Elven Mystic guide

So you've chosen the path of the Elven Mystic! This class choice will dictate how your character develops for the rest of your career, so it's an important decision. You'll have a lot of future options for class development, of course — the first will come at Level 20, when you choose between the Wizard and Oracle classes, and then you may get more choices at Level 40, when Wizards select from the Spellsinger and Elemental Summoner classes. Oracles all promote to Elders at Level 40.

This class track is one of magic, with various skills including pets, damage spells, character buffs, healing and more. Your character will never be as strong with weapons, and you'll find your armor use somewhat limited. But you'll have other strengths which will balance those weaknesses. Which ones depend on your choices down the road. Much of that is in the future for you, however. Let's focus on getting started as a Mystic for now.

Elven Mystics start next to the Elf village on the mainland. Most other races start in their own separate realm, but you're already on the mainland. This is an advantage, because it will save you travel time and money later on.

After logging in for the first time, you'll see a series of popup windows which guide you through various game mechanics. If this is your first time in the game, it's strongly recommended that you follow these starter directions, as they'll save you a lot of confusion later. You'll also be guided through your first quest: you have to kill Keltirs (small wild dogs running around the novice area) in order to get a world map. That map is great — you'll be using it for a long, long time. The quest is very easy, and well worth the reward.

Before you go hunting Keltirs, though, you should set up your hotkey bar! That involves clicking the icons for different powers and actions, and dragging them from your character information sheet onto the bar. You will start with two spells — a wind bolt and a self heal. Both of those are vital, and need to be set to hotkeys. The other actions you should move are "Take Item" and "Sit/Stand." The first tells your character to pick up anything lying nearby on the ground, and the second toggles between sitting and standing. You'll want to sit to rest when your Mana Points start getting low.

Now you're all set to start that first quest — and you might as well kill a few more Keltirs along the way, for the experience. Once you've completed the quest, you'll be directed to Guide Roios,

who will give you the names of people to go to for a variety of additional quests. Questing in this game makes for a nice break from regular leveling, and often has very good rewards, so those are worth investigating.

As soon as you can, get back to leveling on those Keltirs, Elder Keltirs and Wolves. You'll find that you can start a wind bolt, then while it is casting, left-click a spot on the ground farther away from your target. As soon as the spell finishes its cast, you'll start running toward the point you clicked on the ground. This opens up more distance between you and your target, which is important: spells have a casting time, but also have a reset timer (usually short).

That means you can't cast the same spell repeatedly without pause, so you're best off running a bit farther away while the spell resets. The tactic of firing a spell, running away a bit, then turning to shoot again is called "kiting," and you'll be doing a lot of it as a caster. You can't take damage very well, and if something attacks you while you're casting, it can interrupt the spell and prevent your cast. It's important to stay away from close range combat.

As you press on in levels, you're going to see coin and items drop from the creatures you kill. These should be saved, and in most cases the items should be sold to the vendors in town for more coin. Your goal is to save up a bit under nine hundred adena for a new weapon. That will be either a "book" or a staff; the book is probably the better choice right off, since you can use a shield with it. Mystics can use a shield with no penalty. The new weapon will increase your character's Magic Attack score, which makes your bolts do more damage and other spells more likely to hit.

Finally, you've reached Level 7! You've done a couple of quests, and you've killed a lot of the easier creatures. You've bought that new weapon, and might have a shield too, if you went with the book weapon. Level 7 is special though, because it's when you get to learn new skills for the first time. It's also where you need to make the first important decisions about your character's future. Head to the trainers in the Elven Village, inside the big building with the elaborate staircases on the south side of town . If you noticed, each creature you killed gave you "SP" as well as experience. These skill points are used to buy new character powers and skills, or advance existing ones, and by now you should have a small pool of them.

Don't stress too much about which skills to take — you can't mess up your character here. Eventually, you'll probably want all of the starting skills you see offered. In the short term though, there are definitely a couple of best paths to take. Perhaps most importantly, if you plan to group at all, you're going to want to get the Heal spell as soon as possible.