Laithdes Advanced Character Management Techniques

From LSWiki

//This guide assumes you know the basics of LS and have achieved a moderate amount of knowledge about the game.

//The tips in this guide are all 100% based on my preferences and style of play.

//This page is still being written.

Telnet Clients

Your life gets considerably easier if you have access to powerful telnet client. Key factors in choosing one should include: trigger or actions support, scripting support, and the level of how comprehensive these systems are to use.

Personally, I use Cmud. But, if you're looking for more on the free side of things, Mudlet, Wintin++, Wintin.net, or the free version of Zmud are all powerful clients that offer similar capabilities.

Being able to create client based aliases is good, but Lost Souls has on-game alias support which I find is better to use in the event that you log on from somewhere where you might not have access to the client you normally use.

Scripting

Scripting is a very handy thing to do that can reduce the hassle of performing tedious tasks that need to be repeated. Scripting is allowed on Lost Souls as long as these scripts don't excessively lag the server, most basic and properly made scripts won't.

Ideas for scripting uses include but are not limited to:

 Deleting and then recreating a customized character autonomously
 Perform in-game tasks such as moving to a desired room and performing actions: such as joining guilds or getting skill trains, doing quests...
 Going to a place to reset your alignment and then returning to a different room

Race

You'll want to play a anthropic race. (Human, Dana, Drow, Tuatha, Chaosborn, Amberite)

This is because most of the weapons and armor in game are designed to fit human-sized creatures.

Preferably you'd pick a elder race if you have them unlocked because Autodidaction trait is highly important if you're trying to reach end-game npc killing.

Approved Races

Human
Dana
Kobold - max size at creation
Amberite
Tuatha
Chaosborn
Kedeth
Advenus
Quess
Aviar
Phaethon

Guild

Always start as a level 1 Aisenshi. Get the chi attacks.

A philo talent if you have the determination.

 By "get a philo talent", I mean make a character, get a philosophy skill train from Musashi, if no talent pops, remake and repeat.

Combat Meditation skill if you have the Autodidaction trait.

You can leave as soon as you get chi kick if you're going passive method because your guild won't matter. If not, stay with aisenshi until at least level 50.

Character Development

Forget that Strength and Vitality exist, only invest in Agility, Ego, Intellect, Willpower and Perception.

Which you develop most will change depending on what guild you play.

Equipment

Really, I find it's best to not use anything you don't mind losing or can't personally create. Many guilds get access to special armor, auras, and weapons. Typically these are best not because they are most powerful, but because you can't lose them.

There are some exceptions to this, like a Aligned replicating all their equipment. While the benefit to this is great, it's best to know that if you still somehow lost EVERYTHING you have, you can still be effective.

However, for best results here is a list of things I would generally recommend using:

Armour:

 Millenarian plate set
 Dactid
 Apolekid
 Proto Halfsuit (I guess if you have nothing better)
 Noctid
 Cloud Cloaks
 Kineitid
 Strata Armours (at lower levels)
 Wayfarer Cannons (at lower levels)

Artifacts

Most players can extremely underestimate the importance of artifacts in the game. There's reasons why they're unique and can't always be kept and will reset every shut down.

It is most wise to build your character to not be dependent upon the use of artifacts, but to use them as a chance to possibly aid in reducing the amount of difficulty involved in perform specific tasks. Such as completing quests, killing mobs, or moving about the realm.

Some artifacts can be insanely powerful items and might allow you to kill mobs over your current level of ability or comfort. You have the ability to use as many as you can equip, often times the effects from all of them stacking.

Which artifacts you will want to use will mostly depend on you build and alignment.

Artifact weapons can give you access to esoteric damage types that you might know a specific mob is weak too, or even provide some juicy buffs.

Some will only load in random drop rooms, but a good amount will load static in the same place each time. It's wise to view over the Artifacts page and get a good understanding of the special equipment.

Challenges

Note that I ultimately suggest spending levels 1 to 50 passive and only doing challenges.

By "passive", I mean having zero kills on the report generated by the "score" command.

Typically the best way to go about doing this is to set your combat mode to defensive until the desired level is reached.

The reasoning behind this is that if you have zero kills, you will not be eligible for experience based challenges. You will also stop getting quest challenges at 35% quest point completion. Once this happens you'll mostly get the intoxicated, skill experience, charity, and exploration.

By spending 50+ levels focusing strictly on developing skills, exploring and getting 35% of the quests done will end up saving you a lot of headaches later on. This is because after 50 levels you've now earned 250 attribute points, will have explored a significant amount of the mud, which is often used to calculate some things for in-game content.

Challenges divest xp rewards semi-randomly, the more difficult the challenge the better the rewards typically. However the xp rewards scale with level and Assimilativity. So it's not impossible to even make it legend+ as a passive by doing challenges, it'd just get tedious after a while.

Once you get access to advanced challenges it really takes off which means you need to do roughly 50 to 80 regular challenges.

Post-Aisenshi Guilds

Realistically they're only a handful of guilds that you can solo the toughest npc's with. Some give you the ability to do so sooner than others.

Personally I've reached end-game with any of these guilds:

 Aligned
 ELF
 Travelers
 OZM
 Lightbringers
 Coven (only with specific bonds [owl/carrion bird/sparrow "maybe"])
 Shapeshifters*

I suggest taking your character through all of them at some point or another. Guild swapping every 50 levels or so can keep your interest in 1 character since your combat is never too repetitive.

• Shapeshifters is the only guild I have not played to end-game levels, but I know it can be done and is only for those playing kentaur and have months to spend idling to unlock uber shoggoth powers.

Combat Meditation

Combat Meditation or "cmed", is a skill in which applies a blanket percent buff to all your ratings in direct proportion to your effective skill level. My math is likely slightly off (someone will correct me if I'm wrong) but, for each point a person has in cmed you get +0.07% to attack and damage ratings, and +0.14% per point to deflection and dodge ratings.

Along with these buffs being in combat meditation grants the Situational Awareness trait, along with lowering the activity cost of most attacks.

Guilds that eventually give access to the combat meditation skill:

 Aisenshi
 Nizari
 Shlyma Bond
 Frog Bond
 Travelers - Only +2 access if you join with it already opened

Experience Tracks

One of the most personal concepts is where you decide to earn experience most frequently.

Good rules to follow when you go slaying are:

 Locate sources of experience that are moderately close together,
 don't fly from one side of the map to the other just because you 
 know one place might be a good source of experience.

 A good experience track takes you in sort of a circle around
 the world of Lost Souls. However linear tracks that perform 
 sort of a sweeping motion around the world are also acceptable.

 Form a habit of following a track that resets your alignment to
 the proper side at the end of the track.

 Don't be afraid to revisit earlier areas you've used as sources
 of experience later on, in order to clear your kill log so that
 the new sources of experience you've found remain to give those 
 rich chunks of experience.

 Don't be afraid to take others with you, or even try to get others
 to take you with them. You earn bonus experience in groups based upon 
 the amount of damage done to any given target. Often taking lower leveled
 players than yourself can result in you making additional experience just
 for them being there. Or if you're following someone else, you can learn
 of new places that could potentially be new sources of experience. 

Adventuring Companies

Once you reach a desired level of comfort with running a experience track, it's most wise to create a advcompany.

Basically members of these companies share a portion of their experience points with all other members, this effect even takes place when a player is logged out. Upon logging in the built up portion is given to the player.

An active company can end up benefiting all members quite extensively.

Some general guidelines when trying to form and maintain a advcompany:

 Players inactive for 2 weeks or more should be kicked and replaced
 All players should share the same build style/alignment outlooks (this affects how effective the share ratio is for all members).
 All players should be roughly within the same level of each other, give or take 30-60 levels. This also affects the sharing ratios. 
 The player with the highest leadership skill should be designated as the leader, and all other members should invest in the Subordination skill.

Keeping an active company is a quick method to make experience even when you're not at your computer or logged into the game.

Companies also encourage player based inclusion and communication, the sharing of ideas and concepts that can often be critical to learning and discovering new methods of personal advancement.

There also (at least to me), seem to be bonus experience rewards when grouping with members of your company.

Lux

Obviously, lux helps you reach end-game much quicker. However it's not required. I spent most of my LS career reaching end-game status without the use of it. If you do decide to donate to the game, then great! However I'd recommend that you pair your lux with a benefit that's reusable.

For example: A extra guild slot is more useful than 4 Lightbringer Radiance points.

A wild talent is better than X Traveler points.

It's also good to keep a few lux handy for immaculate rez so you don't have to deal with pesky death effects, but that's purely preference.