Mortal Online 2 A Ranger's Guide to Sustainable Banditry

INTRO

This guide is intended for players who want to seek out pvp primarily to obtain wealth and resources. Those who are seeking out pvp primarily to inflict suffering upon others need not read further.

BANDITRY VS BRIGANDRY

The difference between bandits and brigands is simple: bandits take your money, brigands take your life. The life of a bandit is far easier, and doesn't require living in lawless cities or reliance upon a large guild to control territory to take refuge in.

MO2 has two very important mechanics that are impacted by pvp: standing and murder count. When you kill someone, they can report you for murder at the nearby priest and you will receive a murder count and your standing with that area's faction will decrease by 1. If they don't report you, then there are no consequences other than going grey (criminal) for a couple minutes. When your standing with a faction reaches 0, you will be unable to use their priests and their guards will attack you on sight. When your murder count reaches 5 or higher, you will be unable to use the priests at any of the lawful cities, dungeons, and camps; and will be forced to rely upon the red priests found in lawless cities and far away in the wilderness. The lawless cities in particular can be difficult to respawn at due to people camping the priest there. Remember, your goal is to make it easier for yourself to resupply, stash your ill-gotten gains, and get back out there shaking people down; so here are some tips for accomplishing that.

PLEASE! MERCY!

How do you avoid murdering players for their glittering treasures? Simple, mercy mode. When you hit a player or their mount enough, they enter mercy mode and are unable to act and can only move at a crawl. Your goal as a bandit is to get your victim into mercy mode. You want to get your victim into mercy mode as quickly as possible to minimize the possibility of help arriving, delay tactics to recover/strategize, and prevent them from escaping. Once they are in mercy mode, offer them an ultimatum: "/droploot". I would make this demand in both local chat and over voice chat to ensure they receive the message. If it takes them some time to respond, you can always hit them into mercy mode again when they recover; but I wouldn't give them a third chance...

But wait, why would a player want to give up all their stuff if they are going to respawn at a priest naked anyways? I'll tell you why. Because you aren't going to kill their mount, and you aren't going to take everything. You only want to take things of value or that you need. You aren't there to grief, you are there to make a profit and encourage their cooperation. You need to take steps that make the choice to /droploot more appealing than sticking it to you with a murder count.

Ok, so they have typed in /droploot and there is a bag sitting there now. Go through the bag and take anything of value. Also make them remove their horse bags if they have any and dump those out too. Only take what you are willing to carry. Try and keep your word; after all a bandit's word is all he has (until he has all your stuff). Send them off on their merry way, and go about your business.

Keep in mind that killing a pet or horse can still result in a murder count and faction hit if the player suicides after you do so.

RAIDING FACTIONS

Doing parcel runs is the only way to increase your faction standing, but is quite tedious. If you do not want to have to worry about parcel runs, you need to avoid banditry in the region you are living out of. If you are Tindremic, travel to the Khurite regions or other faction areas to do your business. Either way, you are going to be doing a lot of travelling, but probably far less if you aren't having to do parcel runs regularly.

You will be getting some faction hits and murder counts, because there are always going to be stubborn players that make you carry out your threats.

A MERRY BAND OF BANDITS

Mortal Online 2 pvp is a numbers game. You nearly always want to outnumber your victims to ensure certain victory. Banditry as a group can also ensure that you have a broad range of skills to deal with any situation (heavily armored targets, fast targets, etc.) However, the more people, the more ways the treasure has to be split. Bandits operate best in small groups of 2 to 3 people. The rewards diminish the more victims you ambush at a time; they have more opportunity to scatter unpursued.

I cannot recommend solo banditry, although it is possible if you are marauding for soft targets who are unprepared for hostile contact.

AMBUSHING

There are two methods of banditry: the ambush, and marauding. Setting up an ambush, your goal is to stay hidden in one place and wait for victims to come to you.

The Mounted Ambush:

At least one person (if not everyone) will stay mounted on their horse and pursue the targets at close range. You will need some form of mounted magery or mounted archery to catch and stop your target. It is much harder to stay concealed while mounted however unless the terrain itself breaks line of sight with cliffs and boulders to hide behind. The benefit of this approach, is that you'll be able to catch people riding by at a run, since they would normally have the advantage of loading into your visual range when they are already right on top of you.

The On-Foot Ambush

Lets face it, the best way to counter griefers and murderers is to kill their horse. They are almost always easier to kill and cause a significant inconvenience. Using this strategy, you'll want to hide your horses further back, away from the ambush site, and utilize longbows to stop your targets. Magic can also work well here, but has limited range. At least one person will need to have ranged attacks to slow your target down (by putting the horse into mercy mode) while your melee folks close distance and knock the player off their mount and into mercy.

The Inconspicuous Stranger

Have one or more people patrol back and forth from your ambush position. If they spot someone, they can notify you via discord and you can move into better position for what you'll be facing. Now, from here things get interesting, because you can either have the scout pursue the target, pushing them towards your main ambush group, or hang back a slight bit and then follow to cut off immediate retreat. Either way, if the scout is not immediately perceived as a threat, you can use that to your advantage once they pass each other.

Terrain Considerations:

Tall grass can conceal you if resting (although I'm not sure you will appear sitting if you perform rest before your target is within render distance).

Bushes provide some level of concealment but no protection; making it harder for your opponent to land any shots with accuracy.

Trees can be hid behind for pot shots and cover.

Ditches/hills work well for hiding larger numbers, especially while mounted.

Holding the high ground allows you to fire bows more accurately with less drop, and potentially have a clearer line of site over the heads of allies/enemies to reach their healers/casters/bowmen or heal your own compatriots.

Boulders and bends around a cliff let you stay completely concealed until the last possible moment, hiding both people on foot and mounted equally well. Boulders can provide temporary cover.

Elevated cliffs can provide a place to not only hide, but fire down from without fear of being meleed.

Try and choose places where your target will have to slow down to proceed.

Try and choose places where there is only one or two ways out. If only one way, keep in mind you may get trapped by patrols of lawful players seeking to clear you out. If on a very long narrow path, it will also be easier for patrols to catch you since you can't split up.

Some Recommended Locations:

Mountain Passes into Hyllspeia or Morin Khur

Ruins directly on the road

Houses on the road

Bottleneck thoroughfares like passages into the jungles, or through the southern mountains of Tindrem

You basically want to avoid wide open places.

Pros:

You choose where you fight, and control all the terrain advantages.

You choose who to fight without them seeing you.

Cons:

Possibly long waits between viable targets.

Requires more people to reliably disable a mount before they are out of range.

Vulnerable to word getting out of your ambush location and being hunted by anti-pk patrols.

MARAUDING

The second method of banditry, marauding, involves constantly moving and travelling in order to find suitable targets.

Mounted Pursuit:

In this scenario, you may encounter an attractive target who is also mounted and travelling. You will need either mounted magery or mounted archery to catch your target and bring the pursuit to an end. You will likely want the swift riding skill and your horse to be unarmored or lightly armored, without bags. You will also want to favor targets whose horses are more armored than yours or who have bags slowing them down.

Mounted Surprise Attack:

Occasionally you'll come across someone who is afk, or engaged in another activity, almost always while dismounted. If you have any mounted skills at all, you should stay mounted and mercy your target. The biggest advantage you have is surprise and the instinctual panic you will cause them. If they have a mount nearby, deal with that first, and then deal with them (unless they are running away from their mount). Your biggest weakness here is your own horse. It will be highly vulnerable to attack and falling back gives them more time to ready themselves for calculated action. You can also be heard from farther away, and your presence detected if they are paying particular attention to the noise you make.

On-foot Surprise Attack:

Again, you may come across someone who is afk or engaged in a on-foot activity. Just casually ride by without slowing down, and find a good direction to approach them from unnoticed after looking them over. Some of the lighter armors may not make noise (moss also dampens footsteps), and if you draw your weapon out of earshot, you will have a greater chance of getting into melee before they become aware of you. Daggers in particular can probably be drawn at closer range because their weapon sound is a quiet little snip. This scenario is considered optimal if you don't have any mounted combat skills at all; any character can be successful in this situation.

The Fair Fight:

This is the least desirable situation, but can still be very successful if you outnumber your opponents. If you encounter someone and cannot gain the advantage of surprise, you can still choose to try and overpower them and surrender their goods in a straightforward fight.

Avoid damaging any players engaged with npcs, they can report you for murder if the npc kills them. Also avoid healing the npcs for the same reason.

Pros:

The advantage of surprise gives you several possibly strong hits before your target is able to react. The quicker you decide to attack, the less time they have to think, even if they do spot you.

Easier to find action, and less boredom from just sitting around and waiting.

Your harder to take retribution on, and for people to organize against.

Cons:

Higher chance that you encounter other people who want to kill you, without the benefit of concealment. I.e. your mounted group may encounter another mounted group, neither one having the advantage of surprise.

Your targets get to choose the terrain they fight on.

SOFT TARGETS

Finally, we get to who you will be attacking as a bandit and why. There are two types of targets you will be engaging: soft targets and hard targets.

You will typically be attacking soft targets to obtain what they are carrying, not what they have equipped. They will typically be ill-equipped, either with light armor or lower quality material medium/heavy armors.

The two reasons you may want to attack soft targets are: resources, supplies, and the occasional valuables.

If you need to resupply and don't have access to a nearby town, you can usually get food and spell components off of them fairly easily. Humans are less likely to be carrying food though.

If your target has saddlebags, that means they are carrying a ton of resources that they can't carry in their inventory. If you want to see what those resources are and potentially carry them back to your stash, have at them. Rarer materials and processed materials are not only useful for outfitting yourself, but can be sold for a pretty penny at the auction house. Usually if they are in the middle of an on-foot activity, a good bet is that there bags are full of whatever resource they are gathering from that activity.

Occasionally you may get lucky and find people carrying deeds to be laid out, or gold/gems to buy skillbooks, or just have a load of trophies/treasure from whatever they were killing. Don't count on it, but it's a nice bonus when it happens.

HARD TARGETS

Unlike soft targets, hard targets are well equipped. And that may be a good reason to attack them. You want what they are wearing/wielding.

Sure they might also be attractive targets if they have saddlebags, but you primarily only want to be risking your life for their equipment. When you attack hard targets, make sure you can deal with them. If they are really well armored, you'd be best off using heavy blunt weapons and spells to bypass their defense; or be well equipped yourselves.

Chances are that hard targets are carrying things of value as well, since they wouldn't be so well equipped just to ride around looking pretty and killing zombies. They were doing something worth using that gear for.

STASHING LOOT AND SUPPLIES

Even on your best behavior, you may eventually hit a murder count of 5 or higher (turning red). When this happens, you will be locked out of lawful city respawns if you die. You may be able to successfully respawn and bank at one of the two lawless cities, but most likely you will be spawncamped there unless the social hierarchies there change. So that leaves you with wilderness priests. It will be important to know where the horse spawns are around these priests, so that you can quickly run to them, tame a horse, and be on your way to getting re-equipped. While red, you can still enter guarded cities as long as you have positive standing with the faction, so head there first if you need to get re-equipped out of the bank.

If you have reputation problems in a region, I've also found it very useful to utilize the Jungle Camp and Cave Camp. Random-pking has greatly decreased there since the removal of red priests. They make good places to stash extra gear and loot if you are in hostile territory because they are unguarded; and most people there just want to be left alone.

MISC TIPS

Social reputation is a thing. If you frequently terrorize an area, your consistent word or guarantee can be the difference between a /droploot and a murder count.

Longbows are the bane of horses. Avoid longbow users while mounted, and make use of longbows against mounted opponents where appropriate.

Basic self sufficiency is recommended for when you inevitably turn red as a 5-count murderer. Recommended skills are cooking 100, taming 55, light armor crafting 100, 2h weapon/dagger/bow crafting at 100.

Recommended Combat Skills: 100 sprinting, 100 controlled riding/swift riding, archery or magery, mounted archery or mounted magery.

Avoid dungeons, they attract larger groups of players, and the harder dungeons attract well equipped ones as well.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2762563225

A Ranger's Guide to Sustainable Banditry