Welcome to your first live in Norrath. I have a few helpful hints that you may find useful in your travels. These will hopefully keep you alive and happy, and thus increase your enjoyment of the world.
Characters
Characters are stored on the server you play, not your computer. So be sure
to pick one which has real life friends on it if that is what you are looking
for.
Use those skill points
At the very start of your life you have 5 skill points that you can use
for any skill you currently have access to. I highly recommend you use them.
In fact, unless you can't afford to use them, I always recommend you use
your skill points as quickly as possible after hitting level. After 6 th
level when you die you will loose experience, however, all skill levels
remain the same (only HP, AC, and other stats change). So use these bad
boys up as soon as you can.
Watch the hunters
Watch the number of hunters in the zone and in your area. As the evening
gets later (or if it's very early) there will be less hunters, and thus
more monsters in your area. When hunters are more scarce in your area, there
will be noone to back you out of a jam, so be more cautious when there are
fewer people on.
Stay close to home
I don't recommend travel outside of your area till 5 th lv. In fact I always
recommend you stay in your home zone till at least 5 th lv, and in fact
until 3 rd recommend you always keep guards, or the road in site. This way
your well protected, and can easily find your body if you die. Don't fret.
You should hit about a level an hour till 4 th, 5 th will take a few more
hours, but within your first 6 - 12 hours of play you should hit 5 th lv.
So be patient. There is nothing worse than traveling far and loosing everything.
Remember my 2 death rule
I have a 2 death rule. If I die once during a session, I expect that. If
I die a second time in the same area, or getting the first body, something
is wrong. STOP do not go out a third time. Ask for help of some kind, get
an escort, get an invisibility spell, or spirit of the wolf to help you
out. There is something wrong if you've died in the same spot more than
once.
Watch that experience bar
If you have fought in the same area and don't seem to be getting experience,
even from blues, you are in the wrong area. Move to somewhere else. Over
the course of my many lives I've found that hitting blues in one area can
produce little to no experience, where as after moving, I would get one
quarter bubble per shot. So until about 15 th level, you should hit a level
in anywhere between 2 - 6 hours. If you've been 'stuck' on a level for a
long time, hit steady blues, and move somewhere else your probably in the
wrong spot. I'm also of the belief that a type of monster gives you less
and less exp per kill. For example orcs, if you kill a lot, it seems that
the experience given becomes less with each kill (after about the 3rd level
of killing blue con orcs). Try a different area or creature if you level
slowly.
Dungeons and Trains
Dungeons are bound to have trains, personally I avoid them. Trains are when
someone gets x monster, or monsters usually, and decides to run to an exit.
If you happen to be in the way you will usually die, as these tend to be
higher levels than you can handle. Please, if your somewhere new, be very
cautious. Don't fight anything new that's big, pick something small of that
type, find out it's abilities and then fight something more your level.
If you get hit by something way too strong for you and you know others can
save you, go ahead and train, but shout and ask for help, say where the
train is. Do not ever just run into someone and let the monster fight them
without asking from a distance if they can help. If you know something is
too big for you, and you are going to die, and you know there are lower
levels than you near your escape point DIE, take what you pulled and just
admit you made a mistake and die. Don't drag it to a lower area and kill
others. That's just stupid and rude. Remember it's just a game. Don't ruin
the day for others.
On partying
When partying it's always good to call your target before attacking. This
focuses firepower and downs enemies quickly. Also if you can taunt a creature
off someone to absorb damage that's a good way to keep everyone a little
hurt, instead of one person getting hammered. This I call damage swapping,
and is very useful to reduce party downtime.
On casting
I have found that you can interupt or distract your own spells. If you can
try casting without fighting melee. You may find that your spells are interupted
less often, and frequently hit for higher damage.
Also a guaranteed way to stop the casting of a spell (and thus wasting whatever mana it costs) is to crouch. For instance the monster dies mid-cast, crouch, and this will prevent you from completing the spell. As long as your crouched before / during the end of the spell you not cast it. Trust me when you get up to 30 th and past where your tossing spells at 150-250 mana a pop, it's a good thing to conserve when you wouldn't otherwise need it. (This is also good for when you start to heal and the group chases a monster around the corner and you would not be able to see them.)
Side note: Graphical power = casting power. I turned off some settings and noticed instead of hot keys slowly recharging, they would snap back on. This reduced the time between castings and increased my efficiency with snapping off spells with hot keys when they readied, instead of a slow charge after casting waiting for the recharge.
Save that Corpse
If your a class which can summon something, when your naked and going back for your corpse, always summon an item first. Don't use food, use something like a Hammer, or Rod, or Stone, anything you won't eat. That way in case you die on the way, the corpse will stick around a while.
Naked corpses will disintegrate within about 2 minutes, ones with something on them may last up to weeks (depending on level).
Great for the open areas when your following that tracker, or when your tank is pulling and going down fast. Don't ask where they are, just target them and type /follow, you will be taken right to them. Just remember to slide to the side (right or left) to break auto-follow before you start casting. Wherever they are, there you are, great for finding, bad for helping once you find them.
The who command is highly underrated, or was until Role playing came
along. Anyone who is currently Role playing is made anonymous and thus impairs
/who use.
Examples of /who:
Your looking for say, Shadowfall. You can say...
Ex: /who all Shadowfall
And if he's in the world it will tell you where, what level he is and what
race.
/who is the basic function all says what zone, and Shadowfall is of course
the name.
You can also go by level or class. Let's suppose you have a disease. You
can shout for a cure, or see if anyone out there can help and send direct
tells.
Ex: /who cleric
This would give you a list of who all the clerics are in your zone. (Again
only those that are not playing anonymous)
Lets suppose you wanted to know who was 1 - 5 th level.
Ex: /who 1 5
Or even by cleric
Ex: /who 1 5 cleric
Or if you had a question about a high level spell that was 24 th level
Ex: /who all 24 50 cleric
That would list all clerics in the world between 24 th and 50 th level,
and you could send a direct tell to ask them.
The /who command is highly underrated and unexplained. I hope this helps.
The /loc command is very useful for travel. If your about to die, or want to know where something is type /loc. In the example of death, if you do that before death, upon return you can just type it repeatedly to find your way back. Or, in this site, you can use it to find all sorts of places in each zone. The loc command works in an X, Y coordinate fashion, each zone having locs for that zone (each zone is a new area and starts over, ex loc 0,0 will be the 'center' of that zone, the next zone will also have a 0,0 center.)
Thats all I can think of for now. Enjoy.
This command will bring up the persons name as your target. This would be useful to get them as a target in the event you can't see them, such as on a raid or when they are running asking for help.