I consider myself an average player, I'm in the shadowdancers and never bought an OOC credit and I have four trans skills a mythical and two fabled ones. I think I do ok for myself.

Apparently I'm bashing in all the wrong places...

I haven't even left prime.

If you can code, draw, write stories, or work as a guide, you can make OOC credits.

If you enjoy picking (and planting!) herbs or mixing up potions and such, you can make IC credits.

I've not bought any credits with real money, and I'll admit that earning the credits is hard, but it's much easier here than it was in Achaea. Herbs paid for all my other skills, plus some very handy artifacts. Coding paid for quite a few artifacts, too.

Don't let the drive to earn credits take you over, though. Enjoy playing the game and do what you need to keep it interesting for you.

Getting to guide isn't quite that easy, since you have to get through their application process. For some reason, they apparently hate me .

Other than that, I agree. Anyone could get credits from coding, artisanals, bardics, etc. - but keep in mind (like someone already mentioned) that all of these require a pretty significant time investment to make it very far.

Thanks for all the info guys.

I do, however, notice that I wasn't as clear in my OP as I meant to be, so to clarify a bit...

I know (somewhat) about the various means of getting credits. That's not what I meant. I basically just wanted the inside scoop on the various guilds, rather than the cookie cutter info on the website. Like, how friendly/helpful are the druid guild in Serenwilde (or whatever guild you want to mention)? Or, are there enough people on to find roleplay? I'm interested in PK and combat, but again, until I get enough credits together to make that worth it, I'm primarily gonna focus on RP (and hopefully form a solid foundation that'll guide any PK I get into in the eventual future). If I want to go the route of JUST worrying about getting credits, then it sounds like the druids are my best option...or maybe monk for the bashing. But I don't want to revolve my character around a class that I picked so I can get credits easy.

Hopefully that made more sense, and if anyone wants to contribute further, I'd appreciate it muchly.

Thanks again!

I'm going to risk getting myself hurt and try to dive into an analysis of the druid guilds from both sociopolitical and PK perspectives. My biases may show, but I'll try to avoid it.

1. HARTSTONE

The Hartstone is a strange creature - a smallish guild in the Serenwilde. Despite the sprawl, there's a lot to see here. We'll start with your skills.

Good news? Stag is a good skillset. It synergizes well with druid combat and the healing abilities help make up for the basic flimsiness of a druid. Better yet, one of the most important skills, stagstomp, comes at 50% gifted or so. Druid demesnes are insane, in general, and particularly good at cutting through those without efficient and/or effective curing. Yours isn't as good as the Blacktalon demesne - Pathtwist, a n occasional entanglement, is nowhere near as useful as Spiders, which give sensitivity, chills, or clumsiness - but it's still very, very nice. Druids also tend to be fairly mobile - though this will be less noticeable without the Environment investment to tumble. Bad news? Druids have very little damage resistance, and are early targets in combat, so levelling is essential to make you survivable, as is getting your hands on good greatrobes and all other forms of resistance and extra health you can find. You won't be able to do much of anything outside a forest. Period. That's not going to change. On the bright side, as long as you have the power AND aren't being hindered AND don't have to break an enemy demesne...it's easy to raise forest.

Druids are a potentially very powerful class with certain powerful restrictions. It's also interesting to note that all of their combat orients towards one thing - the saplock. If you're looking for a great deal of variety in your PK, it's not going to be easy to find without putting yourself in strange situations.

Notes on your tertiary skills are with the Blacktalon section.

Next...the politics and society.

The most visible Hartstone, period, is Kalodan Faechild, and this sets a certain amount of the tone. He's aggressive, in your face, abusive, wild, and out of control. He's also your guildmaster, and one of the most dedicated politickers in the game. He's decidely part of the militant faction of Serenwilde. This makes some members of the guild very happy - he was elected, after all. But there's also a group that's much more peaceful and averse to conflict. Like all of Serenwilde, there's lots of factions. The Hartstone follow White Hart, a spirit of self-sacrifice, healing, wisdom, and protection. They also revere their sacred ancestors, those who first began to heal the Basin from the scars of the Elder and Vernal Wars, first learning from the fae the druidic arts of melding and controlling the land. There's a lot of interesting history to be had, and by and large, I'd say it's a vibrant guild for roleplaying.

2. THE BLACKTALON

This is my guild, so watch carefully for bias.

Skillwise, the Blacktalon have the most powerful demesne in the entire game. All the straight goodies of a druid meld - spores, pollen, treelife, swarm - and their own nasty specials - murder, spiders. The question is what all you can do with it. While Crow doesn't synergize as well as Stag, it's a nice skillset. However, for someone low on credits, you're not going to be looking into it much. More so important is how your tertiary synergizes. Runes has a fast but fragile offense that also demands a reasonable cash investment in the form of gold. It's less economical then dreamweaving, but cheaper then ecology. Dreamweaving is a slower but ultimately more powerful offense, which offers several early powerful skills - control, epilepsy, daydreaming. It also lets you play around with targetted or room illusions with some provisions. Finally, there's ecology. Not quite as nice for a Blacktalon as a Hartstone, but has the advantages that smudges hit groups and charms give some damage resistance. However, to get the really nice skills in this set - stinger fetish, berzerk fetish, transmigrate - you need that extra lesson investment that will take a while.

Sociopolitically, the Blacktalon is very complex. The roleplay is some of the most interesting - in my humble opinion - that I've found in Lusternia, with room for plenty of doctrinal interpretation, rich history, and guild-mandated interaction about those subjects before you can reach GR2. The guild has a fairly intellectual atmosphere, and discussions on the guild channel are often quite involved. On the downside, it's a small guild, particularly away from peak hours, and the community of fighters in particular is very, very small - try two to three fighters. Blacktalon often feel politically negated on the commune stage, rightly or wrongly, and the guild is currently much more in the 'slump' end of it's boom-slump cycles.

Anyone who tells you anything except bard as the cheapest class to get started in combat is lying to you. You get a kill condition with just Master music. (That's one after Adept here. I forget what the Achaean equivalent is. Skilled?) Nothing else comes close.

In terms of social interaction, the difference between Serenwilde and Glomdoring is a lot like the difference between a large university and a small college. Serenwilde has a ton more people, and as a result, it's easier to find random people doing random things, and you can get away with a lot more. On the downside, it's not as tight knit of a community. Glomdoring is significantly smaller, so if you play during offpeak hours, it's a lonely place. It's easier to make a name for yourself in Glomdoring, either good or bad, and things that you do tend to stick with you longer, either good or bad. The group spirit is second to none. Just steer clear of whichever member of the Shadow Court seems upset and looking to make an example.

Here's a slightly more extensive download on the Hartstone.

Prime goal is the protection and sanctity of the Serenwilde, Nature, and the restoration of Nature. The healing of the lands of all unnatural influences. The rehabilitation of, and if that fails the destruction of, said unnatural influences. Inclusive are cities. Also, the prime dictim of the White Hart includes self-sacrifice for the betterment of the whole, the recognition of the cycle of life, and the vanquishing and obliteration of the Dark Spirits of Glomdoring. The White Hart believes the way of Night and Crow are that of shadows, ash and dust - illusions that work at first, but fall short in the long run. The White Hart also teaches us through introspection and an oft lonely struggle, do we reach true power and wisdom. Knowledge is great, but it is untamed and wild. Only through Wisdom can we tame it, and know how and when something is knowledgable, and even useful, but unwise to do or use. As a guild, we adhere to the "ends justifying the means", at least when a militant such as Kalodan is in the lead, as he is right now. If the ends does more good than harm, it is justified. The Hartstone are generally a commune of it's own, where they move as a group with a majority vote. Though it has been noted several times in history that they've had heavy-handed, whip-wielding leaders such as Kalodan. They also have a deep-seated spiritual sense, using the Spiritual Flame to commune with the Ancestors, solely those of druidic origins, who reside within the Flame, which is beyond Time. The White Hart views Time as a circle, not a line.

On the one hand you don't want to join a guild just because you can make easy credits there but rather want one with RP that you like... on the other you want a guild where you can be good as low level with few credits.. I smell an interesting conflict.

Either way, in the end the opinions you can get here will always be biased on way or another. We're all just players. I personally for example would prefer someone like Kalodan to an Amaru -any time- with no hestiation whatsoever.

That said, just try some guilds out. Generally you'll know after a day or two if you might like the guild or if it totally annoys you (skills as well as RP environment).

PS: I think Kalodan is a good GM, at least from the work I see from the outside. He's loud, he likes to voice his opinion and he has a temper, yes. But that doesn't mean he sucks in what he's doing. (<- counter bias to Veydas post )

So far, as a Warrior, I haven't had too many problems. Yea, I can't participate in any sort of PvP yet, but bashing is pretty simple so far. I've stuck to things that don't inflict much (and don't cause heavy bleeding, because I can't seem to find a Kingdom enchant to help with that) since I'm only using Nexus. I think I've stocked up about...50k gold over a grand total of 44 levels. I can probably make more if I head to other places, but for now, I'm content with rockeaters, scholars and stuff like that.

I'm not an expert, but if you do take a warrior, I don't think it's as bad as some people might say. From what I can tell, you only really need to Trans Knighthood and then get your weapon/armor properly forged (artifact runes would be good to apply, but if you get your stuff forged, you have at least half a year to stack up on credits from the credit market, so it's not a huge rush). Next thing to trans after that would probably Totems/whatever-cities-get for buffs mostly (good to have, but not necessarily needed; though Drawdown/Nightkiss are both pretty snazzy).

I may be horribly wrong though. Survey says it's very likely, actually.

Oh warriors are VERY NICE for bashing. So with herbalism and easy bashing, you can easily afford credits but it still require alot of work. Also for a warrior to compete against people at the top end, you need artifacts. Without them, what you can do is almost pitiful.

Actually, there's a caveat. Mid-to-high-level warriors are very nice for bashing. At lower levels (particularly fresh from the portal) they are not much good at all. Creatures in Newton which every other class can kill in one hit might require several combos from a warrior.

I believe that was changed a long long time ago.

It was changed so that they don't miss as much, but they still do not do enough damage to be anywhere close to the magical classes (or, at least, they did not awhile back when I tried out my last warrior alt).

A krokani with the newbie weapon drops things in one hit.

I'unno, I've never been able to kill them all in one hit/combo as a warrior, no matter the race. But, then again, I haven't tried recently (with the newbie weapon).

But remember, warrior bashing has very little to do with levels and more to do with which skills you've transed and what equipment you have, and to some extent what race you are. Levels really only have to do with how tanky you are, but you can still get away with high level bashing at lower levels if you're trans forging and Moon/Night, for example. There is also a big difference between Inept and Trans knighthood bashing, and better weapons make it faster, and secondary/tertiary skills can also help (by giving increased stats or weapon stats). Also, try bashing Newton as an unspec'd faeling (Hint: it's terrible).

(This post has been through a billion edits.)

As a Loboshigaru with Bear bonded wielding my newbie claymore, I could one-shot most of the mooks in the cavern (except guards, which took two), two-shot most things in Lolliprin and I think it took three to take out things at the top of the mountain.

I disagree. Levels are very important for warriors. The one thing that makes one-handers so incredibly nice is that they get more crits without having to sacrifice a lot of damage. This is also what makes monks very good bashers, even though their damage sucks. I got a world-shattering shofa hit on a linked astral mob yesterday and it didn't kill it



Moondancers, Nihilists, Celestines, Shadowdancers, Geomancers, Hartstones, Blacktalons and Aquamancers can all kill the creatures on the top of the mountain with a single attack. I'm not sure about bards...

That actually depends on race for Nature Curse. Not everyone one-shots the biggest finks/gnomes. Low intelligence changes things.