Another old player with lots of questions

[Shadowplay]

Hey there everyone, I'm another old AC player trying out the game again after years away. I used to play "Jerod Morgan" and "Alphaeus" on WE, though it looks like WE is nearly deserted these days :(

AC was my first MMORPG and while I may have played countless games since then, nothing has ever really hooked me like AC originally did. I know you can't ever recapture that 1st MMORPG feeling, but I'd still like to revisit Dereth again for a time. With that said, on to my questions!

Character Templates: is there an updated list of some solid templates? Everything I find seems to be from years ago and I fear going down the wrong path :) Any specific template suggestions? I mainly played a Life/Sword guy and then did some off the wall crossbow character that was also pretty fun. Not sure what I'd even want to play now since I don't know the state of the game.

Servers: I've seen some recent server population numbers over on the VN boards and things sure have thinned out since I left! Gone are the days of thousands online every night. :( Other than population is there any significant difference between the PvE servers? I'm not up for Darktide right now ;-)

Loot/Gear: would it be worth the work to try to reactivate my old characters? They were only around level 70 or 80, but had pretty decent gear. Not sure if any of the old stuff (like pp gsa, etc.) are better/worse than what's used these days. Should I just let those old characters remain in their eternal rest? :)

Monarchies: are allegiance chains still around? I remember what that was *the* thing and have no interest in swearing to someone just to feed them xp and get little assistance in return ;-)

Leveling/Questing/Hunting for solo player: I've read that things are... bizarre these days in the sense that a truly new player with no buff bot help will have a lot of trouble getting from towns to the old low level dungeons and hunting areas. If this is true, do we basically need patron help to get anywhere these days? I'm not sure I want to just blow through all the content just to level up, but I also don't want to fall into mindless killing near towns because I can't survive going anywhere! *grin*

That's it for now - sorry for the little novel here :) I don't even know if I'll stick around beyond the trial, but on the off chance I do I'd like to be informed before I gimp myself early on. Wow... been a while since I've been in a game were you really *could* gimp yourself!

Thanks for any help and advice is most welcome!

[Yula_the_Mighty]

I will some of the other people answer the rest of your question. Allegiances chains got nerfed. You only deliver reasonable XP to your patron. That is because when your passup experience points are shipped to your grand patron - they are divided by 10 (it isn't exactly 10% but it makes a rough estimate). This continues on every level. If you are six levels down from your monarch and your patron earns 100,000 xp from you, your monarch gets 1 point.

[Wild Bird]

I'll try to answer the loot gear question.

With advancements such as tinkering, random treasure generated loot is very good. Armor that can be tinked/buffed to near 700 al with majors certainly makes Ancient Armor or other quest armor from long ago, certainly less valuable.

Old quest weapons are nearly obsolete too.

Your character now can get augmentations that will allow it to drop fewer items on death. After three augmentations this way, only rares and currency will drop from your character if you die. Suggest you read up on augmentations at you favorite fan site for their use and restrictions.

Leveling a character to above level 125 can be done under a week if you know where to hunt. (fuins, 90+ eaters/basement in fuins, 110+ eaters) Below level 50 is probably still the same for you. White Phytos Wasps or Nanto Matron Hive or other such places.

There are a few hunter killer tasks which is a nice change of pace from the grind.

Welcome back! I hope you enjoy your stay.

[Wild Bird]

On the subject of character templates.

The min/max on stats seems to be the way to go. ***
100/10/100/100/10/10 for melees and archers.
10/100/10/10/100/100 for mages.
All characters almost need to spec their melee defense and attack mode. **

PK melees/archers sometimes change to favor health.
100/100/100/10/10/10 for non-mage PK's.

With buff-bots being almost everywhere, self-buffing isn't needed right away. But generally speaking, all of my characters could self-buff by the trime they entered 110+ eaters. With rending weapons, spec'ing life magic to debuff huge creatures isn't done too much. Besides, the really big lugians in PotB need a full-blooded mage with buffed life magic over 430 to be effective.

So simply put, melees and archers need to concentrate on doing melee archer things while mages need to concentrate on being mages but have them spec melee defense anyways.

** There is some controversy over the need for mages (or any character) to spec melee defense. With very high al armor, you could conceivably survive the high XP hunting sights. But the trade off is that you'll be healing yourself so much as to severly impair your killing. So unless you find a group of people who don't mind the limited XP you'll make for a fellow and don't mind getting a reputation for lowering the XP of a fellow you join, then not spec'ing melee is for you.:D

*** Your goal to gain skills probably should be Spec Weapon, Spec Melee Defense, and train healing and arcane. Train Item asap. Followed by traing other magic schools and mana conversion. Train Alchemy and cooking later.

* A spec'd War/Melee mage will have enough slots to become your non-armor tinker later. If you run a second mage, then you'll have a natural armor tinker. Following this progression, you'll be able to effectively hunt with all seven of your characters and have flexibility in your melees to try different things like having an Aluvian Dagger with spec'd magic defense. With Arcane Lore rares, you don't have to spec lore on any characters to use the highest lore items in the game.

[Lancelore]

Hallo Shadowplay,

Welcome back !!!!!

Alot of questions and I am glad Wild Bird answered quiet a few. But here are my 2 cents.

AC provides much fun for many of us even alfter all these years. It is true the number of players are not the same anymore as some years ago, but there is still a decent number. See it this way. In the past you had to stand in line to do certain quests. With the smaller playerbase this won't happen anymore or only at rare occasions.
Most important thing imo is to be a member of a good monarchy. Here you meet people (mansions) and here you get help and advize. The monarchy is more or less the background of your play. Quests are organized and hunting partners found.

Starting all over is not too bad. Leveling goes much faster these days and with some effort you will be on your old level again after some weeks. And sorry to say, your old gear is probably not very valid anymore. Imo the best is starting all over from scratch.

In our monarchy we could greet the last weeks more and more returning players and even a few new ones. It is too early (and not correct) to say it is a revival. But for some reason many players undergo the same feeling as you have and return after many years.

Anyway, I think you will experience the game as a kind of new. Much content is added or changed. Turbine is doing her best to bring the game to modern standards, although the graphics (being better then in the past) stay behind.

If you decide to play on the Solclaim server (most servers have about the same number of players) please feel free to look us up in game or take a look at our website to get an impression.

But most of all: Have fun !!!!!!!!

[Shadowplay]

Thanks for the replies everyone! It's definitely... interesting being back in game after all this time :) I've certainly seen first hand how quickly you can level even with no help at all from others, not to mention the crazy loot tables these days.

I've had a fairly nice reception in game as well, both on MT and on SC. Seems that while the numbers have dropped significantly at least the remaining "core" players are pretty helpful towards one another. That's always a good sign to me :)

I toyed around with an "extreme" template and did the 100/10/100/100/10/10 Aluvian with spec'd dagger, melee d and even magic d (just for kicks). I found pretty quickly that it's not really viable without the use of buff bots though. I guess that's pretty much how everyone functions these days, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth for some reason. There's some grumpy old purist part of me that thinks ya gotta be able to go it alone! ;-) Presumably any character that doesn't go with an extreme template at this point ends up noticeably behind others at 100+ levels, right?

Anyway I can see myself hanging around for a while if I can just find the right fit for myself, meaning the right character, the right server and the right monarchy.

Thanks again for all your help!

[Atarax]

Try Solclaim, there is a good player base!