I went and did the pw recovery feature on the forums just so I could log in and contribute to this great post. Very succinct and with the most important details not well-covered in the wiki, all very good info. As a player who has often taken years-long breaks, I've had to relearn how to play EfU several different times over the years, and every time there's a steep learning curve, steeper than the vast majority of other difficult games.
That said, just wanted to add one thing, touched on on the wiki, but deserving to be said multiple times.
Let it be known: In EfU, you will die. You will not like it, you will be unhappy about it. It'll feel like it's costing you days or weeks of progress. When it happens more than once in a week, it can feel Sisyphean, like you're just endlessly treading the same path, doing the same work. The best thing to remember is that in a world this low-power, it doesn't actually really matter that much. Because your character can't do that much of anything in the world all on their own, your experience as a player in the game is going to have more to do with your character's IC relationships with other PCs than your character's level or the contents of their backpacks. This gives the de-leveling from death a bit of an unexpected boon when you think about it, as in a way, it allows your character to go back in time to a lower level, where they can again travel and quest with other lower level PC's that were made more recently than yours. PC's your character otherwise might not interact with, friends and enemies your PC might not otherwise make.
These relationships that your character makes are really their most powerful attribute and tool, far more than any class level or piece of DM loot, and the cyclical nature of how the very difficult upper-level challenges can kick you periodically down into the mid-level scrum are in many ways the system and DMs doing your character a favor, by pushing them forcibly back into the general population pool where they are forced to make new friends and enemies.
Anyways, just died to a big fat crit last night, so was thinking about this stuff and just wanted to share. Great guide Electro!
That said, just wanted to add one thing, touched on on the wiki, but deserving to be said multiple times.
Let it be known: In EfU, you will die. You will not like it, you will be unhappy about it. It'll feel like it's costing you days or weeks of progress. When it happens more than once in a week, it can feel Sisyphean, like you're just endlessly treading the same path, doing the same work. The best thing to remember is that in a world this low-power, it doesn't actually really matter that much. Because your character can't do that much of anything in the world all on their own, your experience as a player in the game is going to have more to do with your character's IC relationships with other PCs than your character's level or the contents of their backpacks. This gives the de-leveling from death a bit of an unexpected boon when you think about it, as in a way, it allows your character to go back in time to a lower level, where they can again travel and quest with other lower level PC's that were made more recently than yours. PC's your character otherwise might not interact with, friends and enemies your PC might not otherwise make.
These relationships that your character makes are really their most powerful attribute and tool, far more than any class level or piece of DM loot, and the cyclical nature of how the very difficult upper-level challenges can kick you periodically down into the mid-level scrum are in many ways the system and DMs doing your character a favor, by pushing them forcibly back into the general population pool where they are forced to make new friends and enemies.
Anyways, just died to a big fat crit last night, so was thinking about this stuff and just wanted to share. Great guide Electro!