What I am trying to start here is a thread potentially useful to people who are not themselves interested in robbing, rather in devising strategies to minimize the damage or possibly avoid it altogether. It seems though that the game has gone past its prime, judging from the comments in other posts, lack of improvements and the fact that every time I log in, there are between 10 and 20 other people playing. Compare that with thousands found at chess tables at any given time. That said I believe that there is still enough challenge left for novices and TA marauders alike. Myself I am a casual player and do not have characters at very high levels, so hints from my experience so far suggested here should be hopefully amended by others. Anti-rob strategies. a. As ridiculous as it may sound, I actually posted the location of my house here on the forum some time ago and invited robbers to try to rob it. The catch is that I sleep in it. While it is commonly accepted that that has nothing to do with the danger of being robbed, my experience tells me otherwise. I have been sleeping in my house with one character for months and never got robbed, nor the character whose house location is made public (in order to test the hypothesis). Others do get robbed, even of the trivial stuff as one mobilidoxin or two copper ore. So until proven otherwise, I will assume that staying in your house while offline (if nothing else) greatly reduces the risk of being robbed. b. Do not keep any valuables in your house. This is easier said than done, but in reality the first time I really needed the storage space for a longer period is when my 'prime' character wanted to make a fiendsteel ballast at level 27 - it was just not possible to walk with all those 80 njonjoz teeth and whatever around and a long time was needed to collect it all. That is well past the recommended level when you should move out of the newbie house (18), but if I remember correctly, I did not buy a new house much earlier that that. Before, my character was able to carry everything while collecting all the ingredients required for the next level weapons. There were few occasions when it was not possible, however: I remember at some point while on a relatively low level, I needed 10 weighty crocodile skins for something. Upon reaching the carrying capacity limit, I applied a little trick: I listed them on the market at the price one silver higher than the third cheapest (which you can see). That way there was a very small probability that someone might have bought it and I could go on to hunt more crocs. I do not see why this could not be used at higher levels as well. c. Have one 'prime' character that has the highest level, sufficiently rich or with the luck/mana attribute high enough to be able to make all the required offensive and defensive weapons. I keep track of all the items needed to build the upgrades for the next level or two and gradually collect them along while clicking. All other characters should trail one level behind in succession - than obviously one can pass on the no-longer-needed items to the other one level below via the marketplace, and cheap! If those other characters need different types of weapons, make them too with the first character - as there is only one type of each, those can be kept in the house, reducing the load and with no fear of being robbed. The end result is that there is only one character that may end up with lots of stuff required for future, and then paragraph a. applies (for now). d. Location of the house: I am still trying to figure this one out. There are 9 squares in the fighters' district, 4 in magicians' and 14 in the dark. That should have some effect on the frequencies of the robbing attempts, although it is heavily influenced by the (unknown) trends in robbers' activities. The capacity of the thieves' houses is the biggest, but is it not the area which robbers hit the most? On the other hand, there is obviously no need for a house that restores extra mana if your character has none. I will try to think through which house would be the best/safest to buy with regard to the robbing risk and, if this catches on, post it here. Now, I apologize in advance for stating the obvious and re-discovering the wheel. Although I have been playing other FoD games for some years, I am a relative newcomer to Larkinor. In order to gather information, I tried to read as much as possible here and on the larkinorguide (great stuff that - thanks to the authors! - what I wrote here plainly relies on your site - when I find a job, I'll donate), but it is not possible to go through all the thousands of posts. Here is only what I have not read elsewhere. It seems that 80% of time this forum is frequented by 10-20 diehards with obscenely high level characters who might find this stuff trivial, but nevertheless I invite everyone to correct my faulty deductions. Thank you.
Thwarting robbers
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The Larkinor Quest
Thwarting robbers
>80% of time this forum is frequented by 10-20 diehards with obscenely high level characters who might find this stuff trivial over 1750 forum posts, lvl 87 char... i think i apply here. anyway, i would say that very little of this is trivial, especially to those who haven't frequented chat for at least a year and read forums and larkiguide often. and so... i offer a few little things i've noticed, to add to what you've already stated. a. i've also noticed this trend, and regularly leave my char's in my houses when i log off, whenever possible (whenever it doesn't waste too many clicks to go back home... like if i'm on TA, i won't go home just to sleep). however, if you simply log on, to the character who's sleeping, i don't think it'll tell you if you've been robbed. i believe you'll have to log on, leave your house, and go right back in, to see if you have been robbed "overnight". then you can leave him in the house again for the next "night", and repeat. i could be wrong, but i think it's only when you enter your house, not when you log on, that it checks to see if you've been robbed. and i don't know if you've checked that or not, so i figured i'd make sure. b. for fear of stating the obvious, many of us are almost 100% confident that single items are safe in your house, and cannot be robbed. i have personally participated in some tests where we've had robbers flock to a square where a house has all single items, and it never got hit. and we've also flocked a house where there are tons of both multiple and single items, and only multiples got taken (and never took them all, there was always at least one left). so a single weapon or armour is most likely safe from robbers, and can be left at home, if you'd like. c. this strategy does have its benefits... definitely. i would caution you against using it "religiously" though, as it starts to have troubles beyond lvl 35-40, especially if you are not a subscriber. use it to your benefit, but make sure you're able to provide for yourself in other ways as well, if/when needed. d. good thinking. but be warned... >I will try to think through which house would be the best/safest to buy with regard to the robbing risk and, if this catches on, post it here as soon as you post the "safe" place, it is no longer safe, as robbers too read the forum :p about a year ago, when i payed more attention to this, i know that many of the well-known diggers also had mana, so they could build things for people's fighters. so they liked the mage district to heal mana, and also because the best houses there healed curse (which affects luck, which diggers rely on). and diggers often have good gems in their houses (those who would rather store in their house to use later, rather than post on the market). also, mages like the mana-healing chairs, so there used to be a large concentration of diggers and mages, often with good things, in the 4 mage-district squares, and robbers would love to hang out there. i don't know if this still holds, but i would guess it does to some extent. also, the squares in the thief district, near the casinos, are common robber targets, especially for new robbers who have to keep going back to the casino to upgrade their skill. other than that, find a spot that you find rarely gets touched, but don't post it, or you're likely to find yourself being on a target square, not a safe one. appologies for the essay i have posted. i intended to keep it relatively short, but that rarely works for me! :p --jason
Just a little note uggly mainly robbs in the fighter district,but i do venture into the others also Flossy
There is one fool-proof method to keeping a robber-proof house (unless of course it's been changed, which I know was in discussion) Create a new character. Do NOT level up very high at all. Spend months (or years) making money and buying/building houseparts to put in your noob house. Do NOT move out of the novice quarter. Your house will be immune to robbers and you can not get stolen from, on that character. Worked very well for me. At one point I had well over 8k extra houseparts in my house. However, I am odd, and had ALOT of free time. This method is so costly that it only works well for dedicated players. TeT (bored)
I've extensively tested the various common myths about rob-proofing your house. I know beyond any doubt in my mind how it works. Because of this, I can say with perfect confidence that 14 of my 16 houses will NOT get robbed as long as I'm following my own system.
Some are empty, so don't count. Four of my houses contain significant piles of robable goods, don't even have traps, the characters don't bother to "sleep at home", and yet I haven't lost a single item from their houses. Two others have large enough traps that only one of them has been robbed in the past few years. And to get that to happen, I had to post my house contents, announce where I lived, and offer 75 million silvers reward, then wait around for about twelve weeks while the game's top robbers pounded away my traps with their crowbars. Thanks to robber fodder, the goods I valued were left untouched.
With all that said, I happen to have a very high-ranked robber, and there's no way I want all my robber-proofing knowledge to become common knowledge. In the spirit of gathering together all the tips in one place, however, I will post a few of the commonly known ("believed") ones:
1) the fighter district is the safest
2) choose your trap types based on the top active robbers stats (if you keep getting robbed by the same guy, customize)
3) level 600+ traps keep out almost everyone
4) level 800+ would take the best robbers weeks of dedicated clicking to finally get lucky enough to get past all three traps
5) robber fodder: since robbers take random stuff, fill your house with piles and piles and piles of useless junk
6) TeT's method of extra houseparts and a low level character in the newbie district is a great idea
7) another storage idea: a non-sub account with four of the best dark district houses can store over 1000kgs
8) move your house and upgrade all your traps after getting robbed
9) an unchecked theory: a pile of silvers MAY divert the robber's attention away from your other goods... same goes for theives
10) don't store stuff in your house!
Sandy>I can say with perfect confidence that 14 of my 16 houses will NOT get robbed as long as I'm following my own system i believe i know what you're referring to, and i can agree with you, that this is not common knowledge, and will not be shared across the forum. if people want to figure this out, they will have to do it on their own. i have just never had the time to "robber-proof" my houses this way. --jason
And why would you want to? Gentlemen (and Ladies): I submit to you, that it would be great for the game if the houses of the "Senior Citizens" of Larkinor were occasionally robbed! I cannot think of a bigger Larkinor thrill than to find oneself absconding with the posessions of one of the Legends of the Game. Rather than go to the extreme and, may I say, very inconvenient lengths alluded to in this thread, I challenge you to live up to the obligations of Legend give robbers a chance, even if said chance is miniscule. The legacy of the Legends of the Game is, in part, to be determined by the future of the Game. You can enhance that future by making yourselves vulnerable as is necessary for any good relationship. Do the right thing. Your patriotic duty. Let me rob your houses. Subprime Rounder
You said: > I challenge you to live up to the obligations of Legend give robbers a chance, even if said chance is miniscule. I said: > Two others have large enough traps that only one of them has been robbed in the past few years. And to get that to happen, I had to post my house contents, announce where I lived, and offer 75 million silvers reward, then wait around for about twelve weeks while the game's top robbers pounded away my traps with their crowbars. And: > 4) level 800+ would take the best robbers weeks of dedicated clicking to finally get lucky enough to get past all three traps That qualifies as "a chance, even if said chance is miniscule"! Quit your belly achin' and go gain 300 more robbing ranks so you can improve your "minuscule" chances to "tiny"! Sandy
I have been trying to figure out the probability of a house being robbed in each district. The total robable territory consists of 27 squares, out of which 51.9% is in the dark, 33.3% in fighters' and 14.8% in the mages' district. Assuming that 1/3 of all the players pick each district for the location of their house, there are more houses per square in the mages' than in other districts. Precisely, each mages' district square accomodates 8.3% of all the (upgraded) houses in the game, whereas fighters' and dark squares contain 3.7% and 2.4% of the houses respectively. The maths leads to the conclusion that even if robbers hit mages' district squares twice as much, the odds are your house will be picked less frequently, therefore it is the safest place in this regard. It is to be taken with reservations though, since experienced veterans advise the contrary. Of course, all of the above assumes that houses cannot be robbed in the novice district. I wonder if that is so or the robbers just don't go there. In that case, the low level character with houseparts strategy works fine IF you have enough time, patience, money, etc. indeed. As for the mysterious rob-proof strategy, I think I can imagine how to do it. I will not lament about it here then, for the sake of challenge for other players. However, if I am not mistaken, alas the strategy works only for subs..
Of course, all of the above assumes that houses cannot be robbed in the novice district. I wonder if that is so or the robbers just don't go there.
Yes and Yes :) -B