Carnage Blender is an amusing little online RPG. It is best described by its catchphrases;
"Meet interesting people. Kill them."
"81,769 battles served in the last 24 hours!"
The general idea is that you're a warlord kind of person who hires up to 4 minions and goes about killing people with them. The entire game is
text based, with the only graphical content being the logo. It is located at
www.carnageblender.com.
When your minions successfully kill another party, you are awarded some money and your minions get experience. Losing also gets you some of each, but maybe 1/20th of what you should have gotten. You can then use this money to buy
weapons and armor for your minions, or upgrade the equipment you already own. The experience can be spent training any of your minion's stats. You can also have your minions learn spells, one each of
Direct Damage,
Enchant Offense, and
Enchant Defense. There are also combat skills,
Unarmed Combat,
Archery,
Evasion, and
Bloodlust. Don't worry too much about spending EXP; You can undo everytyhing that you do, by unlearning spells, skills, or even stats.
There are actually quite a few things to explain about Carnage Blender (which I'm going to refer to as CB from now on). I suppose the best way to show anyone is to go through the playing process step by step. You start out registering an account, and then creating a character. This is a simple process, you need only give the character a name. You'll start out with
100 dollars, which you then can use to hire a minion. Once you've done that, you go into the weapon store, and buy your minion a weapon.
Now, weapons have a few stats to figure out on them. They are all characterized by the following format; AxB (+C). A is the weapon's base
attack power. This will never change. The lowest attack is 4, and the highest is 300, but the weapon with 300 can't be bought from a store, and can't be upgraded. The B is the
damage modifier. How the damage is actually calculated, I have no idea, but a general idea of a weapon's attack (for comparison only) is just to take A times B. B changes by either having the blacksmith raise it for cash, or by forging your weapon. C is the
to-hit modifier. Basically, each point will raise your chance to hit by 1%! This means that if a weapon hits +100, it will hit every time. Well, maybe, but I'll go into that later. Anwyays, your first weapon will end up being a Dagger, Main Gauche, Whip, or Rapier.
Now,
combat is divided into 3 phases. There's the enchantment phase, where all enchantments are cast, the ranged phase, where you shoot your bows, slings, or crossbows, and the
melee phase, where you stick pointy things into fleshy things. The ranged phase only lasts for 3 rounds, and then melee will take up to 17. If you haven't killed your opponent by then, the battle will be declared a
stalemate and you'll get nothing. However, you can fight your opponent again, and any damage they've taken will still be there. Every opponent is automatically healed every 90 seconds, so technically you can keep fighting the same people over and over again, if you so desire.
Now, you equip your minion with the weapon, and you're ready to kill people. You'll have 160 BA, or
Battle Allocation, to use. Your BA will be restored by 10 every 5 minutes, which means that by the time you use 160 BA, you'll probably have more to fight with. There's a list of opponents, so you just pick one and click fight. Fighting is all done automatically, so you just see the results. You can choose to not see the
block of text showing the details of the fight, if you so desire. Once you've killed a few people, you're ready to train.
Now would be a good time to mention the Bot Checks. I believe the game tells you about them on your first view of one, but regardless, I'm explaining them. You see, CB takes a few measures to prevent people using bots to do all of their fights for them! So, every once in a while when you're fighting (and every time you visit a store) you'll be forced to answer a botcheck. It's just a picture of two words, one on top of the other. You have to type what the top word is. The catch is that the words are in a loopy cursive type of font, and they can be hard to read at first. You get two tries, then you'll be banned from fighting or visiting the store for 60 minutes and 10 minutes, respectively. If that happens, it's not the end of the worlds, because it happens to everyone at first. Eventually, answering the checks becomes second nature.
Anyways, training. There's a train link, so you click it. Then you choose how to allocate your minion's
exp to its stats. There's no way to put in a set number, just fractions of the whole, and a choice for one exp. If your minion has at least 91 exp, it can also learn a spell or skill. Now, in the beginning, if you're going to use spells, hire a second minion and make it learn them. Before you decide anything, a rundown of the stats; HP is
health, pretty self-explanatory for anyone who's played an RPG. ST is
strength, which causes your minion to deal more damage with
physical attacks and take less damage from them. DX is
dexterity, which allows you to hit more often and be hit less often. HP can be unlearned for 85% of the exp you put into it, and ST and DX can both be unlearned for 88%. Then, of course, there are spells.
Direct damage spells do just that; beat people in the face for damage. There are four; Fireball,
Magic Missile, Cone of Cold, and Decay. Fireball is the first you should get. It'll cast in all three ranged rounds, and hits the entire opposing team, but is the weakest of the DD spells.
Magic Missile casts on the last round of ranged combat, and hits only one person, but causes mass amounts of pain. Cone of Cold is like Fireball, but more powerful, and only casts in the last round of ranged. Decay halves one opponent's HP, but only casts in melee combat. Each spell has its
weaknessess and strengths, so there's not really any spell that's the best or the worst.
Enchant Defense spells do something to raise your stats or give you some sort of extra defense. Giant Strength, Haste, and Ablative Shield all boost your ST, DX, and HP, respectively. They cast on all people in your team, and are cost-effective if all of your minions use it, and you have 3 or more. Protection raises your AC, and casts on everyone.
Vampiric Aura gives your physical attacks a life leech sort of effect, and
Guardian Angel returns damage dealt to you onto whoever dealt the damage.
Then there's
Enchant Offense. Ethereal Chains lowers all opponent's ST and DX. Antimagic Field gives enemy mages a chance that their direct damage attacks will blow up and hit them instead. Cause Fear gives enemy melee attackers a chance to not attack for one turn. AMF and CF both work better if their level is in the same range as the spell level or strength of their targets.
There are also skills for you to use. These were just released a day or two ago, so nobody really knows how well they work yet, but...
Unarmed Combat lets your minion attack without a weapon in combat.
Archery gives your minion a chance to get extra hits during ranged combat, but only if they're using a bow (not a crossbow, mind).
Evasion lowers the + on weapon attacks coming towards your minion. So, even a +100 weapon would still have a chance to miss on a minion with evasion! Lastly, there's
Bloodlust.
Bloodlust causes your minion to take more damage, but deal more at the same time. The extra damage only counts for
physical attacks, however.
So, train however you like. I'll just make a suggestion, though; most people agree it's a good thing to keep only one minion as long as you can. Eventually, buying more is good, but a
solo tank can work pretty well for a long time. Once you're done, you should go back to fighting.
Eventually, you're going to want a better weapon. I personally think that for the most part, you should just go for damage in the beginning. So, get a weapon with high base and lots of x for the best results in melee. It's also an excellent idea to get a ranged weapon. Once again, just get a
sling with the highest x you can afford. Then, you'll have to get ammo for it, in the form of Iron Shots or Rounded Pebbles. Later on, purchasing a bow of some sort is a good idea. I'd say that if at all possible, get a crossbow, preferrably heavy, from someone. You can ask in chat of check auctions, both work.
Crossbows take Bolts, and normal Bows take arrows.
Enough about weapons, though. Armor can also be useful! However, it's completely unneccary in the beginning. Just use your money on weapons for a while. Eventually, you'll want armor, so I'll go ahead and talk about it. Armor comes in the form
A (+B). A is the base, just like weapons. B is the modifier, it just adds more AC. Also, only the B number will reduce damage from magic. Armor comes in 6 forms, Head, Shield, Body, Hand, Foot, and Cloak. There are around 5-10 different kinds of each, and about 10-20 for body armor. Now, a word of warning; most armor will give you spell and dexterity penalties. For this reason, you should only give your mages light armor. There are also pieces of armor that will raise your spell levels, dexterity, and strength, but these are all rare and very costly. A complete list of armor and its penalties can be found in the FAQs. I would say give your mages a Cloak, Leather Boots, Hard Leather Cap,
Hard Leather Armor, and Leather Gloves to start out with. Give your tank a
Steel Brigadine, a Cloak, a Hard Leather Cap (stay away from Heaumes. Far, far away.), Steel Shod Boots, Cesti, and a Buckler. These will all give minor penalties, but not enough to make a huge difference.
If you prefer to get more powerful equipment, you can always try rentals. You can rent pretty much everything, but the cost tends to be high on the higher level items. For the most part, having the powerful items temporarily won't make up for the cost to rent them, but
whatever floats your boat, really.
I think it's time to talk about
tournament characters. Every week, starting at 12 AM Monday, a tournament will start. There are rules posted in the
Discussion Forums, in the Contests forum, and their rules tend to vary between each. Normally, though, they follow the same victory guideline: Have the
highest score at the end. The prizes are usually worth playing for, and your character gets double exp and money, so it can be a good source of revenue for your character. However, it's very important to transfer all of your stuff from the tourney character (using the Other Assignment Options link) before the end of the tournament, because the character will be retired immediately at the end.
Now, after playing a while, you may be wondering "why can't I find anything good in the store?". The answer is simple; all of the good items that spawn in the store will be almost immediately bought by people who camp the stores, and sold for
lots of money. This is a good way to make money, but it's boring and you might not get an item if you see it. If you're looking for something, you have 3 options; You can ask in chat, make a post, or check the auctions. Keep in mind that all the higher end items will go for a lot of money, so choose carefully what you're going to get.
Now, there's two more things to discuss; the
Blacksmith and the
Forge.
The
Blacksmith is an
NPC of sorts, who will upgrade your items for money. However, it takes him time to work on it, and he can only work on one item at a time. As in, every player's item will be added to his queue while he is working. Each point you upgrade on an item will take 10 minutes, but you can't upgrade lower level stuff at all. You can, however, upgrade ammo instantly. Also, the cost to upgrade your weapons is related to their base. Generally, the higher the base, the cheaper it's going to be later on.
The
Forge is a pretty confusing thing at first. I don't reccomend you use it until you get you PR up to a decent level, like 10k or so. And then, just upgrade your own stuff. To begin, you select an item to upgrade. Then, you have to heat it for a certain amount of time. Each action you take in the forge uses one BA. After you heat it enough, you cast a spell of
Hardness,
Accuracy, or
Viciousness. Then, you cool it back down until it is cool to the touch. Then, you heat it
signifigantly less, normally until it shows straw yellow spots, Then, cast the spell of
Tempering. Then you cool it back down! You repeat this forever, but usually until you get your weapon upgraded at least once. There's a giant list of heating times for things at www.cbstuff.com, so you might want to check that out if you're interested in the forge.
Miscellaneous things;
- CB is completely G-PG rated. Don't swear. Ever. Not even acronyms.
- You can purchase BA, up to 480 a day, on the Manage Characters page. This is also where you can retire and create new characters.
- Your PR is determined by how much EXP total all of your minions have spent.
- Spells and skills can be unlearned, and you will gain back 95% of the exp you have spent on them.
- My account name is Ender. If you've started playing because of this article, give me a holler sometime. You can also ask me questions, but for the most part people in chat can answer anything you ask.
- Beware Mushu - he bites.
Once again, Carnage Blender is located at
www.carnageblender.com. Come play sometime
!