New Retiree

Zsetsu

Hello, everyone.  I'm a retired Achaean looking for an immersive RP experience here Imperian. I've got a ton of OOC questions to help me with Character Creation. 

I'm curious about this Engineer class, but haven't found a projected release date.  Is that public knowledge? And what Circle will that go to? 

How is the player base divided in the Circles? I saw Stavenn was deleted for lack of players? Is this true? 

What classes are the pvp powerhouses? What classes should I avoid as a beginner and terrible script-writer wishing to enjoy pvp? 

If I'm toting about 8k in retirement credits,  what class can I get the most bang for my buck?

Aodan

Zsetsu said:

Hello, everyone.  I'm a retired Achaean looking for an immersive RP experience here Imperian. I've got a ton of OOC questions to help me with Character Creation. 

I'm curious about this Engineer class, but haven't found a projected release date.  Is that public knowledge? And what Circle will that go to? 

There is no projected release date yet. as to which circle, its going to be going to every circle, its going to be the newest neutral profession(like shaman, hunter, and berserker)

How is the player base divided in the Circles? I saw Stavenn was deleted for lack of players? Is this true? 

I'd say its somewhat even in terms of pop for circles. but when it comes to PK not so much. also there are certain cities that tend to be less populated. at the moment it is usually Celidon and Antioch, and sometimes Khandava. But in this, I would think that you should pick which circle you want to be in based on what you want your character to be like. Also yes, Stavenn was deleted mostly because of population and for consolidation, and we are told there is going to be 2 more deleted from each of the other circles.

What classes are the pvp powerhouses? What classes should I avoid as a beginner and terrible script-writer wishing to enjoy pvp? 

Right now, most of the professions people flock to for pvp are Shaman, Bard, Summoner. of these, Summoner is probably the easiest if you invest in damage artifacts and go full on damage(but it recommended you get defensive artifacts first). other ones that are really good and pretty easy are Defiler, Druid, and Priest, with defiler and Priest probably being the easiest without heavy artifact investment, while druid from what I hear requires a good chunk of artifacts to make work.

If I'm toting about 8k in retirement credits,  what class can I get the most bang for my buck?

This I am unsure of. you can get your bang for your buck out of all of them to some degree if you invest in defensive artifacts, miniskills, survival, etc. my retirement value is only in the 3000s and I seem to do alright for myself, even though I don't have a lot of artifacts. the only thing I would say is that while knights are great without weapon artifacts, they do have quite a huge buy in when you do decide to invest in weapons. as an example, I've bought 3 truesilver longswords for dk and quickdraw between them regularly in combat... not sure how much of runeguard and templar are the same.

I hope this helps!

Zsetsu

Thanks,  are Berzerkers not good? I was hoping to roll Anti-Magick

Aodan

So with berserker... its a matter of what you want to do PvP wise. PvE wise? its pretty good, 3 attacks each with a chance to crit, some people use it strictly for that. but as far as PvP goes, its tough to pull off a 1v1. I've never really had a berserker on my team before but I hear they are monstrous when it comes to team combat.

Zsetsu

Monstrous in team combat, eh? And good at PVE as well? This sounds like my cup of tea.. 
What role do they play in team combat? Are they more of a support role, front line, utility, afflictor, damager, disabler, etc?

What is their deal with 1v1? I was just reading into their skills and it looks like their Insta-Kill requires 75% health/mana total, so that could be a challenge, but it seems doable with bleeding and their skillset seems to be based on damage output... though their HELP file is not as robust as most when it comes to combat techniques.

Sarrius

Berserker is mediocre, possibly even underpowered, in 1v1. It is an ongoing discussion that will hopefully be resolved with results come classleads. Our combat council is well aware of what classes are totally lacking in terms of viability. I will answer the rest of your questions when I'm not at my desk procrastinating.

Edit: it's a speed and pressure thing.. Berserker has very little tools to leverage their insta and their affliction rate is a 'meh'. Not bad, just a resounding meh. Any class you put effort into aside from Berserker will yield better results, sans Templar or Predator. Maybe Mage too.

Swale

If you want to be AM and are less than confident about coding and PvP mechanics, go Outrider!

Aodan

I can't freaking believe I forgot to mention outrider. It's definitely a good one to learn afflicting with. It's in my opinion the most balanced profession in the game. If it weren't am specific I'd be one right now. And who knows I may end up switching one day

Ultrix

Swale said:

If you want to be AM and are less than confident about coding and PvP mechanics, go Outrider!

Outrider lends itself to some pretty cool RP opportunities as well, mechanics aside.

Also @Zsetsu, you can customize your class pet/thing for free so have some fun with that.

Owyn

@Ultrix Come back. Plz.

Kyraic

I haven't played in a year and change, but to the best of my knowledge none of this stuff has changed about Berserker:

Berserker is 2/10 in 1v1. Slow, predictable, avoidable.

Berserker is 12/10 in group combat, quite possibly the best support class in the game. If not #1, it's def #2.

• It has faster writhes, and it also has frontflip and backflip built into the class, so it's slippery as all hell and hard to pin down. Can escape almost anything.
• It can clear the room with Crash out of Sentinel dance that knocks people out of the room.
• It also gets a ranged beckon to help pull people into the room. 
• It has a 100% chance to ignore rebounding when using a certain wardance.
• It has smart afflicting that your allies can track off of with no work put in on your part, even if you are garbage at afflicting yourself.
• Very strong CC, with reliable on demand transfixes and a slash/trip/battlecry that's a guaranteed prone+stun.
• Probably the most powerful bleeding-based damage move in the game. You can't set it up well(at all, really) in 1v1, but when you're teaming with a Longsword Knight or an Outrider you've got ridiculously potent burst capabilities. 
• The ability to use Haste to give your team a balance bonus, which is hugely powerful.

Also, unless this has changed in the last year, it uses the shield as its primary bashing artifact since you bash with shield slam, which means that it's got the cheapest bashing artifact in the game.

Berserker is a team-fighting powerhouse that requires minimal coding and artifact investment. It just has a bad rep because it's trash at 1v1. You don't want an entire team of Berserkers, of course, but damn near any team will benefit from having one.

Zsetsu

Thank you all! Good info and I'm really leaning towards going Berzerker. 

 another thought: How does multiclass work here? 

Sarrius

Kyraic said:

I haven't played in a year and change, but to the best of my knowledge none of this stuff has changed about Berserker:

Berserker is 2/10 in 1v1. Slow, predictable, avoidable.

Berserker is 12/10 in group combat, quite possibly the best support class in the game. If not #1, it's def #2.

• It has faster writhes, and it also has frontflip and backflip built into the class, so it's slippery as all hell and hard to pin down. Can escape almost anything.
• It can clear the room with Crash out of Sentinel dance that knocks people out of the room.
• It also gets a ranged beckon to help pull people into the room. 
• It has a 100% chance to ignore rebounding when using a certain wardance.
• It has smart afflicting that your allies can track off of with no work put in on your part, even if you are garbage at afflicting yourself.
• Very strong CC, with reliable on demand transfixes and a slash/trip/battlecry that's a guaranteed prone+stun.
• Probably the most powerful bleeding-based damage move in the game. You can't set it up well(at all, really) in 1v1, but when you're teaming with a Longsword Knight or an Outrider you've got ridiculously potent burst capabilities. 
• The ability to use Haste to give your team a balance bonus, which is hugely powerful.

Also, unless this has changed in the last year, it uses the shield as its primary bashing artifact since you bash with shield slam, which means that it's got the cheapest bashing artifact in the game.

Berserker is a team-fighting powerhouse that requires minimal coding and artifact investment. It just has a bad rep because it's trash at 1v1. You don't want an entire team of Berserkers, of course, but damn near any team will benefit from having one.

The bolded are especially noticeable right now. My thoughts:

1. Most people pay somewhere to tune of ~1500cr for the ability to backflip, frontflip, or kipup. Nice to be able to put this somewhere else.. until you buy a new class, anyways, then you'll miss 
2. This is valuable in that a fair bit of that immediate or spammable CC has otherwise been taken away.  
3. Haste wins shoot-outs. Small fights like the ones that occur these days are going to be tipped a fair bit by Haste's bonus to speed.. AM is especially stacked with balance-loving classes, and Shamans are common on all three team rosters right now.

Zsetsu said:

Thank you all! Good info and I'm really leaning towards going Berzerker. 

 another thought: How does multiclass work here? 

You can hold professions of any circle, but they'll be inactive if you are not of that circle at the moment. You may hold as many professions as you like of any given circle, you just have to have the lessons for it. HELP PROFESSIONS and HELP SWITCHING CIRCLES should give you a bit more info. There's no scaling lesson costs, if I recall.

Zsetsu said:

Hello, everyone.  I'm a retired Achaean looking for an immersive RP experience here Imperian. I've got a ton of OOC questions to help me with Character Creation. 

How is the player base divided in the Circles? I saw Stavenn was deleted for lack of players? Is this true? 
Organizations are deleted on a need by need basis, it seems. We were pretty positive Antioch was going to get the axe, for instance, but it was avoided narrowly. Every circle has a roughly similar population, but the density of combat-willing folks is an increasingly common point of discussion on the forums.

What classes are the pvp powerhouses? What classes should I avoid as a beginner and terrible script-writer wishing to enjoy pvp? 
Bard, Shaman, Summoner, in no particular order will be your average team 'carry'. Defiler is currently back in style over in Khandava, though, so stay tuned for whining on that front. Thoughts for you on second question, moreso: Outrider's a good way to teach yourself afflictions and a nice starter project long term for learning to code aff offenses. Priest has its own list of needs that teach you how to automate some small things if you should so wish to learn, but truly requires minimum code investment to be useful considering how it plays. AM's remaining roster is full of limb damage classes and a knight class. Knights are theoretically capable of many things.. 'good in teams' is on that list, imo. The limb damage classes have always been touted as a less 'script heavy' way to PK.. we have 3 flavors of it, including Predator (tanky and sneaky), Monk (immortal and also useful ranged strip), and Ranger (great utility, cool RP skills, resoundingly meh in teams though - great in duels if you ever pick that up, though!).

If I'm toting about 8k in retirement credits,  what class can I get the most bang for my buck?
I see you picked Berserker! Some thoughts:
Skills - Obviously class skills.. I'd suggest Antidotes and Survival as well. Not sure what you're looking to get in to aside from teams, so I won't skew my advice too far here.
Artifact Shield - probably L3?
Artifact Tattoo - At least a Tree. Cheap, long run you'll want one anyways.
Longsword? Broadsword? - Opinion only here: pick up an artifact longsword, not a broadsword. The longsword lines up with your warchant and shield better, it is overall better.
Surcoat - Invaluable.. acts as 15% resist to any physical-sourced attack. Great bashing, great PvP, great everything. 

Plenty of other great things, but that's a start. I think you'll do just fine on 8k as a starter, especially if you snag 'no brainers' too.

Septus

Since its a complete no brainer and I've not seen it mentioned yet: if you're berserker, you want the warmask. Its the cheapest statistic artefact in the game. If you're antimagick, you want the ring of magic's bane. You should also consider transing constitution, philosophy, frost and thermology (that'd be the order I'd recommend after Sarrius' above suggestions, but its pretty flexible: I'd learn that way because you're more likely to run into summoners than knights, and philosophy also helps with defilers/runeguards). After you have miniskills and the ring of magics bane, I'd also suggest picking up more tank artefacts, but this depends on your remaining budget.

Don't get an artefact broadsword.

Do get an artefact shield.

Longsword is dependent on your build. The shield is a no brainer, the longsword is a potentially good buy. Would not be top of my list personally.

For reference, monk is an amazing class if you like manualling your offense and can tank it up a bit. Its also top tier, might be worth considering for a second class down the line.

Zsetsu

Thanks for the advice. I'm thinking of trying to play berserker and focusing on defense, escape, bulking up, disruption, and group support. 

I'll probably avoid monk for as long as I can,  since I played monk extensively in Achaea.

Zsetsu

Are the Surcoat and anti-Mage ring mutually exclusive?

Sarrius

No, you can wear both (and should.)

Zsetsu

Do Berzerkers go through a lot of ink? It it worth getting the mask AND the prism bag thing?

Sarrius

I personally don't agree with this line of thought, but there's more logic/thought put behind it than my entirely rational hatred of grinding: no, prism bag isn't really worth it from a monetary perspective. For it to pay itself off in any reasonable frame of time, you will need to sell those inks.. and that's not as easy a task as you'd think. (paging @Wyll to elaborate, as I've surely butchered his point)

It is worth getting the mask no matter what, though. From a pure cost perspective.. +1 to a stat is at least the price of the mask.. +1 to two stats must assuredly be worth way more.

Owyn

@Zsetsu don't listen to naysayers like @Sarrius. The only thing better than necessary artifacts, is having all the artifacts.

Wyll

Sarrius said:

I personally don't agree with this line of thought, but there's more logic/thought put behind it than my entirely rational hatred of grinding: no, prism bag isn't really worth it from a monetary perspective. For it to pay itself off in any reasonable frame of time, you will need to sell those inks.. and that's not as easy a task as you'd think. (paging @Wyll to elaborate, as I've surely butchered his point)

It is worth getting the mask no matter what, though. From a pure cost perspective.. +1 to a stat is at least the price of the mask.. +1 to two stats must assuredly be worth way more.

Sarrius and I have done the math on this prism pouch, if I am remembering correctly. The prism pouch currently goes for 4 tokens. Tokens will run you around 25-30 credits each. Let's go on the low end and say you can buy a pouch for 100 credits. Honestly, that's not that bad.

At the current market price for credits, we are seeing an average of 32K. I want to really bring this down further, because only currently did the average spike to this ridiculous price. A more reasonable price for credits is 25K per.

100 credits at 25K per is 2.5 million gold. Ink prices range from 20g-400g. At the most expensive price of 400g,  you can buy 6250 gold inks.

Will you ever use that many gold inks? Probably not. The pouch also randomly generates ink. I don't know the frequency and I also believe the color is random. It seems nice, but you will never reasonable see your return on it. You will also find a plethora of shops in Caanae that sell inks at a discounted price, the shop owners themselves being owners of the prism pouch.

Zsetsu

So, I like the flair of a scimitar better than a Kingswood. I have read that they are pretty scimilar. Could it have any negative effect on my overall effectiveness? 

Can artifact longsword be customised to look like a scimitar?

Kyraic

Zsetsu said:

Do Berzerkers go through a lot of ink? It it worth getting the mask AND the prism bag thing?

The mask stays inked for RL days at a time and you'll probably be using red/yellow, which is maybe 100g total, pouch absolutely is not worth it.

Dimitri

You'd have to get 'creative' with your describing, as generally you're not allowed to have things that look like something else. Though artifact weapons do play by slightly different rules for descriptions. Just call it a curved longsword, or something. Can make the curved sword joke at least.

Zsetsu

Tri-Trans, but still level 14. I'll be working my way up.  What skills should I focus on  after class skills?

Aodan

If you're looking to go combat, Survival, evasion, and miniskills. think septus laid out what you should learn in order of miniskills for antimagick, since that's the damage you'll see the most of, but I would recommend finishing all of them eventually:

Septus said:

 You should also consider transing constitution, philosophy, frost and thermology (that'd be the order I'd recommend after Sarrius' above suggestions, but its pretty flexible: I'd learn that way because you're more likely to run into summoners than knights, and philosophy also helps with defilers/runeguards). 

Zsetsu

Didn't want to start a new discussion for this,  so I'll just put it here. 

Merry Christmas, everyone. 

Lartus

@zsetsu Merry Christmas to you as well.

Zsetsu

How are market skills here? Can I get rich as a merchant?

Dreacor

Zsetsu said:

How are market skills here? Can I get rich as a merchant?

I believe you COULD become rich, but you need to have quite low prices and big volume. Basically you need a lot of people to buy your goods and have a large scale of items to sell. I have no experience on market skills, but this is all I've heard or figured out between the lines. Maybe @Oystir and @Arakis can tell more about this?

Kyraic

Zsetsu said:

How are market skills here? Can I get rich as a merchant?

Completely impractical. It would take literal RL years for you to recoup the cost of learning the skills.