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(topic inspired by Salemspellstorm and his guild treks done successfully although none in the team could kill the mobs)

I guess this could be helpful for every homin out there, regardless of level. Let's list various scenarios, dos and donts for them, etc. Maybe some interesting stories if you have them ..

I'll start with a few scenarios:

Going mounted

My favourite. After trekking quite a few homins this way, none of which were particularly high in any skill, I feel it's ok to call it tried and true.

You don't need a high level, just enough hp to take a few hits. Having a total of 2000hp, maybe less, is the least. Take a mount, be prepared to lose it if things so happen. Idea is to outrun all mobs, and if you don't die on the spot from hits, you can later sit down and regen (use products, self-heals, etc). If you happen to die close to a tp, your chances for a willing homin to ressurect you are high.

Since the "steering" of a mount takes time, you must know beforehand what's your path, or you'll take a lot of hits. Know the mobs or ask what you will get in a specific region. There's no stopping if you're under attack, so you need to choose next to which mobs you can pass. Knowing kinchers get aggro at long distances comes in useful, just like knowing tyranchas are almost blind. Learn the location of altars (tps) beforehand, put placemarks for them, or have a willing homin wait for you there.

Multiple homins can do this together, and as long as one doesn't die in the middle of aggro, the other(s) can easily outrun aggro and later come back to rez. However, I feel it's formative to do it solo at least once.

Small group

That means: 2-3 persons max. Going on foot means you risk getting aggro .. the alternative is to wait very patiently for a clear path. Observing the season and evaluating your chances is a good thing to do. For instance, spring sports a Cute-heavy Bounty Beaches after exiting Trench of Trials. Your chances of slipping by are nil, and if you attempt you'll most likely end up surrounded. If your group cannot engage the aggro on the way, best wait for next season.

Especially for groups of low level players, letting one person die while the other flees might be a smart thing to do. Slipping by a carnivore while it's busy hunting a herbivore is another valid technique, used a lot. Small caveat - yelks (for instance) die easily, and you might find your group is still in aggro range when the aggro is done with its kill. Similarly, if two carnivores are attacking the same herbie, you risk one of them to switch attention.

Since this is mostly a trial-and-error thing, I won't go in much more detail. My technique is to just nuke everything in the path preemptively, so as not to risk my healers inadvertedly dying. Slow but effective, if you can kill in a meaningful time.

Large group
Anything above 4 players, even a small league sometimes. In this setup, you'll most certainly get aggro at least once. Someone will lag behind, someone will disconnect, someone will find it funny to go poke a clopper in the eye. The most usual setup here is to have the highest players in the group at the ends of the line, with everyone else huddled together and ready to heal.

As my experience is limited with this setup, I'll let others take scene.

(cont'd)

I Love Treks :P , and i enjoyed reading your post :)

(cont'd)

One of the things people fail to realize is that they can, in fact, visit many places without much of a hassle. Of course, asking "can I trek solo" will get you the message that trekking is dangerous (partially true), that you have little chance of surviving higher regions (partially true), and that you're best off waiting for a group (partially true). In fact however, half of a world trek consists of easy bits and wasted time.

Let's consider someone wishing to go from Fairhaven to Matia lands. The continents are adjacent, so they could go through Loria and then through Heretic's Hovel. However, since HH is a maze with narrow corridors and little option of avoiding aggro, you are heavily discouraged from taking the route. Therefore, one will do the clockwise trip through all continents.

(all things said there work on the reverse route too, forest to lakes counter-clockwise)

Lakes - Jungle

Swimming from Fairhaven to Resting Water: easily done solo, getting the kami tp included; just dont touch the ground if you see aggro. Getting from the RW/Fount vortex to the Fount kara tp: easy with some sneaking, and you just saved someone 10-15 minutes of hand-holding you. The Fount - Bounty Beaches- Trench of Trials bit might be too difficult solo, although in lucky instances I've managed to sneak up to the BB karavan tp by licking the walls.

Trench of Trials is a capricious beast. I've managed to clear it while mounted some 50% of the time, with low level toons included; never managed to sneak solo and on foot. You will most likely want to have help for this part, until you get to the Grove of Umbra vortex.

Jungle - Desert

Grove of Umbra to Zora: moderately easy. You have perrenial dogs to avoid, and a few select other creatures; just look before walking. The Cities of Intuition region is aggro-free, save for small pockets of dogs and javings. From Zora to the Knot of Dementia kami tp there's an aggro-free path too, one exits the city north gate and turns south. I would expect the smart homin to do GoU - KoD without help.

In KoD you have a choice, either take the Great Outback ramp leading to south Dunes of Exile, or go down, vortex to Under Spring and exit in north Dunes of Exile. There are homins who swear US is easy, I prefer the beaten path of Outback since US has mobs up to level 250.

Getting from the KoD tp to the ramp is a matter of patience and looking at your compass for dogs and/or gibbai hidden in the trees. Clearing the ramp is a matter of season and well-timed auras. Every once in a blue moon you'll find it empty, otherwise you have to run, use melee protection aura and invulnerability. Even then, having a willing homin to rez you if you die before the desert vortex might save the day. Extra care needed for named aggros like Fylish and Staro.

Desert - Forest

By far the easiest bit. From south Dunes of Exile to Dyron one can always find a way to sneak, albeit it may take patience for the big cats to move. Once you reached Dyron, the New Horizons transporter will get you to the cities of Pyr and Thesos.

If you want the extra tps, walking on foot through Frahar Towers and Oflovak's Oasis should be easy enough for the willing homin, aggro is easily spotted from miles away and you can find safety in the Frahar Hunters camp, Water Breakers or the oasis water.

From Thesos to the forest vortex, aggro is (again) easily avoidable - either by licking the west wall (with the Kipucka Plain Border Post), or going through the middle. Usually there are kitins near the vortex, nothing a short wait or run can't solve.

Forest

Hidden Source is, like ToT, a capricious place. I've managed to outrun cuttlers while mounted, and that's pretty much the only viable option I see for the solo trekker. With luck, one could get from the vortex to the kami tp however, and then request help to reach the Knoll of Dissent karavan altar. From KoD to Yrkanis any person should be able to easily get, despite the plethora of dogs. Avoiding them until close to Yrkanis should be easy enough, and after that .. drag to guard, or die and get an easy rez.

(nb: getting to the Fleeting Garden kami tp is moderately easy too, albeit a long walk.)

Trekking can definitely be done at low level. I recently completed a world trek (Forest > Desert > Jungle > Lakelands) on foot with two lowbies, sub 50 in everything but digging. But it requires much patience.

The primary thing, watch for safety spots. Often this will be tribes and outposts (though Named mobs can still trample you in some outposts). The next thing is to watch the behavior of the creatures. Clusters of calm herbies are often an OK bet for resting, just watch out for them scattering which is a sure sign of carnivore attack. Also, if herbies actively shy away from an area, it's a sign that there's a carnivore there. Along with that, know what herbies are attacked and which are not. Never trust a cluster of Meks to be safe, as they seem to be buddies with all manner of carnivores.

Watch your radar for open spots and get a feel for safe distances. You be pretty safe standing next to a tyrancha, since they are quite blind, but kinchers seem to be able to spot you halflway across the world. Have at least speed 2 to run in case you're spotted. Speed 1 can work (one of the toons only had this), but it was *much* more difficult than with speed 2.

And, find Cute repellent. The most difficult parts of the journey were definitely those involving Cutes.

Nice bunch of advice.

The main problem I see is your continued reference to "have someone ready to rez." Most new people don't "have someone." So I would add a recommendation to anyone attempting a solo trek to post to Uni that they are about to do it and ask for someone who is willing to do tp rezzes. Of course if you're in a guild and one of the "big guys" is on line and willing, then you're good to go.

My observation on Kinchers is not so much that they have a long aggro range as that they have a huge "wander radius" and that they move quickly from point to point on it. If you happen to be near that point (that didn't have a kincher on it a moment ago) and the kincher wanders there, then it's going to attack. It looks like a 50m aggro range, but it isn't really.

And when you find the recipe for Cute repellant, let me know. :)

Formative? Oh, yes. In Ryzom, whatever kills you makes you stronger :-D

Treks can be fun, even solo ones.

I managed to get to Zora and Yrk on foot easily enough from the Desert (both times - pre and post merge). It takes patience as much as anything, if you get hit and survive, find a safe spot and regen like Mj said; let all your timers reset too, so you still have them all to hand (speed, self heal and invul especially!). A 5

The hard one, imho, is getting to Lakelands. I died several times solo before finally giving up and asking for help. I did it in a group of 2 from the Forest, luckily Nail knew the way and we got through with only 1 close call.

Good point Neela, kinchers (like gibbais) move in unpredictable fashion. One moment they're over 50m away, next thing you know they're right next to you. At least with carnivores you get a moment's warning, when they stretch / look around before moving. If only people remembered this advice from Silan, to always observe the behaviour of animals.

Bittty - the main idea is that you don't have to wait for the weekly trek done by Phaedras. You can do it *now* if you are ready to incur a bit of DP.

Do one continent at a time, or 1-2 regions at a time .. help will come if you make it easy for your rescuer(s) and you show you're ready to put in your own work. Many people are in dig gear half the time. I'm not going to rez you if you're 1 km from my nearest available altar, but I'll consider it if it's a 1 minute job, 250m walk - and my alt has experienced the same. That's the only point of mentioning altars when talking about routes.

Mjollren, um, what? I'm confused.

I didn't mention the PT trek, at all. Certainly we in PT have *never* said that anyone should wait for PT and join the train, just that the option is there. In fact I thought that my posting was supportive of your original with a few extra additions on how to arrange for "rez assistance."

-- Bittty

Figured i'd revisit this thread since Cotare encoraged us to vist all areas of Atys with the exploration achievements. Now that they are all fixed, I went and did nekie treks to all OPs ... wasn't that hard .... of course waiting in each OP for HP and auras to regen from the occasional hit is a cure for impatience. And for PR....either it's gotten easier or I've gotten better at sneaking ....and I stronglu susect it's the former as I rarely even took a hit down there.

The only 2 that gave me trouble was Highgrove and Eastgrove in GoC. The lack of water pools and abundance of big hit mobs in tight places doesn't let ya steer around them.

This Topic makes me sad, as Salemspellstorm has retired from Ryzom; however three rules he always enforced on trek are:

1) If you have aggro, DROP! We can rez you if aggro is not dragged on to main group.
2) Never Loot! 3 or 4 mats is not worth the chance of causing a respawn of the mob!
3) Do not use Follow command, refer to rule 1 for reasoning :P

A homin just reminded me that this topic was useful to at least a few people :)

so I figure I might as well give it an update. Just a few random things:

1. Underspring, along with the other level 250 Prime Roots regions, are swarming with kitin patrols (kirosta group that only attacks homins).

Considering their aggro range (65m), I would never recommend someone to trek Jungle <--> Desert via Underspring. It is probably still doable, but the odds are awful. If you die on the Outback Ramp there are still chances to get a resurrection, but in PR I can't think of 3 players who would risk coming.

2. Winter is generally the worst season to travel. Lots of carnivores and kitins seem to breed, and exactly those you don't want on your tail.

For instance, Hidden Source is swarming with kinchers near Sirgio's camp and on the small hills; teams with multiple masters can end up wiped. Similarly, kinchers in Trench of Trials seem to multiply.

Adding insult to injury, during winter the aggros can litter a place wall to wall, giving you no passage.

3a. There are now a few kitin "observation camps" in game, as a response to the kitin invasion event that took place in the meantime.

A few of them are in a trekker's path, and could be used as safe spot to afk / regen. Off the cuff I can think of the one at the end of Hidden Source, as one goes down the path towards Knoll of Dissent. If the Woven Bridles tribe won't protect you, the observation camp will.

3b. Speaking of tribes, might be useful to know which of them like your race and which don't, so you can drop aggros on their guards.

There is a comprehensive tribe list on the Ryzom Wiki, maybe useful to read before heading out.. or just ask Universe.

4. I've tried recording a couple of treks with alts, which sort of re-creates the fragile condition of a beginner.

If anyone's interested:
Zora - Knot of Dementia - (fail on ramp)
Yrkanis - Hidden Source
Hidden Source - Pyr

That's pretty much it for now, but maybe in due time there will be more videos.

Here's my 2 cents on some of the more difficult spots having solo treked all of Ryzom at one point or another.

ToT I've noticed since they put in the Mara TP the south feels clearer than I remeber it. If however you're solo and going south close to the wall is blocked go north, Eeerie Valley then across close to Darkenwell, then stright down south. There's sometimes a spot where there's some cutes or dogs, wait a bit till you can slip through. Other than that i've always found it pretty clear, done it many times.

Bounty Beaches. Main problem here is the area between Tupile Trade Post and the portal if you go this way. It's just a case of waiting for a gap. It can be tempting to make a run for the small lake near there. It might not be wise as you could find yourself stuck in it. Mobs like to hug its edges.
The other way is up to the Kara TP just above the word Bounty Beaches then across.

Look ahead, plan. Stick the minmap on 50m. Run between the dots. Large areas can be treked just looking at the mini map

My favourite trek path! Very doable - stay down right hand side when travelling from Desert and keep a macro for Great Kirosta

Did HH in winter - never seen it so quiet - think it might be a good season for that place

And +1 for tips - though we tend to travel in light armour and always on foot, tried to give a story about the places we went through last few times (was mentioned on another forum posting) but too busy spamming heals as we raced through aggro, good fun though (and Fasi has a sense of adventure - if not taken within an inch of your life then trek is a fail)

Think Eikichi trekked everywhere solo when about level 10, Ninja skills and never known to ask for a rez!

my favourite trek method is the just-keep-on-running 'as the crow flies' method... granted, it's pretty useless for noobs with a sensitive panic button but it can work if the noob has been briefed prior to setting off.
me and bina trekked me to get tp's not too long back using this method... spam healing each other constantly, we at one point had two KP on our tail... the mantra of "never stop moving" is the key :P
our record for this method is three toons with a total of 24 aggro mobs running after us :D

let be known that i am not of sound mind to deal out useful tips and strategies.