Tips for Novices -- Ranks

Lore Skills Survival Skills Combat Skills Magic Skills

Mechanical Lore...Mechanical lore, or "mech", is probably the most hated of all lore skills, and can be the most difficult to get. My suggestion is that you do not set aside certain periods of time to sit and practice mech lore, but rather that you do it constantly, whenever you've a free moment. Waiting for a ferry or the gondola, riding on the ferry or the gondola, standing in a hunting area waiting for critters to appear, waiting in the Empath guild to be healed...these are all ideal times to practice mech.

When you first start out, you won't be able to afford a mortar and pestle, so you'll want to forage for "combinable" substances, such as grass (you can forage for this inside town), tree sap and twigs. Forage until you have a tuft of grass (or tree sap, or what have you) in each hand, then start combining them (by typing "combine my grass with my grass"). An alternative to combining is to carve branches, which are easily forageable outside the Northeast gate. Make sure you have a carving knife, and then "CARVE MY BRANCH WITH MY KNIFE".

Once you can afford a mortar and pestle (it costs about a gold for both), you can crush any number of things. The simplest, and easiest to find, is georin grass, which is forageable at the ferry landing in Crossing and outside the Northeast gate, among other places. To crush items, place the item in the mortar, remove the pestle, and then "CRUSH (item) WITH MY PESTLE".

Other Lore Skills...Most Guilds require, in addition to specific lore skills, that you have an "overall" lore rank before advancing to the next circle. For this reason, it is advisable to learn as many lore skills as possible, even if they're not required.

Teaching...As a novice, one doesn't normally have high enough skills to attract many students. However, because so many guilds require teaching, it's not that hard to find someone teaching a class on Teaching. The Empath Guild is an especially good spot for this...and if you practice another skill while listening, you'll learn Teaching, Scholarship and the third skill all at once. When you have high enough skills to teach others, be sure to always offer to teach while on the ferry or waiting somewhere (unless someone else is teaching a skill that you badly need!)
Appraisal...This is an easy skill to learn -- simply "appraise" items whenever you have the chance. Don't appraise the same item over and over, though...you'll learn faster if you appraise different items, and the more expensive the item, the better. Also, never appraise another person without permission...it's considered rude.
Musical Lore...As soon as you can afford it, fork over the coins for a simple intrument, such as a flute or a lyre (neither of these instruments need implements, and they're easy to learn). Having just a few ranks in musical lore can keep you from ever hearing your Guild leader tell you that he/she "is not satisfied with your overall lore experience". To play your instrument, simply "PLAY (instrument) (method)" -- you may play instruments in several different ways, but I recomment starting off with "aimless", as you'll be able to play a decent tune much more quickly that way.

Survival Skills

First Aid...If you're new to the Realms, you've probably been amazed at how many people wander about town bleeding from every extremity. First Aid is a difficult skill to get, and many people are willing to suffer the consequences of being a walking war wound in order to get their first aid up. Before trying to tend other people's wounds, make sure you have at least a ten in first aid...otherwise, they'll have to sit there for ages while you fumble through trying to bandage them up properly. The wise adventurer learns a bit of first aid before hunting anything dangerous...my first death, when I was a Novice, happened after a cougar took a goodly chunk of my leg. I ran away, but in the middle of trying to figure out how to stop my bleeding, I died. It was horribly embarrassing.
Always ask before tending another person's wound. And if you have a "bleeder" that you wish to keep, make sure you inform any empath healing you that you want to keep it; and go easy on them if they accidentally heal the bleeder -- empathic healing is a long and often confusing process, especially for new Empaths.
Foraging...Foraging is most often used hand in hand with mechanical lore. If you have any plans of studying alchemy, you'll want to get your foraging skill up as quickly as possible. Because it takes only a few seconds to forage for something, it's quite simple to work it into your daily routine. One word of advice -- avoid trying to forage for anything while waiting for the gondola to Shard. You'll incur an annoyingly long round time, and there isn't anything there to find.
Keep in mind that specific foraging (i.e., foraging for a specific item, as in "FORAGE FOR GEORIN GRASS") will produce much better results than "blind" foraging (as in simply "FORAGE"ing over and over again).
Skinning...Chances are that if you're going to hunt, you'll start off with the shipyard rats or the goblins out the West gate. Both of these creatures are skinnable, though you must -- of course -- have a skinning knife, carving knife, or edged weapon to skin them (a skinning knife, quite obviously, does a better job than a broadsword). Skinning is an extremely useful skill for the simple fact that the better your skinning ability, the higher quality of skins you'll receive and the more money Falken the Tanner will pay you for them. Also, many creatures carry no treasure other than their own miserable hides.
Remember that you must skin a creature before searching it! Once a creature is searched, it decays almost immediately and the chance for skinning it is lost.
The following creatures cannot be skinned: Dryad, Nyad, Sprite, Lipopod, Madman, Swamp Troll, Marauder, Boggle, Morah Vine, Death Spirit, Fiend.
Disarming Traps and Lockpicking...If these skills are not required by your Guild, it is up to you whether to use them or not. Obviously, it's handy to be able to open one's own boxes, but the process of learning how to disarm is a dangerous one. I myself have died twice from poison.
The best way to learn disarming safely is to try disarming the box until you see what type of trap it is. Then put the box away and forget about it for a while. Do this until you can regularly determine the type of trap on the first try, and then try to disarm it. You'll want to make sure you're near an empath, in case the trap goes off. If the box you're disarming is an area trap (though you won't want to mess with these until you're rather good at disarming) such as naptha or poison gas, make certain that you are in a secluded area. Never disarm an area trap in a public place -- not only can you be fined heavily, but you might inadvertently kill a passerby.

Combat Skills

Defense...Defensive combat skills include armour (leather, light or heavy chain, and light or heavy plate), evasion and parrying. The easiest of these is armour, since it requires only that you stand and let a critter bash against you (while you're wearing armour, of course) for a while. As long as you hunt regularly, you should have no problem learning armour at a steady pace.
Parrying is the art of using your melee weapon to deflect the weapon (or claw, or tooth, or what have you) of your opponent. To parry, make sure you're holding your weapon in your right hand, and PARRY (parrying incurs a 3 or 4 second round time). Use parry often when fighting hand-to-hand, as it helps you stay balanced. A good combination that I use is parry-jab-draw (with jabbing weapons) or parry-slice-draw (with slicing weapons). The best way to learn parry quickly is to set your stance at parry, engage a critter, parry, and then simply stand there for a while knocking aside attacks.
Evasion is, in my opinion, the most important of the defensive combat skills, and -- as luck would have it -- by far the most difficult to learn. If you can't maneuver well in your armour, you'll learn evasion very slowly. You won't learn it at all unless your opponent is a difficult one -- i.e., goblins won't teach you much evasion past 15 ranks or so, and that's even if you wear NO armour.
To learn evasion, simply DODGE and let your opponent try to hit you. If you don't feel you're learning much (i.e., if you haven't gotten to "thoughtful" after a dozen swipes or so), then you need to move to a more difficult critter.
A word of advice -- evade attacks until you're at a good learning stage (I like to get to "concentrating"), then kill the creature and let your mind absorb what you've learned. There are two reasons for this -- one, if you thoroughly muddle yourself, you'll wind up learning more slowly (despite rumours to the contrary, it is NOT a good idea to "mindlock" oneself) and two, critters that will teach you evasion quickly are also likely to be able to kill you quickly. And dying is a great obstacle to learning (I suspect I'd know far more evasion if I hadn't died 40 plus times).