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Newbie Scout Questions

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:45 am
by kelentir
Hi, all. Just started playing the other day and am having a blast so far, but I had some questions.

1. How many peace should I spend on endurae and parry? I'm level 10 thus far and have about five in each. Someone I talked to suggested maxxing endurance, but I fear for my thief skills.

2. How important is wilderness? I have no practices in it yet but I also have not been sneaking.

3. Bandage is at 48%. Is that good enough?

4. I'm thinking of putting a few pracs in armor because I can't really carry decent armor. Yay or nay?

5. How much does the game determine if I sneak successfully? Does carrying a heavy load hurt this a lot?

6. I notice there is a lot of talk of needing certain skills at 100% or higher. Is there a certain cut off point at 99% where a skill is unusable or very likely to fail?


Thanks for your help!

Re: Newbie Scout Questions

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2012 10:16 pm
by Alian
Everyone does things differently, but these are my two cents.

Get a few practices in endurance but not a whole lot - you can leave both parry and endurance alone for now I think and instead go for getting Wilderness up a lot, it's very important and makes life easier.
If you can bind your wounds decently then that is all the bandage you will need. Do Not practice armor. This is also sort of relevant to your fifth question - heavy things (such as heavy armour) makes sneaking (and other things) more difficult. As you are a scout your main focus is dodging and avoiding hits, not absorbing them (like a warrior in metal armour does).
Your primary skills (sneak, shoot and those scout skills) should always be as high as humanly possible. This is of course not possible right away but they should be pretty darn high as they are your "primary skills" so to speak.

Hopefully that helps a little bit. :) Good luck!

Re: Newbie Scout Questions

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2012 11:24 pm
by AndrĂ³g
1. Endurance you can add more to later on. Once you've maxxed your scout-skills and you can see what the effect on their percentages really is. Then it's a balancing question, how much does another prac in endurance really give me and how much do my scout skills drop as a result? Parry - same here. Keep in mind that every extra 5% in parry gives +1PB. So look at how many extra percentages you get with putting pracs in it and use common sense.

2. As a scout max it. Maxing this is way more important than endurance. It helps a lot with surviving in wilderness and its a ranger skill, so practising it doesn't hurt your scout skills!

3. That's plenty, also get cure light. 3-4 pracs in that should be enough to make it workable.

4. No point at all. You won't be able to cast it, assuming you have typical scout stats with low mortals. You shouldn't rely on having armour (magical or metal), instead you should rely on having high defence (PB + DB).

5. Many things go into this. Sneak skill obviously, but how much you're carrying as well. The more you carry, the "clumsier" you get. Generally as a scout keeping the load of stuff you're carrying with you as low as possible is very important.

6. For scout skills there is definitely a rather high cutoff point. More experienced scout players can give more precise suggestions in this matter, but I'd strongly advise against having lower-than-101% in sneak and backstab. Assuming your char is statted as a pure scout of course.

Re: Newbie Scout Questions

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2012 12:09 am
by Atticus
1. A few pracs in endurance is fine (2-3 at most). Maxing it will absolutely screw you over as a scout. Same for parry.. just a few. Anything more than that will cause too many issues with your scout skill percentages. :)

2. As you level, its probably a good idea to keep throwing some pracs in this as you go. Ranger pracs do not affect your other skill sets, and wilderness is a huge help for scouts. Plan on having it maxed or close to max at legend levels (26 or over).

3. 48% bandage is probably fine. :)

4. Absolutely not. A thief is not statted for armour spell, and just a few pracs won't be beneficial at all.

5. As far as I am aware, sneak is affected mostly by your percentage in the sneak skill. Not wearing shoes gives you a bonus if you are a hobbit as well (though its counterproductive in a way, since the right boots help with move cost). If I remember correctly, terrain plays a part in this as well, but I could be wrong on this.

6. For most classes, anything around 100% or higher is perfectly fine. For thiefs, it is a little different. Sneak and backstab are more likely to fail than most other types of skills, so its almost essential that you have as high a percentage in those skills as possible. (105%-107%) There isn't really a cutoff for when a skill won't work, but it's widely agreed that a scout with sub 100% thief skills is pretty useless. :)

Re: Newbie Scout Questions

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2012 2:41 am
by kelentir
My stats as an elf (19 dex, 17 per) give me 104.25% max in backstab and sneak. Do I need to reroll?

Re: Newbie Scout Questions

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 4:04 pm
by Atticus
If you used the other stats smartly (i.e. getting a bit of str to help movecost, some con for max moves), I don't think you need a reroll at all. :)

If you put those extra points into something like will or wis, that's a different matter. :)

Re: Newbie Scout Questions

Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 8:56 am
by Antti
Hello, and welcome to MUME!

1. For sure you don't want to max those. But, on lower levels (until you start stabbing seriously, maybe around L21) it makes sense to have at least five in each maybe even more as having some more hps due to better endurance helps you a lot, and cumulatively, each hit you parry saves a big portion of your few hps. If you go for shooting on low thief levels (bow does not help your PB/DB in a same way as for example an eket does) I recommend having enough parry even more strongly.

2. Wilderness helps you to save some moves when not riding. There is no harm investing in it as much as you can afford, but I do not see that making it maxed is your first priority. Pracs give most value per point in the beginning, i.e. with ten pracs you already get quite a lot wilderness, while 23th-27th wilderness prac add only fractions to what you already have. Besides, getting a forest green cloak and black padded boots should help you way more than those final pracs.

3. It is definitely good enough. The most important thing is to get the wound bandaged, and you don't even need that much bandage% to accomplish that. Whether you need to try bandaging once or twice per wound, and if the end result is poorly, properly, securely bound is then more like nice to have thing than a critical issue.

4. Agreeing with everyone, no pracs to armour. It is similar to sneak and stab, either you max it or not practice it at all, and make your other skill selections to support this choice.
Also agreeing that if you have any mana, regardless of your class, make sure that you have at least one spell (e.g. cure light). This should be practised on such level that it usually does not backfire (on low levels a working cure light may take 10 pracs, but it gets easier while you level up). Mana is a huge asset no matter how sucky your sorcerous skills are, and it makes a difference to be able to utilize that.

5. My impression is that sneak is determined mainly by your skill, and that is compared to how observative your target is. Lots of other factors play a role like sneaking/stabbing is easier in forested terrain, it works better in dark room than in a lit one (same goes for the light you carry), hobbits get good bonus when having no boots, how many other characters there are in the room etc. Stabbing blind and deaf cows is easier than stabbing an angry giant.
I don't think that carrying stuff affects to your sneak success directly in any dramatic way. But carrying weight reduces your DB for sure, and wears down your moves more rapidly, especially when you are sneaking. So, don't carry six to twelve pieces of meat with you, and in general avoid carrying anything you don't have to have an access in a split second. Instead, make your mount carry all extra stuff. Consider the equipment you are wearing. Some players do not go beyond "a tad uncomfortable but no problem" while some do. This is a complex decision and the answer is depending on what kind of character / playing style you have, and what means you have to keep your moves up. The general rule is that getting moveless gets you killed.

6. It depends on the skill how critical high prac% is. For sneaking and stabbing it is critical to have as much as you can. Bandage is usable already around 30%, and for some usable skills like kick you don't ever need more than 1 prac.

Re: Newbie Scout Questions

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:08 pm
by faint
Welcome to MUME! Your road WILL be hard and full of bumps but do yourself a favor and dont give up. MUME is still, after 14 years the best game i have ever played, and even though i have less spare time now a days, i still log on whenever i can!

1. How many peace should I spend on endurae and parry? I'm level 10 thus far and have about five in each. Someone I talked to suggested maxxing endurance, but I fear for my thief skills.

I just levelled a new scout myself, and i normally get endurance to around 10 pracs very early since it makes you a little bit beefy and since your gonna be bad at scout skills in the beginning anyway you might aswell have more hps/mps to spare. Parry is not as important but i usually get around 5 pracs in it early on!

2. How important is wilderness? I have no practices in it yet but I also have not been sneaking.
Wilderness is really important, and according to me its also very boring to prac since you dont really notice the difference compared to getting better at sneak/backstab etc! I normally try to prac wilderness early so once levelling takes more of a hassle, you can prac things that actually make you notice the pracs, but thats just me! Get atleast 20 pracs in wilderness.

3. Bandage is at 48%. Is that good enough?
I almost never get more then 3 pracs in bandage. Its just not worth it. If you fail a bandage, try again until you succeed!

4. I'm thinking of putting a few pracs in armor because I can't really carry decent armor. Yay or nay?

Dont, as others have said, your better off without it. And MUME lets you prac cross class alot, but a rule of thumb is to keep yourself limited to 2 different roles, and since scouts need warrior skills, your better of getting more in endurance then getting armour spell.

5. How much does the game determine if I sneak successfully? Does carrying a heavy load hurt this a lot?
When it comes to sneak, its quite random! It checks your sneak % x your level and alot of different variables that is far to complex to type down really since no1 knows for sure. Weight is however one big variable in this. Another rule fo thumb is that you should carry as little as possible as scout, but NEVER go over "a tad of uncomfortable, but no problem" in weight message that you see when you type "info".

Some players will argue this, since you CAN go over it and still sneak, and if you use Shining mail/metal it might be worth it, but since your a new player, just try to stay under "Heavy but we will manage".

6. I notice there is a lot of talk of needing certain skills at 100% or higher. Is there a certain cut off point at 99% where a skill is unusable or very likely to fail?

skill percentage in MUME is counted (if i still remember this) with your % multiplied with your level. 100% is x1 in multiply, so or example:

I am level 40. i have skill% of 107. that means 1.07(the % of my scoutskill) x 25+1.5(levels are counted as 1 up to 25, after that every 10th level counts as one), so 15 levels means 1,5 reallevel)

This means my scout level is at 28.335. The higher the level, the lower you can go in skill and still be effective!

I think this is how the % was counted. So going below 100% is not to recommend when it comes to mainskills like sneak and backstab.