The website helpfiles could use some updating. Confuses the nubs to read about a race and find out the website is wrong.
I'm working on updating them, but they all have to be reformatted by hand so its not something I plan to be able to do in a day.
I actually was looking at some of them the other day and noticed some are done and some aren't. I wouldn't have mentioned it if I had known it was an ongoing project!
A few recommendations since I recently went through the tour with an alt.
One thing I don't like across all of the IRE games as they're all doing with this with the tour is forcing novices to immediately come to a decision about city/commune rather than allowing them to start as a rogue and come to that decision on their own. It can be demoralizing for an organization that invests into a novice only to find out that, 'Oh hey, sorry. I'm not into your org after all and it turns out I want to go here instead'. This can and probably will happen regardless of such a change, but I think it'll happen less.
By the way, kudos to Hallifax (@Davos and a few others in particular) for how they treat their novices. You guys do a really good job at retaining them and making them feel welcome. I quit Hallifax on my alt only because of a typo when I instead meant to do HELP HALLIFAX.
Secondly, some of the org descriptions are really, REALLY off-putting. Magnagora should definitely not be called the 'City of Evil'. That makes it too Mhaldor-ish (from Achaea) by comparison and Magnagora and Mhaldor are really worlds apart in how they operate.
I'd instead expand them to something along the lines of a list like this (and this is just an example):
Magnagora, the Engine of Transformation The only city to survive the Taint Wars. Warped and changed by the Taint, they seek to fundamentally alter the Basin of Life and are guided by the Demon Lords.
New Celest, the Resurgence of the Light Remnants of the Holy Celestine Empire of old. Seek to re-unify the Basin of Life once more under the guidance of the Light and Holy Supernals.
Serenwilde, the Grace of the Moonhart The only Nature commune untouched by the Taint Wars. Spurning civilization for causing the Taint, they are guided by the Great Nature Spirits of Moon and Stag.
Hallifax, <insert Hallifax's title here> Locked away in time during the Taint Wars, the bureaucratic city of Hallifax has returned to establish cold order over the Basin of Life through advancements in science and the arts.
Gaudiguch, the City of Freedom (or whatever their title is) Locked away in time during the Taint Wars, the unorthodox city of Gaudiguch has returned to ignite the principles of freedom and revolution in the Basin of Life.
Glomdoring, the Heart of Darkness Fundamentally altered by events in the Taint Wars, the Glomdoring Commune is guided by the darker Great Nature Spirits Crow and Night and desires to unify the Basin of Life under the Wyrd by any means necessary.
You can then add a blurb afterwards to read HELP <insert org here> for more information as well as a choice of deciding to go rogue if you want to make a decision later.
I'd like to also recommend that the HELP files for all organizations get revisited at some point. They're all incredibly old, bare bones, and don't go into much detail for someone trying to learn more about an organization. In some cases, I think they actually send the wrong message. Example: I read HELP GAUDIGUCH and how they've adopted a new traditional voting system 'if anyone remembers to vote'. In actuality, while Gaudiguch embraces the aspects of pleasure and hedonism, the people (the mobs anyway) there are actually quite smart and VERY existential. However, you wouldn't really see any of that by reading the HELP file. Things like that can really attract someone to an organization and makes them appear different instead of someone just viewing Serenwilde, as an example, as another "cookie cutter forestal org".
I'm one of those Achaeans looking at Lusternia now that character retirement is an option. Previously it was hard to consider other games when I was financially invested in Achaea, now I'm giving them another glance. The first thing I've noticed about Lusternia is that despite a decade in Achaea, I feel like a true newb here. Everything seems to branch out, from skill selection to cities and guilds, to things like beasts?
Having seen the post that guilds will be changing, I'm uncertain if this is even a good time to start playing here. I don't really know what city or commune I'd want to run with, much less what archetype. I'm attracted to the RP, and the ability to really customise one's character, but I'm also completely overwhelmed. Any suggestions?
Not including MKO, Lusternia was always the most different from the other IREs, which all started out much like Achaea (Aetolia began as a direct copy, while Imperian used templates for its mechanics and classes).
The Guild Overhaul is still very much talk right now, and the admins haven't said anything about whether they'd actually push through with it. With that said, new guilds/factions would offer opportunities to shine as a character during their formation.
As for RP, Gaudiguch tends to be on the laid back type, keeping with the carousing, care-free image of the city. Of course, there are pockets of more serious RP here and there. I recall the intense love affair between the Illums and the Templars, for example, or the whole mystical feel of Mysrai's order.
I'm one of those Achaeans looking at Lusternia now that character retirement is an option. Previously it was hard to consider other games when I was financially invested in Achaea, now I'm giving them another glance. The first thing I've noticed about Lusternia is that despite a decade in Achaea, I feel like a true newb here. Everything seems to branch out, from skill selection to cities and guilds, to things like beasts?
Having seen the post that guilds will be changing, I'm uncertain if this is even a good time to start playing here. I don't really know what city or commune I'd want to run with, much less what archetype. I'm attracted to the RP, and the ability to really customise one's character, but I'm also completely overwhelmed. Any suggestions?
Welcome! I would encourage you not to be put off by the giant Guild Overhaul thread. It's a discussion thread designed to brainstorm and take the temperature of the forum-going Lusternians, but it's not definitive that this is the direction the administration is choosing to pursue yet. You'll certainly have time to get acclimated before any changes are announced as definitely happening and go through whatever adjustment is required with the rest of us.
Lusternia can be pretty overwhelming at first, but in my opinion the community and lore are very much worth getting into. It's hard to give definitive recommendations, because there's a lot of really cool stuff going on in different orgs, and it really depends on which type of character seems appealing. I might suggest taking a look at the http://www.lusternia.com/histories-of-lusternia, especially the Chronicles of the Holy Celestine Empire, as that gives an introduction to each org's roots. The Elder Wars and Cosmogenisis are also a fantastically helpful look at where the main conflicts come from, and the race's progenitors. Lusternia's history is incredibly rich and inter-connected, and that was one of the chief selling points for me.
If you have more specific questions about a particular org, I'm sure people would be happy to jump in to talk about those. I'm pretty devoted to Hallifax currently, but have had some experiences with other orgs and they all have their good points.
Guilds are not essential to your rp. You can centre around them, and there are some people who do, but both of my chars don't really care about their guilds much, they are more interested in Serenwilde or Magnagora as a whole.
I'm one of those Achaeans looking at Lusternia now that character retirement is an option. Previously it was hard to consider other games when I was financially invested in Achaea, now I'm giving them another glance. The first thing I've noticed about Lusternia is that despite a decade in Achaea, I feel like a true newb here. Everything seems to branch out, from skill selection to cities and guilds, to things like beasts?
Having seen the post that guilds will be changing, I'm uncertain if this is even a good time to start playing here. I don't really know what city or commune I'd want to run with, much less what archetype. I'm attracted to the RP, and the ability to really customise one's character, but I'm also completely overwhelmed. Any suggestions?
Since you're coming from Achaea, I'd like to give you a little headsup. Magnagora is not Mhaldor, Celest is not Shallam (whatever the new city is named) and Gaudiguch is not Ashtan. While the Achaean cities envelop fantasy archetypes with forces of Good vs Evil, Lusternia instead focuses on ideologies with less of a clear good vs evil flavour. While sure, Magnagora has your necromancers and Demon Lords, the focus of the roleplay is more on concepts of change and progress, daring to go down paths others won't go down in order to thrive. But it doesn't have "evil for evil's sake". It's heavily tinted through a lens of having to do what needs to be done. There's very little evil for the sake of evil, and the Demon Lords can be more than just one dimensional "suffering, lies, hatred, glarbleblorgh, domination". Meanwhile, Celest is built up around a religious ideology, and you only need a quick glance at the inquisitions up through the ages to see how that went.
The great thing about Lusternia is that you can play most typical archetypes in every organization. So I'd suggest that you approach the choice of location in Lusternia through a lens of "what ideology/ideological roleplay appeals to me the most"?
Briefly summarized, my experience follows that the Lusternia orgs have the following core RP.
Celest: Religious Zealotry.
Serenwilde: Tradition and History.
Magnagora: Social Darwinism and Individual Might.
Glomdoring: Communal Cult where the individual don't matter as much as the whole.
Hallifax: Rules and Decorum.
Gaudiguch: Fierce, Unrestrained Individualism
Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
I think I'd argue that Hallifax's core rp is more along the lines of the communal search for Truth via science and art, but that it does tend to devolve into rules and decorum in the day to day rp.
Otherwise I agree with Kiradawea.
It's worth noting that different races have strong historical ties to specific places. So if there's a particular race that seems more intriguing than others, you could go with their culturally associated place and see how you like it. Although you can be any race anywhere and as any guild (with a handful of exceptions due to racism)
As I settle in, these are a few of the things I've found I would have liked more/clearer/consolidated information for.
- Race wise, a clear HELP that indicates which race best benefits for what skills/classes. HELP RACES GAUDIGUCH, etc, to illustrate that Dracnari particularly vibe with the various fire skills.
- Collegium quests, QUEST (questname) was rarely useful. It didn't list what we were actually supposed to be doing (other than 'go talk to the person who gave you the quest - but talking to those people a second time sometimes gave you duplicate items which became confusing), nor what item related to that quest to begin with.
- It would be useful (to me at least) if HELP (classtype) listed basic equipment (what armour they can wear, if there's class-specific items needed, (as an example for bards, what instruments are available and what trade type you need to talk to to get one, what armour), and any class-specific artifacts.
- It would be great if in help files (including org help files), syntaxes were clearer to see (be they in another colour or clickable).
- Also regarding org helps, if city indexes could be better organized by priority/category of information rather than just alphabetical.
- Some sort of area list for what all is in the Basin of Life and any level range recommendations.
- I'm not sure if there's an NPC shop that sells generic food, pipes, tinderbox, and curatives. If there is, it'd be good to incorporate finding it into the newbie tour. If not, there should be. Some things I've had trouble finding in the city shops and aetherplex shops.
- A way to DIRECTORY FOOD to just find all edible things, because as a newbie, I don't know what specific types there are to look for, or what's relevant, and I'd rather not die from starvation.
I'm just gonna redact this post. It wasn't helpful.
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!
Don't all orgs have a DIRECTORY location now? I know Celest does. Can't you look for food generally, or do you have to be specific about the type of food you want?
You have to look for specific things, like platters or cake, food wise.
@Stratas - It's great that you already have a firm grasp of all of this. I'm not sure exactly how to respond because it feels p. dismissive and nonconstructive.
Coming in, I was flying fairly blind, and Lusternia has a pretty steep learning curve. I would hope that the goal is to help new people get acclimated quicker so that they can more readily play more of the game and have a better understanding of things, rather than wrestling over the basics.
Races may be marginal, but you can't expect new people to know that, especially when trying to start off with the best footing they can in their new orgs. As someone who cares a lot about roleplay in particular, "Oh no I effed up I need to reincarnate" means "I need to rethink my entire character and figure out if I either want to go into retconing stuff or have a satisfactory explanation as to why my character would so drastically transform themselves so young".
EDIT - Regarding races, as well, I read a lot of help files on the website before even starting in game, because I wanted to gauge where I wanted to go. It's just a lot to process, and making things easier to process and more accessible makes it easier for people to jump in and start having fun.
There has been a lot of information I've needed that hasn't been in helps (or QUEST information), and periods while I'm playing when no one has been responsive in my organizations (CT, CGT, GNT, GT) when I have asked questions, so trying to build a gameplay system dependent on that, for newbies, is alienating and more likely to see people burn out and move on. Or, people just tell me to read a help again - but if I'm asking about it, that means that I need some help beyond what it's saying or I'm not understanding it in the first place.
Also, pestering everyone for basic information that (I feel at least) should be in a help file and isn't, isn't particularly appealing to me, and detracts from my ability to play the rest of the game.
So far I have found things pretty overwhelming, so providing clearer tools to self-start and wade in without feeling utterly pathetic or nagging or being ignored, would be great.
To address this, though, support your local cooks, who are probably struggling to be relevant outside of the odd herofete and wafers of curatives. Your best bang:buck ratio tends to be whatever the cook made for free looking for curios, but I tend to recommend platters, since they can be infused for constitution.
Generally, your guild should be able to help you find your gear, and many of them list the recommended gear in one of their novice helpfiles (Not CGHELP <guild>, but GHELP <rank> or GHELP ADVANCEMENT|NOVICES) or out-and-out have the gear as an advancement option. Offhand, the Symphonium, Hallifax's bard guild, asks their novices to procure vitals potions, mending salve, some herbs, a pair of pipes and a tinderbox, and 'Clothing that provides adequate coverage, and is not quite as dreary as the set you received from the portal.' to get out of novicehood, and an enchanted robe (or equivalent) to get to rank 5. If your guild doesn't have a file that spells out what you need and where to find it, contact your Guild Admin or a secretary/undersec, or the GM, because they absolutely should.
Again, though, quality of life improvements would be nice. Especially since gear just got turned on its head.
You should probably kick your mentor in the shins and tell him to talk to you more. He's kinda flighty.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Org help files can be made to have clickable links, though they link text needs to be the same as the syntax. I don't know anyone that uses this functionality for sure, but I upgraded Serenwilde's helps where I thought it made sense to have clickable links - mostly where one help file references another by name.
There is an Environment skill that tells you what areas are adjacent to yours and in what general direction they are. For instance, from Prime Serenwilde I get:
You scout around for nearby areas and see:
Alabaster Road roughly northwest.
The Inner Sea roughly southeast.
The Northern Mountains roughly north-northwest.
The problem is that this skill (Scouting) is a bit further in Environment than can be reasonably expected for a newbie to have off the bat (as many of the things below it are useless). I'll keep pestering admins to change the skill order.
We're working on updating the novice hunting and influencing guides on the official Lusternian Wiki, if that helps. They're a few years out of date at this point. Once some larger problems are tackled, someone will be on it!
Side note, I don't think you can actually die from starvation. It's just really obnoxious.
Don't think I've seen it happen in a very long time, no. But unless you don't have/turned off your curing, you're going to run out of health/mana/bromides, which can be pricey, and if you're actively hunting it's one more drain on health than you need or should have.
I think I'm going to roll an alt and go through the intro again to see if anything has changed there. After the bulk of the Overhaul goes through, it might be time to overhaul the intro again - as I remember it, the current intro does a really bad job of teaching... anything about how to play the game beyond walking around killing things. Even just providing newbie guide links and so on would be helpful.
EDIT: A line about optimal armor could probably be easily added to HELP <class>. I don't really see the need to put class based artifacts in the HELP <class> files, given there are only a tiny handful and they are almost entirely optional for most classes.
Likewise, HELP WHATNOW probably is in need of some overhauling. It should be pretty easy now that cures have been consolidated to provide a list of curatives and gear that newbies should start working towards getting after the intro/collegium stage ends.
I have added a line to HELP RACES to direct people to GUILD RACES LIST if they are unsure what to choose. I will also go through today and add a line explaining what type of armour classes wear to their HELP <class> file, and I have placed HELP WHATNOW onto my list of things to work on (hopefully I'll also get to that today). That is the extent of what I can do to help, as most of the other requests are code based.
With regards to hunting and influencing guides, there are actually some by-level guides on the forums in the World Library section, though I don't know how up-to-date they are. Your guild/city may also have some in-game.
I'll probably say things that have been mentioned before, but I wanted to share my experience.
I just completed the tutorial, chose a race and guild, and was fortunate enough to find someone that was happy to help. However, after scanning the forums I'm realizing that I don't understand many of the basic mechanics of the game (starvation? That can happen??). Imo these basic and important mechanics should have been introduced as part of the tutorial so I feel like I know what I'm doing once I do show up in my guild of choice. I would much rather have a longer tutorial then be tossed into the deep end of the game with no idea how to proceed.
I like to have an end goal in mind when I play sandbox games, and the lack of information about how this game works is frustrating my efforts to no end. It's also incredibly frustrating that scrolls and chat are in the same window because that makes it difficult to try to read through long scrolls (which supposedly contain all of the important information that the tutorial lacks) during conversations.
I'm really looking forward to the RP of this game and I'm sure it will be great once I figure out everything. It's just discouraging that I have to wade through scroll after scroll of static text rather than learning the basics interactively.
I have noticed that in the tutorial, if you autowalk to the rock hog caves, you swim across the lake in Lolliprin without taking damage. Which is helpful from a certain perspective...don't want novices drowning in the tutorial...but...it creates the expectation that you can swim safely in Lusternia. And then later on the poor novices will discover that you actually can't (unless you learn a skill).
I really do wish that the mandate had been to make all of the IRE intros more like Lusternia's, rather than merely make them all the same. The original intro, before Muttongate, really hit most of the important aspects of the game for new players before they hit the grid. You were taught about the maps, and how to move around, you were shown what shops look like, and how to buy items, you were taught about probing things, and flame sigils, you were shown how to learn lessons, how to read helpfiles, and how to communicate, how to get things and interact with containers, and you were given health, mana, bromides, food, basic clothes, and a backpack by the end of the intro. The only thing I don't remember it hitting was how to influence, and there was a dwarf explorer in the room it dropped you into in Newton who did that the nanosecond you went there.
That dwarf came in after the original intro, and is really nice. I do think our old intro was much better though; too much watering-down for conformity (intro and the website being examples). Sometimes uniqueness is a good thing!
I'm not a true newbie to MUDs. I've been playing IRE games for at least fifteen years now. I just came to Lusternia last week. I'm very passionate about helping new players, though, and I saw a lot of things that could have been clearer. Heck, you could practically consider me a true newbie because Lusternia is a very alien experience compared to the other IRE games. This is probably going to get long and I don't know if it's going to be useful or not:
1) An explanation on systems/automation/curing in the introduction or collegium. Right after Newton, you're possibly going into areas where NPCs deliver afflictions every other round. Since the Lusternia automated curing apparently only works in arenas, I feel this is pretty essential. The complexity of IRE games afflictions and curing systems is probably the biggest barrier for new players, and it's definitely something to consider addressing.
2) Some of the collegium quests weren't intuitive at all through the QUESTS system. I had to copy/paste what the NPCs were telling me to do because checking on them through the QUESTS syntax only advised me to go speak to the quest giver.
3) The PATH WALK system needs to have its limit seriously upgraded or, better, removed entirely. It's WAY too small as-is. Requiring players to use an external mapper (primarily, Mudlet's mapper) is probably not the best idea. It's a non-issue for the experienced and a very big problem for the new.
4) An introduction to using power and linking/gathering it. Yeah, it's in a help file and I was able to learn how to do it, but power seems to be Lusternia's core mechanic so it might be something to consider drilling into newbie's heads out of the gate.
5) More information. Everywhere. The players here are seriously helpful, but I don't think it's a great idea to rely on them. Not everyone is social. There's a serious lack of data in literally every aspect of the game I've encountered thus far. I don't think there's a single part of Lusternia that I didn't have to ask someone about, just to be able to do it effectively. I don't know if this is more of an admin problem, or a thing player orgs should be looking at. Anyways, here are the two biggest things I can think of right now:
a) Planes. Holy crap, as an IRE vet, navigating the planes is super intimidating. Even now, I still don't clearly understand how to get anywhere outside of my city's elemental plane.
b) Skills. Experienced players know to look at a wiki or ask someone before investing lessons/money into a skillset, but new players don't. I don't see why you can't see all of the skills in a learned skillset, right off the bat.
6) Minor, but I do not recall an explanation that I was protected by the aura of innocence and could not attack some denizens. It's very possible I missed it. The message I got when I tried to attack a gravedigger who ambushed me didn't state the syntax 'RENOUNCE INNOCENCE' if I wanted to attack, and as a result I almost died. I could imagine a new player getting frustrated with this.
7) Some kind of introduction to enchantments/buffs would be super nice. Mercy/kingdom are especially nice and make the game a lot more enjoyable, as did learning that I could have someone craft a cube to auto-recharge them.
8) The website is out of date. Specifically for races and stats/etc. I'd imagine most true new players are going to look at the website before playing, so that seems real important.
9) Out of date helpfiles. A lot of things mention features of the game that don't exist or are changed entirely now. A big one that comes to mind are all the references to stats, when they aren't a thing anymore, or something like that.
10) Some kind of AREA LIST that shows you places you can hunt or quest, by level. This is mostly a convenience thing. Finding new areas has been the most consistently annoying thing for me, and it could very well stop antisocial players from playing.
As a note, the renounce innocence thing is intentional. We had a period where established players convinced newbies to renounce innocence... and then murdered them (those players are gone, thankfully). Most aggressive npcs should not actually attack you when you have it up, so it is usually a good thing (you could BUG the gravediggers attacking you, actually). It is intended to ensure that the world is a LITTLE safer for a true newbie, while also restricting some of their actions (you can't go hunting with an established player because you cannot hit the npcs, and you do not get experience following a stronger player while having Innocence-- unless that has been changed, at least).
If you find a helpfile that is out of date/has legacy information in like stats, please please HELPBUG it in-game or post in the Helpfiles thread. There are a huge number of helpfiles and it is inevitable that as things change we will miss some of them, especially tiny throwaway references in seemingly unrelated files; players letting us know where things have been forgotten makes a massive difference.
(If it's the Overhaul specific helpfiles: we know these are all hideously out of date, and will be working through them next week once everything from the warrior/gear update is resolved).
The QUESTS system is something that's fairly recent in terms of the game's life, and I'm not sure it was ever intended to be a full MMO quests readout. I think it's just intended to remind you that you started working on a particular quest, not bookmark progress or provide hints for quests.
Comments
One thing I don't like across all of the IRE games as they're all doing with this with the tour is forcing novices to immediately come to a decision about city/commune rather than allowing them to start as a rogue and come to that decision on their own. It can be demoralizing for an organization that invests into a novice only to find out that, 'Oh hey, sorry. I'm not into your org after all and it turns out I want to go here instead'. This can and probably will happen regardless of such a change, but I think it'll happen less.
By the way, kudos to Hallifax (@Davos and a few others in particular) for how they treat their novices. You guys do a really good job at retaining them and making them feel welcome. I quit Hallifax on my alt only because of a typo when I instead meant to do HELP HALLIFAX.
Secondly, some of the org descriptions are really, REALLY off-putting. Magnagora should definitely not be called the 'City of Evil'. That makes it too Mhaldor-ish (from Achaea) by comparison and Magnagora and Mhaldor are really worlds apart in how they operate.
I'd instead expand them to something along the lines of a list like this (and this is just an example):
Magnagora, the Engine of Transformation
The only city to survive the Taint Wars. Warped and changed by the Taint, they seek to fundamentally alter the Basin of Life and are guided by the Demon Lords.
New Celest, the Resurgence of the Light
Remnants of the Holy Celestine Empire of old. Seek to re-unify the Basin of Life once more under the guidance of the Light and Holy Supernals.
Serenwilde, the Grace of the Moonhart
The only Nature commune untouched by the Taint Wars. Spurning civilization for causing the Taint, they are guided by the Great Nature Spirits of Moon and Stag.
Hallifax, <insert Hallifax's title here>
Locked away in time during the Taint Wars, the bureaucratic city of Hallifax has returned to establish cold order over the Basin of Life through advancements in science and the arts.
Gaudiguch, the City of Freedom (or whatever their title is)
Locked away in time during the Taint Wars, the unorthodox city of Gaudiguch has returned to ignite the principles of freedom and revolution in the Basin of Life.
Glomdoring, the Heart of Darkness
Fundamentally altered by events in the Taint Wars, the Glomdoring Commune is guided by the darker Great Nature Spirits Crow and Night and desires to unify the Basin of Life under the Wyrd by any means necessary.
You can then add a blurb afterwards to read HELP <insert org here> for more information as well as a choice of deciding to go rogue if you want to make a decision later.
I'd like to also recommend that the HELP files for all organizations get revisited at some point. They're all incredibly old, bare bones, and don't go into much detail for someone trying to learn more about an organization. In some cases, I think they actually send the wrong message. Example: I read HELP GAUDIGUCH and how they've adopted a new traditional voting system 'if anyone remembers to vote'. In actuality, while Gaudiguch embraces the aspects of pleasure and hedonism, the people (the mobs anyway) there are actually quite smart and VERY existential. However, you wouldn't really see any of that by reading the HELP file. Things like that can really attract someone to an organization and makes them appear different instead of someone just viewing Serenwilde, as an example, as another "cookie cutter forestal org".
The great thing about Lusternia is that you can play most typical archetypes in every organization. So I'd suggest that you approach the choice of location in Lusternia through a lens of "what ideology/ideological roleplay appeals to me the most"?
Briefly summarized, my experience follows that the Lusternia orgs have the following core RP.
Celest: Religious Zealotry.
Serenwilde: Tradition and History.
Magnagora: Social Darwinism and Individual Might.
Glomdoring: Communal Cult where the individual don't matter as much as the whole.
Hallifax: Rules and Decorum.
Gaudiguch: Fierce, Unrestrained Individualism
To address this, though, support your local cooks, who are probably struggling to be relevant outside of the odd herofete and wafers of curatives. Your best bang:buck ratio tends to be whatever the cook made for free looking for curios, but I tend to recommend platters, since they can be infused for constitution.
Generally, your guild should be able to help you find your gear, and many of them list the recommended gear in one of their novice helpfiles (Not CGHELP <guild>, but GHELP <rank> or GHELP ADVANCEMENT|NOVICES) or out-and-out have the gear as an advancement option. Offhand, the Symphonium, Hallifax's bard guild, asks their novices to procure vitals potions, mending salve, some herbs, a pair of pipes and a tinderbox, and 'Clothing that provides adequate coverage, and is not quite as dreary as the set you received from the portal.' to get out of novicehood, and an enchanted robe (or equivalent) to get to rank 5. If your guild doesn't have a file that spells out what you need and where to find it, contact your Guild Admin or a secretary/undersec, or the GM, because they absolutely should.
Again, though, quality of life improvements would be nice. Especially since gear just got turned on its head.
Side note, I don't think you can actually die from starvation. It's just really obnoxious.