Needing some advice on how to start

[Darnock]

So I just made it to the big castle. I'm really enjoying the game but I have a few questions.

What do I need to be focused on? Right now I'm talking to the people in the city and doing favors. I'd like to learn how to do magic. I'm pretty happy with sword right now though. What are some skills I need to get and to start leveling them up? People talk about map making or something like that a lot and I'm unsure what that is.

Thats pretty much it, just trying to figure out what to do next

Thank you guys so much, amazing game

[Rhawkas]

The main thing you'll want to be doing is increasing the favor of the various NPCs around Serbule Keep. This will let you learn more skills from them, gain access to storage space with some of them, give you options to Hang Out, more favors (quests/errands) to do, and give merchants more money to spend. You can do this by doing favors for them, hanging out (if you have that option unlocked), or by giving them gifts. You can do Small Talk to get a general idea of what items an NPC likes and you can choose "More Info" when right-clicking on an item and select the "Gifting" (I think) tab to see what NPCs will like that item.

As for particular skills, I'd recommend getting a set of tools:
Autopsy Kit (can get it from Lawara on the starter island)
Handsaw (Therese in the garden in Serbule Keep sells them)
Skinning Knife (bit harder to get, check the buy used tabs of merchants or the player vendors, otherwise you'll have to go find Kleave in Eltibule Keep to get one)
Butcher Knife (I think the cook at the inn in Serbule Keep sells them)
Shovel (Mushroom Jack in Serbule Keep sells them)

These tools will let you autopsy enemies you kill, skin or butcher their corpses if possible, bury their corpses (raises the Compassion skill and allows the enemy to respawn sooner), and harvest wood from trees that are out of fruit or logs on the ground. They also raise the associated skills.

If you need money, head North-Northeast of Serbule Keep to the docks. There's a work order board there that can get you some decent amounts of change for collecting stuff you'll probably come across anyway.

I'd suggest to keep doing favors for the NPCs, explore Serbule Keep, and familiarize yourself a bit more with the game while getting stronger and maybe better equipped. Also check your Journal and find the "Things to do" tab and see if you can complete those.

If you head south of Serbule Keep you'll reach Serbule Hills. It's a little more difficult than most areas of Serbule Keep, but it has enemies that can give you Hunting quests which can give you good chunks of experience. You can identify them by the glowing blue crowns floating above their heads. Just kill an enemy with one of those crowns and you'll get a quest to kill more of that enemy type, after which point you'll get some experience.

Feel free to ask more questions and welcome to Project: Gorgon! =D

[ShieldBreaker]

You'll want to talk to Velkort in Serbule, if you want to learn fire magic. The easiest one to start learning.

If you are not sure what to do, find Pennoc and do his repeating quests each hour. He will give you a broad sampling of task you can perform in game and you can get a feel for what activities you like and don't like.

There is no really required things you have to do. That being said, every skill is basically useful in some way. Industry skill which you get from filling work orders is a great way to make money. Surveying gets you valuable resources you can use yourself or sell. Food is really important so you might want to level your cooking, otherwise you would need to budget for buying food off of other players. Do what you find fun mostly, you may decide you need to level one skill, so you can unlock a related skill, but if you built up skills, resources, and money then you might have an easier go on skills you decide you need but don't enjoy playing later. In a bunch of cases you can buy what you need if can't make it yourself at the moment.

[liz_the_wiz]

The beauty of games like this is there is no wrong.. or right way to do any of it. There is no must do's

[Flet]

The game is about being focused and picking a thing to do and working on it. Its so easy to get distracted and side tracked and find out at the end of the day what you have actually done is made a small amount of progress towards a dozen different things...

I think the first thing to do after newbie island is to get some storage. Not having storage feels bad, having storage lets you feel good!

This is how i do it (ive rerolled a few times)
-Kill skeletons on newbie island untill you have a decent stack of strange dirt (60-70) and around 30 empty bottles
-Start gardening. Cook your vegitables into food (be selective with the recipes you buy from fainor, look at cost of other ingredients and final value of the dish) and sell that food to fainor to get more money to continue buying seedlings and other ingredients to cook more food.
-Once he runs out of money gift him food to the next favor level to get more money. Repeat untill he is close friend or more.
-Give marna food to get more storage space. Max her out to soul mate. Dat storage space.
-Once fainor is best friends or so it will become more cost effective to repeat your food selling and food gifting routine to sir arif, who is in the serbule crypts, but easily accessible via the sewers.

This is to get you storage space via marna and pay for it (and earn extra cash) by selling the food. The upside is you now also have two food-buying vendors that reset weekly so you can always garden up some beets or something and sell them stacks of it for a profit while doing something else like growing cotton to sell to players. You can also cook food for yourself now. I recommend the fruit cocktail recipes you will have lots of fruit if you are diligent about raising foraging skill anyway.

There are, of course, other ways to level up marna favor, but she gets so much from vegetarian dishes that this method is really just the best way to go even if you dont plan on cooking or gardening afterwards.

Now that you have storage its time to think about combat skills you want to focus on, and how you plan on making money long term. But dont get carried away, start growing those potatoes first. Focus!

[alleryn]

Don't forget ivyn and tadion storage too (Charles Thompson is probably less useful), though those are a bit trickier to level up (well ivyn is not so bad really).