Shattered Kingdoms

I will elaborate a bit, with thoughts from my own experience so far, on death in SK and all about getting back alive.

I take the recent contact i had In Game by a deep elf who died.
He contacted me and asked me about life, i did my resonable round of questions, and he revealed to me he was a deep elf. Props to him for not trying to dodge my questions as many others do. Apparently, it became obvious to me he was a new player, and a bit later he oocly told me that and asked for directions. Given i was the only priest around that time, he came to me regardless.

Now then, a few pointers to new players who die and seek their path back to life in SK

1) Try a who and see who has an obvious Priest title. Contact a dark priest if you are dark, a good priest if you are lighty, any if you are gray.
2) Try a who and ask someone you know that has detect invis/hidden to do a scan for you, for any priests around, if you are unable to sense one yourself. Spirits do not see hidden or invisible players. Then follow the steps on (1)

In case there is no priest around, and that happens more than often, you are limited to the following choices:

1) Wait out, and continue who every once in a while, until you sense a priest online.
2) Seek the Will'o'Wisps and the Oracle and try to answer the Death Quest. Keep in mind that asking for help with the Riddle OOCly is considered inapropriate, while it's fully ok if you ask a friend online, ICly.
3) Reincarnation through the command Reincarnate is considered the LAST sollution ALWAYS. Do not attempt this, since it will take away one full level from your experience, resulting in you losing a level, and also a stat point.

Now then, lets go to the case where you are a darkie, and you only sense a lighty priest online. You might do one of the following:

1) Speak to the priest and attept to convince them to help you, even though they know your true nature of dark soul. I know it has happened before, i know i myself too have willingly aided a dark aura'ed before due to -very specific- reasons. It's not common trade, it would take a serious ammount of try, 95% of these requests end up with a NO, but it sparks some serious debate and Roleplaying.
2) Speak to the priest and attempt to deceive them into believing you are a gray, or good guy. Tips to the newbies are, that any priest has "spirit sight" and thus he can see your title. Therefore:
[--- ---] Mantalena, Sacrificial hand of Blood is NOT a good title to try to fool a priest into believing you are light/gray aura. He can see that and he will promptly refuse the resurrection. Also, dont start with Aghelian, Deep or Imperial tongue. This will make the priest suspicious. Go with something like Uxmaln for pretending to be gray, or Sylvan, Zhensh, Taslamaran if you pretend to be light/gray. Pay attention into the skill on the language. Good or Very Good skill will rarely convince the priest you are from the kingdom you pretend you are. Also, if the Priest is clearly Taslamaran and your Taslamaran tongue us superb, go with Sylvan. A minor error will alert the priest you are lying. Then, if you convince them to resurrect you, you can a) Roleplay it out, b) Flee/recall c) Attempt to slay the priest, since it is almost certain, that he will have Detect Aura active, and will try to slay you first, correcting the "error" he just made.

As for Light aura characters dying, and sensing only dark priests, i would be reluctant to take the above steps. I cannot imagine a Principled in speficic, player, trying to deveive a priest of fear, neither the said player accepting the blessing of life from such a dark deity.

As for gray aura characters, well you could shoot up a tell on any priest, and unless they have a specific policy of no-resurrection to those of gray heart, or no-resurrection to those they dont know, you should be fine.

Final Note:
Please understand the priest when he claimes to be busy since there's a whole lot of other things he'd rather be doing, than sitting on a chamber, ready to answer resurrection calls. Try not to be demanding, or pestering. If he states he is busy, kindly ask him to inform you once he has some free time, and tell him that should you be able to return without his aid, you will contact him. Try to contact him again after 30 mins if nothing happens. Not every 5 minutes, else you are shrinking your chances of resurrection Also, always try to include the following information on the first or second sentense: Name, if you are in the River, and the fact that you are dead. A priest with spirit sight will be unaware you are a dead man talking to him, and a priest without one might lose your tell if he has more than enough people speaking to him through tells.

Remember that it all comes down to Roleplaying and patience. Priests are not the most common class to meet in the Mud, and there's rarely one of your aura when you need one. With the above, i hope i have helped some people learn a couple of things, about how to deal with afterdeath.

Very Good Post. Wish this information had been around when I started playing SK. Might not have felt I had no choice but to delete my first four characters. Kudos!

A few things I'd like to add:

-ALWAYS include your name on the very first tell. A priest with ten conversations going will never be able to contact you back.

-Deceive the priest to get life at your own peril. Not only will may they "fix their error" but they might hunt down later, even several times.

-Reincarnate no longer takes a permanant stat point. It does, however, take away a random stat point if the level lost was an even level which gives a stat point. Avoid reincarnation even if it means logging off and coming back another day.

Beat you to it Frolly

Second sentence is too late. And I don't mind belaboring this point.

-ALWAYS include your name on the very first tell. A priest with ten conversations going will never be able to contact you back.

Or, you could play a priest yourself. *wink Benzo*

No one gets a rez faster or more willingly than a fellow priest. I suppose my experience is a bit extraordinary, but in the last four or five times I've died, I only had to ask for a rez twice, and only had to wait once. More often than not, I'm still RPing as a ghost, and I get an angry priest tell to the effect of "Why aren't you in the River yet?"

The most important thing to remember is that death is not the end-all of SK, and that there is a decent chance that your killer will at least give you the time of day provided that you MANIFEST yourself, so they can see you. Remember, only those with spirit sight up can detect a ghost in the room otherwise.

Deep tongue is spoken in the gnomish and dwarven cities I belive, not evil places. I was told that one is actually aggro to dark aura.

And I cannot adaquately emphasize how important it is to be patient. I can say firsthand that priests are needed a lot. Life, potions, summons, gates, help, advice, etc... After you level and play a bit (or maybe even sooner), you will notice how high demand they can be.

'nuff said.

sleeper

PS Sticky plzkthnx

Excellent thread, full of really good advice. The only item I would say shouldn't be encouraged is the one below:



I'm fairly sure that's not the way we want things to play out when it comes to the riddles.

If you sticky this, edit the first post and add the options of shamans/warlocks that can raise/BoL(the cost is only 1 tick of experience, not much at all nowadays). That option is by far better than even the Oracle quests, since you can use the quests only a few times before their cost is the cost of reincarnation.

And there are a few scrolls that can be used to raise dead as well, that people should keep in mind. Although I doubt it's worth the effort to ask every PC online that can use scrolls if they possess such a scroll.