Advanced Creation Options Guide

By siyani - Posted on 16 August 2012

[Back to Chapter 1]
This guide was made by Siyani,
a well standing member of the
Antrippan community.

Advanced Character Creation can be very overwhelming for a new player. There are many ways to customize your gameplay, but some can hurt your character more than help you. When walking through this, you will start with deciding on advantages and disadvantages that your character will enjoy (or endure).

Intresting use of these advantages and disadvantages can create very unique and fun Roleplaying opportunities, although you must never discount the mechanical impact these have. Below we will go over all of them.

First, let's look at the advantages available to you.

Animal Empathy (1000) - Animals seem to prefer you and are less likely to attack. This gives you a permanent 'animal friendship' affect - see HELP ANIMAL FRIENDSHIP.
Attractive (1000) - You are more attractive to members of the opposite sex. When someone looks at you, they will get a 'reaction'. Woroth (11) is a small male gnome. The number here is the reaction or attraction to the character. With the attractive advantage, you will have less of a chance to be attacked by aggressive sentient mobs and you will get a discount with in-game shops.
Awareness (1500) - You are more likely to notice things in a room. With this advantage, you will get a bonus to the 'detect hidden' spell and even without it you will have a better chance of seeing hidden objects or mobs in the room.
Craft Aptitude (1500) - Your crafted items may be made at higher levels, you will get a +10% to all crafts, and you will be able to make better quality items.
Combat Reflexes (2000) - You are less likely to be surprised. This means a bonus to all defensive skills in combat, and being able to stand up faster if knocked down in combat.
Eidetic Memory (2500) - You remember everything, and have a higher skill cap. You will get +10 levels to skill cap, which has a wisdom, hours, and level dependency. You also remember the names of more characters who 'introduce' to you from the other continent - HELP INTRODUCE.
Fast Healing (1500) - Your healing rate is increased to 150%.
Fast Learner (2000) - Your rate of skill increase through use is increased. This means that while using your skills (in combat, crafting, casting spells, etc) you will be able to get raises in them in shorter intervals.
Fast Mana (1500) - Your mana regain rate is increased by 150%.
Legendary (1000) - Your positive reputation grows faster than normal. When someone statuses you in a positive way, you will receive 1 point more than they award - HELP STATUS.
Lucky (1500) - Things just go your way sometimes. This gives a bonus to saves and hit roll; saves help protect against negative effects landing on you and hit roll helps your combat strikes land against your enemies.
Magic Aptitude (3000) - Magic spells require less mana. You will get a bonus to how much mana your character can train, spells will cost 2/3 of the mana it would normally cost, and your spells will be two levels stronger; so if you are level 12, your spells will cast with the strength of a level 14.
Magic Resistance (4000) - You are much less affected by magic, BUT CANNOT USE IT. This is a very, very difficult advantage and has been debated being reclassified a disadvantage. Taking this advatnage can be considered playing the game in a sort of hard-mode, as many common tasks require the ability to cast spells. Your character will require a different play style from other players:
- You may NOT use cast, somatic, or mindcast to cast any spells.
- Any spells or affects you wish placed on you must be done by other players or with the aid of pills, potions, casters, wands, scrolls, or musical instruments.
- There is a flat 50% chance that any negative spell cast against you will be absorbed and have zero impact.
- Damaging spells that are not absorbed will have a greatly reduced damage.
- Negative spell effects do land will have a greatly reduced duration.
- There is a 25% chance that any beneficial spells will have no affect.
- Beneficial spells that do land will usually only last for one 'tick' or 2 min period, although there is a random chance they may last longer.
Natural Leader (2000) - You are able to control more servants. This gives you a bonus to your charisma. You can hold more charmed animals, mirror images, or phantasmal beasts - HELP CHARM ANIMAL, MIRROR IMAGE, PHANTASMAL BEAST.
Psi Aptitude (2000) - Psionic skills require less effort. When you activate a psionic, your willpower will either regen, drain, or hold steady depending on your skill in the psionic and how many you have up. This advantage allows you to hold more at one time - HELP MIND OVER BODY, PRECOGNITION, GUIDING FOCUS, and many more.
Toughness (2000) - Your body provides some natural armor. This is very helpful. It will give you 1 additional AC per 20 levels - HELP ARMOR CLASS.
Strong Willed (2000) - Faster willpower regen and resistance to charm effects. This will make your willpower regen faster when standing, resting, or sleeping. It will also make you resistant to charm affects - HELP CHARM PERSON, PETRIFY.

Now for a look at Disadvantages. These will generally affect your character negatively, but some can be fun.

Alcoholic (-2000) - You need alcohol to function. This is just as it sounds. There are some fountains available to get alcohol from, or you can open up roleplay by purchasing from a distiller. This can be fun, but you have to have just the right amount of alcohol. If you don't, you will have a negative affect to skills and spells.
Cowardly (-2000) - You are more likely to flee from combat. Your wimpy will be permanently set to 70% health. You cannot be frenzied or berzerked. HELP MORALE, FRENZY.
Insomnia (-1000) - You have trouble getting to sleep, and staying asleep. Characters tend to wake up automatically after 1 real life minute.

This can be a pain if you don't like to babysit regen; Sleeping is your primary method of reganing health, mana, and fatigue points, you will often have to re-sleep multiple times in order to ensure your character regeneration is complete.

Lame (-1000) - Your legs are damaged, leading to a lack of mobility. Vitality is used up at a faster rate and fleeing is harder to do.
Magic Susceptible (-3000) - You are more susceptible to magic, beneficial and harmful. Basically, any spell cast on you affects you at a higher level than the caster. This makes beneficial spells help you more and harmful spells hurt you more.

It is a common tactic for Non-Player-Killers (NPK) to pick this disadvantage and avoid enemy spell casters at all costs. The increase in beneficial spells can be seen as an advantage when played properly, as long as you ensure you are not the target of harmful spells. For Player-Killers (PK) though, this strategy will not work.

Mute (-1000) - You are unable to speak. While you CAN cast spells, you cannot speak in any other way other than sign language. This can be fun for roleplay, but harmful in other aspects. Some area quests and remort quests cannot be completed by a mute character, see HELP ZONE QUEST
Old (-3000) - You start as an older member of your race. This is just as it sounds. You will reach old age faster, but you will get a higher skill cap. This can NOT be chosen by remort or child characters. HELP AGE

Restore youth spell at level 80 can reverse it.
If you reach your race's 'old age' it can be outright ignored with the use of the Vigour psionic skill at level 59.

One Eye (-1000) - You suffer from poor depth perception. This gives a -10 to damage rolls and all rooms will be 'misty' meaning you will have to look in a room several times to catch a glimpse of what all might be there.
One Hand (-2000) - You have only one functional hand to use. You can only use one handed weapons and cannot use a shield or hold other items while wielding your weapon.
Overconfident (-1500) - You are less likely to be able to flee. This will set your wimpy to 20% or less. Fleeing will be harder, as will feign death - HELP FEIGN DEATH, MORALE.
Slow Healing (-1500) - Your healing rate is decreased to 50%
Slow Learner (-2000) - Your rate of skill increase through use is decreased. This is the exact opposite of Fast Learner. The time between getting raises in skills and spells through use will be longer.
Slow Mana (-1500) - Your mana regain rate is decreased to 50%.
Unattractive (-1000) - You are less attractive to members of the opposite sex. Shops will charge you more and some might not sell to you at all. Lower reaction for other characters and mobs.
Unknown (-1000) - Your positive reputation grows slower than normal. You will receive one less point per status. If someone gives you 1 status point, your reputation will have no change.

When someone thinks highly of you for any reason and they want to give you a single point increase to your reputation, this disadvantage will result in no reputation being added at all. Only two points or greater will register as a status change for an Unknown character. One point is easy to give with few restrictions, more points require greater reasons; the most common status increases you will get are in increments of one. Therefore if reputation matters to your character, you do not want this disadvantage.

Unlucky (-1500) - Bad things are more likely to happen to you. This will decrease your saves and skill rolls. Enemy attacks will have a slightly higher chance of affecting you, and skills will have a slightly higher chance of failing.
Weak Willed (-2000) - Slower willpower regen and susceptibility to charm effects. This affects regen of willpower, not the cost to keep up psionics.

Now, what do those numbers mean?

When you make your decision, you will not be able to go under -1000. The total cost will affect how many trains you receive when you LEVEL. Racial advantages and disadvantages do not count in this total. Something to think about while looking at the numbers: If you want to lower your experience per level (HELP SETEXP) you will not be able to have too many advantages. The higher your advant total, the fewer trains you receive. The same goes for your experience to level.

If you setexp to 1,000 per level, you will receive 1 train per level.
At 5,000, you will receive 2.
At 10,000 you will recieve 3.

You can use advantages and disadvantages to balance this out.

Remember, you can change advantages and disadvantages for free up UNTIL level 5. At level 5 and higher, it will cost 2000 quest points to purchase the change. Play with your advantages. Move them around. Try new things. You have the ability to do so, so make sure you will enjoy playing the character before level 5. When you get to level 91 remort and know you will not be leveling any further, you can change them again to have a stronger character - though remember this costs 2000 quest points.

Also, you will want to consider what kind of experience are you looking for in the game. Do you want a strong, well-rounded character to start with? Or would you want to hurry up to level 91 so that you can remort and start over? Being able to train HITS and MANA as well as other STATS can be required for a really strong character.

Most of this is pretty self explanatory, but it can be a lot to take in. Below are a few suggestions and examples depending on what you plan on doing with your character.

Setups

If you need help figuring out advantages, you
can use Thurston's unofficial calculator.
The following suggestions are also from him

You are not required to create your characters in any specific way, although many members of the community have come together and suggest certain types for players depending on their play-style. Again if for Roleplaying reasons you want to do something different, there is nothing stopping you.

Pure Crafter: Craft aptitude, Eidetic, (Old or Magic susceptible), Slow healing

Disadvantages don't hurt non-combatants, and you don't have to change advantages at 91. Really easy to level up a crafter before old age kicks in, and if it does, it doesn't really hurt all that much. Old gives extra skillcap. Magic susceptible doesn't hurt at all if you aren't attacking anything that casts spells.

Battler (npk): Toughness, Magic Apt, Old, Magic suscept

Can setexp 9000 and still get full 3 trains per level. Magic suscept is nasty for pks, but not bad for npks. And old can be reversed at level 80.

Battler (npk: remort or child char): Lucky/Toughness, Magic Aptitude, Magic susceptible, Slow healing

Remorts and child chars can't choose old. Toughness will help with some of the negatives to having a child char.

Battler (Level 91): Toughness, Magic aptitude, Lucky, Combat reflexes
Battler (Level 91): Magic aptitude, Psi aptitude, Toughness, Lucky.

Low Level Premort for Starters

This is a list of fun or tolerable things to play with without hurting your game play.

Craft Apt - if you're looking to craft.
Magic Apt - if you're willing to balance this out, it is worth every point.
Magic Suscept - if you are NOT going to be pk.
Attractive and Unattractive - this is not a game changer. You likely won't even notice a difference, so if you just need something to balance you out, these are okay.

Max Level Remort

Most players after hitting level 91 as a Remort character will quest for 2,000 quest points in order to change their advantages. It is generally accepted that unless they keep a disadvantage for Roleplaying reasons, a player will set all of their advantages to positive ones.

The following were borrowed as suggestions from well-established players:

Strong 91 PK combatant - Magic Apt, Psi Apt, Toughness, Combat Reflexes.
Strong 91 NPK combatant - Magic Apt, Lucky, Toughness, Combat Reflexes.