New Player Guide

New Character Creation

When creating your character for the first time, the client will take you through a variety of steps. Because of the customization for this shard, some of these options don't have any effect, or possibly have an adverse effect.

First of all, make sure that your chosen race is human, as choosing either Gargoyle or Elf will result in you entering the game as a bald, brightly-colored human. This is fixable by staff, of course, but it's just easier to pick human from the beginning.

Next, the game asks you to pick your starting template. Because of our customized .spec window, choosing a template at this point is superfluous. New characters begin with 60 skills points in all their chosen .spec skills.

And lastly, the game will ask you to choose a starting location. Again, with our custom maps, this is a superfluous step, as you will automatically arrive in Summer Isle. Just click the Next button to proceed.

Congratulations! You have successfully entered the world of Sanctuary!

Skills to Avoid as a New Player

The following types of skills are worth noting:

• Skills significantly effected by the Pre-AOS change on the shard
• Skills that have been deemed as having limited functionality
• Skills Hard to Train without Gold or Advanced Skill:
  • Magery
  • Necromancy

Skills we recommend

• Camping
• Devotion
• Forensic Evaluation

Changing Text/Emote Colors

Since the default emote color especially is so difficult to read, changing your text colors is an important basic skill. First, click on the Options button on your paperdoll:
This will bring up the Options menu. The tab you need is the second down on the right, that looks like an eye:
Once on that tab, scroll down slightly until you see the little colored squares. Click on one of them (such as the emote color square) and it will bring up a color picker, as so: From there, simply pick a color. The best range for an easily readable color choice is to slide the slider all the way to the right (the lightest set). These colors mostly tend to show up very pale in the game window (making them easily read on most surfaces/backgrounds) but dark in the journal window (making them easily read on the parchment-color background.)

Don't forget to set your .look!

We have a lovely custom description system, accessed via .look; this command both looks at others, and gives you access to edit your own. Just do a .look on yourself, then click "Edit Description" at the bottom. You can use some basic html markup here, such as to add a link to a picture you uploaded elsewhere, or to force line breaks.

Physical Description

Fairly straightforward - what does your character look like. This is the place to put things that are too subtle for the "WYSIWYG" rule, like eye color, tattoos, height, body type, etc.

In-Character Notes

These are the kinds of things an average character would know about your character. Anything in this section is considered fair game for people to RP with.

Out-of-Character Notes

This is the place for anything you want potential play partners to know about you, the player. It is a fabulous place to note any RP limits you have - such as not interested in sexual content, no graphic violence, etc.

Stats and Hobbies

These are purely for RP purposes. They have no actual mechanical effect; however, if you have a 6 comeliness, do not expect people to buy that you are incredibly beautiful/handsome, etc.

Postal System

We have a very useful custom postal service available via the Postmaster NPC.

The basic postal system allows you to send a container or book to any other character (you can search by name) for a small fee; you can also set a COD charge on it, such as for sales.

You can also register as a crafter, which will mean you receive requests for orders for that craft. The opposite side of that part of the system, the postmaster sells an item called an order deed book. You can set the receiving craft for it and write in it what you want, and anyone registered with that craft will receive it, and can accept it if they want to fulfill the request.