Commoner new player guide

Start

This guide will be an all encompassing guide for those delving into the realm of commoners.

Commoners are the default starting guild in Dragonrealms, meaning everyone starts as a commoner. However 99% of players will join a guild, with the bulk of the remainder being mules. Very few players decide to stay as a commoner.

The first and most obvious question is why?

Why stay a Commoner? - RP

Maybe you were such a heretic edge-lord that you finally got kicked out of the Paladin guild. Kssarh was so tired of your crap he threw you out of the Moon Mage tower and you landed on your head. Maybe you're an assassin that just wants to blend in? Or maybe you just really want to be a peasant.

It's a blank slate.

Why stay a Commoner? - Gameplay

• Tired of magic? Tired of khri? Tired of typing .combat? Don't want to be the 500th Warrior Mage to hit 200? Nostalgic for the Dragonrealms of yore where if you looked at a field goblin wrong you might find yourself walking the starry road?

• Staying a commoner is the 'hard-mode' of Dragonrealms. You're not going to get struck down by walking through Crossing in public, but since you are so TDP starved your actions matter tenfold. Listening to classes at the Empath guild for a few days could be the difference between survival and death. Upgrading a weapon can be truly impactful and that can make the game more exciting as each milestone is that much more gratifying. Dragonrealms plays a bit differently for a Commoner. They weren't tuned for you. It's like your Barbarian friend is playing Dynasty Warriors and you're playing a survival horror game. (Don't stay out at night the wolves might get you.)

• While being much more challenging than 'The Guilded' you're free to do what you wish as there's no guildmaster to corral you. You just want to kick rocks and read your encyclopedia in peace? Have at it. You don't have to be focused on combat.

Play your character

Play your character. As a Commoner you'll have no real goals other than those you set yourself. And, without access to the magic skillset, or any real ability systems, you'll have a lot of free time. Which you'll need because advancing is really painful and slow as a Commoner.

Advantages to being a Commoner

A Commoner trains all skills at a secondary rate. Meaning, if you plan on becoming a Moon Mage, you can train weapons up a bit before joining. This is largely silly though, because all skills train as primary to 50 ranks, and then as secondary to 100 ranks.

Disadvantages to being a Commoner

Literally everything else. The best way around this is addressed in the next point.

Ability Choices

As a commoner, you have access to a library of zero powerful spells and abilities. These include:

Below is the suggested picking order:

Training a Commoner

Do stuff and gain experience.

• Since you do not gain TDPs from leveling, it is recommended that you train as wide as possible, keeping as many skills moving as possible.

• There are many rough points on the hunting ladder. You will have to squeeze every drop of EXP out of enemies when 'The Guilded' have moved up. On the early end of the latter you may have to stick around until you're learning nothing. Dodge into somewhere to train your defenses and leave until you can safely survive. Or catch a class on Shield, Evasion, etc. You may need to overtrain your defenses, missile mastery and melee mastery to get a foothold on the next rung of the ladder. Alternatively if you hit an especially rough spot spend some time totally outside of combat and work those TDPs.

It Gets Better

• There are various pockets of difficult, but I found the 100-250 rank range to be the most difficult. In the circle 50 range 'The Guilded' are starting to get their advanced spells and able to use them properly and enemies are tuned for this. Once the ladder starts to open up and enemies have a wider range on which they can be hunted you can stick around longer and eke out a bit more EXP.

Friendship is Power.... and so is Money

• Got an Empath friend? Beg them for healing and buffs. Reducing downtime while bleeding out Or even better find a group to hunt with. Getting a couple of buffs can be a huge boost when you have nothing.

• Fortunately and unfortunately, for the same reason, Micro-Transaction items are a huge boon to Commoners. Heroic Tattoos, Wands good weapons and good armor can make a huge difference in survivability. Being able to survive and being able to hit an opponent are the most important so you can continue to gain experience.

• Partially because you'll be focused on staying alive, and partially because Commoners have no offensive abilities Commoners by far have the slowest kill speed. Meaning less skins to sell, less trunks to open. They're also penalized in the crafting arena, so having a Commoner as your only character is not very recommended.

Join a Guild, or Don't

After a while you'll realize a Commoner is not for everyone. See New player guides for more information about guilds and try out those J O I N keys.

Alternatively, embrace the challenge and slowly, painfully, unnecessarily climb to 1750 in every skill while staying circle 0. If you do go this route, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Your stats are often the only thing keeping you from dying. Train every skill you can for the TDPs to increase stats with, and maximize your TDP use early. If you are doing combat (you should, more TDPs) remember Reflex is the most important stat for staying alive while hunting. Neglecting your mental stats is ok, although Wisdom is useful for absorbing experience slightly faster.
• You can still use Heroic Tattoos for stat boosts, gyres to store and use spells, and wands for all the utility they offer.
• Nets can be used to cause immobilize status using your Light Thrown or Heavy Thrown skill.
• You cannot Dissect, as you can never reach circle 10. This means you should get used to using a Textbook for learning First Aid.
• You work off armor hindrance as an armor tertiary guild, so a chain-primary clown suit of all four armor types (remember the first bullet?) is your best balance between avoiding what hits you can and surviving the rest. For Player vs. Player, full chain.
• The most important command to type once you decide to abandon JOIN forever: TITLE PRE CHOOSE OTHER COMMONER

Commoner PvP

The fundamentals of player-versus-player boil down to several challenges:

• Buff your relevant combat stats and skills.
• Wisely choose damage reactors to mitigate incoming damage
• Stack up as many SvS wards as possible to protect yourself from debilitating effects that enhance incoming damage
• Use your native debilitation wisely in windows of opportunity
• Kill your opponent before they kill you.

Commoners, naturally, natively lack ALL essential tools for minimum-level pvp viability, though these options are all available as microtransaction purchases. To wit, minimum viability for commoner PvP will ideally involve friends or alternate profiles to buff you, and require a heavy investment with real-money microtransaction items. It is important to understand from the start that commoner PvP is a puzzle or challenge to be overcome, so you can occasionally edge out a win and brag about it. Even with the tips below, do not expect to win many fights against seasoned sparring partners, but you didn't choose to become a commoner for the easy road, did you?

Gear

Commoner PvP is all about gear, gear, gear, and more gear. You will want to invest in a number of quality microtransaction weapons because Advanced Combat Maneuvers or ranged weapon damage will constitute the large majority of the damage you deal. I would also recommend some quality armor. For an "armor tertiary" guild, chain is the optimal choice between absorption to mitigate incoming damage as well as minimizing hindrance. As a Commoner your choices for damage reactors are limited, so I would invest in at minimum some lumium chainmail before dipping into the PvP World.

Your outgoing damage will be weapon-based, primarily via ACMs, your debilitation will be wand-based, and your own buffs will be friend-based (or gyre-based). We will go over each section individually.

Picking Your Stats

The fundamental problem with Commoner PvP is, at its core, engagement control. Advancing to melee from missile range takes approximately nine seconds, and smart mages will simply run away and try to burn you down with standard targeted magic choices such as Burn or Lightning Bolt. Thrown weapons cannot reliably hit equal opponents from missile range without debilitation effects, though they do much better at pole range or melee range. So how do we close range and do damage? Debilitation wands.

Looking at the wand-based debilitation widely available these days, there are three "Commoner Builds":

• Mind Commoner (Rend, Huldah's Pall, Ward Break, Mental Blast on some wands with limited charges)
• Magic Commoner (Ice Patch, Call of the Wild)
• Spirit Commoner (Soul Sickness, Heighten Pain)

Mind Commoner is incredibly powerful if you can get the spell-stripping or spell-sealing effects to land. The primary problem with the Mind Commoner build is that all mage players quickly learn to defend against these effects by raising discipline and running Redeemer's Pride or Psychic Shield, since they're so incapacitating, so as a Commoner at endgame in order to win these contests with half-power wands (and no native wards) expect to sacrifice much of your native stat protection to win these. A dangerous build but a heavy cost. I wouldn't consider this viable, even by Commoner standards, in the late game.

For Spirit Commoner, they run into several issues. Foremost, the primary contest (SICK) contests willpower, so they run into the same REPR or PSY problems Mind Commoners do. Likewise, Soul Shield and Courage are common SvS wards that shut this contest down hard. Soul Shield can even be put in a gyre! This build has a viability rate of -7.

Magic Commoner is boring. Magic Common is Wonder Bread. Magic Commoner using Ice Patch wands is a meta-chasing Commoner powergamer. Magic Commoner is also, by far the most viable build! There's a reason "native Paladin spell Ice Patch" or "native Bard spell Ice Patch" are memes, because half of the pvp community is running Ice Patch on a scroll. Even in an evolving metagame where defending against reflex debilitation is becoming more common, IP wands is the safest and most reliable choice.

Buy some Ice Patch wands. Like, seven of them, and maybe buy 3 of all the others just in case.

The Gyre

Lacking any access to native buffs, the gyre available at Corn Maze will be critical to your PvP strategy unless you have invested time (or money) into obtaining several other high level accounts to buff you. Beg your friends for buffs and store them for later. If you truly want to "try-hard" with your Commoner fights (lol), I would suggest at least two gyres if not more, one filled with spells for opponents who will primary be doing physical damage (Barbarians, Thieves, Paladins, possibly Grey Empaths), and another for opponents who will be doing significant elemental damage (all other guilds).

Spell recommendations to fill your 10-slot gyre are as follows:

Physical

• Swirling Winds
• Sure Footing
• Essence of Yew
• Wisdom of the Pack
• Last Gift of Vithwok
• Awaken
• Manifest Force
• Senses of the Tiger
• Psychic Shield

The last spot is flexible and can be rearranged based on need or opponent, such as Soul Shield, Earth Meld, Vigor, Mental Focus, etc. Note some of these spells such as Swirling Winds are also available via wand if you have no friend or alt to buff you, but I would recommend the full 20% buffs to defensive skills whenever possible.

Elemental:

• Same only Ethereal Shield instead of Manifest Force

fin