offense/defense 2

The gortok den has been massively buffed up.

There's five or so mothers down there compared to the one before, and they're killer. The gortok den just isn't viable like it was years ago.

While the information is true, staff fixed the gortok den (and probably put a tripwire alert on that when someone goes in), so you can't use that area anymore and expect the same results.

Well. It's complete horseshit that they would equate going into the gortok den (where you're quite likely to die these days, actually) to practicing throwing knives on a linkdead PC. But that kind of disconnect is familiar from staff.

There's been several long-lived PCs that died in the gortok den, cause they didn't realize they'd have 12 toks hitting them, and then lagged out or such. Throwing knifes at link-dead PCs is just outright abuse and not nearly on the same level.

THAT SAID.

No matter HOW you go about it. Doing ANYTHING to get a highly skilled mundane PC will earn you a red flag from staff. They don't give the slightest shit if you're a great leader, or if you help newbies, or run a crew well. They're really almost completely indifferent. What bothers them most of all is a mundane player achieving coded killing power with weapons. I don't know why they care as much as they do. But there's nothing they hate more than seeing it happen.

If you want karma, do not play warriors or rangers. The game forces you to twink to be a decent warrior/ranger or even an assassin. There's no avoiding it, unless you just completely lack a life and can afford to spend one or two RL years getting decentish (keeping in mind that you can and will die to lots of stupid, unavoidable shit, like game bugs or over-eager NPC guards or more vicious players). You can still be the comic relief warrior/ranger and they'll love that as long as you remain incompetent and weak. But you're far more likely to accrue negative notes than positive ones. You can't really take a shit as a skilled mundane without crossing some staffer's red line.

If you want karma, then you have to play completely innocuous roles, mostly revolving around sucking the cock of players that staff are known to like and watch. This is best accomplished as a magicker. It is EXTREMELY EASY to max out a magicker, and does not require twinking at all. you can do it while spending hours and hours at the bar, and just do a few nil casts here and there. In a month or two, you'll be golden. No one will notice or care. 

First special app a ruk, then a krathi, then a drovian, then a elkros or a whiran, etc. Finally, after all that, you can get a mul or a sorc okay'd. 

All the muls you see are either 1) Ancient players who got karma/privileges in earlier administrations, but many of whom are gone or disillusioned now, such as kronibas, 2) Someone who's been playing a gicker aide all this time, and is going to last on that mul for a couple weeks at best before dying or calling it quits or 3) A staff alt. Almost all staff roll up a mul at least once.

Now and then, you get a cool mul. But they're very rare. The most successful mul, Hawk, was basically attached to the staff alt/favorite/renegade sorc crew, and he just rode around the silt sea fighting silt striders with insane defense/dodge values that do almost nil damage.

Now and then, one of the ancient veterans trots out a mul, but they never really amount to shit, as you can't twink them.

You can only really begin to twink once you make peace with the fact that you're basically not going to be playing a mul or sorc anytime soon and don't want to play a gicker.

(For what it's worth, I was invited to play a mul Byn slave back in 2010. I then had it retracted for what I thought was a very unfair reason, and since then, I've never deluded myself otherwise. I was black listed, and I was liberated from caring about karma. Although I kept what I had.)

Yeah yeah, I knew someone was going to chime in with that. That's why I made a point of explicitly specifying a highly skilled mundane. No offense, but I sincerely doubt any of your rangers ever came codedly near to arousing feelings of envy or jealousy from staff.

It's true though, that some players can get luckier than others. Over the course of a few years, with some decent staffers, and avoiding any real interaction with Nyr, or say, what happened to that poor Arm of the Dragon guy, you can inch up to around 4-5. Hey, even I managed that by 2010! That said, I stand by my statement.

Muls, mindbenders, sorcs, templar apps. You're vastly more likely to get approved for that by going the route I outlined above.

The fact remains, if you want to play a warrior/ranger, and you want to be a good warrior/ranger, you are much more likely to attract negative account notes than positive. It's much easier to acquire positive account notes by playing the gicker ladder/barfly/mudsex/aide path.

There's simply no way to raise, say, Journeyman, without doing SOME twinking. Maybe you're lucky and don't get caught. Maybe you do get caught. Maybe the staffer that catches you was in a particularly bad mood that day. It's a minefield. But I'm almost positive you already knew this, and your post was just a humblebrag.

I will add that I've never been past advanced on a weapon, and things were fine. Weapon skills are broken, I don't think you'll meet a single person who disagrees.

More like ... crafted a few arrows for my clan without emoting while I watch Netflix or something. I dunno, I didn't come here to argue about karma. I spoke up because I don't want new players to think there's some secret recipe to getting karma other than what's in the guidelines, which have, albeit anecdotal, have yet to go wrong for me.

Hm. Lots of latent hostility there. No thanks! Back to your usual programming, guys, sorry for the derail!

I would turn around and bet that from your irrational hatefulness that you're probably Kaineus. For myself, I didn't feel the need to hide behind anonymity, I came straight out and said who I've played. I'm not afraid of an internet bully, sir or madam or whatever you are.