The information contained herein is by no means complete. Nor does it represent the only possible way to build a Healer class character in Drakkar. What it represents is many hundreds of hours of game play and many additional hours of conversations with other Healers in the game. Your experiences will vary depending on your gear, your skill and how often you hunt in a party. It is the intent of the document to offer a roadmap for the beginning Healers only.

Stats are important for any crit in Drakkar. For a healer, you should pay attention to your Wisdom roll. The higher your Wisdom roll, the more EP your crit will start out with and the more you will gain each time you rest.

The simplest way to roll a Healer, is to roll the die until both charisma and luck exceed 16 or higher, then check your other stats to see if the roll is acceptable. Remember, in Nork, charisma controls many factors, including training costs, and Hit Doc.

Stats like con, agility, str, willpower, wisdom and intelligence are all fixable by pots. The higher the Wisdom, the better off you will be when you start out. But it is a fixable stat. Luck and Charisma are much harder to fix.

It should be noted that there are ways to fix charisma, and to boost luck. The Alerian n/n quest and the Majorin Luck pots. However obtaining these pots are nearly impossible for a new player. Its far better to roll the best luck and charisma you can than to hope to fix these two stats by obtaining these pots.

One note I'd like to add to this. Willpower is very important to all classes. While it is fixable with willpower pots, these pots are expensive to buy and can be difficult to find. So if at all possible, roll the highest willpower you can from the start.

Armor is a must for a Healer. The greater the defensive armor the Healer has, the less the Healer gets hit. Its important that you gear your Healer as soon as possible. This isn't to say that a beginning Healer should be outfitted with an uzi and mama scales at level 1, but rather it's important that you get some sort of protective gear for the Healer as quickly as you can.

The newbie Healer entering the nork dungeon for the first time should scavenge whatever he/she can find on the floor. Boots are better than bare feet, plate is better than a wool cloak. A sword, wooden staff or other weapon is better than being barehanded.

If you can obtain help, then try to get yourself outfitted with either Red Dragon scales, or big Yeti, Kitty and a Rak cloak. While it's not possible, as a newbie, for you to obtain this gear for yourself, this gear is considered newbie gear and most people are willing to help a newly created crit outfit with the basic items. (Ask, do not beg) The addition of a blue shield and a longsword/greatsword or a fishery staff will round out your basic complement of gear.

Once you're outfitted with the basics, its time to venture forth. You still have a lot of gear you need to find yourself. Rings, sashes, helms and boots all tie, and you're pretty much on your own when it comes to finding them.

Red Dragon scales are adequate in most cases for a Healer for quite a long time. Unlike the Ment, it can be difficult to tell when you need to upgrade your Red Dragon scales to Mama scales. Where Ments know it's time to upgrade when their own fire/ice spells cause them damage, a Healer only gets one fire spell (Firestorm) in Nork and it will cause the Healer damage with or without Mama scales. The best way to figure out whether you need to upgrade your armor is by watching how often your armor blocks attacks. If it seems as though the crits are getting through your armor more and more, your Red Dragon scales are no longer as affective as they once where, and it may be time to upgrade. Mama scales are tough to get. You need a reasonably sized party of sticks and higher level healers to obtain them.

In the cloak slots you have a wide variety of choices. Your choice of what you wear there should be driven by what you're hunting. For example, a rak cloak is needed if your going to hunt in an area where assault is heavy, ie -5, -6 and -7. On the other hand, hunting M-1 would require an enmiss robe. Hunting lairs have entirely different requirements. For example hunting liches requires all the psi cutting gear you have. A mama hunt requires maximum fire protection.

There is a simple rule of thumb when it comes to rings for your Healer. If the ring provides more protection than what you are currently wearing, switch rings. As a new player, you're not wearing any rings, so you should pick up the ones you find that are combat rings and wear them. As you progress however, you want to be more picky about the rings you wear. For example, since the Healer is not a toe-to-toe fighter, a 3/3 ring is ok, but if you find a 0/4 ring, it would be to your benefit to switch to the 0/4 ring. Remember, think "defense" when considering rings for your Healer. A Healer is not a fighter, the offensive combat adds might be a benefit if you're attacking with a weapon, but if you're using your discs, those offensive adds are being wasted and defensive adds will serve you better. (Note on this: As your crit gets larger, and if you start using your weapon more, think about upgrading your rings to offensive/defensive, rather than strictly defensive.)

There are several varieties of helms available in Nork, but in the case of a Healer, you really want a Hit Point helm. The more HP the helm provides, the better off you will be. But just because the helm only gives you 20 points isn't a reason to sell it! Something is still better than nothing. Its not unusual to find a Healer wearing increasingly higher levels of HP helms as they find them. HP Helms appraise for 8K and can be found as early as nork-2. An easy way of find out if the helm you just found is a HP Helm is to type "Look at helm" in the command line. If it says anywhere in the description that it's glowing, it's either an HP or EP helm and worth trying on once in a safe area!

There aren't a lot of choices here when it concerns sashes. You have the regular sash, the combat sash, the ratburrow sash and the attack sash. The combat sash and ratburrow sashes are identical in look and adds, however the rb sash also comes with crit cure on it, as well as having the ability to allow you to use the ratburrow teleport. The attack sash requires some high level crits to get to, so we won't talk about it here.

Given a choice between them, I'd go for the Ratburrow sash over the combat sash. Strictly because that CC might come in handy someday. Other than that, adds wise, the two sashes are identical.

Here is where the really important pieces of gear for all PSI users start to appear. First off, there is the Muzi (Mini Uzi). This ammy looks like a regular protect lightening or protect enmiss ammy (glowing string of pearls). However the muzi, like its bigger brother, the Uzi, increases your ep regen rate. The muzi increases your ep regen rate by 2 ep per round, the Uzi increases your ep regen rate by 5 ep per round.

The Muzi is the first item you will start to want by the time you've reached skill 5 or so. And its not all that hard to get with help. The first thing you need is a Door Pearl, taken from the ghost on -3.5, and two fishery bows plus a key from M-2. (You get the key on m-2 by trading a flawless black pearl for it). Once you have all of the items, you need to go to Peewee. He's on km-2 and that's the hard part. For that, you will need either someone to dex you to Peewee, or an MT (Mass Teleport) ment that can teleport you there.

The Muzi will see a Healer through for quite a few skill levels. The best way to determin if you need to upgrade to the Muzi? When you spend more time waiting for your EP to regen than you do fighting, start thinking: LICHES!

The Uzi provides an additional 5ep regen per round. Thats enough to support most situations in the game. The hunt for the Uzi is particularily difficult. In order to get to the crit that carries the Uzi you must combat five liches before you can get to Papa Lich. This hunt demands several sticks, a healer and a ment to cast infravision on the party.

The primary weapon of the Healer lies under their helmet. That's right, the brain. Occasionally, we need to resort to more primitive and direct means to get our point across. On those occasions, having a regular weapon skill is handy. The question is, which weapon to skill in? Some people will suggest MA for its superior blocking, but the MA skill is hampered by the armor your wearing. Consequently, a skill 10 in Martial Arts probably doesn't function nearly as well on a Healer wearing red dragon scales as it does on an MA wearing a griffy cloak.

Considering that two of the best Healer weapons in the game are staffs, I would suggest skilling in staff as well as skilling in one other secondary skill, such as long sword. Additionally, I would go further and suggest that once you reach Healer skill 10, you stop briefly working on your Healer skill and rework n-1 through n-3 again until you've brought your staff and longsword skills up to 10 as well. This will save you considerable trouble later and will keep you from looking quite the fool as you tool around Nork-1 killing orcs when you're an 18/15 ment.

In the Nork segment of the game you want a Slith staff. This is NOT easy to come by. A lot of high level Healers do not have one. But if you get lucky, the Slith provides you with a +4 Wisdom bonus. This bonus will add to the strength of your spells.

In the Cob segment of the game you want a Lori staff. The Lori hunt is also a very hard hunt, requiring a fair amount of people. But the staff provides several major advantages. Its a +6 skill bonus and +6 ep regen. Coupled with the Uzi, the Lori provides an additional 11ep per round regen.

That addresses the staff issue, so why was a secondary skill of longsword mentioned? Simple, you will need a decent weapon skill when you get to Cob. Most Healers come to Cob before they are capable of handling the crits with spells alone. The addition of a longsword gives you a fall back position for those times when you run into a crit that is resistant to your spells.

There are several types of gauntlets available in the Nork game segment. The most commonly used gauntlet is the Red Dragon gauntlet. These are suitable gauntlets for a Healer. Vamps, the best gauntlets in the game, would be nice, but unless you intend to seriously build up an MA skill, vamps on a Healer would largely be a waste of good gear.

Drakkar is all about skilling. The higher your skill, the quicker you can kill. The faster you can kill, the faster you can gain skill. However, a new Healer does not get their first attack spell until they reach skill level 3. For this reason, when venturing into the dungeon, you will need a weapon. See Weapons for more details.

Do not fall for the trap of concentrating on your experience level! Skill is what matters in Drakkar. Level is secondary. If you concentrate on skilling your crit, the experience will come naturally.

Sometimes you won't be concerned with skilling, like during that period at level 13 when you're coining for hit doc. Between the cost of training and saving for hit doc, money becomes a very important issue for any class of crit. Ments have it the easiest, since they get transmute at skill level 10. However, a smart Healer can get his/her hands on some transmute twigs (found on KM -4 & -5) by asking friends to grab a few. If you don't have any friends capable of getting twigs for you, asking (NOT begging!) in the Steel Flower can net you a few twigs.

NOTE ON USING TRANSMUTE TWIGS: Pick the piles you pop carefully. Make sure they're large enough to net you a nice bit of coin. The twigs do NOT last forever. If you have trouble obtaining transmute twigs, use the ones you have carefully.

The Healers primary attack disc is Assault.

All classes of crits in Drakkar advance through hunting their crits. Hunting in the dungeons, caverns and surrounding wilderness provides skill, experience, coin and goodies to sell.

In the right combination, hunting in a party will gain you substantially more skill than going solo. Healers are almost always welcome in parties due to their ability to heal/cure their party-mates. Remember that healing and curing your party-mates of various ailments will gain you skill, so don't concentrate only on killing crits. In a party situation, the Healer has a roll to play and responsibilities to the party. Let the sticks slug it out with the crits.

If the party should come upon a zoo of crits, with a few archers, bullywogs or other off hex attackers, a Healers ability to cast Assault at any visible crit will serve the party well. If all in your party are healthy, kill the distance attackers and save the sticks the effort of jumping around.

A party is a cooperative effort between yourself and other players. If you go hunting and your stick won't stay close to the party, or the Healer doesn't heal, the party suffers. Such people that hunt and ignore the needs of their own party-mates are not adequate players for future parties.

* TIP *: When a party member dies in a lair, or zoo situation, it's the healers job to CritCure. However, once you've grabbed your party members' corpse, MOVE YOURSELF TO A SAFE AREA BEFORE CASTING CRITCURE! Casting CritCure will drain a healer of half his/her health points. In the middle of a fight, this can often result in the healer being killed immediately after CritCuring a party mate. If you move off to a safe area, out of view of the crits, you can safely bring your party member back to life, heal him/her and yourself, then move back to your party.

You may not be able to kill crits with a weapon. You may not have the hitpoints that allow you to solo lair crits. But when you boil it all down, a smart, generous Healer is welcome almost everywhere in Drakkar.

Resting a Healer is much the same as resting a fighter or other class (except Ment). Other than increased EP, there is no real difference. Healers gain extra weapon attacks every 8th experience level. So at level 8, you will have 2 attacks per round, at level 16, you'll have 3 attacks per round, etc.

There is another difference between Ments and Healers. A Ment will start off with an attack disc. A Healer must reach skill level three before receiving his/her first attack disc (Assault). To reach skill 3, use Mend (aquired at level 1) on yourself and others.

If you are totally new to the game, and your Healer is your only crit, you have little choice. You need to rest the crit to gain those EP/HP increases. If however, you have another crit financing your Healer, you can allow yourself the time and luxury of building your Healer as maxxed as possible.

When someone in Drakkar speaks of maxxing, they are talking in two possible terms. Max Health points (to 380 for Healers) or Max Energy Points (to 250 in Nork). You should not level past 13 until you have maxxed both your Hit Points AND your Energy Points. While it is possible to make up these Nork maxxes (both HP and EP) once you move on to Cob, I wouldn't suggest it. You will spend even more of your time at the Cob Hit Doc and hunting for grubs to make up this loss than you would normally.

In Nork you max your health points using the Hit Doctor just south of Volcano Town. A Drakkar Healer can use the Hit Doc to max to 380 health points. You cannot use the Hit Doc until you've reached level 13. At the point you reach level 13, if you're like most people, you start coining for Hit Doc. Hit Doc is expensive! Depending on your charisma, you can pay anywhere from 15 million to upwards of 30 or more million coins. If possible, ask a friend to borrow their charisma rings to reduce your costs. +3 charisma adds can reduce your Hit Doc costs by several million coin.

It's strongly recommended that you do not rest once you've hit level 13. By not resting you will be able to bring your Health Points up beyond 380. Use Hit Doc to get to 380, then you're ready to rest. By staying at level 13 and working hit doc, you'll be able to advance several levels, and when you do rest, you'll be gaining Health Points beyond the 380 Health Point limit imposed by Hit Doc.

My personal preference in resting is to put on any rings I might have which impact Wisdom, then drink from the fountain in Rat Burrow for strength boost. Its rumored that strength is tied to the amount of HPs gained per level. And EP is definitely tied to Wisdom (for a Healer), so by combining these two, you cover both bases as far as HP and EP gains go. In order to drink from the Rat Burrow fountain, you will need to be wearing a Rat Burrow sash. Some people will tell you not to rest at all until you've maxxed your EP. This is possible, however if you choose to go this route, expect your character to take a long long time to max your Energy Points. EP pots can be bought at the funhouse for a cost of 500,000 coin. An ep pot can give you between 1 and 5 EP per pot, however the average is slightly below 3 points per pot. Assuming you start out at 30 EP, you would need over 80 EP pots. 40 MILLION COIN. This is a hard road to take, but its worth the effort in the long run. Should you go this road? Thats a choice you'll have to make for yourself. I didn't take this route. But it's an option available to you.

A NOTE ON USING THE RB STRENGTH FOUNTAIN: It's been suggested that the RB strength fountain will cause your crit to age faster. This may or may not be the case. I've rested my Healer using the Strength Fountain, and am still at "Very Young" in age.

Cobrahn, or Cob, poses some additional challenges to a Healer. For one thing, get ready for a lesson in humility. You need to be a minimum of level 18 to get to Cob. If you've followed any of the advice above then you've concentrated on your single crit spells to maximize your skill gain. So you're probably coming over to Cob at skill 15. Personally I don't recommend coming to Cob at a skill less than 15 unless you have friends that are willing to hold your hand and outfit you in Cob gear. While you won't have any new powerful discs at skill 15, your Assault and other discs will be stronger. If you're not so impatient, waiting til skill 16 or 17 would help. However, since most people are lured to Cob by the stories of riches and adventure, I know few people who are willing to wait that long.

Nearly all of the people coming to Cob end up in Tree Town, either by way of restoring or are dex'd from the portal point. Tree Town is safe, but you don't want to go down the climb down until you've performed a couple of tasks first.

You'll want to do the first two of the hit point quests. Replacement and Juntes Ring. Each of these quests will give you an additional 100 hit points in Cob only. You'll need help doing these, but they are fairly easy to do.

Once you've completed these two quests, its time to get yourself to Timmy Town. Timmy Town is akin to Nork in as much as its relatively safe and it provides easy access to the newbie areas in Cob. You'll spend a majority of your early days here in Timmy, exploring the Timmy caves. Mind you, despite it being considered a "newbie" area, this isn't the same as Nork -1. The crits in the Timmy Caves can kill you pretty easily if you're not careful.

The Timmy caves are broken down into several sections. Timmy Caves, Timmy-1, Timmy-2 and Timmy Secret. The main level caves, and Timmy-2 are fairly easy, Timmy Secret and Timmy-1 are not recommended for a solo Healer and should be avoided.

The floor in Timmy is littered with 4 types of twigs. Critcure at level 20, Fireball at 25, Icestorm at 25 and Icestorm at 20. USE THEM!!! Your spells are next to useless in the beginning. With these twigs you can fireball/icestorm the crits down to a point where you can finish them off with Assault.

Of all the crits in Timmy, the ones most troubling aren't the MA's. Surprisingly they are pretty easy to kill off with a combination of Stun and Assualt (use Assault until they're at half health, then stun them to keep them from healing). Mace carrying crits are probably the most troublesome. They sometimes look like the old n-5 Magic casting npc's. Sometimes not. These mace carrying crits are immune to nearly all of your spells. (They can be poisoned tho), and they aren't worth a lot of points. Since they don't seem to hit me all that often, I leave them to last when working on a zoo, and finish off these crits with a weapon.

Looting in Cob is excellent. In the beginning, pick up every gem you find, as they sell very well. The crits in Cob also carry more gold, on average, than a Nork crit. If you have a friendly Ment to party with, take advantage of the Ment's ability to transmute the floor litter to max out your bank account quickly.

WEAPON!!!! Get yourself a weapon, I use a curvy longsword, its a +5 sword found on timmy -1, ties, hits for a ton of damage. I've only got an 7 longsword skill, but having a weapon to fall back on is essential. Remember, you don't want to kill crits with the weapon, use it when eps get low, or when faced with a mace user.

Until you've been geared up by others, avoid heavy zoos. Padded GD Scales, 2 yellows, Graagh rings, Padded IV helm will round out your basic gear. Your definitely going to be using your heal disc often. But once you have the gear above, you'll suddenly find yourself surviving even large zoos with only a few hits instead of every other round. And the really nice thing is that with the exception of the graagh rings, none of the gear I've mentioned is all that special.

For additional information on Cob, I strongly recommend the excellent tutorial put together by Zinktoof, it can be found at this location;

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ctanzio/cobintro.html

�

The information contained herein is by no means complete. Nor does it represent the only possible way to build a Healer class character in Drakkar. What it represents is many hundreds of hours of game play and many additional hours of conversations with other Healers in the game. Your experiences will vary depending on your gear, your skill and how often you hunt in a party. It is the intent of the document to offer a roadmap for the beginning Healers only.

Stats are important for any crit in Drakkar. For a healer, you should pay attention to your Wisdom roll. The higher your Wisdom roll, the more EP your crit will start out with and the more you will gain each time you rest.

The simplest way to roll a Healer, is to roll the die until both charisma and luck exceed 16 or higher, then check your other stats to see if the roll is acceptable. Remember, in Nork, charisma controls many factors, including training costs, and Hit Doc.

Stats like con, agility, str, willpower, wisdom and intelligence are all fixable by pots. The higher the Wisdom, the better off you will be when you start out. But it is a fixable stat. Luck and Charisma are much harder to fix.

It should be noted that there are ways to fix charisma, and to boost luck. The Alerian n/n quest and the Majorin Luck pots. However obtaining these pots are nearly impossible for a new player. Its far better to roll the best luck and charisma you can than to hope to fix these two stats by obtaining these pots.

One note I'd like to add to this. Willpower is very important to all classes. While it is fixable with willpower pots, these pots are expensive to buy and can be difficult to find. So if at all possible, roll the highest willpower you can from the start.

Armor is a must for a Healer. The greater the defensive armor the Healer has, the less the Healer gets hit. Its important that you gear your Healer as soon as possible. This isn't to say that a beginning Healer should be outfitted with an uzi and mama scales at level 1, but rather it's important that you get some sort of protective gear for the Healer as quickly as you can.

The newbie Healer entering the nork dungeon for the first time should scavenge whatever he/she can find on the floor. Boots are better than bare feet, plate is better than a wool cloak. A sword, wooden staff or other weapon is better than being barehanded.

If you can obtain help, then try to get yourself outfitted with either Red Dragon scales, or big Yeti, Kitty and a Rak cloak. While it's not possible, as a newbie, for you to obtain this gear for yourself, this gear is considered newbie gear and most people are willing to help a newly created crit outfit with the basic items. (Ask, do not beg) The addition of a blue shield and a longsword/greatsword or a fishery staff will round out your basic complement of gear.

Once you're outfitted with the basics, its time to venture forth. You still have a lot of gear you need to find yourself. Rings, sashes, helms and boots all tie, and you're pretty much on your own when it comes to finding them.

Red Dragon scales are adequate in most cases for a Healer for quite a long time. Unlike the Ment, it can be difficult to tell when you need to upgrade your Red Dragon scales to Mama scales. Where Ments know it's time to upgrade when their own fire/ice spells cause them damage, a Healer only gets one fire spell (Firestorm) in Nork and it will cause the Healer damage with or without Mama scales. The best way to figure out whether you need to upgrade your armor is by watching how often your armor blocks attacks. If it seems as though the crits are getting through your armor more and more, your Red Dragon scales are no longer as affective as they once where, and it may be time to upgrade. Mama scales are tough to get. You need a reasonably sized party of sticks and higher level healers to obtain them.

In the cloak slots you have a wide variety of choices. Your choice of what you wear there should be driven by what you're hunting. For example, a rak cloak is needed if your going to hunt in an area where assault is heavy, ie -5, -6 and -7. On the other hand, hunting M-1 would require an enmiss robe. Hunting lairs have entirely different requirements. For example hunting liches requires all the psi cutting gear you have. A mama hunt requires maximum fire protection.

There is a simple rule of thumb when it comes to rings for your Healer. If the ring provides more protection than what you are currently wearing, switch rings. As a new player, you're not wearing any rings, so you should pick up the ones you find that are combat rings and wear them. As you progress however, you want to be more picky about the rings you wear. For example, since the Healer is not a toe-to-toe fighter, a 3/3 ring is ok, but if you find a 0/4 ring, it would be to your benefit to switch to the 0/4 ring. Remember, think "defense" when considering rings for your Healer. A Healer is not a fighter, the offensive combat adds might be a benefit if you're attacking with a weapon, but if you're using your discs, those offensive adds are being wasted and defensive adds will serve you better. (Note on this: As your crit gets larger, and if you start using your weapon more, think about upgrading your rings to offensive/defensive, rather than strictly defensive.)

There are several varieties of helms available in Nork, but in the case of a Healer, you really want a Hit Point helm. The more HP the helm provides, the better off you will be. But just because the helm only gives you 20 points isn't a reason to sell it! Something is still better than nothing. Its not unusual to find a Healer wearing increasingly higher levels of HP helms as they find them. HP Helms appraise for 8K and can be found as early as nork-2. An easy way of find out if the helm you just found is a HP Helm is to type "Look at helm" in the command line. If it says anywhere in the description that it's glowing, it's either an HP or EP helm and worth trying on once in a safe area!

There aren't a lot of choices here when it concerns sashes. You have the regular sash, the combat sash, the ratburrow sash and the attack sash. The combat sash and ratburrow sashes are identical in look and adds, however the rb sash also comes with crit cure on it, as well as having the ability to allow you to use the ratburrow teleport. The attack sash requires some high level crits to get to, so we won't talk about it here.

Given a choice between them, I'd go for the Ratburrow sash over the combat sash. Strictly because that CC might come in handy someday. Other than that, adds wise, the two sashes are identical.

Here is where the really important pieces of gear for all PSI users start to appear. First off, there is the Muzi (Mini Uzi). This ammy looks like a regular protect lightening or protect enmiss ammy (glowing string of pearls). However the muzi, like its bigger brother, the Uzi, increases your ep regen rate. The muzi increases your ep regen rate by 2 ep per round, the Uzi increases your ep regen rate by 5 ep per round.

The Muzi is the first item you will start to want by the time you've reached skill 5 or so. And its not all that hard to get with help. The first thing you need is a Door Pearl, taken from the ghost on -3.5, and two fishery bows plus a key from M-2. (You get the key on m-2 by trading a flawless black pearl for it). Once you have all of the items, you need to go to Peewee. He's on km-2 and that's the hard part. For that, you will need either someone to dex you to Peewee, or an MT (Mass Teleport) ment that can teleport you there.

The Muzi will see a Healer through for quite a few skill levels. The best way to determin if you need to upgrade to the Muzi? When you spend more time waiting for your EP to regen than you do fighting, start thinking: LICHES!

The Uzi provides an additional 5ep regen per round. Thats enough to support most situations in the game. The hunt for the Uzi is particularily difficult. In order to get to the crit that carries the Uzi you must combat five liches before you can get to Papa Lich. This hunt demands several sticks, a healer and a ment to cast infravision on the party.

The primary weapon of the Healer lies under their helmet. That's right, the brain. Occasionally, we need to resort to more primitive and direct means to get our point across. On those occasions, having a regular weapon skill is handy. The question is, which weapon to skill in? Some people will suggest MA for its superior blocking, but the MA skill is hampered by the armor your wearing. Consequently, a skill 10 in Martial Arts probably doesn't function nearly as well on a Healer wearing red dragon scales as it does on an MA wearing a griffy cloak.

Considering that two of the best Healer weapons in the game are staffs, I would suggest skilling in staff as well as skilling in one other secondary skill, such as long sword. Additionally, I would go further and suggest that once you reach Healer skill 10, you stop briefly working on your Healer skill and rework n-1 through n-3 again until you've brought your staff and longsword skills up to 10 as well. This will save you considerable trouble later and will keep you from looking quite the fool as you tool around Nork-1 killing orcs when you're an 18/15 ment.

In the Nork segment of the game you want a Slith staff. This is NOT easy to come by. A lot of high level Healers do not have one. But if you get lucky, the Slith provides you with a +4 Wisdom bonus. This bonus will add to the strength of your spells.

In the Cob segment of the game you want a Lori staff. The Lori hunt is also a very hard hunt, requiring a fair amount of people. But the staff provides several major advantages. Its a +6 skill bonus and +6 ep regen. Coupled with the Uzi, the Lori provides an additional 11ep per round regen.

That addresses the staff issue, so why was a secondary skill of longsword mentioned? Simple, you will need a decent weapon skill when you get to Cob. Most Healers come to Cob before they are capable of handling the crits with spells alone. The addition of a longsword gives you a fall back position for those times when you run into a crit that is resistant to your spells.

There are several types of gauntlets available in the Nork game segment. The most commonly used gauntlet is the Red Dragon gauntlet. These are suitable gauntlets for a Healer. Vamps, the best gauntlets in the game, would be nice, but unless you intend to seriously build up an MA skill, vamps on a Healer would largely be a waste of good gear.

Drakkar is all about skilling. The higher your skill, the quicker you can kill. The faster you can kill, the faster you can gain skill. However, a new Healer does not get their first attack spell until they reach skill level 3. For this reason, when venturing into the dungeon, you will need a weapon. See Weapons for more details.

Do not fall for the trap of concentrating on your experience level! Skill is what matters in Drakkar. Level is secondary. If you concentrate on skilling your crit, the experience will come naturally.

Sometimes you won't be concerned with skilling, like during that period at level 13 when you're coining for hit doc. Between the cost of training and saving for hit doc, money becomes a very important issue for any class of crit. Ments have it the easiest, since they get transmute at skill level 10. However, a smart Healer can get his/her hands on some transmute twigs (found on KM -4 & -5) by asking friends to grab a few. If you don't have any friends capable of getting twigs for you, asking (NOT begging!) in the Steel Flower can net you a few twigs.

NOTE ON USING TRANSMUTE TWIGS: Pick the piles you pop carefully. Make sure they're large enough to net you a nice bit of coin. The twigs do NOT last forever. If you have trouble obtaining transmute twigs, use the ones you have carefully.

The Healers primary attack disc is Assault.

All classes of crits in Drakkar advance through hunting their crits. Hunting in the dungeons, caverns and surrounding wilderness provides skill, experience, coin and goodies to sell.

In the right combination, hunting in a party will gain you substantially more skill than going solo. Healers are almost always welcome in parties due to their ability to heal/cure their party-mates. Remember that healing and curing your party-mates of various ailments will gain you skill, so don't concentrate only on killing crits. In a party situation, the Healer has a roll to play and responsibilities to the party. Let the sticks slug it out with the crits.

If the party should come upon a zoo of crits, with a few archers, bullywogs or other off hex attackers, a Healers ability to cast Assault at any visible crit will serve the party well. If all in your party are healthy, kill the distance attackers and save the sticks the effort of jumping around.

A party is a cooperative effort between yourself and other players. If you go hunting and your stick won't stay close to the party, or the Healer doesn't heal, the party suffers. Such people that hunt and ignore the needs of their own party-mates are not adequate players for future parties.

* TIP *: When a party member dies in a lair, or zoo situation, it's the healers job to CritCure. However, once you've grabbed your party members' corpse, MOVE YOURSELF TO A SAFE AREA BEFORE CASTING CRITCURE! Casting CritCure will drain a healer of half his/her health points. In the middle of a fight, this can often result in the healer being killed immediately after CritCuring a party mate. If you move off to a safe area, out of view of the crits, you can safely bring your party member back to life, heal him/her and yourself, then move back to your party.

You may not be able to kill crits with a weapon. You may not have the hitpoints that allow you to solo lair crits. But when you boil it all down, a smart, generous Healer is welcome almost everywhere in Drakkar.

Resting a Healer is much the same as resting a fighter or other class (except Ment). Other than increased EP, there is no real difference. Healers gain extra weapon attacks every 8th experience level. So at level 8, you will have 2 attacks per round, at level 16, you'll have 3 attacks per round, etc.

There is another difference between Ments and Healers. A Ment will start off with an attack disc. A Healer must reach skill level three before receiving his/her first attack disc (Assault). To reach skill 3, use Mend (aquired at level 1) on yourself and others.

If you are totally new to the game, and your Healer is your only crit, you have little choice. You need to rest the crit to gain those EP/HP increases. If however, you have another crit financing your Healer, you can allow yourself the time and luxury of building your Healer as maxxed as possible.

When someone in Drakkar speaks of maxxing, they are talking in two possible terms. Max Health points (to 380 for Healers) or Max Energy Points (to 250 in Nork). You should not level past 13 until you have maxxed both your Hit Points AND your Energy Points. While it is possible to make up these Nork maxxes (both HP and EP) once you move on to Cob, I wouldn't suggest it. You will spend even more of your time at the Cob Hit Doc and hunting for grubs to make up this loss than you would normally.

In Nork you max your health points using the Hit Doctor just south of Volcano Town. A Drakkar Healer can use the Hit Doc to max to 380 health points. You cannot use the Hit Doc until you've reached level 13. At the point you reach level 13, if you're like most people, you start coining for Hit Doc. Hit Doc is expensive! Depending on your charisma, you can pay anywhere from 15 million to upwards of 30 or more million coins. If possible, ask a friend to borrow their charisma rings to reduce your costs. +3 charisma adds can reduce your Hit Doc costs by several million coin.

It's strongly recommended that you do not rest once you've hit level 13. By not resting you will be able to bring your Health Points up beyond 380. Use Hit Doc to get to 380, then you're ready to rest. By staying at level 13 and working hit doc, you'll be able to advance several levels, and when you do rest, you'll be gaining Health Points beyond the 380 Health Point limit imposed by Hit Doc.

My personal preference in resting is to put on any rings I might have which impact Wisdom, then drink from the fountain in Rat Burrow for strength boost. Its rumored that strength is tied to the amount of HPs gained per level. And EP is definitely tied to Wisdom (for a Healer), so by combining these two, you cover both bases as far as HP and EP gains go. In order to drink from the Rat Burrow fountain, you will need to be wearing a Rat Burrow sash. Some people will tell you not to rest at all until you've maxxed your EP. This is possible, however if you choose to go this route, expect your character to take a long long time to max your Energy Points. EP pots can be bought at the funhouse for a cost of 500,000 coin. An ep pot can give you between 1 and 5 EP per pot, however the average is slightly below 3 points per pot. Assuming you start out at 30 EP, you would need over 80 EP pots. 40 MILLION COIN. This is a hard road to take, but its worth the effort in the long run. Should you go this road? Thats a choice you'll have to make for yourself. I didn't take this route. But it's an option available to you.

A NOTE ON USING THE RB STRENGTH FOUNTAIN: It's been suggested that the RB strength fountain will cause your crit to age faster. This may or may not be the case. I've rested my Healer using the Strength Fountain, and am still at "Very Young" in age.

Cobrahn, or Cob, poses some additional challenges to a Healer. For one thing, get ready for a lesson in humility. You need to be a minimum of level 18 to get to Cob. If you've followed any of the advice above then you've concentrated on your single crit spells to maximize your skill gain. So you're probably coming over to Cob at skill 15. Personally I don't recommend coming to Cob at a skill less than 15 unless you have friends that are willing to hold your hand and outfit you in Cob gear. While you won't have any new powerful discs at skill 15, your Assault and other discs will be stronger. If you're not so impatient, waiting til skill 16 or 17 would help. However, since most people are lured to Cob by the stories of riches and adventure, I know few people who are willing to wait that long.

Nearly all of the people coming to Cob end up in Tree Town, either by way of restoring or are dex'd from the portal point. Tree Town is safe, but you don't want to go down the climb down until you've performed a couple of tasks first.

You'll want to do the first two of the hit point quests. Replacement and Juntes Ring. Each of these quests will give you an additional 100 hit points in Cob only. You'll need help doing these, but they are fairly easy to do.

Once you've completed these two quests, its time to get yourself to Timmy Town. Timmy Town is akin to Nork in as much as its relatively safe and it provides easy access to the newbie areas in Cob. You'll spend a majority of your early days here in Timmy, exploring the Timmy caves. Mind you, despite it being considered a "newbie" area, this isn't the same as Nork -1. The crits in the Timmy Caves can kill you pretty easily if you're not careful.

The Timmy caves are broken down into several sections. Timmy Caves, Timmy-1, Timmy-2 and Timmy Secret. The main level caves, and Timmy-2 are fairly easy, Timmy Secret and Timmy-1 are not recommended for a solo Healer and should be avoided.

The floor in Timmy is littered with 4 types of twigs. Critcure at level 20, Fireball at 25, Icestorm at 25 and Icestorm at 20. USE THEM!!! Your spells are next to useless in the beginning. With these twigs you can fireball/icestorm the crits down to a point where you can finish them off with Assault.

Of all the crits in Timmy, the ones most troubling aren't the MA's. Surprisingly they are pretty easy to kill off with a combination of Stun and Assualt (use Assault until they're at half health, then stun them to keep them from healing). Mace carrying crits are probably the most troublesome. They sometimes look like the old n-5 Magic casting npc's. Sometimes not. These mace carrying crits are immune to nearly all of your spells. (They can be poisoned tho), and they aren't worth a lot of points. Since they don't seem to hit me all that often, I leave them to last when working on a zoo, and finish off these crits with a weapon.

Looting in Cob is excellent. In the beginning, pick up every gem you find, as they sell very well. The crits in Cob also carry more gold, on average, than a Nork crit. If you have a friendly Ment to party with, take advantage of the Ment's ability to transmute the floor litter to max out your bank account quickly.

WEAPON!!!! Get yourself a weapon, I use a curvy longsword, its a +5 sword found on timmy -1, ties, hits for a ton of damage. I've only got an 7 longsword skill, but having a weapon to fall back on is essential. Remember, you don't want to kill crits with the weapon, use it when eps get low, or when faced with a mace user.

Until you've been geared up by others, avoid heavy zoos. Padded GD Scales, 2 yellows, Graagh rings, Padded IV helm will round out your basic gear. Your definitely going to be using your heal disc often. But once you have the gear above, you'll suddenly find yourself surviving even large zoos with only a few hits instead of every other round. And the really nice thing is that with the exception of the graagh rings, none of the gear I've mentioned is all that special.

For additional information on Cob, I strongly recommend the excellent tutorial put together by Zinktoof, it can be found at this location;

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ctanzio/cobintro.html

�