Shaman Guide

From MUME

Shaman Guide by Shaukr v0.9

Introduction: Shamans

Orkish shamans are casters for the Tarkhnarb Orcs, a race which has the inspiring caster stats of -3 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom -2 Willpower, plus extremely low base mana regeneration, the inability to cast reliably in the sun, and a drastically limited list of available spells. Despite this catalog of negatives, people (including myself) love playing them, which should be an indication that somehow something is working. Aside from the underdog aspect, shamans bring a couple of unique tools to the field which synergize to great effect. They are the support characters of a pack of raiders, and are also blunt-force spellswords with +2 Strength and +2 Constitution who create openings for their slow, cumbersome spells with force of arms.

Mechanically, “shaman” is a unique skill class available to Tarkhnarb Orcs, which comprises both mage and cleric skills. This means that what would otherwise be a triple-class combo of warrior-cleric-mage is now just a dual-class, with fewer penalties to each other’s skills caused by wide cross-classing. Additionally, Tarkhnarb Orcs get a few unique skills for shamans (raise dead), and more maximum practices in some spells (such as blind, harm, fear) to compensate for their worse stats.

As this guide cannot cover everything, it is aimed more towards newer players or those unfamiliar with the class who want to know how to get started. This guide is going to discuss shamans (both “war shaman” and “pure shaman”) as combo characters, where the combination in question is a mix of warrior and shaman. We’ll look at a very simple “quick start” for players who just want to get out there, and then subsequent guides will go into greater depth on war shamans and pure shamans, respectively. This guide also assumes that you have a basic working knowledge of playing a Tarkhnarb Orc, and the quests and equipment available to them. You are encouraged to ask players in-game for details!

Like all combo characters, there is a sliding scale of the weights applied to each component class: war shamans bring more warrior skills to the table, while “pure” shamans approach total shamanhood but almost always retain more warrior skills than a true caster would. Players have been successful going even further, with characters I would describe more as caster warriors, thief shamans, or totally pure shamans with no combo aspects. In general, the design of these characters tends to be more idiosyncratic and less suited for a general guide. If you are interested in them, starting with something more basic (as presented here), figuring out what works, and then designing your own is the way to go.

General Pros/Cons – Why Shaman?

Pros:

  • Flexible character class that can fill a variety of roles and be re-practiced easily into almost completely different classes.
  • Reasonably reliable mixing for herblores – you will be mixing draughts for everyone.
  • Breath of Briskness and draughts offer very high mobility.
  • Access to a powerful charmed mob enhances solo and group play.

Cons:

  • Lower stats and use of spells makes this character crippled by sun.
  • Limited mana pool and poor mana regen makes for challenging resource management.
  • The more spells you use, the more reliant you are on rare equipment.


Quick Start Guide

Read this section if you just want to get started and aren’t sure what to do and want directions. Make a Tarkhnarb Orc:

  • Use these stats: 
    Str: 15 Int: 15 Wis: 16 Dex: 11 Con: 15 Wil: 13 Per: 9.
    • You’ll start at 2nd age, with +1 to Str, Int, Dex, Con, Wil, and Per.
      • Train improve strength, train neglect wis. You’ll want to let your stats train until your strength shows as 18 when typing “inf”, and you are able to wield an 18 strength weapon with no warning that you are too weak. At this point, you can train maintain strength, train maintain wis.
  • 1. Start your first levels by practicing a small amount of slash, endurance, and parry. You’ll be using slashing weapons as you don’t yet have the strength for bigger weapons, but you can change this later. A good starter weapon is a jagged-edged scimitar, which has +15 ob. You can kill small mobs around the New Orkish Caves (NOC), and by level 5 you should have invested some points in ride, swim, climb, bandage, and pick.
    • An alternative weapon option that provides more offense is to practice two handed weapons and obtain a halberd, which you’ll have the strength to use immediately. Using the at-bay feature of this weapon will allow you to solo XP slightly more effectively but leave you more fragile as you lack a shield.
  • 2. At level 5, aim to have some basic armor (fine rigid leathers or fine chains), your sword, black padded boots, and a forest green cloak. Grab a warg and start exploring! Orkish TPs can be a pain, and you want to gather a ton while the cost of death is irrelevant. 20k is a good start, but it’s alright to stop earlier if you’re finding this hard or uninteresting. A good (and important) added objective on this quest is to save ~12 practices to level up wilderness at the Old Orkish Caves (OOC).
  • 3. If possible, obtain the orkish draught lore (requires a gem – ask other players online) before your grand adventure, so that you can begin making your own draughts. Shamans should (and will) always have a stock of these to boost their mobility.
  • 4. As you start to level up more diligently using your surplus of TPs, raise your slash/parry to 50%, endurance to 40%, and round out your ranger skills (70% climb, swim, and wilderness, max ride, and an early 40% in bandage). XP your character like a weaker warrior, in a group whenever possible. Warrior and ranger skills can be leveled up as you level up, while caster skills (coming next) should generally be practiced all at once – a half-practiced spell is likely to simply backfire.
  • 5. Once you have spare practice sessions beyond the basics listed, you can start picking up spells. armour (max), cure serious (6 practices), shocking Grasp (max), cure critic (4 practices), breath of briskness (12 practices), remove poison (2 practices), and harm (max) is a simple order to get each skill, and will take you to hero level (21).
    • Why do I suggest certain spells or skills? Read on to the war shaman and pure shaman guides for a more in-depth discussion of abilities in context. The suggestions here are presented unambiguously as something that will work, but you can easily train off skills and rearrange them as you discover what works best for you.
  • 6. As you level up, your equipment consists of a few basics: fine chainmail armour, a forest green cloak, black padded boots, and a good light shield (gilded round shield). You can swap out your jagged scimitar for an engraved broadsword, wightblade, or fell blade, if you get the chance.

NOTE: Combat at these levels is generally assisting a buffer and dealing hit damage in PvE, contributing cures to the buffer and nukes against larger mobs. Shock deals a decent punch of cheap damage, while harm is useful on large targets. When (not if) you get involved in PK, use quick shocks to hit your targets, while trying to avoid being targeted – as casters usually are. Keep an eye out for enemies that are bashed, as these are where you should aim a harm. Be proactive about refreshing your armor spell, especially against enemy casters.

At this point, you have a decision to make.

Do you want to be more like a warrior, and hence swap slashing for a more powerful weapon class with your trained-up strength?

  • If so, follow on to the War Shaman Guide. You’ll be practicing bash and the shield spell, leaning into trading hits directly and harming targets that you’ve bashed.

Alternatively, do you want to lean more into your magical abilities?

  • See the Pure Shaman Section. You’ll pick up blindness, raise dead and command, shield, and a few other utility spells from this point, using your summoned mobile to tie down foes for your magical attacks.

Each guide will talk more about the details of each sub-class, and the equipment/skill choices to make.


Wait, Where Do I Practice?

The shaman guildmasters are scattered around the map, and all of them have something useful:

  • Thrakghash of the Mordor Flame located in West NOC. This BN teaches all of the mage spells that orcs have access to.
  • Brolg located in his tower south of Rivendell. Brolg most notably teaches max breath of briskness and black breath.
  • East Priest located in a temple east of the Last Bridge. EPriest has the bulk of the cleric offerings, teaching max blind, harm, raise dead, cures, and remove poison.
  • Numenorean Sage located in the Old Orc Caves. Sage teaches utility skills like strength, cure blindness, and break door. The command skill for orcs is also maxed in OOC, from Gumak, the gatekeeper.

Chances are, you will have some practices from each of these GMs, so it’s good to visit them all. Many of the cleric skills are taught by more than one of the above to different levels.

Something to keep in mind: like many combo characters, the goal is no longer maximizing the power of core abilities! Instead, you will be balancing the effectiveness of many different skills which will make other skills harder to practice as well. Don’t expect to have any skills at superb!


Benchmark Stats: Basic and Flexible

Given the split of shamans into two somewhat distinct subclasses, the first set of stats here is highly recommended as it can be practiced towards either a war shaman or a pure shaman. Each subsequent section will give examples of more specialized stats, but for a player who isn’t sure or wants variety, the below stats (used in the quick start) are effective: 

Str: 15 Int: 15 Wis: 16 Dex: 11 Con: 15 Wil: 13 Per: 9
  • Train +2str +1con -2wis (or +2str -1.x wis if staying purer)

All of the stats I suggest will include max intelligence and wisdom, and at least 15 strength. Intelligence and wisdom are maxed as this gives you the most possible mana and you’ll want to get your spell skill level as high as possible given the stat penalties that orcs have. 15 strength, with age and training, means you have freedom to use any weapon you wish effectively, giving you more combat tools. 13 willpower is enough to have 90%+ blind when practiced pure, and 84% command, with reasonable contribution to your other skills. The remaining stats are fairly free-form, but constitution is often helpful for raw survivability (especially as a war shaman) while dexterity and perception play less of a role.

If you’re willing to run slightly lower constitution (especially at higher levels or with more experience playing orcs), trading some base constitution for more willpower is useful and adds even more flexibility: 

Str: 15 Int: 15 Wis: 16 Dex: 10 Con: 14 Wil: 14 Per: 9
  • Similarly, train +2 strength and train down wisdom, training up constitution if you want. While slightly more fragile, the higher willpower gives more power for blind and raise dead.

Train down wisdom because the stat provides less mana than intelligence, and as a maxed stat you can get a lot of mileage reallocating it to other stats. You might choose to train down less if you want a larger mana pool, but you should still aim for raising strength to use your chosen weapon. In general, suggested war shaman stats will involve higher base strength and constitution, while suggested pure shaman stats will trade off base constitution towards higher willpower.


Core Shaman Abilities and Some Basics

While skill use will be discussed later, there are a couple of abilities that are somewhat typical to shamans and should be covered before you go further.

  • Harm. This is the biggest attack spell orcs have, and without access to dispel evil or fireball, orcs are the ones who use it most. Harm is unique for two reasons.
    • First, on top of the spell’s damage, it also inflicts a wound on the target, giving higher variance to the damage but tremendous potential as wounds can cut enemy max hp.
    • Second, harm cannot reduce an enemy below 1hp – enemies will always survive with 1hp, and the spell will outright fail against a foe with 1hp. It will, however, kill incapacitated foes.
      • Harm’s power is also a newbie trap. The spell is very expensive (25 base mana, 39 when cast quick), and most shamans can cast two harms quickly before having no mana left (pure shamans with high age can perhaps manage three). It’s all too common to see shamans unleash all of their firepower on a target, only to be dead in the water with no mana against an enemy with more than half their health remaining – a problem less critical for true casters of other races who have the mana pool to blast foes to death. Effective use of the spell will be discussed in subsequent sections.
  • Raise Dead. A truly unique spell to orcs, raise dead turns the corpse of a sapient creature into an enslaved shadow – a permanently-charmed mobile. Shamans may only have one of these mobiles, and their power scales with the level of the corpse raised up to a maximum of level 21. Shadows of the maximum level can also be converted into a dreadful warg in Dol Guldur (ask players in-game for the details of how this can be done), an alternative attack-focused mobile for shamans. Both mobiles require the command skill to be used to order them, and I would recommend maxing command (18 practices for orcs) if using raise. Neither mob is inherently aggressive, making them viable in group settings.
    • Enslaved shadows are highly defensive, with solid stats and a large health pool. They can rescue (but not protect) and are easier to command than the warg (might need to send orders multiple times with 13 willpower, but still workable with less). Shadows leave no tracks, have fairly good movement points, and make for strong buffers in XP and PK. They can also be ordered to wield weapons, though this is rarely used barring niche applications (wield spears to ignore enemy at-bay, or a poisoned weapon).
    • Dreadful wargs hit harder than shadows and bash very effectively. They are substantially more fragile than shadows and are harder to command (13 willpower is perhaps the minimum to use them, 14+ is easier). Their moves are extremely good, and they are better suited to assisting/bashing than taking hits from enemies.
  • Raise dead is a superb skill for both XP and PK and does not require many practices because the created mobiles don’t expire or scale with the spell. Raise can be cast at full mana and then you can spend time regenning mana when outside combat so long as the spell is workable (often 5-8 practices needed to get it under 100 mana, don’t waste practices raising this much higher). The pure shaman section of the guide will incorporate this ability more than the war shaman, but high-level war shamans can also pick up this skill.


War Shaman, Pure Shaman, and Extensions

War shamans and pure shamans are nearly distinct classes in practice, and so there is a separate guide for details on each. You should read on to the one (or both) that you’re most interested in playing at levels 21+.

Finally, we should briefly touch on the fact that shaman pures and combos that don’t fit the above frameworks certainly exist. Caster-warriors, with non-max intelligence and wisdom and fewer spells in favor of more robust warrior skills and higher physical stats are one end of the spectrum. Thief shaman combos are another niche case, where the armour spell covers the weak equipment absorb and blindness makes backstab more effective.

Playing the more standard combo setups will develop your sense of what you can fit in a character, what seems to work, what stats matter, and so on. Hence, starting with the basics listed here will help you get accustomed to shaman combos and let you design your own characters which suit your interests.

Some examples: Piercing poison pure shaman: [1] Bolting war-combo: [2]


War Shaman

This guide follows the Shaman Basics guide, and assumes that you’ve either read it, or are familiar with the basics in your own right. If something seems unclear, check to see if the Basics Guide has mentioned it.

War shaman is the more quintessential combo character of the shaman family, incorporating robust hitting power with limited spells that are directly useful for offense/defense rather than support. You can hit and bash like a warrior and fling nukes like a caster – not as well as either but finding synergies between the two. Whether it’s trading hits against a warrior while using armour spell to put you on top or landing a bash with two quick harms for an instant kill, war shaman has a number of useful and simple synergies that make it an effective character for PK and MUME in general.

A Quick Overview:

Pros:

  • Simple, flexible strategies for fights in closeables, in the open, and against a variety of enemies.
  • High solo lethality: bash-harm is satisfying and effective for securing kills.
  • Relatively low dependence on equipment.
  • Bash and nuke give useful tools for a PvE group.

Cons:

  • Limited solo XP options except at very high level.
  • Combo ob/defense can perform poorly against pure warriors in a straight fight.


Stats

While the baseline stats above are perfectly usable for a war shaman, you can tune them in various ways if you don’t intend to re-practice the character.

Examples: 

 Str: 16 Int:15 Wis: 16 Dex: 9 Con:16 Wil: 12 Per: 9 [base]
  • Train -2 Wis +1 Str +1 Con +2 Dex

The above pushes your strength and constitution a little higher at the cost of dex and wil. Dex can be reclaimed by training, letting you settle at: 

Str: 18 Int: 16 Wis: 14 Dex: 12 Con: 18 Wil: 13 Per: 10 [2nd age, train]

At level 30, that looks like this:

  • 360 hits, 101 mana, 140 moves
  • OB: 144%, DB: 36%, PB: 14%, Armour: 94%
  • EQ: Metals, ruby ring, warsword, gleaming belt
    • stats taken solo in orc caves in 2nd age

Ultimately, you should aim for having enough strength to use your weapons (i.e. 18) without access to strength spell or a strength ring, such that you’re less reliant on legend equipment. Your character will start at 2nd age and should stay in the 2nd/3rd age brackets. A good time to reset age is when the +1 strength bonus from age is lost, as the added mana regen isn’t worth the loss of physical stats when going to 4th age and above.


Practices at Legend – Core Skills, Optional Skills

The core skills to aim for are as follows:

  • Max armour/shield/harm: These are your core tools. Expect to have 80%+ in each when fully practiced.
  • Max secondary attack spell: See the end of this section for discussion.
  • Cure serious/cure critic/breath of briskness/remove poison/cure blind: All practiced to viable levels. I would suggest 6/4/~70%/2/1 practices respectively at first.
  • Sense Life: 1-2 practices to boost your perceptions, which helps when searching for random doors or for seeing scouts. Useful and cheap.
  • Primary weapon skill and bash: Exactly what you get will depend on stats and weapon choice. With smite/concussion, 80/75%. With others, 75/75% might be more feasible. See the “EQ and Weapon Choice” section for discussion on weapon classes to choose. This will likely take 25+ practices in the weapon skill and 30/35+ bash practices.
  • Rescue: 1 practice. You won’t be protecting people, but you can at least take over buffing.
  • Parry: ~5 practices. This depends on your weapon class and how you intend to play. Raising parry higher may make sense if you find yourself buffing for XP with a 1-handed weapon more. A baseline of 5 for a smiter or a fully-aggressive concussion character is sufficient.
  • Endurance: ~50%. This can be raised in the future but is a decent baseline. The extra health and moves will keep you alive since you’ll be trading hits with enemies directly.
  • Ride, swim, climb, wilderness: Max ride, and 70% in the rest. I would sooner raise wilderness to 80%+ where possible – a large amount of shaman play turns into hit-flee and hit-spam as your spells are slow, and you don’t have the raw movement stats of a warrior.
  • Track: 90%. Find your foes.
  • Pick: at least 40%. Open doors. Close doors.
  • Attack: 1-2 pracs. Attack, even when not using a piercing weapon, will raise your rate of fleeing. As a character with reasonably low dex/wil (flee chance success) who will be hit-fleeing, you’ll need what you can get.
  • Search: 1 prac is sufficient. For randomized doors and hidden things.

The choice of a secondary attack spell depends somewhat on personal preference. In general, harm is too slow to use outside of bashed targets in PK or on mobs. However, you can boost your damage output by casting after hits or during hit-delay, which also serves to add more disruption when fighting casters. Your main choices are burning hands, shocking grasp, and lightning bolt.

  • Burning hands (11 practices): Burn does approx. 12-24 fire damage and is very quick (1s for normal cast, 0.5s for quick cast), for 7 base mana. Because the casting time is short, you often won’t have to cast this spell quickly (though you can do so when needed), which saves more mana. Additionally, web and frost mudlle in some areas require fire to burn it, making burning hands useful in general. The downsides are that this skill doesn’t do that much damage, especially against enemy Zaugurz orcs (who are effective against fire) or armies of the west who have icy rings. Even if you don’t pick this, having a few practices in it for mudlle uses is handy.
  • Shocking grasp (11 practices): With approx. 20-40 lightning damage, shock hits harder than burning hands at the cost of 9 mana and a slower cast (1.5s normal, 1s quick). Few targets resist lightning, and the spell is still quick enough to land normal or fast shocks on foes during fighting. Overall, this is my preferred choice on war shaman.
  • Lightning Bolt (16 practices): Approx. 28-55 damage at 11 mana, bolt splits its damage between lightning and fire and has the biggest punch for orcs besides harm itself. However, I feel that this spell underperforms for war shamans for the following reasons.
    • First, most of your casting will be after hitting targets, and an engaged unfocused bolt is not terribly quick (1.75s normal, 1.25s quick) – meaning when you do use it, it will almost always be quick-cast, raising its mana cost substantially (17 mana for quick). War shamans don’t have the mana pool to fling a whole lot of quick bolts or get a ton of damage out of them.
    • Moreover, if fighting a white-side caster, their bolts will always be faster than your bolts due to their focused staff (staffed bolts cast at 1.25s normal, 0.75s quick), making this spell of limited effectiveness to interrupt them versus what burning hands or shock can do. Add that it takes more practices, and I find burning hands or shock to be more useful for a war shaman.

If you are interested in using bolt, I would adjust your spell usage more towards bolt as your primary tool: landing 3 bolts in a bash or quick bolts whenever possible, and not conserving mana as much for harm (or dropping harm entirely and practicing more warrior). Some players may also opt for bandage/cure light over cure critic/cure serious. At lower %s, cure light can frequently be better healing for mana cost, and bandage of course costs none. On the other hand, all shaman spells are grouped together (no issue of mage vs cleric practicing like with the Armies of the West), cure serious/critic can work with fewer total practices invested, and they help counterweigh your warrior practices to keep spell% decent.


Equipment and Weapon Choice

Weapon choice is largely up to you, and you should feel free to try out what seems fun. Here are some considerations:

  • Smite: Ounce for ounce this is probably the strongest choice. Str-Con-Wil are your best weapon stats for getting a high skill %. Furthermore, as a combo your attacks are weaker, and so smite’s individually larger hits help compensate for that against linear elements of armor reduction.
    • Some of smite’s weaknesses such as low defense are compensated somewhat by armour/shield. Additionally, re-eq is comparatively simple – grab a mattock and go.
    • Legend EQ: burnished hewing-spear, war mattock, or great warsword.
  • Concussion: Just as good stat-wise as smite, concussion is amazing vs metal targets (i.e. most targets in PK) and allows you to use a shield to boost defense and spellsave. However, the best concussion weapon (ornate, steel-shafted warhammer) is likely the most difficult weapon to replace.
    • Legend EQ: ornate warhammer, max-enchanted heavy morningstar, or engraved warhammer.
  • Stabbing: Effective vs riding and at-bay make stabbing a good all-around choice, with less pure offensive power than smite but more balance overall. Awlpike is a powerful, quick weapon and unlike all other options on this list requires only 17 strength, letting you be more flexible with training and age. However, fighting in closeables on foot in spam where you can’t easily maximize the usage of at-bay will leave stabbing often underperforming other weapons. Also, dexterity and perception are generally your lowest stats, making skill levels lower.
    • Legend EQ: awl-pike, blackened spear (18 str).
  • Cleave: Darkened orkish axe is (relatively) easy to get and hits tremendously hard. However, you are locked to -5 ob versus other weapon classes (cleave weapons are +15OB), and without any of the other useful advantages said classes provide.
    • Legend EQ: darkened orkish axe, mighty dwarven axe.
  • Slashing: Useful for defense, mediocre for offense. Steel claymore hits hard, but if you want to hit things dead, use a bigger weapon. It can be useful to put in 2-5 practices for buffing if you’ve got another primary 1-handed weapon type.
    • Legend EQ: steel claymore, engraved broadsword, fell blade, wightblade.
  • Pierce: No. Doesn’t fit your stats, isn’t a warrior skill, and has low impact damage.

Aside from weaponry, your basic equipment loadout looks like the following:

  • Great helm and full fine metal armor (breastplate, vambraces, gauntlets, greaves, boots). You have the strength to wear metal armor, the high absorb will help you trade blows, and it’s all simpler to replace. Carry spare black padded boots for better mobility on foot.
  • Gilded round shield or the best light shield you can find, or else wear a metal wall shield. If using smiting weapons, any buckler will do for basics.
  • Forest green cloak, then upgrade to a grisly, scorched fur. Combos suffer for low OB, and so ideally, you’ll want a fur (or imposing, golden mantle which is lighter) once you can replace your FGC. 1-handed war shamans who expect to buff can also carry a fine grey cloak.

Legend EQ:

  • Gleaming belt (+mobility),
  • Ruby ring (+ob),
  • Black amulet (eff vs light),
  • Old length of iron chain (eff vs mental).
  • Bejewelled shield if 1handed, horsehide buckler if smiting.
  • Slim silvery wristband (-moveregen, +manaregen) is superb but challenging to obtain.
  • Opaque or lambent amulet provide detect magic so that you don’t have to practice it.
  • Strength ring boosts you to 20 strength and allows you to save practices by not getting the spell yourself, but not needed to play the character.

Basic EQ + Legend Weapon

You are using:
<wielded two-handed> a great warsword (flawless)
<worn on forearm>    a metal buckler (flawless)
<worn on head>       a great helm (flawless)
<worn on body>       a fine metal breastplate (flawless)
<worn about body>    a grisly, scorched fur (flawless)
<worn on arms>       a fine pair of metal vambraces (flawless)
<worn on hands>      a fine pair of metal gauntlets (flawless)
<worn on legs>       a fine pair of metal greaves (flawless)
<worn on feet>       a fine pair of metal boots (flawless)
<worn on wrist>      a keyring with a couple of keys and a set of lock picks
<worn on finger>     a ring
<worn on back>       a leather backpack
<worn as belt>       a leather belt
<worn on belt>       a butcher knife (flawless)
<worn on belt>       a water skin
<worn on belt>       a herbal kit
<worn on belt>       a stone

An example max set, with some artifacts and rare items: 

You are using:
<wielded two-handed> a burnished hewing-spear (flawless)
<worn on forearm>    the black buckler (flawless)
<worn on head>       a crown of bones (flawless)
<worn on body>       a shining breastplate (flawless)
<worn about body>    an imposing, golden mantle (flawless)
<worn on arms>       a shining pair of vambraces (flawless)
<worn on hands>      a black pair of metal gauntlets (flawless)
<worn on legs>       a shining pair of greaves (flawless)
<worn on feet>       a black pair of metal boots (flawless)
<worn around neck>   an old length of iron chain
<worn around neck>   a black amulet
<worn on wrist>      a keyring with a couple of keys and a set of lock picks
<worn on wrist>      a slim silvery wristband (flawless)
<worn on finger>     a ruby ring
<worn on finger>     a root ring
<worn on back>       a silvan satchel
<worn as belt>       a gleaming belt
<worn on belt>       a gem-inlaid knife (flawless)
<worn on belt>       a sable pouch
<worn on belt>       a water skin
<worn on belt>       a stone
<worn on belt>       an enhanced herbal kit

Alternative items:

  • Mana ring. Orc mana regen is outright awful, and this compensates for that to some degree. On the other hand, your spells tend to support your hit power, and ruby ring directly benefits the latter during battles themselves as well as compensating for limited combo OB.
  • Copper ring. Extra spellpower is useful, but with zero pass/fail spells, it’s not as critical to do a little more harm damage as it might be for a caster who needs to not fail a blind.
  • Twisted crown. See copper ring, above. Additionally, for someone trading hits, the more comprehensive absorb is often better, especially with MUME attacks targeting exposed body parts.
  • Shining chains over fine metals. Shining chains are lighter, can absorb a higher total max damage (14 vs 13), are not punished by concussion/blunt weapons, and have smaller penalties to combat stats. On the other hand, they absorb a smaller amount of attack damage up to the cap (55% vs 90%) meaning you take more chip damage. These are also more of a challenge to repair for orcs.

NOTE: that as a max-wis orc, you should be sure you have a herbal kit (enhanced, if possible) and collect ingredients for orkish draughts. Keep 8-10 on your person with ingredients for more, and don’t be shy about using them to boost your mobility as you can easily replace them.


Leveling Up

The snaga life. Coming out of Halls the first time, the same general guidance for leveling any orc applies: grab some quick levels in NOC, get your ranger basics (swim/climb/ride) and get out in the world to get TPs (20k at level 5 will see you almost all the way to hero)! Subsequently, you should level your character like a warrior. Your spell power will take a while to catch up, and it’s entirely okay to not grab any spells until the teen levels, while having early endurance, weapon skills, and even bash will make you more useful. Grab cures when you can, though.

In general, your solo XP power is limited – you’re a worse warrior for now. Being a back-up hitter for a group of XPers is the path of least resistance, and this will largely hold true for all XP you do in this class. A suit of decent armor and an enchanted weapon will let you kill solo mobs slowly but steadily.

Be sure to ask for help in getting draught lore and gather ingredients when you can. Early access to flasks will greatly help your TP quest and having them on hand is a habit you should maintain.

Getting bigger. Into the teen levels you can begin filling out your spell list, assuming you’ve already picked up the warrior skills that you want. Start by maxing armour, your secondary attack spell, picking up breath of briskness and your cures, and then finally grabbing shield and harm. These can be done even into the hero levels.

Hero+. Now you can finish your spells and round off warrior and ranger percentages to where you want them. Having harm maxed will give you more punch in case of PK, and so I would get this sooner rather than later. The penalty from sun is less pressing now, so you can gather more TPs for your higher levels.


Playstyle and Tactics

The general loop for war shamans isn’t complex: keep armor and shield up (and strength, if you have a ring or supporter who can cast it), and try to keep your mana mostly full to get better regeneration and be ready for battle. Travel with bob up to burn fewer moves where possible. This guide isn’t about “fights and how to find them,” but we’ll cover some of what to do when the battle is ongoing.

Your tools are all dramatically weaker in the sun, which will add a chance that your spells simply fail (and it will make them weaker in general). Simple guidance: avoid fighting in sun. And if you have to ask when to break this rule, you aren’t ready to break it. Dark draughts (a herblore which loads in Emyn-nu-Fuin) provide a way to circumvent the penalty of sun, but that is out of the scope of this guide.

When not in PK, your tools are self-explanatory. Hit and bash, and against large mobs and smobs, normal harms are your added nuke. This goes without saying, but harm is a less efficient nuke than other spells available to non-orcs due to its high mana cost and no bonus effectiveness against targets, and you will only be able to cast 4 (5 if high-age, fancy items, etc), so treat yourself as half a nuker when considering what your group has available.

Next, on harm. There are two common uses for harm that are highly effective in PK:

  • Bash <target> – flee – return – cast normal ‘harm’ <target>
    • Landing a bash and fleeing to cast a disengaged (and hence faster) harm provides an extremely mana-efficient burst of damage against your enemy that makes every bash devastating.
  • Bash <target> – flee – return – cast quick ‘harm’ <target> x2
    • Two quick harms are the most you can fit into a single bash, and it will devour almost your entire mana pool. However, if this amount of damage is sufficient to end the fight, that’s what you should do.
    • This is also the better usage when a target is bashed in a larger fight/trap/skirmish and the goal is to lock down a kill immediately that might otherwise escape.

If you are not directly engaged, i.e., you are assisting a groupmate, you can simply “escape” to instantly disengage and cast your harm (one normal or two quick) without fleeing. In a one-room closeable, closing the door until your groupmate can bash the target, then dropping two harms is a common tactic. The key takeaways are that casting harm disengaged is always better, when possible, due to its lack of speed, and that because mana efficiency matters a lot more than it does for a white-side caster with a staff.

The former usage is most effective when in a committed fight (i.e., 1v1 or 2v2 in a locked arena) and you need to make your mana count, while the latter is useful in the open when you need to secure a kill outright. Finally, you can land a normal harm or two quick harms while engaged on a bashed target without fleeing, but rarely is this better than fleeing, returning, and landing the spell (and subsequent melee hits) more quickly.

In the latter case, the concept is to wait until the target is within the range where 2 harms will bring them to 1hp (or near it), and then look to land a bash so that they can be instantly killed without a chance to run away. Given that most foes will try to retreat at low health, bash-harm is an incredible tool to catch someone dead before they have a chance to flee. Remember that harm cannot incapacitate a target, so you need to be able to land a final blow!

When engaging in a skirmish (i.e., jumping enemies or being jumped such that it isn’t a clear committed battle from both sides) you will often feel like a bootleg warrior. Embrace it. Set spells to quick or fast, and hit <target>; c <secondary spell> <target>. Landing hit-casts can deal a large amount of damage quickly, letting you bring down targets before they can organize or punish a single target until they’re on the defensive. Bashed targets are an invitation to land a harm. Play aggressive, but keep your wimpy relatively high as shamans are often targeted by enemies and the damage reduction of armour spell can make you feel more durable than you actually are. A hurt shaman whose armour drops can die in a few spells – do not forget that you are not actually a warrior.

In committed battles (duels or otherwise), play like a warrior, using and refreshing armour spell to trade favorable melee hits against your opponent. Your secondary spell can be used after a hit to add more damage or to interrupt retaliatory spells (vs casters). The same holds against thieves, who fare poorly when piercing against the damage reduction of your metals and armour. Hitting and lining up a shock or bash will often catch them mid-escape, and once they begin fleeing they can be punished while unable to sneak. Playing too defensive will allow thieves to make use of sneak-shoot, where crossbow anti-metal damage will begin to hurt.

As discussed above, landing bashes is an opportunity to either re-armour or to land a harm. When fighting casters, hit-flee and try to keep track of how much damage you’ve landed – a caster with thin or dropped armor will almost instantly die if harmed twice, and so getting an enemy mage to high hurt hps, bashing, and landing 2 quick harms will often simply end a fight in your favor. Against warriors, hitting and casting small spells during their weapon delay will generally put you ahead, though high-level warriors can exploit your lower combo-character OB and make it hard to damage them. In such cases, attempting to land a bash or going wimpy (if not a smiter) to cast spells more aggressively can provide options.

Examples:

  • Vs caster with charmies: [3]
  • Vs war-combo: [4]


High-level Extensions and Alternate Skills

When continuing to higher levels (40+), there are a few things you can add besides simply tuning up your warrior skills:

  • Raise dead/command: Give yourself access to an extremely durable charmed mobile (enslaved shadow) which empowers both PK and launches your character to an effective solo XPer. You only need enough raise dead for it to be castable (5-8 practices). This may be challenging in PK for willpower <13 because command will be 80% or lower, but for more balanced stats it’s a powerful tool. Kill a single level 21+ mob (Olog-hai, Thrakghash) using harm-flee tactics, raise it, and off you go!
    • I would prefer to use the shadow plus your own hitting power and bash rather than using a dreadful warg. The dreadful warg is harder to command, and while it has more firepower, it is also much more fragile. The enslaved shadow can do more to interfere with enemy charmies or warrior hits and is challenging for foes to pick off in a battle.
  • Word of recall: You’ll rarely use this, but the times you do, it will be to save your life. When cast, you’ll be sent to a safe place nearby, which can get you out of closeables or leave dead ends in your tracks. Note that this is hard to cast and casts slow, so you’ll want enough % to get near minimum mana.
  • Envenom: Adding more power instead to your physical combat skills, envenom can cripple enemies (you’ll want to look up the various effective poisons). Note that this can only be applied to edged weapons (nothing that gets eff vs metal from being blunt). Aim for 50%+ in the skill.
  • Escape: At ~30% this skill won’t do much for escaping from fights, but a secondary effect of the skill is reducing the delay when an ally rescues you. If you often play in groups, this can be quite valuable.
  • Earthquake: An AoE tool to battle groups of enemies, earthquake can be used un-stored (quickly or normal) to either initiate attacks on groups or defensively pre-cast when being pursued. Being un-stored, it can be challenging to land offensively unless enemies are otherwise occupied and often relies on sudden opportunity, which can frequently hit your unsuspecting allies. Defensively, it is rarely expected as it is an uncommon choice and so foes will charge straight into it. On the other hand, having this spell in your repertoire encourages you to try to land it, which can diminish how effectively you are using your main skills as you commit to trying to roll the dice.

Closing: Why are you still here? Go bash some elves dead.

Pure Shaman

This guide follows the Shaman Basics and War Shaman guides, and assumes that you’ve either read them, or are familiar with the basics in your own right. If something seems unclear, check to see if the other guides have mentioned it.

Pure shamans scale down their warrior practices – including usually giving up bash – for better total spell power and access to more specialized spells. Your role shifts more to one of support, with access to key utility spells (darken, blind, break door). While perhaps a less powerful class in solo PK, raise dead and the dreadful warg provide the physical offense to back up your spells that you need, while your powerful armour and shield spells make you difficult to crack.

Owing to the +2 bonus to strength that orcs have, it is still worthwhile to wield a “serious” weapon to provide hitting power, be it when buffing, spamming at fleeing elves, or assist-hitting in a group. This is still somewhat of a combo class and allows flexibility in what type of weapon class you might want to wield. However, you should no longer be the one taking the brunt of the damage, as a big feature of being the one trading blows with enemies is that it makes it terribly hard to cast support skills and utilize your mana pool!


A Quick Overview:

Pros:

  • Powerful utility spells make this a superb support character for group XP/smobbing and a toolkit for various situations.
  • Raise dead with high command is tremendously powerful in both XP and PK when solo or grouped, providing either a buffer or basher mobile.

Cons:

  • Reliance on spells is hindered badly by limited mana pool and regen.
  • Limited physical offense means non-spell tools are external to the character itself (extra equipment, or shadow/warg, which can be killed/lost).
  • Often targeted in PK with weaker tools to directly hit back compared to a war shaman.


Stats

The primary difference between pure and war shaman is that willpower becomes much more of a feature, as it plays into skills such as blindness, command, and break door. By contrast, raw health is less important as your armour spell is stronger and you are no longer aiming to physically beat your foes to death. As such, one example of stats would be: 

Str: 15 Int: 15 Wis: 16 Dex: 9 Con: 12 Wil: 15 Per: 9
  • Train +2 strength from wisdom unless you plan on practicing the strength spell.

Like a war shaman, we train down wisdom to obtain 17 strength (18 with 2nd or 3rd age), but we’ve now got 15 willpower. This allows for Excellent (90%+) command. Low dexterity is concerning at a glance, but willpower also feeds into flee success. Because the template for what a pure shaman might practice is less specific, there isn’t as simple a look at what a legend-level shaman stats will look like, but one could expect:

  • 290 hits, 110 mana, 122 moves
  • OB: 130%, DB: 53%, PB: 31%, Armour: 75%
  • EQ: blackened spear, bejewelled shield, shining chain, mana ring, gleaming belt

For new legend, assume closer to 275 hps, and closer to 250 hps if using more “pure” stats with lower con stats taken from Shaukr, level 50, Dunland, using first Benchmark stats in 4th age with +1str +1con -1wis trained

Some pure shaman players may opt to go entirely pure, eschewing strength (and taking fewer warrior practices) altogether and taking max willpower instead. This is viable but exacerbates the weaknesses of the class – without any hit power, losing your raised mobile dramatically decreases your ability to fight things unless you operate in a group.

Example stats: 

Str: 12 Int: 15 Wis: 16 Dex: 10 Con: 12 Wil: 16 Per: 9

Limited or no training.

Most of this section will discuss the former stats, with some mention of the purer-than-pure shaman build.

Unlike war shaman, there is also now more value in letting yourself go past 3rd age. 4th age will boost your mana and mana regen, at the cost of the +1 strength that 2nd and 3rd age provide. Hence, you may want to use both training and strength spell to be sure you have 18 strength at 4th age in cases when you lack access to a strength ring, use lower-str weapons, or accept the partial penalty.


Practices at Legend – Core Skills, Optional Skills

The core skills for a pure shaman are roughly:

  • Amour/shield/harm: Max them. These are your key defensive and offensive spells, which is detailed above. You should have 90%+ in each of these.
  • Blindness: you should have this maxed at 90%+. Key utility skill for xp, smobbing, and for situational uses in PK.
  • Secondary attack spell: Maxed. Most of the discussion in the war shaman section applies, but lightning bolt may become a better choice if your training/age/equipment leaves you with a higher total mana pool and you spend more time casting disengaged in battle.
  • Cure serious: (4-6)/cure critic (2-4)/cure blindness (1)/remove poison (2)/breath of briskness (70-80%).
  • Sense Life: 1-2 practices to boost your perceptions, which helps when searching for random doors or for seeing scouts. Useful and cheap.
  • Command: Max at 18 practices.
  • Raise Dead: to a workable level of 80-100 mana (often 5-8 practices).
  • Swim, climb and wilderness: Get all to 70%.
  • Ride: Max. You need the mobility.
  • Track: 90%+. Don’t play without track.
  • Primary weapon skill: Prac to 50-70%. This depends greatly on how pure you want to be, and what weapon skill you choose.
  • Endurance/parry: Get to 40-50% for your survivability.
  • Rescue: put in 1 practice for those times when you need to rescue.
  • Pick: 40% at least. Open and close doors.
  • Attack: 1-2 pracs. Same justification as for war shaman.
  • Search: 1 practice is sufficient for randomized doors and hidden things.
  • Escape: Optional, but you may want 2-4 pracs (20-30%) to reduce the delay when you are rescued, especially if you are using a shadow frequently.
  • Missile: Some shamans might practice a small amount of missile to shoot blind targets in xp/smobbing. This is not a requirement and is up to you. In general, using these practices on a melee weapon is more useful in more situations.


NOTE: it is challenging to fit both bash and blind in the same orkish character, in part due to the diminished specialization on each (which reduces reliability), but also due to how many practices are needed. Additionally, it’s a bit more questionable how these synergize: if you’re supporting with blind, you can also bring a dreadful warg to bash, and if you’re the one bashing targets you’re probably better off hitting them with more OB, too. It is, however, possible – if you’re willing to give up some other spells – to obtain 70%+ weaponskill/bash and 80%+ blindness. This allows you to do a bit of everything, leaning on the spell boosts of twisted crown and the coarse robe to compensate for the weaker blindness level.

Many of the other skills are a bit more mix and match. Below, I discuss other common shaman spell choices:


  • Strength: 8 practices for +2 strength is quite useful, especially as it implies that you do not need to train your strength at all to wield a heavy weapon (which in turn means more maximum mana from wisdom). On the other hand, this creates another spell which must be maintained, a potential drag on your mana and combat readiness. Having a higher mana pool and a mana ring can compensate for this upkeep cost.
  • Earthquake: The great AoE spell. This can be useful in XP (go wimpy and quake blind mobs) or in PK, defensively when targeted. Without store or a staff, this is rarely useful offensively on shaman, but can be a powerful tool in a battle where one or more foes are trying to chase you down. Note that having to use it defensively means using it based on opportunity rather than in a chosen room as a stored spell, making it more likely you can hit allies too. It’s situationally useful.
  • Darken: Blocks out the sun in a small, 1-2 room radius, and removes the penalty of the sun for orcs (and trolls). Note that you’ll still have trouble casting this if you’re already currently in the sun. Very useful, get a few practices in it if chosen.
  • Break door: Destroys most doors outright, including some that cannot be bashed. Also provides a high chance of unblocking a blocked door, but keep in mind that maxed block door from a white-side caster is incredibly reliable and can still resist your break. Very useful. Max it if you get it (80%+).
  • Word of recall: See discussion in the war shaman extensions. Can be useful.

And some uncommon spell choices:

  • Fear: All ungrouped entities in the room are affected, and face one of four outcomes. 1) nothing, 2) forced to flee from the room in fear, 3) “collapse”, which deals ~50 damage, or 4) a fatal heart attack (no XP for kills this way). This can be very powerful for thinning out a large group of mobs when XPing, or for an AoE attack that does not hurt your own group in PK. However, its actual effectiveness is unreliable at best, irrelevant at worst, though it does have a decent effect on enemy mounts! Note that the coarse robe boosts both blindness and this spell.
  • Black breath: This spell maxes at a tremendous 35 practices and has a potentially massive effect in turn. When cast on a target, this spell will drain moves and mana from the target and all ungrouped entities in the room and give moves back to the caster, with less taken from the non-targeted entities. When “successful”, the amount is around 50% of the first target’s mana and moves, and otherwise drains a smaller amount. This is one of the most devastating ways to attack the mobility of a target and can also be used in place of breath of briskness by draining random groups of mobs to top up moves. However, the spell is expensive and slow (often requiring a lucky quick cast in a large battle or a bashed target), can be resisted, and its effect is highly variable in larger battles. If you practice it, aim for as close to 90%+ as possible. This usually means giving up other major spells.
    • Breath of briskness: is the easiest choice of spell to drop for the practices needed, as black breath can be used in rooms with groups of non-aggressive mobiles to top up your mana, at the cost of needing to find said groups and losing group support. You might also decide to drop harm, as black breath will become your choice of cast-on-bash spell. You can pick up lightning bolt as an all-around attack spell instead.
  • Control weather: Extremely niche uses such as preparing lightning for BNs (who only get call lightning and not control weather, while orcs do not get call lightning at all) or messing up enemy weather setups.

Some spells (poison, hold, energy drain) are currently functionally useless and should not be practiced.


Equipment and Weapon Choice

Like war shaman, weapon choice is up to the player, but there are now some alternative considerations to a few:

  • Stabbing: Awlpike is the only serious legend offensive weapon that requires 17 (instead of 18) strength, which means with 15 base strength and either trained +2 or strength spell +2, you can comfortably be in 4th age and reap the mana advantages of age without sacrificing offense. Additionally, being more of a caster makes you more likely to be targeted, which puts a premium on spears’ ability to keep enemies at bay.
  • Slashing: Less of your damage and effectiveness will come from your physical attacks, and that makes more defensive weapons more relatively useful. If going fully pure with lower strength, slashing with engraved broadsword (or fell blade for offense, if you can get one) is the simple way to go.
  • Smiting: Giving up your defense in favor of more hitpower is now no longer as useful, and hence this weapon class is a much lower recommendation for a pure shaman.
  • Pierce: Still no. There are some thief-shaman combos that do use pierce, but they’re outside the scope of this guide.

Basic EQ

  • Fine chainmails for armor, possibly with fine metal gauntlets and boots. Spare black padded boots to swap to for mobility.
  • Forest green cloak to be replaced by a grisly, scorched fur or imposing, golden mantle when possible. Wear the appropriate cloak when hitting/playing offensively or on the defense, where you can use a fine grey cloak to stack on to your already-solid dodge bonus.
  • Gilded round shield or the best light shield you can find.

An example of a simple set with a legend weapon: 

You are using:
<wielded>            a narrow runed awlpike (flawless)
<worn as shield>     a gilded round shield (flawless)
<worn on head>       a fine chain mail coif (flawless)
<worn on body>       a coarse dusky robe (flawless)
<worn about body>    a ragged, blackened cloak (flawless)
<worn on arms>       a fine pair of chain mail sleeves (flawless)
<worn on hands>      a fine pair of metal gauntlets (flawless)
<worn on legs>       a fine pair of chain mail leggings (flawless)
<worn on feet>       a fine pair of metal boots (flawless)
<worn on wrist>      a keyring with a key and a set of lock picks
<worn on finger>     a ring
<worn on back>       a leather backpack
<worn as belt>       a leather belt
<worn on belt>       a butcher knife (flawless)
<worn on belt>       a water skin
<worn on belt>       a herbal kit
<worn on belt>       a stone

Legend EQ

  • Coarse dusky robe. This item has no absorb but provides +20 spell attack (2 real levels’ worth) to blindness and fear. This is crucial for making your blinds stick, especially against players. Either wear this constantly or make aliases to swap it with other armor.
  • Twisted crown. Unlike war shaman, you now have spells that are pass/fail, and increasing your spell power increases the reliability of your conditional spells working at all. Replace your helm and leave this on.
  • Ashen blade. Regardless of your primary weapon choice, this evil-only slashing weapon can be swapped to on the fly, giving +5 spell attack and is valuable for getting even more out of your spells.
  • Mana ring. Orkish regen is painfully low, and this will help substantially.
  • Shining chainmail. You want the lower weight, and the better absorb.
  • Slim silvery wristband. When obtainable (only via pk), this adds even more mana regen.


  • The usual legend kit:
    • Bejewelled shield
    • Gleaming belt
    • Black amulet
    • Old length of iron chain
    • A strength ring can either provide strength if you don’t have the spell or replace the need to cast the spell if you do have it.
    • Opaque or lambent amulet provides detect magic so that you don’t have to practice it.


NOTE: Pure shaman is more reliant on equipment than war shaman as it relies on more items to boost its spells, and thus is more sensitive to losing equipment. Keep this in mind. While pure shamans can more easily collect gold for re-equipment, it is also more necessary to do so. The most crucial item is the coarse robe, without which blindness becomes somewhat unreliable in PK (and an unreliable spell is one that often isn’t worth the casting time, unless you know your foe is vulnerable). For PvE, your character will still be functional without legend items, but you will notice a quick drop-off in blind effectiveness without the robe and crown. 

''An example legend equipment loadout:''
You are using:
<wielded>            a narrow runed awlpike (flawless)
<worn as shield>     a bejewelled shield (flawless)
<worn on head>       a twisted crown
<worn on body>       a coarse dusky robe (flawless)
<worn about body>    an imposing, golden mantle (flawless)
<worn on arms>       a shining pair of chain mail sleeves (flawless)
<worn on hands>      a fine pair of metal gauntlets (flawless)
<worn on legs>       a shining pair of chain mail leggings (flawless)
<worn on feet>       a fine pair of metal boots (flawless)
<worn around neck>   a black amulet
<worn around neck>   an old length of iron chain
<worn on wrist>      a keyring with a key and a set of lock picks
<worn on wrist>      a slim silvery wristband (flawless)
<worn on finger>     a ring
<worn on finger>     a golden ruby ring
<worn on back>       a leather backpack
<worn as belt>       a gleaming belt
<worn on belt>       a gem-inlaid knife (flawless)
<worn on belt>       a water skin
<worn on belt>       an enhanced herbal kit
<worn on belt>       a sable pouch
<worn on belt>       a stone

Alternative items

  • Copper ring. The boost in spellpower can be useful for critical blinds or battles. Overall, balancing orkish mana regen makes mana ring the more core item.
  • Tarnished copper wristband. Only obtainable via PK, this can replace slim silvery to provide -5 moves, but +10 mana (if leather sleeves, else +5 with chain sleeves).
  • Pitch black robe. Corrupted from a pure white robe, this item returns part of the mana cost of specific spells (smother, curse, black breath, harm, darkness, energy drain, and enchant) approximately 30 seconds after casting them. Given the large costs of harm and black breath, this item can be very powerful in extending your limited mana pool.


NOTE: that a max-equipped shaman will have almost no equipment-based absorb: twisted crown, coarse robe, and tarnished copper wristband (hence leather sleeves) leave the shaman fairly exposed. Setting up many aliases to swap equipment is one possibility, while another is to use your (relatively) high skill level in armour and shield to raise your defense and absorb damage magically. Since hits tend to target unarmored spots, you might decide to wear fine leather gloves and padded boots as well in the latter case, since hits are rarely going to land on the few bits of armor you wear and the lower weight will help defense and mobility.


Leveling up

Snaga. This is mostly the same as with war shamans – you’ll want to grab your exploration skills (ride/swim/climb, some endurance, wilderness) and go TPing. It is still useful to get a few warrior skills for leveling up early on. Blind at low level is not terribly effective, but it does enhance your options if you are solo. Get some fine chainmails and a decent weapon: your lower physical stats and practices make metals more prohibitive.

Mid-low-levels. You’ll benefit tremendously from having a group because these levels will be slow. Blind and shoot give you one option for killing large solo mobs, as well as blind and earthquake. Take the opportunity to make some friends and play in a group – just offer to BoB them around. This section looks short, and it is, because leveling as a low-level pure shaman is a reasonably unpleasant experience.

Hero+. At this point you have blind maxed, and you have access to raise dead and max command. Setting the shadow to buff, plus your shaman blinding and assisting will allow you to freakishly powerlevel. Mirkwood, Central Anduin, and Dol Guldur are easy areas to rip through with this setup, but you aren’t constrained and can go just about anywhere and XP well. If your setup is more defensive, you can use the dreadful warg to assist you and bash instead, but either way, you should be able to progress swiftly to legend and beyond.

  • It will be useful to learn which mobs are both level 21+ and easy to kill in various areas, in case you lose your raised mobile. Obvious choices around NOC are Thrakghash (dies in some harm-fleeing, doesn’t get you wanted in NOC) or olog-hai NW of crack behind crevices.

Another tool – once your defense (especially armour spell) is fairly healthy – is to make use of earthquake. Areas such as the Dunland orkish caves can be cleared out by pre-casting earthquake as hostile packs of mobs chase you into the room. Usually, this doesn’t compare to using raise dead, but it’s another tool.

Finally, at this point having access to raise and blind means you can freely kill any mob inside NOC. Shopkeepers, Guildmasters, Gatekeepers, Takhr, and the Great Goblin will banish you if you attack them but won’t do this if blind – meaning you can freely kill everyone, one mob at a time, reaping an easy harvest of experience and loot. Pure shamans often act as gold suppliers, being able to easily and freely raise money.

  • The Great Goblin won’t chase into Harkz’s legendhome (2E S E from GG), so if you fail a blind and he begins to chase, retreat here.
  • If you mess up and get wanted, someone has to kill the Great Goblin to reinstate your citizenship. Mobs will chase you throughout NOC, so don’t stick around too long. Alternative rent spots are available at DT (if dark) and OOC.


Playstyle and Tactics

Combat as a pure shaman depends first on whether you are in a group, or solo. When solo, the class relies heavily on their raised mob to support their limited physical offense and create opportunities to bring spells to bear. Without this mobile, a pure shaman is at a substantial disadvantage. In a group, your role is to stay alive (as you will often be targeted, so keep your armour up) and provide support, be that blinding charmies/enemy non-casters, spamming spells on enemy casters to keep them out of the picture, and/or landing offensive spells on the targeted enemy where possible.

The choice between enslaved shadow and dreadful warg depends somewhat on playstyle. The shadow can rescue you, buffs much better, but has less offense. It’s often better for XP for this reason, but it has merits in PK where it can be used to tie down enemy charmies or warriors without immediate worries about it dying. Enemies engaged with the shadow are therefore vulnerable for you to cast on. The shadow leaves no tracks, and this allows additional tactical advantages: while everyone will know exactly what type of character you are when they see the dreadful warg tracks.


The warg, on the other hand, can hit substantially harder and bash enemies for nuking or tactical advantage (as players use the boar or lithe mobs). But the warg is more fragile, can be killed by enemies who target it, and can’t buff enemy charmies for long. Hitting the enemy and ordering the warg to assist/bash exploits parry split and your own higher defense to keep the warg in battle longer. The notes on bash-harm presented in the war shaman section apply equally so here, and so the warg has a distinct advantage in enabling quick harm kills. Enemies facing you will often target the warg to try to disarm you, and so you may need to throw yourself somewhat in the threat’s way.

A common experience for shamans, pure or otherwise, is that in a spammy fight, it’s hard to land spells, and as many pure shaman battles are teamfights, spamminess is the order of the day. The result is that you’ll revert to playing a bootleg warrior – spamming hit <target>, bottlenecking foes, and landing fast or quick spells when the battle allows. This often means your moves become a problem (put spare practices towards wilderness, and use breath of briskness and orkish draughts), and it can also lead to spamming yourself into the grave with a character not suited for trading hits. Having a dreadful warg to land bashes and hit hard ameliorates this problem, and to a degree, so does setting up a pure shaman to use real weapons.

A core power of the pure shaman is its quite reliable blindness spell. With coarse robe, you can consistently blind (even quick blind) enemy charmies, helping to take them out of the fight entirely, and even enemy players at times. Using your enslaved shadow or groupmates to buff charmies so they can be quickly blinded is an excellent way to handle casters relying on charmed mobs. Against players, however, keep in mind the limitations of the spell. The wide usage of MMapper means that blinded players can still navigate freely and will have no trouble continuing to run away. On the other hand, blinding enemies in a committed teamfight can knock them out entirely – assuming they don’t have access to cure blindness. And many will.

Many of the anti-class tools work the same as for war shamans when considering the added power of the dreadful warg – the threat of its quick bash will force enemies to play cautiously against you. Keep your armour refreshed and hit <target> – order assist – order bash – cast if enemy is in weapon delay will give your warg parrysplit for its damage while letting your armour spell soak up the enemy hit. Against warriors and thieves, you may also look to land blinds. Note that against casters, aggressive play with the warg is likely to get you hit with earthquake, and so it pays to not be single-mindedly aggressive. On the other hand, overenthusiastic quaking may lead to the caster being bashed regardless (especially in rooms with few exits where their flees may fail), opening them to your Harm spell.

With Italic textthe shadow, this is flipped – if the enemy is named, having the shadow hit so that you can assist or immediately start casting will absorb the enemy’s damage while allowing you to deal your own. This is more challenging if the enemy is not named (and hence cannot be targeted directly by your shadow) or is simply faster than you. At this point, the warg strategies (without blind and with less hitting power) apply. A small but relevant point to end on is spell casting speed. Quick spells, obviously, are fastest – at a lower spell level and 50% more mana. Quick is sometimes overkill where casting fast is effective, doing more damage and costing less, especially if using spells like shock against enemies that are using colour spray or dispel evil. It’s also a healthy middle ground for landing harms at a lower mana cost.


Examples:

  • Quake chaos without weapon skills: [5]
  • Black breath in action: [6]

Highlevel Extensions

As pure shamans get to high levels, you have a few choices:

  • More ranger and warrior skills. While you might not want to get bash, you can improve your general weapon skill, parry, wilderness, or even leadership if you find yourself leading others around. As your level increases, your defense will become more robust, and so leaning into this can be effective. Alternatively, you could try to move away from pure shaman entirely and become a more middle-of-the-road bashing shaman with a wider set of spells.
  • Pick up more spells from the list of things you want to try out. There are always more spells than you can fit with the practices of one character.
  • Try out envenom: Like war shaman, you might want envenom to add additional tricks to your offensive power. If you happen to use black breath, pairing that with arachnia is an obvious move. Aim for 50%+.

Closing: Outros are for elves, snaga.

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