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When I was about to start playing EverQuest, I felt completely overwhelmed. An enormous world. Hundreds of quests. Thousands of players. What would I do? What would my goal be? What sort of character would I play?

After only a few hours of play, I had my answers. What would I do? Beat things up. What would my goal be? Manage to stay alive. What sort of character would I play? A smart one. During the following sleepless weeks, I managed to pick up a lot of good tips for how to play a smart, savvy character and have a lot of fun doing it. I am writing this article in the hope that you can have as much fun as I did, while dying a whole lot less.

Reading the scroll gives you directions for your first little quest
If I had to come up with one word to describe EverQuest, it would be this: hard. EverQuest is a tough game. That's the genius of it. The monsters are tough. The slightest misstep can lead to quick, ugly death, not just for you but for every character nearby. Money is scarce and items are expensive. Gaining levels is glacially slow.

This is what makes EverQuest good. This means that everything you get in EverQuest, you earn. And, more importantly, everyone has to work together to succeed. If you feel bad about EverQuest having very little player vs. player play, you won't for long. This game is hard enough that you'll be very glad you don't have to worry about other characters ambushing you. That's what the monsters are for.

Mission accomplished. If you want to get any farther, you will have to go fight
This is a guide to starting out and getting established in EverQuest's chaotic, tricky world. It's really not that difficult to build a good, solid character, as long as you're a little bit careful and bear a few important tips in mind. For starters…

Building a Character
OK. EverQuest is installed. You've played through the extremely helpful tutorial program. (Don't skip it. It can save you much horror and grief.) Now it's time to make your character. This is where you, like every EverQuest player before you, smack your head up against the comically bad documentation. You are expected to take your best guess about what race to play and what career to follow. Tough call.

Fortunately, it's not as grim a choice as it may seem to be at first. There's a lot of variety in the characters and races, but some things are always true. You'll always spend most of your time at low levels soloing (adventuring by yourself) and most of your time at high levels in a party. There will always be some cities which hate you. You will always function pretty well, if you're careful. The classes and races are very well balanced. And you will always die a lot.
Whoops. Looks like someone typed 'a' at the wrong time
When selecting your class, there are several general types of character to consider. The general sort of character you pick will help determine what you'll eventually spend most of your play time doing:

Tanks (Fighters, paladins, and other characters whose primary purpose is to hit things)—At low levels, you scythe through your puny foes. When you get to higher levels, you will be very in-demand in parties, who will need someone to "tank" for them (i.e. absorb damage while the Wizards fry the monsters).

Snakes are excellent prey early on, though this specimen looks somewhat miffed
Cannons (Wizards, magicians, and other non-healing spell casters)—At low levels, you blast rats and snakes while trying to keep them from hitting you too much. At high levels, you stand in the back of your party and shoot things. There are lots of spell-casters in the world, so you may sometimes have a harder time getting invited into parties. A party can survive without a wizard. It can't survive without a tank.

Helpers (Clerics, bards)—These sorts of characters quickly become ineffective while soloing, but make up for it with amazing supportive powers for their fellow party members. A cleric almost never has trouble getting invited to join the very best parties, especially once he or she can cure disease, and the songs of a bard are always highly welcomed by the savvy player.

Small rats... every newbie's prey of choice
So pick a race that sounds interesting. Good races (humans, dwarves, etc.) are welcome in more cities. Evil races (trolls, ogres, etc.) are not, but they get the satisfaction of being evil and nasty, and are more fun to role-play.

Then pick a class. Don't agonize over the choice too much. Just pick something that sounds good. You'll probably build a new character once you understand the world a little better.

Then head on in!

The Starting Mission
Once your character has been created, you will find yourself standing in your starting city. You are frail and weak, surrounded by guards and characters that could crush you like a bug, if only they were allowed to. Feel free to feel very small and scared.

Boy. Even leather is incredibly expensive
Fortunately, the makers of EverQuest were kind enough to provide an introductory quest for each character. This gives you the chance to explore your starting town. (There's a map in the back of the documentation. This is the only thing you will ever use the documentation for.) It's also a great opportunity to talk to people and get your bearings.

Look in your inventory. There will be a scroll there. Right-click on the scroll and it will tell you whom you should give it to. Find that person, using the map as a guide, and give the scroll to him/her/it. Congratulations! You've accomplished something!

Enjoy this feeling of satisfaction. It will be the last you have for quite a little while.

Oddly enough, booze can give useful bonuses to fighters
Walk around town. Talk to people. Some of them will give you quests meant for introductory characters. Take notes. Look at the items in the stores. Wow! They sure are expensive, aren't they? Take a moment to dream, and then move on. When you're satisfied that there's nothing else for you to do, it's time to go outdoors and hunt rats.

One final warning. To talk to someone, you left-click on them, press Return, and type what you say. Make absolutely sure not to skip that Press Return step, or the first time you type 'a', the character will fight you. You will then die, in a very fast, very funny way.

Everyone makes this mistake at least once. Sometimes, when you see the body of a newbie lying on the ground in front of one of the town guards, have a nice, nostalgic laugh.

Heading Outdoors
Make your way to the town gates. On the other side, you will see the newbie area, fabled in song and story. Every city has one. Some cities have two. Here, wimpy monsters like moss snakes and bats pace placidly back and forth, waiting for someone much like you to walk up and kill them. Get started. You'll have to fight a lot of little monsters before you're buff enough to do anything useful.

It is precisely this part of the game that earned EverQuest its reputation as the most comprehensive, powerful, massively multiplayer rat-killing simulation ever made. This isn't entirely accurate. You also spend lots of time searching for your corpse.

But I digress.

You'll need to go solo for a while, hunting small critters until you're level 7 or so. This will give you lots of practice hunting monsters, preparing you for bigger game.

Walk outside your starting city and poke around, staying close to the gate. Look for something small, like a bat or a rat or a snake. Left-click on it to select it as a target, and type 'c' (for consider). This is something you should always do before attacking. The difficulty of monsters varies greatly. One young kodiak may be an easy target, while another may be completely lethal. Pay attention to the color of the text when you consider something. If the color is green, the creature is too weak to give you experience. If the color is red or yellow, it's too strong (trust me). Blue or black is just right.

When you find a good target, type 'a' (for attack) and walk up to it. Watch the battle for a little while. If you're playing a spell-caster, burn the critter with spells while you fight. Fortunately, at low levels, everyone is strong enough to kill the weak creatures with melee weapons.

If you ever get knocked below two bubbles of health (2/5 of the life bar), strongly consider running back to the gate so that the guards there can save you. But if you chose your target correctly, odds are that the poor, hapless critter will expire, and you will get a little bit of experience. Search the corpse for any grisly trophies you can wipe off and sell for money (sometimes, it seems like EverQuest operates on a bat wing-based economy), go back to the gate to rest, and repeat the process until you're tough.

Picking Your Targets
EverQuest has been painstakingly designed to make sure that nothing is ever easy for you. Hunting creatures for experience is no exception. Once you attain a high enough level to kill a creature easily, it no longer gives you experience. You must move on to nastier foes with bigger teeth.

How could anyone resist role-playing this ugly monster?
As you go through the first few levels, the most important thing you'll need to decide is where to do your hunting. Pick too easy a spot, and you'll take forever to gain a level. Pick too tough a spot and you'll spend a lot of time on your back with no head.

Once you gain a level, wander around and consider all the available creatures. Fight a few. Figure out which creatures are still giving you reasonable experience. Of those, pick the one or two which you can kill without much trouble (you'll need to kill a few dozen creatures to gain a level, no matter what, so make sure that your chosen prey isn't too tough).

Finally, once you've determined your prey, figure out where to hunt. You want an area where targets are plentiful but where there aren't many tough creatures around waiting to ambush you. When you're looking for orc raiders, getting buzzsawed repeatedly by giants gets old real fast. Be patient and explore all of the sections around you. Don't be afraid to shout out asking for advice on where to hunt. You'll find a good place eventually. All hunting grounds are not created equal.

Then, if you work hard, maybe one day you can carry a dolly too!
When just starting out, kill bats, giant rats, and snakes. Always look for decaying skeletons. They're easy prey and the items they carry are sometimes valuable. Eventually, you can move up to fire beetles, young spiderlings, worker scarabs, and smaller orcs and goblins. Then, at last, when you have a few levels under your belt and you can play EverQuest in your sleep (and, in fact, probably have) you can start to join parties and hunt the big game.

mmorphon00@yahoo.com

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