browserice wrote:On Thursday, I left Silan to on mainland in the Mantis world (my char is Mantis). I had done all missions on Silan and was average level 37 on all 4 skills.
For some background.....1st time thru I went to 20 in all skills. 2nd thru ....hmm i dunno......2nd thru 15th toons I left at level 5.
I looked at his quests but soon realized they were for people having more skills them me. So I left the house.
As you may have heard once or twice, ML is not quest driven....Silan is quest driven so when peeps arrive on ML, they get some basic ontroduction tot he full skill tree.....just about everyone asks upon arrival "If I wanna concentrate on being a [insert skill here]...." and ya know what.....no one does. Of course one does "initially", but that soon fades. Unlike just about every game out there, Ryzom is built to promote teh use of wide ranging skills.
As for questing, perty much only reason to do quests on ML is to raise fame or do rites. Fame gets you "access" to more stuff......more faction fame gets you more teleports for example.....more civilization fame gets you better prices from vendors for example. Rites give you permanent skills of bonuses but many aren't working yet.
Once I got outside I started asking around the chat and few seconds later, someone showed up in front of me to guide me. I really appreciated that. In fact, it is that kind of friendliness in Ryzom that love.
geez....what took him so long ?
I asked my guide why this wasn't indicated in the first place upon my arrival to mainland because I would never have found that out on my own. My guide said that he didn't know.
yes you would....it becomes obvious. You arrive in a level 50 (blue) zone, you cross those dashed white lines on map to get to zones of different levels. Yellow is 50-100, orange 100-150, red is 150-200 and purple is 200-250. Generally, the low elevl stuff is found in the blue area.....higher level stuff in the red area. Thgere are exceptions.....I think starter towns for example will have both 0-50 and 0-100 vendors.
My guide and I went to another camp where suprisingly, I was given jewels of lvl 70 (WOW !)..... and amazingly, I was giving 200,000 in money so I could buy myself a mount or pack (don't remember the terminalogy) so I could store more materials.
Well not so surprising. Two peeps can arrive on ML on the same day and play the same hours as each other, on guilded and oen not, and by the end of the month the guilded player is at least twice as high. Arriving from ML has a few burps as unless you "been there before" you gonna experience growing pains. For example, I can take a brand new level 5 toon from the starter town of Pyr to the "red" town of Dyron w/o taking a hit.....why simply "I know the way". If you don't, you can only learn by trial and error and that means lotta dead and DP. Does that make me a skilled player ? No, no more than crossing the stream w/o getting my socks wet makes me a god ? I can't walk on water....well not on less someone show me where the spot is where the rocks lie spaced one step apart and 1/4" under the water surface.
So yes when a peep arrives in my home city, I'm happy to throw him some cash to fit himself out w/ a set of mount and packers....a set of armor / jools for focus / and fighting. I'll show him or her a GH with a temporary guild invite, I'll explain the faction and neutral stance, based upon the responses I will recommend various guilds. I'll explain how to figure out what level armor, wep jools, amp one can use .... I'll explain the various spells and stanzas, I'll explain resists. I'll explain how to judge by the color / star system how tuff a mob is.....I'll even heal outta team as a peep gauges himself against a new mob
1) even if I didn't travel much, it is a beautiful place.
That it is
2) the environment is very friendly and especialy the people (got help withing 10 min of geting there, can you imagine ?)
I couldn't imagine anything esle.
3) I am surprised that if I would have been on my own, my skills were not even enough to pick up where I left on Silan. I mean, the first quests I saw needed higher skills and the materials to be digged up .....
The fact is, while doing all that questing, your character's growth was somewhat stunted. I mean it's a good thing that Cheng got you to try skills like "root"...but if as you said, you came here at level 37, then if you had spent that time on Silan here, you might be pushing 100. But what was your average "per kill" XP over in Silan thru the 30's ? Had to be 300-500 based upon my recollection.
You can walk outta any starter town gate and make a choice as to direction.....make the right choice, and you will do well....make a bad choice and you get eaten right quick. Be nice if you could go out and click on a mob and then go back to an npc and then ask "hey what the hell is this thing ?" and then the npc cud tell ya that you don't wanna mess with that....but that wud get boring right quick.
4) so realted to 3), being alone on mainland would actually be a very long process to raise up your skills XP to be totaly independnt. If you cannto wait that long, then I strongly suggest you get someone who help you raise faster. I had people like that offering it to me back on Silan.
Well opposite actually true. As I said before, real hard to get that "holy grail of xp" (3k) on Silan once you get past 20 or so. So raising up ya skills by comparison is quite easier here. Not to mention the availability of xp catalysts here....personally I prefer not to use them (except for when crafting and the dreary 240+ runs) but stack or so would put you in the position of not having to worry much about the annoying canines around starter towns.
As for being "independent", since they took out the "self heal" spell (was removed prior to official release) truly soloing fight skills requires a fair degree of patience. The fight - sit and heal - fight - sit and heal dance two step gets quite boring after a while......not so bad when you have 500 HP......excruciating when ya have 5000.
I am thinking about geting rid of those jewels so I can start from scratch and enjoy the learning experience (and pains) of get to the same point on my own. I still haven't made up my mind.
Well to do that, it simply means setting aside your sword for quite a while. To replace your 70 jools, you'd have to get (assuming as you said you average level 37 in everything):
1. level dig from level 37 -> 60 (43 levels) - of course this going to be harder w/o focus jools and focus LA. So level LA up to a point where you can buy +35 focus and + 35 HP (14 x 40 skill points or 64 levels.)
2. level jools from 1 to 50 (50 levels)
3. level 1 jool from 51-60 (10 levels)
So there's 160 something levels ya gonna need to get yaself up and going before ya can start working fight again.
But of course digging and crafting is going to be quite inefficient w/o someplace to store them....so packers is sure gonna com3 in handy.
I'll leave with the same payment suggestion I ask from every Silan graduate I run into when he / she asks how they can pay me back. My stock answer is when you see someone arrive here months from now or a year from now with the "Refugee" or "Homin" titles that ya offer to get them started just like some old salt got you started when you arrived.
Two people gotta paint a fence.....they can each do their own work on their own or dude A can help paint dude B's fence 1st and then B returns the favor. The math can't account for it but either way they both did the same amount of work but that way the job sure seems to get done a hell of a lot faster and seems a lot more fun.
) or trek your way to the Elusive Forest alone (tough one, but it can be done if you don't mind "stop, try again" over and over.
DP is only a temporary affliction, and death is nothing to be afraid of