Guild Combinations
This guide is fairly incomplete, it is being posted to start generating feedback for a finished version both here and on my website. Eventually this guide intends to be a moderately detailed overview of the many guild combinations in BatMUD. It aims to describe what they are useful for, and advise on how to make them work. Since this advice applies to players experienced enough to be thinking about taking two guilds, the guide assumes that the reader is familiar with BatMUD's nomenclature and colloquialisms.
Navigators and Secret Societies
This guide aims to describe combinations of 'major' guilds. Although both navigators and secret societies are oftentimes very useful, it is assumed that their bonuses, i.e. transportation and stats, are so straightforward that there isn't much use in addressing them specifically in this guide.
Nomad Combos
Ranger/Barbarian
A flexible combination which gets about the highest damage a nomad could hope for, rapid recovery, and fairly good defensive ability. An outstanding combination for those getting dragged on experience parties or soloing, however those wishing to lead parties should take some flavor of maxed Crimson instead.
Ranger/Crimson
A strong choice for an experience party leader or soloer. Bladed fury and 100% long blades give some nice damage potential. Hiking, camping, and pathfinding let you get to distant areas and recover fast, perhaps you might even get to take your party somewhere besides Foul's creche and Amazons! Crimson will in the mean time give you the defensive and leadership skills to keep you and your party alive. Enhanced peer may help when doing equipment, but the lack of pain threshold will be a nasty drawback. Consider buying pain threshold potions from alchemists.
Crimson/Barbarian
A wall of steel that hits back. Combining 100% defensive skills and the potential to use pain threshold makes you one of the hardest to kill tanks around. You can get any weapon skill at all to 100%, giving you the pick of the litter when it comes to equipment. Probably wouldn't make the best soloer in the game due to the lack of hiking or regen skills, but still a party member of great potential.
Squire/Beastmaster
A hardy wanderer who isn't much good in parties. Your soloing potential is acceptable, and your cashmaking ability is quite strong.
Squire/Cavalier
Don't bother. Mounts simply don't work well right now, and this setup doesn't even get access to good ones.
Squire/Beastmaster/Cavalier
Similar to the squire/beastmaster, but actually gets some use out of it's cavalier skills for added power.
Ranger/Squire/Beastmaster/(Cavalier)
A tireless wanderer, you probably have the best soloing potential of all nomads. I can't reccomend this, at level 80/95 you hopefully have better things to do with your time than solo, and when off a mount you're not much more than a hyperinflated ranger.
Crimson/Squire/Beastmaster/(cavalier)
You don't really need the crimson's defensive ability, since your mount sucks plenty of damage for you against the stuff you can solo, and this isn't a good party guild. Not a great guild combination, especially given the level requirement to make it work. On the other hand, your lack of concern with burden and extra defensive ability could let you wield some utterly massive weapons without fear of dodge loss. Anipium lances anyone?
Barbarian/Squire/Beastmaster/(cavalier)
Not great, you do get to save eps by riding, but you lack the regen for that difference to matter much anyway, and again, this doesn't bring much to parties, especially given you could take a real guild instead of squire/beastmater.
Magical Combos
The majority of magical backgrounders find it best to take a blasting guild and conjurers for protection spells, however there are those who find it worth their while to take two blasting guilds and a secret society to crank their intelligence into the stratosphere for maximum damage potential.
Conjurer/Psionicist
Some of my friends love psiconju, and I really wouldn't know why: this is an awful combination of guilds. Being restricted to a single damage type is bad when doing exp, and is devastating when fighting eq monsters. Worse, your blasts cost more sps for the damage they do than any other magical blaster guild compared. If I recall correctly, you will have somewhat more wisdom than the other combinations, so you might make a good protter. The special class abilities psis get might once have been a redeeming feature for this setup, but are now almost all replaced by alchemist potions.
Conjurer/Mage
Pretty much the gold standard for equipment making, and potentially very good for experience parties too. You need roughly 200M totals and good equipment to make this combination work at all, and over 300M to make it work at all well. This isn't the most flexible setup in the game but it is one which is always in demand.
Conjurer/Channeller
A midbie's alternative to conjurer/mage. You get relatively good ratio of damage per spell point, but do far less damage per blast, which makes you not all that useful for eq parties. This is a decent setup for midbies who want to play with magic, however conjumage is superior in nearly every way for those that can afford it.
Mage/Psionicist
Eight damage types! It's a real pity no one needs more than three or four. The problem with this setup is that you get a high spell point tick and nothing to do with it. Being able to focus entirely on intelligence means you'll have huge blasts, but not to the extent that the loss of conjurer will be worth your while.
Mage/Channeller
Channeller shares damage types with mage, so this can be a little redundant, however you might take channeller for fire/elec/mana and train the other types in mage. As with mage/psionicist, you will tend to find yourself with lots of spell points and not much to do with them.
Channeller/Psionicist
The only flavor of psionicist that doesn't leave a bad taste in my mouth. Giving up conjurer is a tough choice, but you are a solid blaster for experience parties who can stun, do nice damage, and fall back on channeller damage types when the monsters resist psionic magic.
Good Religious Combos
The majority of good religious backgrounders (about 95%) take some amount of levels in tarmalen, since the healing spells are just too tempting to pass up.
Tarmalen/Druid
The stereotypical backrow healer. If you have good wither flesh and hps you can even solo small monsters if you want to, though usually not well enough to actually make much exp or much cash compared to other guilds. Compared to Tarmalen/Nun, you have much lower stats and weaker spells, but are also much more flexible, with the ability to play undead races, toss useful utility spells, and party safely with evil characters.
Tarmalen/Nun
This guild combination has some annoying drawbacks, takes a lot of questing, and uses five more levels than tarmalen/druid, but has significantly superior stats and has powerful abilities against undead and evil beings. You can't be undead, which is annoying and prohibits you from some of the best caster races in the game. You are also going to be a pain in the ass for evil party members to have to live with.
Druid/Nun
On paper, this might look like a great combination of guilds. Druid/nuns get very high stats, flex shield, protection from evil, lots of utility spells, nun blasts, and wither flesh. Sadly, you pretty much can't do anything besides magic damage, and as such aren't much use against anything that resists it.
Tarmalen/Monk
A tank with powerful healing abilities but a low hit point maximum. Life link and unpain can help compensate, but you'd better have a good eq set. This is good solo combination, but you are almost required to have boons if you want to party, and your big concern with this guild combination is stats, since you need every stat but int to be as high as possible. Your damage potential is very low compared to someone using weapons.
Tarmalen/Templar
Generally superior to Tarmalen/Monk, particularly against evil monsters. Templars are particularly popular in 2-3 member experience parties. Boons required if you want to party, and as with Tarmalen/Monk you have to get your stats as high as you can crank them. With only 90% discipline you need +discipline eq to be able to cast spells at all well in equipment-making combat.
Monk/Druid
In theory, probably the fifth best guild combination for soloing, especially if you also pick up navs and boost your healing ability with tarmalens on top of that. Conversely, less good than Monk/Tarm for partyign due to the lack of healing and life link. This combo requires vastly more experience than Monk Tarmalen (250M, and that's with a good hybrid race), but offers some big benefits to soloing. Flex shield is expensive, but provides tremendous resistance to death by critical, which is the bane of all soloers. Wither flesh is a strong spell for use against midsized monsters, regeneration speeds up your recovery, and drain pool will make up for the high costs of your spells. You'll lack unstun and super fast healing, but monk does get stunned maneuvers to 90 or 100%, depending on gender. Fundamentally, you can safely fight vastly bigger monsters than a monktarm, but barring a spectacularly high wisdom (300 or higher) will be slowed down a lot by having to restore hit points with runic heal.
Templar/Druid
Similar to the Monk/Druid, but hits harder and defends less well against nonevil monsters.
Monk/Nun
This guild combination is specifically not possible. I think that is stupid and asinine, but will leave my extensive feelings on the subject out of this guide for the sake of brevity.
Tempalar/Monk
Sort of an oddball combination without much healing ability. Aside from the low hpmax, it rivals the defensive ability of Crimsons, since it gets protection spells, 80% Combat sense and Dodge, 100% Contact Reflexes, Unarmed parry, Discipline, and Stunned maneuvers. I don't see much call for this combo compared to something with maxed Tarmalen, but it might be an interesting setup to try.
Templar/Nun
Both templars and nuns are dedicated to figting the undead and evil beings, so it might seem that the two guilds would go well together, however they simply aren't very compatable. Holding a relic means sacrificing a weapon, and some of the protective abilities are incompatible.
Evil Religious Combos
The big question all evil religious characters need to ask themselves is wether or not they want to take spider levels, and how many if they do. For the purposes of this guide, all combinations involving spiders assume maximum level spiders.
Loc/Spider
Max spider fixes a lot of what makes lords of chaos suck so much. Aside from the ability to call spider demons, you get hunger of the spider for eps, remove poison, and 60% cast heal, which combines very nicely with a few priests levels for respectable selfhealing ability. If you want to play a barsoomian loc, this also lets you combine spider 100% negate offhand penalty with 100% long blades. You can think of flame blade, venom blade, spider wrath, vampiric blow, blade material, and your blade quest as giving you more damagetypes than any other tank can hope for. With a good blade and demon you hit extremely hard, even compared to barbarians, but suffer compared to reavers when it comes to blasting, selfhealing, and hit points.
Loc/Priest
A few priests levels help bolster a loc's nonexistent recovery abilities. A lot of priests levels combines nice blasting and defensive abilites. This is a legacy combination which has been replaced by reaver/priests, who have significantly better defensive abilities and more discipline.
Loc/Tiger
Before the personal experience tune, one level in loc and the rest in tiger was THE way for people to bolster up their loc blades, something which speaks volumes on how worthless single guild locs are. The full version of this combination lets you pull a few interesting tricks with tiger claw and wielding your blade, but really isn't worth the trouble.
Loc/Reaver
Much nicer weapon abilities than a straight reaver, and with spider levels can hit harder than most anything else out there. You lack quick chant, so your blasts and selfhealing will suffer somewhat. Combining your loc blade with a summoned reaver weapon in some ways makes this a powerful "no equipment" setup, if that's what you're after.
Reaver/Spider
Expwise this is a good and relativel inexpensive setup to get into. Glory of destruction and a spider demon will give you a higher steady hpmax than any non-nomad. You've got a good selection of utility abilities, self healing, offensive skills, and blasts. It isn't hard for a good reaver/spider to outperform most nomad tanks, though it takes a while to reincarnate into reavers.
Spider/Priest
A solid backrow blaster with great hit points for surviving blasts. Your spider demon beefs you up to the point you get a much bigger race selection than most casters who want to do eq. Though not truly focused on tanking, you do have enough melee skills to survive hand to hand combat if you have to. With the right race (ent) and the right equipment, you can do well as a tank against most experience monsters too. Don't neglect to study spider touch.
Tiger/Spider
A popular combination, very good for soloing and partying. In parties you'll be called on for tiger claws more than anything else, so get a great spr set and high dex. Maxing spiders gives you access to the navigator guild, nearly a requirement for any tiger that wants to engage in pkilling.
Tiger/Priest
An expensive combination, but a powerful and flexible one. You can participate fairly well in eq parties, and can solo better than almost anyone. Access to high quick chant, base spell point regeneration, and cast skills give you far better tiger claws than can be had from any other setup, which in addition to harms will make you quite popular in parties. It is said that mastery of pain does NOT help tiger claw in any way besides damage, but I can't confirm this. Remember that you need as much +discipline equipment as you can get your paws on to be able to cast while in combat. Don't forget that you need both aneurysm and harm body at high percentages for exp blasting.
Reaver/Priest
Similar to tiger/priest, with better self healing, better hit points and the ability to use weapons. The biggest downside to this compared to tigers is that you don't get tiger claw. Your discipline is a pathetic 50%, meaning you'll have a hard time getting blasts off in combat. Ent is pretty much THE race for this combination, though a smaller race with some uberaxes and enough boons can do well too. Tack on 15 spider levels and some boons and you're near the pinnacle of versatility.
Civilized Combos
Civilized has a lot of guilds to it, but many of the combinations so obviously don't benefit each other enough to bother mentioning them.
Merchant/Bard
A merchant who starts taking bard levels is probably the best way to get started in the bard guild, since merchants can use their ample idle time to KBH and work on bard quests. By far the most useful songspell to a merchant bard is venturer's way, to the extent that most players would state that it is stupid for a merchant to not have it maxed out. Bard levels may also get you into the occasional equipment party, which is a rare bonus for merchants, but this is less likely to happen now days, due to the rising hordes of sabrebards.
Shadow Sabre/Bard
The only things keeping Sabrebards from being as common as dirt is that they take so much effort to make work. Aside from needing to endure the hardship of reaching level 30 bard, sabrebards are very eq and boon dependent. This setup needs at least 2 full boons (dex and con) to work, but given that and a good eq set there's little a decent sabrebard can't accomplish. A really good (i.e. heavily booned) sabrebard is perhaps THE most in-demand eq member in the game, since they can tank, blast, buff, solo, party, def, off, and appear to have kitchen sinks sticking out of their asses.
Civmage/Shadow Sabre
This isn't tremendously poweful for higher level players, on the other hand, I'm of the firm opinion that a new player who puts 11 levels into civmage and the rest into shadow sabre will find themselves in a very good sitiuation. This setup combines good combat ability and important utility spells like invisibility and floating disk. Players with the experience to max out both guilds will probably be more interested in Sabre/Bard.
Squire/Cavalier/Civfighter
A 70 level civtank that can be expanded with max bards. Cavalier isn't great on it's own, but with civ fighter gets access to 100 parry and combat sense. A horse may also mean you can survive without navigator levels. You'll never have nomad hit points, but you can buy pain threshold potions and be eerily close to a crimsobarb. When compared to sabre/bard, is the loss of 10 dodge and 25 levels worth the extra 15% parry. 20% stunned maneuvers, and 30% combat sense? Probably not, given the levels could go either into max civmage or Nav+SS for transit spells, 40 con, and the skill/spellmax to play a better tank race.
Squire/Cavalier/Civfighter/Bard
It takes 100 levels, but it is the most versatle alternative to sabre/bard there is. Depending on your weapons and sabre rep, this may also off much better than sabre/bard.
Squire/Knight/Cavalier
Ah the honey sweet temptation. You're a level 60 character who can rival a level 85 crimsobarb in defensive and leadership ability. Chug pain threshold potions and you are arguably better. You get 60 dodge, 100 parry, 100 stunned maneuvers and 100 combat sense. You can parry lightning bolts, remain concious deeply into the negative hps when leading, fight better the longer you stay in, and have effectively infinite inventory space for loot. On top of this, you can take maximum bard levels and still have 10 more levels to play with before 100. There's just the small problem of being a gimpy little cuss who can't go to a bucketload of very good experience areas without your guild getting pissy at you. Half the reason people hate knights so much is because they're so disgustingly tempting...
Merchant/Alchemist/(bard)
Moneymaker extraordinaire, remember that you require bard and navigator levels to function fully. Between merchant quests, ship quests, and potion research, you have your work cut out for you. If you can endure the long road to become a Master Merchant and Mixmaster, you may well wind up with coffers filled with more money than many characters have in total experience. Be warned that this guild combination requires extensive and detailed knowledge of the game and it's history. Batmud is more than fifteen years old, and many seemingly pointless items have deeply hidden bonuses you MUST know about to truly excel. NO OTHER SETUP is as influenced by batmud's hidden minutiae as merchant/alchs.