Lineage 1.5 as Seen Through the Eyes of a Casual Player; Otherwise Known as: Lineage 1.5 for Newbs: The Do’s and Don’ts
I am not sure if this should be considered a guide or just a bunch of semi-useful suggestions based on my experiences with L 1.5. I have played L 1.5 since beta, however, I have taken numerous breaks over the years and played on just about every Lin private server that you can think of. I have learned much over the years and some of those lessons are listed below. I am not saying that you should or shouldn’t follow the advice below. What I am saying is that L 1.5 is so much more complex than any version of lineage that I have seen and you need to take time to consider the complexity of this game (L 1.5) before you make decisions that can and will haunt you as you build and level your characters over the long haul. God knows that I learned the hard way through a lot of bad advice, mostly by players locked into the NCSoft Lineage experience, and making decisions on char building before taking the time to research and figure out how and where I wanted to go with my main character. If you do the research then hopefully you can avoid some of the costly mistakes that I made over the years. There is not enough room and I don’t have enough time to go through all of my mistakes. Instead, I’ll list only some of the main topics from the school of hard knocks. Again, these topics are geared for novice players not the seasoned expert.
Below is a list of do’s and don’ts that I have compiled based on my experiences with L 1.5 over the years. I consider myself an average player meaning that I am not the best of the best nor am I a slouch or bottom feeder. Keep in mind that my experiences are based on trying to get the best bang for your buck and not blowing your bank account trying to acquire the best gear and achieve maximum tier in a very short time span.
• Do forget just about everything you learned as far as leveling and acquiring gear playing other versions of Lineage. Granted a lot of the hunting spots are very similar but that’s about the only similarity between 1.5 and the others.
• Do read the guides (Game Guide - http://www.l15server.com/guides/game.html and Item Guide - http://www.l15server.com/guides/items.html, Monster Guide - http://www.l15server.com/npcs/monsters.html and the Map/Monster Database from the old 1.5 web site - http://www.lineage15.com/maps.php) on the L 1.5 website and forums before you go headstrong into leveling your main character. It will help you avoid making costly mistakes (time and/or $$).
• Do take advantage of all in-game freebies
o Ancient Adena (aa) [vote on website twice a day (once every 12 hours) to get 120 aa each time you vote] which can be used to buy buffs (see list of commands) or even as auction currency (banned player gear auctions).
o Vitality Cubes (use cube every 24 hours, suggest you get one for each of six character slots) while not exactly free (100 vit coins per cube) you can get some very useful items.
Tip - Be sure to keep one charater, with high charisma on all of the time to maximize your vit coins.
o Daily instances and event instances – Can give some nice and/or rare items as well as mats for crafting.
o Pandora’s Jewelry Box (http://www.l15server.com/pandora.html) Free Plays –Gives jewels and mat’s to upgrade jewels which can be used to enhance you character’s abilities when equipped in a brooch or bracelet. Play daily, resets every morning at 1 AM eastern time. Can also get bonus passes from vitality (vit) merchant (-warp 3) that can give three extra free plays per day. Pandora’s Passes: When you donate to L 1.5 you get Pandora Passes which gives you the opportunity to win special items that aren’t available when using free passes.
o Promotions (http://www.l15server.com/promo.html) – Now and then Zaj issues promo codes for various reasons. Enter code to get prize (often mid or low grade items). A web search may return some old codes like GOODBYELIVE, a promo code issued with the closing of NCSoft US servers which will give you the Tribute set.
• Don’t use regular elixirs if you plan take your character beyond the first tier (T1). OK, this is where people will surely have different opinions. So let me explain my reasoning. Regular elixirs use up precious slots of the allotted 11 elixir slots per character. I found that it was much better to level a T1 reaper to 115 (especially during EXP events) to max many of your base stats at 25. This allows you to use all 11 slots for fluids (fluid of the Gods) which enable you to build one stat to 31 (perhaps charisma to get 5 dolls) and another to 30 without having to curse a stat. Cursing stats can be very costly. The two cursing options are 25M adena from Curse Merchant (inside shack at –warp 8) where you can lose 1-3 stat points but only free up 1 elixir slot or 35 GC for curse pot from the Gift Master (-warp 2) that works similar to Curse Merchant except you cannot lose more than 2 stat points. Granted the cost to curse a stat isn’t that much but buying and using low or mid grade elixirs to replenish those stat points can get very expensive. Hence, it may be more advantageous to take a T1 character to 115 depending on your build and available resources (adena, GC, mats, etc.)
o Tip – When starting out create an 18 charisma character and take six regular elixirs to get 24 cha. Keep this character on when you not playing your main character. The amount of additional vit coins you get over time will be very significant. You can use vit coins to purchase vit boxes (good for doll mats, buffs and other mats/pots), special scrolls (used for certain events) and Pandora’s free plays (3 per day). Use this character until your main gets more cha (you will eventually max cha and will be able to use 6 dolls).
o Tip – Another use for regular elixirs would be creation of a storage character. Start with 18 con and use the max amount of regular elixirs to enable you to hold more items. Would also want something like ogre belt for this char.
• Don’t rely too much on accelerated elixirs. They cost 500M and fail quite frequently. I spent 1 billion adena on the suckers and only ended up with 1 stat point. Perhaps they work better if you max charisma and use all lucky items available in game (I used 4 lich dolls/one mia doll, +5 lucky belt, all kinds of cha items, luck pot, etc. when I tried). Odds are you won’t have max’ed cha when you will be fixing your stats.
• Do plan ahead and choose the right stat to curse. What does that mean? It depends on the type of character you play. Some, except elves, would choose dex to curse. It depends on what class you build on. For example, if you peruse the AH and find cheap weak (go to get stats up to 18) or mid-grade (to get stats 19 to 25, must be lvl 100 or greater to use) elixirs use global in game to try to buy at prices lower than AH. Worst case scenario is you go back to AH and buy them. Anyway, curse stat and immediately pop weaks or mids to desired stat point. Note that weak and mid-grade do not count towards your elixir cap of 11 and you can use as many as you need.
o Tip - For a nice explanation of selecting, cursing and fixing stats see atilian’s video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0bdClll0aI&feature=youtu.be)
• Don’t rely on the auction house (AH) to help you determine the worth of an item. While you can occasionally get some bargains using the AH, most items have greatly inflated prices. I swear that some people set the prices real high so that they can use the AH as additional storage (item comes out of our inventory when it goes in the AH). The best way to find an item’s worth is to negotiate with players in game. Talk to people before you try to buy. Do your homework. It will help you with the negotiations.
o Tip – Don’t bother asking me for prices on expensive items because I have no idea what they will sell for. I don’t regularly keep up with prices. Prices on items can vary greatly depending on how many are looking to buy, how many looking to sell and how fast the seller needs to unload an item. One day something can sell for 1500 GC and a week later you see it going for half that or vice versa. You would think that the best time to buy is during an event where items drop like crazy. This is not always the case so be careful when you buy event items.
• Do pay attention to requirements of higher level gear before you go out and buy items. Higher level gear not only has level restrictions (lvl 80 for S80 gear and lvl 100 for X gear) but can also have base stat restrictions (very common with most, if not all X gear which is currently the best gear available), class restrictions and can be reaper only. The L 1.5 website library is a very useful tool to help you to check out the gear you are interested and determine what you need to do before will be able to use the gear.
o Tip – If you see an item that doesn’t show any of the character class icons next to the name of the item then it is a reaper only item.
• Do your best to take advantage of events. There are several events that Zaj runs throughout the year. These events are usually a great way to acquire custom gear that will help you transition from lower grade to advanced grade gear. Sometimes high grade gear is dropped during events. If you are not strong enough to handle event mobs then form parties. Try to determine how you will split the gear with the party members before you start. You may still want to party even if it’s a keep the drops you get deal. The exp gain alone will probably be worth it.
• Do make an accurate assessment of your main character before decide to go to the second tier (T2). By this time you probably have made some mistakes here and there but you have learned where and how to hunt in order to level your character. You will probably have some X gear by this point. The most important question to ask yourself is “Do I have my stats set so that I can easily max out the important stats (depends on character class and personal preference) as I tier up?” If you have been diligent with stat cursing and fluids you should be all set. If not then determine what needs to be done, as far as cursing and fixing stats and how much you think it’s going to cost you. In rare cases, it may end up costing so much to “fix” your character that it might be best to rebuild from scratch. I know this sounds horrible but if you think about it really isn’t that bad. You know where and how to hunt to level fast, you should have acquired decent gear which will speed up your leveling pace and if you do it at the start of an exp event you’ll breeze through the levels. Again, this would be only if you totally screwed up the first build. Most of the time it is best to curse and continue.
