| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| Revision v1 | 18 August 2003 | Revised by: |
| User contributed documentation | ||
The Brotherhood of Temperance is a guild of monks located at the Cloister of Temperance far in the wilds away from any civilization. There, the monks dedicate their entire life to solitude in hopes of achieving enlightment through meditation and inner peace. Do not be fooled by their reserved nature however, as they are also masters of the martial arts. A well trained monk will be able to dish out much damage really at a fast rate. Never requiring sleep, monks endlessly mediate and train to make their mind and body into one powerful force.
Hence, the Monks of Temperance is a unique fighting guild, relying on their bare hands and feet as well as their mind. The major stats for a monk is dexterity and strength, while wisdom and constitution are minor stats. Charisma and intelligence is not important. The medium sized and large sized races are better attuned to become a monk, while thri-kreens are not allowed to join because of their anatomy.
In order to join the Brotherhood of Temperance, one will have to make a far journey to the Cloister of Temperance, hence it is not recommended for a new player to choose monks as a first guild, because the journey is difficult. It is easier to access a guild near or in town to be able to frequently train and study, rather then having to make a long trip every time you want to train.
To get a good idea of the location of the guilds, use the Zoomable World map as a guide as to where you are going. The monks guild will be in the northeast quadrant at the end of very long path (peach colored line). Vaerlon will be the yellow patch located east of a volcano (orange circle) that is in the middle of the western border of the map. Travel on the road (black lines) that leads furthest east from Vaerlon until it goes into a mountain (grey areas). To make travel faster, use capitalized directions (W, E, S, N, etc) in order to walk along the road. Also, remember to avoid lakes (~) as you will surely drown and traveling at night because you might run into an aggressive undead. When you reach the mountain, walk back west (W) 3 times to avoid a lake when you head north. After that, head north until you reach a river. Do NOT cross to the other side; you want to stay south or east of it. Follow north along the river until you reach a swamp (red s). Then you will follow along the swamp (instead of in it as that would require more endurance) until you reach a river. Follow along that river, which will split into an east river and north river. You can do two things:
You will want to follow along the north river (so cross the east river) and then the river will split once again. This time instead of going north you will follow along the east river, which will run into a path. Take the path north and at the end of it will be the monks guild.
After crossing the east river, instead of following the river north until it splits again, you can go north along the river a bit and then cut through the forest northeast, which should bring you to the path. If you hit a river instead, go east along the river and you should see the path.
Once you've made your way to the monks guild, talk to Brother Selgadon about rituals to join the guild. Follow his directions and you'll be a monk in no time.
The main guild is the Initiates of Temperance, but there's nothing to train there. The first guild is the School of Temperance where you will receive basic training for most of your monk skills. Training martial arts, melee, the maneuvers, and kick + double kick is recommended, as long as the cost isn't too high. You will you get two combat styles, offensive flow and unbending defense, but concentrate on one main one, most likely offensive flow. Kick and double kick are both learnable as you perform kick, so don't train it too high. Meditation is also useful to get as it allows you to regenerate faster and charge your jewel. Resist Exhaustion will improve your endurance point max temporarily, but isn't too useful towards actual combat effectiveness.
The next guild, and last, is the Warriors Monk guild. This is where you complete your monk training, and you will have to choose rather to specialize in feet attack or hand attacks. (Note: I believe feet attacks are more powerful but less accurate) You'll be able to train every skill you learned at the School of Temperance, along with True Stillness and Motion of Combat. True Stillness will help with meditation, while Motion of Combat is the monk's main combat move and is necessary to use runes. It's hard to train unncessary skills, since monks don't have too many skills.
Monks also have the option of joining the Initiates of Air. Doing so will cut your regeneration time, and give you an extra booth of health when you need it. However, it's not recommended unless you have a race with good wisdom, like elf. But then, the combat manuever 'motion of combat' will require spell points to perform, which will eventually drain you after many battles. Healing spells wouldn't be useful, but if you have a very high health then it could be useful to make regeneration faster. Throwers guild is also joinable. Since you don't need to weapons to fight, you can throw to start a battle and then fight without having to wield a weapon, and if you're good enough in throwing, you'll be able to throw a dagger or two during battle too.
To prevail in combat requires more then just training your skills. Meditation before combat is a very important thing to do because it will charge up your jewel, which will help increase your effectiveness in combat greatly. So training meditation and true stillness is wise in order to be able to charge more of your jewel. Runes are also very powerful in combat, especially once you learn them to a higher level. One strategy though is to use motion of combat to load runes, and then switch to kicks to preserve charge to your jewel and the saved spell points could be use for healing if you joined the Initiates of Air. Kick, even though a basic maneuver, can be useful in creating a little extra damage, especially with double kick. For lower level players, kick will be very useful in taking down monsters. Also, "weapon_shuffle" will change your weapon priorities, meaning you'll be more likely to attack with the first hand or feet listed, and so on.
The first basic combat maneuver, learnable by doing. Wearing boots will help.
Occasionally you will kick twice when you perform a kick (automatic and learnable).
The main skill, will affect how will you fight in unarmed combat.
Increases damage and attack speed of your hands.
Increase damage and attack speed of your feet
Automatic skill that affects almost everything a monk does
Monk's offensive combat style.
Monk's defensive combat style.
Using this skill will charge your jewel (thus making you better in combat) and it will also improve your regeneration rate. More skill in meditation will allow you to achieve higher levels of your.
Helps makes meditation more effective.
The main monk combat maneuver. The power of your jewel will help determine the successfulness and power of your attack. Kick and double kick will also help make this maneuver more effective. Each time you perform this attack, it will drain endurance points, spell points, and power from your jewel.
Do not purchase runes until you able to train 'motion of combat' because that skill is required to load the runes. In order to learn the runes, you will have to buy it from Brother Bessobb using money as well as some experience points. The following four runes are available:
Harden your hands so that they make more damage.
Harden your feet so that they make more damage.
Increases your wisdom, which might give you a couple more combat pts.
Enable you to perform a one-time special attack.
The following commands are used with runes:
List the runes you know and your mastery levels for each rune.
List these commands.
Load a rune so that you can prepare it by performing motion of combat.
Once the picture in your gem is complete (it'll glow), this will enable the rune with the next motion of combat.
Shows information about a rune you know.
Check to see if you're using medium or heavy armour
If you fancy, you can seek out Brother Gundar and try the crushing contest. There is a plaque there that will display the scores of the best crushers ever. Martial arts, your meditation level, and strength will be the main factors of how well you do. Determination will also help whenever you get stunned from received too much from trying to crush whatever you are crushing, which you will have 30 seconds to try and do so. To start, simply type 'start with x cm of y' where x is a number between 1 and 10 and y can be one of the following: wood, rosewood, stone, steel, and black granite.