Difference between revisions of "Create a New Character"

Revision as of 03:07, 15 April 2008

Choose a Shard

Before you can create a new character, you must pick the world, or shard in which you will live. Of course you can have characters on multiple shards, but for the time being, you should find your home shard.

In general, you will want to pick a shard that is in your geographic region. If you live in the UK, you won't want a Japanese shard. Likewise, if you live in San Diego, Atlantic is probably not the best shard for you.

The main screen will give you response times and packet loss for the various shards. While not extremely accurate, it will give you an idea of the shards to which you have the best connections and the shards to stay away from. Experience has shown that the packet loss column is not entirely accurate, but the latency column is fairly accurate over time.

Beware of Siege Perilous and Mugen, as they use the Siege Ruleset. These shards are very PvP-oriented and are usually not for the beginning player.

Create a Character

After selecting a shard, you will be prompted to either choose a trade or choose an advanced template. If you are new to MMORPGs in general, you may wish to simply choose a trade, although there are many more possibilities if you choose the Advanced option.

Advanced Character

If you choose the advanced option, you will be able to allot points to various skills and stats. This is the beginning of your character's template. While this can vary as time goes along and your character develops, you should understand that your character can have a maximum of 700 skill points and 225 stat points. You should keep this in mind as your create your starting skills and stats.

Starting Skills

Keeping the 700-point cap in mind, you need to begin to think about your template. While nothing is set in stone, it is a good idea to have an idea of where you want to go. You may not know which 7 skills you want to bring to 100, but you may know that you want to create a mage, a blacksmith, a swordsman, etc.

The following are examples of general character types along with skills that are commonly associated with that character class. Generally your template will consist of 7 skills, each maxing out at 100 point per skill.

Fighting Characters

• Warrior
  • Melee skill (one of: Fencing, Mace Fighting, or Swordsmanship)
  • Anatomy helps to increase the chance of hitting your enemy in a vital organ. In reality, the effect is that more damage is inflicted on your opponent. Healing is useless without this skill.
  • Chivalry is popular due to some of its offensive spells that complement a warrior's template.
  • Focus allows you to quickly regain Stamina after being hit. The more stamina you have, the faster you'll swing your weapon. It also helps you to regain Mana at a faster rate, but not as fast as Meditation.
  • Healing allows you to heal yourself during combat without dropping your weapon. The higher your healing skill, the more damage will be healed. The higher your Dexterity the faster you will heal yourself. Healing at higher levels can be used to Resurrect other player characters. Healing is a must for Warriors, and is useless without Anatomy.
  • Warriors tend to throw a bit of Meditation into their template from time to time, sometimes going with a mix of Focus and Meditation, akin to 60/40 respectively. Meditation allows you to regain Mana faster, thus less time between weapon Secondary Abilities. However, as a new player you should not be too concerned with secondary abilities and may want to consider keeping Meditation off of your template for now.
  • Parrying is a defensive skill that lessens the chance that your enemy will strike a blow on you.
  • Resisting Spells is a defensive skill that lessens the effects of a Debuff Spell such as Weaken, Clumsy, Corpse Skin, etc. It also affects the duration of certain offensive spells cast on you, like the Paralyze spell.
  • Tactics increases the damage done when you strike a blow to your enemy.
• Mage
  • Magery is, obviously a mage's primary skill. The higher your magery, the better your chances of successfully casting spells of various levels.
  • Since every spell a mage casts costs a certain number of Mana points, every mage will want Meditation in their template to allow them to regenerate mana at a faster rate.
  • In addition to Meditation, some mages want Focus which not only increases the rate at which Stamina is regenerated, but greatly increases the rate at which precious Mana is regenerated.
  • Inscription allows the mage to create scrolls, spellbooks, and other magery-related craftables, but it also increases the amount of damage done by a spell.
  • Some mages may want to add a melee skill, or another magic skill such as Necromancy or Spellweaving.

Crafting Characters