Dark-Knight Guide

[eval_elmo]

As the title states. I was just wondering if anyone could point me to a Dark-Knight guide if one exists. Thank you.

[Davairus]

I don't think we have one that isn't horribly out of date (dark-knights lost dodge and charmies flee with master, that was TWO silver bullets directly into the nuts), but I can give you a start.

1) Roleplaying

A dark-knight is a malicious, hate-filled character. Think Darth Maul/Vader and you're on the right lines. The way you see certain people playing drow ninjas is usually on the right track. The usual way to play it in D&D (A-P) is to take a paladin and do the absolute converse.

2) Race

Race choice is very limited. Human or drow. Drow's got the edge easily right now because of sneak and ability to flee from dirt kick. That skill is far more common than hobble. Also the races with hobble will still dirt you pretty easy in the right places. The main good thing human has going for it is levels, but sooner or later though you're going to probably delete because of dirt rapes, and I'll just say I told you so. Also drow-dex is good enough to hold/quaff recalls reliably, so that's a way out of fleeing hobbled.

Unlike with warriors, drow hp's don't turn out far behind human's in the long run, simply because of the combination of drows 1 prac (extra trains) and dark-knights generally shit hp gains per level. You might even break out ahead eventually. No joke.

You'd think human would be best tank instead, but there's not much in it. Set parry is better on lower strength characters, and auspice of ilythir makes dual wielding nicer. That's two common styles a drow is pretty damn fine at tanking in. Shield blocking not so much, but why would you want to go do something like that? (it just gets barraged instantly, though its ok for charming, and occasional fight with thieves).

Whatever you go with, be sure to farm up a lot of gold for scrolls, monster potions etc. I would consider a bank below 100k to be critical condition for a DK.

3) Ethos

For me there's only two real choices. You either go lawful Justice or you go chaotic uncaballed/Legion.

Choose chaotic to have access to wild weapons/armors. This'll save your gold on gambling, since Saluk yields decent items quicker than any shop I've seen outside evermore. Very helpful considering the amount of ganks you'll definitely take. Chaotic also suits dark-knight's due to demons being chaotic. I have to say Legion is a real questionable option. If you meet contracts you can spy/abduct, which'll both be pretty sweet with unholy strength and charm. Even a newbie could get kills. But then there's all the raids, where you'll get your ass handed to you by Knight teams. Much safer to go with a mage for the weapon ward/prot shield there, or a warrior for the better hp and defs. So its not very appealing to me personally, but I know we have people who'd deal with that for the "easy pickings" kills. Its sort of an exaggeration of what playing a dark-knight is already like.

If you go with Lawful dark-knight, then you're going for Justice, which is a niche specialty of dark-knights. The Justice town-sit makes it easy to recuperate from the drainage of full power unholy strength, and you can charm something and cast a special guard afterward, which is a whole lot of pain for someone wanted. You could probably also do a lot of outside-town ganking and recalling, just to be really annoying.

4) Equipping

In some cases you can charm a mob and strip it. Others you're using strike of pain to wittle the mobs down really fast. Before level 50, its a piece of cake to solo everything with monster potions and strike of pain. Especially for drow with its high-dex potion hold/quaffing and auspice of iliythir defence for dual wielded "racial legacy" silver strike. At 50, you're going to have a much tougher restart unless you find a decked douche to kill.

5) Fighting

Early ranks are very easy, just unholy strength and fight it like a noobish warrior. But by later levels this'll run out of steam, with warriors/rangers/zerkers getting better melee skills and sprinting ahead in hp's, pallys getting longer sancs and more mana for cures and whatnot. That's where you end up needing to pick a good mal first to catch them off-guard on saves... use charge to break through defences if they don't confine you with hobbles/dirts, have a charmie and make it rescue, then bash before they redirect, cast fireballs in safe places and stay out of places where you can't do that. That sort of savvy thing. At this point you'll probably wish you'd joined a cabal for lengthy sanc potions.

Here's how it'll probably play out offensively in high rank:

* decide your preferred weapon, get some purples
* locate prey
* back off, use a purple to charm something (the strength of charmie depends on the urgency, sometimes you might just forgoe one)
* cast unholy strength, then frenzy it
* march towards prey, purple up if he didnt move yet
* fight
* chase
* give up when unholy strength falls, if you havent made enough impact
* rest out drain (takes hours)

Defensively:

* immediately run like a bat out of hell
* hide somewhere without nexus spots
* summon/vamp dryads or brownies, and purples
* take the offensive yourself


I will add a caveat - dark-knights have some work to be done on them, so don't expect everything here to hold up over time. I expect the changes done on them to impact what they do in fights mostly, preparation likely stays the same.

[Grayden]

Be a human to rank faster and lightning the shit out of everyone that gets in your way. I have slayed a few paladins with lightning (I am sure you know if you ran into me as a darknight), use it alot and it will take care of you. Don't forget your purples and sparkling flask if you know where to find it. When you start out, scavenage for a few items, you may get lucky with sering longsword, enchanted weapons of solace, or even crap laying around in emerald forest. If your not invisible your dead wrong.

Walk your post from flank to flank and take no shit from any rank.

Grayden Grim of the Bloody Fields of Flesh

[eval_elmo]

I noticed you didn't mention anything about Vampires in conjunction with rolling a Human Dark-Knight. Also, are there plans to implement legacy skills for Humans possibly?

[Davairus]

You didn't ask about vampires... umm. Its a different class. Vampires basically have day/night instead of unholy strength. Barring a few skill differences, they play mostly the same way. But with the unholy strength frenzy affect out of the window for a predictable day/night cycle they have no choice about (ensures prey is always expectant and prepared), and a terrific vuln, you can expect them to do the actual fighting better than DK's do. Something like that. I dont remember what we did but every vampire since Vandrien has been totally gimp.

Humans dont get legacies.

Also what Grayden just mentioned is the "early fighting is easy" thing I talked about, where you can beat people with the noobish-warrior style of fighting. That's what you do before unholy strength, with currently overpowered low rank lightning bolt, which is why I didnt mention it. Once you rank up enough for lightning bolts to get comparitively gimp, that'll definitely stop working, and you wont use lightning bolt. Ever.. You'll have to find a safe spot to fireball at to keep up with the effects of sideswipes/overheads/dirts and all the other crap. Though a human dark-knight is better up until a certain point. And invis is just a defence vs noobs, since dust is so easy to get. Lightning bolt/invis/two defs together at low rank is niche pk.

[Grayden]

Dav you have this down to a science, I was just trying to get him started. You know I have not done a Dk sence the new skills and defense changes. I think a Dk is in order in the next few months, but I am in no hurry.

Grayden Grim of the Bloody Fields of Flesh

[Ashr]

You do have this down to a science. I don't suppose you'd be willing to write up other guides really quickly. Say, Necromancer.

I'll.. uh.. join your fan club, yeah.

Well, as long as you don't make me dress like an elf, anyway.

</tangent>

[Davairus]

Well I'm still a learner myself actually, Burzuk is the authority on this sort of thing since he finalizes the specs. When I "learned" dark-knights for the first time they had ....sleep, blindness, cure light, dodge, a charm spell that wasnt a liability, curse a weapon and forget, and the charmie was a piece of cake to just flee behind and spam bash. With a lot of high level ones with no detects that were on steroids, e.g. overseer mechanus, and they actually did dirts and bashes and stuff. You could also be a perm-fly essentially non-vuln'd avian, and flee lags/charge lags weren't in the game. A drow was definitely the crap option.

Unholy strength and strike of pain are new stuff and pretty important. I'd just ignore unholy armor, not like anyone bashes much anyway, its all about the flee lag.

[m1co]

Use murder/flee with good twohander while frenzied, you'll excel most against paladins.

[Davairus]

Yeah.. that is, until you get dirt kicked, flamestriked, whatever.

[The Zealot]

"I'd just ignore unholy armor, not like anyone bashes much anyway, its all about the flee lag."

Does the unholy armor rating do anything to help DKs avoid dirt kicks? I seem to recall someone saying it did, at one point.

[Davairus]

No. AC and dirt kick are completely unrelated.. the last time that got posted on forum I dismissed it quickly so, dont know how you missed that. Its in a sticky.

I forgot to add murder/flee is pointless with a charmie to manage. Let the charmie handle the added damage and use your mals and affs.

[eval_elmo]

[Adebaldi]

You haven't seen many vampires around, because there aren't supposed to be many of them. Vampires are supposed to be rare and mysterious and that is why it is quite hard to get one. Also because of the harsh vuln and day/night restrictions its not very easy to play one and that is probably why you haven't seen too many around.