Celestine: inquisition/judgement monkey
SD: choke choke choke choke choke
Harbinger: pfifth, allow allies to deal frightening levels of mana drain and bleeding

I finally decided to go with the Shadowdancers! I'm a faeling, starting out...lost as all get out...it seems there's a lot of different planes? How many exactly?

I've always liked this map for planes: Plane Diagram

I don't know if it's on the new website, but it's definitely on the old one.

HELP PLANES file has a bit more information too, if you hadn't read it already.

Edit: Also, though you already likely know most of this, HELP NEWPLAYERS has some interesting tidbits too.

I saw that there is a selfishness skill. Are there a lot of thieves in Lusternia? Which classes can function as thieves? Thanks again!

No. No thieves. What do you think this is, Achaea?

There isn't any thievery in Lusternia, if you find a way to do thievery, it will probably be promptly coded out. You'll also be shunned, hehe.

The above is not necessarily true.

Thievery is difficult because selfishness cannot be forced off any more, and people don't have to drop it to give things any more. Thievery to be a jerkface is frowned upon in general by a significant portion of the playerbase and usually spawns a forum thread to name and shame the culprit.

Sometimes thievery for 'the greater good' has been accepted (getting back things from said jerkface), or thievery with good sportsmanship (doing it for the challenge, returning the items afterwards), or X stealing Y's philosopher stone and destroying it because nobody likes Y (be warned that the last is a very fine line!)

And then sometimes jerks take other people's weapons and smelt them down, which is just rude. Hmph.

Essentially: It does exist in small amounts, you should be aware of it, but you don't need to live your entire life in fear of it. If you get selfishness you're pretty much 99.9999% protected. Unless you attack an SMOB that makes you drop wielded items.

Just to add to what Xenthos said, the only time I can remember someone being robbed and it being a huge deal was when, after Lichseed was given to Magnagora, someone died in an aethermanse during a scuffle and when lichseed auto-ressed her she was in the stockroom and then stole everything in it. That could have been completely avoided had there been an eye sigil put down, but considering it was an aethermanse shop and the fight just migrated there I don't think the owner ever considered the implications of that happening. I think some of the items were returned, but not all, and the culprit got some pretty nasty backlash from the playerbase regarding it.

There's been a few occasions where the shopkeeper will end up doing something ridiculous like not checking keys after raids or not changing locks, or just not taking the basic precautions of shopkeeping and end up getting their shop robbed. Set a few sigils, make 2 aliases, check keys regularly and you'll never, ever get shop-robbed. Three basic, simple rules to follow by.

Isn't that impossible now? I read somewhere you can't pick stuff up off the stockroom floor unless you specifically have permissions to do so.

See, that was a more difficult case. Everything got returned except for the organization-level stuff (construct items basically, which were going to be used against the org she was in). They didn't belong to the shop owner, really, they were entirely for organizational-level conflict.

That's pretty much the only kind of theft I can possibly see justifying, where it doesn't hurt any person, it doesn't really affect organization resources (all organizations should have enough stuff to remake it all), it just impacts one fight and should have been protected against. Keeping any of the personal items was pretty well stood against by everyone.

We've also had guild-shops being robbed by people who had access to them and probably shouldn't have, in retrospect (which is still possible).

One of the many things I've wanted to do in the long run. Until I heard about how it's impossible mechanics-wise.

If they've fixed one bug I know about, the only way to rob a shop is to have permission from the owner, who later regrets it.

Personal theft is theoretically possible, but as Xenthos said, selfishness is a huge deterrent and I've never heard of it really happening in years.

I have one more collegium quest to go then its off to newton to start levelling up. Do you guys recommend just influencing or should I kill the things too? Should I start putting lessons into influencing or will I be good with begging?

Influence then kill if you're feeling super productive.

It's recommended to put lessons into influencing if that's going to be your main gold-gathering method. Might as well not half-ass it. Plus you eventually get access to the higher tier begging moves.

Kill things in newton, you get gold from selling corpses. Or do both! In newton you'll be fine with just begging.

Remember to spin the Wheel daily. SHould be helpful for someone starting out!

You can influence then kill, for double experience. Also, note that Newton is a gold mine. There is no other place which can yield gold that much with the effort it takes to bash it. Begging for infuencing will be fine with gnomes.

You're right, I had completely forgotten about that.

So... yeah, stealing from shops is pretty much not gonna happen. ._.

Even without permission to the shop, if you can get inside the stockroom, it'll let anybody get free charges from a cube :<

Not sure if it works for kegs, though.