Request: help me and your community: please read this everyone!!! (in General)

As many of you know I have made a website which is linked from community.

Now I have come to the point that my interface should be changing soon to make it better to view and thus I want add some more things to the site.

My idea was to ask help from the best of the best (being all of you) for some additional parts still missing on the website:

fighting/strategy guide
Forging Guide (will do this one myself since I have retrieved all the things I need for it.
guide to auctions / rentals
Item guide ?
guide to store camping ?

I know that some, if not all, of these guides already exist. But alas cbplayers still is down and I want to replace it with my site.

So I would need the help of some veterans (newbies can also apply if they know what they are doing) who would be willing to type up a piece of text to help make my website better, the person that writes will get credits of the piece of course.

Also for the strategy guide I have an idea already:
Explanation of all different minion types (standard such as mage & tank and advanced such as Wall, Ninja & CoC Archer Hybrid.)
Different strategy guides with pros / cons / strong points / weaknesses.
Related, helpful item choices

and some more things that I will let you decide on doing :)

Ahh forgot: if you are willing to help, please chat mail me or leave a message here (though chat mail would be better & faster)

Multiple people could be working on the same topic, they could cooperate on the things :)

I also suggest a (much needed, IMO) guide
"Trading for dummies": what to do and what NOT to do in the FS/WTB forum.

Still no hope of a wiki? It would make it easier to cooperate for "multiple people working on the same topic".

Shouldn't camping secrets be a skill which is handed down to aspiring youngsters by experienced campers rather than splashed across the front page of the news? Wheres the tradition? These still are honorable times aren't they?? Who do you think you are? Bruce Lee??? :)

They came, they saw, they camped. And they didn't tell anyone how they did it, because if they did they would have to kill them....

sssimmo & johnnywas: a simple and very basic explanation about what camping is would already do most likely.

It's to answer the questions like: "what is camping" from new players chat :)

Here is the first block of the guide I told you about. Still fixing up and formating the other parts. I used old/outdated html cause it was faster. :p

The New Players Strat Guide

Introduction: This guide is best read from beginning to end. When a term is first mentioned, such as Carnage Blender 2 (CB2), it is said in full with it's abbreviated version following it in parentheses. From then on the abbreviated version will be used instead of the full name. This is to allow you a chance to get comfortable with CB2 slang. If you decide to skip some sections that don't interest you then I might suggest you look to the terminology listing in this guide first.

Note: this guide will assume you have taken the tutorial provided when you start an account on CB2.

What is a strat?

Strat is short for strategy and can either refer to a stategy that is employed or it could refer to a page within CB2 where one can abstract somebody's strategy from. When someone says, “let me look at your strat.” What they mean is they are going to look at your character as if they had clicked inspect on a foe in the fight list on the sidebar. This is a slightly modified version of your home page with information both added and subtracted. It will show other players your intrinsic stats, which are Hit Points (HP), Strength (ST), and Dexterity (DX), to their exact values as well as what spells and skills you have trained in, but not to what level you have trained them to. Aside from this there is also the Armor Class (AC) of each minion as well as what they are wearing, yet the values of this equipment is hidden. To the left of all this information is more information such as the character's Score, Power Rating (PR), Minion Power Rating (PR), Net Worth (NW), battles as challenger and so forth. With this information another experienced player can often determine the effectiveness of your team and hence the defectiveness of your strategy (strat).

Finding your strat and someone else's.

You can access your own strat just as other's see it in a couple of ways. The first applies to everybody, which is you click on 'Manage Characters' on the sidebar and then click on the name of your character that you wish to see. People in clans can go to the clan link found on the sidebar and click on 'My Stats', then you can click directly on any character that you have in the clan. This way seems longer but it kills two birds with one stone for most people since they are interested in knowing their clan stats too, which changes more often then your strat.

An option to see another person's strat who isn't on the fight list is by searching for either their character or by their user name. Both links to use the searches are found in the opponents section of the sidebar. 'specify..' will let you add a character name to the list and clicking inspect will complete the process. The 'search by user' link will take you to the user's page once you click okay. Then you can click on their character to get to the strat.

Managing your PR and NW (Maxing rewards).

PR is a determination made by the game as to how powerful you are, but it doesn't reflect how effective you are. PR is a determining factor in your rewards from battles so the trick of the game is to raise the effectiveness of your team while keeping your PR as low as possible. This is where NW comes into play. NW is the value of the equipment you possess. It isn't necessarily market value but rather the value of the money put into the weapons from upgrading it plus some base value. NW is linked to PR such that if you put on uber equipment then your PR will rocket upwards by uber amounts. Mind you that your effectiveness might not have increased by that much, but your so-called power has. Notice that if PR goes up but effectiveness goes up by only a fraction of the PR then we are only working against our goal to max out our rewards and thus max out our growth. Therefore, spite what the tutorial says, renting high NW equipment is not suggested for new players.

The other major determining factor of rewards is the score of the opponent you are fighting. The higher the score is compared to your PR the better the rewards. Therefore, you should always be clicking on the higher link in the opponents section to see what higher score people you can defeat, especially right after you train your minions.

<p>Revision, instert this between paragraph 1 and 2 in the 'Managing your PR and NW (Maxing rewards)' section.</p>

<p>MPR is the PR of just your minions without equipment. Therefore if you were to unequip everything on your minions then PR should equal MPR. MPR is the stat you need to raise if you want to wear better armour and weapons, the only exception in this case are tattoos. Information on tattoos can be found on the tattoo pages of course. The only way to raise MPR is by collecting experience points (XP) and training it, which leads us back to rewards.</p>

A short index of all minion types. Not an indepth analysis of the types though...

I'm probably missed things, and have taken liberties with names, but it's a start, feel free to amend and correct this! ;)

General types;

Tank (T): A minion that deal damage using a ranged or melee weapon, or the UC skill.
Mage (M): A minion that deals damage using one of the 4 DD spells
Enchanter (E): A minion who's main purpose is to cast either a Defensive or Offensive enchantment or both.
Wall (W): A meat shield that wears as much armour as possible, and train mostly HP. Not primarily used to inflict damage, but to absorb as much as possible.
Ninja (N): A minion that primarily trains Evasion, in an effect to dodge physical attacks.

Specific types;
Archers (A): A Tank who trains the Archery Skill and focuses on dealing damage in ranged combat with a Bow.
Berzerker (B): A Tank who trains the Bloodlust Skill and focuses on dealing damage in melee combat with a melee weapon.
Monk (M/UC): A Tank who trains the UC skill to deal damage in melee rounds without the need of a weapon.
Decay/CoC Archers (?): These physical/magical hybrids combine both the archery skill + Bow and one of the two melee only DD spells, to deal damage in all the combat rounds.

Can't think of any more types atm.. >_<

GunProofVestax,
I think you should add actual links to your explanation. For instance, when you say "a page within CB2 where one can abstract somebody's strategy from", I think you should add a link to such a page in cb2 (this, assuming people can access such a page without being logged in).

GL: i thought the ninja/monk to be the same minion? Ninjas mostly also do damage imo ;)

I think it might be worth seperating the two now. With the recent changes UC minions get thier evasion from thier Gi (? Mags, how was Brock getting his high Evasion?), while the Evasion Skill change could make it worth basing a stealty, nimble type of character by purposely training the Skill.

You could have a Ninja Wall, or Ninja Enchanter for example, but you couldn't have a Ninja UC Tank. (Although the UC Tank would be naturally evasive...)

If you want shade, and GL, i could type up the "in depth" part of the minions :)

;) You don't have to ask me! But I do think I've missed stuff off. >_<

Hmmm, how about a dedicated minion for just Tattoo wear?

Minions: A couple of variations on enchanter perhaps: dunno if you call them anything:

meatshield enchanter - HP trained on an enchanter on an AS team to help against DM.

decay enchanter - base decay trained, leaving you free to put on your enchantments to large degree.

non -hp enchanter - no hp trained with full xp into their enchantments. Useful for instance on a ET or EM team where the tank or mage has been a single minion and therefore has a lot of HP.

The explanations may need rewriting but you get my meaning...

johnnywas, I don't think that listing all those specialized types of enchanters and such will help the new players much but rather confuse them. I think what GL has up thier is basic enough that they can start to combine minion types all on their own.

In that respect I agree with what GL says about the Ninja in that if we leave it seperate then the new player is more open to think in terms of Ninja + ?????.

Slayer, if you wait another ten minutes you can start to revise my revision of GL's minion types. Thanks btw GL, I had no idea what a Ninja was.

Almost for got to mention Manta, but I was just trying to get the matieral out there first. We can add the links in later after the content is worked out. Besides, Shade could do just a little bit of work since he put up the post. Then again I offered to make a guide all on my own. :p

I agree GunProof - that would probably confuse new players. But perhaps there's room for more advanced strategy and ideas. Some players aren't necessarily veterans but have gone past the point of being newbies. It might be more useful at that intermediate level.

I would need both the basic things AND the advanced strategies, plenty of room! :)

and @ Vestax, looking good, but I wouldn't compare a strategy with a minion type and also not with your own character, some people don't have a strategy but they do have a decent character.

Ok ill put some stuff in here too ill havta type it all out though blah blah blah then ill post it but i have a few things i wanna add i think im good enough for strat help i help people all the time so within a day ull see a HUGE post from me

To tell the truth, I just made up what the Ninja was from it's name... *Whistles*. I did say I took some liberties! Like calling a BloodLust tank a berzerker! ;)

Oh, we could also say ninjas train some dex or utilise Haste to cut the dex gap as well...

I think we need to go into the mechanics of attack types (DD overriding weapon, ranges, etc) and the mechanics of hitting (dex cth and weapon pth) and Things like AMF backlash...

:)

Maybe a 'Ninja' is just the fourth type of tank (with one that trains no skill being a generic tank?) that trains tanky things (Str, Dex, ToA, etc) but just trains Evasion as thier skill over Archery, BL or UC.

Hmmm... Do we need all these distinctions and lables?

Here's the next batch of stuff. I decided to leave out the Ninja for now.

The types/names of common minions

Each team is made of minions and with CB2 there are types on minions that are so common that they have their own names and abbreviations. However it is more common to use the abbreviation when describing an entire strat rather then when describing just one minion. Now for the list:

Tanks (T) - These are minions who specialize in dealing physical damage. The characteristic tank has HP, ST, and DX all within similar levels to each other. They are also equipped with some level of amour most of the time and have a ranged and melee weapon. The best tanks are not cheap since they are in constant need of better equipment and upgrades.

Mages (M) - Are minions that specialize in direct damage (DD) spells. These spells include Fire Ball (FB), Magic Missile (MM), Cone of Cold (CoC) and Decay. The common mage trains in HP and the DD spell evenly, but you can feel free to tweak the levels. Mages are cheap in CB2 terms since there is very few amours that are effective for them and since they have no need for weapons (with some exception which will be discussed in hybrids and complex minion types).

Meat Shields - These really aren't any type of minion used in CB2 but rather just a term used to describe a minion who has either a lot of HP or who's HP is trained for the soul purpose of being targeted at. Hence no abbreviation.

Enchanters (E) - Is a minion that concentrates in one of the Enchantment Defense (ED) spells or in one of the Enchantment Offense (EO) spells or in one of each. Some enchanters double up as light weight meat shields but it isn't uncommon for a enchanter to have zero points put into HP, ST, or DX. These are often the cheapest minion in your group since they often go naked with no amour or weapons.

Walls (W) - Is a meat shield with a lot of AC. Their goal is purely to take hits for your other minions. They aren't much cheaper then tanks in the slightest bit. Granted you don't need to give them weapons, an effective wall does however need to upgrade their amour a lot. Some walls are given a small amount of ST, DX, and weapons though in order to knock away enchanters and such.

Yes we kinda do a Bloodlust tank or as Vestax said a Berserker is different from an archer or a Unarmed tank and a Ninja im not sure about sounds just like a light tank with Evasion trained so oh well i guess Ninja could stay the name but its just odd to call it a ninja if u were using like a Morg and a bow just my 2 cents on that

Light and Heavy Tanks!

Stat penatly high AC, or Stat boosting low AC.

I think that we also need to add something on how to combine the various minions in a useful strategy.
For instance, a FB or MM mage goes well with DM enchanter (or they can be the same minion, if it is a single mage char). It would also be useful to explain why certain combinations work, and certain others (usually) don't.

Also, it is not necessary to go in a very detailed explanation of what each kind of tank is: all considered, many minions are hybrids (enchanter/mage, or wall/tank, or wall with evasion...), and I do not think we need to give a name to each one of them...

I suggest the flow of the strat guide should go from easy to advanced from top to bottom. Therefore I am foregoing an explaination of advanced teams at the moment. But at the end of every basic lesson should be a link to the advanced version of that lesson. Therefore at the end of the last post of mine I'ld say we put a link that says "Click here to skip ahead now to hybrids and complex minions." Then I'm going to skip to explaining the phases of the battle right before I explain how that ties into building a basic strat.

As far as the heavy and light tank distinction is concerned, that should be handled as an equipment choice section.

big questions:

why is everyone arguing about what should be in it and what not?
why don't i get a chat mail saying, i'd like to contribute this and that, is that good with you?

As far as the strat thing is concerned, I was thinking about this (of course I was) and I think I'll write it for now as a "why people do this" section. Followed by a "why people don't do this section". Think the best way to teach strat is to take a basic strat a give the reasons why someone would use it. But again we'll need to cut the why people do this section and leave only the basic strats on the top and call the others advanced. So it would be great if people could start listing basic strats (something a beginner can do, not something that requires a tat or a xbow). But after you list it provide a short list of reasons why people use those strats. I'll be first as an example.

AS, GA, AMF enchanters some HP and a Mage.

The enchanters do damage with backlash and protect the mage by taking hits from the front line. This team is also very very cheap and is even very doable with absolutely no equipment all the way up to midlevel strats. It's also effective against FB mages. DM is a problem though.

Two single-minion strats.

Single minion (mage), FB, DM, HP.
Very cheap, the idea is to kill the opponent quickly. Effective against multi-minion teams, thanks to the DM, that negates the enemy defensive enchantments (AS in particular).
Single chars with AMF are its nemesis.
Effective at low-middle levels, does not need any equipment to work.
If you get a ToE, you can go all the way to the top.

Single minion (archer): STR, DX, HP, archery at 1/4 of STR. Maybe some AMF.
Quite expensive: you need at least a bow and a melee weapon, and have to pay for ammo.
Most effective against single mages, less against multi-minion teams. Recommended for middle-high level.

Manta: "you need at least a bow and a melee weapon, and have to pay for ammo."

just call it single tank then if you are using a melee weapon also...

IMO, every tank (archer or otherwise) needs a melee weapon.
The reason are the various malus suffered for using bows in melee.
I would go as far as stating it explicitly as a general rule: there might be exceptions to it, but for newbies it's better to recommend to use also some form melee; when they will know more, they can decide whether it's better stick with this advice or not.

Well, except UC minions, of course.

in other words: an archer with a melee weapon still isn't an archer but a tank :)

put up an initial page with some general information, this page will be built further and further :)

Guide to store camping???
I wonder if anyone will volunteer to do that section.

doesnt have to be a guide as i already said...

it could be implemented in a basic page about what to do on this game

Fighting
Forging
Camping
Chatting

all with their basic information linking to more specific pages perhaps

the Camping page would then get an easter egg (camping photo) and the notice that nobody wanted to give out information about it :P

Shade, without CBF s and with TBF s doing crappy damage there's no need for archers not to use melee weapons.

Unless they're trying to save PR space, that is! ;)

Another batch. Thanks Manta, Shade and GL for contributing your input. You may think it's pointless to argue strat, but it's helping me build this guide, even if I disagree with an opinion.

The phases of Combat

As Shade put it once, “I wouldn't compare a strategy with a minion type and also not with your own character, some people don't have a strategy but they do have a decent characters.“ Decent characters are easy to make, but a team of decent characters can still fail. Therefore it is important to know the roll that everyone plays. But in order to do this it would be good to understand how combat actually works.

Play-By-Play is an option to see the reason for why the battle has ended the way it did. When you go to fight you will see an option button toward the top of the results page. Chose the on option for now when you fight and wait until you think you understand what is going on until you decide to turn it off. Most players never turn it off though.

Enchantment Phase - is the first phase of every battle. Anyone that has a ED or EO will cast that spell right here. From then on the effects of the enchantment lasts for the rest of the battle and the enchanters do not need to do anything or even be alive for it's effect to continue. The enchantment is often listed with it's effectiveness in parentheses directly after it. What the effectiveness means changes from spell to spell and is explained in this guides spells and skills section.

Ranged Combat Phase – Ranged combat is fixed at three rounds. During this time and this time only are ranged weapons usable. Ranged weapons includes Slings, Bow, and crossbows (xbows). DD spells are also usable but only MM and FB. CoC and Decay only work in the next and last phase of combat. There is also a decrease to the effectiveness of spells during ranged combat. The amount of this decrease can be found in the Known Game Mechanics section. Not all ranged weapons fire during all three rounds however. FB, bows, and slings do fire in all three rounds but xbows and MM only fire twice. MM fires in round 2 and in round 3 and xbows fire during round 1 and round 3.

Melee Combat Phase – This is the last phase of combat and lasts for the remaining 22 out 25 rounds of combat. If neither team is defeated by the 25th round then a stalemate is declared and no rewards are granted. During melee all DD spells and melee attacks occur. If a minion has any DD spell at all then they will cast that rather then use any weapon you have equipped on them. At some point minions that do not have UC, DD, or non-ranged weapons will no longer bother to attack the opponent, but as a beginner is it apparent that minions with nothing buy base stats can fight and defeat other weak opponents. However, it is advised that you either get a DD spell right away or spend money on a whip or dagger and equip it as soon as possible.

What do the intrinsics do? (HP, ST, DX)

HP is obvious to most people who play most games, especially RPG's, but in case you are new to these games then HP is the health of your minion. You will notice two number under HP on your home page. The first number is the current health of your minion. The second number is your minions maximum health. The first number is least in consequence since before every battle you initiate your minions will be healed to the maximum at a small cost of CB$. The objective of every battle is to keep you current HP level above zero while forcing your opponent HP below zero. This is done by doing 'damage' to the enemy minion. When a minions HP drops to zero they stop participating in the battle. If a team loses all of it's minions due to HP loss then that team is defeated.

ST increases the damage a minion does with physical attacks, this includes melee and ranged weapons and Unarmed Combat (UC). Unlike HP this number can get below zero without your minion be defeated, they just fight as if they have the bare minimum in strength. There really anything else to say about this stat other then it is rumored to supply minions with some small protection from attacks.

DX increases the chance for your minion to hit with physical attacks as well as dodge those attacks. Also if your DX exceeds your opponent DX by a large enough gap, then the first hit becomes guaranteed and another hit becomes possible, landing you multiple strikes on the same enemy. For more in-depth game mechanics on DX you can skip to the Known Game Mechanics section.

Might wanna change the part that says bows fire all three rounds. Only with 1.00 Archery is that true.

GentlemanLoser, June 23 2005 6:51 PM EDT
Shade, without CBF s and with TBF s doing crappy damage there's no need for archers not to use melee weapons.

Unless they're trying to save PR space, that is! ;)

Well the weapon exemptation is per weapon, not total...

thanks NotFuhgawz, now I just need to know which rounds they fire without Archery at 1.00.

"Well the weapon exemptation is per weapon, not total..."

O_O Wow! You sure Shade? I thought a Single Tank (for example) of X PR had a weapon allowance of Y. Both Ranged and Melee weapons take up the Y allowance, but your saying the Tank would have a Y allowance for a melee weapon and another equal allowance for a ranged one?

If anything, this seems kinda unfair on UC tanks...

GPV

Bows and XBows shoot in rounds 1 and 3. Slings and Sling Staves shoot in all three.

Archery gives bows (and only Bows) a percentage chance (including Belegs) to shoot in the second rounds of ranged. Archery has no effect in melee, so Bows and xBows shoot every other round in melee (starting from the 5th round (second round of melee).

I hope this helps!

:)

That helps a lot. I thought I had hit with a xbow in melee before but someone tried to tell that was impossible. But that would make sense with what I thought. I assume slings continue at a rate of once a round of course. And it is interesting to know that an axbow or a exbow user can continue to sap the power of thier enemies. Too bad xbows are underpowered.

As long as you didn't have a melee weapon, you would have hit with your XBow in melee, but once every other round! ;)

Wrong GentlemanLoser, with a crossbow you will hit every round in melee...

o_O You sure of that Shade...

Not that I don't trust you...

*Runs off to check*

from Jonathan:

Basically, everything will count towards PR, except for a weapon "allowance." Since tanks need NW + ST combined to keep dmg growth up, weapon NW up to a point (about 2/3 of all the XP your [character] has trained, since that's easier to calculate inside a trigger than what ST would turn out to be after all the bonuses are added in) doesn't count towards your PR. NW above that cap is counted normally.

My character:

AMF: 1733794 untrain @ 95% >> 1825046 exp
AS: 1733806 untrain @ 95% >> 1825058 exp

HP: 959363 untrain @ 85% >> 1128662 exp
ST: 993223 untrain @ 88% >> 1128662 exp
DX: 993223 untrain @ 88% >> 1128662 exp
VA: 384693 untrain @ 95% >> 404940 exp

Summed together: 7441033 experience
(ignoring some 8k experience from fights but 8k at 7 mil is 0.11%)

My equipped weapons:
A Vorpal Blade [75x60] (+30) 3,977,838
Angainor. The Chain of Melkor [4x42] (+50) 6,200,420 (Named Exbow)
Also ignoring base values here (7k / 4 mil = 0.175% and 2k / 6 mil = 0.03% neglectable numbers)

So now 2/3 of my total experience is: 4,960,689 NW

Neither of my weapons add to my characters PR.
So my Exbow's NW already is higher than my 'weapon NW allowance'
My exbow would be 25% over the weapon NW allowance...
And adding the weapon's NW's together would make me be 10178258 / 4960689 = 2.05 times over the allowance.

So either this is a huge bug or Jonathan has made the weapon NW allowance higher without letting us know officially.

regarding xbow attacking in melee:

ACK! you're right, crossbows only fire in the odd rounds...

But an archer isn't an archer if the archer has a crossbow anyway, also archery doesn't work for crossbows and doesn't work in ranged.

Just tested it as well! ;) It's the same for bows in melee as xbows. Even with archery, bows shoot only in the odd rounds of melee, as the archery skill has no effect in melee.

I will add that (obviously old but still new) information to the weapons pages ;)

Yeah, re reading Jons statement (especially " weapon NW up to a point ") seems to imply that the allowance is per weapon.

Another downer for UC, as they effectively lose half their weapon allowance... And to boost their 'weapon' (thier UC skill) they have to pump the NW of their UC armour, really pumping their PR in the process...

UC gets even less usefull...

:(

doesn't get less useful, they just have to take into account that their special items add a bit more tot he NW than with normal tanks...

Mwa ha ha, just wait until Brock gets a big ELB. Then we'll see how much usefulness he lost. ;)