Being a newbie was easy. Kill finks, kill gnomes, give items to denizens that obviously want them, do easy quests to go up the mountain. My real doubts started after I wasn't a newbie any more.

I want to see that new denizen that you can influence. I think I'm gonna make a throwaway alt to go sightsee.

This reminds me of a thread I saw way back when where someone wanted to know what Achievements (ala Xbox Live) you could earn in Lusternia. Give someone a list of the Achievements you can earn in the game and let them run down the checklist. Heh.

Achievement: Have a longer Honors than Kaevas.

This attempt at humor was mercilessly shot down by my cruel, heartless father, so I have removed it.

Ha! What now, Ashteru?!? Huh? HUH?!?

This post was edit because the oppressive, cruel father got his will and subdued his kid again.
EAT THAT, BOY. Ashteru ain't never gonna stop being the Patriarch!

Hi. My name is Hazar, and I am the son of an abusive, alcoholic father.

I meant a pack of equipment made and given automatically to newbies for free (Maybe they can ask a special guild newbie tutor for it, for example). Not that the guilds themselves should take care and provide those, that wouldn't solve anything.

I may have missed out on certain updates, but it has always seemed to me that this game is the least playable of all the IRE games if you don't have artifacts and credits. Mainly, without a prism/cubix, I couldn't bash and offer enough to have enough karma to PvP on the prime plane. Without the right planar skills you can't get to a lot of the bashing areas period. Even if you could get to some of the other areas, certain classes couldn't use their skills there, like Aquamancers on the earth plane etc. Last I played, influence was set up as the alternative to bashing, but it gave no karma and had lots of other problems that made it inferior. Most particularly what bothered me about trying to influence for exp and PvP license was the fact that in bashing, you can just target a monster and it is gone after you get exp from it, but when influencing you have to go through every creature's ID number and keep track of which creatures you've already influenced when using influence for exp.

I tend to disagree. Not having played any other IRE games, I can't quite make the comparison, still, the situation isn't as grim as you describe it. Of course, heaps of credits and artifacts are great but there are plenty of people around who get by just fine with minimal to no investments.

Also, as a quick note, influencing is now decent karma, if you offer the esteem you get from it.

There is certainly a higher credit expenditure required on skills, I would argue. But I entirely disagree with you on the artifact point.

Agreed. I would go so far as to say Lusternia is the most playable of any IRE games without artifacts. For instance, it's the only one where ganking is impossible if you're alert: in all the other games, your enemy can have a Veil and not even be scryable. Thanks to Aethersight, anyone can see if they're about to be under attack. I really like that. Travel is much easier thanks to the new permanent gateways. DEFINITELY, the system for artifact weapons is more fair. And there are no retarded stat-boosting artifacts. All in all, I'd say it's much easier in Lusternia.

Anyone feel like explaining to me what the new permanent gateways are? Can one get to astral or other bashing areas with them without getting cut off and dying on the return trip for example?

And not really related, but is there a way to turn off powerplex jewel message spam yet? Every time I log on I have to fish through like 30 messages from that thing.

If you mean the Nexus Worlds, you can just enter it via your nexus and return back to prime without asking for the ride back down.

But if you mean the new rifts created during the Kethuru Part 2 event, I don't know if there are still any of them left.

There are. One in Faethorn currently.

Love your avatar Lysandus. Is it from, uh, avatar?

That said, my problem was this. It doesn't apply to people fresh out of novicehood so much as mid level might characters such as myself, so sorry if I'm derailing, but making a new thread seems unnecessary. So my level is too high to profit from most of the main plane bashing areas that were around last I checked, excepting that one island that was always bashed out, influencing tosha monastery was a nightmare to keep track of all the vnums, and I couldn't bash tosha because I have a "good" character from Celest and it would be out of character. I could go to astral but as a warrior archetype, would need help to get there even with trans planar. Once there I would almost always die because my route back would get cut off and/or the insanity would add up and kill me. I had to either make a massive influencing system or buy artifacts to keep advancing in the game and I didn't want to do either so I had stopped playing. Is stuff like this still an issue? Or can warriors make the hop to and from the planes on their own now or is there another way around this/more bashing areas on prime? I'm not buying an aethership either at this point.

Heh, the influencing system I have is simple to make thanks to Okin.

I hunt and influence thus I rise up in Experience fast with Harmony blessing.

Jello-

If you want to get to Astral without asking for a favor... go up through Ethereal. Be on good terms with one of the Communes and use their nexus to go up, or use one of the gatewoven rifts to Ethereal, and then head up through Water. If you're worried about getting back after being stranded insane on Astral, you needn't be. Ask for a tesseract target to Celestia once you hit neurotic, or exceed your comfort zone for insanity. Use the nexus world for a quick return trip, or only go down to replenish herbs/potions/enchants, spending some time in between your Astral jaunts hunting power on Water to reduce your neurosis.

Alternatively, as Lysandus suggested, if you influence by id number and THEN bash the same foe, you never really have to keep track of which ones you've already influenced. Either they are walking around uninfluenced, or you have a corpse to offer.

Sadly though I can't influence AND bash the monks.

My character is enemied to both communes unfortunately And he's trans poisons, so he would hunt the scorpions more often than the water things.

So use a gatewoven rift to ethereal and then up to Water - there are a few around outside of organization territory. And sure, hunt scorpions on Astral... but you really do not want to stay up there for a day or two straight. I suggested Water (and the leeches there, if you're a poisoner) as a rest cure in between your visits to Scorpio or Pisces.