Shoggoth Primer

From LSWiki

2021/2 Update: Affinity organs have been removed. However, metamorphosis' skill weight has been rebalanced so that you only require ~15 specs in it to be "perfect" as opposed to 30. All organs have also been buffed. There's also a cool shoggoth-only guild, Nglethk N'keh Fl'hlgath.

Playing a Shoggoth is a true learning experience, much like playing one of the more complicated guilds. What follows is a short guide to starting out as a Shoggoth from character generation, including important definitions and various pointers to help ease you into their play style.

First, and most importantly, you want to maximize your attributes in character generation. Shoggoth grow naturally over time (in the Shoggoth language, their Vorgaal increases - which is directly correlated to your size statistic.) Ergo, it makes little sense to favor size in character generation, when it will grow on its own outside of it. At the time of this writing, it appears you grow one vorgaal about every hour of in game time, as long as you are not hungry or thirsty. This means a considerable time investment (or at least tick training) on your part to see substantial character development, as you are quite capable of utilizing all available Vorgaal from early on with little noticeable effect.

The more Vorgaal you have, the more organs - or Strunthlg - you can possess at one time (Flgathu is the term for organs currently existent on your body.)

When you are damaged, your usable Vorgaal decreases - this means if you are using all of your Vorgaal for organs they will disappear, possibly leaving you blind, deaf, without mode of attack, or worse. Glithmrul is how you set the priority of your organs - lower priority organs will tend to disappear first when you are damaged enough for that to occur. Fungmrul is related to Glithmrul, in that it is the "inherent structural stability" of a given organ, and that means it is a priority setting you can not influence. The general consensus is to leave a portion of Vorgaal unused so that these priority settings are not as necessary.

Now that major definitions are out of the way, we can proceed with some more specific pointers.

To grow organs, use the command "perform flgathl <organ name>". Don't be afraid to alias this and all your other important Shoggoth commands, and be sure to read the help files on all of them.

First of all, grow yourself an optical receptor (Ythog) so you can see.

Second of all, grow yourself an auditory tympanum, or the Shoggoth ear analogue (Mfha) so you can hear.

Third of all, grow yourself a tentacle manipulator (Hngaug.) You'll need a separate tentacle for a number of useful organs, including weapons later on.

Grow yourself a vocal tube (K'thee) so you can speak. You will need to get training from various NPCs to even get started, and it will be a slow process.

Train your anglic and linguistics up so NPCs can understand you - you'll need them to do so, because otherwise you'll never get the skills you need.

Use Ghaunadu on organic matter, or even living targets, to satiate yourself. As you learn about more organs, you may consider instead growing the digestive organ (Abvhath) to satiate yourself through.

At this point, you have the basics. I suggest you focus on getting the required skills to make Xelth (wings) so you can get around easier for better, and a wider variety of, training. Major skills you will want to have specialized to at least a couple degrees are: animal lore, anatomy, physics, metaphysics, psychology, mathematics and metamorphosis. Skills that are important, but for a smaller selection or specific organs are things like: arcane lore, gem lore, insect lore, and so on. As you become familiar with the help files on specific organs, you will begin to see how wide a variety of skills Shoggoth utilize even for rudimentary organ setups.

Given the above, recognize that Shoggoth require a very substantial investment in intelligence and willpower just to reach a basic level of functioning. You should also bear in mind that if you intend on joining a guild, you will lose the adventurer access in a number of the skills you really need. You will have to be creative in associations you join, or limit your guild choices, to keep adequate access...and likely will still lose access to one or two skills at a minimum.

Regarding general guidelines for organs and skill progression, you may want to consider earning Kaxmang and growing a few. These organs will provide you with the Berserkergang trait, allowing you to berserk in combat, as well as a large amount of Killer Instinct to increase your damage rating. Furthermore, you will likely want to earn the ability to grow Wuigalk and K'flithk which are both very powerful weapon organs for your tentacles. The various attribute boosting organs will also be useful in assisting you in combat, as Shoggoth statistics without them tend to be paltry, especially at the outset.

Finally, Shoggoth are mostly impervious to physical damage - with the exception of crushing attacks, though you still mostly resist them. This means that if you value your lives (and organs), you should try to avoid fighting NPCs that deal forms of esoteric damage - at least until you develop your ability to dodge/deflect, or can grow the appropriate resistance and/or affinity organs.