Shattered Kingdoms

I'm very new to this game (just discovered it yesterday, really,) and I started an earlier melee character (a dwarf) to get the hang of getting through the newbie school and understanding the game's absolute basics, but now I'd like to start a character of the class that I'd really love to play, namely a sorcerer. There's a number of things I'm not entirely clear on yet, though, and I was hoping the newbie forum posters could help me clear them up.

First of all, I was leaning toward playing a neutral (unprincipled perhaps) human sorcerer, if only because they seem like the most well-rounded race, they're easier to roleplay and I'm under the impression that their stats work very well for a sorcerer. What I'm apprehensive about, however, is the aging system--humans don't seem to live a very long time and if I invest a a lot of time and energy into this character will he just keel over and die after a year or less of real-world time has elapsed? Is there any magic that extends your lifespan or halts/slows down the aging process? Are there any other races that are generally better suited for sorcery? I would rather not play an elf/deep elf because I don't think I'm equal to the RP burden yet and I doubt I could handle nearly half the world hating me because of my race automatically.

Secondly, what should I put my starting attribute/stat points into to make leveling easier? Presumably I'd want to max out intelligence, wisdom and charisma fairly early on, as well as invest several points in art, but which ought to be the highest priority? Would raising any of the three physical stats make much sense as a human sorc? Also, could I get away with wearing light armor or should I simply stick with cloth?

Finally, I have a somewhat related question--is it possible to learn a new language from the one you start with? How exactly would I go about doing that?

There isn't any magic that can extend your life. But if you polymorph into a longer-lived race, you have their life span. You get over a year of real time with a human, plenty in my opinion.

I would recommend maxing cha/wis/int/art in that order. If you have left over stat points, put them into con. Wear cloth, you'll run into armor pentalties if you use light armor.

You start with the language of your starting kingdom. If you want to learn other languages early, find a mentor. (help mentor)

WIS will allow you to have a greater mana pool earlier on, which will be where your leveling prowess comes from. INT is a priority for sorcs, but not immediately, as you probably are not going to be required to hold six or seven spells at once until a status or two down the road.

There are no magics to extend your character's life in this game. Once they're done, they're done. As to investing a lot of time in a character only to have them drop dead after about a year...You might want to get used to that unless you get a penchant for playing elves, or deep-elves, or sprites.

As to the armor weight you should be wearing, I suggest sticking with cloth, and getting a pet to stand behind. It can be useful to wear heavier armor if sitting around trying to master your spells (failed castings cost less mana) but for leveling purposes, stick to what your class is restricted to.

Learning new languages (there are eight in total) can be done from NPC teachers, or better yet, from PC mentors. Going to the inn of your city of origin and entering the mentor command sends a mental message to all appropriately-leveled characters who live in that nation (and have their mentor flag turned on) that your character is looking for a teacher. By mentor status, most characters have learned the other spoken languages well enough to teach, so even if there isn't a sorcerer able to teach you, you could learn the tongues from any class available at the time.

Welcome to SK. Hope you have the stomach to tough it out.

Humans are a good race to be a sorcerer. There is no magic to extend your life-span, although I should say that very few players actually play a character until it does of old age.

Being new I would also suggest staying away from elves/delves as you already figure out yourself.

Personally, I love gnomes for caster classes. They have the highest wisdom giving them the best mana pool/regen rate. Charisma is a little low which slows down leveling, and makes ordering pets/charms a bit more troublesome but they have enough intelligence to sleep while holding the 'charm person' spell. Something half-elves cannot do, so I would also suggest staying away from them.

As for attributes..and I'm sure some players will disagree with me on this, but I would max charisma first for leveling purposes. Then max int, after maxing int I would actually max out your art trains, It'll probably take until you have reached 'Master' status but max art isn't really an option anymore. After you max art, you can finish off wisdom.

There are magical items that increase attribute points, you should try to max your wisdom with magical items until you have it maxed naturally.

As far as learning other languages any player that has reached 'Mentor' status can teach them to you if they know them 'superb' or better. NPCs can also teach you languages, but for your early levels try to find a player to teach you languages/skills/spells because players don't charge anything, while as NPCs do.

If you need any tips or help with leveling just ask around IC. Players are generally helpful if someone is having trouble. If nothing else they should at least point you in the direction of someone who can help you.

Welcome to SK!

Thanks for the prompt replies, everyone, I appreciate them a lot.

The reason I'm so concerned about learning different languages is that I have a friend of mine who I would like to play with, but he's starting in Zhenshi and I'm considering starting in Exile, but I'm pretty sure that the two nations have different languages. I was under the impression that Exile is the best place to start if you're a newbie (although I started my old dwarf fighter character in Zhenshi too,)--would any of you say it's worth it to start in Exile and learn Zhenshi language and make my way to Exile later, or simply to start in Zhenshi to begin with?

Also, why is it uncommon for people to play a character until it dies of old age? Is leveling up to max level a fairly quick process if you know what you're doing? I don't really have any objections to the whole age/permadeath thing, and in fact I think it seems like a really effective way to forestall game-wide skill inflation, so it's just something I plan to get used to.

I'm obviously smarter than you two.

Start in Zhenshi then and move to Exile later if you want to. Nerina has an excellent newbie zone.

I really disagree with training art last. Magic missile is the leveling spell of choice, but that doesn't mean on the road to GM you don't need other spells to land.

Color spray is very useful when leveling to blind all your opponents if your leveling on NPCs in groups, and its very easy to max wis with one or two pieces of jewelry

But what leveling NPCs are wearing saves?

Art doesn't increase damage.

So how many trainings of art is ideal? And does it only effect the success of 'debuff' type spells rather than damage-dealing ones?

I also had one other quick question--I know names from popular fiction are disallowed, but what about character names from very obscure greco-roman gods? Would that be alright?