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Getting Your Bearings

Runes of Magic does a nice job of getting you into the action quickly without tossing you into the deep end of the pool in the hopes you’ll learn to swim. There’s a very quick optional tutorial available when you first start. I suggest doing so for a couple of reasons. First, it gives you some nice rewards and a 48-hour 20% attribute bonus. As a quick note, the timer for this bonus continues to count down whether you’re online or not. The second reason to do the tutorial is it literally takes little more than 3 or 4 minutes to complete. In exchange for the aforementioned attribute bonus, it’s well worth it.

Once you finish the tutorial, you’re placed in a starting village and immediately sent out on a number of different quests. The majority of these consist of kill tasks and speaking with various village residents. The kill quests are typical MMOG fare but they serve their purpose in getting you familiar with your particular brand of combat, so I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.

Being sent to speak with the local village residents is another long used staple in the MMOG bag of tricks to show you where to go in order to learn how to craft, buy weapons, and get a general feel of the land. It may be one of the oldest tricks in the book, but that doesn’t make it any less effective.

Unleash the Beast

The last thing your Warrior will ever want to think about is taking an anger management course. That’s because just like the Hulk, the madder they get, the more dangerous they become. Think of them as Norse Berserkers. They’re more concerned with dealing out massive amounts of damage than they are about their own safety. This makes them extremely dangerous to any and all enemies.

While the Warrior can use nearly every weapon in the game, you’ll probably want to stick with those that coincide with your abilities the most. This means that most of the time, you should be using a 1-handed sword, 1-handed axe, or any 2-handed weapon. The bleed effect some of your attacks can inflict requires a sword or axe, the Thunder skill requires a 1-handed weapon, while your Tactical skill requires a 2-handed weapon.

One of the things that make the Warrior such an attractive class are the choices you have and knowing you're not just a clone of the Warrior beside you is a good thing. Some may choose to go the board and sword route by using a sword and shield, while others prefer to stick with 2-handed weapons. The choice is up to you.

Unlike a Mage, the Warrior starts out a little slowly. There’s nothing in the early levels of the game that will actually cause you any trouble, but you’re not going to be able to kill many opponents with a single blow. This doesn’t mean you should give up though, for as you gain in levels, your power drastically increases.

Most of the damage your skills inflict are based off a percentage of your current weapon. In the beginning, some of these skills only cause 40% of your weapon’s potential damage. Before you reach level 10 though, these same skills will be causing 200% or more, depending on how you choose to distribute your skill points. As you continue to level, this will only get better, so be sure to hang in there.

The Warrior isn’t the class of choice for everyone. If you’re looking for a class that allows you to get in the face of your opponent and are more concerned about causing damage than resisting it though, you should think about rolling one up. The Warrior is the perfect class for those that think the dark side of the Force is where it’s at… give in to your hate and rain hell upon your foes.