Meridian 60 doesn't have a world map at the start, you have to "draw" it yourself by wandering around. Well to some degree Geographer and Historian will expose things but not a ton. However everyone knows that you can follow rivers to civilization, especially downstream. After pushing around the woods and getting into some fights I found a river and followed it. Now Meridian 60 is a proc gen MMO not a hand made one and I was in a medium level area but still, rivers usually work. I got to 320 out of 400 exp before I got to town. I considered grinding but you don't get a new set of Abilities until level 5. As a human variant I get 2 every 5 levels and as a High Human I get an extra one every 10 levels. I'm only level 2 though. Bummer. A nice social ability could have really helped me out.

Now villages are great and all and I'd like to buy some basic gear, but I have Cantrips so I don't need water or a bath or anything like that. At lower levels most templates actually grind at a pretty similar rate. Mana slows me down but utility spells speed me up. A fighter would need to repair gear and drink and bathe and so forth. In any case I am almost naked, but not dirty which is a bit confusing for people. A small village usually only has a general store which is fine. Who is going to let the naked guy into a fine tailor? I sell my vendor trash and my few decent crafting items, since I was cursed to be a stupid mage and not an awesome crafter, and grab some mid tier clothes. Nothing fancy but not trash. At least I'll be presentable when I find a decent city.

As a mage I really do want to hit up a good city. Sure you can find an ancient master out in the woods or w/e but its hard, I'm low level in a mid tier zone, and I already have special magic. Major cities will have guilds and noble houses and bazaars and also adventuring guilds. Most modern games have dumped Adventurer's Guilds, but M60 was oldschool. Mostly I was worried about quests. As a unique mage rather than a common one I really needed a more focused Guild for my actual training.

A major mage guild might even have an epic quest for a rare Template. My first multi-plate would probably be something half mage and half adventurer. DEX aside getting a magical rogue or ranger class would help a lot. A boost to loot finding, dealing with traps and puzzles, maybe some sort of arcane weapon skill to at least lower my mana burn rate, and a moderate boost to my base stats for STR, CON, and CHA. I didn't want a basic class, I needed something magic related. In D&D they called them prestige classes but in M60 they were just Secret or Unique/Legendary level templates.

Nothing in the village was super helpful, aside from the basics. Some of the quests would have been good for a ranger or warrior but for a mage with a Unique or Legendary Template it was meh. Templates basically had the same 5 levels that games still use now, which was also what they used to use in old CRPGs. Basic, Uncommon, Extraordinary, Legendary, and Unique.

It turns out only 10 of the 10000 players had Unique Templates, 100 had Legendary, 1000 had extra ordinary, and 2500 had Uncommon. The other 6400 has Basic. Getting an Uncommon Template wasn't that hard, especially for experienced players, and there was reduced competition since we didn't have a ton of people in game. 100% of beta testers ended up with 2 or more Uncommon Templates. 40% got at least one Extraordinary, 10% at least 1 Legendary, and 2% ended up with at least one Unique Template. Of course this is all stuff that came out later. At the time I didn't know if my sitution was commonplace or abnormal.

~50 players ended up with more than one Unique Template. I had 3 and 2 Legendary Templates and 2 Extraordinary Templates. You weren't capped at 7 Templates or anything but given the limited time on the clock and the fact that for me another Extraordinary Template, much less an Uncommon or Basic one, was more of a utility boost than a power boost, I didn't try to get more. One player got up to 14 templates, all Uncommon or better, but he only had 1 Unique Template, 2 Legendary, and 2 Extraordinary. Hitting 9 for Uncommon on top of that was more of a hoarding thing for him than a significant buff.

That's a long way off, though. We had 8 months and I picked up my second Template, a Legendary one, a month in. We're still on the first week. I refused to multi into anything lower than Extraordinary just for snob purposes. There were one or two Uncommons I maybe could have benefitted from early on but it was a sort of trade off between early growth vs being stuck with weak capabilities later. Hard to say if it would have sped things up vs pouring all my points into high tier options.

I had a lot of time to think during my trip down the river road. I assume you'd take half a chapter of build debate over 10 chapters of walking. I had a couple fights and I hit level 3. I guess we can talk about the key fight for my levelup. EXP costs double till level 10. So it takes 102300 exp to hit level 10, since we started at 0. We're half way through week one and that took me 2 weeks so right on schedule. What's the number one threat to beta testers? Bears. Number 2 threat? Also bears. Specifically I fought 2 bears.

Stone Bear Level 4 80EXP

HP 160

STR 16 DEX 8 CON 16

Skills: Slash 40 | Bite 40 | Charge 80

I was at 320 if you recall so I only needed one bear, but fuck me right?

I've got 98 HP and 252 mana at this point. I was sorely tempted to pump CON but I held off till level 10. Really mana is my main problem. These bears were fhsing in the river but its an RPG so you know we will be having a fight. Might as well take the initiative rather than waiting for their aggro to trigger when I try to sneak by. I guess technically I have Worldstep and I could blaze by fast but if I ran into something up the road I'd be low on mana.

The bears are on the shore eating their catch as I approach. Which is good. Fire and acid are not water friendly. It would be nice if I had Illusion. With Smoke and Copy combined with my lockdown abilities I'd be able to safely fight 1 on 1. I took down the other bear with 21 less mana and no damage. I should be good for 2 of these guys now. I am worried about charge but it has a prep time. I can take a couple hits before I die.

I start off with my basic spell chain of Boost. I have Lockdown which has an 8ft diameter. I can hit them both. Of course my next spell would probably be Envenom. Then I'd be out of Boost. Boots puts Lockdown to 8.4 seconds after Spellsage which isn't bad. 114 mana. I probably want Quicken so I can maximize Lockdown's timer. Quicken, Boost, Lockdown, gives me 8.4 seconds of Root and 7.6 seconds of Haste.

I wish I had the mana for Boost, and then Tricasting Boost buffed Fireballs. That would be 210 damage. 140 for 2. Ah well. Maybe I shoulda been loading stats into INT. I thought about my options aside from QBL followed by Envenom. 154 of 252 mana. That meant I'd only have 98 mana, well 100 with regen, to wipe out the second bear. Envenom+Spellsage with Boost+Highmage actually takes down a whole bear, assuming I can stay out of danger. I'd have 7 ticks of Envenom during Lockdown.

I'd have burned 154 of 252+2 mana to clear the first bear, with 12 seconds of Envenom dealing 168. I'd then need to deal 160 damage worth of mana with 100 mana to the second bear. Casting unboosted Envenom gets me 12 seconds of damage for 96 damage for 25 mana which is awesome. You can't stack Envenom sadly, it just boosts the duration. I do not have 20 seconds. I have 75 mana and I need to stay safe and deal 64 damage. Splash 40 damage for 25 mana. And its a DoT that can stack with Envenom. So I've got 50 mana left.

One option is to drop Lockdown again. That get's me 5 seconds of Root added on for both bears. I would get the full cast of Envenom on the first bear, taking it out. Actually splash is AoE so the first bear would even die early. I'd be left with a bear who had lost 11 ticks of health to Envenom, 88, plus 40 to Splash for 128. 32 health and I'd have 10 mana with like 7 seconds to plan. My mana recovery is 15/5 from WIS + 6/5 from Manawell. With 4.1, 21/5, mana a second I recovered a decent amount of mana. I believe it was around 50 without going second by second. I'm old and lazy. Sue me.

I'm level 2 so I get 80+80=160*1.2(lvl diff)=192 EXP.

+192exp (320/400) (112/800) Lvl Up!!!

You have gained 10HP, 21MP, and 2 stat points!

You have gained 2 skill points + 1 magic point!

I'm at 108 HP and 273 mana. I add 2 points to MEM for 23 since I wanna dig around with Illusion this level. I have 11+6 skills, so I'll hit 20 now and 23 next level. Taking CHA now instead of next level won't matter.

Illusion Phase 1 Spell List:

Copy Self: Clone 8s | self | ranged 40ft | Cast 2s | 25 mana

Mesmerize: Sleep 5s |single target| ranged 40ft | Cast 2s | 20 mana

Charm: CHA +4 for 20s | self | Cast 1s | 100 mana

Distract: Concealed 4s | group | Cast 1s | 50 mana

Now that I was diving into Illusion I grabbed Smoke from Miasma plus Copy Self and Charm. Mesmerize would be a nice pick in a level or two as well as Distract but for now I needed a CHA boost for the big city. I got in a few more fights on my way and ended up at 400/800exp on the way to level 4.

Once I hit the city I immediately headed for the Mages Guild. I demonstrated my Tier 3 and 4 magic at the door, not wanting to give up the game yet, because I needed to be initiated to buy some start magic gear. I was hurting for mana so I needed some rings and such and I wanted a staff for combat as well.

I met with the Registrat and demonstrated some Pyromancy, Cantrips, and Miasma. I wanted to keep Illusion to myself. It wasn't a super rare skill but you got a small boost to Illusion if no one but you and your party/friends knew about it. Sentients and high tier monsters start to have saves and resistances against magic and I needed every advantage I could get.

From selling my vendor trash again and a couple nice things I ended up with a few silver. That was good because by starting with a strong Template and in a decent zone I got to skip the Copper Gear phase. Blech. I paid the guild fee and headed to their Emporium. The area I spawned in was a sort of Europy Dark Ages type place flair wise. The city was called Atria, clearly a Roman reference. I'd say it was more Slavic than Germanic which was a weird combo considering the lack of Roman interaction with Slavs in the real world.

I already had pretty good regen but I picked up some more anyways as well as a max mana buff. 7 Silver got you 2 recovery rings and a mana amulet. They really liked Amber here because of the Slavic theme if you care about aesthetics. My personal pool and recover were 273 and 21/5. Items were actually impacted by Template bonuses in the beta but they dumped that for live. Ah well. For now I got 5+2 and 5+2 for 14 more recovery per 5. 35/5 put me right at 7 a second. The whole /5 thing was a bit of a drag and of course later games got rid of it. Just seems like it adds extra math work.

The crown of my aquisition was the amulet. Another 100 mana was a big deal at my level. Sadly my only mana buff was to recovery. The staff was cool but not a major matter. Guild staffs dealt 4+STR + INT/4. So I was packing a 12+5=17 damage weapon. 17 single target wasn't amazing, especially in melee range. Staffs had "Reach" so at least I would get first strike if someone was coming at me. Firebolt did 20 damage for 20 mana, and while it was ranged that was still a pain. The staff could help me clean up trash mobs with low physical defense. It was also a sign of Guild membership.

I was pretty poor in relative terms. So I couldn't buy any fancy apparel. INT or WIS clothes, light armor, etc. So far I hadn't been hit but I had low health and it was bound to happen sometime. I'd grab some of that stuff on my next trip. I actually didn't get any nice looted gear before level 5.

Once I had gotten myself set up as a registered mage I headed over to the adventuring guild. In the live mode you mostly saw parties here, or at least NPC companions but not me. I played solo for a long time and any player alliances were temporary. I only did companions for escort quests or similar situations.

I'd dive into the dramatis personae in town but I didn't stay here long and so I'd rather move our story forward. Its a fine line between clarity and purple prose. I registered as an adventurer just in case I saw something cool in a guild but in the beta I was moving too fast to pay attention to the ins and outs of the guilds and the ranks really. I sort of jumped straight to noble drama. I spent some time as a mercenary for instance.

Adventurers had the typical tropey ranks. Copper Iron Steel Silver Gold Mithril Aurelium. Nothing too fancy. I started out Iron after an assessment, as I noted I sorta skipped the tutorial stuff. I grabbed the first 7 quests I saw and I went on my way. My first job was taking down a couple Abnormal Mountain Lions. Decent EXP but mostly just fun to play with my new mana pool.

Abnormal Mountain Lion Level 8 120EXP

HP: 200

STR 20 DEX 16 CON 20

Skills: Slash 50 | Bite 80 | Pounce 100

So it turns out I should have maybe ground a bit more before going questing. After I took down these monsters I got on that right quick. I hit level 4 before I did the next quest.

As far as this fight goes, again I have initiative. The Guild info was right on. We all kinda know the drill now I think. First a bit of buffing, then some crowd control and debuffs/DoTs. I knew I needed to do 400 damage and I could really only afford to get hit once. I had some fancy escapes now but as always mana is my weak spot, even with my fancy new gear.

I pop Quicken since the first few spells are key. Then Boost, as always. Lockdown. I know I've got 8.4 seconds of Root and 7.6 seconds of Haste now. I have one charge of Boost and of course I drop Envenom. 14 damage a second for 12 seconds. Now I've got 7.4 and 6.6 seconds. I drop Boost again and then Envenom and Splash. 4.4 and 3.6 seconds. Enough time to proc Splash all the way. Splash on Boost does 70 damage, and both Envenoms boosted do 168. I drop Lockdown and then Splash to finish the fight. All in all I spent 305 of my 373 mana. I don't check recharge since it doesn't matter.

This is the first fight I've had some breating room and I love it. I probably could have done almost as well without my 100 extra mana with my recovery but why chance it? I gained 120*2*1.4=336 EXP. Sitting pretty at 448. As noted I grind some mediocre forest mobs and played around with some different spells. I haven't had to use Pyromancy or Illusion much but I want to avoid falling into a pattern. I also rarely use Tarnishing or Warper. I know it seems like a mistake to have taken Tarnishing but I promise it pays off later.

+400exp (848/800) (48/1600) Lvl Up!!!

You have gained 10HP, 21MP, and 2 stat points!

You have gained 2 skill points + 1 magic point!

I'm now one lousy level from some new Abilities. Unfortunately it will take all the experience I've earned so far x2 to finish this level up. Luckily I have all these quests.

So I grabbed Distract and Mesmerize as I planned. Distract is more of a sneaking around spell, as is obvious by the name. Basically its throwing a rock or whistling but Mesmer style. I don't have Rogue skills yet so Illusion is a good bridge for times when I'm not just mage blasting stuff. Mesmerize is a cheap disable. Basically similar to TimeStop but not as expensive. Sleep however can be cancelled by both friend and foe but in the right situation it is a rare example of a Tier 3 spell outdoing a Tier 1 spell. Awesome.

Finally I pick up Stagnation. This both halves movement speed and action speed. Basically Slow is reverse Haste. The duration is twice as long as most disables which is nice. Like Haste Boost and other enchancers target the duration. Against a single target this is a nice tool. You can use it against several targets if you plan to bounce around with movement skills or use blinds and distractions. Say you want to pick off minions while the boss can't get to you.

I'll post a big character sheet next entry in my little blog and then we'll go questing and hit LVL 5.