Why are you here?

I'm surprised you didn't wrap up your post with a "THANKS OBAMA!" grumble

Calm your tits. The people we were playing against were not twinked to hell and back, in a straight up fight they were -losing-. That's why they were relying on the standard delf tactic of running and shooting. The characters were played for a long time (such as Bright Eyes, who probably has about 50 days played or something, they were around when I played my first Sun Runner) as well as the fact I managed to kill one before being killed by arrow spam. I quite enjoyed it. If that Byn group had had even ONE archer among them, things may have turned out quite differently, but unfortunately EVERYONE was a melee-focused character. I'm just really curious to see how everything ended. Did the Byn/Wyverns win or lose? I'm assuming they were ran off, everything went to shit and the Byn losses were horrific. But it didn't go to shit through staff intervention, almost every character involved in that was a PC, with about 20 on the Byn/Wyvern side and about 12ish on the Sun Runner/Tribal side.

I would have prepared for that whole RPT completely differently had I known we'd be facing off against a maxed ranger desert elf. Like holy shit, the amount of PKs he must have racked up there were incredible.

As much I like to see staff called on bs...


Byn hrpts are not fair.   While we could all list our (least) favorites, like the surprise pit! rpt, the recent byn events have proven the pattern.   Fire bag + flee bag combo, anyone?

You attend byn rpts when you are ready for a new pc.   All know this.


The Soh and Sun Runner defense of the Pah is similarly known.   The only surprise is whether there was a maxxed krathi or a maxxed ranger logged in when your unit blundered in.   Seriously.  all those pcs have to do is mudsex, grind skills, and rpt. 

You take a pc into the Pah when you want to die in pvp.


I also call bs on taking a merchant into a combat rpt.  I've played a 40 day merchant / aggressor with egood strength and the best plate he could afford. The absolute best he could ever pull off was killing three or three yellow gith solo. The only reason he survived a few rpts was Albie.

Offense doesnt equal rpt survivability.  Defense does.  Merchants dont have any.   You kinda made a choice that whether it was 19 mantis in a broken wagon like Kurac gets, or six + gith archers like the Byn get, your pc was gambling with their life.

I have a small bit of sympathy for imms on byn rpts too.   The lack of archery prep is huge.   Did your unit have a maxxed ranger stealth + backstab or sap to take out lone archers?   This can and should be a roleplaying game, but it sure as hell isnt a game where the  challenge level is set to your pc.   You roll into a mass combat rpt that will challenge the 50 day warriors in your group,... well, you know what happens next.

EDIT: Mostly deleted

Anyway, mad props to anyone who was in the Byn at the same time, even if your PC was one of the ones I and/or my PC disliked.

In the words of the eponymous Nyr,

"Not a bug.

Noted."

And scrambled.

Alright I really didn't want to put this up (it's giving away loads of coded stuff, and it's actually fun to find out) so SPOILERS about mantis encounters. Highlight text to read.
This is also the reason I think staff weren't being unfair, because mantis even when not being interfered with by staff do come at you in the valley relatively easily if you go anywhere south.

I lost a character a few years ago to mantis there, they're actually really well coded. There's "scout" mantis, that if you approach in a group flee soon after you attack them, and summon more mantis (usually 2-3) if you don't kill them quickly. Also if you try to hide or sneak up on mantis, they throw out a series of canned emotes about searching for you, and eventually -do- find you (a script or something that removes your hide pretty quickly, it's always the same emotes and length of time they find you so I highly doubt it's a staff animation), and if they see a mount left alone (e.g. you dismount to hide), they will kill it and eat its corpse after throwing out an emote about staring at it for a while. They also will lay ambushes (hide after running away) and ambush you a room away when they flee. They're very cool, would recommend going out there in a group someday for a bit of adventure. Just you know... Be sure to run pretty soon after, but shouldn't kill you if you use bows or shit. They're pretty buff.