Dyminica's Notes
Tips for those new to our guild.
Your race is important, but you can work with it. If you really want to be a gnomish cleric, you probably can pull it off; just don’t expect to be a fluffy gnomish cleric. If you are flexible on race, I suggest choosing a race that is well balanced. You are going to need to train combat and magic. Therefore, your mental stats and your physical stats should be good. For this reason human or dwarf are good choices. Now, I realize humans are all that exotic, and dwarves aren’t very aesthetic. That being said, choose whatever race you like and be aware that you will be working with some penalties to some important stats.
I recommend keeping strength, stamina, reflex and agility all equal. Train so that things stay even. It may be a myth, but I’ve always been told that you’ll get more benefit from training from 8 to 10 than you will by letting something stay at 9. This has to do with some complex mathematical equation used to determine how things play out in the game. I don’t know this complex mathematical equation, or why it may or may not be true, but I’ve also never had problems training my clerics. I suggest keeping your mental stats spaced by two. Wisdom should be two higher than disciple which should be two higher than intelligence which should be two higher than charisma. People who tell you to keep discipline higher than wisdom do not remember or did not understand the mental change. I’ve tested this creating two identical characters. You will learn faster with wisdom higher. Also, charisma is important for a cleric. Train it. So, for example:
Strength : 30 Reflex : 30
Agility : 30 Charisma : 26
Discipline : 30 Wisdom : 32
Intelligence : 28 Stamina : 30
Commune. This will tell you what level of devotion you have to the gods. This is directly tied to your ability to perceive power, so you will want to keep it high. The most effective way to gain devotion is to tithe in crossing. You do this by typing “put 5 silver kro in alms” at the entrance to the crossing temple. This will get you to the highest level of devotion fairly quickly, wait 10 minutes between putting money in. If you get to where you hear your god call to you by name, and tithing does not work anymore, use Tamsine’s blessing. This will decrease your devotion by a fraction and enable you to tithe one more time to get the highest level. If you are poor (as are most new players) you can dance in front of an altar, recite any poem of more than 4 lines that contains the name of a god, pour wine on an altar, offer things on altars, pray, kneel and kiss an altar, offer pelts of undead animals on altars, bathe with herbs in a holy pool, plant sirese seeds, and a variety of other things that primarily work on the islands that I’ll let you research for yourself.
Get them. Go on the tour in the crossing temple or ask clerics in the guild. Someone will take you and show you how to do this. Keep 5. Yes, 5. If you die in some obscure combat area at 4 AM and you can’t get help and end up departing, you’ll be happy you have 5 when you die two or three times trying to get to your grave. Also, yes, it is possible (although not probable) to lose multiple favors on a depart.
Power walk everywhere you go. Use cambrinth whenever you cast spells. This will keep you from ever having to work power perception or magical devices just for the sake of using them. This will make your life in dragon realms much more enjoyable. If you want to work magic, snap cast spells. If you want to work harness more, wait for full prep. Start working TM early. Boggles in the fallow fields of shard are undead, as are Nyads in the forest of night. By 7th or 8th circle you should be able to play with tortured souls. I realize these don’t pay very well, but consider that later you’ll be able to hunt things that pay very well very quickly (I can make 50 or 60 plat an hour with no problem in forest genis or death spirits), it’s worth the initial investment.
Lore:
Teaching is moderately boring. It always will be. The only way to learn it is to do it. If you can, hunt with people and take turns teaching each other. You should learn scholarship as you are taught which is why it is important to listen to others as well as teach. Once you hit about 40 in scholarship, you can start making prayer beads. Making prayer beads will teach you both mech lore and scholarship. Learn appraisal by appraising gem pouches or weapons and armor. There is more information there, so you learn better. Musical theory is learned by playing an instrument. When you are starting out I recommend bones or whistles. They are easy to play, and cheap.
I highly recommend using chain armor. Believe it or not (and if you don’t believe it go to mama’s and check) chain is lighter than leather and it protects MUCH better. So, unless you are a thief, a barb, or a paladin, training chain is better. Also, train two weapons when you are young. Even if they do not make two weapons required for our guild, you’ll get mindlocked in combat with just one. For blades, the best strategy I’ve found is jab/parry/jab/parry/slice/slice/slice. You jab/parry until you are overwhelming your opponent, and then you slice or thrust (depending on if your weapon is a slicer or a thruster) until you aren’t balanced again. Repeat. Light blunts aren’t nearly as effective as a medium blunt, and you can get light medium blunts, so, I do not recommend training LE. For blunts, bash/draw/bash/draw. Blunts are very effective against undead. I believe clerics are bonused in blunts, but they are very difficult to train when you are small. They make you tired. Ranged weapons are always good. I recommend bows over crossbows. They have a shorter roundtime, and from a clerical perspective hit just as hard. Of course, in this perspective, a ranged weapon will depend somewhat on your race. (If you are an elf or elothean longbow or composite bow is good, if you are a Halfling, shortbow or slings are good, etc.) Don’t make ranged your primary weapon. As a cleric you will need parry.
Evasion and skinning come with combat and therefore you should learn them easily. Foraging has a timer on it. Forage, and if you are successful, wait one minute to try again, if you are not, try again in 15 to 20 seconds. I can mindlock foraging this way. Climbing is learned by climbing things. This always has a timer on it. When you first start climbing, climb the hillside near the farmhouse out the north gate. If you do this a few times, you won’t have trouble climbing the tree in Arthe Dale. Then you can move to Arthe and climb and swim there. To learn perception, stand outside the bank or ask in the guild if anyone has jugglies they will give you. First aid is a must. Should resurrection every get fixed, you’ll want to be able to tend the corpses, not to mention, it can keep you alive in combat. Some empaths will let you tend them if you ask nicely, or you can always listen to classes. You’ll only learn tending your own bleeder for so long before you get disease and die, or it stops teaching you.
If you have other questions, ask an elder cleric. Although some of us are grouchy and scary, understand it comes from years of people expecting us to drop everything we were doing to go help someone who was silly enough to die repeatedly in a combat area that was way above their skill without favors. This no longer applies, but some clerics haven’t gotten over their grouchiness yet.
~~The ever angelic, Dyminica
