New player guide

Oh my Gods! Numbers and mechanics and everything else! What does it MEAN?! What am I doing?! Well, slow down there. Let's start with your concept and character first. Read a bit about the race lore, and what class appeals to you, pick those out and your storytelling background. I can get your numbers going, but the real draw of the game is the story!

All done? Good!

Now let's go over some basics. Go to https://unwrittenlegends.net/classic/sitemap.html and look up your class, and make a quick list of your Very Good/Good skills. Set it aside for later.

Defense Stats

Endurance!

t's your health. It's important, early on. If you're new, max it out! It also scales percentile with your conditioning skill as you level. It doesn't really matter what role you take.

Reflexes and/or Strength

There's certain attacks that can only be dodged or blocked by a shield (bolts, magical or physical). Shields are bolstered primarily by strength, and reflexes secondary.

Evasion and dodging scale only off reflexes. Your class will generally determine which one you're doing (you don't want to use shields with very poor scaling, for example).

Shields > Parrying > Dodging, due to item bonuses; but you can't parry bolts of the magic or archery variety unless you have a class feature (tag) that enables so. Your mileage might vary depending on role. You'll generally want to focus on whatever is the highest skill.

Reasoning, Will, Wisdom

The highest of these three increases Gnosis, the skill used to resist magical attacks. The bonus these stats provide is flat, not percentile, unlike endurance and conditioning.

You'll make a decision on this later;for now, just keep those details in mind.

Primary stats

Go back to your class on the previous website, and pick out your spells or abilities, and find out what stats are mentioned for your class's roles. If there aren't any, and you're using a weapon-based class, that comes down to power, hybrid, and precision weapons.

Combined stats due to 'defaulting' give a lesser bonus, but the game is designed to enable different builds without having issues.

Power: Strength or average of strength and dexterity if your strength is low.

Hybrid: Highest physical stat of reflexes, dexterity, strength, then secondary highest physical stat, or average of the other two if too low.

Precision: Dexterity or average of reflexes and dexterity if your dexterity is low

Casting: Intelligence (or, average of intelligence and third-highest mental stat if intelligence is low)

Arcane: Reasoning

Vedic: Will

Astral: Wisdom

Certain spells or abilities may also specify they use a specific stat - this is ontop of the details listed above. So you could for example, as an arcane-vedic, make reasoning and will very high, and make intelligence a secondary.

This is why I suggested taking a moment to think about which stat to pick for Gnosis; which stats you take will vary depending on what your abilities your class has on display.

Will has the highest defensive bonus of all the mental stats, so if you don't care about casting spells, default to that.

So what does this mean?

Always max endurance, then strength IF shields are good+, otherwise reflexes, and making sure will is reasonably high for gnosis if you don't use spells.

Generally, my rule of thumb is to focus on one 'aspect'. Do you want to cast spells? Do you want to run around smacking things with weapons? Do you want a rapier, or a bow? Focus on the stats that make you good at that, but try not spreading yourself thinner than three stats (we're excluding Endurance - you're always maxing that out).

So, pick out the most important stats and then fill in everything else with whatever feels good.

Mind you, if you have Very Bad melee or Cannot Use spells, you might want to avoid strength on the former and intelligence/reasoning on the latter.

What to innate?

Conditioning, Shields or Evasion and Dodging, Gnosis, Tactics.

Tactics is used for some combat maneuvers and is also the skill utilized when trying to run away from a fight. It also has some secondary uses for reading scrolls and using magic items with the appropriate Tag.

Armor if you happen to be a Scientist Mechanist, non-grit mercenary, or Spiritual Cleric.

Specific roles will want to innate their specific role skills - for example, all wizards want to innate sorcery. The skills relevant to your specific build (whether that be sorcery, kinesis, unarmed combat, melee weapons, parry, etc).

Then whatever crafting or game-interactive skills you want based on what fits the theme of your character.

Settings

Type 'settings'. Most of them are self-explanatory. Turn use components on if you're an illusionist (this will let you use your focus gem), and set training to whatever skill you think is important that you're having trouble raising (it will train it while you are logged off).