HI! Welcome to Chessy (and UO!). Hopefully you enjoy the game and find that Chessy is the best community around (good pick, if you ask me). As for EC vs CC, you should try them both, but EC is a fundamentally better client, though the CC has its advantages too. I was a diehard CC guy for years and recently tried the EC just for fun and, actually, I switched. I learned how to make cart work and everything and changed over to use the EC perminately. I can set up a players macros in less than 5 minutes, where as in CC it might take 20 or 30 switching back and forth from UOAssist to the game getting everything set. Enough on that.
You say you want to make a poisoner assassin... so I am assuming that you want to PvP. The PvP community is difficult because most people there have been doing it for years and years and years and know every trick. However, the assassin is a good template to rock on as you start and if you are alone. Gareth makes a good point with the fencing for poisoning, however, nowdays with imbuing, you can rock out with swordsmanship just as easily. The butcher's knife allows you to poison and disarm without changing weapons. If you are a poison assassin, you'll want to poison and disarm a LOT. I would also recommend the skills of ninjitsu, tactics, anatomy, healing, hiding, and stealth. Though resist is a nice still too. I know some ninjas like to have both a melee and long range weapons skill to chase down the runners.
Welcome to chessy! Glad to see new players. If you want any help or need anything, please PM me and I'll do what I can. It's hard to start out in this game. It is SOOOO big with SOOOOO much stuff that it can be overwhelming for sure. But it can be managed.
Oh, also, there are tons of player run townships floating around and most are pretty open for new members and the like. You could probably find a community to join if that's your thing. Oh, Luna bank (Malas, Luna at any moongate) is the commerce and social hub of the land.
OK, I lost myself in what I was saying. Stratics is a great source of information, but kind of hard to navigate. If you have a specific question on a certain thing, UOGuide is a wiki site that is extrememly helpful for quick reference.
Have fun! Don't venture into fel too soon, people enjoy adding to their murder counts.
