Best Of

PART 1: MAKING YOUR CHARACTER

LORE

I would highly recommend that you read all of the histories available on here. They were very well written and is what drew myself and many others to Lusternia in the first place. At the very least, I would suggest reading the Cosmogenesis, Elder Wars books 1 and 2 (Dracnoris and Trilliallial), Vernal Wars, Aftermath, Chronicles of the Holy Celestine Empire and the Coming of Estarra.

To keep it relatively short, there are Elder Gods and Soulless Gods. Soulless Gods have an uncontrollable hunger to destroy things and the two groups of Gods got into a messy war that ended up with most of the Elder Gods being consumed, fleeing into the Void or "splintering" (basically turning into many, mortal miniature versions of themselves who each had part of the divine spark of the Elder God) while a few very powerful Soulless Gods still remained.

The mortal races would then go on to congregate into civilisations with many being hunted down and consumed by the remaining Soulless Gods. A mortal named Gorob was able to make an Edifice of Power in his home city, which he used raise himself to divinity, becoming the first Vernal God, naming himself D'varsha. He then spread this knowledge with other mortal civilisations and more and more Vernal Gods were raised to fight back. Eventually, all but one of the Soulless Gods had been trapped. The last one, known as Kethuru, had become too powerful and only nine Vernal Gods remained, with no more resources to create more. They sacrificed themselves in a ritual to become Avechna the Avenger, who was then able to defeat Kethuru and seal him away too.

In the aftermath of the Vernal Wars, three forest communes and four cities rose. At the heart of each was a Nexus of Power, similar to the Edifices of Power that were used to raise the Vernal Gods. The first city, Celest, formed a powerful empire that all of the other organisations were more or less part of. This Holy Celestine Empire was prosperous for many years, until Emperor Ladantine VII approved of a project to tap into the power of a newly-discovered plane beyond the known cosmic planes. Now known as the Astral Plane now, Project Cosmic Hope as it was known, was a complete disaster, because that is where Kethuru had been sealed away. Unknowingly, Ladantine released a part of Kethuru's essence, now known as the Taint, into the Basin of Life through the Stone of Truth in Magnagora. This Taint corrupted Magnagora and many of the nearby surroundings, sparking a war that led to Hallifax and Gaudiguch being locked in time for hundreds of years, the Ackleberry forest performing a ritual that has caused the entire forest to be lost to us to this day, the Gloriana forest, as it was known, becoming tainted and transforming into the Glomdoring and the capital city of the empire, Celest itself, being completely destroyed.

ORGANISATIONS

-Magnagora is the heart of the Taint, as it was through the Stone of Truth, now Megalith of Doom, that the empire tried to channel the energy of the Astral Plane through. It is a no-nonsense, aristocratic society and embraces the corruption of the Taint to further its objectives. Tied to the Elemental Plane of Earth and Cosmic Plane of Nil, both of which have also become twisted by the Taint, there are nods to steampunk as well as a dark priesthood. Viscanti is the "native" race of this city.

-New Celest is a city built from the refugees of "Old Celest" that was destroyed at the end of the Taint Wars. The Supernals of the Cosmic Plane of Celestia, form the backbone of the city's ideals and much of its culture is a continuation of the old empire. They are crusaders of the Light and the city also possesses a nautical theme due to its ties to the Elemental Plane of Water and proximity to the Inner Sea. Merian is the native race of this city.

-Hallifax, along with Gaudiguch, was locked in time for over five hundred years, only coming back in the last couple of centuries. It is a city of art and science and while much more muted now, followed a caste system with socialist leanings. Aiming to bring their brand of harmony to the world, it is a flying city of crystal spires, connected to both the Elemental Plane of Air and the Cosmic Plane of the Continuum. Trill and lucidian are the native races of this city.

-Gaudiguch, like Hallifax, only came back in the last two hundred years. To the outsider and the uninitiated, it is a city of fire shows, drugs and alcohol, often all at the same time. It is the city of freedom, as in the freedom to pursue any goal you want, but this is all a veil cast by the ones in power to hide the more clandestine undercurrents. There are many secrets in this city, many of which that may be lost to those who have passed before. Dracnari is the native race of this city.

-Serenwilde is a nature commune that has its home in the forest of the same name. Calling itself the "last natural forest" in the Basin, it was untouched by the Taint, but it was definitely not unaffected. Prior to the Taint Wars the communes were already distrusting of the empire, but now more than ever Serenwilde believes civilisation to be a poison. This commune is very spiritual and has themes of cycles, from the various aspects of Brother Hart or the phases of Mother Moon. Elfen is the native race of this commune.

-Glomdoring was originally tainted, but following some events that took place a long time ago, it now embraces an entity known as the Wyrd. To some, it is the Taint, to others, it is something entirely different. To those of the commune, it is a binding force that they see as being an evolution of nature to perfection. It is a very collective commune and declarations of "Nothing Matters But Glomdoring" will often be followed by a chorus of "Glory be to Glomdoring". The dark and twisted forest is guided by crafty Brother Crow and the shadows of Mother Night.

While in theory they're all independent of one another, in reality alliances are formed. The current alliances, which have been more or less stable for a couple of life years now are Celest, Hallifax and Serenwilde (the "north") and Magnagora, Gaudiguch and Glomdoring (the "south").

The game is very much designed for you to join an organisation and take part in the community. There is a resource called power that will fuel many of the more powerful skills and while it is possible to obtain power as a rogue, many skills actually require you to be part of the corresponding organisation to even use it. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you do not try to play as a rogue. It's not impossible, but I think you are really missing out.

RACES AND STATS

-Unlike in MKO, all the races can join any organisation, although some might be frowned upon for RP reasons. For example, a viscanti will probably be frowned upon in Celest and there might be some restrictions placed upon them.

-We don't have stats like strength or intelligence, so all our races start off on a more or less equal footing. At levels 1, 25, 50 and 100 (demigod), each race will unlock bonuses. These are generally very minor, but the one obtained at demigod can be pretty significant. Check out the help files for each of the races.

-We have three vitals here; health, mana and ego. Health and mana are more or less what you'd expect from MKO or any other IRE game, but ego is mostly used for influencing and debating (more on these later), with only a handful of skills that really bring ego into combat in any meaningful way.

-These vitals, like other things such as damage buffs, resistances and regeneration operate on a 10 level system (though arties and certain skills do push this limit a bit higher sometimes). HELP BUFFS has more information about how these are calculated.

GUILDS AND CLASSES
I will preface this section by noting that Lusternia is currently going through a combat overhaul. While most of the major things have been overhauled you can expect some things, such as monks, to be changed significantly at some point.

There are seven groups of classes, or archetypes, in Lusternia; warriors, monks, wiccans, guardians, druids, mages and bards. Each organisation has five guilds, with forest communes having warriors, monks, bards, wiccans and druids. The cities all have warriors, bards, guardians and mages, with monks also being available in Celest and Magnagora. Hallifax and Gaudiguch currently do not have any monks.

Unlike in MKO, each individual class is tied to a specific guild. For example, starting in the Moondancers guild will start with the Moondancer class. While it is possible to classflex, our version of multiclassing, later on, it is recommended that you balance the RP goals you have with what classes you are interested in playing. NOTE: At some point all of the existing guilds will be replaced with three new guilds/factions per organisation, separating the RP and mechanical links of the classes. This "faction overhaul" is ongoing but nobody is really sure when it will happen. There is nothing to suggest that this will be complete in the near future so I would still recommend that you consider the RP/class balance when picking a guild to start in.

Each class has three class skillsets; "primary", "secondary" and "tertiary" skillsets, with some level of customisation through different choices available, typically through the tertiary skillsets. This is kind of like specialisations in MKO. I'll leave it up to you to research what is available to each specific class, but here is a general overview of each of the archetypes.

-Warriors target body parts to inflict wounds, taking each body part through a few levels of wound severity. As a body part becomes more damaged, warriors will be able to deal increasingly effective afflictions. Each warrior specialisation has a different focus. For example, Pureblades will aim to build up lots of bleeding while Axelords are focused on dealing great amounts of damage.

-Monks form combos with a mini-point buy system with something called "ka". As a monk builds up momentum, they will be able to use more ka in their combos, allowing these combos to become more devastating as the fight goes on. Note that monks are due to be overhauled soon with the scale of the overhaul yet to be determined, so they may change dramatically when it does happen.

-While bards in MKO combine their music with a bladed weapon, here their only weapons are their instruments, voice and bodies. They can create and perform songs with up to nine stanzas that can each be imbued with passive or active effects. They can also strike chords for various effects such as the perfectfifth, which will prevent the target from moving away until they can deafen themselves These can be buffs to allies as well as fairly devastating to enemies. Combined with the secondary skillset of Acrobatics and some very good tertiary choices, bards bring a lot of utility to fights.

-Druids and mages function pretty similarly to one another. The traditional Druidry or -mancy specialisations allows them to create demesnes (more commonly known as melds) over multiple rooms, not too unlike Pyromania in MKO. Each of the melds have unique effects that are very powerful. As there is no way to currently break a meld without a melder of your own, often it can be very difficult for the side without the melder to come out on top.

The alternatives to druidry and -mancy are the -wood and -chemantics specialisations, commonly known as "woodchems" or "chemwoods". Unlike their melding counterparts, they are more mobile as their effects are not restricted to a meld, although for the most part their passive effects are single target only. Coming from an alternate timeline, thematically, they are also very different. The -woods become literal trees, with a race dedicated just for the two specs while the -chem specs vary based on the city. Geochemancers play up the steampunk theme of Magnagora to a new level, while Aerochemancers combine Hallifax's engineering with the element of Air to shoot people with what is essentially a laser beam.

-Wiccans summon fae, nature spirits from the Ethereal Plane to passively afflict their targets, similar to Demonology in MKO. While Moondancers and Shadowdancers have skills that set themselves apart, they both aim to kill by draining someone's mana below 50% so that they can use toadcurse, a skill that transforms someone into a defenceless toad, ready to be stomped to death.

-Guardians are probably the most varied of all the archetypes. Each city's flavour of guardian plays differently. Celestines are priests of Celestia, calling forth an an archangel to aide them as they try to bring holy inquisitions down on heretics while Nihilists are dark priests of Nil with a mastery of undeath as sacrifice the souls of their enemies to the Demon Lords. The Institute are masters of time and combine their knowledge of the harmonics of gems to warp time around their target until they are destroyed by a powerful timequake. The Illuminati are a secretive sect, preferring to manipulate flesh into horrific entities that do their bidding, driving their enemies insane with their chaotic magic until their minds can handle it no more.