Pacifist class

Silvarien

@Delrona : I personally know next to nothing about combat and I've managed to have fun in the game, as have a lot of others.

It's above all a role-playing game, and if you're not comfortable with combat you can interact with other players to your enjoyment without fighting. Each city has its own role-playing concept. There are some cities that are fairly combat intensive, and some that don't require combat at all. Virtually all cities, though, have non-combatants in some form or another, even cities that seem combat heavy.

I realize the game might look very confusing and difficult, and it took me way longer than most people to learn it. But it is really enjoyable precisely because once you do get the hang of things, there are so many things that you can do here that you can't do in many other games.

Sena

Delrona said:

I apologize for the way my last comment came out. I am just frustrated at how hard it is to find games that are well written, and not focused on combat. Most quests I've fund so far require killing things bigger than I am.

Every city has lists of places to hunt, or support arenas for fighters, but there is little  support for exploration. I understand that no listing of quests hints outside of newbie areas is so new players are  safe from spoilers, but it is still frustrating finding things. 

There are a lot of quests that don't involve killing (or don't involve bashing at least, the killing being done through the quest mechanics), you just have to find them. Quests are very slowly getting better, with things like the quest log and cleaning up old quests/areas so they're clearer and more organised, but the focus is almost exclusively on newbie/low-level areas so far.

The thing with exploration is that there's not much to support. Anything pointed out for you in a guide is one less thing to explore. For literally exploring the world, HELP GEOGRAPHY gives you a good list of locations to check out, and each of those areas has a help file that gives some background/lore or at least a basic description, and the more common and well-travelled areas have maps listed there. You can use WALK TO <denizen> to easily find a specific denizen if you need to. There's also the Explorer's Tome for 500 credits, which will tell you how much of an area you have left to explore (and a few players disliked that, because as I said it takes away from exploring on your own). When it comes to scripting, there are mappers that have most of the world mapped, and people have made things like searchable databases of items and denizens (though I don't know of any that are even slightly recent). It's a lot of work to create and maintain things like that.

Other types of exploring (working out mechanics, lore, and pure RP things) are almost entirely player-driven, there's not much else the game itself can do to support it (aside from making mechanical details more accessible, but that's almost entirely OOC and is mostly relevant to combat anyways).

If you want help exploring (in any sense) or finding quests or just need some suggestions for where to start, there should be players in every city who can help you out even if there's no official structure in place for it.

There are people who've been playing the game for more than 10 years without ever participating in combat and only minimal bashing, so there's definitely room to play the game in other ways.

Sarieno

Hello!

My character is by no means a pacifist, but I find PVP mostly frustrating (except in group situations). This is due to a proper lack of learning for the most part, but that's my own kettle. When it comes to hunting, I only rarely hunt solo, even before the changes to the hunting system. Having gotten that out of the way, I've been playing Achaea for eleven years. I've played four classes on my main - Runewarden, Jester, Druid, and Occultist. I've also, near coincidental, been a member of four houses - the CIJ, The Lotus, the Spiritwalkers, and the Merchants. I've also been on the city council of Hashan, on the council in the Merchants, worked in various ministries, run shops, and generally participated in the world.

None of this is to toot my own horn (at least I hope it didn't come out that way.) I am basically supporting what @Sena said. There's so much to do outside of fighting, and basically, you can find an RP justification for any class you have not wanting to be violent, as long as you're in an org that can, to a reasonable degree, support that. Cyrene, to a lesser extent Hashan, and potentially Ashtan (I don't know what's going on in Ashtan these days) will support those kinds of things, as well as neutral houses like the CIJ and the Merchants. An example for an RP justification would be a bard who just wants to sing, or a Runewarden who's sworn off the blade due to past trauma, or even a blademaster who made a sacred vow not to use his blade, who uses it as a focal point for meditation. 

And, as a word of encouragement, @Bambi in Hashan has been nonviolent for as long as I can remember. I'm not quite sure how the woman does it, except that I think it likely extends to just PVP seeing as how she is a dragon. When she is approached regarding a city crisis like a raid or a denizen invasion, she supports, but doesn't fight. And that seems like the definition of pacifism to me.

Alaskar

The joy of questing, at least in my opinion, is exploration. Go explore the areas in the wilderness that you may not have known existed. Put together a group of similar-minded people, and venture to the lands far to the north. There are some really neat areas with cool little secrets that don't necessarily require killing things. Some do, but they're not all bad. Like killing a bunch of weird cultist whatever guys to fix their telescope and look at the constellations in the sky in their somewhat hidden observatory. Go raise Kamleikan, I know of a denizen who buys swamp tree branches and lost souls. They're out there, but quest info in Achaea has always been relatively guarded, and that's what makes questing so cool. Would it feel as magical if you just had a list of places to go and items to find/give to NPCs? Nope. 

Now how much those quests benefit you XP wise is another story. But if you're not concerned with combat, you can really just ignore XP and focus on the other cool aspects of the game.  

Ahmet

Alaskar said:

The joy of questing, at least in my opinion, is exploration. Go explore the areas in the wilderness that you may not have known existed. Put together a group of similar-minded people, and venture to the lands far to the north. There are some really neat areas with cool little secrets that don't necessarily require killing things. Some do, but they're not all bad. Like killing a bunch of weird cultist whatever guys to fix their telescope and look at the constellations in the sky in their somewhat hidden observatory. Go raise Kamleikan, I know of a denizen who buys swamp tree branches and lost souls. They're out there, but quest info in Achaea has always been relatively guarded, and that's what makes questing so cool. Would it feel as magical if you just had a list of places to go and items to find/give to NPCs? Nope. 

Now how much those quests benefit you XP wise is another story. But if you're not concerned with combat, you can really just ignore XP and focus on the other cool aspects of the game.  

Plus there are some quests that are REALLY good gold.

Lioren

I'm kinda wondering if this needs to be a "class", the mention of a separate experience track in the original post makes me things this is something that could be slotted in alongside an existing class. People could gain experience in "Pacifism" by following certain objectives and perhaps there could be maluses as well such as consequences for killing, such as people perhaps not trusting you if you suddenly aren't quite the pacifist you've claimed to be.

I suppose my feeling is that a concept such as pacifist seems like it would heavily modify how one interacts with the game world, while the varied classes all offer different things and different utilities, often that core interaction remains similar, and idk I guess a pacifist wouldn't feel right if it wasn't a choice beyond choosing the class (if choosing such mechanically prevented you from say... attacking someone and breaking that character for a moment). 

My mind kinda keeps going back to game of thrones actually, While less for the pacifism, I kinda think it would be cool if my character had the option to follow paths for interacting with the world on a higher level. Idk, kinda like the idea of some kinda of Varys type character, but would also love to see someone like... Dany but from Mhaldor striking terror into the hearts of all and captialising on their fear to force them into submission.


I have weird ideas, I know, and new here but been playing ire's for a while, so like... hi people/