Gah! Getting pissed off now. Died three times tonight.

The first time I tried to engage an enemy but a "helper" was in my way so everytime I left clicked, it would try to start a conversation with her mid-battle.
The second time I escaped from a den and chose to ignore some baddies but one kept chasing me and zapping me. By the time I turned around to attack, my health was below 25%. I almost beat the enemy, it turned to run away, tried to attack it but for some reason every time I left clicked, nothing happened. I tried to use power attack 1 and had no magic so got killed.
The third time I was in a den. Attacking the enemy one by one but at one point, two attacked me simultaneously, then they ran away when they had almost zero health and then a third attacked me. I just left at that point.

The other thing is pockets/pouches. I seem to acquire loads of crap. What stuff is useful and what isn't? For example, if I kill loads of spiders, do I take the legs and fur or are they a waste of time. Normally when I play the likes of Morrowind/Skyrim, I gather crap like that and sell it to get more gold.

Throw away anything that's grey.

Anything else you can sell at an auction house in your main city.

If you don't want to sell it then just chuck it. The main things to keep are potions and armour/weapons that are maybe a lvl or two too high for you but would be good when you get there. For now anything else is kind of irrelevant.

Most things like spider venom, spider silk, leather, etc... are used for crafting.

Don't worry about dying too much at the beginning. It will probably happen a lot. You'll find yourself in a cave and the mobs behind you start to spawn so you either have to fight your way out, run away, or die, lol!

Indeed, at the beginning it's a little attritional. RE: Stuff - once you get out of the start zone and find your race's capital city, you can open a bank account (no really) which gives you access to a chest you can use to keep hold of a lot more stuff. You can also buy bags that have more paces, up to (IIRC) 20 slots per bag when I was playing. Usually you have to buy them from the auction house as people use their profession skills to make them - the auction house is also in your race's capital. you should also note some things 'stack' - you can drop them on top of each other to form piles that only take up one space in your bag.

The 'chuck anything grey' is reasonable advice in the main. Keep weapons that drop because they usually can be sold for at least reasonable money but any 'bit of a creature' like a horn or a tooth that isn't a quest object at this point probably isn't going to be any use to you or have a sale price worth lugging it about. You can install add ons that tell you what everything you're carrying is worth but the whoel add ons thing.. well I don't even know if they work with the starter edition to be honest with you.

About getting mobbed.. that's an entire skillset in MMOs, generally referred to as 'crowd control'. You will have certain powers you can earn which help this - stick opponents in place, make them temporarily run away, freeze them etc. At the level you're probably at though, the only thing you can do is go carefully and try not to activate too many at a time. That stealth skill you have as wood elf is useful for that. Creatures have an activation radius that is dependent on the difference between your level and theirs - so monsters that are higher level than you can 'see' you from further away than one lower level than you and will carry on chasing you even if you get further away, whereas lower level creatures will give up more quickly.

All this stuff is practice - you'll get used to how far away you need to be and what mobs you need to avoid.

Also, the penalty for dieing really isn't that great at your level. Running back to your crpse is just time and even respawning in graveyard is only going to cost you a few coins in repairs and waiting around for 20 seconds. It's somewhat worse when you're level 80 and the repair costs are enough to buy a small town .

When I die, do I have to do the spirit crap? PITA to try and find it - the last time I died, it took me three attempts to find my corpse.

There are two options when you die.

Find your corpse and respawn at it with the risk of being in the middle of a cave that you can't get out of.

Respawn at the graveyard. You take a bigger penalty for doing this but when you only have a few silver coins then it isn't that much of a hit. I think you lose more xp on the lvl that you're at.

IIRC the 'run back to your corpse' option gives you a very short (I think about 10 second) penalty on your skills after you resurrect yourself. You can resurrect anywhere withina certain radius of your corpse, so it's usually possible to find a safe spot to do so unless you've completely got in over your head.

The 'respawn at the graveyard' option gives you a longer skills penalty - I think it's about 5 minutes - and also causes all the equipment you're wearing to lose 25% of it's durability which means you'll need to get it repaired or it may break sooner. The cost of repair is proportional to the value of any given item and how much durability it's lost in total.

Eve is possibly both the best MMO and the worst MMO to play ever.

The amount of options that are available are massive (from being a Miner, Trader, Pirate, blah blah) and people who play the game often regard it as a second job.

The main issue with the game is simply its accessibility, it's rather hard to get into and your options at the start are extremely limited. Not to mention there is no EXP grind in Eve, all skills are researched over time, with higher level skills taking longer. This effectively means that you can't simply play more to level faster and there's always a "minimum amount of time" before you can actually fly certain ships

As for, if i didn't have any friends playing MMOs, would i play them? That's an interesting question.... i probably still would as I'd end up making new friends. My original bunch of friends left SWTOR after the first month, I knew there was a Guild from the Ctrl+Alt+Del webcomic on a different server, so i bit the bullet and started a new character over there. I met new people along the way and am still running content with them to this day (in fact, there's a shiny new patch on SWTOR tonight and it's going to be a great [LIFTED] =]).

Okay, I think I'm struggling a bit with things here.

I died four times whilst trying to kill the mob and get the dude's head in the Fel Rock place. Turns out I should have been using some special seeds to kill the enemy!!! I'm accumulating lots of stuff like a whithered staff, rusty chainmail etc. How can I get them either repaired so they're usable or sellable?

I'm still struggling with attacking enemies. Sometimes my character won't fight someone despite there being a red circle under the target and I'm left clicking on the target's face. If I press the special magic moves buttons (eg '1' for powered attack) I can hit the enemy. WTF is going on?

I tried to speak to an innkeeper to bind the heartstone in Dolanaar but there were no options. Lots of clicking and I ended up transporting back to where I first started when the game first installed! How do I bind the heartstone? Have I got the right person?

Right, there's a couple of thing about attacks.

First off, if you haven't changed it then right clicking a mob will make you run towards it and attack with your weapon repeatedly. If you press the attack button again it stops you attacking. So only press once.

Second, only put your special attacks onto your bar. (Your normal attack is your right mouse button).

Special attacks are generally either more powerful or cause some sort of effect to either you, the mob you are fighting or mobs within an area. However, they are not spammable. They will either have a cooldown period or will use "energy" (Rage in the case of a warrior).

The way to play a warrior normally is to run in with the attack on so that as soon as you get in range you'll start smashing them with your sword (or hammer or mace or whatever). Then whilst he is attacking you can then manage your special attacks and shouts.

My normal approach to a group of mobs would be something like.

1. Click to attack closest mob.
2. As soon as Charge attack gets in range use it to run in and stun the enemy.
3. Just before I get to him perform the shout to give me a buff (can't remember name).
4. Then when I'm in range use something like rend (I think it's called that) to start the mob "bleeding". This will start him losing health over time.
5. Use some sort of shout to gather all the other mobs together (if you're feeling brave).
6. Use the whirlwind attack (or whatever it's called) to hit all the mobs that have gathered around you.
7. Repeat 4, 5 and 6 until all the mobs are dead. Making sure to hit normal attack on each subsequent mob.

Note though that you only need to press normal attack once per enemy. I normally do this just by right clicking them. This will then make me target that mob AND automatically start attacking them.

Remember, the attack button is a toggle. You will keep slashing until either you or the mob is dead.

I don't seem to have attack as a "toggle". I have to left click to strike anything. The only two power moves I have at the moment are a power strike (uses magic) and eviscerate. I can press 1 or 2 to get these.

Should I bother learning any new abilities with random trainers? Think one was cooking and the other was pets.

EDIT: I'm a level 9 but can't wear chainmail because I don't have the proficiency! Where do I go? This is not like Skyrim at all!

Hmm...

It's been a while since I played. I'll download the free trial tonight and remind myself. Did you say you're a warrior?

Night Elf warrior

Right, downloading now

What realm are you in?

Aggramar

I'm omens.

Just started playing and will be online for the next two hours.