The instructions said that civilized is a good class for newbies. I picked drow as my race. I asked someone in game if this was a good idea and they said no. What is a good race/class for a newbie?

Well, civilized drow probably wants to be a spellcaster...you have a few options in the civilized bg:

• Folklorists
• Civ Mages
• Runemages
• Bards

As a drow, you are better on wisdom and spellcasting, so I'd suggest folklorists as a first choice. Civmages are a decent blaster for the early levels, and especially now, they get a good variety of damagetypes...generally considered a newbie caster guild. Runemages could work, though the low drow skillmax and runemage's lack of traditional spell training probably don't tie off eachother very well; additionally, runemages requires a lot of research to work well, but can be a good way to get powerful spells at very low levels -- if you spend the time to research them. Bards is also a doable guild, one of the more role-playing ones which will have you doing plays and writing stories etc to advance levels -- the casting is mostly dex-based, which drow is okay at.

As for did you make a good choice, I like civilized, there's a lot of variety. And, if you later on feel you've made a bad decision, you can always reincarnate ('help reinc', 'help reincarnation', 'help reincarnation process'. Basically, you can, for a small tax, start over again at level 1 and re-spend most of your experience as a new race+background+guilds. Some players do it weekly (a bit excessive), many do it every few months, and almost none do it never.

what is a good race for a civilized?

Nomad is the easiest to start with and pick some race that is big and has hp like giant, cyclops, ogre, centaur maybe even wolfman.

All skills and spells cost exp but you can do even some damage wo/ skills in melee combat and newbie nomads can get 800+ hp with ease so they wont die to everything and nomad guild especially ranger provides nice regen and wilderness survival skills like swim. Newbie civ wil get like 400 hp.

You can start with other backgrounds if you like but it will be bit to veryvery much harder might be more fun tho. Also evil religious has some tank guids that are suitable for newbies, but ask in newbie channel.

I would add that, for real newbies, it is really worth considering a race that has infravision and no awkward allergies or similar (like water allergy or lowered stats while in light).

For nomad, I've always quite liked Lizardman as a good newbie race. Dwarf is also quite playable and, although small, does give you reasonable hit points and, should you stay a dwarf nomad for a while, the high skill maximum for dwarves makes it less difficult (costly) to raise skills to higher percentages (80%+).

So, if you wanna go civilized, you need to be a bit more specific when asking for a race. Civilized background is quite varied...there's spellcasters, merchants, fighters, and things in between.

As some others have suggested that nomad is a good starter background if you're considering reincing, this is the case in some regards -- the traditional easiest newbie combo is some big race as a nomad ranger. Personally, I think evil religious + tzarakk (slaves of the beastmaster [not herd of beastmasters]) would also be a strong guild. But, civilized is perfectly playable too -- you need to pick something fun! I'm currently a civilized drow...as drow I'd recommend perhaps folklorists (though, as folklorist, you'll be most successful when you find a group of front row fighters to kill stuff with).

--ooga