Cleric new player guide
This is a page for the Cleric specific page for the Newbie Help Guide. Whenever possible, overlap with the general guide should be minimized.
For details, rules, and the other pages involved, see Category:Newbie Guide Contest.
Start
Gear
While the character creation process will provide you with basic armor and a weapon, there a few other things you will need to begin adventuring (mostly) safely. To begin with, spend some time wandering around your starting town, trying to find the grizzled old war Veteran (Crossing) or Sir Robyn (Riverhaven). Visit their pages to see the syntax for exchanging your starting gear with those NPCs for a weapon and armor that fit your play style and character concept. In Dragonrealms you can make just about any armor/weapon combination work, though I would recommend chain armor and a scimitar or broadsword for now.
Now that you've wandered around and probably gotten thoroughly lost, it's time to learn a great command for getting around town, the DIRECTION command (abbreviated DIR). This will allow you to easily navigate to where you need to go.
Next order of business; obtain a shield. To accomplish this you can use DIRection ARMOR and follow the cues. Once you make it to the shop, you can READ CATALOG to see what is for sale. You can also use the WEALTH command to see how much money you have. In Crossing, you can get a target shield from Tembeg's Armory. In Riverhaven, there is unfortunately no small shield option, though you can probably ask another player to get you one from Goblins or if you must, purchase an oval shield from Bantheld's Ironworks. A shield is your first priority, and then if you have extra money you will want to purchase a helm, greaves, and gloves. The shop you purchased a shield from will have these items, although if you started in Crossing, the storebought helm is terrible and doesn't protect eyes - consider a trip to Riverhaven in the not too distant future to purchase a helm there.
Now that your armor is taken care of, you should also purchase a piece of cambrinth. Cambrinth is a magical metal that stores mana, and the primary means of training the Arcana skill. DIRection ARTIFICER will either take you to Herilo's Artifacts (Crossing) shop or Zanthron's Artificer Shop (Riverhaven). Once in Herilo's, you can use the SHOP command to see what is available. Any of the 'scrap' type cambrinth pieces in the metal bucket will do. If you started in Riverhaven, Zanthron's has no good options for new players, so consider a trip to Crossing in the not too distant future. Exploration is fun!
After you have purchased these necessities, you should head to the local Cleric shop - Brother Durantine's (Crossing) or Riverhaven Cleric Shop (Riverhaven). These will be regular stops for you as a cleric, since you will get materials for Rituals and Communes here. For now, purchase Incense and Wine as they will come in handy for your first few rituals.
Preparation
We'll begin with the shield, and if you were able to obtain a small-sized target shield, we will go over how to wear it on your arm. If you were unable to obtain a target shield and are using an oval shield, skip to the next paragraph because you have to hold an oval shield for it to work. With a target shield, hold your shield in your hand and ADJUST SHIELD. This will switch the shield between two methods of wearing it: over your shoulder, or attached to your forearm. The message you will be looking for is this: You adjust the straps of your shield, tightening them so that it will fit securely upon your left arm. After you have adjusted it properly, WEAR SHIELD.
Now that you have a shield, held or worn, let's cover the STANCE command to make sure you're using the shield. STANCE SHIELD will allow you to use your Shield (100%) and Evasion (80%) skills. This is the safest stance for young adventurers, as your new armor will greatly hinder evasion until you have more ranks in its use. Once you enter combat and have a weapon in your right hand, you can STANCE PARRY to train the Parry skill. However, it is always best and safest to return to STANCE SHIELD as your default. Once you have an arm-worn small shield and are in shield stance, you can be at full defensive power all the time no matter what you are doing. Again, if you have an oval (or any medium sized) shield, you must be holding it in your left hand to use it.
Training
Upon joining the Cleric guild, you are given the choice of your first spell. While there are no 'wrong' choices of first spells, some can definitely make things more difficult on you. I would recommend getting Centering as your first spell since it will train the Augmentation skill.
For the first 10 circles, Clerics need to train 3 of the Magic Skills. This guide will cover the training of Arcana, Attunement, and Augmentation in depth to get you through, and then some tips for progressing further.
Attunement is perhaps the easiest of all Magic Skills to train. It will tell you how much mana is available in any given room by use of the PERCEIVE command. Also POWER or CONCENTRATE. It is trained as simply as walking into a new room, and checking the POWer there. Each room has a timer of 540 seconds on teaching via PERCeiving, so to train you end up doing a 'Power Walk'. Move, CONCentrate, Move, CONCentrate, Move, CONCentrate...you get the picture. On to casting!
For the sake of this Newbie Guide, all spells should follow the same pattern: (with exceptions to be discussed later)
- PREPare <spell>
- Wait until you see: You feel fully prepared to cast your spell.
- Add Mana
- Cast
The <item> in this example is the scrap/sliver/shaving you bought from the Artificer. As you're just starting out, the <amount> will only be 1 or 2 as you won't yet have the skill to put much extra mana in your spells. You can split it up however you like, in increments as small as 1. You can HARNESS 1 and CHARGE 1/INVOKE with cambrinth for a total of 2 extra mana. Eventually you will also be able to cast before the spell is fully prepared, though at low skill levels you risk backfiring and damaging your nerves.
Rituals, Devotion, Communes & Theurgy
Each of these has their own section on the main Cleric page, but it is more important to understand how they all tie together to effectively play and train a Cleric. The relationship between devotion, rituals, communes and theurgy is a bit overwhelming at first, but hopefully after reading this you will understand their interaction and how to use them to benefit your Cleric and train Theurgy effectively.
Devotion is the empirical measurement of your connection with the gods. It is raised through acts of piety (rituals), and used by our guild abilities (communes). Bluntly speaking, Rituals make devotion go up, Communes make it go down. Now, you might be asking yourself "Why would I ever want it to go down?!"...because my friend, that's how you train Theurgy.
Theurgy is the Cleric Guild's signature skill, and is trained through the use of Communes. The higher level the commune, the more experience it grants. Eventually you will be using Meraud's commune regularly, though for the near future you'll just use Eluned's to make a lot of water.
Using rituals to gain devotion while using communes to train Theurgy is supposed to be a constant, ongoing process indicating the Cleric's piety and service to the gods. Understanding this relationship between these guild abilities will allow you to understand Clerics from both a mechanical and RP perspective. Now that you've (somewhat) wrapped your head around that, on with the good news:
For the first several circles of your clerical life, you don't need to worry about it; the rituals themselves will teach Theurgy. However, this is a stopgap for younger players, so understanding the relationship is still important. The more time consuming and involved the ritual, the more devotion it grants. To begin your career as a Cleric, here's a few of the beginning rituals:
Completely Free
Requires Holy Water
- Menial Humility
- Planting of Sirese Note: You must GATHER them in one of these locations
Requires Incense/Wine
These will be your bread and butter devotion/theurgy tools for the first dozen circles. It's worth noting that the Sirese ritual grants the most devotion and experience out of those. Don't limit yourself to just these however. Visit the rituals page and try out whichever you like. Or better yet, ask another Cleric in game!
More Advanced Stuff
Now that you've got the basics, it's time to make things a little more complicated. Looking forward past just surviving your first few circles, you'll want to round out your training a little more. At level 31, you are required to begin training a second weapon, but this is much easier if you start as early as possible. I recommend everyone train at least:
- One bladed weapon (Small Edge, Large Edge, 2-Handed Edge)
- One blunt weapon (Small Blunt, Large Blunt, 2-Handed Blunt, Staves)
- One ranged weapon (Light Thrown, Heavy Thrown, Bows, Crossbows)
- Two different types of armor (not including Shield)
- Use Tactics as one of your Lore skills to circle with
- Use Targeted Magic as one of your Magic skills to circle with
Keep in mind one of the greatest things about Dragonrealms' skill system is there is that the only limit on how many skills you train is time. Pick as many or as few skills fit your character concept and roleplay; my advice here is just to make sure you can reasonably handle anything at your level the game throws at you...is that monster parrying too much? Throw an axe at its face! Is your slicing weapon deflecting off that armored critter's hide? Use a blunt!
You will probably notice that trying to train Parry is great practice at being a punching bag. I have found that at low levels, it is best to use custom hybrid stances to train parry. Try something like STANCE EVASION 100, STANCE SHIELD 40, STANCE PARRY 40 if you're having too much trouble.