Scout Guide
Credits: Originally By Locram (source). Please edit, update, and improve!
Scouts in Mume
Scouts in mume are distinct from other classes in their ability to sneak and backstab. Sneaking makes you practically invisible to other players and mobs, as long as you enter their room and not the other way around. In order for sneak (and all skills that require you to sneak) to work you need to have SUPERB sneaking, that is over 101% sneak (percentages are visible when typing practice at a guild master).
It is possible to sneak with less than 101%, but you will fail up to a third of your sneak attempts if you have 99% or less. The other thing is that you can't sneak good if you carry heavy equipment. So check info when you pick things up, if it goes above a tad uncomfortable, you need to lose some weight.
Race Options
All scouts skills, except envenom and attack are DEX and PER based, in that order, and you need above 101% in order to have a working scout. Dwarves do not make great scouts not only due to bad stats, but they also get a severe malus to sneak, which makes them an overall bad choice.
There is no reason statwise to play a half-elf scout, so that leaves us with the choice of man, elf or hobbit. Elves it seems, make the best scouts, since they get high bonuses to DEX and PER. However elves get a malus in str, con and wil and lower move point regen. Elves get a free citizenship in lorien and cannot become sick in MUME.
Hobbits get bonuses to dex, con and wil, but malus to str and int. Hobbits also get a bonus to backstabbing (higher sucess rate) if they remove their shoes. Trolls do 33% more damage against hobbits, and hobbits cannot ride big horses (warhorse, horse of the rohirrim, pack horse, docile horse).
Men get no bonus or malus to stats. This leaves you with low scout percentages and less room to get none scout skills, such as bash or high endurance, but gives you a higher stregnth that allows you to carry more.
Stats
Having a given stat gives you a certain max percentage when practicing a skill. This percentage is augumented or worsened by your other skills, depending on their class. This means that if you practice sneak for instance, and get 106%, then you put 10 pracs in endurance your sneak will become lower. This also affects other aspects of your character, such as OB/HP/DB/PB. Raising any warrior skill will increase hp and ob, and also raise all other warrior skills. Raising any scout skill will increase db, lower hp and ob and also give you higher scout skills. Ranger pracs do not affect any stats or other skills.
This means that for any type of scout you want as LOW scout percentage as possible, but you want to keep it above 101%, so that you can sneak still. This will give you the highest possible OB, PB, HP and regeneration, and you'll still be just as good with the shooting, sneaking and backstabbing. This also means that you need very high percentages in dex/per if you want to play a combo character, and slightly lower dex/per if you want to play a more pure scout.
For someone making a more or less pure scout, with few pracs in out of class skills, a man scout is probably the best, since they get no malus and high hp/strength. For someone making a more warrior combo type scout you'll need the extra dex/per the elf or hobbit offers. With hobbits it's possible to get very high hp, since you get more con than men and you are able to prac more endurance sice you have better scout stats, on the other hand you'll have trouble when facing trolls, and the malus to strength means you won't be able to carry as much equipment and still sneak, so it's a tradeoff.
As previosuly mentioned, DEX is the primary scout stat, so get max of that whatever you are making out of your scout. PER is the second one to think about here. Don't get less than 16 per. It's probably wise to get 17 or even 18 as man, since otherwise you will have to get very low endurance and parry. A common mistake is to think that since scouts have weapons that have very low strength requirements that strength isnt very important for a scout. That is dead wrong. As previosuly stated your strength determines how much you can carry while still sneaking, and your encumbrance will also greatly determine how many moves it costs to walk a room, since you have to carry everything and since you will not ride much.
DEX, PER, STR and CON should be your priorities, probably in that order too. WIL is also good for wilderness (and spellsave), but not as important as strength. INT is good for envenom percentage, though at above 75% you fail almost nothing, and you get over 80% with 19 dex 9 int at max pracs. WIS is the ultimate dump stat for scouts, don't waste your points here.
Here are a few examples of stats:
Man (pure) Str:15 Int: 9 Wis: 8 Dex:18 Con:16 Wil:12 Per:17.
Elf (higer scout% allows more warrior skills) Str:15 Int: 9 Wis: 8 Dex:19 Con:15 Wil: 9 Per:18.
Hobbit (most hps) Str:14 Int: 7 Wis: 8 Dex:19 Con:18 Wil:11 Per:16.
Pracs and leveling
Good news: Leveling scout is probably the fastest and easiest class on mume.
If you are an elf you should start by getting a torch in mandos and praying to lorien. In lorien spam around until you have enough travel points for level 10 or so. After that pray to Grey Havens. At level 1-15 you level by shooting, and after that by backstabbing.
Both shoot and backstab are delayed commands that are interrupted if you get hit while trying. In order to shoot something you need a bow (longbow is better for xp), a quiver with arrows and preferably the missile skill. Shooting from sneak also helps both aiming, damage and reliability of your shots, so get max sneak as soon as you can. When a scout (or anyone else) flees from combat, they will get nosneak, which is a temporary effect that lasts for about four seconds, you will see that your prompt will have a smaller 's' instead of the normal capital 'S', and that means that you have sneak on, but you have nosneak. There is a skill to counter this however - the escape skill. Escape lets you flee in a chosen direction, and lets you keep sneaking afterwards, however it takes time to escape and escape can also fail (chances are higher with many mobs/players hitting you). Max missile is 16 pracs, and is taught in lorien. Max sneak and escape is taught in tharbad. Sneak is 23 pracs, escape is 16.
Scouts have most of their guildmasters in the city of Tharbad. This is a dangerous place for low level newbies, since the town accepts black numenorians as citizens, and there are many agressive mobs and hidden doors that you must know about. I suggest that the first time you want to visit tharbad ask on narrates for someone to help you get to the guildmasters.
I suggest you get max missile and sneak in Grey Havens, which is quite low, but still good enough to level to 10 or 12, around then you should have saved up enough pracs for you to follow a legend into Tharbad and get max sneak, high missile and max escape.
Backstab is possible to max out at level 14, but will not work great until level 18. After that however you only need your bow to finish off bad/awful mobs. Leveling solo from 18-25 with backstab is very fast.
At level 10 or so you can get 4-5 cure light. At legend get a few pracs bless. Some scouts get create food and create water too, since it will allow you to carry less, but i think these spells lower your scout percentage too much, though it's up to you to decide that.
At legend, or whenever you start to prioritize PK over xp, you will want to get more warrior skills, so that you have higher hp and ob. Escape is not nececary in pk, but very useful in some situations, so you can consider skipping it if you wish to prioritize something else.
Many players will advise you to get 95% awareness. This will give you limited night vision. You see mobs and get no malus from darkness, but you don't see room namnes and cant do map room. Some of these players say that backstabbing is easier with no light on. I have tested this and found no real difference in stabbing with or without light. Also when using hide you will automatically cover your light source, so if you have no night vision and hide in a dark room you wont be able to see/do anything without revealing your position. There are however ways to counter this:
Making a camp fire in the room. This is quite obvious if you use hide to hide from other players that are chasing you, but if they havent seen you yet they you can still backstab people using this. Seeing lore is a herb lore that you get from killing the witch near fornost. This also gives you the same night vision as awareness. Dark helmet is an artifact helmet that gives you real night vision. I mention this because awareness is very expensive to practice (27 pracs) and many new players think it's necessary to have it.
What other skills you want is largely dependant on how you want to pk. Backstab does about 225 hp with a good weapon at legend. This is more than half the hp on a warrior or caster, and more than that on a scout. This means that in order to actually kill someone with backstab you need to backstab then when they are low, or be able to chase them down afterwards. Envenom comes in handy here, as there are poisons that do damage and drain moves. Missile weapons are the most damaging weapons in the game, if you dont count backstab from daggers. However missile is a delayed action so people won't stick around until you've shot them dead. Bash comes in handy here, since you can land four longbow shots in one bash if you have max missile.
Even though scouts are sneaky and have the ability to backstab, you are not limited to doing only that. A scout with high ob and hp, or high defense can win many fights by just hitting his opponent to death with your dagger. If this is your primarly playstyle, get high endurance, max attack, max piercing and possibly bash too. Some people make scouts that have other weapons, such as ornate hammer etc. This is only viable if you can make a scout character with 18 or more strength, and you will also have to have a high ob for it to be worth it. This usually means having quite a high level (40+).
People also think about scouts as solo characters. A scout can contribute alot to a group both in xp and in pk. A scout can sneak around and check out how many are on the opposing team, they can sneak in and only reveal themselves once the door is blocked, creating an element of surprise, they can poison the weapons of the other group members, they can shoot bashed targets and do almost the same damage as a caster, etc. Your possibilities as a group increase by having a scout, you just need to think a bit! :)
Equipment
As previously stated for leveling you need a longbow. For pk you might want to choose a faster shortbow, such as the eleven shortbow or black horn short bow.
For backstabbing you can use an elven dagger or orkish fang, which if enchanted does the same damage as the best dagger in the game, which is the black runed dagger, but it has 5 less ob and 5 less pb. Slender dagger is an alternative that has slightly lower damage but 5 more ob than black runed dagger, and 10 more than fang.
Scouts in general carry no armour, except shining chain, though this doesnt mean you should run around naked. Plain clothes increase your dodge, and leather gloves increase your ob. Thin, soft leather gloves are the best, they are +3 ob, and you can get them pretty easy compared to a ruby ring for instance (which is +5 ob). Get ash arrows rather than plain arrows, they are lighter and have a small ob bonus. They are available in lorien and rivendell. Having a decent shield is also helpful. Other than that just dont carry anything at all. Having light equipment is very important so dont carry 10 pieces of raw meat around all the time. 2-3 lembas wafers, a small water container, a light source and a butcher knife should be your only excess equipment. Having a pale blue stone, preferably a focused one, and having the traveling lore and/or orkish draught will aid you greatly when pking at legend.
