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Guide to Exploring - Indiana Jackass
June 10, 2003
Intro
Exploring is very important, since it builds your knowledge of the realms, which in turn
increases your potential ability to flee and kill players. Aside of that though, exploring
around can reveal to you things such as:
The locations of rares, uniques, unlimiteds
The way to do quests
Free versions of scrolls and useful potions
Shortcuts across big distances
Places useful to train and farm for gold
Undiscovered levelling areas (some are still out there!)
Special mobs that do things no others can
Knowledge that helps you understand the history of the world
Were you surprised how much you can learn just by wandering around looking at stuff?
Well.. knowledge is power, and one who has explored a lot certainly has
something to be proud of. Other people will be jealous of your vast knowledge which
they are too lazy to get up and find out for themselves. 150 hours of exploration
is also a LOT better investment of your time than 150 hours of killing the hobgoblin
soldiers to train your skills. Spending hours training like that is a waste of time
if you haven't explored :)
If you are training characters and you don't even know your way around areas that
are a mere two from town then you are in.. DUN-DUN-DUNNNNNN!!!!! The TRAINING TRAP.
Requirements
You will need at least an expendable level 9 with detect invis, preferably avian,
and a month to spare. Ideally you need an expendable level 40 or so healer, or
something else suitably buff with good spells. Sorta hard for a newbie to get
that high. If you can't get the healer up, then the next best thing is probably
a level 28 or so shaman, which will be quite hardy thanks to having two defences
and sanctuary. Oh and, you'll need lots of patience. I recommend exploring the
hometown first, then exploring areas moving gradually further and further away from it.
Thats areas around each hometown, then beyond, by the way. So check out everything
two areas radius of Seringale, then Timaran, then Darkhaven. A word of advice: that
radius is rarely left by the average player trying to hide >:).
First Pass
When you go out exploring an area, the first and most important thing you need to do
is learn its shape. Bump into every single wall, and make a macro to open in all
directions, and you will quickly learn the layout of the area. Its important to have
detect invis up to spot invisible mobs. While exploring you are likely going to get
killed by something you walked into. This is a sad but necessary consequence of
finding your way around, so I don't advise exploring too high with characters above
level 10. If you have an avian illusionist at level 9, you can explore pretty much
everywhere thanks to having the detects and cheap movement plus free recalls. It will
die for sure, but you are only learning the areas shape and where its doors are - so
just concentrate on doing that.
Ghosts can walk through locked doors, which is one way to get through a door you can't
find a key for. Hehe, just try not to make it TOO obvious you're dying to explore, or
have a good excuse ready. "But I was looking for my corpse sir!" Yeah.
Second Pass
After you learn the areas shape, you might want to take a closer look, and you can make
a map to help you do this. While making a map you can spend the time taken reading the
descriptions of the rooms. Descriptions can give clues of quests and hidden objects
in the area, but there's no guarantee of that. Its a slow but sure process to inspect
each room for extra room descriptions and checking around you for secret passages. Once
you feel confident you have mapped the area, there is just one thing left to look at -
the mobs.
example of making a map:
North---North---North
Road Square Road
Important stuff for doing this properly:
1) Use a macro to do 'open n, open s, open e, open w, open d, open u' in every room
2) Use 'look 100.' in every room to find extra descs. It will say something like 'There
are only 40 of those here.' because its counting everything you're holding. So you type
'look 40.' and 'look 39.' to check for the extra desc, until you hit your eq :).
3) Quaff the potions and recite the scrolls later, some are dangerous and will interrupt
your exploring with a death :D
There are maps already made for some stock areas, try to get them from the internet.. to
save the writing. The stock areas are easy to find even with google. BUT and this is a
big BUT make sure you know the area properly without the map! This information is
important to remember.
** It is not essential to make a map, but it IS essential to make a note (be it mental or
in writing) of things of interest and how to get back to them **
Third Pass
Go through the mobs and try to remember everything they are using. If any of that stuff
is useful, might want to mark the mob on the map you made - so that you can go back to
it later. Keys and rares come to mind. Once you have learned whats got what, then you
have done everything you needed. Any item you find should be identified and if possible
the identify saved along with where you found it, so you can find it again later. This
is not possible with a low level character, but higher level clerics and mages have the
identify spell.
Finishing touches (High level chars with ID recommended)
Finally you need to figure out how tough those important mobs are. Its easiest to test this
out with a healer around level 40 or so. Get the healer fully spelled up and initiate combat
with the mob. You can use this to measure how quickly the thing beats your ass. Most mobs
that can beat on level 40 healers relentlessly aren't going to be a picnic for your lowbies.
Mobs that are aggressive to your healer are undoubtedly a high level. Use the consider command
to help guess at its level. As you beat the mobs, and equipment falls into your hands, identify
it and save the ID along with the area you found it. Higher level characters also usually can
afford to buy the things from the shops, and things like that.
If the mob is very tough, but doesn't appear to have anything, it might have had its rares maxed
out. Keep a note of what mobs might have had rares, and check in on them from time to time. It
may take months to find out where every rare loads. Tough mobs make tough zombies, and tough
illusions, keep that in mind.. :)
There is one more way to guess at mob level, though I won't guarantee this is always correct. As
a general rule, the level of an object from a monster is equal to the level of the monster. The
beauty of this is you dont even need ID. If you sacrifice an object, you get half of its level
in gold coins. So a level 50 object, 25 gold coins, indicates a level 50 mob. Mobs which are
5-7 levels higher than you are worth trying to level on too.
There are over 100 areas in AR. The author has used this method to explore all of them, and
has been in several cabals including Justice over the last few years, putting the knowledge to
good use.
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