Class Questions from a Brand-New Beginner

Serani

Hello!  

As the topic here mentions, I am utterly new to playing Achaea.  I've read through several of the recommended class threads on the forum here, which all seem to say that knights--I'm assuming this means paladins, infernals and runewardens?--but are other classes sufficient for killing things to level?  I, for instance, tend to love playing a caster, but seeing as how I've seen naught at all about them on the "good classes" threads I've been reading through, I'm guessing those tend to be no so great?

Also, I've read a fair bit about artifacts.  Pardon my newbie stupidness, but what are these artifacts?  I'm guessing something I can buy with my card or some such.  What sorts of things do they do for a particular class, and what sort might a new player of some yet to be determined class wish to get?  I'd really love to get some suggestions, even if they're all "Go for a knight class or die screaming!!!!1111oneoneeleven", especially if there's some rationale as to *why* these are great classes.  All said, I definitely prefer staying out of melee combat as a rule, but I'm not dead set against it as long as there's some good reasoning behind it!

Thank you in advance for any reply you can give.

Sobriquet

The way Achaea is balanced is that all classes are "Good" but some lean more towards a style or goal. Runewarden, for example, particular 2 handers are known for being good hunters while pvp is fairly straight forward. (Which is why I like it). You then have something like Occultist which isn't as good for hunting but is great for utility, raids and PvP, but also a little more complicated to learn. (also why I like it ).

I would suggest finding a class you like the theme off and try it, you can always change later (with no penalty of you don't embrace class). Possibly stay away from heavy affliction  classes such as Serpent or Apostate if you're a true IRE newbie, but even then with the right support they are both good choices. 

Taryius

Every class can hunt and bash, and barring sword and shield wielding knights, none of them are that awful at it.

There are some min maxers here that will tell you whats the best bashing class, and what is the best this and that, but in the end you should choose something that you think is cool and would motivate you to build a character around.

Killing something a few seconds slower than a 2-Handed knight isn't going to break the game for you so don't worry too much about that, and as Sobriquet said there isn't a lot of penalty to switching class until after you embrace one (HELP EMBRACINGCLASS) so feel free to try them out. 

Cooper

Knight is the "budget" bashing and pvp build for people who are beginners and/or don't plan to spend a lot of money on Achaea.

You can be good at killing things to gain levels and killing other people who play the game as knight without spending any money.

Laedha

Welcome! I hope you're having fun! 

If you like the flavor of casters, do it! Early bashing is pretty fast for all classes. Throw yourself into a city and house and make friends and you'll be taken on hunts quite a bit too. Once you're around level 80, you'll probably have a sense of whether you like your class abilities and if hunting is feeling frustrating to you, and you can talk to people and consider a change that works with your character. 

Artefacts can be nice but are absolutely not required. I'm a terrible hunter with almost no reflexes to speak of, no programming knowledge, a "bad" bashing class, and few artefacts. Between levels 80 and 90 I got a level 1 critical hit bonus pendant and a level 1 sip ring, which increases how much you heal when sipping health. I still got to dragon just fine, and it wouldn't have taken a ton of extra time even without those bonuses. Artefacts are important for high-level combat, but aside from that, they are purely extra. 

I don't know what your financial situation is, but if you can afford the no-brainer lesson and credit packs, those can help you a lot and they are a good deal. I also do the IRE membership ($25/month) that gets you an xp bonus and 100-150 bound credits per month. You can use those for lessons or let them build up and then get a new artefact every few months. 

Jiraishin

Serpent is great for RP and distinctive flavor and has some really interesting utility features, like wormhole travel. It sucks for hunting (unless you have artefacts) but is good for escaping fights with your skin and has group combat utility even if your pvp skill is limited to typing "snipe person direction" and spamming enter. It's been my main class for 9 years, and I was a free player till a few months ago.

Depthswalker is a caster class with good flavor and a lot of rp opportunities, and is apparently very good for group combat. 

Magi is like THE original caster class, and if you get a few of them together you can make everyone else die screaming.

Alchemist looks cool and I don't frankly know much about it beyond its IG origins  but it's certainly a caster class. 

Antonius

Depthswalker isn't a caster class, the majority of its offense is based around melee attacks with a scythe.

That said, the distinction between caster and melee classes in Achaea isn't the same as in MMORPGs. Either way you'll be in the same room as the target a lot of the time, and (most) abilities in Achaea don't have cast times, just balance/equilibrium recovery times after using.

Kiet

It doesn't seem like some of your questions (especially the implied ones) are being answered.

When people rate knights highly, it's almost always for pve when you have 0 artefacts. Classes are vastly different if you rate them based on 1v1 pvp, group pvp, or pve, generally. The spread between casters/physical classes is pretty even as far as 'best classes' go because there's no class that's best at everything.

Artefacts are permanent items that do things like give you + to a stat (either offensive or constitution), weapons with higher stats than can be forged, or defensive items like the shield of absorption, which lets you mitigate a lot more damage than a regular shield. You have to pay credits for these, and the fastest way to get credits is to just buy them through the website using RL money. You can earn them in-game, too, but be prepared for a very long grind in that case if you're starting from scratch.

As for your concern for melee classes: every class in achaea is essentially a melee class in pve. There's no position difference if you're doing pve. In pvp, range/melee is based mostly on whether you can attack from outside the room or not, and whether classes are casters or not has little bearing on that. Knights, for instance, can shoot their bows from like 10 rooms away if it's a straight line.

Re: what class to pick, it'll depend greatly on 1) your interests and 2) your RL budget. If you prefer casters for a thematic flavor thing more than anything else, you have, for instance: shaman, magi, occultist, sylvan for 'pure' casters. Then you have hybrid sort of casters with depthswalker, druid, priest. All of these classes are at least pretty good at a few things. For pve, I'd say shaman is the best of these if you can afford a lot of arties, while sylvan is the best if you can't. For PVP it gets a lot more complex, obviously, they're all pretty good at that.

Jiraishin said:

Serpent is great for RP and distinctive flavor and has some really interesting utility features, like wormhole travel. It sucks for hunting (unless you have artefacts) but is good for escaping fights with your skin and has group combat utility even if your pvp skill is limited to typing "snipe person direction" and spamming enter. It's been my main class for 9 years, and I was a free player till a few months ago.

Serp is fine for bashing unartied too. It might not be the best in the land of no arties, but you do a lot more dps than most unartied classes. Just don't do the illogical thing and try to take stuff that's too hard for your reduced tankiness.

Aegoth

Magi's offense is melee with a staff.... what's your point?

Serani

Thank you so much for the answers!  I very much appreciate what each of you have said.  Thanks to Kiet in particular for letting me know about artifacts--as I alluded before, I'm rather clueless with Achaea just yet.

Mexis

Don't buy artefacts or credits, or embrace your class until you're super sure about sticking with it long term.