Library: newbie guide

When I get asked things a lot, I begin to write them down in books, so people can just read the book rather than ask me. Also, books are more complete (when finished), and less prone to forgetting. According to the christian calendar most people use, this book was written in January of the year 1997. It is written slightly after the conversion, which happened a few months ago. If there is another conversion, this book may or may not become outdated. It is not finished. When it's done, you'll see a "FINISHED, <date finished>" at the end. * Character Creation * By the time you read this book, you've probably already made a character and advanced to level 5 or so. Maybe even to level 20 if you've played for some time. Which means you've probably played a little at least. * Fundementals, Character Classes * There are three basic types of players here, which you ought to look at functionally (by what they do). There are tanks, who are made for taking damage, "blasters", which are made for doing damage (with spells mostly), and there are healers, who heal damage to others. And then there are exceptions, like merchants or navs, but these aren't sugested for newbie characters. So your "class" has probably already been chosen for you, it was chosen at character creation when you chose your background. If that's not what you want to be, get a reinc now, while you still don't have too much to lose. You must try to excel at what is important for your class. Don't worrey about other things. For instance, a tanks job is taking damage. How much damage you do, or for a mage how much HP they have, or that they never do much damage when they hit something. Just get good at what your class is good for. This is why you party. * The Essentails, from the Beginning * Picking a background: Nomads make great fighters. They have the most HP, but no SP whatsoever. Next come civilized. They have okay HPs and SPs, so they're an all-around background. They have a good choice of guilds. Regardless, I do not recommend this for newbies. They don't have the HP for tanking in real parties. Then, evil-religious. Like civilized, they don't have the HP for tanking. Because they are mediocre healers, and for other reasons, see the guilds section, I do not recommend thse for newbies either. Then, there is good-religious and mages, which have poor HP and good SP. Be these if you want to be a healer or a mage, respectively. Next comes race. The most important thing is that your race be suited to what your class is intended for. For instance, don't be an Ent tank or a Giant mage. Races can change often, so I try mostly to be general here. Tanks need a race that is generally not too large, since being large means you take more hits than others in your party. And taking hits means you'll die before other tanks do. A dwarf, for instance, can outlive giants and minotaurs with ease. The point is not to be big and powerful, but to be average or small size and yet still have good HP. So my personal favorite here is a dwarf. Their HP are comparable to the larger races, and they train skills for cheaper than other races. Healers and mages shouldn't worry too much about the physical characteristics of their race. It is much cooler to have a race like Merfolk, with quicker advancement (needs less XP, better XP-rate). Your stats are secondary. For newbie mages, however, a race that can cast magic missile (Drow, Thrikhren) may be preferable, since it is nice to have a good first reliable spell. * Complete-ing your Background * You can easily complete the levelquests for 2 and 4, and maybe some others. The best way to get XP early is just by exploring. Start with Newbie Mountain, right next to Diggas. You get XP every time you go to a room that you haven't been to before. This means that simply being in a place like the Crimson Brigade guild and walking around gives you XP. You can easily get the xp you need to complete your background by doing this, maybe with a little partying and killing also. * Choosing a Guild * There are currently a few guilds per background to choose from. You should join one as soon as possible. Be sure you join a guild that will teach you usefull skills/spells. Some guilds are simply not suited to newbies, others aren't good at all. It changes. One thing to remember is not to pay much attention to what higher-level players (35+) yell about. If everyone yells that a guild sucks, and reincs out, that doesn't necessarily mean you ought to reinc out also. Remember, you're level 20 or so, they're 35+. If its playable, pick something and stick with it, don't reinc just b'cos your guild is full of whiners. q help open guilds gives you a "complete" list of guilds. This info may be somewhat out of date. Tank guilds: To tell the truth, the guild you join doesn't matter too much. Most highbies are legionaires I understand, I myself would prefer rangers, since they get bladed fury later, practically the best attack skill in the game, later on. But for a newbie, it really doesn't make a terrible lot of difference. Magical guilds: The Brotherhood of Wizardry is the basic "blast" guild for mages. Though their spells are learned slowly, their spells are extremely efficient, and little trouble to cast. There are also Psionicists and Abjurers. Abjurers is being closed and/or redone soon. Conjurers I don't know too much about, but it could be the "new" Abjurer guild. I also don't know too much about Psionicists, but the Brotherhood probably teaches you the best spells. Join the brotherhood, and specialize in magical (or acid, if you have quite a lot of levels and XP). This way you at least can train magic missile/acid arrow, and get some use out of your background. Good-religious guilds: Priests of Tarmellon - I don't have too much nice to say about this guild, so I'll keep my mouth shut. It is your basic healer guild. You have problems, like healing very evil people, and a guild that moves to different places depending on the season. Try to find someone else in the guild and ask them. Maybe they'll be nice enough to tell you. I also do not recommend the Druid guild, or the Monk guild to anyone. Especially not newbies. evil-religous: Not a recommended background for anyone less than 20th level. I do not like Lords of Chaos. They are like poor tanks in parties, they die too much. If you must join this guild (there is some cool flavour stuff), join evil-priests too. That way you at least use your SP for blast spells, and you have to train attack anyway. Evil-priests is a great guild, but I do not recommend it for newbies, b'cos you must train your attack to 60%+ to be effective. Which is expensive. And the spells hog SP. The thing I like about this guild is that the harm spells do more damage, and you get them much earlier in the guild then say the Brotherhood of Wizardry. There are rumors of an evil-monk (ninja?) guild, and a necromancer guild to be coming soon. Civilized: Newbies shouldn't join merchants. Merchants are a specialty guild. And the fellowship, or mercenaries, are like poor versions of blast and fighter type guilds. Thieves are rumored to exist, but if they do its a well-kept secret. And bards will come eventually. any-background guilds: These are specialty guilds mostly for highbies, don't worrey about these. * Playing, partying * Now that you've joined a guild, remember to stick with that guild, its better here to concentrate on just one thing and get good at it. So now, you're probably ready to start actually killing things. It is very important to party. The ideal party is one person from each class, a tank, mage, and healer. Try to keep the ratio close to 1:1:1. Each tank should get their own healer for combat, and all the healers do in combat is continually cast healing at their designated tank. * While fighting * Parties automatically have a designated leader. A good leader doesn't let, or does the best to stop his party members from dying. Not only do they lose xp and such, but it also really slows things down when someone dies. So it is always better to flee from a monster (almost always possible for newbies) and heal up rather than to try to fight it when one of your tanks is seriously injured. In general, a tank that gets below 200-300 hp ought to report, and this is a signal to the leader to get out of there. Of course, monsters regen quickly, and some monsters will even follow you, so its important to get the injured person back up to noncritical as soon as possible, and then to re-attack the enemy. * Areas * There are a great deal of areas in the game. Not all areas are created equally. Some are much better for adventuring than others. Areas to avoid are: 1) Areas very close to town. These areas are mostly over-crowded, and the xptune means you get little xp for killing things. For instance, Digga's area or newbie mountain, or Tonze's newbie mines are areas to avoid. 2) Areas that you can normally solo in. Avoid fighting monsters in a party that you can normally kill easily in solo combat. The whole idea of partying is so that you can kill stuff you can't normally kill. 3) Areas with a lot of the same monsters. Again, newbie mountain is a good example. The xptune will take away most to all of your xp, or begin to after a short while if it doesn't start out that way. Look for an area with many different types of single monsters, rather than many almost-identical monsters. Mithil stonedown, while not a good area b'cos its too close to town, is a good example of an area with many different single monsters, rather than a bunch of the same. 4) Areas with aggressive monsters (ones that attack you instantly). You should always take the time to use consider at an unknown monster. Anything that's above "... is a fair opponent" -- treat with caution. But remember your in a party, and you can take things on you normally couldn't. 5) Areas with spellcasting monsters, or undead. While an occasional one is okay, you should avoid fighting hordes of spellcasting monsters, especially those with area-attack spells. These type of monsters can often take out a mage or healer with one or two spells. Unlike melee attacks, spells can be targeted at anyone in your party, rather than just your tanks. Undead are nasty because they cast curse spells that decrease con, drain xp, etc., and this can really slow a party down. * Reincing * You should try to avoid reincing often. I think the "reinc tax" is largely determined by how long ago your last reinc was. If your last reinc was months ago, you can get very low, like 2%. If your last reinc was yesterday, we'll people whine about getting upwards of 30%, so you can probably get about 20%, which is quite bad. Again, don't reinc b'cos something in your guild just got downgraded, and a lot of people at levels way above you are whining and reincing out. When there's a change in game dynamics that favors a certain guild, don't reinc to change to that guild. Often times, that guild is unplayable for newbies, or turns out to be mostly useless, as merchants did when people were going hog-wild reincing into it b'cos they thought plastic surgery was the best thing since "Gorby Acid". If you reinced recently, don't reinc b'cos too much of your xp is spent on outdated spells like cure light wounds (for healer). You probably won't save too much, considering most guilds have minimum's and such.

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Library: newbie guide