Grouping & Soloing

Sloth is primarily a group MUD as there are several huge mobs that no player can take down by themselves.  The best equipment is usually found on those huge monsters and as such, you'll oftentimes have to join a group to slay those monsters.  The best experience is also found in grouping, since a large group can kill several large mobs that will yield greater experience than killing several smaller monsters would yield solo in most cases.  This is not to say that you can't solo on Sloth - just that they will oftentimes be much smaller mobs, several more kills, or if you prefer - multiple runs to kill a single mob.

The classes available on SlothMUD all have their uses in a group, but some classes are better for soloing than others.  The best primary class for soloing with the focus on killing multiple small mobs would probably be thief primes with their massive backstab damage allowing them to splork (kill the mob with a single, double, or triple stab).  But any class can solo certain mobs with the right blend of skills, spells, equipment, and most importantly, knowledge.

At the lower levels - it's much better to solo in order to gain experience and knowledge.  When you're in a group, you're being dragged around by the leader and in most cases can't even see where you're going - until the leader reaches his intended destination.  Also - the experience in groups is doled out on a percentage-based system, where those with more levels get a greater percentage of the experience and those with fewer levels get a smaller percentage.  Gold is split equally.  At the extremely low levels (before you get stats) - it's almost worthless to group.

In general, until you have at least a decent armor class and some hit points to soak up some damage without dying, I wouldn't group for the most part.  If it's a honor mob or a quest group though, feel free to join up and try your best not to die.

A few very important notes about grouping - there are several things to know:

• The tank is the only one that should have his autoreporter on - to make it easier for everybody in the group
• gag fight and gag eq along with possibly, concise are almost required just to cut down on the massive spam that will happen with a large group - they suppress lines that you don't really need to see
• DO NOT JOIN A GROUP WITHOUT TACTICS LEARNED!  The group structure is a 2-line system, with the large beefy people with higher armor class being in the front line (man up) and the smaller & crunchy people stay in the back line (man back).  Sometimes chaos hits your group and everybody in the back line gets moved up to the front line - you will have to immediately man back or risk death.  The message that will be given is this: Your front line collapses! Your group is thrown into chaos!
• If the tank yells something prior to battle, that is actually a warrior skill (one of the oaths) - everybody in the group should warcry the exact same message that the tank yells.  Here's a sample - if the tank is Badden and his warcry is this: Badden yells 'SILENCE! I KEEL YOU!!!' then your reply needs to be warcry SILENCE! I KEEL YOU!!!  Each warrior has his own unique message - most people simply make a trigger within their mud client that allows them to automatically reply to the warcries of various warriors.  The good news though, is that there's only one warcry used prior to each fight and it's the same one used by the tank.  If the tank dies, or a new tank begins tanking, the warcry will be different.
• If you solo for the most part at first, you don't have to worry about these things - they usually only apply to high level groups.
• Most groups would like the lower level players to use certain debuff spells (which will be discussed later, but the most general one is the blindness spell) - the blindness spell only works if you are not actively taking part in the melee fighting - so if you don't take a part in meleeing, you can stay out of the fight and keep casting the blindness spell on the monster until one of the spells finally hits and blinds the monster.
• To take part in the melee fighting, it's best to assist playername where the player's name is the tank's name.  Using Badden again as an example - if he is tanking, it'd be assist Badden
• The leader sets the target - pay attention to this target as several monsters can be in the same room at the same time, with the same names!  If the leader targets 2.dragon then you should be casting your spells targeting 2.dragon not dragon, as 2.dragon specifies the second dragon in the room.  It's also a beneficial thing for you when you solo to target the last mob in a room to start killing something, since some mobs can leave or enter the room.  If you hit the first dragon when everybody is hitting the second dragon, the first dragon will eat you alive and then begin eating the rest of the group - the group ends up fighting 2 dragons at the same time, which is never good.
• Once you have begun melee fighting with a monster, you don't have to target most skills or spells anymore - they will automatically hit the monster you are fighting with at the moment - so you can cast 'firewind' instead of cast 'firewind' target.

Monsters can have multiple attacks, cast spells, or have unique protections that players do not get - an example would be a fire whip that hits everybody in the room.  In most cases, if you have double attack, you get one hit on the monster then take all of the monster's hits, then if your second hit will be successful, it'll land after that - then a special protection would occur at the end.  But that's not a hard and fast rule by any means.

[Written on: 13-Feb-2010]