Your first hour

1. Make your fighter

• Choose a faction. It decides your home, your side and which bloodlines you can take.
• Choose a Bloodline Legacy, or go without one.
• Spend your attribute points. They are fixed for this life, so decide what you want to be: a brawler, a caster, or a mix.

2. Train at the Academy

Step on the Resonance in your Citadel to reach the Nimian Training Academy. Nothing you lose there is real, so it is the place to learn the basics:

• Move and turn the camera.
• Raise your Guard, and lower it when the blow has passed.
• Use Flash Step to close a gap or to leave one.
• Charge Nimis to refill what your techniques spend.
• Sit on a bench to recover.

Spar with other Initiates while you are there. A knockout in the Academy costs nothing.

3. Visit your teachers

• A profession teacher gives you a profession and its first technique.
• An element teacher gives you an element, as Pure or as the first half of a Hybrid. Read the element pages first; this choice is for life.
• Start learning a technique. Progress builds wherever you are from then on. See Learning and mastery.

4. Before you leave the walls

• Bank your gold. A defeat in the wilds takes most of what you carry and none of what is banked.
• Take a mission from the board, so the trip pays even if the fights do not.
• Know the way back. Portals close for 30 seconds after another player hurts you.

5. Your first fight

• Start with the creatures near the gate. See Creatures.
• Join an arena event when one is called. Teams are matched by age and rank, and a loss there costs nothing.
• When another player finds you, remember that being knocked out is not the end. You can struggle back up, and you are only defeated once your Wounds are full.

What comes after

The Graduation Exam makes you a Warden. At 25 the Academy closes to you. From there the wilds are the game.