The big step - going to the mainland

[usinuk]

To me its not about level. Its about skills.

You need roughly 400-450 HPs to survive average attacks on the mainland as a melee fighter. You also need increase damage 2 for the ql20 weapons. The nice part about being able to fight is that you could conceivably get all of this at 20, then pick up a good weapon and armor and kill 50ish level mobs. If you're mining skill points, get over at 20 to take advantage of the ranged tree...crafting a pistol and ammo just costs too much.

You need acid/cold 3 and fear as a pure mage to survive on the mainland, along with say 400ish sap. Its also easier to get defensive experience there.

You need maybe 100k of dappers sitting in your bank account for the better equipment available. More than that is better as weapons run 10K, heavy armor 90K in the shops (40Kish from other players), and you'll now have the option for stuff like +25 hp jewelry.

Other than that, go when you want. Harvesters can go far earlier...once you get agg extraction 50 the diff in exp between 20 mats and 50 mats is night and day for advancement.

As others have said, crafters are probably better off sticking around newbieland for a little longer as if you want to grind through trees the cash available from early mission generation comes far easier on the mainland if you're not able to kill or harvest fine quality + materials from much tougher mobs. I went to the mainland initially with 100K after probably burning through like 150K worth of mats to get to 33/28/26/24 in the second craft tree.

YMMV, of course.

[exile]

Speaking of the mainland...

I know I am getting a bit ahead of my own progress here, but is this map only part of the Tryker territory - as I assume it is - and how do you move on to other areas (including desert/forest/jungle belonging to the other races)?

Also should I expect to see only one basic type of terrain for each race - beautiful beaches, palm trees and crystal clear lakes for Tryker for instance, or will there be more variation in higher level zones?

If you press the back arrow on the map, this should take you to the global map. Here you should be able to see what you're looking for.