I have played Achaea for a while, and have there a Mhun Runewarden (who is my ultimate, primary character for now, but he may be taking a vacation to allow Selverad to advance to the forefront.) and a Rajamalan Serpent, both fairly speedy classes. One is Cyrenian, the other Hashani. I made a Mhaldorian, but abandoned him fairly quickly. An exploration of the city dissuaded me from attempting to start a life there, though I did enjoy my brief period of Grook Apostate Decaying....

I made an Idrasi in Imperian and lost interest due to the complexity of the form and the hostility of the Ithaquan environment... I've since created a Warden and am trying it out again, but he's not a real priority. I've thought of creating some type of magic user in Imperian, just to have someone on both sides, but really... I don't really like the feel of Imperian all that much.

My current Lusternian character is a Tae'dae Bonecrusher from Serenwilde. I set him up before my Imperian character... I wanted bit of a change from my usual high-speed tactics and fairly sophisticated characters... While not playing my Tae'dae on such a limited, even primitive syntax as Cyrene's own Gnaash Bor'ak (whom I hold in the highest regard... It takes a lot of skill to roleplay like that.) I've tried to make him rough and terse, to the point of dropping most parts of a sentence not required for complete understanding. Things that used to be more along the lines of "Greetings, Serenguardians!" have become "Selverad here." "Farewell for now, comrades!" has become "Away. Hunt well." I'm still trying to find a balance where he can be easily understood, though I suppose that will become easier as people come to recognize it as his particular style. (Trying to play a character like this has given me even greater respect for the player behind Gnaash.)

All of this comes as I try to decide what to make as an alternate in Lusternia. I've thought of an Orc'lash Ur'Guard, or maybe a Glom Faeling of one form or another... I wanted to ask around a bit first, because even though I have a bit of play experience from Achaea and Selverad, my experience hastaught me that I'm not cut out to be a PKer. I don't want to spend money on credits, though Bardic contests might give me a few credits now and then, once I get up and running; I usually use Nexus, and find most scripts for either Nexus or Zmud to be completely bewildering. So I'm not necessarily looking for a powerplay character (although I wouldn't want a completely useless character either....) I'm wondering which sort of characters would do well in a support role. I'm looking for something I can bash and explore comfortably with, that's not terribly sinister (chaotic neutral, or lawful evil, is about as bad as I can get... Chaotic Evil is a bit much for me to play.) and has abilities that I can use to help others along from the (fairly early) beginning.

So, sorry for the novellete here, but I'm just looking for ideas and opinions.

To respond to a bit of what you said, good support skillsets in Lusternia are moon, druidry, aquamancy, geomancy, healing, and dreamweaving. You don't need much Moon to help revive others. Druidry/Aquamancy/Geomancy will let you hold a demesne when needed and forest/wyrd/flood/taint areas. Healing lets you cure others and such, and Dreamweaving is fun for spying, scouting, and screwing with people.

There aren't any chaotic-evil orgs in Lusternia. Magnagora is really lawful-evil, and Glomdoring is more true neutral, if you want to use the horrendously limited DnD concept of alignment.

I really don't like those alignment constraints, but I still use them in description, sometimes for lack of a better term.

Ok, that's good for support. How about versatility? This is an idea I just had... It would be nice to be able to switch between different weapons and fighting styles, just for a change of pace in the character... The reason I find myself starting so many alternates is that I like to switch things up every once and a while, and I often find myself (unwittingly, perhaps...) putting myself into very in-flexible playtypes.

Ok, I'm liking the idea of Magnagora... So Geomancy is available there, yes? I'm thinking of going with a Nihilist or a Geomancer, since I already have a fairly combat-centric character in the form of Selverad. Ideas for races?

(Note; in the course of this thread I will probably accept and discard different ideas, so don't pass up on commenting on an early post just because it seems like I've made a decision. More information is always appreciated.)

Have you thought going completely different, I.e. Influencing, or just being Merchant focused?

I've thought of it, but I don't really know enough about it... I know in Achaea, there really isn't any way to advance besides combat. How can one advance oneself here without going bashing? That would certainly be a nice change from the ordinary....

Read up on Influencing and the influence skillset.. there are tons of threads around here on it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention Astrology, which is another good support skill, though it's extremely annoying to me. I personally don't like having skills whose effectiveness is effectively randomly determined every day, but they do have some really nice temporary buffs, such as resistance to a damage type or a boost to a stat.



If you want on the fly versitility, err... don't play IRE games That isn't really much of a feature in any of them, I don't think. Changing weapons as a warrior here requires you to change your knighthood specialization completely, as each spec is centered around a specific weapon.



Geomancy is Magnagora, yes. Ideas for races? Something that doesn't have slow EQ. Viscanti, Mugwump, and Human are all considered good choices. For Nihilist, the same, but with Aslaran added if you use Tarot.




Influencing is much, much faster than bashing while under level 70. It gets really slow and boring after that though. For influencing, all you need is a race/class combo with 14 or 15 charisma or more, and you're set. Focus on learning Influence until you get Supplication (89 lessons) and that's the only skill you will ever need to gain experience. Influencing is very repetitive and underdeveloped, but it is fast, so whatever

I recommend influencing Tosha monks as soon as you can. They are all friendly, and thus weak to Charity (begging, supplication, and wheedling). You will need Supplication to have a chance, and to be about level 20. You should get 25% or so experience for each of them at first. Just make sure you target them by number and chase the moment they sneak away, as they move around a lot, and pausing in the middle of an influence battle causes the mobile to regain his ego really fast.

My notes regarding influencing:




For influencing races, remember that High Magic users can get +1 charisma, and Rituals users get +1 charisma really early. So, if you are Nihilist or Celestian, you can pick a race with 12 charisma and still be fast enough (I think). I'm not sure how far into High Magic the +1 charisma bonus is, but the +1 charisma bonus in Rituals is really early.

And here I am with a Tae'dae.... Had I known, I'd have invested in it from the beginning.... As it is, it will take me a good 15-18 more levels before I have enough lessons to get it to a useful level.

Guess I'd better get started bashing crabs.

Ok, so that slaughters the versatility idea. So I have one bruiser; should I keep bringing up his combat skills, or try to get his influence up to acceptable (and somewhat useful) levels, or should I just start a new Magnagoran Geomancer and experiment with Influence that way?

I'd like to start a Magnagoran Geomancer either way.... Just an issue of settling on race and style. I don't really like the Viscanti, and the Mugwumps... I could maybe pull off a Mugwump. But they have terrible Charisma... That would be the way to go, I think, for a high-powered bashing Geomancer, if there is such a thing... The fast Eq and high Intelligence should make most attacks rather effective.

EDIT: Also, as an additional consideration, what would be one of the best ways to go about making a character suitable for crewing an aethership? Or is that somewhat ambitious?

Mugwumps are as tanky as tissue paper, and tanking matters more than offence while bashing. Still, I think mugwumps are fast enough to attack and shield before most denizens get a single hit in

Tae'dae influencers are actually quite good. I recommend the influencing for just about anyone with enough charisma, as it will pay for itself relatively quickly from begging in Tosha.

To explain why having 14ish charisma is so important - charisma determines influencing speed. If a denizen is hit with an influencing attack, the denizen's own attack timer is reset. Thus, if you can hit them faster than they can hit you, they can never hit you.

What type of support character would you want to have? Defensive or 'healing' for a lack of a better word?

As the aethership skillset is incomplete, I can't really answer that However, no skill or stat effects your effectiveness to crew an aethership except for Aethercraft, which is a common skillset. So, right now, all you'd need is a bit of Aethercraft, and you'd be as good as the rest of us, but once the specializations come out, you will need a considerable number of lessons spent in the skill.

As the skill is at present simply another one of Lusternia's many fads, I wouldn't really recommend focusing too much on it. The lessons it would take are better spent elsewhere unless you have an abundance of credits. If you really enjoy it though, and have access to a ship, by all means, go for it. I'm just not sure how many people actually care about traveling the Aetherways often now that the novelty of aetherships has worn off.

Besides Kethuru(Mag did try to ally with him during the first apocalyptic event we had), and small sects of Magnagorians who worship Gorgulu, but ya, your point still stands.

Kethuru is not an org. He's as big as one, but he has WAY too many tentacles to be classified as such.

So, I should start putting the lessons Selverad learns into Influence? Maybe not all, I've been trying to get up to Teleport, but that's not cheap either...

So for my Magnagoran.... Most of the appropriate races have terrible Charisma.... Maybe turn Selverad into an influence character, with my Mag becoming my magic basher type...

Spend four lessons on Influence for Begging, and then see how you like it. Beg from the villagers of Estelbar - almost all of them are Friendly. Beware Tomtom, Yojimbo, and Mrs. Trundle though - they can be a bit much.

Four lessons isn't much, and it's enough to get the first charity skill. You can spend the other 85 later for the next level of charity if you find you like it.

Ok, so that's my current plan for Selverad. Get Begging, Get Teleport, try things out for a while and decide where to go from there.

Now to settle on the Magnagoran. What other races would be acceptable as a combat Geomancer, besides Viscanti or Mugwump? I can do Mugwump if I have to, but... Hm. I'm just looking at options, is all. Would a Mugwump Geomancer even be viable? Like you said, blast and shield before they can hit back... Would that work?

Mugwump Geomancer is really powerful for PvP - I'm not sure how powerful for PvE though. Hopefully, a magi will reply with what races are good, 'cause I'm not really knowledgable on the subject.

PvP.... I'm fairly terrible at that. Although, thus far my attempts have been limited to the arena exploits of my Runewarden against people who, as a general rule, devote far more time, energy, and resources to that aspect of the game. I suppose I could try it.... But with my general unwillingness to die, I'd probably quickly become unpopular for sniping at the weak and wounded.

Geomancers and demesne users in general require the least credits to become efficient. PvE for mages is pretty much managable with all races... It all depends on your ooc reflexes- if you are quick of wit, go for a quick EQ race like Mugwump, you hit -alot- faster but you are more vulnerable... if you're quick enough with shielding and getting away when you need to... it's a very good option- A mugwump psionic hurts. Another option would be being more tanky... being able to take more punishment... Viscanti goes well here.

At either way... try and choose a race that fits your RP...

cheers

I suppose I could try that. Set it to highlight in red the EQ message, set best attack to Ctrl+A, health to Ctrl+H, mana to Ctrl+M, and let slip the hounds of war.

EDIT: Does that sound feasible? Haven't made it yet, still open to comment.