This isn’t just an attention getter, this was my experience Sunday morning.  I decided to solo Set before I had to get ready to head out the door and figured it wouldn’t be too terribly hard to do.  That was the result of sharing the item with another character, but not repairing it before I put it away.  This is not a rant about scrapping equipment, rather I thought I’d try to point out some good habits that players should probably take up.  I’m happy add more to this list, but here’s just a few.

Scrapping happens, but it should only happen to lights and containers …

There is really no excuse to scrap an item off your character unless it’s a 1 AC item.  I know, I just scrapped a bloody DFT, but there is no excuse for it.  I use triggers that will remove gear once it reaches a low AC level.  They’re not the simplest in the world but they’re the advanced version of a simple idea.  It requires a little foresight because you have to have the AC of your items at hand from identify.  These triggers are absolute core of not scrapping equipment.  Better to die because the triggers just stripped off your weapons than to scrap them… you’re carrying other weapons anyways arent’ you?  I’m getting ahead of myself.  The first habit you should get in to is repairing immediately after you recall.  Don’t start shuffling things around or putting loot into storage – repair everything, then shuffle.  This habit would have prevented my disaster.  If you don’t have time to run to <insert cheap repair mob here>, don’t, pay full price and do the repair.  How many repairs do you have to do at the cheap mob to save the same value in coins as your gear?  If you just supplicated your corpse – repair.  In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t take long to repair if you’re trying to run back to the fight, you probably took longer forgetting to type stand the first time or running back to one of the visitation deities to gain favor.  Which brings us to …

Never leave home without enough favor to supplicate …

I would say supplicate corpse, but there’s no excuse for leaving home without at least recall favor.  There are two deities who are so easy to favor to supplicate that even if you die during a run you can spam the favor and get back on the same repop.  Some of the other deities are tougher but most will respond to bury or dig on corpses … probably more strongly at low levels than high ones.  If you have one character that gains on bury and one that gains on dig, well aren’t you just ready to go?  I have had this sort of thing bite me in the butt where I’m sitting out 3000 rounds of curse because I don’t have a remove curse potion/scroll or enough favor to supplicate.  When this happens I invariably don’t have a way to dispel magic and I’m out of recall scrolls too… nothing short of trans is getting me out of there … or recall by mdeath.

If you stay organized and stocked, you can be spontaneous with less stress …

As the king of disorganized I’ll reiterate that this advice comes from years of not doing it right.  If you are anything like me your main is packed with all sorts of miscellaneous crap scoured from all over the Realms… notes, guides… stuff that if you emptied your pack and a crash hit would probably not amount to much of a long term loss (as a famed DT’er take my word that you’ll get over it in time).  I am not saying that you can’t hoard, I’m saying don’t hoard on a character you want to leave Darkhaven with.  One of my ordermates has a very good routine that I hope to be able to emulate, one day 🙂  He’ll drop off all run loot from his characters to his main and sorts his main out when he gets near 500 weight.  I can do this for short periods of time but inevitably I end up at 998/999 and stuff piles up.  When you do this sort of thing the next step becomes easy… go restock your potions on the character you just used.  If you’ve already gone and repaired and favored well hey, your character’s pretty well ready to go back out the door.

There’s no excuse for not having the basics …

There are easy ways to do things and harder ways to do things.  The harder ways usually give you reduced weight items or higher spell level items or some advantage, but the easy way items are just fine for most situations.  You should be able to cast sanctuary, elemental shields, fly, sneak, hide and invisibility on yourself.  Get an item equipped in each wearloc to help cut down equipment damage overall (even if you dispute that the code punishes you for not having each wearloc equipped, having items in face, back and 2 ankles it’s 4 more items for the code to pick from).  Some of these are stone easy… sanctuary, fly and invisibility come off a number of simple stock items or can be brewed and bought easily.  Sneak and hide are sometimes tricky to get on a good item, but they can both be found by level 5 on basic items so that you can move between areas without being attacked.  Basic ac only items for each wearloc are easily obtained.  The basics are just that, basics.  Get them.  Upgrade them when you get the chance.

Adept the skills and spells on your character …

I’m not too bad for this one because I’ve incorporated it into my leveling so it’s not such a chore at avatar.  It is frustrating for anyone running with you to watch your skill or spell fail repeatedly and it’s slowing you down when you’re soloing.  Some skills are a pain in the butt to adept but you only usually have to do it once per character … if you use triggers and keep them it cuts down the work.  Fighting styles are a pain, find a mob that’s immune magic and wield magic weapons … the weapon skills can be easily adepted by level 10 if you poke around for different weapon types.  If you’re stuck on something, send me a tell … some of the answers are good quest training … go adept cook and practice for Destre to let the sausage maker out.

It’s taken no time at all to make this a long post… I’ve intentionally left off run etiquette because it deserves it’s own post.  I hear “I’m bored” a lot and you discover later that the same person is also unprepared.  If you can make some of these things habits you’ll remove some of your obstacles to excellence.

I’m of to adept writing short notes, clearly I’m not yet proficient …. 🙂