[Shadowseeker]

The lessons for the Sparring Grounds. I will copy extracts/modified versions from other people, giving them credit, to have one big topic. Those without credits are those I wrote myself.

The most basic part:
(Takes little time to go through)

Have creatures. Recruit them, find out where and get some. You can check yours at the left side:
http://shadowseeker.redio.de/Creature.jpg

If they are dead or have lower energy than max, you can click on that yellow button to heal them if you have enough Vital Energy. Costs 1 AP for 1 click.
http://shadowseeker.redio.de/CreatHeal.jpg

Main Abilities you need to know of:
Any sort of Damage (Damage, Haotic damage, Random Damage)
Lifesteal
Weaken

With these you can go out and fight.

However, make sure your ritual has AT LEAST 301 Energy in it, the sum of all creatures in it. Or else it turns random.

Advanced Lesson:
(Takes time to go through but has lots of information, however read the Basics first)

Step 1 to 3, all in one topic: (Important!!!)
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3

Credit to No One and Dst.

Step 4: Healing rituals

To do this, put all your healers in the ritual and the attacking creatures that can be set to not hurt the person helping you. There are some creatures you can set from attack to weaken defense (usually only available at lvl 2 or higher for the creature). Do this. then get someone to attack you with a single barren soul and something that deals no damage. This will help to heal your creatures faster. but be warned - for this method you will get either a win or a loss - and possible honor loss as well. be sure that this is the step you want to take before you decide to use it.

Example:
You set up a ritual as your defense along with another attacking player, as it takes 2 to make a healing ritual.

You can use Heretic archers level 1 (be sure to take them off of attack mode). Set the archers to weaken defence and any other creatures you use in the ritural need to be not able to cause damage in the fight.

And of course a Healer (Barren soul or others) has to be used in the ritual if you need to heal. If the attacker wants to heal, he has to have one, same for the defender. Easiest is if both have one. At later stages you will discover more Healers.
Don't ever use a barren soul by themselves because for the ritual to work you need a creature with 301 or greater VE, remember the 301 rule (each ritual must have at least 301 VE or a ritual will be assigned automatically.

A maxed out Barren Soul is 300 VE , so defending or attacking with him alone will cause the game to automatically set your creatures at a random mode of attack.

Both players get healed creatures. Each player gets healing from their own healers, the player doing the most healing is given a win.

Credits to Actraiser and King Bull.

Step 5: Creatures

From The Aramory and from Wind's Crossing:

There's several you can find, and many are useful. Sometimes even those from the start can be good, so why not recruit a few of each and leveling them by yourself, seeing which helps you most?

And do not be scared of high requirements, these usually point out more powerful creatures.

Step 6: General Layout of Rituals

This is about what you should use in your rituals and what not, but again these are suggestions.

If you have high stats compared to others you can set Single Creature rituals, or two creatures. When giving them all your stats they become very powerful: But this is only recommended if you can hit all. Also it can be countered in several ways, but often enough it works.

Think about it, you basically can hit three different targets: Single, Multiple or All.
So, assuming you have the possibility to put target all, you should do this more than multiple or single. Why is that so? Multiple are strong, yes, but if there are not enough creatures to hit they become useless. (You should know why if you followed all steps and read) And although those which target single often have higher attack, in the end a creature which does 200 dmg to one and one which does 50 to 6 are different: The overall damage is higher when using all, since many people use full rituals with 6 creatures.

Sounds simple, yes? Well, often enough I see people not abandoning their single targetting creatures. One or two can be useful, but overall target all has the advantage. When it comes to Lifesteal there is no target all. So there a single targetting can be useful, since it always will work.

Step 7: Suggested Rituals

You may replace Heretics with Aramors, but I prefer Heretics for a good reason.

However keep in mind that these are rituals limited for a special reason..the more powerful ones can be made with other things :)

So go out explore, level new creatures until you find the one that suits you most.

Weak people:
5 Heretic Archers (the higher the level the better) and 1 Elemental on weaken.

Deals high damage and will help you to victories.

People with some upgraded creatures:
2 Grassans, 2 Heretics, 2 Elementals.
Abilities? Well, I'll leave it to you to choose after you leveled them a bit :)
But Weaken should be included, it helps with damage.
If you maxed several Grassans, you can use those instead of Heretics as well. If they are not max level, then try others.

For starters you should compose your rituals of damagers and weakeners: Weaken helps dealing more damage, but you still need damge after all.

As for other abilities, you should know them by now, and auras: These are unlocked during later stages, when you get rarer creatures and level them up, combine them with what you know so far of combat.


Step 8: Effective Raising

Your exp is limited strongly, while in mp5 there is a way to lower your profile exp again. Now, what to do? You should mainly fight with those creatures you wish to level later. Lower damage equals less experience, but also less stat gains..however those can be neglected for mp3, because you cannot use heat. For mp4 I may recommend to fight some high exp battles, using high heat gives more bonuses as well.

Be careful when putting lifesteal or damage into your defense ritual: If any of the creatures survive on your side you can gain profile exp, if all lose nothing happens. Same goes for attack, check the vital energy and creature energy of those you attack first. Often you get more exp than wins, and there are 0 exp wins you can use. This adds more wins only, so that your cap will not move closer.

Step 9: Honor

-500 is the limit of negative Honor, so you won't gain anything except the personal win/loss count from your fight.

Why is that important :

When you gain too many wins, it will be very hard to find a player with a positive honor reward to fight for, and you'll be giving anyone a lot of possitive honor reward, in other words..you'll be a mass target for other player everywhere and everytime.

Suggestion :

- Keep the Honor positive by balancing your wins and losses (Sword & Sheath).
- If you have to reach a high negative honor but you need some wins or Exp, set ur Winning / Best ritual on defense,and try to stay in the place that you believe you'll win, let them attack you and always check ur creature vitality so they'll always be in full health, that way you'll never gain honor but still gain the win count and the exp. You should still balance yourself afterwards though.

Credits to Poppi Chullo.

This post has been edited by Shadowseeker: 22 August 2009 - 08:59 AM

[Guybrush Threepwood]

I might just say that those steps 1-3 are pretty old, and perhaps should be looked over again. For example, the game does not look for any ritual that has over 301 Ve before going random, it is were that the case it would actually be impossible for me to go random, but I do. I'm not even sure it looks for the next to last ritual, I'm not positive on that one though.

[Shadowseeker]

Hm..I assumed it was still correct, never got into the trouble of that. The first three steps were actually the only things I didn't modify myself, so I'm going to test a bit later.

[Jester]

If your defense ritual (the farthest one down) has less than 301 Ve on it then the game will pick random. It doesn't matter if you have other defense rituals over 301, the game doesn't use those until the current defense ritual is actually broken. Also, if you have no defense rituals, the game will automatically take the offense ritual that's farthest down on the list and say "too low Ve" and use that ritual instead of an actual random ritual.

Also, I don't like these guidelines, they seem to just give all the answers instead of explaining how something works and letting people figure it out themselves.

[No one]

Guybrush Threepwood, on 21 August 2009 - 07:11 PM, said:

I might just say that those steps 1-3 are pretty old, and perhaps should be looked over again. For example, the game does not look for any ritual that has over 301 Ve before going random, it is were that the case it would actually be impossible for me to go random, but I do. I'm not even sure it looks for the next to last ritual, I'm not positive on that one though.

First of all, nobody said anything about looking for a valid (301 ve) through the entire list of rituals. Only last, and previous to last.

Second ... I will check that again, it has been only ONE YEAR since I wrote it.

Third ... if you are not sure ... take your time and test before spamming with something you are not "even sure". asdfgahimytnrewqfweurtcyuikfd

Jester, on 21 August 2009 - 09:09 PM, said:

...
Also, I don't like these guidelines, they seem to just give all the answers instead of explaining how something works and letting people figure it out themselves.

true, it does look like a big spoiler.
But what can I say? I could only write those things without being considered as a spoiler.
Hmm, but that was back then and MD evolved ever since ;)

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Rule 5: Multiple invalid rituals
If neither last nor prior to last rituals are valid using "Rule 3" and "Rule 4" a random ritual is picked from the list of rituals you have.

This is what I mean, the game WILL NOT pick a random ritual from the list you have, it will MAKE a random ritual from the critters you have available. And sorry, I am sure, it creates a random ritual if the last one does not meet the requirement. It does not attempt the next to last, and does not then choose a random ritual. I assumed that your rule implied that Rule 5 would imply the game will continue choosing random rituals until one worked, in other words, would take a ritual you have set that complies with the rule. This is not the case, and I am positive.

When I posted I was 95% sure that it was wrong. I had intended to check, but figured it was common knowledge that that rule was incorrect and that someone would have the answer. Soon afterward Jester did. There for I did not feel the need to post the follow up.

[No one]

Guybrush Threepwood, on 18 September 2009 - 09:17 PM, said:

Rule 5: Multiple invalid rituals
If neither last nor prior to last rituals are valid using "Rule 3" and "Rule 4" a random ritual is picked from the list of rituals you have.

This is what I mean, the game WILL NOT pick a random ritual from the list you have, it will MAKE a random ritual from the critters you have available. And sorry, I am sure, it creates a random ritual if the last one does not meet the requirement. It does not attempt the next to last, and does not then choose a random ritual. I assumed that your rule implied that Rule 5 would imply the game will continue choosing random rituals until one worked, in other words, would take a ritual you have set that complies with the rule. This is not the case, and I am positive.

When I posted I was 95% sure that it was wrong. I had intended to check, but figured it was common knowledge that that rule was incorrect and that someone would have the answer. Soon afterward Jester did. There for I did not feel the need to post the follow up.

Well ... it seems that you misunderstood how many " a random ritual " means. It is just one and it will not continue for ever.

But if I understand well what you said, it means that "Rule 5" simply does not apply altogether. And it seems reasonable to assume that this has been removed for performance reasons.

And as I said, I will check it and I will rectify my posts there, but I also have to confirm all that with Mur.


Also, if you post comments on someones posts, please be sure or , if possible, check it BEFORE you say it.
As for the "it was common knowledge" and "I did not feel the need to post the follow up" ... if I were to say that, or all the patient people in this game ... then you would have never ever received any help or hints, because all can be labeled "common knowledge". And ... "follow up" ? I would say "rectify", but that is just me.

This post has been edited by No one: 18 September 2009 - 10:13 PM

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Since there was no rule 6 stating what happens when/if rule 5 failed I assumed it simply looped. If rule 5 fails, then rule 5, or something to that effect, also, if you will notice, (and I said this in the first response...) Jester had already responded, less than 2 hours after me. Also, I said it does not look for ANY ritual with over 301. When I said that I meant that it most certainly, does not, 100% sure, look for any rit after the second to last, or I could not go random.

I said that I felt it was relatively common knowledge, and someone else would post. 2 hours later, about a month before you posted here... Someone did. For some reason I didn't feel the need to randomly spam, hey look, yup, Jester and I were right, I checked it again too. But in the future, if you would like me to follow everyone else's posts of absolute agreement with my 95% sure statements I can do that. Just to be specific on this, when I posted I had been using the fact that it did NOT check the next to last to protect important rituals I had created for months, had suggested to others that they also do so, and had noted it's success in the past. Normally when I state I am pretty sure that doesn't work that way, what I mean is, I have tested this myself, seen that this is not the case, at least from my understanding, and am looking for confirmation from others that it does not seem correct, not that I have never looked into this, but for some random reason feel, perhaps psychically that it does not work.

This post has been edited by Guybrush Threepwood: 19 September 2009 - 06:30 AM

[battilaa]

i realy think MD lacks relieble Guides. Of cousre i want to learn all the stuff on my own, but becouse most of the time i play against people who have more expiriance then i have, im in a big handycap. Basic game Mechanics should be explained in the forums, so people have a full view when trying to create there own strategies.

I realy realy wish some good players would show 1-2 exemples of there fights with an explanation to why they did it that way. The game is complicated enough to allow many differnt game styles so shareing your knowlage wouldnt hurt anybody.

The target audiance in great need for Help are fresh MP4 characters. Given how differnt MP chars cant interract with each other it is in all Pro players interest to teach newbies the game, so they in turn can get to MP5. If all of us were MP5 we would practicly have 3x as much people to play with.

Most games establish an ever increasing level of play. Even newbies in Warcraft 3 are pretty decent players now. Why would MD delibritly quenter act game evolution by systematicly banning any helpfull informaiton? A definition of SPOILER is needed here.

to give you guys an exemple.. why does it have to take months of playing for me to relise XP is gained by destroying VE and not dependent on how HARD the aktutal fight was. Why cant i know before hand that i can gain personal XP by defending, even thought my Creatures dont gain XP.
Similar facts are not Spoilers, but should be included in a manual, so newbies can make informed decisions. Sorry for the long Post. Take Care!

[Burns]

well, actually we LHO-slaves are in the game to be asked about such things ;)

you know, i can make a walkthrough for MD in like ten minutes, but where does that lead?
mindless grinding, as seen on various examples in the past, and no social interaction, which is the very basic of a community.
the utmost basic things are clearly described in several fighting tutorials, both ingame and on forums, you just need to open your eyes to find them...

and anything that goes OVER the very basics can be learned by other players, in direct social contact, be that asking or fighting, and be sure about one thing: the best strategies don't get passed down like secret knowledge from vet to newbie, you always learn them by losing to them several times ^^

in ancient times, someone with an extraordinary creativity actually discovered them, but since then, it's learning by _losing_

[battilaa]

becouse i have a very differnt view on this, but i might be wrong, i wont write another comment here, until either i proved you wrong, or i have learned that my ways are wrong.

Greetings

[Shadowseeker]

It's more a skill called observation, wits.

It's also to sharpen your mind, to find out about certain things..guides are one of the easy, quick methods, or let's say trainers for games you play..however, you do NOT LEARN.

You are forced to learn if you want to achieve, why isn't that great? In fact, that guide I posted here is already getting close to the guides which make you just follow and not learn at all. But I still introduced it, feeling newbies should get a share of knowledge and then try to improve themselves, leaving the heavy spoilers out.