Actually, that was the very first thing I wanted to do- "GUILDDISFAVOUR, YOU MAGGOT!". But then I realized that Faymar can't really preach about respect and responsibility since he usually shows none to other people when he rages. It felt like a Mexican standoff with myself, very annoying. Definitely something that I need to fix.

I spent something like 7 years in Achaea. Seven years of hell.

I tried Lusternia a couple of times through the last few years, but no one was around to help me, I had no clue what this "collegium" thing was or what I was supposed to do, and you can only sit around waiting for someone to log in before you say "screw this" and log out.

It's not like that anymore though. There are a lot of players now, and they're all very good about helping newbies. I have yet to see a question go unanswered on newbie channel. The nice thing is newbie channel is ooc here, unlike in Achaea.

Some things that are very different here from Achaea:

- collegiums - another newbie-friendly feature. Collegium tasks teach you about the game and specifically your org. They touch on subjects which are unique to Lusternia, such as planes and power, and they give you gold (which you very much need here - that's one downside to Lusternia: things are generally more expensive. Especially with the new comm change, but I won't get on a tangent about that!)

- guilds - I started Achaea before autoclass, but I don't remember much since I was still pretty new. As someone already pointed out, guilds and orgs here are much more close-knit. There is actually a sense of community. Since guild/org hopping involves paying for lots of relearning, you kind of have to adapt to your home and get along with its other members. This might be a contributing factor to the fact that there is more cooperation and problem-solving here. In Achaea if you had a problem with someone, you just hire an artiwhore dragon to jump/rob them.

- theft - pretty much doesn't exist here. I'm still having a hard time getting used to that. Sylphas told me the other day "I'm glad I never spent enough time in Achaea to get theft-paranoid like you are." Ha!

- planes and aetherspace - the world has so much more depth here. You can fly through space, whether it's for hunting the aetherbeasts (amaaaaazing xp gain), gathering dust to sell (amazing money, or so I hear!), or traveling to an aetherbubble.

- pk that actually involves rp - people aren't going to jump you "just because they can" here (for the most part). Almost all pk is related to orgs being at war. Namely a group from one org (or two allied orgs) gets together and raids the ethereal or elemental plane of their enemy org.

- common sense - I'm sure you noticed how complex the rules were in Achaea. It's not like that here. It's basically "use your brain." And it works. Personally I think the reason for that is that the admins here are actually sensible. In Achaea, if you had an issue with something that needed admin intervention, it was always a gamble depending on which admin you got. That's not a problem here.

- more rp immersion - people take their rp more seriously here, it's not just a fancy chatroom.

- families and greathouses - family actually means something here. I used to cringe when I'd see a bunch of people who acted like they belong on Jerry Springer get together, make a family, and name the family clan something like "the noble house of whatever." Noble, my left foot. And while incest exists here, it's not rampant or allowed by game mechanics (as long as the mechanics work properly ... no one look too carefully at Aubrey's and Sylphas's family trees).

- less drama - people are just plain more mature here, on the whole. It's self-regulating. The admins don't have to babysit the players here. If someone did something stupid, they'd have a bunch of other players on their tail. I've heard that back when someone would rob people, he'd get chased out of the game. That was before I joined, but if it's true, that's awesome. In Achaea, it got to the point by the time I left that there were pretty much no in-game consequences for your character's actions. I forget the guy's name now, but there was one notorious rogue in Achaea who could always get whatever he needed (herbs, vials, enchantments, whatever) even though he was enemied everywhere, because anyone could take on as many trade skills as they wanted, whatever their city/class, and of course he had all his skills because of autoclass. So kicking someone out of your org or enemying them or enforcing tradebans really meant nothing. Here, it actually has some effect.

- trades - again, you have to interact with other people here, since some trades are only available to certain guilds, and a person can choose only one trade at a time.

- designs - *drool*

Another downside though is that there are more necessary abilities spread throughout more skills. I think overall you have to spend a lot more money on learning to get by as comfortably as you do in Achaea. That's hard for people like me, but you said money isn't an issue so that probably doesn't matter for you. There really aren't many other downsides though! I wish I'd stayed with it back when I first tried, and abandoned Achaea back then. You've definitely made the right choice! Welcome to Lusternia.

Oh and I forgot, like someone said, there's the fact that you can actually do stuff here! In the 7 years I played Achaea, I only got above CR1 once, I think. I wanted to get involved in things but no one cared. And it was a big deal to get level 80. It's easier to get experience here too (and in a variety of ways so you don't burn out on the same thing over and over). Within 6 months, Aubrey has gotten to Titan, is GA, CR6, and all that. Definitely room to grow here!

Bah, that sounds amazing. I don't want to spend TOO much money on the character, but with this community it sounds like it'd be worth it. Which classes are more expensive ones and which ones are cheaper.

And does anyone else play achaea and is able to kinda compare classes? Seems like mages here are not like magis in achaea at all.

It depends on your definition of expensive.

Wiccans and guardians are generally your more expensive classes because you need to trans more skills to be as effective in combat. We're talking tri-trans for these classes. Knights are probably the most expensive just because you need a decent set of artifacts to be effective. Mages, Druids, and Monks are all pretty cheap. Bards probably between wiccans/guardians and monks/mages/druids on the expense scale.

With all the promotions that've been running lately, you can get a lot of free credits and lessons. Also, I've noticed that Lusternian bardics and artisanals tend to give out prizes to more people than Achaea does.

Haven't played Achaea very much for a few years, so probably couldn't be very helpful in comparing classes. Lusternian classes are pretty unique from what I remember and its a little hard to find equivalents from other games.

Money will be spent if you need everything now. I've bought credits twice or three times, and never in big packages. It's taken me awhile, but I'm up to level 80, am multi-trans in my skills, and have a growing manse (basically a "house", your own bubble in aetherspace whose appearance you control 100%). Everything in Lusternia can be gotten without spending a single dime of real money-- it just takes longer. Much longer in some cases (like if you wanted a kick-n-run box, commonly called a cubix), but there is nothing in the game that you MUST pay real money for.

I'm kind of forced to go down that road to an extent. If I don't act like that, certain people say I'm too happy and nice to be a good leader.

Bards are far and away the cheapest for entry level work, monks a fairly distant second, then the big clump, then Celestine/Nihilist at the sadface end of the spectrum.

Our bards play a lot like your mages. Our monks play a little like your monks. Wiccans play a little like occultists. A nihilist with hexes plays a bit like an apostate if you squint really hard and turn your head a certain way. The rest don't really correlate.

Mages and druids are vaguely like your druids and sylvans, if you nerfed the hell out of groves but made them portable and allowed them to spread over several rooms at once. Each of those guilds have their own set of grove-like effects. Like, Aquamancers have mean jellyfish floating around where they spread their effects, Hartstone have acorn-wielding squirrels of doom, etc.

Guardians might look a lot like priests and apostates, but their pets are passive afflicters (only), and a lot of their combat is based around the sort of affliction work you might expect from an Achaean knight...except they're angling for instakills instead of damage kills.

Our knights practice a form of attrition combat, but it's not damage-centric. In Achaea, damage to body parts is fairly incidental. It might be a key part of the top-tier strategy, but it's not the only approach. In Lusternia, damage to body parts is pretty much the only way a knight can operate. Instead of being cured with regeneration, bodily wounds are cured by applying health potion, which can (in theory, at least -- not so much in practice) force some difficult decisions between sipping health to keep yourself from dying and applying health to keep the knight from lopping off your arm/leg/head.


Maybe the most important point in all these vague statements is that, even within the same guild, you have choices in the skills you take. No guild has access to all the same skills as any other guild, and no two guildmates are guaranteed to have taken the same skills. The flavor in our guilds is much more front-and-center than any wimpy ol' house too. It might be easier for you to tell us how you want to play and for us to abstract out the complexity for you.

You'll find that in group combat, you don't really need high in skills (aka whore basic hindering abilities or web enchant) to be helpful. It's only for 1v1 combat that some guilds require tri-trans while others don't.

You don't even need to spend money for the kick-n-run-inabox. There's something similar you can get for free via questing that works just as well more or less.

Or you can go and get a medallion.

Can't use an Orgbix in enemy territory.

Awesomeness...asked a question over ct, got an answer, asked a few more. Said thanks, i just wanted to learn and was curious about everything. Boom, favour from a God. I NEVER got a favor like that in my 11 years of achaea. I always had to sacrifice a ton of stuff. Just pure awesome.

Where'd you end up going, out of curiosity?

Right now in the geomancers of some M city, heheh. I'm just testing out the class see how I like it. As i learn more and more I might go back and make a new character and try something new.

Ahh, Magnagora. Good luck! And yes, don't be afraid to reroll if you feel like this character isn't for you. There's a vast field of possibilities out there, now even more than at any time previously.

Also, if you're like me and like to research things carefully, you should have a peek here: Wiki link

Yeah, the IC Gods are very hands on and awesome here.

Nice! Yeah the gods here do like surprises. I like how Aubrey seems to have a personal relationship with Maylea. Achaean gods were pretty absent.

Manses, that's what I forgot to mention. I absolutely adore manses. It's a safe place if you need to afk for a couple minutes, or if you just want to hide from the world, and being so hidden makes them feel like a real sanctuary or home. They can also be made into aetherships and aethershops. Or all three! Sometime you should check out the aethercity of Deepnight and see how long it takes to get lost in there. Teehee. Plus furniture actually serves purposes here. Lendren has things pretty well explained in CLANHELP MILKWEED if you wonder what different pieces of furniture do.

I can only remember two famous theft-related incidents. Narsrim spent 100 credits switching to Jewelry to get a transfix gem and then switching back to herbs, and Magnagora were getting smashed so hard that someone (whose name started with K, I think...) stole it and put it in the Megalith.

And... Yrael. He was an incident all on his own, but he didn't want stuff, he wanted to be "the thief". If people ran to the forum and bitched up a storm, they didn't get their stuff back. If they asked nicely, they did. And he never kept any unique designs or stuff like that. Cleared out a few guild shops, though.