Elemental

(You can read the previous version of this page, which is the Elemental new recruit pamphlet, on this page Elemental/Pamphlet. There's a bunch of information there that would be handy to read through)

All words that appear in bold have in-game files which can be accessed by typing “info <topic>” once you’ve joined the guild.

About the guild[]

The Elemental guild is based around becoming the embodiment of the classical elements (air, earth, fire, and water) and channeling that power to damage enemies. Once you master the basic four elements, you'll explore the elements that make up life and even time, itself.

An elemental's deep connection to their home plane comes with the intrinsic ability to emit the power held there against their enemies in a way few mortal weapons can match. That connection comes with a drawback, however; an elemental has few natural defenses and relies heavily on armor to protect their physical form, and wielding weapons inhibits their ability to emit.

Location[]

The Elemental plane is located in the southern side of Pinnacle. (cot,s,w,s,s,w)

Quick start guide[]

chat el: chat on the guild line (and "chat el -h" for history)
info: access the guild help files
enhance: shows you the skills you can raise. As you raise your skills, the maximums of other skills may increase
powers: lists the powers you have in your current form. Most powers are evoked. Check this often as you progress for newly unlocked abilities!
evaluate: gives you information about an enemy
energy drain: recovers NRG from the creature you're currently fighting. Enemies have a 'pool' of NRG available to draw from while in combat.
corpse drain: siphons energy from a corpse which both restores 10% of your max NRG as well as transferring energy to the Apex in the guild hall which will increase the rate elementals regenerate while there.
blast is our superpower. It creates a "grenade" of elemental power that we can activate and then give to an unsuspecting mark. Then it goes BOOM. Don' be holding it when it goes boom.
escore for your guild stats. (there's also escore2 for even more)

You'll start as a Water Elemental by default. Anytime before you hit size 10, you can go to the Grand Elemental and shift into a different form. This may be only done once to select your first form, but eventually, you'll be able to learn all forms.

In general, the forms go Fire, Air, Water, Earth in order from more damage to more tanky (and vice versa). The only catch in progressing is that you can't switch to the opposing elements: Air/Earth and Water/Fire. So if you start with Air, your second form will have to be Water or Fire. If you start with Fire, your second form will have to be Air or Earth, and so on. Different forms come with some slightly different powers and some powers only come after you've mastered several forms.

In combat, Elementals emit NRG to damage their enemies. For every NRG you emit, you'll gain that much guild experience, experience towards enhancing skills, and that much link energy (see escore for the amount of link energy you have) which is a reserve pool for special powers and emergencies. As you gain guild experience, your size will go increase and increased size gives access to more powers as well as higher emit levels. A key skill to enhance is manifestation which will make each emit cost less NRG (but it will still give the full experience benefits). Raise manifestation whenever you can.

As an example, if you using emit level 5 with a manifestion skill of 1, you will use 4 NRG (level - manifestation), hit with emit 5 damage, gain 5 GXP, gain 5 GXP for enhancing skills, and gain 5 Link Energy.

Elementals can wear all equipment slots, but wielding a weapon will block their ability to Emit.

Managing NRG[]

Enemies you are fighting have a pool of available NRG to draw upon with energy drain. Larger mobs have larger NRG pools and raising efficacy will also increase the size of that pool. Since energy drain is simply a pool, you can energy drain every round to refill your NRG. There are a few ways to automate this on the mud side. First is by using the mud-side repeat command like "repeat combat/evoke energy drain". The second is to set up a mud-side reflex to energy drain when it starts to deplete with the command "reflex gp1 <99% evoke energy drain." The final common method is to use a set of aliases and the elemental perform command.

To use the perform version, create an alias like "alias autoed evoke perform as combat evoke energy drain:9999,autoed". This will cause you to do energy drain up to 9999 times while in combat and then call the alias again to start another set of 9999 times. If you use this method, you should add autoed to your .login alias like "alias .login autoed" (or insert it into the list of other .login commands).

Which method you want to use is a matter of personal taste, but as long as you're energy draining every round, you're doing okay. Attempting to energy drain a creature who hasn't been damaged enough will result in the message "That creature is not weak enough to be drained of energy.", so you may want to gag this on your client to cut down on spam.

There are a few other ways to regain NRG in combat. First you can "evoke corpse drain" on a corpse to recover NRG. Visiting the Pinnacle Morgue and carrying (and upgrading) a coffin can come in handy for fights where you find yourself coming up short. Secondly, you can use siphon to convert stored link energy to NRG you can use, but this should be used sparingly because there are far better uses for link energy later and you'll want a very large pool saved up for then.

Outside of combat, you can regain NRG by returning to the Apex in the Elemental Guild. Siphon also works outside of combat in a pinch. If the area has mixed large and small mobx, going and killing a bunch of the smaller mobs is a way to regain NRG without returning to the guild or using precious link energy.

As a final note, if you have the VAF perk "ktrig" you can put energy drain in your ktrig for one last refill to top you off a the very end of combat.

Healing[]

Elemental's hit point (HP) healing power is rebuild which uses spell points (SP) to heal you. Rebuild will only work once per round, even if called multiple times, so having a healthy HP pool is a very handy thing. The efficiency of rebuild (HP:SP ratio) is affected by the cohesion skill.

Since healing is pretty much entirely dependent on spell points, keep an eye on your SP level. Mud skills, equipment, and other buffs which increase SP regeneration will go a long way.

Elementals can recover SPs employing a variety of tools:

Each form has a specific SP regeneration power: earth tap, the four winds, tidal wave, heat wave, and soul wave.
After size 50 you can utilize mental depletion to draw SPs directly from an enemy. Time Elementals of sufficient size can also 'evoke mental depletion corpse' for an additional source of SP healing.
Create Soul Gems using trap the soul for a defensive barrier and SP heal.
Use natural convergence(NC) for a full SP heal once per mental reset (10 minutes). You eventually unlock a 2nd NC.

You should automate rebuild so it fires every time it needs to. There are a few methods for doing this:

You can evoke preservation like "evoke preservation as 400 evoke rebuild" which will trigger a heal every time your health drops below 400. Note: This is a hard HP number, so you'll have to adjust it as your HP max changes.
Mud-side reflex ("help reflex") like "reflex add hp <90% rebuild" Note: Reflex requires a mud skill to use. "help mskills" for more info
Mud-side panic ("help panic") like "panic rebuild/90%"

Powers summary[]

Many powers are locked behind reaching a certain size (guild level) in a form and when you start a new form you will lose that power until you advance to a sufficient size in your new form. Check powers often to see what's being unlocked.

Additional powers are unlocked at spirit and time forms. Some powers, like 'self illumination' and 'flare' only work in certain forms; and your SP-regen 'wave' ability changes name as you progress through the forms. Some spirit- and time-specific powers need to be prefaced with "spirit" or "time" when using info. e.g. "info spirit coolpower"

Works well: element shield will totally block a specific type of damage for a short time. Handy for mobs with big non-physical specials; equipollent will hit every enemy you are currently in combat with. It is an NRG hog at first and doesn't hit hard, but will once you get your equipollent skill high enough.; solidify is an extremely useful defensive power that toggles on and off, but costs a large amount of link energy (this is what you were saving it for). Eventually, you will get the conveyance skill high enough that you will be able to keep this on all the time since you will be regaining more link energy that it costs with the conveyance discount.; trap the soul creates a soul gem which can be used for a SP heal and brief damage shield. Smaller gems can be combined into larger gems for greater effeect. For easily farming up soul gems, you can get the ktrig VAF and put the command there to create a soul gem at the end of every combat.; resolve will change the damage type of your emit. You will be limited to types related to your form, but picking a non-physical damage type is usually the best option. Eventually, you will be able to use any damage type and this can noticibly increase damage if you switch to something your target is weak against.

Not so much: barrier uses NRG to decrease incoming damage, but is uses a large amount of NRG so it's only practical in emergency situations.; diffuse reduces your consistency to reduce damage taken but it also reduces the damage you're dealing and you will leak NRG. Typically not worth it.; condense is an ultra specific defensive ability that greatly increases your defense but causes you to deal no damage.; energy wave is a power that will release energy in the room that other elementals and some other guilds can benefit from. Handy to keep in mind, but not often used.; engulf is intended to surround an enemy can convert all damage to it to a single type (i.e one they're weak against). It does not currently work properly due to mud changes.; enshroud adds a very small amount of AC related to you form, but generally not very much.; disperse will attempt to spread your elemental form to try and fool an enemy into thinking you've died. Your dispersed form is virtually incapable of handling any damage so if you fail to fool the enemy, you will likely die. Only worth trying if you are in an absolutely dire emergency and are going to die anyways.; age debuffs a mob and reduces the damage it does, but by the time you get it enemies will be too strong for it to meaningfully affect.; spiritwrack is a *very* risky power that can increase your damage output but you have a signifiant chance that it will backfire and kill you. Best avoided.

Note that even the powers that use NRG (which is normally to valuable to waste) can be useful in a pinch and you can always lower or shut down your emit to give you time for help or heals to arrive.

Skills[]

As you spend NRG in combat, you'll gain a reserve of NRG to use on skills which you can enhance. All skills have their own info file. Like gxp, you'll earn energy to spend on skills for each emit. Skill energy is a separate pool from size energy.

Manifestation: This is a big one. It's generally expensive, but well worth it. For every point you have in manifestation, your emits will cost one fewer NRG. So if you're using emit 4 and have manifestation 1, your emits will cost 3 NRG but you'll still do emit 4 damage, get 4 gxp, and 4 enhance energy.
Control: Control is closely tied to eec which is visible on escore2. If your control/eec are low, you will fail emits (the message says you emit weakly) and you will still consume NRG, but you won't get any gxp or do much damage. Keeping your control up will keep your EEC up, which will mean more consistent gxp.
Resistance: We're not a tanky guild, but what taking we can do is helped by the resistance skill. The effectiveness of your barrier power is also tied to resistance.
Resolve: Resolve is both a power and a skill. As a power, it can alter our damage type based on the elemental form you're in. The skill helps us do that damage type more consistently.
Efficacy: Efficacy increases the size of a mobs NRG pool for for energy drain.
Elucidation: Elucidation will provide more (and more accurate) information when you use the evaluate power.
Equipollence: If you're in combat with multiple enemies, you can use the equipollent power to attempt do deal damage to all of them at once. The equipollence skill make us more effective when doing so.
Continuance: Increases our maximum NRG.
Cohesion: Make the rebuild power work more efficiently.
Vortex: Our elemental vortex (guild object) also doubles as a bag. The vortex skill will increase the number of items you can store in your vortex.
Intensity: Increases the damage we do.
Blast: When we create blasts, the blast skill makes our blasts blastier and more blasty. You also will get more time to give away your blast to enemies.
Vinculum: As you emit NRG in combat, you gain a reserve of "link energy." One of the things you can do with that link energy is siphon it off to regenerate your own NRG. Vinculum makes that transfer more efficient.
Focus: When using plane taps (earth tap, tidal wave, four winds, heat wave), focus will extend the duration of those taps.
Finesse: Finesse makes us more effective at dealing damage. It doesn't have a huge effect, but it definitely has some.
Conveyance: You will not start out with this skill. Once you get it, it will lower the link energy used for powers that use link energy. Mostly important for solidify which is a tanking power that uses link energy. Solidify costs 28 link energy per round and each point of conveyance reduces that by one. So, if conveyance + emit are at least 28, you will not lose link energy while using solidify.

Stats[]

Wisdom: This is our prime stat. Your wisdom directly affects how much damage you do with your emits.
Intelligence: More Spell Point means a bigger pool to draw from when using rebuild.
Constitution: Hit Points are important so we can stay alive. A dead mental does no damage.
Dexterity: It's listed as neutral, but it helps us avoid attacks and that's a good thing.
Strength: You'll need strength to carry gear but your guild object (elemental vortex) doubles as a bag which can help.
Charisma: It's listed as lower, but it's pretty important to an Elemental's damage (see below)

There are two "sets" of stats for Elementals and the ratios of those stats are very important.

For damage, you must keep your Charisma one more than half your Wisdom.

For tanking, you must keep your Strength one more than half your Dexterity.

If you don't watch this, you will take big hits to your ability to deal and mitigate damage. Stat buffs can bring up your Cha/Str to keep your abilities balanced, but getting your Wis/Dex buffed won't negatively impact the balance.