Character Building

Character building can be accomplished in many ways from diligently practising your skills to the performing of mighty quests to the gaining of positions of power through which you can influence the lives of others. Some of the main attributes of your character are described below.

Level

To ascertain your progress, the primary command is SCORE. This shows information about your character including your current experience level which can be taken as a rough indicator of your might and power within the land.

In the game, a character starts as a naked and sparse-skilled newborn. From then on you are led and guided to the Academy of your birth-city, where many of your early hours will be spent. You will be guided through your Accolades - a set of quests which must be performed, and it is hoped they should provide you with a basic understanding of the land. After these are completed, you will graduate from your Academy - and from that moment on, you will be able to choose your own destiny.

FIrst Age, unlike most of the other multi-user games, is not based purely around score. It has a complex system of levels which you ascend by simply experiencing the world. Many have difficulty grasping the fact that in First Age you gain points by just wanderi ng around and looking at things evolve. It is likely that your ultimate aim will be to progress to the divine status of God. You must realise that God is not simply a level obtainable by gaining an enormous amount of experience. Reaching God must be done via much hardship and quests; Gods have nearly limitless power of creation and destruction and the obtaining of this power must reflect this important responsibility.

To reach God you must progress all of the mortal levels. They start at Newborn and end at Avalonian. As a rough guide-line, once you reach the level of Indefatigable you are doing rather well! Eventually you reach Avalonian where progression depends on your interactive skills, time spent with others and group quests. Beyond Avalonian lies the very final mortal level, that of Ordainable. Once you are of the level of Ordainable you are physically ready to transcend mortality. All that remains is for you to collect the fifteen gemstones, a quest the likes of which you will have never seen before.

Skills

Arguably, skill levels are at least as important as experience in terms of character development. Skills are discussed in more detail later.

Alignment

Your alignment is a gauge of the ideals by which your character lives and is influenced directly by your acts. You will find it is a slippery slope dabbling with the Dark Side. It is easy to become evil but extremely difficult to return yourself to purity. Alignment is a gauge used by First Age to determine whether your character leans toward altruistic or selfish actions. Available when you type STATUS, it measures your propensity towards the good forces in Avalon or the darker, more sinister cause of evil. Your character's alignment alters slightly with each and every action that you perform. You are more likely, therefore, to lean towards the dark sides through the act of slaughtering an innocent child or through aiding in the pillaging of a peaceful township. Equally you are upholding all that is Good should you defend that village or heal that beleaguered child. Alignment is one of the factors that govern many aspects of your character's interaction with Avalonian beings - it therefore rests at the crux of the question of role-play, and you should give considerable thought to where between the poles of Good and Evil your character should lie.

Status

The STATUS command shows you details of citizenship, your alignment, current physical status, and other information. It details the feelings of the major civilisations and sects towards you. Only a status of friend or enemy is shown, and you will find this list expanding as your experience and discoveries grow.