Ratlings are seriously underrated.

[Garresh]

So I've noticed that all across the various forums that ratlings are considered to be a bad race overall. The only favored combination put forward is duelists. But to be honest, the more I use them the more I feel like they're a sleeper just waiting to be noticed. With the changes to potentials, attributes are a lot more important with regards to race selection than before. The combination of a bunch of skills that make the early game significantly easier and great potentials means they function well with all classes, at all phases of the game.

And I just want to point out a few things that get overlooked. Their best attributes are dexterity and toughness, and I can't see any other races having as good a spread there as ratlings. From the very beginning they're less vulnerable to traps, have a good hp buffer, and can qualify for a lot of stuff. That combination is defensively excellent, and that's something every class can use.

They also have surprisingly fast base hp regeneration. Its not Troll levels or anything, but I was surprised how quick they heal without the healing skill. This does come at a cost to PP regen, but the deficit there is not particularly bad. I barely noticed PP regen problems on a minecrafter Im playing and once he got concentration to 100 it was indistinguishable from other races.

And the other thing that people don't realize is that ratlings have both above average life span and above average exp gains. Their lifespan is longer than humans, but it doesn't get noticed because they reach maturity faster than humans. They also get an exp bonus which is pretty nice. Neither of these things are huge, but it gives you wider comfort zone for how you progress.

Has anyone else been finding ratlings really good, or am I just going crazy? XD

[Soirana]

So I've noticed that all across the various forums that ratlings are considered to be a bad race overall. The only favored combination put forward is duelists. But to be honest, the more I use them the more I feel like they're a sleeper just waiting to be noticed. With the changes to potentials, attributes are a lot more important with regards to race selection than before. The combination of a bunch of skills that make the early game significantly easier and great potentials means they function well with all classes, at all phases of the game.

And I just want to point out a few things that get overlooked. Their best attributes are dexterity and toughness, and I can't see any other races having as good a spread there as ratlings. From the very beginning they're less vulnerable to traps, have a good hp buffer, and can qualify for a lot of stuff. That combination is defensively excellent, and that's something every class can use.

They also have surprisingly fast base hp regeneration. Its not Troll levels or anything, but I was surprised how quick they heal without the healing skill. This does come at a cost to PP regen, but the deficit there is not particularly bad. I barely noticed PP regen problems on a minecrafter Im playing and once he got concentration to 100 it was indistinguishable from other races.

And the other thing that people don't realize is that ratlings have both above average life span and above average exp gains. Their lifespan is longer than humans, but it doesn't get noticed because they reach maturity faster than humans. They also get an exp bonus which is pretty nice. Neither of these things are huge, but it gives you wider comfort zone for how you progress.

Has anyone else been finding ratlings really good, or am I just going crazy? XD

Most likely going crazy.
What racial skills? Detect item status is cute, but not essential. Others are, meh. Even humans bring in food preserv and I take that over detect status anyday.
Dx is not that important honestly, but let say hurthlings have good Dx and To and some skills, that actually help.
Maybe you were Candle born, but I dot recall ratlings being in between of drakes and orcs.

[_Ln_]

Pretty sure ratling level up slower than humans/gnomes/hurthlings. The age difference between humans and ratlings is marginal. They get Appraising which is mostly useless and Detect Item Status which on 95% of the races has laughable progression. They also have really poor equipment.

Sure. they get high Toughness and that's about it.

[grobblewobble]

But they have whiskers.

[Blank4u47]

Pretty sure ratling level up slower than humans/gnomes/hurthlings. The age difference between humans and ratlings is marginal. They get Appraising which is mostly useless and Detect Item Status which on 95% of the races has laughable progression. They also have really poor equipment.

Sure. they get high Toughness and that's about it.

The detect item status skill and the appraise skill are life savers in the early game, and they level up themselves.
They get decent str, allowing for 18 almost every time, they get great toughness, which makes up for bad starting equip, along with the great dx. High perception. Decent learning.

They level up as quick as humans.
Their hp regen is 35, that's fast. Pp regen is 55 so average.

[Blasphemous]

I enjoyed my ratling duelist but like every other short lived race, gave up on playing them more often due to aging problems and the frequency of my encounters with ghost lords and kings.
At the moment, I put ratlings somewhere between humans, orcs and trolls in how often I play them. Which is virtually never.
I may play a drake from time to time or a rare dwarf but that's it.
Elves ftw.

[Shinae]

I roll ratling sometimes. Just because I like the looks. They aren't bad, but they aren't great either. I love dwarves the most, maybe because they look nice and have beards and they start with detect traps, so I can skip thieves guild if I want to.

Appraising is meh, but detect item status I love, bad thing about it is that it's often pain to level high enough (especially with ratling) and when you finally hit high skill with it, you don't need it anymore, because you have all the blessed identify scrolls in world you ever need. So I can't say ratlings have great early game because of it. I usually switch weapon first time when I can "identify" mithril or better one by it's weight, I don't need detect item status early game, it helps sometimes, but it's not needed.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I don't understand why detect item status is held in such a low esteem by most players. Yeah, sure, you can go to an altar and identify everything. But sometimes the altar is quite far away and I'm definitely not going to lug the hundreds of weapons and especially armor found in a vault to see if one of them has a good ego.

In practice I find I have a much higher chance to find great ego weapons and armor in games where I have detect item status. In other games, many of them go unnoticed and I probably leave eternium plates of life, of carrying or of resilience lying around.

I'm not saying it's at the level of Alertness or Concentration, but it's a good skill in my book. In fact it's more or less on par with food preservation in my book - at least in the latest versions of ADOM, with the reduced corruption rates and rotting chaos guardian corpses not being a big deal anymore.

[Blank4u47]

I agree, detect item status can really save an early characters life when it comes to weapons and armor, at the very least it makes it far less annoying to drag everything to the black market to Id it

[Soirana]

I don't understand why detect item status is held in such a low esteem by most players. Yeah, sure, you can go to an altar and identify everything. But sometimes the altar is quite far away and I'm definitely not going to lug the hundreds of weapons and especially armor found in a vault to see if one of them has a good ego.

Let me explain, my personal opinion:
1. Skill at ~20-30 does ID status of maybe 15 of that 100 armor you seem to be interested. 85 still has to be dealt. So you have to put bunch of skill increases, instead of getting awesome skills like alertness and find weakness. Or at least healing and food preservation.
2. Egos are very low chance with low lv char in low DL dungeons.
Armors don't come in hundreds, since all clothes, robes, leather armors can safely rot there they happened to drop.
Weapons come in hundreds if you milked every orc or every gnoll. Well, if you did, you just pile them on and let anything which stacks with anything rot in that pile too. (egos are low drop chance at this point, right).
At this point every high metal armor I would just put on, and some weapons need to be dragged to altar or BM. So all detect items did was save one trip... no wait, it probably identified half so you have twice as much not stacking weapons, which might require two trips. (yeah, you can equip known status stuff, but extra stuff comes from weapons which might have stacked with ones you Id status)
3. Best aid in early game is anything that helps to reach midgame, Det status tragically fails at that. From mid game I got blessed Id going, so this skill does next to nothing except having important skills at lower value.
4. Now, if you grind Id or are go for four precrowns with livesacs (and pickpocket every mob before saccing it) type of player, I guess detect item status is very useful for you. Other, then helping with grinding I fail to see skill's uses.