying to play a character who is generally a good person, then there's rarely anything wrong with attacking orcs and the like.

Xith

You can draw lines. For example, slaughter orc soldiers, but not the orc women and children.

If you look at the impermanent nature of Achaean death (even denizen areas repopulate as though they'd prayed to Thoth), and recognize that the "combat experience" you're gaining is by besting them in combat, you're actually training the opposing city and toughening them. Strengthening through Oppression, as Mhaldor would say.

In Moghedu, for example, which is heavily beset by invaders and has been, they're a fairly militant city. They used to have warriors with spears, didn't have archers or mages. The women didn't practice Striking in the living quarters, and so forth. The forces were upgraded a while back, which was a unique denizen version of levelling up.
But not every denizen in Moghedu wants to fight. The bottom few levels are largely miners, there are adolescents and merchants, etc. So if you want to look like less of a raving sociopath, I'd recommend only killing the combatant contingents of a sentient population.

I've heard there is a game mechanic that decreases the experience gained from a village the more often it is hunted, and I'd love to see something that toughens the population of an area the more it's hunted (newbie and lowbie areas excepted). In other words, if an area loses more than 1000 denizens in one month, the next month's respawn will include more expert troops in the fray.

I did much of my pre-80 levelling in Arcadia, before taking an active role in GoM, and since then, I've refrained from hunting certain areas like that. I'm level 88 and most of my xp ups and downs are through combat with people I get to defend against in Moghedu through the formal DENIZEN ALLIANCE. You can also try to get good at combat and win enough duels for a positive xp gain, but that doesn't solve the mid-level hunting issues, since you need a high level to win more fights.


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tl;dr - some denizens want to die and train their combat skills (guards and soldiers exist to guard and soldier) just like combatant adventurers. pick those ones and use discretion around women, children, and other non-fighters. HINT: if it fights you with a heavy coin purse, a pot of soup, or a library book, don't kill it

Delrona

Thanks @Xith that is an in-game explanation I can handle. I've only played perma-death games before I came here, so the reincarnation of players and denizens is a little confusing. Training in real-life situations is good for the combatants. Although I have found a couple areas where I'm just defending myself, to it's fair game for me to try and survive.