Kroolut's Guide to Death

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Welcome young adventurers! After I read Grog's Guide to Sloth, I couldn't help but want to write one of my own. So here we are. You'll all be glad to know that our dear dear friend Grog is right here to help me. And I'm sure that you'll be even more glad to know that he's dead now. He'll be my aide for this endeavor, and since he's dead, you won't have to suffer through his mindless babbling.

Now, the best part about dying is that it doesn't matter what class you are, it affects everyone in pretty much the same way. So, I'll just start at the beginning and we'll hopefully get to the end. And if something horrible happens to Grog before we get there... all the better.

So, the first question you're probably asking is, what can I do when I die? Unfortunately, not a lot. The good news is, if you're reading this guide, it probably doesn't matter. If you're under level 15, then you don't lose any experience for dying. If you can get body moved to somewhere safe, you can avoid the difficulties normally associated with corpse retrieval. With all your xp and all your gold and gear, you're ready to face the world again with a minimum of pain.

Just remember that you're only dead for 5 ticks, which isn't a lot of time to get help. If you don't want to wait the 5 ticks and can handle things on your own, typing 'quit!' will kill you in a hurry so you can get on with your life.

Now, one thing you can do to help yourself is to have a friend or two. Mostly because you can't recall or push yourself while dead. In fact, you can't do much of anything while dead, so having a friend is never a bad thing. If possible, have an alternate way of reaching this friend other than chatting with them in the game. ICQ is an enormously popular medium, though many will use alternate messengers like AIM. Trillian can be useful because it allows you to connect to all the most popular messengers with one client.

Grog is not smart enough to know how to use a messenger, so he can't call anyone for help. One of the disadvantages of being a moron. What else can Grog do? Well, there are private channels within Sloth that can be helpful. If you and your friend are both in the same channel, you can drop your link when you die and it will send a message to the other person that you have left the channel. They can then talk to you or vision you and learn that you are dead. In a perfect world, the person in the channel with you would be able to help you by themself, however, at the very least they can gossip for someone to come help you.

Other options after channels include grouping for safety. When you're grouped with someone, you can chat with them and see their hps when you type score. This doesn't tell you when the person is dies, but if you periodically check to see if they're alive, it can be a way of helping keep yourself alive. This is typically known as a 'Safety' group.

If you're grouped or in channel, it's helpful to keep your friend informed of where you are. Sloth is a big place, and trying to figure out where you're dead can be difficult at times. Things like the vision spell and the Dynamic World map found on the webpage can help you get into the basic area, and hunt can usually get you there after that, but can take much longer than the 5 ticks the person has before they die. If you're using a messenger, you can always include where you are in the message.

After these basic techniques, you're basically left with luck. You can hope that someone notices that you're dead, or that a god restores the world. If you are on Valkyre and worship Splork, there's also a small chance that Splork will raise you. A useful but unreliable technique.

Luckily, I'm grouped with Grog and can easily tell that he's -739 hps dead, and since he's right here, I know where he is. Since I'm the one who killed him, I know that he's been dead for 3 ticks, so now he's probably wishing someone would come help him. We're going to let him sweat it out some more.

Now, if you're on the continent of Valkyre, your options are severely limited. The best you can really hope for is to get your body to a safe place and 'quit!'. This is because anyone with the Raise Dead spell is too big to get to Valk. There are a few other options, such as raise dead wands, which are fairly rare and Sidhe charms of raise dead, which can sometimes be found if you're very lucky. If you're under level 15, at least you don't have to worry about losing xp. If you're over, it could sting a bit depending on how much you're carrying with you.

If you're not on Valk, your body must still be recalled or pushed, mostly because being raised in the same room as the mob that hates you isn't a good idea. After getting away from the mob, your next order of business is to try and be raised. This requires a fairly large cleric, preferably a cleric prime with high Wis a good set of +raise gear, but any will do in a pinch. Take Grog here... he'd be pretty happy if anyone would notice his sorry ass.

As the dead person, there's a few things you can do to help yourself get raised. For instance, having a Con of 18 will greatly improve your odds of being raised. Also, if you happen to wear any +shock gear, this can also help, though it's fairly rare to be wearing the gear unless you're raising.

Unfortunately for Grog, I don't have any +shock gear, and I have a relatively low Wis. Not that it really matters, because I'm a necromancer with Cleric fourth. I won't be raising anyone for a very long time.

This brings me to the last part of the lesson... corpsing. When a raise fails, you type 'quit!' or 5 ticks pass, you corpse. If you're above level 15, several unfortunate things happen to you. First, you can lose about 30% of your xp. If you're unlucky, you can also lose a level from your 1st or 2nd classes. Eventually, it becomes possible to lose a level from your 3rd class. After you corpse, you can log back into Sloth and find out how much dying cost you.

And that brings me back to Grog again. I'd like to draw your attention to one final note on being dead. You should always try to avoid safe areas... like this one. Mainly because you can't cast in them and you can't be pushed out of them. This practically garrentees you'll corpse! A fact which I'm sure Grog isn't thrilled with at the moment... Any second now...

Yay! Grog is dead!

Now... where did I leave my Juju?

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One other thing, if you do die, and corpse, and need help getting your corpse back; if you have druid as one of your classes you can shapeshift to the cat and go get your corpse as mobs aren't agg to the cat form. Not sure if its because the form is under lvl 4 or what, but it works.

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This is intended as a guide for how to spend the five ticks that you're dead and minimize the need for CRs. After all, it's much easier to find your corpse when it's at recall with you than when it's sitting next to a big angry mob.

If you need to do a CR, Choong already wrote an excellent guide for it:
http://slothmud.org/index.php?name=PNph ... opic&t=976