yet another newbie

[sehracii]

Greetings and welcome!
Always a pleasure to give a little advice to a new player.

Your combat skill trees will branch into more specific abilities as you level up.
Magic is relatively simple - at 21 you gain the abilities to advance in offensive and defensive magics separately.
At 51,those two branches split into two more branches each- offensive becomes elemental and offensive affliction while defensive becomes heal and defensive affliction.

Actually... just go here to see all that.

It's important to note that leveling one skill branch has no effect on leveling others - you could potentially master everything with no penalty if you had infinite play time.

There is ranged combat, but it is not available on the Silan start island. Ranged is more complicated then other combats so they hold it back until the mainland.

The only combat branches I would say are generally "broken" is staff and hand to hand. I mean, they work... you can even grab a shield and be an effective tank with them if it fits your concept - but their damage is practically non existent with no benefit. You'd be better off with any other 1 handed weapon.
There is a common misconception that ranged is broken, but don't believe it.


There are three servers for three languages. Arispotle is the English speaking domain so I'm guessing you'll want to dwell there.


PvP... generally... doesn't have much animosity involved. There are faction tags for PvPing Kami vs Karavan all over the world if you like- but there's nothing to be gained or lost there so its pretty sparse and just for fun.
Our most common PvP is outpost battles- guild owned property that produces benefits for the owners.
The battles to take them can be quite large as anyone, not just the guilds involved, can join in. Often the sides are drawn along Kami/Karavan lines but there are many exceptions.
Some people will always get a little too worked up over PvP but in general I think you'll find it very easy going here.

Let us know if you have more questions, and I hope you enjoy your stay!

[fiach]

greetings and salutations,

On were options of ranged mundane weaponry. Has this been taken out of the game at some point?

Lastly, how would you gather is the attitude when it comes to the factional warfare between the Kami and the Karavan? Coming from an MMO that had a horribly infectious "win-at-all-costs" mentality basically burned me out and was not a good life experience to me. I'd like to avoid that at all costs, if I can.


.

Hi and welcome to Ryzom, alot of the infornation you need is covered in more depth in other posts in this Newcomer section of the forums.

Yes Ranged is still present in the game with a number of different ranged weapons available, here is a link to my guilds site that covers ranged combat extensively.

http://www.ryzomranger.co.uk/



There are two factions that intermingle with each other to a large extent, and every week or so there are battles for Outposts, these Outposts are more guild orientated than faction based combat.

Hope you enjoy your stay in Ryzom

[sidusar]

At the moment there are no restrictions to free-trialers, but this is expected to change at the end of the month. Be warned that if you take a character to the mainland, you may be forced to either upgrade to paying account or start a new free trial account when the time comes.

If you seriously intend to stay with the game though, I'd say come to the mainland as soon as you feel ready while it's still free, just to experience what it's like before you decide to stay and pay or not. It's pretty different from Silan, so just seeing Silan doesn't give you a very accurate picture of the game.

Welcome to Ryzom! Hope you do like it!

Oh, and some more on your specific questions: Yes, staff and unarmed fighting are the only skills that can really be called useless. Of the rest of the combat skills, you may find some to be more usefull than others, and some to be harder to train than others, but they are all viable and all have their uses.

The misconception that ranged combat is broken mostly comes from the fact that it is generally less powerfull in PvE compared to melee and magic, but this is offset by it being more powerfull in PvP.

And as for that PvP, there are certainly individuals and maybe even groups that have a "win-at-all-costs" mentality, but they are mostly cheerily ignored and ridiculed by the rest of the playerbase. Most people would rather lose a battle than lose their friends on the opposing side, methinks. Even those who don't have friends on the opposing side generally don't get too worked up over losing.