In-game courtesy and ethics

WTH Tarq the archer?

The Mana World has been around for a long time now. If memory serves me correctly I started playing (under a different nick) around 2004 when part of Tulimshar was all there was. Spiders had just come out and looked like archants, not spiders at all.

In any game worth its salt there inevitably ends up with a few players who like to take advantage of bugs/flaws or other players. This post really isn't about them, they'll always be around, and they often really seem to enjoy tormenting players for kicks. Before diving into the main part of the post I thought I'd relate a real life story about one such person, Phil (not his real name). Phil used to love to snidely tease people, call them names, loudly proclaim any rumours about people, even physically poke at people. One day Phil chose to bug the wrong person and ended up in tears and extreme embarrassment.

Jen (not her real name) was pretty much a normal person who happened to sit in front of Phil in class. Phil would often call her names and make snide comments just loud enough so a few people around could hear, typical Phil. One day during an exam Phil started poking at Jen. I guess Jen had enough of Phil's B.S. and she turned around with a book 1 1/2 inches thick and cracked Phil right across the face. The sound of the book connecting with Phil's face was so loud that everyone in the class turned. Everyone started laughing at Phil, including the teacher of the class. Now I can here people saying why wasn't Phil sent earlier to the principal, why was he allowed to continue torturing people. Earlier age where more was tolerated. Jen? Who would fault Jen for helping herself. I think more than half the people, including the teacher of the class, probably wanted to give Jen a hero badge at that moment. You really had to see Phil cry and the look on his face to understand the joy people felt seeing a bully brought to his emotional knees. Now of course we have anti-bullying everywhere (not that it helps all the time).

Enough of an aside, I just wanted to point out that people who bully don't always get away with it.

What I really wanted to talk about and put forth is kind of an in-game courtesy and ethics post. I've been mulling about this topic on and off for a long time and partially mentioned aspects of it before, but I want to set in digital stone what I consider good in-game courtesy.

1. Warriors, if you're tanking for mages and archers don't abandon them to finish off that zombie. Catch whatever is closest to the mage or archer, the little bit of experience you'll get from the zombie isn't worth your allies dying. You may not think they're allies, but the speed of killing in groups will help your experience a whole lot more than solo killing.
2. If you ask someone to help you do a quest where it costs that person to travel to where you are doing the quest, at the very least offer to pay their way to and from that place. Payment could be in the form of something to sell, but you should at least pay their way. Don't assume because they're higher level that they just have loads of cash and don't care, just pay it, it's the right thing to do.
3. Power houses, share items if you're hunting in groups. This goes double if there's only a couple of you hunting and one of you is tanking for another. I've tanked for a lot of people in the graveyard and I've noticed a trend where people are extremely helpful lately asking if I wanted an item that dropped. Just because you can kill fast doesn't mean you're invincible. If someone is tanking for you, help them out a little too. (Not suggesting you give all your items up, but if 2 ears drop, what's the hurt in sharing 1?)
4. Player killers... oh you know I was going to get to you... kill away, but don't kill someone in the middle of battle with a couple of terranites, at least wait for them to finish and kill one on one. It's kind of like not trying to kick someone when they're already down (remember Phil).
5. More for you PKers. If you get something, like T-Ore from PKing someone and you don't really need it, give it back, you'll make the person feel less upset about being PKed (I think most people to pay the fee rather than travel the very long way to the PvP spot). If you really need the T-Ore give the player something else, a constellation prize is better than nothing.
6. Life's too short to hold grudges. Remember some players don't give a damn about ethics or courtesy, they think of it as weak. Remember that at some point in life they'll have a weak moment, no need to crush them, it happens to everyone.

Just play folks. Be good to one another and help each other.

Republish: Monster kill statistics

This is an article I originally wrote and published on the auldsbel.org server.

I spent a bit of time over the past few days compiling some statistics in the hope that it would help players advance a little faster. Part of this was to try to answer questions like: which monster is best to kill in order to level? which monster gives the most job experience (so skills advance faster)? which monsters give consistent experience?

I killed all these monsters at level 49. I was armed with a sword (I ran into the cave and managed to open the chest and get back out), shield, fairy hat, forest armor, jeans, fur boots, winter gloves, and wooden shield. My statistics were: 40,2,1,43+3=45, 29+3=32 (the +3s are from the forest equipment).
I died attacking a couple of monsters (I really would have survived one of the monsters, but accidentally attacked another and got swarmed) bringing you these statistics. I hope they help.

I have not included Black Scorpions, Grass Snakes, Fallens, Zombies, Skeletons, or any of the wisp, spectre family of monsters because I consider all of these are too difficult for a low level warrior (but may be okay for some archers).

Monster Name	Kill 1	Kill 2	Kill 3	Kill 4	Kill 5	Average	Job Exp
Angry Scorpion	37	37	37	37	37	37	5
Archant	91	88	72	87	89	85.4	14
Bandits	87	81	91	81	65	81	21
Bat	29	23	28	27	27	26.8	3
Butterfly	85	91	85	83	85	85.8	11
Cave Maggot	16	16	16	16	16	16	3
Evil Mushroom	233	231	236	233	230	232.6	35
Fire Goblin	34	38	45	41	45	40.6	4
Fluffy	81	80	100	103	101	93	7
Giant Maggot	136	136	136	140	136	136.8	14
Green Slime	302	302	305	302	307	303.6	96
Ice Goblin	85	64	73	74	75	74.2	10
Log Head	149	128	154	188	149	153.6	5
Maggot	6	6	6	6	6	6	1
Mouboo	491	497	499	497	497	496.2	16
Pink Flower	279	296	294	294		232.6	40
Pinkie	113	99	99	90	107	101.6	7
Red Scorpion	173	168	168	199	174	176.4	16
Red Slime	131	130	133	131	131	131.2	17
Reinboo	273	273	273	294	273	277.2	29
Rudolph Slime	101	106	114	101	104	105.2	8
Scorpion	13	13	13	13	13	13	2
Sea Slime	187	187	187	187	187	187	13
Slime Blast	20	22	20	20	20	20.4	8
Snail	177	182	205	180	181	185	18
Snake	371	361	361	402	371	373.2	56
Spiky Mushroom	54	45	54	42	54	49.8	5
Squirrel	34	34	34	34	34	34	5
White Slime	49	55	55	55	27	48.2	15
Wolvern	281	269	283	238	280	270.2	86
Yellow Slime	94	94	94	83	94	91.8	9

I guess I'm so used to killing cave snakes that I didn't include them for some reason. Averaging out 5 cave snake kills: 152, 148, 184, 148, and 122 we get 150.8 experience, less than the average for log heads, red scorpions, and sea slimes, but better than red slimes or pinkies.

Your best experience bet at low levels are green slimes, if you can suffer their damage. They're significantly tough at level 33, so it might be worth changing to an archer at this point if you've done the warrior thing.

The tipping point for hunting Cave Snakes

Hunting cave snakes

I like hunting cave snakes. Cave snakes give decent experience and can be killed at a relatively low level (20ish). With some decent armor or archery you can reduce the damage done to you to practically nothing.

But there comes a point where the experience gained from killing cave snakes diminishes significantly. That point seems to be level 33. Up to level 33 the amount of experience gained is at least 2% of the experience required to level. At level 33 the experience seems to drop to around 1.3% per snake. Don't get me wrong, this isn't terrible, but better prey await you at this point, and it might be better to restat for something like green slimes or reinboos.