Beginner's guide

Welcome to DragonRealms, one of the most in-depth and expansive games. This article is an attempt to aquaint you with an incredibly complex world that has not always had the new player in mind.

Character Creator

When a character is first begun, they will be in a limbo world in which they will be able to choose many of their traits.

Name

Your name is actually one of the most important things about your character. It is the thing that everyone will see first, it is how people will talk about you, and it's how people will interact with you.

You initially will only be able to pick your first name, though later on you will have the option of adding a family name.

The rules are fairly straightforward. Your first name must be unique, not contain any real life references (Microwave is not going to work), drug references, profanities, numbers, titles (Lordnose, Kingbrave, etc. won't make it) or references to major literary characters (leave your Drizzt clone at home, or at least give him/her a creative name). If you violate these rules, it may get past the automatic filters, but a GameMaster will probably visit you later and make you change it.

Rule of thumb is that if you'd be ashamed to have it on your birth certificate, consider picking something else.

Now, already you may have seen people with names that violate one or more of these rules. What it comes down to is that DR has been around 15+ years and the rules have not always been stringently enforced, or even terribly well defined. If you see one of these names, understand that they've probably been playing for years and pity has been taken on them so that they wouldn't need to rebuild all their old friends/enemies if their name suddenly changed.

Gender

In DragonRealms, gender means little. While you might occasionally have different reactions from people, there is no real benefit to either gender.

Race

The second major choice you will face is your race. Your race primarily determines how much it will cost you to improve your stats. Each race has several areas in which they are excellent at, and several which they are lacking.

It should be noted that there is no coherent system of racial bonuses beyond the stat training. For example, while a specific shopkeeper might treat all dwarves better or insult elves, the one across the street may have wildly different reactions, or none at all.

While you may pick a race with an eye towards a specific style or guild, it is highly advised that races be picked on the basis of which culture the player enjoys. Some of the most interesting characters can come from mismatched choices (gnome barbarian anyone?).

• Dwarf: Slow, tough, and disciplined. The hairy rock-kissers of fantasy you know and love, even the women can grow beards.
• Elf: Fast and charismatic, elves are slightly weaker and frailer than humans. Tall, long-lived, and tending toward naturistic, elves come in a variety of subtypes that can drastically affect their views of the world.
• Elothean: Incredibly intelligent but weak and frail. A people that value knowledge over almost everything else, and have a strange inability to grow hair on most of their heads, Elotheans push the boundaries of nearly every intellectual pursuit.
• Gnome: Agile and intelligent, but weak and frail. These are short folks with keen minds and an affinity for mechanical devices and magic.
• Gor'Tog: Strong, tough, but not terribly bright. They are huge, hairless, green giants that tend towards physical labor.
• Halfling: Agile, tough, but weak and undisciplined. The short folks with the hairy feet and a love of food, drink, food, sleeping, and food. Don't discount them, or you might find they've run off with your money while you were calling them names.
• Human: Humans lack any particular strengths, but also any weaknesses. As widely varied as any real life group, humans can be found doing nearly anything almost anywhere.
• Kaldar: Strong and charismatic, but often distainful of mental pursuits. Looking much like large, bulky humans, Kaldar are a refugee splinter group from the warlike Gorbesh.
• Prydaen: Fast and charismatic, but poorly disciplined and prone to lacking common sense. Prydaen appear to be a strange mix between a human and any of the various predatory felines. Call them a cat at your own risk. They came to this land fleeing the near extinction at the hands of a powerful Necromancer.
• Rakash: Fast but uncordinated, slow mentally but tough. While mostly indistinguishable from any random human, when the black moon Katamba is full, they become take on the form of a wolf-human hybrid. Like the Prydaen, they fled a powerful Necromancer and attempt to rebuild their packs in the eastern lands.
• S'Kra Mur: Strong and fast, but a bit slow upstairs. Humanoids with lizardlike features, the S'Kra Mur have a strange culture that has strange concepts of honor and kinship.

A table giving more detail on attribute aptitudes can be found here.

Appearance

DragonRealms allows people to customize their characters to a large extent. In rare cases, some cultures may prize certain features, for the average adventurer it hardly matters. There should be no worry that your choices will hinder you, even if it ends up sinister or silly.

First Steps

Once the appearance is finalized and you step out into the world of Elanthia, you will find yourself in one of the two starting cities, either The Crossings or Riverhaven. It will be noted in this guide if the cities differ in some way.

While within the walls of either of the starting cities, the DIR command can be used to receive directions to major landmarks, such as the guildhouses or merchants.

Guild

The third of the major changes that you will asked to make is to choose your guild. This is much like your class or profession in other games, and it will determine much of your special abilities, as well as affecting how easily you train certain skills.

Much like race, most of the long term players would agree that the characters they enjoy the most have the guilds picked due to their flavor or history, rather than the mechanical advantages.

A short description for each guild follows, but it should be kept in mind that these are general stereotypes and areas of strength for the guilds. With enough effort and time, any character of any race or guild can become great at anything.

• Barbarian: The guild of fighters. They excel at weapon learning and utilize the poorly understood power of Inner Fire to accomplish amazing feats, but give up the ability to use magic to do so.
• Bard: A strange mix of warrior, musician, and historian, Bards wield magic in their songs, but still maintain a strong skill in mundane martial attacks. With their focus on scholarly pursuits, Bards make excellent craftsmen.
• Cleric: Whether crusading to destroy the foul undead or tending to spirits of the fallen, Clerics represent all the gods of Elanthia, good and evil. For their devotion, the gods reward them with amazing magics.
• Empath: The Empath guild is one of healing. Through their powerful supernatural connections to others, they are able to draw injuries to themselves and then heal it with their magic. The side effect is that any harm done to living or once living creatures cause feedback that can cripple their abilities. While some Empaths like to ascribe this as a moral issue, the numerous lifeless constructs that have fallen to more warlik empaths seems to discount this.
• Moon Mage: They are masters of predicting the future from the stars and planets, as well as a wide mix of powerful spells. The Moon Mage guild has numerous sub-sects that make it up, as well as a history of producing some mages with an unhealthy interest in politics.
• Necromancer: This guild is intentionally designed as a hard mode for long-time players. Everything is more difficult, and the consequences for making a mistake are more severe. If you are reading this guide, you do not have experience necessary to play them.
• Paladin: Holy warriors, these masters of defense are held by the gods to a higher standard of honor than others, but are granted powers by the purity of their souls. Though they are primarily warriors of the sword and shield, their cause is bolstered by dabbling in holy magics unshared with clerics.
• Ranger: The classic woodland warrior, Rangers mix magic, stealth, and weapons to create a potent force. However, their abilities wane when too much time is spent in cities, so it is rare to see a Ranger in town for long.
• Thief: The pesky fellows who take your money and stab you in the back before you see them. While not as bad as the Necromancer guild, the Thief guild is more difficult, including puzzles just to find their guildhouse. Not recommended for people who need this guide.
• Trader: Masters of commerce and the power of money, Traders criss-cross the lands with their caravans delivering goods, or set up shops in the major city's plazas to market their wares to adventurers. Between their aptitude for crafting and ability to rent shops, Traders make, by far, the best merchants. Note: Traders have had a history of little development, however they are slated to receive access to their own magic system at some point in the near future.
• Warrior Mage: Masters of the six elements, Warrior Mages are the classic fireball-throwing mages of fantasy. Luckily for them, no rules restrict them to robes or nightshirts, though they are less adept at wearing armor than the average adventurer. Their typical response is to simply kill everything before it gets near them.

The last, and very rarely chosen option is to remain a Commoner. Commoners will never gain any promotions, or any special abilities, as long as they remain a commoner. Some people choose this path for roleplaying reasons, or because they are preparing for a guild later, since Commoners learn everything moderately well. It is highly advised that a guild be chosen.

Once you reach your chosen guild using the DIR command, proceed to the area with the Guildmaster and type JOIN twice. If at that point, the guildmaster informs you that you do not have the correct stats for the guild, he or she will offer to train you to the minimums.

It should be noted that so long as you have not received your first promotion, you can switch to another (exception is Thieves and Necromancers), though you will lose all of your learned skills.

Please Read

After having writen all this, it is important to add a very large warning. DragonRealms has one of the biggest updates in it's history coming. It will affect nearly every system in the game, including a near complete rewrite of some guild abilities. More details can be found here, but newer people should not feel that they must or even need to read it.

The why is fairly simple: DragonRealms was initially designed 15+ years ago with the expectation that 100 ranks in a skill would be godlike. With some players hitting 1500 or more ranks, many things that seemed like a good idea before can be disasterous at higher levels. For example, if x item gives you 5% bonus to using an axe, at 100 ranks that's 5 ranks, no big deal. At 1500 ranks that's 75 ranks, enough to go from completely missing to hitting solidly.

Don't panic. Much of what you have already learned will not change. And for everything else, everyone will be as much in the dark about the new changes as you. If you find yourself worried, log onto the test server (accessed through the same means you use to connect to the main server) and play around. Nothing done there affects your character in the main game.