Skills and Money

[RiverOtter]

Hello! I'm a brand new player and I'm confused about a couple of things. Could someone out there help me with these two areas?

Skills: How do I get better at skills? I tried picking some locks and hiding and it seems to just go on forever without letting me know if I failed or succeeded.

Money: What are some ways of making money in the world? I tried with my first character to go out "hunting" beyond the gate and got killed in my first day by a scrab. I guess I'm concerned about burning through my starting allotment without a backup plan for funds to feed my character.

I just applied for a new character that's a Ranger, sub Physician. Do y'all have any tips for a starting Ranger?

[Lizzie]

Skills - you get better at them by using them, generally speaking. Technically the coded system involves improvement by failure but there are a bunch of other things that go along with it, and the exact formula is not made available to players. You say you tried picking locks - were you playing a character that had the actual lockpicking skill on your skills list? Did you have a pick held in your hand? If no to either, then you would not have had  any chance to improve. As for the hide skill, you won't see whether or not you succeeded after trying. YOU can't see YOU hiding. You only know if you succeeded because other people don't see you. Since you can't prove a negative - there's no echo for success or failure on your end.

Money - as a ranger, you'll start with the forage skill. That can help keep you fed if you start out in Tuluk. Your best bet as a new player though would be to try and get a job in a clan. As a ranger, if you want to "see the world" or at least get out of the city on a regular basis, that'd mean: the Byn, Salarr, Kadius, or Kurac.

I'm assuming you want some kind of combat-oriented "niche" to fit into, and so looking for work in one of those clans as a fledgling hunter would be the recommended route.

[Gimfalisette]

Welcome to Armageddon

Skills: How do I get better at skills? I tried picking some locks and hiding and it seems to just go on forever without letting me know if I failed or succeeded.

Type "skills" to see your skill list.

If a skill is not listed, then for certain skills, when you try to use them, they never end the attempt. I believe lockpicking and hide fall into that category. So probably what you encountered was that your character simply did not have those skills.

The skills on your skill list are the ones that will get better with practice, generally speaking.

When you get really good at certain skills (how good varies), you will "branch" other skills. Then you will have new skills to practice!

As to money and starting, I agree that joining a clan will be really helpful to you at this point. Don't even bother to get much gear for your character, just go find someone who can recruit you into the clan. Part of the job of clan leaders is to provide employment to player characters, so don't be worried about approaching them for this.

As Lizzie said, a ranger would be welcome in the Byn, Salarr, Kadius, or Kurac. The Byn is more military-ish and tends to have a lot of PCs. Plus, it's the classic starting clan for newbies, they'll teach you a ton about the game

[Beethoven]

I've noticed that when you try to pick something that isn't actually pickable, it still gives you the echo "you set to work on the lock" but never resolves. I've made this mistake on plants several times when using the wrong syntax.

[Molten Heart]

Many choose a crafter subguild and sell their crafted wares to support themselves otherwise survival can be difficult.  Some forage for salt to sell to House Jal in Allanak, or hunt spice to sell to House Kurac in Red Storm Village.  These two can make someone a lot of money without the need for high skill levels.  There is also picking cotton in Tuluk but I dont know if it's comparableto the other two as far as earning potential.

[Voular]

Also you can shovel dung in Allanak and sell it to the dung-cart guy. Not much coin, but hey - you won't starve. (Probably.)

[Harmless]

A good tip for using combat to survive is that except for warriors, brand new characters have very low combat skills. Joining a clan like the ones mentioned above will let you practice combat safely in training/sparring before risking your life on a giant bug trying to eat you. If you do want to practice combat on dangerous creatures, follow these rules:

0.) skills improvement is really slow. Your character can only improve by a little bit for any one skill in an in-game day (every 90 minutes or so in real life, roughly). Therefore early characters stay weak for the first several days of playtime or longer.
1.) have an escape plan. Know how to get to safety at all times i.e. The city gates.
2.) have the movement points to get to safety at all times. If your movement points are at 70 or less and there aren't any deadly creatures about, sit or rest to recover moves before going further.
  a.) or, use a mount like a war beetle to go where you need to, but practice riding in a safe zone (i.e. A city) for several rides until your character is a little better at riding.
3.) retreat from combat as soon as you know it's unwinnable. If you aren't scoring major hits and your enemy has already brought you down to 70-80% of your health, run early using the FLEE command. Enter flee several times quickly if at first you don't succeed, then get ready to move further away immediately after you first escape. Fleeing while mounted is even harder than on foot so riding practice helps.
4.) you can't defend yourself in combat without at least one weapon in one of your hands, or a shield.

You can learn about a dozen other tricks in a combat oriented clan, but the above are the very basics.

[path]

I just want to chime in to agree with Harmless here. Far and away the most efficient and fun way to learn how to make a character survivable is to join a clan. The Byn hires mercenaries, the Merchant Houses hire hunters and in either city state the militia and legion respectively need people to bear arms.

This'll allow you to skill up while roleplaying, which is what RPI is all about, natural progression. They'll also be able to show you other tricks for future survivability depending on which clan you select. You'll be likely to see some of the known world and hopefully the introductions will be thematically correct. It's nice to have a little help in character while being introduced to new facets of the game.

[RiverOtter]

Thanks to all for these tips! I particularly appreciated the summary of combat strategies. I think what led to my first initial death was experience with other games where usually easy mobs were near the cities. I figured that *surely* the bug would die before I would. Haha.

I'll definitely seek out a clan after I'm able to get a new character. I appreciate all of your time to compose these helpful responses!

[solera]

A good tip for using combat to survive is that except for warriors, brand new characters have very low combat skills.

It was an easy mob.

[Harmless]

A good tip for using combat to survive is that except for warriors, brand new characters have very low combat skills.

It was an easy mob.

Unfortunately, this is correct. Scrabs are low on the difficulty scale overall. But they are not to be trifled with! Most brand new characters wouldn't be able to kill a scrab.

Because death is permanent, your priority should always be survival. If you can get into a tustle with a scrab for a few rounds and escape alive, then your character probably learned something from that encounter. In a sense, you've already gotten the "exp" for the fight. You don't need to kill things to get "exp," the only reward for killing something/someone is their corpse, and there are no other coded benefits.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll get the swing of it. Welcome, and thanks for the early donation of another pair of boots.

[Jinxed]

Some hiring clans tend to spread the rumors in watering holes. Remember to keep an eye on board in taverns, you may find a great deal of useful information there.
All kinds of people, including hiring ones, could be easily found in tavern as well.

In a nutshell - tavern is a local community center. Live there.

[Barsook]

Make sure you roleplay the rumor boards as heard rumors as commoners can't read or write.