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Midkemians: Getting Started and Other Useful Information
Falaeron
Jolteon
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.
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.
29
(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
So now you've created your character, and completed the tutorial. What now?
COLLEGIUM AND NOVICEHOOD
-The Collegium is our system for introducing new players to the game. Each organisation has its own and there is a channel, CGT, specifically set aside for it. There should also be a bunch of useful information in help files found in CGHELP, with each guild having one that acts both as a welcome as well as a lesson plan to get you started.
-The Collegium itself contains five quests that will introduce you to some key mechanics and get you familiar with your chosen organisation's lore and geography. If you're familiar with MKO or any of the IRE games, these shouldn't be too difficult for you to complete, especially if you consult the CGHELPs or your fellow commune/city members through CGT.
-Once you have completed all five quests you will graduate from the Collegium with honours, bringing you to novicehood in your guild. You should now also have access to the guild novice channel on GNT, which you can use to communicate directly with members of your guild. There is a ten hour wait before you can advance from novicehood, but your guild should offer some form of test to obtain early advancement. It should be written into one of the GHELPs, but don't hesitate to ask around on GNT or CGT if you can't find it.
-Once you have advanced out of novicehood, you will no longer have any restrictions on learning skills.
PICKING SKILLS
-As I mentioned in the classes section, you will have some skill choices available to you. When you first start you will need to select your guild skills. SKILLCHOICE LIST will show you all the choices available to you. You can use SKILLCHOICE SELECT to pick each one. For example, to pick Totems, you would need to do SKILLCHOICE SELECT TOTEMS.
-At this point I recommend picking at least the first two guild skills available to you if they haven't already been selected for you.
-I also recommend picking one of Lowmagic or Highmagic right away if you have the choice (some classes are stuck with one or another, such as mages having to pick Highmagic). The very first skill acts as a shield like the shield tattoo in MKO, although most mobs are able to break shields here.
-There is no cost to forgetting a skill and picking up another if you have not invested any lessons into it.
GETTING GOLD
-I would take the time to quest in the Newton Caverns for as long as possible (you get kicked out at level 31). While you can certainly get experience faster elsewhere, the gold in Newton is easy to obtain compared to most other sources of income at that level and you'll probably need quite a bit of it to get you started.
-Bards, scholars and pilgrims are a great, easy way for novices to earn gold. They can be found in on all of the major roads and highways as well as the mountain ranges. Once you've found one, let them know that you will lead them to the Avechna's Peak (pilgrims), Great Stage (bards) or Great Library (scholars) and they should follow you. Take them to their destination and they will reward you with 100 gold each. Each organisation has a stage and library and doing this quest will actually help out your organisation by generating a bit of power as well as cultural points for them (more on this later)
-There might be other quests in your organisation that are suitable for newbies. Ask around!
-Once you're too big for Newton, you might want to find the Ruins of Shallach. The orcs there are not too difficult to kill and there's someone who will pay fairly well for their corpses in the area. Make sure you're attacking the orcs above ground and not the ur'dead troopers though!
STARTING SUPPLIES
Each organisation will have shops and while some of them are very well-stocked unfortunately there is a much more convenient and almost always cheaper place to get your basic supplies. The aethermanse system acts as both private "housing", much like estates in MKO, as well as a central hub for shopping in manses that have been converted into shop. Each organisation has a portal room where you can access manses that are connected to that particular organisation. All manses are also connected to the Aetherplex Chamber, which can you also get to by using TELEPORT AETHERPLEX. Once you're at the Aetherplex, you can use PORTAL SEARCH SHOPS to search for items in aethershops. Once you've found a shop that stocks the item you want, you can use PORTAL ENTER to enter the shop and buy your goods. PORTAL EXIT will take you back to the Aetherplex.
HERBS, ELIXIRS AND SALVES
-Curing is much more complex in Lusternia with a number of cures and curing balances that you will need to keep track of.
-Your guild's lesson plan would probably have got you the Rift and LiquidRift abilities in Planar. These are like the vault in MKO with the rift holding normal commodities and herbs while the liquidrift will hold all of the liquids such as elixirs and salves. AB RIFT and AB LIQUIDRIFT has the full details but one thing may not be immediately clear is that with the liquidrift you need to find the liquid you want to store and link to a vial, for example health, and use RIFT FILL FROM HEALTH. Note that for liquids all prices are per 50 sips. You then need to find and buy a teardrop sigil and attach it to an empty vial. You can then RIFT LINK TO HEALTH. From now on when you try to sip health, you will sip from the vial, taking it directly from the liquidrift.
For now, you can just get the following basic potions and other cures, but eventually you'll want a full set of cures (HELP HEALINGLIST has a full list of the old cures. Many, but not all, are now obselete so you may want to ask in game when you are ready to get everything):
200 sips of potion of health (linked to a vial)
200 sips of potion of mana (linked to a vial)
200 sips of potion of bromides (linked to a vial)
100 sips of lucidity slush (linked to a vial)
100 applications of restorative ice (linked to a vial)
100 purity dust wafer
20 soothing steam - You will also want to get a pipe to put this in as well as a tinderbox to light the pipe
Enchantments
-While we have tattoos, they are a tradeskill that are different to the tattoos you'll find in MKO and the other IRE games. Instead, we get enchantments that provide similar and other useful effects. Enchantments go on jewellery and you will need to rub them every time you need to def up, such as after you log in or die. For example, to activate the kingdom enchantment, you need to RUB KINGDOM.
-To start off with, I would suggest you buy rings with enchantments already put on them. Rings can hold up to 10 charges each. You can recharge your enchantments from a shop with an energy cube (I would suggest you get one yourself later on) by using RECHARGE FROM CUBE. You can also use RECHARGE ALL FROM CUBE to recharge all of your enchantments in one go.
-Here are the following enchantments that I recommend you get along with their effects:
Mercy - provides a small bonus to health regeneration
Perfection - provides a small bonus to mana regeneration
Beauty - provides a small bonus to ego regeneration
Kingdom - passively clots bleeding damage
Waterwalk - allows you to walk on water
Waterbreathe - allows you to go underwater without drowning
Acquisitio - allows you to automatically pick up corpses when bashing, as well as periodically picking up things in the room. You can RUB ACQUISITIO again to turn this off.
ARMOUR AND ROBES
-Because of the combat overhaul, the types of armour that each class could use was changed earlier in the year. Some guild scrolls (and even older players) may still tell you to get enchanted great robes, but this is no longer the case.
-HELP ARMOUR has a list of all the armour types and who can wear them, but it is highly recommended that unless you have the Acrobatics (all bards and monks who pick Acrobatics over Psychometabolism) or Tattoos (a monk only tradeskill) skillsets, you get forged armour. This includes scale, chain and plate armour. All three provide the same protection, but you can expect scale to be a bit cheaper and plate to be a bit more expensive due to commodity costs.
-Monks with tattoos will likely want to use tattoo armour granted by the skillset. All other acrobatic users will want robes. These no longer have to be enchanted but (small) buffs can be added to them by enchanters. Forgers can do the same with armour.
-If you are unsure you can WEAPONPROBE to see what level of physical protection you can get from them. Robes should give 12% and armour should give 20%.
-Tailors can make splendours that give 16% and forgers can make masterarmour that give 25% while these tradeskills remain active. These can also only be used by the person who crafted them.
PK/COMBAT
-HELP PK has the full details about the rules about PK here, but basically the Prime Material Plane is restricted PK.
-To attack someone on Prime, you must DECLARE . If you kill them, you will go onto their PK STATUS, which means if you attack them again in the next 30 days (without you attacking them back beforehand), they will be able to bring down the might of Avechna the Avenger upon you, killing you and peacing you for a period of time. You probably don't want this to happen to you.
-The exception is enemy territory, including certain NPC areas. You will get no protection while you are in such territory and if you are attacked by someone while you are in these territories it will act as if you have declared them (so if you kill them you go on their PK STATUS)
-The above only applies to the Prime Material Plane. All other planes, such as Ethereal and Astral, are open PK.
-Certain events, such as village revolts may also make areas open PK for the duration.
-Almost all meaningful combat in Lusternia is group vs group. The only 1v1 you will really find are organised duels and arena spars.
-Outside of skirmishes or raids here and there, the main objective based combat events are village revolts, domoth claims and wild nodes.
CURING
-CURES LIST has a list of the new cures and CURES INFO will tell you which afflictions each of the new cures will cure. Similarly, AFFS LIST has the list of afflictions we are working to trim down towards anf AFFS INFO will tell you information such as what the effect of the affliction is and what it is cured by.
-We don't have a true serverside curing system, but we do have a basic ability very early on in Discernment called Firstaid. AB FIRSTAID has more information, but the gist of it is that if you type FIRSTAID it will diagnose and try to cure any afflictions you have for you. We do have a serverside vitals management in the Curing skill early in Discipline. This allows you to set thresholds for when to try to heal your health, mana and ego.
-While Firstaid and Curing are sufficient for basic hunting and influencing, if you want to get into combat you will need a proper curing system. The only publicly available system we have is m&mf for Mudlet, found in this thread. The only other system I know of that has been shared with more than a handful of people is Crown for MUSHclient. I can't really say much about it other than this though.
INFLUENCING
-Unique to Lusternia is influencing, a system of battling denizens with your words rather than your weapons or magic. You will get experience for beating denizens in these "ego battles", just as if you had killed them instead. In fact, many players get to demigod primarily through influencing.
-There are five main types of ego battles, with each having a different effect on the denizen. For example, charity will cause the denizen to give you their gold. HELP INFLUENCE has more details.
-The Influence skillset is vital if you want to take part in this system. In general, the more of this skill you learn the faster you'll be able to influence.
-Early on in Influence you will get the Analyze ability, which lets you analyze mobs to see if they can be influenced and if so, what personality they have.
-There are five personalities and each will be particularly weak against one type of influencing and completely immune to another. For example, a denizen with a friendly personality will be particularly weak to charity influence, but trying to engage in a paranoia ego battle will be impossible.
-To influence, you need to use INFLUENCE WITH . Each ego battle has 3 attacks (such as begging, supplication and wheedling for charity) that you will unlock as you learn more of the Influence skillset. Denizens will start to build up resistance to each attack as you use them so the ideal strategy is to cycle through each attack available to you.
-Using an influencing attack takes ego. It starts off being a fairly small amount at first but will increase as the battle goes on. If you don't use an attack within a few couple seconds of regaining equilibrium the denizen will attack back, costing you even more ego. Be sure to influence as quickly as possible and stock up on the bromides.
-Once you begin to influence with one type of ego battle you are locked into that type until you leave and wait for the denizen to reset or use a skill called Divert about midway down the Influence skillset to divert their attention.
-Influencing also gets you esteem, which is used to offer to gods. You can only hold 500 esteem at a time, but you can imbue it into an enchanted figurine which will be able to hold a virtually limitless amount, so if you intend to do a lot of influencing be sure to get a figurine. Many people also buy esteem from other players. HELP ESTEEM has more information.
-There is a sixth type of ego battle unlocked by gaining city or commune rank and is used entirely to persuade a village to join your organisation when it revolts
-Many quests require some degree of influencing. Some are even entirely influencing based.
ARTIFACTS
-Artifacts work similarly to MKO, but most of our artifacts are items in their own right. "Invested" artifacts are all runes here.
-You cannot rent artifacts in Lusternia.
-Dingbats are own Ishapian Token equivalent.
CULTURE
-Culture is a gauge of an organisation's scholarly, literary and theatrical success. CULTURE will show the breakdown of culture scores for every organisation.
-Each game month, your organisation will get power equal to its cultural score
-HELP CULTURE has a more comprehensive list of ways to increase cultural score, but one easy way to help is to bring in bards and scholars as mentioned in the getting gold section.
LIBRARY
-The library is vital to an organisation's culture as published books will add to culture score.
-Every two years, there is a prestige competition where each librarian submits a literary book and a scholarly book published through their library. The winning books give big boosts to the cultural score for the next two years.
-There are also many fantastic books that have been written by other players and published through the library system. You can check them out by going to your local library and using the LIBRARY, BROWSE and CATALOGUE commands.
-If you want to get involved with writing and getting books published, talk to your local librarian or their aides found in AIDES LIBRARIAN. Most, if not all, organisations reward a hefty amount of credits for books!
STAGE
-The stage system is one of the more unique features of Lusternia and also contributes significantly to culture score.
-Like the library, every two years each Minister of Cultural Affairs can submit a performance recorded at their stage to a prestige competition. The winning performance will also give a big bonus to the cultural score for the next two years.
-You can browse and watch all of the plays, performances and lectures available at each stage by using the STAGE commands.
-Like with books, organisations will also reward you with a lot of credits if you take part in this system. Talk to your Minister of Cultural Affairs or one of their aides found in AIDES CULTURAL if you need help getting started.
BARDICS AND ARTISANAL
-Lusternia has a monthly bardic and artisanal competition with very lucrative credit prizes. This is the main source of credits for many players.
-You can submit your works or see all of the winners from previous competitions on the website here.
-HELP BARDIC has the full details about submission guidelines and what rewards are available.
-Be aware that there is a one or two month delay before results for a particular month will be announced so please be patient!
CRAFTING
-There are no crafting licences in Lusternia. Instead, you can pick one tradeskill and start putting lessons into it from the very beginning (though this is not recommended if you don't have a lot of lessons).
-There are three ways to unlock an additional active trade skill each; a demigod power, an ascendant power and a 2000 credit artifact.
-You can always use the skillflexing system to maintain multiple trade skills, even if your active limit is still only one.
-All designs must be submitted through cartels. Every organisation has a cartel for each trade that has designs (forging, jewellery, tailoring, cooking, artisan, bookbinding). Everyone with that tradeskill active are automatically members of these cartels.
-Clans can also be converted into cartels for 500,000 gold. It is up to the clan/cartel leader to invite people to these private cartels. They may also appoint someone else to be the trademaster to handle the design submissions.
-Each year each cartel can submit up to 3 public and 3 private designs. There are no additional fees to submitting designs. Private designs will remain private to the cartel forever and anyone in that cartel will be able to see and craft these designs. Public designs are available to everyone.
-If you want a design to be private to you and you trust your trademaster and other members of a cartel you can also ask them to mark your design as being reserved for your use only. However, the only way to ensure a design can never be used by anyone else is to purchase a private cartel
-IMPORTANT: Unlike MKO, all designs here use British English. HELP TRADEMASTER has the full guidelines for designing.
-Reviewers are (often mortal) volunteers and can make mistakes. I know it can be very exciting to be able to craft the cool new sword you designed, but please be patient.
DIVINE ORDERS
-Most Elder Gods have a Divine Order (HELP DIVINE ORDERS)
-You can see join by asking a high-ranking member of the Order to baptise you, or by seeking out the god themselves. The help file for many of the gods will show who their Order heads are, although there may be other players with the ability to baptise you. The best way to find out is to ask around.
-Gods here are very closely aligned with the organisation they have chosen to be part of. There is a penalty, called affinity (HELP AFFINITY), associated with belonging to an Order of a god who belongs to an organisation you are not part of. For example, if you were to join Darvellan's (a Celestian god) Order while being a member of Serenwilde, you should expect to find it harder to advance in the Order, as the penalties increase based on Order rank.
-Of course, some gods may not even offer membership to anyone outside their chosen organisation based on their background and personality.
-Divine can give favours like in MKO, but the effects are slightly different. Check out HELP FAVOURS.
MOVEMENT AND EXPLORATION
-There is a very basic pathfinding system in Lusternia with a set of predefined LANDMARKS you can PATH FIND to. For example, if you want to path find to Magnagora, you need to do PATH FIND MAGNAGORA and then PATH WALK.
-PATH FIND can also be used with room numbers. The Aetherplex Chamber has the room number 6831, so you can PATH FIND 6831 as well, for example.
-While you are within your own organisation, LANDMARKS will show an expanded list with many important locations in your organisation.
-There is a 50 room limit to using PATH FIND.
-Because the path finding system is fairly basic, many people prefer to use a mapper such as the Mudlet mapper.
-You don't get experience for exploring in Lusternia
PLANES
-Planar travel is very important to Lusternia. HELP PLANES explains how the planes are laid out and you will likely have been exposed to this mechanic in one of your collegium quests. Outside of artifacts, use of Nexuses and planar rifts are the only way to move between planes.
-The main section of Ethereal consists of Faethorn, the realm of the fae with both Serenwilde and Glomdoring claiming to protect it. There are archways at the northern and southern ends leading to the Ethereal Serenwilde and Ethereal Glomdoring, respectively. You can ENTER ARCHWAY to move between these areas.
-Members of the communes can TRANSVERSE ETHEREAL from their Nexus with a very low skill in Planar (below LiquidRift) to get to the Ethereal manifestation of their Nexus. TRANSVERSE PRIME will take you back to the Prime Nexus.
-Faethorn is also connected to each of the Elemental Planes through archways. It should be fairly obvious which archway leads to which plane since the surrounding area are themed according but you can PROBE ARCHWAY to confirm it for yourself.
-Those of the cities who are mages and guardians and have the Gate ability in Elementalism or Cosmic can TRANSVERSE ELEMENTAL and TRANSVERSE COSMIC at their Nexus to get to their respective Elemental or Cosmic plane. For guardians, they can then transverse to elemental. From elemental, anyone can transverse to Faethorn through the archway.
-City folk who don't have ties to the Elemental or Cosmic planes will have to use the permanent rift to Faethorn from Tolborolla Valley. You may also ask other people to lead you where you want to go.
POWER
-Power is special resource that is used to fuel many of the more powerful abilities. You can have a maximum of 10 power available to you at a time and 100% reserves (though there are artifacts and other buffs to increase this limit). Each % of reserves is equal to 2 power and once your active power falls below 10 it will slowly regenerate from your available reserves.
-The most common way to get power is by linking it from your organisation's Nexus with LINK NEXUS.
-You will likely be blocked from drawing power. You can get unblocked by asking one of your friendly power aides found in AIDES POWER.
-Every RL day you can link up to 15% reserves for free - this is called dross power and will not take any power from your Nexus. This will only take you up to a maximum of 15% reserves and can be drawn despite any power blocks.
-Power is also used by organisations to pay for security things like guards.
-The ultimate goal of getting more power for organisations is to use it to raise a Vernal Ascendant, giving a player what is effectively level 101 and access to a wider variety of powers than demigod. This costs at least 2 million power, so it's not something that can be done often!
THEFT
-It is possible steal from other players, so make sure to secure your belongings.
-It's also very rare because anyone who does it will tend to be shunned by the community.
-If it happens to you, let people know.
WHO LIST
-WHO shows everyone on the same plane and continent as you without a gem of cloaking active.
-Demigods are coloured gold. Ascendants are coloured cyan. Divine are coloured green.
If there's anything that you think I missed or, particularly to the Midkemians coming over, would like explained better let me know and I'll add to it.
Lots of useful information here, though. And much, much more to discover.
I may have missed it, but a basic rundown on how the planes are layered and how to move between them would be handy.
I definitely do appreciate all the time and effort you have taken
May want to cover BODYSCAN as well.
I thought about putting in BODYSCAN too, but my experience is that guilds tend to only tell novices to learn discernment up to FirstAid so they won't have access to it immediately.
Nothing matters but Glomdoring. Savor Mother Night's embrace.