Channeling for Beginners

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Ganelon
Posts: 1572
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 11:10 pm

Channeling for Beginners

Post by Ganelon »

Promised to post this for a long while, so here it is at last. Hopefully this will allow a general view of how the channeling talents work, and prevent you from needing to search through a dozen help files on the spot. It will also (with some luck) perhaps prevent burning out so easy in new players.

It's not a complete guide to channeling - just designed for the above purposes. A lot of stuff isn't included here. Those things you'll have to learn for yourself through experimenting, asking players, clanning in weaving clans, or asking immortals directly.

The information is accurate as far as I know from playing a load of channelers over the years (admittedly, mostly male channelers). If any errors are spotted, feel free to post on the thread, and I'll go back and correct it.


WILDER EVENT
For those who roll the "Wilder" talent, you will be able to recognize it immediately. You'll be out doing your own thing, when a message will pop up that was unrelated to anything you were doing, or the area around you. This might be something along the lines of:

"You weave flows of water and scrub them around leaving everything in your wake clean."

Or:

"You create a flickering flame."

You've just begun to spontaneously channel.

To get the most out of this, you need to stay locked in combat as much as possible during the Wilder event. This is easier said than done - along with spontaneous channeling comes 'channeling sickness'. This delightful condition will have you reeling alternatively under the effects of Vertigo (stealing your ability to move in the directions you want), Sleep (the magical kind, typing wake will not have any effect), Blinding you, or making you feel Poisoned. The channeling sickness persists until the end of the Wilder event. But its not all doom and gloom...

At this time you will create weaves with no control over what comes out. You'll see the message:

You feel more proficient with (weave name).

If you manifest a high level weave, this will usually simultaneously raise your percentage of skill with all weaves in the same element that are below it in degree of power (or tier). The weaves you manifest over this time will be the weaves you have at the end of the event (though you can learn more from other sources). The event comes to an end when you finally gain the skill of Embrace (for females),
or seize (for males). The exact time the event persists depends on a number of things. Immortals can't give you a time frame, as we can't see it ourselves.

Obviously, if you're a male channeler - you probably don't want to advertise what's going on to other players. Try and keep clear of them while the event is ongoing, and dont mention it on globals. Gossip is OOC - but it can be hard to forget at times what you already know. If you're vastly confused to what's going on, use pray to get an immortal's attention. Female wilders will automatically attract the attention of the Tower if they know you can channel (IC'ly).

You can log off during the wilder event - it won't affect it in any way. It will resume next you log in.

LEARNER CHANNELERS
This talent is much more subtle. In essence - you have no idea you can channel, but it is possible to teach you to do so. Both males and females can roll this talent, same as with becoming Wilders.

There are a few ways you can determine if you have this ability:

1) For female channelers, you can go to Merean Sedai (the Mistress of Novices in the White Tower) and say learn. If Showtime (the amount of time you have to play before a talent - if any - manifests) has expired, she will inform you that there is either:

a) No chance of you being able to learn to channel.

or

b) You will be clanned on the spot, bundled into whites, and set to a life of washing dishes, cleaning fireplaces and other novice chores.

2) Another channeler can appraise you and discover if you have the talent. Obviously, only males can appraise males, and females appraise other females.
Not 100% sure if all parties involved here have to be seized/embraced or not. If so, someone let me know - kind of runs contradictory to the books and will need some changing. Seemed most Sedai could at the least guess at a female's liklihood of being able to channel.

3) You can go to the city of Illian and try and seek out Adale, or stumble across other wandering pracs and see if they'll teach you seize (this option for male channelers only).

In all the above cases for learners, you need to have a sufficient percentage of either embrace or seize before prac mobs will teach you any weaves (45 or 46% from memory).
"How the fades must gnash their teeth......."

Demandred of the Forsaken.
Ganelon
Posts: 1572
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 11:10 pm

Re: Channeling for Beginners

Post by Ganelon »

There are a number of skills that can be used with weaves themselves. Such skills as meditate, tie, etc. To begin with, you need only concern yourself with the basic meditate and embrace/seize.

Meditate allows for easier holding of the source through embrace/seize, so it's a good idea to raise it first - but not totally required. You can weave without meditating. If you're new to all this, I'd recommend maxing out both these skills before actually starting on weaves.

To form a weave requires the following syntax: weave 'weavename', or weave 'weavename' target (yes, the italics are needed) where required.
Most weaves will inform you of incorrect syntax and prompt you towards the correct version if you don't do it right.
Before doing so, remember to embrace or seize, and for goodness sake - release when done. Some weaves drain power over time. Dont weave a bunch of stuff, hold it, then go walk the dog. You'll come back to find yourself burned out.

There are a number of speeds you can channel at, such as quickly, normal, thoroughly, etc.
As beginners, you want to stick with thoroughly. It's the slowest, and chews through the most power, but it is also the safest. Less chance of the weave misfiring and hitting you, or weaving something totally unintended. The last can possibly kill you if you take enough damage, or burn you out if you dont have enough power.

So how do you determine if you have enough power to weave safely? There are several states of channeling energy.
Refreshed means you're at your current max (not your total max, this will raise over time up to a certain point based on your total cap from your elements - current element levels can be seen by typing score). Several other levels exist, but the important thing to remember at the beginning is: DON'T CHANNEL PAST TIRED. There are levels lower than this, but for beginners, this is where you're starting to reach the danger point.

I highly recommend you look at the help prompt file. It shows a number of ways you can construct vastly superior prompts to the standard one, or the one in the TIPS messages. You can cover everything you could possibly need, including if you're holding saidin/saidar and amount of channeling energy amongst other things. You can use color as well to make these particular parts of the prompt stand out so you don't miss them.
"How the fades must gnash their teeth......."

Demandred of the Forsaken.
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