Questions from a possible retiree

Damadas

Hello everyone!

I've played Achaea, Imperian and Aetolia extensively. I was looking to retire a couple old characters and try out Lusternia. I have a bunch of questions that you guys are probably going to think I'm silly for asking, but if someone could help me out that'd be great.

1) How many credits does it take to make a character PK viable? I'm not talking top-tier artifacted out the butt or anything, just enough to start competing one on one.

2) There seem to be a LOT of skills. Do you need to transcend them all?

3) Are there any systems available for MUSHclient or cMUD? I'm not a huge fan of Mudlet (don't hate me). Even a starter system would be okay. I just don't want to start from scratch; don't need an offense or anything like that.

4) How often does PVP happen in Lusternia?

5) Could you tell me about Dracnari? Is there any lore I need to know about that can't be found in the race help file? Specifically; naming conventions, generally accepted culture or anything like that.

6) Is there anything an IRE veteran should know coming into Lusternia?

7) Is there a class system or anything like that in Lusternia? As in, can you get a class and go to a different guild or city?

Thanks!

Damadas

More on 5), is the art on the main Lusternia page accurate for Dracnari? What is their human:lizard ratio? Full on snouts, etc?

Lerad

4) There are scheduled (with slightly random time windows) PvP contests for the orgs. Every week (roughly give or take 7 rl days), a set of "villages" will revolt and everyone will scramble to claim them. PK is allowed in some of those. There are "aetherbubbles" which function similarly with different things to do every 12 days, wildnodes every 2 weeks, and Domoths at assorted time periods (players can initiate this last one, based on whether they have control over said domoth)

7) The Lusternian multi-class system is tied to permission. You are given permission to use the class outside of the guild that gives it at the discretion of the said guild's leaders. Obviously, this means they can also say no. There are also spells and abilities that mechanically require you to be a member of a city, and this cannot be changed by players - it's a mechanical requirement and you won't be able to use that ability even if the guild grants you permission to use their skills, unless you meet the mechanical requirements.

Qistrel

2) You don't have to trans all the skills, a lot of it is convenience rather than necessity. A PKer could answer better, but, I think you need Combat, Low or High Magic and Discipline.

3) Not really, you could possibly get a copy of Crown or Acorn from someone for MUSH, but 'm told Crown is not getting updated, and Acorn was more of a friends-and-family thing than a system intended for everyone.

4) A lot. Even when there's not Domoths or Revolts going on, people raid other cities all the time. (Though some of them only show up for easy kills and run away when a better fighter shows up.)

5) So, having researched races, the general consensus that picture of the dracnari on the website is not very accurate. They are far more lizard than human, and would have snouts, no hair, cold blood, and a lack of breasts.

That said, there is also the human interbreeeding thing, so you can put your dranari anywhere along a scale between full lizardperson and human with scales and firebreathing.

There is an internal game commande NAMEGEN that will give you a list of common Dracnari-ish names. Being linked to Gaudiguch, they are generally wild partiers, set-the-roof-on-fire, and drink almost as heavily as dwarves. But there is also room for a secretive style character who uses the Gaudiguch wildness as a screen for clandestine stuff.

6) Learn how the Avenger/Declaring/Off-Plane/Zapping in Enemy Territory stuff works so you don't kill someone and get them calling down Avechna on you, or die thinking you'll get status only to find that you didn't.

7) Lusternia has classes but the classes are more flexible than other IREs. also guild-specilised skillsets. So take Mage for instance. In Gaudiguch, the Pyromancers Mages have Elementalism->Pyromancy, Illusions, and a choice of three 'tertiary' skills. If you moved to, say Celest, you would lose access to most of the good Pyromancer skills, but could join the Aquamancers by forgetting Pyromancy and taking up Aquamancy. If you wanted to move to a forest commune, you'd have a bigger problem, because they don't have Mage guilds.

The only class that can fully switch cities/communes without changing skills is warrior using tracking as their third skill.

Shaddus

Wait, Dracnari have no breasts?


There goes my love life

Shaddus

Damadas said:

Hello everyone!

1) How many credits does it take to make a character PK viable? I'm not talking top-tier artifacted out the butt or anything, just enough to start competing one on one.

Nobody really touched on this, so I'll see what I can do.


Out of the archetypes, Warriors are pretty credit-hungry when it comes to PK. Other than Warriors, tritrans is generally a good place to be, or at least trans main skill. Bards and monks can generally pk decently with a lot lower credit/lesson threshhold than most other archetypes. You seem drawn to Dracnari, so I'll plug Gaudiguch, which have Minstrels as their bard guild and Dracnari as their generally preferred race. The skillset itself gives you a bit of protection, especially when drinking, and the attacks you gain are fire-based (Dracnari gain a buff to fire damage), which is helpful in many hunting areas. PK-wise, Minstrelry isn't too shabby either, and you can take our version of Tarot along with it if you want.

Gaudiguch is (loosely, very loosely) like Ashtan in many ways, and we have a decent spread of experienced pker's in the city.

Arix

wait, then where does the golden dragon milk come from?

Damadas

You said "warriors are credit hungry"

How credit hungry are we talking? I'm going to have at least 6000 credits available from retiring, possibly more, and am willing to buy additionally if I like what I see.

Shaddus

Damadas said:

More on 5), is the art on the main Lusternia page accurate for Dracnari? What is their human:lizard ratio? Full on snouts, etc?

Unless you're extremely idiotic about it, people rarely poke fun at people for playing races their own way. Have a full-on snout or more human if you wish, nobody will really complain. Occasionally, you'll get someone who wants to RP as a "dracnari snob" sort of person and scowl at dracnari with hair and boobs, but that's all it really is: roleplaying.

Shaddus

Damadas said:

You said "warriors are credit hungry"

How credit hungry are we talking? I'm going to have at least 6000 credits available from retiring, possibly more, and am willing to buy additionally if I like what I see.

I'm not the best person to explain that, and certainly not a top-tier warrior. Right now, we're going through an overhaul which should cheapen weapon artifacts. Before that, we had several tiers of artifacts to attach to weapons to increase stats, with a weapon able to hold 1-2 runes that ranged from 100-600 credits per, and then elemental runes at 250 credits, and then wounding runes at 100-600 per. Then you often bought the same runes, more or less, for your hunting weapons. 6k credits would definitely give you a good kit to work with, but I'd wait until after Monday to start putting credits into weaponry if you go the warrior route.

Shaddus

That @Shuyin guy over there can probably answer this better than I can.

Shuyin

Tbh probably best  to wait until the warrior overhaul comes in on Monday and then make a decision from there re: new warrior. If you like it, great, if you don't, then you can say you gave the new system a try.

Qistrel

We're not entirely sure how credit hungry, due to the fact that on Monday, the gear overhaul is coming out to simplify weapons and armour, and all the old warrior artifacts are being retired. We don't have prices on the new replacement artifacts yet.

I'd say 6000 is more than enough.

And I was talking about 100% pure dracnari, which is rare. You can make your dracnari have whatever you want, cause humans have got into virtually everything. Like rabbits they are.

Damadas

Thank you guys for your answers so far. I'm really grateful.

I've sent a couple messages to the only people listed on the forums as having ownership of mushclient systems. To be honest, I have no interest in starting here without a beginning point for a system, even if that system is kind of outdated. 

That being said, if anyone reading this thread who hasn't received a message from me is in possession of a basic mush system, or knows someone who is; I would infinitely appreciate any direction you could offer, privately or here.

Twytch

To expound more on classes and guilds, each city and commune gets five basic archetypes, which are kind of like templates for classes: Warriors, Wiccans/Guardians, Druids/Mages, Bards, and Monks (Gaudiguch and Hallifax do not yet have monks, though). 

Further, each class is composed of three different skills (you may be familiar with this setup from other IREs), except that Lusternia offers much more freedom in which skills you choose. Typically, at least one of your skills you can choose from a pool depending on the organization you're in. 

For example, Warriors get to specialize into being a Pureblade (two-handed sword), Blademaster (two one-handed swords), Bonecrusher (blunt weapons), Axelords (axes), and Cavaliers (polearms + steed). They can choose any of these specializations regardless of what city or commune they join. 

The secondary skill of Warriors is Athletics, this is the same for all of them across the board. 

The tertiary skill provides even more choices for a Warrior. One route for all Warriors is to take Tracking as a tertiary skill. Alternatively, they can choose another route depending on what organization they choose from: Warriors from Magnagora can take Necromancy, Celestians get Sacraments, Hallifaxians get Aeonics, Gaudiguchians get Paradigmatics, Serenwilde ones can choose between Moon or Stag, while those from Glomdoring choose from Night or Crow. 

So, taking all of that into account, you can have a Warrior from Serenwilde who's an Axelord Stag, or one from Gaudiguch who's a Pureblade Tracker. 

The other archetypes are set up in a similar manner. If you're interested in an archetype other than Warrior, I'm sure the forumgoers can further expand their choices if you ask!

Arcanis

@Twytch

Just because you have the name of one of my favorite LoL champions, i'll be liking your posts from henceforth.

Damadas

Hey guys. I didn't want to make a new thread but I have a pretty important question. I've been playing for a few days now and am pretty well on my way. People have been extremely helpful through in-game interactions and out of game here, and I really like a lot of things about the game.

I asked a lot about PVP, but how is the RP in Lusternia? Do people use the EMOTE command a lot? Is RP a niche thing here?

Qistrel

There a quite a few rpers! Technically everyone is rping cause it's enforced. But some people do it a lot more, people do use custom emotes a lot. You just need to find them, they sometimes hide.

We're trying to get people to use the RPWHO command more so they're easier to find.

Kagato

Damadas said:

Hey guys. I didn't want to make a new thread but I have a pretty important question. I've been playing for a few days now and am pretty well on my way. People have been extremely helpful through in-game interactions and out of game here, and I really like a lot of things about the game.

I asked a lot about PVP, but how is the RP in Lusternia? Do people use the EMOTE command a lot? Is RP a niche thing here?

As @Qistrel said, RP in public is fairly firmly enforced, albeit reactively at times.  Admin do look in from time to time and if they see or receive reports that one is constantly/repeatedly 'suffering from insanity' (basically using OOC), they will deduct rolepoints from the offending person, repeated docking will result in losing the ability to use various channels (Market/City/Guild aethers).  Being docked rolepoints can also result in you losing more experience when you die and  gaining less experience from hunting/questing.  Tells and Clans tend to get a blind eye turned to them, though they are technically meant to be in-character too.

From HELP ROLEPOINTS:

Some things that might lose you rolepoints

----------------------------------------------

   Out-of-character shouts or news posts.

   Abusing channels.

   Breaking channel rules.

   Taking on silly titles.

   Being AFK (see HELP AFK).

   Acting without regard for the history of your character.

   Using real world references of any kind.

   If it doesn't exist in Lusternia, it's OOC.

  

Arix

That title one is mostly only enforced by other players, rarely have I seen it enforced divinely unless it was also OOC, and even then sometimes not

Kiradawea

Damadas said:

Hey guys. I didn't want to make a new thread but I have a pretty important question. I've been playing for a few days now and am pretty well on my way. People have been extremely helpful through in-game interactions and out of game here, and I really like a lot of things about the game.

I asked a lot about PVP, but how is the RP in Lusternia? Do people use the EMOTE command a lot? Is RP a niche thing here?

I've never seen people using says in public for OOC stuff. At least not that I can recall. While using EMOTE does happen, I don't see too many using it. However, people still RP a lot, especially in Hallifax, through what they say and how they act.

Allyrianne

I've noticed that a lot of people tend to scale their EMOTE usage depending on who they're interacting with (myself included), so if you EMOTE at people, you'll find people using it back at you. 

I would definitely not call rp "niche," but I'm mostly in Hallifax so maybe I'm spoiled.

If you want more rp than you feel you're getting, I'd encourage getting involved in active Order for some more sources of rp/plotting.

Daraius

I see EMOTE used all the time, and I try to mix a healthy amount of it into my RP. Admittedly I tend to overuse variations on a handful of custom emotes, but when I'm in the zone I've been known to be little more creative from time to time. "> @Damadas, you'll find that you get about what you give in terms of RP. You can find people who are amazing wordsmiths (and typists) in every org, and if you make an effort to engage them, you'll be rewarded.

Everiine

I also see EMOTE being used all the time. Most of the players I know use it frequently and to their benefit. As said before, if you use EMOTES, people will realize you're taking RP more seriously, and will generally engage with you just as seriously.

Qistrel

I have aliased custom emotes. Nikka has a monkish bow, wing emotes, and a few other things. But also use ones on the fly.

I need to get batter at remembering to use prefixed emotes in my says.

Silvanus

Don't be distraught about not being able to kill one on one, I am not sure if it was mentioned. I know a lot of fighters that still struggle killing one on one. Any fighter that has fought long enough can tell you what kill strategy you are going for in the first ten seconds of a one on one fight, and you can easily work your way to counter it. 

It is probably the most overrated aspect of combat in Lusternia. Combat here is all focused around group combat. From Ascension, to Revolts, to Flares, to Domoths, to raids, occasionally you may find a one on one, but surviving long enough to stack the odds in your favor is more important than killing, since reinforcements will come.  I still often times struggle 1v1, so much that I rarely fight one on one, but instead designed myself to having the biggest impact on a fight as possible in a group (glamour bard).

That being said, I consider myself a top tier fighter and I have a pretty low retire value compared to a lot of other values I've seen thrown around. It really will just require lots of practice, because most of the time it's your guild skills that make the biggest impact in a group fight, and more often than not, that skill isn't even Transcendent.