Dark Age Of Camelot: Let the Player Columns Begin!

So, there you are in the midst of a group of players about your level and suddenly without warning...one of the group decides to go screaming into the spawn sword drawn yelling something about the mobs mother that you can't quite make out. The event that usually follows is that lovely orange text scrolling in the chat window proclaiming the entire group has shaken loose their mortal coil. The cries of your group mates begin as you all search for the nearest rezzer. Has this happened to you? I bet it has! What I would like to discuss today is how to hunt in a group without causing a whole lot of prayer meetings. This advice is for the beginner but sometimes everyone needs a refresher.

Preparation and binding

For the sake of time and sanity make sure everyone is bound in the same place! It's a real slice of heaven when your healer informs the group after he / she dies that they have to ride from Snowdonia Fortress to Avalon Marsh to take the portal back to Gothwaite Harbor and catch a horse from Caer Gothwaite to Fort Gwyntel in the Dales of Devwy where your group is hunting. Please, please, please don't be that guy!

The next thing to do is get everyone acquainted with each other's role in the group. Who's doing the pulling, who's healing who, who's guarding who, who's tanking that kind of thing. This will only take a few minutes and will most likely save you a lot of walking back from your bind point if no kindly Cleric is about or your own healer is worm food. If things are clear from the start the chance of the group gaining experience quickly is much greater and the chance of death diminished. If members of your group are more on the maverick side and don't have any intention of sticking to some sort of order you may not want to group with them in the first place. If all you do is die because someone is pulling extra mobs and repeatedly wiping out your entire party the group will dissolve and you will have lost possibly more experience than you gained since grouping.

Macros

I cannot stress this enough; get your party members to use macros! A lot of people I have run into in groups either don't know what a macro is or how to use them or they simply won't use them at all. For example, I was in a group earlier this week with my alt, 9th level Fire Wizard, and was acting as puller. I asked the group to use /assist on me so we would be concentrating our attacks. I was met with "huh?" "What's that?" "What's a macro?" and my personal favorite, "just pull!" Needless to say the group did not last very long either in life or longevity. We got wiped out several times due to multiple pulls and the group quickly grew weary of death and disbanded. If you can get them to use /assist and /stick things will go much more smoothly without all that pesky death. For those who are not familiar with these two commands /assist allows you to assist the puller, or any player, by targeting the inbound mob and /stick is used on the mob when it reaches the group. Stick keeps you from having to look around for the mob when he decides to switch targets or agros the healer.

To create these two macros use these formats:
Assist: /macro [macro name] /assist [name of puller] i.e. /macro AST
/assist Eraus
Stick: /macro [macro name] /stick i.e. /macro STK /stick
*Note: you can use the assist macro without the player name to assist anyone who needs it. Just click on the player you wish to help and click the AST macro.

Healers

If you have a healer in your party, and you should, and he / she gets agroed help them quickly. If they die there is a good chance that a good portion of the party will follow suit depending on the mob you are engaged with. If the tanks have the guard ability have them use it. You don't have to kill the mob on the healer just draw agro from them so they can get back to saving your tail.

If you have a Necromancer in your group with using mana tap and power transfer have him keep an eye on the healer and to transfer mana to him as needed. Also have him keep an eye on the casters just in case but the healer has priority. Granted most Necromancers solo for the first 40 or so levels, ah hum, but they do sometimes group at lower levels.

Pay attention

One of the most important things to remember is to pay attention to the group. Don't stand too close to the spawn, if the group moves move with it, stay together, and listen to the leader of the group. Hopefully he has some experience and can keep things under control. I used to play Midgard on Igraine as Boga Eyvinder with some good people and whenever we grouped we had great success as long as we paid attention to the leader.

Loot

When it comes to splitting the loot I usually stick to autosplit in a normal hunting party. Everyone will get something at some point during the session and it keeps people from complaining about someone bogarting all the loot. Besides it's easier to blame Mythic if you don't get anything isn't it? Now, when an item drops the party should look at the item and see who could make best use of it within the party according to level, ability, and specialization line. After that you can give it to someone for an alternate character if no one there can use it. Either way is good just try to keep everyone having fun. That is the point isn't it? If it's of no real use to anyone see if someone has a high skill level in a craft like tailoring or armor crafting. Sometimes you can salvage the item for the raw materials for more money than the item itself would sell for.

Training and leveling

When you or a member of your party levels up please, for me, don't run back to town to train and leave the group short! That is very annoying to the rest of the group. You will have to go back to a town eventually to sell off loot to the merchants or get your gear repaired anyway so just wait and go back together.

Well, that is about it and happy grouping!

// Eraus

**If you have any comments to the Player who wrote this, please send them to me and I'll happily forward them to them. My Email is Deina@Warcry.com