Guide

The tutorial provides a very good example of what the overall world is like. Understanding the ins and outs of combat, how to handle light, equipment, and completing quests are a big part of your experience of the game overall.

Once you have completed the tutorial, many players tend to focus first on questing. In the Sparkle tower you can find orbs that show you a list of nearly all of the available quests throughout the game. You also have the ability to <claim> them for immediate reward.

The benefit of claiming a quest immediately is that your character grows, and combat experience is directly tied to how much quest experience you have so far. The downside is that you do not get to learn about the areas where these quests are.

If you are a new player, there are good tour quests in Argos (Calia), Solace (Krynn), Sparkle, Minas Tirith (Gondor), Pelagrir (Gondor), the Gypsy Camp (Terel), Kabal (Kalad), and west of Bree (Shire). These can be good places to practice some of the skills that you have learned in the tutorial.

Learning how to create triggers and aliases are a very important skill. These allow you to automate a lot of effort, and greatly reduce how much typing you have to do. Try installing the tutorial package, it has examples of how to write these for yourself. Ask others if they have their own packages as well - these are made to be shared.

The most important decision of your experience will be about choosing an occupational guild. The majority of your strength will come from this. There are guilds that are free to join (eg. Mercenaries, Gladiators, School of High Magic) with no application requirements. These are the easiest to start off with.

If you are uncertain of where you want to go, you can also join the Cadets or Academics (located in Gelan - Calia), which are designed for new players to really get a feel for before taking on something more serious. These can be a great place to start off while you are still learning about the 15 different realms available.

Magic guilds (School of High Magic, Academics) provide a more difficult experience than martial guilds. They come with lower defensive skills, and also require you to find spell enhancers (wands, staves, etc) as well as herbal components to power your spells. While the appeal of magic can be very exciting, the experience can also be very discouraging, particularly when you are just getting to know the game. This is a more advanced playstyle. Both have comparable damage caps. Magic guilds may trade off defensive capabilities for slightly higher offensive output, and not having a tank may cause you to feel you are getting constantly beat up.

There are many skills, and skills cost a lot of money. There are dozens of adventurer guilds throughout the game, many of which allow you to train your skills up to superior layman. Only your occupational guild will allow you to get to the highest level of skills in any particular section.

Skills require a significant amount of money, particularly above superior layman. There are three approaches that most new players take to collecting these funds.

Combat

There are newbie friendly areas that provide a decent amount of money, along with some combat experience. Some common areas for the smallest players are: Satyrs (east of Gelan, head north once you have crossed over the mountain), Sarn Ford (southwest of Bree), Orc temple (west of Sparkle). Be on the lookout for unusual/peculiar/exotic items, as these are imbued. They can be exchanged at Karkadelt (Sparkle) for 25 platinum or sold in the auction house for potentially more money. Faint imbues are the lowest value, and intense ones can get you 9x as much as a faint imbue, and a lot if the imbue is a useful one. Be on the lookout for gems as well, you can sell these in gem shops for good money too.

Herbing

If you have enough herbalism skill, you can search for specific high-value herbs to sell to an herbalist. Attanar and Suranie are examples of these, though there are many others. Your ability to <search here for suranie> is entirely dependant on your herbalism skill, if you do not have enough you cannot do it. The craftsman gardener guild (Earthsea) is a great way to get this skill without making a major commitment to an occupational guild.

Looting

The highest value equipment comes from the high end places, but these can only be killed by the biggest players (legends and myths). Many large players do not have much need for money and leave the loot on the ground, which you can potentially grab and run to the shop. This can be highly lucrative (2 platinum per NPC in some cases). However, this does rely on you knowing where these places are, and which bigger players tend to leave the loot behind.