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Asheron's Call is a fun and somewhat deep game, but it has one major problem, in that you need to make many critical and unchangeable decisions about your character before you even start playing. Most players makes such horrible mistakes that they find their character is doomed to become a farmer by around level five. They are the lucky ones. Some people make such minor mistakes that it isn't until level 20 that they realize that their character should just put on an apron and start selling supplies to "real" adventurers.

It generally is best to play through a few levels with one character before starting over with a second, just to get a feel for the game. You could take a pre-designed character, but they are all flawed, so you should instead select "adventurer" so that you can design yourself from the ground up.

The Little Things

Select a world... R is on Thistledown

Before you get on to really designing your character, you need to pick a heritage group. Alluvians use European names, but they get the worst "free" skills, Assess Person and Dagger. Gharu people have the hardest names to remember, but get the very useful Assess Item (lots of free experience) and slightly useful Staff skills. The Sho get Unarmed Combat, which is probably the best "weapon" skill in the game. Pick as you see fit.

You may also choose skin color and other physical attributes. When it comes to clothing, select items that cover as much of you as possible. They are worth a bit more (money is easily acquired, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting more), and can be made more useful if you get the Item Enchantment skill.

Your Primary Attributes And You

In the game, you'll spend experience points to increase attributes and skills. The number of points necessary for an improvement is the same whatever the level of the statistic. For example, if your starting Strength is 50, the cost to increase it to 60 (ten increases) is 2100 points. If you started at 100 Strength, it would still cost you 2100 points to raise it to 110. The point is that you want your starting attributes to be set up so that they're useful at low levels, and so that, in the long run, you'll raise them all equally. The lowest value you can start with is 10, and the highest is 100. All your attributes start at 10, and you have a pool of 270 points with which to raise them when you create the character.

Select a heritage group... the Sho are mighty popular for their fisticuffs

Let's take a good look at the six primary attributes:

Strength: Strength is critically important for all characters. Yes, even wizards will need a great deal of strength, as they can wear just as much armor as anyone else, and also have to carry a large number of spell components (a moderately high-level wizard will carry enough components to rival a suit of plate mail). You also do a bonus to damage with hand weapons if your strength is above 55, and get a penalty below that, so take 55 as a bare minimum for strength, regardless of what kind of character you use.

Endurance: Endurance is critical at low levels, as it controls health (how much damage you can take) and stamina (how long you can swing a weapon before collapsing from exhaustion). Early on, a few hits can kill you and fights can last for many swings as your somewhat incompetent character fights slightly more incompetent monsters, making an Endurance of 40 or more best for warrior types. Mages can get by with less endurance, as they'll be avoiding combat (hopefully!), and won't need stamina either. At higher levels, most fights are one-sided (either way!), and ten or twenty health points isn't going to matter. The second character you create to play with will probably have lower endurance, as you'll be able to outfit him with better stuff (from your previous character), making those early fights just a bit quicker.

R isn't a vampire trying to be invisible, he's healing himself

Coordination: This attribute influences the most skills in the game, and is of great importance to warriors and critical for archers. Many mages keep it at the minimum score of 10. As coordination influences how well you attack with a weapon, how well you fire a bow, how well you avoid melee and missile damage, and how well you can heal yourself non-magically (assuming you have the skills), non-Mages are well advised to put their "spare" points into Coordination. Coordination is not as critical as the other attributes, but it helps in many ways.

Quickness: Quickness is another attribute that is important for all characters. Primarily, Quickness influences how fast you run. Forget about the image of the doddering old mage that needs a staff to walk, in Asheron's Call, that's just rubbish! Most mages have high quickness, so they can run away from monsters, then turn and blast them from a distance. Most archers have high Quickness for the same reason. Quickness also influences, slightly, how quickly you attack with a melee weapon, making it useful for warriors. It also makes it harder for you to be hit by missiles or in melee. Quickness below 50 is almost certainly a mistake, except for an experienced player who really knows how to exploit the monster AI (or lack thereof) so that he doesn't need to run much.

A solitaire game of Pat-a-cake, or is someone cooking?

Focus: Focus is critically important for mages, and of little value to warriors. Focus influences nearly as many skills as Coordination, but none of them are as important to a warrior (except for mundane Healing). Most characters eventually learn spellcasting to at least a small extent, but unless you plan on having two or more spellcasting skills, you can afford to keep this attribute low. Focus is also important for identifying weapons and items, but you can always find someone who will do that for you.

Self: Self influences spell skills much like Focus, and also determines your maximum Mana level, at least in the beginning. Non-mages should leave it at 10, but mages should try to make this high, subject to all the other attributes being high, too! Easier said than done, of course.

Your Secondary Attributes

You can't raise secondary attributes until you gain some experience, but now is as good a time as any to look at them.

There are three secondary attributes, Health, Stamina, and Mana. Health and Stamina are influenced by your endurance—each point of Endurance gives you one of Stamina, and two points give you one of Health. You can pay experience points to raise Health and Stamina directly, or you can increase Endurance. The trick to figuring out which is better is double the cost to raise Endurance twice; this would raise your Stamina two points and your Health one point. Compare that cost to the cost of raising Health once and Stamina twice. Do whatever is cheaper.

Archers and mages do best perched on walls, like near 34.2S, 80.7E

Mana is determined by Self, on a one for one basis. You could the same trick as above to figure out which to raise, but Self also influences your spell skills, so it's usually better to raise Self even when it is more expensive than Mana.

Skills, Skills, Skills

The most absolutely, fundamentally important aspect of your character is the skills he or she possesses. Experience points, which can raise skill levels, are easily acquired in the game. Skill points, which determine what skills you can have, are very difficult to acquire. Initially, you get 50 skill points, and you get one more each level for your first ten levels. Then the skill points you get drop off quickly. Plan initially how you'll spend your first 12 skill points (acquired by level 16)…you'll have a long, long, time to plan how you'll spend the next six you get after those (level 35).

Skills can be useless, untrained, trained, or specialized. Useless skills stay that way unless you spend skill points to train them—most spell skills fit into this category. Untrained skills can be used, but you don't get experience points for using them, and you can't increase them. Trained skills are the ones you've paid to learn, and they'd better be ones you intend to use a lot. When you initially create a character, you can choose to specialize in a skill. This costs additional skill points, but it's much easier to increase a specialized skill, and you get a special five point bonus to the skill, too (on top of a five point bonus you get when you train the skill). Specialization cuts into the skill points you have for buying other skills, so here's the deal: Most great high level characters are specialized in one skill (or possibly none). Most semi-useless mid-level characters are specialized in three skills. Utterly worthless fifth level characters are specialized in more than three skills.

R heals someone else. Or maybe he just wants a hug

When you create your character, think long and hard about whether you want to specialize in a skill. Specialization makes your character much better at low levels, but at high levels, the experience and initial bonus only add up to an extra 20 points or so to a skill—and this amount can easily be matched by spells and equipment.

For example, you might specialize in sword use. This costs eight skill points. By level 30, your skill might well be 200. If you had had basic sword training, you would be around 180. But you could have spent those eight skill points to learn, say, Creature Enchantment. When needed, this would allow you to run faster, hit harder and more accurately (well past the level of the specialized swordsman), dodge better, and perform every one of your other skills better, even if you doesn't have mage attributes. Or you could learn Item Enchantment, and be able to enhance your weapons and armor greatly, and teleport around the world at will. How smart was it to have specialized in sword?

There are loads of skills, and many ways to create a character. In the next section, we'll cover some of the more popular character types

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Page Updated Mon Feb 28, 2000 8:25pm EST