Posted by The Arcane(VIP) on October 16, 2000 at 03:25:57:
In Reply to: Not that the other responses weren't good... posted by Vargus on October 16, 2000 at 02:09:06:
> But an old piece of advice that I've found is quite helpful, if you didn't start the fight and weren't ready for it, chances are they already have the upper hand and the best bet is to get away, prep, then come back and try to tool them. Even better: don't let people catch you by surprise, period. Be paranoid. Type where a lot... type who pk a lot. No one stays hidden forever, or camo/cham forever (though some rangers come close)... knowing who's around is sometimes good enough, even if you can't always see them. Move around a lot... be aggressive and offensive. People are less likely to find you when you're actively moving around and searching for others. If you're doing something else like ranking or gathering equipment, stay alert. If you're practicing, find the remotest place you possibly can, and stay as alert as you can without going insane. Pre-hero, most PKing occurs in ranking areas. I've attacked and killed more groups in Aridhol than I care to count, and it never ceases to amaze me that they didn't realize I was there in the time it took me to figure out which "Tenement" they were currently in. As noted, catching someone by surprise under these conditions usually results in a kill. Take advantage of this when attacking, and conversely, minimize the odds of this happening to you. At hero, most PKs occur in or near cabals. Usually this implies preparation and organization (to some extent, dependant on player skill and circumstances), and again changes the complexion of the fight. When you do get surprised, try and figure out what went wrong and why you got surprised. It doesn't matter if you won or lost the fight... you should always dictate the terms of the fight to the fullest extent possible. Oddly, I find it difficult to explain exactly what factors go into achieving this... I'm not entirely sure what it is that I did right when I played, but I literally never got unexpectedly attacked in the past year or so, as far as I can remember. With a raven/quasit conjurer, this was trivial, but I managed it with a Rager warrior too, so I dunno. Overall, your description of stuff you do sounds excellent and fairly complete. Just give it some more time, and as the poster below suggested, start working on strategies to turn "made-them-flee" victories into "get all corpse" victories.