First Impressions

[Jarulf]

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I hope your tanks have the ability to taunt and are doing so regularly. I can recall during my brief EQ experience(ugh), I had taunt keyed. If you clicked "taunt" the "box" would turn gray and when it resumed its normal color you could click again and the tank, hopefully, would taunt as often as he could in order to keep the monsters off the spellcasters and clerics. If they did not do so, the spellcasters and clerics were toast. This tactic is so basic, I almost feel silly posting it.

In any event, I hope you keep posting your candid impressions of the game as you go along. Not even Blizzard wants beta testers who are nothing but shills.

I don't know of any specific taunt option (there are several "commands" but I don't know if they are for actual battle use (there are lots of cool dance, wave, salute, sit and so on options, but that is more for style :) ).

Anyway, a monster will pick and switch targets as it is attacked. As a rogue I try to get up behind a monster to do a backstab attack. This works great if someone else (in the party for example) is fighting. Many times the monster will turn arround for me as target though, but not always. I think there are more into target selecting than actually who attacked last but I can be wrong.

One thing that doesn't work is if you are geting beaten up, you can't simply run back and past others to have the monster switch to them, it will continue charging you right through others. You need to have them actually attack the monster, at least in most cases I have experienced.

Even so, the case I recall when Bolty and I fought a relatively tough monster, the monster did turn to Bolty and atatcked him for a while despite me actually attacking and hitting it for damage. After a few of them, it did turn arround and started to attack me though.

What is great having are potions, they are instant healing, food and such requires calm and, for example 20+ seconds to take effect when you just sit down. Not at all usefull for fights. However, I can see buying potions for healing as a very expensive solution if you need to take them every fight. I only use them for special fights against really tough monsters that I would otherwise not handle. Monsters heal often faster than youself if you break away for a heal.


As for corpses, I would say they stay even after you get back and "ressurect" from ghost to person. It is thus more an indication of were people have actually died. No idea for how long they stay and if one can have lots of coprses in different places.


By the way, didn't play at all yesterday, but will try to get in some hours tonight, say, form 18 EST to midnight with a possible break or two for food and other stuff if I can. I am in the dwarf area (can't recall its name) but might travell to the human town/area since I am searching form someone to teach me the tradeskill to do leather wear. Might even do the Westlife explot telepeort if I get the time :) I think Westlife is more along my level now than it was when I was there last time, I was at most level 9 then I think, now I am almost 13 with better gear.