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Last updated March 2019



= Introduction =
This is both an advanced guide for veteran empaths as well as new (but gaming experienced) players looking to min/max their gameplay as an Empath. The goal is to discuss in-depth the current mechanics surrounding the guild as of (2019), and how to best take advantage of them to build a beast of an empath character. '''This is not meant to present information in an objective manner and let the reader decide what they want to do. Rather, this guide is similar to a "build guide" for current MMOs or APRGs where the author presents strong subjective opinions on what choices to make in order to min/max.''' 

== Why Empath? ==

In the old days, an Empath could only heal other players. It offered a unique gameplay that no other game could provide, which not only drew me to the class, but also to DragonRealms. Despite being a heavy gamer that played most other popular games on the market, I kept coming back to DragonRealms because the Empath was unique. But that uniqueness came at a price: An Empath had no way to generate their own income, because they could not hunt, and the crafting system did not exist yet. They relied solely on the tips and goodwill of their patients, which coupled with relying on patients for advancement in the guild through training the Transference skill, made the Guild choice a humble one, which left many players wanting more independence. 

Today, the Empath is probably the most capable guild in the game, provided they train properly. Here is what the Empath offers:

=== Healing === 
The empath still offers the most rewarding foundation for interaction with other human beings in the game. Healing remains perhaps the most consistent way to facilitate making friendships. Cleric rezzes come in second, and Trader and Moon Mage services probably a distant third. Healing used to be very difficult. Today's empath's abilities are overtuned, and frankly overpowered. Even a low circle Empath is basically fully functional. The concentration and fatigue problems of taking wounds are gone, and the mana issues with healing yourself back up are gone. A moderately high circle Empath is basically a healing god/goddess if played correctly, capable of soaking up every wound that walks through the door of a triage, thanks to Regenerate, Heal, and Fountain of Creation.

=== Tanky Hunting ===
A byproduct of being able to heal themselves up in a flash after healing others, the empath just happens to be the most tanky, resilient class in the game. They are near unkillable if played correctly while hunting. Any wound received disappears in a near instant, and Empaths even have a spell that acts as a ward against taking vitality damage. They have spammable AOE debilitation spells that knocks every creature in the room to sleep. High level hunting grounds in the realms now, such as Lava Drakes and Ice Archons, can be hunted now by empaths with weapons if their skills are high enough. And even without weapons, MANIPULATE and guardian spirit kills living creatures such as Wyverns at a decent rate, while easily mind locking Empathy and TM.

=== Lore Prime ===
This used to be a bad thing, as the lore skill set used to be worthless. But now with the mech lore split and the new crafting system and work orders, being Lore prime means you have a good way to make money while training skills. Lore Prime guilds have more career choices, which means more technique slots. This means you can turn in higher quality goods for more money. They have bigger pools and absorb the experience faster, which means you can do more work orders without feeling that the experience has gone to waste. On top of that, Empaths get a flat 5% bonus to income when turning in work orders.

== Downsides to being an Empath ==

So why doesn't everyone roll an Empath? Here are the things that prevent some people from enjoying an Empath:

=== Weapons Tertiary ===
This drastically slows the advancement of the main offensive skillset in the game. Empaths cannot train weapons on living creatures without gaining shock, effectively restricting their hunting ladder to constructs and undead (with a spell). The main way an Empath deals damage is not through weapons, but rather through manipulation and Guardian Spirit, which both scale at acceptable speeds via the Lore and Magic skill sets respectively. Thus the bigger problem with weapons being tertiary is not the offensive capability of the Empath, but rather a disadvantage in one of the more lucrative skillsets used for TDP gain. But with the new REXP system, which we will go into detail later, this is less of a problem.

=== Non Free-to-Play ===
Playing an Empath requires a subscription, which is a good thing or else there would be endless pet Empath characters. However this also means in the rare case that there is actually a new player to DragonRealms, they cannot try out the Empath for free, which is the richest experience DR has to offer (IMO of course).


= Creating your Empath =
== Stats ==

Let's talk about the three most important stats for a modern Empath: Intelligence, Reflex, and Charisma. 

Intelligence is the single most important stat for leveling speed. More ranks, means you get more TDPs faster, which means you can train more stats. In addition, it also helps your concentration, allowing you to neglect (if you choose) stamina. It also helps us in learning from classes, which we do a lot of when sitting around for the first couple of circles.

Reflex is the most important defensive stat. Because we are survival secondary, Evasion will be our most important defense, above Parry, Shield, and Armor. Reflex is our combat stat used to hunt mobs at our level. It also helps in minor ways with shield, hiding, and crafting. 

Buffs in DR used to be independent of your own ranks. In the old days people would use Constellation Jewelry (CJs) and empathic linking to give insane bonuses to characters that would otherwise have very low ranks or stats. Today all buffs to ranks and stats are capped at a percent of your maximum ranks. Buffs effectively scale with your stat, so the more of the stat you have, the better. We will be maxing out reflex so when we buff it, our defenses are top notch. This is especially helpful early on to help Empathy learning rates from hunting living creatures.

Charisma used to be the most important stat for Guardian Spirit, which used to scale off Empathy and Charisma. Today it primarily scales off an Empath's Targeted Magic skill. Regardless, Charisma is still very important for an empath as it still directly affects manipulation, which is our primary offense ability and way of training Empathy. It also affects prices on crafting, shifting, along with how much we learn and teach from classes.

So in summary our stat weights look something like this: Int = Reflex > Charisma >> Disc = Wisdom = Stamina > Strength > Agility

All the other stats are not as important. In the old days, Stamina and Discipline were very important for an Empath, as the process of taking wounds would tank an Empath's concentration and stamina, to the point where they could not heal themselves up afterwards, and was at risk of dying to bleeders. This is no longer the case. I recently circled a baby gnome Empath with very little of both of these stats, and I was shocked that I could take all the wounds from a patient and have both stamina and concentration be relatively fine afterwards. Today, Discipline still helps you hide a bit better, and absorb your spells a bit quicker. Stamina gives you more of a vitality buffer when healing very wounded patients, as well as combat. Wisdom is like a less effective Intelligence-- it helps give you bigger pulse sizes when draining experience, but training Intelligence gives you a bigger pool, and therefore a bigger pulse as well.

Then we have Strength, which still has good quality of life uses by increasing your carrying capacity. This is helpful if you are lazy and like lugging around a lot of crafting stuff. If you like backtraining your weapons, and want to keep it fairly close to your main combat abilities, Strength would actually be a very important stat for you because it helps you carry all those different weapons around without burden, and also reduces the RT and increases the damage of the weapons, which helps you fill the weapon pools up quicker.

== Races ==

Because of the stat weights, a Gnome and Prydaen are both S-tier choices for an Empath. If you want to learn fast with a huge Intelligence and Reflex advantage, all the while looking cute with lots of moxie, pick a gnome. 

A Prydaen offers a good Reflex and Charisma advantage, and is neutral on Intelligence. However a Prydaen has two unique advantages over the gnome: a tail and claws. A tail offers you a unique place to put a pet bleeder. Claws offer you a natural brawling damage boost, and brawling is an Empaths preferred weapon because of the boost we get via Aggressive Stance (more on that later). There are reports (untested) that the Prydaen brawling bonus is working incorrectly for some damage types however, so be wary. The downside to a Prydaen is you might not enjoy the RP unless you are a Furry.

Elotheans, Elves, and Halflings are all good A-tier choices because of their stat distribution. A S'kra Mur has a penalty to intellgience, but a tail, a bonus to reflex, and are fun to RP, so still a good choice.

Humans and Kaldars are boring choices, they are both stat-neutral with no other mechanically interesting qualities.

Dwarves used to be a great choice, but now with less value to discipline and stamina, they are one of the poorest choices. And a Gor'Tog Empath? I think I've only seen one serious one in all my years of playing DR. I think her name was Lairnaa Feathers(sp?) or something.

== Weapon Choices ==
With the new REXP system released in January of 2019, it fundamentally changes an Empath's weapon training strategy. Before the universal doctrine was to train all weapons for the maximum amount of TDPs. Now that's changed for REXP users. And since Empath's cannot be F2P, every Empath will have REXP to deal with and manage. 

=== REXP ===

In short, the time for REXP is not actually consumed by the listed time. Every 20 seconds, if a pulse group has field experience, it is consumed and the time remaining is decremented by 20 seconds. This means that if a a field group has no pulse experience, the REXP is not consumed, and the four or six hours that come with a standard or premium account could in reality be extended beyond that time. If you are a casual player that can only play four or six hours each day, then by all means, continue to train all weapons. However, if you are logged into your character long enough each day to where your REXP ends, then it is in your interest to be selective on what weapons to train in order to maximize the time you are on REXP.

Here is a table of the relevant groups for weapons

{| class="wikitable"
! Group
! Skills
|-
| 1
| Staves, Polearms, Light Thrown, Heavy Thrown, Brawling, Offhand Weapon, Melee Mastery
|-
| 2
| Parry, Small Edged, Large Edged, Two-handed Edged
|-
| 3
| Missile Mastery, Primary Magic, Attunement, Arcana, Targeted Magic, Augmentation
|-
| 4
| Small Blunt, Large Blunt, Two-handed Blunt, Slings, Crossbows, Bows
|}

Unlike other guilds, an Empath has no parry requirement. So we can completely neglect parry. This is a good thing because parry, shield, and evasion are all zero sum via the STANCE system. If we completely neglect parry, it allows us to put more STANCE points into shield. This means we do not have to train any edged skills, and we can save an entire pulse group. 

Missile mastery is paired with the magic groups, which we will train of course, which means in general we should train some sort of ranged.

Finally we can cut out group four entirely. This means an empath can shave off two pulse size groups from their skill training regimen. How much time does this give us? Well it depends on the total number of other pulse groups we have, but you can look at the general difference 2 skill groups can make from the following table (credit to Discord User Ataelos#1042):

{| class="wikitable"
! Skill Groups
! Hours to Drain Restexp (Standard)
! Hours to Drain Restexp (Premium)
! Hours to Drain Restexp (Plat)
|-
| 1
| 40
| 60
| 80
|-
| 2
| 20
| 30
| 40
|-
| 3
| 13.33333333
| 20
| 26.66666667
|-
| 4
| 10
| 15
| 20
|-
| 5
| 8
| 12
| 16
|-
| 6
| 6.666666667
| 10
| 13.33333333
|-
| 7
| 5.714285714
| 8.571428571
| 11.42857143
|-
| 8
| 5
| 7.5
| 10
|-
| 9
| 4.444444444
| 6.666666667
| 8.888888889
|-
| 10
| 4
| 6
| 8
|}

For example, if I leave out those two mentioned groups and train every other skill group, as a regular subscriber, I would get five hours of REXP instead of four. If I can cut out two other groups from my training regimen, I can get 6 2/3s hours instead of four! Since weapon is our tertiary skillset, we learn it slower, which means less TDP/Time spent. Thus we want to focus our REXP time on other pulse groups.

Since REXP does not apply to login drain, you have the option of backtraining every other weapon group when the REXP ends. Lock them, go offline, and they will drain when you log in the next day.

=== Brawling ===
Brawling should be an Empath's primary weapon for a multitude of reasons. The first is that because an Empath is Lore Primary, Tactics is a skill pool that needs to be filled up quickly and efficiently. Brawling offers the fastest RTs to mind lock Tactics when using the ANALYZE command in combat. The second reason is that our spell Aggressive Stance naturally boosts brawling (along with evasion). Third, Brawling is within the Melee Mastery skill pulse group, which means it does not take up an extra REXP pulse if any melee is to be trained. Fourth, Brawling moves can be done at any time, even with other types of weapons in hand, so it is easy to train. Finally, brawling has traditionally always been an empath's weapon from before they could actually deal damage to constructs and undead. In the old days, it was the only trainable skill with commands such as PUSH, SHOVE, and CIRCLE. Today, those commands have been moved under the jurisdiction of Tactics, and Brawling covers the damaging moves like KICK, CLAW, GOUGE, etc..

With the advent of player-crafted Brawling weapons, there is now a way for Brawling damage to scale off material and crafting scale-- so feel free to buy the best you can afford! It is however a pain because almost each brawling move uses a different brawling item, and unless you have a brawling item-hider (e.g. platinum torque), or a omni-hider, it can add a lot of unnecessary fluff to your profile, and give you extra scroll when you have to remove the equipment for hinderance-sensitive actions such as disarming.

=== Staves and Polearms ===
These should be our melee weapons that we train alongside brawling. The preferred weapon for staves is a nightstick, because it can fit into most bags. A short hunting spear will be your preferred training polearm of choice because it can fit into most bags, as well as doubling as your Heavy Thrown weapon. FEINT if you are below 80 stamina, and DRAW if you are above 80 stamina.

=== Light Thrown and Heavy Thrown ===
These are your main ranged weapons to be trained alongside brawling. For Heavy Thrown, the choice is easy-- use a short hunting spear. For Light Thrown, you have to either use a bola, a light throwing spike, or throwing axe. Always use the LOB command instead of THROW so the weapon will not lodge. Be careful to make sure your parry is set to zero, so you don't parry with them on accident and gain experience in Light Blunts or Small Edged. Another alternative is to always hold HT in the right hand, and LT in the left hand, and lob right, then lob left. This method helps train offhand weapon as well.

== Armor Choices ==
== Starting Tips ==

= Healing =
== Overhealing ==
The number one cause of death for Empaths, is transferring a useless wound to a vital body part. I can't emphasize this enough. So many Empaths are careless about this it is crazy. When a body gets dragged in with super heavy wounds, either from a vicious spar, a mean box, or a teleportation accident, it's usually a 50/50 chance that the Empath healing it will die because they are careless. Even if they are high circle. Don't be this empath-- overhealing is easily preventable.

Your body has five critical body parts: Head, Neck, Chest, Back, Abdomen. If a useless (level 8) injury of any type (wound OR scar, internal or external) is created through transference, you will die. Instantly. This means if you have a moderate level 4 bleeder on your chest, and you take another moderate level 4 chest bleeder from a patient, you will die because 4+4=8. If a patient walks in with a level 7 wound pet chest bleeder, and you have minor abrasions on your chest (level 1), you will die because 1+7=8. If you are clean, and someone walks in with a completely destroyed chest and you take it, you will die because 0+8=8.

To prevent this, always make sure you heal your critical body parts, wound and scars, back up to full before healing a patient that has severe injuries. If you have trouble seeing what injury is what, refer to the wound substitution script in the next section. 

If you are a high level Empath, NEVER use LINK UNITY, to take wounds from a patient with severe injuries. There's a new ability empaths have that reduces the severity of wounds as you transfer them, so it makes it '''even harder''' for high circle Empaths to die. Currently, only TAKE or TRANSFER does this, LINK UNITY does not. So you should always TAKE/TRANSFER conventionally on serious patients. You should do this even if they have a useless would on a non-critical body part, because useless legs still cause you to fall over screaming and RP-wise, that's not very fitting of a high level Empath.

If you are a mid-circle empath, use TAKE <Patient> ALL HALF. This will take half the wounds and stop. Make sure you have enough ranks to actually do this, or else you will get the message that you slip and get a wild transfer. After you've taken half, heal up your critical body parts, both wound AND scar, and then take the rest of the wounds.

And if you are a low-circle empath, TAKE ALL, wait for one pulse of wounds to transfer and then type FALL, and wait for all your links to break. This is the safest way. Don't try to break all the links with the link/break command because you might have trouble remembering the exact syntax for it in the heat of the moment. Even I don't remember the exact command syntax right now. Just FALL. For the same reason why you push both pedals while driving with one foot instead of using your right foot for the gas and the left foot for the brake.

Don't be a noob. Don't embarass the guild. Heal safe. Seriously I facepalm whenever I see a high circle Empath go down. If my character is the one with the deadly wounds, I might say something in-game like, "Ack I'm sorry I caused your death.", since I'm a nice guy. But in reality, I am thinking "Wow, what a noob, you died from overhealing, Learn2Play pl0x captainpicardfacepalm.jpg".

== Wound Substitution ==

If you are using Genie, I made a simple script that sets up substitutes and colors to make wounds on yourself very easy to see. This way you know exactly how bad the wounds are on your body before you take on more wounds. It looks something like this:

[[Image:wounds.jpg]]

Green indicates fresh wounds, and blue indicates scars, with the shade denoting external or internal. Body parts that are critical will have a -*- next to them (so make sure you heal them up first, or at least keep them well-maintained). Bleedings are denoted with -!-. You can download the script here:

https://elanthipedia.play.net/User:Enfo/Scripts/WoundSubstitution.cmd

== Cast Reverse ==
When using Heal Wounds and Heal Scars, always use CAST <body part> REVERSE. I wish there was some way to make this default. The main reason for this is that you cannot see internal wounds on yourself if they are below level 3, while external wounds are always visible, even at level 1. So sometimes when you type HEALTH, you look clean, even though you are not. This is especially true when there is nerve damage from backfiring spells, or slight internal head and nerve damage from being stunned from PERCEIVE HEALTH when there are too many people in the room for your low Empathy ranks to handle.

Another reason for prioritizing internal wounds is that if you are ever in a situation where you are leaking badly, and don't have the concentration/stamina/mana to fire off a healing spell for whatever reason, it is better to leak on the outside than inside because you can tend external wounds.

= Training =
We already talked about Weapon and Armor, which being tertiary skills, have the least impact on our TDP growth and guild circle advancement. In this section we cover the rest of the training strategies for skills that actually form a core part of being an Empath. 

== Lore ==

=== Empathy ===
Empathy is the signature unique skill of an Empath and is needed primarily for advancement. The ways to learn Empathy are:

* TAKE/TRANSFER wounds from another player. 
* Learning it from another Empathy TEACHINGing Empathy.
* PERCEIVE HEALTH when there is another entity in the room (NPCs, Players, Monsters)
* TENDing leeches 
* MANIPULATE FRIENDSHIP on Creatures.

The final method, manipulation, is the most efficient way to train Empathy at high circles. Thus Empaths hunt to circle now. There aren't enough wounds on wounded adventurers to feed all empaths. Empathy courses are not always available. Powerwalks are out of fashion because they train other skills inefficiently. 

The biggest pitfall of a new empath is letting their Empathy skill get too far ahead of their combats. I can't stress this enough: always try to keep your Empathy within a reasonable range of your combat! Resist the temptation to sit in the infirmary all day grabbing wounds, even though it is very easy to circle without combat at first. For the first 100 ranks, the viable training margin will be very tight. But afterwards it will open up greatly, with tolerances often in the hundreds of ranks. It is important not to get discouraged when you don't see much Empathy experience when you're 100 or less ranks. If you plan to hunt with an Avenger, do not let TM get behind. Pick up Paralysis ASAP (more on that later).

=== Outfitting ===

Outfitting via Tailoring is perhaps the easiest lore skill to start gaining ranks in. All you need are knitting needles. Get some good player crafted ones if you can afford them. Then go to the Outfitting society to buy or make wool yarn. Create only items from the knitted section of your instruction book. Knitting is simple because there is only one tool, compared to other professions where you need to lug around a lot of tools. 

If you want to make money via knitting, then make sure you have 2 free technique slots saved up, and then take both Cloth Decorative Wear Design and Knitted Fabric Design both at the same time. If you choose Tailoring as your career and hobby, you can do this at 25 ranks. Otherwise you need to wait to 50 ranks without any career/hobby investment. The reason why you wait and save is because after you do this, you will roughly get a 50/50 distribution of cloth and knitted work orders. You can cycle through and just accept the knitted ones. If you don't save up and take just Cloth Decorative Wear Design, all your work orders will be for cloth, and you will have a hard time drawing knitted work.

If you need more info, refer to this wiki's [[Tailoring]] page.

=== Performance ===

In the old days we would train this skill (Back then it was Vocals) and Empathy at the same time via the great Wheeler Singing Power-walking Trains(TM). We would walk around Crossing in a huge group, perceiving all the shopkeepers while singing. It was glorious.

Today, the vocals skill is no more, and we have Performance, which is most commonly trained with zills, which can be worn, and played while worn. To get a [[Item:Pair of copper zills]] you need to make the trek to Riverhaven with a low-circle character, ASK THE PEDDLER ABOUT WARES, and then ORDER them from the peddler. Make sure you also order some chamois cloth to clean your zills. If you are too high of a circle, you cannot buy zills as the peddler's inventory will have changed, and your only recourse then is to buy them from someone, or roll up a newbie alt. The peddler's location is random so you might have to run around town looking for a bit.

If it is raining, you might need to SHAKE ZILLS to get the water off. You can do this while playing the zills. You also need to CLEAN ZILLS WITH CLOTH if they get dirty, and this can't be done while playing.

=== Alchemy ===

=== Engineering ===

=== Forging ===

=== Mechanical Lore ===

=== Scholarship ===

=== Tactics ===

== Magic ==

The general rule of thumb to magic training is ABC (Always Be Casting). No matter where you are, what you are doing, have a spell prepped for ''something''. As Empath mana is dependent on room location, try to always end your cast in rooms with decent mana. You can start your prep anywhere however, you only have to CAST in the good mana room.

=== Arcana ===


== Survival ==



= Spell Build Order =

= Hunting =

{| class="wikitable"
! 
! Living
! Undead
! Construct
|-
| Train Empathy / Manipulate
| Yes
| No
| No
|-
| Train TM / Guardian Spirit Avenger
| Yes
| Yes
| Yes
|-
| Train Weapons
| No
| Yes*
| Yes
|}