Welcome to Lusternia. Home to long winded people.

I guess my point was that if you want to know more about what's out there that you could be doing, you simply ask. We'll tell you all the various activities you can get involved in as a novice and all the cool stuff you can look forward to later when you're stronger and more learned. Seeking people out and telling them things they could be doing would tend to just overwhelm most people, in my opinion. The newbie guide (recent addition to the web site) does a pretty good job of introducing players to lots of aspects of the game, though.

I've always thought Lusternia to be one big learning process. You just kind of pick up things as you go along. It's much more fun and less stressful that way.

As for the whole "one skill Transed" thing, I honestly think that you won't be extremely effective in PvP, but if you're group fighting, you can always pick one thing and do that thing very well. For instance, whenever I group fight, the only thing I do is Perform Maneuver X where Maneuver X's only afflictions are Knockdown, Kneecap, and Amputateleg. Then again, with an above average greataxe and being an Aslaran, I'm whacking your legs at least once every three seconds, if not twice every four depending on whether or not I get afflicted. I tend to drop pretty fast when people notice I'm in a group and then focus fire on me, but I'm very good at keeping high priority targets on their backs.

As for one on one, if your skills are on par with me, you've got something that amounts to a system, and your weapons (for Knights) or class related skills are high enough, and you're about my level or higher, you'll blow me away. Unless I get the jump. In which case, my waraxe and my wolf are going to be ripping you apart like a pond of piranhas on whatever helpless creature had the misfortune to stumble into that deathtrap.


P.S.: Beware t3h anvil of d00m

Small could be the other word to use. I don't overly mind the spread-out feel, if it's intended (though generally refinement makes stuff more concise instead of spread out). It makes more sense for a -highway- to not have somewhere to get off every three feet. As long as there's enough places to visit/hunt. Questing is pretty much secure, as I've ran across way more quests in Lusternia far more easily than I have in the other three IRE games. The villages are very useful for that.

That kinda supports my original point, that in other IRE games you can be good at PvP with less than 2 Trans skills, for many classes. A class like Occultist are much better Tri-Trans, whereas a Monk, Mage or Knight (to name a few) can pretty easily get by with less than 2 Trans skills and be competitive. They won't have ALL the tools, yes, but they don't auto-lose to higher might people either.


To my (limited) knowledge there's more hunting areas accessible via Planar and Aetherships. Plane hunting requires a skill, and is pretty limited since most stuff on non-Astral will get you enemied, or will run out very quickly. Aetherships requires some skill investment (not a lot, as I understand, but it takes away from guild skills for those that didn't buy credits yet) AND manses cost a lot of money.

Which mostly just leaves Prime, for those looking to just check out the game. Which leads back to the empty/small/barren comment. All the areas seem to be something important... which while being cool, also limits what you can hunt without screwing yourself. Don't underestimate pointless hunting areas... hunting is what many people might do before another area in the game grabs them.

In the end... it depends on the exact experience Lusternia is trying to provide.

Mages, Warriors, Bards, Druids, and Monks can all fight without tri-trans. Only Guardians and Wiccans really require it (and Guardians might be able to get away with not having tri-trans depending on their strategy, but they'll be seriously handicapped).

A druid can get away with high skill in druidry and little else. It's considerably harder, but doable.

Right, I forgot to put druids in the list.

...And you'll die if you get paralyzed (as will all the ones Sham listed) more than once or twice in a row.

Nah. Paralysis hurts, but my alt has gifted discipline and can still do okay unless the opponent is doing nothing but spam paralysis, and in that case you aren't really going to die.

Lusternia's focus isn't on PvE, but we do need more low-to-midbie bashing areas. Bashing spreads out considerably after you gain some levels; there are several bashing areas with no enemying, although some are specific to this or that organisation.

Sorry to dredge this up, but have to get my 2c in... I've been bouncing between the various IRE games of late trying to settle down on just one. Lusternia gets high marks because of the quests thus far. In Achaea, there were a couple give corpse X to denizen Y. And catch butterflies. Obviously, Lusternia has those too but I found many more thus far by pushing through Newton and through the portals (I'm far from being done). I like the thought of having a huge list of honours. And a lot of the issues brought up earlier in this thread don't seem to be issues anymore (ie., plenty of hints - though I haven't found/progressed far enough for the honours ones that I know of).

However, there is one amazingly annoying and almost crippling issue: quest item decay. There is nothing more frustrating that screwing around for 30min to get the portal open, regathering all the components to get to certain other areas, just to get one step further and realize you need to go back to Newton because you've stumbled on something new that requires something you picked up an hour ago and has long since decayed. Going back is fine... until you realize the portals closed. So you screw around for another 30min to get them back open, get part way and find out some _other_ piece required has decayed in the meantime! So back you go in hopes that you beat the closing of the portals or the decay of the item you came back in the first place for. Just to finally get back, make it that one step further, and...... aaauuuuuggggghhhhhhh. I actually abandoned Lusternia for a while and focused more on Achaea until I realized that I actually like the quests here better (minus this).

The other issue, of course, is the weak dwarves. Good god people, dwarves are the ultimate race regardless of game. Please boost them to their rightful place above all others. Achaea had this aspect correct, from what I could tell.

Quest item reset time is a delicate balance. If you make them reset too fast, you risk having them reset on someone who is actually in the middle of the quest, but if you make them reset too slow, you risk having them stay in the inventory of someone who stopped doing the quest for a long time even when other people want to do it.

To reiterate a point made earlier - guilds have to talk to their novices. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE AN UNDERSEC. Every org (with the possible exception of serenwilde, because i didn't check) is at least partly guilty of this.

Well dang it all.... after my rant about the quest item decay time, I went back and pounded on the quests for a while now that I knew a few things to string together. And wouldn't you know it? "He has earned the title of Savior to the Gnomes." And I had fun doing it to boot. Will have to tackle the other honours quest another night.

Now about those dwarves...

We did extend the length of time the portals stay open a few months ago, which might've helped.

Well, I reckon one of the reasons you might not, is because nobody seems interested in newbie RP. people get complacent in there own rp that has gone on for ages, and few wish to get into newbie's