Azazello Interview

Azazello the Daemon of the Waterless Desert is a level one hundred Tarkhnarb Rider

Race: Tarkhnarb Orc
Class: Complicated :-)

Azazello was the char I planned really well. At least I though so. I wanted a charecter between thief and warrior, but mainly a warrior. I didn't want sneak, hide, but I thought about poison and defence.
It turned out I hated poisons and all the fuss with vials, ingredients etc, so the poison part was cut out quick enough. :) So in the beginning Azazello had stats somewhere between thief and warrior and was supposed to be able to reroll to both of them.
The reality was of course a bit different :) My main problem was TRACK! And the biggest mistake was to believe Gray's formula without doublechecking.

Special note: As of now, Azazello is the character with the shortest real life time to reach level 100: 2 years 9 months!

Ow, i didn't know that :) The first year I played only 3-4 hours a week, via the java telnet clinet on mume.org site. I was perfectly aware of clients, but I had no possibility to install it on that computer! :(
During the year I managed to level up Woland, Azazello and Kochurma.
And then I got my own internet connection and client ... :)

Reference stats:
Reference abilities: Str:19 Int:10 Wis:8 Dex:17 Con:18 Wil:10 Per:14.

Back to the stats. As you can see, with this stats I get something like 89% track :) Instead of planned 91.
In the beginning I played as a thief - up to level 25. I mapped moria (myself, with the pencil and paper). This map (with later updates by Ostu and Gray himself is known as Gray's map of moria *chuckle*)
Somehow I managed to never ever mobdie, even though I entered virtually every place :-/ The only room I, for no distinct reason (!), did not enter, was the oneway to Mezagor :-)

When I figured that I have to (and want to) lead my group myself, I had to figure out a new way, so I thought about turning into battleshaman.
This way I would lose some offence and damage, but gain some offensive spell, bob, better cures, some defense, armour spell to replace max_hp loss AND BETTER TRACK!
I've tested for about half a year - I even had a 101% track reroll, though with really low mentals. Strangely enough, it was the highest def reroll (170+), but without armour spell :)

Base abilities: Str:18 Int:11 Wis:10 Dex:16 Con:18 Wil:11 Per:14.

In the end I liked this setup much more than the previous ones, even though the stats are by far not the best ones.

Give a brief description of your char?

I always wanted to be a semi-defensive type of character. To some extent I was trying to fit te description of Azazello from the books.
I used concussion - always. Only some pracs in slashing.

How would you summarize the career of your char, how did it all happen?

Well, this one was clear - I wanted to get to level 100! As well I wanted to become a warlord, to get to spot #1, to get highest possible amount of wps.
As far as i know, Azazello is one of the few chars, who broke the 400 wps level (back then, when wps actually meant something). The decay rate of wps used to be enormous. For instance I could log in with 398 wps, kill ~15 pukes, half of them solo and with "you gain some reknown!" messages. In 10 hours I would be back to 398.

What was characteristic to your career, were you especially known of something specific, or did you have some favourite tactics? Did you have somekind of eras distinctive of each other, favourite group mates, etc?

A lot of grouping :-) A lot of learning. This was my first pk char - I really learned pk with Azazello and Woland back then.

Right after reaching level 25 I joined Smrtihlav's group. He has this special treat to be the group magnet and huge-fights catalysis.
At level 38 or something I started to group with Diamonium a lot. He became some kind of teacher of hunting and little groups fighting to me at this point (The first teacher was Mazai - one of the greatest players of the 90's imho).
Then I joined Mammoth's groups sometimes (as Woland too) and it always ended with me being dead and highly unsatisfied, since most of the time we _almost_ won.

At level 48 or something I started to walk around solo a lot - mainly xping and dueling solo warriors/mages.
And then we started to group a lot with Stolb and Vip - this became our most known group, probably :-) But since Stolb and Vip could not play at nights, I grouped with other players a lot. Among them Durcano and Ugnez (p of Madcat). Ugnez was kind of "better Azazello" :)
Since Vip was always a pure cleric, we could fight powerful enemies, but Vip himself could die like a fly :-)

And at level 80-something I rerolled to battleshaman.
That's it, I think.

What was the one thing you loved in your char that made you play it all the way?

It was my highest level char, and I wanted it to be even higher! :-) Simple as that. If it would be today, I would create a new char long before level 40.

Describe the best, the worst, and the funniest memory you have with this char?

The best is probably the Scroll-fest in Old Fornost fight. I wanted a fight like that for a looong time - where I could really use the so-so big scrolls collection and beat a way bigger group nearly single-handedly :-) It was also probably the moment, when I knew my char almost by heart. (I usually switched to playing Woland when I died. And at this point of time I played Azazello on a daily basis for like 5-7 hours for 8 months straight without dying, so I really "had the feeling" of the char).

The worst ... probably when I changed scroll aliases and due to that failed to recite my scrolls on Stolb or self in a fight and we all died :) It may be something else too, but right now it does not come to my mind.

The funniest ... maybe when I jumped into a DT in Unqalome when I was there for the first time. I had just got a full shining set (last piece from the darkie Balrog, probably the first darkie Balrog after a looong delay) and Smrtihlav lended me Dragonhelm for buffing.
The deal was that I once created a map of Unqa "in offline mode", by reading logs with all DT's marked and then sent it to Gray. Apparently he dumped my map, since well, I never was in unqa - how could I know anything... ;-) My map included all the DT's, whereas Gray's map, which I had at the day of glorious jumping didn't... So I checked the map, exits, examined the description and still jumped into the bloody DT :)

Each level 100 character is asked to present one question to other club 100 members. Kindly submit your question here, and answer to it by yourself too.

- Question by Azazello: When was the primary playing period irl of this char?

2001-2003 it seems.

-What is your relationship with MUME nowadays ?
How do you see MUME now compared to what it was back then ?
Any hints, advices, greetings to MUME community ?
Other characters you have: ?
Real life name and nationality: ?

See Woland's interview