Being as this is my first biped, I'm truly a new player here - so what follows are a few observations I've made in the first ten levels...

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I wandered into the character creation mall looking for a new body - one of those fancy two-legger models with all the class options, and after a bit of browsing; checking out the important things like hair styles and stuff, I settled on a brand new Satyr.

A few minutes later I was learning my first levels of cleric, being as one of the loading screen tips mentioned that having a heal spell was handy and I thought this was wise.

I don't spend any of my skill points at this stage as I'm still trying to figure out where to put them and something tells me that nothing the cleric has available will be useful to the mage class.

Once that was done I picked up the mage class and re-ran all of the quests on the starter island - blowing up pigs, melting spiders, torching beetles; it was a blast, literally.

Here's where I start to spend training points - no where does the trainer tell you anything about what stats would be good for the class you've joined, so I ask in NPA what is a good point choice for a mage and get nothing for several minutes, followed by "Sorry, I'm a Dragon, I don't know".

Thanks, I'm a Dragon too, and I don't know either!

So I minimize the client and bring up the Wiki to glean some kind of guidance as I have 48 points and about 48 things I can put them into.

Which brings up another potential issue - I'm pretty sure I can't run Istaria full-screen and alt-tab out to get information (if this has been fixed, I haven't heard about it), so I run in windowed mode which allows me to go to a web site I know about (Istaria Wiki) to get info...

This is not something a new player is going to have much luck with as the client installs full screen and you kinda have to know the Wiki is there to use it.

Additionally, on this recent install the client still didn't have a clue about my monitor and it really looks bad when it's full screen and 1024x768... This might need to be looked at as it's trivial to get the desktop resolution on runtime in Windows and I'd assume this can be appended to the resolutions in the config file just as easy. That way at least the correct option would be available when a new player made it into the options menu.

While at the Wiki I discover that the Wizard prestige class sounds like fun, so I evenly split my points in 'fire' and 'energy' to hit the minimum in energy to join the school - eventually - and still boost my fire skills so I can do some damage... In theory? It's hard to say but I need to do something, so it's what I do.

Well, the trainer mentioned that most mages pick up the scholar crafting class in order to make their own spells, and this too sounded wise. So off I went to quarry sandstone, make spell shards, and craft spells.

This was easy!

All too soon Ryson is voting me off the island and I wash up in New Trismus to start my new life.