Archeage tips
The reason to play the beta is to see if you like it at all. Also to get familiarized, learn how to claim land, which land you will prefer, and hopefully get some sea time.
This is the travel map for east continent.
Unless they allow everyone in the beta, to hold land you must to be a patron, which is like ~$12 of credits. Since it's beta you will however be refunded any credits you buy in beta on go-live, so you essentially get to spend them twice. If you don't care about land just skip the land stuff. If you decide later not to worry with land, you can always sell it. Without land you will rely on public farms, unprotected land, and landed friends (or spice) to grow stuff. (see 'families' below)
Primary factors for land choice roughly in order of priority:
PVP or non PVP zone: non PVP preferred naturally.
Climate: Everything grows everywhere but does so faster and lives longer in the right climate. Most things prefer temperate climate.
Coast: Coast is preferred if u intend to do sea trading.
Public Transport: Can be helpful.
Race has nothing to do with where you may build. It has only to do with cosmetics and the minor racial abilities. However we are doing east. Because kitties. Asians can hearth more often, and harvest quicker which means u will win races where u and someone else get to a node at the same time. Kitties climb faster and fall farther. The latter makes glider travel safer.
List of eastern non PVP zones:
- Arcum Iris (arid) (no coast)
- Falcorth Plains (temperate) (no coast, but airship hub)
- Mahadevi (tropical) (coast)
- Silent Forest (temperate) (no coast, crappy mountains)
- Solis Headlands (arid) (coast)
- Tigerspine (temperate) (no coast, less crappy mountains)
- Vilanelle (temperate) (coast, thus crappy mountains don't matter so much)
Vilanelle seems the obvious choice, temperate and coast. But the sea lanes are a bit restricted so it's harder to hide from pirates.
Solis gives you lots of opportunity to go the LONG way round and avoid the most pirate patrolled waters, but it's arid.
Mahadevi is between those two, but tropical.
To get land you will primarily quest. You will get an 8x8 garden from just doing the obvious quest line (by which time you should already have your first mount and maybe glider). Once you get the garden you will need the following which you will use your garden to grow:
- [Arcum Iris Lavaspice] 60 Turmeric & 50 Dried Flower (Most Flowers (Azaleas cheapest)+ Knife)
- [Falcorth Plains Snowlion Yarn] 30 Goose Down(barley)** & 50 Medicinal Powder (Medical plants (Mushrooms cheapest) + Knife) rewards DONKEY***
- [Tigerspine Grape Jam] 30 Grape & 50 Chopped Vegetables* (Vegetables (Potatoes cheapest) + Knife)
- [Mahadevi Elephant Cookies] 10 Banana & 50 Chopped Vegetables* (Vegetables (Potatoes cheapest) + Knife) rewards 16x16 FARM
* may be grown on public garden
** geese eat ground grain feed which is cheapest to make with barley which may be grown on a public garden
*** Donkeys are the first thing that can carry packs, other than your back which is SLOW
Each of those four steps requires you to move the pack that you made to market. Before you get the donkey you will want to use public carriage or airship. (see the map) Depending on how you catch them, they can be faster even once you have a donkey. You can fight with a pack but you can't run, and if you die you drop your pack. Better hope you get back before someone finds it. Carriages and airships don't get attacked by mobs.
Once you get the quest complete you can sell the pack to a gold merchant (practical) or take it to your garden to store (which takes a little room) until you have access to a clipper to bring it oversea to get gilda stars (GS) for it (less practical) or try to traverse the sea in a rowboat (SLOOOOW and likely you and your pack will end up sleeping with the fishes)
Anything that you can grow on a public garden you probably should, to free up your own garden, but publics are only protected for 24 hours, and has a limit of 10 at one time.
Grapes and geese CAN be grown on public nursery and public farm respectively, but you have to chop or slaughter before 24 hours or someone else will.
Anything can be grown ANYWHERE if you like to find hiding spots. But if you aren't as clever as you think, anyone that finds it can harvest it.
Similarly if you don't mind accumulating crime points you can harvest whatever you find with a name on it. Crime points won't hurt you until you pvp, which you won't likely in the beta. If you are convicted of 3k crime you become a pirate and KOS (red/attackable) to everyone. But again you won't go to trial until you pvp and you'd have to work to get 3k anyway during the beta. I hate stealing but in the beta it's hard to argue against it.
Some stuff grows spontaneously; it won't have a player name. You can freely pick/chop it, and you should unless your labor is pinched. If it's 'small' or 'seedling' or 'sapling' it will occasionally get you a seed or seedling, but usually you just kill the plant and waste labor.
The other way to get land is a 15 gilda star (GS as opposed to G for gold) cottage, which you should be able to afford pretty early. You may place the cottage, but not build it, to hold land. Spending the 15GS may however preclude you being able to buy a clipper, which costs 50GS. Ships are nice, but people can ride on each others ships. In the beginning GS are primarily to be earned via quests, later from sea trade.
You will need 100 lumber(logs), 100 iron bars(iron ore) and 100 cloth(cotton/wool) to build your clipper. This can be a group project. People seem to prefer harpoon clipper to cannon clipper, tho I suspect this is because they intend to board, as opposed to sink potential boarders.
Your mount gets XP from riding and watching you fight. It does not get XP from watching you garden/harvest/mine/craft, etc.
You can share garden duties. The easiest way is having a family, which is like a step below a guild. Families are free and can have up to 8 people, and if you have your plot set to 'family' any family member can plant or harvest.
I have few ideas about which class combo is 'best'. Your first tree should be a dps tree like battlerage, sorcery, archery, occultism. I like to have vitalism as the third one since it heals & rezes, and you lose some xp when you die (2% unless u don't pray, but u will always pray) if you don't get a rez. Being able to rez seems polite to me as well as handy. Conventional wisdom is do not change class trees while you are leveling however or u make work for yourself later. You may freely reset skills within the same classes however so long as u have the cash.
Anyone can wear any armor. Plate mitigates phys dmg defense. Leather helps archery offense. Cloth helps caster offense.
Most activity other than fighting uses labor points. Labor points regenerate 5/5min online or 10/5min for patrons. Patrons also get some regen while offline.
This game has a lot of cute and novel features. I do not know if it has legs tho, and I'm not pushing the game past the beta. Honestly I prefer Rift as the most polished MMO extant, imo. But I don't mind a Archeage diversion. This game requires tending, and probably social coordination. You don't make the good endgame lucre without travel thru PVP zones, though of course there are ways around that. The most obvious is we all sail/caravan together. You can also smuggle.
And my personal dream is a peaceful goods runner business or co-op. Since we cannot be attacked in home non-pvp zones, it seems to me we could have a service to run goods for people who similarly do not like PVP. They bring goods to a deserted coast and we deliver them safely. They just have to trust us, but that's what reputations are about. In other words I would like to break the intended PVP orientation of the game with peaceful trade. (not fundamentally against PVP mind you, I just like bucking systems:)