Several questions from a newish player

edited August 2015 in General Questions
Hey. I'm somewhat new to the game (I played it for like month back and forth, back in 2004 and 2006) and I'm having trouble deciding on what to settle on, city/house/class-wise. I don't play a lot of muds, so this is all new and rather overwhelming for me. I was able to google some info, but it is mostly very outdated. My questions:


1. I have a very hard time on deciding on what city to choose. I've tried half of them. Haven't tried Mhaldor, Eleusis or Targossas. Mhaldor is most likely out of question because I don't really like playing completely evil characters - I prefer to be more grey. Though I am aware that Mhaldor is more machiavellian evil than "chaotic dumb". I kind of liked Ashtan, though the whole chaos and chaos lord stuff seems a bit too esoteric for me - are you forced to worship or respect chaos? Is it hard to learn and understand the chaos stuff? Cyrene seems a bit too "clean" and while it's nice having a LOT of friendly people around you, it's a bit too...posh? For me. Hashan seems interesting, but it seemed a tad underpopulated. Plus the whole research and science angle doesn't completely fit the characters I mostly play. Eleusis seems interesting, but how much freedom is there to it? Can I play as a more brutal protector of nature, or as an explorer? What city should I choose if I want to have quite a bit of freedom and a good place to learn the game?


2. On houses, I'm a bit overwhelmed by the necessity to write essays for some of them. I'm fine with doing long roleplay, I'm fine with studying the game's lore, I'm fine with doing various tasks - but writing essays to rise up in ranks isn't really my thing. Are there houses that don't have this requirement to rise in ranks, and what are they?


3. What are some easier to learn classes that excel at hunting and don't require you to spend a lot of real money for artefacts and such? I'll probably start completely without artes. Preferrably something doesn't require huge background knowledge to roleplay well. I don't really want to get yelled that I'm roleplaying a class wrong, because I don't know every little detail of the class' history. I like to play tough mercenary types, snarky intellectual types(with a bit of humor thrown in) and "crone" types. 


4. The hardest part of the game seems to be the PvP stuff. It seems like you require scripts and so on to play well. I've tried both the HTML5 client and Mudlet, and I prefer the HTML5 one - I just like having a GUI to check some stuff easily. I am completely coding illiterate - I've tried it (for other things) and I honestly can't make heads or tails of it. Even the simplest tutorials for Mudlet stuff confuse me. I haven't been able to find a lot of HTML5 client scripts or GUI changes online, are there any?

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Answers

  • AchimrstAchimrst Nature
    edited August 2015
    A bit about Eleusis to sort of answer your questions, yes you can play a brutal protector of nature or an explorer. Eleusis only really limits you from harming nature which can include NOT hunting certain denizens.

    Edit: Oh and killing other Eleusians is bad too. As for houses, I don't think many of them do essays anymore but you are going to have to join a house that belongs to your city or one of the two houses, CIJ or Merchants, that are neutral. You also will learn about most houses when you join a city and do the city tasks.
  • edited August 2015
    Some semi-brief answers, in order:

    1) There's a fair bit of freedom in Eleusis, and yes, you can play as either of those archetypes (or both, if you want, or anything in between). There are some limitations on what you can hunt (can't hunt Istarion, Tsol'aa, Sparrow's Rest, and a few other places/denizens), and there's obviously no harming Nature (which would get you kicked fast).

    2) I'm not sure what Houses still have essays, but I'd guess/hope most are reducing them nowadays, if not dispensing with them entirely.

    3) Runewarden is pretty decent for basic hunting, to pick one. Dragon is good for the tanking, but, well... yeah.

    4) A good free system is Wundersys, which uses server-side curing instead of client-side. As far as clients themselves are concerned, Mudlet is popular and free, and there are free GUIs around too (Zulah's is in one of the forums here). I'm coding-illiterate as well, and really wouldn't know the first thing about HTML5 stuff.
    - (Eleusis): Ellodin says, "The Fissure of Echoes is Sarathai's happy place."
    - With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
    - (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
    - Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
    - Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."



  • Kerp said:
    Even the simplest tutorials for Mudlet stuff confuse me. I haven't been able to find a lot of HTML5 client scripts or GUI changes online, are there any?
    One reason you might consider sticking with Mudlet is that a lot more people are making scripts for it. You can find several free GUIs on the forums that will give you most of, if not all of the features the HTML5 client has. I encourage you to learn bare bones scripting (for whatever client you choose) at the least. You can get a lot of use out of super basic aliases and triggers if you're clever about using them.
  • I'm obviously biased, so take all this with a shaker of salt, but...

    Virtuosi are a good example of a House that doesn't require essays - in order to advance in the House you study a certain type of art (you can do additional paths after graduation for Housefavours). Each path has eight tasks, most of which include workshops, tours, and producing whatever type of art you are studying (dance, music, theatre, tailoring, jewellery, cooking, painting, sculpture, poetry, or prose). The tasks build on each other and go in order, so you don't need any prior knowledge of the art - they are meant to teach from the ground up. You work one-on-one with your path head or their aide. As far as I know, most of the Shield tasks center around actually doing spars and such, so less with the essays, there, and I know the Outriders' exploration path focuses a lot less on essays and their other paths have some tasks that require essays, some that don't.

    Cyrene can come off as...posh and pretentious, for sure, and some of us are overly(?) friendly. (I'm totally guilty.) But it is moving in more of a neutral direction as a city, and it's a very good place if you want some space to learn the game and pursue your own goals - it's meant to be a place where people can do what they want to do and achieve their own goals without being pushed in any specific direction. There is not the influence of factional RP that you get from other cities. 

    Runewarden is a really good class for hunting, but the classes are starting to become more balanced hunting-wise, really, so my advice would be to find whatever class fits you - or that you think you could grow into - and try that. Make use of your time before you embrace class to switch around a little bit. If you are really min/maxing for best hunting, runewarden would be your best bet, but whatever fits your RP would be better.
  • edited August 2015
    TL;DR: Moral of the story is don't worry and pick whatever sounds fun!

    All of the classes are viable (for hunting and otherwise), all of the cities have good people in them, all of the houses are fine (and none of them should require essays).

    It's much more important to jump in and get involved than to fret over picking the "best" class/city/house.
  • Hashan's a bit underpopulated due to events that caused it to give one of it's old Houses the boot and the Renaissance basically only just came to Hashan, raising two brand new Houses. It's starting to get more populated now that the stagnation of waiting for the Renaissance to come has passed and the new Houses can always use good people.

    But if it doesn't fit your style, no harm done. Simply thought to comment on the population thing.
  • Thanks for all the answers. I'm mostly interested in Ashtan and Eleusis for now. Runewarden, sentinel, sylvan and shaman seem like the most interesting for me. I understand runewarden can have a rather expensive upkeep due to having to purchase ink, venom and other extra things, is that easy to get gold for as someone new? Are shaman and sentinel as micro heavy as they seem? I've tried all of them except for sentinel, to level 20. Kind of a hard choice since all of them have something that appeals to me. Stat packwise, is it faster for hunting to focus on str/int, or on con? It seemed like I needed a bit more con to hunt reliably in Great Rock.  

    As for GUIs, I was able to find Zulah's, and they seem okay. Are there any other free ones? How exactly does server side curing work on the HTML5 client?
  • When it comes to con vs str/int, ignoring PvP and just worrying about hunting, I'd almost always recommend con to new players who don't plan on buying artefacts right away. Runewarden would be one of the few exceptions though, because they're extremely tanky regardless of con, so a str-specced runewarden will still have an easier time surviving than a con-specced shaman/sentinel. Sylvan is decently tanky as well even if it doesn't come close to runewarden, but sylvan also requires significantly more lessons to get their nice defensive abilities, so I'd still recommend con to start with.
  • I took on Runey as my second class there recently. For hunting it's an absolute dream (first class is monk - but after the nerfing Runey now is much better imo). In terms of cost - armour and weapons (full plate and dual scimi's) set me back circa 50k. Which is a big ask when your only means of earning quiche is hunting - but I think a lot of houses have donation bins / training equipment they will give or loan to you. And if you RP a female you'll get pretty much everything free all the time :D Inks and venoms and stuff are expensive yes, but they're not vital if you don't go down a pvp combat route. The old Ashtan was certainly the business in terms of cities, now it's a bit odd to me. Targossas is pretty cool people wise if you don't mind the regular praying :) As other people said above; just jump into whatever character it is you decide to play and commit to it. You'll enjoy it regardless of the who's, what's, where's and when's.
         He is a coward who has to bring two friends as backup to jump people hunting.

  • You mentioned you liked the idea of Hashan, but not the 'sciencey' stuff, the Somatikos is very much more physical oriented, combat, hunting, sailing, etc. You do have to do a little research for your trials, but it's not heaps, most any house is going to require some sort of research or writing. No essays though.

    Each of the cities has a slightly different peak period it seems, you might have found you don't mesh up with Hashan's if you found it small - it's not as big as Cyrene or Ashtan, but it's not that small, bigger than Mhaldor or Targossas.

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