Hello, on Sept 9th 2016, Midkemiaonline will be closing its doors. What this means is several iron realm games may find several new faces trickling slowly as things begin to wind down. Several players have stated their interest in coming to Lusternia because they are interested in the immersive roleplay, the combat, meeting new people and essentially a new start. It can be very difficult being the new guy, especially if you have been so used to things for years. Some of us are going to be intimidated approaching the established players here while others will be jumping right into the fray. If anyone from Midkemia happens to read this, I wanted to let you know that I will be hopping between here and the other major games, (Achaea, Aetolia, and Imperian) as Jarnul(or variations) to try and make contact to see how you all are doing. I know a few of you have already started your journey ahead of us and I guess I just wanted to keep in touch. While this is still going on, I will still be in MKO for the time being working to save a few things for nostalgia purposes. Goodbye my fam.
Until we meet again,
Jarrul of Sar-Sargoth
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Here are some notes on things I've learned so far:
* Read the histories! They are SO SO SO good. They are written in a very engaging way, so they are more like fun fantasy fiction than the normal dry lore files most games have. Do check them out: http://www.lusternia.com/histories-of-lusternia
* Curing (and some skills) is in a bit of flux right now as they simplify things, so check out HELP OVERHAUL. It took me way too long to learn this, and this made things way less confusing.
* Learning how to travel around is super useful. I've only touched the tip of the iceberg, but there are some very useful player-created networks for travel, such as the pathfinding path clusters in the Undervault and the planar rift network near Hallifax. Poke around and explore and you'll find that players have already put in a lot of legwork to give shortcuts to places.
* You can TELEPORT NEXUS, TELEPORT AETHERPLEX, TELEPORT ARTIFACTS right out the gate for useful travel!
* There are tons of buffs. I find this really fun, and love figuring out all the different buffs there are. Many player skills (cooking, etc) create consumeables you can use. These buffs include EXPERIENCE GAIN, crit strike, health/mana/ego, etc, so if you want to race to demi (guilty!), there are tons of options to shorten the race.
* The credit market may look scary, but those high numbers are amazing if you have even a small bit of expendable income, as the IG gold prices for things like clans and houses are fixed. I sold like 50 credits and was able to buy myself 2 (?!?!) cartels and tons of xp buffs. And those numbers aren't even that scary on the flip side, as you can get tons of gold while bashing AND bardics/artisanals are judged every month (instead of the quarterly other games have switched to). Plus, cities/communes seem very generous with prizes/rewards - AND you can earn lessons through achievements!
* RP can be a bit understated here - it's not like some MUDs I've played where everything is emoted, but if you put yourself out there, people will notice and later find you. For example, I made a lot of derpy emotes at a Serenwilde party last week, and I've had lots of people embracing me as a new commune member, and roleplaying with me.
* The players here absolutely understand how complex the game is, and they are very willing to answer questions. I was shy at first, and felt guilty for bothering people, but everyone I've met - from many cities - through the course of my newbish travels has been very helpful. @Xenthos, for example, killed me for attacking Illithoids. After the fact, he was very cordial and answered questions about what he had done to kill me - people here are smart, mature and helpful, so turn a losing situation into a learning experience!
* Group combat is king here, but that's not a bad thing at all for new players - this gives us the chance to dive in and help (even if it's just mashing a single alias), learn, and get established in our orgs.
* The seals event is amazing. I played this game briefly years ago and most of what I remember is this event. Tons of contests, prizes, fun - and it happens every year!!!
* Vengeance is the shit, play Vengeance!
If anyone attacks / kills a newbie for little / no reason at all, tell people. We don't particularly like when people go around harassing newfolk. A death as a consequence for actions taken? Sure. But not for "just because".
Serenwilde here
xoxo Talia/Mairin
The eye of Dylara materialises in your hands and flings itself around your neck, tightening incomprehensibly until it is irremovable.
Perfectly clean, this eyeball has been wrenched from the socket of Dylara. It has been animated by some unusual force, constantly looking around itself as if in shock or fear. It is bathed in a light covering of white flames that roll endlessly over its surface. A single chain of empyreal metal pierces either side of the eye, allowing it to be worn around the neck.
There is a LOT to do, and most of the time there's someone who's willing to show you the thing if you ask. Some good ones to look into are: influencing/debating; ikons; aetherhunting; Orders; families; designing; stagework; trades (even without designing things yourself); curios; wonder items; TONS of quests; guild-, org-, and international-level politics; tea;
Don't commit to an order or a family without asking a LOT of questions and spending a lot of time around the members of that order or family. Orders can give a very decent idea to other players as to what your character values, and while that can change over time, it's still a big step. Likewise, family, though your birth family can't be changed after you accept it without rolling a new alt or marrying out.
Newbies are encouraged to ask questions about their guild, their class, their archetype, their org, or anything else they can think of, even if they're asking things that have been answered 7,000,000 times in the last hour. Most places also don't punish you if you leave the guild or org before fully establishing yourself. This even bears out in the mechanics, since until you graduate from novicehood in a guild, all lessons placed in guild skills are refunded 100% instead of the usual 80% when you forget them.
As Demartel demonstrated, most artisans are willing to outright give newbies the basic gear they need to get their feet under them.
No matter what guild you choose to settle in, there are skills that are more or less required and skills that are so useful that it's hard not to justify the expenditure. Of note are the rift and liquidrift in planar, and the curing abilities early in discipline and discernment. Some of these refund the lessons invested, thanks to the ACHIEVEMENTS system.
If it's not a newbie channel, it's an IC medium by default. Not sure/can't remember how forgiving MKO was with this, but you can and will get weird looks or comments if you're too blatantly OOC.
Don't be afraid to ask questions. Lusternia is pretty complicated if you're new, and the Planes are especially complicated until you get a mental image of how they're laid out.
A few files you should read ingame that distinguish Lusternia are things like HELP AVENGER (PK rules, sort of), HELP POWER (a sort of resource you'll need to use for some of your skills, that is gained from your Nexus), HELP DIVINEORDER (slightly different from MKO, gods are heavily tied to their org).
The thing that really reeled me into Lusternia is the rich culture mechanics. If this sort of thing is your jam, definitely check out HELP CULTURE and all the files listed therein. HELP HOUSES is also worth a look, as a really well-established family system.
Aaaand going to shamelessly plug Glomdoring here. If you like RP, this is where to be!
Feel free to contact me IC or OOC any time at all, MkOers! I'm so glad we all have ways to keep in touch.
hotbed of sin and debaucherygreat place (as you've likely discovered) to get to know the players behind your favourite characters. We host lots of fun events, like the Mafia games that occur near constantly (we actually have a queue for these if you have interest in playing or hosting!), logs of events, and a handy little corner where our gods blog about whatever floats their goat. For example, @Sylandra is a prim and proper lady of Hallifax, but she can also drop drag queen gifs with the same quality and quantity of @CyndarinAscends!While I'm not sure of the exact situation of things over on MKO's forums, we do not have a dedicated area for rants, and arguments are
supposed to behandled with an even head and maturity.And if you want RP, I can highly recommend both Magnagora and Hallifax, the latter more than the former in my opinion. If aetherspace is a big draw, Celest has one of the steadiest crews in quite some time. Glom and Seren are also great for RP, but I find them a good place to learn the value of org identity and how you can create a character that abides by that without losing personal effects (plus they have @Salome who is just the bee's knees, and @Xenthos kinda destroyed the world once). Gaudiguch has the highest concentration (currently) of player experience when it comes to combat, and you'll find plenty of people there to help you jump right in (don't worry, they don't discriminate based on org for this stuff unless you make a right nuisance of yourself) while still offering one of the most free-form divine experiences I've ever had the pleasure of joining (Mysrai).
While this is mostly me introducing myself and trying to be friendly, I admit I have a secret ulterior motive. I like seeing new posts in this thread and want the notifications. Good luck!
Ixion tells you, "// I don't think anyone else had a clue, amazing form."
That being said, if you're awesome and sweet, Hallifax' community is thriving, and we have a lot of fun. We have the best people, let me tell ya. A lot of people, the smartest people, are saying that Hallifax is the place to be.
Enjoy your nascent Lusternia addiction problem!
There's info in the relevant sub-forums for each org to give you an idea of whats ahead, but it's something pretty exciting to look forward to and might offer themes that you'll be interested in that might not be explored as much just yet. (Serenwilde's factions are obviously the best of course #nobias)
(jk ilu)
For a while there was a fighter glut in Mag because Mag had the more exclusive and comprehensive system for free, so it was easier to learn how to fight there than elsewhere. They had access to both Crown and Treant, whereas the other three only really had Treant and a couple smaller systems, or the paid version of a couple other curing systems. (which Mag fighters still had access to, and could thus use to improve Crown or Crown-based systems.)