Newbie Guide

or how to get to 5th level without really trying...

This is a very unique time in Everquest history, for at no other time since its inception has there been this many newbies roaming the zones of Norrath as now. Everybody is a newbie at some point, and nobody wants to stay a newbie forever, so I've decided to give some advice to people on how to get out of this phase quickly and to set yourself up for later on, when you really pay for/benefit from the ground you laid as a newbie. Note that I chose 5th level as the point when you are no longer a "newbie" (for which I'm sure I'll get many emails). I chose this point because it is where everyone has advanced enough to get some class-defining skills and abilities and to really start becoming something other than a professional rat slayer.

I'll start out with some facts about newbies that everyone needs to be aware of, because they dictate what I'm going to tell you below and give a guide for how to proceed through the lower levels.

Okay, now that you have the basic rules that affect a newbie's life, I'll discuss guidelines that will help you do well as a newbie.

Your First Day as a Newbie

You've spawned. You are standing in your starting city in your everyday clothes, eager for adventure. What do you do? Find your guild. Why would I suggest such a thing? Three reasons. First, you need to find your guildmaster and turn in the guild note in order to obtain your guild tunic. This gives you a small boost to AC, and in some cases (monks in particular) actually changes your appearance, which is fun. Second, there may be quests that you can obtain from the guild members to keep in mind for later, if you can't do them now. Third, it allows you to train in your primary weapon skill. This makes the first couple of levels a little less painful.

The second task (and this is actually probably the first thing most people do) is arrange your icons on your screen. I won't go into detail about the mechanics of actually doing this, that's in your manual. I would recommend, however, that you place your major attack abilities at the top. Depending on class and race, these include Melee Weapon (for everyone) and Slam, Kick, or Bash. Next, you should place any combat-related buttons up there as well, such as Mend (for monks), Harm Touch (for shadowknights), etc. This lets you use them without fishing around through different screens during a battle. Next (if you have room) is to place other icons for skills you are going to want to practice frequently here (more on the purpose of that in the When to Train section). This is invariably Sense Heading for everyone, and Taunt for warrior types. If you have room left (usually only mages) it's nice to have your Spells button there as well as Sit/Stand and Run/Walk. Play around with it, you'll find an arrangement you like. Also, if you're feeling "advanced," check out how to make a button to use the /loc command and plant that on your main page of buttons, it will help you not be so lost.

Now you're all set and ready to adventure, head on to the next section!

What to Kill

As much as we all like to roleplay, there are certain truths about the world of Everquest. One of those is that killing is the path to power. You have to kill monsters to acquire experience to obtain higher levels to get more abilities to more effectively kill. They also have money to buy better weapons/armor/spells to do the same. This changes somewhat at higher levels, but nobody could argue that this is the primary task of a newbie. So what does a newbie kill?

The easy answer is: everything. A newbie will learn quickly that this doesn't sound like what it means, though, and you must only attack creatures that are roughly your equivalent in battle. You do this using the /con or c command, to consider the enemy. This will give you two pieces of information. The first part says something about how they regard you, with like, dislike, or ambivalence. The second part is what we're concerned about here. It states a range from Easy to Upper Hand to Even to Gamble to Tombstone (as they get harder, if you couldn't figure that out). These are terms you will become very familiar with. At 1st level, everything is at least even with you. You should fight these at first level. At higher levels, consider fighting anything Even or Upper Hand. You get no experience for Easy (at least not at first), and *never* fight a Gamble or Tombstone by yourself. You will die, I guarantee it. Which brings us to the next part...

One thing to be aware of before you move on, however, is the monster's propensity to group together. For example, at the Gates of Qeynos, you can take on snakes, rats, bats, fire beetles, Klikniks, and skeletons. The first three you can attack with abandon and not expect a nearby snake/rat/bat to assist his comrade. Fire beetles and Klikniks are a different matter, as any one of them will turn on you if you are attacking another of their kind. This is great if you're tough enough to take them, but if you are even with them you better start running. Be aware that most "intelligent" creatures share this behavior, including kobolds, gnolls, orcs, etc.

When to Run and When to Stand Your Ground

An inherent part of the fun of roleplaying is feeling like you are the character you are playing, so you should feel some sort of fear when considering that your character in the roleplaying environment is going to die. But for a newbie, the only negative consequence from death is that you have to return to your body to retrieve your guild tunic and whatever loot you've gathered, and if you're a spellcaster you have to rememorize. Until 4th level you get your food and water renewed, and you don't lose exp until 5th.

So when to run? When you know for a fact that there is no chance to win the battle. Fighting that Even decaying skeleton with a rusty 2H sword is likely going to end in your demise. You need to decide early on in the fight if you are doing comparable damage to the monster, and based on that decide whether or not to stay until the end of the fight. You can tell this just by watching your health bars and the text screen for the amount of damage you and the monster are doing to each other. As a guideline, if you reach half your health and the monster still has two-thirds of its health left, you better start running. Note that there is some variance in how you fare against monsters, even ones you have the Upper Hand against, because they may be equipped with weapons and so do more damage to you, they may become frenzied, or you may just be unlucky.

So why would you stay in a fight that you might lose? First of all, there is little to lose (refer to above). Secondly, you get major experience at low levels for defeating monsters that are even with you (a bubble at first level, one-half of one at second). Most battles with them will be close, so you just have to stick them out until the end. Third, running late is the surest way to die. There are very few characters (except those with very high agilities) who can outrun an attacking monster. Muse can do it because he has a song to assist him, but he is also not a newbie. When you run, the monster gets to take shots at your back, with a bonus, so he is still doing damage, and you no longer are. If you run, be sure that you can take enough damage to last until you reach the guards. If you can't you might as well stay and fight, because you could get lucky, which is better than being dead.

How to Make Friends/Enemies

Factions are an important part of the game that you should start out being aware of so that you don't run into serious problems later on. Factions are a fancy name for how you are viewed by different groups of NPC's and monsters. This is the first part of the /con or c command mentioned above. If you have a good faction standing, /con'ing a monster will show something that sounds like they like you. If you are neutral they usually regard you indifferently, and if they dislike you it states something about them wanting to kill you. You get the idea.

Depending on your race/class/diety you start out with certain faction standings with all other groups in Norrath. I could write a whole article on this itself, but it would bore everyone. The times it really plays a difference are with races and classes that are considered evil by others, such as necromancers or trolls, ogres, and dark elves. You will have a hard time trying to find someone to trade from in civilized lands simply because of your faction standing. In fact, many guards will attack you on sight. Most monster groups have a negative faction standing with almost all races/classes.

An example of the complexity involved is, for instance, the wolves and bears in the Qeynos hills. They are factioned with the rangers and druids of Surefall Glades, and if you attack too many of them you could run into not only the problem of being attacked on sight by every wolf and bear you run across (rabid grizzly anyone?) but of not being able to deal with or speak to the rangers and druids, as you've declared yourself a "poacher" to them. And it's an ever-worsening condition, because every one of these creatures will begin to attack you on sight, thereby worsening your standing. These interactions are complex and can weigh heavily on you later on, so depending on how you want your life to be at 20th level, consider seriously what you attack and what you don't.

Training Your Skills

When I was playing the beta, I occasionally ran into people who would marvel that at 6th level, I was over level 20 in my skill at Tailoring, and could produce a patchwork leather item about every other attempt, whereas they hadn't even been able to train in it. How did I do it? I never trained in other skills. The basics behind training are that skills go up on their own with use. You only have to train a skill when you haven't possessed it before. This becomes an even greater issue with the more difficult advanced trade skills, like blacksmithing, where the conventional teaching is to not even attempt to create anything until you are at least level 25. How will you ever get there without practicing? You have to have 25 train points put into it.

Basically, the guideline I personally follow for training is the following. At first level, I dump all of my training points into my main weapon skill, and kick if I have it. This gives me a slight push over the monsters I fight. For every level after that, I don't spend any points on anything unless I'm learning it for the first time. Note that you should be aware of what level you get new skills, because when you go up the level these skills appear the same as the others on the training screen and you won't remember if you have never trained in it before. This way, when I hit fifth level I usually have about 20 train points and can invest these in a trade skill to make more cash.

There are other things you should note early on. When fighting, you will likely be using a variety of weapons and weapon types, unless you find one that you love. Be aware that your intelligence affects how quickly you learn skills. As you fight things, your skills will increase until they max out for that level. Fighting with that skill after that point will not improve it, so you might as well switch to using a different skill. For instance, Muse chooses to fight with 1H slashing weapons, but being a smart guy, he maxes out fairly quickly in that skill once he reaches a new level. As a Bard, he will also likely find himself engaged in battle with a musical instrument in his hands, and will need to fight hand-to-hand. So after I've maxed out my 1H Slashing skill, I take the weapon out of my hands and duke it out with monsters to increase my Hand-to-Hand skill. I will never be as good as my buddy Yifoling, the monk, but being able to use my hands to play an instrument makes my songs so much more powerful that being able to fight hand-to-hand is really worthwhile. For Warrior-types, the smarter ones really benefit from this type of play, given that you might find yourself in dire straits at some point with a weapon that is not your typical one. For dumb warriors (ogres and trolls) you may not be able to learn more than two different types, but the smarter ones (dark elves and erudites) you can learn all the different classes quite well. And Hand-to-Hand always helps when trying to find your body without a Bard's assistance...

Money and Equipment

Like real life, money and equipment are a big concern to your budding newbie. Some classes (mixed warrior/spellcasting types) get hit very hard by wanting both spells and weapons/armor, but everyone suffers from the "if only I had one more gold piece" problem. There is really no trick to this, but I can give advice on the matter.

First of all, don't spend beyond your means. The game was designed so that as you become higher level, you earn more money from the monsters you kill and so can buy better stuff. Hoarding 10 platinum to buy that chain helm at 4th level is a ridiculous waste of money, you could have bought half a suit of real leather at that point and have double the AC bonus from it. It's very tempting, but don't do it.

Secondly, gather everything. I often see people leaving bats lying on the ground with wings on them, which I promptly take. Items like this are stackable, so you could carry dozens of them on your person without losing carrying space. Plus they go for about 8 copper each, which isn't a lot of money, but if you're carrying around a dozen of them, that's worth a gold right there. It all adds up.

Third, always keep reserves in the bank. Know where the bank is in your town. This becomes very important at 10th level and higher, which is when death means no more free weapon or food and water. Keep a weapon on reserve in the bank (if you ignored my above advice to train in Hand-to-Hand) so that running to your body doesn't mean another one of your bodies litters the landscape for others to trip over and laugh at. This goes for food and water as well. Things have changed recently so that food and water play a more important role in daily life. In the old days of beta, I wouldn't even bother buying food and water if I ran out, because having it only got rid of that message that I was starving and thirsty, and it saved money. Now lacking food and water means that you can't recover your stamina, and you lose stamina more quickly now, by jumping for instance, that it really becomes important to have food on you.

How to Play Nice with the Other Kiddies...

Now on to my final point (or pet peeve, depending on how you look at it). This game is refreshing because it really fosters comradeship and the will to help others because there is a very limited player-killing aspect to it. The problem that generates with this society (as well as other online societies), however, is that without any sort of retribution or justice, there is a tendency to engage in disruptive or rude behavior. Rude language/comments is something that the Guides and GMs will be dealing with, but rude behavior with regards to monsters is something that is in our realm. The rules for getting experience and being able to loot a corpse are as follows: the person who does more than half the damage, or the most damage if there are more than two individuals involved, gets both the experience and the ability to loot the corpse. This is generally fair, but becomes a problem under certain conditions. The most obvious is when a monster is carrying a weapon of obvious value, so that killing this monster equates to another 2 gold in the bank or a better weapon to fight with. The general guideline is that the character who engages it in battle first is the one with "rights" to the kill. They deal out and take the damage, they deserve the goods. But it is fairly easy for another character, most notably either a higher level character or a fighter of the same level, to be able to deal more than half the damage even if they come to the battle late, thereby gaining the exp and the loot. This is rude, and with limited retribution, makes the game annoying for many.

Just a little story to make you think if you wish to engage in this behavior (and to give an idea to those who this behavior annoys). I was once fighting a decaying skeleton with a weapon. I had done some damage, when a passing fighter pounced on it to get the weapon. Being only a cleric, he managed to do more damage and got the weapon, while I took the damage from the combat. I berated him, but he cursed at me and ran off. A real class act. So I tailed him. I waited until he engaged in battle with a monster that was our level. He was going to win (he had the better weapon now), so I began to heal the monster. Shortly he realized what was happening and started to curse me out. I chuckled and continued to heal the monster. Having not read my advice above, he decided to turn and run at the point when he could only walk. He made it about three steps. [Note that this doesn't work any more, but the point remains, had he been asking for help or else he was going to die, I would have offered to contact his family for him and ran off]

Now maybe you'll call this petty of me. It really had no effect on him because he was a warrior below fourth level, all he had to do was run from his spawn spot and pick up where he left off. But it made me feel better, and I was pretty sure he would never steal a kill from me again...

Conclusion

Being a newbie is a great deal of fun and, trust me, you'll be doing it probably several times before you get it right and before you are settled on a race/class that you really want to play for months. After a few times you will be able to write the above without even thinking, but hopefully this will carry you through those first few times.

Updated By: xellosmod
Updated on: 11/06/03































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