morph
morphing will give you the picture, sex and foodtype of the monster/thane you morph, and the stats/spells in prportion to your own total stats/magic (note if a monster morphs you it will only take your atributes that are better than its own, and will keep the same picture). the main benifit of morphing is to get magic dammage only as a natural (acheivable by morphing balrogs, weights, ghosts or wraiths) and ugly as a natural (acheivable by morphing medusas or basilisks). you can get both by morphing a ghost, then finding a basilisk with the morph spell and letting it morph you so that basilisk has magic dammage only and ugly then morphing that. bear in mind when you morph that if you morph something with 0 portage you will get -1 portage and will not be able to carry hourglasses, teleporting shoes or anything (aside from rings) but will be compleatly immune to ugly and siren song. also that monsters lower down the cave have more spells therefore you will have more spells if you morph then. its best to make your first morph on around lvl 70ish where everything has over 225 magic and you might get the morph spell again. another option is to morph the dragon (my first morph). you will get superhero dammage only (which means you can only be harmed by the stomp spell and monsters with superhero wizard) and be almost compleatly invunerable to anyhting above lvl 60ish. i recomend for the first time you try morph, to morph a weakish balrog wraith or weight.
weapon of choice
the whip is generally considered the best weapon becaurse it has the longest range of a weapon that can be enchanted (14), its 1 handed so you can hold a sheild or long spear, and it only takes up 1 portage.. fighting at a dinstance like this not only keeps you alive and often invunerable but has the added bonus of keeping yoru weapon safer from enemy hits, dosent get thrown and is therefore less likly to break.
the billhook is a little easier to get ahold of (thou trying to kill a billhook/skeleton with a fairy might get a bit frustrating). again it has the benifit of having long (10) range but it has an impale.. this is a lifesaver, if you walk into a room and somethign runs atcha then (provided it isant carrying a pike/heavy lance/whip you get an impale.. if its a sucessful hit then their stoped at 10 range and will not get a chance to attack you that turn. you will get the impale bonus every turn if your fighting a monster that does not aproch fliers thus saving you a little on str (makes chimera dragon heads scaly hide/giant worms skin/gargoyles skin a little less frustrating). sadly its 2 hands and a little more port but you can often reach with a kick and a pull billhook. pikes and heavy lances are similar (with 4 port/13 range and 5 port/12 range respectivly)
bows and crossbows 17 range makes life as a non flying elf quite easy (as oppose to 14 range from thrown items). you need a magic bow (quickbow is not enough?) but not magic arrows to do dammage to balrogs/wraiths ect. light crossbows are 1 handed, the witch will only poison arrows/bolts and not hex/curse/bless. ive never made good use of bows far below lvl 15 but i see no reason why they wouldnt be effective as stoning touch will carry with yoru arrows
as far as shields go.. i am of the belief that small shields are no more help than having a weapon equiped, large sheilds are my favriot but seem prone to breaking. if youve given up speed in favor of mind dammage and ugly then 2 shields is quite a popluar (cheap) set up. shiney shields will reflect uglynes and can kill medusas or portage monsters that have morphed ugly off you or someone else. i still belive that they will go some way to protect you from uglynes aswell and are effective in pking. early on i would prefer to have a javlin or long spear equiped in the off hand for the extra impale attack and chance to stop a monster before it gets into range
the javlin seems to be the most efficent short range weapon and can be purchaced from the blacksmith. if used in combination with a flail you might find yoruself pushing a monster out to 6 range on yoru attack and the monster aproching to 4 or 5 for its attack and taking anohter hit off yoru javlin
invisibility
it is possible to attack a monster whicle remaining invisible, select your attacks and become invisible then click the monster then click the back arrow, reselect become invisible and yoru attacks. the porblem is that if you kill the monster yourr attacking then your spell wont be cast so if there are other monsters in the room you will be open to attack the turn that you kill each of them. also impaling weapons are a problem. i like to get in closer than their implae range and stab dagger/headbut (note also that with enough speed or flying against a monster that has trouble with fliers you canattack them while they try to back off far enough) prime targets for this are the manticors and ogers that you dont dare face with yoru billhooks
hourglasses
verh important in the middle part of the game, you can turn hourglasses and leave them on your portage thane then if you git stomped/killed or make a bad morph you can pick up your old hourglass, let yoruself die and become your old self.
ugliness
ugly is your friend dont be afriad of it. if someone wearing a shiney shield inspects you then theres a good chance you will die (even when yoru sleeping in herots hall) dependent on your magic compared to their magic. some cheap people will use this to assasinate you so if your gonna sleep with ugly make sure to have an hourglass of yoruself on a port thane and if your in an advanced kingdom then hold onto an hourglass you turned in herots without ugly. you can get this wonderfull curse with aprox 25 magic from the witch and its one of the quickest ways to get improvemnts in the game. a charge will be spent automatically each time you attack or get attacked, even by monsters immune to it. it goes verh quickly and if you find yourself having wasted some then it might be worth your time reseting to an eairlyer hourglass, taking the 5 point stat drop to save some points of ugly. stash a couple of hg's of yoru ugly face then hunt for a single wight/medusa/siren/hobgoblin ect with around twice yoru magic.. what to use ugly on and when is somethign you'll learn with experience but you can get away with killing ridiclously big monsters with it. if you have 50 magic and just got ugly then try looking on around lvl 40 to begin with.
mind dammage
similar to ugly, mind dammage is another powerfull spell that lets you kill monsters alot bigger than you, you can first get it at around 65 magic and at this level your gonna have to use yoru charges spareingly. mark yoru target with a magic item or demon and mind dammage it untill its only on a few life then reset to an hourgalss just before you encountered yoru target thus taking a 5 point stat drop but only using 1 or 2 mind dammage to dispatch the beastie. at early and late stages, many headed hydras and chimeras make good targets as exploding the body will kill all the heads aswell. using it will not make you visible but will give monsters that spot you the free hit that casting spells gives. i recon its most time effective to target monsters with around 150% yoru magic unless you have a demon holding yoru hand
basilisks
the most abundant source of amulet pieces in the early game is the basilisk, wander a few thanes around on lvl 14 to spawn them then to kill then you will need aprox 26 speed and 40 magic. you should be flying and carrying 2 shineys with 5 or 6 hourglasses turned. if you die simply pick up one of yoru turned hourglasses and your shineys and throw another fireball. stomping a basilisk to -3 magic is an asured way of killing it but if the baislisk is considerably weaker than you, the corpse will not apeare (similarly if you kill it with elements/allyed trees/tamed monsters). another nice way of killing them is to get negative portage/flying/fireball for a 'sure' kill. the quickest way to get negative portage is to make an elf-fairy, keep your portage 0 and push yoru speed up to 20ish then let yoruself get killed a few times.. the porblem here is that you wont have many fireballs or much speed and may well run out of fireballs before you incinerate that basilisk. you can take the corpse to the wyrd with a demon or any thane with over 30 endurance by teleporting to wyrd or underworld
the cyclops
theres no longer a reason to go up agains the clops with weapons now that its been moved so low in the cave. to find him simply swim the pools untill you get to the room with baltazars wall and dozens of books/magic weapons. someone will probabaly have left a named magic weapon on the same square as the cyclops to make him easier to get to (just teleport to the named item) feel free to move this somewhere else and leave yoru own item thus caursing some hiccups for yoru oppsition. killing the cyclpose is fairly easy so long as you ahve over 300 magic and 100 end. if you have portage then go into the next room and animate 4 or 5 skeletons (staying invisible all the while) and walk back in. they'll eventually kill him. if you have protection from weapons and -1 portage (or no ugly) then you can use mind dammage to kill him. he will morph you at the begining of every turn in addition to itsphysical and magical attack so dont use an improvment or buy a spell from the witch between yoru first hit on him and killing him. you may need to run back to the witch for a bit of healing every now and then but so long as you dont use an improvment your getting the upper hand. when you read the wall you will 9 times out of 10 be teleported somewhere random in the cave (possible to be put as deep as the bottom lvl but usually its above lvl 15) then if you whisper the words on the wall to the queen you'll be rewarded with an amulet piece
who takes what?
giving an amulet piece to the witch will get you improvments (10% the difference between yoru stats and grendels?) giving her a quest item will get you a random book giving her a full amulet will get you alot of imporvments (100% the diference between you and grendel) giving her a grendel/mother/dragon corpse will get you a few rings/gains, anythign else will give you a single spell of requirement less than the value of the item given to her and yoru magic. giving the wyrd an amulet piece witll get your stats swapped round (ie 1200 speed and 30 portage might become 1200 portage and 30 speed) giving him a quest item will get you a human corpse giving him a full amulet will make you a demon. giving the queen a quest item will get you an amulet piece, anythign else will get you a jewel to the aproximate value of the item you gave to her. giving the king amulet pieces/questitems will get you soem magic armour/weapons as if from the bottom lvl of the cave. giving him a full amulet use to give you the viking sailor spell (ie sail without losing items or stats) but now does nothing (?) giving him anythign else will give you rings to the same vale next tiem you sing of deeds. the dragons corspe can be sold for 10k at the barn or smith
demons
to get a demon give a full amulet to the wyrd. demons have portection from fire, teleport, invisibility, detect invisible, resist magic missile and light sick as their naturals but if a demon is stomped then they will lose their abilties permanantly nless they have a eairlyer hourglass. they can read books provided they have over 10 magic and morph in the usuall amnner. they wont be attacked on sight by monsters but the monsters will attack back if atacked. they dont get improvemnts off killing monsters but do get imporvments off killing thanes (but not other demons). becomeing a demon will make you 32000 outlaw but dieing with an unturned hourglass will make you lawful again, visiting the under world will give you 32000 outlaw back. if you click on the wyrd your woulnds are all healed and if you sail as a demon your stats will become that of a basic thane again but you will keep yoru species and naturals they have an attack in the kick punck headbut collum called suck blood and if you hit a thane with it you will get a fireball or an imolate or a breath fire spell. i recomend making your demons orignol species troll/giant so as if you sail with him you will have high endurance for riding out any lamps or torches that are lyeing about and high portage for carrying yoru main guys junk.
the @ sign
in the address bar at the top of yoru page, if yoru above land you will see the @ followed by some numbers, if you change these numbers to 330 you will go to a 'seceret' room in the inn, @1000 is the underworld and every other overland location have its ownnumber ie @100 for herots hall @220 for the barn. usefull for saving a few screen loads on visiting the witch or blacksmith
bk's skankey shiney shield trick
if you inspect an ugly thane (even if sleeping in herots hall) and you have 1 or more shiney shields equiped, 3 things can happen, you can be turned to stone, you can avoid their gaze, or they can be turned to stone. if they die it will be as if they had inspected you (ie they will die, you will not get outlaw status or become red to them, and if in ak you will get gains, their eqipment will spill and they will be taken to their last turned hourglass or the hall/guesthouse). it is not clear weather this is a bug or a feature.
the rope
whats it for? *shrugs* i donno. i use them for marking my path in th cave sometimes. some people would have you belive you can tie things down in the underworld/climb up the pools/make whip from them. i'd like to see you fashion a leash for the dragon so you can take him for walks. strap the witch to the bed and start with the kinky sex games.. if nothing else it provids a constant stimules for speculation
flowers and bugs
you can pick them quickly by 'multi clicking' that is clicking, waiting for the little globe symbol in the bottom left of yoru browser to turn into a pink hourglass then clicking again. (usefull for walking long straight lines down the cave also you'll have to wait a bit longer once the hourglass in the bottom pops up dureing primetime so if you want to stock up on flora its quicker early morning. each folwer/bug will raise yoru magic 1 for the purposes of determining how nice the witch is to you thou i dont use em accept right at the start if i have under 11 magic and make up the difference in flowers so as to get flight or invisibility
stomp
stomp is the only spell that perfect morphs with negative portage can affect each other with (mind dammage too but the natural 'fire' and 'water' ect abilities from elements seem to give a good resistance) whoever stomps the quickest wins so my method for quick stomping is select stomp click the other guy back arrow on the browser select the spell above stomp down arrow on keyboard click t'uver thane again.. thats with i.e 5.1 and seems to submit as fast as my connection can handle. a few rounds of that, check the thane list to see when you stop having an affect then close yoru borwser and wake up again if you wait for the screen to reload to sesubmit yoru stomp you'll get caught up in lag as a thane with half yoru magic brings you promply to -3. you can affect even the 2000 magic super thanes so long as you have atleast 10 magic but you'll bring off 1 at a time and only very occasionally.. still if theres someone asleep outside the hall, their not invunerable to your 10 min old fairy/giant. if someone attacks you keep moving and dont panic. often they will teleport to you, not wait for the page to load and click back thru the history untill the last time you where onscreen and muiltistomp ya.. it might be worth your time teleporting to the underworld to let them burn up but thats probabaly too much hassel. best to go to sleep and wake up every now and then for a surprise stomp untill you can get the upper hand. i prefer to fight with portage as it lets you stash hourglasses more easily and having junk in yoru inventory will lessen the amount 'you feel yourself crack' but if not atleast save your maxed out stats on an hourglass. stomping monsters will not affect the gains you get from it. it seems when monsters spawn they come with a value of sorts thats made up from their stats and spells.. (not changed by the morphing for more spells/stats or gittin' stomped) your stats and spells give you a similar number and at the time you kill the monster its that relationship that determins how well you gain (speculation but seems to fit). stomping a monster will not ugly you thou if you have an impale weapon or get within weapon range and stomp you may still be petrified. stomping has no affect on your distance
elements
using elements and especially skeletons in a bag is a great way to kill anything (especially the cyclops if yoru not wiling to morph to neg port) the lag might be a little hard to handle and you will only get 2 or 3 imps even if they bring down a 20 segment giant worm with 3x your magic but sometimes outlaws like to sleep in a bath of snakes/ants/rats.. and this is the best way to get round that. as for taming them neato fireball throwing gargoyles or the trees that turn your enemey to stone.. their just stealing your improvments and laging you up. fun to play pokemon for a day i guess. you cant bring tames/allied trees from below lvl 15 to the surface or above lvl 15 but they will follow you if you walk thru walls and if you wait long enough they'll catch you up if you teleport. if you summon an element below lvl 15 then your magic determins how big it is. you need lots more magic than the monster you want to tame.. only monsters (and not quest monsters ie basilisks/sirenes/bulls) can be tamed.. you wont get any gains if it subsaquently dies and casting it will give the monster an automatic attack if you fail
servers
there are 4 servers, http://216.226.26.102/, 103, 104 and 105 (or www1.grendelscave.com, www2, www3, www4 as some people like to call them) as indicated by the different colours on the thane ranking list.. their performance varies widley and they have different down times, offset by a few mins. if your freeze up just try anohter. brown is pretty consistant and im quite fond of blue too. make sure your on the quickest server of the moment before you wake up to stomp someone that might stomp back
the best player in the game
who is the best player in the game? getting big quickly nower days is not the mystery it once was. i dont think its a question of skills, more of inovation.. did the fugees cover of killing me softly sound better than bob marleys? perhaps.. does wycliff jean compare to bob marley? dont be ludercruse. and with that thinking there can only be once choice, golden ninja, the first grendel slayer and continually strong with a human/human. never having met him, however, my vote would land squarely on turambars shoulders as the first to be able to take a kingdom in a very short time, and with still, probabaly still with the sharpest skills in the game. wild arms would be another consideration with similar skill and 10 ligitimate kills under his belt. i would caution you against mistaking heavy use of cheats/exploits/hackings/whining/pig russeling as goodness (blood knight and others)(but mostly blood knight)
tribes
alright im scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit here.. so far as tribes go i'd say to stay away from em.. make yer own one day or join up with some friends.. you might come across a tribe that offers you the world seemingly for free.. *shrugs* in many ways this page is as much a spoiler as tribes like that. your call; apreciate the simple things in life *shoots another poison arra at the ogre* the little game is fun