The Native Path

Introduction

This page offers guidelines on playing a native in Shartak. It is intended as a serious alternative to the Newcomers Guide (which has serious shortcomings) and focusses on the info needed to get a native off to a good start on Shartak.

General

The areas of primary importance in any native village are the Weapons Hut, the Healer's Hut and the Trader's Hut. These huts are vital for stocking up the player's inventory.

The first two of these huts are often referred to as resource huts as they can be searched for essential resources. Searching in the Weapons Hut will yield blowpipes, poison darts, machetes, knives, daggers and sharpening stones. Searching in the Healer's Hut will yield healing herbs, gourds of water, gold coins, machetes (usually blunt), knives (also usually blunt) and sharpening stones.

The Trader's Hut is not strictly a resource hut. NPC traders maintain a stock of goods that may either be purchased using gold coins or bartered for using other items. The traders may also be persuaded to buy, or barter for, items in the player's inventory.

When starting out a native player should consider carrying 2 or 3 machetes (they can become blunt or break during use), a blowpipe, poison darts, a knife or dagger, a sharpening stone and plenty of healing herbs / gourds of water. Keep a few empty gourds and suchlike, you can refill them either with water or by juicing fruit found in the jungle i.e. mangoes, bananas and berries, in lots of four. You need a knife or dagger for juicing. Remember that anything can be traded in sufficient quantity. Note also that gold coins do not take up any of your inventory space whilst all other items do require inventory space. Gold is best saved for buying consumable resources such as poison darts and healing herbs, use everything else as a trade item.

Skills For All Classes

There is a Golden Triad of skills for all characters on Shartak i.e. Combat, Healing and Movement. By developing this triad as early as possible the character will maximise the rate of XP gain. Early development is very important as XP costs for skills increase progressively. A poor start can result in a character being stuck at lower levels for longer than is strictly necessary.

Combat

Basic Close Quarter Combat, Advanced Close Quarter Combat, Bodybuilding then Balanced Stance represent the skills that are available to all natives and should be purchased in that order. For warriors there are additional skills (see below) that offer a faster rate of XP gain.

If you plan to advance via combat you should get the HTH combat skills as soon as possible. However, until you have Basic Close Quarter Combat and Advanced Close Quarter Combat (and Bodybuilding too if you want to be really picky) using blowpipes vs animals is the most efficient XP per AP method of killing for XP. Only the warrior class should purchase Basic Blowpipe Use. It is a dead-end skill for non-warriors and the XP should be used instead for the HTH skills.

Tip: HTH combat vs animals results in greater damage to the player than ranged combat vs animals. This can be used to the player's advantage i.e. to gain more XP from combat and self-healing.

Healing

Triage and Natural Medicine are exceptionally useful. Triage offers no XP in and of itself, it merely allows identification of wounded players and helps prevent wasteage. Natural Medicine doubles the HP healed by a herb and means that one herb can gain you as much as 10 XP (as opposed to 5 XP without the skill). It also makes herbs go further, meaning less time spent gathering herbs. Together these skills offer an XP income stream that does not rely on hunting or combat.

Tip: Wounded players who have run out of herbs usually head for the nearest Healer's Hut.

Tip: Those who wish to roleplay as healers should seriously consider the Villager class (see 'Other Skills' below).

Movement

Everyone benefits from getting the Exploration and Trekking combination as soon as possible, ideally after the combat and/or healing skills. Exploration enables the player map and Trekking halves the APs required to travel through jungle of density 6 or less. If you are playing as a Scout, then Trailblazing is also rather handy as only density 10 jungle can then slow you down (and moving through dense jungle can help throw off angry pursuers). The primary reason for purchasing the movement skills is to preserve more APs for activities that gain XP i.e. hunting, combat, healing, searching for goods et al.

Tip: Although movement skills don't earn XP in and of themselves, chopping jungle can earn a few XP and trading with a trader from another settlement can earn 100 XP for each 'first' visit (see 'Haggling' below).

Skills For Warriors

Although all classes begin with the same combat abilities, Warriors can gain skill levels very quickly by playing to their combat-related strengths. Hunting animals (or outsiders) is one of the best methods by which a new character can accrue XP. Obtain a blowpipe, machete(s) and a large quantity of poison darts. Whilst darts can be found in the Weapons Hut it is often quicker to get them from the trader if he has stock. It's also worth finding few herbs in the Healer's Hut as the more aggressive animals will fight back and you will gain XP for healing your own wounds as well as for dealing damage and killing your prey.

Tip: Trading a single healing herb can often yield 2 or 3 times the number of poison darts that a gold coin can purchase, so don't forget to grab some herbs when restocking.

In terms of skills, Blowpipe Training and Advanced Blowpipe Training are a good route to levelling quickly as they offer the highest hit rates and the greatest damage (particularly vs animals) but they use up poison darts. Basic Blowpipe Use was recently added to the native skill tree for all natives. This skill is now an essential for Warriors as the base rate-of-fire for a blowpipe was adjusted negatively. With this skill the blowpipe is on more of an equal footing with the outsider rifle and carrying multiple preloaded blowpipes is unnecessary.

Tip: Don't neglect the HTH combat skills! These are the base-level combat skills for everyone.

Other Skills

Once you have maxed the three main groups (Combat, Movement, Healing) the skill choice becomes much more subjective.

Stamina is a good purchase. The extra HP can mean the difference between death and collecting the head of your attacker. It has no direct XP-earning capability but it does mean that you can take (and self-heal) a lot more damage.

Scavenging is a must for Villagers playing either as healers or traders. Searches in the Healer's and Weapons Huts are 50% improved by this skill and the APs spent result in finding a lot more useful (and tradeable) items and a lot less junk. This is a very powerful, subtle skill. It has no direct XP-earning capability but it does allow a community-minded villager to flood the local trader with poison darts and herbs so that others can obtain them easily. As a consequence of the benefits conferred by this skill the Villager class is potentially the best class both for healers and for those who wish to accumulate money by trading.

Haggling is another nice-to-have but should not be taken too early. Traders can be visited repeatedly but XP from trading can only be garnered by continually doing the rounds of the traders at all settlements (not just your own). You have to move from trader to trader (camp to camp) to get the most out of trading transactions.

Outsider Knowledge is useful to everyone. For natives the GPS greatly eases navigation around the island (an irony that the Shartak coder needs to address). It is also handy to be able to use outsider FAKs although they only heal 5 HP as opposed to native herbs healing 10 HP. Rifles and bullets are a waste of time for a native who has mastered either the HTH or blowpipe skill tree.

The four Tracking skills are enormously useful to those defending an area as, at higher levels, they allow you to track specific people if you have them in your contact list.