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). You can exchange the weapons and armor that you started with for those 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. Next order of business, obtain a shield. 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. You will also want to obtain greaves, gloves, and a helm in the near future - but a shield is definitely the first priority.
Preparation
This section to cover stances, shield adjusting, etc.
Training
Training tips, links to Cambrinth usage, etc.
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.