New Player-Failed at Everything So Far :(

I'll give you some advice that will help you survive. First off, the skill system is a use-based one, meaning the more you use a skill or spell... the better/stronger it gets. When you improve the starter skills to level 10, they usually open up better skills that you can buy that will help you greatly. But, in order to buy them, you need gold (currently, they cost 100 gold each). So how do you make some quick gold?

Easiest that I have seen early on is delivering the mail for the town criers. Walk up to the town crier in Soltown, Ardoris, and/or Solania and type in "mail" (without the quotes) and they will give you a mail package and a destination to bring it. Then all you need to do is leave that town, walk on the overland map to that destination, enter it and find the town crier there. After collecting your reward (75g each time I believe... may be more for the first time, I forget)... say mail to get another package to deliver. I believe Soltown sends you to Ardoris - Ardoris sends you to Solania - Solania sends you to Soltown. They could be random though, so don't quote me on this. Put basically, they send you back and forth between those 3 towns. The only risk involved is if you get pulled into a random encounter from the overview map. If that happens, simply run straight thru to the exit and you are back to safety. Soltown will be on the east coast of the overview map. Ardoris will be southwest a bit from Soltown, and Solania will be northwest of Soltown. The Ardoris run is pretty simple... just follow the road heading that way. Solania is a bit trickier to find. You need to head north a bit from Soltown and pass the first trail to the left, making a left up a bit more. Then hug the hillside and weave through the marshes, crossing a couple bridges. Once you make these back and forth runs a few times, you should have several hundred gold to use for skill training:

Hit K to open up your skills window and you will see all the skill trees and what is available. You will notice that most new skills/spells require you to increase the one above it to level 10 before it's available (mouse over the icon and read the red text at the bottom). Also, sometimes a skill requires 2 prior skills leveled up first. Knowing that, look through all of the options and see what you could improve right away to help you survive. Improved healing and defense comes to mind so...

The first thing you want to do is stand in town and spam your healing spell until your finger hurts. Then switch fingers and continue some more. While you are doing this, keep an eye on the life magic skill tree (keep the K window open in background) and when it hits level 10 you can take a short break. At the bottom of each skill/spell icon, you will see a green line ticking across as you use it. Then the green line makes it all the way, the level goes up one... so you can track your progress and know just when a skill will level up. [As a side-note - you will notice that your healing spell should be increasing in effectiveness as you level it up...mouse over the tool tip to see what the current level does and what the next level will increase to.]

Now when you get this to level 10, find a skill trainer and buy the 3 new spells you have opened up. If you are still low on gold, sell all the looted items you have so you can afford them. If you don't have enough for all 3, you will have to get what you can for now and then buy the other(s) as you can afford them. Start with Life Power as this is a passive skill that increases as you use any Life magic spell, and makes them all better as this levels up along side them. Next you can either choose the Healing Ray (medium heal that heals more but has a short cast time instead of the instant Healing Touch) ... or you can choose Purify (This will cure poisons from spiders and the plague from zombies, as well as some other debuffs you might get.) I would suggest you get all 3 if you can and then spam those in town (along with Healing Touch) to make them a bit better before heading out to combat. Don't worry about opening up the next tier of Life spells yet. For one thing, they are mainly based on healing/curing others in a group and secondly, most of them depend on reagents to cast successfully. If anything, you might want to pick up Banish Undead if you plan to hunt skelly's or zombies a lot.

If you still have some gold leftover from your mail runs, go back to the trainer and pick up some skills in the Strategy branch: Train Strength, Train Dexterity, and Armor Preservation (all in the Tactics Tree, available after Healthy reaches level 10) and Train Intelligence (In the Focus Tree, available after Heightened Awareness reaches level 10). These skills will increase your base stats, which determine your attack rating and how often you hit/miss and how much damage you do. The Armor Preservation will help keep your armor from damaging/breaking and will save you on repair kits down the road. The best part about all of these is they are passive skills that will get better as you fight or use your basic skills/spells. In fact, if you can grab these before you purchase the 3 Life spells I suggested above, then these stat skills will increase as you train those other spells up as well.

Lastly, if you are still using Light Armor that they started you with (cloth or leather) then make sure you use the Dodge skill as often as you see it pop up when you are fighting. The defense it provides will help you survive longer in a fight. However, if you happen to pick up any heavy armor in your travels (chainmail or plate) then you need to buy that skill from a trainer first so you can wear it. Heavy armor is MUCH better at helping you survive early on, so if you can get your hands on any I suggest making the switch. It may cause you to fizzle more, but the better defense is worth it. Also, the lower level Life tree spells are barely affected by the heavy armor fizzle modifier.

Oh, one more thing... if you open your skills window (K) you will see a small dash or green triangle in the upper left of each skill/spell icon. The green triangle means that you are currently working towards improving that skill (so it will draw points from the experience "pool" you have which is tied to your adventurer level). The dash means you are not training that skill/spell. So, if you want to improve a specific skill/spell then you can turn everything else off by clicking on the triangle. This will put more of the points into the ones you want to improve faster. I would suggest leaving all of the passives on as you want them to improve as high as possible... but if you reach level 10 in a skill and open up the next tier, you can turn the one off and put more points into the new skill to improve that faster. For instance, if you open up Healing Ray, you can lock Healing Touch so that when you use Healing Touch during a fight, it doesn't go up. Instead, the point pool will be reserved for the Healing Ray (and anything else you leave ON).

Hope all that helps and makes sense. My point is, get to know the skill / spell system and try to streamline as best you can. Work on and improve survival stuff before you even fight. Then when you start fighting, you have better heals and better defense than when you first got in the game.

One thing that most people don't realize is that the skill points pool is based on your adventurer experience level (hit V to see this as well as your other character stats). There is also a cap level of 100. So, once you hit 100 your skill pool points will no longer be gained. This means that once you hit 100, your skills/spells will only be able to be improved by what is left in the tank so to speak. So, the most important thing to realize long-term is to make sure you turn off training of unnecessary skills after they unlock something you want below them. You can always unlock them later on once you get all the stuff you want. But what you don't want to do is things that I did like allowing the Heavy Amor Tree Skill - Deflection - to reach level 66 when this skill isn't even really in the game and does nothing (No icon means it is a placeholder skill to get to the next tier). I wasted 56 points in that skill that do nothing for my character right now and could have gone into something else instead. Now, that skill will likely get added in later (once they balance it or figure out how they want it to work) so when game goes "Live" it wouldn't be so bad. But for now, it was a waste of points that I will never get back. Now do that sort of thing on a couple skills/spells and it all adds up. I'm not at level 100 yet so I don't see the negative effect of it yet... but if I get there before a skills wipe then I will. So always be conscious of what skill/spell training is on and which you can safely turn off.

Good luck!

 

If you take a new player near a spider, they're dead, up to level about level 12-15, with absolutely no chance to survive if they try and fight. The DoT is massive until your health pool is extremely large, comparatively.
But yes, I've done what you've outlined on two different characters, and it doesn't help in the slightest. Even if you lock purify on your bar, it's only a percentage change. If you don't get it on the first cast, three poison ticks later, you're dead.
The new player experience is -extremely- unfriendly, with respect to spiders and zombies. If you don't believe me, you could always try it..

To be specific: A level 4 character has 82 health. A small wolf spider DoT is 1-5 damage per tick, every 1 second. That means
it goes something like:

[9/4/2015 11:50:27 AM] Small Wolf Spider attacks Player and hits dealing 2 points of damage with Poison.
[9/4/2015 11:50:28 AM] Small Wolf Spider attacks Player and hits dealing 5 points of damage with Poison.
[9/4/2015 11:50:29 AM] Small Wolf Spider attacks Player and hits dealing 2 points of damage with Poison.
[9/4/2015 11:50:30 AM] Small Wolf Spider attacks Player and hits dealing 4 points of damage with Poison.
[9/4/2015 11:50:31 AM] Small Wolf Spider attacks Player and hits dealing 3 points of damage with Poison.
[9/4/2015 11:50:32 AM] Small Wolf Spider attacks Player and hits dealing 3 points of damage with Poison.
[9/4/2015 11:50:33 AM] Small Wolf Spider attacks Player and hits dealing 3 points of damage with Poison.

That's 25% of your hit points gone in 7 seconds, JUST from the DoT. If there's two spiders, it's double in that time. You'd be lucky to make two casts and two swings in that same 7 seconds. PLUS, they're chewing on you that whole time, so you're taking normal damage as well.

It's really not fun, currently. It's just a guaranteed death, as a new player. And god help you if you're using the deck system the way they want you to, and don't have Purify locked.

 

Wow, this is some great information! I'm working on this now.

I had a mission to deliver mail to Desolis, but that town is completely blocked off from me by a big wall. I deleted the mail item, thinking I could get a new mail mission from the Town Crier, but he thinks I still have the mail to Desolis to deliver. How do I cancel this mission, or get the mail package back that I deleted?

Thanks again!

 

Lots of good advice here. I might add.... make sure you are facing the target. If you are at an angle to the target, your damage output will go down drastically.

 

What an awesome, detailed, and informative post. This has to be the best beginner's tutorial I have seen.

Thanks Daxxe

 

Your post made me smile. I can really imagine your frustration. A lot needs to be done to acclimate new players to the game, it is a bit haphazard at the moment. Also the new skill system, just introduced in R21, needs balancing. Your best bet at the moment is to get help from experienced players.. If you see me in game, feel free to ask for help.

 

Well, hitting "T" for auto-attack makes all the difference. Apparently, my sword skills are much worse than the computer's, because auto-attack is allowing me to really do well in the nearby swamp. I'm killing skeletons, zombies, and even a couple of bandits!

I also opened up the health skills and tactical passives, and they're starting to pay off. Now, I can kind of see where we're going with the game. This is MUCH better!

 

The running joke is that "auto attack doesn't automatically attack".

I bound the "T" key to one of the extra mouse buttons. Now it's a pavlovian conditioning everytime I hit tab...

 

um... don't do that.

 

Ouch, like Alley Oop said, that is a bad idea and one the crier explicitly said you shouldn't.
However, I think I can get you out of that pickle if you are ingame in about 3h-5h something. I have extra mail packages in a chest somewhere (got them for an old bug/exploit report) and could trade you one so that you can get the chain going again.

However if you don't mind stealing then there are much more lucrative ways of getting some gold without fighting.

Or if you want a better start I could simply gear you up and give you some starter gold and help you level a bit, so that your SotA experience could be that much nicer.

Regardless of what option above feel free to write in chat
/friend Spoon
then open the 'f' key interface to see if I'm online and if so right click the name tag to Whisper me in game.
I'm always happy to help out new folks if I'm available.

 

Well, I don't know what to tell you.

My health is currently 84, using the starter armor, in the second level of polearm skills, and just took death magic (Death Touch @ 5) and I'm taking down two spiders at a time with half of my health usually left.

I use Purify a lot and cast it every time I get poisoned and I keep moving toward the spider because they like to back up just out of range.

 

Holy wall-of-text.

Should make a faq and post it.. great stuff!

 

You can listen to whoever you want - but as a new player you ONLY gain points by completing quest and / or killing critters. As a result your Adv level will increase and you will get points dropped into a pool of points you can use to spend in skills as YOU chose.

If you just use healing you will NOT be able to kill anything and once your quests points are all used up you will NOT be able to kill anything.

BE SMART Look at the skills - what they doo - what Innate are there.

I would suggest pick a fighting style YOU want to use, also pick your armor type Heavy or Light.

You WILL nee some focus to use special moves and / or spells but I would wait until you can fight a little before you pick spells.

You can use death touch to heal and NO healing to keep yourself alive if you chose.

But for simple learning I would chose Swords and Heavy Armor with a little healing to start out and learn skills how they work and how to increase them.

Swords - I would train Blade Master up until 10 then Lock it and unlock the next two in the tree (Thrust, Dbl Slash, Blade Speed). Once Speed is 10 LOCK it and work on raising Vital Points and Mastery. I would also prob lock Thrust and Dbl Slash once they hit 10 and move on to Rend and Riposte. Once you have all those skills unlocked and at 10 I would then leave only the ones you want to work on set to raise.

Armor - Heavy I would run Glancing Blow up to 10 and then lock it and unlock the rest of the innates and Inner Strength I would raise inner strength, but LOCK Deflection immediately as it is useless but rasi some skills in Hard Head and Endurance. Once they are at 10 I would lock them and become more specific in training.

Tactics - Healthy to 10 then lock it and unlock ALL the others in the next row (if you have the gold) if not make sure you unlock Str and Dex. I would not set them all to raise just Str and Dex but UNOCK them all. you can lock them and unlock them NOT at a trainer so changing can be done on the fly (as long as they are unlocked) I would work ONLY Str and Dex until your dex is at least 10 and Str to 20 then I would consider training other skills in the trees.

Focus - Heightened Awareness - 10 and lock ( starting to look familiar)then I would unlock all the next row but only Train Intel and Quick Swapping - once quick swapping is 10 LOCK it and move into next innate Inner Calm. I would unlock Follow thru but ONLY if you are going to have 2 dack and swap them if not do waste the time.

In Magics Trees I would work on SOME healing 10 - just to unlock next row and the spread it around as you chose and or Death Magic - Tap Soul works VERY well to get Focus back IF you have health stable. If you are getting beat up it can kill you but once at 10 you can unlock Death Touch and its innate to make it work better and use that in a fight to heal you.

This I a VERY basic start to a Sword / Heavy Armor Dexer - there are MANY templates you could chose but you HAVE to plan and use your points accordingly. If you just turn them ALL up you will get points in places you don't want / need right off the bat.

You need to be able to Hit / Kill some small creature and heal thru some minor damage.

As you work and get Stronger and Faster you will be able to take on other critters.

Again I would not just SPAM any spells as they use up points in skill that will NOT help you in the long run.

If you want more help in Game look for me "Grumpie Weinine" I will be happy to show you around , take you out and watch your back, or even set you up with some Equipment, and or gold.

 

That's great news Gregg247, your on your way. The game is now presenting itself to you and you will discover it's depth and appreciate it even more. This game isn't your typical MMO, plus the fact that it's pre-alpha and things currently exist unlike how they will at release. We are all along for the ride and will have to change our play style again down the line probably several times before it's released. But the reality is, we all chose to be here knowing it's a work in progress.

 

It is nice to see so many helpful suggestions coming from the community. The learning curve of this game reminds me of my early days in UO when I would leave town only to be killed doe. Once someone told me I should start chopping wood and use my weapon on a practice dummy in the safe zone for a few hours before attempting to kill anything.

 

I myself started the game last night. At first I felt like you until I realized that I wasn't auto attacking, now things die a lot faster lol. Additionally I started using Combos which really helps in bringing down stuff.


Side/Sentimental note.
I feel like I am back in the late 90s and in UO Beta. The feels I get from this game WOW!

 

Welcome Vanevar!

 

I'd love to see a log of that. Although it will be unfortunate if it only works with polearms.

 

I'll capture one tonight when I get home from work and send it to you.