Nehal's Newbie Handbook
It might sound strange, coming from someone putting together a Newbie Handbook, but I am by no means an expert. I've been playing for about a month and have yet to secure a win. Despite this, I'm putting this succinct guide together as what I hope will become a primer for new players. When I first started playing I had my newbie deaths, and started to crawl further and further into the game, but often at increasing time expenses, only to be killed by bosses or random monsters I hadn't seen and had no idea how to handle.
If you're the sort of person who doesn't mind losing a 12-hour old character to an unknown challenge, you may want to turn away. I'm writing this for a specific type of player - the sort who enjoys the challenge itself and is turned away by a learn-through-losing-characters approach. Especially in the beta state of the game, a new player can easily find a character doing well, far beyond previous incarnations, but end up instantly dead because they wandered into the wrong zone - or wandered in vastly underprepared.
Birth Options
The start of a new game. Staring at a list of races and classes and attempting to make sense of what is what. Lets break it down into some quick rules-of-thumb.
- Races
- Classes
- Suggested Combinations
- Character Unlocks
Dungeoneering
This section intends to clearly describe each zone and its particular challenges. TOME4 does a fantastic job of giving each zone its unique flavor and challenges
The following zones are separated into what I roughly feel are the tiers of difficulty for a new player. As with any tier list, there is likely to be disagreement about this ordering. I've grouped these with general difficulty, special challenges, or major breaks in the game's main quest.
- Recommended Order
Tier 1
- Norgos' Lair
- Trollmire
- Escape from Reknor
- Abashed Expanse
- Blighted Ruins
- Slazesh Fens
- Murgol's Lair
- Ritch Tunnels
Tier 1.5
- Scintillating Caves
- Kor'Pul
- Rhaloren Camp
- Heart of the Gloom
Tier 2
- Sandworm Lair
- The Maze
- Old Forest
- Daikara
Tier 2.5
- Hidden Compound
- Ruined Dungeon
- Trapped!
- Lumberjack Village
- Golem Graveyard
Tier 3
- Lake Nur
- Temporal Rift
- Ruined Halfling Complex
- Mark of the Spellblaze
- Dreadfell
Tier 3.5
- Ancient Elven Ruins
- Dark Crypt
- Last Hope Graveyard
Tier 4
- Lost Kingdom of Reknor
- Unremarkable Cave
- Ardhugol
- Flooded Cave
- Temple of Creation
- Shadow Crypt
- Vor Armory
- Briagh's Lair
Tier 5
- The Guardians
- Orc Breeding Pits
- Vor Pride
- Gorbat Pride
- Rak'Shor Pride
- Grushnak Pride
- Valley of the Moon
- Eruan
- Charred Scar
Tier 6
- Slime Pits
- High Peak