Tip of the Week – Guide to Crescent Reach for Newbies!

So, You Made It To Crescent Reach! Now What?
Written by Community Member Chanus

Introduction

Below you will find a Guide to help you navigate through the first 10 or so Levels of the game, after you have completed the Tutorial. The Author highly recommends you follow the Crescent Reach > Blightfire Moors path (from the Serpent’s Spine expansion) if you are a new player or have not played the game in a long time. Many fun Quests and useful Items were added to the lower level game with this expansion, and server as a great place to get your teeth into the game. Certainly, though, exploration is half the fun! Feel free to deviate from the path laid out and explore the vast other areas. This is meant solely to give some idea of a direction to get you headed on the right path into the “meat” of the game.

First Things First!

Hail Emissary Tinvinn, the Drakkin that should be standing directly in front of you when you arrive. You will receive a Quest that will begin your journey through the game outside the Mines. You will learn to locate your Guildmaster, Spell Vendors, Initiate Dakkan* and Innkeeper Fathus. These people will all help you progress your character and learn more about the city within which you have found yourself. If you find yourself getting lost, you can find all these with your (Ctrl-F) Find Window.

An NPC (Non-Player Character) type you did not meet in the Tutorial is the Class Guildmaster. They are located in the western area of Crescent Reach known as the Dragon Grove, in a small building outside of the main city. Here, you may interact with these NPCs (by Right-Clicking) to train your skills. Each time you gain a level, you gain skill points which may be used for this training. Advancing a skill up to 20 via this method is free, but after that point, your Guildmaster will begin to charge a fee for more advanced knowledge. As you scroll down the list of skills, you can see what other skills you will learn later on, and at what Level they may be first acquired.

As a note, most of your skills will also be trained as you adventure. Depending on your class, it may be a good idea to save some skill points for those later Level skills so that you may “catch them up”. Any new skill you learn will be announced when your character gains a level and will start with one skill point.

Spell Vendors

Near your Guildmaster, you will find a Spell Vendor for your class. The spells available here are basically the same as were available in the Tutorial (though they are grouped by single class, instead of in pairs).

If you're a class that uses spells, you will need to take a slight detour to the Library in the Plane of Knowledge to purchase your spells over level 10. To get there, open your Find Window and click on the Blightfire Moors entry. Follow the path and run through the zone line. Blightfire Moors can be a dangerous place, but with a little bit of awareness, you should cross it without any problems. Keep your eye out for any critters and stay well away from them. If you head straight out, you will pass a signpost and see a path in front of you. Follow that path, staying to the south (heading east) where it forks, until you reach an outpost. On the east side of the outpost, the path continues around a hill. You will eventually come across a stone pedestal with a book on top of it. Click there to be transported to the Plane of Knowledge.

Once in the Plane of Knowledge, use your Find window again and look for your Class spell vendor. Your spells are grouped within level ranges on each vendor. Once you have the ones you need, head back to Crescent Reach.

Initiate Dakkan and Innkeeper Fathus

Initiate Dakkan will offer you three Quests which will supply you with a few helpful items. If you haven’t already discovered the “Preview Reward” button in your Quest window, now would be a good time to check it out. There are a good deal of Quests available in Crescent Reach, but some may offer rewards that will not necessarily benefit your character (such as Mana Regeneration Potions as a reward are not terribly useful for a melee class that doesn’t use Mana).

You will notice that Initiate Dakkan has “Quests 1+” under his name. This is an important tag to notice on any NPC in Crescent Reach. When you see the word “Quests”, hail that NPC, read through, and respond to their dialogue. Check the reward(s) offered for any Quest and do those that will benefit you. You can pick up a lot of nice items and equipment this way during your stay in Crescent Reach.

Innkeeper Fathus is the last NPC you will encounter on your first Quest through Crescent Reach. If your character is a Drakkin, seek out the NPC he suggests, as it will lead you to your Breath Weapon Quest, an innate ability all Drakkin may obtain which causes Area Effect damage, Damage Over Time, and a “debuff” to a particular Resist type (depending on your Dragon heritage).

What Else May I Do?

How nice of you to ask correctly!

As stated above, make sure to acquire every Quest you possibly can while in Crescent Reach. Explore all the areas of the city, as a few NPCs that offer Quests are a bit off the beaten path. You do not necessarily need to complete every Quest, however. Choose those which will benefit your character.

In the Jade Dragon Inn (the rooms behind Innkeeper Fathus), you will find a book lying on a table in one of the rooms. This is the first item you need to collect to obtain your Serpentseeker’s Charm of Lore. Simply pick up the book and hand it to Librarian Hemfar. There are two other items within the zone of Crescent Reach you may turn in (though I wont say where, where is the adventure in that?), which are hidden in containers you must /open, much like the kobold barrels in the Tutorial. There are also many other items you may collect scattered throughout the Serpent’s Spine zones. Many will be in containers; some are acquired from looting mobs. Once you have turned in the three items from Crescent Reach and one from Blightfire Moors, you will obtain your Charm of Lore. The more items you collect, the stronger it will become!

Another option many players choose is to follow the path of Tradeskills. You may have learned a bit about Baking while you were in the Tutorial. There are citizens of Crescent Reach who will give you tasks that raise your skill in any Tradeskill up to a skill of 54 for free. After obtaining that level of skill, you will need to advance further by acquiring components off of creatures around the world. If an item can be used for creating Tradeskill items it will have a tag when inspected that says, “This item may be used in Tradeskills”. If you do choose to pursue one of the crafting arts, be sure to head to West Freeport to speak to Event Coordinator Baublie Diggs just outside the city gates to obtain your Tradeskill Trophy. This is an item that evolves as you get better at your chosen craft and offers you an increased skill modifier. Note you are also not limited to only practicing one craft, you may practice all of the Tradeskills if you so choose (with the exceptions of Research, which is Caster Class Only, Tinkering, which is Gnome Only, and Alchemy, which is Shaman Only).

Where Do I Get Armor and Weapons?

You'll find that many items are acquired in Crescent Reach similarly to the way you acquire them in the Tutorial. They drop randomly off of creatures (mobs) that you kill. You will also find several Quests from various NPCs around the city that will reward you with non-visible (ears, fingers, neck, back, shoulders) armor items.

Since the armor is dropped randomly, you may end up with pieces your character can not use. Not to worry! Unlike the armor in the Tutorial, these pieces can be traded with other players for those you need, or sold to vendors for a bit of extra money. Due to this, it is also a good idea to browse vendors occasionally to see if someone else has sold them a piece of armor you may wear. Be careful, however, as some of the more greedy vendors will charge very high prices for items they do not usually carry. If the cost of something seems well out of reach, you are probably better off not bothering to save up the money for it.
 
Once you reach level 20, you will want to speak with Kimem Saydel in the Blacksmithing area of the city. He will offer you a set of armor quests for the Blightfire Moors zone which will upgrade you quite nicely. The armor awarded is quality enough to last you through quite a few levels.

The Rest is in Your Hands!

You should now be well on your way to beginning your adventures in the world of Norrath. Remember to keep your eyes open for new adventures around any corner, do not underestimate the value of making friends, and above all else: Have fun!

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