Shattered Kingdoms

Here is my attempt at a introductory strategy guide for a new player playing a priest. I didn't give many specifics, and stopped at journeyman, but please let me know if there is something I need to edit out because it gives away too big of a secret. Of course, feel free to point out things you disagree with or things that are incorrect, or things that should be added.

So you're a new player to SK and you've decided you want to play a priest. In SK, priests the the most religious of all classes. You draw your power from a single patron diety.

You must choose one god (of similar alignment to your own) and roleplay with the existing members of that religion. If they find you worthy, you will be invested into the church. The criteria for investment varies from faith to faith and over time, but generally, if you proclaim a true interest in serving their god and have a good knowledge of the deity's spheres, you should be invested without too much trouble. If there are no existing members or you cannot find them, you can try using PRAY to declare your faith, and an immortal may take pity on you and invest you into the religion. You may also try setting your TITLE to something about your desire to serve your deity.

Prior to joining a religion, you will be able to use amateur and novice level spells and use cloth or light armor. See HELP ARMOR2 for information about armor type. Once you join a religion, your armor restriction will be based on the religion you join. Wearing armor heavier than is recommended will result in imparment of your ability to cast spells. In character, most people refer to spells that priests use as "prayers" and differentiate them from magic spells of warlocks and sorcerors. Do not let this confuse you if someone offers to help you "learn new prayers," they may be offering to train your spells.

To level your priest, you will want to stick to the starting area within each city. This area will provide you with skills and spells, and many times equipment, until you reach novice(1) (level 6). When you are Amature(5), it is often a good idea to stay in the area and train as many skills as you can instead of leveling quickly to novice, which will prevent you from gaining experience in the safety of the starting area. Learn all of your amateur skills and spells from the trainers there or from a mentor. Use the MENTOR command to get help from another player who might be able to help you in the world. Be sure to roleplay with your mentor and realize that the advice given will be from an in character perspective unless the comments are prefaced by OOC, such as "priest says to you, "OOC: are you having trouble with commands?" which means he is asking you "out of character."

Tactics for leveling through novice(1):
Find a iron or steel mace. The practice dagger you are provided with is made of wood and will not last long or do much damage. There is likely a weapon shop in the area. You may need to ask someone to help you find a weapon, but your dagger will suffice, although it will take you longer. You will also benefit from using a shield, even before you learn the shield block skill, so be sure to always have one equipped.
If you are playing a griffon, you will have no trouble fighting your way to novice, even without any weapon.

You may try casting armor on yourself to lesson the damage you take. When you are low on health, use cure light. If you begin casting your spell right after a round of combat, you can fit a casting of the spell between rounds. When you run out of health and mana, be sure to sleep to recover mana quickly. If you are hungry or thirsty, you will recover mana and health very, very slowly, so be sure to keep well hydrated and fed. The bless spell will help you to land your blows, so keeping that up may help you as well.

Novice-initiate:
Once you have graduated from your chosen starting area, you will need to find a more dangerous place to seek combat. You may have noticed that if you were brought to 0% health or lower within the training area that you were able to recover after a short time. This will not be the case outside of the training area. If you are reduced below 0% hitpoints, you will die. See HELP DEATH if you die. Dying may give you a chance to meet some of the more established priests if you have not already met them. Most people prefer to be brought back to life by skilled priests.

Continue to use your mace (make sure it is repaired if it becomes damaged) and keep using armor and bless. At novice, you should learn the novice level spells, from an NPC trainer or a mentor. Two especially useful spells for combat purposes are protection and frenzy. If feel you are taking too much damage, use protection. This spell will reduce damage done to you, but only by those of the opposite alignment (or anyone if you are gray aura), so be sure that you choose an area that has evil things to fight if you are good and good things to fight if you are evil. This will also help you advance more quickly, since you receive more experience for fighting things opposed to your alignment. It is also normally not considered good roleplay for a good aligned character (principled or scrupulous) to kill other good aligned NPCs or PCs, so don't forget to roleplay while you are training.

Frenzy will increase the damage that you do, but will also increase the damage that you take. Use this if you are not taking much damage but would like to kill your enemies faster.

If you are still having trouble staying alive or killing your chosen enemies quickly enough, you should find a good pet. In Exile, a taslamaran courser will be a fine pet, and in Nerina a black horse would also do nicely. The pet will allow you to kill your enemies more quickly, and can take many of the hits for you. However, you will not gain experience for the damage that your pet does, so you may need to kill more enemies to advance than if you do all of the fighting on your own. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since you will also earn more gold to buy better armor, more pets, to repair your gear or for training.

When using a horse pet, try ordering it to begin combat by bashing: ORDER ALL BASH <target>. Most horses can do this. If you see them fall on their face and miss, try waiting a bit and ordering them to stand ORDER ALL STAND. Then try again. By begining with bash, you will ensure that your enemy focuses its attacks against your horse first, and in many cases it will die before it switches to begin attacking you. This means that you can fight more foes without needing to heal or rest. Don't forget to heal your horse in case it begins to get hurt (use INFO to check your pet's status).

Be sure to train meditation as soon as possible, as this will increase your mana regeneration rate and lessen your down time.

Training through apprentice will be similar, though you will need to find new places to fight. Ask others where you may training. Use the AREA command and ask about one of the places on the list.

When you reach journeyman or high apprentice, you will want to learn the flamestrike spell. At this point, you will likely find it easier to rely on using spells to damage your enemies than your mace. You may then stand behind your pet or another player and simply cast spells from a distance. Use the POSITION command to place yourself in the middle or back rows.

Attributes:
As a priest, you will be primarily a spell caster at high levels. You will want to have high intelligence and wisdom. Charisma is not terribly vital to a priest, but having low charisma may make gaining experience slow, ordering pets around, and if you intend to join a tribunal, low charisma will hurt your ability to command the troops or your nation.

I suggested you use a mace for the first part of your training, so you will need to be strong enough to wield a mace sized correctly for your race (medium for a human, small for a dwarf).

Dexterity will help you avoid attacks as well as land attacks of your own, so having at least limber dexterity may be worthwhile. There is a very nice shop in Sith'a'niel that sells wristbands that may help increase dexterity-- Find the lemonade fountain and go south to enter the store.

Once you are satisfied with your listed attributes, you can chose to put the rest of your points in HP, MP, ART or move. How you place these points depends on how you wish to play your priest. HP will be useful for a priest who will find himself under attack often. MP will be useful for a priest who wants to be able to heal a group on a long mission without resting as much. Priests do not have many spells that use ART, but it will make it harder for your spear of faith, flamestrike, summon and gate spells to be harder to resist. I wouldn't suggest training move (which increases your PE) because priests get refresh and endurance.

I really don't like the format of this. Do you mind if I present my own guide? I don't want to make it into a competition, but as a newbie, I can't see this being as helpful as it could be.

It's amateur and novice spells.

I pretty much stopped reading after this so there might be more mistakes.

yeah, I'm with snuffles.

Nope. If you're lightie, you can choose neutral/light gods. If you're darkie, you can choose neutral/dark gods. And I might be mistaken at this, but I think if you're grey, you can be invested into any religion, but lighties and darkies are usually weary of greys being in darkie/lightie religions.

And once Alphrenor invested Scorcese, a member of the Adepts, into the Dulrik (lightie) religion.

That caused an uproar, but it just goes to prove that it CAN be done.

Those instances, however, are the exceptions that prove the rule, and mentioning them to a true newbie is confusing and unnecessary.

Whether the induction of grey-aura characters into a given light/dark religion is possible seems to be a function of the current climate of the church in question along with the opinion of its immortal patron. This is a consensus that is subject to change.

Basically, I think the phrase 'of similar alignment to your own' is ideal. It doesn't say 'the same alignment as your own,' and still allows a new player to ask himself the question 'but how similar?' and find out the current answer ICly if his character concept is truly sound in addition to being unorthodox.

I fixed the amateur/apprentice typo and feel free to make your own guide. How about one for each class?

I am slightly opposed to this. I say this because I think the outfit gear that classes get should be a bit better (ie not just cloth, but the proper armor for each class...cloth for cloth, copper for light, steel for heavy) along with proper weapons (steel xxx, mace for priests/shaman, sword for warriors, dagger for adventurers, staff for mages).

In addition, it should be stated in many helpfiles to get ingame advice. The more we try to make this an ooc guide, I think, the less helpful it will be.

I can write up a leveling guide for any class that is fairly efficient and easy to follow, buuut, I consider it a detriment to the IC environment. And believe me, while I am slightly a purist, I want newbies to have more ease.

Difference of philosophies. I am not the type of player who likes to quest/explore/learn things like this on my own. There are tons of players out there like me who can still contribute positively to the game.

There are lots of you out there who can level any character to 50 and get all the leet items without ever asking for any advice IC because you previously made a character who learned these things.

I think this is a detriment to the game. Any vet can make a character that is better than my character because you know where to get rare gear and consumables and magic devices. SK isn't a game that is a contest of skill or charisma in rallying people to your side, but a competition of OOC game knowledge.

If you really think that teaching new players how to successfully level to 20 without having to beg one of you guys to show them how is a detriment to the game, then you're wrong and your attitude is a detriment to the game.

Wait. How did I do it the first time though? I had to learn it.

I learned it in game.



I never said it should be. You are under an inferiority-complex, I simply said it is a detriment to start making this game like WoW or a video game.



They should be involving themselves in character and asking. Believe me, I tell people -all the time- how to do it in game. I'm not totally opposed to guiding them, but this just seems...well making this game an ooc circlejerk more than it already is.