Basic Principles

Combat in Achaea can be extremely enjoyable, and skill is a major contributing factor to success. This isn't to say however that Achaea's fighting system is wholey balanced, and Monks on the whole aren't the best class for player vs player combat. That being said however, it is my belief that Monks require the most skill and expertise in order to excel, and that is where the satisfaction comes from.

In order to become familiar with Achaea's basic combat style you should read HELP COMBAT, HELP MOBCOMBAT.

Experience and Skill
Combat in Achaea isn't just about spamming a single skill over and over in the hopes of killing your opponent before they kill you. It requires a lot of tactical skill to be a good fighter, and you must be able to think on your feet. Consider this example:

you have no means of escape.
 * 1) You are chasing your opponent and he runs into a single exit room.
 * 2) You persue into the one exit room and he blocks the entrance.
 * 3) Your opponent uses an insta-kill skill such as behead to kill you because

Now, lets look at this again from a different angle with a different series of events.

inside(using ice wall for example)
 * 1) You are chasing your opponent and he runs into a single exit room.
 * 2) You cease chasing your opponent and block the exit trapping him
 * 1) You can then use a range of telepathy and/or kaido attacks on that person while he is trapped inside a room.

From this example you can see that by knowing the lay of the land or using squint or glance, you can easily establish where you and your opponent are headed and what means they may use to try and outsmart you. You must however always stay one step ahead and attempt to forsee what your opponent may be planning. By looking ahead you prevented your death and perhaps even layed the foundations for your opponents quick demise.

The above being said, there are a lot of standard procedures you should be aware of that are essential for combat no matter what, and these include: Tattoos, Knowledge of Monk Combos/Breaks, Sufficient Herbs and Vials, pipes and a decent curing system. In the following sections I will address briefly their purpose and relationship to combat metholodgy.

Tattoos
In this section, i'll give a brief run down of all the tattoos available from the AB LIST and then go into more detail about which ones are most useful and in what situations.


 * Firefly Light up your surroundings.
 * Moss Automatically reduce your bleeding.
 * Feather Attain the lightness of a feather and levitate.
 * Shield Protect yourself from most attacks.
 * Mindseye See while blind, hear while deaf.
 * Hammer Shatter another's shield.
 * Cloak Protect yourself from summonings.
 * Bell Be warned when there are those spying on you.
 * Crystal Heal yourself of all your wounds.
 * Moon Regeneration of mana through the power of light.
 * Starburst The power of the stars provides immediate resurrection.
 * Boar Feel the noble blood of the Black Boar beat in your veins.
 * Web Snare another in a sticky web.
 * Tentacle Call the tentacles of Shimite to rip someone from the sky.
 * Hourglass Send the sands of time to put your victim to sleep.
 * Brazier Summon another to you.
 * Prism Walk on prismatic shards of light.
 * Tree Heal yourself with the tree of life.
 * Chameleon Change your identity to the casual observer.
 * Superscribe Hold two tattoos on each body part.

From the list above you can see that there are infact many tattoos available and for a person that is not TRANSED in tattoos, there are only 6 available tattoo slots for inscribing. It is therefore essential that you have the most necessary tattoos on you at all times. I would suggest that all Ashurans with 6 tattoo slots have the following Tattoos:


 * Moss (to stop bleeding)


 * Moon(moon regen is even more critical due to the amount of mana we consume)


 * Shield(critical for preventing damage when needed)


 * Hammer(required to break your opponents shield, if you don't have one, they can heal right back up before attacking you again)


 * Mindseye (required to see and hear even when blind and deaf)


 * Cloak (a must have tattoo to prevent being summoned by your opponent (possibly even into a trap))

Herbs
Really, you should have atleast 50 of each herb to go into an out of arena fight, though naturally only one of each is sufficient for an arena spar as no herbs are used in the arena. Most herbs are cheap (under 40gp per), though some herbs are an exception to this rule: In order to view a list of all the herbs available and what they cure please see HELP CURES or HELP CURES, HELP CURELIST, HELP HEALINGLIST and HELP HEALINGYOURSELF.
 * Bloodroot: Because this herb is very much in demand in Achaea and doesn't grow in as many places as other herbs, bloodroot can be bought for around 100gp a piece. You must have a decent supply of this because paralysis and slickness are two extremely common afflictions.
 * Kola: Only grows in rare places and there is also a high demand. You can expect to pay upward of 200gp a kola nut, but it will last until you die, logout or an affliction burns it away.
 * Skullcap: Usually found at around 60gp per, a skullcap can either be eaten to give deathsight or smoked to give rebounding.

Vials
Vials are almost as important as herbs, but are used more for resistances toward things, and not as many of them are for affliction curing purposes.
 * Frost Vial: Gives a level of resistance to cold damage.
 * Levitation Vial: Prevents you being grounded by certain things such as vibes from Magi that knock you off your feet and occultist entities that will try to bash you off your feet.
 * Speed Vial: Helps you to avoid Knight attacks and prevents aeon from hitting.
 * Venom Vial: Gives some resistance to the snake damage venom.
 * Caloric Salve: Heals cold afflictions.
 * Restoration Salve: Applied to mend a limb so you can apply mending.
 * Mending Salve: Applied to fully mend a broken limb.
 * Epidermal Salve: Heals blindness/deafness or anorexia.
 * Mass Salve: Stops you from being pushed or dragged to another room.
 * Health/Mana: Heals health or mana.
 * NB: Salves cannot be applied if you have the slickness(oily skin) affliction.
 * NB2: You cannot drink vials or eat herbs if you have the anorexia affliction.

Pipes
Pipes are often downplayed and not many people seek out pipes or know how to use them effectively. You need two things, a pipe and a tinderbox to light it. The four things you may put in a pipe and their uses are: In order to smoke a pipe, you must place the appropriate herb in it and "smoke ". All are instant except for skullcap whereby rebounding takes about 6 seconds to appear. It is worth noting that when rebound DOES appear, it will be disappear again if you make an aggressive action.
 * Elm: When smoked, elm will cure a range of afflictions but most importantly AEON.
 * Valerian: Cures slickness affliction when smoked. Also cures mana leech from apostates and disloyalty.
 * Skullcap: (Mentioned in herb section)
 * Weed: Useless except for flashing happy faces.

In arena it is useful to timer rebounding to keep being smoked every so often, alternatively use aliases to smoke from pipes. It is also worthwhile to make triggers and aliases to relight pipes when they go out automatically.

Healing System
Always very much underrated by newer fighters, a decent healing system and by that I mean triggers, is ESSENTIAL to combat. Some fighters are manual and do quite well with a lot of practice, but a system that cures things for you or atleast some of the afflictions can give you time to think about your strategy and YOUR damage to THEM. A decent trigger system shouldn't just eat an appropriate herb or drink an elixer when you receive a certain affliction, you can use queues, alarms and triggered folders to only eat when you have balance or eat in a certain priority or even a certain combination in order to get out of certain "venom locks".

Writing a decent trigger system takes quite a while and its a good idea to start with a basic system and work off that the more experienced you get with combat and the more you understand. I will be addressing healing systems in a future lesson.

Some useful links for scripts and triggers:

http://larkin.dischai.googlepages.com/ - Larkin's website, you can download Acropolis (ZMud) here which is an excellenet fully working combat system that is ideal to start off on. Also tonnes of scripts, but they only work with Acropolis.

http://achaea.fadedparadox.googlepages.com/ - Trevize's website with lots of useful scripts for ZMud and MUSHclient.

http://vadi.missgaelyia.com/ - Vadimuses' system for Nexus users can be found here (although I don't believe it is free). However, there are free scripts for Nexus users here.

http://tsunami.gautama.googlepages.com/ - Lots of free MUSHclient plugins here, some useful monk combat one's.