New Players' Guide

Welcome to Elanthia. This guide is written to aid a new character in joining GemStone IV, and will be heavily linked in order to give the most information in as little text as possible, allowing for the new player to chose which topics interest him or her the most.

New Character Creation

Everyone must start here. It is more important than knowing the verbs that exist, because, in order to even log into the GemStone universe and use the verbs, you still must first create a character. Play.net gives a very basic process in creating a character, but gives little insight as to what those choices will mean. Creating a character involves a few basic steps and choices that will affect a character throughout his career.

First, when you log in on www.play.net you will be given two choices -- Choose a character to play and Select client. The first choice will be to Create a new character. The second choice gives 3 choices, though it lists 4. These are StormFront, eScape, Wizard, and Java. Likely the best choice for a new character is StormFront, however, this client does need to be downloaded. In any case, when making a character this choice is irrelevant until the character is created. When a choice is made, hit the orange button labelled, "Create Character."

Gender

The first step would be to chose a gender. Both genders are equal mechanically, so the choice of gender is solely a roleplaying choice. Click on the image of the gender you prefer.

Profession

Next, the character choses a profession. A profession is a very important choice as it decides which role your character will play in the world of Elanthia. For example, an empath is a healer that focuses on mental and spiritual magic. They are the only profession with skills and spells related to healing other characters, however, they cannot raise the dead. That is a task left to clerics. Clerics focus only in spiritual magic and are very strong against the undead, usually, unless the cleric is aligned to a dark god, often called Lornon Arkati in GemStone. Bards are a class that use music combined with elemental and mental magics to enhance themselves, their party, and defeat their enemies. Bards are skilled in Loresinging, a skill which can reveal the properties of magical items to a higher degree of accuracy than any other system. Warriors are skilled in martial skills, fighting opponents in open combat with a fury unmatched by any other profession, though their access to magic is more limited than any other profession. Warriors can take blows better than any other profession, though, but are closely followed by rogues in the endevor to take punishment. Rogues are skilled at hiding, ambushing, climbing, disarming traps, and opening those pesky locks, though many rogues neglect their locksmithing and trap disarming skills in favor of increased combat or magical abilities. Paladins are very similar to warriors except with access to spiritual magic and a decreased focus on martial skills. Paladins are the only profession capable of wearing heavy armor and still be able to cast spells effectively. Rangers are lovers of the outdoors and have many spiritual magics related to that love. They are capable of foraging and they can imbue various elemental and natural resistances to non-metallic armor. Wizards are masters of elemental magic and are capable of crafting many magical items, including permanent enhancement bonuses to weapons, armor, and shields. Sorcerers use both elemental and spiritual magic, and use them to perform what some would consider the darker arts: sorcery. Their spells include demon summoning, necromancy, and various effects drawn from the two.

Race

A character's race is less important to the character's career than their profession, however, a race will have a dramatic effect on the roleplaying opportunities that character possesses. For example, the dark elves are shunned by their light skin cousins and therefore are denied access to certain locations within the Elven Empire. Also, various statistic bonuses each race possesses make them more suited for certain professions.

Culture

A culture choice should be made when the player is more informed of what role each culture plays within Elanthia. If a character selects "none" for culture, the choice can be made at a later date. As a new player to GemStone IV, it is recommended to chose "none" for now.

Appearance

The appearance of your character is decided here. These choices can, however, be changed in the future via various tents within the cities of Elanthia or by a GameMaster run non-player character that specializes in modifying a character's features. The appearance of your character, however, is highly your choice given the preset options.

Stats

The statistics of a character will follow that character for the rest of his career, so putting the right points in the right stats is highly important to get right the first time. More detail will be added on this at a later date.

Skills

Chosing skills will determine how your character performs in combat or performing various other tasks such as disarming traps, picking locks, foraging, trading, skinning, and more. The amount of skills a character can chose is determined by their stats, which determines how many training points a character gets. Generally, the more training points, the better, however, generally having a high number of training points at low levels means that your stats will not grow as much as someone who willingly sacrifices the extra training points.

Name

A character's name should be fitting for a medieval setting.

More to come!

External Links

• Play.net's Quickstart Guide