Introduction

Hello. I am looking at this game with casual levels of interest as it seems to have some of the features I look for in a game. I'd like to ask a few questions before downloading it though that I'm sure current community members could answer for me a lot faster than I could pick through the existing media for this info.

I am a player who enjoys Roleplay and while traditionally I've been a PvPer who protects the innocent in a lot of games I'm kind of feeling as though I may turn my swords into plowshares in this game (should I choose to play it) to focus more on the economic and roleplay aspects.

1. Is there a skill cap system? I see there are a lot of crafting and combat skills. Is there any kind of limit on how many I can learn, or perhaps a limit on how many I can effectively use at one time? If so, how does it work?

2. What is the RP scene like? I see there is skills to make musical instruments and things of the sort. This seems to suggest an active RP community to me unless there is a bard spec I missed. How's that in this game?

3. If I were to get into this game how difficult is it to get a business set up and start trading with people? How difficult is it to get people to come to the area I live. Perhaps a good system for joining existing and active cities and starting businesses there?

4. This game is currently in early access from what I hear. Does anything I do in this stage of the game affect the game post release, or is it essentially still in testing?

Thanks in advance for your help and input.

 

Hail and well met!

1- Yes, there is a skill cap system.... no hard caps but there is a soft cap because of the sheer volume of xp needed to advance skills beyond 100. Also there is a xp decay system, applied upon death, which increases according to how many skills you've leveled up and how high.

2- I dont RP but there are role players in game and community events where some folks do active role playing.

3- You can sell resources fairly early in your game. Crafting however is a lot of work to get to a stage where you are doing serious selling. Some towns are more active than others, if your home is in an unactive town your vendor will see much less traffic. I would suggest the player owned towns of New Brittania Market & Novia Market as good places to aquire a plot with hopes of selling items. You can also use the public vendors, which do see a lot of traffic, until you have a spot of your own.

4- It's early access but there will be no more wipes. Any progress you make before release will still be there afterwards.

You're welcome!

 

1-I am a player who enjoys Roleplay and while traditionally I've been a PvPer who protects the innocent in a lot of games I'm kind of feeling as though I may turn my swords into plowshares in this game (should I choose to play it) to focus more on the economic and roleplay aspects.
Yes there is a role-play community here for you. Role-play guilds, role-play POTS (player owned towns), and role-play forum areas

1. Is there a skill cap system? I see there are a lot of crafting and combat skills. Is there any kind of limit on how many I can learn, or perhaps a limit on how many I can effectively use at one time? If so, how does it work?
No there is not skill caps you can do it all, except they are balancing and occasionally you may run into a soft cap at very high levels to balance.
2. What is the RP scene like? I see there is skills to make musical instruments and things of the sort. This seems to suggest an active RP community to me unless there is a bard spec I missed. How's that in this game?
I am not a role-play player per se' but they will be able to talk about this more with you if that is what you are looking for. I can role-play a bit joking around but that is about it usually for me.
3. If I were to get into this game how difficult is it to get a business set up and start trading with people? How difficult is it to get people to come to the area I live. Perhaps a good system for joining existing and active cities and starting businesses there?
It definitely takes time to gather what you need to do anything in this game. Having property is a benefit in this game but will not keep you from doing things to get started altho if you are open to it for example we have a boarding house in Wizards Rest and new players are very welcome to hang their hat and place chests to get started on the journey. Every month there is a raffle that gives a chance to get property if you buy a raffle ticket for about 5ooo gp but these lots are taxed as in smallest size row 500 gp a day and it goes from there. So to start out staying in a homeless shelter is a nice start. Next release or the one after that renting will come in game and renting is an option as well but still it depends on rent prices which we don't know how that will work yet.

Different areas have more traffic. There is a marketplace on the forums to advertise but hopefully our bulletin board system will come in so people can advertise their wares in game. Also some are designing their player owned towns to be trade towns and the raffled lots deeds you would win are POT deeds. There are many wonderful people in the game willing to help, but if you like to go it alone to get started you still can if you get settled some place. You can bind to one place to recall to as you like and you can teleport to other players as well if you are in the same mode.
4. This game is currently in early access from what I hear. Does anything I do in this stage of the game affect the game post release, or is it essentially still in testing?
this game is playable as it is. There are still aspects of most things that are not fully balanced and implemented at this time. For example fishing, agriculture, and questing are not complete but complete enough to try out and do some. Expect much more for these features as we go a long. Even though the developers plan to release this by the end of the year or a perhaps a bit later the development will continue on an ongoing basis to add much more to the game. You may run into road blocks here and there and need to report bugs but yes we do need to do that too. Just remember we are playing but it is not a fully developed game, but still has a lot of amazing aspects at this point. And we do not have a bard available to create but I think we will at some time. We are a classless system so you need to make up your character to be the most effective for your play style.
A few things to note:
'b' is for recipe book and recipes can sometimes be teachable and reteachable from other players which saves a lot of gold, other recipes need to be found exploring the world on creatures, in chests and in different towns sometimes.
'o' is for our emote system which we have a nice selection of and that is fun for role-playing. other players can teach you many more of them and some are found talking to npcs in your travels
'j' is for journal and it is still be refined to be more user friendly
the 'enter' key lets you bring up your chat window and you can pin it opened and resize it, plus make different tabs to make it so you do not miss chat from other players click on the blue flower and deselect some things to just see local emotes and whispers for example so you don't have to sift through everything trying to find a chat from someone. also this is still be worked on to be better.
'z' is to toggle combat and toggling out of it will refresh your health and focus faster, also we have lots of buffs. Learn your buffs. We have blessing shrines and you can have 2 that last 9 hours, and you can eat 2 tier of foods at one time to give you more buffing, for example 2 hour food and a 4 hour food would be two different food tiers.
check your bank when you first can and claim rewards. You should have a few recall and teleport scrolls to start in your bank.
Thanks in advance for your help and input.
Anyway I am Majoria in the game and if I can ever help, please let me know. You can friend another player by clicking the 'f' key outside of the chat window like pointing at the ground as all other commands and then type Majoria and hit enter to add me. You can also right click another player and see choices there for how you are able to interact with others and right clicking a players name in your friends lists also give those choices too. So welcome and it is so nice to meet you. Best wishes and enjoy your time here, there is tons to know and a pretty big learning curve so do not hesitate to call out for any questions you have. We have all been new before and would love to help.

Edited

 

Welcome Eldurian! I'll try to answer, but forgive me if I goof up I am still learning too.

1. Is there a skill cap system? I see there are a lot of crafting and combat skills. Is there any kind of limit on how many I can learn, or perhaps a limit on how many I can effectively use at one time? If so, how does it work?

---> To my knowledge there isn't what you might call a *traditional* skill cap. What you have are skill points you acquire from questing, random encounters and simply fighting your way though areas. You have to manage your skill points because they do drain away as skills level up. The more skills you try to train at one time, the more skill points are drained away from your pool. So it is up to each person to manage their skill points and decide what to train, when to train it, when to stop training, etc. This applies to both cambat and crafting.

2. What is the RP scene like? I see there is skills to make musical instruments and things of the sort. This seems to suggest an active RP community to me unless there is a bard spec I missed. How's that in this game?

---> That's a good question and one I'm not sure about. I've been a hardcore RPer for 15 years, but I haven't done *any* in SoTA. There are RPers out there and websites such as http://www.rpota.com/ but sadly, I am currently out of the RP loop.

3. If I were to get into this game how difficult is it to get a business set up and start trading with people? How difficult is it to get people to come to the area I live. Perhaps a good system for joining existing and active cities and starting businesses there?

---> The crafting system is a tough one. It is resource intensive and slow going. How hard it would be to set up a business really depends on the business and how much effort you want to put into it.

4. This game is currently in early access from what I hear. Does anything I do in this stage of the game affect the game post release, or is it essentially still in testing?

---> Anything you do now *does* affect your character's future. There are no more wipes - it is early access, but the world in now persistent. There *may* be a quest wipe at some point, but all that would do is set you back to redoing any quests you may have completed. I don't know if this will definitely happen, but I did hear devs discussing the possibility at one of the Postmortems. If memory serves, the reasoning behind it is that quests are still being added. But DLMB...heh. (Don't Lawyer Me Bro )

 

To my knowledge this will be optional but nothing is concrete yet.

 

Thanks for all the responses. Looks like I have until the 31st to test it a bit more and see if it's something I want to put money into.

A couple follow up questions:

1. Is there any kind of help channel in-game / how would I access it?
2. Is there or is there ever planned to be some kind of monthly sub?
3. Not a super fan of the quests. Is this game sandboxy enough that I can kind of do my own thing without quests after the tutorial quest?

 

Welcome @ELDURIAN !

1. There is not help channel in game, but you can access zone chat by typing /z

You can also access to SotA wiki by typing /Sotawiki [name of item or thing that you want information of] (www.sotawiki.net)

www.sotahelp.org can help you to find active people from game who are dedicated to offer help for other gamers, especially newcomers.

2. No planned monthly sub

3. You don't need to do any quests if you don't want to.

Add me as your friend in game, Luca Xante in game also. Whisper if you need any help, advice or just company. I am looking forward to see you in game

 

Don't forget to enable zone in the chat dialogue (using the gear icon) - by default new players don't see it.

Also @ELDURIAN feel free to ask any player you see around, the worst that can happen is they ignore you, but most are really helpful Look for players with the Hospitaller title, those players are volunteering to help others with the game.

 

*As you stand near the dock of that seedy sea town called Etceter you hear the commotion and many gather to look at the fog. The sound of drums keep getting nearer and nearer rising to a fever pitch. The silhouette of a Man-O-War ship with large skull and bones flags appears and slowly docks. At the foremast of the ship you see and elegantly dressed tall man with a broad smile on his face*

"The Pirate King arrives". *The voices of the children, the poor and the homeless sound excited as the man has the plank lowered and followed by two large men who carry a large chest which when opened reveals a large cache of gold coins. Upon the Captain's signal the two large men grab handfuls of coins throwing them at the crowd. Another man comes up to the ship dressed in the town guard uniform who receives what appears to be a map."

"Guard, give the Mayor this map and letter and prepare the town as the Obsidians are enroute and will attack soon. We will thwart their sea endeavor yet the land entrances may be compromised soon. Let the Stevedores resupply our ship as we head back out in one hour".

OOC: Welcome aboard brother. The others have answered all your questions and I just want to give you a taste of some of my RP writings that you can read at leasure in the "Fire Lotus Tavern, Library Forum" Many RP towns here and personally I recommend "House Serenite of Grumvald". Many others here as well. If you have any swords related questions please feel free to add "Boris Mondragon" to your list. Many have spent large sums of money in the game yet I started out with an adventurer pledge ($40.00). With hard work and dedication I have obtained everything I wanted in game especially good friends and good times. R/Boris/El Pirata

 

Hi there Eldurian! Welcome to the SotA Community! If you're looking for a regular RP event, keep tabs on @Stryker Sparhawk 's Happy Hour which takes place every Wednesday at 8PM Central.

1. Soft caps created by ever increasing xp requirements for skill points advancement and the decay system.

2. There are a LOT of RP'ers here, and there are routine events where folks RP, but mostly light RP. My best advice for finding your RP niche? Join the published events like the aforementioned Happy Hour, start meeting and greeting the people that show to those events and start branching out from there.

3. There are a handful of cities/towns that are full, certainly, and you can squeeze into properties on occasion as they free up, and there are MANY towns (NPC and POT) that have much housing availability. Currently, there isn't much foot traffic in near empty towns, but as the population grows, even just the inhabitants of your town would be enough to keep you in business if your wares and prices are in demand and fair. Guess its all about the foot traffic and advertising. Keep in mind too, you can post your wares on public vendors in busy towns or make friends with someone in key locations and place a vendor on their lot or share a vendor with them. I see tons of vendors in key locations that are never full of wares.

4. Still in testing but we now have persistence. There shouldn't be any more mass wipes. Perhaps a hot fix or two, but no major data wipes have occurred since we were persistent... um. A while ago.

Also, I noticed you mentioned being into RP-PvP. I made an offering not too long ago--thought I'd share in case its something that would interest you. https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-kahli-rp-pvp-free-housing.89263/#post-809164

 

Welcome to the game! I hope you'll have alot of fun

 

Welcome!


I'll link my twich videos. While I am pretty high level, you can see what it will be like for you in a few weeks when you start getting up in strength. Hopefully it will help you along, especially with combat.


https://www.twitch.tv/2112starman/videos/all

 

Greetings and salutations Eldurion! Welcome to the community!

 

welcome to the game Eldurion if you would like video tutorials then click on the link. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHaJtTffuLWz33z6OBtbhhA
I cover many of the topics you asked and I am ready to answer any you need answers to. please feel free to post here any questions as the community is waiting to help.

 

Welcome to New Britannia Eldurion! If you do decide to buy and try, take a look at the "Player Events" book you will get in your inventory. It updates each monthly release and has the on-going events as well as special ones that particular month. There are also plenty of events listed in the forums too that done make it into the book. I have found these to be quite entertaining, engaging and RP-like (some of them). And occasionally, the devs will show up and even Lord British himself!