I just learned a while ago that some people actually ends up on this page occasionally. So now I have to deliver some quality content also. So here is my totally subjective list of coollines and newbiefriendliness of guilds. Please note that I have only second hand information on the guilds crimson and below as I haven't tried them yet (as full guilds anyway). I don't take responsibility in the interpretation of these figures.
| Guild | Newbiefriendliness | Coolness |
| Ranger | 5 | 1 |
| Mage | 1 | 3 |
| Alchemist | 3 | 5 |
| Merchant | 2 | 3 |
| Tiger | 2 | 3 |
| Tarmalen | 4 | 1 |
| Spiders | 1 | 4 |
| Monks | 3 | 4 |
| Bard | 2 | 4 |
| Barbarians | 4 | 1 |
| Channellers | 2 | 5 |
| Lords of chaos | 3 | 2 |
| Crimson | 3 | 2 |
| Conjurer | 1 | 1 |
| Psionicists | 1 | 3 |
| Druids | 1 | 4 |
| Nuns | 2 | 5 (I hear it's actually 6) |
| Evil priests | 2 | 2 |
| Civmage | ? | 1 |
| Civfighters | ? | 1 |
| Templars | 2 | 2 |
I have played a mage (to about level 25 or so), which sucked. I have also played a ranger (to level 37) in which point I had 5M experience and decided to go alching. I did some mining and reinc money collecting as a merchant until I finally reinced to alch. Alching is fun. At least if you do it the fun way, not the hard way. Of course now they changed the algorithm and it's supposed to be harder to hack than the previous one, but I'll try someday :-)
Ok, not an alch anymore. As of 11.1 I reinced to tarmalen. Being a tarmalen was fun at first, but when I finally learned that BatMud is mainly a game of greed and selfishness, it sucks being an exploited tarmalen.
So it was a quite logical for me to reinc to tiger next. Of course I was so good hearted that I wasn't a true tiger, so I only soloed and idled for some time.
Then, by a some twist of fate, I reinced back to tarma. Don't ask me why. Don't! The reinc date was 3.5.2001, exp 23M after taxes.
After that (reinc date 2.6.2001, exp 23M) I reinced to spider which was a fun guild, with the demons and stuff. I also got some exp done, at least more than as a tiger. I also got some sucky demons, which totally sucked. One night I was so tired though that I forgot to chest and lost some nice pieces of eq (worth 1-2m in total or so).
Channellers (reinc date 1.8.2001, exp 26M) looked like a fun guild, with blasts and golems and channeling and stuff, but after realizing that the blasts sucked, golems got destroyed in tests and weren't of much use, I quickly reinced out, just after two weeks. I managed to create a nice 2 ton iron golem, which was as slow as my dead great-grandmother.
To monks (reinc date 17.8.2001, exp 25M), which seems like a good guild. At least I have managed to make 1 meg/week for the 3 weeks I was in the guild. Of course I have few tarm levels as well. At that time I think I had about 30m exp.
Then (reinc date 9.9.2001, exp 30M) i reinced to alch again. Alching is fun. You get lots and lots of cash. IIRC I idled quite a lot too, and alch is a perfect guild for that, too. I also researched the last 2 potions.
After that (reinc date 1.10.2001, exp 30M), I thought that it would be nice to party a bit, and so I chose to be an ogre barbarian, which, of course, totally sucked. I think i made quite a lot of level quests in this reinc, which was partially fun.
So after a couple of weeks (reinc date 15.10.2001, exp 32M) I reinced back to alch and again made lots of cash.
My friend Zeane was a bard and it seemed like a fun guild (reinc date 30.10.2001, exp 31M) which it indeed was. I think bards are one of the most fun guilds to play in (not anymore -- 18.2.2003) . I performed a couple of wonderful plays: a poem Ode To Autumn by John Keats and a piece of an act from a play Alchemist by Ben Johnson, and I also wrote a nice short story as guild quests. I didn't really make exp, just fooled around and learned about 80% of the songs by heart.
I grow bored very quickly, so my next reinc was again to an offensive guild, catfolk monk (reinc date 22.10.2001, exp 31M). Now it was even more fun than last time even though I had the same amount of exp and all. So I managed to be in that guild quite a long time. Also, batmud was crashing quite a lot at that time, so one couldn't really play at all. I explored quite a lot.
The next guild was spiders and some priests, and race drow (reinc date 18.1.2002, exp 39M). I didn't like that guild at all now. Even though I had a quite nice demon, my rate was so lame (absolute maximum 1,5k) that I didn't even bother making much exp. However I did explore a bit.
In order to increase my exp rate I reinced to human tiger, which was finally a good choice (reinc date 5.2.2002, exp 40M). My rates got up 100% to 3k and I was so happy that I just made more and more exp. At the moment (3.3.2002) I have 46M, and I'm planning to stay in tigers and get at least 50M before reincing.
It's been a while (almost a year ;-) since I've written here so I once again have to rely on logs and memory... The reinc was successful. Apparently I had reinced when my regular machine with logger was offline, so there are no records on the reinc itself (reinc date ~6.3.2002, exp ~47M). The next try was deflated brownie tarmalen (49 levels), in which I quite many (low-level) level quests. The actual reinc was boring and I only managed to make few megs of exp.
The next reinc was again traditional deflated human tiger (reinc date 2.4.2002, exp 48M). This reinc was quite boring again, though. (Well I had to work & watch anime too so I didn't have that much time for bat).
The next reinc (reinc date 14.5.2002, exp 52M) was a hobbit merchant, which was fun. I didn't make much cash (actually everything I made with prots&stuff went to chest skeletons), but now I have quite many slots to store my useless crap. I also made full merchant belt, gathering the final 1m carried exp to finish it was probably among the most frightening experiences I've experienced on bat. Again, I idled a lot too. I had a few levels of bards too, and as I saw the changes made to the guild (instruments etc.) my next reinc idea was clear.
The next reinc (reinc date 2.8.2002, exp 51M) was of course brownie bard + some channeller levels. I spend quite a lot of time in mid-reinc limbo because of bard requirements (instrument creation quests -- you can only create 1 instrument in 3 days and I had to make 5) and just after I had finished my reinc (on 16.8.2002) I decided to reinc again, because bards were ultra boring.
The next reinc was catfolk monk with a bit of tarmalen (reinc date , exp 51M). Solo exping was fun again, with rates around 3k.
It was time to create party character again (reinc date 5.10.2002, exp 56M), so it was of course elf channeller + a few levels for int from saato+. Lots of idling and getting bored again.
The next unsuccessful try was traditional deflated human tiger (reinc date 26.10.2002, exp 55M), which didn't work this time. Only horrible 2.5k rates as with monk but this time with the fear of getting killed by a nasty critting mob (probably I shouldn't have tried to kill mobs >2k...). So I didn't exp much this time either.
The constant reincing had spent all my cash, so I had to finance it with the only good way to make cash in bat -- alching (reinc date 10.11.2002, exp 55M). It was fun and I got loads of cash, so I could now try something new -- a non-infla reinc.
I had heard some things about reavers, so now it was time to try them (reinc date 8.12.2002, exp 55M). But it would have been difficult to just reinc to them to gather destructive energy, so I made a full loc and took 6 reaver levels. I also took 14 priest levels and 2 navigator levels, totalling 67 levels, so I was dead broke again... The race choice, tinman, wasn't probably the best one, its endurance didn't help that much, heals sucked etc. The rates were horrible (less than 2k/min -- I don't understand why some people actually like locs. Well of course I didn't have 100% vb/foc (no boons), and it fumbled like 5% of the time and missed 10%, and I got massives only like 3 or 4 times during this whole reinc (well my blade was only AWESOME though)), but at least I got energy. The christmas time bonuses helped a lot, they made me feel that there was even some progress, and I had lots of free time to mud, so I got quite a lot of exp, and also got onto the 3rd layer of reavers.
The next reinc was of course reavers, and 12 levels of priest (reinc date 6.1.2003, exp 65M).
Oh yes, the obligatory links also:
Dryad's great site
Uncle's, with guild cost calculator
Batmudder's, with area hints
and other useful tips, by Nyghtshade etc.
Jenny's(?),
containing tf triggers.
Merchanting guide by Erwos
Dandalf's,
including
quite good reincing tips for newbies
Zithromax