Welcome back, I returned just before Christmas after a 15 or so year gap and I hear you, everything has changed! My once powerful characters are mediocre at best now.
There's lots of good information in the 'stickys' on the forums here that helped me a lot. The trouble is there's so much to take in unless you've got an eidetic memory you're better off learning gradually over weeks (at least that's what helped me).
'Victim of Sieges' suggestion above of joining a guild is a good one as you're more likely to be able to find someone to ask a question and then further follow-up questions if need be.
I've found asking questions on the forums not to be that great, there's lots of people viewing posts but not many posting. It's a pain I know people posting the same old questions again and again (something i'm guilty of
) when the information they need is out there already, the trouble is when you're trying to re-learn the whole game even the terminology people are using needs looking up so it can take ages to read a post at first. Not to mention you ask a question about building say a 'Sampire' character and everyone has arguments about what's best and what equipment and then you find a post that's nice and clear and easy to follow but find it's 10 years old so don't know if it's right still and don't want to put hours in to training irrelvant skills so post a thread asking if some set of skills are good but no one replies because the 'information is already out there' lol
It's tough but you will get there over time, I'm loving being back with all this new stuff to learn.
Here's a few bits that helped me, they may be relevant to you too:
1) For easy gold go to Shame and stay on the first level, you only need physical resist here so easy to armour up and 500gp per kill ish plus minor lootable items that may help you. (My warrior and Bard did well here). You can quickly earn enough to build a small house and get some half decent equipment...
2a) Equipment - Look on forums to find out what stats you want on the equipment you use as different things will help different characters. You hover over a bit of armour now and loads of different properties will be listed, a lot of which may be of no use to you so look into which ones you want and you will find it easier to know what to wear/carry. Once you've been playing a while you'll be able to pick up better armour with more stats relevant to you but early on them pieces will be to hard to get or too expensive to buy.
2b) Click on your character when in town or in your home and click 'Vendor Search' you can find cheap bits of armour and weapons that will help you a lot. (don't go looking randomly as there's so many empty vendors out there you'll waste hours)
3) Everyone hangs at Luna bank now, some people may help you there.
4) Every day at 6pm GMT there's a meeting at Brit bank, players are very helpful and welcoming there.
5) There's loads of these but here's a few that helped me read forum posts better, just take a photo with your phone
:
SSI - Swing Speed Increase
DI - Damage Increase
LRC - Lower Reagent Cost
LMC - Lower Mana Cost
HCI - Hit Chance Increasee
HML - Hit Mana Leech
HLL - Hit Life Leech
HSL - Hit Stamina Leech
HPI - Hit Point Increase
DCI - Defense Chance Increase
Welcome back, have fun
