Race abilities - which ones are useful?

Aggra

Could someone describe the racial abilities and how useful they are?  I tend to like racials that provide abilities rather than just bonuses.
Are their any racial abilities that can't be performed with spells/items?  I think I will be an Occultist btw.
Horval body armor useful?  So is actual armor better?  Do all classes have the ability to wear any armor?
Horval leap - what is this?
Is the Grook waterbreathing/swimming/regen decent?
Is Atavian flying useful? 
What is the Mhun movement bonus?  I guess I dont really understand movement yet in MUDs yet.

Thanks,
Agg

Kogan

Hi Aggra. There are a few abilities worth noting in racial actives. The horkval leap can be very handy assuming you don't have access to a leap type ability outside of it. Allowing you to leap over walls as opposed to tumbling in some scenarios. Someone else will need to comment on the specifics of horkval armour. Grook regen/waterbreathing is nice if you're fighting in water which may not be that often. However grook does offer a high intellect specialisation which is great for occultist. Atavian flying can be handy. Especially early on but most people will learn riding at some point and get a mount to achieve the same. However if you're dismounted you still have access to fly as an atavian. Finally the mhun movement speed, or celerity, bonus. Essentially if you're moving quickly you may get a message saying you're moving too hastily and need to wait a short period before you can move again. This bonus adds 1 move before you encounter that. It's actually quite noticeable. 

Aggra

Thanks much for the fast reply and great comments.

Agg

Kiet

Siren's generally the best race for most int classes, imo, including occultist. Grook is a close second if you have a male char.

Solnir

Horkval armour is somewhere between leather and ringmail in resistances, and since they can't wear regular armour it's generally best to only be horkval if you are a magi, monk, or bard, in terms of armour.

Atalkez

It’s better than leather, worse than ringmail.

If you can wear anything above leather, you’re making a bad decision to go Horkval for resists.

Sena

Horkval can situationally be worse than leather or better than ringmail (or even better than fullplate), because resistances work differently from armour. For a simple example, some attacks (such as backstab) ignore armour entirely but not resistances, so no amount of armour can provide better protection than horkval's natural armour. And then there are some things that are actually reduced by the stated armour percentage on weaponprobe/armourlist, so even leather's 11% blunt (the lowest protection of any armour) is better in those cases than horkval's 10% resistance.
Against denizens specifically, horkval armour should be marginally better than ringmail for blunt damage, a little better than leather but worse than everything else for cutting.

To give more specific details on the other racial abilities:
Atavian:
Fly is extremely useful if you don't have any other way of flying. Atavian flight has a long balance though, so if you do have other options, they'll probably be better. Classes that give flying abilities are depthswalker, druid (only in certain morphs), jester, magi, occultist, sentinel (only in certain morphs), and sylvan. Anyone with trans riding and a flying mount can fly, but only while mounted. Anyone can buy a Ring of Flying for 400 credits, which works the same way as Atavian flight but with half the balance cost.

Hover just replicates the effect of levitation elixir. Basically only useful if you need levitation but your vial has decayed or you forgot to buy one.

Dwarf:
No unique abilities, resistances are 5%.

Grook:
Waterbreathing just replicates the effects of pear/calcite, it's a slight convenience bonus.

Natural swimming is, as far as I know, identical to the ability of fluidswim in survival. This was useful when fluidswim was fairly high in the skill, but now you start with fluidswim at inept survival, so I'm unsure if the bonus actually has any effect now.

Water regen is extremely useful (restores 15% of max health every 10 seconds; three times the regen of a boar tattoo, for example) if you're actually fighting in water, but most of your time will be spent on land, so it's pretty limited outside of a few bashing areas. It's quite a bit more useful if you're a magi/sylvan so you can flood any room. Or if you can afford a Sceptre of Aquaeous Mastery, but that will run you about 1600cr currently, probably a lot more after this month is over.

Horkval:
As I mentioned above, horkval resistances aren't directly comparable to any type of armour, but in general I'd say anything above ringmail will be much better most of the time.

Leap is extremely useful if you don't already have access to something similar. It has a very short balance and allows you to bypass many things that can slow or prevent your movement (rubble or difficult terrain, icewalls, a player blocking the direction, etc.). Classes that have a similar ability are bard, blademaster, druid (certain morphs), jester, sentinel (certain morphs), and serpent (evade has a longer balance than leap, but additional benefits). Any class can spend 333 lessons in survival to get tumble to bypass the same obstructions (and more), but tumble is a lot slower and drops your cloak tattoo (which is a big deal in PvP). Any class can spend 841 lessons in riding to learn mountjump, which is the same as leap but requires a mount. Or anyone can buy an artefact that gives the leap ability for 500 credits.

Human:
No unique abilities, the crit bonus is ~1% (half as effective as a level 1 crit pendant), the sip bonus is a 10% chance of 10% increased sip (not particularly useful).

Mhun:
Low light vision is inferior to nightsight, which you can learn with just a few lessons in vision.

The movement bonus is extremely useful. When moving, have you seen the "Now now, don't be so hasty!" messages when you try to move too quickly? How that works is that, normally, you can move twice per second before having to wait until the next second to move again. Any attempted movement beyond your limit gives that hasty message. Mhun gets +1 to that limit, so you can move 3 rooms per second instead of 2, effectively allowing you to walk 50% faster. The in-game autowalker (WALK TO <place>) respects those movement speeds as well. Depthswalkers have an ability that gives the same bonus, and there's an artefact for 500 credits that also gives the same bonus. Unlike the other examples though, the artefact and class ability don't make the racial ability irrelevant, because the bonuses stack; a mhun depthswalker with an armband of celerity would get 5 moves per second.

Rajamala:
The ability to consume corpses is mostly just for fun/RP, but it does provide sustenance, which is convenient below level 80 if you're hunting and aren't carrying any food with you. After level 80 you no longer get hungry naturally, so there's no longer an actual benefit.

I don't have any details on the dodging bonus, and the cold resistance is 5%.

Satyr:
Headstomp, as far as I know, has no practical use. It requires the target to be prone, and has a 50% chance to give an affliction (stupidity, dizziness, fear, confusion, or epilepsy), but I don't have any specifics on the damage or balance cost.

Endurance regen is 10 endurance every 4 seconds, effectively doubling base endurance regen, which is very useful for classes that use endurance quickly.

Siren:
Seduce will prevent the target from attacking you (or pacify seducible denizens), but it's easily cured so it doesn't have any practical use in PvP. The denizen effect can be situationally useful, but is mostly just an RP ability.

Beguile pulls people from an adjacent room to yours (prevented by deafness or anything that would prevent movement), which does have some situational usefulness. Priests, apostates, and magi have similar abilities.

Poison resistance is 5%.

Troll:
The chance to stun on blunt attacks can potentially be very useful if you get lucky, but the chance of stunning is small and even when you do stun there's a good chance that it won't be timed right to make a difference. So even as a class that constantly uses blunt attacks (like monks or dual blunt knights) 99% of the time it won't matter.

Electrical resistance is 5%.

Tsol'aa:
Swinging into trees is a survival ability, learned about 806 lessons in. Serpents and sentinels get it as a class ability early on, and anyone who can fly can get into the trees from the air with LAND TREES. If you don't have much survival or another method of reaching the trees though, it's a useful ability.

Hiding simply prevents you from showing up in a room (the "Sena is here" line after the room description when looking in a room) unless the person looking has lifevision (not a rare ability by any means, but the majority of people won't have it). It doesn't hide your movement, so it's not really useful for stealth on its own, just making you harder to find in some situations. Druids, occultists, apostates, and infernals have abilities to hide their movement but lack the actual hide ability, so being Tsol'aa complements their stealth really well, at least in the forest. There's also an artefact for 800 credits that similarly complements hiding. Serpents, sentinels, and depthswalkers have the ability to hide without restrictions on environment, making the Tsol'aa ability useless.

Xoran:
Breathing fire is pretty useless for actual combat, but it has some additional conveniences that can be nice. It allows you to destroy icewalls without a firelash enchantment, and allows you to light pipes or other things without a tinderbox.

Fire resistance is 5%.

Aggra

Sena,
You wrote "Classes that give flying abilities are depthswalker, druid (only in certain morphs), jester, magi, occultist,"

So Occultist has a flying spell?  I couldn't find it in the material I read so far.

Agg

Krypton

Chariot tarot.

Sena

The chariot summoned by the chariot tarot has the ability to fly, working much like a flying mount but without requiring any riding skill.

Aggra

Ahhh thanks! 

Agg

Kiet

The chimera also serves as a flying mount unless that changed.

Sena

Kiet said:

The chimera also serves as a flying mount unless that changed.

For some reason I was thinking that it still required riding to fly with it, but now that I think about it, it probably doesn't (it's in the AB file after all). I didn't trans domination when I played an occultist so I've never actually used it.

Sobriquet

Headstomp has an excellent practical use as a 2H with upset. Also, the endurance regen plus trans fitness means I never run out.