ti-legacy.com

Hey there! Just to introduce myself, I’m Sabrelon! I’m a long time RPI-player, having played most of the recent Diku games in the past few years. What this means is that I’m relatively well-versed in starting out in games, and generally value the opinion of newer players as a way to clarify game mechanics, helpfiles, and player interaction that might not be obvious to people just starting.

So, if I think it might be useful for a newbie like me (especially if it was useful for a newbie like me), I’ll make a note of it here. I’ll likely continue updating/bumping this post as I play and learn new things. Hopefully this is helpful!

As well, I’d like to extend the opportunity for established players to add tips that might have been useful right when they started!

Character Generation (Chargen)

If at any time you have questions during chargen, use the command VISNET <question> to ask for help on the newbie channel. Staff may send you a TELL. If that happens, you can TELL <name> back, or just REPLY.

Starting off with Chargen I want to look at a few of the options that are available that seem to be rather newbie friendly, as well as some things that I think might be important to read before you press ENTER GAME by the end.

An Important Note: As long as your name remains cyan, you’re able to return to the chargen areas by asking staff. So far, with my first character, I’ve gone back maybe 5 times. I’ll probably go back again. I’ve been directed to use this as much as you need to get a feeling for how you want to play. Started out as a person focused on Crafting and don’t like the skills you chose? Go back, lower the skills with the PURCHASE command (help purchase), and change it up. Do it again a day later if you need to. Or twenty minutes because you forgot something, like I did.

So you’ve found the game and you’re thinking to yourself: “What now?” My recommendation, first and foremost, is is read over the Races section on the wiki (http://ti-legacy.com/races/). If you like one in particular, read more about it. Lithmorran certainly seems to be the easiest way to get started (and save yourself some XP as you get the common tongue of the area for free). I started as another race. It’s entirely your call.

The races in TI:L are similar to races in real life. The only thing choosing them changes is culture, homeland, and language. People might react differently to you depending on what you pick, so keep that in mind. Otherwise, once you’ve read the available information, go ahead and start Chargen.

On Being a Mage: Though I haven’t seen anything happen to a Mage yet, Mages are constantly at risk because of the setting. If you choose to be a Latent Mage, make sure you’re prepared for antagonistic RP. Because of this, I’d recommend you not be one with your first character. There’s plenty of time once you’re more familiar with the setting.

Having a basic background in mind when you start your character is important. Though TI:L doesn’t require a history like some games do, basing your character around an archetype or idea that you have will give them a cohesion they might not get otherwise. Make sure you read as much information as you feel necessary about Freemen (http://ti-legacy.com/freemen/), Gentry (http://ti-legacy.com/gentry/), and Nobles (http://ti-legacy.com/the-nobility/) before you make your decision on which you’d like to play, though I’d highly recommend starting as a Freemen and working up. This will give you the opportunity to learn the game on a fairly basic level, as well as keep your starting XP pool large enough to have a healthy amount of skills for your character to be competent.

Once you have your class decided, consider whether or not you’d like to join a Guild. Guild’s will, at the most basic level, give you a group of people to roleplay with on a consistent basis. Some guilds might be required to advance skills after a certain point, as is the case with the Merchant’s Guild and most Trade skills. So if you want to be a Master Blacksmith, you might need to consider the Merchants. If you want to be a lute-playing Bard, you’ll need to consider the Troubador’s. Take some time to read through and consider: http://ti-legacy.com/guilds/

Now, for your first character I’d probably recommend playing something combat-focused, or at least someone that’s moderately interested in fighting. Finding roleplay around sparring, along with joining some of the more martially-oriented guilds, seems very easy, and once you learn the combat code (which I’ll go into a bit more later) roleplaying out fights is simple, and you’ll easily find a job for yourself. Keep in mind that Swordsmanship is ICly only taught to Nobles and Knights, so consider this when choosing your weapons skills.

A Note on Descriptions: When you’re moving around on the map the first thing that people will see are your short description (sdesc), followed most likely by your extended description. These things give your character the feel of being real, and I highly recommend you take as much time on them as you need. There aren’t many things here to suggest beyond making sure your description fits the race you’ve chosen, you have at least one or two keywords that would set you apart (use emerald instead of green, or pitch black instead of just black) so that people can interact with you easily once you’re in game. Your extended description doesn’t have to be a novel, I’d at least suggest describing your character’s eyes, hair, face, and general body shape. You can change either of these at any time when you’re IG, so don’t worry about reworking them!

We’re on to Stats. Keep in mind while you’re statting your character that certain skills require certain numbers to be met. A Strength of 55 if necessary to wield most weapons. A charisma of 55 is necessary to take Haggle. When you’re finished distributing your stats the game will display which skills you won’t be able to take. Feel free to reorder as many times as you need, even once you’re in game with the PURCHASE SWAP command (help purchase).

Now we’re on to Skills. Typing in SKILL will give you the categories that certain skills fall under, as well as your familiarity with those skills. Typing SKILL LIST will give you a full list. The XP you have to buy skills might seem like a lot, but you’ll want to make sure you buy skills that compliment one another. If you’re playing a combat character, you’ll want to choose a weapon (or two), along with a defense (or two). A more in-depth guide written by Takta can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nGb ... 3JJKY/edit (This guide is fantastic, and really helped me get an understanding of how combat works on TI:L, I highly recommend reading it. It definitely changed the skills that I chose)

The last thing that’s worth mentioning during Chargen is restringing your default clothing. This allows you to change the way your worn items look. While it might seem complicated at first, reading HELP RESTRING does a good job of explaining it fully. When you do the long description for an item, make sure to capitalize the first letter, and end with a period, this is just so it parses correctly when you do things like remove/wear it. As well, make sure you change the keywords, which allow you to target the item with commands like GET or WEAR. If you change your tunic into a blouse and you don’t change the keywords, you’ll still have to type WEAR TUNIC to put it on!

Some helpfiles that are really worth reading before pressing ENTER GAME: HELP SUMPTUARY, HELP RPXP, HELP EMOTE, HELP COMBAT OVERVIEW, HELP SCORE, HELP POOL, HELP LEARN, HELP TELL, HELP RP CULTURE

Some forum posts that are also worth reading: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=470
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1094
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=994
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=471

Starting Out

Okay, so you’ve started. The world is big, you have a map and a copy of the Erra Pater, and you’ve your whole career ahead of you. You might be asking yourself, what now? Well, the first thing you’ll want to practice is emoting. The EMOTE command is your go-to for describing your characters actions, and as TI:L is a roleplay enforced game, you’ll end up using it a lot. HELP EMOTE covers a whole deal of it, but there are some general things about emoting that I’d like to say:

Regardless of your skill quality, keep at it. If you’re comfortable doing 2 line emotes while other people are doing 4, keep doing it. You being around and roleplaying is what matters, the length comes with time, practice, and a certain disposition. I like writing big emotes. When I first started, however, I’d be lucky if they were a line long.

Find your style. This one is important. Everyone has a different emoting style that they come to over the course of their time roleplaying. You’ll find yours too. You find someone who you really like? Send them a tell, ask them for tips. Find a reason to roleplay with them more. Copy their style! Imitation might not always be flattering, but there’s lots to learn from lots of people, and there’s no reason not to learn from them!

So the basic emote command looks like: EMOTE runs away. You’ll want to make sure you write in the third person, and use an active voice. That is to say, emote walks instead of emote walked. An example emote:

Emote steps through the doorway with a wide smile on his face. Looking out across the room, he closes the door behind him and makes his way towards the bar.

There! That’s an emote, simple. If you want to target another player in an emote (so they see you instead of their name), you just use a /. An example:

Emote steps through the doorway with a wide smile on his face. Looking out across the room, he spots /Sabrelon sitting on a stool. Closing the door behind him, he moves to take a seat.

Which will show to Sabrelon as:

Newbie steps through the doorway with a wide smile on his face. Looking out across the room, he spots you sitting on a stool. Closing the door behind him, he moves to take a seat.

There are lots of other things you can target with the emote command, and even some more advanced ones, all of which are covered in HELP EMOTE!

Alright, so you can Emote now, that’s good. Now you have to find people to emote with! To check who’s all online, just type WHO (help who), and if you’d like to check where people are roleplaying, you can type WHERE (help where). These two commands will give you an idea as to who is around and where people are, and are invaluable tools.

So, you’ve typed in WHERE, and there’s 1 person at The Queen’s Inn and Tavern. You want to go there and say hello and introduce yourself. TI:L has a built-in command called TRAVEL (help travel) that lets you automatically walk from location to location. While I’d highly recommend learning the streets by looking at your map (LOOK MAP), this command is extremely useful for automatically walking to one place or another. So you’re at the Almshouse, if you type in TRAVEL THE QUEEN’S INN AND TAVERN, a path should be picked, and you’ll be on your way.

When you get there, you see someone with the short description: a totally different newbie with black hair. I’d read HELP RP CULTURE to see how people generally act in situations like this. So the other newbie emotes at you, you emote back, and you start talking. He introduces himself at Sabrelon, and you want to be able to remember that. If you type in REMEMBER TOTALLY SABRELON (help remember), instead of “a totally different newbie with black hair” showing up every time you see him, you’ll see Sabrelon instead!

So you’ve talked with Sabrelon for a while more and you think he’s a mean guy, and that you’d really like to punch him. Instead of just thinking that Out of Character, you can use the THINK command (help think) in game to actually have your character think it! This is visible by staff, as well as any mages that can read minds, and can help you flesh out your character as you play them!

This whole time you’ve been sitting at the bar with a mug in your hands, and someone new walks in. You want to convey what you’re doing to them, so you use the ACTION command (help action). Action works kind of like an emote that sticks to the end of your short description. An example:

ACTION sits with his back to the door with a mug in his hand.

Would look like: Newbie sits with his back to the door with a mug in his hand.

Now that you’ve talked for a while, you probably have some RPXP saved up. RPXP is the experience you get from roleplaying. Read HELP RPXP to get a full idea of what you need to do to earn it, but here are some basic tips to help you along:
Make sure you’re using THINK, EMOTE, and ACTION often. While you don’t get more RPXP for using them more often, you’ll get more for using a combination of all three. Every so often the game will reset your RPXP Gain, and all you have to do to get it back up is these three things again!

You and Sabrelon keep talking for a while more, and you decide you want to spar. You’ll want to go to the bank (TRAVEL BANK, HELP BANK) to withdraw some Silver, then head to the Park Street Training Hall (TRAVEL PARK STREET TRAINING HALL). Once you’re there, you can buy some practice weapons so that you don’t hurt your opponent during combat. If you’ve read the guide that Takta wrote, you might have a solid grasp of how combat works. If you didn’t, just know that all you have to do to fight is type SAFE (which is the sparring alternative to ATTACK), <Opponent’s name> <body location> then an emote. That might look like:

Safe sabrelon arms swings his axe down at /Sabrelon’s arms in a wide arc while screaming wildly.

The only other thing you’ll need to know about combat is setting your defense. COMBAT DEFENSE <defense skill> (help <defense skill>) will set that particular skill as your means of not being hit, and all weapons have defenses that they’re weak to. Consider this when choosing which ones to use.

Simple as that! You don’t lose health while sparring, just stamina (Movement Points, or MV) so you don’t have to worry about being permanently injured. Whether you win or lose, you’ll probably be tired, so you’ll want to SIT down, REST, SLEEP, or EAT some food. Your MV won’t recharge on its own (help MV), so you’ll need to do one of those things in order to get it back to full.

Now that you’ve learned to emote and fought, you decide you want to craft. You took Woodworking as a craft skill, and want to make a fishing pole so you can go fish. The first thing you’ll want to do is check the woodwork helpfile (help woodworking) so you can see all of the related commands. Typing just WOODWORK by itself will show you what recipes for items you have. The recipe for the fishing pole is 721, so in order to see what items you need for the recipe you’d type in WOODWORK SHOW 721.

This will show you what items are consumed when you make the object, what is produced, and what tools or other components you might need. Once you have them in hand, you’ll want to type WOODWORK 721, and your character will begin. If you pass all of your skill checks, you’ll be the proud owner of a new fishing pole!

Now that you’ve done some fighting, crafting, and roleplaying, you probably have some RPXP saved up that you want to go to your skills! If you type in POOL (help pool) you’ll see a list of skills that your character is slowly increasing. The only way to add skills to your pool is by doing them, so by crafting you’ve added Woodworking, by fighting you’ve added your combat skills, and by buying items you might have added Consider. The good news is: You’re done! Now you just wait for the pool to fill with your RPXP, you’ll be notified if it levels up, and you can keep roleplaying!

And that’s about it! I’ll add some Advanced information once I’ve figured out what I’d like to talk about (and once I’m an advanced player as well), but all of this should be more than enough to get you started! Remember, if you have any questions, so far the staff and players have been fantastic, and I’m sure they’d be happy to help you over VISNET.

This post reserved for next portion.