Non-Newbie Ramblings

From LSWiki

(Difference between revisions)

Revision as of 02:23, 27 February 2008

Spoiler warning: information below includes details, such as solutions to puzzles or quest procedures, that you may prefer to discover on your own.

1 Introduction
2 On Starting
3 Skills/Stats/Specialities
4 Guilds/Associations: making your character
5 What Skills are good
6 Random Advice

Introduction

This page's formatting (and idea of having something like this at all) is completely ripped off from Kilelen, so yay Kile! The purpose of this guide is to try to centralize some advice for new players from a not-so-new perspective. We have plenty of "old hats", and hopefully we can make your playing experience better.

On Starting

Lost Souls is incredibly complex. That complexity, in fact, is what brings many of us back year after year. Even those of us who have been playing for years still are finding new things.

So, my first advice would be not to let it overwhelm you. Enjoy it for what it is -- and worry about figuring out pieces at a time. If you try to absorb the entirety of everything at once, you'll probably explode.

With that in mind, I'd suggest picking one thing you want to try. This is even done by us long-timers...you'll often see in OOC something like: "I want to try an Amberite Sentinel and see how high strength I can get..I think that might really work." You can't do everything with one character, (although if you have fun trying, I'd say go for it)! But you'll probably have a more rewarding sense of accomplishment if you just stick to one thing...see the section on Skills/Specialties for more about this.

Once you have in mind what you want to try, create a character (don't worry to much about stats and such yet) and read the help once you begin the game. Read, read, read (this is a text-based game, after all!). Don't feel that you have to read everything, but you should at least read up on the basics.

In fact, since you're here, it's probably easier to read the help files here...it'll save you much typing.

At the very least, I'd suggest understanding skills, specialties, attributes and traits.

Which is a nice segue to...

Skills/Stats/Specialities

This isn't (really) a level based game. You get far more milage out of increasing your skills, which is why you just read about them.

Skills are your "power". Being good in particular skills are what are goung to increase your effectiveness in combat. Since your stats influence how many specialties you get, you should be thinking of how many speciality points you need per attribute, in general...

Or, more plainly, if you need lots of dexterity specialties for your guild, you probably shouldn't have an extremely low dex.

You can overcome this somewhat with levels: at 5 statistic points a level, that's 245 by the time you hit level 50...and so you can make up for choices that aren't perfectly min-maxed.

So everyone asks "What to get?".

Well, combat is mainly how you get experience in the game, so you need to make sure you can survive that. With some exceptions (and there's always exceptions in LS) you should probably stick with one weapon class. Put a decent amount of specialties into that. Then pick a way to defend yourself. You may count on parrying with your weapon, or if you're tiny and/or fly, dodge and flight may serve you better. Some guilds are going to rely heavily on special skills for combat effectiveness, so now it the time to start thinking about that as well.

With the rough idea of what you what to have for statistics and skill specialties, think about what guild and associations you want to be in.

Guilds/Associations: making your character

Your guild is going to dictate what attributes you want, and so are the associations you want to join.

At first, try to avoid spreading yourself too thin with assocations. Each association will require some specialities for its skills, and if you join many, you'll just end up being terrible at all of them (and probably your guild skills as well).

So, by now, you've read alot of abstract things, so let's look at something concrete to help tie things together. Out of sheer bias, let's consider why I thought of making a faerie ELF.

First, a look at attributes:

Attributes
Strength      10 to  40
Intelligence  80 to 120
Constitution  10 to  50
Dexterity     100 to 150
Willpower     80 to 120
Charisma      80 to 120
Perception    80 to 120
Size          5 to  15

As you can see from the guild, ELF like to have WIL, CHA and luck, which faerie get some of, so that's a nice bonus. They're pretty big in all of those, and they have a good amount of INT too, which I'll need for guild skills. On the down side, the low size and con/str means I can't really take very much in the way of punishment.

I decided to max my STR, WIL, INT and CHA. My reasoning was STR to carry things, WIL/CHA for invocation power, INT for guild skills. That meant I had to minimize DEX (an uncommon faerie choice) and size. I figured I'd just have to live with not having the most fighty ELF, but that's OK! Small size actually gives some minor bonuses to dodge (harder to hit) which I figured may help a little. Of course, if I did get hit, I'd hurt badly.

What was leftover, I threw into con to help with the frailty.

Strength       40
Intelligence   120
Constitution   39
Dexterity      100 
Willpower      120
Charisma       120 
Perception     80
Size           5

Then I looked at the specialities I had available and decided where I wanted to allocate what:
STR specs: load bearing/massive blow
INT: Guild skills: conjuring, symbology, xotimancy, theology, elder lore, arcane lore
CON: recuperation, biofeedback
DEX: dagger, dodge, flight, quickness, combat reflexes
WIL: chaos affinity, centering, channeling, meditation
CHA: invocation, telesmatic weapon, leadership
PER: whatever -- for me introspection, awareness, empathy

Note how I didn't try to specialize in everything. Your specialties are valuable: don't spread them too thin. In fact, I decided not to join any associations so that they would go just that little bit farther.

What Skills are good

So what are some of the must have skills?

Random Advice

Don't hide your character information if you're just starting out. No really cares that much, and it's much harder to offer you intelligent help if no one knows what race, class and level you are. Suggestions for "what weapon is good" are very different for a small dwarf than a zuth.

End of spoiler information.

Retrieved from "http://wiki.lostsouls.org/Non-Newbie_Ramblings"

Categories: Spoilers | Guides

Non-Newbie Ramblings

From LSWiki

Revision as of 02:23, 27 February 2008

Contents

Introduction

On Starting

Skills/Stats/Specialities

Guilds/Associations: making your character

What Skills are good

Random Advice

Views

Personal tools

Navigation

Search

Toolbox

 With that in mind, I'd suggest picking one thing you want to try.  This is even done by us long-timers...you'll often see in OOC something like: "I want to try an [[Amberite]] [[Sentinel]] and see how high strength I can get..I think that might really work."  You can't do everything with one character, (although if you have fun trying, I'd say go for it)!  But you'll probably have a more rewarding sense of accomplishment if you just stick to one thing...see the section on Skills/Specialties for more about this.
-Once you have in mind what you want to try, create a character and read the help.  Read, read, read (this is a text-based game, after all!).  Don't feel ...
+Once you have in mind what you want to try, create a character (don't worry to much about stats and such yet) and read the help once you begin the game.  Read, read, read (this is a text-based game, after all!).  Don't feel that you have to read '''everything''', but you should at least read up on the basics.
+In fact, since you're here, it's probably easier to read the [[Help Files|help files]] here...it'll save you much typing.
+At the very least, I'd suggest understanding [[skills]], [[specialties]], [[attributes]] and [[traits]].
+Which is a nice segue to...
 == Skills/Stats/Specialities ==
+This isn't (really) a [[level]] based game.  You get far more milage out of increasing your [[skills]], which is why you just read about them.
-== Guilds/Associations ==
+Skills are your "power".  Being good in particular skills are what are goung to increase your effectiveness in combat.  Since your stats influence how many specialties you get, you should be thinking of how many speciality points you need per attribute, in general...
-==Handy Commands That Are Not Immediately Obvious==
+Or, more plainly, if you need lots of dexterity specialties for your guild, you probably shouldn't have an extremely low dex.
+You can overcome this somewhat with levels: at 5 statistic points a level, that's 245 by the time you hit level 50...and so you can make up for choices that aren't perfectly min-maxed.
+So everyone asks "What to get?".
+Well, combat is mainly how you get [[experience]] in the game, so you need to make sure you can survive that.  With some exceptions (and there's always exceptions in LS) you should probably stick with one weapon class.  Put a decent amount of specialties into that.  Then pick a way to defend yourself.  You may count on parrying with your weapon, or if you're tiny and/or fly, [[dodge]] and [[flight]] may serve you better.  Some [[guilds]] are going to rely heavily on special skills for combat effectiveness, so now it the time to start thinking about that as well.
+With the rough idea of what you what to have for statistics and skill specialties, think about what [[guilds|guild]] and [[associations]] you want to be in.
+== Guilds/Associations: making your character ==
+Your guild is going to dictate what attributes you want, and so are the associations you want to join.
+At first, try to avoid spreading yourself too thin with assocations.  Each association will require some specialities for its skills, and if you join many, you'll just end up being terrible at all of them (and probably your guild skills as well).
+So, by now, you've read alot of abstract things, so let's look at something concrete to help tie things together.  Out of sheer bias, let's consider why I thought of making a [[faerie]] [[Erisian Liberation Front|ELF]].
+First, a look at attributes:
+ Attributes
+ Strength      10 to  40
+ Intelligence  80 to 120
+ Constitution  10 to  50
+ Dexterity     100 to 150
+ Willpower     80 to 120
+ Charisma      80 to 120
+ Perception    80 to 120
+ Size          5 to  15
+As you can see from the guild, ELF like to have WIL, CHA and [[luck]], which [[faerie]] get some of, so that's a nice bonus.  They're pretty big in all of those, and they have a good amount of INT too, which I'll need for guild skills.  On the down side, the low size and con/str means I can't really take very much in the way of punishment.
+I decided to max my STR, WIL, INT and CHA.  My reasoning was STR to carry things, WIL/CHA for invocation power, INT for guild skills.
+That meant I had to minimize DEX (an uncommon faerie choice) and size.  I figured I'd just have to live with not having the most fighty ELF, but that's OK!  Small size actually gives some minor bonuses to dodge (harder to hit) which I figured may help a little.  Of course, if I did get hit, I'd hurt badly.
+What was leftover, I threw into con to help with the frailty.
+ Strength       40
+ Intelligence   120
+ Constitution   39
+ Dexterity      100
+ Willpower      120
+ Charisma       120
+ Perception     80
+ Size           5
+Then I looked at the specialities I had available and decided where I wanted to allocate what:<br>
+STR specs: [[load bearing]]/[[massive blow]]<br>
+INT: Guild skills: [[conjuring]], [[symbology]], [[xotimancy]], [[theology]], [[elder lore]], [[arcane lore]]<br>
+CON: [[recuperation]], [[biofeedback]]<br>
+DEX: [[dagger]], [[dodge]], [[flight]], [[quickness]], [[combat reflexes]]<br>
+WIL: [[chaos affinity]], [[centering]], [[channeling]], [[meditation]]<br>
+CHA: [[invocation]], [[telesmatic weapon]], [[leadership]]<br>
+PER: whatever -- for me [[introspection]], [[awareness]], [[empathy]]<br>
+Note how I didn't try to specialize in everything.  Your specialties are valuable: don't spread them too thin.  In fact, I decided not to join any associations so that they would go just that little bit farther.
+==What Skills are good==
+So what are some of the must have skills?
-==On Healing==
 ==Random Advice==
+* Don't hide your character information if you're just starting out.  No really cares that much, and it's much harder to offer you intelligent help if no one knows what race, class and level you are.  Suggestions for "what weapon is good" are very different for a small [[dwarf]] than a [[zuth]].
 [[Category:Guides]]
 {{endspoilers}}