A guide on how to enjoy Arctic
Survival of the fittest
by Oligo San
08/21/98

Intro
This is probably my most knowledgable area, don't know if that says much :) All this is taken from a tank perspective mainly, because that's what I'm experienced in, I will eventually make this guide more comprehensive to include all the classes. Reader feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Disclaimer: If you go out and get your ass kicked, don't blame me, blame your cleric.

Tracking (Offensive/Defensive/Maintenence/Irregularities)

Offensive tracking
Tracking is one of the most useful skills if you're not sure where your enemies are. What some folks don't realize is that it can be used as an offensive tool and as a defensive tool. If you don't know how to go to train track, go to my skills section. Tracking is reliable once the skill level of (excellent) or (superb) have been obtained. When tracking, you must keep in mind that it causes considerable lag, and therefore, you will unlikely have the first pounce when you enter the room that he/she is in. The best way to get this, is to have a group leader drag around the tracker. Therefore group moves faster without the cumbersome track lag. Oftentimes, no matter how good your track is, you may not get a track with a direction (a strong track), but you may get a track that works with no direction but auto-tracks (an active track). It's definitely a wise idea to keep a druid handy in your hunting party with refreshes mem'd. In the cases when the track is not a strong track, the leader should lead the tracker until the tracker comes about a strong track. Once a strong track is detected, the leader of the group should be the tracker, unless there is an idea of where the target is or could be. The key to hunting and tracking is speed, and since tracking lags the tracker, your group must compensate for this.

Defensive tracking
Oftentimes while in the middle of a zone, the enemy may log on in force and your group may not have the numbers to confront them. However, you're deep in the zone and there's an item loaded, or perhaps there's a cr that HAS to be completed. In cases like these, defensive tracking becomes your tool. Defensive tracking is again based on the premise of active tracks and strong tracks. You need to know the names of who will likely be after you, and then attempt to track them. If you receive a direction then you have a strong track and the person hunting you is near. It may be wise to recall at that time. If you receive a track without a direction but continues working after moving, that means that the person is closing in, but you still have some time.

Tracking Maintenence
An active track without directions can be very hard to keep going sometimes, especially when scouring Krynn for your victim to be. A few things you should be aware of. If you engage in fighting, you will lose your track and be forced to track again. You can only track the same person once per tick, more than that is just useless. Mounting or dismounting a horse may cause you to lose a track. Someone please verify this for me. Also eating food and drinking I believe does not affect your active track.

Tracking Irregularities
Sometimes when tracking a person, and having a strong track on him, you move the next room and the track disappears. When that occurs, you need to check the who list. More often than not, the user logged off, perhaps because of fear of you. Another anomoly is tracking over water, tracks can remain active over water I believe if it started out on land, but you will definitely get no directions. Tracks cannot be started on water. Magic may be different.

Individual Hits
Targetting individuals is mainly about stealth and being incognito. Obviously if your target knows he's being targetted, it's a lot more difficult, because he/she will just find a nearby peace room to hang out in. If you have cornered this individual in a peace room, do not just stand outside him where he can scan you, that's too blatant. Instead remain about 2 rooms away and contantly scan and see if he's foolish enough to come outside. This can often be a boring activity and if the target is smart, this may result in a stalemate. If that occurs, recall and go to the city where you think your target recalls to. Then stake out the inn area for a bit and perhaps you may get lucky.

If you have tracked the individual city and he is unaware of your presence, have other members of your group guard the exits of the cities and the inn and set triggers. The person will most likely run (if he/she doesn't recall) to the inn or try to escape the city upon being initially attacked, so if you have the city gates and inn accounted for then his escape is minimized.

Flags (Tricks/Peaceroom Breakers)
I need to do some research about this area. A lot has changed since I've been gone. Included in this section will be peace room breakers and their implications and results in respect to flags. Also some tricks and tips on getting flags or eluding them.

Battle (Preparation/Fighting/Cleansing/Tips/Feedback)
You might want to go read some logs posted on my log page if you want to get an idea what a battle is all about. Usually I'd say a good fight is a 5 vs 5. and a battle is anywhere ranging from 8 vs 8 on upwards. Today's modern large scale battles get up to a 20 vs. 20's.

Battle Preparation
This is the most crucial part to actually fighting is the preparation beforehand. You MUST have a designated party leader who's experienced. This party leader is gonna get unbearable spam about what he/she should do or various ideas told to him by party members. Also there are gonna be those folks who are too afraid to fight or don't wanna risk dying and they will weaken the moral of the group. Tell those fools to shutup if you believe that the group is adequate. There are a lot of items that need to be mentally checked off. First you should know exactly what you have and what they have. Namely clerics and tanks. Tanks are the key to victory not clerics as they would have you believe.
Every tank should have a target assigned to him by a leader. It's the leader's responsibility to designate each person individually. The skill level and experience level in your group will greatly vary so each person must be told like an idiot exactly what to do. While of course you want to keep the enemy clerics sitting at all times, you want to keep the enemy tanks sitting, therefore they cannot bash your casters. Bashing prevents bashing is an axiom that holds true in Arctic, call it Oeschard's law. Expect your casters to be bashed immediately upon battle initiation. Each leader has their own idea of how a fight should be organized, but in general make sure the casters are dead first. 50 hitpoint acid blasts ain't gonna do jack shit to a 630 hp tank, but it'll definitely give a mage a fright.
A designated main tank is usually a good plan but you gotta account for the confusion and chaos factor that's involved. I usually try to main the fights and it worked out well sometimes. It helps to have a cleric, Merk, who plays right next to you in the computer cluster. All tanks should have a designated caster in their group to rescue. An alias should be setup for example

#alias rl {rescue lesath}
#alias rm {rescue merk}
#alias bz {bash zyran}
etc...

If you don't use Zmud or Tintin, most telnet clients at least allow you to bind commands to the function keys.

If there is a prismer in your group and the enemy is aware of it, it's very difficult to keep him/her alive. Lavinia wasn't exactly popular in the big battles. There are however some remedies to this problem. Getting the area affect caster stoneskinned helps. Having a cleric assigned to that caster also helps. That cleric needs to be ready to heal the mage once a round. As many people as possible should be barkskinned, or blessed, or strenghted, or stone-skinned. The more spells that are helpful that you are affected by the better. If there are heal potions or any kind of item curing, get those items handy and create aliases for them.

Hopefully everyone is setup at this point.

Battle Fighting
This is where all those hours of zoning will pay off. If your casters have area affect spells: ice storm, sunray, or prism, those will all pay off immensely. I remember one fight where Labatt practically single-handedly hosed our group down with ice storms because he wasn't bashed and accounted for. Prisms have the ability to fear, blind, and hold the victims so it's very popular, and sunray while make the victim blind, unable to bash, disarm, or cast.

Mages: if you're standing attack a cleric, or cast area affect spells if you have

Tanks: during a fight there is ALWAYS a case where someone needs to be rescued, so when the tank has a chance to stand he should be attempting to rescue every caster and bash every enemy caster, don't try to disarm.

Druid: ice storm like there's no tomorrow, make sure you're barksinned

Thieves: dual wield and maul away, it may be hard to determine who's held in the spam

Clerics: heal your assigned tank and spam group often to check who's in need of healing. Use cure criticals and not heals on yourself unless it really is needed. Cast sunray if you possess it.

The actual battle will be VERY spammattic (I just invented that word). Modem players, especially anyone with less than a 28.8k may not even see the battle, they may even lag out. Remember to type stand a lot, you may be bashed and not realize it. Also check group status often, and rescue/heal/cast/quaff a bunch. Make sure everyone has triggers to loot corpses as soon as they're dead. All said and done, hopefully your side has come out on top.

Battle Cleansing
Usually, if you just won a huge battle, everyone is shouting or yelling, or just spamming "Yes", or "fuck/hell yeah". The leader however needs to maintain his cool, check all the corpses, make sure everyone and everything is accounted for and go into the tracking phase. Most smart opponents will have found the nearest 1-man room or peace room. If they've retreated to a 1-man room, you just have to wait til they recall. If this is the case, go check up on the folks in the peace rooms. If you're lucky, you may have flags on them and can gank a few.
Once you're sure everyone you can possibly kill is dead, and you've done cr's for all the dead folks on your side, head to someplace safe where the leader can divvy up the eq. How the leader divides it is completely his/her disgression.