Newbie TipsFollow

If you're just starting out in the game for the first time....

Do NOT worry about working on tradeskills.

Do NOT worry about starting a "bazaar mule".

Do NOT worry about where the fastest/best place for plat hunting is.

If you truly are new to the game, there are more important things to work on, such as...learning how to get used the UI(or user interface), learning what the basic game commands are and how to use them, learning how to interact with your environment and other people, deciding what class/race combination best suits your style of play.

Things like the bazaar, trade skills, farming, are all aspects of the game that are better put aside till you're more familiar with the basics of the game.

Make a character, run around a bit, kill a few bugs, press the buttons, die a few times, get a feel for how the game plays and how you enjoy it. That's what a true new player to the game should be doing, not worrying about tradeskills and farming.

This is half true. Yes, worry about tradeskills after you learn the basics. No, do not put them off until your 6th or 7th level. Why? Because then you have already been spending money on things such as food and drink. The order of my posts has directed you towards baking and brewing first. This is because you do not need to spend that money you should be saving on food and drink. You make your own with very basic materials, and soon you can make things that are significantly better than Rations or Water Flasks, the two basic food and drink items. If, following my suggestion, you start baking at a reasonably low level, say level 3, you should, by the time your initial food and drink items wear off, should amass a small stockpile of these Goos. Purchasing a spit only heightens this capability, allowing you to bake on the run.

Brewing is somewhat more irritating to begin only because there is no portable brewing item. Bog Juice, however, works just as well as a water and is a bit cheaper to make. The problem with initial brewing is not knowing where to find a brew barrel, or not knowing what they look like. Therefore, I suggest learning the layout of your town with a fodder character. You can combine this learning the town with learning the basics. Then, either delete that character or just move to another server. After you create your new character, you will know the basics and layouts of the towns, thereby learning where the tradeskill items are. Perhaps after I play the game some more I can list the locations of these implements to further help you out.

Either way, you should be able to sustain yourself without spending too much money on food and drink. This opens yourself up to spending on gear and other nifty items like Jeweler's Kits, Large Sewing Kits, and Fishing Rods.

Thanks for bearing with me through that...*whew*

Edited, Sat May 15 21:34:55 2004 by TheMightyMagnu

Hmm... good tip Kitca.

Tip:
Do not level up too much too quickly. You want to have your skills be equivalent to your levels so that you can be as strong as you can be. Do not level up at blinding speed after level 5 or so.

Your skill cap is determined by your level. For instance, say you were level 3. Your skill cap would be twenty.


Equation for determining skill cap:

5L+5=S

Or 5 times your current level plus 5 equals your current skill cap.

No wonder the EQ economy is falling apart. Does anyone want to point out the glaring logical error in this?


also:



I agree more with Ashes point about taking time to see the world. Levelling fast per se does not mean low skills necessarily and telling people to max all skills at every level is bad advice. I would rather advise people that if they have a spell of fast levelling (Paludal for instance) then they need to take some time to work on skills afterwards. It is perfectly possible to ignore a skill till 45 and then train it in a few hours if you need to. If it is a mainline skill then you won't be in that position anyway.

An awful lot of the "advice" from TheMightyMagnu is highly questionable. Some is useful but much shows little or no experience of the game, and much else is just regurgitated tradeskill recipes.

For example:



That just isn't true or even vaguely realistic. Baking can be enjoyable for some people, is required for some quests, and at high skill may make some plat.

But please.. leave a raid because you ran out of food? This is not only nonsense but nothing to do with baking. You are just as capable of running out of the ingredients as the finished product. Not to mention the fact that Clerics, Druids, Shaman and Mages can all summon Food and Drink.

"Sorry I have to leave the LDoN adventure I've run out of food" doesn't ring any bells I'm afraid.


and:



Why not just sell in PoK?

and then the final blithering idiocy about baking and brewing being essential to save you money on food and drink. This is total nonsense. Perhaps it makes sense from the viewpoint of a 24 warrior keen on tradeskills but most characters - especially if they took the good advice about Plague Rat tails - have no need to worry that they can save 2cp by baking their food. If you enjoy tradeskills then it makes sense to do that but by no means is it a good tip for new players to imply that they need to do this. 3 Plague Rat tails will buy you a stack of Fizzlecutters. You cannot brew anything to outlast that at low skill and low cost ingredients.

I'm sorry MightyMagnu, there are some good tips in this thread but you're not giving them. And please save yourself the trouble of telling us the locations of every brew barrel and oven in EQ. This information is readily available on EQAtlas and EQTraders, and often on the in-game map. EQtraders will also tell you which vendor sells what so if you need bay leaves in Thurgadin it tells you where to go.

To Cobra101:

Point A: I was simply expressing my opinion about what I thought was a good starting zone. Yes, it has flaws, but it worked for me and my experience is the only one I know.

Point B: I am not a Halfling Druid. I was simply using this as a starting class example. You are right, it doesn't ease you into spells. No class does. It is one of them, though, that makes it easier to start off. Others include Enchanters, Mages, Wizards, etc. all guys that start with a level one spell. Druids are a combination nuker and supporter.

Point C: Okay I made a mistake about the Halfling not being a class...I knew it was a race and so does everyone else you all can infer a meaning. I'm human.

Point D: Misty Thicket does not have wandering guards. It has a total of 5 guards. Two at the gate to the wall, two at the Rivervale zone line, and one wandering on the wall. None of them roam and KS unless some stupid player lures them out of their natural habitat and then, yes, they go mad with killing. But this does not happen often.

Point E: I said to move to another server because that's what worked for me. By the time I was level 6 I had just learned the basics and had already lost lots of plat on food and such. At level 6 I finally learned to do tradeskills and started a new character on a different server. I suppose if you want to stay on that server it is fine but fodder characters are extremely useful to learn from and then discard.

Point F: Now YOU made a mistake. Druids are better tanks than all other caster types excluding Shammys which they are equal to. Druids can use scimitars, piercers (at least they could when I started, that was about two years ago), and blunt weapons. They are not bad with them but they are not as good as melee and hybrids with them.

Point G: You forgot to argue the 'recommended' part, although you obviously saw it and quoted it originaly, you seem to have disregarded it. I never said 'oh yeah its the only way to go'. I was just (once again) recommending what worked for me.

Point H: You are not only being rude but you are being arrogant as well. None of what I said was false. ONCE AGAIN, it was a RECOMMENDATION. Some people were kind enough to help me learn for those three days.

I'm not going to argue any more, so if you do respond I will just ignore it unless it is constructive.


My points are up so here is my next tip:

Do not be shy. This is a game to be enjoyed by all, and the people who play this game are generally friendly to all. When you first start playing, ask a more seasoned adventurer for help learning about this game. They will most likely say yes, and the worst that can happen is a simple, 'I'm busy.'

Thank you again for demonstrating your total lack of knowledge.



and then



Thank you for demonstrating your inability to tell a straight story.



Most of what you said was misleading, wrong or stupid. False comes in there somewhere.

And hiding behind "it was just recommendations" is abnegating all responsibility for what you tried to do. If you give tips then they should be helpful ones. Like the other posters did. read their posts I'm sure you'll get the hang of it. You may have thought you were presenting things as "You could try this - it worked for me" but due to your ****-poor communication skills it comes across as "Do this it is the best thing to do"

For example saying :-


is hardly couched in terms of a recommendation. We have abreviations here like IMO (also IMHO but you wouldn't need that one) which flag things as opinions.


And Misty Thicket - beyond the wall - certainly has wandering guards. Unless they have been nailed down in recent times. I certainly had mobs KSed by guards that wandered in the timeframe you are claiming.



Apart from demonstrating general idiocy - like whatever happened to your newbie food? There is a logical leap in here that I don't follow. Whether or not there is any advantage in making a character to explore with and then using another character to play, where does changing server come into it? You do realise you can delete characters?

Lets go right back to your first wonderful tip:-

Recipe Info:
1 Fire Beetle Eye
1 Rat Ear

This makes an Edible Goo - This is a meal

Vendors buy Fire beetle eyes at 2 silver 5 copper
Vendors sell Ration (Also This is a meal) for 2 silver 8 copper

I confess I don't know what vendors pay for Rat ears but I suspect it is more than 3cp. Even if it isn't, a new player fresh at Baking 0 will fail often. And they could well have saved money by selling the loot and buying rations.

Each failure cost them a meal - you sir are taking the food from the mouths of starving newbies. I hope you're ashamed of youorself.

Precisely what I am doing. Pointing out the nonsense you are spouting before they waste all their nice shiny fire beetle eyes on failed combines.

This board is very useful for new and experienced players alike. The sentiment of creating a thread of useful tips is laudable. However every now and again someone comes in with half-baked drivel that pollutes the flow of good information. It is then necessary to separate that misinformation from the good stuff.

I am not arguing with you. I am demonstrating that you have no idea what you are suggesting people do. There is a big difference.

Ye Gods of Little Fishes



The word is ROGUE. Rouge is a cosmetic.

The containers in LDoN come in 3 sorts - Mechanical which are rogue openable, Ones openable by WIS casters using the special LDoN spells, and ones openable by INT casters using their LDoN spells.

A good tip would be to leave opening such things till after the adventure has been won to avoid wiping the party and losing it.

Your "tip" on group construction is so filled with concepts that most people shed by the time they leave Crushbone that you quite evidently haven't a clue and are not qualified to be giving advice. Especially since you say this is for "mid-level players". What does that mean? 20-30?

Quite frankly the "perfect group" myth is a severe impediment to enjoyment of the game and perpetuating it is not helping anyone. You are encouraging this misconception.



You quite obviously don't know what the prime elements are nor which classes can do what.

"Support Caster" is not a recognised designation. You would be better looking at what these can do. You need to fill functions.

For example a dungeon needs some form of CC (Crowd Control). You must either avoid getting adds or control the ones you do get.
You can avoid them by using some form of pacification spell available to Paladins, Enchanters, Bards and Clerics.

You can control them by using some form of Mezz available to Enchanters, Necros andf Bards. You can also control them using Root parking and kiting although this is less dependable.

Finally you can off-tank (a previously delegated tanking class (or pet) keeps the add occupied until the rest of the group is finished with the first one.

It is wonderful to see Rogue left off the list of Damage Dealers. Ranger should also properly be in damage dealers rather than tanks. It is only at the low end and very high end that they can be considered tanks.

Bards seem to have been forgotten altogether. I feel sorry for them in some alternate universe where people take your advice.

As long as one aspect of the group can cover for lack of another there is no need for such formulae. With enough damage output healing can minimised, with slow it can be tanked by a Shaman or Beastlord pet.

You are in no position to be giving advice but should be taking it. There have been lots of helpful threads discussing this and putting your "formula" here is just demonstrating your ignorance.

Finally:



As I have demonstrated it lost you money. It should certainly do that for them too, but is that what we want?

::whistles as the BS flag gracefully arcs through the air::

Ok. Very simply in the condition we were both talking about where bazaar prices are out of kilter you might have the following sample prices.

Spiderling Silk selling for 5pp each
LQ hide selling for 10pp each
Padding selling for 15pp each.

While if you farm your own hides and silk putting your padding on sale at 15pp might initially seem to you like "pure profit" as you put it, in fact it is a 5pp loss.

If instead of selling the padding for 15pp you sell the silk and the hide as components then you make 20pp.

When counting your "profit" you should consider the value of the components used even if you did not actually have to buy them.

Oh I see what you're saying. On my server leather padding sells for 25pp, if that makes a difference. Sorry for the confusion.

Blacktharne, I see your point. See, the thing that I didn't like about the way Cobra101 presented himself was his insulting manner. Saying 'what idiocy' and such is not exactly constructive critisism.

To all: You are somewhat right about my limited experience. I have had the game for about 2 years now, but I have only really gotten to play the game about 4 months out of the year, do to school (I go to a boarding school where you are not allowed to play online games.)

The main reason I was suggesting tradeskilling was that if my main had known about it sooner I felt as though it would have helped me as a really low level. Now, I understand if you say that all this is opinionated, and it is, but that is all I really have to go on. I created this thread to see what other's opinions were on the subject, not to have my opinions either totally rebuffed or flamed.

Have a nice day. And to Cobra101, you would make a good lawyer