Hi guys,

I'm an Achaean who decided to migrate to Lusternia. I never realy amounted to anything over there apart from reaching level 50 and not knowing what else to do because I was realy put off by the gap credits can give you. So anyway, here I am because I heard while Lusternia does have a pretty steep learning curve, there have been people who manage just fine without credits and being jerks with trans skills and artifacts. So yea anyway I've been looking over the lore and stuff and I'm pretty impressed. I like how everything isn't as they seem to be, and how varied the cultures are.

So anyway, I've been mulling over and I'm quite undecided how to start jump in. What I'm looking for is a class that can do just fine without credits. I've been looking at the guilds and Blacktalon seems pretty awesome, though I'm not sure how effective I would be if I just focus on one skill. Can you guys give any input on this?

Thanks,

In combat, you won't be terribly useful as a Blacktalon with only one skill trained. One thing you may consider doing is becoming a career influencer, the alternative system to bashing for exp/gold. That way you could focus on one skill (Influencing).

In my opinion, the lowest cost to entry level group usefulness as a class is bard. Bards get a lot of bang for their buck in the Music skill, before specializing. Using those skills, you're already an asset to any group.

Oh?

I've never seen myself as a guy waving around a mandolin. It could be fun to roleplay that. How are the bard guilds in Lusternia? Is it like the Tybierdd in Achaea where the focus is on culture, dancing and what not?

Thanks,

You can be useful as a BT, even if you can't trans all your skills. It might be a bit hard at first, but the commune in general will be there to help and the guild is going through some changes as well that may be more helpful to newer players starting out.

But ultimately, the choice is yours!

I don't know Achaea so I can't compare. There's certainly room for culture in the bard guilds here and they encourage it, but since everything in Lusternia is combat first, there's plenty of room for bard players who never write or do creative or cultural things at all, and I'd say the majority of bard players do little or none of it. So you can really treat it as "do your own thing".

Hi Daus!

I came across your posting and wanted to point out a few things for you:

1. The Blacktalon Guild is always having contests that give out credits as a reward, so this might be something to help you learn more abilities should you partake.

2. Glomdoring, as a whole, also has contests from the Cultural Ministry, which rewards credits as a prize.

3. As a Blacktalon, it will get a little difficult but overall, they have a pretty solid roleplay type. However, in combat, you may find it a bit difficult as the druid classes are built behind the idea of a demesne (an area under a single druid's control with differing abilities that hinder the druid's victims). I would also suggest the Bard class or maybe even the Shadowdancers, though the wicca class also will require extensive lessons if you really want to be involved in combat.

4. There's also the Monk class. I've seen young monks who, without spending OOC money on credits, can handle their own in a fight.

Welcome to Lusternia.

@diamondais Well that's the problem! There's so many choices I just can't make up my mind!

@Lendren I like combat. It's just the feeling I get that "this guy has tons of credits so he's better than you" feeling I get everytime I try to participate in Achaea that realy put me off.

@Marina Thanks for the welcome! Overall I'm intrigued about Glomdoring since my time as a forestral in Achaea mostly consisted of people pouncing me or people expecting me to pounce them (not a very pleasant experience!). Does Glomdoring have a 1 pounce per day rule?

Glomdoring people do not pounce, for pouncing, please see Serenwilde.

Let's not perpetuate stereotypes... racist.

Previously Removed.

Edit: I thought about it for a moment and the Cantors isn't a bad decision either. I know they get some very useful skills that help the Celestines, don't they?

Someone has plainly gotten hold of Marina's forums login, reporting now.

One pounce per day? Blasphemy. We leave the pouncing to the northerners.

For a very long time I've not been able to buy credits due to a lack of RL disposable income, something that only changed within the past few months. However as others have said there are loads of ways to earn them in game - and there are often contests going on game-wide as well, or rewards like the lessons for being logged in during this month.

I'm not going to say that you'll be omnitrans instantly - it'll take a long time and a lot of work, but it's not like you won't get other things (XP!) in that time. I went for a long, long time with only one skill (influence) transed and whilst it meant that I did -different- things in combat, it didn't mean I was useless. The great thing about Lusty combat is that because a lot of it is group-focused, even the little folk can be really useful. I don't know how much you know about bards in Lusty yet, but basically we rely on keeping people from being deaf - and for a really long time I was just doing that in a fight, but it's incredibly useful to the other bards.

Technically at this point I should say something about how awesome the Harbingers (Glomdoring bards) are and that you should join, but I was Blacktalon first so I have an underlying love for them.

Time2ban.

Bard would be a good choice. You can do some decent bashing without a trans skill, acrobatics is pretty amazing at low tiers, and you also have high charisma which makes influencing easy (influencing is the alternative to bashing, pretty much always prevents death and generally you won't engaged in pvp... it is the pacifist's way to go, basically). To boot you can get hermit in Tarot which is a very nice and low-tier, which will make navigation relatively easy for making rounds.

Just keep in mind that while there is the Bard archetype, each bard guild is vastly different from each other.

Since you're not a combatant this really doesn't matter skill-wise, so really just choose whatever sounds the best to you. The Bard guilds are Spiritsingers, Cantors, Harbingers, and Cacophony. We are expecting new bard guilds for Hallifax and Gaudiguch when playerbase permits, though I couldn't say when this is happening for sure.

Spiritsingers are in Serenwilde, which is a forestal commune, they have Lendren who is an excellent playwright if you ever wanted to go in that direction.
Harbingers are in Glomdoring, another forestal commune, but previously tainted and now influenced by the wyrd. A quiet guild, though picks up when Krellan pops in. - but this may be the one you'd like to join as it is in the same org that the Blacktalon are in. They also get the Faeling race which is pretty great for influencing.
Cacophony are in Magnagora, a city org influenced by the taint, I don't really know what is all up with that guild as Estwald seems to be the only active member, but he's a fighter.
and finally, Cantors, located in Celest, a city org that you may call your typical 'good' org, yadda. Cantors are a pretty small and quiet guild without much to offer as they are kind of gimped in combat and no one in that org takes any interest in producing plays that I've noted. However the Merian bonus for charisma is pretty delicious and allows you to reach very high cha and int for good damage and good influencing if you can handle being squishy.

On that note, there is a difference between the commune bards (spiritsinger/harbinger) and the city bards (cacophony/cantors) when it comes to tradeskills, and that is that commune bards can pick up Lorecraft after Alchemy, rather than Brewmeister. Lorecraft is superior to Brewmeister because 1) you don't have to be drunk all the time and 2) at trans you can make any salve, purgative or potion you desire. This can be one hell of a good money maker. City bards can pick up tinkering but people only need a tinkerer once every blue moon and no one really makes use of Brewmastery. You can look at those skills here: http://sites.google.com/site/xieltalnara/Skills

So that being said, influencing is a great way to earn some in-game cash, especially at trans. If you pick a race with high charisma your influencing will be that much easier. All you'll really need for influencing is bromides potions, some perfume, perhaps a scroll of healing and maybe even sparkleberry if you're paranoid. All relatively cheap and easy to stock up on. You can sell bottles of esteem for a fairly high price and then buy credits off the market (though the credit prices are lolhigh right now). Even so, that would be the easiest route to go.

Hope you found this all helpful, and hope you give Lusternia a try!

edit:

I completely forgot to mention that you can download the Mudlet client for free and use demonnic's influencing script for influencing.

You can go for basically the whole deluxe package: http://forums.lusternia.com/index.php?showtopic=20010
or just go for the influencer and call it a day: http://forums.lusternia.com/index.php?showtopic=19151
Both of these are FREE.

I disagree with the statement that the Harbingers are quiet.

*******************************************************
Guildmember Rank Position GT GNT CGT
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tacita * Guildmaster On On On
Aleyah 5 Undersecretary On On On
Eliron * Administrator On On On
Stratas 5 Undersecretary On On On
*******************************************************************************
Currently, there are 4 members on this Plane and 3 on other Planes.

Lots of us! And there often are these days

For your reference:

Serenwilde Monk Primary Ability (Wildarrane)

New Celest Bard Primary Ability (Starhymn)

Glomdoring Bard Primary Ability (Shadowbeat)

Magnagoran Bard Primary Bard Ability (Necroscream)

And if you're interested, here are the tertiary skills available to you as a bard, depending on if you take Low Magic or High Magic (Please see Below)

Illusions
This ability calls for the bard to take up High Magic. It will eventually lead (once mastered) to Glamours . However, keep in mind that there is a defense that can cause your Illusion and Glamour spells to be blocked. This defense/item is called Earwort. I've heard people who play bards run screaming into traffic after having watched their victims escape their clutches just from eating earwort. It really is a sad thing to see.

Hunting
This ability calls for the bard to take up Low Magic. It will eventually lead (once mastered) to Ecology . I've heard a lot of good things about Hunting and have played with it myself on an alt or two. It is a great money maker for the lower levels and even for those who are in their upper tiers. Ecology has a lot of great utility skills and has some good passive damage abilities that you can use while maintaining your distance from your target. Also, having a cute fox/spider/bat/etc running around with you is kind of a cute idea for a lot of players. Just thing; you have a cute, flat-nosed bat that flutters around you while you weave scenes of death and utter destruction upon the battle field. What's not to love about that?

I got all of this information from our Wiki, which you can find below.

Lusternia Wiki (Skills)

Interesting,

Can someone tell me more about Influencing? How many lessons do I need to put in it? What kind of mobs do I generally target to influence?

Thanks,

Regarding influencing, you've got far more to choose from, generally. While you can't influence animals, you will be able to influence city mobs, guards, village mobs etc. without being (automatically) enemied. It might not be a good idea to influence mobs in a village that belongs to an enemy, of course, but contrary to bashing, you'll not get automatically enemied.

As for lessons... well, the more the merrier, as with all things. There are, in essence, five different types of influencings (empower, weaken, charity, paranoia and seduction) and each of those five have three different "attacks". While you can make do against weaker enemies with only the first of each, getting a second and third will dramatically increase your efficiency.

EDIT: There are also things that can be learned in order to improve it further. For instance, learning Dramatics will get you some ego regeneration when you're in Performance mode, and you can learn Beastmastery in order to both have your beast heal your ego and empower your influencing. Those are definitely later additions though.

I see,

So I can just influence village mobs if I want to?

Almost anything sapient.